Twenty-five minutes ago his phone had trumpeted at him, in the ringtone he used for Lab Security, waking him up. Manny said, "Mr. Drexler, I think you better come down here right away. Echo's hurt pretty bad and the place is a wreck."

"What?" he said, morning stupid.

"They hit Echo, I can't wake him up. They broke into the lab."

"Did you call for an ambulance?"

"Yes. They said they'd send a crew from the airport, they're the closest."

"Did you call the police?"

"No."

"Good. Don't move him. Put a blanket or something over him, keep him warm. Stay right with him. I'm on my way."

He grabbed his camera and phone and ran out, down the stairs to his car.

He had stopped for coffee on the way and he felt guilty about it until he saw how grateful Manny was for his cup. The crew chief was saying, "...we can get him to St. James in about fifteen minutes. Either of you guys want to come with us?" Manny looked at Drexler. Drexler nodded, "Call me as soon as you know something. Get some breakfast when you get a chance." He gave Manny a twenty. Everyone except Drexler quickly buckled into the ambulance. "Call me." he shouted after them as they closed and latched the doors. With a scraping of diesel bearings, the big ambulance drove out past the open gate, lights flashing but sirens silent.

As the noise of the engine faded, for the briefest moment, Drexler was conscious of the beauty of the morning. He saw a whooping crane, far off over the marsh, slowly flying on a morning crane errand. The lights of the refineries in the distance seemed to dim against the brightening sky, and the stillness of the air was underscored by the steam rising in a straight vertical plume from the vent stacks up to a height in the air where it spread like a wispy white umbrella. The coffee cup in his hand was warm and reassuring, and a sip brought him out of his reverie. He put the cup on the hood of his car and began taking pictures. All the cars in the lot: the white ZDI jeep, Manny's Toyota, Echo's car, and his own car.

He went up the walk, taking pictures of the entrance, the ground next to the entrance where the grass was tamped down and there was a small crescent of blood clotting in the mud. He took a picture. The door was jammed open, crooked in its frame. He was careful not to touch it, he shouldered it open, and turned on the light switches with his sleeve.

The reception area was completely trashed. Papers, files, garbage strewn everywhere, was more than ankle-deep throughout the room. The waiting room chairs were broken, one was thrown through the glass wall of the conference room. He snapped a careful panorama. It looked like a pretty bad mess, but the magnitude of it didn't strike home until he saw what had been done to the model of the Cat.

In the reception area at the Lab they kept a scale model of the airship they were building, the model was about four feet long and two and a half feet wide and about eighteen inches high. It had been suspended in a glass case on a pedestal in the center of the floor of the reception area. Everyone at ZDI called her the Cat, and Drexler thought she was the most beautiful ship -- land, sea, or sky -- ever conceived.

They called her the Cat because it was a zeppelin designed according to the principle of the catamaran. The lifting body was to be just over two hundred feet in diameter and almost a quarter of a mile long. It was not the traditional bullet-shaped zeppelin, it had an aerodynamic lilt to it's form, it was almost porpoise-shaped. Like it was the descendant of a Lockheed Constellation and the Hindenburg.

There was a boom of fine lacework separating the lifting body from the system control body, a smaller, thinner, longer version of the lifting body. The cargo, up to a hundred and forty-nine forty-foot high-cube containers, would be carried beneath the boom, and could be shifted from side to side on rails for balance.

The model was exquisitely detailed, with portions cut away to reveal the internal workings, the stripper chambers, the isolation compartments, the hoist system, the internal structure -- it was designed with semi-rigid structure, the top half of the lifting body was a delicate meshwork of trussing, while the lower half was inflated and collapsed as needed. The model even included the tiny emergency catwalks with their airlocks, the robot docking ports, and the static discharge nodules that lined the interior of the hull. The Cat was fierce and strong and sleek and beautiful.

And the model was completely destroyed, smashed to splinters, presumably by the black iron pipe that lay across it diagonally in the wreckage.

Drexler took pictures of all of it. He took pictures of the lunchroom, the broken soda machine. He took pictures of the copier with a computer smashed through the glass platen.

He took a deep breath and went down the hallway to the offices. The spare office was intact, untouched. He took pictures of each wall. Memo's office; the same. Robinson's office. untouched as best as he could tell. He photographed. Echo's lab. Everything in order. He took photos in each direction; click, click, click, click. He was about to continue down the hall when he noticed that Echo's computer was on, stuck in the middle of shutdown with a logout dialog. He went over and dismissed the dialog and the screen went dark.

So it went, throughout the lab, nothing in the back areas seemed to have been touched. They'd verify this of course, and god help the bastards who did this if we catch them, especially if Echo is hurt, really hurt, but as he took photographs of the giant test chamber, totally intact in the core of the Lab, Drexler began to formulate what he would say when he called LA, when he made his report Drexler would conclude that it was mindless vandalism, viscous, and worth thoroughly investigating, but untargeted. If they'd wanted to wreck our operation, there was plenty worse they could have done.

Drexler was hoping Echo would be able to answer his questions soon. Echo was tough, he'd be all right. Right now, though, Drexler had some calls to make.



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