Delta Green

Chapter Five

Lieutenant Colonel Bradley Mitchell, Beta One, was Chief of Maintenance for the 1st Aerospace Squadron fleet. He considered every Mako and MakoShark to be his exclusive property, merely on loan to their flight crews and the United States Air Force. Of course, every maintenance section member, enlisted or commissioned, felt the same way. If the craft were ever divided among their owners, no one would have much. Except Master Sergeant Benny Shalbot, maybe. The electronics specialist was meaner than many of his co-owners.

On the frequency McKenna had assigned to his Tactical Two radio channel, Mitchell said, “Delta Blue, you can clear your port side CO2 storage tank, then open the pressurization valve between it and the fuel storage and take the pressure off the pellet feed.”

“If I do that, Beta, we may get a backfeed of pellets into the carbon dioxide tanks.”

“We worried about my bird or about one contaminated tank?” Mitchell asked.

“It means stripping the bonded skin off the wing to repair it,” McKenna told him, “and that means three or four days. I don’t want the downtime. Can’t have it.”

“Damn it, Blue! Let’s weigh the cost of the craft and the cost of a CO2 tank…”

“And lost air time,” McKenna broke in. “Delta Green is the priority now.”

“Ah, hell.”

“We need a design change so we can depressurize the pellet tank without backing into the CO2 tanks,” Munoz said, thinking ahead.

“I’m already thinking about it,” Polly Tang, the maintenance deputy, said, “but that’s future. Right now, I’ve got the schematic up on my screen. I don’t think the anti-blowback valve is the problem. The problem is going to be in the actuator that controls the valve, or in the actuator relay. You tried the redundant system, Snake Eyes?”

“Already closed, Beta Two.”

The MakoShark was flying nose high, but when he glanced through the canopy to his left, McKenna saw the coastline passing below. The South China Sea was a pretty blue, leaning toward emerald.

“All right, Delta Blue,” Mitchell said, “we can override the igniter interlock and shut down the igniter. The pellets will continue to flow.”

“And jam up the combustion chamber and nozzle,” McKenna noted.

“Maybe. Still, we can change those without stripping bonded skin,” Mitchell said.

“Give me another option, Beta.”

“Jesus Christ! What thrust are you developing?” Mitchell asked.

“One five thousand indicated.”

“Hold one, I’m calculating now,” the maintenance officer said.

On the intercom, Munoz asked, “Snake Eyes, you thinking of trying to land with an active rocket motor?”

“I want to see if Brad is thinking along the same lines. You want to get out here, Tiger?”

“Nah. I’ve been along when you’ve done worse.”

“Okay, Delta Blue,” Mitchell said. “Start your turbojets twenty minutes out of Wet Country. On the approach, we want forty per cent power on the right engine and five per cent power on the left. That should balance the power development, but you’re going to come in hot, fifty-five or sixty knots above normal. On the flareout, go immediately to a hundred percent reverse thrust on the left engine. That’ll maybe neutralize the rocket thrust. No more than ten per cent reverse thrust on the right engine.”

“And lay into the brakes?” Munoz asked.

“We’ll probably burn out the brakes,” Mitchell said. “And we’ll likely be thinking about new tires also.”

“I’m alerting the crash crews now,” Polly Tang said. “We’ll have mechanics on the runway, ready to open the nacelle and shut down the anti-blowback valve.”

“Sounds good to me,” McKenna said. “Alpha One, you listening in?”

“I’ve got a copy,” General Overton said.

“Comments?”

“It’s your call. Take your time, Delta Blue.”

“Good luck, Snake Eyes,” Amy Pearson said.

Everyone on board Themis seemed to be listening in on the conversation. Probably holding their collective breath.

Munoz spoke up on the ICS. “You just watch, amigo. In about five minutes, Big General Cartwright is goin’ to come on the air and tell us he doesn’t want any rubber strips left on his runway.”

“He’d really scream about large pieces of MakoShark, wouldn’t he?” McKenna asked.

“Let’s go back to talkin’ about smoked tires instead, Snake Eyes.”

