“Since we don’t really know the nature of the source, it’s difficult to associate an energy with it; that is, it could sit in one place and emit bursts of energy that reverberate, or it could represent a continuous supply of energy, as we believe. A ballpark estimate is the total energy liberated in one characteristic period, ninety minutes. In one period that would be about one per cent of the energy of a one kiloton nuclear event.”
“That’s a maximum estimate, isn’t it?” asked Isaacs.
“Yes, sir,” replied Danielson, “within a factor of a few, given that the source is confined to the Earth.”
“One hundredth of a kiloton,” mused Isaacs. “That’s too small to be a nuclear device, and if the source is closer, the energy estimate only goes down. Still, if that amount of energy is being liberated artificially on the surface, we should be able to see other signs of it in the optical or infrared — somewhere.
“The most reasonable assumption,” Isaacs continued, “is that this is some natural seismic event that happens to have a period of about an hour and a half, regular fault slippage of some kind.”
Danielson raised a finger and opened her mouth to interject, but Isaacs interrupted her, “Unless, of course, you can prove the source is actually moving about.
“Obviously, I’m unconvinced this signal is anything but some sort of natural phenomenon,” Isaacs said, “but I am convinced we need to nail it down. Suppose you’re right and it’s not related to natural fault slippage somewhere, do you have any guess as to what it might be?”
“No. If the source is moving around in the Earth as I think the data suggest, it’s a total paradox. Fault slippage at different points on the Earth shouldn’t be correlated.”
Isaacs leaned back in his chair, toying with a pencil. “A period of ninety minutes still sounds suspiciously like some artificial phenomenon — keyed to somebody’s time clock. If your positions are right, Egypt and whatnot, it’s not a local man-made thing, but I’d like to make sure that is ironclad.”
Isaacs sat up at the desk and gestured to Danielson with the pencil. “You had better make this a matter of some priority until it’s resolved. We need to know the period, if it really is one, more accurately. If the period is not precisely defined, that’s good evidence of a natural phenomenon. If the period turns out to be exactly ninety minutes, it will be a man-made event despite present evidence to the contrary.
“We need to know the location, whether or not it is moving around. When you have a location, we can look for some other evidence of its existence and nature. If it’s seismic in nature, there should be some correlation with fault location and activity. Any other suggestions?”
Danielson paused a moment in concentration before she spoke. “No sense speculating without more data. It will probably be useful to get records from civilian seismic stations, universities here and abroad. We can look for correlations among events that would pass unnoticed in any single record. That should help with both the period and the location.”
“That’s fine,” said Isaacs with a note of finality. “Let me know how this develops.”
“Right,” said Danielson, rising to leave, collecting the bundle from his desk. “We’ll continue to monitor our own AFTAC data, and that may begin to pin things down. But it will take a month or so to acquire and analyze the civilian records.”
“Okay, keep in touch.”
“Yes, sir.”
Isaacs watched the door close behind her. He stared at it, unseeing, as her problem diffused from his mind and his consciousness flowed out along tangled diplomatic channels. From his office to Drefke’s to the White House. To Moscow. Academician Korolev. Why did he rule out the meteorite? What had happened to the Novorossiisk? What would happen to the shuttle?
Chapter 3
Major Edward Jupp went through the countdown procedure the way he had a hundred times in simulation and twice for real. His gloved hands played over the switches, and he responded to the voice of the mission control agent at the Consolidated Space Operations Center in Colorado Springs. His mind was on the gaunt, taciturn passenger in the rear seat. This was his first mission as commander, and he ached for a perfect flight. So what did they do but pull the mission scientists, and substitute this bozo, Colonel Newman, putting him in charge of a half-baked kamikaze mission to snatch a live Russian laser satellite. On the other hand, thought Jupp, they’re giving me a chance to fly this sweet baby, new engines, high orbit capability; we’ll see what she can really do.
