America

Most of the other big-ticket American weapons procurement programs had been canceled to fund the ICBM shield. Many people in and out of uniform had argued bitterly about the wisdom of that, but the public wanted protection, and a hundred billion dollars was a lot of gravy to be spread far and wide, so Congress had gone along. After all, the argument went, America was the only superpower, with planes, ships, and tanks enough to defeat anyone on Earth, so the real threat was from third-world regimes developing weapons of mass destruction. SuperAegis, the argument went, would be a big first step in protecting Western civilization. And with a hundred billion to spread around, there was something for everybody, as one commentator pointed out. What's not to like?

'If it works,' Jake Grafton muttered.

'Oh ye of little faith, it will work, Admiral!' said the man beside him after glancing at his uniform and name tag. His name was Peter Kerr, and he was the engineer in charge of SuperAegis. Jake recognized him from several meetings that he had attended chaired by Kerr. To the best of Jake's recollection, Kerr had never spoken to him before. In fact, he would have been amazed if the man even remembered him.

'In fact, SuperAegis is the only antimissile defense system that would work,' Kerr said as he looked at the dignitaries peering into the rocket's first-stage exhaust nozzles and gazing up, up, up. 'All the academics said it couldn't be done, but there it is. The sensors in the satellite detect the exhaust of an ICBM booster lifting out of the atmosphere, the reactor powers up, generating the energy to track the warhead with radar and destroy it with a pulse laser. Solves the detection and interception problems neatly, cheaply, and automatically.'

'A better mousetrap,' Jake agreed. Peter Kerr looked at him sharply, glanced again at his name tag, then turned away.

'There went your naval career,' said a cheerful British voice at Jake's elbow. The owner, Wing Commander Alfred Barrington-Lee, was the British military liaison officer to the SuperAegis team. Toad Tarkington liked to refer to him as 'Hyphen,' although Toad called him 'sir' to his face. He was in his late forties and sported a nice potbelly that appeared larger than it really was due to his stooped, narrow shoulders and nonexistent hips. Jake hadn't managed to spend much time these last few months with Barrington-Lee. Toad had, and respected him, which was a positive recommendation.

Beside the RAF officer was Maurice Jadot, the French civilian on the liaison staff. He was a medium-sized, nondescript man who smoked Gauloises cigarettes — outside of course — and often loitered, flirting outrageously, around the female secretaries' desks. This open sexual tension in the workplace awed the Americans, who had been so browbeaten by the sexual Gestapo that they hadn't seen it done at the office in decades. Jadot spoke English with a pleasant accent. According to Tarkington, who was a connoisseur in these matters, the accent added to his sex appeal.

The German was Helmut Mayer. An urbane, witty, intelligent man of the world, Mayer was the most extroverted of the four, the one most often at the center of conversation. Just now he was shaking hands and muttering pleasantries to the dignitaries, many of whom he apparently knew well enough to greet by name. His humor was self-deprecating and he had a delightful laugh. The women in the office found him fascinating. Unlike Jadot, Mayer treated all the women the same, friendly on a social, not sexual, level.

The fourth member of the team, who was looking around at the lively crowd as if he were attending his first hockey game, was Sergi Kuznetsov, the Russian. He was the only one of the four who was an acknowledged intelligence professional, yet he probably knew as much about ICBMs and the problems involved with shooting them down as any of the others. He was taciturn to a fault, spoke only when spoken to, and never made small talk. Tarkington referred to him as a stranger in a strange land, which Jake thought an apt description. Apparently America had overwhelmed him. When asked, he once admitted that this was his first foreign assignment.

Jake was the deputy to the team leader, Air Force Lieutenant General Art Blevins, who was somewhere below with the launch team. Tarkington filled an administrative assistant's billet, although in addition to his admin duties he functioned as Jake's assistant. He and the admiral had been together on various assignments for years. Looking around, Jake decided he was probably the junior flag officer on the platform today. A good many three- and four-star flag officers were on the flight deck of the USS United States or one of her escorts. And truth be told, from that vantage point they would have a better view than the bunch on the Goddard platform, who were going to watch the launch on the control room monitors.

