Brown, Dale - Independent 01 (15 page)

           
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
?”