Fallen Dragon

by Peter F. Hamilton

Genres: Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Space Opera; Military Sci-Fi

Synopsis

Fallen Dragon is a classic standalone novel by science fiction star, Peter F. Hamilton.

Lawrence Newton always dreamed of adventure amongst the stars. Now the ultimate prize is within his grasp, but what will he risk to get it?

Lawrence is the sergeant of a washed-out platoon, taking part in the bungled invasion of yet another human colony world. The giant corporations call such campaigns 'asset realization', but in practice it's simple piracy.
When he's on the ground, being shot at and firebombed by resistance forces, he recalls stories of the Temple of the Fallen Dragon. Its priests supposedly guard a treasure hoard large enough to buy lifelong happiness. So Lawrence decides to mount a dangerous private-enterprise operation of his own.

Release date: November 15, 2008

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 640

Sample

Chapter One

TIME WAS WHEN THE BAR WOULD HAVE WELCOMED A MAN FROM ZANTIUBraun’s strategic security division, given him his first beer on the house and listened with keen admiration to his stories of life as it was lived oh so differently out among the new colony planets. But then that could be said of anywhere on Earth halfway through the twenty-fourth century. In the public conscience, the glamour of interstellar expansion was fading like the enchantment of an aging actress.

As with most things in the universe, it was all the fault of money.

The bar lacked money. Lawrence Newton could see that as soon as he walked in. It hadn’t been refurbished in decades. A long wooden room with thick rafters holding up the corrugated carbon-sheet roof, a counter running its length, dull neon adverts for extinct brands of beers and ice creams on the wall behind. Big rotary fans that had survived a couple of centuries past their warranty date turned above him, primitive electric motors buzzing as they stirred the muggy air.

This was the way of things in Kuranda. Sitting high in the rocky table-lands above Cairns, it had enjoyed long profitable years as one of Queens-land’s top tourist-trap towns. Sweating, sunburned Europeans and Japanese had made their way up over the rain forest on the skycable, marveling at the lush vegetation before traipsing round the curio shops and restaurant bars that made up the main street. Then they’d take the ancient railway down along Barron Valley Gorge to marvel once again, this time at the jagged rock cliffs and white foaming waterfalls along the route.

Although tourists did still come to admire northern Queensland’s natural beauty, they were mostly corporate families that Z-B had rotated to its sprawling spaceport base that now dominated Cairns physically and economically. They didn’t have much spare cash for authentic Aboriginal print T-shirts and didgeridoos and hand-carved charms representing the spirit of the land, so the shops along Kuranda’s main street declined until only the hardiest and cheapest were left—themselves a strong disincentive to visit and stay awhile. Nowadays people got off the skycable terminus and walked straight across to the pretty 1920s-era train station a couple of hundred meters away, ignoring the town altogether.

It left the surviving bars free for the local men to use. They were good at that. There was nothing else for them. Z-B brought in its own technicians to run the base, skilled overseas staff with degrees and spaceware engineering experience. Statutory local employment initiatives were for the crappiest manual jobs. No Kuranda man would sign up. Wrong culture.

That made the bar just about perfect for Lawrence. He paused in the doorway to scan its interior as a formation of TVL88 tactical support helicopters thundered overhead on their way to the Port Douglas practice range away in the north. A dozen or so blokes were inside, sheltering from the evil midday sun. Big fellas, all of them, with fleshy faces red from the first round of the day’s beers. A couple were playing pool, one solitary, dedicated drinker up at the bar, the rest huddled in small groups at tables along the rear wall. His brain in full tactical mode, Lawrence immediately picked out potential exit points.

The men watched silently as he walked over to the counter and took off his straw hat with its ridiculously wide brim. He ordered a tin of beer from the middle-aged barmaid. Even though he was in civilian clothes, a pair of blue knee-length shorts and a baggy Great Barrier Reef T-shirt, his straight back and rigid crew-cut marked him out as a Z-B squaddie. They knew it; he knew they knew.

He paid for the weak beer in cash, slapping the dirty Pacific Dollar notes down on the wood. If the barmaid noticed his right hand and forearm were larger than they should be, she kept quiet about it. He mumbled at her to keep the change.

The man Lawrence wanted was sitting by himself, only one table away from the back door. His hat, crumpled on the table next to his beer, had a rim as broad as Lawrence’s.

