Silver Tower

EPILOGUE

"He wanted to be where he could see the bay," Ann said. "That's what he said in his will: "I want to rest where I can see the bay and touch the sky where my daughter lives."

She bent down and placed the bouquet of flowers on the mound of earth near the low headstone that bore the name of Captain Matthew E. Page, United States Navy. She and Jason Saint-Michael stood on a low hill on the edge of the cemetery northeast of the Alameda Naval Station. The low clouds and mists obscured San Francisco and Oakland Bay Bridge far below them in the distance, but the clouds had seemed to part just before they reached the top of the Berkeley Hills, and the sun now shone brightly on the summit.

Saint-Michael gripped Ann's hand, released it, then moved off toward the edge of the hill and stared out into the vista below. She watched him as he moved away.

It was obvious that the mists rolling up from San Francisco Bay had invaded his nitrogen-tortured joints: he walked with a cane now in the cool, damp air. It was an old, gnarled shillelagh given to him in a private ceremony by the president. He had accepted it with a smile and a handshake, but he'd been quiet and moody ever since.

It had turned out to be his retirement ceremony as well, since the doctors had decided that it would be too risky for him to go into space again. With no field unit to command and no interest in sitting behind a desk, he'd reluctantly agreed to the medical retirement that Space Command offered him. Come next month, he'd be a civilian again. Could he accept that?

Ann had hoped that getting him to California for New Year's would somehow improve his mood, but it seemed to have the opposite effect. Her mother, Amanda, was supportive, but even her up-mood didn't really help. He was about to leave her home when the unexpected call from Admiral Clancy came, requesting his presence at the Oakland-Alameda Naval Base, headquarters of the Nimitz carrier group, the next day.

They had stopped at her father's gravesite to lay a small bouquet on his headstone, but now she thought that it hadn't been a good idea at all. The reminder of Matthew Page's death only seemed to resurrect other painful memories of the past few months, driving, it seemed, a wedge deeper between them.

She moved close to him, linked her arm in his as they looked out at the swirling mists of San Francisco Bay. "Strange in a way," he said, "but I miss that station. I mean, what is it anyway? Computers, instrument panel — nuts and bolts, really. But I miss the damn thing. You wouldn't believe how I miss it." He looked at her, thinking of her life-saving skill and the fierce dedication she'd shown toward Skybolt. "I take that back… Of course, you would know."

There was no good answer to that. What she said was, "Jason, why did you agree to come here?"

"I thought I should say good-bye to your father… When will you be going back?"

"Back?"

"To the station."

"Never," she said.

"Never? Why?"

"Because that part of my life" she didn't add, his life, "is over. I would never do anything to hurt you."

"But what about your career? That's your laser device up there. That's yours. You can't just—"

"I seem to remember this guy, a cocky sonofabitch Space Command general who said it wasn't my laser. You know something? He was right. You want to know something else? I don't want it anymore. Don't look at me that way. I just don't want anything more to do with it. I built that laser as a defensive device, Jason. Not an offensive one."

"So what were we supposed to do? Let those Elektron spaceplanes use us for target practice?"

"No, of course not. We had no choice — it was them or us. But Space Command's already rebuilt most of Armstrong and placed it in the same orbit over the Arabian Sea that you put it in. They're using it to shadow the Arkhangel group—"

"I still don't see—"

"If Skybolt is supposed to be a defensive weapon, protecting us against strategic nuclear weapons, what's Silver Tower still doing over the Arabian Sea?"

He paused for a moment. "Surveillance. It's still by far the best surveillance platform we've got. And it can help protect the fleet from a sneak cruise-missile attack…"

"Or fighter attack? Bomber attack?"

"Sure…"

"How about hitting the Arkhangel directly? I wonder what Skybolt would do against a carrier? Blow up a few planes on its decks? Set off a weapons magazine? Do some serious damage to electronics? Maybe even kill a few sailors on deck. Why not go one better? You don't have to be a think-tank guru to come up with the idea. Just a sincere dedicated chief of staff, secretary of defense — or president? The Russians are going to have the Brezhnev leave the Persian Gulf and sail to South Yemen for resupply. They say that it will rejoin with the Arkhangel and form a new, stronger battle group to hit the Nimitz again. So why isn't it logical we attack the Brezhnev? Attack it when it gets to port? But better still, why don't we run our laser over the Arkhangel's home port of Vladivostok? Or Murmansk? Or Leningrad? Or Moscow?"

"That's going pretty far, Ann."

"Maybe, but are you so sure? You used to work on Space Command planning staffs. What if you now had weapons with the destructive capability of Silver Tower and Skybolt? Can you really say you'd never consider using them to stop a war before it starts? Preemptive strike? Surgical strike? Or just good old saber-rattling from seven hundred miles in space?"

"I don't believe we'd ever do that."

