'Well, what about this business of sidereal time then: what do you make of that?' asked Gantt, attempting to head off Leems's negativism.
'That's one of the crucial issues we would like to raise with this group,' Isaacs replied to him. 'The timing seems to be so special that it must be an important clue, but we haven't been able to utilize it. Perhaps we could get some comment now from you.' He swung his hand in invitation around the room.
'Well, Alex — what the hell?' Gantt turned to address Runyan on the sofa.
Runyan scratched his thick beard. 'I'm working on it,' he replied in a testy tone overlaid with humour, picking up the cue from Gantt. There was a general chuckle. 'The sidereal tune would normally indicate an extraterrestrial source. That seems outlandish in this context, but I guess we should kick it around. I deduce we're under attack by an extraterrestrial army stationed on Alpha Cancri aiming tachyonic earthquake beams at us.' The chuckles turned to guffaws. Isaacs smiled wryly, recalling his own fatigued fantasy.
Noldt asked, 'How about a Jupiter effect? Is there an alignment of planets that would cause a tidal or some other effect which would be associated with a fixed direction in the sky?'
'Jupiter effect?' Isaacs queried and Gantt turned to answer him.
'The Jupiter effect is supposed to be a terrestrial upheaval associated with an alignment of the great planets every two hundred years. One version has it that this alignment causes solar storms which eject particles affecting the polar atmosphere. Associated changes in air pressure are supposed to trigger earthquakes.'
'I don't believe any of that,' Gantt went on, 'and have even more difficulty seeing how it could enter here. The regular tides should swamp any such effect. I suppose this might be a resonance of some kind, but it would have to be completely unprecedented.'
'Where's Jupiter now?' asked Runyan. 'Would you have noticed a change due to its motion over the time base you have?'
Isaacs deferred to Danielson. 'Jupiter is about forty degrees away from the direction we're talking about,' Danielson replied. 'That may not mean anything if a resonance is involved. A preferred direction that's a mean of the moon and the sun and Jupiter might be involved. Over the last three months the earth has moved far enough to rule out a preferred direction with respect to the sun, but Jupiter moves more slowly. I'm not sure we could rule that out.'
'Jupiter would have moved through two or three degrees,' Runyan stated, having done a quick mental calculation.
'That's a shift of over a hundred miles along the earth's surface,' Danielson replied. 'If that's the case, we can just about eliminate the possibility of alignment of the trajectory we see with the position of Jupiter.'
Runyan continued thinking out loud. 'The twenty-three degree angle of the earth's equator with respect to the ecliptic is purely random — there's no other solar system or astronomical connection — ruling out the accidental location of Polaris. A fixed angle of thirty-three degrees with respect to the earth's equator means even less. This thing has to be basically terrestrial. And yet sidereal. I'll put it back to Ellison. What the hell?'
'How do you know the Russians aren't behind this somehow?' Leems asked. 'It seems like some kind of beam technology could be involved, and they invented the techniques. A satellite could be rigged to fire at a precise point in orbit so that it would look as if it always fired from the same position with respect to the stars. As Alex just said, terrestrial, but sidereal. They might do such a thing just to throw us off the mark. I point out that the eighty minute period you report is very close to the time for a satellite to orbit the earth.'
'That's short, though, Harvey ,' said Runyan. 'A satellite takes closer to ninety minutes.'
'Use an array of satellites then.' He turned to Isaacs.
'You have checked the location of Russian satellites, haven't you?'
'No, that hadn't occurred to me -'
'I'm sure you'll remedy that oversight at the first opportunity, ' Leems interrupted.
Isaacs gritted his teeth and Danielson came to his defence.
'But that doesn't make any sense,' she said. 'Why would they use any such weapon on their own ship? And wouldn't we know if they had some technique for generating seismic tremors deep inside the earth?'
'I don't suppose we know everything the Russians are up to,' said Leems with a patronizing tone. 'Perhaps they shot their own ship to embroil us in the very scandal you alluded to.'
Danielson leaned slowly back in her chair, her face flushed. Isaacs shook his head slowly.
Quiet fell on the group momentarily, then Fletcher spoke. 'Alex, you were joking a while ago, but it got me thinking.' He looked around at his colleagues. 'Apparently, none of us can propose a natural explanation to account for the evidence presented: the seismic signals, the sonar signals, the suggestion that something is boring small holes through the earth itself. I can't buy Harvey 's suggestion that it is some Russian plot. There are too many weird aspects. I think we must seriously consider another possibility. Suppose that we aren't dealing with either a natural or a man-made phenomenon?' A deep silence filled the room. 'Suppose there is a, well, an external intelligence behind this?'
The silence continued as Fletcher's words probed a queasy, sensitive spot in each member of Jason. Trained as scientists, they sought to explain the world around them with the simplest rational extension of previous knowledge, but each knew their knowledge had bounds, limits. Each knew the rules of the game could be changed and their carefully honed intuition would be of little use. Each looked for and craved a simple solution, but each knew there was a chance, however small, that Fletcher could be right. They could be facing a situation so fundamentally different than anything they had encountered previously that their training and experience could be meaningless.
'Are you suggesting that there's an extraterrestrial intent behind these occurrences?' asked Plumps. His tone was incredulous. There were mutterings of dissatisfaction around the room.
'None of us here are UFO fanatics,' pressed Fletcher, 'least of all me. But we all know you can't prove a negative; we can't prove other intelligent civilizations don't exist. We know there are a few standard clichй concerning how such civilizations are to be discovered, radio emissions and all that. But I convinced myself long ago that guessing at the character of an extraterrestrial civilization by extrapolating the human condition is an exercise in futility. We have no basis for estimating the sociological and cultural evolution of an alien society even if we all obey the same physics.
'All I want to do is to raise the possibility. If we can rationally rule it out, or develop a preferred alternative, then so be it.'
'It doesn't make sense,' proclaimed Ted Noldt. 'If there were an intelligence at work, we should be able to discern a purpose. What we've heard about here, holes drilled through ships, is no benign attempt at communication. It's certainly not overwhelmingly destructive either, an overt act of aggression. What could the purpose possibly be?'
'That's just my point,' retorted Fletcher. 'You're not asking a question of physics, but one of motivation. I submit we're unlikely to fathom any but the most transparent of motives — as you said, peaceful communication or war. The true possibilities are limited only by our imaginations. Suppose they're prospecting? Suppose we're seeing the effect of some probe and our existence here is totally immaterial to them? We could be like an anthill which is accidentally in the way of a geologist's test well as he searches for oil. Your first reaction was to think they must be for us or against us. Maybe they don't give a damn.
'Or maybe it's a test,' Fletcher continued, trying to think of unorthodox possibilities. 'Maybe we're dealing with a bunch of extraterrestrial behavioural psychologists who just want to provoke us in a certain way and study our reactions.' Fletcher looked from man to man, defensive but determined to make his point.
'How can we possibly know what their purpose is? I certainly don't.'
Ellison Gantt then spoke up. 'l. think earl feels backed into a corner. Let me take a different tack. I agree with him that we should at least consider this possibility, and that an attempt to fathom motives may be premature. Suppose we assume for the moment that some influence is being boomed at us from a fixed point in space. Is there any way to determine what that influence is and where it's coming from? Could it be something with which we are basically familiar, like a laser or a particle beam?'
'I can speak to that. In fact, I'd been mulling over that very question,' said Vladimir Zicek, his speech hissing with East European sibilants. 'Any orthodox beam device would have a different signature than what has been described here. That is, one can imagine boring a hole from one side of the earth to the other with an exceedingly powerful beam, but one of the characteristics of the present phenomenon is that for half the cycle it goes from north to south, but on the other half it proceeds in the opposite direction. No external beam can do that. A beam must always propagate away from its source.'
'Hmmm, perhaps not a beam in that sense then,' said Fletcher thoughtfully. 'What if some focusing principle is involved? A diffuse source of energy which is brought to a concentrated focus along a certain path. Maybe the source of energy isn't along the line of the trajectory, but transverse to it.'
Fletcher lifted an imaginary rifle to his shoulder and strafed back and forth a few times. Several of those along his line of sight lunched involuntarily. Fletcher stopped squinting through the sight.
'Maybe a neutrino beam?'
There were several loud voices raised in simultaneous assent and dissent. A general hubbub ensued.
Wayne Plumps sensed that it was necessary to assimilate all that they had heard and called for quiet.
'Perhaps this is a good time to take a break for refreshments, ' he said. 'Let's resume our deliberations in half an hour.'
Against a rising background of chatter, the group stood, filed into the hall and down the stairs to a room where coffee, tea, and some cookies were set out.
Phillips escorted Isaacs and Danielson as they queued up. He made a small ceremony of preparing a cup of coffee for Danielson, ensuring she had the desired ingredients, a couple of cookies, and a napkin. She thanked him and then moved off by herself, motivated partly by a desire to be alone to contemplate the afternoon's developments and partly by a suspicion that Isaacs and Plumps would appreciate a chance to converse privately. She stood by a window looking over the parking lot and the playing field beyond, cradling her cup and saucer and munching on the cookies.
