Unpopular Science

“No, thank you. I want to monitor the crawl.”

The centipede kept itself inside the channel dividing the concrete slabs that made up the tarmac on this private end of the airport at Casablanca. The terrain was broken and uneven from the perspective of a crawling creature that was no more than twelve millimeters in height, and time and again the centipede was forced to crawl out of the channel or over a crack or around a raised broken concrete chunk.

Once, one of the armed security men strolled around the back of the jet, out of boredom more than thoroughness. The chances of any mischief coming from the far side of the aircraft, across the open, empty airport runways, was small.

If he had been more observant he might have noticed the strange, dull, slate-gray thing stretched out in the gap in the concrete. He never saw it.

When the man passed on, the centipede began moving again. It came to the big wooden block, then to the right rear tire. It reared up, two inches off the surface, its activities now hidden by the tire from the view of the guards. It took the rubber in its legs and dug in. The eighty-four tungsten legs of the mechanical centipede were like filament, no wider than a human hair but strong and extremely sharp. The algorithms that controlled their movement, computer-generated to match the movements of real centipedes, allowed it to flow easily through a natural movement. Getting a grip was the easy part; not getting too much grip, that was a challenge.

The force of each leg was feather-light, but the filament legs were so sharp they penetrated the rubber easily. The tires were new, and the heat had softened them somewhat; still, the specialty aircraft tire polymer was so tough it adhered to the tiny needles that penetrated it. By the time the centipede had crawled to the top of the tire and onto the metal strut, it had lost six tungsten legs to the tire.

That was a slight handicap, but the centipede’s next task was its most difficult.

The kid with the crew cut grinned with his mouth full of white bread and olive loaf. “Ouch. Six legs lost. You gonna make it?”

“Please stop chewing in my ear,” the older man said. “I told you tungsten was a mistake.”

“There’s nothing stronger.”

‘Titanium thretcheth,” the kid managed to say while stuffing in a huge mouthful.

“Where are your manners? I did not understood you,” the father said irritably.

The kid chewed and swallowed a huge glob, washing it down with milk from a frosty glass bottle. “I said, titanium stretches.”

“Tungsten is far stronger. You look like an advertisement for zee Dairy Farmers of New Mexico.”

The kid grinned and dragged an arm over his mouth, erasing most of his milk mustache.

On screen, the chart of numbers updated itself dynamically and the image of the aircraft wheel well abruptly rotated and closed in.

Somewhere in the-northwestern corner of Africa, the centipede was gripping the strut of the aircraft through a combination of constriction and the needlelike penetration, to microscopic depths, of its seventy- eight surviving legs into the surface of the steel, and as it did so it ascended.

All they could do was watch. The algorithms controlling the centipede made their own adjustments far too fast for manual assistance.

But seconds later the image became stationary and the monitoring window indicated the centipede was in position.

“All right, Pops!” the kid shouted, spraying milk on the older man and on his computer screen.

His father was too self-satisfied to complain. Minutes later, he was gratified to see the next centipede likewise position itself in the wheel well of the other aircraft.

The third centipede had by this time crawled away into the grass by the tarmac to hide in wait for other commands.

The older man picked up the phone on the first ring.

“Mr. Fastbinder,” said a familiar voice. ‘Tm eager to hear about your progress.”

“Excuse me one moment,” the older man said, and put the phone to his chest. “Jack,” he said to his grinning son, “don’t you have a date with Sue Ellen this evening?”

“Not until six. Pops.”

“Can’t you find something else to do?” He nodded at the phone.

“Oh, yeah, sure. I’ll go install those new gyroscopes in the Walkers.”

When the teenager had moved across the workspace to a distant bench, the older man put the phone back to his ear and apologized. “My son is enthusiastic.”

“Don’t blame him, Fastbinder. What’s the word out of Morocco?”

“We narrowed it down to two aircraft that arrived in zee last three hours.”

“Did you get any eyewitness reports from the Barbers?”

“Berbers,” Fastbinder corrected. “All are dead.”

“Really? I guess I should have expected that. Wow. Nobody saw anything?”

“Our police mole says one passerby reported seeing a dark young man and an old man in a Japanese geisha outfit.”

“That’s it! That’s him! That’s them, all right!”

“As soon as I lost contact with our Berbers, I initiated zee airport activities. We’ll have stowaway on both aircraft.”

“And when will we know which is the right plane?”