“Power surge?”
“You didn’t notice it?” Walker said. Ann shook her head. “It dimmed all the lights and almost took out all station power. The backups kept the main power from dumping.”
“But Skybolt has its own batteries. It doesn’t draw on station power at all....”
“Well, in this case it did.”
“That’s impossible....”
“Ann,” Saint-Michael said. “What we’ve been saying is the truth. Skybolt didn’t track the target until nearly thirty seconds after it appeared on radar. It never locked onto the target. It drew off station power to activate the MHD reactor, it fired without locking onto anything and it failed to hit the target. Period.” He ignored her high dudgeon. “I’ll allow a second test firing, but only after engineering confirms that our suppressors and power backups can handle another surge. If they can’t assure me that this station’s equipment won’t suffer any damage, the tests are over until the problem is corrected. If we go ahead with the test, I’ll maintain a command-beam discharge- inhibit until I see a positive target lock-on. If I don’t see a lock-on to the designated target, the test is over.”
“General!”
“All clear, Dr. Page?” Saint-Michael accented each word.
Drop dead. “Clear, sir.” She slid past Saint-Michael and Walker and headed back to the Skybolt control module, the two officers watching her half-glide, half-jump through the connecting hatch.
“She’s been working sixteen, twenty hours a day on that thing,” Walker said. “I’d be pissed, too, if my pride and joy had just flunked out.”
Saint-Michael was noncommittal. “Get me a report on the power situation and the crew’s technical opinion on a second test firing. Also check out the Agena and the SBR. Maybe... maybe the problem’s not with Skybolt.”
Walker nodded.
“And you handle the command inhibit.”
“Where will you be?”
Saint-Michael watched the hatch leading to the connecting tunnel close. “In the Skybolt module. Pipe all communications down there.” Without waiting for Walker’s response Saint-Michael headed toward the connecting hatch.
It was a tight squeeze but a few moments later Saint-Michael had wedged himself into the narrow walkway down the middle of the Skybolt control module.
He clicked his wireless microphone on. “Control, this is Alpha. Status of the backup power systems.”
“Sir, this is Marks. Backups are fully functional. No apparent damage. They’re doing what they’re supposed to do.”
“How much time until the Agena comes back around?”
“Estimating fifty minutes, sir.”
Saint-Michael looked at Ann, who was busy pulling a relay box from an electronics cabinet and inspecting the settings on a long row of circuit boards. “You’re a go for another shot, Ann.”
She pretended not to hear and slapped the box back into its slot, snapped the latches shut, maneuvered toward Saint-Michael to another relay box and nearly jammed Saint-Michael in the ribs as she removed it. “Excuse me, sir.”
“Listen, Page, you had better get that damned chip off your shoulder. It’s too much baggage for this station—”
Ann ripped a twelve-inch-square circuit board out of the relay box with an angry yank. “Yes, sir. I’m sorry, sir.” She avoided his stare and went back to her work space to find a replacement circuit board.
“You know this test will fail, too, don’t you?” Saint-Michael said. Ann turned on him. “Thanks for the vote of confidence, General. But that’s all right. I knew that’s how you felt right from the beginning. You never wanted this project—”
“You have got things screwed up....” He shook his head. “How did you ever get picked for this project? Sure as hell not for your glorious personality.”
She plugged the new circuit board into its slot. “I’m here, sir, because this is my project. If you don’t think it’ll work, if you think it’s all a waste of time, that’s your prerogative—”
“I didn’t feel that way at first. I guess it’s your wonderful attitude that jams my gears—”
“My attitude has nothing to do with this project or your gears....”
“Has everything to do with it.”
She ignored that and moved back to her work station, punching buttons on the keyboard hard enough to rattle the desk.
“‘My’ laser, ‘my’ module, ‘my’ project. This isn’t your anything,” he said.