"I wish you would convince me. But you know as well as I, too much success, like Skybolt has had now, can breed a need for more and more… I wanted to develop it for defensive reasons only. But now…"

He didn't argue with her, but turned away and stared at the huge ridgelines of fog rolling across the bay. They stood together quietly for a long time, until she noticed him shifting his weight from one leg to the other. "We should leave," she said. He followed her back to the car.

Rush-hour traffic had thinned as they made their way down Mount Diablo Boulevard to the Nimitz Highway and on into the Oakland-Alameda Naval Base. When they reached the gate and showed their IDs, the shore patrolman pointed toward a waiting staff car parked at the reception area. "Admiral Clancy is waiting for you, General. His driver will take you and Dr. Page."

Puzzled, Saint-Michael returned the SP's salute, turned across traffic into the parking lot and parked beside the large navy-gray sedan. The driver saluted and held the doors open for them. "All this for a simple debriefing?" Ann said, peering out the darkened windows. She could see very little in the fog and haze surrounding the base. "We're not heading for carrier group headquarters, either. Driver, where are we going?"

"Slip seventeen, ma'am."

"But we are going to meet Admiral Clancy. Saint-Michael said. "Yes, sir. He's waiting."

Ann shrugged, "The boonies. We may as well sit back; it'll be a long ride."

The base was not very large, but the warehouses, docks, and buildings that they were forced to weave among made the trip seem endless. After ten minutes they pulled alongside a long, dark drydock area in front of a maintenance enclosure. The drydock was filled with oil-clogged water and a bit of debris, but it was still relatively fresh-looking water; the drydock basin had only recently been filled with seawater. The enclosure was contained on all sides, but by the looks of the four-inch-diameter hawsers leading to the diesel, ship-moving "mules" on the pier, the vessel inside was huge.

The driver stopped at the foot of a security tower located a hundred yards from the maintenance enclosure, opened the door for his two passengers, saluted, then quickly departed. "This is getting very strange," Saint-Michael said. "I wonder what—"

Suddenly, a horn began to sound from loudspeakers on the maintenance enclosure. The two rail-mounted mules outside the enclosure were started, and the front door of the enclosure began to slide open. "I think we're about to find out."

When the doors were fully opened the mules took up the slack on the hawsers, and with clouds of diesel exhaust billowing skyward, the tractors began to pull on the vessel hidden inside. It had only been pulled a few feet out of the building when Ann suddenly grabbed his arm. "It's the California," she said, "Number thirty-six. They brought the California back to Oakland." But as it was gently pulled out of its enclosure it was obvious it was not the same California. "I hardly recognize her. Look — I'm not sure but I think those are twin missile-launch rails on the nose."

"And two RAM missile-launchers on the forecastle," he said. "Also cannons everywhere… but what the hell is that?"

The California was a bit more than halfway outside when they both gaped at a huge new structure just behind the midships masts. Four massive legs dozens of feet high and several feet wide sprawled across the entire aft section of the ship; it appeared the battleship had had to be lengthened a few feet in the stem just to accommodate the huge legs.

Two RAM missile launchers were mounted between the legs to provide defensive cover for the rear quadrant of the ship, but the most impressive new feature was the device on top of the pedestal: a huge elongated dish — at least forty feet wide and fifty feet long, arranged so that the long part of the dish was parallel to the ship's beam. The dish had two sections of steel folded down on top of it, hinged on the sides and supported by hydraulic pistons. "What the hell… I've never seen anything like that," Saint-Michael said. "it looks like some kind of wing, but on a navy warship…?"

The California was towed clear of the enclosure and the maintenance and security towers surrounding it, then pulled to a halt by two mules in the rear. A gangway was set in place with the familiar "USS CALIFORNIA" on the canvas sides, but,its vessel designation no longer read "CGN-36"; it now read "DWRS-36."

"Well, stop gawking and get up here," they heard from the ship. They looked up the newly painted side of the California and saw Admiral Clancy waving them toward the gangway. According to naval etiquette, they saluted the colors aft, then the officer of the deck, and then hurried up the gangplank and were met by the admiral. "Permission to come aboard, Admiral," Saint-Michael said, saluting him. Clancy returned the salute. "Get your butts up here. I've been waiting all day to show you this."

They had to step lively to keep up with Clancy, who rushed up to the bridge and then around the catwalk facing aft across the huge device sprawled over the California's fantail. "All right, all right, Admiral," Saint-Michael said as they finally stopped and stared out over the top of the curved stack of dish-like plates mounted on the ship. "What is all this?"

"The future, Jason." Clancy turned to a lieutenant commander waiting behind them. "Hit it, Commander."

"Aye, sir." A few moments later a loudspeaker blared, "Attention on deck. Stand by to deploy array panels."

