Project Daedalus

Chapter Seventeen

"The hypersonic test flight must proceed as scheduled," Tanzan Mino said quietly. "Now that all the financial arrangements have been completed, the Coordinating Committee of the LDP has agreed to bring the treaty before the Diet next week. A delay is unthinkable."

"The problem is not technical, Mino-sama," Taro Ikeda, the project director, continued, his tone ripe with deference. "It is the Soviet pilot. Perhaps he should be replaced." He looked down, searching for the right words. "I'm concerned. I think he has discovered the stealth capabilities of the vehicle. Probably accidentally, but all the same, I'm convinced he is now aware of them. Two nights ago he engaged in certain unauthorized maneuvers I believe were intended to verify those capabilities."

"So deshoo." Tanzan Mino's eyes narrowed. "But he has said nothing?"

"No. Not a word. At least to me."

"Then perhaps he was merely behaving erratically. It would not be the first time."

"The maneuvers. They were too explicit," Ikeda continued. "As I said, two nights ago, on the last test fight, he switched off the transponder, then performed a snap roll and took the vehicle into a power dive, all the way to the deck. It was intended to be a radar-evasive action." The project director allowed himself a faint, ironic smile. "At least we now know that the technology works. The vehicle's radar signature immediately disappeared off the tracking monitors at Katsura."

"It met the specifications?"

Ikeda nodded. "Yesterday I ordered a computer analysis of the data tapes. The preliminary report suggests it may even have exceeded them."

Tanzan Mino listened in silence. He was sitting at his desk in the command sector wing of the North Quadrant at the Hokkaido facility. Although the sector was underground, like the rest of the facility, behind his desk was a twenty-foot-long "window" with periscope double mirrors that showed the churning breakers of La Perouse Strait.

His jet had touched down on the facility's runway at 6:48 A.M. and been promptly towed into the hangar. Tanzan Mino intended to be in personal command when Daedalus I went hypersonic, in just nineteen hours. The video monitors in his office were hard-wired directly to the main console in Flight Control, replicating its data displays, and all decisions passed across his desk.

"Leave the pilot to me," he said without emotion, revolving to gaze out the wide window, which displayed the mid-afternoon sun catching the crests of whitecaps far at sea. "What he knows or doesn't know will not disrupt the schedule."

Once again, he thought, I've got to handle a problem personally. Why? Because nobody else here has the determination to make the scenario succeed. First the protocol, and then the money. I had to intervene to resolve both.

But, he reflected with a smile, it turned out that handling those difficulties personally had produced an unexpected dividend.

"As you say, Mino-sama," Ikeda bowed. "I merely wanted to make you aware of my concern about the pilot. He should be monitored more closely from now on."

"Which is precisely what I intend to do." Tanzan Mino's silver hair seemed to blend with the sea beyond. "There is an obvious solution. When he takes the vehicle hypersonic, he will not be alone."

"What are you suggesting? No one else—"

"Merely a simple security precaution. If he is not reliable, then steps must be taken. Two of our people will be in the cockpit with him."

"You mean the scientists from Tsukuba? The cockpit was designed to accommodate a three-man crew, but MITI hasn't yet designated the two researchers."

"No. I mean my personal pilot and copilot. From the Boeing. Then if Androv deviates from the prescribed test program in any way, they will be there, ready to take immediate action. The problem is solved." He revolved back from the window. "That will be all."

Ikeda bowed, then turned and hurriedly made his way toward the door. He didn't like last-minute improvisations, but the CEO was now fully in command. Preparations for two additional life-support systems would have to be started immediately.

After Tanzan Mino watched him depart, he reached down and activated a line of personal video monitors beside his desk.

Vance recognized the sound immediately. It was the harp-like plucking of a Japanese koto, punctuated by the tinkling of a wind chime. Without opening his eyes, he reached out and touched a hard, textured surface. It was, he realized, a straw mat, and from the firmness of the weave he knew it was tatami. Then he felt the soft cotton of the padded mat beneath him and guessed he was lying on a futon. The air in the room was faintly spiced with Mahayana Buddhist temple incense.

I'm in Japan, he told himself. Or somebody wants me to think I am.

He opened his eyes and found himself looking at a rice-paper lamp on the floor next to his futon. Directly behind it, on the left, was a tokonoma art alcove, built next to a set of sliding doors. A small, round shoji window in the tokonoma shed a mysterious glow on its hanging scroll, the painting an ink sketch of a Zen monk fording a shallow stream.

Then he noticed an insignia that had been painted on the sliding doors with a giant brush. He struggled to focus, and finally grasped that it was the Minoan double ax, logo of the Daedalus Corporation.

Jesus!

He lay a minute, nursing the ache in his head and trying to remember what had happened. All he could recall was London, money, Eva…

Eva. Where was she?

He popped erect and surveyed the room. It was traditional Jap anese, the standard four-and-a-half tatami in size, bare and Spartan. A classic.

But the music. It seemed to be coming through the walls.

The walls. They all looked to be rice paper. He clambered up and headed for the fusuma with the double-ax logo. He tested it and realized that the paper was actually painted steel. And it was locked. The room was secure as a vault.

But across, opposite the tokonoma, was another set of sliding doors. As he turned to walk over, he noticed he was wearing tabi, light cotton stockings split at the toe, and he was clad in a blue-patterned yukata robe, cinched at the waist. He'd been stripped and re-dressed.

This door was real, and he shoved it open. A suite of rooms lay beyond, and there on a second futon, still in a drugged sleep, lay Eva. He moved across, bent down, and shook her. She jerked away, her dreaming disrupted, and turned over, but she didn't come out of it.

"Wake up." He shook her again. "The party just got moved. Wait'll you get a load of the decor."

"What…" She rolled back and cracked open her bloodshot eyes. Then she rose on one elbow and gazed around the room. It was appointed identically to his, with only the hanging scroll in the tokonoma different, hers being an angular, three-level landscape. "My God."

"Welcome to the wonderful world of Tanzan Mino. I don't know where the hell we are, but it's definitely not Kansas, or London."

"My head feels like I was at ground zero when the bomb hit. My whole body aches." She groaned and plopped back down on the futon. "What time do you think it is?"

"Haven't a clue. How about starting with what day?" He felt for his watch and realized it was gone. "What does it matter anyway? Nobody has clocks in never-never land."

Satisfied she was okay, he stood up and surveyed the room. Then he saw what he'd expected. There in the center of the ceiling, integrated into the pattern of light-colored woods, was the glass eye of a video camera.

And the music. Still the faint music.

He walked on down to the far end of her room and shoved aside another set of sliding doors, also painted with the double-ax insignia. He found himself looking at a third large space, this one paneled in raw cypress. It was vast, and in the center was a cedar hot tub, sunk into the floor. The water was fresh and steaming, and two tiny stools and rinsing pails were located conveniently nearby on the redwood decking. It was a traditional o-furo, one of the finest he'd ever seen.

"You're not going to believe this." He turned back and waved her forward. In the soft rice-paper glow of the lamp she looked rakishly disheveled. Japanese architecture always made him think of lovemaking. "Our host probably figured we'd want to freshen up for the festivities. Check it out."

"What?" She was shakily rising, pulling her yukata around her.

"All the comforts of home. Too bad they forgot the geisha."

She came over and stood beside him. "I don't believe this."

"Want to see if it's real, or just a mirage?"

She hesitantly stepped onto the decking, then walked out and bent down to test the water. "Feels wet." She glanced back. "So what the heck. I could use it."

"I'm ready." He kicked off his tabi and walked on out.

She pulled off his yukata, then picked up one of the pails and began filling it from a spigot on the wall. "Okay, exalted male," she laughed, "I'm going to scrub you. That's how they do it, right?" She stood up and reached for a sponge and soap.

"They know how to live. Here, let me." He picked up a second sponge and began scrubbing her back in turn. "How does it feel?"

"Maybe this is heaven."

"Hope we didn't have to die to get here. But hang on. I've got a feeling the fun is just beginning."

He splashed her off with one of the pails, then watched as she gingerly climbed down into the wooden tub.

"Michael, where do you think we are?" She sighed as the steam enveloped her. "This has got to be Japan, but where?"

"Got a funny feeling I know." He was settling into the water beside her. "But if I told you, you'd probably think I'm hallucinating." Above the tub, he suddenly noticed yet another video camera.

As they lay soaking, the koto music around them abruptly stopped, its poignant twangs disappearing with an electronic click.

"Are you finding the accommodations adequate?"

The voice was coming from a speaker carefully integrated into the raw cypress ceiling.

"All things considered, we'd sooner be in Philadelphia." Vance looked up.

"I'm sorry to hear that," the voice continued. "No expense has been spared. My own personal quarters have been placed at your disposal."

"Mind telling me who's watching me bathe?" Eva splashed a handful of water at the lens.

"You have no secrets from me, Dr. Borodin. However, in the interest of propriety I have switched off the monitor for the bath. I'm afraid my people were somewhat overly zealous, installing one there in the first place." The voice chuckled. "But I should think you'd know. I am CEO of the Daedalus Corporation, an organization not unfamiliar to you."

"All right," she said, "so where are we?"

"Why, you are in the corporation's Hokkaido facility. As my guests. Since you two have taken such an interest in this project, I thought it only fitting you should have an opportunity to see it first hand."

"Mind giving us a preview of the upcoming agenda?" Vance leaned back. "We need to plan our day."

"Quite simply, I thought it was time you and I got reacquainted, Dr. Vance. It's been a long time."

"Eight years."

"Yes. Eight years…" There was a pause. "If you would excuse me a moment, I must take a call."

The speaker clicked off.

"Michael, I've got a very bad feeling about all this." She was rising from the bath, her back to the camera. "What do you think he's going to do?"

He's going to kill us, Vance realized. After he's played with us a while. It's really quite simple.

"I don't know," he lied.

Then the speaker clicked on again. "Please forgive me. There are so many demands on my time. However, I was hoping you, Dr. Vance, would consent to join me this afternoon for tea. We have some urgent matters to discuss."

"I'll see if I can work it into my schedule."

"Given the hectic goings-on here at the moment, perhaps a quiet moment would be useful for us both." He paused again, speaking to someone else, then his voice came back. "Shall we say four o'clock."

"What time is it now?"

"Please forgive me. I forgot. Your world is not regimented by time, whereas mine regrettably is measured down to seconds. It is now almost three in the afternoon. I shall expect you in one hour. Your clothes are in the closet in your room. Now, if you will allow me. Affairs…"

And the voice was gone.

"Michael, are you really going to talk with that criminal?"

"Wouldn't miss it for the world. There's a game going on here, and we have to stay in. Everybody's got a score to settle. We're about to see who settles up first."

"Zero minus eighteen hours." Yuri Andreevich Androv stared at the green screen, its numbers scrolling the computerized countdown. "Eighteen fucking hours."

As he wheeled around, gazing over the beehive of activity in Flight Control, he could already feel the adrenaline beginning to build. Everything depended on him now. The vehicle was as ready as it was going to be: all the wind tunnel tests, all the computer simulations, even the supersonic test flights — everything said go. Daedalus I was going to make history tomorrow morning.

Except, he told himself, it's going to be a very different history from the one everybody expects.

"Major Yuri Andreevich Androv, please report to Hangar Quadrant immediately."

The stridency of the facility's paging system always annoyed him. He glanced at the long line of computer screens one last time, then shrugged and checked his watch. Who wanted him?

Well, a new planeload of Soviet VIPs reportedly had flown in yesterday, though he hadn't seen any of them yet. He figured now that everything looked ready, the nomenklatura were flooding in to bask in triumph. Maybe after a day of vodka drinking and back slapping with the officials in Project Management, they'd sobered up and realized they were expected to file reports. So they were finally getting around to talking to the people who were doing the actual work. They'd summon in a few staffers who had hands-on knowledge of the project and commission a draft report, which they'd then file, unread, under their own names. Typical.

He reached for his leather flight jacket, deciding on a brisk walk to work off the tension. The long corridor leading from the East Quadrant to the Hangar Quadrant took him directly past Checkpoint Central and the entry to West Quadrant, the Soviet sector, which also contained the flight simulator and the main wind tunnel, or Number One, both now quiet.

As he walked, he thought again about the new rumor he'd heard in the commissary at lunch. Gossip kept the Soviet staff going — an instinct from the old days — but this one just might be true. Some lower-level staffers even claimed they'd seen him. The Chief.

Word was Tanzan Mino himself — none other than the CEO of the Daedalus Corporation — had flown in this morning, together with his personal bodyguards and aides. The story was he wanted hands-on control of the first hypersonic test flight, wanted to be calling the shots in Flight Control when Daedalus I made history.

Finally. The Big Man has decided to show his face.

"Yuri Andreevich, just a minute. Slow down."

He recognized the voice immediately and glanced around to see Nikolai Vasilevich Grishkov, the portly Soviet chief mechanic, just emerging from the West Quadrant. His bushy eyebrows hung like a pair of Siberian musk-ox horns above his gleaming dark eyes.

"Have you seen her?" Grishkov was shuffling toward him.

"Seen who?" He examined the mechanic's spotless white coveralls. Jesus! Even the support crews on this project were all sanitized, high-tech.

"The new woman. Kracevia, moi droog. Ochen kracevia. Beautiful beyond words. And she is important. You can tell just by looking."

"Nikolai, there's never been a woman in this facility." He laughed and continued on toward Security. "It's worse than a goddam troop ship. You've finally started hallucinating from lack of pezdyonka."

"Yuri Andreevich, she's here and she's Soviet." The chief mechanic followed him. "Some believe she arrived this morning with the CEO, but nobody knows who she is. One rumor is she's Vera Karanova."

"Who?" The name was vaguely familiar.

"T-Directorate. Like I said, no one knows for sure, but that's what we've heard."

"Impossible." He halted and turned back, frowning.

"That's just it, Yuri Andreevich," he sighed. "Those KGB bastards are not supposed to even know about this project.

That was everybody's strict understanding. We were to be free of them here. But now…" He caught the sleeve of Androv's flight jacket and pulled him aside, out of the flow of pedestrian traffic in the hallway. "My men were wondering. Maybe you could find a way to check her out? You have better access. Everybody wants to know what's going on."

"KGB? It doesn't make any sense."

"If she's really… I just talked to the project kurirovat, Ivan Semenovich, and he told me Karanova's now number three in T-Directorate."

"Well, there's nothing we can do now, so the hell with her." He waved his hand and tried to move on. "We've both got better things to worry about."

"Just keep your antenna tuned, my friend, that's all. Let me know if you can find out anything. Is she really Karanova? Because if she is, we damned well need to know the inside story."

"Nikolai, if I see her, I'll be sure and ask." He winked. "And if she's the hot number you say, maybe I'll find time to warm her up a little. Get her to drop her… guard."

"If you succeed in that, moi droog," he said as his heavy eyebrows lifted with a sly grin, "you'll be the envy of the facility. You've got to see her."

"I can't wait." He shrugged and moved on toward the Hangar Security station, at the end of the long corridor. When he flashed his A-level priority ID for the two Japanese guards, he noticed they nervously made a show of scrutinizing it, even though they both knew him perfectly well, before saluting and authorizing entry.

That nails it, he told himself. Out of nowhere we suddenly have all this rule-book crap. These guys are nervous as hell. No doubt about it, the big nachalnik is on the scene.

Great. Let all those assholes on the Soviet staff see the expression on his face when the truth comes out. That's the real history we're about to make here.

As he walked into the glare of neon, the cavernous space had never seemed more vast, more imposing. He'd seen a lot of hangars, flown a lot of experimental planes over the years, but nothing to match this. Still, he always reminded himself, Daedalus was only hardware, just more fancy iron. What really counted was the balls of the pilot holding the flight stick.

That's when he saw them, clustered around the vehicle and gazing up. He immediately recognized Colonel-General of Aviation Anatoly Savitsky, whose humorless face appeared almost weekly in Soviet Military Review; Major- General Igor Mikhailov, whose picture routinely graced the pages of Air Defense Herald; and also Colonel-General Pavel Ogarkov, a marshal of the Soviet air force before that rank was abolished by the general secretary.

What are those Air Force neanderthals doing here? They're all notorious hardliners, the "bomb first, ask questions later" boys. And Daedalus is supposed to be for space research, right? Guess the bullshit is about to be over. We're finally getting down to the real scenario.

And there in the middle, clearly the man in charge, was a tall, silver-haired Japanese in a charcoal silk suit. He was showing off the vehicles as though he owned them, and he carried himself with an authority that made all the hovering Soviet generals look like bellboys waiting for a tip.

Well, Yuri Andreevich thought, for the time being he does own them. They're bought and paid for, just like us.

"Tovarisch, Major Androv, kak pazhavatye," came a voice behind him. He turned and realized it belonged to General Valentin Sokolov, commander of the MiG 31 wing at the Dolinsk air base on Sakhalin. Sokolov was three star, top man in all the Soviet Far East. Flanking him were half a dozen colonels and lieutenant colonels.

"Comrade General Sokolov." He whipped off a quick salute. Brass. Brass everywhere. Shit. What in hell was this all about?

Now the project director, Taro Ikeda, had broken away from the Soviet group and was approaching. "Yuri Andreevich, thank you for coming." He bowed deferentially. "You are about to receive a great honor. The CEO has asked for a private conference with you."

Yuri stared over Ikeda's shoulder at the Man-in-Charge. All this right-wing brass standing around kissing his ass counted for nothing. He was the one calling the shots. Who was everybody kidding?

Now the CEO looked his way, sizing him up with a quick glance. Yuri Androv assessed him in turn. It was one look, but they both knew there was trouble ahead.

Then Tanzan Mino patted a colonel-general on the shoulder and headed over. "Yuri Andreevich Androv, I presume," he said in flawless Russian, bowing lightly. "A genuine pleasure to meet you at last. There's a most urgent matter we have to discuss."

At the precise hour, the tokonoma alcove off Vance's bedroom rotated ninety degrees, as though moved by an unseen hand, and what awaited beyond was a traditional Japanese sand-and-stone garden. It was, of course, lit artificially, but the clusters of green shrubs seemed to be thriving on the fluorescents. Through the garden's grassy center was a curving pathway of flat stepping stones placed artfully in irregular curves, and situated on either side of the walkway were towering rocks nestled in glistening sand that had been raked to represent ocean waves. The rocks were reminiscent of the soaring mountains in Chinese Sung landscape paintings.

Vance's attention, however, was riveted on what awaited at the end of the stony walkway. It was a traditional teahouse, set in a grove of flowering azaleas. And standing in the doorway was a silver-haired figure dressed in a formal black kimono. He was beckoning.

"Did I neglect to tell you I prefer Japanese cha-no-yu to the usual British afternoon tea?" Tanzan Mino announced. "It is a ritual designed to renew the spirit, to cleanse the mind. It goes back hundreds of years. I always enjoy it in the afternoon, and I find it has marvelously restorative powers. This seemed the ideal occasion for us to meet and chat."

"Don't want to slight tradition." Vance slipped on the pair of wooden clogs that awaited at the bottom of the path.

"My feelings entirely," the CEO continued, smiling as he watched him approach. "You understand the Japanese way, Dr. Vance, which is one reason we have so much to discuss."

He bowed a greeting as Vance deposited his clogs on the stepping stone by the teahouse door. Together they stooped to enter.

A light murmur of boiling water came from a brazier set into the tatami-matted floor, but otherwise the room was caught in an ethereal silence. The decor was more modern than most teahouses, with fresh cedar and pine for the ceiling and walls rather than the customary reed, bark, and bamboo.

Tanzan Mino gestured for him to sit opposite as he immediately began the formalities of ritually cleaning the bamboo scoop, then elevating the rugged white tea bowl like an ancient chalance and ceremonially wiping it. All the while his eyes were emotionless, betraying no hint of what was in his mind.