McKenna spent the next half hour concentrating on keeping the nose high in order to bleed off speed. Munoz developed an approach pattern for them and coordinated it with the tower personnel at Wet Country.

Coming out of supersonic flight was a rattler, with the craft bobbing around her part of the sky for a few minutes. McKenna whispered nice things to her, and she finally came around and resumed her nose high attitude.

“Goin’ active, Snake Eyes.”

“Go.”

Munoz switched his radar from passive to active mode in order to check the immediate vicinity for air traffic.

“Passive,” he reported when he had switched back. “No traffic to sweat.”

They went through the turbojet start-up sequence more carefully than usual. Both engines started without problems after he put the nose down enough to get a clear airflow through the intakes.

McKenna didn’t feel any unusual tension. It would be an abnormal landing, but he had been in tighter spots.

Munoz handled the radio chores, leaving McKenna free to manipulate the throttles and concentrate on the approach to the runway.

“Wet Country, Delta Blue,” the backseater called.

“Gotcha, Blue. Give me a status.”

“We’ve got seven-zero-zero knots, angels ten, sixty miles out.”

“Squawk me once.”

Munoz turned on the modified IFF, Identify Friend or Foe, briefly to give the controller an identified blip on his radar screen.

“I see you. You’re clean straight in on ought-one. Wind is normal, meaning nothing. Barometric pressure two nine point eight.”

McKenna didn’t bother sight-seeing. He kept his eyes scanning the HUD and the instrument panel, watching for delicate imbalances that he could control with the throttles. Easing the nose up, he bled speed off by approaching stalling speed, but he didn’t want to raise the angle of attack so high that he cut into the airflow for the turbojets and stalled them out.

“Four-three-five knots,” Munoz reported. “We’re looking for about three-ten, right?”

“In that neighborhood, Tiger. Altitude?”

“On the radar altimeter, we’re showing two-five-five-zero.”

Munoz’s instrument readouts agreed with his own, which was reassuring.

The MakoShark kept lowering her tail, pancaking toward the earth at over four hundred miles per hour. The stall warning buzzer and panel light ignited once, and McKenna brought the nose down a trifle.

“Three miles, jefe.”

“Good a guess as any.”

“Hey, man! I say anythin’ about give-or-take a few feet?”

“Just checking.”

Mitchell’s numbers were just numbers. They didn’t feel right to a pilot who had learned to trust his instincts as well as his instruments. Old barnstormers never die.

“Outer marker,” Munoz reported, then told the tower the same thing.

“We’ve got visual on you,” the air controller called back.

Far ahead of Mitchell’s recommendation and two miles out, McKenna eased the left throttle into reverse thrust, beginning to counteract the rocket motor. He pulled the right throttle back to twenty per cent power, until the rudders felt balanced.

The MakoShark settled abruptly.

“Five hundred ground clearance,” Munoz said, his voice steady and firm.

McKenna nudged the nose down.

The airspeed picked up for a few seconds then began to fall off.

“Three hundred feet.”

The airspeed dropped to 320 knots. The controls felt iffy. The right wing dropped, and he brought it back up with minor pressure on the controller.

“Fifty feet, airspeed three-one-zero.”

The noise of the rocket motor all but drowned out the sound of the turbojets now. He didn’t hear the shriek of rubber when the main gear tires touched down.

McKenna had to use the brakes to bring the nose down, and it hit hard and bounced. He pulled reverse thrust into both engines, but at different rates, and the MakoShark slewed from side to side as he sought the right adjustments.

Halfway down the runway, with the MakoShark still moving too fast, the emergency vehicles roared onto the runway alongside him, but quickly fell behind.

He was standing on the brakes now, the MakoShark’s path straightening as she slowed.

Easing off the reverse thrust of the right engine to maintain his line.

Drifting to the right side of the runway.

And rolling off the concrete onto the hard-baked soil of Borneo.

And slithering to a stop.

Dust boiled the air around them.

The scream of the left turbojet countering the thrust of the rocket motor threatened to deafen him. He killed the starboard jet engine.

