by Ben Bova
Sitting in front of Linda’s desk, Mrs. Markley radiated cold fury. “You are the branch manager, aren’t you? Why can’t you get the machines fixed?”
Mrs. Markley was the seventh customer to barge into her office in the past half hour, complaining that the ATMs were down. Linda had tried to phone the local service company, but she’d gotten nothing but a busy signal. In desperation she had called corporate headquarters in Houston. No use. The line was so jammed with other calls that all she got was an automated message advising her to call again later.
“I want access to my money!” Mrs. Markley was hissing. “It’s bad enough that your machines aren’t working, but your tellers refuse to cash my Social Security check!”
“Our computers are down,” Linda tried to explain. “It’s only temporary, I’m sure. If you could come back later…”
Mrs. Markley rose grandly to her feet, practically twitching with rage. She reminded Linda of a beady-eyed rat.
“If you can’t run your bank properly you should be replaced!” Mrs. Markley snapped. Then she swept out of Linda’s office.
Linda sank back in her swivel chair and fought down the urge to burst into tears.
ABL-1: Laser Bay
“You scared, boss?”
Startled, Harry half-turned and saw Delany’s big, bearlike form lumbering up the narrow walkway toward him. Harry had slowly worked his way past the lasing cavity and mixing chamber, heading tailward along the tanks that held the liquid oxygen and iodine toward the cramped little monitoring station where Wally Rosenberg sat, checking pressures and tankage levels.
“What are you doing back here?” Harry demanded. Monk’s station was up in the nose, at the beam control compartment.
“The optics are all okay,” said Delany. “I was just wondering how you guys’re feeling. You nervous about this?”
“Nervous? Kind of,” Harry admitted. “Aren’t you?”
Delany shrugged. “Why should I be nervous? The gooks are about to start World War III and we’re in the middle of the action. What’s there to be nervous about?”
Harry wanted to laugh, but the best he could do was to crack a thin smile.
“You checked the optics?” he asked Delany. “Everything’s on the tick. No problems.” “Where’s Taki?”
“Up at the battle management console, where she should be. Maybe they’ll give her an Air Force commission if she nails those gook missiles.”
Harry knew that he and the other civilians were manning the laser only because this was supposed to be a test flight. We’re only a skeleton crew at best, he thought. When the system’s declared operational, Air Force personnel will take over. With more than twice the number of their five-person team, at that.
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll go up forward and see how she’s making out.”
Delany gave him that sloppy salute of his. “Aye, aye, skipper.”
Harry shook his head. “This isn’t the Navy, Monk.”
“We ain’t the Air Force, either.”
The COIL’s channel ran through the length of the plane, past the crew compartment and galley, beneath the flight deck and cockpit, and into the bulbous turret that made the plane’s nose look like a potato. Taki Nakamura’s station was up forward, at the electronics consoles that monitored the plane’s sensors and the laser’s output beam.
Taki’s battle management compartment was directly beneath the flight deck. Harry scanned the row of consoles, most of them dark and unused until they powered up the laser. The plane’s slight swaying was more noticeable up here near the nose. Like a ship at sea, Harry thought. This big lunk of an airplane must weigh a hundred tons, but it still pitches up and down a little.
Nakamura was sitting at the main console, her fingers flicking across the keyboard, her eyes focused intently on the display screen.
“Everything okay, Taki?” asked Harry.
She looked up at him, her lean, sculpted face utterly serious. “Everything’s in the green, jefe.”
Harry nodded to her. He remembered that Pete Quintana was the guy they originally called el jefe, the boss. Harry inherited the title when Anson put him in charge of the team, after Pete was killed. An gel Reyes had even gotten his wife to stitch the title onto some of Harry’s T-shirts and coveralls. Victor Anson had never seen it, thank god. There was only one god in heaven, Anson always said, and one head of Anson Aerospace. Yet Anson had never come out to the desert to see the test rig, never even made his way down to the working section of his own company’s laboratory in Pasadena. He stayed in his office. People came to him.
