Silver Tower

CHAPTER 33

This was no longer the world's most extraordinary flying vehicle, Ann thought, and they were no longer a crew of highly skilled astronauts and engineers: this magnificent spacecraft called America was nothing more than a glorified hearse, and they were the pallbearers, They were being sent to do a dirty job, with the whole world looking on.

Ann and Marty Schultz were observing the loading of America's cargo bay two days prior to launch. They stood on a steel arch over the massive spaceplane watching huge cranes and scores of workers maneuver supplies into the cargo bay. Ann's first glimpse of America had been so striking that, for a moment, she'd forgotten the reason for their voyage, forgotten the pain of knowing that Jason would not be joining her. "She's beautiful. Really beautiful," she had said when they'd climbed on top of the observation arch for the first time.

Schultz had first taken her on a walk-around inspection of the huge space vehicle. Unlike the husky, boxlike STS space shuttles, America was a sleek, rather ominous-looking craft. It was twice as large as the shuttles, closely resembling an oversized version of the Mach Three-plus U.S. Air Force SR-71 Blackbird military reconnaissance plane (the fastest aircraft in the world until America had come along), with its pointed hawknose bow sweeping gracefully out toward its broad, flat fuselage and impossibly thin edges.

The craft was built primarily of an exotic metal called rhenium, which was stronger and lighter than titanium and more heat resistant than reinforced carbon-carbon. The cockpit, crew cabin and cargo bay rose out of the top of the smooth black-and-gray rhenium body in a graceful hump, blending smoothly into the broad, flat tail. The sides of the fuselage flared out into short, thin wings that, a few minutes after launch, would swing into the body when their lift was no longer needed. Two short, rounded vertical stabilizers jutted out of the top of the fuselage near the tail, pointing in toward the spine. But most impressive about America was her three large engines: long, boxy devices slung under the fuselage with rows of dividers and chambers throughout. Ann had walked around to the front part of the engine and, out of habit and curiosity, looked into the engine inlet. To her surprise she could see right through the engines. She asked the obvious question: "Where the hell are the engines?"

"Those are the engines," Marty explained, welcoming the chance to lecture her on something he knew a good deal about. She understood and kept quiet. "Those are the scramjet engines — supersonic ramjets. Instead of using fan blades to compress air like ordinary aircraft jet engines, the scramjet uses what's called a Venturi — the internal shape of the engine itself — to compress air for ignition. The underside of the fuselage is an integral part of the engine, slowing and cooling the air before it enters the Venturi.

"A conventional turbofan or turboramjet engine is limited to around Mach three-point-five; it just can't suck more air. A simple ramjet engine is far more fuel efficient and can go as fast as Mach five or six — a lot of early military antiaircraft missiles were rocket-boosted ramjets. Ramjets, are limited by the metals used in their construction, which burn up or disintegrate at high speeds, But a scramjet is designed to use its hydrogen fuel as well as its composite construction to cool the inlets. That helps the internal parts withstand the hypersonic speeds over Mach five.

"Once the heat and disintegration problems were solved we were ready to race. There theoretically is no upper limit to a scramjet's speed, but Mach twenty-five is enough for our purposes: that's orbital speed." Marty pointed to the rail rack below the space planes. "Since a scramjet engine can't suck in air by itself, the spaceplane is shot down this track on a rocket sled to get enough air going through the engine for ignition. At about two hundred miles an hour the Venturi in the scramjets begin to work, and America lifts herself off the sled."

"But how do the engines work in space?" Ann asked. "There's no air up there."

"These engines are hybrids: they're true scramjets in the atmosphere but they convert to liquid-fueled rocket engines once there's no more air passing through the engine. America's primary fuel is hydrogen, with oxygen to burn it. As you know, oxygen is supplied in the atmosphere at lower altitudes. As America climbs and the air thins out, the front of the scramjet engine gradually louvers closed and oxygen is fed gradually into the engine from the ship's fuel tanks as needed. The scramjet becomes a true rocket engine at about seventy miles altitude. The spaceplane is really a big fuel tank: everything except the crew cabin, cargo bay and avionics bay is fuel storage.

"On return it's just the opposite: hydrogen and oxygen fuel are mixed in the engines until there's enough oxygen flowing through the Venturi from the atmosphere to sustain ignition. The scramjets can be used almost all the way to landing, so America can land at almost any long runway. Los Angeles International and San Francisco International are our designated alternate landing sites, but if necessary we can fly all the way across the country in one hour to find a more suitable one."

As Marty talked Ann couldn't help thinking about Saint-Michael. He had not been with her these past two days while she trained for hypersonic spaceplane duty at the Space Command HTS flight simulator at Little Rock, then went to Southern California for the launch. Although he didn't say so, she guessed that after seeing her off in Colorado Springs he'd flown to Washington to appeal the ruling that had grounded him. She doubted, though, that he'd be able to convince the Joint Chiefs to reactivate the station, and as each new hour passed and she failed to hear from him, the possibility of his getting his way seemed less likely.

She looked up to see America's cargo bay doors fully open, the silver radiator lining reflecting the blaze of hundreds of spotlights surrounding the craft. Even though the spaceplane was twice as large as her older, less sophisticated cousins, her cargo bay was the same small size. Indeed, dwarfed by the sheer size of the spaceplane, the cargo bay seemed to have been installed as an afterthought. One glance at its payload, though, brought the mission's grim reality into sharp focus.

Most of the cargo bay was occupied by the two PAMs, payload assist modules — large liquid-fueled rocket engines with remote-controlled guidance units and a mounting-adapter. It would be Ann's job, with help from Marty Schultz, to attach the Skybolt laser module to the PAM, align it pointing away from earth and activate it. Using steering signals from Falcon Mission Control on earth relayed through the NASA TDRS satellite relay system, the PAM would boost the laser module into a six-hundred-mile storage orbit, giving Space Command another few months to assemble a shuttle sortie to retrieve the modules. Even though America's cargo bay was the same size as a shuttle's, the spaceplane was not designed to bring large objects like Skybolt back from space. A second PAM was being carried as a spare or, if the first was successful and if there was time, to boost Armstrong Space Station's command module itself into a storage orbit.

