Act of God (14 page)

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

WASHINGTON, D.C.

The night was getting late, and they had an early flight in the morning to catch. Vandenberg was a continent away. They had left Ugo and Fred at Ugo's top-security apartment in the new VIP complex next to the Potomac. Ugo had taken a characteristic view of his new digs.

"You know, this place useta be part of a big complex of 'temporary government construction' built during World War One. It was finally demolished year before last so they could build these apartments. So I figure, they give this to me, I should be able to keep it for about eighty years before they knock it down again, if they keep going by their old schedule, right?" That seemed to make sense to Sam, too.

Now, he and Laine were in the parking garage of Sam's apartment building. He opened her door and helped her out of the still-unfamiliar little Japanese car, their hands staying together as they turned to head toward the elevator. He had to turn loose of her hand as they passed between a massive concrete pillar and a parked Cadillac. The space was barely wide enough for one person edging sideways.

Sam really didn't quite see the knife lancing toward his stomach. He was just stepping clear of the pillar and all his years of training and practice took over as he spun aside on the ball of one foot, letting knife and hand go past, catching the wrist with his forearm to improve the deflection. His left arm slipped over the man's right arm and then both his hands were gripping the wrist and he was yanking the assassin sideways viciously. It was a classic elbow-breaking
wakigatame
, but before the man's elbow could break, his head was shattered against a concrete pillar. Even as he fell, Sam's hand was snaking beneath his coat and he went into a forward roll and yelled: "Stay down!" to Laine. Such men never work alone.

In his peripheral vision he caught a hint of movement and Sam spun on his belly and came up in that direction, hearing the muffled pop of a silenced pistol and the ping of the slugs hitting the concrete nearby, feeling the sting of fragments kicked up by the slugs, feeling the adrenaline rush and thinking, absurdly, how good it felt to be in top form again. Two more shots pocked the concrete where he'd been. This was no bungling Bulgarian. The roar from Sam's unsilenced ten millimeter was deafening in the echoing confines of the parking garage and the reverberations were still dying away when Sam came up from behind a parked car and saw the Russian aiming in the wrong direction. This kind of mistake a pro only gets to make once and Sam wasn't about to let the chance slip by. His first shot caught the Russian's shoulder, spinning him to face Sam. He was badly hurt but still tried to bring his pistol around for another shot. Sam's next two shots hit him in the chest and the next one, just to be certain, was right through his forehead.

"Stay down!" Sam again cautioned Laine. His cars were ringing and he could barely hear his own voice. He did a quick sweep of the garage but there were no more gunmen. He stepped out through the garage door, gun still in his hand. The street was all but deserted this late, but a car was parked at the curb a few paces away and he could see the glowing coal of the wheelman's cigarette. Sam walked quietly alongside the car and rapped sharply on the door with the side of his automatic. "Hey, Boris."

The man behind the wheel looked up, startled and Sam leaned in, pressing the barrel of his pistol against the man's neck. "Don't even think about it. You know, you people sure aren't getting much mileage out of your diplomatic immunity these days. You might as well go home. Your friends won't be corning back, but you'll get their bodies in a delivery van or something. The papers will probably say there was a mob shootout here tonight."

"Crime in the streets," the Bulgarian said. "It's not safe any more."

Sam grinned tightly, "Beat it, Boris. It's past your bedtime." The Bulgarian shrugged, started the car and slipped it into gear and drove away. A rental car, Sam noted. They weren't yet brazen enough to use an embassy car on a hit.

In the garage, he found Laine leaning against a car with her hands in her coat pockets, looking wan. At least she wasn't as shattered as last time. Sam gave the knife man a brief glance, then went to the gunman. The gun was, as he had suspected, it thirty-two. Anything larger was too difficult to silence efficiently.

Laine came up to him. "KGB?" Her voice was quite steady.

"That's right. The knifer was a sacrifice; a distraction, just some Bulgarian thug. This one's a top Russian. He used to go by the codename Borodin. He was a major or colonel last I heard."

Laine would not look directly at the dead man but she did not seem horrified. "Is it always going to be like this? Dodging bullets in garages?"

Sam shook his head. "They won't try again. I'm surprised they tried a second time." He studied Borodin some more. "Jesus. I can't believe they're still wearing hats and trench coats. Why don't they just issue them uniforms?" There was nothing to be gained down here. "Come on. Let's go up to my apartment. I have to make a call to Langley. God, my landlord's going to be pissed about this."