“Come on, people,” Munoz urged.

Several seconds later, red foam trucks and blue pickups came sliding up beside them, spilling firemen and mechanics dressed in silver heat-resistant suits.

Vitaly Sheremetevo looked up from his desk when he heard the tap on the door frame.

Corporal Petrovsky, his secretary, said, “Colonel Volontov has arrived, General.”

“Send him in, Corporal.”

Sheremetevo took off his reading glasses and rubbed his eyes as Volontov entered the office and came to attention.

“At ease, Pyotr Mikhailovich. Please have a chair.”

Colonel Pyotr Mikhailovich Volontov was almost 180 centimeters tall, slim, blond, and blue-eyed. Hard angles in the planes of his face reflected the overhead fluorescent lights. He was an intelligent man, and he did not often concede to impetuous authority. He was based in St. Petersburg (once Leningrad) and commanded the 5th Interceptor Wing, comprised of Mikoyan MiG-29s and the two Mako aerospace craft. Sheremetevo had adopted the man early in his career and protected him occasionally when he had balked at ridiculous orders and had come close to insubordination.

“I came as soon as I could, General”

“I appreciate that,” Sheremetevo said. He considered taking a walk along the parade ground for this conversation, but reminded himself that his office had been swept for eavesdropping devices that morning. Electronic eavesdropping had been a constant under the old Soviet regime, but he had yet to discover similar tactics used by the Commonwealth members. The jockeying for power among republic presidents and politicians remained the focus of the political arena for the time being. The military chiefs were currently more concerned with walking the tightropes strung between the republics — and keeping the payrolls coming in — than with risking their own power bases within the air force and army.

He told Volontov about Colonel Pearson’s request.

“She wishes to have the names of the men who have trained in the Mako?”

“Yes.”

“For what purpose, General?”

“That was not revealed to me, and I have not bothered guessing at it. Our last report to the United Nations stated that the Makos were being utilized solely for support of the Soyuz Fifty space station, and that we retain one craft on the ground until the other has returned from space. Is that not so, Colonel?”

“That is correct, in addition to their training roles,” Volontov said. “In fact, both are on the ground now while we await a shipment of fuel pellets.”

“And the status of the space station?”

“Operations are going quite well, General. There are seventeen scientific experiments under way at the moment. We have three men permanently assigned, and next month, we will embark our first female member of the station crew.”

Sheremetevo nodded thoughtfully. He had not fully supported the training schedule for the woman, but Volontov had been impressed by some female pilot of McKenna’s squadron and had insisted upon a trial period for a woman.

“How many pilots have washed out of your program?” he asked the colonel.

Volontov closed his eyes, thinking. “Without the records available, I estimate that we have trained thirty-two or thirty-three. I know that nine have qualified. All excellent pilots, General.”

“That is above a twenty-five per cent qualification rate,” Sheremetevo said. “General Brackman would be impressed, I think, since the Americans only qualify twelve per cent of their pilot candidates”

“Our training development is always on-going. We can always be better than we are now.”

“I agree. Do you have any objection to providing the list of disqualified candidates to Colonel Pearson?”

After a moment’s hesitation, Volontov said, “No, although we should keep in mind that many of those men have returned to assignments in other fighter aircraft. They are still capable pilots, General, though not suited to the requirements of space flight.”

“I think the current state of affairs between the Commonwealth and the United States allows us to be a bit more candid than we have been in the past. You said, ‘many’ of the pilots, Pyotr Mikhailovich. What of the others?”

“During the unrest, five or six officers in my command defected. You have that report, General.”

“Yes. I had forgotten.”

There were many reasons for the high number of defections, Sheremetevo knew. Many men had not been paid for months. Many had assembled their families and fled to other sanctuaries for idealistic, religious, and ethnic protection. There had been no pattern to the desertions: conscripts, company, field, and general grade personnel had eventually been erased from the active duty rolls. The political instability had kept everyone scrambling, and no effort had been made toward seeking out the deserters and setting examples. An unstated policy of “let bygones be bygones” had prevailed.