He watched from the corner of his helmet visor as the boom swung away from the top of the liquid fuel tank. He could sense the billion cracklings as the liquid oxygen sucked heat from the mighty vessel, and he lightly fantasized again that he could smell its cool freshness. The hum of a thousand organs, electrical, mechanical, fluid, and solid sang their readiness to him. He listened to the countdown and felt the Pavlovian rush of adrenalin as the count reached “one.” With “zero” the beast screamed its energy, first with the roar of the gigantic liquid fueled engines and immediately the answering call of the solid boosters, a triumphant Tarzan cry, hailing the defeat of gravity. And then, just as before, the miracle was repeated and they were on their way, lifting, twisting away from the gantry, the thrill of unbridled acceleration coursing through his body.
They kept to established routine for the first several orbits. The idea was not to tip their hand too early. Jupp knew, though, that the Russians would be watching them microscopically, anticipating precisely the move they now planned. The quiet passenger remained in his seat, not so much withdrawn as apparently oblivious to the activity necessary to establish a shuttle orbit. If he noticed that he was suspended head down two hundred miles above Earth, he did not show it.
They switched to the briefing books for their revised mission, a mission they had studied and rehearsed for only a fleeting week. Only a week before that, the Russians had blown away a fancy new American reconnaissance satellite. Jupp was aware that the American military and intelligence communities had been in a retributive fury, little disposed to look past the surface act and examine the motive. The Russians, correctly or not, suspected a space-based attack on one of their carriers, and the recon satellite had shown an undue interest in the damaged ship. The Americans still did not have an operating laser in space. Now they knew the Russians did have one. The Americans wanted it. The shuttle would get it. Jupp had had only a few chances to discuss this change in plans with his copilot, Larry Wahlquist, but he knew Larry liked the whole thing even less than he did.
Jupp and Wahlquist stood facing the U-shaped console at the rear of the flight deck, their backs to the pilot’s and copilot’s seats and the nose of the shuttle, their feet anchored by velcro pads against the capricious lack of gravity. Each opened independent safety switches on opposite sides of the console, and then Jupp lifted a cover and thumbed a heavy toggle switch. They watched on the TV monitor as the twin doors on the large cargo bay swung open. Wahlquist fitted his hands into the manipulator controls. His gaze switched rapidly back and forth from the monitor screen to the rear window above the console, which provided a direct view into the cargo bay. In the bay, the long, skinny, elbow-jointed manipulating boom came alive, an extension of Wahlquist’s own muscles and nerves. He moved the boom to the only item in the large storage area. It was a cylinder twenty feet long and four feet in diameter. From the end of the cylinder extended a shaft that ended in a special fitting designed to be gripped by the manipulator boom. Wahlquist moved the boom to the shaft, then made the fine adjustments to align the clamp on the boom with the fitting. Slowly he closed the jaws on the clamp. Satisfied that the mating was exact, he threw a switch that locked the boom onto the shaft with an unbreakable vise grip. He threw another switch on the console and watched on the TV monitor as the tubular casing separated along its length and peeled back like a long skinny clam. He then used the boom to heft the shaft and hold it aloft, pointed straight out from the bay toward the Earth below. Nestled along the shaf
t, cleverly and compactly aligned, were the segments of a mirror. At a signal, the many pieces would carefully unfold and arrange themselves like a gigantic polished umbrella, half again as big in diameter as the shuttle craft itself.
Jupp returned to the pilot’s seat. They were in an orbit that carried them northward over China and Siberia, across the pole and down over the eastern seaboard of the United States. So far, so good. The shuttle, Cosmos 2112, and all other Soviet satellites capable of interference were monitored closely both from Earth and from space. There was no sign of excess Soviet interest or activity. Shuttles did not usually adopt polar orbits, but they were not unknown, especially when a surveillance satellite had to be deposited in such an orbit. The mirror stayed folded against its supporting shaft to avoid adding premature confirmation to suspicions that must be growing.