After the utensils were ceremonially cleansed, he wordlessly scooped a portion of pale-green powdered tea into the bowl, then lifted a dipperful of boiling water from the kettle and poured it in. Finally he picked up a bamboo whisk and began to whip the mixture, continuing until it had acquired the consistency of green foam.

Authority, control, and — above all — discipline. Those things, Vance knew, were what this was really about. As was traditional and proper, not a word was spoken. This was the Zen equivalent of High Mass, and Tanzan Mino was silently letting him know he was a true master — of himself, of his world.

Then the oyabun reached over and formally presented the bowl, placing it on the tatami in front of his guest.

Vance lifted it up, rotated it a half turn in his hand, and took a reserved sip. As the bitter beverage assaulted his mouth, he found himself thinking this was probably intended to be his Last Supper. He hoped he remembered enough to get the moves right.

He sipped one more time, then wiped the rim, formally repositioned the bowl on the tatami, and leaned back.

"Perfectly done," Tanzan Mino smiled as he broke the silence. "I'm impressed." He nodded toward the white bowl. "Incidentally, you were just handling one of the finest pieces in all Japan."

"Shino ware. Mino region, late sixteenth century. Remarkably fine glaze, considering those kilns had just started firing chawan."

"You have a learned eye, Dr. Vance." He smiled again, glancing down to admire the rough, cracked surface of the rim. "The experts disagree on the age, some saying very early seventeenth century, but I think your assessment is correct. In any case, just handling it always soothes my spirit. The discipline of the samurai is in a chawan like this. And in the cha-no-yu ceremony itself. It's a test I frequently give my Western friends. To see if they can grasp its spirituality. I'm pleased to say that you handled the bowl exactly as you should have. You understand that Japanese culture is about shaping the randomness of human actions to a refined perfection. That's what we really should be discussing here this afternoon, not the world of affairs, but I'm afraid time is short. I often think of life in terms of a famous Haiku by the poet Shiki:

"Sounds more like your new airplane," Vance observed, then translated:

A mortal butterfly

Fluttering and drifting

In the wind.

"A passable enough rendering, if I may say, though I don't necessarily accept your analogy." He reached down and lifted a bottle of warmed sake from beside the brazier. "By the way, I know you prefer tequila, one of your odd quirks, but there was no time to acquire any. Perhaps this will suffice."

He set down two black raku saucers and began to pour. "Now, alas, we must proceed."

Post time, Vance thought.

"Dr. Michael Vance." He lifted his saucer in a toast. "A scholar of the lost Aegean civilizations, a former operative of the Central Intelligence Agency, and finally a private consultant affiliated with a group of mercenaries. I had your file updated when I first heard you were involved. I see you have not been entirely idle since our last encounter."

"You haven't done too bad yourself." Vance toasted him back. "This new project is a big step up from the old days. Has a lot of style."

"It does indeed," he nodded. "I'm quite proud of our achievement here."

"You always thought big." Vance sipped again at his sake, warm and soothing.

"It's kind of you to have remembered." Mino drank once more, then settled his saucer on the tatami and looked up. "Of course, any questions you have, I would be—"

"Okay, how's this. What do you expect to get out of me?"

He laughed. "Why nothing at all. Our reunion here is merely intended to serve as a tutorial. To remind you and others how upsetting I find intrusions into my affairs."

"Then how about starting off this 'tutorial' with a look at your new plane?" Vance glanced around. "Guess I should call it Daedalus."

"Daedalus I and II. There actually are two prototypes, although only one is currently certified to operate in the hypersonic regime. Yes, I expected the Daedalus would intrigue you. You are a man of insatiable intellectual appetite."

"I'm not sure that's necessarily a compliment."

"It wasn't necessarily meant to be. Sometimes curiosity needs to be curbed. But if we can agree on certain matters, I shall enjoy providing you a personal tour, to satisfy that curiosity. You are a man who can well appreciate both my technological achievement and my strategic coup."

The old boy's finally gone off the deep end, Vance told himself. Megalomania. "Incidentally, by 'strategic coup' I suppose you're referring to the fact you've got them exactly where you want them. The Soviets."

"What do you mean?" His eyes hardened slightly.

"You know what I mean. They probably don't realize it yet, but you're going to end up with the Soviet Far East in your wallet. For the price of a hot airplane, you get to plunder the region. They're even going to be thanking you while you reclaim Sakhalin for Japan. This Daedalus spaceship is going to cost them the ranch. Have to admit it's brilliant. Along with financing the whole scheme by swindling Benelux tax dodgers."

"You are too imaginative for your own good, Dr. Vance," he said, a thin smile returning. "Nobody is going to believe your interpretation of the protocol."

"You've got a point. Nobody appreciates the true brilliance of a criminal mind. Or maybe they just haven't known you as long as I have."

"Really, I'd hoped we would not descend to trading insults." He reached to refill Vance's sake saucer. "It's demeaning. Instead I'd hoped we could proceed constructively."

"Why not."

"Well then, perhaps you'll forgive me if I'm somewhat blunt. I'm afraid my time is going to be limited over the next few hours. I may as well tell you now that we are about to have the first hypersonic test of the Daedalus. Tomorrow morning we will take her to Mach 25. Seventeen thousand miles per hour. A speed almost ten times greater than any air-breathing vehicle has ever before achieved."

"The sky's the limit," he whistled quietly. Alex hadn't known the half of it. This was the ultimate plane.

"Impressive, I think you'll agree." Mino smiled and poured more sake for himself.

"Congratulations."

"Thank you."

"That ought to grease the way in the Diet for your deal. And the protocol's financial grab ought to sail through the Supreme Soviet. You prove this marvel can work and the rest is merely laundering your profits."

"So I would like to think," he nodded. "Of course, one never knows how these things will eventually turn out."

"So when do I get a look at it?"

"Why, that all depends on certain agreements we need to make."

"Then I guess it's time I heard the bottom line."

"Most assuredly." He leaned back. "Dr. Vance, you have just caused me considerable hardship. Nor is this the first occasion you have done so. Yet, I have not achieved what I have to date without becoming something of a judge of men. The financial arrangements you put together in London demonstrated, I thought, remarkable ingenuity. There could be a place for you in my organization, despite all that has happened between us."

"I don't work for the mob, if that's what you're hoping."

"Don't be foolhardy. Those days are well behind me," he went on calmly, despite the flicker of anger in his eyes. "The completion of this project will require financial and strategic skills well beyond those possessed by the people who have worked for me in the past."

"All those petty criminals and hoods, you mean."

"I will choose to ignore that," he continued. "Whatever you may wish to call them, they are not proving entirely adequate to the task at hand. You bested my European people repeatedly and brought me a decided humiliation."

Speaking of which, Vance found himself suddenly wondering, a thought out of the blue, what's happened to Vera? She's been European point woman for this whole scam. Where's she now?

Mino continued. "Therefore I must now either take you into my organization or…" He paused. "It's that simple. Which, I wonder, will it be?"

Vance studied him. "A lot depends on what happens to Eva."

"The fate of Dr. Borodin depends largely on your decision. So perhaps I should give you some time to think it over." He leaned back. "Or perhaps some inducement."

Vance didn't know what he meant. At first. Then he turned and looked behind him. There waiting on the stony walkway of the garden were three of Tanzan Mino's personal kobun, two of whom he recognized from London. The CEO's instructions to them were in rapid-fire Japanese, but he needed no translation as they moved forward.

Yuri Andreevich was mad as hell. After his one-on-one with Tanzan Mino, he knew he'd been screwed. Sticking a couple of "pilots" from Mino Industries in the cockpit. It was just the old GRU trick, surveillance under the specious guise of "support." He'd seen it all before.

But he'd had an idea. A flash. What about the woman Nikolai had seen? The one he said was T-Directorate?

A knockout. That's what Nikolai had claimed, so she shouldn't be hard to track down. He'd been methodically working the crowded corridors of the North Quadrant, checking every open doorway. Although the facility was huge and sprawling, he figured she'd probably be somewhere here close to Command Sector.

Where the hell could she be?

One thing was sure: Tanzan Mino was as sharp as all the rumors said. The bastard had been on-site for less than a day and already he'd suspected that something was brewing. So he'd made his own preemptive strike.

The problem now was, how to outsmart him.

This T-Directorate operative had to be the way. After he got her into a receptive mood, he'd lay out his case. Point out he had enough to worry about in the cockpit without playing flight instructor to a couple of Mino Industries greenhorns. He'd never flown an experimental plane with civilian copilots and he damned sure wasn't going to start now. Especially now.

Govno! Where the hell was she?

He continued methodically checking the North Quadrant offices just down from the Command Sector, hoping somebody there had seen her. The whole place was getting hectic now: last-minute briefings right and left. Whenever he'd spot a friendly Russian face, he'd collar its owner to inquire about her. Fortunately he had an A-level pass, so all he had to do was flash it to the security stiffs at each sector checkpoint and they'd wave him past. He'd just talked to a couple of flight engineers coming out of a briefing room who claimed they'd spotted her in the hallway no more than half an hour ago.

But why was she here at all? It made no sense. Unless she'd defected, gone to work for Mino Industries. Which was exactly the kind of thing you'd expect from one of those opportunistic KGB bastards.

Konyechnaya! There she was, shapely ass and all, just in front of him, headed for Sector Control and flanked by two Japanese security types. They were striding close by, probably showing her around. Maybe she was worried about safety here with all these sex-starved engineers.

Odd, but her walk wasn't exactly what he'd expected. Seemed a little too knowing. Guess that's what happens when you spend too much time in the decadent capitalist West.

He decided to just make his move right there in the hall. Truthfully she did look like a hot number. Nikolai wasn't kidding. This was going to be more interesting than he'd figured.

Zadroka! A piece!

"Strasvetye," came a voice behind Eva. "Kak pazhavatye."

She whirled around. Moving in fast was a tall and — admit it — not bad-looking Soviet major.

"Ya Yuri Andreevich Androv," he declared with a light, debonair bow. His Russian was cultivated, Moscow. "They tell me you just got here. Thought we should meet. You've probably heard of me."

"I have no idea who you are," she heard herself saying.

Where the hell did they take Michael? she was wondering. Right after he met with Tanzan Mino, he'd disappeared. And now she was being moved. She didn't know where, but she did know one thing: all the phony politeness was over. Things had gotten very rough, very fast. She was being relocated to a secure location in the Soviet section, or so she suspected, but she figured project management mainly just wanted to keep her out of the way.

Right now, though, she had an agenda of her own.

"I'm a servant of the people." The major who called himself Yuri Androv winked. "Like you. I'm frequently asked to try and kill myself in their behalf."

"I don't know—" she tried to answer, but the Japanese guards were roughly pulling her on.

"I'm the test pilot for the vehicle," he finally announced.

"How lovely." She glared at him. "I hope it's going to be a smashing success."

"I'm about to find out. Tomorrow morning. Right now all I want to do is try and get back in one piece. Which is why I need to talk to you." He caught her arm, temporarily blocking the two uniformed Mino Industries guards. Then he continued on in Russian. "I've got a problem. We've got a problem. I was hoping you could help me out."

When the two security men tried to urge her on, he flashed his A-level at them and told them to lay the fuck off, in explicit Russian. Startled, they froze.

That's when it finally dawned on her. This idiot must think I'm Vera.

Now he was withdrawing a white packet of English cigarettes and offering her one. Instinctively, she reached out.

"So how can I help you, Major Androv?" Eva flashed him a smile as he lit her English Oval with a match.

"It's the test flight tomorrow. Nobody should be near that cockpit who hasn't been certified to at least ten G's in the simulator. I tried to tell him, but he wouldn't listen."

"Ten G's?" She was trying to keep him talking. "That's—"

"Damned dangerous. But we need it to bring the scramjets up to rated thrust, at least the first time. They've never been tested in flight. We just don't know."

"And nobody else here has been certified?" She wasn't even sure exactly what "certified" meant, but she tried to look concerned.

"Exactly. Now all of a sudden he wants to stick a couple of his Nips in the cockpit there with me, probably crop-duster screw-ups from Mino Industries." He finally lit his own cigarette, with a suggestive flourish. Christ, she thought, why do all Soviet pilots think they're God's gift to women. "I tell you it's idiotic." He exhaled through his nose. "You've got to help me make him see that, before it's too late."

She glanced sideways at the two impatient Japanese. From their blank faces she realized they hadn't understood a word.

Well, she thought, right now I've got nothing to lose.

"What you're saying, Major, is very disturbing. Perhaps we should have a word with the CEO right away. We both know time's getting short." She glanced down the hall toward the wide doors at the end: Command Sector. "Why don't we just go in together and see him?" She'd noticed the major's A-level, which seemed to carry clout. "Maybe you can deal with these flunkies." She indicated the Mino-gumi kobun posing as her guards. "Since I neglected to bring my pass, they have no idea who I really am."

He laughed. "Guess a few assholes around here are in for a surprise."

No kidding, she thought. Mainly you, flyboy.

God, nobody can strut like a Soviet Air Force pilot. Hard currency stores, scotch from Scotland, American cigarettes, French porno videos. They think they own the world. Bad luck, Romeo. You're about to have Tanzan Mino all over your case. Maybe you'll end up so rattled tomorrow you'll crash and burn.

He turned and waved his pass at the two guards. "Mino-san wa. Important business desu."

Then he seized her arm and pushed the guards aside. "Come on. Maybe you can get these fuck-ups fired after we're through."

"I'll see what I can do." She smiled again. "By the way, you're confirming that the big test flight is still on? In the morning?" She paused, still not sure exactly what the test was all about.

"Oh-nine-thirty hours. All the way." He was leading the way briskly down the crowded corridor.

"And you're going to… "

"Take her hypersonic. Mach 25. Straight to the edge. Brush the stars. And believe me, I've got to be alone. I can't be running a flight school." He was striding ahead of her now, talking over his shoulder. "Which is why you've got to help me talk some sense into that old fucker. Excuse me," he said, grinning in mock apology, "the CEO."

The guards at the wide double doors leading into Tanzan Mino's suite just gaped as Yuri Andreevich Androv flourished his A-level at them and then shoved his way past, oblivious to the clamor of Japanese shouts now trailing in his wake.

"Mino-san, pazhalsta," he said to the figure standing in the anteroom, scarcely noticing it was a woman, and too expensively dressed for a receptionist. Eva watched Vera Karanova lunge for a button on the desk as he pushed open the teakwood door leading into Tanzan Mino's inner office.

The first thing she noticed was the wide window behind the desk opening on a stunning view of the straits, the setting sun glancing off the tips of the whitecaps. Seated behind the desk, monitoring a line of computer screens, was a silver-haired executive.

So that's what he looks like, she thought. Perfect. Central casting couldn't have done better.

"Yuri Andreevich, what…?" he glanced up, glaring at Eva. "I see you've met one of our American guests."

"American?" Androv stopped, then looked at her, puzzled.

Better make this fast, she told herself. In about five seconds Comrade Karanova's going to take this Soviet hero's head off.

"Listen, you bastard." She was storming the desk. "If you so much as lay a finger on Michael or me, either one of us, the National Security Agency is going to close you down so fast you'll think an H-bomb hit this fucking place. I want to see the American ambassador, and I want my belongings returned."

"Everything is being taken care of, Dr. Borodin." Vera Karanova answered from the doorway. Eva glanced back and saw a platoon of eight Mino-guchi kobun, Mino's personal bodyguards, all with automatics. "You will come with us."

Androv was staring blankly at her now, his swagger melting like springtime Georgian snow. "You're American? National Security?"

"They kidnapped us. In London. They're going to screw you, everybody. We found out—"

"We?"

"My name is Eva Borodin. I'm director of Soviet SIGINT for the National Security Agency in Washington. And Mike Vance, CIA, is here too. God knows what these criminals are doing to him right now. But they're about to take you apart too, hotshot. So have a nice day. And while you're at it—"

"Tovarisch Androv, you have just done a very foolish thing." Vera's voice was frigid. "I don't think you realize how foolish."

"Dr. Borodin," Mino finally spoke, "you are even more resourceful than I'd expected. Resourcefulness, however, is not prudence. Dr. Vance is currently… reviewing a proposal I made him. You should be hoping he will accept. As for the National Security Agency, they believe you are still on holiday. After tomorrow, it will not matter. Nothing you can do will interfere with our schedule."

"We'll see about that."

"Trust me," he smiled. Then his look turned grave and shifted. "Major Androv, you will kindly remain after they have taken her away."

Chapter Eighteen

The room was cold. Just cold. That was the first thing he'd noticed when they shoved him in. It still was. For nine hours he'd been sitting on a hard, canvas-covered Soviet cot, shivering.

The place was no larger than a small cell, with a tile floor, ice gray concrete walls, and two bare fluorescent bulbs for lighting. No heat. There was a slight vibration — it seemed to be part of the room itself — emanating from the walls and floor. He'd tracked it to a large wall duct.

Ventilation system could use adjusting, he'd thought, fan housing's loose somewhere. They also could turn up the damned heat.

He was wearing only what he'd had on in London, and this definitely was not London. Hokkaido was a much colder part of the planet.

The room had the feeling of a quick, slapped-together job. But it also looked like it could withstand a medium-sized nuclear detonation. One thing was sure, though: It wasn't built with comfort in mind. The door was steel, the same dull hue as the rest. It was bolted from the outside, naturally.

But if isolation and cold were Tanzan Mino's idea of how to break his spirit, to see how tough he was, the man was in for some disappointment.

What the Mino Industries CEO had unwittingly accomplished by moving him here, however, was to enlighten him about the layout of the place. As he was being escorted down the crowded facility corridors by the three leather-jacketed kobun, he'd passed a projection video screen suspended over the center of a main intersection. The location seemed to be some sort of central checkpoint, and the screen displayed a schematic of the whole facility.

He'd faked a stumble and used the recovery time to quickly scan its essential features.

He leaned back on the cot and ran through one more time what he'd seen on the screen, trying to imprint it in his memory.

Insight number one: the facility was organized into four main quadrants, with a layout like a large X. Some of the writing was Japanese, but mostly it was Russian Cyrillic characters. He massaged his temples and visualized it again.

The first thing he'd focused on was something called the North Quadrant, whose Russian designation was Komendant. It looked to be the command center, with a red-colored area labeled in both Japanese and Russian. Next to that were a lot of little rooms, probably living quarters or barracks. Kanji ideograms identified those, so that section was probably where the Japanese staffers bivouacked.

That command section, he'd realized, was where he and Eva had been. They'd been quartered in a part of Tanzan Mino's private suites, the belly of the beast.

It got even more interesting. The other three quadrants were where the real work was going on. On the right side of the screen was East Quadrant, whose label was Komputer/ Kommunekatseon, which meant it contained the computers and communications set-up. Flight Control. And the South Quadrant, the Assamblaya, consisted of a lot of large open bays, probably where the two prototypes had been assembled. Those bays connected directly to a massive sector labeled Angar, the hangar. But the bays also had separate access to the runway, probably for delivery of prefabricated sections from somewhere else.

The West Quadrant appeared to house test facilities; the one label he could read was Laboratoraya. Probably materials labs, next to a configuration that could have been a large wind tunnel. Made sense. That quadrant also had more small rooms with Russian labels. He'd studied the screen a second longer and…

Bingo. He'd realized he was being moved into the Soviet sector, probably the barracks and laboratory area.

This had to be the least used location in the facility now, he told himself. All the wind tunnel testing of sections and the materials research was probably wrapped up, meaning this area was history. Yesterday's news. So the CEO had shunted him to this obscure lock-up in the West Quadrant, the Soviet section. What better spot to discreetly dispose of somebody for a while?