Harry patted Taki’s slim shoulder and moved forward, past the battle management compartment and into the nose of the mammoth airplane. Here was the beam control station, Monk Delany’s domain, the business end of the COIL, where megawatts of infrared energy fed through the ball-shaped turret in the plane’s nose and lanced out toward the target.
The controls for the ranging laser were there, too. Perched in a housing atop the flight deck’s hump, the ranger was a smaller carbon dioxide laser that was used like a radar to fix the location of the target and feed that data to the big COIL for the kill. Slaved to the sensors that spotted the missile’s hot rocket plume, the smaller laser pinpointed the missile’s position and distance. The turret in the plane’s nose moved in response to the data from the ranging laser and then, zap! the COIL fired and the missile was destroyed.
Harry noticed that the ranging laser’s console was not powered up. Idly, he sat at the console and flicked it on. The central screen glowed to life, and the words SYSTEM MALFUNCTION burned themselves onto it.
What the hell? Harry thought. System malfunction?
“What’re you doing, Harry?”
He looked up and saw Monk Delany looming over him.
“Something’s wrong with the ranger.”
Delany leaned over his shoulder and pecked at the console’s keyboard, SYSTEM MALFUNCTION glowered at them.
“Shit,” said Delany. “You been screwing around with my program?”
“No, I just turned the console on,” Harry said.
Mumbling unhappily, Delany nudged Harry out of the seat and took over the console himself. After several moments he shrugged in frustration.
“Something’s wrong,” he said.
“No kidding.” Harry knew that without the ranging laser to feed targeting information to the COIL, the whole system was useless.
“Lemme fiddle with it,” Monk said, still looking at Harry as if it were his fault.
“I’ll go check the rig,” Harry said.
“You can’t check it while we’re in the air,” Monk growled.
Harry patted his muscular shoulder. “You can’t, ape-man. You’re too big to squeeze in there. But I’m small enough to do it.”
“You’ll break your stupid ass.”
Harry heaved a sigh and said, “It’s got to be done, Monk. Otherwise we’ll have to turn around and go home.”
Monk said nothing, but the look on his face told Harry that he wouldn’t mind returning to Elmendorf, not at all.
ABL-1: Flight Deck
Harry left Monk sweating and swearing at the ranging laser console and clambered up the ladder to the flight deck. The two Air Force officers looked startled to see him.
“I need to check the laser assembly,” Harry said, pointing overhead.
The redheaded captain said, “Colonel Christopher ought to know about this, sir.”
Nodding, Harry said, “Let her know, then.” The captain spoke into his pin mike and an instant later Colonel Christopher popped through the hatch from the cockpit.
“What’s wrong, Mr. Hartunian?” She looked nettled.
“I’ve got to check the ranging laser.”
“In flight? I thought that unit was sealed off while the plane’s pressurized.”
“The laser housing is pressurized too,” Harry explained. “This won’t endanger the plane.”
She looked unconvinced. “Is this really ne
cessary, or are you just...” She let her voice trail off, but Harry got the implication loud and clear: Are you nerds just playing around with your techie toys?
“It’s completely necessary,” he replied. “Without the ranging laser we can’t lock onto a target.”
Planting her fists on her hips, Colonel Christopher asked tightly, “Are you telling me that the ranging subsystem is down?”
“That’s right. We’re trying to find out what’s wrong with it and get it fixed.”
She stood there before him, her face set in an angry frown. Abruptly she turned to the young lieutenant and commanded, “Jon, you’re the tallest guy we’ve got. Give Mr. Hartunian all the help you can.”
Lieutenant Sharmon got up from his console, his close-cropped hair nearly brushing the overhead.
“Thank you, Colonel,” Harry said.
“Get it fixed, Mr. Hartunian.”
“Harry,” he said automatically.
Colonel Christopher looked as if she wanted to breathe fire. “Mr. Hartunian,” she repeated.
With Lieutenant Sharmon’s help, Harry unscrewed the plate that covered the ranging laser’s mount.
