A Ruby Beam of Light

by Tom DeMarco

  “Uh huh. But that is real progress, isn’t it?” The tension began to subside in the back of his neck. The ability to track one object was hardly going to be enough in the long run, Burlingame knew, but for their particular needs this evening, it might just suffice.

  “Oh yes. It is something that we couldn’t do before. So it’s progress. It has taken a hell of a lot of effort to achieve it.”

  “I know. No one is more appreciative, Lamar, of the effort you and your people are putting in than myself. I say no one is more appreciative, but of course there is the President who is more appreciative. He is highly appreciative.”

  “Mm.”

  “Highly. Well. Now that we have vision, we’re practically home, aren’t we?” Oops, mistake.

  “We goddam well are not practically home!” Armitage exploded. “We are nowhere!”

  “No. That’s what I meant.” Burlingame smiled lamely. “Lots and lots more work to do. Of course.”

  “Incredibly much more work to do. This project was meant to be staffed by 600 people. So we are 580 people short. Think of that. We are breaking our asses trying to do the work of 580 missing people!”

  Burlingame did his best to look impressed. “A truly incredible effort, gentlemen. I can’t think who else on earth, I mean on the whole entire and complete earth, would be capable of it. I’m just saying that within limits there are things that we can do. Of course there are those limits. But within them we can do some things. That’s all I’m saying.”

  “Right. We can do two things. We can fire a one second beam at a preset position, and we can see one thing at a time.”

  “Well excellent. So we could see that one thing, and, I guess, then we could fire at it, couldn’t we?”

  Armitage just looked tired. “Show him the demo, Lawrence.”

  Lawrence Perkins moved over to the wide screen console and switched it on. Burlingame turned pleasantly toward him, ready to see and to be impressed by the demo. He was already starting to feel good about this. The demo he was about to see, would undoubtedly be sufficient for this evening’s needs. All it had to do was pick up one incoming target and blast the thing out of the skies. Not too much to ask for all these weeks of work.

  The screen showed a swirl of stars moving from left to right. Perkins supplied the commentary: “The sensor is turning, looking for something to latch onto. We show stars on the screen, though the sensor can’t actually see them. We’ve just dummied up the stars so you get a sense of which way the sensor is moving. You have to understand, though, that the sensor doesn’t really see the stars.”

  “And that’s all right,” said Burlingame. “That’s quite all right. You see, I’m not looking for perfection.” Who cared whether the stupid thing could see stars?

  “I just want to be sure you understand. The stars are simulated.”

  “Quite all right.”

  “Yes. Well, now, you see, the scanner has picked up an object.” There was indeed a circle with an X inside it swimming into view from the left side of the screen. “There. And, as you can see, the system has latched onto it.” Movement of the stars was slowing, evidently from the decreased rotation of the sensor. When the circle attained the center of the screen, it stopped. “OK. We’re locked on. SHIELA is tracking the object. Its coordinates are shown here in the corner, expressed in polar notation. SHIELA can ‘see’ the object, and can follow it.”

  “And it’s a moving object, isn’t it?”

  “Um, yes. I guess so.” Perkins looked surprised by the question.

  “How fast is it moving?”

  “Well, seventy meters per second.”

  “Aha. So we’ve locked onto a fast moving object.”

  “If you want to put it that way.”

  “Blast it.”

  “What?”

  “Blast the thing. Hit it with the one-second beam. I don’t care what it is. Private or military aircraft. It won’t be a commercial aircraft because there aren’t any aloft tonight, I happen to know that. So I want you to blow that object up. We are willing to take the heat on this. Because we absolutely have to know that we can spot and destroy a moving object. That is the essential. What I’m asking you to do is blow up that object that you are tracking now, to make it disappear from the screen. Those are my instructions. Those instructions come directly from the White House.”

  “Jesus.” Perkins was white in the face. “You think we’ve locked onto some poor bastard out for a spin in his Cessna, showing his girlfriend the lights over the city or something. And we’re going to blow him up to give you a little demo.”