A huge crane was lowering a large cylindrical object, eight feet in diameter and ten feet long, into the forward part of the cargo bay. For some reason its stark simplicity made it even more painful to look at. Ibis was a spaceborne crypt, a huge coffin, the device that would be used to bring back the bodies of the crew of Armstrong space station and the space shuttle Enterprise.

Ann looked at it, then turned away. "It looks like an old fuel tank," she said to Marty. "It is," he said. "The kind brought up on shuttle flights to refuel satellites. it's been heavily insulated to protect the… he paused, swallowed hard, "the crew during reentry. The cargo bay can get as high as a thousand degrees Fahrenheit during reentry."

She touched him lightly on the shoulder. "I don't like what we're doing here," she said. "We're being pushed around by the Russians, even told when and how to claim our own dead. Damn, I really wish Jason… General Saint-Michael were going with us. Somehow right up until now I thought he'd manage it…" (As, she thought, he'd managed to make love to her after a sickness that would have kept most men in a hospital for weeks…)

The American and Soviet carrier battle groups were still separated by over two thousand miles of ocean, but even one-eighth of a world apart they had already started the first few tentative steps toward a conflict both knew was all but inevitable.

The Nimitz carrier group had moved out into the Arabian Sea to allow its escort ships room to spread out more and maneuver at higher speeds. The group had been augmented by three frigates, two cruisers and two armed reserve supply ships from Diego Garcia, the tiny island naval base south of India. It was still enforcing a strict blockade of Soviet-bloc ships trying to enter the Persian Gulf, which prevented the weakened Brezhnev from refueling from Iran, and airlifted fuel and supplies were not sufficient to allow the Soviet carrier battle group to operate at peak efficiency.

The Americans had sent several flights of B-52 bombers with F-15 fighter escorts from Diego Garcia to shadow and test the response pattern of the huge Arkhangel carrier group, which had just crossed the Eight Degree Channel west of Sri Lanka and was now in the Indian Ocean. The B-52s, the assault aircraft of choice because of their fuel capacity, were armed with twenty-four Harpoon medium-range antiship missiles apiece, making them formidable threats against the carrier fleet.

But the Arkhangel was not about to let the B-52s anywhere near the fleet. The Soviets first engaged the B-52s as far as three hundred miles away from the carder, using their Sukhoi-27 Flanker carrier-based fighters in seemingly never-ending streams. The Soviets knew that at high altitude the B-52s' improved Harpoon missiles had a range of one hundred miles; they simply doubled that figure and set up a stiff air cordon. The Su-27s were docile at three hundred miles, shadows at two hundred and fifty miles and aggressive in warning off the B-52s and their escorts at two hundred twenty miles. Warning shots were fired at two hundred miles, with more emphatic verbal warnings given.

The F-15s were at a huge disadvantage. They had to leave their vulnerable KC-135R and KC–1 °C aerial refueling tankers far behind, out of range of the Su-27s, so their combat range was severely limited. The B-52s could count on enough fighter protection only to break through the first wave of Su-27s from the Arkhangel; then they were on their own for the last dangerous one hundred miles to their launch points.

The B-52s obeyed the very last verbal warnings received and turned around right at the two-hundred-mile point. Even so, they were able to accomplish their primary mission, which was to collect valuable data on the shipborne tracking and acquisition radars that had been sweeping them, as well as radar data from the Su-27s that had pursued them. But the scraps of information the B-52s collected did not alter the basic fact: it was going to be a nightmare, if not an impossibility, trying to get close to the Soviet fleet.

Like the Arkhangel's carrier group, the Nimitz's had to contend with airborne threats of its own. The Nimitz was only a thousand miles south of Tashkent, the Southern Military District headquarters, where ten Tu-95 Bear bombers were now based. The Bears carried the naval-attack version of the AS-6 cruise missile, which could be launched against the Nimitz well within the protection of Soviet land-based surface-to-air missile sites in occupied Iran. The Soviets also had a new weapon, the AS-15 cruise missile, a long-range, nuclear-tipped supersonic cruise missile. The AS-15 could be launched from well within the Soviet Union, or its shipborne version could be launched from one of the Arkhangel's escorts at extreme range. Supersonic land-based bombers from the Soviet Union were also a major threat against the American fleet.

Another series of strategic maneuvers were being accomplished in an entirely different realm: under the sea. A small fleet of American attack submarines had moved into the Indian Ocean and were edging closer and closer to their adversaries. But unlike the sky-spanning maneuvers of a high-altitude B-52, this precombat dance was measured in single miles or even in yards. It might take days for a Los Angeles-class attack submarine to move two miles closer to the escort ships surrounding the Arkhangel; then, in a chance encounter, it would be discovered by a lucky helicopter sonar dip or a tiny telltale sound from within the submarine, and then the sub would be forced to run off and start all over again. Four subs were involved in this tension-filled chase, maneuvering bit by bit toward their huge target.

The Nimitz was a bit more fortunate: the four Soviet attack submarines from Vladivostok remained with the Arkhangel battle group in a defensive posture, prowling the seas close to their battle group. Other subs were being reassigned from Havana and from the Mediterranean toward the Persian Gulf, but they could be tracked as they made their way through the Suez Canal or Strait of Gibraltar or around Cape horn. If hostilities erupted they at least could be intercepted before they reached the Nimitz battle group. What the outcome would be was, of course, uncertain.

The battle lines were already drawn. Even though the combatants were still several hundred miles apart, the chief players in the final battle of the Persian Gulf had already been chosen. The confrontation would soon be at hand.

There was no jovial prelaunch breakfast with family members and politicians, no press conference, no words of congratulations or encouragement. The crew of America had the traditional steak-and-eggs breakfast, but it was served in strict privacy in the HTS Launch Control Facility mess hall. A few words passed between the crewmembers, but they were hushed and confined strictly to the flight or the launch.

