The Orion Plan

by Mark Alpert

  Nunn saluted and marched off. Then Hanson turned back to Sarah. “This is a matter of national security, Dr. Pooley, so please forgive the invasion of your privacy. I wouldn’t have taken these steps unless they were absolutely necessary.”

  She certainly wasn’t going to forgive him, but her curiosity was stronger than her distaste for the man. “I don’t understand. How did this meteor become a national security crisis? Did it hit something important?”

  The general shook his head. “No, nothing like that. But before I can share any information, I need some assurances from you.”

  “Assurances?”

  “Sometimes the Air Force will request the assistance of a civilian adviser from outside the Defense Department, usually because the civilian has some expertise we can’t get from our own staff. That’s the kind of arrangement I want to make with you, Dr. Pooley. I need your help.”

  “Help with what?”

  “The problem is, I can’t tell you until we come to an agreement.” He picked up a briefcase from the floor. It was black and decorated with the Air Force seal. “The information I’d like to share with you is highly classified. You’ve already passed our background checks, but you need to sign a contract promising your cooperation and confidentiality.” He laid the briefcase on the table, snapped it open, and pulled out a stapled sheaf of papers. “We’ll provide you with appropriate compensation, of course. The assignment will be temporary, and when it’s over you can return to your duties at NASA.”

  He handed her the contract. Dumbfounded, Sarah leafed through it. The gist was plain: the Air Force would pay her a thousand dollars a day for her services, and in return she had to promise to keep everything secret. If she broke her promise, she’d spend the next ten to twenty years in federal prison.

  She stepped toward Hanson, holding the contract at arm’s length. “You can take it back. I’m a scientist, remember? I want to publish my results, not hide them.”

  The general didn’t take the papers from her. “You’ll still be able to publish your findings. You’ll just have to let us vet your research articles before publication to make sure they don’t include any classified information.”

  “Vet my articles? You mean censor them, right?”

  “No, that—”

  “Look, it won’t work. We have different priorities.” She thrust the contract at Hanson, anxious to get rid of the thing. “I don’t know why you’ve called in the Marines, but it doesn’t matter. One way or another, I’m gonna find out where that meteor came from.”

  “It wasn’t a meteor.” Hanson’s voice was low, almost a whisper. “It was man-made.”

  Sarah let go of the contract, which fluttered to the floor. “What?”

  “It was a space probe making a controlled reentry into the atmosphere. We saw the proof once we analyzed the readings from all our radar stations across the globe.” He reached into his briefcase again and pulled out another sheaf of papers. This document had the words TOP SECRET stamped on its front page. “It wasn’t an American probe. Not NASA, not Air Force. Not the European Space Agency either. But there are two other countries that could’ve launched it. I’m sure you can guess who they are.”

  “How could it be man-made? It was moving too fast.”

  “You’re right, that’s a problem. It’s one of many problems.” He held up the classified document so Sarah could see its title: ANALYSIS OF THE TRAJECTORY OF OBJECT 2016X. “We used the radar readings and the Sky Survey data to plot the object’s path during the final hours before reentry, but there are plenty of uncertainties. That’s why I need you. The experts on my staff are good at plotting missile trajectories, but this probe took a roundabout route to get here, going way off into interplanetary space. And according to my sources at NASA, you know more about interplanetary trajectories than anyone.”

  Sarah turned away from him, trying to think. It was possible to accelerate a spacecraft to speeds as high as 80,000 miles per hour. You’d have to launch it into a highly elliptical orbit around the sun and then execute a series of complex maneuvers, aiming it at Venus or Jupiter and using the planet’s powerful gravity to slingshot the probe across the solar system. But what was the point? Why propel a spacecraft to such an extraordinary velocity just to send it back to Earth?

  Her throat tightened. She turned back to Hanson. “Was it a weapon?”

  The general waited a few seconds before responding. His face was unreadable. “We won’t know for sure until we find the thing. Or at least a piece of it. Our patrol boats are going to drag the riverbed.”