The tubular housing for the ranging laser was too tight for Harry to do more than stick his head through the opening. The plane’s engines sounded louder up here, the vibrations heavier. It felt cold, too. Harry realized that there was nothing between him and the subzero stratosphere out there except a thin sheathing of aluminum.
Teetering on a makeshift ladder that Sharmon had created by stripping one of the crew’s relief cots and leaning the metal frame against the bulkhead of the flight deck, Harry wormed one arm up into the shadowy housing and played the beam from his pocket flashlight down the length of the carbon dioxide laser. Everything seemed okay. No loose connections. Seals looked tight.
Turning carefully to inspect the forward end of the laser, Harry froze. The forward lens assembly was gone. Where the fist-sized unit of collimating lenses should have been there was nothing but a gaping emptiness.
Somebody’s taken the lens assembly out of the laser, Harry realized. He stared, trembling, at that empty space where the lens assembly should have been. Somebody’s taken the lens out of the laser, he repeated to himself. Without the lens assembly the ranging laser can’t work, and without the ranging laser, the big COIL can’t be aimed properly. The whole system—the whole plane—will be useless.
There’s a saboteur on the plane! The thought made Harry’s knees weak. But there was no other explanation. That lens assembly didn’t remove itself from the ranger; somebody deliberately took it out. Then he remembered the explosion at the test rig, the accident that had killed Pete Quintana and nearly broken his own back. It wasn’t an accident, Harry realized. It was deliberate sabotage. By one of my crew.
As Harry stood there, wondering what to do, how to handle this terrible new knowledge, he heard Victor Anson’s voice in his mind:
Make it work, Harry. I’m counting on you. We’re all counting on you.
Harry Daniel Hartunian
Bethlehem, Pennsylvania: Lehigh University
Harry Hartunian had never been a fighter. He wasn’t a take-charge guy. Instead, he had a quiet, persistent, relentless determination to finish whatever he started. Born and raised in the Boston suburb of Medford, in high school Harry took a lot of ribbing for his flyaway hair and his passive, almost invisible presence in the classroom and outside. The bullies picked on him, of course, but Harry befriended the biggest guy in the school by offering to do his homework in exchange for his protection. The bullying stopped. And his bodyguard even taught Harry a few moves that were down and dirty but effective in an emergency.
He didn’t go out for sports—the mindless pressure to win turned him off. In his sophomore year Harry made the chess team, barely, but by the time he graduated he was the best chess player in the school.
Engineering appealed to him; Harry liked the idea of building things and making mechanisms work. He got a partial scholarship to Lehigh University and went into its electrical engineering program. On campus he met Sylvia Goldman, who was in the teacher’s college. She was from Media, Pennsylvania. Sylvia was attractive, buxom, with flashing dark eyes. Harry felt flabbergasted that she was interested in him.
For her part, Sylvia saw in Harry a steady, dependable man who could be led rather easily. He had this funny hair that flew every which way at the slightest breeze, but he wasn’t that bad-looking and he was doggedly determined to do well in class and get a rock-solid job after graduation. He was quiet, and so shy he wouldn’t get fresh with her, so after a few dates she got fresh with him. After nearly a year of dating they moved into a tiny studio apartment together.
Harry married Sylvia in a simple civil ceremony in Bethlehem’s city hall. Neither her parents nor his saw fit to attend the wedding. Both families were infuriated by their marriage. Sylvia’s mother feared that this goy boyfriend of hers had gotten her pregnant; Harry’s father asked him why, when there were so many fish in the sea, he wanted to settle so soon for just one of them.
As graduation neared Harry was recruited by a firm in California, Anson Aerospace Corporation. The company was developing lasers and Harry had worked summers in the university’s laser lab to make enough money to support himself and his bride.
With their diplomas in their hands, they moved to Pasadena, leaving their disapproving parents thousands of miles behind them. Sylvia got part-time work as a substitute teacher while Harry threw himself into his job as a laser technician.
