agenda.
The house is quiet as a tomb, and he double checks to make sure the volume is zeroed before running the risk of a burst of noise—a big mistake he made a few weeks ago that brought his father flying up the stairs.
There’s a parcel of e-mails from friends, including one with a link he’s never seen before, some sort of Internet router service.
A long list of active e-mail accounts parades by, and he selects a few at random, watching a stream of 1’s and zeros without being able to discern their meaning.
He selects a translation program and tries it with no effect, then pulls in another, and on the third try someone’s real-time transmission is crawling across his screen, some teenage girl complaining about a feckless boyfriend.
Boring.
He pulls back a level and scrolls down to the very bottom, finding a message in progress without a coherent address.
He triggers the translation program again, and the words assemble themselves in English, the transmission apparently still in progress and scrolling across his screen.
…record, I suppose I should yell Mayday, Mayday, Mayday! ( At least I think that’s the right phrase.) I’m a passenger on the private spaceship
And this isn’t fun anymore.
Alastair sits back, scratching his head. The syntax and tone don’t match any of the hackers he knows who might try to pull such a stunt, but then he can hardly know all the tricksters on the planet. Someone, however, is trying a sophisticated scam, and he triggers a save program to record whatever comes and sits back to watch what the trickster will try next.
Just to be certain, he triggers the Google search engine and throws the words private spaceship and
Instead sixteen thousand hits come back with the starting point the official Web site of American Space Adventures. Alastair sits forward slowly as he pages past the home page and reads about—the launch one day before—the name of the craft:
A smile spreads across his face.
The chief master sergeant toggles another command and turns to the NORAD commander. “Sixty-seven minutes left before impact, General, and thirteen minutes to target intercept.”
The special liquid crystal display he’s been controlling in a closed conference room changes views.
Chris Risen nods at the duty controller as he scans the orbital threat to ASA’s
“What will they see in the main control room?” Chris asks.
“They would see a launch, sir, but we’ve nulled it out of the computer, so it will not show.”
“And if it impacts the target?”
“They’ll see the debris with no explanation.”
“What’s the status of the ASAT launch?” He’s very aware of the serious fuel mistake.
“Bluebird Two-Three has elected to continue, sir, despite the… ah… problem. He’s positioning now for the run.”
“We have radar on him?”
“Yes, sir. I’ll bring it up.”
The track of the F-106 appears to be moving in slow motion relative to the track of the oncoming piece of Soviet space junk streaking south on its polar orbit. The Delta Dart is flying at just under six hundred miles per hour now while the target approaches at seventeen thousand. A digital readout next to the F-106’s target depiction shows his heading changing and his speed increasing as Chris settles into one of the command chairs to watch. It will be up to him to call ASA if the attempt fails, and it’s a call he does not want to make.
“He’s starting his run, sir.”
Owen Larrabe tries to ignore the persistent itching on the side of his face in a place he has no hope of reaching. Sealed inside his pressure suit, it will just have to itch, he decides. But the damned itch is leaching away his attention at a critical moment, and he summons up the willpower to combat the distraction as he nudges the throttle into afterburner. He’s level at thirty-five thousand and keeping the flight director target dead center as he lets the Delta Dart accelerate smoothly through the speed of sound, the airspeed indicator winding up toward the needed airspeed of 1.22 Mach. He sees the Mach-meter already at 1.2 and accelerating and pulls back the throttle, holding constant at 1.22 as he mentally counts down to the pull-up point, now just five miles and less than twenty- five seconds ahead. He checks his lateral flight path, reconfirms that the missile arming sequence is complete and precisely on target, pulls the F-106 into a sharp 3.8-g climb until reaching sixty-five degrees nose up, holding the attitude as the airspeed remains constant with full burner, the fighter climbing at more than forty-six thousand feet per minute, the altimeter more or less a blur as he shoots up through fifty thousand, then sixty and seventy, slowing slightly as the engine gulps for air and fuel and flames-out.
He’s coasting now up through eighty-five thousand feet, gravity slowing him rapidly. He feels the F-106 jump slightly and hears the whoosh of the missile’s rocket motor as it releases itself and starts its climb, its silicon brain aware that the launch speed is slower than it should be, the altitude more than five thousand feet shy of the mark.
He’s got worries now beyond the missile’s fate, and he tunnels in on the task of getting down safely. Bailout is always an option, but one he doesn’t want to use.
Owen pushes the stick forward and lets the F-106’s nose fall through the horizon and steeply downward as the speed builds again. He flicks open the speed brakes as he tries to restart the engine, but one glance at the fuel indicators confirms that there won’t be a restart. The engine has sucked down the last drop of fuel in the full afterburner climb, and he’s now flying a delta-wing glider with one solitary chance at a safe landing.
Only a few thin cumulus clouds dot the landscape below as the Delta Dart plunges earthward, the speed stabilizing at just under Mach 1, a small Ram Air Turbine providing the only hydraulic pressure to the flight controls. He punches up Carlsbad Muni as his destination and does a quick calculation.
He swings the fighter’s nose to the appropriate heading, watching carefully as the altitude unwinds through forty thousand.