'That's crazy,' she heard Leems's voice rising disdainfully over the chatter. 'All the more reason to look to satellites in orbit, one to fire one direction, and another to fire a return shot in the opposite direction. That would solve Zicek's objection.'
A bit later she made out Runyan in a more conversational tone.
' — good idea, Carl, couldn't hurt to have astronomers look in that direction. Very deep photographs taken with telescopes on Mauna Kea and in Chile. Who knows what we might see. Maybe I'll call some friends, see what they can do.'
Runyan, speaking to earl Fletcher and Ted Noldt, lowered his voice to a conspiratorial level.
'In fact, the first step is to make sure I have the precise coordinates.'
He winked at them and crossed over towards where Danielson was standing, his thongs flapping on the floor.
Fletcher leaned over to whisper to Noldt.
'Doesn't take him long, does it?'
Noldt smiled into his coffee and shook his head.
As Runyan approached her, Danielson finished her last cookie and wiped her fingers awkwardly on the napkin which she held under the saucer. The gesture attracted Runyan's eyes to her waist where she held the cup. Out of habit, his gaze continued down her legs and then back past her breasts to her face which was in profile to him. Taking pleasure from the innocent voyeurism, he stopped at arm's length from her.
'A pretty little problem you've posed for us here.'
Danielson turned, a reflex smile of recognition brightening her face. She took a sip of cooling coffee and glanced out the window before replying.
'I thought we were on to something significant from the beginning, but I have to confess I don't know what to make of some of the ideas we just heard.' She faced him again. 'Beams from outer space. Could that possibly be true?'
'What do you think?'
She laughed lightly, chiding herself.
'I suppose that somewhere in the back of my mind that possibility had been flitting around since I first discovered the fixed orientation in space. I've been refusing to recognize it because it seems so outrageous, but not unthinkable.'
'I suspect most of us feel the same way,' he returned her laugh and laid two fingers on her forearm, a small intimate gesture. 'But we're taking a break here. Tell me about yourself. How did you get into the intelligence game?'
Danielson looked down at his hand. The fingers were those of a craftsman, large and gnarled, ungainly to look at, but capable of deft, intricate movement. She raised her eyes to his face and enjoyed the way his grey-green eyes reflected a sense of humour and well-being.
'Not much to tell -' she began.
While Runyan entertained Danielson with small talk, Isaacs and Plumps discussed the developments of the afternoon and their options for the remainder of the day. Isaacs was not pleased by any of the ideas he had heard. Plumps suggested gently that they should allow the brain— storming to continue until they either ran out of ideas or found one on which there was some consensus. They were interrupted by a woman who announced a phone call for Isaacs. He raised his eyebrows at Plumps and followed the woman out.
He returned several minutes later and headed for Danielson, his face grim. He interrupted Runyan in the middle of a funny story, and addressed Danielson.
'There's an emergency,' he said brusquely. 'We've got to get back to Washington.'
As Danielson looked at Runyan with uncertainty, Isaacs turned to Phillips.
'I'm very sorry, but we must go. Something has come up. I'm grateful for your time today.'
'We're happy to be of service, of course. Your problem has intrigued us, and I'm sure we'll continue to discuss it.' 'I hope you will. I'll be in touch as soon as I can.'
Isaacs hustled Danielson around as they gathered up their things and escorted her to the car.
He drove quickly in great concentration for several minutes until he was sure of his course. Then he glanced at her.
'That was Bill Bans. The Russians have made their next move. They've surrounded our nuclear satellite with a pack of hunter-killer satellites.'
'What will they do?'
'Not clear. Bans has called the crisis team for this afternoon to try to get the basic facts together. We'll meet again first thing tomorrow morning and try to anticipate them. If they hold off that long. Damn! McMasters will wonder where the hell I am.'
He drove in silence again for a while.
'That was a very good presentation you gave today,' he said, keeping his eyes on the road. 'You convinced them we've got a real problem. And thanks for coming to my defence when that bastard Leems got on my back.'
'This can't really be a Russian weapon, can it?' she asked. 'Sure doesn't smell right to me, but we should check satellite locations just as Leems said.'
Danielson began to contemplate how she could obtain and sort Soviet satellite positions. They were quiet the rest of the way to the airport.
There were problems getting their reservations changed. They spent an hour and a half in the terminal amid crowds that prevented any discussion of their mission. Danielson could tell Isaacs was tense and fretful. The visit with the Jason team had been intriguing, but inconclusive, and the move of the Russians had caught him up short. If he had been in Washington he would have assembled the crisis team, not left it to Saris. Danielson sympathized with the anxiety she knew Isaacs felt. CIA officials had a right in principle to their free time, but they had better be on the spot when an emergency cropped up, never mind off on another coast suborning Agency policy. Danielson felt exposed herself.
The only seats they could get were several rows apart in the crowded midsection of the red-eye flight. Jet lag and strain caught up with Danielson. She napped most of the way. Isaacs was trapped between a talkative matron and a young mother, squirmy babe in lap. He stared grimly ahead through the whole flight, trying in his fatigue to think.
Chapter 9
'That's one of the crucial issues we would like to raise with this group,' Isaacs replied to him. 'The timing seems to be so special that it must be an important clue, but we haven't been able to utilize it. Perhaps we could get some comment now from you.' He swung his hand in invitation around the room.
'Well, Alex — what the hell?' Gantt turned to address Runyan on the sofa.
Runyan scratched his thick beard. 'I'm working on it,' he replied in a testy tone overlaid with humour, picking up the cue from Gantt. There was a general chuckle. 'The sidereal tune would normally indicate an extraterrestrial source. That seems outlandish in this context, but I guess we should kick it around. I deduce we're under attack by an extraterrestrial army stationed on Alpha Cancri aiming tachyonic earthquake beams at us.' The chuckles turned to guffaws. Isaacs smiled wryly, recalling his own fatigued fantasy.
Noldt asked, 'How about a Jupiter effect? Is there an alignment of planets that would cause a tidal or some other effect which would be associated with a fixed direction in the sky?'
'Jupiter effect?' Isaacs queried and Gantt turned to answer him.
'The Jupiter effect is supposed to be a terrestrial upheaval associated with an alignment of the great planets every two hundred years. One version has it that this alignment causes solar storms which eject particles affecting the polar atmosphere. Associated changes in air pressure are supposed to trigger earthquakes.'
'I don't believe any of that,' Gantt went on, 'and have even more difficulty seeing how it could enter here. The regular tides should swamp any such effect. I suppose this might be a resonance of some kind, but it would have to be completely unprecedented.'
'Where's Jupiter now?' asked Runyan. 'Would you have noticed a change due to its motion over the time base you have?'
Isaacs deferred to Danielson. 'Jupiter is about forty degrees away from the direction we're talking about,' Danielson replied. 'That may not mean anything if a resonance is involved. A preferred direction that's a mean of the moon and the sun and Jupiter might be involved. Over the last three months the earth has moved far enough to rule out a preferred direction with respect to the sun, but Jupiter moves more slowly. I'm not sure we could rule that out.'
'Jupiter would have moved through two or three degrees,' Runyan stated, having done a quick mental calculation.
'That's a shift of over a hundred miles along the earth's surface,' Danielson replied. 'If that's the case, we can just about eliminate the possibility of alignment of the trajectory we see with the position of Jupiter.'
Runyan continued thinking out loud. 'The twenty-three degree angle of the earth's equator with respect to the ecliptic is purely random — there's no other solar system or astronomical connection — ruling out the accidental location of Polaris. A fixed angle of thirty-three degrees with respect to the earth's equator means even less. This thing has to be basically terrestrial. And yet sidereal. I'll put it back to Ellison. What the hell?'
'How do you know the Russians aren't behind this somehow?' Leems asked. 'It seems like some kind of beam technology could be involved, and they invented the techniques. A satellite could be rigged to fire at a precise point in orbit so that it would look as if it always fired from the same position with respect to the stars. As Alex just said, terrestrial, but sidereal. They might do such a thing just to throw us off the mark. I point out that the eighty minute period you report is very close to the time for a satellite to orbit the earth.'
'That's short, though, Harvey ,' said Runyan. 'A satellite takes closer to ninety minutes.'
'Use an array of satellites then.' He turned to Isaacs.
'You have checked the location of Russian satellites, haven't you?'
'No, that hadn't occurred to me -'
'I'm sure you'll remedy that oversight at the first opportunity, ' Leems interrupted.
Isaacs gritted his teeth and Danielson came to his defence.
'But that doesn't make any sense,' she said. 'Why would they use any such weapon on their own ship? And wouldn't we know if they had some technique for generating seismic tremors deep inside the earth?'
'I don't suppose we know everything the Russians are up to,' said Leems with a patronizing tone. 'Perhaps they shot their own ship to embroil us in the very scandal you alluded to.'
Danielson leaned slowly back in her chair, her face flushed. Isaacs shook his head slowly.
