SG: Rad #95 (1/3): "Where'd

[Gary]

     The last rays of the sun were slipping away as Rad landed.  The
streetlights had already taken over, giving the buildings on either
side of the street a gentle gold hue.  Many of these were stores that
sold high-end merchandise to those who could afford this area of Los
Angeles, just a few blocks from the Pacific Ocean.  One, the building
that was his destination, was an older, eight-story tan-brick tower
that, from directly overhead, had the appearance of a diamond.  From
the ground, it had the appearance of having gone to seed, if only by
comparison to the more elegant company it kept.
     The only appearances Rad was concerned with right then were those
of a window and a door along the side of the building facing the
street.  A number of police officers also seemed concerned with these
appearances, and had parked their cruisers and put up yellow crime
scene tape.  Rad spotted an ambulance and flew to it, ignoring a young
officer telling him to get behind the tape.
     A team of paramedics shouted medical jargon at one another while
attaching medical equipment to a couple of middle-aged businessmen who
had apparently had a lot of gray greasepaint badly applied to their
doughy faces.  One man had a large gouge in his forehead, and several
bruises that the greasepaint had ceased to disguise.  The other had no
visible bruises, but was muttering and thrashing against his
restraints.  Rad could not make out his words.
     "Ahh," said someone behind Rad.  "Can we help you, Mister...
um... Rad, is it?"
     Rad turned to see the officer, a man in his mid-thirties who was
almost as disheveled as the guys in greasepaint.  A badge, pinned to
the lapel of his brown trenchcoat, identified him as a 'Detective
Sanders.'  His hair was short, black, and curly, and the look on his
medium-brown face was not friendly.  The officer Rad had earlier
ignored stood next to Sanders and smirked.
     "Like, yah, Detective dude," said Rad.  "Like, my wife, and,
like, my daughter were, y'know, visiting here, and I, like, couldn't
contact them, so, like, I flew down here, and...."
     "And you found they were not in the ambulance," Sanders finished
for him.  "Unfortunately, they are not anywhere, so far as we can
tell.  But since you are the only one around here so far who seems to
know who was in this apartment besides its usual occupants, I'll
tolerate your presence at my crime scene."
     The gruff tone in the detective's voice surprised Rad.  Though he
had been gone from Earth for quite a while, he had not expected to
encounter any great change in attitudes toward his involvement in
crime-solving.  As Rad listed the people he knew were visiting the
apartment that afternoon--his wife Glum, his teenage daughter Rumiko,
his friend Eivandt Seconds, and Eivandt's wife Alice--the detective
kept looking at the crowd behind the yellow tape.  He seemed to be
waiting for something.
     "It never fails," he said, after Rad finished.  "One of you
superguys shows up at a crime scene, and next thing you know we can't
see for shinola because of all the flash bulbs going off.  Damn
paparazzi.  At least your ordinary Hollywood A-lister doesn't go
'round poking into police business.  Unless they *are* police
business, you know what I'm saying?"
     Rad, who did not know what Detective Sanders was saying, decided
to try a friendly smile.  His ultra-white teeth caught the glow from
the streetlights and the police cruisers, and bathed the whole scene
in a harsh and garish brilliance.
     "Ow!" Sanders commented.  "A little less teeth in that grin
there."
     Rad reverted to his earlier look of concern.  "Like, sorry there,
Detective dude.  It's, like, been a while since, like--"
     "Since you've been here, I know," Sanders finished.  "I saw the
videos on YouTube this morning of you comin' out of the bank after you
broke up that hostage situation.  People thought you were Owen Wilson
at first, but I remember you from when I was growin' up.  You and that
hot chick in that little tiger-striped bikini, what was her name..."
     "Like, Glum," Rad said.  "My wife, dude."
     Sanders furrowed his brow.  "Right.  Your wife.  Who you're here
to look for."  He shrugged, and seemed to come to a decision.  "Well,
let's go inside and look around.  Neighbors told us about the people
that were living in the apartment, and more or less about how the
attack went down, but not what the hell it was all about.  Maybe you
can help us with that."
     As they went through the rooms of the cramped and now thoroughly
wrecked two-bedroom apartment, Rad described the attack he had been
through at Critical Studios in Van Nuys.  Aside from the fact that
those in the Van Nuys attack had claimed to be ninjas, while--
according to the Detective--the people in this attack had claimed to
be zombies, the strikes had been similar.  The invaders had come to
their targets via chartered busses, and had left on those same busses
once they had gotten who they had come for.  No one knew where the
busses were now, or anything more than the general direction they had
taken.
