by Dale Brown
the future of air combat-but JC. Powell didn't see it in his
future.
"It doesn't turn anyone into a robot," Patrick said. "You still
have full control. I don't see what your problem is about AN-
TARES. "
"Full control? Of what? A computer tells him what to do,
and he does it. "
"It's still the pilot calling the shots,
"Sure, he can pick up his own options out of a list the com-
puter presents to him, or he can override everything and go his
own way. I know that. But if a smart computer offers up a list
of a hundred options, well, most guys will pick something out
of that list." Powell spread his hands out across his lap. "Say
you're at a fancy restaurant." He motioned an imaginary waiter
to his table. "You've been to this restaurant before because they
have the best steak in town, but Pierre hands you the menu.
What do you do?" Powell opened his imaginary menu and pre-
tended to read it. "You look at the menu. Why? Because it's
there. So maybe you order the steak because that's what you
always order, but you still look at the menu.
"See, even with ANTARES it takes time to scan the menu.
A real pilot will use that time to use his head and instincts to
execute a real maneuver. In ANTARES there's no thought, anal-
ysis, decision making . . . it's been done for you. And I call that
programming.
"But if it results in a better system?"
"ANTARES hasn't been proved to be better than a human
pilot .
"We still use a human pilot, "
"More or less, I guess," Powell said sarcastically, returning
switches to their proper positions. "But in a significant way we
don't-I say ANTARES can be beat."
"Well," Patrick said, rubbing his eyes wearily, trying to mas-
sage away the headache that usually happened when arguing with
JC. Powell, "it's a moot point, at least for now. Like I said,
we're not concerned with how well DreamStar fights, deploying
DAY OF THE CHEETAH 59
her is still a ways off. We're here to test the aircraft and test the
concept. "
, slumping so far down in his seat Patrick 'ouldn't see
him, said, "But all those generals and congressmen don't care
about testing the concept. They all want to know the same
thing-can she win dogfights?"
"And you're saying she can't."
"I'm saying that she can be beat. A pilot with the right combo
of skill and balls can beat ANTARES. And if ANTARES is
forced out of the combat loop, the pilot in DreamStar has to be
able to take charge and fight on his own. DreamStar's not really
set up for pilot-directed dogfighting. For me that's her weak-
ness . . . And look what we're doing to our combat pilots"-
motioned toward DreamStar-"Ken James is one of the
best pilots in the Air Force. He's been a star ever since he grad-
uated from the Zoo. So what have we done with him? We've
trussed him up in a steel flight suit, a twenty-pound helmet and
more damn electrodes than Frankenstein's monster. We're using
his brain but not his mind. There's a big difference, I figure.
Are all our best military pilots going to be used as protoplasmic
circuit boards for ANTARES?"
For a guy that was only thirty years old, Powell could be a
real stick-in-the-mud sometimes. Patrick scanned the EEG read-
outs. "Everything looks normal. It should be awhile before he
radios in that he's ready. I'll let you know when he's coming
around so we can crank engines."
"Roger that. I'm gonna do another flight-control check."
"Didn't you just do a computer self-test?
"Having a computer check a computer to see if a computer
is working is just looking for trouble. One of these days all those
computers will get together and drive us into the ground. I wanna
catch them before they do it. I'm doing the check manually. Let
me know when you're ready to go."
"Rog." Patrick was tired of arguing. Besides, had a
point. He turned again to the EEG monitors.
Theta-sine-alpha indicated that James was relaxed, but it was
a much deeper level of relaxation, more neurological, much more
than ordinary muscle relaxation. The ability to get to theta-sine-
alpha had taken months of training. They called it biofeedback
when psychologists would hook a patient up to a mini-EEG or
polygraph that would beep whenever a beta wave would be de-
60 DALE BROWN
tected, indicating stress or irregular muscular or nervous activ-
ity. The idea was to relax the body or control nerve Activity until
the beeping stopped. James had to go far beyond such muscle
relaxation-he had to relax his mind, open it, create a window
into the subconscious.
For Kenneth Francis James, the window to his mind did not
open like a door or a window-it opened like a hot, rusty knife
ripping through pink flesh. But that was the nature of the Ad-
vanced Neural Transfer and Response System that linked the
brain with a digital computer. James had gone far beyond Car-
michael's lectures. This was the real thing, the link-up between
the computer on the plane and his suit.