  “That is exactly what I think, and exactly what is going to happen. No one is sorrier than I am for the unfortunate occupants of that plane. But I am going to have to insist. The stakes are huge tonight. We have to know what kind of a capability we’ve got here. And I take complete responsibility.” He turned to Armitage. “Doctor. You understand what needs to be done.”

  Armitage smiled cryptically. “Oh yes. I understand what you’re asking. It isn’t a Cessna, by the way, the object we’ve locked onto.”

  “It isn’t?”

  “Nope. Cessnas are little, much too little for us to see at the present stage. Of course, eventually, we’ll be able to pick up objects as small as a common bar room dart, but just now, our vision is limited to largeish objects.”

  Burlingame turned back to the screen, to the circled X now in its center. An ugly suspicion suddenly occurred to him. “What is that object?”

  “That object, Mr. Burlingame, is the Earth.”

  “The Earth?!”

  “Yes. Our current visual capability is limited, as I said. The limitation is that, so far, the only thing we’ve been able to see is the Earth.”

  “Jesus.”

  “There it is. That is a non-trivial accomplishment, by the way.”

  “Jesus.” Burlingame was staggered. “You can see the Earth.”

  “Right.”

  “Only the Earth.”

  “Right.”

  “Well, that’s marvelous. You can ‘see’ an object that only takes up about a quarter of the whole goddam sky.”

  “As you say.”

  “I am underwhelmed.”

  “Such is life.”

  He could feel his face getting red. “You’re going to have to do one hell of a lot better than that, Dr. Armitage. You’re going to have to be able to see a missile coming in fast, headed for an American city.”

  “Of course we understand that.”

  “Well how long before you can do that? Are we talking 1 A.M.? 2 A.M.? Or 3 A.M., for Chrissakes?”

  “How long before we can spot an incoming missile?”

  “Yes. How long?”

  “A single missile?”

  “Yes!”

  “From a land launch? Sub-based missiles come in lower and are a bit harder to see.”

  “Yes. A single land-launched missile. How long before you can track it?”

  Armitage leaned back in his chair to look up at the ceiling. “We should be able to do that by…let me see. Assuming our current staff and our current rather impressive rate of progress, by…Christmas, year after next.”

  “Jesus!”

  “Well, don’t quote me on that. I may have been too optimistic.”

  “I can’t believe you guys! You are off the wall. I mean off the wall. You think this is a fucking tea party. Jesus.”

  Burlingame was on his feet, his face purple. He stuffed his journal back into his case and walked out fuming. He slammed the door hard behind him. Didn’t even look at the guard as he passed. Jesus. The worst of it was that he had been so pleasant to those turkeys. And this was the result. He had praised them and smiled at them and tried to be accommodating. And look what it got him. Not a goddam thing. Well if he had learned one thing this evening it was that being accommodating just wasn’t worth shit. No more Mr. Nice Guy for Oswald Burlingame. He got into his car and drove off with a squeal of tires.

  Within t
wenty minutes of Burlingame’s departure from the Johns Hopkins campus, an SS-24 missile lifted off from an island off the coast of Ecuador. It was targeted on St. Louis, Missouri. Launch time had been calculated for impact at precisely 12 midnight, St. Louis time. The missile was picked up by a US Navy destroyer on station two hundred miles west of San Diego. Within a few seconds, the alert was raised. Since the station had been prepared in advance for what they were seeing, they went right to Red Status. Word came over the StratCom network immediately.

  Albert was dozing with his ear to the receiver. The announcement might have been part of his dream. He had been dreaming such things a lot lately. He sat up, stared at the device in his hand. It immediately repeated the alert. He looked over at Homer, who was awake in the chair beside him. Homer had heard. The words of the announcement didn’t have much effect on him, it was more like an alarm clock going off in the morning. It had a binary significance: time to begin. Albert put his ear back to the little device. He looked up at Homer again. “They think 19 minutes,” he said. He looked at his watch. “At 1AM our time, I guess.”

