glad you weren’t mad at me Doctor. Remind me to never upset your wife but what are you going to do about Sales now?’
A cold look crept into the Doctors eye s, ‘I’m a Highlander Colonel a Scottish Highlander, we were all born with infinite patience and a long memory.’
The Colonel shook his head sadly, ‘I think you might need it too. I have about the highest clearance you can get in the military and even I can’t find out much about this clown. All I do know is , he has a lot of clout.’
Brian nodded thoughtfully, ‘I know we’ve never heard of him and we ’re the top people in our field.’
‘May I say something off the record Doctor?’
‘Please feel free Colonel.’
‘I’ve seen action many times Doctor and a man in my position relies on the men around him. After a while you begin to get an instinct about people and how much you can trust them. I’ll tell you now, there's not one of my men including myself who want anything to do with this Sales character. The President was wrong when he took you and your wife off this project.’
Brian was quite taken aback by the big man’s confession, ‘well… I’ll take that as a vote of confidence Colonel, thank you.’
‘I have a bad feeling about this fellah Doctor; sooner or later he’s gonna balls it up big time. That normally means we have to go in and sort it all out. It would be nice to know you and your wife are going to be around to back us up when it all goes down. So please don’t do anything to give that shit an excuse to throw you out.’
Brian felt quite flustered, ‘well … ok … I’ll try and keep the peace until then.’
The Colonel nodded his thanks, ‘in the mean time I’ll try and find out what I can about him for you.’ He turned and left them.
Brian raised his eyebrows at Mary, ‘do you think he just said that to calm me down?’
She smiled the tears all dried up and smoothed out the rumples on the collar of his lab coat, ‘I don’t think the Colonels the type of man who tries to placate anybody dear. He’s the type of man who knows exactly what he’s saying and who he’s saying it too.’
A shudder travelled the length of his spine, ‘well I hope to God he’s wrong about anything going wrong. Those ships could advance our civilisation by thousands of years over night.’
Another week passed with no results. Doctor. Sales, who now treated the ship as his own personal property, began to fly into unreasonable rages. On a couple of occasions Brian and Mary found themselves on the receiving end of these black tantrums, but on each occasion, either Colonel Howe or one of his men was able to place themselves between them. They would ask the enraged man a load of stupid questions, which deflected his anger.
No matter where Mary or Brian went, one of the elite soldiers never seemed to be far away. It felt strange at first but they soon became used to it and then came to draw some comfort from it. The support from the remainder of their staff was also overwhelming.
Mary was sitting at one of the main monitors when she suddenly realised something was far from right. She knew Sales had ventured into the ship with some of his own men and bags of equipment, but it wasn’t until he began removing teams of scientists from what they thought of as the engine room that she began to suspect he was up to no good.
Sales had promised the President positive results within the first week. But as time went on and nothing had been found his frustration grew. The President had been onto him three times today already and he had begun to get the feeling if he didn’t come up with something shortly then the project would be passed onto someone else.
Sales had no intention of letting that happen. It was time to play his ace in the hole. The three men with him were engineers. Experts at smash and grab tactics. Industrial espionage was their forte and employed almost exclusively by
A cold look crept into the Doctors eye s, ‘I’m a Highlander Colonel a Scottish Highlander, we were all born with infinite patience and a long memory.’
The Colonel shook his head sadly, ‘I think you might need it too. I have about the highest clearance you can get in the military and even I can’t find out much about this clown. All I do know is , he has a lot of clout.’
Brian nodded thoughtfully, ‘I know we’ve never heard of him and we ’re the top people in our field.’
‘May I say something off the record Doctor?’
‘Please feel free Colonel.’
‘I’ve seen action many times Doctor and a man in my position relies on the men around him. After a while you begin to get an instinct about people and how much you can trust them. I’ll tell you now, there's not one of my men including myself who want anything to do with this Sales character. The President was wrong when he took you and your wife off this project.’
Brian was quite taken aback by the big man’s confession, ‘well… I’ll take that as a vote of confidence Colonel, thank you.’
‘I have a bad feeling about this fellah Doctor; sooner or later he’s gonna balls it up big time. That normally means we have to go in and sort it all out. It would be nice to know you and your wife are going to be around to back us up when it all goes down. So please don’t do anything to give that shit an excuse to throw you out.’
Brian felt quite flustered, ‘well … ok … I’ll try and keep the peace until then.’
The Colonel nodded his thanks, ‘in the mean time I’ll try and find out what I can about him for you.’ He turned and left them.
Brian raised his eyebrows at Mary, ‘do you think he just said that to calm me down?’
She smiled the tears all dried up and smoothed out the rumples on the collar of his lab coat, ‘I don’t think the Colonels the type of man who tries to placate anybody dear. He’s the type of man who knows exactly what he’s saying and who he’s saying it too.’
A shudder travelled the length of his spine, ‘well I hope to God he’s wrong about anything going wrong. Those ships could advance our civilisation by thousands of years over night.’
Another week passed with no results. Doctor. Sales, who now treated the ship as his own personal property, began to fly into unreasonable rages. On a couple of occasions Brian and Mary found themselves on the receiving end of these black tantrums, but on each occasion, either Colonel Howe or one of his men was able to place themselves between them. They would ask the enraged man a load of stupid questions, which deflected his anger.
No matter where Mary or Brian went, one of the elite soldiers never seemed to be far away. It felt strange at first but they soon became used to it and then came to draw some comfort from it. The support from the remainder of their staff was also overwhelming.
Mary was sitting at one of the main monitors when she suddenly realised something was far from right. She knew Sales had ventured into the ship with some of his own men and bags of equipment, but it wasn’t until he began removing teams of scientists from what they thought of as the engine room that she began to suspect he was up to no good.
Sales had promised the President positive results within the first week. But as time went on and nothing had been found his frustration grew. The President had been onto him three times today already and he had begun to get the feeling if he didn’t come up with something shortly then the project would be passed onto someone else.
Sales had no intention of letting that happen. It was time to play his ace in the hole. The three men with him were engineers. Experts at smash and grab tactics. Industrial espionage was their forte and employed almost exclusively by
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