     "Hey," said Sanders, as they entered the smaller of the two
bedrooms, which seemed to not have suffered the same damage as the
living room.  "Maybe your wife and kid weren't here.  Maybe they'd
already left, and your communications net or whatever is down 'cause
of something else."  Sanders stepped to the bedroom window and peered
out.  The apartment was located at one of the obtuse corners of the
building, and Rad realized it was not the broken window he had seen
when he landed.  From the flashes he saw, Rad guessed that the press
was aware of its existence.
     Rad started for the window, but stopped when he saw a scrap of
paper on the floor near the doorframe.  It was nothing that should
have caught his eye, as there was a lot more in the room to focus on--
the shattered window, the overturned bed, or the set of giant boot
prints in the carpet, to name a few--but it did.  He picked it up.
     It held one word.  'Skylight.'
     "They were here, dude," said Rad, after tucking the scrap into
his blue jean cutoff pocket.  He headed out of the apartment, ignoring
Sanders's questions about how he knew.  Rad could not conceive of a
way to explain the paper scrap, at least no way that would not invite
more questions than he could comfortably answer.  Detective Sanders
did not need to know that the scrap had belonged to Rumiko, that she
had acquired it from inside a cooked bratwurst, and that the note had
been placed there by his sister Akane, whom the world at large
believed--with some relief--to be dead.  Nor could Rad explain, even
if he wished, why Akane had placed that note, which had had the effect
of allowing Rumiko to overhear that a woman named 'Miranda Satori' had
directed him via letter to find an ex-supervillain named The
Programmer.
     As Rad reached the doorframe, the world outside flared bright
white, then orange, then red.  At first, he thought an explosion of
some kind had occurred, only without an actual explosion-y sound.
Without much sound at all, really, save for a low-intensity crackling-
flame noise.  Only after the light faded did sound seem to return, and
to Rad it was a mix of excited chatter and a lot of little beeps and
pops.  The world outside lit up again, this time with a series of
small white flashes that merged into an eye-hurting strobe effect.
     "Oh, no," Sanders groaned.
     "Stay behind the tape, boys," said a voice from outside.  "Not
you, Iris.  Take notes while I investigate."
     The voice was familiar.  Hell with familiar, it was unmistakable.
A shaded mezzo-soprano, equal parts steel and seduction.  A coy hint
of pout lingered in the tones, though Rad knew its owner seldom
resorted to actual pouting.  When he emerged into the evening air--
Sanders reluctantly following--he had to smile, despite his mood.
     Yury Mitsuke had landed.  Her fire-engine red hair was shorter
than Rad remembered it last being, and her outfit--form-fitting
crimson leather that accentuated her curves and framed a generous
portion of her generous bosom--was far more material than he ever
recalled seeing on her.  Her face--full and sensual lips, small and
slightly angular nose, lustrous tan-gold skin, and wild green eyes--
was exactly as he recalled, so much so he realized that she, unlike
others of his old acquaintance, had made free and full use of surgery
and science to deny the appearance of aging.  Wisps of smoke rose from
the leather and from her.
     Beside her was a woman--'Iris,' he guessed--who was smaller, and,
Rad guessed, younger.  Early twenties, he estimated.  Her face was a
petite, light-skinned oval framed by black, shoulder-length hair and
wire-rim glasses.  The rest of her was as slender as her face, and
largely hidden by a prim blue-and-white pantsuit.  If she was five
feet tall, it was only because she was hovering an inch off the
ground.  She was busy typing something in to a rectangular object that
was either a SpoonBerry or something like it---
     "Rad!" Yury exclaimed.  "There you are!"
     He had just enough time to will his psychokinetic power to shield
his skin before Yury bounded over, jumped up, wrapped arms and legs
around, and delivered a kiss that was flaming in more than the
metaphorical sense.  He caught her, returned the kiss as much as was
possible, and wondered why the flashing sounds had gotten so much
louder.
     "All of you back behind the tape!" he heard Sanders yell.  "Damn
paparazzi!"

                                 ***

                                 RAD
                             Episode 95
                  [ Rad Returns, Part Five of Ten ]
                        "Where'd My Cake Go?"