In the elevator, Laine laid a hand on Sam's arm. "Sam, do you think they'll try for Fred and Ugo? We should notify them."

"In that fort? They'd have to send an ICBM. No, I think they were trying to get you and still hoping to make it look like a feud between me and the Bulgarians." He watched her closely, looking for a sign of delayed reaction. "You're taking it a lot better this time."

"I've had some time to think since last time. They were KGB killers and if it is them or us, I'd much rather we were the ones to survive. At first I was afraid that maybe you were like them, but now I know that you are not. I'm just glad that we are both alive."

In the apartment Sam made the necessary telephone calls while Laine sat silently on the corner of the couch. "Sam?" she said when he hung up. He looked at her as he sat on the couch. "Just because I'm not so upset this time doesn't mean I could not use some comforting." She even managed a smile as she came into his arms.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

KREMLIN

The reception for the Bulgarian party chiefs was just wrapping up. The burly chief of the Soviet Army was leaving with the svelte secretary-hostess. Nekrasov had noticed the man eyeing her and he had passed word through a KGB agent to make the introductions and whisper a few words in her car. She had played this role before, and Nekrasov was soon going to need all the leverage he could yet with the armed forces. When his iceberg bombs struck he would need to gather the reins quickly, consolidating power in his own hands and putting Chekhov out to pasture. No, perhaps the Premier should be disposed of permanently. After all, some of the icebergs would be falling on Soviet soil, and the old man could just be standing under one of them. Nekrasov produced one of his rare smiles at the neat irony of it.

When the last guest had left Nekrasov went into his office and found Ryabkin waiting for him, pacing the room. It was a bad sign for the usually phlegmatic Ryabkin to be showing signs of nerves.

He motioned Ryabkin to sit and took a chair facing him.

"Comrade Deputy Premier, we have several problems. The second attempt to eliminate Taggart and the Estonian woman failed as well. Borodin is dead, along with his Bulgarian backup. We dare not try again."

"The damage is done," Nekrasov said. "You spoke of several problems. What are the others?"

"It seems that Tammsalu, Taggart and Ciano have pushed themselves far enough to address the National Security Council and they are being taken seriously. Ciano has been moved into high-security housing reserved for persons whose safety is crucial to the nation."

"How seriously are their charges being taken? After all, they have little evidence and they know nothing for sure."

"We come to the worst of my report. The National Security Council has made up an intelligence report concerning the charges made by these people. They have codenamed the iceberg plan Project Ivan the Terrible. Their present policy calls for massive nuclear retaliation against any such attack. The first fall of an ice or meteoric rock missile on American territory or in waters near enough to do damage to the American coast will be met by a nuclear counterstrike."

Nekrasov almost smiled again. "Project Ivan the Terrible. It's a good name. I should have thought of it myself." He regarded his former deputy with a look of pure stone. "Obviously you didn't come by this report through diplomatic channels or there would be an emergency session of the Politburo sitting right now. How did you get this information and how reliable is it?"

"We have a mole planted in the periphery of the CIA—"

"I know that," Nekrasov said impatiently. "I put him there."

"He saw the cover page of a highly classified document with the title Project Ivan the Terrible. The KGB chief in residence had passed word around to investigate any new programs directed at the Soviet Union and he managed to scan the report. He was of course mystified by references to ice bombs but he managed to report what he had learned to the local KGB chief who reported to me."

"Verbally? Nothing written or recorded?"

"Nothing."

"That's good. I want further confirmation of this. It could be that this massive nuclear retaliation is a contingency plan, not a settled government policy." He leaned back in his chair for just a moment.

"We have a double agent, a man who has been doing business with us and with the Americans for years. He is a Cuban who got into America years ago, during the Carter boatlift. Put him on it. When he reports results, have him thoroughly interrogated, using the new drugs, to make sure his report is accurate. Then get rid of him and destroy all evidence."

"It shall be done. Is the iceberg bomb project now cancelled?"