The first mind-numbing phase of transition was activation of
the system itself, which occurred automatically once ANTARES
detected that James had entered theta-sine-alpha. In order to pick
up the tiny changes in electrical activity in James' body, the
metallic ANTARES flight suit itself had to be electrified. Even
though the charge was very small it was applied to almost every
part of the body, from the skull to the feet; it was like touching
one's tongue to the terminals of a nine-volt battery and feeling
the tiny current jolt the taste buds, except that James felt that
sweet, tingling sensation in every part of his body. And through
it all, he had to maintain theta-alpha . . .
Enduring activation of the ANTARES system was only the
first step; the now familiar slight physical pain was easy to block
out. The next assault, however, was on the mind itself.
Once ANTARES was open it would transmit a complex series
of preprogrammed questions to various conscious and subcon-
scious areas of James' mind. The questions, programmed months
earlier by countless hours in a simulator-recording unit, would
match the existing brainwave patterns of each level encountered.
After scanning, recognizing and matching the patterns, AN-
TARES would then overpower that particular neural function,
force the original pattern to a compatible subconscious level and
allow the ANTARES computer to control that level. It was like
submitting a series of passwords to several levels of guards ex-
cept each time ANTARES would reach a level it would hammer,
not knock, on the door, demanding entry. Once admitted, it
would first befriend, then overpower, the resident inside. The
takeovers accomplished by ANTARES were sometimes painful,
DAY OF THE_CHEETAH 61
sometimes soothing. At times images would force their way out
of James' subconscious, long-stored memories of childhood that
Maraklov had long forgotten.
His conscious mind was now like a big living room that had
just had all its furniture moved to different parts of the house.
ANTARES had taken over control of most conscious activity,
keeping only a few essential activities in the conscious fore-
ground while relegating the rest to higher parts of the brain. Now
ANTARES was ready to start remodeling.
With the doors and windows to James' subconscious mind
wide open, his mind was ready to receive and process vast
amounts of information. Normally that information would come
from the five senses, and even with ANTARES some still did,
but now altogether new sources of information were open. AN-
TARES could collect and transmit digital data signals to James'
conscious mind, and James could receive that information as if
it came from his own five senses. But James no longer had five
senses-he had hundreds, thousands of them. The radar altime-
ter was a sense. The radar was a sense. So was the laser range-
finder. Dozens of thermometers, aneroids, gallium-arsenide
memory chips, limit switches, logic circuits, photocells, volt-
meters, chronometers-the list was endless and ever-changing.
But it was an enormous shock to the system to find that the
list of senses had grown from five to five thousand, and here
ANTARES was no help at all; when the "room" was full it
simply began cramming in more input sources. For James the
new impulses weren't coherent or understandable. They were
random flasNs of light or crashes of sound, battering his con-
. d, all fighting for order and recognition. Put another
scious min
way, as he once had, it felt like a crushing wall of water, a wave
of unbearable heat, and the swirling center of a thunderstorm all
mixed up at once. And ANTARES was relentless. The instant
Ise was set aside, a hundred more took its
an image or an impu
place. The computer only knew that so much had to be learned.
It had no conception of rest, or defeat, or of insanity.
Suddenly, then, the flood of input was gone. The tornado of
data subsided, leaving only a room full of seemingly random
bits of information lying scattered about. The furniture was over-
turned-but it was all there, all intact. Now, like a benevolent
relative or kindly neig hbor, ANTARES began sorting through
the jungle of information, creating boxes to organize the infor-
62 DAIE BROWN
mation, placing boxes into boxes, organizing the mountains of
data into neat, cohesive packages.
The random series of images began to coalesce. Undecipher-
able snaps of sound became long, staccato clicks; the clicks
turned to a low whine; the whine turned into waves of sounds
rising and falling; the waves became words, the words became
sentences. Flashes of lights became numbers. And then the
numbers disappeared, replaced by numbers that James wanted
to "see. "
The energy surges generated by ANTARES were still cours-
ing through James' body, but now they were acting like am-
phetamines, energizing and revitalizing his body. He was aware
of DreamStar all around him, aware of its power waiting for
release.
James' eyes snapped open, like those of a man awaking from
a nightmare. Swiveling his heavy helmet on its smooth Teflon
bearings, he looked across at Cheetah's open canopy. Powell
was busy in the forward cockpit; McLanahan was watching his
instruments. But he must have read something in the instruments
in Cheetah's aft cockpit, because just then McLanahan looked
over toward him. He could see the DreamStar project director
with his oxygen visor in place, apparently talking on the radios.
Patrick was looking directly at him now-was he talking to
him..... ?
. . . And suddenly the energy was unbearable. It was as if
DreamStar was a wild animal straining on a leash, hot with the
scent of prey, demanding to be released.