                                 by
                            Gary W. Olson

                                 ***

     Of all the strange things Rumiko Moroboshi had thus far seen in
this... this dream or vision or hallucination... the strangest was the
appearance of her aunt, the supposedly dead Akane Moroboshi.  Rumi
only recognized Akane from the photos that Rad, her father, kept, and
while the Akane before her matched in appearance--a taut yet supple
body clad in the same kind of tiger-stripe-print sun dress Rumi was
also wearing, soft chin, thin lips, slight nose, watchful eyes, and
black hair to the middle of her back--there was one detail that seemed
very out of place.
     "Green," said Rumi.  "Esteban called you 'the Green Lady,' but I
thought maybe he meant..."
     "Something mythic," Akane finished.  "Or political.  Not that
there's much difference.  Could you think of bacon for a second?"
     Rumi thought of bacon before she could stop herself.
     "There," said Akane.  "That's better."
     Akane's skin was now yellow-tan, a bit darker than even the
earliest pictures Rumi had seen of her.  To Rumi, it looked like she
had been getting a lot of sun, wherever she was.  And she *was* alive,
Rumi was sure, despite all she had been told and all she had read
about her demise.  Radian's demise.  Though Rumi was locked in a dream
of some kind--ever since her mother and friends were abducted by
pseudo-zombies in cheap gray greasepaint, and she had flown up to try
to see where the bus that had brought them had gone--she was
unaccountably certain that this was the real Akane, and not a figure
invented by her subconscious.
     She was not nearly so sure about everything else in the world
around her.  Below was a vast jungle, stretching out in all directions
under near-black storm clouds.  In the distance was the principal
source of light--a massive white electric arc that ran from a fifty-
foot tall pyramid-like temple to a hovering, two-hundred-yard-long
roughly cylindrical bronze-gold battleship-looking object.  In the
air, close to it, too far to make out any details, hovered a guy
wearing bronze-gold armored pants.  Directly below where Akane stood
and Rumi floated was a bronze-gold bubble maybe fifteen yards in
diameter, that an earlier examination had revealed carried three
beings of different races, at least one of which--the Reptiloid--Rumi
recognized as not originating on Earth.
     "I wasn't expecting this to happen so soon," said Akane.  "I
thought we'd get to it after."
     "After what?"
     "After everything.  After the business with The Programmer.  You
know.  Stuff."
     Rumi did not know.  Akane floated next to her, and gestured to
the beings visible through the transparent section of the bubble.
     "I don't know the Reptiloid," she said, "or that short dude from
Mole-at-Chigar--don't call them 'mole men,' by the way, they hate
that, proper name for 'em is Burrolan--but see that gorilla-lookin'
guy?"
     Rumi looked at what she had earlier thought of as a 'gorilla-
sized bonobo,' a mean-looking black-furred biped with a deep scar
through what had once been his left eye.  She nodded.
     "That's Erasmus Fancy," said Akane.  "Not his given name.  Very
dangerous.  And charming, I've read, though I've never met him
personally."
     "Seeing as how this is from the nineteenth century," Rumi
ventured, "I can see why not."
     "Rumi, look at me."
     Rumi looked at Akane.  Up close, she could see the age lines,
which had not been in the old pictures.  If Rumi had to guess, she
would have said Akane was slightly older than her dad, though she knew
Akane had been--was--two years younger.  As she watched, Akane pursed
and unpursed her lips, as if trying to work out how to say something.
     "I didn't expect I was putting you in danger," she said, at last.
"I'm sorry about that."
     "You mean, the weird zombie guys--"
     "Oh, those would have been around regardless," said Akane.  "I
meant that, because I managed to get that note into the brat you ate
so you'd fly up to the skylight at Eivandt's house and see your dad
and Manny open up the note I sent to them telling them they should
find a guy they recognized as The Programmer..."
     Rumi waited.
     "What?" she finally asked.
     "Sorry," said Akane.  "Had to take a breath.  Haven't had to say
a sentence like that in quite a while.  Where was I?"
     "The Programmer."
     "Right.  I put them on the trail of the Programmer, and I put you
on it, too."
     "Why?"
     Akane again looked thoughtfully at the bronze-gold bubble.  Then
she turned to look out at the floating battleship and the temple.
     "Float with me, Rumi," she said.  "I don't think you should miss
this."
     Akane stepped from the bubble-ship and floated toward the bronze-
gold battleship.  It was not flight, exactly, as she remained
vertical, and the air did not stir her hair.  Rumi found that she only
had to will herself to move to accompany Akane in this fashion.
