14

The man in the black suit and sunglasses straightened his tie as he and his men climbed out of their unmarked black Hummers and headed for the Tech Shack which only hours before had been declared up-and-running. Within lay batteries of television monitors showing live feed from almost a hundred satellites, some of them so powerful that they could track the progress of a single ant on the ground.

Scores of technicians were scanning recorded feed from the crash site, searching the ground for bodies in hopes of discovering what became of a handful of them that were suspected to be missing.

'Ah, Professor Holcomb,' the man in the black suit said, extending his hand and smiling from the teeth. 'Have you made any progress?'

The man in the black suit despised scientists on general principle. Anyone who freely shared information was potentially dangerous, not to be trusted. In this regard, scientists were the worst offenders of all. They seemed not to comprehend that all power structures depended upon, not the freedom of information, but the absolute control of information, and the manner in which it was either disseminated or withheld. After all, information was power, and having power therefore meant controlling information.

But Professor Holcomb was a rare exception to the rule- a scientist who understood power and its uses. The man in the black suit did not trust Holcomb- but for other reasons entirely. Holcomb had his own agenda- he wanted access to the technology within the alien ship which, in his view, was there for the taking. It would, he assumed, catapult Canada and its scientific community to a level of power unattainable by any other organised body on the face of the planet, including the government of the United States. Including, the man in black added mentally, his own Canadian government.

The man in black was otherwise not overly concerned with whatever dark dreams consumed the small-minded soul of Professor Holcomb. The lust for power was something he understood, and that was enough. Through that desire, the professor would be easy to control.

'You,' Holcomb muttered in response, irritated by the distraction as he watched a monitor over the shoulder of a technician. 'What is it this time?'

'You know what I want. Have you managed to locate the missing bodies?'

'We're looking!' Holcomb bit off, tersely. 'As it stands, we haven't yet been able to bring up an unobstructed view of the ground, just subsequent to the crash. There's too much smoke, too much debris. The heat alone has rendered infra-red imagery all but useless. We're attempting to clean up the images using the latest spectro-chromatography and x-ray imaging software, but it's a tedious process.'

'Why?'

'Because there's no colour or contrast differentials, you smirking little cretin! Using this technology, we can see the ground, but we don't yet know what it is we're looking at, because this method renders everything viewed as monochromatic. It's the same problem one encounters when attempting to teach a computer to identify the world around it for navigation purposes. The computer has no way to differentiate any one thing from any other thing it encounters. It sees everything equally, with nothing to draw its attention because it has no concept of significance.

'These programmes we're using are intended to teach our computers to discriminate, so that they can tell a rock from a tree from a body.'

The man in the black suit and sunglasses bit down on an overpowering urge to crush the professor's larynx for his uppity attitude, if not his sarcastic remark. In a dangerous tone, he said, 'You told us, when we allowed you to become a part of this project, that you'd been using this type of software for years!'

'Our software is in the forefront of this type of technology,' Holcomb told him, unruffled. 'All that is required is that we find the right combination of algorithms- a process that will be greatly hurried by your conspicuous absence! If you want your bodies, I suggest you leave us to our work, in peace!'

The man in black digested this in silence, toyed with the notion of bringing in another team, quashed the idea. Whatever he thought of the professor, the man was right- some processes evolved at their own pace.

But the idea gave him no comfort. He wanted the job done, and his superiors wanted it done yesterday. His orders were simple- kill the aliens, wherever they were, get his hands on the ship, use Holcomb to unlock its secrets.

Only two obstacles stood in his path- finding the missing aliens, assuming there were any, and keeping the Prime Minister in the dark until they had their hands on the aliens' technology. This was the one problem that could blow up in his face: were the Prime Minister to discover that aliens were still very much alive inside that thing, there would be hell to pay, and they might be forced to share their secret with the world.

To that end, negotiations were under way to acquire a nuclear device from his Secret Service counterparts in the US. A messy solution, perhaps, but it was the only sure way to ensure that the aliens' technology remained under his control.