Delta Blue

Six

Pearson’s alarm chirped at six A.M., and she was instantly awake. She rubbed the grittiness out of her eyes, then turned on the small lamp in her sleeping cubicle. She freed herself from the Velcro straps that pinned her against the cushioned bulkhead. Opposite her by four feet was a communications panel for intercommunications aboard the station. It included a small television screen. Some people went to sleep by watching Casablanca instead of by reading. In an elastic-edged fabric pouch above the panel were the books by which Amy Pearson went to sleep. Currently, she was in the middle of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich and wondering why she had not read it before.

Below the communications panel was her personal locker, just about the only private area allowed her, or anyone, on board the station. Opening the twin doors, she retrieved a fresh jump suit, underwear, and her hygiene kit. She unzipped the curtain and pushed out into the corridor, then aimed herself toward the six hygiene stations. At six in the morning, only one was in use — identified by the amber light — and she let herself into a vacant stall.

Stripping out of the loose, baggy-legged sleeping garment that most of the enlisted men called a potato sack, she stuffed it into the dirty laundry hamper. Pearson used the vacuumized toilet, then gave herself a bath with a damp sponge. The only thing she really missed in her assignment on Themis was a long, steamy shower every morning. Floating in front of the sink, which was really a basin surrounding a vacuum nozzle, she brushed her teeth, rinsed her mouth with mouthwash, and spat into the vacuum port. None of the women on board worried about makeup. After combing out her hair, which took a while, she slipped the headband in place. She might have to have her hair cut, the next time she was earth side, she thought. She was beginning to look like something out of the ’60s San Francisco. The legs, too. She used an electric razor on them. After donning bra, panties, and jumpsuit, she repacked her hygiene kit and took it back to stow in her cubicle.

Pearson was assigned to the Spoke Sixteen residential module, the one limited to military personnel. The outer end of it was the dining/recreation space, and five people were present by the time she arrived. It was a busy place, usually, with people going on shift, coming off shift, or wiling away the time between sleep and work. Pearson’s days were intentionally long, and like the MakoShark pilots, she did not have a set work period.

S. Sgt. Delbert O’Hara, the chief steward, was stocking one of the three food stations mounted against the bulkhead common to the sleeping cubicles. Almost all of the station’s food was pre-prepared earth side, brought up in refrigerated bins, and stored in the hub. As needed, it was transferred to the dining modules. O’Hara, who reported to Deputy Commander Milt Avery, but might as well not have, was responsible for the menu, and he did a credible job with what he had to work with, making frequent changes in what the machines had to offer. Over time, in fact, he had devised new recipes of his own for the specialists on earth to develop into pouchable products. O’Hara had also labeled each of the three dispensing stations — “Junk,” “Back Home,” and “Cuisine.”

Pearson kicked off from the corridor edge and drifted up to the Cuisine station.

“Good morning, Delbert.”

“Morning Colonel.”

“What’s new here?”

“Not much on the breakfast side,” the sergeant said. “But try the Back Home. I just loaded a Texas Omelet that’ll knock your socks off. If you had socks.”

Pearson smiled at him. “You guarantee it?”

“Don’t need to. Major Munoz had three of ’em this morning.”

“That’s a five-star rating.”

“Damned tootin’.”

Each of the stations had six selections, and Pearson opened the second Plexiglas door of the Back Home station, extracted a pouch labeled “Texas Morning,” and shoved it into the microwave. While it was cooking, she got herself an orange juice and “Coffee, Black.” The juice was already cold, and the coffee already hot.

She looked around. The porthole was showing a slice of earth, heavily clouded this morning. The large-screen TV was mercifully blank. The big mural of Tahiti appeared serene. A lieutenant from the nuclear section was playing one of the dozen electronic games lined up against the outer bulkheads. The dining rooms on Themis were the only places where one could actually find a table and chairs. Not that anyone actually sat in them; they strapped themselves in to maintain position while playing checkers, chess, backgammon, or cards with game pieces that were lightly magnetized, as were the tabletops. And some people liked to eat sitting down, or appearing to sit down.

Two sergeants were engaged in a mean game of chess, soft drinks floating nearby.

That left Kevin McKenna sitting alone at a table by the port.

He smiled at her.

So she clamped her breakfast pouches in one hand, pushed off toward him, and caught herself as she reached the padded chair opposite him.

He actually released his restraining strap and stood up, holding onto his coffee.

“Good morning, Amy.”

