Sorrow Space by James Axler Page B

shook his head. “We might have more trouble spotting it, but I don’t see it myself,” he reasoned. “That would take a lot of equipment to boost the jamming signal. It’s too elaborate for gun runners.”
    “An outside party, then?” Lakesh proposed.
    “Again, same notation,” Philboyd said. “And it’s too specific. It could not be by chance alone—it would take a targeted attack on our specific transponder frequencies to hide them.”
    “What about the Original Tribe?” Lakesh suggested. The Original Tribe were a group of technological shamen who operated from a hidden location in the Australian outback. They had clashed with the Cerberus organization one year ago during a mission to recover a reactivated doomsday device, and had subsequently marked the Cerberus operatives—and specifically Lakesh himself—for death. With their advanced technology, the Original Tribe had shown incredible ingenuity in infiltrating computer systems, and had even managed to remotely tap into the mat-trans.
    Philboyd looked uncertain. “They’ve been quiet for so long,” he said. “It just doesn’t feel right.”
    “Then what else could have happened?” Beth asked.
    “The transponder signals are bounced to us via satellite...” Lakesh began, still forming a working theory. “Could there be a problem there, Beth?”
    Delaney tapped her computer keys, engaging a systems check of the satellite uplink. “We’re still getting a strong signal in other respects,” she said doubtfully. “It’s only the CAT Alpha team that has dropped from sight.”
    “Well, if the satellites are still operational,” Philboyd realized, “then either the signal’s been blocked by a screen, or Kane and his team are somewhere beyond their reach.”
    “Off planet?” Lakesh said doubtfully. While Cerberus had mounted off-planet excursions before now, including battling with an alien mothership outside of Earth’s atmosphere and visiting the Moon and Mars, the abruptness with which Kane’s team had disappeared did not seem consistent with such a journey. For one thing, they should have reported in. “Recheck the data and replay the signals with an echo trace,” Lakesh decided. “Try to pinpoint exactly when and where they were when they disappeared. Brewster, backtrack on the satellite footage. Let’s see if we can eyeball our team from above and learn where they went to.”
    Brewster Philboyd nodded, removing his glasses for a moment to clean them on his tunic before he got to work on this new problem. It seemed that the mysteries were piling up today, one upon another.
    As he wondered what had happened to CAT Alpha, there was something else nagging at Lakesh as he made his way back to his desk. The report that Reba DeFore had provided concerning the components of their mysterious visitor, most specifically those nongenetic components that suggested protective clothing of some sort. Could that possibly be a space suit, the kind man had designed to walk on the Moon? If Kane’s team had been spirited off planet, was it possible that an astronaut had come to visit Cerberus via the mat-trans? And if that was the case, were the two things linked?
    Lakesh sighed heavily as he plucked up DeFore’s report for another check. There were just too many questions right now, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that the one thing they didn’t have enough of was time.
    * * *
    K ANE DUCKED DOWN AS another bullet clipped the burnt-out car close to his ear, shrieking like a delirious child as it cut through the air.
    Crouched beside him, Grant and Brigid were both awaiting his decision.
    “Fight or flight, Kane?” Grant pressed. “Which is it?”
    He didn’t want to fight Magistrates, but if it was necessary, they needed somewhere they could defend, where they would be less out in the open. Kane’s eyes darted to the building behind him, the one from which they had emerged, its ruined wall showing the guts of four floors like some cutaway