A deep-throated rumbling began on the pedestal below them, and suddenly the curved panels on top of the pedestal began to move, unfolding like giant flower petals. In less than a minute they had dropped into place. The device was now an oblong dish one hundred feet long and forty feet wide at its broadest point, deeply curved in the center. At the precise center was a receiver horn. On the face of the dish was painted "USS CALIFORNIA." Then the dish began slowly to incline and swivel until it was pointing almost directly south, its rim almost touching the two pedestal legs supporting it. "Not a bad piece of work, right, Jas?"

"Not bad, Admiral, but what is it?"

"You haven't figured it out?" He gestured at the dish with a sweeping wave of his hand. "This, sir, is my new California-class SBR, fleet command and control ship. And that is my space-based radar data transreceiver. "

"That's an SBR receiver? Amazing."

"Dedicated one hundred percent to sending and receiving SBR data signals," Clancy said. "Four thousand square feet of antenna, over fifty now — the largest antenna afloat. Shielded and hardened against electromagnetic pulses and designed to operate even in a nuclear environment. But that's not the best part."

Again Ann and Saint-Michael had to scramble to follow Clancy as he led them down through a series of hatches, past crewmen standing at attention along the bulkheads, and into a circular room labeled "CIC. "

"The California's new combat information center. " The admiral motioned toward the center of the circle, where a raised platform, fifteen feet in diameter and curved like a shallow bowl, was under construction. "It's not quite finished but you'll get the idea. We call it the 'DANCE floor' — but you don't dance on it."

He led them over to the platform so they could examine it. "DANCE stands for Digital Advanced Near-space Communications Equipment. A mouthful, I grant you. It's a twenty-first century version of the old craps-table situation-boards they used to have on command ships, the ones with the operators with long croupier sticks moving little ship models around. DANCE floor is actually a horizontal screen that displays SBR data in three dimensions. With it a fleet commander can get an instant three-dimensional map of the area around his fleet for thousands of miles. Images are put on the screen by laser projectors, so ships and their datablocks appear to be hovering in midair in perfect relationship to the fleet. When SBR data aren't available the images can be frozen or the computer can predict where the ships or aircraft would be and update the board accordingly. We can also integrate shipborne radar and other satellite sensor data into the DANCE floor for real-time mapping… I think that station of yours, and its gear, got to me. You and Ann saved thousands of lives out there. When I realized none of my ships had the capability to fully utilize SBR signals, well, I decided we should commit our resources to building one as soon as possible. The navy and the Joint Chiefs backed me all the way. What the hell choice did they have?

"The California's new combat information center should be finished in a month," Clancy said, moving out of CIC and back. up on deck. "One month after that she'll be ready for her first shakedown cruise." They reached the port rail near the gangway and stopped to watch as the huge SBR receiver antenna was being folded up again.

"I wish you luck, Admiral," Saint-Michael said. "She's a beauty. Silver Tower should be fully operational in two months and as long as the Arkhangel and the Brezhnev stay in the Middle East, the station will be there—"

"Not so fast, Jas. You still don't get it. I'm going to need someone special aboard California. Someone who has command experience and knows Armstrong's SBR system. I can think of only one man who fits the bill."

"You want me?"

"Hell, yes, I want you. As commander of the new SBR section you'll oversee all operations, fleet integration and training for the new system. We'll knock the stuffy old U.S. Navy kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century, Jas."

Just then the loudspeaker clicked on. "Attention on deck. Admiral Clancy to the bridge. Admiral Clancy to the bridge. "

"Got to go, Jas. I need your answer. Soonest. You've got to look over your new command and get ready for your new trainees in one month. Ann, you're a wonder… Please give my love to your mother." He turned and trotted down the deck.

"He's a little bit crazy," Ann said, smiling. "Well, do you think you could spend a few months at sea with a fifty-year-old kid?"

"Depends."

"On?"

"Us." He took her hand in his. "I'd love to go, you know that. But I want you, I want us to be together on this. We deserve it. You could go back to the station and—"

"No."

"Ann, listen. Leaving Space Command won't change anything. If they have plans to turn that station into an armed fort and Skybolt into an offensive as well as defensive weapon, just leaving won't change that. It's a cliché, okay, but you've got to work within the system, not outside it if you're going to accomplish anything…"

"What could I do? I wouldn't have any effect on the big brass's decisions—"

"Maybe not right away, but you could sure as hell speak up. And they'd have to give some weight to your opinions… After all, not all the bugs in the laser have been worked out yet. You're still probably the only one around who really knows how Skybolt works…" He smiled. "At least I'd know Silver Tower was being well taken care of."

She moved closer to him. "I'd like to take care of you."

"No problem. Clancy can spare me for a few days. We could take off, Acapulco maybe, the Bahamas, Lake Tahoe—"

"General… I've been in space. Can't we just—"

"We can," he said, taking hold of her arm and signaling to their driver.

Ann was not coy. "Wherever we're going, let's hurry." Saint-Michael leaned forward, instructed the driver, then settled back into her waiting arms.