Time to brush up your Russian.

Problem was — he grimaced at the realization — there wasn't a heck of a lot left to brush. He'd had a year at Yale, just enough to let him struggle along with a dictionary and squeak around some standard language requirement. That was it. He'd never given it a second thought afterward. Instead he'd gone on to his real love — ancient Greek. Then later, in CIA days, the action had been Asia. At one time he'd ended up doing some consulting for Langley's Far Eastern INTEL desk, helping coordinate American and Japanese fieldwork.

He could swing the Japanese, but the Russian…

Tanzan Mino probably knew that, yet another reason why he'd decided on this transfer. There'd be fewer people here to communicate with. Smart.

The labyrinth of King Minos, brainchild of Daedalus, that's what he felt trapped in. But Theseus, the Greek prince who killed the monster, got some help from Minos's daughter, Ariadne. A ball of string to help him find his way out of the maze. This time around, though, where was help going to come from? Maybe the first job here was to kill the monster, then worry about what came next.

Partly to generate a little body heat, he turned and braced himself at an angle against the door, starting some half push-ups. With his hands on the door, he also could sense some of the activity in the hallway outside. He figured it had to be after midnight by now, but there were still random comings and goings. Activity, but nothing…

He felt a tremor, then heard a loud scraping and the sound of a bolt being slid aside.

He quickly wheeled and flattened himself against the wall, looking futilely for something to use as a weapon. Aside from the cot, though, there was nothing.

Okay, this would be hand to hand. He could use the exercise. Besides, he was mad enough.

The gray steel door slowly began to swing inward; then a mane of white hair tentatively appeared, followed by a rugged ancient face as the visitor turned to stare at him through heavy glasses.

"Strasvitye," the man said finally, uncertainty in his gravelly voice. "Ya Doktor Andrei Petrovich Androv."

Would the idea work? Yuri still didn't know. As he walked between the vehicles, the hangar's wide banks of fluorescents glaring down on the final preflight preps for Daedalus I, he was sure of only one thing: at this point, the revised plan was the only option left. Would the American help?

The woman, the bitch, was no fool: An insight he'd come by the hard way. But maybe the CIA guy — what had she said his name was? — Vance?

How the hell did he get here? However it had happened, he was being kept in the West Quadrant. It had been no trick to find him.

He was a godsend; his help would make the scenario possible. Now it merely required split-second timing.

He glanced up at the big liquid crystal display screen on the far wall, noting it read zero minus eight hours ten minutes. He should be back in the West Quadrant now, catching some sleep — if Taro Ikeda knew he was here in the hangar, there'd be hell to pay — but time was running out.

Tanzan Mino had listened icily to his renewed arguments against additional personnel in the cockpit, then declared that the viability of the program depended on having backups. Merely an essential precaution. End of discussion.

Bullshit. As soon as the political games were played out, the CEO was planning to get rid of him, probably by some "accident."

Well, screw him. And that's where the American came in. The thing to do was just appear to be proceeding with the countdown normally, keep everything innocent. Then, at the last minute…

He stared up at Daedalus I one last time, watching as the maintenance crews finished the last of the preflight scramjet preps. And he shook his head in amazement that Andrei Androv and all his damned propulsion engineers could create a genuine technological miracle and still be total bumblers when it came to what in hell was really happening.

These technical types thought they were so brilliant! But if it had taken them all this time to realize they'd been fucked by Mino Industries, then how smart could they really be? Made him wonder how the Baikonur Cosmodrome ever managed to get so much as a turnip into orbit.

Now these same geniuses had to get Daedalus II flight- ready in just a few hours, and had to do it without anyone suspecting what they were doing. Finally, they had to be ready to roll into action the instant the "accident" happened. No trial runs.

He checked his watch and realized his father's propulsion team was already gathering at Number One, the final meeting. The question now was, could they really deliver? The American was the key.

"Your name Vance?" The Russian voice, with its uncertain English, was the last thing he'd expected.

"Who are you?"

"For this vehicle, I am Director Propulsion System," he replied formally, and with pride, pulling at his white lab coat. "I must talk you. Please."

Vance stepped away from the wall and looked the old man over more closely. Then it clicked. Andrei Petrovich Androv was a living legend. Ten years ago the CIA already had a tech file on him that filled three of those old-time reels of half-inch tape. These days, God knows what they had. He'd been the USSR's great space pioneer, a hero who'd gone virtually unrecognized by his own country. No Order of Lenin. Nothing. Nada. But maybe he'd preferred it that way, liked being a recluse. Nobody, least of all the CIA's Soviet specialists, could figure him.

And now he was here in the wilds of northern Hokkaido, building a spaceplane. They'd sent over no less than the Grand Old Man to handle the propulsion. This project was top priority.

A s it deserved to be. But the immediate question was, What was the dean of Soviet rocket research doing here visiting him?

"Sorry I can't offer you a cup of tea. No samovar." He looked out the open door one last time. Several Soviet staffers were glancing in as they walked by, obviously puzzled why the famous Doktor Androv himself had come around to talk with some unknown civilian.

"Shto? Ya ne ponemayu.… I not understand."

"Tea. Chai." He shrugged. "Just a bad joke." He reached over and shoved the door closed, then gestured toward the cot. "In the wrong language. Please. Sit."

"Thank you." The old man settled himself. "I did not come for chai." His hands were trembling. "I want—" Abruptly he hesitated, as though searching for words, and then his mind appeared to wander. "Your name is Vance?"

"Mike Vance."

"And you are with American CIA?"

What's going on, he wondered? How did these Soviets find out?

"Uh, right." He glanced away. "That's correct."

"Mr. Vance, my son is test pilot for the Daedalus." He continued, running his gnarled hands nervously through his long white hair. "His name is Yuri Andreevich."

"Pozdravleneye." Vance nodded. "Congratulations. Yuri Andreevich is about to make the cover of Newsweek. You should be proud."

"We have serious problem, Mr. Vance." He seemed not to hear. "That is why I am come. I am very worried for my son."

Vance looked him over more closely. Yes, he did appear worried. His severe, penetrating eyes were filled with anguish.

"Got a problem with the CEO? Guess the godfather can be a hard man to warm up to, even for his new allies."

"Mr. Vance, I do not know you, but there is very small time." He continued with a shrug, not understanding. "So please, I will tell you many things in very few minutes."

Vance continued to study him. "Go ahead."

"You may not realize, but this project is to be giant leap for our space program. Many of our best engineers are here. This vehicle, a reusable near-earth space platform, would save billions of rubles over many years. It is air-breathing vehicle that would lift research payloads directly into space. But my son never believe that its real purpose. Perhaps I was idealist, because I believe. I always think he was wrong. But more and more of things I have learned about its electronics — things we had nothing to do with — make me now believe he is right. And yesterday, when certain… chelovek of the Soviet Air Force come, the worst…" He paused, his voice beginning to betray barely concealed rage. "I have work all my life for peaceful exploring of space. And now I have been betrayed. The engineers I bring with me here have been betrayed. I also believe, Mr. Vance, that the Soviet people have been betrayed. And along with them, Mikhail Sergeevich himself. This is part of a plot to… I don't know what secretly is plan, but I am now convinced this plane must be destroyed, before it is too late. And the world must be warned. That is why—"

"Then why don't you warn somebody?" Vance interrupted him. "Matter of fact, there's a lot more to this setup than an airplane."

"But why do you think I am here, talking to you? The facility now is completely sealed. I would warn Mikhail Sergeevich what is happening, but no communication is possible." He hesitated again, painfully. "They want to put my son in the airplane tomorrow with guards. He has been made prisoner, like you. He does not want to fly the vehicle for tomorrow's test, but the CEO is forcing him to do it." He looked up, his eyes bleary and bloodshot. "Mr. Vance, I think he will be killed as soon as this plane is certified hypersonic. They no longer trust him."

"What about you? They probably won't think you're very trustworthy either if they find out you came to see me."

"That is correct. But the time has come for risks."

"So what do you want from me?" He stood back and looked the white-haired old man over one last time. Was he telling the truth? Were the Soviet engineers actually planning a mutiny?

"We are going to stop it. Tomorrow morning, just before the test flight. It must be done."

"Good luck."

"Mr. Vance, you are with American intelligence. We are only engineers. We know nothing about the kind of things necessary to—"

"Do you have any weapons?"

"Nothing. The guards here are all from the corporation." He lowered his voice. "Frankly, most of them look like criminals."

"They are." Vance laughed in spite of himself.

"I don't understand."

"I know you don't understand. If you did… but that's beside the point."

"Then will you help us?" His wrinkled face was fixed in determination. "Do you know anything about explosives?"

"Enough. But are you really sure that's the way you want to go?" He paused. "There's a lot that can go wrong in a big facility like this without anybody knowing what caused it."

"All the sensitive areas are under heavy security now. They are impossible to penetrate."

Terrific, Vance thought. "By the way, how does your son, the test pilot, figure into all this?"

"All along he was planning to… I don't know. He refused to tell me. But it doesn't matter. Now that two Mino Industries guards are being put in the cockpit with him, whatever he was planning is impossible. So we have to do something here, on the ground."

"Well, where is he?"

"He is in the hangar now."

"I'll need to see him."

For one thing, Vance thought, he probably knows how to use a gun. All Soviet pilots carry an automatic and two seven-round clips for protection in case they have to ditch in the wilderness somewhere. Our first order of business is to jump some of these Mino-gumi goons who're posing as security men and get their weapons.

"By the way, do you know where they're keeping the American woman who was brought here with me?"

The old man's eyes grew vague. "I believe she's somewhere here in the West Quadrant. I think she was transferred here around eighteen hundred hours, and then a little later her suitcase arrive from hangar."

"Her bag?" His pulse quickened.

"Delivered by the facility's robot carts. The plane that brought you was being made ready for the CEO's trip back to Tokyo."

"Where was it left?"

"I don't know. I only—"

"Okay, later. Right now maybe you'd better start by getting me out of here."

"That is why I brought this." He indicated the brown paper package he was carrying. It was the first time Vance had noticed it. "I have in here an air force uniform. It belongs to my son."

The parcel was carefully secured with white string — a methodical precision that came from years of engineering.

"You will pose as one of us," the old man continued. "You do not speak Russian?"

"Maybe enough to fool the Mino-gumi, but nobody else." He was watching as Androv began unwrapping the package.

"Then just let me do all talk," he shrugged. "If anybody wonders who you are, I will be giving you tour of the West Quadrant. You should pretend to be drunk; it would surprise no one. You will frown a lot and mumble incoherent questions to me. We will go directly to my office, where I will tell you our plan."

Now Andrei Androv was unfolding a new, form-fitting uniform intended for Yuri Andreevich. The shoulder boards had one wide gold chevron and two small rectangles, signifying the rank of major in the Soviet air force. Also included was a tall lamb's-wool cap, the kind officers wore. Vance took the hat and turned it in his hand. He'd never actually held one before. Nice.

Seems I just got made air force major, and I've never flown anything bigger than a Lear jet.

He slipped off the shirt he'd been wearing in London, happy to be rid of it, and put on the first half of the uniform. Not a bad fit. The trousers also seemed tailor-made. Then he slipped on the wool topper, completing the ensemble.

"You would make a good officer, I think." Andrei Androv stood back and looked him over with a smile. "But you have to act like one too. Remember to be insulting."

After the hours in solitary, freezing confinement, he wasn't sure he looked like anything except a bum. But he'd have no difficulty leading Doktor Andrei Androv along in the middle of the night and bombarding him with a steady stream of slurred Russian: Shto eto? Ve chom sostoet vasha rabota?

How did the Soviets find out he was here? he wondered. Must have been Eva. She'd got through to them somehow. Which meant she probably was still all right. That, at least, was a relief.

After Andrei Androv clanged the steel door closed and bolted it, they headed together toward the old man's personal office, where he had smuggled drawings of the vehicle's cockpit. The hallways were lit with glaring fluorescents, bustling with technicians, and full of Soviets in uniform. Vance returned a few of the crisp salutes and strutted drunkenly along ahead.

They wanted him to help blow up the plane! He was a little rusty with good old C-4, but he'd be happy to brush up fast. After that, it'd be a whole new ballgame.

"Will he help?" Yuri Androv surveyed the eleven men in the darkened control room. The wall along the left side consisted entirely of heavy plate glass looking out on Number One. That wind tunnel, the video screens, the instrument panels, everything was dormant now. Aside from a few panel lights, the space was illuminated only by the massive eight-foot-by-twenty-foot liquid crystal screen at the far end now scrolling the launch countdown, green numbers blinking off the seconds. Except for Nikolai Vasilevich Grishkov, the Soviet chief mechanic, all those gathered were young engineers from Andrei Androv's propulsion design team. Grishkov, however, because of his familiarity with the layout of the hangar, was the man in charge.

"I just spoke with Doktor Androv, and he believes the American will cooperate," Grishkov nodded. "He will bring him here as soon as he has been briefed."

"I still wonder if I shouldn't just handle it myself."

"It would be too dangerous for you, Yuri Andreevich. He knows about explosives. Besides, you have to be ready to fly the other plane, Daedalus II, right after the explosion. Nobody else can take it up."

He laughed. "Steal it, you mean."

"Yuri Andreevich, we have made sure it's fueled and we will get you into the cockpit. After that, we will know nothing about—"

"One other thing," he interjected, "I want it fueled with liquid hydrogen."

"Impossible." Grishkov's expression darkened, his bushy eyebrows lifting. "I categorically refuse."

"I don't care. I want it."

"Absolutely out of the question. The engines on Daedalus II haven't been certified in the scramjet mode. You can't attempt to take it hypersonic. It would be too risky." He stopped, then smiled. "Don't worry. You can still outrun any chase plane on earth with those twelve engines in ramjet mode."

"I tell you I want to go to scramjet geometry," Yuri Andreevich insisted, his eyes determined.

If I can't do what I planned, he told himself, nobody's going to believe me. I've got to take one of those vehicles hypersonic tomorrow morning, ready or not.

"Impossible. There's no way we can fuel Daedalus II with liquid hydrogen. The Mino Industries ground crews would suspect something immediately. It's out of the question. I forged some orders and had it fueled with JP-7 late last night, at 2300 hours. That's the best I can do."

Chort, Yuri thought. Well, maybe I can fake it. Push it out to Mach 5 with JP-7 and still…

"And the two 'pilots' from Mino Industries," he turned back, "what about them?"

"If the American plays his part, they will never suspect." Grishkov flashed a grin.

"Unless somebody here screws up," he said, gazing around the room again, studying the white technician's uniforms, the innocent faces.

"There'll be a lot of confusion. When we start pumping liquid hydrogen into Daedalus /, the site will be pandemonium," Grishkov continued. "All you have to do is get into the cockpit of the other plane."

It would be a horrible accident, but accidents happened. They'd all heard whispered stories about the tragedy at Baikonur in October 1960, when almost a hundred men were killed because Nikita Khrushchev wanted a spectacular space shot while he was visiting the United Nations. When a giant rocket, a Mars probe, failed to achieve ignition, instead of taking the delay required to remove the fuel before checking the malfunction, the technicians were ordered to troubleshoot it immediately. Tech crews were swarming over it when it detonated.

"Then I guess we're ready." Yuri Andreevich sighed.

"We are." Grishkov nodded and reached for the phone beside the main console, quickly punching in four numbers. He spoke quietly for a few moments, then replaced the receiver.

"They'll be here in five minutes. Doktor Androv has just completed his briefing on the cockpit configuration."

"All right. I'm going now. Just get the hangar doors open, the runway cleared, and the truck-mounted starters ready. This is going to be tricky, so make sure everybody thinks we're merely taking Daedalus II onto the runway as a safety precaution after the explosion." Yuri gazed over the group of engineers one last time. Would they do it? Whatever happened, he had to get out of there and start checking the cockpit of Daedalus II before the morning's preflight crews arrived. "Good luck. By 0900 hours I want everything set."

He gave the room a final salute, out of habit, and headed for the security doors. In moments he'd disappeared into the corridor and was gone.

"Let me do the talking," Grishkov said, turning back to the others. "And let Doktor Androv translate. Also remember, he has no idea Yuri Andreevich is going to steal the other plane."

The men stirred, and nodded their assent. From here on, they all were thinking, the less they had to do with this plot the better.

Then the door opened. Standing next to Dr. Andrei Petrovich Androv was a tall man dressed as a Soviet air force major. As Grishkov looked him over, he had the fleeting impression that Yuri Andreevich had unexpectedly returned, so similar was the American poseur to Andrei Androv's own son. In height and build, the resemblance was nothing short of miraculous. This was going to be easier than he'd dared to hope. Put the American in a pressure suit, complete with flight helmet, and he could easily pass.

"He has agreed to set the explosives," Andrei said in Russian as he gestured toward the man standing beside him in a tight-fitting uniform. "Meet ‘Major Yuri Andreevich Androv.'"

The room appeared to be the quarters of a high-ranking member of the Soviet staff, now returned to the USSR. It was comfortably if sparely appointed and even had a computer terminal, a small NEC. She'd switched it on, tried to call up some files, but everything required a password. She could use it, however, as a clock. As she watched the time flashing on the corner of the screen, she tried to remember what the Soviet major had said about the schedule… the first hypersonic test of the Daedalus was scheduled for 0930. That was only an hour and a half away.

She was wearing her London clothes again, but where the hell was her bag? She walked over and sat down on the side of the single bed, thinking. If she could get her hands on the suitcase, the Uzi might still be there.

That's when she heard the sound of muted but crisp Japanese outside — the changing of the guard. The Mino-gumi kobun were keeping a strict schedule, a precision that seemed perfectly in keeping with everything else about the facility. Life here was measured out not in coffee spoons but in scrolling numbers on computers.

The door opened and one of the new kobun showed his head. At first she thought it was merely a bed check, but he stared at her mutely for a moment, then beckoned. She rose and walked over. This new goon, black suit and all, was armed with a 9mm Walther P88 automatic in a shoulder holster. Outside, the other Mino-gumi motioned for her to come with them.

That's when she noticed her bag, sitting just outside the door.

There goes my chance, she sighed. They want to keep me moving, make sure I'm not in one place long enough for anybody to get suspicious. This way I'll seem to be just another guest.

Without a word they were directing her along the hallway toward Checkpoint Central. All Tanzan Mino's kobun seemed to have free run of the facility, because the uniformed security staff didn't even bother to ask for a pass. They may have been new and alien visitors from outside this closed world, but they represented the CEO. Carte blanche.

Now they were moving down the crowded corridor leading to the South Quadrant. The walls were still gray, but this was a new area, one she hadn't yet been in. No sign this time, however, of the Soviet major named Androv.

Guess he wasn't kidding about an important test flight coming up. Something was definitely in the wind. The pace of activity was positively hectic. So why was she being moved, right in the middle of all this chaos? It didn't make sense.

She looked up ahead and realized they were headed toward two massive, heavily guarded doors. What could this sector be? Once again the Japanese security guards merely bowed low and waved her Mino-gumi escorts past.

The wide doors opened onto yet another hallway, and she was overwhelmed by a blast of sound. Motors were blaring, voices were shouting, escaping gasses were hissing. The din, the racket, engulfed her. And then she realized the reason: There was no ceiling! Even the "offices" along the side were merely high-walled cubicles that had been dropped here in the entryway of some vast space.

It was the hangar.

The actual entry at the end was sealed and guarded, but instead of passing through, they stopped at the last door on the right.

Whoever had summoned her, it wasn't Tanzan Mino. His array of personal kobun weren't lined up outside. In fact, there were no guards at all.

The leather-jacketed escorts pulled open the door, and one entered ahead of her, one behind. Inside was a large metal desk, equipped with banks of phones and rows of buttons.