“Good morning.” She strapped herself down, and McKenna refastened his own straps.

“You’re looking radiant this morning.”

“Come on, McKenna. I look the same every morning.”

“I know. That’s what brightens my day.”

Shaking her head, she pulled the sipping tube free from the side of the orange juice pouch and took a sip.

McKenna said, “You’re actually going to eat O’Hara’s Tex-Mex special?”

“If Tony can handle it, I can.”

“Hoo-kay, but remember the Tiger has a stomach lining made of depleted uranium alloy.”

Almost all of the food served was in finger-food form. Handling silverware was too much trouble, when the peas were going to fly away, anyway. Some hot meats were served with tongs. Liquids were something of a problem, too. No gravy or sauces, unless they were imbedded in the mashed potatoes and meat.

Pearson peeled the plastic zipper open, rolled the covering down, tested the heat of the eggy roll with her forefinger, and took a bite of her Texas Omelet. She chewed twice before she got zapped.

“God… damn!” she blurted.

Over by the food stations, O’Hara grinned and called, “I caught one of your socks, Colonel.”

“Isn’t that the best damned jalapeno pepper you ever tasted?” McKenna asked.

She sucked on her juice, but had the feeling nothing would relieve the spicy coating on her tongue and the inside of her cheeks.

“It is good,” she said, determined to finish it now.

By the fourth bite, her mouth was acclimated, but she thought she would feel the heat until midmorning.

At least, McKenna didn’t laugh at her. He asked, “What’s on for today, Amy?”

“At one o’clock, I’ll give the squadron a briefing.”

“Covering?”

“The photos Dimatta got on the last run, for one thing. We got quite a few more naval vessels. Then, I’ll background you on some of the principal players.”

“Who, for instance?”

“The tail numbers you identified on the two Tornados makes them part of the First Squadron of the Twentieth Special Air Group assigned to New Amsterdam. The wing commander is a Colonel Albert Weismann, a good old boy who’s been around for quite a while.”

“What’s the makeup of the wing?” McKenna asked, then sipped from his coffee.

“A little strange, from what the DIA has in its files. There’s two squadrons of Tornados and Eurofighters — commanded by Major Gustav Zeigman and Major Wilhelm Metzenbaum, a squadron of transports, and one of helicopters.”

“That is a bit weird. Lot of variety for one wing.”

“Yes. It looks to me as if an entire wing is devoted to support of the well sites. Then, there’s Admiral Gerhard Schmidt.”

“Who’s he?”

“The missile cruiser Hamburg turns out to be his flagship, and Schmidt’s assigned as commander of the Third Naval Force. Now, Schmidt’s an old hand, too, in his early sixties, and the data says he’s a hell of a naval strategist and tactician. By all rights, he should be in command of a fleet.”

“Which means?”

Pearson ran her tongue around the inside of her mouth, trying to erase the traces of pepper. She unlatched the sipping tube on her coffee. “Which means that something about those wells makes them important enough to require the services of top echelon commanders.”

“Intriguing, Amy. You do a good job.”

She nodded slightly to acknowledge the compliment. “I’m still trying to track all of the vessels attached to the Third Naval Force, but at the briefing, I’ll also give you a rundown on the pilots we think are assigned to the Twentieth Special Air Group. Believe me when I say they’re all hot dogs and aces.”

“I always believe you, Amy.”

“Do you? Why don’t you like me, McKenna?”

His eyes widened, and he grinned. “Not like you? Damn, my dear, I think you’ve got it all backward.”

“Don’t call me ‘dear,’ please. If you had any respect for me, Colonel, you’d treat me as the professional I am.”

“You want me to treat you differently than I treat Brad Mitchell or Polly Tang or Frank Dimatta? I can give you the prima-donna bit, if that’s what you want, or I can be a brass asshole, or I can be me.”

She just stared at him for a moment, then gathered her empty pouches for the trash vacuum. “I’ve got work to do.”

“Put it off. We’ll talk.”

“Talking with you is too exasperating,” she said. “And I’ve got to check on the civvies.”

Releasing her lap belt, Pearson pushed off the chair, dumped her breakfast remnants in the receptacle, then kicked her way toward the blue hatchway door leading into Spoke Sixteen.

