“We’ve known the Russians have been working on high- performance STOL fighter-aircraft for years, sir ...”
“Right. Exactly as long as we’ve been working on them here at Dreamland. We launch Cheetah, they launch an STOL fighter. We develop a supercockpit for DreamStar, and four months later we intercept plans for nearly the same design being smuggled into East Germany. The Joint Chiefs will close down Dreamland if we don’t stop the leaks around here.” ‘Tm rechecking the backgrounds of every person remotely connected with the project,” Briggs said. “DIA is rechecking the civilian contractors. But that adds up to over five thousand people and more than a hundred and fifty thousand man-years’ worth of personal histories to examine. And we do this every year for key personnel. We’re just overloaded—”
“I know, I know,” Elliott said, picking up the phone again. “But we’re running out of time. For every success we have on the flight line we have one defeat with intelligence leaks. We can’t afford it.” He keyed the switch on the telephone handset. “Storm Flight, this is Alpha. Clear for engine start. Call for clearance when ready for taxi.”
“Roger,” McLanahan replied.
Elliott turned to Briggs. “Join me in the tower when you’ve gotten the overflight update on those two Russian satellites. Before I have you work your tail off to find our security leaks, the least you can do is watch a little of our success.”
“Wouldn’t miss it for all the stolen STOL plans in Ramenskoye,” Briggs said, and immediately regretted it as Elliott gave him a look and limped out of the command post.
* * *
“Storm Two starting engines,” James reported to Powell. The pilot of the F-15 Cheetah barely had time to acknowledge when the whine of engine turbines pierced the early morning stillness.
Engine start was triggered by a thought impulse that selected the “engine start” routine from the “home” menu transmitted to James by ANTARES. Computers instantly energized the engine-start circuits and determined their status; since no external air or power was available, an “alert” status would be performed.
Less than a second later the ignition-circuits were activated and a blast of supercompressed nitrogen gas shot into the sixteenth-stage compressor of DreamStar’s left engine. Unlike conventional jet engines, it was not necessary for one compressor stage at a time to spin up to full speed—all compressor stages of these engines were activated at once, allowing much faster starts. Less than twenty seconds later the left engine was at idle power, where it began supplying bleed air-power to the right engine for compressor spin-up and ignition. In one minute both engines were started and full generator power on line. Once the engine-start choice had been activated, the computer knew what had to be done next—James just allowed the results of each preprogrammed check to scroll past his eyes as the on-board computers completed them.
“Storm Two engine start complete, beginning pre-takeoff checks.”
* * *
“Amazing,” Powell murmured in Cheetah. He had begun his engine-start checklist at the same time James had, but he had barely had his left engine up to idle-power by the time DreamStar’s start-sequence was completed.
* * *
Immediately after James made his report to McLanahan and Powell, he commanded the start of an exhaustive computer check of all of DreamStar’s systems. With both engines powering four main and two standby hydraulic pumps, energy was available to DreamStar’s flight controls. Outside, the check made DreamStar’s wing surfaces crawl and undulate like the fins of a manta ray. From outside the cockpit the flight-control check was almost surreal . . . each wing bent and unbent in impossible angles, stretching and flexing more like a sheet of gelatin rather than hard fibersteel. The process from hydraulic system power-up to full flight-control certification had taken fifteen seconds.
Next was an electrical system check. Total time for a complete check of two generators, two alternators, one emergency generator, and two separate battery backup systems: three seconds. James stayed immobile during the checking process, allowing his senses to be overtaken by the rush of information.
The aircraft itself was like a living thing. Personnel were not allowed near the aircraft during the preflight because damaging radar, electromagnetic and laser emitters were being activated all around the aircraft at breakneck speed. Throttles advanced and retarded by themselves. The mission-adaptive wings continued their unusual undulations, arching and bending so wildly it seemed they would bend clean in half or twist right off the fuselage.