Quiet fell on the group momentarily, then Fletcher spoke. 'Alex, you were joking a while ago, but it got me thinking.' He looked around at his colleagues. 'Apparently, none of us can propose a natural explanation to account for the evidence presented: the seismic signals, the sonar signals, the suggestion that something is boring small holes through the earth itself. I can't buy Harvey 's suggestion that it is some Russian plot. There are too many weird aspects. I think we must seriously consider another possibility. Suppose that we aren't dealing with either a natural or a man-made phenomenon?' A deep silence filled the room. 'Suppose there is a, well, an external intelligence behind this?'
The silence continued as Fletcher's words probed a queasy, sensitive spot in each member of Jason. Trained as scientists, they sought to explain the world around them with the simplest rational extension of previous knowledge, but each knew their knowledge had bounds, limits. Each knew the rules of the game could be changed and their carefully honed intuition would be of little use. Each looked for and craved a simple solution, but each knew there was a chance, however small, that Fletcher could be right. They could be facing a situation so fundamentally different than anything they had encountered previously that their training and experience could be meaningless.
'Are you suggesting that there's an extraterrestrial intent behind these occurrences?' asked Plumps. His tone was incredulous. There were mutterings of dissatisfaction around the room.
'None of us here are UFO fanatics,' pressed Fletcher, 'least of all me. But we all know you can't prove a negative; we can't prove other intelligent civilizations don't exist. We know there are a few standard clichй concerning how such civilizations are to be discovered, radio emissions and all that. But I convinced myself long ago that guessing at the character of an extraterrestrial civilization by extrapolating the human condition is an exercise in futility. We have no basis for estimating the sociological and cultural evolution of an alien society even if we all obey the same physics.
'All I want to do is to raise the possibility. If we can rationally rule it out, or develop a preferred alternative, then so be it.'
'It doesn't make sense,' proclaimed Ted Noldt. 'If there were an intelligence at work, we should be able to discern a purpose. What we've heard about here, holes drilled through ships, is no benign attempt at communication. It's certainly not overwhelmingly destructive either, an overt act of aggression. What could the purpose possibly be?'
'That's just my point,' retorted Fletcher. 'You're not asking a question of physics, but one of motivation. I submit we're unlikely to fathom any but the most transparent of motives — as you said, peaceful communication or war. The true possibilities are limited only by our imaginations. Suppose they're prospecting? Suppose we're seeing the effect of some probe and our existence here is totally immaterial to them? We could be like an anthill which is accidentally in the way of a geologist's test well as he searches for oil. Your first reaction was to think they must be for us or against us. Maybe they don't give a damn.
'Or maybe it's a test,' Fletcher continued, trying to think of unorthodox possibilities. 'Maybe we're dealing with a bunch of extraterrestrial behavioural psychologists who just want to provoke us in a certain way and study our reactions.' Fletcher looked from man to man, defensive but determined to make his point.
'How can we possibly know what their purpose is? I certainly don't.'
Ellison Gantt then spoke up. 'l. think earl feels backed into a corner. Let me take a different tack. I agree with him that we should at least consider this possibility, and that an attempt to fathom motives may be premature. Suppose we assume for the moment that some influence is being boomed at us from a fixed point in space. Is there any way to determine what that influence is and where it's coming from? Could it be something with which we are basically familiar, like a laser or a particle beam?'
'I can speak to that. In fact, I'd been mulling over that very question,' said Vladimir Zicek, his speech hissing with East European sibilants. 'Any orthodox beam device would have a different signature than what has been described here. That is, one can imagine boring a hole from one side of the earth to the other with an exceedingly powerful beam, but one of the characteristics of the present phenomenon is that for half the cycle it goes from north to south, but on the other half it proceeds in the opposite direction. No external beam can do that. A beam must always propagate away from its source.'
'Hmmm, perhaps not a beam in that sense then,' said Fletcher thoughtfully. 'What if some focusing principle is involved? A diffuse source of energy which is brought to a concentrated focus along a certain path. Maybe the source of energy isn't along the line of the trajectory, but transverse to it.'
Fletcher lifted an imaginary rifle to his shoulder and strafed back and forth a few times. Several of those along his line of sight lunched involuntarily. Fletcher stopped squinting through the sight.
'Maybe a neutrino beam?'
There were several loud voices raised in simultaneous assent and dissent. A general hubbub ensued.
Wayne Plumps sensed that it was necessary to assimilate all that they had heard and called for quiet.
'Perhaps this is a good time to take a break for refreshments, ' he said. 'Let's resume our deliberations in half an hour.'
Against a rising background of chatter, the group stood, filed into the hall and down the stairs to a room where coffee, tea, and some cookies were set out.
Phillips escorted Isaacs and Danielson as they queued up. He made a small ceremony of preparing a cup of coffee for Danielson, ensuring she had the desired ingredients, a couple of cookies, and a napkin. She thanked him and then moved off by herself, motivated partly by a desire to be alone to contemplate the afternoon's developments and partly by a suspicion that Isaacs and Plumps would appreciate a chance to converse privately. She stood by a window looking over the parking lot and the playing field beyond, cradling her cup and saucer and munching on the cookies.
'That's crazy,' she heard Leems's voice rising disdainfully over the chatter. 'All the more reason to look to satellites in orbit, one to fire one direction, and another to fire a return shot in the opposite direction. That would solve Zicek's objection.'
A bit later she made out Runyan in a more conversational tone.
' — good idea, Carl, couldn't hurt to have astronomers look in that direction. Very deep photographs taken with telescopes on Mauna Kea and in Chile. Who knows what we might see. Maybe I'll call some friends, see what they can do.'
Runyan, speaking to earl Fletcher and Ted Noldt, lowered his voice to a conspiratorial level.
'In fact, the first step is to make sure I have the precise coordinates.'
He winked at them and crossed over towards where Danielson was standing, his thongs flapping on the floor.
Fletcher leaned over to whisper to Noldt.
'Doesn't take him long, does it?'
Noldt smiled into his coffee and shook his head.
As Runyan approached her, Danielson finished her last cookie and wiped her fingers awkwardly on the napkin which she held under the saucer. The gesture attracted Runyan's eyes to her waist where she held the cup. Out of habit, his gaze continued down her legs and then back past her breasts to her face which was in profile to him. Taking pleasure from the innocent voyeurism, he stopped at arm's length from her.
'A pretty little problem you've posed for us here.'
Danielson turned, a reflex smile of recognition brightening her face. She took a sip of cooling coffee and glanced out the window before replying.
'I thought we were on to something significant from the beginning, but I have to confess I don't know what to make of some of the ideas we just heard.' She faced him again. 'Beams from outer space. Could that possibly be true?'
'What do you think?'
She laughed lightly, chiding herself.
'I suppose that somewhere in the back of my mind that possibility had been flitting around since I first discovered the fixed orientation in space. I've been refusing to recognize it because it seems so outrageous, but not unthinkable.'
'I suspect most of us feel the same way,' he returned her laugh and laid two fingers on her forearm, a small intimate gesture. 'But we're taking a break here. Tell me about yourself. How did you get into the intelligence game?'
Danielson looked down at his hand. The fingers were those of a craftsman, large and gnarled, ungainly to look at, but capable of deft, intricate movement. She raised her eyes to his face and enjoyed the way his grey-green eyes reflected a sense of humour and well-being.
'Not much to tell -' she began.
While Runyan entertained Danielson with small talk, Isaacs and Plumps discussed the developments of the afternoon and their options for the remainder of the day. Isaacs was not pleased by any of the ideas he had heard. Plumps suggested gently that they should allow the brain— storming to continue until they either ran out of ideas or found one on which there was some consensus. They were interrupted by a woman who announced a phone call for Isaacs. He raised his eyebrows at Plumps and followed the woman out.
He returned several minutes later and headed for Danielson, his face grim. He interrupted Runyan in the middle of a funny story, and addressed Danielson.
'There's an emergency,' he said brusquely. 'We've got to get back to Washington.'
As Danielson looked at Runyan with uncertainty, Isaacs turned to Phillips.
'I'm very sorry, but we must go. Something has come up. I'm grateful for your time today.'
'We're happy to be of service, of course. Your problem has intrigued us, and I'm sure we'll continue to discuss it.' 'I hope you will. I'll be in touch as soon as I can.'
Isaacs hustled Danielson around as they gathered up their things and escorted her to the car.
He drove quickly in great concentration for several minutes until he was sure of his course. Then he glanced at her.
'That was Bill Bans. The Russians have made their next move. They've surrounded our nuclear satellite with a pack of hunter-killer satellites.'
'What will they do?'
'Not clear. Bans has called the crisis team for this afternoon to try to get the basic facts together. We'll meet again first thing tomorrow morning and try to anticipate them. If they hold off that long. Damn! McMasters will wonder where the hell I am.'
He drove in silence again for a while.
'That was a very good presentation you gave today,' he said, keeping his eyes on the road. 'You convinced them we've got a real problem. And thanks for coming to my defence when that bastard Leems got on my back.'
'This can't really be a Russian weapon, can it?' she asked. 'Sure doesn't smell right to me, but we should check satellite locations just as Leems said.'