Sheremetevo scrawled a quick, handwritten order and passed it across the desk to Volontov. “Very well. Send Colonel Pearson a complete listing of your pilots, and indicate the ones who have failed or who have defected. Except for your currently active pilots, send her the complete file on each man.”

“Should we provide that much information, General?”

“I think that she will not disseminate the data irrelevant to her purposes among the intelligence agencies,” Sheremetevo said. “Especially if I ask her not to do so.”

Volontov started to say something, then clamped his mouth shut.

“A comment, Pyotr Mikhailovich?”

“No, General.”

“Come, now.”

“How far are we going to trust our new allies?” Volontov asked.

“Would you fly wing for Colonel McKenna? Or trust him on your wing?”

“I… yes, General, I would.”

“As long as we are dealing with his command, I will expand my trust somewhat. Could you do the same?” Volontov nodded and allowed a grim smile. “I can do that, General.”

Koro Toro, the nearest village, was over a hundred miles away from Jack Andrews Air Base. “Hot Country” was located in the middle of Chad in Northeast Africa. It was forbidding territory, located on the southern edge of what was known as the Bodelo Depression. The clay and sand sediment of the landscape stretched for miles in every direction. The temperatures routinely climbed to 124 degrees. At night, the terrain surrounding the base had the appearance of a lunarscape. Wind-eroded rock and sand formations seemed to change daily. The air was clear, though, and the stars were brilliant without a layer of pollution to block their light.

Like Merlin Air Base in Borneo, the base in Chad was semi-covert. The MakoSharks could operate freely in the barren desert during daylight hours, and the base had been selected as the site for training and flight trial missions.

To protect them from overflight surveillance, the MakoSharks were parked and serviced inside Hangar One. Three more hangars and a massive three-story residential building comprised the rest of the main base.

“Let’s have a picnic,” George Williams said.

“You’re shitting me,” Dimatta told him.

“It’s almost five o’clock.”

“And the damned temperature is ninety-five.”

“Be brave.”

“The hell with being brave,” Dimatta said.

But they got two box lunches from the kitchen (a huge chef’s salad for Williams and meatball heros for Dimatta) and a six-pack of iced beer. Williams selected the direction, and they walked west.

Dimatta spread a blanket at the foot of a small dune and they sat down. The sweat was pouring off his forehead. The sun was off in the west, reconsidering its impulsive decision to go down.

“There should be a launch in about twenty minutes,” Williams said.

“Nitro, this is nuts, sitting out in the middle of the damned desert, watching a launch that’s so routine it’s like watching a dishwasher.” He chomped into his sandwich and thought that the cook could have been more generous with the spices used in the meatballs.

Hot Country, like the Borneo base, provided launch and recovery services for the HoneyBee resupply rockets. The launch complex, located west of the main base, was linked to it by a twin set of railroad tracks. Behind them in the gigantic hangars were specially fitted C-130 Hercules aircraft utilized as the recovery vehicles for the rockets. The C-130 made its first attempt to capture a HoneyBee descending by parachute at about thirty thousand feet. That way, if it missed, the aircraft would have time for a couple more passes. A loop of cable trailing from the aircraft snared the parachute shrouds, then the rocket was winched aboard, sliding into a rollered cradle in the plane’s cargo bay. When the Hercules missed its prey, which happened infrequently, and the HoneyBee splashed down in the sea or crunched down in the desert, the Chinook helicopters were used to recover the hulk.

The HoneyBee vehicle was forty-six feet long and nine feet in diameter, segmented into four compartments: nose cone, which contained the electronics; payload bay; fuel compartment; and propulsion system. For launch, there was an additional, non-recoverable booster engine that was jettisoned at three hundred thousand feet. The reentry shroud over the nose cone, cast in ceramic, was good for six or seven return trips into the atmosphere and was then replaced.