  She shook her head. Jesus, this is serious. She stepped toward the table and took a closer look at Hanson’s map. His impact zone, she noticed, was smaller than the one she’d estimated. She pointed at the ellipse’s eastern boundary, which encompassed only the sliver of Inwood Hill Park that ran alongside the river. “You made a mistake. The zone should include more of the park.”

  “We narrowed the search area based on our radar analysis.” Hanson held up the classified document again but kept it out of Sarah’s reach. “Remember when we were watching the object on radar last night and we thought it exploded in the atmosphere? That was actually a deceleration maneuver. The probe used a ten-foot-wide aeroshell to reduce its speed, just like the NASA spacecraft do when they land on Mars. At an altitude of twenty-one miles the probe ejected the aeroshell, which disintegrated. Then the probe continued toward its target. The analysis also explains why the spacecraft looked like it was more than a hundred feet wide in your telescope observations. It really was that big during the earliest stages of its approach. The object that your Sky Survey telescope spotted in deep space, hundreds of thousands of miles away, was several times larger than the one that dove into the atmosphere.”

  Sarah waited for him to say more, but he just stood there, looking at her. She felt the sting of frustration. She wanted to grab the classified analysis right out of his hands. “What are you saying? The spacecraft shrunk before reentry?”

  Instead of answering, he put the document back in his briefcase. “I’m sorry, Dr. Pooley, but we need to come to an agreement before I can discuss this any further.” He bent over and picked up the contract from the floor. Then he reached into the jacket of his uniform and pulled out a pen. “Will you work with us?”

  She scowled at him. The bastard had planned this. He’d given her just enough information to sink his hooks into her. He’d probably done some research on her beforehand, talking to her bosses and colleagues at NASA. He knew she wouldn’t be able to stand the uncertainty.

  Sarah snatched the contract and pen from him. She flipped to the last page and signed it. Then she flung the papers at him and reached into his briefcase to grab the trajectory analysis.

  Hanson smiled. “You can keep that copy. Just don’t let it out of your sight.”

  She didn’t respond. She was too busy studying the data. There were pages and pages of radar readings showing the position of the object during the last few minutes of its flight. The analysis also included a diagram of the probe’s trajectory before it reached the Earth. This plot, based on the Sky Survey observations, started at a point beyond the moon’s orbit and made a graceful curve toward the planet.

  Sarah bit her lip as she stared at it. Hanson was right. Besides the United States, there were only two countries that could’ve launched such a complex spacecraft: Russia and China. And China was only barely capable of it.

  She jabbed her finger at the trajectory diagram. “I bet it’s the Russians. You remember the Ikon, the interplanetary spacecraft they launched a few years ago? That whopping big thing with the nuclear-powered propulsion system? They put it in orbit around the sun, and after six months of testing they said they lost contact with it. But maybe they were lying. Maybe they found another use for it.”

  Sarah gathered from the look on Hanson’s face that he’d also considered this possibility. He stepped closer, standing with his shoulder touching hers, so they could look at the document
together. “Our best guess is that the spacecraft’s real purpose was to provide a demonstration. The Russians are returning to the intimidation tactics they used during the cold war. They want to show us they can attack any of our cities with a weapon that’s too fast to be stopped by our missile defenses.”

  “You mean a kinetic-energy bombardment? The speed of the projectile provides the destructive power?”

  Hanson nodded. “The Pentagon studied a similar system ten years ago, a satellite that could hurl tungsten rods at the Earth’s surface. They called it ‘Rods from God.’ We’d heard rumors that the Russians were working on the same technology, but now it looks like they made a few improvements. Their system is less vulnerable because it doesn’t use an orbital platform.”

  Sarah looked again at the trajectory diagram. “Yes, it’s coming from deep space, so you couldn’t destroy it in advance with an antisatellite weapon.”

  “Exactly. There’s no defense against it. If there’s a standoff anywhere in the world—the Middle East, Ukraine, wherever—they could obliterate any of our command centers or sink any of our aircraft carriers.” He pointed at the analysis in Sarah’s hands. “And the Russians wanted us to know they could hit any city on the globe. Here, go to page twenty-seven.”

