Able One

balls. Those particles can kill unhardened satellites, too.”

“So what you’re telling me is that we’re back to 1950, as far as telephone communications are concerned.”

“Television, too, sir. Computer networks. Anything that uses satellites to relay information or data. All kaput.”

For several long moments the President said nothing. Then he asked, “Is this the first strike in a war, General?”

General Bernard hesitated, then answered, “It’s a good way to start a war, sir. Pearl Harbor, in orbit.”

Elmendorf Air Force Base, Alaska

Harry Hartunian was having the same nightmare again.

He was at the test center out in the desert, standing in the control room as the team powered up the big laser. Through the thick safety glass of the observation window he could see the jumble of tubes and wires, the stainless steel vat that held the iodine, the frosted tank that contained the liquid oxygen, the complex of mirrors and lenses at the output point where more than a million watts of invisible energy would lance across the desert floor to the target, half a mile away.

Five technicians were at their posts, but Pete Quintana was out beside the optical bench on the other side of the observation window, right in the middle of the laser assembly. Pete was worried about the effect of the rig’s vibration on the sensitive optical setup. Quintana.

“Iodine pressure on the button,” one of the technicians in the control room called out.

Don’t pressurize the oxy line, Harry warned. In his nightmare he tried to say the words out loud, but not a sound came out of his mouth. The tech was sitting five feet away from him, but he couldn’t make him hear his warning.

“Electrical power ramping up,” another technician said.

“Optical bench ready.”

“Atmospheric instability nominal.”

“Adaptive optics on.”

“Iodine flow in ten seconds.”

“Oxygen flow in eight seconds.”

Don’t pressurize the oxy line, Harry tried to scream. But he couldn’t speak, couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything but watch them go through the same disaster again.

“Pressurizing iodine.”

“Pressurizing oxy.”

“No!” Harry screeched.

The explosion knocked him against the back wall of the control room, shattering his ribs against the gauges mounted on the concrete. Pain roared through Harry as the laser blew up in a spectacular blast that knocked the roof off the test shed. The heat from the oxygen-fed fire poured through the safety glass of the observation window, hot enough to melt the gauges on the back wall.

Pete Quintana was enveloped in the flames, screaming, gibbering, flailing in agony. Harry tried to reach out to him but his own pain was so intense that he blacked out.

“Rise and shine, Harry!”

Hartunian blinked awake. The room was dark, but somebody was flicking a flashlight beam in his eyes.

Harry was drenched with sweat, gasping for breath.

“You were yelling in your sleep, pal.” Monk Delany. Harry recognized his voice and dimly made out the outline of his heavy, bearlike body in the darkness of the strange bedroom. Elmendorf Air Force Base, Harry remembered. We’re in Alaska.

“C’mon, buddy, we’re gonna miss breakfast if you don’t get going.”

Harry didn’t mind the flashlight glaring in his eyes. It was Monk’s chipper, cheerful tone that irked him. Can’t be more than four o’clock in the friggin’ morning, Harry thought, and Monk’s as jolly as a goddamned Santa Claus.

“Come on, Harry,” Delany coaxed, flicking the flashlight beam back and forth across Harry’s face again. “Rise and shine.”

“Go ‘way!”

Delany laughed. “You gotta get up, Harry. Time’s a-wasting.”

With a groan, Harry sat up, blinking, rubbing his stubbled jaw. Reluctantly he switched on the bedside lamp.

“What time is it?”

“Nearly six.”

Squinting at the room’s only window, Hartunian said, “Christ, it’s still dark.”

“Alaska, buddy. We’re not in sunny California anymore.”

“Tell me about it.”

Hartunian swung his legs out of the bed and stood up, shivering slightly in his boxers and undershirt. His back ached dully. He was a short, round-shouldered man with baby-fine thin dark hair that flew into disarray at the slightest puff of breeze. His midsection showed a distinct middle-aged bulge. He hadn’t come to Alaska willingly.

You’re the program engineer now, Harry, Victor Anson had told him. Wherever that plane goes, you go. We need you to make that damned laser work. Harry. Forget the accident. Just make it work. The company’s ass is on the line. We’re all depending on you.

“Okay,” he said to Delany, “I’m up. Go on down to the restaurant—”

“Mess hall,” Delany corrected.

“Whatever. I’ll meet you down there in ten minutes.”

Delany was several inches taller than Hartunian and outweighed him by more than thirty pounds. His hair was dark and thick, but despite his formidable appearance his normal facial expression was a genial, lopsided smile. He was already dressed in his white coveralls with the Anson Aerospace Corporation logo on its chest and back.

“You know how to find the mess hall?”

“I’ll find it,” Harry said, reaching for his bathrobe.

“Ten minutes.” Delany went to the door. He turned back, though, and advised, “Wear the heavy coat. October out here can be pretty damned chilly.”

“Where’s your coat?”

Delany flashed a grin. “I never feel the cold.”

Blubber, Harry thought sourly.

It was cold outside, he discovered. Cold and still dark, although the sky was lightening enough in the east to silhouette the rugged snowcapped mountains. Despite his brand-new goose-down- lined parka Harry’s back twinged from the cold. Psychosomatic, the doctors had claimed. Your ribs have healed and there’s nothing wrong with your spine. Still, ever since the accident, Harry’s back ached.

If I’d stayed in California like a sane man, Harry thought, I could’ve gone to the beach today.

Yeah, a sardonic voice in his head replied. And you’d have Sylvia and her lawyers pounding on your door, trying to get you to sign the damned divorce papers.

With a shake of his head, Harry looked around for the mess hall. He’d arrived at Elmendorf Air Force Base the previous afternoon, and most of the buildings in the sprawling facility looked pretty much alike to him. Last night, though, before going to sleep in the room they’d assigned him and Delany to share in the Bachelor Officers quarters, Harry had checked the route from the BOQ to the mess hall and put it into his cell phone’s memory. Now he pulled the phone from his pants pocket to orient himself.

Damn! The phone was dead. No, he saw, it was getting power from the battery. But the screen said NO CONNECTION.