In a typical mission profile, supplies stored in Hangar Four were packed into the cargo modules. At the back of Hangar Three, a recovered rocket was examined and refurbished, then moved to Hangar Two for final calibration, fueling with the solid-fuel pellets, and insertion of a cargo module. The HoneyBee was then moved to one of the three launch pads on a small railroad flat car.

Upon launch, a HoneyBee generally achieved rendezvous with Themis in about three hours. In ten years, only four HoneyBees had been destroyed during launch, and nine had malfunctioned in space. Six of them had disintegrated upon reentry.

Many of the HoneyBees returned to Earth with cargo aboard. Pharmaceutical formulas and electronic components assembled in the zero gravity and nearly pure vacuum of space were making new inroads on technological frontiers. The Air Force’s contract clients performed biological experiments and shot fantastically clear telescopic photographs. The fees charged by the Air Force for these services were extremely high, as were the first-class tickets aboard a Mako for biologists, chemists, engineers and other scientists who wanted short stints of duty aboard Themis.

Dimatta and Williams had spent quite a few months transporting snotty passengers in a Mako before McKenna recruited them for the hot aerospace fighter. Neither wanted to go back to the mundane duties of a shuttle crew.

“What do you think,” Williams asked cautiously.

“What do I think of what?”

“The new bird, asshole!”

They had taken Delta Orange on its first hop in the afternoon, a round trip that lasted less than ten minutes. The objective was only to test takeoff and landing profiles and instrumentation. Dimatta had not exceeded five hundred knots.

“It’s all right,” he said. “They’re all a little different, and I haven’t quite found the controller touch I want.”

“Yeah. I wonder how they’re doing?”

“Who’s doing?”

“The search. Maybe we should call Snake Eyes.”

“I bet he’ll let us know if there’s any progress,” Dimatta said.

“I wish we weren’t sitting around here.”

“Soon as we get Orange straightened out, we’ll be back in the fray.”

“I find the son of a bitch who took her, I’m going to take him apart one organ at a time,” Williams vowed.

“Not without my help.”

Williams nodded morosely and forked a chunk of lettuce into his mouth. He chewed slowly and thoroughly.

Dimatta figured Williams’s mother had told him to do it that way.

Williams said, “It’s not the same, Gancha. Can’t come up with a name for her.”

Dimatta didn’t have to ask for clarification. Williams had always called Delta Green’s computer Josie for undisclosed reasons.

“Don’t try so hard, George. It’ll come.”

“I don’t think so.”

Their combined depression was interrupted by the squawk of a siren from the vicinity of Launch Pad Two. Red and blue strobe lights erupted in the gathering dusk. Figures in silver protective suits scattered for bunkers.

The squat HoneyBee sitting on the pad lost its only companion as the gantry tower slid away.

Seven minutes elapsed.

Dimatta finished his first sandwich, opened another beer, and started on the second sandwich. For some reason, the meatballs tasted spicier.

Since the rockets used the pellet form of solid fuel, launches were much safer than in the past, and the countdowns were considerably foreshortened.

White-hot flame spewed from beneath the pad, and the rocket lifted off, slow as heavy cream. After a moment’s indecision, the rocket abruptly accelerated, now trailing white vapor. The roaring thunder of ignition rolled across the dunes, and by the time it reached them, the HoneyBee was a mile high. In minutes it was a mote on the darkening sky, indistinguishable except for the vapor trail.

“I wish to hell I was on board that thing,” Williams said.

“No, you don’t,” Dimatta told him. “It’s all remote controlled. You wouldn’t have a damned thing to do.”

McKenna caught a ride back to Themis on a milk run Mako carrying foodstuffs to replenish the stores of Army Staff Sergeant Delbert O’Hara, the chief Steward aboard the station. Almost all of the station’s food was pre-prepared Earth-side, brought up in refrigerated bins, and stored in the hub. It was transferred to the dining modules as needed by O’Hara, who reported to Deputy Commander Milt Avery. O’Hara did a credible job with what he had to work with, making frequent changes in his offerings and developing new recipes of his own for the specialists on Earth to develop into pouchable products.