Through it all James was constantly informed about each system’s exact status and operation. He could no longer feel his feet or hands, but he knew which circuit in the superconducting radar was energized, and through that system he knew down to the millimeter how far Cheetah was parked from him. He knew the position of DreamStar’s canards, the pressure of the fluid in the primary hydraulic system and the RPMs of the ninth-stage engine’s turbine, just as one might know which way his toes were pointing without seeing them or the way one picks up a pencil and begins to write without consciously thinking about the action. ANTARES had cut James off from monitoring his own body, had relegated that function to a deeper portion of his brain and had shifted his conscious mental capacity to the task of operating a supersonic fighter plane.
Suddenly, DreamStar ceased its wild preflight movements, and the engine throttles returned to idle . . .
“Storm One, Two is in the green, ready for taxi,” James reported.
“My radar’s not even timed out,” Patrick said to J. C. Powell. “How are you coming on your preflight?”
“Few more minutes.”
“How can he accomplish an entire systems preflight in just a few minutes?”
“How long does it take you to wake up from a nap?” J.C. told him as he put the finishing touches on the preflight he had begun long before. “How long does it take you to ask yourself how you feel? That’s what ANTARES is like. If something was wrong with DreamStar, Ken would feel it just like he’d feel a sprained ankle or a crink in his neck.”
Where Ken had banks of computers to check his avionics, J.C. manually had to “fail” a system to check a backup system, or manually deflect Cheetah’s control stick and have the wing flex checked by a crew chief to verify the full range of motion of the fighter’s elastic wings. But after a few minutes of setting switches and checking off items in a checklist strapped to his right thigh, he was ready to go.
Patrick keyed his microphone: “Storm Control, this is Storm One flight. Two birds in the green. Ready to taxi.”
* * *
General Elliott was now on top of Dreamland’s portable control tower, a device fifty feet high that was set up and taken down for each mission to confuse attempts by spy satellites to pinpoint Dreamland’s many disguised dry-lakebed runways. Major Hal Briggs had just come up the narrow winding stairs and handed Elliott another computer printout when Patrick made his call.
“Those Cosmos peeping Toms start their first pass over the range in fifteen minutes,” Briggs said. “They’ve got our test time scoped out almost to the minute. Those satellites will be overhead every fifteen minutes for the next two hours—exactly as long as this scheduled mission.”
“Another damned security leak. And I scheduled this mission only two day ago.”
“But those spy birds weren’t up there two days ago,” Briggs said. “I checked. You mean—?”
“I mean the Soviets took only two days—maybe less—to launch two brand-new satellites just for this test flight,” Elliott said. “Well, at least they won’t catch our planes on the ground.” He picked up his microphone. “Storm Flight, this is Alpha. Taxi to hold point and await takeoff clearance. Winds calm, altimeter ...” Elliott checked the meteorological data readouts on an overhead console “. . . three-zero-zero-five. Taxi clearance void time is one-zero minutes. Over.”
“Storm Flight copies ten minutes. On the move.” Moments later both fighters emerged from the satellite bluff and fell in b
ehind a jeep with a large sign that read “FOLLOW ME.” The caravan moved quickly across an expanse of hard-baked sand to another smaller satellite-bluff hangar that had been towed out to the end of one of the disguised runways that crisscrossed Groom Lake in the center of the Dreamland test range. Now Cheetah and DreamStar pulled alongside each other and set their parking brakes while technicians and specialists did a fast last-chance inspection of each.
“Pre-takeoff and line-up checks,” Patrick said over interphone.
“Roger,” J.C. replied. “In progress.”
“Storm Two ready for release,” James suddenly radioed in.
“Amazing,” Patrick said to J.C. “He’s already done with a pre-takeoff checklist twice as complicated as ours.” He keyed the UHF radio switch. “Standby, Storm Two.”
“Roger.”
