Act of God (15 page)

The ship, with no further use for its grapples, cast the cables loose. Slowly and deliberately, the ship began to accelerate away from the comet. Tired as they were, the trip back was not to be one of rest and relaxation for the crew. There remained the complicated task of equipping the two icebergs with auxiliary chemical thrusters for the final precision maneuvering at the time of the icebergs' entry into the atmosphere above arctic Siberia. Before doing so, however, they had to determine the exact center of inertia of each so that the thrust from the auxiliary booster would not throw the icebergs into a spin.

Difficult as it had been to free them from the comet, and terrible as their employment might be, they did not look very dangerous. Each iceberg was about the size of a small suburban house. The power released would be all out of proportion to their size. These were to be experimental bombs; there was technically no limit to the size of the icebergs that could be brought in except for the size of the comets themselves.

Korsakov had one more important task left after attaching the auxiliary thrusters. He had to steer his ship on such a trajectory that, when the icebergs were disconnected from
Pionyer I
, they would proceed on their way to their destination in Siberia. The icebergs would be released very near the end of their journey. The fine maneuvering at the time of the impact would be directed from one of the three new geosynchronous space stations:
Volga
,
Don
and
Dnepr
. Once the icebergs were cut loose, Korsakov's mission would be completed. He and his crew would have accomplished the greatest, most important feat so far in man's expansion into space. And if all went well the world would never know.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

VANDENBERG AFB, CALIFORNIA

The starscape in front of Sam was spectacular. Each star was a brilliant, steady pinpoint of light instead of the flickering display that most people see, filtered through a thick atmosphere. To his left was the immense blue bulge of the Earth. He could see a sizable hurricane developing to the south of Okinawa. Or did they call them typhoons in that part of the world? There was a knock on the door behind him. "Colonel Taggart?" called a young voice.

Sam got up and opened the door. Outside was a young Air Force buck sergeant with a message in his hand. Behind him Sam could see the huge hangar which at the moment was mostly full of trainees in the newly-designed Space Service uniforms. "Message for you, sir." The sergeant handed him the message and a clipboard and Sam signed for it. The sergeant stuck his head inside. "These simulators are unreal," he said. "This is better than Disneyland!"

"I wish they'd change the display," Sam groused. "That storm's been hanging off Okinawa for six weeks. Were you ever on Okinawa, Sarge?"

"Yessir. Two years in Security at Kadena. Good duty there. Best sushi bars and massage parlors anywhere."

"Tell me something: Is it hurricanes or typhoons they have there?"

"Typhoons. I sat a couple out at Kadena. I think hurricanes are strictly Atlantic."

"Thanks. Where's the nearest phone?"

The sergeant pointed to a service hallway between a snack bar and classroom. "There's one over there, sir."

"Secure?"

"All the phones here are secure if you have the right code."

Sam glanced at the note again as he crossed the hangar to the phone. It said simply that Dr. Ciano had called from Denver and wanted Taggart to call back as soon as possible. Busy as Ciano was these days, he was as excitable as ever, and these calls were frequent. Sam punched the security code first, then the number Ciano had sent. A male voice answered: "General Spacecraft, Mr. McNaughton's office." General Spacecraft was the prime contractor for Bountyhunter-A. Ugo had been spending a lot of time there, and at other prominent aerospace-oriented companies. Sam had a suspicion that Ugo was buying up stock on the sly, getting outrageously favorable prices because of his government position, blissfully uncaring of probable future charges of corruption and conflict of interest. He'd probably get away with it, too, the arrogant little bastard.

"May I speak to Dr. Ciano, please?"

"One moment, sir." There was a brief delay, then: "Taggart, I need to talk to you."

"Ugo, what's the difference between a hurricane and a typhoon?"

There was a moment of silence. "You feeling all right, Taggart? They treating you okay? Have you maybe been for one too many spins in the centrifuge?"

"I'm fine. I've been looking at the same storm for the last six weeks in the flight simulator. I was wondering whether it was a typhoon or a hurricane. Since you're the world's greatest expert on everything, I just thought I'd ask."

"Well, just to set your mind at rest, they're the same thing. Both tropical cyclonic storms originating over water. Typhoon is what they call 'em in the Pacific; comes from Chinese. Hurricane is what they call 'em in the Atlantic and it's a Carib Indian word. Feel better now?"

"Thanks, Ugo. I knew you'd come through for me. Now, what's
your
problem?"

"I'm in a powwow with the head honcho of General Spacecraft right now. We need you here right away. How soon can you get here?"

"Just like that? Drop everything and fly to Denver?"

"Right. You got anything better to do?"

"You better believe it. I have a late lunch date with Laine in—" he glanced at his watch, "forty-five minutes, as soon as she's out of the acceleration chamber. Then we have plans for the evening. Is it that urgent?"

"Yep. Anyway, I don't know about this evening, but Laine ain't gonna have no appetite for lunch if she's spent the morning in the acceleration chamber. Just tell her it's a matter of national security, which it is. How quick can you get here?"

Sam fumed quietly. "If there's a spare F18 out there ready to go, I can be there in about two and a half hours."

