Powersat

Washington, D.C.

From the giant structure of the power satellite, 22,300 miles above the equator, an invisible sword of energy lanced down toward Washington, D.C., powerful enough to kill anything in its path. It touched the ground in Bethesda and marched south-southeast, piercing the fat little clumps of cumulus cloud that floated across the land as it swept inexorably toward its target: Arlington National Cemetery.

Birds fell out of the sky, their feathers scorched, their innards exploded by the sudden blast of heat. Grass curled and browned as the beam swept by. Newly leafed trees puffed tendrils of smoke. Like a finger of death the energy beam swept slowly across the District of Columbia. The water of the Potomac sizzled briefly as ten thousand million watts of energy crossed the river and reached Arlington.

Automobile ignition systems conked out. Cars on the Key Bridge suddenly lost power and banged into a snarl of dented fenders and crumpled trunks. People inside the cars fainted from sudden heat shock; several died, slumped over their steering wheels. Electronics systems shut down in home after home; children wailed that their computer games had crashed while their parents clicked fruitlessly at the remote control units of their suddenly blank TV sets.

A power transformer on a telephone pole just outside Meriden Hill Park blew out in a spectacular shower of sparks and smoke. The children playing on the grass were startled.

Mrs. Rhonda Bernstein, minding her grandchildren at the park while her daughter and her fumble-fingered son-in-law prepared their backyard picnic dinner, was alarmed enough by the transformer’s blowout to fish out her cell phone and call 911. The phone didn’t work. Frowning, she shook it and pecked at the minuscule keyboard again. Not a peep.

These damned cheap things never work when you need them, she thought angrily. Some bargain. She was perspiring, she realized. I haven’t had a hot flash in five years, she thought. But this was worse. She couldn’t catch her breath. The blood was thundering in her ears. And the children had stopped playing. None of them was running around anymore. Two of them had fallen to the ground; the others just stood there looking scared.

Then she saw that the grass was turning brown. Before her eyes it was curling up and browning, just as if somebody had thrown it into an oven.

She had strength enough to get to her feet before she collapsed to the ground with a fatal heart attack.

“Hey, the magnetrons have come back up!” called one of the technicians at the control center in Matagorda.

Lynn Van Buren hurried over to the woman’s console and saw that indeed the satellite’s magnetrons were up to full power again. It can’t be Dan and the crew; they’re not even halfway there yet.

She had to stand on tiptoes to see over the console and yell to the guy two rows away, “What’re you getting from White Sands?”

“Nothing,” he answered. “Not a milliwatt.”

Van Buren frowned, thinking, The powersat’s beaming power again but the rectennas aren’t receiving a thing. Her pulse began to race; she could feel her heart thumping beneath her ribs. This could be bad. Really bad.

“Something screwy here,” called one of the other technicians. Van Buren hurried over to his console.

“Look at the accelerometer record,” he said, tracing a finger along a curve that glowed red on his screen against a rapidly changing set of alphanumerics. “The bird’s moving.”

“It can’t be!”

“Look at the friggin’ numbers!”

Van Buren stared. “It’s being maneuvered!” she blurted.

“Not by us,” said the technician. “We haven’t budged her since we settled her in that geosynch slot months ago.”

Van Buren raced to the communications console. “Pipe me through to the boss.”

“They’re in the OTV now,” said the communications technician.

“I know that!” Van Buren snapped. “Get him!”

The comm tech stared up at her. Van Buren never lost her temper.

How can it be so hot all of a sudden?” asked Irv Lamont.”One minute it’s nice, all of a sudden it’s like August.”

Eighty-six-year-old Lamont was playing chess at the sidewalk café with Cass Bernardillo, his friend of sixty-some years.

Bernardillo looked up from the chessboard. “Clouding up. We might get a shower.”

“The weather forecast was for sunny and mild,” Lamont grumbled.

“The weather forecast. What do they know? Remember last February? I had to shovel four inches of ‘sunny and mild’ off my driveway.”

“You should have moved to a condo,” Lamont said. “Let them do the outside work.”

“I’ve lived in that house for fifty-three years. The only way I’m gonna leave is feet first.”

Lamont made a sour face at his old friend. Then he ran a hand inside his shirt collar. “Christ, it’s hot.”

“Let’s go inside the restaurant. It’s air-conditioned inside.”

“They always keep it too cold.”

“So you want to broil yourself out here?”

Lamont started to answer, but collapsed over the chessboard, scattering the pieces to the sidewalk. Bernardillo slumped in his chair and slid to the pavement, too. Half a dozen people walking along the street keeled over. A car slammed into a light pole and then a city bus careened into a line of parked cars with a screeching, rending tearing of metal. People screamed. And more fell, dead and dying.

Al-Bashir’s eyes were riveted to the television screen. The president of the United States was getting out of his long black limousine, smiling at the crowd of people lining his path to the dais where he would deliver his speech and then present a ceremonial ring of flowers at the Tomb of the Unknowns.