     Between the ship and the bubble were Los Pantalones, and the guy
who was wearing them.  As they got closer, Rumi saw that the guy was
thin and gangly, had short brown hair and sun-reddened skin, and for
someone who had been described to her as a 'great-grandfather,' seemed
very young.  Almost as young as Esteban Veracruz, the boy who had
described him as such.
     "James Cartier," Akane said.  "Nephew and ward of a nineteenth-
century detective named Richard Cartier, who achieved a minor sort of
fame by being the inspiration for the 'Detective Dick Carter' dime
novels.  Of course, James was one of the very few who knew that
Richard was also the Dweller in the Shades."  Akane gestured to
the floating battleship.  "James was along to get an education in
crime-fighting, Cartier style.  Richard brought him along on a long,
cross-country trip to catch the commander of that airship."
     Rumi grew close to James, and studied his frozen expression.  His
eyes were wide, and his mouth was open in... what?  A shout?  A
scream?  A belch?  She looked over her shoulder and saw that, whatever
it was, it was directed at Erasmus Fancy's floating bubble.
     "How do you know all this?" she asked.
     "Richard Cartier kept extensive journals of his cases," Akane
replied, as she joined Rumi in contemplation of the younger Cartier.
"Both the mundane stuff that was sometimes the grist of the 'Dick
Carter' novels--pirates, thieves, spies, anarchists, giant snakes,
man-eating tigers, and women needing their virtue defended against
any or all of those--and his occult detective work as the Dweller.
Mysterious cases, sorcerous foes, mad gods, that sort of thing."
     "What did his journals say about all this?"
     Akane shook her head.  "Turns out there's two journals missing
from what was revealed in the eighties.  One covers an early period
in Richard's life, soon after he became the Dweller, and the second
covers this trip."
     Rumi turned her attention to James as she listened to Akane.  She
could see something of Esteban Veracruz in him, she thought.  The wide
eyes.  The gangly body.  The shout.  The defiance.  She looked over
her shoulder again, and contemplated the bronze-gold bubble.
     "Richard's first entry," Akane continued, "after the second
missing volume stated that he returned to New York without James, and
that James would return once his 'apprenticeship' was complete.  And
that was the last he ever wrote about his nephew.  Two months later,
he sacrificed himself to close the portal to the Ravenousity's home
dimension opened by Dankar Rukh, the Sorcerer Superlative--the last
note in the last volume, recorded by an anonymous hand---"
     "He's using regular bullets," Rumi interrupted.  She gestured at
James's knees, buried in Los Pantalones.  The puffs of frozen smoke at
his knees were due to several bullets being fired from holes there.
One bullet was still visible, and, though Rumi could tell little else
about it, she saw that it was not bronze-gold as Los Pantalones were.
     "I imagine he has to conserve the nectarisite--that's the
material his pants are made of," said Akane.  "Much lighter and
considerably stronger than your ordinary battleship steel, and I doubt
James has any to spare at this time.  Dr. Gigawatt wrote a paper on
it just recently, and I haven't had a chance to tell Esteban about
it---"
     "You have a lot of time to read, don't you?" Rumi asked.  "Where
you are, I mean."
     "Seems that way," said Akane, her voice and thoughtful
expression betraying nothing.  Rumi could not tell if she was being
deliberately enigmatic or not.  She showed no signs of wanting to
expand on why she had put Rumi onto the Programmer's trail.  "Let's go
check out what James was defending."
     They approached the floating ship in silence.  Rumi found she
could see the rococo detailing on the ship in greater detail now, and
that the curli-cues, c-scrolls, and other asymmetrical curved
intricacies that had barely been visible from a distance were, up
close, as complicated and seemingly unnecessary as those she had
observed on the seams of Los Pantalones.  Except... a few of the
projections had a distinctly barrel-like aspect.  And there were other
openings that the excessive ornamentation made nearly impossible to
see, save up close.  Rumi wondered if this was not a nineteenth-
century Earth form of cloaking--create a surface so hideously over-
ornamented the mind refuses to see the parts that are actually useful.
     "The ship is called the _Subtler Than Light_," said Akane.  "It
was responsible for a good number of the reported airship sightings in
the late 1890s.  Not the only one, of course--there were other
inventors and agencies with secret vessels--but this one was the most
caught.  Mind you, these reports have been dismissed as 'tall tales'
invented by the newsmen of the times...."