“MAW switch set to V-sub-X, max performance takeoff.” J.C. read off the most critical switch positions for the mission-adaptive-wing mode, and Patrick saw that the leading and trailing edges of the wings had curved into a long, deep high-lift airfoil.
“Canard control and engine nozzle control switches set to ‘auto alpha,’ ” J.C. continued. “This will be a constant-alpha takeoff.” J.C. Powell always briefed his back-seater on the takeoff, abort, and emergency procedures, even though he and Patrick had flown together for almost two years and Patrick knew the procedures as well as J.C. “Power to military thrust, brakes off and power to max afterburner. We’ll expect nega- tive-Y push after five seconds, with a pitch to takeoff attitude. After that we monitor angle-of-attack throughout the climb and make sure we don’t exceed twenty-eight alpha in the climb-out. I’m looking to break my previous record of a seventeen-hundred-foot takeoff roll on this one ... In case we don’t get the push-down I’ll cancel auto-alpha and switch to normal takeoff procedures—accelerate to one-sixty, rotate, maintain eight alpha or less, accelerate to two-eight-zero knots indicated and come out of afterburner. Same procedures if we lose vectored thrust after takeoff... All right. ” Powell slapped his gloved hands together, finished off the last few items of the checklist: “Circuit breakers checked. Caution panel clear. Canopy closed and locked. Seat belts and shoulder harnesses?”
“On and on,” Patrick intoned.
“Checked up front. Lights set. Helmets, visors, oxygen mask, oxygen panel.”
“On, down, on, set to normal.”
“Same here. Parking brakes released.” J.C. touched a switch on his control stick. “Takeoff configuration check.”
“Takeoff configuration check in progress,” responded a computer-synthesized voice. It was the final step in Cheetah’s electronics array. A computer, which had monitored every step of the pre-takeoff checklists being performed, would make one last check of all systems on board and report any discrepancies.
“Takeoff configuration check complete. Status okay. ”
“I already knew that, you moron,” J.C. murmured to the voice. He never relied on the computerized system although he consulted it. It was, as he would frequently remind everyone within earshot, another computer out to get him. “We’re ready to go, Colonel,” he said.
Patrick keyed the radio switch. “Storm Control, this is Storm flight of two. Ready for departure.”
* * *
Hal Briggs, on the narrow catwalk of the portable tower, spoke four words into a walkie-talkie. “Sand storm, one- seven.”
His cryptic message activated a hundred security officers spread out within some four-hundred square miles of the takeoff area. They were the last line of defense against unauthorized intrusion or eavesdropping on the test that was about to begin. Each man checked and rechecked his assigned sector with an array of electronic sensors—sound, radar, heat, motion, electromagnetic—and once secure, reported an “all secure” by sending a coded electronic tone. Only when all of the tones were received would a “go” signal be sent to Briggs.
Five seconds later he received that coded tone. “Good sweep, General,” he reported to Elliott. The general took one last look at the satellite overflight schedule, picked up the mike:
“Storm flight of two, clear for unrestricted takeoff. Winds calm. Takeoff clearance void time, five minutes. Have a good one.”
* * *
Patrick hit a switch, and the faint hum of the big gyro- stabilized video camera mounted on Cheetah’s spine could be heard. “Camera’s slaved on DreamStar, J.C.,” he said. “Don’t lose him.”
“A cold day in hell before any machine can outrun me.”
They saw DreamStar taxi a few feet forward just ahead of Cheetah, until the tip of DreamStar’s forward-swept right wingtip was just cutting into J.C.’s view of Ken James.
“Cornin’ up,” J.C. said. He brought the throttles forward, keeping his toes on the brakes. Cheetah began to quiver, then shake with a sound like the distant rumble of an earthquake.