“Couldn’t you have chosen somewhere more out of the way?” Staff Lieutenant Colin Schmidt asked. The guttural Germanic tone made several of the local men look around, eyes narrowing with instinctive suspicion.

“This place suits,” Lawrence told him. He’d known Colin for all of the full twenty years he’d spent in Z-B’s strategic security division. The two of them had been in basic training together back in Toulouse. Green nineteen-year-old kids jumping the fence at nights to get to the town with its clubs and girls. Colin had applied for officer training several years later, after the Quation campaign: a careerist move that had never really worked out. He didn’t have the kind of drive the company wanted, nor the level of share ownership that most other young officers had to put them ahead. In fifteen years he’d moved steadily sideward until he wound up in Strategic Planning, a glorified errand boy for artificial sentience programs running resource-allocation software.

“What the hell did you want to ask me you couldn’t say it down at the base?”

“I want an assignment for my platoon,” Lawrence said. “You can get it for me.”

“What kind of assignment?”

“One on Thallspring.”

Colin swigged from his beer tin. When he spoke his voice was low, guilty. “Who said anything about Thallspring?”

“It’s where we’re going for our next asset realization.” On cue, another flight of TVL88s swept low over the town; with their rotors running out of stealth mode the noise was enough to rattle the corrugated roof. All eyes flicked upward as they drowned conversation. “Come on, Colin, you’re not going to pull the bullshit need-to-know routine on me, are you? Who the hell can warn the poor bastards we’re invading them? They’re twenty-three light-years away. Everybody on the base knows where we’re going—most of Cairns, too.”

“Okay, okay. What do you want?”

“A posting to the Memu Bay task force.”

“Never heard of it.”

“Not surprised. Crappy little marine and bioindustry zone, about four and a half thousand kilometers from the capital. I was stationed there last time.”

“Ah.” Colin relaxed his grip on the beer tin as he started to work out angles. “What’s there?”

“Z-B will take the biochemicals and engineering products; that’s all that’s on the asset list. Anything else … well, it leaves scope for some private realization. If you’re an enterprising kind of guy.”

“Shit, Lawrence, I thought you were a straighter arrow than me. What happened to getting a big enough stake to qualify for starship officer?”

“Nearly twenty years, and I’ve made sergeant. I got that because Ntoko never made it back from Santa Chico.”

“Christ, Santa fucking Chico. I forgot you were on that one.” Colin shook his head at the memory. Modern historians were comparing Santa Chico to Napoleon’s invasion of Russia. “Okay, I get you posted to Memu Bay. What do I see?”

“Ten percent.”

“A good figure. Of what?”

“Of whatever’s there.”

“Don’t tell me you’ve found the final episode of Fleas on the Horizon?”

“That’s Flight: Horizon. But no; no such luck.” Lawrence’s face remained impassive.

“I got to trust you, huh?”

“You got to trust me.”

“I think I can manage that.”

“There’s more. I need you at Durrell, the capital, in the Logistics Division. You’ll have to arrange secure transport for us afterward, probably a medevac—but I’ll leave that to you. Find a pilot who won’t ask questions about lifting our cargo into orbit.”

“Find one who would.” Colin grinned. “Bent bastards.”

“He has to be on the level with me. I will not be ripped off. Understand? Not with this.”

Colin’s humor faded as he saw how much dark anger there was in his old friend’s expression. “Sure, Lawrence, you can rely on me. What sort of mass are we talking about?”

“I don’t know for certain. But if I’m right, about a backpack per man. It’ll be enough to buy a management stake for each of us.”

“Hot damn! Easy meat.”

They touched the rims of their tins and drank to that. Lawrence saw three of the locals nod in agreement, and stand up.

“You got a car?” he asked Colin.

“Sure: you said not to use the train.”

“Get to it. Get clear. I’ll take care of this.”

Colin looked at the approaching men, making the calculation. He wasn’t frontline, hadn’t been for years. “See you on Thallspring.” He jammed on his stupid hat and took the three steps to the back door.

Lawrence stood up and faced the men, sighing heavily. It was the wrong day for them to go around pissing on trees to mark their territory. This bar had been carefully chosen so the meeting would go unnoticed by anyone at Z-B. And Thallspring was going to be the last shot he’d ever get at any kind of a decent future. That didn’t leave him with a lot of choice.