     Akane gestured toward an area near the front of the _Subtler Than
Light_, near where the giant electric arc touched its nose.  Rumi
followed her there, and saw something the rococo stylings had
initially hidden--a top deck, largely covered by what Rumi now
realized were bronze-gold wings that had been folded above it.  Though
much of it was shrouded in dark shadow, the general look of what Rumi
saw reminded her of pictures she had seen of nineteenth-century Earth
sailing vessel decks.  On this thirty-foot wide deck were a number of
small bipeds, all of whom seemed very busy, though Rumi was not
entirely sure at what.
     "Those are howler monkeys, in case you were wondering," said
Akane.  Each howler monkey, Rumi observed, was no greater than two
feet tall, black-furred and wide-eyed, and--though it was hard to
judge, since they were kept still by the 'freeze frame' of the
vision--very agitated.  Rumi noticed they had small horns far up on
their foreheads, just like the two she had seen---
     "There were a couple on that floating bubble ship," Rumi said.
"I thought of them as 'demon monkeys.'"
     "They're frequently called that.  And 'devil monkeys.'  At this
point in time, they're the principal crew of the _Subtler Than Light_.
Them... and the bonobos."
     Rumi only had Coco--the metallic bonobo that hung out with
Esteban and helped him with getting Los Pantalones to work--for an
idea of what bonobos looked like, but she was fairly sure that she saw
none on the deck of this ship.  The only other kind of biped visible
was the human standing at the rail, with a clear view of both James
Cartier and Erasmus Fancy's bubble.
     Akane moved toward the woman, and Rumi followed, trying to
suppress her impatience.  Akane had given her a few names and some
stories, but nothing that really explained what she saw, or why she
was seeing it.  Less than an hour ago, it had been a picture in a
photocopied journal, with none of this detail or color.  Now she was
here... and her body was elsewhere.  Falling, last she knew.
     "Aunt Akane..."
     "Her name is Capella," Akane interrupted, gesturing at the woman
at the railing.  "Take a good look at her."
     The woman named Capella was no taller than Rumi, but her bearing
and demeanor made her seem that way.  Rumi had seen noble posture
before--her mother was good at it, at least in the photos she had
seen, her father less so--and it was definitely present in her
straight back, her proudly squared shoulders, and her arms--her left
hand on her hip, her right arm imperiously pointing in the general
direction of the bubble.  The black material she wore--thick as
leather, with the texture of silk--seemed to be fashioned as armor,
though Rumi could not believe it would stop anything more serious than
a harsh glare.
     Capella's face showed, if not nobility, a certain near-noble look
that Rumi interpreted as boundless self-assurance bordering on
ruthlessness.  There was nothing in her eyes--eyes that seemed a bit
off, somehow, a bit larger than was usual in humans--that hinted of
compassion or even concern.  The edges of her lush lips had an upward
curl that seemed cruel.
     Her hair was gold and barely shoulder-length.  On her forehead,
just below her hairline, Rumi could see the glint of a bronze-gold
jewel set into a silver tiara.  On moving closer to get a better look,
Rumi realized that the golden hue of the woman's skin was more than a
sign of nobility--it was not skin.  It was fur.  Very short fur, but
fur nonetheless.
     "When she shaves," said Akane, "she appears passably human, but
she's not.  She's a bonobo--or what bonobos have evolved into, within
the realm now controlled by the Hidden Empire.  Mark her well, Rumi,
because you will see her again."
     Rumi had had about enough of this.  She angrily turned, ready to
confront her aunt...
     ...and the world shimmered and went bronze-gold.

                                 ***

     "--and we'll just have to reschedule the photo-shoot with Us
Weekly," said Yury Mitsuke, as she soared above suburban houses,
trailing white-hot flames that did no harm to her outfit.  "Emergency
situation and all that."
     "Got it, ma'am," said Iris Adams, who cruised alongside Yury, did
not trail flames or anything else, and remained focused on her
SpoonBerry device.  Rad could hear them clearly above the rush of wind
as he flew along, thanks to [space science!] augmentations to his
hearing.  He was impressed with how Iris, who never looked up from her
mobile device, was able to effortlessly keep up with Yury's seemingly
random course corrections.