Sitting behind the desk was Vera Karanova.

"Did you sleep well?" She glanced up, then immediately signaled for the kobun to absent themselves.

"Did you?" Eva looked her over — the severe designer suit, black, topped off with a string of gray Mikimoto pearls. It was a striking contrast to the short-haired engineers bustling outside.

What riveted her attention, however, was resting on the desk next to the banks of phones and switches. A Zenith.

"We have some time this morning." Vera ignored the response as she brushed at her carefully groomed dark hair. "I thought we should use it productively."

"Lots of luck, Comrade."

"It is not in either of our interests to be at cross purposes," she continued, still speaking in Russian. It was a startling change in tone from the evening before. "You and I have much in common. We both have worked at high levels in the security apparatus of our respective countries. Consequently we both understand the importance of strategic thinking. That sets us apart." She reached out and touched the laptop computer. "Now, to begin, I would very much like for you to show me how you managed to break the encryption for the protocol. The CEO was most impressed."

"If he wants to know, he can ask me himself." She helped herself to a metal chair.

"He is very busy at the moment," Vera continued, "occupied elsewhere."

This is a setup, Eva was thinking. She wanted to get me down here for some other reason.

But it was hard to concentrate, given the din of activity filtering in from the open ceiling. Above them banks of floodlights were creating heavy shadows around the office, and out there somewhere, she realized, was the prototype.

"Why don't you tell me what's really on your mind, Comrade? Or better yet, why you decided to throw in your lot with all these Yakuza criminals."

Vera Karanova laughed. "You are a director with the National Security Agency. You obviously are very competent. And yet you and the rest of American intelligence seem completely blind. Oblivious to the significance of what is happening around you. In case you hadn't noticed, the Soviet military is being stripped, practically dismantled in the interest of economic restructuring."

"High time, if you ask me."

"That is a matter of opinion. The Cold War, whether we liked it or not, maintained a predictable structure in the world. Both East and West went out of their way to support and stabilize Third World countries in order to keep them out of each other's camp. But with the Cold War slackening, there's disintegration everywhere. Demilitarization is leading to political and economic anarchy worldwide."

Right, Eva thought. But you left out one other interesting fact: Japan got rich while the superpowers were out there "stabilizing" everybody, squandering resources on matching sets of military toys instead of investing in their own infrastructure. They'd love to keep it going.

"This plane," Vera went on, "can be used to serve the ultimate cause of restoring world order." She paused, then continued. "But only if it is in the hands of our air force, from today forward."

"Purge the new thinking?"

"The Soviet Union is on the verge of economic disaster. Perestroika has plunged our country into chaos. The time has come to admit revisionism has failed."

"Where's good old Uncle Joe when you need him?" she smiled. "Stalin made the Gulag trains run on time."

"Our restructuring has gone too far," Vera continued. "There are limits beyond which a society can no longer endure change."

Eva stared at her. "I take it KGB and your military right- wingers are planning to try and stage a coup?"

"There still are responsible people in the Soviet Union, Dr. Borodin, who believe our country is worth saving."

My God, Eva thought, their hard-liners are planning to take control of this plane and use it to re-enflame the Cold War? Just like the race for the H-bomb, it'll rejuvenate the Soviet military.

"This is our last chance," Vera continued as she reached down and flicked on the computer. "However, if we are to succeed, the terms of the protocol will require certain revisions."

"Do you really think you can get away with this?"

"That's where you come in," Vera went on. "But first perhaps I should show you something."

She reached down and pushed a button on the desk, causing the set of blinds along the side of the office facing the hangar to slowly rise. "I'd like you to see the Daedalus." She pointed out the window. "Perhaps then you will better appreciate its significance."

Through the glass was a massive hangar engulfed in white vapor, as cryogenic liquid hydrogen created clouds of artificial condensate, cold steam, that poured over the army of milling technicians. Above the haze, however, she could just make out two giant aircraft. Their wings started almost at the cockpit, then widened outward to the plane's full length, terminating abruptly just before the high tail assembly. Positioned side by side, they looked like huge gliders, except that beneath the wings were clusters of massive engines larger than any she'd ever seen before.

"So that's the prototype, the vehicle specified in the protocol."

They were stunningly beautiful. Maybe all high-performance aircraft looked sexy, but these possessed a unique elegance. The child's vision of the paper airplane reincarnated as the most powerful machine man had ever created.

"I thought you would like to witness the final preparations for our first hypersonic flight," Vera proceeded. "Thus far one of the planes, that one there on the left" — she pointed—"has been flown to Mach 4.5. Today's test will take it to the hypersonic regime, over fifteen thousand miles per hour."

They've leapfrogged the West, Eva was suddenly realizing. It's the X-30 spaceplane America dreams of building in the next century, except it's here now.

"From the looks of things, I'd say you're on schedule."

Vera clicked something on the desk and a blinking number appeared at the top of a video screen. It was the countdown. Liftoff was less than an hour away.

"Yes, so far there has been no hold. Even though today is overcast, with a low ceiling, we don't experience weather delays like the American space shuttle. In fact, this plane is virtually weather-proof, since it leaves from a runway just like a normal passenger jet."

No wonder the test pilot Androv was swaggering, Eva thought. This must be a flyboy's wet dream.

"One more question. Why are you showing me all this?"

"I told you, there's something I need." She paused, and in the silence Eva listened to the increasing clamor of preparations in the hangar outside. "After the test flight this morning, the prototype is scheduled to be transferred to the Supreme Soviet. However, that cannot be allowed to happen. Consequently, there will need to be alterations in the protocol." She clicked on the laptop computer. It hummed lightly as the hard disk engaged, and then the screen began to glow. "Those revisions need to be kept out of the system computers here at the facility for now, so your copy of the text would be an ideal place to prepare a first draft."

"You're going to pull a fast one." Eva stared at her. "You're going to tinker with the terms of the deal and turn this plane over to your air force. Very inventive."

"That is correct. And you are going to help me, Dr. Borodin. You are going to call up your text and print a copy for me."

Sweetie, you are a piece of work.

"Why bother printing it again? Sorry to tell you, but I've already run off a copy. It's in my suitcase."

"We searched your bag. There's nothing there."

"You didn't look hard enough." Maybe this was her chance. "Send some of your thugs to fetch it."

"Very well." She reached for a button on the desk.

Eva turned to look out again through the white mist. Something was going on now. A motorized cart was pulling up and two men in pressure suits were getting off. Must be the pilots.

The first to step off the cart was already waving his hands imperiously at the Japanese technicians. He had to be the Soviet pilot, Androv. Yep, it was him, swagger and all.

Then the second pressure-suited figure stepped down. That one, she assumed, must be one of the Mino Industries recruits Androv had been complaining about. Guess he didn't get very far with his demand to be in the cockpit alone.

The walk.

Memories of a long-ago skin-diving trip to Cozumel flooded back. They were off the northern reefs, wearing oxygen tanks, admiring the multicolored banks of coral. Then later, as they staggered up the beach, she'd laughed at his frog-footed waddle.

Michael!

Chapter Nineteen

As Vance stepped off the motorized cart, the hangar around him was shrouded in white vapor. The swirling cloud on the ground, the eerie chiaroscuro of the lights, the amplified voice that ticked off the countdown — all added to the other-worldliness of the scene. And above the turmoil two giant spaceplanes loomed, silver monoliths that seemed to hover atop the pale mist.

Chariots of the gods, he thought, gazing up.

The Russian technicians had carefully suited him exactly as Yuri Androv, right down to his boots. Next to his skin was the dark-blue flight suit and cotton-lined leather cap issued to all Soviet pilots, and over these came a pressurized G-suit fabricated from a heavy synthetic material; it felt like a mixture of nylon and Teflon. This was topped off with the flight helmet, complete with a removable reflecting visor, which conveniently prevented anyone from seeing his face.

Although the helmet restricted his peripheral vision, he still could hear clearly through headphones miked on the outside, although they did make the din of the hangar sound tinny and artificial. A Velcro-backed insignia of the Minoan Double Ax adhered to his chest; he was posing as a Mino Industries pilot.

For all its unfamiliarity, however, his gear felt very much like the rubber wet-suit he donned for scuba diving at depths. The two hoses fastened to his abdomen could have been connectors for compressed air tanks and his helmet the oxygen mask. He felt equally uncomfortable. Only the damned flippers were missing.

Since his RX-10 G-suit was designed for high-altitude flight, intended to do double-duty as an emergency backup in case of cockpit decompression, he had to carry along his own personal environmental-control unit, a white, battery-powered air conditioner the size of a large briefcase. It hummed lightly as it cooled and dehumidified the interior of his suit, keeping his faceplate moisture-free. The recycled air he was breathing smelled stale and vaguely synthetic.

The most uncomfortable part of all, however, not to mention the most nerve-racking, had to be the six sticks of C-4 plastic explosive and their radio-controlled detonators now secured against his chest.

Since the Soviet engineers had suited him up in a separate room, avoiding any contact with the Mino Industries doctors who'd been giving Androv his preflight physical, he'd yet to see Yuri Andreevich Androv clearly. He had a partner and he hadn't even had a good look at him yet.

"The other M-I pilot will be arriving in a few minutes," Androv was announcing to the white-jacketed Japanese technicians standing by the Personnel Module. "He was delayed in the briefing." For their benefit he was speaking English, which, to Vance's surprise and relief, was almost perfect. They nodded as he continued. "We'll just go on up in the module. I want to check over the cockpit one last time, make sure there're no last-minute glitches."

The Personnel Module resembled a small mobile home, except its pneumatic lift could elevate it sixty feet straight into the air, permitting direct access to the cockpit's side hatch. It was worlds away from the fourteen-foot metal ladder used to access a MiG cockpit.

"Flight deck." He was speaking through his helmet mike as he pointed up. "Understand? Cockpit." Then he turned and motioned for Vance to follow as he stepped in.

"Hai." Vance nodded gravely, Japanese style. "Wakarimasu."

Let's hope the haze keeps down visibility, he was thinking. This place is sure to have video monitors everywhere. And this fancy elevator is probably bugged too.

Intelligence from Command Central was that Tanzan Mino's two Yakuza "pilots" were receiving a last-minute briefing from the CEO himself. Still, they were certain to show up soon. This was no time to dawdle.

The technicians closed the door of the module, then activated the lift controls. As it began gliding upward, Androv glanced over and gave Vance a silent thumbs-up. He flashed it back, then set down the heavy air-conditioning unit and shifted his weight from foot to foot, still trying to get the feel of the suit.

Maybe, he told himself, this test pilot game is easier than it looks. But only so long as you never actually have to leave terra firma. Then it's probably more excitement than the average person needs.

The upward motion halted with a lurch and the module door automatically slid open. At first glance the open cockpit of the USSR's latest plane made him think of the inside of a giant computer. Nothing like the eye-soothing green of a MiG interior, it was a dull off-white in color and cylindrical, about ten feet in diameter and sixteen feet long. Three futuristic G-seats equally spaced down the center faced a bank of liquid crystal video screens along one wall, and lighting was provided by pale orange sodium vapor lamps integrated into the ceiling.

The real action was clearly the middle G-seat, which was surrounded by instrument consoles and situated beneath a huge suspended helmet, white enamel and shaped like a bloated moth. Everything about the controls bespoke advanced design philosophy: Instead of the usual flight stick placed between the pilot's knees, it had a multiple-control sidestick, covered with switches and buttons, situated on the pilot's right, something only recently introduced in the ultramodern American F-16 Falcon.

Although the throttle quadrant was still located on the left-hand console, in standard fashion, it, too, had a grip skillfully designed to incorporate crucial avionics: the multiple radars, identification-friend-or-foe (IFF) instrumentation, instrument landing system (ILS), and tactical air navigation (TACAN).

He realized they'd utilized the new Hotas concept — hands on throttle and stick — that located all the important controls directly on the throttle and flight stick, enabling the pilot to command the instruments and flight systems purely by feel, like a virtuoso typist. Even the thin rudder pedals looked futuristic. The whole layout, in severe blacks and grays, was sleek as an arrow.

In the end, however, maybe it was all redundant. According to Andrei Androv this vehicle incorporated an advanced control system called equipment vocal pour aeronef; it could be flown entirely by voice interface with an artificial intelligence computer. All flight and avionics interrogations, commands, and readouts could be handled verbally. You just talked to the damn thing and it talked back. The twenty-first century had arrived.

The other two G-seats in the cockpit, intended for research scientists, were positioned on either side of the pilot, about four feet away, with no controls whatsoever. All this baby needed was Androv and his computer.

There was more. The space was cylindrical, which could only mean one thing: It was designed to be rotated, again probably by the computer, adjusting the attitude or inclination of the pilot continuously to make sure the G-forces of acceleration and deceleration would always be acting down on him, like gravity, securing him into that special G-seat. And why not? Since there was no windscreen, the direction the pilot faced was irrelevant — up, down, or even backward; who cared?

And the helmet, that massive space-moth intended to be lowered over the pilot's head. From the briefing, he knew that the screens inside were how the pilot "saw." Through voice command to the central computer he could summon any of the three dozen video terminals along the walls and project them on the liquid crystal displays before his eyes.

"So far, so good," Androv said, stepping in and down. Vance followed, then reached back to secure the hatch. It closed with a tight, reassuring thunk. The silent blinking of computer screens engulfed them.

"By the way, it's up there," Vance said quietly, shifting his head toward the newly installed video camera positioned just above the entry hatch. Androv glanced up, nodded, and together they turned away from it. Then without further conversation they each ripped off their Velcro-secured insignias — Androv's, the Soviet air force red star bordered in white; Vance's, the double ax — and exchanged them.

"How much time?" Androv whispered.

"Just give me ten minutes." He held up his heavy wrist-watch. Together they checked and synchronized.

"Good luck." Androv nodded and gave another thumbs- up sign, then clasped him in an awkward Russian hug. Vance braced himself for the traditional male kiss, but thankfully it didn't come. "Do svidania, moi droog," he said finally, standing back and saluting. Then he grinned and continued in accented English, "Everything will be A-okay."

Without another word he swung open the hatch, passed through, and stepped into the personnel module.

Vance watched him depart, then turned back to examine the Daedalus cockpit more closely. It was a bona fide marvel.

Screens, banks of screens, all along the wall — almost like a TV station's control room. Everything was there. Looking across, left to right, he saw that the engine readouts were placed on top: white bars showing power level, fan rpm, engine temperatures, core rpm, oil pressure, hydraulics, complete power-plant status. The next row started on the navigation and avionics: the radar altimeter, the airspeed indicator, the attitude-director indicator (AID) for real-time readings of bank and dive angle, the horizontal situation indicator (HSD) for actual heading and actual track, and on and on. All the electronics modules were already operating in standby mode — the slit-scan radar, the scanners, the high-resolution doppler. Other screens showed the view of the hangar as seen by the video cameras on the landing gear, now switched over from their infrared mode to visible light.

The avionics, all digital, were obviously keyed to the buttons and switches on the sidestick, the throttles, and the two consoles. Those controls, he realized upon closer inspection, could alter their function depending on which display was being addressed, thereby reducing the clutter of separate buttons and toggle switches on the handgrips.

The cockpit was not over-designed the way so many modern ones tended to be: instead it had been entirely rethought. There were probably two hundred separate system readouts and controls, but the pilot's interface was simple and totally integrated. It was beautiful, a work of pure artistry.

Which made him sad. He'd always been an aviation buff, and the thought of obliterating a creation this spectacular provoked a sigh.

On the other hand, H-bombs were probably beautiful too. This was another vengeful Shiva, Destroyer of Worlds. Ridding the planet of its first hypersonic weapons delivery system would be a public service to all humankind.

But first things first. He had no intention of allowing his next moves to be on TV. The newly installed monitor, part of the "retrofit," was about to get a small adjustment.

Strolling back toward the entry hatch, he quickly detached the reflecting outer visor that was designed to drop down over the front of his flight helmet. Then he reached up and wedged the silvered portion against the lens. The camera would continue to operate, relaying back no malfunction signals, but it would be sending a picture of the ceiling. Next he unzipped his flight suit and carefully unstrapped the package riding against his chest. Inside were the six taffy-colored bars of C-4 plastic explosive, each an inch square and six inches long, all wrapped in clear Cellophane. They almost looked like candy, but they could blow this entire plane through the hangar's roof.

The charge had to be set before the two Mino-gumi pilots were delivered by the Personnel Module. When they arrived, he'd simply pretend to be Yuri Androv and say they all had to go back down for a final check of their pressure-suit environmental systems. The moment they were clear, he'd activate the radio and detonate. Then the fun would begin.

There. The two consoles on either side of the central G-seat, that's where he'd wedge the charges. It was the perfect place, the central nervous system. After one last, wistful look at the banks of video displays along the wall, he set to work.

"Do you understand?" Tanzan Mino asked. It sounded more like a command. They were in the Mino Industries Prep Section, a preflight briefing room that led directly into the hangar. The faceplates of the two pilots' flight helmets were raised, allowing him to see their eyes. "Any deviation from the prescribed maneuver blocks will signal a problem."

"Hai, Mino-sama," both men nodded grimly. They had come here in the cockpit of his personal Boeing, and they were not happy with their new assignment. Neither had the slightest desire to risk his life in the service of the oyabun s megalomania. The command to serve as last-minute "co-pilots" in the Daedalus, however, was an offer they could not refuse.

"Should anything happen, you will radio Flight Control immediately, and we will use the plane's artificial intelligence system, the AI module, to bring it back and land it."

"Hai." They nodded again.

"You will not be expected to take the controls," he went on. "The computer can override all commands from the cockpit. You will merely ensure the prescribed flight sequence is adhered to."

He paused, intending to collect his thoughts, but an oddity on the newly installed cockpit monitor caught his notice. He cursed himself for not having kept an eye on it. He'd been too busy briefing the pilots and now…

Something about the picture was strange. The perspective had changed. He reached over and, with the push of a button, transferred the image to the large liquid crystal screen on the side wall. Yes, it was definitely wrong. He couldn't quite tell… Had someone jostled the camera? There was still a full half hour before…

Something had happened in the cockpit.

The prep crews were scheduled to be finished by now — he glanced at a screen and confirmed that the checklists had already been punched — so no one had permission to be inside the plane. From this point on, only the pilots were authorized to be there.

Androv. Where was he? He was supposed to be in the Soviet Flight-Prep Sector now, across the hangar.

He turned to Taro Ikeda, who was monitoring a line of video screens. "Check with Flight Prep. Has the Soviet pilot completed his preflight physical? Has it been signed off?"

"Let me see." He moved immediately to comply. After he tapped a keyboard, a number matrix appeared on his computer screen, showing the status of all the preflight sequences. Quickly he called up the pilot sequence.

"His physical has been completed, Mino-sama. Everything is checked off. He logged out fifteen minutes ago."

"Then where is he?"

"I'll try and find out."

He reached for a phone and punched in the main number for the Flight Prep sector. The conversation that followed was quick and, as it continued, caused a look of puzzlement to spread over his already-worried face.

"Hai, domo arigato gozaimashta," he said finally and hung up. As he turned back he was growing pale. "Mino-sama, I think there may be a problem. They say he has already left the sector, but—"

"All right then, where has he gone?"

"Sector Security says he left with one of your pilots, Mino-sama, headed for the hangar."

The room grew ominously silent. They were both now staring at the two Mino Industries pilots, standing directly in front of them.

"There must be some mistake." Tanzan Mino inhaled lightly. "Are you sure you understood correctly?"

"It's obviously impossible. I agree."

"Then what's going on? Whatever it is, I think we'd better find out. Immediately." He motioned for the two pilots to accompany him as he rose and headed for the door. "Stay close by. We're going to the hangar."