After breakfast the crew filed toward the life-support shop for their prelaunch suiting-up. The four crewmembers pulled anti-"g" suits over their coveralls, which would protect them against the sustained five to six "g" s they might experience in the first ten minutes of flight. Because breathing might be difficult in the high "g"- environment, each would also wear POS facemasks, with oxygen fed into the masks under pressure.

After their last-minute physical and suiting-up the crew walked to the loading dock on top of the spaceplane. America was still in her loading hangar, sitting on top of the huge sled, with the sled's hydrogen-oxygen rocket engines on either side. They took a long escalator ride to the top of the loading dock, walked across a catwalk to the top entry-docking entry batch and then rode a moving ladder down to America's airlock on the flight deck.

In spite of America's huge size, the flight deck was no larger than a shuttle upper deck. They moved through the large airlock chamber and into the flight deck area. The galley, waste-control-system facilities and storage lockers were on the left. The right side of the cabin held numerous storage lockers for space suits and EVA equipment. Forward of the airlock were two permanently mounted seats with space beside each seat for another temporary jump seat. The HTS seats were hydraulically dampened, heavily padded seats that would help the occupant to better withstand the high "g"-forces.

Forward of the passenger seats was a small area with auxiliary controls and circuit-breaker panels, and forward of that was the cockpit. The entire flight deck forward of the airlock was a huge, life-support capsule. In an emergency the flight deck would explosively cut itself free of the spaceplane, rocket away from the stricken craft and parachute to earth under a two-hundred-foot-wingspan delta-wing parasail.

Under strict Master Mission Computer ("Mimic") control, preflight preparations in the cockpit were already well under way by the time the crew had boarded, so Ann and her fellow crewmembers had little else to do but strap in and monitor the computer's progress. A wall of four large computer monitors on the front instrument panel explained each preflight step being performed. As a sort of token gesture to the humans, the computer would pause after each step and ask if the humans wanted to proceed. The reply was always 1, "yes"; the computer would proceed anyway if no reply had been given within five seconds. After only thirty minutes of computer-actuated switching and lightning-fast electronic commands and replies, America was ready for launch. "Falcon Control, this is America," Colonel Hampton radioed. "Mimic reports prelaunch checklist complete. Acknowledge. "

"America, we confirm. Checklist complete. Be advised, launch sled fuel-pressurization complete."

"Roger. Awaiting final clearance."

"Stand by, America."

The last radio exchange puzzled Ann: it was an unusual amount of human intervention for a normal hypersonic spaceplane launch. Usually any clearances required for launch were obtained by Mimic enquiries to various other computers around the facility. Humans were not ordinarily consulted.

Ann turned to Marty and keyed her interphone switch. "Is there something wrong? I don't recall this step in the simulator rides."

Marty hesitated before replying: "I'm sure with all the brass observing this flight, someone just hit the pause button somewhere to give the brass time to get caught up. Mimic can move pretty fast."

The wait lasted for some five minutes, then a sudden voice on the radio announced: "America, this is Falcon Launch Control. Ignition sequence interrupt. Launch abort. Launch abort."

Ann had her harness buckles, oxygen hoses, "g"-suit hoses and communication cords off in five seconds. Marty followed suit and immediately got to his feet. "Remember, get a good tight grip on that safety belt on the rescue tower," Marty was saying. "It'll jerk you pretty hard when it pulls you away from the—"

They heard the sound of the upper airlock hatch being wrenched open. "Someone's out there," Marty said, not quite believing. "How? They just called the abort… They both hurried across to see who could possibly have made it on top of the spaceplane only five seconds after the abort was called.

In reply the huge curved airlock door swung open and a tall figure stepped through. Ann's eyes showed stunned recognition, but before either Ann or Marty could speak, the figure addressed them: "No time for explanations now," Jason Saint-Michael said straight-faced and moved quickly past them toward the cockpit.

Ann merely stared at the back of the cockpit seats for several moments, then turned around to see two launch technicians dropping through the open hatch. She moved to the cockpit as Horvath slid past her and Hampton began strapping into the right seat.

"Jason, you're all right…? You're going to fly?"

"Looks like it."

"But you told me your plan was disapproved…"

"It comes down to good old-fashioned arm-twisting. More later," he said as he strapped into the left-side commander's seat. "Get ready for launch; we can't delay too long or we'll lose the optimal launch window. We've only got ninety minutes to pull that damned casket thing out of the cargo bay and put a fuel tank on board — a full fuel tank this time."

She squelched her questions and went back to her seat. Schultz and Horvath were helping the technicians assemble a spare crew seat beside the two permanent ones. Marty motioned Horvath into his permanent seat. Horvath accepted and began strapping himself into the seat beside Ann while Marty began securing himself onto the flimsy-looking tubular seat they had just assembled.

"You're going to fly in that?" Ann asked.

"You bet," Marty said. He gave his best swashbuckling grin. "Only rookies need anti-'g' seats."

"But what about the mission to retrieve the bodies…"

"Looks like it's a different mission now," Marty said. "They sure cut it close, though. It's dangerous as hell to interrupt a launch countdown after the rocket fuel tanks have been pressurized. A few more minutes and it would've been too late without a week-long abort. He jabbed a thumb aft. "If I know General Saint-Michael, he's organized the world's fastest cargo switch in history. One of those fuel tanks can hold five thousand pounds of liquid oxygen and ten thousand pounds of liquid hydrogen — more than enough to refuel Silver Tower's depleted fuel cells. The PAM boosters? They'll make great boosters for Armstrong Station."

"So we're really going to do it… we're reactivating Armstrong Station…"

Marshal Alesander Govorov was on a late afternoon tour of Glowing Star, the Soviet spaceflight center in south-central Russia. He had shunned his military escort, although his staff car with armed driver was following along a few dozen meters behind. In the growing dusk, wandering around his Elektron launch facility — now, by Stavka decree, unquestionably his — he preferred solitude as he observed his workers scurrying around the launch pads.

He looked ahead and saw his dream standing before him, illuminated by banks of spotlights on tall towers: three SL-16 Krypkei rockets, service gantrys and umbilicals in place, ready for launch. On top of each booster was an Elektron spaceplane, gleaming in the Space Defense Command colors of silver and red.