"Not at all. It shall go forward." He saw the dismay on Ryabkin's face. "It will be modified, of course. The Americans are not the only ones with backup plans. I foresaw this possibility from the first and drew up alternate strategies. Do you really believe they would use massive nuclear retaliation? It would be suicidal. Our new anti-missile defenses are now operational in all our most vital areas. They know we would shoot back with our own missiles and nuclear winter would probably kill whoever survived. I think that report was planted, which means our mole has been compromised. They're bluffing, Ryabkin. It's always the same with them: they talk tough but they back down rather than face a real threat. They're weak, Ryabkin. For years they've substituted money for strength and now they're too spineless to use what strength they have left. My Project Ivan the Terrible will bring them to their knees, have no fear."

"As you say, Comrade Deputy Premier." It was a remarkable tirade from the usually reticent Nekrasov. Ryabkin began to have serious doubts about Nekrasov's sanity.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

PIONYER I

To viewers used to the spectacular launches of Space Shuttle or Space Truck, the launch of man kind's first deep-space mission would have been a disappointing sight. There was none of the shattering noise, clouds of smoke or gigantic vehicles lurching their way ponderously skyward. In fact, it was less dramatic than a typical launch of a small, unmanned interplanetary mission from a near-Earth orbit. In the launching of chemically-fueled rockets, most of the acceleration was accomplished during the initial few minutes, at which lime the bulk of the fuel was ignited in spectacular fashion. After that, such a craft would coast along its ballistic path in accordance with the inexorable laws of Newtonian mechanics. Using such methods, a one-way trip to Mars, for instance, would take several years, making long-distance missions impractical for manned probes.

Pionyer I
, witnessed only by the somewhat jaded crew of Space Station
Volga
, blasted off from orbit with little fuss. Ignition was signaled by a faint glow from its thrusters and the ship began to move, quite slowly at first, from its position near the station. Unlike the conventional rockets,
Pionyer
was the first continuously accelerating spaceship, designed to bring interplanetary distances within the grasp of man. Hundreds of millions, even billions of kilometers, could now be crossed in time spans practicable for manned missions. If everything worked.

A shuttle, taking off from Earth, went from a dead standstill to several G forces within a few seconds.
Pionyer
initially accelerated at a rate of about 0.01 G. Such an acceleration is almost imperceptible. However, in interplanetary space, a constant boost of 0.01 G allows a ship to attain a speed of nearly 10 kilometers per second at the end of one day, and it is still accelerating.

Korsakov and his crew held their breaths for some time as the ship drew away from the station. Everything seemed to be working perfectly. Korsakov expelled his breath and grinned. The mission was in his hands now.
His!
Traditionally, Soviet space missions were controlled to the greatest extent possible from the ground, leaving the cosmonauts little autonomy. The distance involved in this mission did not allow such ground control. Korsakov would have unprecedented authority, aided, of course, by his computer.

Compared with a simple fly-by of a comet, as had been done with Halley's and others, this rendezvous-with-touchdown was an immensely complicated proposition. The fly-by involved a simple juxtaposition: the elliptical orbits of the comet and the probe had to cross at some point, and comet and probe had to arrive at the intersection at roughly the same time, at least close enough to allow study without a collision.

Pionyer
had to match velocity, speed and direction with the comet precisely at the moment of encounter. Even the slightest difference in velocity could result in disaster. To complicate matters further, the ship's course had to account for the continuously changing mass of the ship as its reaction mass, the water in the storage tank, was depleted.

All this meant that the ship's course had to be continuously updated by a high capacity computer tied to a multiple-star sensor and inertial guidance system. A couple of decades before, that would have meant a linkup with a gigantic computer system on the ground.
Pionyer I
was equipped with the latest fifth-generation computer, providing on board computing capabilities undreamed of only a few years before. Operating this computer and applying its recommended adjustments comprised Korsakov's main responsibility as captain and chief pilot until rendezvous, at which time he'd get to do some real piloting.

The comet chosen for this mission was a periodic comet whose orbit and return to the inner system could be precisely predicted. Its orbit was close to the ecliptic plane, the plane on which the Earth orbits the Sun. Its closest approach to the sun was little less than one astronomical unit, which is the mean distance of the Earth from the Sun. This reduced the danger of exposing the crew to excessive solar radiation during their mission. The comet's path also brought it fairly close to the Earth itself at its perihelion point.

Korsakov and the crew were immensely grateful lot this last fact, since it made for a relatively short voyage. A good thing, since they were assigned no experiments or other scientific work and had very little to do except for the pilot on duty.

