"I'm game." He nodded, feeling his adrenaline starting to build again. "Standing here is not going to do anything for us."
It was a quick climb, through the slivers of granite outcropping that cut their way out of the shallow soil. When they reached the cinderblock structure, she punched in a security code on the keypad beside its black steel door and shoved it open. "If they haven't shut down the terminal in here yet, maybe I can get Georges on the computer net. He can shunt over control of those servomechanisms up there and then . . ."
He followed her inside. As he did, fluorescent lights clicked on to reveal an array of radar screens and a main computer terminal. "Hey, can we kill the beacon?" He frowned. "Whatever you're planning better be doable in the dark."
"No problem." She activated the terminal, then pointed toward the door. "The light switch is right there. Think you can handle it?"
He clicked it off and let the wisecrack pass. Then he turned back. "Now what?"
"God, I've never had anybody coming to kill me. The stories are right. It really does concentrate the mind." She began typing on the keyboard. "I had a thought. We're networked into the Fujitsu from all over the facility with LAN, so—"
"And that's computer lingo for a local-area network, or something."
"Right." She nodded. "At one point we had to hook all the workstations together, for a special test. Part of this area was connected into the network, so we could do some of the work from up here, but we always kept the larger servomechanisms on the main system, for safety reasons. Georges set it all up so everything has to be operated from down there, where the power drain can be monitored. Right now I need to get hold of him and have him do some things."
She was still typing. And then she got what she wanted.
9:51 p.m.