  Homer raised himself with an effort. Old people, he thought, ought not to sit down in such deep chairs. Loren, who had been sleeping on the floor beside him, was on his feet. “I’ll get the others,” he said.

  Edward had left his door ajar. Loren stuck his head inside and said, “Let’s go, Ed.” It might have been the wake-up for an early departure for a camping trip. He heard Edward’s reply from the darkened room, and then went on to Sonia’s room, just one down.

  He knocked and waited. There was movement inside, he could hear. The door opened a crack. Sonia peered at him, squinting in the light from the hall. “Sonia.” He wanted to take her in his arms, to comfort her. But she kept the door between them.

  “I’m in my pajamas,” she said.

  “Come to Homer’s room as soon as you can.”

  “Give me a few minutes to dress.” She shut the door.

  Kelly’s room was next. Loren knocked. There was a sound from the interior, and then the door opened. Kelly was wide awake. There was a low light on behind her. She had on a white nightgown with short ruffled sleeves.

  “It’s happened,” Loren said.

  Kelly drew him into the room. “Look in on Curtis,” she said. “I’ll throw on some clothes.”

  Loren went to the adjoining room and peered into the darkness. He could hear the child’s regular breathing. The form in the bed seemed peaceful in its sleep. He turned back into Kelly’s room. She was standing at the dresser with her back toward him, pulling up a pair of jeans under her nightgown. He caught a flash of her bottom as she pulled them into place. She threw off the nightgown. Her back was long and slender. She was taller, he thought, than his sisters, a bit taller. She pulled a tee shirt over her head and turned to him. “Ready,” she said. She was in her bare feet. No shoes, no underwear. They got back to Homer’s suite even before Edward.

  Homer had waked Maria. She came in from the bedroom, tying the belt of a rose dressing gown. Claymore came in from the other side. Sonia and Edward arrived at the same time. It was eleven minutes to Impact. Homer closed and latched the door, turned to them, all business:

  “The Gloria Verde have launched on St. Louis. Albert got the alert a few minutes ago over his StratCom machine. The missile will land at 1 AM our time. We have only a few minutes for thinking. Thinking, and thinking together is what we have to do now.

  “There are some things we have to explain to Albert and to Maria and to Claymore, about our agreements for turning on the Effector, if we decide to do that. Are you listening, Clay?”

  “Oh sure.” Claymore was the only one to have sat down. He was on the couch, in his peach colored PJs. There was a glossy Guide to Ft. Lauderdale Nightlife on the cocktail table. He flipped the book open. “Sure,” he said.

  Homer turned to include Albert and Maria. “You know what the Effector is. I’ve explained it to each of you. You know what were are considering doing tonight, what we have to consider. But you have no responsibility for whatever happens here. That is important. We five bear the responsibility.” He looked around at the members of his group. “Myself, Edward, Sonia, Loren and Kelly. Just we five. We are going to vote before taking any action. We agreed before that the decision to turn on the Effector would require unanimous approval of the five. Any No vote will be a veto. It looks like we’re going to have to vote tonight. Soon.

  “There is no use voting on whether to turn it on yet. Because I would vote No. We can’t act to help St. Louis. Because there is still a chance that that will be the end of it. If Washington elects to accept the attack on St. Louis without reprisal, we don’t have to turn on the Effector at all. That will be a big relief. We have to think of it that way. We wait until after Impact. We wait and wait. If the U.S. complains but doesn’t counter-attack, then we never have to vote at all. Nobody has to say what he or she would have voted. Then we can rest comfortable for the rest of our lives, knowing that we didn’t use the power that fell into our hands, that we never acted to plunge the world into darkness. We will always wonder what would have happened if we had saved a few lives in one mid-western city, but changed the fabric of our whole world forever after. We can have that discussion over beers back at Cornell.”

  He ran out of things to say for the moment. He needn’t have said anything; they had all known. There was a long quiet moment, then the sound of Claymore turning a page.