“The beam isn’t there!” he shouted without taking his eyes from the screen. “It’s not there yet!”

The Egyptian, standing behind one of the seated technicians, said, “It isn’t easy to move that huge satellite. This has to be done carefully, delicately.”

“Get the beam on its target!” al-Bashir insisted.

“It’s moving across the city. Give us a few more minutes.”

Al-Bashir tried to control his impatience. A few more minutes won’t hurt. Let him begin his speech. Strike him down in the middle of his oration. Let the whole world see him broiled alive, him and his lackeys around him.

Then he smiled to himself. In a few minutes, half an hour at most, it will be done. Then I go upstairs for my reward. I deserve a reward for this. She’ll be mine, whether she wants to be or not.

Jane Thornton took her place beside Senator Quill as the president glad-handed his way along the line of VIPs waiting beneath the long plastic awning. Everyone put on their best smiles for the cameras.

Every time Jane saw the president she was struck by how small he was. Strange, she thought American presidents tend to be either six-footers or little bantam cocks. Washington, Lincoln, even Reagan were all tall men. Teddy Roosevelt wasn’t all that tall, but he was dynamic, energetic.

This president was at least two inches shorter than Jane, even in the elevator shoes that everyone in Washington knew he wore. She smiled down at him as he took her hand. He smiled back warmly while the cameras clicked away.

“I ought to thank you, Jane.”

“Me, Mr. President?”

“Sure. You’re pushing Scanwell into a first-ballot nomination.”

“I’m certainly trying.”

“Great. You think he can beat an incumbent president? I’ll whup his ass in November. I’m looking forward to it.”

Without letting her smile slip one millimeter, Jane said, “Good luck, then. You’ll need it.”

“I hear you might be his vice presidential choice,” the president added.

Jane murmured, “You have long ears.”

“Take the slot if he offers it to you. Then I’ll whup your sweet little ass, too. That’ll be even more fun.”

The orbital transfer vehicle looked like a barbell-shaped ocean buoy encrusted with barnacles. Designed to operate in space and never come back to Earth, it did not need to have a sleek aerodynamic shape like the spaceplane. Its exterior was studded with antennas, tool kits, grappling arms, and life-support packs.

Inside, it resembled a sardine can. Built to hold ten spacesuited people, it seemed jammed to bursting with only the seven of them standing in it. No seats; they weren’t necessary in zero gravity. Dan’s team stood with their boots slipped into fabric foot loops fastened to the metal decking.

Adair stood up at the front of the circular cabin, his attention on the beeping, flickering readout screens surrounding him, rather than the curving window of thick quartz glass in front of him. Dan stood just behind him, peering out that window. It was black out there, as deep and dark as infinity. Only a few very bright stars could be seen through the quartz’s heavy tinting.

“Rendezvous with the beast in eight minutes,” Adair called out.

Like the spaceplane, the cabin of the OTV was pressurized. The crew could lift the visors of their helmets and breathe the air the vehicle stowed in its internal tanks. It was a small luxury, but Dan felt glad of it. Eight minutes, he thought. Then the work begins. For now, the seven men and women simply stood there, with nothing to do but wait. There was no sensation of motion; they didn’t even sway in their foot anchors.

“Getting a flash from Matagorda,” Adair said. “On two.”

Dan touched the stud on his wrist band that activated radio frequency two.

“This is Dan,” he said.

A crackle of electronic hash in his helmet earphones, then, “Van Buren here. Our monitors show the magnetrons have come back on, but White Sands still isn’t getting any power.”

Dan felt his brows knit. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

A fraction of a second’s delay, just enough to make him realize he was nearly twenty-two thousand miles away.

“And the satellite’s being moved,” she added, her voice edging up a notch.

“Moved?”

“Somebody’s repositioning it. And it isn’t us.”

“Away from White Sands?”

“Right.”

“To where?”

“We’re trying to figure that out.”

“Get on it! Right away!”

“We’re on it, chief.”

“Call me the instant you figure out where it’s being pointed.”

“Right.” Van Buren clicked off.

“Hey!” Adair hollered. “I can see the beast!”

Dan followed the astronaut’s pointing arm and there it was, a thin flat square hanging against the black of space, its edges glowing in sunlight. They were coming up from below the powersat; Dan saw the rows of boxlike structures and domes that housed the inverters and magnetrons and other equipment. Down at the end, as far from the output antenna as possible, was the dome for the satellite’s control systems.. There was a docking port next to it. That was where Adair was aiming the OTV.

A glint of light caught his attention. Leaning forward, one hand on Adair’s back to steady himself, Dan peered out the window and saw a long, slim metallic object floating off a few hundred yards from the powersat, rotating slowly, catching the sunlight as it spun.

“That’s the output antenna!” he shouted.

“Jeez, boss, I think you’re right,” said Adair.

“How’d it get loose?”

“Beats me.”

“Swing us up toward that end of the satellite,” Dan commanded. “I want to see what’s happened up there.”