Traversing the spoke, she passed the four lifeboat stations, one of the reasons Spokes Sixteen, Ten, and Fourteen were off-limits to civilian personnel. Sight of the yellow hatches emblazoned with the black letters, “LIFEBOAT,” was not considered morale-maintaining for the civilians. The lifeboats were not very complex and could not survive reentry into the atmosphere. They were just simple capsules with food and air that would last thirty days. In the event of a catastrophe that consumed the entire station, each boat could sustain life for ten people while it drifted in space, waiting for a MakoShark or a Mako or, if necessary, a HoneyBee to rendezvous with it and retrieve the inhabitants.

The engineers had absolute faith in the structural soundness of the station, but just in case…

Keeping the civilians ignorant of the possible need for lifeboats was just another morale, as well as security, problem. Pearson thought the visitors ought to know about them, but somebody in DOD thought the clients should not have unnecessary worries.

Lt. Col. Amelia Pearson was also the security officer aboard Themis. Brad Mitchell was in charge of the station’s environmental and structural integrity, but Pearson was responsible for containment of the less tangible, more slippery commodity of secret intelligence.

She maintained the security clearance files on all enlisted personnel and officers except for General Overton, McKenna, and herself. Those were monitored by General Thorpe at Space Command. Pearson supervised the security clearance investigations for any potential replacement of personnel aboard the station. Replacements were rare, however, since those aboard resisted rotation back to an earth side assignment, and most had extended their one-year postings to Themis one or more times. Outside of war, there weren’t many situations in which the officer/enlisted distinctions virtually disappeared. Station personnel were selected strictly on the basis of competency in a given field.

There was a large backlog of applicants for duty on the space station, from the army, the navy, and the marines, as well as the air force. The 1st Aerospace Wing was air force-operated, but the personnel complement included all services. Maj. Brad Mitchell was a marine. Polly Tang was army. No matter where they came from, though, the military people had never given Pearson much trouble. They understood the importance of the knowledge they accumulated, and when they were earth side, they did not spread it around.

More troublesome to her brand of security were the civilian scientists on two-or three-week stints for companies that had contracted with the Department of Defense. Being scientists, they were naturally curious. Nosy, Pearson termed it. They might well defend to the death their right to protect the secrecy of an industrial process they personally developed in space, but they were less circumspect about revealing military secrets.

Pearson had devised the color scheme used on Themis. All interior surfaces were painted a typical, uniformly military gray. Hatchways to absolutely dangerous areas — primarily the undeveloped spokes and the air locks — were finished in red. Hatchways to spaces accessible only to particularly authorized personnel were orange and were also protected by keypad-operated locks. The nuclear reactor, communication, computer, ordnance and fuel storage areas, and the MakoShark hangars were behind orange hatches.

Areas to which a civilian might be invited, but only under escort, were identified in yellow. The Command Center, the Mako bays, and the Honeybee docking facilities qualified for yellow.

Blue was utilized for the spaces open only to military personnel, such as the military laboratories in Spokes Ten through Fourteen, and green was the predominant color used for those regions accessible to visiting civilians. Some compartments had blue/green hatchways, denoting combined usage. Various corridors in the hub had a green stripe running along the bulkhead. If an unescorted civilian didn’t see green somewhere, he or she knew the territory was forbidden. Not that some of them cared one way or the other. Military people were always reminding errant civilian people of the distinction.

Of the sixteen spokes, seven were open to civilians — three of the residential modules and four of the dedicated laboratory modules, Spokes Two through Eight. The nuclear reactor power plant was located at the end of Spoke Nine. In the hub, civilians could visit the exercise room, the medical clinic, a communications space set aside for corporate contractors, the laundry, and a few other specialized spaces.

At some time during her workday, Pearson made it a point to visit various spaces in the civilian areas. She made her visits randomly, and frequently she sent M. Sgt. Val Arguento in her place. Arguento was an army communications specialist who manned one of the shifts in the Radio Shack, but who also served as the security NCO. He had had extensive experience with the Defense Intelligence Agency and with the National Security Agency.

This morning, Pearson chose Spoke Six. She followed the curving outer corridor, Corridor Two, around to it, passing a number of people emerging from the residential spokes, headed for their assigned tasks. Everyone spoke to her, and she returned the greetings with a smile.

Spoke Six had a green hatchway, and was therefore out-of-bounds to most of the military contingent. The corporate contractors often had secrets they wanted to keep to themselves. And even if they did not, the experiments taking place in the labs were often sensitive, and the scientists didn’t want to be subjected to high traffic.