Each spaceplane, he knew, was armed with ten Scimitar hypervelocity missiles, now for the first time being massproduced in the Leningrad Malitanskaya-Krovya exotic weapons factories. They had proved their worth in combat with stunning results. He also had three top Soviet cosmonauts, hand-picked and personally trained, on twenty-four-hour alert at the Space Defense launch center.

His newly formed combat unit, the first of its kind, was the talk of the Soviet military, but despite — or perhaps because of — the unit's success much effort was being expended in instituting refinements and improvements. Changes had already been proposed, for example, in Govorov's simple but effective hypervelocity missile-weapon design. Undoubtedly the changes would end up complicating things, requiring more cosmonaut intervention before launch, but that, Govorov thought, would be considered a reasonable price to pay.

One change already made was an added explosive warhead to the Scimitar missile, needed because some midlevel engineer had noted that fifteen Scimitar missile hits on the space station Armstrong did not produce the devastation everyone had expected. With new explosive Scimitars in the Elektron's cargo bay, it was that much more dangerous to fly, but that was always the way. The better, the more dangerous.

Govorov also knew that careers were made by those eager to make such refinements, and sometimes those men would steamroll over those in their way. He was on the lookout for such men, but at the same time he was careful not to hold on too tightly to his precious Bavinash missiles. Progress, for better or worse, was inevitable.

More important, his big gamble had paid off. Even in the Soviet military hierarchy those with the guts to stand for what they believed in could have some success. High rank usually meant heavy inertia, and the members of the Kollegiya had more in common than they would ever want to admit.

But leaders could reward, as well as strike down — when they perceived their own self-interest. Govorov, once commander of a small tenant unit at Tyuratam, now was commander of half of the entire base — over two thousand square kilometers, a dozen launch pads with support equipment and two thousand men and women — and he could summon as much hardware as he required from any corner of the Soviet Union to fill those launch pads. On his own authority, he could launch a half-billion kilograms of men and machines into earth orbit. He could do everything and anything except attack a foreign spacecraft, and then he needed only the word of one man, the general secretary of the Soviet Union himself, to attack any spaceborne target he felt was a threat to the nation.

It was a level of responsibility unprecedented in the Soviet Union — and, with very few exceptions, anywhere else. American nuclear submarine commanders, under extreme circumstances, could launch an attack in time of war; the commander of the American strategic bomber forces could launch his planes at his own discretion to improve their survivability in case of attack or natural disaster; the three Israeli fighter-bomber theater commanders could assemble their stockpiled nuclear weapons and launch an attack if provoked or in danger of being overrun. But not one of them had the power to take command of outer space. Only Marshal Alesander Govorov of the Soviet Union had that.

Take command of outer space. Govorov reflected on the implications of that as he moved down the main concourse toward the launch control center. He had been in the control center only a few minutes later when Colonel Gulaev approached him. "Sir, launch-detection report has been relayed to us by our reconnaissance satellites. The spaceplane America has launched from southern California…"

Govorov glanced at the chronometer over the command center consoles. "Ninety minutes later than their announced schedule. Has the launch been confirmed by any other means?"

Gulaev checked his watch. "Yes, sir. Agents in place near Edwards Air Force Base reported it to intelligence, and the news reports of several countries were filled with detailed descriptions of the launch." He paused. "Trouble, sir?"

Govorov's earlier mood quickly melted away.

"Do you think the late takeoff is significant?"

Gulaev shrugged. "The most important, the most widely publicized space flight by the outraged Americans, and it takes off ninety minutes late… It could be, sit."

Govorov nodded, went quickly to a computer-monitor at the extreme right end of the master command console, moving a technician aside as he scrolled through the display. "These tracking data are hours old," Govorov said.

Gulaev moved to his side and noticed that his superior was checking the orbital status readouts of the space station Armstrong. "We can update the data in three hours," Gulaev told him, checking the chronometer again. "But the station's orbit is erratic and its altitude is decreasing rapidly. It's becoming harder and harder to track."

Govorov studied the information. Armstrong was, miraculously, still in one piece, judging by the signal strength of the radars tracking the station. It seemed they would need to redefine what they considered the upper limits of the atmosphere. One hundred thirty kilometers was the usual altitude where atmospheric heating due to friction should cause damage to a spacecraft, but it was also generally acknowledged that the upper atmosphere was not flat like a desert but as craggy as the Himalayas: in some spots it only extended to eighty kilometers, in others perhaps a hundred fifty. Earth's atmosphere, as Govorov had observed many times from space, was like a boiling cauldron. Clouds revealed only a small fraction of the real turbulence in the sky. Surely the American space station should have impacted with enough of the higher peaks of the atmosphere to cause some damage. Apparently, it had not…?

A vague sense of unease began to grip Govorov as he recalled his words to Colonel Voloshin — something about the space station Armstrong remaining a threat as long as it was in orbit. For the past few weeks he had allowed himself the luxury of thinking the station was doomed, that his two-ship attack force had inflicted a mortal blow. But the station was still aloft. Was it also still a danger?

Logic said no. The station was mere hours from reentering the atmosphere. The crew of the spaceplane America had little time to retrieve the bodies of their dead crewmembers, let alone boost the station into higher orbit. Their late takeoff was like a death sentence for the station. No, he had accomplished his mission… The station was just taking a little longer to expire.

He took a deep breath, nodded to Gulaev. "Be sure careful records are made of the spaceplane's progress. I will be in quarters."

A few more hours, Govorov thought as he left the command center for his waiting vehicle. Just a few more hours…

It was long, long after America had reached orbit that Ann was able to recover fully from the sheer excitement of the launch. Marty Schultz almost had to shake her to get her attention. "We're in orbit," Marty said. "Sorry to startle you but I haven't seen you move in a few minutes."

"I feel drained, like I just ran a marathon."

"Well, it's not your usual shuttle launch, for sure."

