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Shilin was sure he had misheard when some time later the voice from ground control repeated its earlier command:
“Destroy the target!”
Events took on the quality of a dream. An irksome, recurring dream that ineluctably haunts a person. The firm voice from the radio, just like in a dream, was drilling into his ears the same words, as if it were not a person at the other end but a tape loop playing over and over on the airwaves.
To be exact, the order to eliminate the target had been given twice over the past twenty-seven minutes: the first time when the foreign plane had approached the island, and now as it flew away from it. The first time, the order had been immediately retracted, but the fact that it was repeated now struck Shilin as odd and unexpected. What sense did it make to o
