Godzilla at World's End (17 page)

That meant that whatever this thing was, it was guided by an intelligence. But what kind of intelligence? And why destroy satellites without declaring war or without an apparent plan?

Unless the plan is to knock out every single satellite in orbit
, Wistendahl pondered, a chill running through him.

That would cripple the whole world and throw us back to the Stone Age ...

Suddenly the glass doors to the Space Command Center opened, and General Rory Bierce, commander in chief of NORAD, returned from his video conference with the president of the United States and the prime minister of Canada. A tall lieutenant with bland features followed.

"Status!" the general barked.

Colonel Wistendahl, exhausted from being on duty for sixteen hours straight, saluted his commander and made his report.

"The object continues to knock satellites out of the sky, General," Wistendahl replied. "In six minutes, it will hit a Chinese satellite placed in orbit just six weeks ago - unless the Chinese manage to move the thing far enough out of the object's path to save it ..."

The general nodded grimly.

"We have an update on the size of the object, General," Wistendahl continued. He shuffled some papers in his hand and came up with the correct page. "The object has a mass of about twenty-five to thirty thousand tons. It is about sixty-five to seventy meters long. The thing may have wings, and seems to emit a laser beam - at least that is what destroyed the spy satellite a few minutes ago.

"We have some telescopes tracking it, and hope to have a photograph or computer image of the object in a few more minutes."

"We have those images now, Colonel," General Bierce interrupted. All heads in the SCC turned toward the general when they heard his words. The officer scanned the curious faces staring up at him.

"What I am about to show you must not leave this room," General Bierce announced loudly. "You all have security clearance - remember that what you are about to see is top secret."

The general nodded toward an aide, the tall lieutenant who, Wistendahl suddenly noticed, was wearing a sidearm. The man inserted a disk into the drive of one of the many computers. The man calmly tapped out a security code on the keyboard.

Everyone in the room gasped when they saw the thing on the huge main color monitor.

"Yes," Bierce stated. "I understand your surprise. We think the object is a living thing, or perhaps a cyborg or robot of some kind. Spectrographic scans indicate both the presence of metal and the density of flesh and bone.

"The object
did
launch from a previously unknown site under the Antarctic. Who knows how long it was buried there?"

"What do you think activated it, General?" Wistendahl asked.

General Bierce shrugged. "There have been reports of earthquake activity in Antarctica, and mysterious disappearances - in one case, an entire scientific research station."

Everyone continued to stare at the thing on the monitor until the voice of Airman Stilson interrupted them.

"The object is approaching the Chinese satellite," she announced. Everyone in the Space Command Center turned their attention to a second screen, which marked and cataloged all the satellites in space.

Slowly, the red dot representing the unknown object approached the Chinese satellite. Suddenly the two pips crossed paths, and the satellite disappeared from the monitor. The red dot representing the object progressed to its next target.

"If this goes on much longer, every communications satellite in space will be destroyed in less than three days," Colonel Wistendahl announced.

The general nodded. He had just informed the administration of that fact. The president seemed to have no comment.

"I'm putting us on alert," General Bierce announced. "DEFCON ONE. This facility will be sealed. No one comes in or gets out of NORAD as of now."

"The object is changing course," Stilson interrupted, staring at her monitor. "It is approaching a Saudi Arabian satellite ..."

Colonel Wistendahl and General Bierce exchanged meaningful glances. Both were old Cold Warriors who had fought battles like this before.

"One more thing," the general said finally. "The ... object ... has been given a name. From now on, refer to it as Gigan."

Friday, December 8, 2000, 11:13 A.M.
Taiwan-to-Manila ferry
Luzon Strait, near the South China Sea

"Make way for the Gecko Prince!" Jin cried, thrusting his arms out and throwing his emerald-green Gecko cape over his shoulders.

His little sister, Mae, gave her nine-year-old brother a sour look. "I want to be the Gecko Prince," she demanded stubbornly.

Jin brushed aside her protestations. "You
can't
be the Gecko Prince," he informed her. "You're a
girl
- and anyway, you don't have a cape."