The one at the front, the biggest, naturally, had the tight smile of a man who knew he was about to score the winning goal. His two compadres were sidling up behind, one barely out of his teens, swigging from a tin, the other in a slim denim waistcoat that showed off glowmote tattoos distorted by old knife scars. An invincible trio.

It would start with one of them making some comment: Thought you company people were too good to drink with us. Not that it mattered what was actually said. The act of speaking was a way of ego pumping until one of them was hot enough to throw the first punch. Same dumb-ass ritual in every low-life bar on every human planet.

“Don’t,” Lawrence said flatly, before they got started. “Just shut up and go sit down. I’m leaving, okay.”

The big fella gave his friends a knowing I-told-you-he-was-chickenshit grin and snorted contempt for Lawrence’s bravado. “You ain’t going nowhere, company boy.” He drew his huge fist back.

Lawrence tilted from the waist, automatic and fast. His leg kicked out, boot heel smashing into the big fella’s knee. The one in the denim waistcoat picked up a chair and swung it at Lawrence’s head. Lawrence’s thick right arm came up to block the unwieldy club. One leg of the chair hit full on, just above his elbow, and stopped dead. Its impact didn’t even make Lawrence blink, let alone grunt in pain. The man staggered back as his balance was slung all to hell. It was like he’d hit solid stone. He stared at Lawrence’s arm, eyes widening as realization hammered through the drink.

All around the bar, men were pushing back chairs and rising. Coming to help their mates.

“No!” the man in the waistcoat shouted. “He’s in Skin!”

It made no difference. The youngster was going for the big bowie knife in his belt scabbard, and nobody was paying any attention to warnings as they closed in.

Lawrence raised his right arm high, punching the air. He could feel a gentle rippling against his wrists as peristaltic muscles brought the darts forward out of their magazine sacs into launch tubules. A ring of small dry slits peeled open above his carpals, black nozzles poking out. The dart swarm erupted.

As he left the bar, Lawrence turned the cardboard sign on the door so it said CLOSED and shut it behind him. He made sure his hat was on square, a fussy action, covering his anger. God damn the Armory Division. Those bastards never erred on the side of caution, always on the side of overkill. He’d seen two of the men lying on the floor start to convulse, the dart toxin levels set way too high for a simple incapacitation sting. The bar was going to get very noisy with police, very quickly.

A South American couple was sitting at one of the tables on the bar’s veranda, studying the laminated menu. Lawrence smiled politely at them and walked off down the main street back to the skycable terminus.

Ambulances and police vehicles were parked down the length of Kuranda’s main street when Simon Roderick’s TVL77D executive liaison helicopter whispered over the town. They were at all sorts of angles to each other, completely blocking the road for thirty meters on either side of the bar. There were obviously no traffic regulator nodes to guide anybody through Kuranda’s streets. Thoroughly in keeping with the town’s doughty throwback nature. He shook his head in bemusement at the chaos. Emergency service drivers could never resist the dramatic slam-halt arrival. Tough luck if one of the injured needed a paramedic crew urgently; the closest vehicles were all police. Paramedics clad in green boilersuits were maneuvering stretchers around awkward angles, sweaty faces straining from the effort.

“God, what a bunch of no-brainers,” Adul Quan complained from the seat behind Simon. The Third Fleet intelligence operative had pressed his face against the helicopter’s side window so he could view the town directly. He never liked utilizing sensor feeds through his direct neural interface, claiming the viewpoint switch made him giddy. “We should bid to manage the state’s civil operations. At least offer them AS coordination, bring them into this century.”

“We have the urban area franchise,” Simon replied. “And all our people have some kind of medical monitor fitted in case there’s a problem. We can retrieve them wherever they are. That’s what matters.”

“Good PR, though. Devoting resources to helping civilians.”

“If they want our help they should take a stake in us, contribute and participate.”

“Yes, sir.”

Simon heard the skepticism in the other’s voice and made no comment. To get where he was, Adul had built up a large stake in Z-B, but even that couldn’t make him understand what true belonging meant. In truth, Simon thought, no one except himself did. That would change eventually.