James looked down at the left MFD, the multi-function dis-
play, on the forward instrument panel. He imagined the index
finger of his left hand touching the icon labeled -VHF- 1. " Im-
mediately the icon illuminated. Now, hovering right the in
re
front of his eyes, was a series of numerals representing the pre-
programmed VHF radio channels-the image, transmitted from
DreamStar's computers through ANTARES to his optic nervous
system, was as clear and as real as every other visual image. He
selected the proper ship-to-ship channel on the computer-
generated icon and activated the radio. The whole process, from
deciding to activate the radio to speaking the words, took less
than a second.
"Storm TWo ready for engine start," James reported. Al-
though the ANTARES interface did not take away his ability to
DAY OF THE CHEETAH 63
speak or hear, all traces of inflection or emotion usually were
filtered out. So the voice that Patrick heard on the radio was
eerie, alien.
"Welcome back, Captain," Patrick said. "I saw you come
out of theta-alpha. Ready to do some flying?"
"Ready and waiting, Colonel."
"Stand by." Patrick switched to a secondary radio. "Storm
Control, this is Storm One."
In the underground command post of the High Technology Ad-
vanced Weapons Center a four-star Air Force general seated at
a large cherry desk replaced a phone on its cradle, then looked
down with disgust at his right leg. He reached down, took his
right calf in both hands, straightened his leg, then raised himself
out of his leather seat using the stiff right leg as a crutch. Once
fully standing he unlocked the graphite and Teflon bearings in
the prosthetic right knee joint, allowing it to move much like a
regular leg.
An aide held the office door open for General Bradley Elliott
as the director of HAWC stepped out and down the short hallway
to the command post. He used a keycard to open the outer door
to the entrapment area. A bank of floodlights snapped on, filling
the entrapment area with bright light, and the outer door auto-
matically locked behind him.
Two security guards armed with Uzi submachine guns came
through the doors on either side of the area. They slowed when
they recognized who it was but didn't alter their moves. While
one guard quickly pat-searched Elliott and ran a small metal
scanner over his body, the other stood with his Uzi at port arms,
finger on the trigger. The metal detector beeped when passed
over Elliott's right leg. Elliott tolerated it.
The guards watched as Elliott signed in on a security roster
and double-checked the new signature against other signature
samples and the signature on Elliott's restricted-area, badge
pinned to his shirt. Satisfied, the guards slipped away as quickly
as they had appeared.
A tall black security officer wearing a nine-millimeter Beretta
automatic pistol on his waist walked quickly to the general of-
ficer as he emerged from the entrapment area. "Sorry, sir,"
Major Hal Briggs said, handing Elliott a cup of coffee. "New
guy on the security console. Buzzed the sky cops when the metal
64 DALE BROWN
detector in the entrapment area went crazy. He's been briefed
again on your ... special circumstances. "
"He did right. You should have commended him. The re-
sponse guards too."
"Yes, sir, " was all Briggs had time to mutter as Elliott pushed
on past him and entered the communications center. One of the
controllers handed him a telephone.
"Storm Control Alpha, go ahead."
"Alpha, this is Storm One. Flight of two in the green and
ready to taxi.-
"Stand by," Elliott said. As he lowered the phone Briggs
handed him a computer printout.
"Latest from Lassen Mountain Space Tracking Center,"
Briggs said. "Three Russian satellites will be in the area during
the test-window: Cosmos 713 infrared surveillance satellite still
on station over North America in geostationary orbit, but it's
the other two we're concerned w ith. Cosmos 1145 and 1289 are
the kickers. Cosmos 1145 is a low-altitude, high-resolution
film-return photo-intelligence satellite. Cosmos 1289 is a radar-
imaging film-return bird. We believe th@y're mainly ground-
mapping satellites with limited ability to photograph aircraft in
flight, but obviously they can be damaging. Both will be over
the exercise area during the test throughout the day. Do you want
to reschedule, sir?"
"No," Elliott said. "I don't want to give the Russians the
pleasure of thinking they can disrupt my schedule with a couple
of old Brownies. Just make sure DreamStar and Cheetah stay in
the bluff while they're overhead.
He took a sip of coffee, scowled at it, then set the cup down
with an exasperated thump. "Besides, it seems like they have
all the information they need on DreamStar anyway. I could have
dropped my teeth when I saw the DIA photo of the Ramenskoye 1
Flight Test Facility in Moscow with the exact same short-takeoff-
and-landing runway-test devices as ours here at Dreamland. The