Lacking an argument to match her brother's, Mae turned to threats. "Mother said you can't wear your cape on this trip. I'm going to tell!" she announced.

Jin, who had been avoiding his parents since the trip on the ocean-going ferry began early that morning, tried to reason with his annoying little sister.

"You can be the Gecko
Princess
," he announced magnanimously.

But Mae frowned and crossed her arms. "I don't
want
to be the princess," Mae cried. "All the princess does is scream - and she
always
has to be rescued from the evil Black Dragon!"

"But you're a girl," Jin pointed out. "You can't be a prince."

Mae stamped her tiny feet, turned, and walked away from her brother. As she left, she called to him over her shoulder.

"I'm going to tell Mother," she declared.

"Go on and tell!" Jin cried back defiantly. Then he turned around and ran across the deck, his green cape billowing behind him. Jin knew his playtime was going to be short once his mother found out he'd sneaked his cape aboard the ferry. As he stared over the railing at the choppy waves, Jin frowned.

Bad enough I'm missing today's episode of
Gecko Prince of the Universe, Jin thought bitterly.
Any minute now, Mother is going to arrive and take my cape away from me again.

Jin decided to make good use of the time he had left.
Three times around the bulkhead means I'm going to Mars
, he decided.
Four times around and I'll arrive on Jupiter.
The little boy thought about it for a moment before deciding to go all the way.

"Gecko Prince ... fly to Jupiter!" he cried as he took off in a run. His head down, his arms and legs pumping, Jin ran headlong around the bulkhead of the rusty ferry.

"Black Dragon, face me now, you coward!" Jin cried as he completed his third lap around the bulkhead. But as he came around the corner, Jin screamed.

To his amazement, he had come face-to-face with the Gecko Prince's archenemy - the Black Dragon himself.

Jin took three steps backward, then fell on his rump. The dragon, swimming in the ocean only a few feet away, turned its mighty head and stared at the little Chinese boy. Then it blinked and hissed angrily.

Jin screamed again. Then the boy heard excited voices. Some of the passengers had run out onto the deck, pointing at the monster, which quickly swam past the ship. Cameras were produced, and many of the amazed passengers began to snap pictures of the creature.

Jin, still stunned, closed his eyes and rubbed them with his fists. When he opened his eyes again, the dragon was gone. Only a ripple on the ocean waves indicated that it was ever there at all.

Suddenly, Jin felt a hand on his shoulders. He looked up into the angry face of his mother. His little sister, Mae, stood at her side, a triumphant smile on her tiny face.

"I told you not to bring that stupid cape on this trip!" Jin's mother cried.

"But, Mother!" Jin protested. "I just saw the Black Dragon! He was swimming right out there." Jin pointed to the deep ocean.

"That's
it
," the woman declared. "You're not watching that ridiculous television show anymore!"

"But, Mother -"

"Don't argue with your mother," the woman commanded. Then she dragged the boy up off the deck and pulled him away. Jin protested the whole time.

Saturday, December 9, 2000, 1:15 P.M.
Independent News Network, Studio B
World Trade Center Tower
New York, New York

"What is this? A rerun of
Independence Day
?" Larry Jones quipped with obvious irritation as he pointed to the fuzzy picture on the television screen.

Nobody in the control booth seemed to understand the man's reference - or they
pretended
they didn't. Instead, all eyes in the studio were glued to the monitors - two of which were blank. That was because two of the five major broadcast networks were off the air; they'd been off for two hours.

The Fox Network was still up, but its picture was broken and fuzzy, and often the audio track simply faded out.

PBS was still broadcasting - at least in New York City. The cable channels were not faring much better. Most of them were off-line, and more were going down every hour. And in the last several hours, telephones, fax machines, and even computer lines were being affected by some sort of massive glitch.

"I guess we're not going on the air today," Brian Shimura complained. "Too bad, too, because I have some great stories ... rumors of a UFO in orbit above the Earth ... earthquakes in Peru ... and get this! Someone actually took a picture of a
dragon
off the coast of the Philippines!"