Simon used his DNI to feed a series of commands to the autopilot, and the helicopter swung round over the little circular park at the top end of the main street. As he came back to the scrubland truck lot he’d identified as a landing zone, he saw that some kids had spray painted an open eye on the corrugated roof of a derelict shop. The fading green and blue symbol was big enough to stare up at all the strategic security division helicopters that zipped through the tropical skies above the town. Like a perfect portrait painting, its gaze followed Simon as the TVL77D extended its undercarriage and sank down on the baked-mud surface. Rotor downwash sent a flurry of crushed tins and junk-food wrappers tumbling away from them as the fuselage lost its gray sky-blur integument, reverting to ominous matte black.

He paused for a moment as the turbines wound down. His personal AS had extended trawlers to retrieve all the emergency service e-traffic within the local datapool. The relevant messages were relayed straight through his DNI. A display grid snapped up within his apparent field of vision, its indigo color, invisible to the human eye, ensuring it didn’t obscure anything in his actual physical sight. But for all the torrent of information presented to him, he was still left lamentably short of hard facts. Nobody on the scene had yet established what had actually happened. So far they just had the one unconfirmed report of a suited Skin running amok.

His attention flicked to one of the medical grids. He called it up, and five high-resolution graphs expanded for him as he stepped from the helicopter cabin. The handheld blood analyzers that the paramedic teams were applying to the victims were establishing links to the Cairns General Hospital’s databank, working through chemical profiles to identify the agent involved in the poisoning.

Simon put on a pair of old-fashioned wraparound sunglasses. “Interesting,” he murmured. “Do you see this?” He had sent copies of the analyzer results to Z-B’s bioweapons division AS, which gave him a positive match on the agent. His DNI relayed the secure package to Adul.

“Skin toxin,” Adul observed. “An updosed incapacitation shot.” He shook his head in disapproval before unfolding his own sunshade membranes across his nose. “One definite fatality. And those two with allergic reactions are going to wind up with nerve damage.”

“If they’re lucky,” Simon said. “And only if these paramedics get them to the hospital fast enough.” He ran a hand over his brow, dabbing at a thin layer of perspiration that had already accumulated in the intense heat.

“Shall I have the antidote dispatched to the emergency room?”

“Incapacitation toxins don’t need an antidote; they clear automatically. It’s what they’re designed for.”

“That dosage level will put a hell of a strain on their kidneys, though.”

Simon stopped and looked at Adul. “My dear fellow, we’re here to investigate how and why it was used, not to act as nursemaid to a bunch of retarded civilians who are too slow to duck in the first place.”

“Yes, sir.”

It was that tone again. Simon thought he might soon be reconsidering Adul’s usefulness as a security operative. In his business, empathy was a valuable trait, but when it veered into sympathy …

The pair of them threaded their way through the maze of emergency vehicles parked along the main street. The few clear passages were clogged by people: locals, sullen and silent, and a few tourists, frightened and excited. Around the bar’s veranda, police officers in their shorts and crisp white shirts milled about trying to look as if they had a reason and purpose. Their chief, a tall captain in her mid-forties, wearing full navy blue uniform, stood beside the rail, listening to a young constable making his excitable report.

Simon’s personal AS informed him the officer in charge was Captain Jane Finemore. A script page containing her service record expanded out of the grid. He scanned it briefly and dismissed it.

All the police fell silent as Simon and Adul made their way forward. The captain turned; there was a flash of contempt as she took in Adul’s mauve Z-B fleet tunic; then her face went protectively blank as she saw Simon in his conservative business suit, jacket slung casually over his shoulder.

“Can I help you fellas?” she asked.

“I rather fear it’s the other way round, Captain … ah, Finemore,” Simon said, smiling as he made a show of reading her discreet lapel name badge.

“We intercepted a report that indicates someone in a Skin suit was engaged in hostile action here.”

She was about to answer when the bar’s doors slammed open and a paramedic team carrying a stretcher hurried out. Simon flattened himself against the veranda railing, allowing them past. Various medical bracelets had been applied to the patient’s neck and arms, small indicator lights winking urgently. He was unconscious, but twitching strongly.

“I haven’t confirmed that yet,” an irritated Captain Finemore said when the paramedics were clear.

“But that was the initial report,” Simon said. “I’d like to establish its validity as a matter of urgency. If someone in Skin is running loose, he needs to be dealt with immediately, before the situation deteriorates any further.”

“I am aware of that,” Captain Finemore said. “I’ve put our Armed Tactical Response Team on standby.”

“With all respect, Captain, I feel this would be best dealt with by a counter-insurgency squad from our own internal security division. A Skin suit would give the wearer an enormous advantage over your ATR team.”

