He said, “We’ve penetrated its defenses or we’d be dead. So let’s see if we can figure out how to destroy it.”

“I know it,” she said. “I know lots about it.”

“How?”

She headed off around the catwalk. The forest was now far below them. The machine was gaining altitude.

She raced up a narrow ladder, moving toward what he thought might be some sort of control room, a dark, box-shaped form high in the superstructure.

He watched this beloved, deceitful creature, his Gina, climbing with the urgency of a hounded animal. She was far from the self-possessed, supremely competent young woman who had been his controller. This Gina was a true soldier, desperate, terrified, but not stopping.

Looking down from the catwalk, he could see through the open central ring of the structure and all the way to the ground, and the diminishing scale of everything told him that they must have reached an altitude of at least twelve thousand feet. There was no sense of movement, no shaking, just a slight breeze coming through the empty central opening of the thing. The higher they went, the colder it got.

Rather than race after Gina, he continued to evaluate the situation. He raised his eyes to the thing’s soaring crown of antennae. Perhaps they had something to do with how it stayed aloft.

So maybe he could break them off. Maybe that would make a difference. Getting to them, though, would be difficult. He’d be vulnerable, too, especially while he was climbing along that upper ring. It was narrow, so he’d have to balance carefully. Plus, they were probably too well anchored to damage with bare hands. And what if they carried an electrical charge?

He began ascending a spiral catwalk. Many years ago, he’d been on assignment in Rome, and he thought that the monstrous ring that he was circling was about twice the diameter of the dome of St. Peter’s. So, about 350 feet in diameter. To his eye, that would make the distance from the tip of the downward-pointing projection to the crown of the upper antenna about seven hundred feet, roughly twice the length of a football field.

He climbed higher, stopping occasionally to judge perspective. He disciplined himself to remain calm, to evaluate. Outwardly, a large man walked swiftly but easily along the catwalk. Inwardly, he seethed, wanting to trust Gina, but still unsure.