That, Ann decided, was a rank understatement. Unlike the shuttle, which gradually climbed into orbit, the spaceplane America sprinted into orbit. From the moment the rocket engines were ignited on the sled that propelled the spaceplane down the long launch track in the high southern California desert, she had felt the crushing "g"-forces pin her body to her seat. America had been boosted from zero to two hundred miles per hour in less than fifteen seconds… It was nearly impossible to believe that seven hundred thousand pounds of machine could be accelerated at such a rate.

She'd thought the "g" s would diminish after they'd lifted off the rocket sled, but they hadn't even begun to slacken. The first indication of a force even greater than the rockets on the sled came when the center scramjet engine ignited. The three-hundred-fifty-ton spaceplane bucked like a living thing, lurching so hard that the hydraulic "g"-dampeners in Ann's seat could hardly absorb the shock. One hundred miles an hour of airspeed was added to the forward momentum of the spaceplane in the blink of an eye. Her "g"-suit had immediately inflated to keep her from blacking out, and if her face mask had not shot oxygen under pressure into her lungs she would have suffocated. As it was, her rib cage felt heavy as lead and breathing was suddenly impossible. When the other two scramjet engines ignited shortly afterward, her "g"-dampening seat had hit its limit and her body was forced to endure the ever-building, crushing pressure. She had had to perform an "H-maneuver," whereby blood was forced to the upper body and head by partially closing off the trachea, and then grunting against the pressure. She glanced sideways during the ascent and saw Horvath's chest heave and flutter as he performed the maneuver too.

By the time all three scramjet engines were running, America was traveling at well over three hundred miles per hour and had already streaked down three of the five miles of launch track. The restraining clamps were then released, and the spaceplane lifted off the sled and shot skyward. If the three engines hadn't ignited, high-pressure steam jets on the last mile of the track would have automatically activated and begun slowing the spaceplane down below two hundred miles an hour, where arresting cables and hydraulic brakes could be applied.

As it was, America broke the sound barrier twenty seconds after lifting off from the takeoff sled. She was then pulled up into a forty-five-degree climb at six "g" s, racing skyward at over fifty thousand feet per minute. The craft went hypersonic past the Mach five mark-fifty seconds later as it passed forty thousand feet altitude, the ear-shattering sonic boom rattling across the Sierra Nevada mountains far below. By the time America reached the Canadian border five minutes later it was at Mach fifteen, still climbing on top of a column of hydrogen fire nearly a mile long. Her wings were retracted at that point because at two hundred thousand feet altitude there was not enough air to generate lift.

The louvers at the front of the scramjets engines automatically closed as the spaceplane climbed, so five minutes into the flight the aircraft had transformed itself into a liquid-fueled rocket. As the engine began to burn more pure internal liquid oxygen, the speed increased. Finally, ten minutes into the flight the crushing "g" forces began to subside as America completed its acceleration to orbital velocity.

Now several banks of orbital maneuvering jets were activated to begin matching America's orbit with that of the stricken space station. The climb to Silver Tower's altitude didn't take long: on the lowest part of its orbit the station was now down to only five hundred thousand feet — eighty-three miles — altitude, low enough to be clearly visible to observers on earth. Following tracking and steering signals provided by ground-based tracking stations — Armstrong had stopped transmitting a position and docking beacon weeks earlier — Saint-Michael and Hampton began to chase down the stricken space station.

"Digital autopilot slaved to Ku-band tracking signals," Hampton reported. "Mimic is estimating thirty minutes to rendezvous."

Saint-Michael was studying America's flight-profile readouts and environmental displays. "Eighty miles," he muttered. "We're barely above entry interface altitude" — where the spacecraft began to enter earth's atmosphere and decelerate on account of friction. "Check the radiator and coolant flow. It's already midway in the caution range."

"Coolant flow is maximum," Hampton said, checking another screen. "We can try partially closing the radiators to cut down on the friction. Or we can go to EMER on the cross-flow system to bring the temperature down to the normal range."

"How about that fuel back there?" Saint-Michael said. "We can't play around so close to the atmosphere like this. We may have to jettison the fuel in the tank when coolant temperature reaches the danger level. There's no sense holding onto it longer and endangering the ship."

"Can you power up the station or reposition it without a refueling?"

"I don't know. I don't remember how bad the solar panels the station were hit." Like Ann, Horvath and Schultz, Saint-Michael had kept his POS facemask on to continue prebreathing pure oxygen in preparation for their spacewalk into the station. As he spoke, he began massaging his temples. "You all right, General?" Hampton asked.

Saint-Michael quickly lowered his hands from his head. "Sorry, bad habit. Just thinking, believe it or not… That Russian spaceplane attack knocked out power in the command module, but I think the SBR and Skybolt were still running when I found Ann unconscious in the Skybolt control module. That may mean that the station is still functioning, at least partially."

"But Falcon Control lost the station's ID and TDRS tracking signal weeks ago. They've assumed all power is out."

"We'll assume the same." Saint-Michael pressed the button on his comm link. "Listen up, crew. We won't have much time, and we've got to assume that the station is completely dead. Our priority will be to boost the station to a safe altitude. After that we'll try to power her up, reposition her, set up SBR surveillance of the Indian Ocean and the Nimitz carrier group in the Arabian Sea and begin to make some structural repairs. In between we'll probably have to fight off another attack… Ann, you'll be in charge o setting up the PAM boosters on the keel. I know Marty's explained how and where they go. Any questions?"

"No," Ann said, still finding it hard to believe they were going to reactivate the station after all. "It's a lot simpler than disconnecting Skybolt would have been."

"Good. Marty, you'll be in charge of refueling the cells on the keel so we can get electric power back on. The cargo shovel appeared damaged so you'll have to do it the hard way: drag the fuel tank around to the cells with the MMU maneuvering unit and use the remote fuel-transfer system. Any problems with that?"

"I used to pump gas in Ohio when I was nine years old."

"Just be ready in case Ann needs help."

"Rog."