Though it pained him to do so, McKenna rode in the cargo bay, in one of the passenger modules, since he would never usurp the flight command of one of his pilots, in this case, Navy Commander Art Ingram. McKenna used the Mako craft as the screening and training program for pilots — or in the naval tradition of Ingram’s case, aviators — who might eventually graduate to command of the MakoShark. The Mako pilots never got close to a MakoShark until McKenna was ready for them to do so, and he knew that all of them yearned to do so. If Brackman had been successful in obtaining a new MakoShark this year, he had already selected Ken Autry, commanding Mako Three, as its pilot. Now, with Delta Green gone, it appeared as if the schedule was again going to be delayed.

Benny Shalbot directed the docking, then closed the hangar doors and pressurized the hangar with breathable atmosphere. While he waited for technicians to free him from his cocoon, McKenna unbuckled his harness and spoke on the intercom, “Nice ride, Art. You, too, Glenn.”

Glenn Farrell, the backseater, was a Marine major.

“Thanks, Colonel. Do you have any pointers for us?” Ingram asked.

“None. You get gold stars on your OERs.”

The Officer Efficiency Reports, completed by supervising officers, were the primary sources of information for promotion boards.

With the craft’s payload bay doors open, one of the technicians unlocked and opened the hatch to the passenger module, and McKenna pushed himself downward through it. Momentum kept him going until he reached a hangar cell wall — every surface of every compartment aboard the station was a wall. Flexing his knees at contact, he straightened them with a snap and ricocheted off the wall toward the hatchway in the center of the inside bulkhead, sailing under the nose of the Mako.

The old hands aboard the station, practice making perfect, zipped around in the zero-gravity environment with alacrity. Strategically placed handholds and the textured plastic surface of bulkheads were launch, diversion, and landing points. The veterans found comic relief in the flight patterns of newcomers who learned quickly that momentum did not die away and that accuracy in launch meant fewer heads bumped against the wall next to a hatchway.

McKenna stopped himself by grabbing the edge of the hatchway and eased into the corridor. Benny Shalbot was tethered by Velcro straps to the hangar control console below a window that overlooked the inside of the hangar cell. He was double-checking the content of the atmosphere he had pumped into the cell and shutting down the control systems.

Shalbot looked like a weight-lifting leprechaun. Nearly bald, with a bulbous nose and a large head, he was muscled and fit. And beneath all that pate was a brain that not only remembered most of the formulas and schematics involved in radio, radar, computer, and weapons systems electronics, but also understood them.

“How you doing, Benny?”

“This fucking job is driving me crazy, Colonel.”

“Maybe it’s time to go Earth-side for awhile,” McKenna suggested.

“What! And lose my hazardous duty pay?”

Shalbot was among the first to bitch about the Air Force, the station, and his chores, but he would also be the first to stand ankle-deep in the gore and blood running from his wounds, and defend it.

“You okay, Colonel?”

“Fine, Benny.”

“Grapevine says an actuator relay cut out on Blue.”

“That’s what they told me.”

“Goddamn it! I should have caught it.”

Shalbot ran the electronics diagnostics tests on all of the aerospace craft, every time they docked at Themis, updating Brad Mitchell’s centralized computer maintenance files.

“It was probably fine when you tested it, Benny. Hell, you can’t catch all the glitches.”

“I can damn sure try”

“Don’t sweat it, Benny.”

McKenna grabbed a handhold on the console and pushed off toward the “down” end of the corridor. “Down” was toward the outer rim of the hub, and toward the spokes, and “up” was toward the core.

The hub was divided like two onion slices into the hangar/storage half and another half that was a maze of corridors, offices, and more storage spaces. Technicians swam along the corridors, appearing from and disappearing into labs and maintenance areas.

McKenna waved through a window at Mitchell as he went by the maintenance office, then slowed to peek into the exercise room. It was Compartment A-47, but outside of the station commander and the maintenance officer, McKenna didn’t know anyone who called it that.

