Level One

Part 4

        Twenty minutes later Tracy was sitting in her father's office recounting her version of the earlier events. Phillip Hammond had already received a brief report from Brad Sullivan, but he listened with interest to his daughter.

"I can't understand it, Dad," Tracy said, "I was friends with Sarah. She even came around to my townhouse a couple of times, but all this time she was planning to steal from us. Why didn't I pick up on it?"

"Probably because you never thought to distrust her," her father answered, "Don't forget your ability doesn't necessarily work automatically every time. If you had concentrated on looking into her mind you probably would have found her out, but you had no reason to."

Tracy sighed, "Yes, I suppose you're right."

The videophone chimed. Phillip pressed the connect button to see Professor O'Brien's face looking anxiously at him. "Dr Hammond," he said, "I just discovered exactly what it was that she downloaded. This is amazing. It's more than amazing. I don't want to discuss this over the com. I'm coming up to your office." 

He clicked off before Phillip could respond. He looked at Tracy. "Well this should be interesting."

Five minutes later O'Brien was sitting in Hammond's office excitedly recounting what he had discovered. "The Mark Two formula. It was about three weeks ago. I went out briefly and left Sarah to run it through the simulations on my computer. But I had left System A switched out. When she ran it through Simulation Four there was a result. But she told me later that none of the simulations had worked. I took her word for it and never checked. Instead I started developing the Mark Three formula."

"What was the Simulation Four result?" Phillip asked.

"This is what's so amazing. The computer predicted a potential point four five C."

Phillip sat back in his chair and smiled. "Well this is indeed a fantastic breakthough. Forty five per cent of the speed of light is better than we were aiming for. Well done, Professor."

O'Brien beamed. "Thank you. I knew we were close. But Sarah knew about this before any of us. She smuggled in a USB stick and downloaded the formulas and rocket engine plans."

"And any country with a space programme would happily pay millions to get hold of this information," Tracy added. "She must be planning to pass it on to someone for a large amount of money."

*****

The following night Tracy was at home in her townhouse. Angie had come around earlier and they shared a pizza and watched a movie. After she left at around midnight Tracy prepared for bed while thinking about the events of the previous day. Sarah still hadn't been caught. Her car had been found that morning parked off the side of a rural lane about 15 kilometres from the complex. Brad had surmised that she must have left another vehicle there in advance ready for a switch. Without knowing what vehicle to look for, the search had become a lot harder. They might not find her at all. By now she could easily be interstate. Also Carl Brennan had been unable to determine how Sarah had obtained a stun gun. All he was able to establish was that one of the units was missing from its locked cabinet in the security centre. He was concerned that she had had inside help, and he and Brad were in the process of questioning, with the assistance of the lie detector, all of the security staff who had access to the cabinet.

Just as Tracy had climbed into bed and turned the light off the security buzzer sounded. She got back out of bed and went into the lounge room. Pushing the respond button on the intercom she looked at the video screen to see who was at the gate at such a late hour. She gaped in astonishment. It was Sarah. Tracy took a few seconds to recover, then pressed the button to activate the audio.