The first tricky part was to close on the Cosmos, using the mirror for protection. The Cosmos was a long way out, in a parking orbit one day long canted a bit with respect to the Earth’s equator. In twelve hours it would swing from some distance north of the equator to an equal distance south, but at the same longitude since as the satellite completed a half orbit, the Earth would complete a half revolution, maintaining the alignment. From the Earth, the Cosmos seemed to drift slowly north and south, passing over a particular point on the Earth twice a day. They would keep a maximum distance by going up in their polar launch orbit, at right angles to the orbit of the Cosmos. There was no place to hide in space from the weapon that shot beams at the speed of light, but at least aiming would be more difficult at greater distances.
To minimize direct ground-based surveillance by the Russians, they waited until they were over the west coast of South America headed for Antarctica and the Indian Ocean beyond. Then Jupp programmed the rockets to begin the meticulous ascent toward the Cosmos, which hovered near the spatial gravesite of its recent victim. They climbed in an open spiral, belly of the spacecraft up, the necessary orientation for ascent because of the preset angle of the rockets. They circled once every few hours at first while the Cosmos hovered near the northern swing of its cycle over the southern Urals. The time for an orbit lengthened as they rose until they were at an altitude slightly less than the Cosmos and also orbiting once in about twenty-four hours. They were high over Panama while the Cosmos drifted lazily southward over Ethiopia.
Wahlquist had tried to keep the mirror shaft pointed at the Cosmos out over the wing of the shuttle as they ascended. This was difficult at first. Since they were upside down, the Cosmos was apparently “below” them where the boom did not extend easily. The heat resistant re-entry tiles might have offered some protection from the laser, but this was still a high vulnerability maneuver. As they rose, the necessary adjustments became minor. Their aspect changed little since, from their circular orbit, the Cosmos always appeared to be off their right wing. Nevertheless, Jupp could feel the tension rising in his copilot as time passed and still there was no activity from the Cosmos.
Once more, Jupp played lightly on the control thrusters until the nose of the shuttle pointed nearly at the Cosmos. The rocket thrust would now rotate their orbit until it aligned with that of Cosmos. The maneuver was a dead give-away, however, and Jupp strained against the static of his earphones to hear the warning he knew must be only instants away. He hit a button to engage an automatic sequence. The rockets surged, and then were quiet. He used the thrusters again to align them perpendicular to their new orbit. The Cosmos was now at eleven o’clock out his window as they hung upside down in the dark. Wahlquist adjusted the boom.
The computer signaled readiness for the next firing sequence. Jupp was reaching his finger toward the button when the voice came up over the scrambled radio channel, the standard conversational tone heightened with tension.
“Shuttle, this is control. We’ve got action here. Standby.”
Jupp twisted in his seat to exchange a look with Wahlquist standing at the rear of the flight deck. He glanced at Colonel Newman who remained impassive.
“Cosmos has done a rotation and yaw. Alignment on shuttle suspected.”
Wahlquist did not have to be told. He threw a toggle switch and pushed a button, and the mirror unfolded, a dainty weapon against the ravishing power of the laser on board the Cosmos. The shuttle could provide a shirt-sleeve environment, but they wore their suits for double protection. Now they closed and fastened the faceplates on their helmets, switching to the oxygen supply of the suits.
In their present orientation the mirror completely obscured their view out the front. Jupp felt a twinge of nerves. With the computer, he did not need to see where he was flying, but his fighter pilot instincts rebelled. For all his training with instrument flying and targeting, he still did not like to have his vision needlessly blocked.
They sat in silence for ten minutes. Finally mission control broke in.
“No further action, proceed with orbital sequence.”
Wahlquist spoke without removing his hands from the boom controls.
“They’ve got a bead on us.”
“I reckon they do.” Jupp replied. “Maybe we’re out of range. They know if they’ve guessed right we’re only going to close on them. Maybe they’re waiting to see the whites of our eyes. We’ve also given away our defensive strategy by popping the umbrella. They’re probably working up their own tactics now.”