"Ken, you'll follow me into the station," he told Horvath. "The environmental and electrical controls are easier to work than a shuttle is, so you shouldn't have too much problem figuring them out. We'll try to get solar power on, followed by fuel-cell power. If you can find and patch up any holes in the command module, it'll make our work easier. Otherwise we'll just try to reactivate the station's attitude and environmental system… Jon, you take care of America and try to help anyone out that needs help. The PAM installation has priority. After that, refueling and repairs. Keep us advised of any messages from Falcon Control until we get communications going on Silver Tower."

"Right. "

Thirty minutes later, they had moved to within a few hundred yards of Silver Tower.

For a few long moments the sight of the station in the distance dampened everyone's enthusiasm… The damage was worse than any of them had imagined…

The station's spin had decreased in velocity but it was gyrating on at least three or four different axes at once, like some sort of unearthly multilegged monster with dozens of different appendages reaching out to grab the spaceplane and devour it. Ionization from frequent scrapes with earth's upper atmosphere had created a multicolored, undulating aura of energy around the station. Parts of the central open-lattice keel glowed like hot embers, and clouds of debris and frozen water, gases, and fuel hovered everywhere. Several large panels from the SBR arrays and solar collectors were missing or damaged.

Hampton looked uneasily at Saint-Michael. "Do you think it's safe to approach the station with all that junk and sparking out there?"

"No. But we've got to do it."

"Sir, wait." Hampton turned in his seat to face Saint-Michael. "The 'ifs' are really starting to pile up here. We'll be driving right into the middle of all that debris and heat ionization. Then we've got to try to match the moves the station is making… One mistake ark we've got another dead ship."

"You knew the risks, Jon. We all did."

Hampton paused, considered. Finally he shrugged and said, "Okay, General. We'll do it your way. Let's stick our noses into that beehive."

Saint-Michael nodded, wrapped a hand around the manual control stick. "Here we go…"

He had applied forward thrust for exactly two-point-one seconds when a terrific bang shook America from bow to stem. He glanced toward Hampton as they checked the computer monitors for damage indications. "Pretty big bees," Hampton said.

Saint-Michael, ignoring him, took a tighter grip on the control stick and nudged it forward into the swirling mass ahead.

America provided no visibility out the cockpit windows except for the commander and pilot, so the others were spared seeing the source of the explosions, rumbles and flashes of light and heat that threatened to tear their ship apart during the final docking with Silver Tower.

The cargo bay temperature had risen to the danger zone when they moved only two hundred yards closer to the crippled station. "Cargo bay overtemp warning," Hampton reported.

Saint-Michael promptly overrode the preprogrammed command — which had been to jettison the fuel tank — and chose "EMERGENCY COOLANT SHUNT" instead, opening a manifold from the scramjet intake coolant system that allowed supercooled hydrogen to flow from America's fuel tanks through to the radiators. It was a risky choice — the tiniest leak in the radiators would have allowed the hydrogen to be ignited by the superheated ionized particles streaming past the spaceplane from the station — but there was no explosion and the temperature moved away from the danger zone.

Saint-Michael's fingers moved over the control buttons on the stick, switching between translate — straight-line — and rotate thrusts. Because it took less time to rotate in one direction than it did to reverse directions, America literally corkscrewed its way toward the docking port. They had been forced to hit smaller pieces of debris to avoid impact with larger ones. Debris breaking off or exploding from the station didn't always "fall" or disappear: it seemed to hang around the station in a dangerous orbit of its own.

After nearly thirty minutes America was hovering a mere ten feet from the docking adapter, held in place by the spaceplane's intricate station-keeping computers. But ten feet was still ten feet too much. "We can't go any further, General," Colonel Hampton said. "We've got the stationkeeping routine running as precise as the system allows."

Horvath spoke up. "I'll go to the docking module and—"

"No. I'll go," Saint-Michael said.

"I'd advise against it, General," Hampton said. "Your dysbarism…

"I've got to do it sooner or later, Jon, and I'm the best qualified to check out the station. I've been prebreathing oxygen for the whole flight so I should be okay. You've got the ship."

Saint-Michael waited until Hampton had adjusted his manual controls and situated himself, then unstrapped and floated back toward the airlock. Ann reached out and stopped him. "If you feel… if you get in any trouble, get back."

He nodded, moved past her. It took him five minutes to get into a spacesuit and backpack. Ann prepared to suit up after he exited the airlock, was watching him through the observation port on the chamber door as he began to depressurize the airlock. Suddenly, just as he moved the AIRLOCK DEPRESS switch from position five to zero, he quickly punched it back to five. "Jason?"

He held up a hand toward her but seemed to be shaking his head trying to clear his vision.

"Switch back to PRESSURIZE, — she called to him.

"I'm all right." Saint-Michael slowly stood erect, shaking his head as if recovering from a fall. "It's gone." He reached for the depressurization control again—

"No," Marty said quickly. "You can't do it, General—"

"I'm all right." He waited a few moments, then switched the depressurization knob to zero. A few minutes later he gave Ann and Marty a thumbs-up and undogged the upper airlock hatch. Ann was repressurizing the airlock as soon as the general had locked the hatch after exiting.

"Bad news," Saint-Michael said over his comm link. "The docking tunnel is unusable whole docking module is about ready to break off the station. Everyone has to EVA."

Saint-Michael scanned the spaceplane. The view of America against the chaos around the station was quite a sight… The gray-black spaceplane seemed to add a sense of power and strength to the damaged station it hovered near. He could see tiny puffs of gas escaping from the maneuvering jets on America's nose and tail as the spaceplane maintained its tenuous position beside the station.

The scene looked normal if he concentrated on just the station and the spaceplane, but when he tried to look at earth the view became chaos again.

With America in near-perfect synchronization with the station, there was no apparent movement between them — but earth appeared to be spinning all around them, making one revolution over Saint-Michael's head every minute. At first it was disorienting and he had to fight off the "leans" — his eyes telling him he was standing still, his head and body spinning and oscillating in reference to earth. It was like being on a crazy roller coaster with one's eyes closed. "Be careful when you step outside — the ride out here is a wild one. I don't see any major damage to America. Ann, I'm going to start unstowing the PAM boosters. I'll attach one, you get the other."

