A Glint In Time (History and Time) Read Online Free Page A

was a very funny setup.
    Some of her equipment arrived the next morning by truck and Sally tackled the job of building a satellite terminal. She spent half of the day aligning the ground equipment with the satellite and the rest of the day getting the relay circuits setup with a specialized carrier in Hawaii. She had to hang on the phone with technicians in different time zones around the world as they patched and tuned her circuit. Each group of technicians had their own way of doing things. Sometimes she could cajole and flirt and other times she had to use order numbers, circuit numbers, and invoice numbers to backup her demands.
    She initially set up the satellite dish and other equipment on the beach sand while the local contractor finished the concrete pad. The concrete didn't have to support much weight, but the antenna needed the pad for stability. When she mentioned to Wirtz that she would have to move the equipment to the cement pad after the pad cured for a few hours, he said, "Use the nighttime crew. I'll introduce you to Ted Arthurs."
    They found Ted kicked back in front of a terminal as his fingers flew over the keyboard. He turned out to be a guy of about Sally's age with a short haircut, flashing smile,
    good biceps, and tired eyes. She explained that she would like to move the eight foot antenna assembly in one piece across 150 feet of sand to the new cement pad. Ted smiled slowly and said, "Let me make a call." About thirty minutes later three more short haircuts on top of really good bodies appeared at the beach house door.
    Ted and his three buddies each grabbed a leg of the antenna pedestal and then ran in a remarkably coordinated ballet across the soft sand. "We do stuff like this for fun." Ted said as he lifted his corner of the antenna pedestal.
    "Wow" Sally was honestly impressed. "Are you guys a beach volley ball team?" Sally asked. It was the only solution to the puzzle of four guys in a highly coordinated team that she could come up with.
    The four guys exchanged looks and Ted said, " Yeah, we workout a lot on the beach. Nobody beats us." They helped Sally to carry the rest of her equipment to the concrete pad and then to carefully align the dish to the satellite in the southwest.
    At one point, the sounds of the sea were shattered by a roar that Sally hadn't heard before. She looked up to see the back end of two jets flashing over the sand. "What was that?" she asked Ted. He grinned, as did his friends. "Two F-16s making a pass at the beach after working on the range. They were just having fun on the way home. By the way, the local chamber of commerce calls that the 'Sound of Freedom.' The base does a lot for the community."
    Sally wanted to find out more, but as she got busy reconnecting the equipment cables, all of her helpers faded away. She saw Ted later in the beach house, but he just nodded and smiled and continued his work on a console.
    At the start of her fourth day in Florida, Sally was ready to complete the link to Indonesia. She dialed the contact number and a voice with a neutral accent answered immediately. "Miss Langley, hello. It seems you are doing very well."
    Sally found herself staring at the telephone handset. "Ah, hello." she finally replied. "Who are you?"
    "My name is Sanyoto Woo. I have technicians here to accept the connection. I will be your liaison. We see your signal in the satellite bandpass on our terminal. Are you ready to make the data connection to link the computers?"
    "Ah, no." Sally replied, on the defensive. "The router should arrive today and I've got to get it installed. I've got the satellite terminal up, but the router is the link to the network."
    There was pause and Woo's voice continued, "That is good. I am advised to tell you that there are no changes to the routing tables you received in our message. Please call me again when you have the router setup. Good morning, Miss Langley." The phone went dead. Sally was almost as impressed by the fact that Woo