Jupp reprogrammed the computers for the delay and fired the rockets. Wahlquist rotated the boom during the firing. Cosmos was now at ten o’clock out Jupp’s window, and the boom and mirror shaft extended at almost right angles to the axis of the shuttle. They were particularly vulnerable because the mirror could protect the cabin or the tail, but it was not big enough to shield both when they presented their side to Cosmos as they now did. By previous decision, Wahlquist adjusted the boom forward so the crew was shielded. Jupp rushed through another programming sequence.
Too late!
No human could time the beam of energy that leaped from a portal in the Cosmos. No need to lead the target with this cannon, just point and shoot. Nor was there a mote of dust in space to mark its passage to any eye not in the line of fire. In less than a tenth of a second an intense beam of light crossed a distance greater than that between the poles of the Earth and slammed into the upper tail of the shuttle.
The beam delivered heat but little impulse so there was only the faintest jolt and a tiny crackling carried not by the vacuum of space, but through the metallic walls of the craft itself. The three men in the cabin sensed the brief blue-white flare from the change in shadows and odd reflections, as if someone had struck up a welding torch out of their line of sight. The radio crackled to life as the man in the rear seat made his first overt move. With a single motion, smooth despite the constraint of his vacuum suit, he pushed a button on his wrist. To one side of his helmet visor, visible but not in his normal line of sight, the green luminous display of an electronic stopwatch leapt to life, its quickest digits whipping by at dizzying rate. He pushed another button and the display was once again that of a standard chronometer.
“Control to shuttle! Control to shuttle! Cosmos has fired. Repeat, Cosmos has fired! Are you hit? Come in shuttle.”
The battle was on! Jupp felt a calm of adrenalin-charged tension settle over him. He rammed the control thrusters, slewing the craft around to present a smaller, tail-on target to the Cosmos, as Wahlquist adjusted the boom until the mirror shielded them in the rear. Then he responded in his best Chuck Yaeger drawl.
“Aaaah, that’s affirmative, control. We have taken a hit in the aft section. We’ve covered our rear and are having a look now.”
Jupp flipped a finger sign at Wahlquist who hit a switch to relay the image on the cabin monitor to the ground. Wahlquist adjusted the position controls on the boom camera and watched the image play awkwardly on the monitor until he was oriented and began to scan around. The boom extended directly to the rear so that the shaft lay against the right side of the tail with the mirror beyond. Eve
rything seemed normal as he scanned across the base of the tail and then around the bay.
“Look higher up on the tail,” growled Colonel Newman from the rear seat.
Wahlquist gritted his teeth, turning stiffly in his suit until he could see Newman seated behind Jupp. He glanced quickly at him and then for a longer instant at Jupp. He turned back and fingered the controls to tip the camera upward and then let out an audible gasp.
“Son-of-a-bitch,” said Jupp slowly.
The upper third of the tail section was missing. A scorched crescent marked the damage, beyond which there were random ends of wires and shafts, and beyond them nothing, their intended connections vaporized. The lower part of the rudder that remained intact hung at a skew angle, its upper pinions blasted away.
“Aaah, you copy that control?”
“We’ve got it, shuttle. Evaluation is underway. Mandatory, repeat mandatory, shuttle, you must complete orbital adjustment with greatest speed.”
“Roger.”
Jupp nodded to Wahlquist who swiveled the boom so that the mirror was abeam them, clear of the rockets, but once again exposing their tail. Jupp played with the thrusters and rapidly fed data to the computer. He hit the rockets again, and they felt the thrust of the final burst that would bring their orbit into alignment with that of the Cosmos. When they finished the maneuver, they were orbiting directly toward the Cosmos, but going sideways, their side exposed. Jupp rotated the craft until they were pointing toward the Cosmos, and Wahlquist rotated the mirror to the front, protecting them to the maximum extent. They were behind and slightly below the Cosmos, but orbiting more quickly so they would slowly catch up. Wahlquist sticky-footed his way over and buckled himself into the copilot’s seat.
The Krone Experiment k-1 Page 5