Taro Ikeda briskly followed after them into the corridor. If anything went wrong now, he would be the one held responsible. Some vandal tampering in the cockpit was the last thing he needed. Everything had gone smoothly with the countdown so far this morning; he shuddered at the prospect of a last-minute hold.

Ahead of him, Tanzan Mino was striding down the hallway, kobun bodyguards in tow, headed directly for the wide hangar doors.

She was still having trouble thinking clearly. Michael was in the hangar, was actually in one of the planes. What was he doing here?

She barely noticed when a kobun walked in and settled her suitcase on the metal desk. He glanced at it, said something in Japanese, and disappeared out the door.

The case was heavy leather, acquired from a little side-street shop by Victoria Station. It looked just as it had when she and Michael stashed the Uzi back in London. They'd deliberately bought a case heavy enough to conceal a weapon inside. Had Mino's people gone through it? Discovered the automatic?

"Is this it?" Vera was asking.

"That's the one." She reached down.

"No," Vera said, staying her hand, "I will open it myself." With a quick motion she pulled around the zipper, then flipped back the heavy leather top. There lay a battered map of Crete, under it Michael's book on the palace, piles of rumpled clothes…

This isn't how it's supposed to happen, she was thinking. The automatic's down in the bottom, in a separate section, but if Vera probes a little she'll find it. I've got to make her—

"There's no printout here." Comrade Karanova finished digging through the clothes and looked up. "But then there never really was, was there, Dr. Borodin? Perhaps what you'd hoped to find was this…"

She pulled open the top drawer of the metal desk and lifted out a shiny black automatic. It was an Uzi.

"You didn't really think you could do something as amateurish as smuggle a weapon into this facility." She shoved it back into the drawer.

"Congratulations. You've done your homework." So much for surprising Vera Karanova. Apparently that wasn't something easily managed.

"Now we will print a new copy of the protocol," she said, shoving the suitcase over to one corner of her desk. "I don't want to waste any more time."

"Right. Time is money."

So now it was up to Michael. Maybe if she could stall Vera long enough, whatever he was involved in would start to happen.

Glancing out again at the vapor-shrouded floor of the hangar, she fleetingly wondered if maybe she'd been seeing things. No, she was certain. That walk, that funny walk he always had when he didn't feel in control. She knew it all too well; she knew him all too well. He'd arrived on the hangar floor riding on that little motorized cart, together with the Soviet pilot, and they'd both entered the hydraulic personnel carrier and been raised up to the cockpit. Then the carrier had come back down and disgorged the Soviet pilot, who'd immediately disappeared into the haze. Which meant Michael still had to be up there.

What was he doing? Had he somehow thrown in his lot with the Soviets? He certainly wouldn't work for Tanzan Mino, so that meant there had to be a revolt brewing. The thing now was to link up, join forces. It was hard to figure.

Oh, shit.

Coming through the wide hangar doors, headed for the same personnel transporter Vance had taken, was Tanzan Mino and a host of his kobun bodyguards, followed by two more men in pressure suits. He looked as though he had every intention of — yes, now he was saying something to the operators of the personnel carrier. They all were going up.

Whatever Michael was doing, Mino-san wasn't going to be pleased. The whole scene was about to get crazy. Did Mike have a weapon? Even if he did, he wouldn't stand a chance.

"Take it up."

Tanzan Mino was marching up the steps of the Personnel Module, accompanied by six kobun in black leather jackets and the M-I pilots.

The operators glanced at each other, then moved to comply. One Japanese pilot had just come down and disappeared into the haze. Now two more had arrived, along with the CEO. Were there three Japanese pilots? Things were starting to get peculiar. But then this was no ordinary flight; it was the big one.

The door clicked shut with a quiet, pneumatic whoosh, and the module began its ascent. As they rode, Tanzan Mino reflected that in less than an hour this vehicle would be setting new records for manned flight. The world would hear about it from a press conference he would hold in Tokyo, carried live around the globe. That press briefing would also announce a new alliance between Japan and the Soviet Union. It would be a double coup. The planet's geopolitics would never again be the same.

The module glided to a halt and its door opened.

He'd been right. The cockpit hatch was sealed, which meant somebody was inside. The Soviet pilot must be up to something. But what?

Then, unbidden, the pressure hatch started opening, slowly swinging back and around, and standing there, just inside, was a man in a pressure suit. There was no reflecting visor on his helmet now to hide his face.

Vance stared at the small army facing him, including Tanzan Mino and his two pilots. This definitely was not the drill. Something had gone very, very wrong. Had some of the Soviet ground crews lost their nerve and talked? Whatever had happened, things were headed off the track.

The C-4 explosive was set. But this was hardly the moment to activate the detonators and blow the place.

"How did you get here?" The CEO's eyes narrowed to slits.

"I decided to take you up on that tour."

"What do you think you're doing?"

"Planning a vacation. Checking out the transportation."

"Very amusing, Dr. Vance," he said, staring at a length of C-4, a glass and metal detonator shoved into its side, wedged next to the sidestick. "But who else is part of your scheme? You didn't arrange this unassisted."

"Why would anybody else be involved? I just thought it'd be fun to kick off today's celebration with a bang."

"I'm afraid you will have to be disappointed." He turned to the kobun. "Clear the cockpit. Sweep it. And then," he glanced up, "after Dr. Vance replaces the visor on his flight helmet, we will escort him to my office for a very brief and undoubtedly very illuminating interview."

"What's happening?" Vera had turned to watch through the white haze as the last kobun dismounted from the personnel module, following Tanzan Mino and the three pilots.

"Maybe there's been a glitch in the countdown after all." Eva was trying to sound casual. Vera couldn't know the tall pilot in the middle, the one being helped along by Tanzan Mino's musclemen, was Michael. "Looks like Major Androv has got himself into some trouble."

She could tell Vance was mad as hell. They'd probably roughed him up a little there in the cockpit, just to get started, and now they were intending to really go to work on him. But he must be part of a group, so where was everybody else?

"Androv has to fly the plane today. We have everything scheduled. Why are they taking him away?" Vera turned and stalked for the door. "This cannot be permitted. Whatever the problem is, it has to be solved right here. Now. The flight must go forward. Too much is riding on it."

Eva watched her stride out into the white haze of the hangar. She wanted to follow, but then she thought of something better.

He was wondering when to try and make a break. But how far could he get, encumbered with the pressure suit?

Where's the backup? Are they going to let me just twist in the wind?

The original scenario had fallen apart, but that didn't mean the game was over. The Soviet engineers he'd seen clearly wouldn't be any help in a crisis, but the test pilot Androv was another story. He'd surely try to pull something back together. Where was he? Probably still up in the other cockpit, getting Daedalus II ready. So now…

That's when he saw her, coming out of an office whose doorway was only half visible through the clouds of mist. It looked like… Vera Karanova. She was striding directly toward them, intercepting Tanzan Mino's small procession.

"Where are you taking him?" She pointed toward Vance, glancing at his Red Star insignia, as she addressed the godfather in English.

"Are you attempting to interfere in my affairs now, too?" Tanzan Mino demanded as he paused to stare.

"I just want to know what it is you're doing," she replied.

"I am handling a problem," he said coldly as he examined her. "There is a traitor, or traitors, among the Soviets. I intend to find out who's involved."

"What do you mean?" An edge of nervousness entered her voice.

Vance was coming up. "Sorry I screwed up, Vera," he said in English. "So close yet so far. Somebody must have blown the whistle."

"You're not—" She stared as he lifted the visor of his flight helmet.

"But what the hell," he went on. "We gave it a shot. Nothing ventured, nothing—"

"We?" She examined him, puzzled.

"I suspected all along you could not be trusted." Tanzan Mino's calm facade seemed to crack as his face flushed with anger. "But I had no idea you would actually betray the entire project. Sabotage the vehicle."

"I don't know anything about sabotage." She clearly was startled, attempting to maintain calm in her voice. "If Vance has—"

"It appears I'm surrounded by treachery and traitors." His voice quavered as he stepped over to one of the kobun, then reached in and withdrew the 9mm Walther automatic from the man's shoulder holster. When he turned back, his eyes were opaque with anger and paranoia. He'd clearly snapped, lost it. "Mr. Vance, I want to know the names of everyone who was involved in this plot. Everyone. If I am satisfied you are telling the truth, then perhaps I will consider sparing your miserable life. Otherwise…"

He turned back to Vera. She was staring at the gun, her face ashen, not letting herself believe what her eyes were telling her. The white mists of the hangar swirled around them, creating ghostly shadows across the expressionless faces of the kobun.

"You made a very grave error in judgment," he was saying to her. "I don't yet know precisely what you were expecting to accomplish, but whatever it was, I can assure you I am not a man who tolerates disloyalty."

His expression was strangely distant as he raised the pistol and fired, one precise round, a dull thunk barely audible above the din of the hangar.

Vance watched in dismay as Vera Karanova stumbled backward, her dark eyes uncomprehending. It was a gangland-style execution, quick and preemptory, the time-honored way. No appeals or due process.

He'd been hoping merely to gain some time for Androv, not cause her to be murdered on the spot. Now Tanzan Mino turned to him, still gripping the pistol. His face was distorted in irrational fury. "Perhaps I made a mistake just now, Dr. Vance. What do you think?"

"Probably a pretty serious one."

"Yes, now that I reflect on it, I'm inclined to agree. The culprit we seized red-handed was you. You are the one I should be making an example of." He was raising the Walther again.

It began so quickly he almost didn't realize it was happening. From out of the swirl of mist that engulfed Daedalus /'s landing gear a white-haired old man appeared, grasping a pistol. Tanzan Mino turned to stare, just in time to hear him yelling — in Russian.

"Release him. Release my son. I order you." He was closing on the group, about twenty feet in front of them, brandishing the weapon uncertainly. Vance couldn't make out what caliber it was, but he doubted it mattered. Andrei Androv clearly had no idea how to use it. His was an act of desperation.

Then another realization clicked.

He said "my son." He thinks I'm Yuri.

Before anybody could move, a white pressure suit materialized out of the distant haze around Daedalus II. It was Yuri Androv, running toward his father, shouting. "Nyet! Don't—"

"Release him, I tell you." Andrei Androv didn't hear him as he continued to move menacingly on Tanzan Mino. The outcome was inevitable.

Vance ducked and rolled for the Personnel Module just as the kobun's line of H&K automatics flared.

Andrei Androv lurched, gray hair flying, and managed to get off two rounds. But instead of hitting a kobun, he caught one of the Mino Industries pilots, visor up, directly in the face.

Comrade Doktor Andrei Petrovich Androv, dean of Soviet propulsion technology, chief designer of the Daedalus, died instantly, his eyes still fixed in determination. However, Tanzan Mino's kobun weren't tidy. One of them squeezed off a couple more rounds just as Yuri Androv ran up and leaned over his father's crumpled body. With a groan, he spun around and staggered against the huge 22-ply tires of Daedalus I's starboard landing gear.

It still wasn't over. As Vance scrambled against the Personnel Module, he caught a glimpse of something that, faintly visible through the clouds of cryogenic fog, apparently was escaping everybody else. Another woman was standing in the door of the office where Vera Karanova had been. Holding an Uzi.

How had she managed to get her hands on that?

Not a second too soon. She can sweep the floor. Just get out of the way and give her an opening. Maybe there's still time.

He began scrambling for the base of the Personnel Module. Now the white mist was obscuring everything, and Tanzan Mino seemed to have enveloped himself in it. He was nowhere to be seen. However, his presence was not missed by his kobun, who were still taking care of business.

The next agenda item, Vance realized, was himself. As he tried to roll under the module, one was turning, raising his automatic…

Now Eva was yelling, "Michael, stay down."

The kobun all whirled back, but she was ready. Stock extended, full auto.

Jesus, he thought, that hood in the back is holding enough C-4 to clear a small arena. If she hits one of the detonators…

It was either a lucky or an unlucky shot. After eight rounds, less than a second's worth, a blinding ball of fire erupted where the kobun had been, sending a shock wave rolling through the open space of the hangar, knocking over technicians almost a hundred feet away. As Vance was slammed under the Personnel Module, out of the corner of his eye he saw Eva being thrown against the doorframe of the office. The air blossomed with the smell of deadly C-4, like acrid Sterno. Not for nothing did the U.S. military swear by it.

Now Yuri Androv was peeling himself off Daedalus II’s landing gear, his flight suit blackened and smudged. Blood from a bullet wound was running down the right sleeve.

They'll be coming for us all, Vance thought. Tanzan Mino's probably somewhere radioing for more guards right now.

Eva was stalking through the smoke, still grasping the Uzi.

"Michael, are you all right?"

"Hell of a morning." He was pulling himself out from under the Personnel Module, awkwardly trying to straighten his flight helmet. "You took out the palace guard, everybody but Mr. Big. Congratulations. And I thought CIA had a patent on that kind of operation."

Already emergency alarms had begun a high-pitched whine, blaring through the cavernous hangar. Everything around them was chaos.

"You know," she yelled above the noise, "he's going to kill us immediately. There's no way he's going to—"

"I figure we've got about two minutes to think of something," he yelled back and pointed. "Check on the pilot. His name is Androv."

"I know. I met him last night." She turned and stared. "We had a small misunderstanding."

"Well, let's see if he's still in any condition to fly."

"You mean?"

"How else? You got any better ideas, I'd like to hear them."

Yuri Androv had worked his way through the carnage of the explosion, the scattered remains of Tanzan Mino's phalanx of kobun, to again bend over the form of his father. Once more the cloud of obscuring mist was flowing over the scene, blanking it.

At that moment, however, a pale glow laid itself around them, the murky light of overcast dawn. Vance realized the Soviet technicians had thrown open the hangar doors and were scrambling out onto the tarmac.

Good, let them. We might just follow suit.

Now Yuri Andreevich Androv was approaching, clasping his right arm.

"We've got to get him fixed," Vance said briskly, looking him over, "put on a tourniquet."

"Think he can still fly?"

"I say we make him fly."

With his left hand Androv peeled back his helmet visor and kissed Eva. "Spacebo," he said in Russian, "you did what I would have done if I'd had a weapon. But now I don't know what—"

"How's your arm?" Vance cut in. "We've got to make a decision right now. When the reinforcements arrive, it's game over. One little Uzi won't handle their firepower."

Androv frowned. "Can you fly?"

"Never handled anything bigger than a Lear," Vance replied. "And then only as copilot."

It didn't seem to matter. Androv glanced at the open door of the Personnel Module and motioned to them.

"Then come on. Let's hurry." Now he was searching the hangar. Finally he spotted the man he wanted.

"Pavel," he yelled in Russian, "have the starter trolleys been engaged yet?"

"Da," came the reply.

"Then prepare Daedalus I for power-up and get the hell out. We're go for rpm."

"What do you mean? The tow trucks haven't even been—"

"Forget the tow trucks. It's going to be afterburners, right here. Get the rest of your people in the clear."

Afterburners were rings of nozzles that sprayed fuel into the superheated exhaust gases of a jet engine, creating a burst of power. In military aircraft they were used to produce surges in thrust during takeoff and dogfights.

"Afterburners! In the hangar. Yuri, all the hydrogen storage tanks could blow. You'd destroy Daedalus II. Just incinerate it."

"That's the idea." He was already mounting the steps of the Personnel Module, not looking back. "There's only going to be one plane left. The one I take."

"The computer." Eva had started up the steps, but then she froze and turned back, handing Vance the Uzi. "I have to get it."

"There's no time." He reached for the weapon, its muzzle still hot. "We've got—"

"Michael, I didn't come this far just to let the protocol slip through our fingers." She was running past him now, back down. "Only take a second."

He knew it was pointless to argue. And besides, maybe she was right. Who knew where they'd end up?

Now Androv had faltered and was leaning shakily against the open doorway of the module, the right sleeve of his pressure suit covered in blood. Vance took advantage of the ticking moments to step up and examine it.

"You need a bandage." He started tearing away the synthetic cloth. "Or better yet, a tourniquet."

"No." Androv glanced at his arm and grimaced. "There's not—"

"You're going on adrenaline right now, my friend. But when the shock wears off…" He looked around the interior of the module, but there was nothing to cut with, so he just ripped away a large portion of Androv's sleeve and parted the material. A savage furrow was sliced across his bicep.

"I don't want you to pass out." He tore a section of the sleeve into a strip and then, struggling with his heavy gloves, began binding it above the wound. The hangar was still bedlam, people running and yelling on every side, alarms sounding. As he was finishing the tourniquet, Eva came bounding up the metal steps carrying her Zenith. They were ready.

Androv quickly secured the door and activated the controls. Through a smoke-smeared window they watched the bloody hangar floor disappear into the haze. The world suddenly turned dreamlike, an unreality highlighted by the soft whoosh of the pneumatic lift beneath them. Then the module lurched to a halt.

Vance led the way through the open hatch. "Looks like somebody forgot and left the lights on."

"Pavel told me the starter trolleys were engaged," Androv said in Russian as he climbed through, then stepped down. He continued in English. "Petra can initiate power-up."

"Petra?" Vance turned back. "You mean the—"

"Our copilot." He pointed toward a large liquid crystal screen at the far end of the cabin, now blank. "I want to try and use her to override Flight Control for the rest of the sequence."

"Short circuit the countdown?"

"I've never done it, but…" He walked over and reached down to flip a square blue switch on the right-hand console. "Let's see if she's awake this morning."

He glanced up as the screen blinked on and a large black-and-white double-ax logo materialized, set against the red and white of a Japanese flag. Next he pushed a button on the sidestick and spoke.

"Petra, report countdown status."

“All preflight sequences nominal.” The eerie, mechanical sound of a woman's voice, speaking Russian, filled the space. “Do you acknowledge?”

"Affirmative," he answered back. "You will now initiate ignition sequence. Bypass remaining countdown procedure."

“That is an override command. Please give authorization code.”

"Code P-18. Systems emergency."

“The countdown is now T minus nineteen minutes twenty-eight seconds. All systems are nominal. Therefore Code P-18 is not a valid command.”

"Shit," he whispered under his breath. "Petra, verify P-18 with Flight Control." He paused for a split second, then pushed a button on the console and commanded, "Abort instruction." Another pause, then, "Repeat verify abort command for N equals one over zero."

"What was that?" Eva was wedging her laptop under the left-hand G-seat.

"I think, I hope I just put her command-monitor function into an infinite loop. She'll just continuously start and stop the verification procedure. Maybe it'll render that subroutine incapable of blocking the other system functions."

"You're going to confuse her head? Good luck."

He settled himself in the central seat, then reached up and began unlatching the huge flight helmet. As he did, his eyes were suddenly flooded with grief.

"They killed him." He paused for a moment and just stared. Vance thought he'd finally become befuddled from the shock. But then he choked back his emotion and continued. "We're going on the deck. Under their goddam radar."

"What did you say?" Vance strained to catch his words. The English was slurred.

He seemed to grow faint, his consciousness wane, but he finally revived as he finished yanking the giant helmet down over his head.

Vance's headphones came alive as he heard the Russian. "Daedalus I to Control. Do you read? I am now bringing up core rpm for starboard cluster, outboard trident." A second later, he continued, "We have S-O ignition."

"Yuri," came a startled radio voice, "what in hell is going on! You can't—"

"Portside cluster, outboard. Rpm up," he continued in Russian, his voice halting. "We have P-O ignition."

"Yuri, you can't—?"

"Starboard cluster, inboard. Bringing up. Portside cluster, inboard—"

"Androv, for godsake, have you gone mad?"

"Sergei, I told them to clear the hangar. I'm taking her to full power."