She tapped the green square and waited while the door unlocked and swung open. This spoke was forty feet long, and along its length, four accesses were provided, leading to small modules attached to the side of the spoke. These were hydroponic farms, where food and other flora were raised in special solutions. Artificial light was normally used, but one of the modules had a sliding shield that allowed direct sunlight to enter. It was all experimental. One of the military spokes had hydroponic farms growing wheat, rice, corn, and soybeans that were actually consumed after Sergeant O’Hara performed his magic.

After her Texas Omelet, Pearson thought she might revert to O’Hara’s bland bean concoctions.

The laboratory on the end of the spoke was huge, eighty feet long by sixty feet in diameter. Its interior bulkheads were partially movable in order to create differently sized spaces, based on the needs of the contractor.

The contractor was responsible for providing the equipment necessary for the particular experiment, and the equipment arrived at the station by HoneyBee.

Spoke Six was currently under contract to Honeywell and to Du Pont and was therefore divided into two separate laboratories. She passed through Honeywell’s space, which wasn’t currently inhabited, and opened the hatch to Du Pont. Honeywell smelled of ozone, which she didn’t like, and she made a mental note to mention it to Brad Mitchell.

Dr. Howard Dixon was upside down to her when she pulled herself through the hatchway She performed a half flip.

He smiled at her. “Ah, Colonel. Welcome.”

“I hope I’m not disturbing anything, Doctor.”

“Not at all. I’m boiling some oxides, if you’d like to watch.”

Absolutely fascinating, she thought. “I’ll pass, thanks. Are you being taken care of? Is there anything we can do for you?”

“Not a thing. I’m perfectly happy.”

In the immense space, he looked like a miniature, hanging onto the workbench fitted to the outer wall. But he did look happy.

The lab was a jungle of specialized instruments, consoles, and work tables to which were attached intricate lacings of tubing, vials, and bottles.

On her circuit of the lab, Pearson was careful to not touch anything. She looked primarily for things that might seem out of place, for paperwork that shouldn’t be there. There wasn’t much paper, of course, since most work notes and reports were kept on computer.

Computer disks leaving the station, or data and voice transfers from the client communications room, were scanned by Sergeant Arguento’s computer for information that should not be included in industrial and scientific reports. The computer sought out key words and phrases in computer documents and sounded the alarm when something was amiss. Usually, when they discovered classified information being transmitted, it was unintentional on the part of the scientist. A trivial piece of scientific curiosity, a measurement of the nuclear plant output, a suspicion that Themis stored ordnance aboard. One nuclear physicist, who also happened to be an antinuke activist, had convinced himself that nuclear-tipped missiles were stored aboard the station. He had made a nuisance of himself searching the station’s compartments for them, and had eventually been deported.

When such incidents happened, General Overton was called on for a stern lecture, and the appropriate corporate headquarters was notified. Companies like Du Pont or Honeywell or Martin-Marietta did not want to lose the privilege of experimenting in space and tended to take immediate corrective action with their employees.

Completing her inspection, she said good-bye to Dixon and passed back into Honeywell’s lab. It was mostly taken up by three large, reinforced, and interconnected boxes that contained the components of a computer memory. It had been explained to her that the difference was that the memory chips were in complete vacuum. They were playing with artificial intelligence, Dr. Monte Washington had willingly explained to her.

She made a quick trip around the lab, then headed back to the spoke, reaching the hatchway just as it opened. Washington and his assistant, a bespectacled and bald man named Kensing, floated through the opening.

“Hey, Colonel Pearson,” Washington said. “You’re early today.”

“That’s because I have a full day ahead, I’m afraid, Mr. Washington.”

“Ah, that’s too bad. I was hoping to buy you lunch or dinner. Take in a movie.”

“Maybe another time,” she said, for perhaps the tenth time. Washington was persistent, though not grabby. He poked with his eyes.

She felt his eyes on her backside as she darted down the spoke.

Monte Washington might be one step worse than McKenna, she thought. At least McKenna seemed honest.

And she wondered at the question she had asked him. She didn’t really think that McKenna disliked her.

Bahnsteig Eine appeared to be solid as a rock when Eisenach’s helicopter settled onto the landing pad at two o’clock. The appearance was something of a deception.

The platform bases actually floated. While the platform itself stood some fifteen meters above the surface of the sea, the three legs extended downward only as far as the subsurface unit. That massive, donut-shaped structure was twenty meters below the surface, providing flotation as well as stabilization with extended, winglike stabilizers and internal, motor-driven gyros. The seabed, a crevice in this location below Bahnsteig Eine, was some 520 meters deep, and the platform maintained its position by means of four anchor lines.