“I designed it------ ”
“Did you build it? Did you fly it up here? Did you hook it up by yourself. Are you going to test it yourself? Now that there’s a glitch in it, I supposed you think you’re going to fix it yourself. It won’t tie into the SBR, it won’t isolate from the stations’ batteries, it won’t lock on, it won’t hit what it’s supposed to hit. But Ms. Super Scientist is going to fix it in fifty minutes by herself, and by God she’s going to have a successful second firing or else.”
Ann stared at the computer screen, her lips tight.
Saint-Michael was on a roll. “Far be it from you to ask for help from any of us lowly military people. Your laser won’t tie in with the SBR? Well, we happen to have three SBR experts on board this station but you haven’t consulted any of them. You have a tracking problem? We have Kevin Baker, a thirty-year veteran in spacetracking hardware and software on board, but you haven’t talked to him.... Let me make some wild guesses here. You also haven’t asked one single person, on this station or on the ground, for help. You’re not in contact with anyone at your lab in Boston or your corporation in California. No one on this station knows anything about your systems. As a matter of fact, I’ll bet I’m the only person on this station who’s ever been inside this module since it’s been activated. How am I doing?”
Ann’s fingers stopped tapping on the keyboard. She looked up from her work-desk at Saint-Michael, shrugged, kept quiet.
“Ann, this is a tremendous project. The first space-based antiballistic missile laser. Two hundred megawatts of energy. Capable of destroying a hundred missiles a minute, maybe more. It’s a fantastic device. And it works—the laser works exactly as advertised. You’ve done a tremendous job.”
“I hear a ‘but’ coming.”
“You’re right,” the general said, smiling in spite of himself. “But ... no one person can be an expert on everything. You designed the Skybolt module to ‘snap together’ with Silver Tower. It’s a technological marvel that the thing works at all. But there’s a problem, and you’re stuck—”
“I am not ‘stuck.’ ”
“Then why did you replace that relay circuit board?”
She narrowed her eyes, then picked up the circuit board she had removed from the electronics rack. “This? It’s a tracking interface channel multiplexer board. It controls the logic channels between the SBR and the laser-mirror aiming unit....”
“But you said in Control that everything checked out OK. And your last-second self-test, which repeated out in the command module, said everything was ready. Now, how did you know which board to replace?”
Her eyes lost some of their anger, refused to meet his. “I’m... I’m trying certain critical circuits. One might be... be fused or shorted—”
“Or maybe you happen to have a spare of that particular board. Maybe you felt the need to try something, anything, before the next Agena pass. After that, you have at least twenty-four hours to hunt for the real problem before the next pass.”
She stared at her workbench.
“Let me make a suggestion. If you agree, I’ll pass along a request from you to meet with Colonel Marks, Kevin Baker, Chief Jefferson and Technician Moyer just before the shift change. I’ll tell them you’d like to talk with them about the beam test and Skybolt’s interfacing problem.”
He glanced over his shoulder toward the command module. “I can almost guarantee that those guys will be tickled to get their hands on Skybolt. You’ll get help out your ears. It couldn’t hurt.”
She
looked up from her workbench. “You really do want to help?”
He touched her lightly on the shoulder. “We all want to help. And it’s nothing personal, so don’t get all crazy on me. We’re involved in the success of this wonder device of yours, too. Hell, I might even get another star if it works... promotion by association, you might say.”
She allowed a smile, then typed in a command on her keyboard and went to her microphone. “Control, this is Skybolt.”
“Go ahead.”
“Second Skybolt beam test is postponed for a systems check. Skybolt is in stand-by. MHD is deactivated.”
“Copy and confirmed.”
She looked at Saint-Michael. “I’ll ask the others to meet with me, General. I guess it’s about time we got acquainted.”
Three days later the space station’s crew gathered in the command module to hear an announcement from Saint-Michael. As was his habit, the general got straight to the point. “We’re moving Silver Tower,” he said.
“Moving?” Colonel Marks said, clearly upset. “Where? I haven’t heard anything about this....”
“You have some special feeling for this particular orbit, Wayne?”
“It’s just... unexpected, Skipper.”
