by Bova, Ben
No time for sightseeing, Dan told himself sternly. The broad surface of the powersat was studded with cleats, handholds where safety tethers could be attached. Dan had no time for that. He grabbed the nearest cleat and began pulling himself down the hundred-yard-thick edge of the satellite, heading for its underside and the bulbous enclosure of the control station, zipping along from one handhold to the next like a speeding torpedo.
“Hey, boss, you’re supposed to use the tether!” a distressed voice sounded in his earphones.
“You use ’em,” Dan said. “I’m in a hurry.”
Back when he had worked for Yamagata, Dan had won bets from other workers in sprints across smaller structures. He grinned to himself. I haven’t lost the knack.
But then he saw two other figures in dull orange spacesuits heading for the control station, coming up from the other direction. This is going to be a race, after all, he said to himself.
Although Denny O‘Brien was in terrible physical shape, his mind was sharp. While the president droned on, O’Brien pushed through the crowd toward the nearest Secret Service agent. There may have been a dozen others that he didn’t notice, but this guy had the stone face, the special eyeglasses, and the sports jacket that covered his Uzi, despite the wilting heat.
“I’m Senator Thornton’s senior aide,” O’Brien said breathlessly, holding his plastic ID under the agent’s nose. “I’ve just got word there’s an assassination attempt going down.”
The agent’s stone face went slack-jawed.
“Who’s in charge? We’ve gotta get the president to safety right away!”
Dr. Supartha could not believe her eyes. Usually the emergency room was fairly quiet on a holiday afternoon; it wasn’t until the night shift that the drunks got themselves into accidents or fights. But here in the middle of the afternoon, almost a dozen people had come into the hospital, seven of them already dead, all of them showing the strangest symptoms.
Dr. Supartha had thought it merely a coincidence when the first two came to her attention. Heat prostration? She shook her head. The outward symptoms might have suggested that, but this was something far different, far worse.
By the gods, she thought, these poor devils look as if they’d been cooked.
There was always the danger of missing the next cleat and going sailing off the powersat out into space, Dan thought as he sped along toward the control station. Without a tether to anchor you, you’d go sailing into the wild black yonder forever. Unless one of your buddies came out and picked you up.
No time to worry about that. Those two strangers were heading for the control station, and they weren’t up here to do any good. They’ve already replaced our antenna and moved the satellite to aim at Washington.
Jane’s there! he suddenly realized. These bastards could kill her!
He redoubled his efforts to get to the control station before they did. In his helmet earphones he heard Adair and the others shouting to him, warning him that he was taking foolish chances. Yeah, he answered silently. Let me slow down and play it safe while they wipe out Washington with Jane in it.
A Secret Service agent slipped up beside the president and placed a handwritten note on the rostrum.
The president glared at the woman, angry at the interruption, then glanced at the note. And paled.
He bit his lip for a moment, then looked up at the audience. “Ladies and gentlemen, please excuse me. An emergency has come up and I must return to the White House immediately. Thank you.”
The crowd stood stunned as the president abruptly turned away from the rostrum and a squad of Secret Service agents surrounded him.
Jane Thornton was just as puzzled as everyone else. For a few moments she stood beneath the protective awning, not knowing what to do. She turned to Quinn, who looked just as confused as she felt. Then she saw Denny O‘Brien struggling through the crowd toward her, waving his cell phone in one extended arm like a signal. As she watched, O’Brien staggered and sank to his knees, his suit obviously sopping with perspiration.
And others were dropping to the browning grass, all around him.
MARSEILLE
“It’s working!” al-Bashir clapped his hands with a loud smack. “Look! Look!” He pointed to the TV screen.
Pandemonium had broken out at Arlington National Cemetery. People were falling to the ground by the dozens, by the hundreds. The TV cameras’ picture became grainy, splotched with interference.
“But the president is getting away,” said the Egyptian, standing beside al-Bashir.
With a grim smile, al-Bashir replied, “Let them bundle him into his limousine. The metal shell of the limo will serve as an oven very nicely.”
The Egyptian nodded, then turned back to the technicians at their laptops. One by one, he checked them and satisfied himself that the satellite was still beaming out power and still aimed at Arlington.
Al-Bashir was practically dancing across the basement floor. “In an hour, at most, the vice president will order their military to blow the powersat out of the sky.”
“And the evidence of our work will be destroyed,” said the Egyptian.
“Exactly,” said al-Bashir. “They will never know that this was a deliberate attack on them. They will think the satellite malfunctioned. This will kill the idea of solar power satellites forever!”
“A great victory,” the Egyptian admitted.
“Indeed.”
Al-Bashir headed for the door that led to the stairway.
“You’re not waiting to see what happens now?” the Egyptian asked.
“No need. It is written. Now I go to reap the fruits of victory.”
The Egyptian nodded, barely. He knew that al-Bashir had brought a woman with him.
“I will remain here,” he said to al-Bashir’s back. “I will monitor the situation until it ends.”
Al-Bashir waved a hand in acknowledgment, thinking, The man is an engineer through and through. He wants to make certain of every last detail.