“Are you saying you don’t think we can handle this?”

“I’m offering every facility to ensure that you do.”

“Well, gee, thanks. I don’t know what we would do without you.”

Simon’s smile remained in place as various police officers snickered around him. “If I could ask, where did that original report come from?”

Captain Finemore jerked her head toward the bar. “The waitress. She was hiding behind the bar when your man opened fire. None of the darts hit her.”

“I’d like to talk to her, please.”

“She’s still in a lot of shock. I’ve got some specially trained officers talking to her.”

Simon used his DNI to route a message through his personal AS. The captain wouldn’t have a DNI herself—Queensland State Police budget didn’t run to that—but he could see her irises had a purple tint; she was fitted with standard commercial optronic membranes for fast data access. “Did nobody else witness this man in a Skin suit? He would hardly be unobtrusive.”

“No.” The captain stiffened as the script scrolled down across her membranes. “There was just the one sighting.” She was talking slowly now, measuring every word. “That’s why I haven’t ordered a general containment area around the town yet.”

“Then finding out is your first priority. The longer you wait, the wider the containment area, and the less likely it will succeed.”

“I’ve already got cars patrolling along the main road to Cairns, and officers are covering the skycable terminus and the train station.”

“Excellent. May I sit in on the waitress’s interview now?”

Captain Finemore stared at him. His warning message had been very clear and backed by the state governor’s office. But it had been private, enabling her to save face in front of her officers—unless she chose to make it public and destroy her career in a flare of glory. “Yeah, she’ll probably be over the worst by now.” Said as if she were granting a favor.

“Thank you. That’s most kind.” Simon pushed the bar’s door open and went inside.

Over a dozen paramedics were in the bar, kneeling beside the toxin victims. Orders and queries were shouted among them. They rummaged desperately through their bags to try to find relevant counteragents; medical equipment was strewn about carelessly. Their optronic membranes were thick with script on possible treatments.

The victims shuddered and juddered, heels drumming on the floor-boards. They sweated profusely, whimpering at painful nightmares. One was sealed in a black bodybag.

It was nothing Simon hadn’t seen before during asset-realization campaigns. Usually on a much larger scale. A single Skin carried enough ammunition to stop an entire mob dead in the street. He stepped gingerly around the bodies, trying not to disturb the paramedics. Police officers and forensic crews were examining walls and tables, adding to the general melee.

The waitress was sitting up at the counter at the far end of the bar, one hand closed tightly round a tumbler of whiskey. She was a middle-aged woman with a fleshy face and permed hair in an out-of-date fashion. Not really seeing or hearing anything going on around her.

Clearly there wasn’t a single viral-written chromosome in her DNA, Simon decided with considerable distaste. Given her background, the absence of such v-writing inevitably meant she had low intelligence, bad physiology and zero aspirations. She was one of life’s perpetual under-dogs.

A female police officer sat on a barstool beside the waitress, a sympathetic expression on her face. If she’d taken in any of her specialist training, Simon thought, the first thing she would have done was move the woman outside, away from the scene.

His AS was unable to find the waitress’s name. Apparently, the bar didn’t have any kind of accountancy and management programs. The AS couldn’t even find a registered link to the datapool; all it had was a phone line.

Simon sat down on the empty barstool next to the waitress. “Hello there. How are you feeling now, er … ?”

Weepy eyes focused on him. “Sharlene,” she whispered.

“Sharlene. A nasty thing to happen to anyone.” He smiled at the police officer. “I’d like to talk to Sharlene alone for a moment, please.”

She gave him a resentful look, but got up and walked off. No doubt going to complain to Finemore.

Adul stood behind Sharlene, surveying the bar. People tended to take a wide detour around him.

“I need to know what happened,” Simon said. “And I do need to know rather quickly. I’m sorry.”

“Jesus,” Sharlene shivered. “I just want to forget about it, y’know.” She tried to lift the whiskey to her lips. Blinked in surprise when she found Simon’s hand on top of hers, preventing the tumbler from moving off the countertop.

“He frightened you, didn’t he?”

“Too damn right.”

“That’s understandable. As you saw, he could cause you a great deal of physical discomfort. I, on the other hand, can destroy your entire life with a single call. But I won’t stop there. I will obliterate your family as well. No jobs for any of them. Ever. Just welfare and junk for generations. And if you annoy me any more, I’ll see you disqualified from welfare, too. Do you want you and your mother to be whores for Z-B squaddies, Sharlene? Because that’s all I’ll leave you with. The pair of you will be fucked into an early diseased death down on the Cairns Strip.”