Heavy seas were running, the troughs a meter below the white-capping tips of the waves, but the platform was steady when Eisenach, his adjutant Oberlin, and Oberst Albert Weismann, exited the helicopter.

Four crewmen from the platform ran out to tie the helicopter down, and the pilot descended from his cockpit to light a cigarette.

The wind was strong, forcing the three officers to grip their service caps as they made their way across the flight deck to the dome entrance. The small door was set deeply into the wall of the dome. The walls were three meters thick, solid insulation sandwiched between aluminum skins in each of the five-meter triangular pieces that made up the dome. Next to the small door was a section of wall, four meters tall by six meters wide, which was removable so that heavy equipment could be transferred in and out of the dome.

When Oberlin closed the door behind them, they stood in a wide, high corridor leading to the back side of the structure. The deck was steel-plated in an antiskid diamond pattern. At the back of the corridor, an insulated fiberglass wall had been installed, to isolate the corridor from the drilling compartment that was located to the back of the dome.

Eisenach wrinkled his nose at the sulfur-tainted air that wafted through the corridor. A deep hum of machinery vibrated through the floor.

On his right were the living quarters, ten floors of dormitory rooms, kitchens, and recreation rooms to house the 140 men who worked on Bahnsteig Eine. The living spaces took up about a third of the dome.

To the left, taking up four floors, was the gigantic collection and distribution room. The heavy machinery was located in the drilling section.

Eisenach had no interest in seeing either area on this visit.

He led the way down the corridor and arrived at the elevator just as it opened.

Oberst Hans Diederman smiled widely as he emerged from the car. “Herr General Eisenach, how good it is to see you!”

Diederman was an army engineer with a widely respected mind. He was tremendously overweight, and the fat bulged his fatigue uniform. Eisenach had spoken to him repeatedly about his weight, but the engineer continued to enjoy the well-stocked pantry included in his command.

Eisenach treated the man with some deference because he was instrumental to the VORMUND PROJEKT. He was in charge of all twenty-four platforms, and the process had been developed by Diederman and his army subordinate engineers. Some navy and air force engineering officers, who happened to be partially knowledgeable of the project, were jealous.

Diederman did not bother with a salute, but held his callused hand out.

Eisenach shook it. The hand was hard and firm, contrary to his appearance. “Hans. How are you?”

“Wonderful! Come, come, gentlemen. Let us go up to my suite.”

Diederman stepped back into the elevator, and Eisenach, Oberlin, and Weismann followed him. The engineer’s bulk made the car very small.

Diederman pressed the button for Level Five, and the car rose silently. He had designed the elevator also.

When they exited on the fifth deck, the vibrations and humming of the platform were considerably reduced. The sound-deadening insulation imbedded in the walls of the control center was quite thick.

The center itself felt spacious. It was two stories tall, and the interior walls were about thirty meters long. The outside, third wall curved to the radius of the dome. In one wall was a door to the residential section. In the other straight wall were doors to several private offices.

An electronic grid map on the wall identified the immediate area, with the wells, the ice shelf, and ships in the area clearly marked. Alongside the circles signifying each well was a rectangular box displaying sets of numbers. To Diederman, and to others as well versed as he, the numbers provided pertinent and current information about each well. Temperatures, pressures, output. Eisenach had long before given up trying to interpret them.

The floor of the control center was lined with electronic consoles. There were forty consoles, with thirty-two of them currently manned.

Oberst Albert Weismann stopped by one console and peered over the shoulder of the operator. He appeared as puzzled by what was displayed on the computer screen as Eisenach had been, the first time it was explained to him.

“Now, this way, gentlemen.”

Diederman led them into his office, which was spacious, and closed the glass door. The office did not have a desk. It had a computer terminal, a bank of six television screens, two sofas angled into one corner, and a huge round table with eight chairs spaced around it. The table was littered with computer printouts, diagrams, and schematics. Near one chair was a slanted control panel similar to a switchboard.

The chief engineer poured the coffee himself, drawing the strong black liquid from a large urn into ceramic cups. He passed them around as everyone took seats at the table, but did not offer cream or sugar. He placed a platter piled high with pastries in the center of the table. He swept piles of documents to one side, then plopped into the chair next to the switchboard.

“Well, then, General Eisenach. You are here for a progress report?”

Though that was not the primary purpose of his visit, Eisenach said, “Please, Hans.”