"A dragon?" the director said from his chair. "Are you sure they didn't spot Godzilla?"

"Nope," Brian replied. "I saw the photo on the video newswire. And trust me,
I
know the difference between Godzilla and a dragon."

The producer sighed and rubbed his tired eyes.

"Actually, Brian, dragons sound about right," he said miserably. "Because at this rate, nobody will be on the air by this time tomorrow. As far as communications go, if it ain't hard-wired, it ain't happening."

"Yeah," the director added. "It looks as if we're all entering a new Dark Age."

Saturday, December 9, 2000, 1:55 P.M.
Bridge of the
Destiny Explorer
Near the Ecuador/Peru border
Off the coast of South America

Shelly frowned when she saw the stricken look on her father's face. He had just completed a long radio call to New York - one of the first they'd managed to complete in many, many hours.

It looked as if the airship's communications system was going haywire, and for no apparent reason - at least none that Shelly could find.

"What's up?" Shelly asked, knowing it was bad news and not sure she wanted to hear it. Things had been going pretty well since they had departed from Orlando. The lights were working properly now, thanks to a software solution dreamed up by Leena Sims.

Ned and Peter had gotten the Messerschmitt-XYB prepped and ready for a test run, and Michael had corrected some of the glitches in the airship's navigational computers.

Shelly knew that the good times were about to come to an end. She suspected as much when she heard her father yelling at someone over the radio a half hour ago.

Simon Townsend looked at his daughter, then at Captain Dolan, who was still at the helm. Outside the bridge windows, the day was misty and overcast. The gray skies somehow fit the sudden changes of mood on the bridge.

"We've been ordered to land the
Explorer
in Lima," Simon announced, clutching a sheet of paper on which he had scribbled some notes during the radio conference.

"What?" Shelly cried. She and Captain Dolan exchanged shocked glances.

"You mean we're, not going to Antarctica?" Captain Dolan demanded, sounding more upset than Shelly or Simon would have expected him to be at the news.

"Oh, we're going to Antarctica, all right," Simon Townsend replied. "But our passengers aren't. We've been ordered to leave them behind in the care of the American embassy."

"But why?" Shelly asked.

"We're supposed to take on a unit of U.S. Army Rangers with full combat regalia."

"Rangers!" Shelly cried. "Why Rangers? Has some kind of war broken out?"

Simon looked down once again at the sheet of paper in his hand.

"The United States government has just taken possession of this airship and its crew," he announced. "A state of emergency has been declared. Something is happening in Antarctica, and the Rangers are supposed to investigate it."

Unnoticed by Shelly or her father, Captain Jack Dolan paled. His hands clutched the control wheel of the airship, and his eyes remained fixed on the horizon. But turmoil blackened his features.

Could it all be true?
the captain wondered.

"Why can't they just fly an airplane full of troops down to the South Pole?" Shelly demanded. "Why do they need our airship?"

Simon looked at his daughter.

"For one thing, it's not
our
airship. It belongs to Mycroft E. Endicott," her father reminded her harshly. "And according to this message from Mr. Endicott, there has been no communication with anyone on the Antarctic continent in three days.

"Every airplane sent over the South Pole simply disappears, and a spy plane sent over the region a couple of days ago discovered that a seventy-mile-wide hole has opened up in the ice."

My God in heaven!
Captain Dolan screamed to himself. His heart began to race.
Perhaps I'm not on a wild-goose chase after all!

"Is all this weird stuff connected to our communications problems?" Shelly asked. Her father nodded.

"And not just ours," he replied. "It seems the whole world is having troubles with its communications systems."

"This can't be happening!" Shelly moaned, striking her hands on the wall of the bridge. "We can't lose the
Destiny Explorer
to a bunch of tin soldiers!"

"I'm afraid we can, Shelly," her father said grimly. "We've gotten our orders from Endicott himself."

As tears welled up in Shelly Townsend's eyes, her father addressed the captain of the airship.

"How soon can we land in Lima?" Simon Townsend asked.