  Sarah turned the pages until she reached a second diagram. This one showed the probe at twenty minutes before reentry, when it was still thirty thousand miles from the Earth. At this point, according to the Air Force’s analysis, the object’s trajectory branched off into two curving paths. Now Sarah realized what Hanson had meant when he’d said the probe had gotten smaller—it had split in two. The larger part, the hundred-foot-wide object, had swung clear of the Earth and continued speeding across the solar system. The smaller part, the foot-wide probe shielded by the ten-foot-wide aeroshell, had plunged into Earth’s atmosphere.

  She looked at Hanson. “Doesn’t this seem a little strange? To use such a large spacecraft to deliver such a small probe?”

  “We think the spacecraft can deliver as many as ten kinetic-energy projectiles, each capable of extensive destruction. But for this test they used only a small dummy payload. They didn’t want to start a war, but they wanted to show us what they could do. Like I said, typical Russian intimidation.”

  “Well, it sounds pretty inefficient.” Sarah shrugged. “So what exactly do you want me to do?”

  Hanson stretched his hand toward the diagram and pointed at the larger object, the one that flew past Earth. “I want you to plot all the possible trajectories for that thing. I want to know how it got here and where it’s going next.”

  “It’s moving so fast, it’s probably gonna go straight out of the solar system.”

  “I don’t think so. I think that spacecraft is carrying more projectiles. And they’re real weapons, not dummy payloads.” The general shook his head. “I think it’s coming back.”

  FIVE

  Although Dorothy Adams loved Inwood Hill Park, she hated climbing that damn hill.

  She chose the easiest route, walking along a pathway that gently meandered up the slope, but it was still tough going. She’d never been especially athletic, and everything had grown so much harder since she got sick. After the first hundred yards, she started panting. After a quarter mile, her head swam and her chest ached. By the time she reached the top of the hill she was ready to retch. She staggered toward one of the park benches and gripped its back to steady herself. Then she dropped her canvas bag on the ground, let out a groan, and settled her skinny butt on the bench’s wooden slats.

  This is just pitiful, she told herself. You’re not even sixty yet. Your grandmother worked in the cotton fields till she was eighty-four, and you can’t even walk half a mile from your apartment. Lord in Heaven, what a mess you are.

  The chemotherapy was to blame, mostly. The drugs had snuffed out Dorothy’s energy and appetite. Her weight had dropped to a measly hundred and ten, and now her yellow blouse hung as loosely as a curtain from her shoulders. The worst part, though, was the pain in her belly. It wasn’t like a stomachache or a cramp. It was a dull misery in the very center of her being. In the beginning—six months ago, that is—she’d felt the pain only when she was lying down or after a big meal. But now it was always there, like a heavy stone inside her stomach.

  Dorothy closed her eyes and took a deep breath. It was hot and muggy in the park, but the day was almost over. In a couple of hours the sun would go down and the whole earth would let out a sigh of relief. She took another deep breath and smelled the leaves and grass and dirt. There was more oxygen on top of that hill than anywhere else in Manhattan. That was one of the things she loved about the place. Another was that it reminded her of the countryside where she grew up. With her eyes closed she could imagine she was back in Alabama.

  After a few minutes she started to feel better. She opened her eyes and gazed at the trees all around her, the hundred-year-old oaks with hulking trunks and gnarled branches. The early evening sunlight slanted through their leaves. Swarms of gnats whirled inside the shafts of golden light. Noisy squirrels scurried across the gold-dappled ground.

  She smiled. It was all so ordinary and beautiful. If she were still the minister of her church she would’ve written a sermon about it, this blessed daily miracle. But she’d retired from Holy Trinity four months ago, soon after she got the bad news from her doctor. She no longer had to write sermons, organize bingo nights, or run the Sunday school. Now she had the luxury of simply enjoying the moment.

  Oh, Lord, she prayed, you’ve given me so much. Would it be presumptuous to ask you for one more blessing?

  To the west the Hudson River glittered in the sunshine. Looking down from the hilltop, Dorothy could see the cars stuck in traffic on the West Side Highway and a sleek Coast Guard boat going up the river. Then she raised her head and squinted at the sun and the thin clouds around it. Presumptuous or not, she was going to send her prayer skyward.