Diederman pressed two buttons on his control panel and one of the TV screens came to life, showing a view from above of a drilling compartment. A swarm of men moved over the floor and along the ribs of the rig, dismantling steel beams and lowering them to the deck with an overhead crane.

“That is Platform Twenty. The well has been completed successfully, now, and we are disassembling the heavy drilling rig. It will be moved to Platform Twenty-Two.”

“How long until the well-head assembly is emplaced?” Eisenach asked.

“Oh, give us another six, seven days. I will have the well on-line within ten days, General. That will give us twenty-one wells in the network.”

“Very good, Hans. How about Platform Eleven?”

It had been decided by the High Command that centralizing the control and distribution on Bahnsteig Eine might be foolhardy. Bahnsteig Elf, therefore, was undergoing renovations that would allow it to perform as an alternate control station.

“Right now, I estimate another five or six weeks, General,” Diederman said. He waved an expansive hand toward the control center outside his windows. “The electronics are in short supply, and we have had to wait upon the manufacturer for several weeks. The consoles, especially, are dedicated to our particular purpose.”

“Would you like additional pressure brought to bear on the manufacturer?”

Diederman shook his big head. “It would not do us much good. We are still fishing for cable and pipeline on the seabed, now. It is going to take us a while to bring it to the surface and complete the junctions.”

“Very well,” the general said.

The second television screen came to life with a picture of another drilling compartment.

“Now, then. Platform Twenty-Three is down to three thousand meters. We broke a rotary bit and spent three days pulling pipe so we could fish for it. Right now, they’re going back down in the hole with a new bit. If the geology holds up, we ought to complete in another couple of weeks. Then we’ll move that rig to Twenty-Four. Hell, General, overall, we are ninety-one days ahead of schedule.”

“And I, and the Fatherland, are extremely grateful for your expertise, Hans.”

Diederman shrugged. “Now, perhaps you will tell me of the real purpose of your journey, General.”

“Real purpose?”

The engineer grinned hugely at Weismann. “Old Albert does not come out here very often. I think he is uncomfortable at sea.”

Weismann nodded. The wing commander was fifty-two years old and had been flying for thirty-four of those years. His eyes were pale and clear, and his blond hair was cropped short. At one time, his skin had also been pale and clear, but he suffered now from some epidermal rash that reddened the backs of his hands and the skin of his forehead and cheeks. He was a tall man, very lean in his tailored uniform.

“Go ahead, Colonel,” Eisenach said.

“How many external cameras do you have on each well, Hans?” Weismann asked.

“There are three. Two overlook the helicopter pad, and one is located at the top of the dome. All are remote-controlled.” Diederman played with his switchboard and yet another television screen revealed a view of the sea, slowly panning by. “We keep the upper camera on full rotation, watching for intruders.”

“But watching the sea?”

“Of course.”

“It can be aimed upward?”

“Certainly.”

With several keystrokes, Diederman changed the angle of the camera. A blank, pale blue sky appeared.

“It is a boring view,” Diederman said.

“It may not be for long,” the commander of the 20.S.A.G. said.

“Oh?”

“Yesterday, one of my pilots chased off a Greenpeace ship. Near Platform Six?”

“I recall the incident. It was reported to me.”

“During the encounter, the pilot believes that he saw another aircraft in the area. A fleeting glimpse of an aircraft that revealed no radar or infrared signature.”

Diederman looked to the general then back to Weismann. “There is such an aircraft, of course. Properly, an aerospace craft.”

“Yes,” Weismann said. “The American MakoShark. We have never seen it before.”

“Nor have many,” Eisenach said. “Hans, our concern is that the Americans may have taken an interest in your wells.”

Diederman grinned. “They are mine, now? I will put them up for sale and retire a very rich man.”

“It is possible,” Eisenach said, ignoring the levity, “that the craft, if it was actually seen by the pilot, and if it was a MakoShark, was interested solely in the encounter with the Greenpeace ship. On the other hand, however, we do not wish to take chances.”

“So, now. You wish to utilize my dome cameras? Since the MakoShark is visible to the eye?”

“Exactly,” Weismann said. “Each of the dome cameras is to begin scanning the skies. I will work with your technicians to formulate a computer program to guide them — changing the scanning angle and magnification ranges. I will also set up a communications link between the monitors you must… ”

“That costs me man-hours, Albert.”

“I apologize, Hans, but it must be done. We will need three shifts of men to monitor the screens. And I will arrange a communications network between them and my wing.”

“Now, General, do you really believe these aerospace craft are spying on us?” Diederman asked.