  Homer had thought of something else. “If we do have to vote, I hope we don’t, but if we ever do, then I want to ask…”

  Albert held is hand up. His ear was glued to the receiver, his eyes faraway. “They’re launching,” he said.

  “What!?” Loren was incredulous. “Who’s launching? Us?”

  “The President has given the order. We’re launching our strike.”

  “That can’t be! They’ve got to wait for Impact. The Shield might hold. The Cubans might abort. The missile might be a dud. It might be off target. It’s too soon to react.”

  Albert shrugged.

  Homer looked at his watch. “Now we vote,” he said. There are nine minutes left. If we vote yes, we might as well act before Impact. We can save some immediate lives, and that might make it easier.”

  “They have launched,” said Albert. “StratCom has confirmation of the first missile off…and now the second, a submarine launch. That’s it. There are more…”

  “Now we vote.” Homer separated himself and the four members of his staff from Albert and Maria. “A yes vote means turn on the Effector. No means do nothing. I vote…”

  “Wait!” said Loren. He remembered the last vote. All had spoken up immediately except Sonia. So, at the end, it had been her vote alone that mattered. He didn’t want that to happen again. “Little pieces of paper, he said. We’ll write our votes. That way, no one is last. No one person gets left with all the pressure.”

  There was a pad of Post Its on the desk. He tore one off for each of them. There were pencils on the desk too, which they picked up. Sonia took a pen from her purse. Loren wrote Yes on his paper. Then he collected the others. He stuck them to his sleeve, five yellow votes, all in a row. All were Yes. Sonia’s yes was written in letters so small that he had to look closely to see them, fine inked characters barely an eighth of an inch tall.

  “All have voted Yes,” he said.

  Homer nodded. “I will turn on the Effector myself.”

  “Seven minutes,” Albert said.

  Edward had brought the ornate oak box in with him. He set it now on the desk, opened it and stepped away. A hush. Homer approached the box alone. He stared down at it.

  “There is a slide switch on the side,” said Loren.

  “I know, I know.”

  Albert’s voice came to them from faraway. “I don’t mean to press. Six minutes to first impact,” it said.

  “I know,” said Homer.

  Loren wished that Maria would stand beside Homer for this moment. He shouldn�
�t have to be so alone. He looked back at Maria, but she had sunk into the white chair. Her face was turned away.

  Instead, Kelly stepped forward and took Homer’s left hand in both of hers. She pressed her cheek against his. Loren thought she might have whispered something, but he couldn’t hear. Homer nodded. He reached out his other hand to the switch. Loren craned his neck to see. Had he switched it or not? Homer seemed frozen in position.

  “What is the population of St. Louis?” Edward asked. “Three million?? Homer, you save enough lives in the next few minutes to justify your decision. Within an hour, you will have saved tens of millions more, far more than will ever be lost due to the Effect.”

  “I know,” Homer said. “So I will do it.” He slid the little switch and stepped back. The others crowded forward to see. The switch applied current to the tiny maser-like generator and it also released the mechanical brake that kept the card from floating free. There was a low pink glow on the center of the device. The card began to turn, seeking out magnetic north. It turned through north and then slowed and started painfully back. Finally it settled down. Loren looked out the window. Nothing had happened.

  “Maybe the magnet…” he said.

  The lights in the room began to dim. They didn’t turn off sharply as they would at a sudden outage; it was more like a brown-out. The lights went down slowly as if controlled by a dimmer. When the room was dark, they turned to the window. The brightly lit cityscape was browning out too. After a few seconds, there was no electric light visible at all. No one had spoken. Behind them, Albert broke the silence by saying, “Three minutes to first Impact.” He was still holding the StratCom up to his ear. It ran on battery, so was unaffected by the power loss. The StratCom transmitter was in a satellite, outside the earth’s magnetic field.

  They all turned to the window. Claymore stood up and walked over to look. “See,” he said, waving to Homer to come forward. “I told you so. It’s a different color.”