The Egyptian, meanwhile, was thinking of a dictum he had heard from some American funnyman: It’s not over until it’s over.
Dan was racing across the broad surface of the powersat, flicking hand over hand along the cleats, heading for the control station. One thought burned in his mind, They’re trying to kill Jane. These sons of bitches are trying to kill Jane.
In his helmet earphones he heard Adair and the others of his crew calling to him, urging him to slow down, to be careful.
“You’re gonna get yourself killed, boss!” Adair warned.
The hell I am, Dan replied silently, puffing too hard to speak aloud.
He could see the two cosmonauts in their dirty orange suits making their way to the control station. The bastards had a head start, but Dan was catching up swiftly.
Then he heard one of his crew saying sternly, “You two are trespassing on private property! Identify yourselves immediately!”
Dan almost laughed. I didn’t realize we had a double-damned lawyer in the crew. The intruders did not respond. Probably their suit radios are on completely different frequencies from ours, he reasoned.
He knew what had happened, and with the clarity born of a massive adrenaline surge he understood exactly what the intruders were going to do. They had already concentrated the microwave beam being broadcast by the powersat and maneuvered its attitude thrusters so that the beam was pouring onto Washington. Now they were heading for the control station to wreck the controls and prevent Dan and his crew from turning off the power.
At Arlington National Cemetery hundreds were collapsing onto the grass while a squad of Secret Service agents huddled around the president beneath the heavy plastic canopy that stretched over the speakers’ platform.
Jane stared at Denny O’Brien’s prostrate form, his cell phone still grasped in his dead fingers.
“What’s happening?” Quill asked, his usual unflappable calm completely shattered. He looked frightened, dazed, as he hunched on his knees in the mass
of terrified, whimpering VIPs.
“Get down!” said one of the Secret Service agents. “Somebody’s shooting out there!”
Jane remained on her feet and pulled her cell phone from her shoulder purse. Turning it on, she saw that she had received a call from Matagorda. She pecked at the recall button.
Harsh static hissed in her ear. Then a voice she didn’t recognize, high and tight with tension, answered, “Who is this?”
“Senator Thornton,” Jane replied.
“Thank god and all his saints,” said Lynn Van Buren. “I’ve been trying to reach you. The powersat’s gone wonky. It’s beaming microwaves at you. High intensity.”
“I’m with the president—”
“Is he safe?”
“So far. They’re going to take him—”
“Don’t move him!” Van Buren snapped. “If he’s protected from the microwaves where he is, don’t move him! For god’s sake, don’t put him in a limo or any other car. That’d be like sticking him in a microwave oven!”
Jane felt an ice-cool calm envelope her. Now that she knew what was happening, she knew what to do.
“Stay on the line. I’m going to give this phone to the head of the president’s security detail.”
The chief of the Secret Service bodyguards was also on his feet, an Uzi cocked in his right hand, scanning the crowd. He was saying into the pin mike at his lips, “I don’t see any shooters.”
Jane stood before him. “You know who I am?”
“Senator Thornton, yes.”
She shoved the phone at him. “There aren’t any shooters. We’re being baked by a microwave beam from the power satellite.”
“What?”
“Listen to what this woman has to say,” Jane said, thrusting the phone into his empty hand. “She’s from Astro Corporation, in Texas—the people who built the satellite.”
April felt her insides jump as al-Bashir came through the bedroom doorway. She stood tensed by the open French windows that led onto the flower-rimmed balcony.
“Still in the same dress?” he asked, looking slightly disappointed. “I thought you would have showered and changed by now.”
April had examined the clothes hanging in the closet. Nothing but slinky, sheer stuff. “I’m not a Playboy model,” she said.
Al-Bashir ignored her sarcasm. “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting. I had business to attend to. Important business.”
“I’d like to go home, Mr. al-Bashir,” she said as firmly as she could manage.
His smile turned smug. “I don’t think that would be advisable under the circumstances.”
“I don’t know how you brought me here,” April said, feeling like a trapped animal. “I mean, I never agreed to come here with you.”
“Yet here you are.”
There was a light rap on the door. Al-Bashir opened it, and the Asian woman came in, dressed in a miniskirted skintight outfit, pushing a rolling cart covered with a damask tablecloth. It bore a dinner for two in covered dishes, an ice bucket containing a bottle of champagne, and two long-stemmed glasses.
In silence, the woman wheeled the cart to the middle of the room, then looked questioningly at al-Bashir.
“You may go,” he told her, “for now. I’ll call you when we’re ready for you.”
April felt icicles prickling along her spine.
“Look, Mr. al-Bashir—” she began.
“Call me Asim.”
“I didn’t ask to be brought here, and I’d like to go back home. Right now.”
Al-Bashir shook his head pityingly. “I don’t think you’d like to be back in that pig’s nest in Texas, April. It’s going to be very ugly there. In a few hours mobs will be tearing down Astro Corporation and looking for Dan Randolph’s blood.”
Her knees went weak. “What? What do you mean?”
“Several thousand Americans have been killed, including the president of the United States, very possibly. They were all killed by Dan Randolph’s power satellite.”