“With what we have to protect, Hans, we cannot afford to believe otherwise.”

It was the first time in a long time that the entire complement of the 1st Aerospace Squadron had flown together.

The three MakoSharks backed away from their bays at six o’clock in Themis’s evening, midnight in Bonn’s. They took some time doing it, losing speed relative to the satellite, and spreading themselves sixty miles apart. McKenna wanted lots of room for error. Flying formation through blackout was not done.

It was not evening for Themis in real time. Her nights were erratic and short-lived, dependent upon when the orbit happened to place the earth between the station and the sun. An eclipse of the space station which might last for up to twenty minutes.

The direct sun glinted off the white plastic-clad skin of the station, making it appear much larger than it was. Up close, when approaching Themis, she was magnificently gigantic, seeming to loom over a minute MakoShark. In the early days, when she was just a hub and a couple of spokes, McKenna used to practice space-batics around her, zipping in close, backing off, rolling across the top of the hub to the solar array on the back side. Ease up to the Command Center’s porthole and stare directly into Overton’s eyes from fifteen feet away.

Overton had finally ordered a cease-and-desist on those activities, which was within his rights. He was in charge of the space station, while McKenna was responsible only for the squadron. Overton’s concern had not been with McKenna’s ability. Rather, he was afraid the newer pilots in the squadron, just joining it at that time, would slip and run a MakoShark right through his viewing window.

When all of the hangar doors were closed, twenty-foot high black letters were joined into the logo:

Every time he saw it, McKenna felt a twinge of pride. There was nothing like it anywhere, nothing to match the capability and ingenuity of Americans with a purpose.

Soyuz Fifty, the Soviet space station initiated two years before, orbited some ninety miles higher than Themis, but it was a limited undertaking. To date, it was comprised of five modules strung together in a straight line, and it was manned by no more than three people at the same time. The radar antenna for the most powerful radar ever developed, and housed in Themis’s Spoke Fifteen, was larger than the entire Soviet space station.

The Soviet Rocket Forces were having funding problems.

As Delta Blue drifted away from her mother ship, McKenna studied the new spoke. It would be Nine-B, next to the nuclear reactor, and its segments were arriving steadily by HoneyBee. So far, it was about twenty feet long, appearing spindly in comparison with the completed spokes. Four unassembled sections floated close by, secured by single ropes. The crewmen assigned to fitting the prefab pieces together had been called back inside the station for a rest break. Coincidentally timed so that they would miss seeing the departures of the MakoSharks.

The perspective changed as Delta Blue increased the gap. Themis became smaller against the unending backdrop of space, and with her knob-ended spokes, looked like, first, a child’s Tinkertoy, than a star that had wandered in too close.

“Let’s upend her,” Munoz said. He had been programming the reentry data.

“Roger, Tiger.” McKenna keyed the radio pad for the squadron’s frequency. “Delta Blue to Delta Flight.”

“Yellow, here, Snake Eyes.”

“Green.”

“Reverse position.”

With the thrusters, he turned Delta Blue over and waited until the confirmations came from Dimatta and Conover. He could not see either of the MakoSharks, each thirty miles off his wing tips.

“Green ready.”

“Yellow’s set.”

“Delta Flight, program check.”

Abrams, Williams, and Munoz confirmed accepted reentry programs.

“Initiate sequence, Delta Flight.”

McKenna watched the CRT and saw the numbers appear.

“Sixteen minutes, Snake Eyes,” Munoz said. “I’m going to take a nap.”

“Delta Blue, Yellow. Seventeen minutes, twelve seconds.”

“Blue, Green. Fifteen minutes, twenty-two seconds.”

“Not too bad, guys,” McKenna told them. “See you on the other side.”

The reentry passage was almost flawless. Themis had been over the continent of Antarctica when they started, and the three MakoSharks emerged from blackout almost directly over Turkey, the spread between them expanded to 150 miles.

By the time they had joined up on turbojets at 40,000 feet and Mach 1.8, Warsaw, Poland, was the primary landmark.

“Systems check, Tiger?”

“All internal systems are showin’ number one, Snake Eyes. We lost the damned Phoenix.”

“Delta Flight, systems check.”

“Green reports a full complement, Snake Eyes.”

“Yellow’s all green.”

“We burned out a Phoenix,” McKenna told them, “but then it’s a moot point, anyway. We’ll go as planned.”

“Roger, roger,” Dimatta said, “Green’s northbound.”