"Boredom could prove to be the greatest hazard of space travel," said Kaminsky, the Second Pilot. He drifted on a short tether near the ship's tiny galley. "At least on the old sailing ships they had storms, sails to trim, things to break the monotony."

"Bigger crews, too," contributed Gurdin, the life-support systems engineer. "Not the same few ugly faces to look at all the time. Next time let's sneak in some of those computer games they're so fond of in the West. I played some in Switzerland once. They're a lot more fun than chess."

"They're decadent and designed to sap the will of the proletariat, hadn't you heard?" reproved Korsakov. "Put yourself on report for political laxity. I 'm told that we'll soon have political education officers in space so we can all feel right at home." He checked his computer screen for the hundredth time since waking. They were getting close, as distances are calculated in space.

With a practiced flick of his wrist, Korsakov launched himself toward the tiny observation dome. Grasping the handholds, he stuck his head into the Neoquartz bubble, which was just large enough to accommodate a helmeted head. Korsakov scanned the stars briefly. "There it is," he announced. The others came crowding up and he abandoned the bubble to give them a chance to look. "Not much to see yet."

"It's just a fuzzy dot out there," said Kaminsky disappointedly.

"We're still days from rendezvous," Korsakov told them. "But at least we know that it's there. It would have been embarrassing to arrive at the rendezvous point and sit there staring at our watches while it didn't show up."

"A woman once did that to me in Pskov," Gurdin said. "At least comets are more predictable."

"But comets are a thousand times more dangerous," Korsakov said. "We're going to be cutting pieces off that thing with a laser, something that's never been tried before. We'll all have plenty of opportunities to get our names on some monument to the heroic dead, so I want no mistakes when we get to work. Anybody who fails to follow orders exactly gets to walk home."

"It'll look much bigger tomorrow," Kaminsky said, drifting from the observation bubble. "Let's wake our relief. Let them be bored for a while."

By the time they were within a thousand kilometers of the comet, there was still ample water left in the ship's reaction mass tank. It was a tribute to Korsakov's skill. The onboard nuclear powerhouse had sufficient uranium fuel to last well beyond the anticipated return trip. The next generation of spaceships would harness hydrogen fusion, providing a literally inexhaustible quantity of fuel for space travel. That was many years in the future. Right now the crucial question was whether they could mine sufficient ice from the comet to replenish the ship's water tank, and whether the ice was pure enough for their separator to clean up for use. If those two factors worked out, even if they failed in detaching the two icebergs, they would have accomplished one of their major objectives: the first manned interplanetary flight.

The immense cometary coma, the nebulous envelope surrounding the mass which spread out into a long "tail" as the comet neared the sun, was little more than vacuum made visible. As
Pionyer
entered it days earlier, visibility did not change substantially for the expedition, despite the coma's hazy appearance from the Earth. As the ship came in within several hundred kilometers of the comet, the denser gas and dust particles began to obscure vision. The comet's nucleus, the solid core, was visible only on the ship's radar screen. This comet was icy, as opposed to some that were dusty, but there were dust particles in the coma, in particular near the nucleus, and moving at such speeds even dust could pose a hazard to a spaceship.

Making touchdown on a comet was not like landing on a planet or the Moon. It was not even like docking with an orbiting space station. It was more like harpooning a whale. The comet's gravity was detectable only by instruments, and since it rotated it would literally cast the ship away unless it were securely anchored.

For the last few hours Korsakov was in the pilot's seat without relief. None of the others could be trusted with these incredibly delicate maneuvers, perhaps the most difficult ever attempted in space. His eyes were glued to his screens with their television views of the nucleus and their continuously-changing readouts. It truly looked like a jagged snowball, with streams of gas streaking across its surface.

"Cast off grapples," Korsakov ordered.

There was a slight vibration through the ship. "Grapples away," reported Tamara Ulanova, the only woman aboard. The rocket-propelled grapples shot across the intervening space, trailing their thin but high-strength cables. Glowing red-hot, the grapples impacted the surface, burying themselves in the ice, then expanding explosively beneath the surface, extending their barbs to grip the ice firmly. The crew waited tensely for several minutes, letting the grapples cool and giving the ice a chance to refreeze over the metal.

"Check tension," Korsakov said.

Tamara started the ship's windlasses for a moment, putting a slight tension on the cables and reading the results on her screen. "Full tension on all four anchors!" she said exultantly.