More people were filing up onto the tiny platform under the rocket, so Jake eased his way down the steps to the catwalk. From here he could see the giant flame deflectors that would vent the rocket's exhaust away from the platform's massive legs. He took a last look at the carrier, destroyers, frigates, and protesters' yachts as he made his way along the catwalk. He entered the personnel module and began climbing the ladders, working his way up six stories while uniformed NASA launch personnel filed down to make their final checks. The ladderways reminded Grafton of those in aircraft carriers.

The control/launch module was designed to contain everyone on the Goddard platform during the launch. The module was a bombproof, fireproof vault with small, three-inch-thick windows that looked as if they could withstand anything up to a nuclear blast. Huge monitors were spotted strategically throughout the room, and it was at these that the spectators looked. Cameras all over the platform were focused on the rocket, which gleamed on the monitors like.. 'the administration's phallic symbol.'

Congresswoman Samantha Strader made this observation in a clear voice. She had the ability, honed through the years, to make herself heard in crowds. The babble died abruptly. A few people tittered nervously.

Strader had buttonholed the secretary of state, who had reached the command module just moments before Jake arrived. He was huddled with the secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Strader was the senior minority member of the House SuperAegis subcommittee, which was why she was here. She was the administration's most vociferous critic of SuperAegis and had used that issue to catapult herself to national prominence. In fact, in some quarters she was seen as presidential timber. If she made a splash in the primaries, she certainly had a shot at the vice-presidential nomination.

'Man, she ought to love SuperAegis,' Tarkington whispered. He had followed Jake up the ladder with the international liaison team in tow. 'Got her on the cover of Time magazine last week.'

Jake didn't hear the secretary's retort, but he heard Strader's riposte.'… should be issuing hara-kiri knives to you gentlemen, in the event this bottle rocket goes in the water. After squandering fifty billion on it, hara-kiri is the least you could do for your country.'

The secretary had had enough of Sam Strader. 'I'd be delighted to do the dirty deed on those terms, Ms. Strader,' he said loudly, 'if you'll promise to use the knife if SuperAegis works as advertised.'

The public address system buzzed to life, ending the bantering with an order for all personnel on the Goddard platform to enter the command module. 'Ten minutes and counting,' the announcement ended.

The launch technicians sat at computer consoles butted against each other, all in a row, against the forward bulkhead. A second row of consoles sat behind the first, also oriented toward the windows. This arrangement allowed the controllers to peek through the bombproof portholes at the waiting rocket if they could somehow tear their eyes from their computer screens. Few, if any, did. The technicians wore headsets and concentrated fiercely on the screens before them.

Walking behind the technicians and looking over their shoulders were the scientists and engineers who designed and supervised the construction of SuperAegis. This launch was the culmination of years of effort, a lifetime of study and theorizing for most of these men and women.

They reminded Jake Grafton of expectant parents, chewing fingernails, strolling aimlessly, lost in their own thoughts. Here and there one of them would pause to study a computer monitor, then move on, apparently reassured.

At five minutes to go, all conversation behind the consoles stopped. The audience stood silently, watching.

Jake glanced at Strader, who was watching the proceedings with rapt attention.

The launch director's name was Stephen Gattsuo. He reminded Jake of an orchestra conductor, and in many ways he was. Grafton and the liaison team had attended many practice countdowns, so many that the admiral felt he could have written the launch order and got it pretty close. If anything, the real countdown was going much smoother than the practice sessions, which were full of emergencies and every malfunction the fertile brains of the engineers could conjure up.

A minor electrical problem delayed the countdown for several seconds, perhaps twenty, but the technicians rerouted data around the malfunctioning distribution bus so smoothly most of the observers didn't know there had