Delta Green would make her run over the wells, looking especially for naval units. On the return, she would scatter sonobuoys along the estimated route of the undersea pipelines.

Conover’s voice came on the air. “Delta Yellow. We’re going to cruise the river.”

Conover and Williams would make a wide circle to the left as far as the North Sea, then take a meandering course south down the length of the old Federal Republic of Germany, shooting low-light and infrared film of the major military concentrations. Their primary concern was New Amsterdam Air Force Base and the naval port of Bremerhaven since Pearson had identified both as home bases for the 20th Special Air Group and the 3rd Naval Force.

McKenna was taking on the old German Democratic Republic. On the first run, they would come west down the Baltic into Mecklenburg Bay, then turn south and fly all the way to the Czechoslovakian border before turning north once again. Pearson was as interested in the new or expanded industrial sites as she was in military bases. Rostock, Magdeburg, Halle, Leipzig, Zwickau, Dresden, and Berlin were the chief photographic targets.

At 500 knots, to avoid trailing a sonic boom, the round trip over land took an hour and twenty minutes. Munoz used the radar randomly, and they made momentary contact with sixteen aircraft. Two were commercial flights into Berlin and Dresden, and the rest were patrolling Luftwaffe pairs. None of the aircraft, nor any of the coastal radars, spotted them. The radar threat receiver went off regularly as they passed active radar installations, and Munoz squelched out the noise in the lower bands.

After passing over Berlin at 10,000 feet, Munoz said, “You know, jefe, I count four new radars along the Polish border.”

“We know we’re dealing with paranoid personalities, Tiger. They’d like to move the USSR to Antarctica.”

“That’s for damned sure. Hey, babe, we’re out of targets. You want to punch it for home?”

“Let’s finish it out to the Baltic. Maybe well spot a couple more radar installations.”

“Roger. Let’s… uh, take it to heading four-five for two minutes, then back to oh-one-oh.”

McKenna turned to the new heading and watched the chronometer readout on the HUD. He also lost altitude to 7,000 feet. This stretch of Germany wasn’t heavily inhabited.

A few minutes later, back on his original heading, he saw the darkness of the Baltic coming up. The scattered lights of cities along the coast identified it.

Munoz had the screens showing night-vision interpretations of the landscape. There wasn’t much to be seen. A few villages along the Ucker River on their left.

Thirty miles to the Pomeranian Bay on the Baltic.

Chirp! Chirp! Chirp!

“Son of a bitch, Snake Eyes! That’s a big damned J-Band transmittin’.”

“Where?”

Munoz went to active radar for two sweeps.

“Headin’ two-eight-one,” Munoz said. “I put it on the coast five miles west of Peenemünde”

“Let’s take a look.”

“Let’s.”

McKenna eased the hand controller over and banked into the new heading.

“What’s the film load, Tiger?”

“Checkin’ now. I’ve got fifty frames of low-light, and twenty frames of infrared left. Ho-kay. The J-Band’s gone off the air.”

“Use up all you have,” McKenna said.

He saw the installation ten miles before he reached it because it was well lit. He altered course a couple degrees to pass right over it.

At the speed they were making, McKenna only got a quick look.

“I count four large buildings and a chopper pad,” he told Munoz.

“Ditto. Plus the radar antenna a quarter-mile to the east. One of the buildings, the largest, has been there for fifty years or more, Snake Eyes. We saw it, what, a year ago?”

“About that.”

“I’m backin’ up tape.”

As they left the coast behind and McKenna started a slow, turning climb, Munoz reversed the videotape until the installation appeared on the panel screen. He froze the frame.

The old and large building had once produced heavy machinery, McKenna thought. Tractors, maybe. It was now in full operation, light spilling from hundreds of small windows. Two of the new buildings were tall and wide, kind of like hangars, but short of windows. The last building was a narrow structure, but he guessed it at over fifteen stories in height. It had an aircraft warning strobe on top. In the green-hued picture, it was difficult to tell, but McKenna thought he saw a maze of railroad tracks running into the buildings.

“Strange layout, amigo?”

“Could be a launch complex, Tiger.”

“That’s what I’m thinkin’, but it’s damned small.”

“It only takes one launch tower for one big rocket,” McKenna said.

“I think we oughta put a Wasp into it.”

“Good idea, but we’re not going to do it.”

“I also think,” Munoz said, “that we’d better tell Embry to convert our Wasps to air-to-ground.”

“You’re full of good ideas.”

“Got lots of sleep today.”