"Roger. I'm a minute from EVA."

Saint-Michael made his way carefully along America's spine toward the open cargo bay, his attention continually drawn to the damage on the station. The most serious was on the keel, especially — the SBR antennas. "The Russians did a job on the SBR control-junction boxes," he said. "It looks like we'll have to splice all of them but I can't be sure at this distance. One or two of the arrays might be intact."

He continued down to the cargo bay and maneuvered beside one of the PAM booster engines, removed restraining pins on the cargo bay attach-points.

"Both PAMs are unpinned."

"Copy, General," Marty Schultz said.

Saint-Michael looked up as America's remote manipulator arm rose out of its launch stowage cradle and the tiny closed-circuit TV camera aimed itself at him. "Ready to eject the aft PAM."

The general maneuvered back a few feet away from the booster. "Go." With a puff of gas the large booster slid out of its attachment sleeve and lifted slowly out of the cargo bay. As it rose up before him Saint-Michael maneuvered himself up and across to a reinforced mounting bracket on the side of the booster, then jetted forward until he could grasp the booster. He pulled himself into the booster and latched the front of his MMU to the bracket. His head was just above the top of the booster. "I've got the first PAM," he said. "Ann, I'm heading along the keel toward the spaceplanes' nose to attach the booster. You take yours toward America's tail to the keel. Mount your PAM perpendicular to America's alignment to the keel; I'll mount mine parallel to America. Maybe we can stop the spinning at the same time we boost the station away."

"Copy."

"General, this is Hampton. We're at seventy-five miles altitude. Cargo bay temperature is back in the danger zone."

"Go to EMER on the radiator cooling system again."

"I did. It came down but it's heading back up again. We've run out of time. I suggest we jettison the fuel cell and pull out."

"Forget it… Ann, where are you?"

He saw her emerge from the upper airlock hatch before she could answer. "On my way." He passed her a few moments later as he headed out past America's steeply angled cockpit windows, over the pointed flat nose around the maneuvering jets, and down and along the open-lattice keel. "We've got to hurry, Marty, we're going to need you and Horvath out here. Now."

"We're both in the airlock suiting up," Marty told him. "Should be out in four minutes."

It took Ann and Saint-Michael ten minutes more to attach the boosters to the keel. Meanwhile Schultz and Horvath had exited the airlock. Marty took the last MMU — America carried only three — and helped Ann attach her booster to the keel. Horvath, without an MMU but using tethers and safety clips, made his way up through the damaged docking tunnel and into Silver Tower's docking module.

"My booster is secured," Saint-Michael reported. "Ann?"

"Just one minute more and—"

A gasp from Horvath. He had come across the grisly scene inside the docking module where seven of the dead space command crewmen lay. He tried to blot it out, knew he never would. A few moments later he announced, "General, I'm in the connecting tunnel. It's depressurized, but the Skybolt module is showing pressurized. And I can see lights on in the galley module and in Skybolt. I see some damage, but it looks minor—"

Thank God, Ann said to herself.

"General," Hampton said again, "it's now or never."

"We're ready," Marty called out. "Ann, Marty, secure yourselves to the keel. Ken, grab hold of something in there. Jon, you'll have to maneuver clear of the station before we set off the boosters."

"Moving away now."

Ann watched with fascination as the huge, dark form of the spaceplane seemed to fall away from her, the tiny maneuvering jets on the broad tail flashing on and off like spotlights. In a few moments America was a hundred feet away from its original position, looking like a large, finely detailed toy hovering against the revolving backdrops of stars and the hazy upper atmosphere of earth.

"Commit both PAM boosters," Saint-Michael ordered.

"PAM boosters armed," Hampton replied. "Ku-band earth station data link good. Data transfer… here it comes…"

Ann felt her body strain against the clips holding her to a mounting bracket on Silver Tower's keel as the PAM booster fired. She could feel an intense vibration ripple through the keel; then the booster abruptly cut off, but the spinning went on. "Why did it stop?" she asked. "Is them—"

She didn't have a chance to finish the question as Saint-Michael's PAM booster fired in sequence. It was followed by another longer burst of thrust from her PAM booster, followed again by a shorter pulse from the opposite booster. The effect was to move the station and its tethered crewmembers upward toward outer space at a rate of ten miles per hour. For Ann and the others it was like being dragged along by a slow-moving car. America seemed to slide forward and sideways, then tip on edge. Even the scattering of debris seemed to swirl and drop away like a cloud bank being pushed back out to sea by a fresh breeze.

Following guidance commands from the ground tracking stations, the two PAM boosters alternated each of their pulses of thrust until, after several minutes, the station's wild multiaxis spinning slowed nearly to a stop. As the rotation decreased, the booster thrusts became longer as the station fought for altitude. A couple of minutes later the roar of the engines was constant. Earth was now firmly beneath them, slowly but surely dropping away. Ann was no longer pinned to the keel, but found instead that she could move freely.

Saint-Michael spoke first. "Jon, how do you copy?"

"Loud and clear, General," Hampton said. "Ken's got the station emitting a tracking beacon now. America is back on digital autopilot. I'll bring her back beside the cargo bay so we can start refueling the energy cells."

"Horvath here. Ne got auxiliary power on in the command module. It's depressurized. I don't think we can fix it: it's got two or three monster holes in it—"

"How about environmental and SBR controls?"

"I think I can reset the environmental controls, sir. I have no idea if that SBR stuff is operational, but there's backup power going to every console.

More than they'd hoped for, Ann thought. Silver Tower was alive. Now if the Russians would just give them the time they needed…

Marshal Govorov came into the Space Defense Command control center, joined up with Colonel Gulaev, then kept stride with his subordinate as both hurried to the main tracking computer monitor to scan the information that was scrolling across the screen. "We didn't notice the change until the station was at two hundred fifteen kilometers…" Gulaev said. "We thought it was an error, an anomaly—"

"It's impossible," Govorov said, realizing as he said it how much that sounded like the Kremlin bureaucrats he'd gone up against all these years. He'd deceived himself. Well, let's go from there… But wasn't more time needed to boost the station into higher orbit?