"The liquid hydrogen tanks are in there. You could blow the whole hangar to hell if you use afterburners. You must be crazy!"

"The bastards gunned him down, Sergei." He caught a sob. "It was my fault. I should have warned—"

"What are you talking about? Gunned who down?"

But Yuri Androv's mind was already elsewhere, drifting into a grief-obsessed dream state.

"Engine start complete," he continued. "Beginning pre-takeoff sequence."

Will he be able to get this thing off the ground? Vance was wondering. He's shot up and now he's falling apart.

Guess we're about to find out. The fuselage cameras are showing an empty hangar. Everybody's run for cover.

"Eva, want to take that seat? I'll take this one. No free drinks in this forward cabin section." He was speaking through his upraised helmet visor as he eased himself into the right-hand G-seat.

"And buckle up for safety." She settled herself in the left. "Let's just hope he can still manage this monster. It's a Saturn V with wings."

"He's got his talking computer, if she'll still cooperate. Do me a favor and translate now and then."

"Machines are supposed to translate for people, not the other way around. We're in space warp."

"I believe it."

As he pulled down the overhead seat straps, he found himself wondering what Daedalus would feel like in full afterburner mode. Those turboramjets made a Boeing 747's massive JT-9Ds look like prime movers for a medium-sized lawnmower.

"Power to military thrust." Androv was easing forward the twin throttles, spooling them up past three-quarters power. Daedalus had begun to quiver, shaking like a mighty mountain in tectonic upheaval.

"Prepare for brake release."

The screens on the wall above reported fuel consumption edging toward three hundred pounds of JP-7 a second.

"Yuri," the radio crackled, "don't—"

"Pavel's got his men out of the hangar, Sergei. I can see on my screen. I'm going cold mike now. No distractions. Just wish me luck."

There was a click as he switched off the communications in his helmet. He missed a new radio voice by only a second. It was speaking in English.

"Dr. Vance, what is going on? He's just cut his radio link with Flight Control. He's deranged. I order you to halt the flight sequence. He could destroy both planes by going to afterburners in the hangar. I demand this be stopped."

Vance glanced up at the TV monitors. An auxiliary screen showed Tanzan Mino standing at the main Flight Control console, surrounded by more kobun, who had muscled aside the Russian technicians. He also noticed that a lot of Soviet brass were there too.

"Looks like you've got a problem."

"I'm warning you I will shut you down. I can activate the automatic AI override three minutes after takeoff. The plane will return and land automatically."

"Three minutes is a long time." Vance wondered if it was true, or a bluff. "We'll take our chances."

"You'd leave me no choice."

"May the best man win."

"Petra, brake release." Yuri Androv's voice sounded from beneath his helmet.

“Acknowledged.”

Vance looked across to see his left hand signal a thumbs-up sign, then reach down for the throttle quadrant. The vehicle was already rolling through the wide doors of the hangar, so if there were an explosion now, at least they'd be in the clear.

Androv paused a second, mumbled something in Russian, then shoved the heavy handles forward to Lock, commanding all twelve engines to max afterburner. The JP-7 fuel reading whirled from a feed of three hundred pounds a second to twenty-one hundred, and an instant thereafter the cockpit was slammed by the hammer of God as the monitor image of the hangar dissolved in orange.

Chapter Twenty

"One small step for man."

Vance felt his lungs curve around his backbone, his face melt into his skull. He didn't know how many G's of acceleration they were experiencing, but it felt like a shuttle launch. He gripped the straps of the G-seat and watched the video feed from the landing-gear cameras, which showed the tarmac flashing by in a stream of gray. The screen above him had clicked up to 200 knots, and in what seemed only a second the Daedalus was a full kilometer down the runway. Then the monitors confirmed they were rotating to takeoff attitude, seven degrees.

They were airborne.

Next the screens reported a hard right-hand bank, five G's. The altimeter had become a whirling blur as attitude increased to twenty degrees, held just below stall-out by Petra's augmented control system.

When the airspeed captured 400 knots, the landing gear cameras showed the wheels begin to fold forward, then rotate to lie flat in the fuselage. Next the doors snapped closed behind them, swallowing them in the underbelly and leaving the nose cameras as their only visual link to the outside. The screens displayed nothing but gray storm clouds.

Landing gear up and locked, came Petra's disembodied voice.

"Acknowledge gear secure," Androv said, quieting a flashing message on one of the screens.

No abort so far, Vance thought. Maybe we're about to get away with this.

The airspeed had already passed 600 knots, accelerating a tenth of a Mach number, about 60 knots, every five seconds.

That's when he noticed they were still receiving wideband video transmissions from the Flight Center. The screen showing Tanzan Mino remained clear and crisp. Surely not for much longer, but now at least the uplink was intact. And the CEO was returning the favor, monitoring their lift-off via a screen of his own. Vance watched as he turned to some of the Soviet brass standing next to him and barked orders. What was that about?

For now though the bigger question was, What do we do?

Androv was still busy talking to Petra, issuing commands. Vance realized they were assuming a vector north by northeast, out over the ocean. They also were probably going to stay on the deck to avoid radar tracking, with only passive systems so that no EM emissions would betray their heading.

He glanced up at the screens and realized he was half right. They were over the ocean now, at a breathtaking altitude of only five hundred meters, but Androv had just switched the phased-array radar altimeter over to start hopping frequencies, using "squirt" emissions. Pure Stealth technology. No conventional radar lock could track it.

"Dr. Vance, I am giving you one more opportunity to reconsider." Tanzan Mino's voice sounded through the headphones. He was still standing at the main Flight Control console, though his image was finally starting to roll and break up. "You must return to base. The consequences of this folly could well be incalculable."

"Why don't you take that up with the pilot?" Vance answered into his helmet mike.

"His receiver has been turned off. It's impossible to communicate with him. He's clearly gone mad. I will give you another sixty seconds before I order the on-board guidance computer switched over to the AI mode. Flight Control here will override the on-board systems and just bring the vehicle back and land it."

Again Vance wondered if he really could.

Then a screen flashed, an emergency strobe, and Petra was speaking. The Russian was simple enough he could decipher it.

Systems advisory. You are too low. Pull up. Acknowledge. Pull up.

Androv tapped the sidestick lightly and boosted their altitude a hundred meters.

"Michael," the voice was Eva's coming through his headphones. "She — it — whoever, said—"

"I figured it out. But did you hear the other news? Mino-san just advised he's going to override Petra. We're about to find out who's really flying this baby."

"No." Androv was raising his flight helmet and gesturing, his wounded arm urging at something in his right pocket. "Please take. Do it quickly. And then…"

Vance unstrapped his G-seat harness, rose, and moved over to the central console. Androv had raised his hydraulic helmet all the way up now and was trying to unzip the right side of his flight suit. Vance reached down and helped him, not sure exactly what he needed.

"There." Yuri was trying to point. "The radio. Please, you must…" The English began to fail him again.

"What's this?" Vance took out the transmitter, the size and shape of a small calculator.

The answer was in Russian, complex and garbled. Something about computer.

"He's wired something into the on-board computer, Michael," Eva began translating. "The radio will perform brain surgery on Petra, disabling her AI functions. It's supposed to prevent Flight Control from overriding… I didn't quite get it. But he wants you to help."

Vance glanced up at the line of video screens. Daedalus was now skimming rapidly over the straits, banking in the direction of the archipelago known as the Kurile Islands, and the image of Tanzan Mino was breaking up, almost gone. Had he heard? Maybe it didn't matter. The allotted sixty seconds was ticking away and he could just make out the image of Tanzan Mino, holding a microphone, preparing to give orders.

By the clock on the screens he saw that forty-one seconds had already passed.

"Dr. Vance, we are preparing to initiate total systems override." The CEO's voice sounded through his headphones. "You have fifteen seconds remaining to acknowledge."

"The code," Androv was saying. "It is one-nine-nine-nine."

Vance stared at the small device in his flight glove. It had a number keypad and a liquid crystal display.

"You have ten seconds," Tanzan Mino said. The image was ghostly, but the voice still rang loud and clear.

He began fumbling with the device, but the numbers kept eluding him, slipping around the thick fingers of his gloves. Finally he caught the 1. Above him the screens were still scrolling. Eight seconds.

Suddenly the cockpit seemed to sway, an air pocket that even the Daedalus' advanced structural mode control system couldn't damp out entirely. Now Androv was talking to Petra, going for a sliver more altitude. Seven seconds.

"Michael." Eva was watching, her face still drawn from the acceleration. "Is it—?"

"It's the gloves. The damned gloves. I'm…" Then he punched in the first 9.

In the back of his mind he noted that the cockpit was adjusting as Daedalus rotated, increasing attitude…

He got another 9. But his grip on the "calculator" was slipping, pressing toward the floor as the G-forces of acceleration weighed against him. He checked the screens again and saw that three seconds remained.

Now Androv was grappling to keep control of the throttle, while issuing instructions to Petra.

Am I about to disable her? he wondered. If I do, can he manage this nightmare manually? What if Mino was only bluffing?

Two seconds.

A final, bright green 9 appeared on the liquid crystal readout.

“Alert. AI system malfunction.” It was the toneless voice of Petra. She sounded vaguely annoyed.

Something had happened. Two of the screens on the wall above had just gone blank, but Daedalus continued to climb.

"Dr. Vance, we are now going to recall the plane. We have ordered a wing of fighter-interceptors scrambled from the Dolinsk airbase on Sakhalin. They will escort you back."

Whoops. So that was what he was telling the Soviet brass to do. Get up some hardware fast. This could well be the shortest flight since the Wright brothers'.

Then he heard Androv's helmet mike click on.

"This is Daedalus I. Do you copy me?"

"Major, you—" Mino began.

"Copy this, you bastard. Fuck you. Repeat. Fuck you. I've disabled your fucking AI module."

"You disabled it?"

"That's a roger. Do you read me, you murdering son-of-a-bitch? FUCK YOU!" He clicked off his mike

Vance was moving slowly across the cockpit, headed back to his own G-seat. As he settled himself and reached for the straps, he glanced up at the screens to check their flight data — altitude, speed, vector, G-force, fuel consumption. They were still on the deck, with an airspeed just under a thousand knots, about eleven hundred miles per hour. Not quite Mach 2, but already it was risky. And their vector was 085, with coordinates of 46 degrees latitude, 143 degrees longitude.

What now? Daedalus had all the active radar systems known to modern avionics. Looking at the screens he saw forward-looking radar, sideways-looking radar, a four-beam multimode pulse-Doppler look-down radar, terrain-following radar, radar altimeter, mapping and navigational radar, and a host of high-powered ECM jammers. The problem was, they all emitted EM, electromagnetic radiation. Switch on any of those and they'd become a flying radio beacon, broadcasting their position.

The next row of screens, however, provided readouts of their passive, non-emitting receivers and analyzers. That clearly was what they would have to use to monitor the threat from Sakhalin, scooping up any EM for lightning-fast computer processing. Surely Petra could spit out a fingerprint of everything in the skies. To begin with, there were the basic Radar Warning Receivers (RWRs) located aft, on the tailplanes, as well as infrared warning receivers (IRWRs) positioned high on the outboard stabilizers. The screens showed she could analyze basic frequency, operating mode, pulse repetition frequency, amplitude of pulse, time of arrival, direction of arrival — the full menu.

"If it's true they've scrambled the base at Dolinsk, it probably means the new MiG 31s." Androv was now busy switching on all the passive systems, just the way Vance figured he would. "We have to decide what to do. But first I want to take her up and do a quick recon. Buckle in."

"The latest Foxhound has a multimode pulse-Doppler look-down, shoot-down capability that's as good as any in the world," Vance heard himself saying. "We're the biggest target in the skies, and we're unarmed. We'd be a sitting duck for one of their AA-9 active homing missiles. They're launch-and-leave."

"Let's check it out before we get too worried," Androv replied. "But this has to be fast. You're about to see a Mach 3 Immelmann. Don't try this in a 747." He laughed, then began lowering his high-tech helmet. "I hope I can still manage it."

There was a surge of acceleration as he shoved forward the throttles, then yanked back on the sidestick. The Daedalus seemed to kick straight up. And up. And up. The instruments showed they were traveling skyward in a thin arc, as though sliding up the curve of an archer's bow. Now the altimeter was spinning, and in eighteen seconds they had already reached twenty thousand feet. But still Androv kept the stick in, and during the next five seconds, as Daedalus continued tracing the archer's curve, they almost began to fly upside down.

At the last moment he performed an aileron half-roll and righted them. The Immelmann had, in effect, taken them straight up and headed their powerful forward-looking IR detectors and radar in the direction of Sakhalin. Vance glanced at the screens and realized they'd climbed thirty thousand feet in twenty-seven seconds. They'd just waxed the standing forty-eight-second time-to-climb record of the USAF F-15 Eagle, and Daedalus wasn't even breathing hard. Even though Androv had now chopped the power, they still were cruising at Mach 2. Effortlessly.

No wonder he loves this bird.

The only downside was, the fuel reading showed they'd burned twenty-three thousand pounds of JP-7 during the climb out.

"Petra," Androv said into his helmet mike, "take VSD to standby and give me infrared laser."

Petra's interrogation revealed a wing of eight MiG 31 interceptors, flying in formation at twenty-five thousand feet and closing. At Mach 2.4.

"Ya ponemaiyu," Colonel-General Gregori Edmundovich Mochanov said into the secure phone, the pride of Dolinsk's Command Central. "I ordered a wing of the Fifteenth Squadron scrambled at 0938 hours. Fortunately we were planning an exercise this morning."

He paused for the party at the other end, General Valentin Sokolov on a microwave link from the Hokkaido facility.

"Da, if Androv maintains his altitude below six hundred meters, then he will probably have to keep her near Mach 2. The vehicle, as I understand it, is not designed for that operating regime. So with the MiG 31s on full afterburner, we can make up the distance. But we need his vector."

He paused and listened. "Yes, they are fully armed. AA-9s. A kill perimeter of—" He listened again. "Of course, active homing radar and infrared, on the underfuselage—" He was impatiently gripping the receiver. "Da, but I can't work miracles. I must have a vector." He paused again. "Da, but I don't want to accidentally shoot down another KAL 747. I must have a confirmed target. I'm not going to order them to fire without it."

He listened a second longer, then said, "Good," and slammed down the phone.

Guess we'd better start playing hide-and-seek in earnest," Vance observed.

"Stealth, my American friend," Androv replied. "The hostile radar signature of this fuselage is almost nothing. And we can defeat their infrared by taking her back on the deck, so the engines are masked from their look-down IR. Back we go. We'll pull out at five hundred meters, but it'll mean about three negative G's — blood to the brain, a redout. Very dangerous. Be ready."

Then he shoved the sidestick forward and Daedalus plunged into a Mach 3 power dive. The infrared cameras showed the sea plunging toward them. The dive took even less time than the climb, with the altimeter scrolling. Suddenly the voice of Petra sounded.

“Pull up. Warning. Pull up. Pilot must acknowledge or auto-override will commence.”

A ton of empty space slammed into them as Petra automatically righted the vehicle, pulling out of the dive at an altitude of four hundred meters.

Vance looked over and saw Yuri Andreevich Androv's bandaged arm lying limp on the sidestick, lightly hemorrhaging. He'd passed out from the upward rush of blood.

"He has disappeared from the Katsura radar again, Mino-sama. I think he has taken the vehicle back on the deck." Ikeda's face was ashen as he typed in the computer AI override command one last time, still hoping. The Flight Control operations screen above him was reading "System Malfunction," while the engineers standing behind were exchanging worried glances. Who was going to be held responsible? The master screen above, the one with the Katsura radar, no longer showed the Daedalus. Androv had taken it to thirty thousand feet, then down again. He was playing games.

Tanzan Mino was not wasting time marveling at the plane's performance specs. He turned and nodded to General Sokolov, who was holding a red phone in his hand. The MiG 31 wing wasn't flying military power; it was full afterburners, which was pushing them to Mach 2.4. If Daedalus stayed on the deck, they might still intercept.

"We have no choice," he said in Russian. "Order them to give him a chance to turn back, and tell him if he refuses, they will shoot him down. Maybe the threat will be enough."

Sokolov nodded gravely. But what if Androv was as insane as every indication suggested he was? What if he disobeyed the commands from the Sakhalin interceptors? What then? Who was going to give the command that unleashed AAMs to bring down the most magnificient airplane — make that spacecraft — the world had ever seen. The MiG 31, with its long-range Acrid AA-9 missiles, had a stand-off kill capability that matched the American F-14 Tomcat and its deadly AIM-54 Phoenix. Since the AA-9 had its own guidance system, the pilot need not even see his target. One of those could easily bring down an unarmed behemoth like the Daedalus as long as it was still in the supersonic mode, which it would have to be at that low altitude.

A pall of sadness entered his voice as he issued the command. Androv, of all people, knew the look-down shoot-down capabilities of the MiG 31. Maybe there was still a chance to reason with him. The Daedalus had no pilot-ejection capability. His choice was to obey or die.

Reports from the hangar said he'd taken some automatic-weapons fire from the CEO's bodyguards. How badly wounded was he?

Hard to tell, but he'd got Daedalus off the runway, then done an Immelmann to take her to ten thousand meters, followed by a power dive back to the deck. He was frolicking like a drunken dolphin. Pure Androv. How much longer could he last?

Sokolov glanced at the screen in front of him. The computer was extrapolating, telling him that a due-east heading by Daedalus would soon take her over international waters. If Androv kept that vector, at least there'd be no messy questions about violating foreign airspace.

"How long before they can intercept?" Tanzan Mino asked, not taking his eyes from the screens. Now the Soviet interceptors were on the Katsura radar, speeding toward Daedalus' last known vector coordinates. It should only be a matter of time.

"In five minutes they will be within air-to-air range," Sokolov replied. He paused, then asked the question weighing on his mind. "If he refuses to turn back, do you really want that vehicle blown from the skies?"

Now Tanzan Mino was thinking about the Stealth capabilities of the Daedalus. Was the design good enough to defeat the MiG-31s' pulse-Doppler radar? He suddenly found himself wishing the plane hadn't been so well designed. The stupid Soviets, of course, had no idea — yet— that it could just disappear.

"He could be headed for Alaskan air space. That's what the computer is projecting. You understand the ramifications if this vehicle falls into the hands of the Americans."

The Soviet nodded gravely. That was, of course, unthinkable. There would be no going home again.

"Yuri!" Eva was up like a shot. "Lean back. Breathe." She was pushing the button that raised the huge flight helmet. As she watched, his open eyes gradually resumed their focus. Then he snapped his head and looked around.

"Shto… what happened?"

"I don't think you can handle heavy G-loads. You're weak from the wound, the tourniquet."

He straightened up, then glanced again at the altimeter. They were cruising at three hundred meters, smooth as silk. And they were burning six hundred pounds of JP-7 a second.

"Nothing has gone the way I planned." He rubbed at his temples, trying to clear the blood from his brain. "We're just buying a little breathing space now by staying down here. I think the radar noise of the choppy sea, together with all our Stealth capability, will keep us safe. But at this low altitude we're using fuel almost as though we were dumping it. If we continue to hold on the deck, we've got maybe half an hour's flying time left."

"If we gained altitude," Vance wondered, "could we stretch it enough to make Alaska?"

"Probably," Androv replied. "If we took her above fifty thousand feet, we might have a chance."

"Then we've got no choice. The only solid ground between here and the U.S. is the Kurile Islands, and they're Soviet territory."

"But if we did reach U.S. airspace, then what?" Eva asked. "We'd have to identify ourselves. Who's going to believe our story? Nobody even knows this monster exists."

"Right," he laughed. "A top-secret Soviet hypersonic bomber comes cruising across the Bering Strait at sixty thousand feet and into the USAF's airspace. One hint of this thing and they'd roll out the SAMs."

