CHAPTER 5Doctor Westley Lindwood at the secret satellite station at Tangimoana, thirty kilometres east of Palmerston North and five hundred kilometres south of Auckland, glanced up at warning lights where he had been carrying out routine but boring work following the three hundred and twenty-three satellites that they were tracking above New Zealand during his shift. All the warning lights began flashing and a siren howled.
"Damn," he muttered to himself for he had never seen more than three lights come on simultaneously before. Either there was a massive failure in the tracking disks or, and this was much more likely, a software fault. Since a recent upgrade there had been numerous teething problems.
"Alice, diagnose and report," he said.
"All our tracking disks and accompanying satell