Danielson began to contemplate how she could obtain and sort Soviet satellite positions. They were quiet the rest of the way to the airport.
There were problems getting their reservations changed. They spent an hour and a half in the terminal amid crowds that prevented any discussion of their mission. Danielson could tell Isaacs was tense and fretful. The visit with the Jason team had been intriguing, but inconclusive, and the move of the Russians had caught him up short. If he had been in Washington he would have assembled the crisis team, not left it to Saris. Danielson sympathized with the anxiety she knew Isaacs felt. CIA officials had a right in principle to their free time, but they had better be on the spot when an emergency cropped up, never mind off on another coast suborning Agency policy. Danielson felt exposed herself.
The only seats they could get were several rows apart in the crowded midsection of the red-eye flight. Jet lag and strain caught up with Danielson. She napped most of the way. Isaacs was trapped between a talkative matron and a young mother, squirmy babe in lap. He stared grimly ahead through the whole flight, trying in his fatigue to think.
Chapter 9
Jorge Payro grabbed another piece of sheet metal off the pallet behind him. He fed it carefully into the machine, checking the alignment, then stepped back and yanked the lever triggering the hydraulics. The press crumped down, folding edges, slicing off the extra metal. Jorge raised the lever, pulled the formed piece off the platform and worked around the edges with his file to remove the worst of the burrs. He placed the partially formed object on the conveyor belt. Somewhere down the line, after more cutting, stamping, drilling, painting, and fitting, the part would emerge as the top of a washing machine. Jorge turned for another flat sheet. While he worked he thought of his date for the futbol game that evening. One of the teams from Buenos Aires was coming to play Rosario. Rosario was good this year: they had a chance. Jorge was excited by the prospect of victory. He was also excited by his own chances with Constanza. Particularly if they won, everyone's passions would be running high.
He pulled another piece off the press and added it with his file. He put it on the conveyor, then did a double take, and yanked it off again. He held it before him and stared in amazement. There was a hole in it, about the size of his little finger. He had not noticed that when he picked up the sheet. He looked at the stack on the palette. No holes there. How could he have missed such a dung? He set the damaged part aside, picked up a fresh sheet, and manoeuvred it into place. He pulled the lever. The press dropped a little, but then jammed, groaning.
Jorge slapped the lever off. He threw the switch that shut the machine down completely, raised his safety goggles up onto his forehead and stared. The upper jaw of the press was skew in its framework. Jorge stepped forward and craned his neck to look up at the underside. His eyes widened. There was a hole in the massive piece of steel. It was drilled through, just like the damaged part he had just removed. From somewhere higher up in the works of the machine, a steady stream of fluid seeped down. Jorge removed a glove, ran a finger through a drip and sniffed. Hydraulic fluid. This machine is in bad trouble, he thought to himself as he wiped his finger on his overalls. He pulled the sheet of metal from the press and was not completely surprised to find another hole in the bed of the machine. He ran a finger around its clean edge and bent to peer down. He couldn't see-but a fraction of a centimetre in, but he bet it was deep, maybe all the way to the floor. He stuck his little finger into the hole up past the first knuckle. He couldn't imagine what could have caused such a thing.
Jorge pulled off his other glove, threw it next to the first, and went in search of his supervisor.
It was 7:30 A.m. Sunday morning, July 4. Isaacs had not slept on the flight back from Son Diego and then had spent an hour on the phone catching up on the Russian deployment of hunter-killer satellites and making arrangements for this morning's meeting. He'd got three hours of troubled sleep and nursed a splitting headache.
Isaacs scanned the packed conference room. Twenty— three people were more than it held comfortably, but he had cooed for everyone in his crisis team to bring their aides. This would speed dissemination, give the young people exposure, and encourage them to participate freely. He did not want any bright ideas languishing in the face of an unprecedented confrontation with the Russians. He began as the last chair was filled.
'I'm sorry to have to call you in on a holiday. This may be the Soviets' heavy-banded idea of irony, but they're threatening us with some real fireworks.
'You know that the Soviets launched an operating laser and used it to destroy the FireEye satellite which had recently been placed in orbit last April.' You don't know why, though, he thought. He caught Pat Danielson's eyes on him from where she sat in a rear corner looking remarkably alert despite their late flight. She returned his gaze steadily until he looked on around the room and continued. 'The US appropriated that laser satellite with the shuttle, but the Soviets launched another. The US response was to, put a small atomic device in orbit near the laser. The device is specially shielded with a reflective coating, difficult for the laser to penetrate. There are also heat sensing circuits that will trigger the device if the laser is used on it. The Soviets have been informed of this. We have promised to detonate the device if the laser is used.
'They have now made their countermove. They've surrounded the two satellites with a pack of six hunter-killer satellites. These contain only conventional explosives, but they're powerful enough to neutralize our nuclear device. The concern is that the protective circuits will not respond to a blast wave. The Soviets are betting, or Muffing, that we are vulnerable to the hunter-killers.
'Our task is to anticipate the intelligence gathering operations that will be necessary to map out their tactical possibilities, and our appropriate responses. As of forty-five minutes ago, the Soviets had not tried to aim the laser, but they could force the issue at any moment.'
Isaacs signalled, the lights were dimmed, and a slide projected at the end of the room. The people sitting too near the screen shuffled their chairs around and craned their necks.
'This was taken from one of our KH-ll satellites from about 5,000 miles,' Danielson continued. 'The laser satellite is the cylinder at the tip of the yellow arrow. You can make out some details on it if you look closely, and, of course, the image can be reprocessed to bring them out. The small spot at the tip of the white arrow is our device.'
'What's the actual spatial separation there?' a voice asked.
'About two hundred metres,' Isaacs replied. 'The effective range of the device is much greater, the proximity was chosen mainly for psychological effect. You'll notice that our device is located along the long axis of the laser satellite; the laser fires out the side. The small dots at the tips of the six shorter yellow arrows are the hunter-killers.'
'That's an odd configuration they're in,' said Bill Saris from somewhere down the table. 'Unless there is a funny projection effect, they seem to be in two groups of three and closer to the big laser satellite than to ours. Why would they do that? Won't they do themselves as much or more damage as they do us?'
There was a silence for thirty seconds, then a sudden voice.
'Shaped charges! I'll bet they're shaped and specifically aimed away from the laser and towards our device.'
There were murmurs of agreement, then Baris again.
'We'll need some close-up photos to see if the hunter— killers have distinguishing features and if there is a pattern in their orientation that suggests they are aimed. I bet we find they're positioned so that any recoil will miss the laser. We'll need ground intelligence concerning their manufacture.'
Another voice. 'If we assume they're shaped, we can work out the spread angle of the explosion from the positions they've been deployed in, assuming they're all designed to hit us and none to damage the laser.'
Isaacs listened to this interchange with the satisfaction he always took when the ideas began to flow in one of these sessions. He had worked hard to assemble this crew and rarely failed to admire their performance. It was a good thing someone could think this morning. His mind was numb.
'How did we get in this fix?' someone inquired. 'Surely we saw the hunter-killers converging?'
'The Soviets play good chess,' Isaacs responded. 'They ,know how to use their pawns. They correctly anticipated our dilemma as they moved the first one up. We had promised to fire the nuke if the laser were used. But it's a very different story to fire the first nuclear device in space in a generation when neither the laser nor even the hunter— killer is actually used, just repositioned. I think there was also a failure to realize that the heat sensitive circuits might not be triggered by an explosion until extensive physical damage was already done. In any case, once they had Muffed the first one into position, adding others wasn't much different.'
'We could up the ante,' someone suggested. 'Put up another nuke at a greater distance, but still in kill range. If the hunter-killers take out the first, we take out everything left with the second nuke. And we lay down an ultimatum. Use one or both nukes if any hunter-killers approach the second.'
Isaacs made a couple of personal notes to augment the record of the session which would be transcribed and stored in computer memory. 'The President may not want to escalate in that direction,' he replied. 'Let's see what else we can come up with.'
'What's to keep the Russians from putting up their own nuke?'
'They may be trying to keep some lid on this in their own way,' answered Isaacs. 'But that's clearly one of their options. Let's come back to that and see if we can map out what would drive them to it.'
'How fast are those hunter-killers?' a new voice asked.
'Can the nuke be scooted somewhere else before they can respond? For instance out of their range, but still within nuclear range?'
Another voice answered. 'Tough to outrun an explosion.'
'Yeah, true,' the first voice answered thoughtfully, 'but at least you would be putting the pressure on them to make the first overt move.'
'Maybe,' came the second voice, 'but if you force them to blast the nuke, they may figure they're already committed and start using the laser on everything else in orbit.'
Isaacs had the projector turned off and the lights back on. Around the room, people sat erect from the postures they had assumed to peer at the slide.
'Let's talk some more about the options of the Soviets,' Isaacs requested. 'What are they apt to do?'