It was fitted on all walls with specialized equipment for maintaining muscle tone. On the wall opposite the door was a small centrifugal weight machine. All of those aboard who did not regularly return to the Earth’s surface were provided with an exercise regimen by the station’s doctor. And everyone spent ten or fifteen minutes a day spinning in the artificial gravity of the centrifugal weight machine.

As he watched, the centrifugal machine spun down to a stop, and Polly Tang unbuckled herself from the seat.

“Hi, Kevin.”

“Want to come along and watch me change out of my flight suit?”

“No.”

“Want to join me for lunch?”

“Sure. My treat.”

Tang was wearing the blue jumpsuit with built-in boots that everyone aboard Themis wore for its practicality. It did not disguise the trim curves of her petite figure. That view, however, would be as close as he would get. Though the two of them had enjoyed their repartee for a long time, Tang was married to the chief HoneyBee engineer at Wet Country and had two children she adored.

She waited while he slipped into the pilots’ locker room, doffed his environmental suit, and pulled on a fresh jumpsuit. Aboard the space station, no one wore insignia or badges of rank.

He pulled himself through the curtain back into the corridor. “Ready, lover?”

“After you,” she said.

“The view’s better if I follow you.”

“After you,” she said.

McKenna grinned and asked, “Do you have a dining preference?”

“The Skylight Room in Sixteen today, I think.”

“A charming place,” McKenna agreed, and shoved off the hatchway jamb. Tang followed.

The corridor bisected the hub, and when McKenna reached the curved hallway that went clear around the outer diameter of the hub, he caromed off the outer wall, pushing off again. He heard Tang’s feet slap at the bulkhead as she pursued him.

Self-sealing round doors that led into the spokes were spaced irregularly off this pathway. There were seventeen spokes at the moment, though the corridor also had an additional seven doors, sealed and painted red, to accommodate future spokes. There were also airlocks on opposite sides of the hub to allow access to the exterior for repair and maintenance.

The colors were vibrant and important. Amy Pearson had designed the color scheme which designated that red-painted hatches were verboten and orange hatches were keypad locked and restricted except for particular authorized personnel. The entries to nuclear reactor, communications, ordnance, fuel, MakoShark hangar, and computer spaces were orange. Yellow hatches defined those areas where civilians might be invited under escort, such as the Command Center, the Mako bays, and the HoneyBee docks. Blue signified military-only, and green or blue/green denoted spaces accessible to the civilian scientists who regularly inhabited the station.

Colored stripes ran along the corridors to indicate what kind of a space the transient was in. If unescorted civilians didn’t see green somewhere in the vicinity, they were out of bounds. Station military personnel frequently had to remind civilians who transgressed the color scheme.

Protected by a yellow hatchway, Spoke One led to the Command Center module.

Seven of the spokes were open to civilians, Two through Eight, and offered three residential modules and four laboratory modules. Additionally, civilians were welcome in some of the hub compartments: the clinic, laundry, exercise room, and the contractor communications compartment.

Spoke Nine contained the nuclear power plant. Like the spokes containing fuel storage and ordnance, it was secured to the hub with explosive bolts so that it could be jettisoned in an emergency.

Spoke Nine B was the most recently constructed, and its large module was utilized for repairing KH-11, Teal Ruby, and other satellites retrieved from their orbits by Mako workhorses. Major Kenneth Autry was McKenna’s chief pilot on that shuttle service.

Spokes Ten through Sixteen were military-only, housing laboratories, repair and storage areas, fuel and ordnance, and the like. It was assumed that civilians would not take kindly to knowledge of the kinds of weaponry that were aboard the station. And civilians as well as much of the military complement were denied up-close looks at the MakoShark.

At the end of their spokes, four modules were residential, containing sixteen individual sleeping quarters, recreation/dining spaces, kitchens, and personal hygiene stations. The personnel complement was divided into separate dormitory areas for safety, rather than for organizational reasons. With an accidental blowout in one of the residential modules, three-fourths of the space station’s human contingent would still be intact. Orientation lectures stressing those kinds of safety measures for temporary residents, like a physicist or biologist, brought an ashy shade to their faces.