"Maybe we couid talk our way down."

"Maybe."

"There's no other choice."

"You are getting ahead of things, both of you," Androv interrupted, staring at the screens on the wall. "We still have to handle the interceptors from Dolinsk. If we went for altitude, we'd show enough infrared signature to make us an easy target during ascent. Before we even reached two thousand meters, they'd have a lock on us."

Vance glanced at the IRWR. Daedalus's infrared laser scanners were still tracking the wing of MiG interceptors, now at twenty-two thousand feet and closing.

"It doesn't matter," he said. "We've got to get off the deck soon, while we still have fuel. Either that or we'll have to ditch at sea."

"Comrade Vance, the Daedalus is a marvelous platform, but when we go for altitude, we're going to be vulnerable. There's no getting around it. This vehicle was intended to perform best at the edge of space, not down here."

"All right," he said slowly. "Then why not take her there? Use the scramjets. We may be running out of JP-7, but we have a load of liquid hydrogen. Maybe this is the moment to finally find out if this thing can burn it."

"I'm — I'm afraid. After what happened when we pulled out of the power dive, I'm not sure I could handle the G-load necessary to power in the scramjets." Yuri paused. "The tourniquet has almost paralyzed my arm. I don't have the kind of control and timing we'd need. If I thought I could — but no. I hate to say it, even think it, but maybe we have no choice but to give up and turn back."

"Not yet," Vance said. "Maybe there's one other possibility."

"They still are not acknowledging," Tanzan Mino said grimly. "We don't know their exact vector, but they will have to gain altitude soon. When they do…" He turned to General Sokolov. "Radio Dolinsk and confirm the order."

This was the moment Valentin Sokolov had been dreading. The AA-9 missile, which was carried on the MiG 31’s recessed underfuselage stations, came in two versions: the active radar homing model and the heat-seeking infrared design. He suspected that Daedalus had enough Stealth and ECM capabilities to partially defeat radar, but Stealth couldn't mask IR.

Sooner or later, Androv would have to make his move, come off the deck. And when he did, the MiGs would pick him up and it would be over.

But that was still preferable to letting Daedalus fall into the hands of the Americans. So if Androv refused to answer his radio and comply with the call-back, there'd be no choice.

"What do you mean?" Androv asked, wiping at his brow.

Vance took a deep breath. "We've got no choice. You know what I'm thinking."

"We'll need ten G's of acceleration to power in the scramjets, my friend." He leaned back in the seat and closed his eyes. His face was now drawn with pain, but the bleeding had stopped. Above them, Petra silently flew the plane and flashed messages on the screens. "I've trained for years," he continued finally. "Even with your inflatable G-suit, you couldn't possibly take the G-loads and stay conscious."

"What other choice is there? Either I try, or we ditch down there in the Sea of Okhotsk. Personally, I'd rather go out like a shooting star, taking our chances."

"It's not that simple. The scramjets are designed to be powered in at Mach 4.8. We dare not risk that below at least forty thousand feet. There are aerodynamic reasons. In fact, they're not really intended to be used below sixty thousand."

"Well," Vance said, "if we started our ascent at max throttle, what kind of airspeed could we capture by forty thousand? Could we achieve Mach 4.8?"

"Only if we used afterburners. Which means we'd probably have only about ten minutes of JP-7 left for landing later." He laughed sadly. "Assuming there's anywhere we could land."

"How about Heathrow? I know a Japanese banker who'd probably love to have this vehicle as collateral for a few billion in Eurodollar debentures he's being forced to underwrite. He's a friend of mine and I owe him a favor."

"You want to turn this plane over to some banker?" He was visibly startled. "We can't ignore the fact that it still belongs, technically, to Mino Industries."

"My friend's a big boy. He'll work it out, Yakuza-style. Don't worry." He glanced up at the fuel gauges. They now had twenty minutes left. Just enough to get back to the facility and give up? Or go all the way.

"Eva, what do you say. Want to give it a shot?"

"I'm game. One thing's for sure; I have no intention of going back to get ourselves murdered by Tanzan Mino. If we can make it to the other side of the world by burning hydrogen, then…"

"Maybe, just maybe Petra could help enough for you to manage it." Androv paused to collect his strength. "I don't know if you can stay conscious through the ten G's of acceleration needed to initiate the scramjets. But I know for sure I can't, not in my current state. You might as well give it a try." He turned to Eva and continued in Russian. "There's an emergency back-up pressure suit in that locker beneath Petra's main screen. See if you can put it on. You'll still probably pass out, but don't worry, the 'event' is only temporary. After we go through the hypersonic barrier, acceleration will subside. Down to three, maybe four G's."

"I'll get the suit," she said, starting to unbuckle her straps.

"Okay, we'd better get started." Vance was crossing the cabin. The nose cameras were showing the spray of white- caps directly below them. If they'd passed any fishing vessels, he mused, there were probably stories of flying saucers already going around. The passive IRWR scanner was still tracking the wing of MiG 31s, now at a hundred and thirty kilometers, approximately eighty miles, and closing. Daedalus was almost within the kill perimeter of the MiG 31s and their AA-9 missiles.

The radio crackled, something in Russian. Yuri Androv stared at the flight helmet, then looked down at the console and flipped a switch.

"I copy you, Firefight One," he replied in Russian. "Over."

"Androv, you idiot. What in hell are you doing? Defecting to the capitalists?" The voice laughed. "We don't know what the devil you're flying, but when you pulled that Immelmann, my IR thought you were an An-124 Condor transport turned into a high-performance Foxbat. One incredible son-of-a-bitch."

"It's a spaceship, Arkadi. Excuse me, Colonel Arkadi. Congratulations on the promotion."

"Spacebo," he said, laughing again. Then he sobered. "Yuri, I don't know what this is all about, but I'm instructed by General Sokolov to escort you and that thing you're flying back to Hokkaido. If you're stupid enough to refuse, then I have orders to shoot you down."

"Is that any way to treat an old friend?"

"Yuri Andreevich, we go back a long way. To the Ramenskoye Flight Test Center. You were the best we ever had. Don't make me do this."

"I'm thinking I may spare you the trouble."

"Thank God."

"Give me five minutes. If I don't turn back by then, give it your best."

"Pull up. Show yourself on IR. We have no idea what your vector is."

"I'll take her to three thousand meters. You'll have a lock on me. But I still want five minutes."

"That's all I can give you, Yuri. After that…" His voice trailed off.

"I'm going off this frequency. Talk to you in five."

"Five minutes. Starting now."

Androv pushed a switch on the console, then said, "Petra, stabilize at three thousand."

“Three thousand,” she repeated. “Confirmed.”

He rose from the pilot's seat, motioning for Vance. There was a surge of acceleration as the vehicle changed pitch, the cockpit rotating to adjust for the G-forces. The weight of two and a half G's weighed against them as the altimeter screen started scrolling upward.

Vance walked across to the central seat, studying the console. The throttle quadrant and sidestick he understood, but most of the other controls were new to him. Maybe it didn't matter.

"Does Petra understand English?"

"Of course," Androv nodded. "Russian, Japanese, and English. Interchangeable. She's programmed such that if you command her in Russian, she replies in Russian. If you use English, that's what you get back."

"So far, so good." He looked at the large screen at the end of cabin, the one that displayed Petra's mindstate. She was dutifully announcing that she'd just taken the vehicle to three thousand meters. She also was reporting the IR interrogation of a wing of MIG 31s flying at twenty thousand feet, with a closure rate of three hundred knots. When Daedalus made her move, would she be able to outdistance their air-to-air missiles?

We're about to find out, he thought, in — he glanced at the screens — three and a half minutes. Eva was zipping up her pressure suit now, readying to strap herself back into her seat. The helmet made her look like an ungainly astronaut.

"Like I said, the scramjets become operable at Mach 4.8," Androv went on. "At forty thousand feet, that's about three thousand miles per hour. I've never taken her past Mach 4.5." He was grasping the side of the console to brace himself. "You probably know that scramjets require a modification in engine geometry. In the turboramjet mode, these engines have a fan that acts as a compressor, just like a conventional jet. However, when we switch them over to scramjet geometry, the turbines are shut down and their blades set to a neutral pitch. Next the aft section of each engine is constricted to form a combustion chamber — the shock wave inside becomes the 'compressor.' " He paused. "The unknown part comes when the fans are cut out and the engine geometry is modified. I've unstarted the fans and reconfigured, but I've never fed in the hydrogen. We simply don't know what will happen. Those damned turbines could just explode."

"So we take the risk."

"There's more," he continued. "The frictional heat at hypersonic speeds. Our liquid hydrogen is supposed to act as a heat sink, to dissipate thermal buildup on the leading edges, but who the hell knows if it'll work. We're now flying at about fifteen hundred miles per hour. When you give Petra the go-ahead, we could accelerate to ten, even fifteen thousand miles per hour. God help us, we may just melt."

"If you were willing to give it a shot, then I am." Vance looked up at the screens. "We're now at ten thousand feet. I kick over to scramjets at forty thousand?"

"The computer simulations all said that if we go hypersonic below sixty thousand feet, we could seriously overheat. But maybe if we climb out fast enough…"

"We'll have to take our chances. We need to minimize that window of AAM vulnerability."

"I agree." Androv gestured for him to sit, then glanced up at the screens. "We have two and a half minutes. I've set Petra for full auto. All you have to do is just talk her through the key intervals of the sequence."

Vance settled in and examined the huge flight helmet looming above him, making him look like an alien insect from science fiction. Now the cabin had taken on an eerie quiet, with nothing but silent screens flashing data. He'd never talked to an airplane before, and the thought gave him some disquiet.

Two minutes.

"What do I do first?"

"You probably should start by attaching that nozzle there on the legs of your G-suit to the pressure hose on the console. When the G-forces go above eight, tubules in the legs automatically inflate using bleed air from the engines. It's going to squeeze hell out of your lower extremities. If you begin to gray-out, try to grunt as hard as you can. The M-l maneuver, I think you Americans call it. If your vision begins to go entirely, just try and talk Petra through."

"What else?"

"Once you start pushing through the hypersonic barrier, keep an eye on screens B-5 and B-6, which report engine strut temperature and stress loads. Those are the most important data for the scramjet mode. But first check the C-2 screen. Core rpm has to be zeroed out before the scramjet geometry modification, since the compressors need to be completely shut down. If it's not, then instruct Petra to abort the sequence. It could cause a flameout."

"And that's when I switch over to liquid hydrogen?"

"Exactly. Petra will set the new engine geometry, then sample compression and temperature and tell you the precise moment. But the actual switch-over is manual. I insisted on it." He pointed. "It's those blue toggles right behind the throttle quadrant. Just flip them forward."

"Got it."

"After you toggle her over, just ease the throttle forward, and pray." He settled himself into the right-hand seat, tugging at the tourniquet. "When we enter the hypersonic regime, I don't know what will happen. Above Mach 6 or Mach 7 we may begin to critically overheat. Or the airframe stresses could just tear this damned samolyot apart. Whatever happens, though, you've got to keep pushing her right on out, to stabilize the shock wave in the scramjets and bring them to full power."

Vance glanced up at the screen — thirty seconds — and fingered the sidestick and the throttles, trying to get their feel. As he began lowering the massive flight helmet, he noted that with the engines on military power they had exactly eighteen minutes of JP-7 left. When he kicked in the afterburners to push them into the hypersonic regime, the fuel readings would start dropping like a stone. But this was their ball of string, their way out of the maze. Would it work?

"Remember," Androv said with finality, "just talk Petra through any problems you have. And try to capture an attitude of sixty degrees alpha…"

"Yuri, are you ready for us to escort you back?" The radio voice, speaking Russian, sounded through the cabin.

"I'm still thinking it over," he answered.

"Don't be a fool. I have orders to down you with AA-9s. My weapons system is already turned on. Warheads are locked. You're as good as dead. If I push the fire button here under my left thumb, you're gone in fifty seconds."

"You just made up my mind," he said, and nodded toward Vance. "Go."

"Firing one and two," was the radio response.

Vance grabbed the throttles. "Petra, do you read me?"

“Yes,” she answered in English.

"Give me alpha sixty." He rammed the throttles forward, clicking them into the Lock position, igniting the afterburners. Next he yanked the sidestick into position.

The cockpit rotated upward, automatically shifting to compensate for the changing G-forces. In front of his eyes now was a wide liquid crystal screen that seemed to be in 3-D. The left side resembled the heads-up display, HUD, common to jet Fighters, providing altitude, heading, airspeed, G-forces in a single unified format. The right side showed a voice-activated menu listing all the screens along the wall.

"Read me fuel," he said, testing it.

Immediately the numbers appeared, in pounds of JP-7 and in minutes, with and without afterburners. The G-force was now at 3.5 and climbing, while the digital altimeter was spinning.

“Systems alert,” Petra announced suddenly, ”hostile radar lock. And hostile IR interrogation. Two bogies, closure rate nine hundred sixty knots.”

They weren't kidding, Vance thought. He glanced at the altitude readout. Daedalus was hurtling through thirty thousand feet, afterburners sizzling. But an AA-9 had a terminal velocity well over Mach 3. Add that to the Foxhound's 2.4…

"Petra, give me estimated time of impact."

“Extrapolating closure rate, I estimate impact in forty- three seconds.”

Their acceleration had reached 3.8 G's, but fuel was dwindling rapidly, already down to twelve minutes.

"Give me RWR and IRWR, screen one," he commanded.

The liquid crystal panorama inside the helmet immediately flashed, showing the unfriendly radar and infrared interrogations. The two Acrid AA-9s — that's what they had to be — were gaining altitude, tracking them like bloodhounds. One was radar locked, while the other showed active-homing IR guidance. The exhausts of Daedalus's afterburners must look like a fireball in the sky, he thought.

He scanned the menu for electronic countermeasures (ECM) capabilities.

"Petra, commence radar jamming."

“Commenced. Estimated time to impact, thirty-eight seconds.”

The missiles were still closing. Even if the radar-guided AAM could be confused, Daedalus had no way to defeat infrared homing.

The left-hand display now showed they had accelerated to Mach 4.2. The throttle quadrant was locked into the afterburner mode, but outrunning AAMs was like trying to outspeed a smart bullet.

He watched the dials. Mach 4.3. Mach 4.4.

“Estimated time to impact twenty-eight seconds.”

"I'm not sure we're going to make it," he said into his helmet mike. "We may have to try initiating the scramjets early."

"No, it would be too risky," Androv replied. "The skin temperatures at this altitude. The air is still so dense the thermal stresses…"

Vance checked the screen again. "Altitude is now thirty-eight thousand feet. I'm going to level out some, try and boost our Mach number. One thing's sure, we can't make it if we hold this attitude. Besides, we're burning too much fuel. Either we chance it now, or we get blown to smitherines. We've got no choice." He shoved the sidestick forward. For this he didn't plan to bother with Petra.

“Time to impact, twenty seconds,” she reported tonelessly.

By trimming pitch, Daedalus started accelerating more rapidly. Airspeed scrolled quickly to Mach 4.6.

“Time to impact, fifteen seconds.”

Nine and a half minutes of JP-7 remained. Just enough to land, he thought, if we ever get the chance.

Mach 4.7.

"Eva, take a deep breath. We're about to try and enter the fourth dimension."

"I… can't… talk."

Then he remembered Androv had said she might pass out. Now he was starting to wonder if he wouldn't lose consciousness too. He was sensing his vision starting to fade to gray, breaking up into dots. The screen noted that their acceleration had reached eight G's and was still climbing. Fighting for consciousness, he reached down and increased his oxygen feed, then contracted every muscle in the lower half of his body, trying to shove the blood upward. The G-indicator on the left-hand screen had scrolled to 9.2.

“Time to impact, ten seconds.”

Mach 4.8.

He reached down and manually locked the pitch on the compressor fan blades into a neutral configuration. They immediately stalled out, causing Daedalus to shudder like a wounded animal. Then he heard the voice of Petra, and a new signal flashed on his helmet screen.

“We have nominal scramjet geometry. Commence ignition sequence.”

She'd reconfigured the turbines, meaning Daedalus was go for hypersonic. He grappled blindly behind the throttle quadrant and flicked the large blue switches that initiated the hydrogen feed. But would the supersonic shock wave inside the engines fire it?

“Time to impact, six seconds.”

"Let's go." Reaching for the throttle quadrant, he depressed the side button and then shoved the heavy handles forward, sending a burst of hydrogen into the scramjets' combustion chambers….

Daedalus lurched, then seemed to be tearing apart, literally disintegrating rivet by rivet.

"We have detonation," Colonel Arkadi reported into his helmet mike. His twin-engine Foxhound was already in a steep fifty-degree bank.

"We copy you," General Sokolov replied. "Can you confirm the kill?"

"The target is outside my radar and IR," he said, wishing he had some of the new American over-the-horizon electronics he'd heard about. "But both missiles reported impact. I've ordered the wing to chop power and return to base. We're already on auxiliary tanks as it is."

"Roger," came the voice from Flight Control in Hokkaido.

"We downed her, Comrade General. Whatever she was, there's no way she could have survived those AA-9s. The target is destroyed."

Chapter Twenty-one

Tanzan Mino closed his eyes and sighed. The financial portions of the protocol would still stand on their own; the arrangement could be salvaged somehow; it would merely require finesse.

The shocked faces of the Soviet brass standing behind him told of their dismay. Daedalus, the most marvelous vehicle ever created, had literally been within their grasp, and now… both prototypes destroyed.

But at least, at least it hadn't fallen into the hands of the

Americans. No more humiliating episodes like that in 1976 when the traitorous Lieutenant Viktor Belenko defected with a MiG 25 Foxbat, exposing all its secret electronics to the West.

A slam of acceleration hit him, and he felt a circle of black close in on his vision. It was the darkness of eternal night, the music of the spheres. His last sight was the airspeed indicator scrolling past Mach 6.1. Almost four thousand miles per hour.

The starship Daedalus had just gone hypersonic.

He didn't see it, but look-down radar had shown the two Acrid AA-9s exploding a thousand feet below. When the scramjets powered in, the infrared-homing AAM lost its lock on them and detonated the other missile, sending a supersonic shock wave through Daedalus. AAMs, however, were now the least of their problems.

Skin temperature was pushing 2,200 degrees and the cockpit was becoming an incinerator. At forty-eight thousand feet they were rapidly turning into a meteorite.

His vision was gone, but just before losing consciousness he shoved the hydrogen throttles all the way forward and yanked back on the sidestick, sending them straight up into the freezing black above.

Altitude seventy-three thousand feet. Airspeed nine thousand knots.”

"Petra, raise helmet." He was slowly regaining his sight as the G-loads began to recede. The cockpit was an oven, overwhelming its environmental control equipment, clear evidence vehicle skin temperature had exceeded design.

“Confirmed. Helmet raising.”

Although his vision was still black and white, he started easing back on the throttles and checking around the cock pit. Eva was beginning to stir now, rising and struggling with her safety straps, Androv remained slumped in his G-seat.

"You okay?" He rose and moved toward her. "I think I blacked out there for a second or so."

"I'm going to make it." She shifted her eyes right. "But I'm not so sure about…"

"Don't worry." The Russian snapped conscious and immediately reached to begin loosening his straps. "I've been through heavy G-loads before." Suddenly he stared up at the screens, pointed, and yelled. "Hypersonic! Zoloto! You didn't tell me. I almost can't believe—"

"We almost lost it. Skin temperatures reached—"

"Japanese ceramic composites, my droog. No other material could have done it. And now the atmosphere is thinning. When we hit eighty thousand feet, or maybe eighty-five, skin temperature should stabilize down around a thousand degrees. That's 'room temperature' for this vehicle." He paused and grinned. "Liquid hydrogen. It's a fantastic fuel, and a terrific coolant. Of course, if this catches on and we stop using alcohol coolant in our MiGs, I don't know what the Soviet Air Force will all drink before payday."