'Well,' said Earls, 'they could fire a charge over our bow, so to speak, if the charges are shaped and the explosion can be directed, just a little sabre rattling without changing the status quo. Or they could go for broke, zap us with a hunter-killer then use the laser with impunity. Or they could just fire the laser, betting that we won't use the nuke even if the laser is actually used. Hunter-killers don't do them much good then, but there is some chance any explosion would trigger the nuke, and they may not want to risk that.
'Come to think of it,' Baris wagged a finger, 'maybe they would want to try exactly that, just go ahead and use the hunter-killers. If the nuke goes, they have us for using atomics in space. If we chicken out, they have free use of the laser and our vaunted nuclear threat comes to nothing. Just the kind of pitiful giant posture they like to trap us in.'
Baris scratched his head as he thought. 'If that's their most obvious move, then we just force them to it if we try to move the nuke out of range of the hunter-killers. That seems to me to be the question. Will they risk our wrath and perhaps a nuclear explosion by using the hunter-killers, or just sit tight? Do we use the nuke without direct provocation, or try to horse it out to a greater distance? Or do we just sit with them and sweat blood?' He stopped and looked around the room for a reply.
The discussion continued for an hour and a half. They continued to produce ideas, filtering out the unproductive ones, refining and developing the good ones. A priority list of intelligence targets was constructed and assignments banded out. Isaacs finally called a halt so that all could turn to their individual tasks.
The next day, Monday, Isaacs finally found some time to pursue his personal agenda. He'd promised Danielson more data to refine her predictions of the upcoming event in Nagasaki. Now he looked across the desk at the young Navy lieutenant. Philip Szkada had been placed in nominal charge of the Navy's surveillance of the strange sonar signal. Although the day was officially a part of the three-day holiday weekend, he had agreed to meet Isaacs in Rutherford 's old office.
'It's a pleasure to see you again, Mr Isaacs,' said Szkada.
'I guess the last time was when you came to visit Captain Rutherford just before — just before -' His face took on a heavy pinched look. 'It's still difficult to believe he's gone.
By all rights I should have made that trip, but he insisted on going himself.'
He was silent for a moment, then met Isaacs's gaze.
'What can I do for you today?'
'You know that Avery Rutherford was a good friend of mine. I'm interested in his death for both personal and professional reasons. When we spoke over the phone at the time, you indicated uncertainty as to whether the ship's sinking was related to its surveillance mission, but that the surveillance programme was downgraded afterwards. I was hoping to learn more about the circumstances and the mission.'
'There's not much to say. In fact, under the shock of the moment, I may have said too much. From reports of the survivors and some scattered physical evidence, it appears that the ship's turbine exploded. There's no firm reason to conclude that the fate of the ship was related to her mission.'
He paused and made a tent of his fingers. He cleared his throat before continuing.
'The mission itself is a confidential Navy investigation. With all respect, sir, I'm not sure you have a need to know.'
Isaacs expected and admired that response. He would have demanded it of his own subordinates. He could not accept it, however. He turned the tack back to the personal issue.
'You said you should have been on the ship. Avery wasn't the sort to pull rank unnecessarily.'
'No, sir, he wasn't. But in this case I had worked out the ideas that were the basis of the mission. I expected to go.'
'Avery had nothing to do with the planning? Strange then that he would have involved himself in that way.'
'Well, of course, we discussed the mission. Some information had been kicking around and I managed to make sense of it.'
'Avery had no role in that?'
'Not really. Some things just fell into place for me after one of our discussions.'
Szkada paused and looked thoughtful.
'He did ask me some leading questions. With the pleasure of seeing it fit together, I didn't give much thought to the actual process that brought me to the conclusion.'
He looked up towards the far wall over Isaacs's right shoulder. Isaacs remained silent, reading the workings of his face. He saw the frown lines disappear, to be replaced by arched eyebrows and a look of mild surprise. After a moment another idea hit him and he leaned forward and locked eyes with Isaacs.
'He fed me the idea, didn't he?'
He pointed an index finger at Isaacs.
'And you gave it to him!'
Isaacs admired this perspicacity, even somewhat belated. No wonder Rutherford had spoken highly of him.
'Lieutenant, I sent my best friend to his death. I want to know what killed him.'
'Mr Isaacs, I really can't help you. I presume you already know what the mission was.'
Isaacs wanted to make it easy for him.
'You're monitoring a sonar signal that moves on a trajectory which is fixed with respect to the stars.'
Even having deduced Isaacs was aware of the mission, the frank statement startled Szkada. Isaacs continued.
'We have some seismic data showing the same behaviour. In case you're curious,' he smiled, 'the idea of the fixed trajectory actually came from one of my people, a counterpart of yours in the Agency.'
'You must know all I do then,' Szkada commented. 'I don't have the authority to push for a full investigation here, so we're just in a monitoring mode. We've learned nothing new. Perhaps we could collaborate?' Szkada suggested, 'with an official request from the Agency.' Isaacs cut him off with a raised hand.
'Lieutenant, we have a similar problem. Our mission has been officially shelved, partly because my superior knows that your superiors are nominally continuing the investigation. I want to say that I am here unofficially today.
'Let me ask you,' Isaacs looked intently at the young officer, 'do you think the ship's destruction was related to its mission?'
'I think we should be doing a lot more to find out.'
'I believe I have a way to open this case up. I'll handle it in the Agency and if it doesn't work out, I don't want you involved. Your data is intrinsically more accurate than ours. I can't ask you through channels, but if you could give me the most precise values you have for recent sonar data, times, and locations, I may be able to exploit them in a way which is satisfactory to us both.'
Szkada contemplated the man across from him for some time.
'I'll show you the numbers we have. You copy what you want on your own paper in your own handwriting. And good luck.'
Isaacs nodded his acceptance of these terms and reached in his portfolio for paper and pen. Enough time, he thought, to get this data to Danielson before the crisis team reconvenes. He could sense the presence of the hunter— killer satellites orbiting, Damoclean, overhead. For the moment, at least, the thread still held the sword aloft. He knew Danielson was stealing moments from the hectic press of other duties to analyse the positions of Soviet satellites to check for any correlation with the seismic signal. He wondered whether she were having any luck with that. He needed to see Martinelli to arrange surveillance of Nagasaki , only two short days away, but that would probably have to wait until tomorrow.
Vincent Martinelli came around his desk to greet Isaacs, his doughy face lit with a smile.
'Bob, how are you? Sit down.' He motioned Isaacs into a chair and sat in an adjacent one.
'What did you think of the President's decision to hang tight? Guts ball, huh?'
'So far, so good. I guess that makes it a wise move. We discussed the possibility that the Russians would take out the nuke and go for broke with the laser, but the more we talked, the more it seemed like their actual goal was to establish their right to orbit a laser, free of our interference, and that they would hold to the status quo. The President bought the idea that they didn't want an overt escalation any more than we did. But you're right, it took some nerve to just let the nuke sit in the range of those hunter-killers and wait it out.'
'What's it been?' Martinelli glanced at his watch. 'Sixty— odd hours since they were launched. As long as nobody nudges the trigger on one of those hunter-killers, we have a truce.'
'Looks like it.'
'So other than that, how are things in the think tank? Seems like we haven't had time to chat since that damn Russian carrier caught fire.'
'Things are fine, Voice. But I was hoping you could improve them by taking a couple of pictures for me.'
'Sure, any time. That doesn't require a personal visit.'
'I would like coverage of an area in Nagasaki near the bay, tomorrow.'
'Tomorrow! Jesus, man, you know it takes a week at top speed to get a request through the priorities committee.'
'I know that, Vince. That's why I'm here. All I need is one hour of your flex-tune, but I need it tomorrow. There's no tune to go through channels.'
'It would help to clear it through McMasters, at least, even on an informal basis.'
Isaacs was silent for a moment.
'I hoped that wouldn't be necessary.'
Martinelli contemplated his visitor. He had known Isaacs to work around McMasters before, but not in a matter like this when consultation with him was explicitly mandated.
'This is important to you?'
'Vince, I think I'm on to something that may help explain the Novorossiisk event and get us out of this whole mess it has led to. I can't prove it yet. I need more evidence, including your photos.'
'You want to tell me what it is?'
'You'll be sticking your neck out as it is if you do this. I think we should leave it at that.'
'And you need to steer clear of McMasters?'
'He's got me between a rock and a hard place. The less— said about that the better for now, too.'
Martinelli let out a sigh. 'Let's see whether what you're asking is even feasible. You have the coordinates?'
Isaacs withdrew a small sheet of notepaper from his pocket and banded it to Martinelli.
'I'll check with the scheduling office. Hang on a bit.'
Martinelli left Isaacs in the office. Isaacs rose and paced the floor. He severely disliked involving Martinelli in this way. He could not even be sure the photos would be useful, but some steps had to be taken to reduce their level of ignorance. He wanted to bring to bear as many means as possible. He had cabled the consulate in Nagasaki and arranged for an observer to cover the area, hinting at the possibility of some political turmoil. Again.he was operating out of channels since his office was not directly responsible for covert intelligence. He had gambled that any request from central headquarters would elicit a cooperative response and had apparently been correct. Martinelli returned in a few minutes.