Anson Aerospace was a happy haven for the young engineer. All his life he had been an oddball, a nerd, a quiet, studious boy who was shy with girls and respectful to adults and preferred reading books to getting involved in teenaged pranks. At Anson, Harry was surrounded by people just like him. Geek heaven. There was a pecking order, of course: scientists were above engineers, even though the engineers all felt that physicists should never be allowed to touch any of the equipment in the lab.
“It’s easy to make a laser that’s idiot-proof,” the head of Anson’s safety department told Harry. “Making it Ph.D.-proof is just about impossible. Those guys think they’re brilliant, see. They poke into the lab and fiddle with this and twiddle with that until they either give themselves a ten-thousand-volt shock or burn the place down.”
Harry knew he was not brilliant. But he worked hard and steadily for long hours and little recognition. Yet he loved it. He loved the technical challenges, the camaraderie that slowly developed among his fellow engineers, the bowling league he helped to organize, even the physicists who unconsciously lorded it over the engineers as if it was their right to look down on the guys who got their hands dirty. Indeed, Harry was not brilliant, but he was dependable. He got the job done, no matter how difficult it was, no matter how long or hard he had to work at it. Quiet and steady as he was, gradually he was recognized by his supervisors, and even by the scientists who ran the lab. To his own surprise, Harry got salary raises almost every year: small ones, but he didn’t complain.
Sylvia did. They had two daughters now and a sizable mortgage on their home. She felt Harry wasn’t aggressive enough about his salary.
“You should be getting more,” she would say. “Gina Sobelski’s husband hasn’t been with the company half as long as you have and he makes twice as much.”
“Sobelski’s in the legal department,” Harry would counter. “Different pay scale.”
Logic did not move Sylvia.
“You’re dull, Harry. Nobody pays any attention to you. You’re a bore.”
He didn’t argue. He just let her vent and the next morning he went to work, where the only pressure on him was to do his job.
Anson Aerospace landed a juicy contract to build a megawatt-plus chemical laser for the Missile Defense Agency. The whole company was abuzz with the news. Victor Anson himself called a meeting of the entire staff in the company cafeteria to tell them that this program would be the most important contract the firm had ever
received.
Harry was surprised when he was picked to be part of the small, select group of engineers who would build the device.
Dr. Jacob Levy was chosen to head the laser group, with Pete Quintana as the chief engineer under him. Monk Delany complained to Harry that Quintana only got the job because he was Hispanic and the company wanted to look good to the affirmative action busybodies.
A couple of the guys began calling Quintana el jefe. Harry and the others went along with it. What the hell? Harry thought. He had no problems with a Hispanic being his immediate supervisor. He liked Pete.
Sylvia took the news of Harry’s new assignment strangely.
“I suppose that means you’ll be working longer hours, doesn’t it?” she asked that evening, after their daughters had gone to their rooms to do their homework. Harry could hear the thumping beat of the music they listened to while they were supposed to be studying.
“Yeah, I guess so,” he said.
Sylvia grumbled and Harry wondered why she got sore at the fact that he was successful at his work.
“Look, Sylvie, I’ve got a big responsibility now,” he tried to explain. “I know I’m not a genius. I’ve got to put in long hours and work as hard as I can. These scientists I’m working for are really brilliant; I’ve got to give it everything I’ve got just to keep up with them.”
Sylvia stared at his earnest face and shook her head.
There were women in the lab, of course: a couple of Caltech grads among the scientific staff; several engineers and technicians. A few of them were even good-looking. The Christmas parties were fun, although Harry always drove straight home afterward. Sylvia would scowl at him the next day as Harry nursed his hangover and thanked whatever gods there be that the Pasadena traffic cops hadn’t stopped him on the way home.
Sylvia had given up her teaching career, such as it was, once she became pregnant with Victoria. Then came Denise. Instead of a career in education, Sylvia pursued Causes. Women’s rights. Neighborhood beautification. Abused children. Political campaigns. Harry thought of them as hobbyhorses. Sylvia always had some Cause or other to keep her busy, as if raising two daughters wasn’t enough of a job. Through her Causes she met people, dragged Harry to meetings and cocktail parties, gave herself a sense of accomplishment.