“Turn ’em loose, baby,” J.C. murmured. He scanned his engine-instrument readouts on the main display, running down the graphic displays of engine RPM, fuel flow, nozzle and louver position, turbine inlet temperature and exhaust gas temperature. Each bar graph lined up in the normal range, everything right smack in the green—both engines in full military power, one hundred and nine percent of rated thrust, sixty thousand pounds of power. His grip on the stick and throttles unconsciously tightened. “Turn ’em loose . . .”
* * *
James also performed a last-second engine instrument check. But he had no bar graphs to check out with his eyes. ANTARES reported information not only through the visual nervous system in the form of words, numbers and symbols that he could “see,” but, to avoid overload of the visual senses, also as sensations that he could detect with his other senses. He could feel the power of the engines as clear and as real as air inflating his lungs or strength rippling down his arms. He knew in an instant that both engines were at full military thrust. At a thought-command, a computer that metered fuel flow performed a retrim of each engine to compensate for pressure altitude and outside temperature, which yielded a few hundred pounds extra thrust. The engine-fuel trim would be accomplished every six seconds thereafter as DreamStar began its test flight, accomplished as easily and as subconsciously as a person might ride a bike or drive a car along a much-traveled highway.
James briefly activated the search radar, which transmitted its signals as visual images—no obstructions or targets within thirty miles. A fast scan of VHF or UHF frequencies—no emergency calls, air traffic control challenges, no abort call from the tower. One quick check of hydraulic systems—all running normally. Electrical—one generator on the left engine running a bit hot. On a mental suggestion, a digital flight-data recorder logged the time, conditions and readouts on the left generator for the crew chiefs to analyze after the flight.
The check of the secondary systems, including the flight- data recorder entry, had taken less time than it took J. C. Powell to tighten his grip on his throttle quadrant.
James now ordered the brakes to be released . . .
* * *
J.C. saw DreamStar shoot forward. “Here we go,” he said.
Patrick took a firm grip on the steel “handlebars” surrounding the instrument panel in the aft cockpit. Without a stick, throttles, or pedals, Patrick could do nothing during takeoff but watch the engine instruments and hang on. He glanced at
the large yellow-and-black-painted handgrip between his legs underneath the center of the instrument panel—the ejection handle—and mentally measured the distance to it . . .
* * *
DreamStar shot forward like a dragster popping off the starting line. James commanded both engines to max afterburner, increasing thrust to well over one hundred fifty thousand pounds. At almost the same instant he also commanded activation of the auto-alpha flight mode. Louvers on the top of each engine nozzle swung open, diverting one-third of the engine thrust diagonally upward, compressing the rear main landing gear struts to their lowest position and allowing the nose-gear strut to extend fully.
DreamStar was now pointing ten degrees upward, in full unstick, takeoff attitude.
The trailing edges of the two canards deflected downward. The engines, coupled with the foreplanes, were now shoving DreamStar’s nose skyward—its computers controlling the canards kept the one-hundred-thousand-pound fighter from flipping backward out of control. As speed increased and the canards began to fly the nose, the louvers diverting the engine thrust upward gradually swung downward, allowing the thrust to acclerate the fighter and lift the tail off the runway. At one hundred knots airspeed DreamStar’s nose gear lifted off the runway. The pitch attitude increased to thirty degrees, held just below the stall by the computer-controlled foreplanes. At one hundred and fifty knots DreamStar lifted off the runway, and because the wings, foreplanes and engines were commanded for maximum lift, she rose like an elevator.
In just over one thousand feet, the same distance a small general-aviation plane used at takeoff, the fifty-ton jet fighter had left the ground. Once airborne, thrust again was automatically diverted to optimize climb performance. DreamStar was now a rocket, being propelled skyward at well over twenty thousand feet per minute. By the time it reached the end of the two-mile-long camouflaged runway, it was over eight thousand feet above the ground.
* * *
J. C. Powell’s promise to keep up with DreamStar was kept for about five seconds.
He and McLanahan saw James give the signal to release brakes. “Two good engines,” McLanahan called out from the aft cockpit as J.C. eased both engines into max afterburner.
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