'Somebody ought to tell those bureaucrats that you don't just turn things like this on and off,' Candi growled.
'Six weeks, tops.' Al grinned. 'Maybe less.'
'When?' Candi asked.
'Soon. We haven't had a chance to run it on the simulator yet, but it feels right. It was Bob's idea. He was about due, and it streamlined the software package even better than what I was trying. We don't have to use as much AI as I thought.'
'Oh?' The use of AI-artificial intelligence-was supposed to be crucial to mirror performance and target discrimination.
'Yeah, we were overengineering the problem, trying to use reason instead of instinct. We don't have to tell the computer how to think everything out. We can reduce the command load twenty percent by putting pre-set options in the program. It turns out to be quicker and easier than making the computer make most judgments off a menu.'
'What about the anomalies?' Taussig asked.
'That's the whole point. The AI routines were actually slowing things down more than we thought. We were trying to make the thing so flexible that it had trouble doing anything. The expected laser performance is good enough that it can take the fire-option faster than the AI program can decide whether to aim it-so why not take the shot? If it doesn't fit the profile, we pop it anyway.'
'Your laser specs have changed,' Bea observed.
'Well, I can't talk about that.'
Another grin from the little geek. Taussig managed to smile back. I know something you don't know, is it? Just looking at him made her skin crawl, but what was worse was the way Candi looked at him, like he was Paul Newman or something! Sallow complexion, even zits, and she loved this thing. Bea didn't know whether to laugh or cry
'Even us admin pukes have to be able to plan ahead,' Taussig said.
'Sorry, Bea. You know the security rules.'
'Makes you wonder how we get anything done.' Candi shook her head. 'If it gets any worse, Al and I won't be able to talk to each other between?' She smiled lecherously at her lover.
Al laughed. 'I have a headache.'
'Bea, do you believe this guy?' Candi asked.
Taussig leaned back. 'I never have.'
'When are you going to let Dr. Rabb take you out? You know he's been mooning over you for six months.'
'The only mooning I expect out of him is from a car. God, that's a ghastly thought.' Her look at Candi masked her feelings exquisitely well. She also realized that the programming information that she'd gotten out was now invalid. Damn the little geek for changing it!
'That's something. Question is, what?' Jones keyed his microphone. 'Conn, Sonar, we have a contact bearing zero-nine-eight. Designate this contact Sierra-Four.'
'You sure it's a contact?' the young petty officer asked.
'See this?' Jones ran his finger along the screen. The 'waterfall display' was cluttered with ambient noise. 'Remember that you're looking for nonrandom data. This line ain't random.' He typed in a command to alter the display. The computer began processing a series of discrete frequency bands. Within a minute the picture was clear. At least Mr. Jones thought so, the young sonarman noted. The stroke of light on the screen was irregularly shaped, bowing out and narrowing down, covering about five degrees of bearing. The 'tech-rep' stared at the screen for several more seconds, then spoke again.
'Conn, Sonar, classify target Sierra-Four as a Krivak-class frigate, bearing zero-nine-six. Looks like he's doing turns for fifteen or so knots.' Jones turned to the youngster. He remembered his own first cruise. This nineteen- year-old didn't even have his dolphins yet. 'See this? That's the high-frequency signature from his turbine engines, it's a dead giveaway and you can hear it a good ways off, usually, 'cause the Krivak doesn't have good sound- isolation.'
Mancuso came into the compartment. Dallas was a 'first-flight' 688, and didn't have direct access from the control room to sonar as the later ones did. Instead, you had to come forward and step around a hole in the deck that led below. Probably the overhaul would change that. The Captain waved his coffee mug at the screen.
'Where's the Krivak?'
'Right here, bearing still constant. We have good water around us. He's probably a good ways off.'
The skipper smiled. Jones was always trying to guess range. The hell of it was that in the two years that Mancuso had had him aboard as a member of the crew he'd been right more often than not. Aft in the control room, the fire-control tracking party was plotting the position of the target against Dallas' known track to determine range and course of the Soviet frigate.
There wasn't much activity on the surface. The other three sonar contacts plotted were all single-screw merchantmen. Though the weather was decent today, the Baltic Sea-an oversized lake to Mancuso's way of thinking-was rarely a nice place in the winter. Intelligence reports said that most of the opposition's ships were tied alongside for repairs. That was good news. Better still, there wasn't much in the way of ice. A really cold season could freeze things solid, and that would put a crimp in their mission, the Captain thought.
Thus far only their other visitor, Clark, knew what that mission was.
'Captain, we have a posit on Sierra-Four,' a lieutenant called from control.
Jones folded a slip of paper and handed it to Mancuso.
'I'm waiting.'
'Range thirty-six thousand, course roughly two-nine-zero.'
Mancuso unfolded the note and laughed. 'Jones, you're still a fucking witch!' He handed it back, then went aft to alter the submarine's course to avoid the Krivak.
The sonarman at Jones's side grabbed the note and read it aloud. 'How did you know? You aren't supposed to be able to do that.'
'Practice, m'boy, practice,' Jones replied in his best W. C. Fields accent. He noted the submarine's course change. It wasn't like the Mancuso he remembered. In the old days, the skipper would close to get photos through the periscope, run a few torpedo solutions, and generally treat the Soviet ship like a real target in a real war. This time they were opening the range to the Russian frigate, creeping away. Jones didn't think Mancuso had changed all that much, and started wondering what the hell this new mission was all about.
He hadn't seen much of Mr. Clark, He spent a lot of time aft in the engine room, where the ship's fitness center was-a treadmill jammed between two machine tools. The crew was already murmuring that he didn't talk very much. He just smiled and nodded and went on his way. One of the chiefs noted the tattoo on Clark's forearm and was whispering some stuff about the meaning of the red seal, specifically that it stood for the real SEALs. Dallas had never had one of those aboard, though other boats had, and the stories, told quietly except for the occasional 'no shit!' interruptions, had circulated throughout the submarine community but nowhere else. If there was anything submariners knew how to do, it was keeping secrets.
Jones stood and walked aft. He figured he'd taught enough lessons for one day, and his status as a civilian technical representative allowed him to wander about at will. He noted that Dallas was taking her own sweet time, heading east at nine knots. A look at the chart told him where they were, and the way the navigator was tapping his pencil on it told him how much farther they'd be going. Jones started to do some serious thinking as he went below for a Coke. He'd come back for a really tense one after all.
'Yes, Mr. President?' Judge Moore answered the phone! with his own tense look. Decision time?
'That thing we talked about in here the other day?'
'Yes, sir.' Moore looked at the phone. Aside from the handset that he held, the 'secure' phone system was a three-foot cube, cunningly hidden in his desk. It took words, broke them into digital bits, scrambled them beyond recognition, and sent them out to another similar box which put them back together. One interesting sidelight of this was that it made for very clear conversations, since the encoding system eliminated all the random noise on the line.
'You may go ahead. We can't-well, I decided last night that we can't just leave him.' This had to be his first call of the morning, and the emotional content came through, too. Moore wondered if he'd lost sleep over the life of