  Reach inside me, Lord. Remove the stone from my body. Find the cancer cells in my pancreas and liver and bloodstream and melt them away with your holy touch. Because I’m only fifty-nine years old, Lord. There’s so much more I want to do.

  She wasn’t completely satisfied with the prayer. It sounded a bit whiny, to tell the truth. During her thirty-five years in the Episcopal church—five years as a missionary, ten years as an organizer for the Union of Black Episcopalians, and twenty years as vicar of Holy Trinity—she’d taken great pride in her sacred writings. This piddly, whiny prayer didn’t measure up to her usual standards. But under the present circumstances it would have to do.

  As she stared at the Hudson, she noticed another Coast Guard boat cruising a few hundred feet behind the first one. Curious, she craned her neck to look down the river and saw yet another one. And there were three more Coast Guard boats in the distance, close to the New Jersey side of the river.

  That’s strange. Dorothy’s first thought was that they were searching the waters for a drowning victim, maybe a suicide. She rose from the bench and went to the other side of the pathway to get a better view. Then she looked down the hillside at the riverbank and noticed the men in uniforms near the marina. There were dozens of them.

  Now she started to worry. Did something happen? Some kind of terrorist attack, maybe? She hadn’t heard any bombs go off.

  Several soldiers stood guard at the entrance to the marina, but most were marching across the baseball fields. They didn’t come up the pathway that climbed the hill, though. The soldiers stayed on the other side of the highway, in the section of the park closest to the river. Dorothy looked for signs of an attack or an explosion down there, but she didn’t see any. There were no injured people, no ambulances. It occurred to her that maybe this was just a drill, a training exercise. She’d seen several police drills in Inwood over the past few years. The NYPD patrol cars would come roaring down Broadway in the middle of the day with their lights flashing and their sirens screaming. Maybe the Coast Guard did the same thing.


  She continued watching for another minute or so. None of the soldiers seemed to be moving with any urgency, which made Dorothy more convinced that it was a training exercise. Still, she was uneasy.

  The pain in her belly sharpened. It was bad today, even worse than usual. She needed to go back to her apartment and take some more pills. First, though, she had to visit her friends.

  With another groan, she returned to the bench and picked up the canvas bag she’d dropped. Inside the bag were several packages of string cheese and half a dozen cans of Planters Peanuts, all taken from the food pantry at Holy Trinity. The church offered free groceries to the needy on Monday and Thursday mornings, but Dorothy knew that many of the neediest people in Inwood were too ashamed to come to the pantry. So she went to them instead. She wasn’t strong enough to run the church anymore, but she could still perform this simple act of charity.

  She walked a little farther down the pathway, then stepped off the asphalt and into the woods. Because she was afraid she might stumble, she moved slowly and kept her eyes on the muddy ground. Most of the park’s homeless people slept on the eastern slope of the hill. They spent their days wandering across the neighborhood, begging for change and dodging the cops, and returned to the park before sunset to find a place to sleep. So the early evening was usually a good time for Dorothy to visit them, before the drunks passed out for the night and the junkies hit the needle. She would offer them some cheese or peanuts and ask a few questions and try to gauge how they were holding up. If someone seemed in dire need of help she’d encourage him or her to go to a shelter, but she never forced anyone. She wasn’t their social worker. She was their friend.

  And though the visits were difficult, she always looked forward to them. Yes, most of the homeless were traumatized and some were deeply disturbed, but they were also more interesting than most ordinary people. They were a multiracial group—black, white, Asian, and Latino—and in that way they resembled the congregation at Holy Trinity. Dorothy had been visiting some of them for years, and over time she’d learned their nicknames and quirks. In bits and pieces they’d told her their stories: their troubled childhoods, the sexual abuse, the prison sentences, the rehab attempts. As she listened she sometimes felt a powerful urge to rescue them. She wanted to drag them, kicking and screaming, to her church’s parish house. But she’d realized long ago that she couldn’t save anyone who didn’t want to be saved. All she could do was feed them and listen to their stories.