"We're dead. We're dead, and
we're here, and they tell us to make helicopters. So we make them,
working like dogs to make a deadline. Then, just as the first one comes
off the line, the power fails. No more juice. The head engineer took off
in the one we finished. He was going to find out what gives, but he
never came back. So we sit." He spat on the ground. "I wish they'd left
me dead after the plant blew up. I'm not myself since then."
"What in hell would they need with helicopters?" Hanson asked.
The man shrugged. "Beats me. But I'm beginning to figure some things
out. They've got some kind of trouble with the sky. I figure they got
confused in bringing us here. This shop is one that made those big cargo
copters they call 'Sky Hooks' and maybe they thought the things were
just what they're called. All I know is they kept us working five solid
weeks for nothing. I knew the power was going to fail; they had the
craziest damn generating plant you ever saw, and it couldn't last. The
boilers kept sizzling and popping their safety valves with no fire in
the box! Just some little old man sitting in a corner, practicing the
Masonic grip or something over a smudgepot."
Hanson gestured back to the sheds. "If there's no power, what are those
lights?"
"Witch lights, they told us," the man explained. "Saved a lot of wiring,
or something. They--hey, what's that?"
He was looking up, and Hanson followed his gaze.
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