     Yury had introduced Iris as her top personal assistant, and from
the stream of instructions that had followed during their ten-minute
flight, he understood why she needed top personal assisting.  Her
life, both as the solo hero HotFlash and an A-list movie star, seemed
terribly busy, with all the photo shoots and read-throughs and crime
patrols and autographs and the people to be caught with by the
paparazzi and such.  He was edging into impatience by the time she and
Iris stopped in mid-air, a few thousand feet above unsuspecting
houses.
     "We're here, ma'am," Iris said.  "A bit early."
     "Like, why are we stopping, y'know?" Rad asked.  "I thought,
like, that Chalandra, like, was waiting for us..."
     "She is," Yury assured him.  "Now, Iris, we're going to have to
push back my public collapse and freakout to October.  There's no way
I can do that before we wrap up shooting HTT, and I think I at least
ought to do some groundwork, you know, get caught dancing on
tabletops at Dave's Place and snogging with, I dunno, who should I
snog with?"
     "Kevin Federline's available, ma'am," Iris said.  "As is Tila
Tequila, Spencer from 'the Hills,' Gary Coleman..."
     "What about Rad?"
     "What?" Iris asked.
     "Like, what?" Rad asked.
     "For snogging," Yury said.  "Strictly snogging, no goinking,
complete and ridiculous scandal going well on into November sweeps,
moral outrage from Nancy Grace and Bill O'Reilly, fifty-fifty split
on the profits thru December, what you say?"
     Rad, utterly confused, seized on the last part of her rambling
question.
     "Like, profits?"
     "My employer is invested in the tabloid properties," Iris
explained.  "Television and print.  Many in the business are.  Scandal
maximizes profits for shareholders by driving up viewership and print
sales.  As ordinary scandals are unpredictable and erratic, they are
now planned so as to synergize with corporate strategy.  For example,
when HTT debuts, there will be a sharp ratings spike for the November
episodes..."
     "HTT?" Rad asked.
     "My reality show," Yury said.  "'Yury Mitsuke: Hotter Than Thou.'
All about how misunderstood and ordinary I am.  It's on the E!
network."
     "Er..."
     "Of course, a few years back I *wanted* to do another season of
'The Super Life,' but then Key just *had* to move away to Megapolis
and get married and knocked up... in that order, even!  The woman has
*no* idea of how to stage these things."
     "Ma'am," said Iris.  "I don't think the plan will work with Rad.
You've just been snapped snogging him.  That will make October a
repeat snog.  Wrong kind of coverage."
     Yury sighed and nodded.  "What would I do without you?" she
asked.
     "I shudder to think, ma'am," Iris replied.  She lifted an arm and
pointed at something just over Rad's left shoulder.  "The _Vander
Harkness_ is here."
     Rad, who had still had no idea what was going on, but was glad
for the distraction, turned.  What he saw was breathtaking, if only
for its sheer awkwardness.  The sides appeared to be gray battleship
steel, with numerous inset rectangles.  The underside appeared made of
similar material, though it was scorched by five flaming blue circles,
one in the center and one at each outer corner of its frame.
     "Like, why does it look like, y'know, a big 'H'?" Rad asked.
     "Corporate synergy," Yury replied.  "I'm almost certain.  Come
on, let's go up.  They're in a hurry."
     From above, the _Vander Harkness_ still looked like a big 'H,'
but now with more to it.  The 'columns' of the H held a number of
smaller craft, both planes and choppers, as well as more inset
rectangles.  The strand connecting the 'columns' held three small
domes, and as they got closer, Rad could see numerous people in suits
and helmets emerge from them.  He guessed the entire craft was a
couple hundred yards long, maybe about a third as wide and deep.
     "Like, dudes," said Rad.  "It's so, like, quie---"
     Suddenly and without warning, the air was filled with a massive
noise that Rad could only compare to a Walking Disaster Area concert,
only with slightly more idea of what a melody was.  He looked at Yury
and Iris, both of whom were holding their ears.  Yury removed one
hand and gestured to the domes.  Rad saw a section of the center dome
spiral open.  The three flew toward the opening.
     Everyone on the _Vander Harkness_ watched as they approached,
though Rad saw no signs that they ever stopped what they were doing,
be it refueling the choppers and VTOL jets, banging on instrument
panels with wrenches, driving jeep-like vehicles down a ramp into the
craft itself, or getting fitted with jetpacks.  Though the columns had
the look and feel of aircraft carrier decks, they were shorter than
the carriers Rad remembered seeing.  Not to mention far more
disorganized.

(continued in part two, following...)