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SEA OF SHADOWS 131
Fisher nodded. “Chicken bones. We need to do the secret voodoo
ritual.”
“I see,” the chief said. “And what, pray tell, is the secret voodoo
ritual?”
“We had some on the Paul Foster,” Fish said. “Dried up chicken
bones. We kept them in one of those purple velvet bags like Crown Royal
bottles come in. Whenever we came across a radar problem that was
kicking our asses, we’d get out the chicken bones. We’d turn on one battle
lantern and shut off all the lights, so things would get real dark and spooky
looking. Then, we’d shake up the bag really good and dump the chicken
bones on the deck.”
Chief Lowery grinned. “This helped somehow?”
“Hell yeah,” Fish said. “One of the bones was bigger than all of the
others, and one end of that bone was bigger than the other end. See?”
“Like a leg bone?” Gordon asked.
“Yeah,” Fish said. “Like a drumstick. Anyway, whichever way the big
end of the big bone was pointing, that’s where the problem was. We
would go to the nearest piece of equipment to where it was pointing and
start troubleshooting.”
“Bullshit,” Gordon said.
Burgess grabbed the crotch of his own coveralls and squeezed
theatrically. “Yeah, Fish. I’ve got your big bone right here!”
Fish grinned and gave Burgess a wink. “No thanks, Cowboy. I’ve
seen your bone, and it didn’t look very big to me.”
Chief Lowery tried not to grin. “Knock it off, you knuckleheads.
We’ve still got a radar to troubleshoot.”
Fish held his hands palm up and let them drop. “That’s what I’m trying
to tell you, Chief. There’s nothing left to troubleshoot. There is nothing
wrong with this fucking radar. We’ve run every on-line test, every off-line
test, and every dynamic and static load test ever invented. We’ve swapped
every circuit card in Array #4 with every circuit card in Array #3. If the
problem was in one of those cards, or even several cards, the interference
should have moved to Array #3 with the cards.”
Burgess nodded. “We’ve checked video processing, wave guides,
primary and alternate power, and all of the digital multiplexers. We’ve
checked for thermal problems, phase angle calibration errors,
electromagnetic cross-talk between cable runs, signal shedding, and digital
sync pulse errors. We’ve also tested the sweep raster initiators, and every
clock pulse and digital incrementer that’s even remotely related to SPY.”
“Fish and Shit-for-Brains are right,” Gordon said. “We’ve swapped
every disk pack, and reloaded the software from scratch three times. I’ve