Vance glanced at their vector. They were over the Bering Sea now, with a heading for who knew where.

Mach 11.3 and climbing. The Daedalus was pressing effortlessly toward the darkness above. Time to think about what was next.

"How much of this wonderful liquid hydrogen do we have?"

"Just enough to do what I've been planning for a long time." He edged over and touched Vance's shoulder. "I'm deeply in your debt. You made it possible. Now there's only one thing left. The ultimate!"

Vance looked at him and realized immediately what he meant. Why not!

"Do we have enough oxygen?"

"Extra cannisters were loaded because of the two Mino Industries pilots. I think we have about ten hours."

"Then I vote we give it a shot," he said, turning to Eva. "What do you think?"

"What are you talking about?"

He flipped up his helmet visor. "If we can achieve Mach 25 by around a hundred thousand feet, we can literally insert into orbit. It'd cause a diplomatic flap the size of World War Three."

She slumped back in her G-seat. "Is it really possible?"

"Of course," Androv said. Then he laughed. "Well, I hope so. I've been thinking about it for a couple of months now. I actually programmed Petra to compute the precise thrust required, orbital apogee and perigee, everything. The first Sputnik had an apogee of one hundred miles and a perogee of one hundred twenty-five miles. I've calculated that at Mach 25 I could propel this vehicle into roughly that orbit. To get out we can just do a de-orbit burn. Set the compressors on the ramjets for retrofire and cold-start them."

"So we can hold Tanzan Mino's cojones hostage for a while and have some fun," Vance smiled. "What do we tell Petra?"

"I'll give her the coordinates, but you've got to handle the stick. We need to hit Mach 25 above 98,600 feet, then shut down the engines with split-second timing. She'll tell you when. If I computed it right, we should just coast over the top."

"Got it." He looked up at the screens on the front wall of the cockpit. Their altitude was now 87,000 feet, and then-speed had reached Mach 18, over ten thousand miles per hour. They were cracking world records every millisecond. And the cockpit was starting to cool off again as the thinner atmosphere reduced friction on the leading edges. They'd survived the thermal barrier. Coming up was the emptiness of space.

He watched as Androv called the routine in Petra's silicon memory where he had stored the orbital data, then ordered her to coordinate it with their current acceleration, altitude, and attitude.

Confirmed, she was saying. Reducing alpha by two degrees. She'd already begun modifying their flight profile.

“You are approximately four minutes and thirty-seven seconds from the calculated orbit. Will fuel controls be manual or automatic?”

Vance glanced over at Androv. Here at the edge of space, were they really going to turn their destiny over to a talking computer? This game could turn serious if Petra somehow screwed up.

"Let's keep the throttles on manual."

"I agree," he nodded. "Too much could go wrong."

"If we don't like the looks of anything, we can always abort."

"Petra," Androv commanded, "throttles will be manual."

Affirmative. If she felt slighted, she wasn't saying anything. Four minutes.

"We'd all better strap in," Vance said, "till we see how this goes."

The screens above them were still flashing flight data. The strut temperature in the scramjets, where a supersonic shock wave was providing the compression to combust hydrogen and the rush of thin air, had stabilized at 3,100 degrees Fahrenheit. Androv stood staring at the screens, and a moistness entered his eyes.

"If my father could have seen this," he finally said in Russian. "Everything he designed has worked perfectly. He dreamed of this vehicle, talked of it for so many years, and now finally… to be murdered on his day of triumph."

Eva looked at him. "Maybe his real dream was for you to fly it. To create something for you."

He paused, as though uncertain how to respond. The look in his eyes said he knew it was true. The pain and anger seemed to flow through him like electricity.

"Before we are finished, the world will know of his achievement. I intend to make sure of it."

“Three minutes,” Petra announced. “Reducing alpha by three degrees.”

The screen above reported that they'd reached Mach 22.4. Their altitude was now ninety-three thousand feet.

She's leveling out, Vance thought. Are we going to make it, or just fade in the stretch?

The scramjets were punching through the isolation of near-space now, the underfuselage scooping in the last fringes of atmosphere. He doubted if there'd be enough oxygen above a hundred thousand feet to enable the engines to continue functioning, but if they could capture the vehicle's design speed, seventeen thousand miles per hour, they still could coast into the perigee curve of a huge orbital elipse.

He looked at the screens again. They were now at Mach 23.7, with two and a half minutes left. The complex calculus being projected on Petra's main display now showed their rate of acceleration was diminishing rapidly as the atmosphere continued to thin. Maybe, he thought, there's a good reason why no one has ever inserted an air-breathing vehicle into orbit before. Maybe all the aerodynamic and propulsion tricks in the world can't compensate for the fact that turbines need to breathe.

Petra seemed to sense they were in trouble. “Constricting venturi by seven point three,” she said. “Reducing alpha by four degrees.”

She was choking down the scramjets and leveling them out even more. Their thrust to weight ratio — which at thirty thousand feet had been greater than one, meaning they could actually fly straight up — was dropping like a stone. It was now down to 0.2. Daedalus was slowly smothering.

But now their velocity had reached Mach 24.6. Almost, almost…

“Thirty seconds,” Petra said, as though trying to sound confident. She was busy sampling the combustion ratio in the scramjets and making micro adjustments to the hydrogen feed.

Androv spoke into his helmet mike. "I'm beginning to think we won't make it. Petra is now probably estimating thrust based on faulty assumptions about oxygen intake. There's nothing left up here to burn. There'll be no need to abort. The edge of the atmosphere is going to do it for us." He looked up at the big screen and said, "Petra, project image from the nose camera, rotated to minus ninety."

“Confirmed,” she replied and flashed an image sprinkled with stars. Then the camera swept around, and the massive screen at the end of their cabin brought into view the edge of a wide globe that seemed to be composed of shimmering blue. It was the North Pacific.

"I just wanted to see this," he said wistfully. "I once took a MiG 25 to seventy-three thousand feet, but it was nothing to compare. We're in space."

"I've been eavesdropping on satellites for years," Eva commented. "But this gives it all a whole new perspective."

“Ten seconds. Prepare to terminate hydrogen feeds.”

The airspeed indicator now read Mach 24.8. Closing….

Vance reached for the heavy throttle grips, watching the final seconds tick down.

… four, three, two, one…

“Terminate hydrogen feeds.”

He yanked back on the handles, feeling a dying tremor flow through the vehicle. The airspeed indicator had just hit 17,108 mph.

In the unearthly silence that followed, Petra's synthetic voice cut through the cabin. “Preliminary orbital coordinates are computed as perigee 101.3 miles, apogee 117.8 miles. Duration is one hour and twenty-seven minutes. Radar altimeter will provide data for second iteration of calculations in thirty-six minutes.”

The engines were completely shut down now as they coasted through the dark. Nothing could be heard but hydraulic pumps, air conditioners, light groans from zero-gravity-induced stresses in the massive fuselage.

"Zadroka!" Androv shouted. "We've done it! Maybe there is a God."

Now, as Daedalus began to slip sideways, like a liner adrift at sea, the nose camera showed they were passing over the ice-covered wilds of northern Alberta.

Vance felt a sudden rush of fluids from his extremities, where they had been pooling because of the G-forces, upward into his face and torso. The sensation was one of falling, hanging on to his seat. Clumsily he unfastened his G-seat harness and pushed up to…

He sailed. Across the cockpit. At the last instant he twisted, trying to right himself, but before he could he'd slammed into the bank of video monitors on the opposite wall.

"Jesus!"

"Sweetie, you look like a flying fish." Eva drifted back in her seat, loving him all over again.

"I feel like a newborn deer trying to stand up." He rotated and carefully pushed himself off the ceiling, repressing the instinct to kick like a scuba diver. "But remember the old Chinese proverb. Don't criticize a man till you've floated in his shoes for a day."

"Darling, it's a dream come true. I'm finally weightless," she laughed. "At last, no more dreading to get on a scale."

"The pain in my arm is gone," Androv spoke up again, renewed satisfaction in his voice. "We've just performed our first medical experiment in space. It's good for gunshot wounds."

"I'd like to perform another experiment," Eva said. She was slowly extracting herself from the G-seat. "What kind of electrical system do we have on board?"

"We have a massive battery section, kept charged by the turbines," Androv replied. "All these electronics require a lot of power."

"So we could transmit?"

"Of course. We're designed for that."

"What are you planning?" Vance looked over as he drifted back across the cockpit.

"A small surprise for Tanzan Mino." She was twisting around as she floated next to her straps. "Let me start preparing the laptop. I knew there was a reason why I brought it." She reached down under the seat and pushed it out, where it floated.

"I want to hook this into Petra." She reached up and awkwardly retrieved it. "Is there any way I can?"

"There's provision for laptop interface. They worked so well on the American shuttles, our people installed an identical setup here." Androv swam slowly to the console, then flipped down a panel, revealing a serial port. "You can connect it there. The wiring's in place."

Vance twisted and checked their coordinates. They were now at latitude 56 degrees, longitude 109 degrees, headed over central Canada. "Incidentally, so much for North American air defenses. No radar interrogations whatsoever."

"That's because of our Stealth design," Androv said. "We have almost no radar signature. Not only are we a menace to the world, we're invisible."

Vance floated down and settled into the central G-seat. The more he learned about the Daedalus, the more unsettling he found it. What should they do with this monster? Maybe turn it over to the UN as a monument to technology gone amuck, to high-tech excess. At last, he thought, man has achieved the ability to move anywhere on the planet, at speeds as fast as the laws of physics will allow, and do it invisibly. Maybe it should be called the Shadow.

"Okay." Eva interrupted his thoughts. "I've finished tying in the Zenith. We're about to go live from the top, gentlemen, the very top. I'm going to send the protocol to every wire service in the world. What better credibility than to be downlinked live from space?"

Vance looked at the picture from the nose camera. They were over the Atlantic now, which meant they'd soon be passing over the Soviet Union, with line-of-sight horizons that stretched from Europe to Asia.

"Why settle for print?" He had a sudden thought. "How about television? With all this video gear, we should be able to put together something that would transmit. The Baikonur Cosmodrome has receiving facilities. We see Soviet cosmonauts in space all the time. And they'll be directly under us. We also could make the evening news all over Japan if we broadcast to the Katsura tracking facility."

"Good thinking, but I've got an even better idea." She seemed to pirouette in weightlessness. "Japan already has DBS, direct broadcast satellites, and there are home satellite dishes all over the country. It's the Global Village. So why don't we just cut in for a special bulletin?"

"Why not." He pointed to the ill-fated cockpit camera Tanzan Mino's technicians had installed above the entry hatch. "Matter of fact, we probably could just use that, if we could hook it into some of the electronics here on the console."

He floated up, half drifting and half swimming, and inspected the camera, convincing himself that it was still in working condition. And it had to be wired into something. Maybe now all they needed to do was flip the right toggles. The console switches numbered, by his conservative estimate, approximately three hundred.

"Let me see what I can do." Androv floated down and immediately started to work, toggling, testing, watching the display screens as various messages were scrolled.

"Petra," he finally commanded in Russian, "give me a positive connect between UHF display-read and video output terminal 3-K."

“Interface confirmed.”

Suddenly a video screen fluttered, ran through a test series of colored bars, then threw up a picture of the cockpit as seen from the camera above the hatch. Vance studied the image of three figures floating in a confined space outfitted with electronic hardware and a giant wing-shaped hood over the central seat. On TV their cockpit looked like the flight deck of some alien vessel in Star Trek IX.

"We're on." Eva waved at the camera. Her image on the screen waved back.

"Okay," Vance said. "Now for the tricky part. Transmission."

Androv smiled as he drifted up again. "That's actually the easiest of all. Remember this vehicle was originally intended — supposedly — as a near-earth research platform. There're plenty of downlinks, in keeping with the need to transmit data, as well as general propaganda functions. We can use any frequency you want, even commercial broadcast channels."

"So why don't we go live worldwide? Just give everybody an inside look at the planet's first radar-evasive space platform."

"Petra has a listing of all commercial satellite channels, just to make sure she doesn't inadvertently violate one of them with a transmission. Let's pull them up and see what they are." He flipped several toggles on the wide console, then told Petra what he wanted. He'd no sooner finished speaking than the large screen that supplemented her voice was scrolling the off-limits frequencies.

"Okay," Eva said. "Let's start with the data channels belonging to world-wide newsprint organizations— Reuters, the Associated Press, all the rest — and send a copy of the protocol. It'll just appear on every green screen in the world. Then we can pick off frequencies used by television news organizations and broadcast a picture postcard from here in the cockpit."

"Sounds good." Androv turned to look at the screen. Quickly he began selecting numbers from the banned list, moving them to a new file that would be used to specify parameters for the broadcasts.

Vance watched, shifting his glance occasionally to the view from the nose camera. Below them clusters of light from central Europe's largest cities beamed up, twinkling lightly through the haze of atmosphere. He reached over and flipped the camera to infrared and sat watching the back-radiation of the North African deserts, now blots of deep red on the southern horizon; then back to visible again, noticing two parallel ribbons of light that signified habitations along the length of the Nile. The world, he was thinking, really is a Global Village. She was right. There's no longer any place you can hide from the truth.

"Eva, when you feed the protocol to the wire services, note that there'll be a transmission of some live video at—" he glanced up at the digital readouts on the screens, "how about at 0800 hours, GMT?"

"That's in twenty minutes."

"Should be enough time, don't you think?"

"Sounds good to me. And to show you I'm brave, I won't even fix my hair."

"You never looked more beautiful, even that night out at the palace. Don't change a thing." He turned to Androv. "How about doing the talking? First in Russian and then in English? We'll write the English part for you."

"It will be my pleasure, Comrade. My fucking pleasure."

"Daedalus," Vance said, mostly to himself. "He found a way to escape the maze of Mino. We did too. It's easy. You just use your wings and fly."

Kenji Nogami settled the telephone back into its cradle and reached for the television's remote selector. The set was currently scrolling a special text being distributed over the Reuters financial-service channel. Very interesting.

He shoved aside the pile of new Mino Industries Eurobond debentures, to make room for his feet on the teakwood surface of his desk. BBC had just informed him they'd taped an accompanying video segment and were planning to broadcast it in thirteen minutes, at nine o'clock. At least that's what Sir Cecil Ashton, director general, had just warned. As the London banker for Mino Industries, he had told Sir Cecil he officially had no comment.

No comment was required.

He reached into a drawer and drew out a box of Montecristo Habana No. 2s, noting sadly there were only three left. With a frown he picked up his pocket Dictaphone and made a note to his secretary to stop off at the tobacconists on Threadneedle, just down from the Bank of England, and get another box.

A hypersonic aircraft. So that was what it had been about all along. And now some Russian test pilot had stolen it, taken it to orbit, and was planning to land it at Heathrow in three hours, there to turn it over to Westminster Union Bank, the London financial representative of Mino Industries Group.

Perfect timing. The thought immediately occurred to him that this would be ideal collateral for the billions in phony Eurodollar debentures he was being forced to issue for Tanzan Mino. Finally, finally he had the man by the bollocks. Who, he wondered, did he have to thank for this godsend?

Yes, it was shaping up to be quite a morning. Perhaps a trifle early for a cigar, but…

He flicked the TV off the Reuters text and onto BBC-1.

"… would appear to be further evidence of the growing technological supremacy of Japanese industry. As this commentator has had occasion to note in times past, the lines between civilian and military technology are rapidly vanishing. That Japan's so-called civilian research sector could create the high-temperature ceramics required for such a vehicle, even as European and American military research has failed to do so, speaks eloquently of the emerging shift in world…"

He rolled down the sound a bit. The commentator went on to mention that all Mino Industries representatives— both here in London and in Tokyo — named in the announcement from orbit had refused either to confirm or deny the story.

He noted the time on his Omega, then smiled, leaned back, and snipped the end off his cigar.

"Mino-sama." The man bowed low. "NHK just telephoned your office in Tokyo, asking for comment."

"Comment about what?"

"They have received some text off a satellite."

"What? What did they receive?"

"It was purportedly the English translation of a secret protocol, an agreement between Mino Industries and the Soviets. Naturally we denied it in the strongest possible terms."

"It has to be some preposterous fabrication. I can't imagine how anything so absurd could have—"

"That's actually the problem, Mino-sama. NHK says they received it from a manned space station, but they've checked with NASDA and have been assured there are currently no astronauts in orbit by any nation."

"In orbit?" My God, he thought. Daedalus didn't go down; she went up. With the protocol aboard.

How did they manage to get her hypersonic? Androv was wounded. He couldn't possibly have handled the G-forces. Which meant—

Vance.

"Tell NHK if they broadcast one word of this libelous, unsubstantiated hoax, they should be prepared to face legal action." His face had become a stone mask as a sepulchral hush settled over Flight Control.

"I will inform them," the man bowed again. He hadn't had the courage to tell the oyabun the rest of what NHK was now receiving… along with half of the citizens of Japan via their new direct-broadcast satellite dishes.

Kenji Nogami thought the picture was a little indistinct at first, the hues slightly off. But then somebody in BBC's technical section corrected the color balance, making the tape's blues and greens and reds all blue and green and red.

Yes, now he could make it out. A cosmonaut was drifting across the camera's view, suspended. It made him ponder briefly the phenomenon of weightlessness. Curious, really, that it was all a matter of where you were.

One wall of the cockpit was lined with video terminals, and at the end was a massive screen currently displaying the Daedalus Corporation logo, a double ax. Nice advertising, he thought. Coca-Cola probably feels envious. Overall it was a classy job, no two ways about it. The oyabun didn't do things by halves.

Well, this was one marvel Her Majesty's government would be happy to get their hands on. For his own part, not a bad piece of collateral. Must have cost billions in start-up investment.

Then he got a better look at the figure and realized something was wrong. One side of his white environment suit was stained red. And he seemed to be nursing a bandaged arm as he drifted up toward the camera.

"Stradstyve," he began, "Ya Yuri Andreevich Androv…."

The cosmonaut then proceeded to deliver a long-winded speech in Russian that Nogami could not follow and the BBC had not yet translated. He seemed to be growing angrier and angrier, and at one point he gave a long disquisition about someone named Andrei Petrovich Androv. He was obviously a Soviet test pilot. Who else could fly that creation? Given the looks of the cockpit, it was a quantum advance in high technology.

Nogami leaned back, his match poised. The good part, the part in English, was coming up. That's what Sir Cecil had said. The Russian segment had been for broadcast in the Soviet Union, had the local spin. The English part was for the world. And for Tanzan Mino.

Who was now in deep, deep trouble. Murder, fraud, a global conspiracy — they all were there, and even more damning for the way the story had come to light. The medium was the message.

About that time the cosmonaut who'd identified himself as Soviet Air Force Major Yuri Andreevich Androv drifted to the side, permitting a better view of the cockpit. That's when Nogami noticed two other individuals. One appeared to be a woman — leave it to the Soviets, he smiled, to know about good public relations — also wearing an environment suit, her helmet momentarily turned away. The third appeared to be male, also in an environment suit and flight helmet. Sir Cecil hadn't bothered mentioning them, since Air Force Major Androv had done all the talking.

Then the male cosmonaut in the center drifted up and began opening his visor, some kind of curved glass that reflected the yellow sodium lights in the ceiling. He grappled with it a moment, then in annoyance just yanked it off and tossed it to drift across—

Nogami stared at the face. Mother of God!

He was laughing so hard he almost missed his Montecristo when he finally whipped up his match….