April sagged down onto the bed, speechless. Smiling contentedly, al-Bashir went to the champagne bottle and began undoing its cork.
POWERSAT
Williamson saw the American in his snow-white spacesuit racing like a lunatic toward the control station. But the bugger’s too late, Williamson told himself. He and Bouchachi reached the hatch of the domed enclosure well ahead of the Yank.
“You stay at the hatch and hold him off,” Williamson told Bouchachi. “I’ll go in and knock out the controls so they can’t turn the power off.”
“Hold him off?” Bouchachi asked, his voice little more than a squeak in Williamson’s earphones. “How? With what?”
Williamson considered giving the Algerian the knife he’d used on the cosmonaut, but thought better of it. Better save it in case I need it, he said to himself. Tapping the array of wrenches and other tools attached to Bouchachi’s belt, he said, “Whack him on the helmet hard enough to crack it open.”
“But the others!” Bouchachi pointed to the half-dozen other Americans making their way slowly, hand over hand, toward them.
“By the time they get here it’ll be too late.”
“But they’ll kill us!”
“We’re goin’ to die anyway, right? In another little while you’ll be in Paradise, chum, with your seventy-two virgins.”
Williamson ducked through the hatch, into the control station. Bouchachi turned and saw that the American was only a bare few meters away. He fumbled at his waist for the biggest wrench he had.
Too late. The American launched himself like a missile at Bouchachi. The two spacesuited men collided soundlessly. Bouchachi felt the wind knocked out of his lungs. He grappled with the American, trying to keep him away from the hatch, and they both went sailing, tumbling head over heels, across the broad expanse of the powersat.
Dan wrenched one arm free of his opponent and grabbed a cleat. He felt his shoulder pop from the sudden strain; a streak of agony ran along his whole right side. The other guy was hanging on to him with both arms, their helmets bumping. Dan could see that the guy was some sort of Arab.
With his free left hand Dan reached behind the guy’s helmet and pawed at the strap holding the man’s life-support backpack. The guy’s eyes went frantic and he pushed away from Dan. Still hanging onto the cleat despite the pain in his shoulder, Dan pulled up both his booted feet and kicked the bastard in the gut as hard as he could. The man went spinning away, arms and legs flailing as he tumbled off into space, dwindling rapidly in the distance.
With his usable left hand, Dan made his way from cleat to cleat until he was at the hatch of the control station.
The other intruder was inside the dome, his boots hooked into foot loops on the floor, his body half bent in the simian crouch that people unconsciously assume in zero gravity. The only light inside the dome was from the control board’s colored display screens and lighted gauges. Dan saw it reflecting off the intruder’s helmet. He was poring over the board, Dan realized, trying to figure out how to disable the controls. Then he pulled a sizable wrench from the tool set at his belt.
He’s going to smash everything! Dan saw.
With a roar that the intruder couldn’t hear Dan launched himself at the man headfirst, banging into him and sending the two of them bouncing off the curving wall of the tight little control dome. Fresh agonies of pain shot through Dan’s right shoulder. Where the hell’s the rest of my gang? he wondered as he recoiled away from the intruder.
The bastard still had the wrench in his fist, and he pushed off the wall to fly straight at Dan.
With a grim smile, Dan realized that this bozo didn’t know shit about fighting in zero-g. Flicking his boots against the loops studding the floor, Dan edged sideways and his attacker sailed right past him and into the other side of the dome. He bounced away, turned an inadvertent somersault, then righted himself and faced Dan again.
By now Dan had moved to the control panel, standing in front of it. “You want to wreck the
controls,” he said, knowing the other couldn’t hear him, “you’ll have to get past me first.”
The intruder hesitated, hanging weightlessly a few inches above the floor. He threw the wrench at Dan, sending himself into a hopeless spin. Dan caught the wrench in his good hand and hefted it menacingly. “Thanks, pal. Now come on over here so I can give it back to you.”
But there was a knife in the man’s gloved hand now. Dan saw its slim blade glint in the faint light from the control screens.
Anchoring one boot in a foot loop, Dan hurled the wrench back at the intruder. The man ducked in reflex action, and the motion started him tumbling again. Dan glided out from the foot loop and slipped behind the flailing intruder, locking his legs around the guy’s waist and grabbing his knife hand. The two of them bucked and banged off the control board and the dome’s curving wall for what seemed like an hour to Dan.
At last he heard Adair’s voice, “What’s going on here, a rodeo?”
“Ride him, boss!”
“Christ, the sumbitch’s got a knife!”
All six of Dan’s crew jammed into the dome and overpowered Williamson. One of the women ended up with the knife.
“Why don’t we just stick this up his ass?” she snarled. Dan was already at the controls, shutting down the magnetrons. “Uh-uh. We want him alive and able to answer questions.”
One by one, in swift succession, Dan turned off the magnetrons, poking at the control board with his left hand. A string of red lights sprang across the control board. His right shoulder was flaming with pain now, as the adrenaline ebbed out of his blood.
“Radio Van Buren and verify that we’ve turned off the power,” Dan said, suddenly so tired and hurting that he wanted to curl up and go to sleep.