Silver Tower

CHAPTER 12

As Ann Page had predicted, her report on the potential Skybolt project delays caused by moving the space station into a geosyncronous orbit over the Middle East had negligible effect on Space Command. Saint-Michael had gotten the green light, and for the past several days the space station's crewmembers, had worked overtime gathering information and staying on alert for a Soviet response. A Soviet response. Put that way, it sounded so neat and tidy, so impersonal and even reasonable, Ann thought. Like playing a game of chess. She imagined just how devastating a Soviet "response" might be and felt a chill. She was actually glad she had her work to concentrate on. She'd have been a nervous wreck, standing in the command module and watching the display screen read out possible threats.

Kevin Baker put aside another relay circuit board and sat down beside her on a small workbench in the cluttered Skybolt module.

Ann looked at him. "I was thinking about how unreal a lot of this is. What might be happening down below. The fact that we're even up here in space at all…"

Baker nodded. "I know what you mean. I think of all the years I spent in labs… not quite like this but you know, filled with the same clutter. And no one giving much of a damn. And now suddenly I seem to be at the center of everything that's important, but the feeling is pretty much the same. Solve the problem, devise solutions, check out hypotheses—"

"And what's your favorite? Hypothesis, that is… How can we get this laser of ours to do what it's supposed to do?"

Kevin noted the word "ours" and was pleased. "Well," he said, looking at the maze of wires and circuit relays in front of him, "why don't we start with this left GCS-B data relay? What do you have connected to it'? Looks like platinum. "

"It is platinum. That's the MHD master superconductor relay. I call it the toaster."

"Not a bad name for it, This is the first superconducting relay I've seen that's smaller than the size of a cement truck. So where's the automatic test center?"

Ann motioned to the ceiling and Baker let out a low groan. Working on the ceiling might have been old hat for her, but his station laboratory had been a virtual recreation of his earth-bound laboratory, where computers never floated to the ceiling. Shaking his head, he lifted toward the ceiling, anchored himself on Velcro-covered footpads and punched instructions into the test computer. The renewed frustration in his voice echoed throughout the Skybolt module. "What is this?" gesturing to sixteen long rows of numbers.

"It's a linkage of all the relative program sequence codes of the relay circuitry. There are sixty-four displays of each two hundred fifty-six bit word. You need to cross-check each display with—"

"Wait a ininute. That's over sixteen thousand data bits…"

"For the left MHD relay circuitry data bus," Ann continued. "There's another check of the right data bus and the main driver."

"God, how can we check all this? It'll take days. Maybe weeks. "

"I haven't run through the whole check," she told him. "The toaster has run perfectly for two years. I've got three hundred other components that I'd suspect before the toaster, so it gets a lower priority. I'll check it later."

Baker seemed not to hear her as he twisted off four Camlock fasteners on the tiny self-test console, lifted the front panel clear and peered inside. "Good, at least you have standard connectors in this thing. I'll rig up a fiber-optic network line from Skybolt to my lab. I can plug my computer right into this console and have it check all the data registers for us. It'll do the check in a few minutes and give us the answer in English, not in this hexadecimal gobbledegook. You'll be able to monitor your toaster continually after this."

"That's great, Kevin. How soon can you get it set up?"

"A few hours for the network line and connections, and a few more to write the program to compute and cross-check the checksums. "

Ann nodded, looked at the self-test console. "Do you really think the problem is in there?"

"Don't know a lot about superconducting relays. In fact, I know damn little about most of the other toys you have in here. But your self-tests aren't telling you what the problem is. We've gone over most everything else except this thing. I'd say the problem has to be here." He detached himself from the ceiling and glided back to the deck.

For the first time in days, Ann allowed herself to hope that the problem would actually be resolved — providing, of course, that no new and unanticipated glitches loused it up…