“Space Command and the Pentagon have brought a few items of interest to my attention that I think we can help out with. For the first time since Thor was first deployed on this station, Armstrong Station has a chance to act less like an orbiting laboratory and more like a tactical fighting unit. The primary objective of the move is reconnaissance. We have the most sophisticated space-based radars in the world on this station, but right now they’re only used to scan empty sky above Russian missile silos and scan for aircraft flying over the pole. We’ve become little else but a redundancy, and I think we should be doing more.”
Heads nodded. Ann knew that what Saint-Michael was saying was right. Silver Tower tended to be thought of solely as the perfect place to conduct weapons experiments for the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization. The Skybolt project was only one of several being conducted on board the station—others included Kevin Baker’s Thor experiment, and experiments on superconductor technology and space-based radar miniaturization. Silver Tower usually had as many civilians on board as military men, and the station’s docking ports were always occupied.
“So what’s the job?” Colonel Walker asked. "Who are we going to spy on?”
Saint-Michael brought out a chart that he had been keeping beside his work station and Velcroed it to an instrument panel. It was a Mercator projection map of the globe with a wavy line drawn through it. The uppermost crest of the line passed over Iran; the lower part of the line passed between Chile and New Zealand over the south Pacific Ocean.
“I propose moving Armstrong Station to a seven-hundred by one- hundred-mile elliptical orbit. Three-hour orbit; two hours and ten minutes over Africa and lower Asia. One-and-a-half hours within direct scanning range of Iran. And I want it in the very same track on each orbit.”
There was a low rumble of voices as the crew of Silver Tower studied the chart. It was Colonel Marks who spoke up again.
“On the same track? You mean—pass over the exact same points on the earth on each orbit?”
“Exactly.”
“That sounds serious, General,” Walker said.
Saint-Michael nodded. “It is. I’ve received an... observation, I suppose is the best word... about a surprisingly large military buildup in the Soviet’s southern military district. The observation hasn’t alarmed many in the Pentagon because the buildup coincides in some degree with an announced Soviet military exercise and a suspected fall resupply push into Afghanistan. Even so, there are a few who believe something far more extreme may be happening... something like an invasion of Iran.”
Again there was a low rumble among the crew. Saint-Michael quieted them down, then went on. “The idea of an invasion of Iran may sound farfetched, but to me, at least, it makes sense. Iran is in a state of transition. Its people are deeply divided between the old Khomeini Islamic fundamentalists and those who genuinely want to reestablish ties with the West. The prolonged war with Iraq has weakened the country’s defenses. The point is, Iran is ripe for the picking.”
“So what are we supposed to do, General?” Kevin Baker asked. Baker looked ten years younger than his actual age of sixty-five as he stood in a nylon athletic warm-up suit, fresh out of the vacuum- shower after sixteen hours in space working on the station’s Thor garage. “What are the orders from Washington?”
“I’m not talking about orders from Washington. This idea is mine. As I think you know, I have a good deal of discretionary authority when it comes to the operation of this station. I use it to avoid waste, accelerate research and development and make this station the most effective military unit of its kind. At least that’s what I try to do. But it’s been my feeling that Armstrong’s great potential has been going to waste. We spend more energy on systems to defend ourselves than we do on providing a necessary strategic warning or tracking capability for Space Command. Now we have an opportunity to provide that capability, so I need input from you. Let’s hear it.”
“It’ll eat up tons of fuel,” Marks put in. He made a fast mental calculation. “It’ll mean sideslipping the station... at about nine hundred miles every hour.”
“So?”
“So!” Saint-Michael had to work to hide a wry smile—he had just activated Marks’s mental microprocessors....
“Sir, it takes three hundred pounds of liquid hydrogen and oxygen a week for station attitude adjustments—which equates to approximately three hundred miles worth of movement. You’re proposing to move the station nine hundred miles laterally an hour. That’s an extra nine hundred pounds of propellant an hour. That’s”—a slight pause —“twenty-one thousand, six hundred pounds of fuel per day. One- third of a shuttle cargo flight full of fuel—one-fourth of an Agena-Three vessel....”