McKenna and Tang took hold of grab bars at Spoke Sixteen to stop their momentum, and he tapped the large green button mounted on the bulkhead. The automatic door rotated two inches to free itself from the locking tangs, then swung open on its massive hinge. The hinge was mounted solidly to the bulkhead, and two bars from the top and bottom of the hinge met in a “V” at the center of the round door, which pivoted on an axle at the point of the “V” Every door on the station automatically closed in the event of decompression.

McKenna offered a hand to Tang and pushed her through the hatch. Once he was clear, he tapped the red button on the other side. The door closed behind them as they tugged their way down the spoke. It was twelve feet in diameter and double walled. Between the walls ran the ventilation ducting, electrical conduits, heating and cooling coils, and thick insulation. Since the satellite did not rotate, there was a hot side and a cold or night side. One mainframe computer was dedicated to the task of cooling and heating the satellite’s skin in order to keep the variance of several hundred degrees bearable to the inhabitants.

Along the spoke’s thirty-foot length were access panels for maintenance and two yellow hatches; they were the only decorative aspect of the tube. The only windows, large portholes, on the station were located in the Command Center and in each of the three dining rooms. They were positioned so as to prevent the client contractor’s visiting scientists from viewing MakoShark arrivals and departures on the hangar side of the hub.

Visitors also were unaware that the yellow hatches in the residential spokes provided access to lifeboats. The boats attached to the spokes were nothing more them capsules with thirty days of oxygen and edibles, but knowledge of their presence could be upsetting to delicate academic minds.

McKenna and Tang floated past the section of sleeping and hygiene compartments and into the dining room. These spaces were also the only recreational areas, and they had actual tables and chairs to which people could fasten themselves. Board and card games were available. Electronic games were attached to one bulkhead.

The kitchen was against yet another bulkhead in the form of O’Hara’s three dispensing stations, which he had labeled “Junk,” “Back Home,” and “Cuisine.”

They perused the offerings in each specialty.

“Light lunch for me,” Tang told him, selecting a salad encased in a plastic pouch.

McKenna opened a clear plastic door in the “Back Home” dispenser and picked up a chicken-fried steak sandwich. He floated across to the microwave oven and zapped it for two minutes.

Tang retrieved coffee pouches, sailed them to him, and he heated them, also.

Then they towed their luncheon to a table and strapped themselves down.

Two off-duty techs were zapping asteroids or something at one of the electronic games, but otherwise the compartment was deserted. A pink, dawnish view of Antarctica dominated the porthole. Streaks of dark gray crevices ran like veins through the pink ice.

McKenna ripped the tape from the straw for his coffee pouch and took a sip. The coffee was as good as that in any American truck stop.

“How are the kids, Polly?”

She gave him one of her great smiles. “Danny likes his school, or so he says. And I’m going Earth-side next week for Maggie’s fourth birthday.”

“It’s about time for you to stay Earth-side, isn’t it?”

“I’m going to do one more six-month tour. God, I’m going to miss it, Kevin.”

He opened his sandwich pouch and took a bite out of it. There was no gravy, and it wasn’t as crumbly as it should have been, but it wasn’t bad. Most of their food lacked textures and liquefaction that was natural on Earth. Gravy and crumbs tended to float around and get in the way of other activities.

“You haven’t reported in,” Tang accused.

“They’ll find me if they need me.”

“Tell me about Amy,” she said. She had soft gray eyes that laughed a lot, and they were amused just then.

“Amy?”

“Come on, McKenna. You two got a thing going?”

“Hey, where do you get that?”

“Everyone knows the relationship has changed. Since the New Germany bit.”

He was spared answering by the PA system.

“Colonel McKenna, contact the Command Center,” Overton ordered.

“Excuse me, Polly.”

He released his Velcro seatbelt and shoved off the chair for a wall-mounted intercom.

Pressing the pad labeled “Cmd Cntr,” he said, “McKenna”

Overton responded, “You want to come over here, McKenna? We’ve got a UFO closing on a HoneyBee.”