"Reel us in." Korsakov ordered.

Slowly,
Pionyer I
inched down its anchor cables toward the cometary surface. There was an imperceptible jolt. Nobody dared to say anything. Korsakov released himself from the pilot's harness and looked out through the observation bubble. He shuddered briefly from released tension.

Outside, it looked like a very foggy morning on Earth, with visibility limited to a few meters. The 'landscape', 'cometscape'? was surrealistic, eerie. Alien.

Korsakov looked down and saw that the landing struts had their feet firmly, solidly against the surface. Then he checked to make sure his microphone and recorder were operational. "Tsiolkovsky Center, this is
Pionyer
Base, on the comet. Mankind is now an interplanetary species." The crew broke into spontaneous cheering, their over-vigorous back-slapping sending them spinning about the cramped interior of the ship. Kaminsky pressed a vodka flask into his hand and Korsakov held it out toward the others. "To the future!" He took a long pull at it and passed it on.

After a lengthy instrument check and general stock-taking, they prepared for the first EVA. As captain and sovereign master, Korsakov had the honor of being first. The airlock hatch swung open to the foggy scene and Korsakov pushed himself along the rail of the spindly ramp. A shock of exhilaration shot through him as his feet touched the surface. So this was how Armstrong felt! It took a little hand-pressure on the ramp to hold himself against the surface. The comet's gravity, about one hundred thousandth of Earth's, was indistinguishable from free-fall. He only wished that this event was broadcast to the whole world like the American Lunar feats had been.

The work of the following weeks was the most difficult and arduous ever attempted in space. Clumsily, under conditions akin to those of deep-sea divers, the six-person crew worked continuously on eight-hour shifts, cutting ice. Hampered by their awkward pressure suits and the umbilical lines connecting them to the ship, they wrestled with the newly-developed laser saws to free the ice from its matrix.

The lasers had to be handled with utmost delicacy. The slightest slip could destroy their space-suits, their umbilical lines, even their ship, and space is the most unforgiving of environments. All knew that a serious accident could have only one result: death. The only variable was the number of deaths.

They cut ice for the water tanks first. This they did in small chunks, getting practice for cutting loose two icebergs. First they melted smaller chunks to distill for the reaction mass tank, then they cut a somewhat larger chunk as reserve fuel. Even though the tank was now full, the return journey would consume far more reaction mass than the outward trip. Going back, they would have to accelerate and decelerate the mass of the two icebergs and the reserve ice in addition to the ship and its fuel tank.

Conditions were hampered further by the rotation of the cometary nucleus. When their site was facing sunward, they had a bright, dense fog. Visibility was limited, but the diffuse light made work fairly easy. With the sun on the opposite side, they were in twilight. The refracted light scattered by the water vapor and dust prevented total darkness but their environment was obscure and their floodlights proved to be of little use.

With much early frustration, they learned that the ice had to be separated quickly from its bed once cut with the laser. Even the minute gravitational attraction of the comet was sufficient to cause a new bonding to take place almost instantly. They improvised a tripod crane from the general-purpose strut material they had brought along, and with this and a grapple they kept their ice blocks under cable tension sufficient to lift it free as the final cuts were completed. The crane looked unthinkably spindly to support such massive objects, but the real problem was to keep its legs anchored down to keep both crane and ice from drifting off into space. At least the ship's nuclear generator provided all the power they needed for their tasks. That allowed for the repetition of jobs that failed on the first, second or third try.

At the end of three weeks,
Pionyer I
, with its cargo of dirty icebergs, was on its way. So far, the crew suffered from nothing but fatigue and one sprained ankle. They had been prepared, indeed had even expected, to absorb more casualties. Theoretically, the return journey could be made with a crew of three. That was the first major relief.

The second was that the ice was usable. The worst fear of the planners had been that the ice would contain too many large rocks. Testing suggested that there were some rocks near the core but the comet's surface was covered with dusty ice laced with trace molecules of such chemicals as ammonia and methane. These trace molecules were not sufficient to disrupt the operation of the propulsion system. The system worked most efficiently when the charge-to-mass ratio of ions used was the highest. Hydrogen ions extracted from water yielded the highest charge-to-mass ratio attainable. Hydrogen ions were separated from oxygen ions through a special device. Each ionic species was accelerated through separate ion-drive boosters for maximum efficiency.