"Sir, shall I alert the—"

"Alert no one. I want this tracking confirmed."

Gulaev took off for the communication center to call Sary Shagan for a confirmation. The answer did not take long. The young officer returned to the control console only sixty seconds later to find the Space Defense commander alone at the console — no one else wanted any part of him — including himself.

"Sir, the Shirov-25 space surveillance site at Sary Shagan has just issued an advisory to Space Defense Command headquarters. The tracking is… confirmed. Armstrong appears to be under power and being directed to a standard circular orbit, inclined less than five degrees from the equator… Is it possible that the Americans could reestablish surveillance over the Persian Gulf or Arabian Sea…?"

Govorov came close to giving him a murder-the-messenger look, then shook his head, trying his best to control himself. "The station's pressurized modules are uninhabitable. Our Scimitar missile had to penetrate the radar array and solar cells. It would take a full work-crew months to bring Armstrong back on line." Or at least it should… He clapped his hands together, as though to jog himself out of his unaccustomed funk. "All right, I want a secure videophone connection established among Rhomerdunov, Khromeyev and myself, the conference to be, set UP in tactical situation briefing room three. And I want General Kulovsky of intelligence on hand. Get him here."

Gulaev hurried off to give the orders, relieved that Govorov seemed his old self, back in control, in command, at least a step ahead of the Americans…

But why did it feel like they were one step behind?

The videophone terminal had been set up on a pedestal at the front of the large conference room near Govorov's office at the Glowing Star Manned Launch Facility. Govorov and General Kulovsky, the Space Defense Command's chief of intelligence, stood in front of the terminal waiting for the two senior Stavka members to make contact.

They did not have to wait long. The videophone buzzed once, long and insisting, and the screen suddenly flared to life, revealing Deputy Minister of Defense Khromeyev and Commander in Chief of Aerospace Forces Rhomerdunov seated at the main battle staff conference table at Supreme Headquarters in Moscow.

Khromeyev spoke first. "We already know about the American space station, Govorov. I assume you have an explanation…"

Govorov did not feel better, hearing he'd apparently been scooped by the space warning and tracking facility at Sary Shagan. Make the best of it, he told himself, and try to tell it as you see it…

"Comrade Deputy Minister, it's not as we hoped, and believed. True. But I believe it likely that the station has been destroyed beyond the point of near-term usefulness—"

"Then how is it being moved at all?" Rhomerdunov interrupted. "I believe the Americans may have brought aloft the rocket boosters needed to send the station to higher orbit—"

"Isn't it more likely," Khrorneyev put it, "that you overestimated the damage done to the station?"

"Yes, sir, that's possible, but I point out that America's cargo bay, from what we've learned of it, is more than large enough to carry a fuel tank and several small rocket boosters to attach to the station's central keel."

Govorov hit a button on a small wireless control unit, and the pedestal that the videophone monitor was mounted on swiveled up so that the camera faced a large plastic and balsa wood model of Armstrong hanging from the ceiling. The model, carefully constructed and precise in every detail, had been just as precisely broken in several places. "The model you're looking at, sir, represents the last full image of the station as seen through my Elektron spaceplane's Scimitar missile laser designator." With a long pointer he then motioned to each of the station's damaged systems.

"Yes, yes, General. And your opinion, Colonel Kulovsky?"

"That the station does not have the capacity to counter earth's gravity," Kulovsky said. "Even with full-thruster capacity, the station can't change altitude more than a hundred kilometers without a refueling. So, as Govorov says, the spaceplane must have brought rocket thrusters to move the station."

"The most important target for myself and Colonel Voloshin," Govorov said, "was the station's space-based, radar array attach points. As you can see — he used the pointer for emphasis — three of the four attach-points have been hit and two destroyed."

"So that leaves two SBR arrays," Khromeyev said.

"Yes, though not enough to let the Americans duplicate the extent of earlier surveillance, sir," Kulovsky said.

"The other strikes against the station," Govorov said, "took out or damaged the solar arrays, which are necessary to recharge the station batteries and convert water to fuel… the fuel-storage vessels on the keel… and the pressurized modules themselves. It's possible these punctures in the modules are repairable in orbit, but they will leak so badly that the modules can't be safely inhabited unless the crew wear space suits the whole time. However, sir, I grant that the seemingly impossible may be possible. We are not infallible, and I do not underestimate the Americans. I have warned against that myself over the years, and I don't intend to change now. And so…"

"And so…?" Rhomerdunov said. "Finish the thought, General."

Govorov took the leap, the one he'd been moving toward, if in a roundabout fashion, since this little lecture had begun. "And so, sir, I believe we should not take the chance, however remote, that Armstrong will not regain its surveillance capabilities and be a substantial threat. I recommend that I attempt another attack against the space station…"

Khromeyev clearly wasn't so sure. "The first attack on the space station was easily justified," he said. "The Americans moved their station directly over the Soviet Union and used it to direct an attack against our defensive forces. But if we mount another offensive against a crippled station, one that is not, at least at the moment, orbiting over Soviet territory, world opinion may very well turn against us. We have already received much criticism for the deaths aboard the American rescue-craft; if we attack America's only hypersonic spaceplane, one ostensibly launched to retrieve the bodies of the other crewmembers that died in Govorov's first attack, we could be subject to the kind of international condemnation that could expand the conflict beyond the present boundaries — something we must avoid."

"I agree, Sir."

Khromeyev and Rhomerdunov conferred briefly; then Khromeyev turned to the camera: "Marshal Govorov, continue to monitor the space station Armstrong's orbit and advise us immediately if there are any significant changes, or if any other spacecraft dock with the station. The responsibility for determining whether or not the station becomes a threat to Operation Feather is, of course, yours."

It was not what Govorov wanted to hear, though he wasn't surprised. It seemed he'd done too good a job of making a "balanced" presentation. But if he knew the Americans, and he was beginning to know them too well, they would soon give him a good reason to resume the attack he believed necessary…