'The satellite time is tied up tight. There're troop movements in southern China , near the Vietnamese border. On the other hand, we'll have a U-2 flight returning from the same area at about the time you want. I can't give you an hour, but maybe we can get him to save a few frames in his magazine and circle Nagasaki for ten minutes. Any longer and the Japanese will get suspicious. We're allies, remember. They don't appreciate us taking spy pictures of them. At least we try to be subtle about it,' he grinned.
'Ten minutes is cutting it very close. But if it's ten minutes spanning that time,' Isaacs pointed at the slip of paper in Martinelli's hand, 'that may do the trick.'
'We'll see what we can do.'
'Thanks, Vince, I owe you one.'
'Wait till you see if we get anything.'
Isaacs spent most of the next twenty-four hours as he had the last, in the frenzied analysis of Soviet signal intelligence, searching for clues that the deadlock in orbit might be broken. Danielson had used Szkada's sonar data to refine her estimate of the several block area in Nagasaki where she predicted the seismic event would encroach on the city. Isaacs had cabled the revised information to the consulate and passed it on to Martinelli. Martinelli had confirmed that they could get some aerial photos of the area.
As Isaacs headed home Wednesday evening he was concentrating on the upcoming event in Nagasaki, only a few hours away, a little after eleven in the morning Japanese time, July 8, allowing for the International Dateline. Would they learn anything useful? And, if so, for god's sake what? What were they dealing with? He replayed in his mind the interchange in La Jolla. Russians? Extraterrestrials? Damn it all anyway! He failed to notice that he had been following the same dark sedan all along MacArthur Boulevard nor did he notice the limousine that pulled in behind him as they neared Georgetown.
The sedan pulled into the quiet narrow street Isaacs always took to get home, and Isaacs followed. Part way along the block the sedan braked, and Isaacs also did so mechanically. The sedan's back-up lights came on, and it reversed to within a few feet of Isaacs's bumper. He felt a momentary hint of irritation at the delay and then looked back over his shoulder, preparing to back up himself to give room. All he saw was the hood of the limousine. At the same moment, someone opened his door and he jerked around with surprise.
A tall figure in a dark suit was silhouetted in the doorway. The man bent down, revealing a broad-featured face that was vaguely familiar.
'Mr Isaacs?' The voice was slow, working methodically with an alien tongue. 'Mr Zamyatin would like a word with you.'
Mr Zamyatin was it! Isaacs's eyes followed those of the man back to the limousine. Colonel Grigor Zamyatin was well known in the Agency as the head of the KGB station in the capital, a position that gave him immense power throughout the country, not to mention his own homeland.
Isaacs fixed his eyes on the man again, recognizing now the face from the Agency file on the embassy staff. Yegor Vassilev, a 'secretary' in the visa section.
'Zamyatin be damned,' he said with some heat. 'You can't accost me like this on a public street in my own country!'
'Please, Mr Isaacs,' Vassilev replied in a placating tone, 'Mr Zamyatin said to mention Academician Korolev.'
Isaacs stared. What the hell did that mean? It was on the record that Isaacs had submitted the report suggesting meteorite damage to the Novorossiisk. A report that Korolev had rejected. But this forced liaison was unlikely to have arisen from such an interchange. They must have intercepted his personal letter to Korolev. Resignation mingled with a strong dose of curiosity drove Isaacs out of his seat. Could Zamyatin conceivably be turned to an ally in this bizarre situation?
As he stepped onto the pavement, Vassilev mumbled, 'I will operate your vehicle,' and slipped behind the wheel of the Mercedes.
The rear door to the limousine opened and Isaacs stepped in and sat. Someone outside closed the door, and a deep hush settled into the interior of the car. In a moment they began to move ahead gently.
A half block away an anonymous tan Oldsmobile Cutlass was parked in a driveway. The driver lowered the compact camera he had been using and spoke softly into a microphone. He watched as a van from a Georgetown appliance store pulled around the corner and closed to within a half a block of the limousine. He then backed out and headed in the opposite direction.
In the limousine, Grigor Zamyatin reached across, extending a hand.
'Mr Isaacs,' he said in a carefully developed Midwestern accent.
Isaacs, examining the neatly combed grey hair, the friendly peasant face, the shrewd black eyes, hesitated a moment. Then he took the hand in a firm grip. No sense insulting the man before the cards were on the table. He felt some protest was deserved, however.
'Colonel. I trust you have a good reason for this bit of piracy. You could get me in quite a jam. The Agency frowns on unauthorized clandestine meetings with the opposition.'
'Come, come, Mr Isaacs. I think you will agree we need a quiet, frank chat, man to man. Surely you would not want me to make an official request for an audience. How would you explain that to your Mr Drefke — or to your Mr McMasters?'
Damn! thought Isaacs, even the KGB knows he's on my back.
'In any case,' said Isaacs, 'here we are. What's on your amid?'
'Your role in the Novorossiisk affair, Mr Isaacs. Simply that.'
Isaacs looked at him silently.
'You wrote a very persuasive memo concerning the possibility of a meteorite striking the carrier. Your premise had already been considered, tested, and rejected. Nevertheless, your sincerity, if I may use that word, made a deep impression on Academician Korolev.'
Zamyatin watched closely as he used that name. He saw a slight lifting of the dun. He faced straight ahead and continued.
'You have probably guessed that we are aware of the contents of your personal letter to him.'
'What I don't know is whether he even received it,' said Isaacs, attempting to take the offensive. 'I've had no reply.'
He pulled another piece off the press and added it with his file. He put it on the conveyor, then did a double take, and yanked it off again. He held it before him and stared in amazement. There was a hole in it, about the size of his little finger. He had not noticed that when he picked up the sheet. He looked at the stack on the palette. No holes there. How could he have missed such a dung? He set the damaged part aside, picked up a fresh sheet, and manoeuvred it into place. He pulled the lever. The press dropped a little, but then jammed, groaning.
Jorge slapped the lever off. He threw the switch that shut the machine down completely, raised his safety goggles up onto his forehead and stared. The upper jaw of the press was skew in its framework. Jorge stepped forward and craned his neck to look up at the underside. His eyes widened. There was a hole in the massive piece of steel. It was drilled through, just like the damaged part he had just removed. From somewhere higher up in the works of the machine, a steady stream of fluid seeped down. Jorge removed a glove, ran a finger through a drip and sniffed. Hydraulic fluid. This machine is in bad trouble, he thought to himself as he wiped his finger on his overalls. He pulled the sheet of metal from the press and was not completely surprised to find another hole in the bed of the machine. He ran a finger around its clean edge and bent to peer down. He couldn't see-but a fraction of a centimetre in, but he bet it was deep, maybe all the way to the floor. He stuck his little finger into the hole up past the first knuckle. He couldn't imagine what could have caused such a thing.
Jorge pulled off his other glove, threw it next to the first, and went in search of his supervisor.
It was 7:30 A.m. Sunday morning, July 4. Isaacs had not slept on the flight back from Son Diego and then had spent an hour on the phone catching up on the Russian deployment of hunter-killer satellites and making arrangements for this morning's meeting. He'd got three hours of troubled sleep and nursed a splitting headache.
Isaacs scanned the packed conference room. Twenty— three people were more than it held comfortably, but he had cooed for everyone in his crisis team to bring their aides. This would speed dissemination, give the young people exposure, and encourage them to participate freely. He did not want any bright ideas languishing in the face of an unprecedented confrontation with the Russians. He began as the last chair was filled.
'I'm sorry to have to call you in on a holiday. This may be the Soviets' heavy-banded idea of irony, but they're threatening us with some real fireworks.
'You know that the Soviets launched an operating laser and used it to destroy the FireEye satellite which had recently been placed in orbit last April.' You don't know why, though, he thought. He caught Pat Danielson's eyes on him from where she sat in a rear corner looking remarkably alert despite their late flight. She returned his gaze steadily until he looked on around the room and continued. 'The US appropriated that laser satellite with the shuttle, but the Soviets launched another. The US response was to, put a small atomic device in orbit near the laser. The device is specially shielded with a reflective coating, difficult for the laser to penetrate. There are also heat sensing circuits that will trigger the device if the laser is used on it. The Soviets have been informed of this. We have promised to detonate the device if the laser is used.
'They have now made their countermove. They've surrounded the two satellites with a pack of six hunter-killer satellites. These contain only conventional explosives, but they're powerful enough to neutralize our nuclear device. The concern is that the protective circuits will not respond to a blast wave. The Soviets are betting, or Muffing, that we are vulnerable to the hunter-killers.
'Our task is to anticipate the intelligence gathering operations that will be necessary to map out their tactical possibilities, and our appropriate responses. As of forty-five minutes ago, the Soviets had not tried to aim the laser, but they could force the issue at any moment.'
Isaacs signalled, the lights were dimmed, and a slide projected at the end of the room. The people sitting too near the screen shuffled their chairs around and craned their necks.