“If the proposal is approved,” Saint-Michael said, “there’ll be a two-per-week resupply sortie. An Agena-Three unmanned cargo module can supply us with four day’s worth of fuel.”
“Why an elliptical orbit, General?” Walker asked. “An elliptical orbit only gives you a look once a day at most. An equatorial orbit will give you a look several times a day.”
“I did some wagging on the computer,” Saint-Michael said. “A one-hundred-and-fifty-nautical-mile equatorial orbit will place us over two thousand miles from the recon target area. That’s the space-based radar’s extreme range limit. I believe it’ll be worth the extra fuel to set up an elliptical orbit, especially if it’s adjusted for earth rotation —an equatorial orbit can’t be adjusted.”
Saint-Michael stepped back to his chart, pointing toward the rectangle marking the recon target area. “It’ll be dicey,” he said quietly. “Even without the threat of a Soviet invasion of Iran or a U.S.-USSR confrontation, we’ll be orbiting over the worst possible place on earth. We’ll be flying almost directly over the Soviet Union’s primary antisatellite unit at Tyuratam, and the Sary Shagan Missile Test Center on Lake Baikash, where the Soviets supposedly have an active antisatellite and antiballistic missile laser—”
“Not ‘supposedly,’ General,” Ann put in. “A laser powerful enough to blind satellites definitely has been in operation there for twenty years. The intelligence reports are underestimates. The Russians have a functional antisatellite laser system at Sary Shagan, maybe powerful enough to damage this station.”
“There’s little chance of that, Dr. Page,” Jefferson said. “This station is heavily armored. After all, that’s why it’s called Silver Tower. The titanium-silver armor is stronger than—”
“Jake, the nickname is sort of outdated,” Walker interrupted. “Only the original pressurized modules have the armoring, not the add-on center beam, radar arrays, fuel tanks or solar arrays.”
“Right,” Ann said, “that laser at Sary Shegan could slice through every unprotected device like butter.”
There was a moment of silence, then Saint-Michael turned to Colonel Marks. “Wayne, could the electrolysis unit handle seven extra thousand gallons of water per day?”
“Easy,” Marks said. “The unit was designed for a station twice the size of Silver Tower.” The electrolysis unit, powered by the huge solar arrays, converted Silver Tower’s fuel—plain seawater—into hydrogen and oxygen gas. Radiators, perpetually facing away from the sun toward the minus-three-hundred-degree coldness of space, then condensed the gases into liquids for storage, or pumps simply sent the gases into the station’s four positioning engines to adjust the station’s orbit and attitude. One unmanned Agena-Three supply tanker carrying sixty thousand pounds of water from earth would be enough for satellite, shuttle, and hypersonic plane refuelings and full station operation for a month.
“General, will moving the station interfere with any further Skybolt tests?” Ann asked. “I’ll be ready for another free beam-test in three days. If things go well I’ll be ready for another Agena-Three live-fire target test in a week.”
Saint-Michael paused. “Sorry, Ann, but I have to recommend to Space Command that the Skybolt test be postponed for now. We’d be sure to catch hell for firing the laser so close to the Soviet Union’s ICBM fields.”
“General,” she said quietly, too quietly, “we all worked very hard to advance this project ahead of schedule after the first partial-power test failed. In my opinion, sir, a successful Skybolt test should claim higher priority than an unsolicited recon mission.”
“Your comment is noted, and now—”
“Then I have your assurance, General, that my objection will be given equal weight with your own arguments when you make your proposal to Space Command.”
“As commander of this station I’m obliged to include recommendations and advice from all members of my crew. I am not, however, required to give assurances to anyone ” He turned to Colonel Marks. “Wayne, I’d like you to double-check my figures on the proposed orbit and fuel calculations. Colonel Walker, get together with Wayne and set up a rough resupply schedule system using both shuttle and Agenas.” He took a deep breath. “Dr. Page, please outline the delays in your program and any potential problems caused by the delays.”
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