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Peck was in the middle of a particularly detailed write-up on unexplained and unaccounted-for tech movements in the North Shore region when his computer pleep!ed at him. Instantly he saved his work, sat back, and smiled.
Satellite time.
His office didn't have nearly as many monitors as O'Connell's, but that was the price of being a relatively junior analyst. At least the one hooked up to the intermittent-at-best satellite surveillance feed was newer and of a higher resolution than the other man's. It got him better images from the same feeds, if nothing else. True, they were usually in black-and-white, but he didn't mind. You got more detail that way.
The image that flickered to life on the screen was a familiar one: the lumpy, uneven ground and patchy tree cover of a particular plot of land in Montana, complete with the ratty roof of the pegged-together cabin. Hmm… looked like Stantz had been doing some home repair. With- was that dirt? Yeah, it looked like dirt. Sod, maybe, but he didn't have the resolution to tell. Clever of the man, really. More resourceful than he'd expected from an engineer with a stolen technology fetish. Probably he'd need to extend the estimate of time to resolve failure, but the boss-man was all right with that. It wasn't as if Stantz was either going anywhere or costing them anything right now.
Ah, speak of the devil. . .
He wished, not for the first time, that he'd trusted the new minicams enough to install a few in the local trees. Satellite feed couldn't get him facial expressions. In the end he'd opted to rely on the satellites because leaving anything more advanced than the crummy 1960's telephone on site was asking for trouble. Stantz would've found them eventually, taken them apart, and probably built some kind of laser or sonic disruption weapon out of the parts. This way was easier, even if it meant all he had to go on was a silent image of-
-wait.
"What the hell is he doing?" Peck wondered aloud, standing to frown at the image from closer up. The man on the screen had picked up a sizable stick. Nothing unusual there. Usually that meant the World's Worst Boy Scout was trying to find another way out of the cabin's vicinity. No go this time, though. He had the stick in his left hand, and he was. . . huh. . . swinging it, waving it, jumping at something with it. . .
Either Stantz was trying to kill biting insects with a stick, or the Ghostbuster had gone crazy. Peck made a mental note to wait about half an hour after his satellite time ended and phone the man. Let the voice stress analyzer on his line decide whether he was talking to an incipient nut case or not.
He leaned back on his heels and watched the thorough slicing and dicing of imaginary enemies until the surveillance satellite completed its pass over Montana and the image winked out.
Satellite time.
His office didn't have nearly as many monitors as O'Connell's, but that was the price of being a relatively junior analyst. At least the one hooked up to the intermittent-at-best satellite surveillance feed was newer and of a higher resolution than the other man's. It got him better images from the same feeds, if nothing else. True, they were usually in black-and-white, but he didn't mind. You got more detail that way.
The image that flickered to life on the screen was a familiar one: the lumpy, uneven ground and patchy tree cover of a particular plot of land in Montana, complete with the ratty roof of the pegged-together cabin. Hmm… looked like Stantz had been doing some home repair. With- was that dirt? Yeah, it looked like dirt. Sod, maybe, but he didn't have the resolution to tell. Clever of the man, really. More resourceful than he'd expected from an engineer with a stolen technology fetish. Probably he'd need to extend the estimate of time to resolve failure, but the boss-man was all right with that. It wasn't as if Stantz was either going anywhere or costing them anything right now.
Ah, speak of the devil. . .
He wished, not for the first time, that he'd trusted the new minicams enough to install a few in the local trees. Satellite feed couldn't get him facial expressions. In the end he'd opted to rely on the satellites because leaving anything more advanced than the crummy 1960's telephone on site was asking for trouble. Stantz would've found them eventually, taken them apart, and probably built some kind of laser or sonic disruption weapon out of the parts. This way was easier, even if it meant all he had to go on was a silent image of-
-wait.
"What the hell is he doing?" Peck wondered aloud, standing to frown at the image from closer up. The man on the screen had picked up a sizable stick. Nothing unusual there. Usually that meant the World's Worst Boy Scout was trying to find another way out of the cabin's vicinity. No go this time, though. He had the stick in his left hand, and he was. . . huh. . . swinging it, waving it, jumping at something with it. . .
Either Stantz was trying to kill biting insects with a stick, or the Ghostbuster had gone crazy. Peck made a mental note to wait about half an hour after his satellite time ended and phone the man. Let the voice stress analyzer on his line decide whether he was talking to an incipient nut case or not.
He leaned back on his heels and watched the thorough slicing and dicing of imaginary enemies until the surveillance satellite completed its pass over Montana and the image winked out.