'This was taken from one of our KH-ll satellites from about 5,000 miles,' Danielson continued. 'The laser satellite is the cylinder at the tip of the yellow arrow. You can make out some details on it if you look closely, and, of course, the image can be reprocessed to bring them out. The small spot at the tip of the white arrow is our device.'
'What's the actual spatial separation there?' a voice asked.
'About two hundred metres,' Isaacs replied. 'The effective range of the device is much greater, the proximity was chosen mainly for psychological effect. You'll notice that our device is located along the long axis of the laser satellite; the laser fires out the side. The small dots at the tips of the six shorter yellow arrows are the hunter-killers.'
'That's an odd configuration they're in,' said Bill Saris from somewhere down the table. 'Unless there is a funny projection effect, they seem to be in two groups of three and closer to the big laser satellite than to ours. Why would they do that? Won't they do themselves as much or more damage as they do us?'
There was a silence for thirty seconds, then a sudden voice.
'Shaped charges! I'll bet they're shaped and specifically aimed away from the laser and towards our device.'
There were murmurs of agreement, then Baris again.
'We'll need some close-up photos to see if the hunter— killers have distinguishing features and if there is a pattern in their orientation that suggests they are aimed. I bet we find they're positioned so that any recoil will miss the laser. We'll need ground intelligence concerning their manufacture.'
Another voice. 'If we assume they're shaped, we can work out the spread angle of the explosion from the positions they've been deployed in, assuming they're all designed to hit us and none to damage the laser.'
Isaacs listened to this interchange with the satisfaction he always took when the ideas began to flow in one of these sessions. He had worked hard to assemble this crew and rarely failed to admire their performance. It was a good thing someone could think this morning. His mind was numb.
'How did we get in this fix?' someone inquired. 'Surely we saw the hunter-killers converging?'
'The Soviets play good chess,' Isaacs responded. 'They ,know how to use their pawns. They correctly anticipated our dilemma as they moved the first one up. We had promised to fire the nuke if the laser were used. But it's a very different story to fire the first nuclear device in space in a generation when neither the laser nor even the hunter— killer is actually used, just repositioned. I think there was also a failure to realize that the heat sensitive circuits might not be triggered by an explosion until extensive physical damage was already done. In any case, once they had Muffed the first one into position, adding others wasn't much different.'
'We could up the ante,' someone suggested. 'Put up another nuke at a greater distance, but still in kill range. If the hunter-killers take out the first, we take out everything left with the second nuke. And we lay down an ultimatum. Use one or both nukes if any hunter-killers approach the second.'
Isaacs made a couple of personal notes to augment the record of the session which would be transcribed and stored in computer memory. 'The President may not want to escalate in that direction,' he replied. 'Let's see what else we can come up with.'
'What's to keep the Russians from putting up their own nuke?'
'They may be trying to keep some lid on this in their own way,' answered Isaacs. 'But that's clearly one of their options. Let's come back to that and see if we can map out what would drive them to it.'
'How fast are those hunter-killers?' a new voice asked.
'Can the nuke be scooted somewhere else before they can respond? For instance out of their range, but still within nuclear range?'
Another voice answered. 'Tough to outrun an explosion.'
'Yeah, true,' the first voice answered thoughtfully, 'but at least you would be putting the pressure on them to make the first overt move.'
'Maybe,' came the second voice, 'but if you force them to blast the nuke, they may figure they're already committed and start using the laser on everything else in orbit.'
Isaacs had the projector turned off and the lights back on. Around the room, people sat erect from the postures they had assumed to peer at the slide.
'Let's talk some more about the options of the Soviets,' Isaacs requested. 'What are they apt to do?'
'Well,' said Earls, 'they could fire a charge over our bow, so to speak, if the charges are shaped and the explosion can be directed, just a little sabre rattling without changing the status quo. Or they could go for broke, zap us with a hunter-killer then use the laser with impunity. Or they could just fire the laser, betting that we won't use the nuke even if the laser is actually used. Hunter-killers don't do them much good then, but there is some chance any explosion would trigger the nuke, and they may not want to risk that.
'Come to think of it,' Baris wagged a finger, 'maybe they would want to try exactly that, just go ahead and use the hunter-killers. If the nuke goes, they have us for using atomics in space. If we chicken out, they have free use of the laser and our vaunted nuclear threat comes to nothing. Just the kind of pitiful giant posture they like to trap us in.'
Baris scratched his head as he thought. 'If that's their most obvious move, then we just force them to it if we try to move the nuke out of range of the hunter-killers. That seems to me to be the question. Will they risk our wrath and perhaps a nuclear explosion by using the hunter-killers, or just sit tight? Do we use the nuke without direct provocation, or try to horse it out to a greater distance? Or do we just sit with them and sweat blood?' He stopped and looked around the room for a reply.
The discussion continued for an hour and a half. They continued to produce ideas, filtering out the unproductive ones, refining and developing the good ones. A priority list of intelligence targets was constructed and assignments banded out. Isaacs finally called a halt so that all could turn to their individual tasks.
The next day, Monday, Isaacs finally found some time to pursue his personal agenda. He'd promised Danielson more data to refine her predictions of the upcoming event in Nagasaki. Now he looked across the desk at the young Navy lieutenant. Philip Szkada had been placed in nominal charge of the Navy's surveillance of the strange sonar signal. Although the day was officially a part of the three-day holiday weekend, he had agreed to meet Isaacs in Rutherford 's old office.
'It's a pleasure to see you again, Mr Isaacs,' said Szkada.
'I guess the last time was when you came to visit Captain Rutherford just before — just before -' His face took on a heavy pinched look. 'It's still difficult to believe he's gone.
By all rights I should have made that trip, but he insisted on going himself.'
He was silent for a moment, then met Isaacs's gaze.
'What can I do for you today?'
'You know that Avery Rutherford was a good friend of mine. I'm interested in his death for both personal and professional reasons. When we spoke over the phone at the time, you indicated uncertainty as to whether the ship's sinking was related to its surveillance mission, but that the surveillance programme was downgraded afterwards. I was hoping to learn more about the circumstances and the mission.'
'There's not much to say. In fact, under the shock of the moment, I may have said too much. From reports of the survivors and some scattered physical evidence, it appears that the ship's turbine exploded. There's no firm reason to conclude that the fate of the ship was related to her mission.'
He paused and made a tent of his fingers. He cleared his throat before continuing.
'The mission itself is a confidential Navy investigation. With all respect, sir, I'm not sure you have a need to know.'
Isaacs expected and admired that response. He would have demanded it of his own subordinates. He could not accept it, however. He turned the tack back to the personal issue.
'You said you should have been on the ship. Avery wasn't the sort to pull rank unnecessarily.'
'No, sir, he wasn't. But in this case I had worked out the ideas that were the basis of the mission. I expected to go.'
'Avery had nothing to do with the planning? Strange then that he would have involved himself in that way.'
'Well, of course, we discussed the mission. Some information had been kicking around and I managed to make sense of it.'
'Avery had no role in that?'
'Not really. Some things just fell into place for me after one of our discussions.'
Szkada paused and looked thoughtful.
'He did ask me some leading questions. With the pleasure of seeing it fit together, I didn't give much thought to the actual process that brought me to the conclusion.'
He looked up towards the far wall over Isaacs's right shoulder. Isaacs remained silent, reading the workings of his face. He saw the frown lines disappear, to be replaced by arched eyebrows and a look of mild surprise. After a moment another idea hit him and he leaned forward and locked eyes with Isaacs.
'He fed me the idea, didn't he?'
He pointed an index finger at Isaacs.
'And you gave it to him!'
Isaacs admired this perspicacity, even somewhat belated. No wonder Rutherford had spoken highly of him.
'Lieutenant, I sent my best friend to his death. I want to know what killed him.'
'Mr Isaacs, I really can't help you. I presume you already know what the mission was.'
Isaacs wanted to make it easy for him.
'You're monitoring a sonar signal that moves on a trajectory which is fixed with respect to the stars.'
Even having deduced Isaacs was aware of the mission, the frank statement startled Szkada. Isaacs continued.
'We have some seismic data showing the same behaviour. In case you're curious,' he smiled, 'the idea of the fixed trajectory actually came from one of my people, a counterpart of yours in the Agency.'
'You must know all I do then,' Szkada commented. 'I don't have the authority to push for a full investigation here, so we're just in a monitoring mode. We've learned nothing new. Perhaps we could collaborate?' Szkada suggested, 'with an official request from the Agency.' Isaacs cut him off with a raised hand.
'Lieutenant, we have a similar problem. Our mission has been officially shelved, partly because my superior knows that your superiors are nominally continuing the investigation. I want to say that I am here unofficially today.
'Let me ask you,' Isaacs looked intently at the young officer, 'do you think the ship's destruction was related to its mission?'
'I think we should be doing a lot more to find out.'
'I believe I have a way to open this case up. I'll handle it in the Agency and if it doesn't work out, I don't want you involved. Your data is intrinsically more accurate than ours. I can't ask you through channels, but if you could give me the most precise values you have for recent sonar data, times, and locations, I may be able to exploit them in a way which is satisfactory to us both.'
Szkada contemplated the man across from him for some time.
