Powersat

Matagorda Island, Texas

Following Tenny’s trail wasn’t as simple as Dan had hoped it would be. The engineer kept no notes, no record of his hunt for the traitor among Astro’s staff. Dan ransacked Tenny’s office, spent hours each night poring over his computer files, searched for keywords, clues, hints. He could find nothing. Dan even went to Tenny’s home to ask his widow and teenaged sons, as gently as possible, if he’d discussed the matter with them. Nothing.

At last he tried a different tack. Late at night, alone in his own office, Dan called up the computer’s personnel program and began to search for signs showing that Tenny had hit a particular individual’s file. Now he began to discover too much material. Tenny had delved into dozens of files. Dan sorted the hits by date. Joe had evidently started with the technicians on the launch team, then the flight controllers, and branched out to all sorts of people. Even Niles Muhamed and Dan’s executive assistant, April, were on Tenny’s hit list.

He scrolled through the personnel department’s directory of all the company’s employees. Eight hundred and sixty-four men and women, he saw. Then he corrected himself: No, make that eight hundred and sixty-three; they haven’t taken Joe’s name off yet. Eight hundred and sixty-three people. One of them’s a traitor. Maybe more than one. But who is it? Which of them has sold me out? Which of them is a murderer?

He knew a lot of the employees by first name, knew them well enough to listen to their family troubles, well enough to joke with them. April was always bringing in tidbits about romantic entanglements, who was chasing whom, who was breaking up, who was expecting a baby. Maybe she could help me track down the killer, Dan thought. Then he laughed at the idea. Shows how desperate I am, he told himself. April is terrific with the in-house gossip; a detective she ain’t.

He fell asleep at his desk, waking only when the morning sun lanced through the window that looked out onto the parking lot.

Bleary-eyed, he stumbled along the catwalk from his office to his apartment. Half an hour later, showered, shaved, dressed in a freshly pressed shirt and slacks, he went back to his office. Can’t beat the commute, he said to himself. I never have to worry about the morning rush traffic. A few people were already down on the hangar floor. He didn’t see Passeau among them.

April was at her desk, brushing her silky dark hair. Dan gave her a smile that was almost a grimace. Why can’t she do her hair before she comes in to work? he grumbled to himself. Then he remembered that she drove a baby blue Dodge Sebring convertible that half the guys in the company drooled over. Cool car, but it made a mess of her hairdo.

“Breakfast?” she asked as Dan went into his office.

“Just grapefruit juice,” he said, then added, “And coffee.” Start the day with the two major food groups: vitamin C and caffeine.

Dan sat at his desk and took a deep breath. “Let’s see if you can get through the day without going broke,” he muttered.

He saw that April had already booted up his computer and displayed his morning’s appointments and incoming calls. The insurance carrier, of course. Passeau. Somebody named Neil Heinrich, of Tricontinental Oil; one of Garrison’s flunkies, most likely. Saito Yamagata, calling from Tokyo.

Dan jiggled his computer’s mouse until the screen showed the global map that displayed time zones. Cripes, it’s midnight in Japan, he saw. But he moved the pointer to Yamagata’s name and clicked on it. The phone program automatically dialed the number in Japan. Dan expected to get an answering machine, still he knew it would be good form to return Sai’s call as soon as he received it. Politeness is important to the Japanese.

To his surprise, Yamagata’s round, flat face grinned at him from his screen. “Daniel, you’re at your office early.”

Grinning back, “And you’re at your office late, Sai.”

Yamagata threw his head back and laughed heartily. “Two workaholics, that’s what we are.”

“Maybe,” Dan agreed, thinking that you had to be a workaholic when your company was sinking beneath the waves.

Yamagata’s face grew more serious. “I heard about the accident and your chief engineer’s death. My condolences.”

Dan hesitated, then thought, what the hell; why try to keep it a secret? “It wasn’t an accident, Sai. I don’t think the spaceplane crash was an accident, either. Somebody’s trying to knock me out of business.”

There was always a half second of delay in response when a call was relayed by satellite. Even moving at the speed of light, the message had to travel to the commsat up in synchronous orbit and then back again. This time, though, Yamagata hesitated much longer than the normal time lag before replying.

“I wondered about that, Dan. There are powerful forces opposing us. The international oil interests don’t want anyone to succeed with a power satellite.”

“You mean the Arabs,” Dan said.

Yamagata shook his head, dead serious. “I mean the international oil interests. Arabs are part of the bloc, of course, but there are others, including Americans right there in your state of Texas.”

“Tricontinental? You mean Garrison?”

“Among others.”

“He wants to buy into Astro Corporation,” Dan said.

Yamagata hesitated again, obviously thinking fast. “Remember the story of the Trojan horse, my friend.”

Now Dan hesitated. He remembered his father’s advice: Whenever somebody calls you friend, check your pockets. At length he asked, “Have you had any problems like this? Sabotage, I mean.”

“No,” Yamagata said, a trace of a smile curving his lips slightly. “We are not as far advanced on our program as you are. And our workforce is entirely Japanese now. No more gaijin workers, such as you.”

Dan thought, That’s one way to keep internal security tight: hire only people you know.

“I called to give you good news,” Yamagata said, his smile widening. “My board of directors has approved my suggestion that we offer you our help. We can provide you with transportation to and from your powersat on Yamagata rockets.”

“From Japan?”

“Yes, our launch center at Kagoshima.”

“At what price?”

Yamagata said, “As I understand it, the heavy lifting is finished. What you need now is primarily transport for engineers and technicians.”

Nodding, Dan added, “Plus their life-support supplies and some materials, electronics assemblies for the most part.”

“Yes, that’s what I thought.”

“At what price?” Dan repeated.

“Zero.”

Dan leaned back in his desk chair. “Sai, should I start counting my fingers or my toes?”

Yamagata laughed again. “You don’t trust your old friend? The man who hired you when you were just a puppy?”

“And threw me in with a bunch of roughnecks whose idea of fun was busting a gaijin’s nose?”

“You look better for it,” Yamagata said jovially. “You were too pretty before.”

“Sai, what do you want in exchange for free rocket rides?”

Yamagata’s smile faded a little. “A strategic partnership between Yamagata Industries and Astro Manufacturing.”

Dan hesitated just long enough to show Yamagata his respect. Then, “On what basis?”

“You grant us license to manufacture your spaceplane in Japan.”

Alarm bells began tingling in the back of Dan’s mind. “That would bring your costs down when you start assembling your powersat in orbit.”

“Yes, of course. That is why you developed the spaceplane, isn’t it? That is why we need it.”

“So you can compete against Astro more efficiently.”

Yamagata shook his head slowly, like a teacher disappointed with a student. “Dan, Dan, the global energy market is worth trillions of U.S. dollars. Together, you and I, we can carve out a big slice of that pie. We can corner the solar power satellite segment of the market.”

Dan gave him a grin. “Sai, I can grab a big part of the solar power satellite market all by myself.”

“If you don’t go broke first,” Yamagata retorted, with an upraised finger.

“There is that,” Dan admitted.

“Work with me on this, my friend. Why should we compete when together we can make many, many billions?”

Yeah, Dan asked himself, Why should we compete? But he heard himself say, “Sai, I appreciate your offer. I truly do. But I’ll have to think about it. Give me a few days?”

“Of course,” Yamagata said generously. Then his expression hardened. “But remember the Trojan horse.”

“I will, Sai. I will,” Dan said, thinking that the Trojan horse might well be Japanese.