Sharlene’s jaw dropped.

“Now, you tell me what I want to know. Focus that pathetic mush of flesh you call a brain, and I might even see you get a reward. Which way do you want to go, Sharlene? Annoyance or cooperation?”

“I want to help,” she stammered fearfully.

Simon smiled wide. “Splendid. Now, was he wearing a Skin suit?”

“No. Not really. It was his arm. I saw it when he bought his beer. It was all fat, and a funny color.”

“As if he had a suntan?”

“Yeah. That’s it. Dark, but not as dark as an Aboriginal.”

“Just his arm?”

“Yeah. But he had the valves on his neck, too. You know, like Frankenstein bolts, but made from flesh. I could see them just above his collar.”

“You’re sure about that?”

“Yes. I’m not making this up. He was a Zantiu-Braun squaddie.”

“So what happened: he walked in and shot everyone?”

“No. He was talking to some bloke. Then Jack and a couple of the others went over. I guess they were looking for trouble. Jack’s like that; a good bloke really, though. That’s when it happened.”

“The man fired darts that knocked everyone out?”

“Yes. I saw him hold his hand up high, and someone shouted that he was in Skin. I got down behind the counter. Then I heard everyone screaming and falling. When I got up, they were all just lying there. I thought … thought they were all dead.”

“And you called the police.”

“Yes.”

“Had you ever seen this man before?”

“I don’t think so. But he might have been in. We get a lot of people in here, you know.”

Simon glanced round the bar, and just avoided wrinkling his nose in disgust. “I’m sure you do. What about the person he was talking to—have you seen him before?”

“No. But—”

“Yes?”

“He was Zantiu-Braun as well.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. I’ve worked in bars all around Cairns. You get to recognize the squaddies, not just from their valves.”

“Very well. So the shooter came in and bought a beer, then went straight over to the other squaddie, is that right?”

“Yes. That’s about it.”

“Try to remember, did either of them seem surprised that the other was there?”

“No. The one who was here first was drinking by himself, like he was waiting for the other.”

“Thank you. You’ve been most helpful.”

Captain Finemore gave Simon a surprised look when he emerged from the bar. “What happened?”

“Nothing,” he said. “It wasn’t a Skin suit. He was using some kind of scatter pistol. I expect the dart toxin was produced in an underground lab. Shame the chemist wasn’t a bit more attentive to the actual molecular structure when he attempted to retrosynth it.”

“A shame?” The line of Captain Finemore’s lips was set hard. “We’ve got one dead, and Christ alone knows if the rest of them will recover.”

“Then you’ll be glad we’re getting out of your hair.” Simon gestured along the clutter and confusion of Kuranda’s main street. “It’s all yours. But if you do need any help rounding the shooter up, then don’t hesitate to ask. Our boys can always do with a bit of live training.”

“I’ll keep it in mind,” Finemore said.

As before, police and civilians parted for him with sullen, silent resentment. He ran quickly through the TVL77D’s start-up procedure and lifted from the baked mud. His personal AS reported there was no unauthorized removal of a Skin suit from the Cairns base armory.

“Check this out for me,” he told Adul. “I want to know who it was walking round in Skin.”

“Some squaddie got jumped in a bar. Do you really think it’s that important?”

“The incident isn’t. The fact that there’s no reference to Skin missing is. And I’m curious why two of our people should choose to meet in such a godforsaken place.”

“Yes, sir.”

Zantiu-Braun’s Third Fleet base centered on the old Cairns International Airport just to the north of the town. There were no commercial flights there anymore; the main transport link was the TranzAus magrail train, bringing cargo and people northward with smooth efficiency at five hundred kilometers an hour. Now the parking aprons held squadrons of Third Fleet helicopters along with scramjet-powered spaceplanes and a few dark, missilelike executive supersonic jets; eight old lumbering turboprop craft maintained by Z-B provided a civil coastwatch and rescue service all the way out to New Guinea. As a result, the airspace over Cairns was the busiest section in Australia apart from Sydney, where the remaining airlines had their hub. Synthetic hihydrogen fuels had replaced natural petroleum products, ecologically sounder but relatively