'I'll show you the numbers we have. You copy what you want on your own paper in your own handwriting. And good luck.'
Isaacs nodded his acceptance of these terms and reached in his portfolio for paper and pen. Enough time, he thought, to get this data to Danielson before the crisis team reconvenes. He could sense the presence of the hunter— killer satellites orbiting, Damoclean, overhead. For the moment, at least, the thread still held the sword aloft. He knew Danielson was stealing moments from the hectic press of other duties to analyse the positions of Soviet satellites to check for any correlation with the seismic signal. He wondered whether she were having any luck with that. He needed to see Martinelli to arrange surveillance of Nagasaki , only two short days away, but that would probably have to wait until tomorrow.
Vincent Martinelli came around his desk to greet Isaacs, his doughy face lit with a smile.
'Bob, how are you? Sit down.' He motioned Isaacs into a chair and sat in an adjacent one.
'What did you think of the President's decision to hang tight? Guts ball, huh?'
'So far, so good. I guess that makes it a wise move. We discussed the possibility that the Russians would take out the nuke and go for broke with the laser, but the more we talked, the more it seemed like their actual goal was to establish their right to orbit a laser, free of our interference, and that they would hold to the status quo. The President bought the idea that they didn't want an overt escalation any more than we did. But you're right, it took some nerve to just let the nuke sit in the range of those hunter-killers and wait it out.'
'What's it been?' Martinelli glanced at his watch. 'Sixty— odd hours since they were launched. As long as nobody nudges the trigger on one of those hunter-killers, we have a truce.'
'Looks like it.'
'So other than that, how are things in the think tank? Seems like we haven't had time to chat since that damn Russian carrier caught fire.'
'Things are fine, Voice. But I was hoping you could improve them by taking a couple of pictures for me.'
'Sure, any time. That doesn't require a personal visit.'
'I would like coverage of an area in Nagasaki near the bay, tomorrow.'
'Tomorrow! Jesus, man, you know it takes a week at top speed to get a request through the priorities committee.'
'I know that, Vince. That's why I'm here. All I need is one hour of your flex-tune, but I need it tomorrow. There's no tune to go through channels.'
'It would help to clear it through McMasters, at least, even on an informal basis.'
Isaacs was silent for a moment.
'I hoped that wouldn't be necessary.'
Martinelli contemplated his visitor. He had known Isaacs to work around McMasters before, but not in a matter like this when consultation with him was explicitly mandated.
'This is important to you?'
'Vince, I think I'm on to something that may help explain the Novorossiisk event and get us out of this whole mess it has led to. I can't prove it yet. I need more evidence, including your photos.'
'You want to tell me what it is?'
'You'll be sticking your neck out as it is if you do this. I think we should leave it at that.'
'And you need to steer clear of McMasters?'
'He's got me between a rock and a hard place. The less— said about that the better for now, too.'
Martinelli let out a sigh. 'Let's see whether what you're asking is even feasible. You have the coordinates?'
Isaacs withdrew a small sheet of notepaper from his pocket and banded it to Martinelli.
'I'll check with the scheduling office. Hang on a bit.'
Martinelli left Isaacs in the office. Isaacs rose and paced the floor. He severely disliked involving Martinelli in this way. He could not even be sure the photos would be useful, but some steps had to be taken to reduce their level of ignorance. He wanted to bring to bear as many means as possible. He had cabled the consulate in Nagasaki and arranged for an observer to cover the area, hinting at the possibility of some political turmoil. Again.he was operating out of channels since his office was not directly responsible for covert intelligence. He had gambled that any request from central headquarters would elicit a cooperative response and had apparently been correct. Martinelli returned in a few minutes.
'The satellite time is tied up tight. There're troop movements in southern China , near the Vietnamese border. On the other hand, we'll have a U-2 flight returning from the same area at about the time you want. I can't give you an hour, but maybe we can get him to save a few frames in his magazine and circle Nagasaki for ten minutes. Any longer and the Japanese will get suspicious. We're allies, remember. They don't appreciate us taking spy pictures of them. At least we try to be subtle about it,' he grinned.
'Ten minutes is cutting it very close. But if it's ten minutes spanning that time,' Isaacs pointed at the slip of paper in Martinelli's hand, 'that may do the trick.'
'We'll see what we can do.'
'Thanks, Vince, I owe you one.'
'Wait till you see if we get anything.'
Isaacs spent most of the next twenty-four hours as he had the last, in the frenzied analysis of Soviet signal intelligence, searching for clues that the deadlock in orbit might be broken. Danielson had used Szkada's sonar data to refine her estimate of the several block area in Nagasaki where she predicted the seismic event would encroach on the city. Isaacs had cabled the revised information to the consulate and passed it on to Martinelli. Martinelli had confirmed that they could get some aerial photos of the area.
As Isaacs headed home Wednesday evening he was concentrating on the upcoming event in Nagasaki, only a few hours away, a little after eleven in the morning Japanese time, July 8, allowing for the International Dateline. Would they learn anything useful? And, if so, for god's sake what? What were they dealing with? He replayed in his mind the interchange in La Jolla. Russians? Extraterrestrials? Damn it all anyway! He failed to notice that he had been following the same dark sedan all along MacArthur Boulevard nor did he notice the limousine that pulled in behind him as they neared Georgetown.
The sedan pulled into the quiet narrow street Isaacs always took to get home, and Isaacs followed. Part way along the block the sedan braked, and Isaacs also did so mechanically. The sedan's back-up lights came on, and it reversed to within a few feet of Isaacs's bumper. He felt a momentary hint of irritation at the delay and then looked back over his shoulder, preparing to back up himself to give room. All he saw was the hood of the limousine. At the same moment, someone opened his door and he jerked around with surprise.
A tall figure in a dark suit was silhouetted in the doorway. The man bent down, revealing a broad-featured face that was vaguely familiar.
'Mr Isaacs?' The voice was slow, working methodically with an alien tongue. 'Mr Zamyatin would like a word with you.'
Mr Zamyatin was it! Isaacs's eyes followed those of the man back to the limousine. Colonel Grigor Zamyatin was well known in the Agency as the head of the KGB station in the capital, a position that gave him immense power throughout the country, not to mention his own homeland.
Isaacs fixed his eyes on the man again, recognizing now the face from the Agency file on the embassy staff. Yegor Vassilev, a 'secretary' in the visa section.
'Zamyatin be damned,' he said with some heat. 'You can't accost me like this on a public street in my own country!'
'Please, Mr Isaacs,' Vassilev replied in a placating tone, 'Mr Zamyatin said to mention Academician Korolev.'
Isaacs stared. What the hell did that mean? It was on the record that Isaacs had submitted the report suggesting meteorite damage to the Novorossiisk. A report that Korolev had rejected. But this forced liaison was unlikely to have arisen from such an interchange. They must have intercepted his personal letter to Korolev. Resignation mingled with a strong dose of curiosity drove Isaacs out of his seat. Could Zamyatin conceivably be turned to an ally in this bizarre situation?
As he stepped onto the pavement, Vassilev mumbled, 'I will operate your vehicle,' and slipped behind the wheel of the Mercedes.
The rear door to the limousine opened and Isaacs stepped in and sat. Someone outside closed the door, and a deep hush settled into the interior of the car. In a moment they began to move ahead gently.
A half block away an anonymous tan Oldsmobile Cutlass was parked in a driveway. The driver lowered the compact camera he had been using and spoke softly into a microphone. He watched as a van from a Georgetown appliance store pulled around the corner and closed to within a half a block of the limousine. He then backed out and headed in the opposite direction.
In the limousine, Grigor Zamyatin reached across, extending a hand.
'Mr Isaacs,' he said in a carefully developed Midwestern accent.
Isaacs, examining the neatly combed grey hair, the friendly peasant face, the shrewd black eyes, hesitated a moment. Then he took the hand in a firm grip. No sense insulting the man before the cards were on the table. He felt some protest was deserved, however.
'Colonel. I trust you have a good reason for this bit of piracy. You could get me in quite a jam. The Agency frowns on unauthorized clandestine meetings with the opposition.'
'Come, come, Mr Isaacs. I think you will agree we need a quiet, frank chat, man to man. Surely you would not want me to make an official request for an audience. How would you explain that to your Mr Drefke — or to your Mr McMasters?'
Damn! thought Isaacs, even the KGB knows he's on my back.
'In any case,' said Isaacs, 'here we are. What's on your amid?'
'Your role in the Novorossiisk affair, Mr Isaacs. Simply that.'
Isaacs looked at him silently.
'You wrote a very persuasive memo concerning the possibility of a meteorite striking the carrier. Your premise had already been considered, tested, and rejected. Nevertheless, your sincerity, if I may use that word, made a deep impression on Academician Korolev.'
Zamyatin watched closely as he used that name. He saw a slight lifting of the dun. He faced straight ahead and continued.
'You have probably guessed that we are aware of the contents of your personal letter to him.'
'What I don't know is whether he even received it,' said Isaacs, attempting to take the offensive. 'I've had no reply.'