"Try to make it two. I'll meet you at the airfield. Drive careful, now." Ugo hung up.

Sam left a message for Laine. The accelerated Shuttle training program had left them little time together during the last few months. This wasn't the first engagement they had had to cancel. On the airfield, he found the sergeant in charge of the flight line. "You have an F18 fueled up, Sarge?" Sam had taken care to ingratiate himself with the flight line personnel as soon as he had come here.

"Can you have it back tomorrow?" The Air Force staff sergeant looked absurdly young to be responsible for a whole line of high-performance aircraft. "I'll be needing it by 0900."

"Sure. If I can't bring it back myself, I can get someone to fly it."

"Just make sure and let me know who's bringing it back if it's not you. Sign here, Colonel." He handed Sam a clipboard.

After considerable arm-twisting, Sam had managed to get himself into the shuttle pilot program. To be flight-qualified involved accumulating sufficient pilot-hours on an F-18. He also needed to fly a specified number of hours each month to maintain his flight-ready status. To this end, the Air Force allowed astronauts to use F18s to run errands, on an aircraft-available basis.

As promised, Ugo was waiting for Sam at the hangar. He gave Sam a bearhug and a slap on the back, which his long arms permitted without needing a stool to stand on. "Lookit my newest toy!" Ugo gestured grandly at a low-slung sports car. It looked fast and expensive. Sam examined it, noting the special boosters on the gas and brake pedals. The clutch was a squeeze-lever mounted on the steering wheel.

"Is it as fast as it looks?" Sam asked. Immediately, he regretted the question.

"Hop in." Ugo said. Sam did, with trepidation. Unauthorized aerobatics in an F18 didn't scare him one tenth as much as the thought of Ciano at the controls of a bomb like this.

Sam's head slammed back against the headrest as Ugo hit the accelerator and the little car tore off in a screech of tires, trailing a plume of rubber smoke. He blithely drove out onto a runway and passed a taxiing airplane, whose pilot was yelling into a mike, probably asking the tower what the hell was going on.

They passed through a gate and Sam expected Ciano to show a little more circumspection out on the public highway, but such was not to be. "Ugo," he said, "you just went through a red light. There's nobody chasing us with guns this time."

"Uh-uh. If you'd've looked close, you'd've noticed it wasn't really red. When I get this thing going fast enough, the red lights violet-shift to green. You got to take into account the relativistic effects." With this concept firmly in mind, Ugo never stopped for a red light. They pulled up at their destination in a screech of brakes.

Sam read his watch unbelievingly. "We couldn't have covered twenty miles in that time."

"Relativistic effects again. This time it's time dilation. You have to brush up on your Einsteinian physics, Sam. I'll lend you some good texts."

"We got this problem, see," Ugo told him as they walked from the parking lot to the administration building. General Spacecraft was a sprawl of offices, shops and factories surrounded by a high chainlink fence. "The chairman of the board came to me with it, because they regard me as sorta the resident genius when I'm around, which is my cross to bear everywhere. The problem involves hardware, but I think the solution lies in people-engineering. And who's the best trouble-shooter in the people-engineering department but my old buddy Sam?"

"Ugo, I just don't know how to thank you."

"You'll think of something."

The administration building was an ultramodern piece of architecture designed for efficiency and security. There was a guard sitting at a console next to the private elevator which went to the chairman's suite, and he took Ugo's voiceprint.

"Do you really think someone might slip past you disguised as Dr. Ciano?" Sam asked the guard.

"Could happen," he said humorlessly.

The elevator opened onto an elegant lounge where they were greeted by an efficient young man whom Sam's practiced eye identified as the boss's bodyguard. He ushered them into a spacious office with a gigantic, floor-to-ceiling window providing a breathtaking view of the Rockies.

"Pretty nifty office, huh?" said Ugo. "I'm gonna get Uncle Sam to give me one just like it."

Ian McNaughton entered from a side room and greeted Sam warmly. He was chairman of what had become in recent years an immense aerospace conglomerate. In height, he fell into the sizable span between Ugo and Sam. He looked to be about fifty, which was not an advanced age for a top executive of one of the largest companies in the world. His hair and moustache were whitish-blond, making him seem a bit older. His clothes were conservative and expensive. He offered amenities but Sam and Ugo, both in training these days, settled for tea. When the tea was served, McNaughton came straight to the point.

"I trust Dr. Ciano outlined our problem to you on the way from the airport?"

Ugo tried to look innocent. "He did," Sam lied, "but Dr. Ciano tends to talk over my head. I'm pretty much a layman in these matters. I'd appreciate it if you'd go over it for me in simple terms."

"The work on Bountyhunter-A had been going rather well until this problem cropped up. The problem is with the system for zero-g separation of water from cosmic dust and other impurities in the comet's ice.

"To complicate the problem, we have only educated guesses as to the composition of comets. The Russians, on the other hand, have several successful cometary probes behind them, and may even have managed to retrieve physical samples. Automated returns are something of a Soviet specialty. You may recall that shortly after our initial Apollo landings, they got their own Lunar samples back using an automated return rocket.

"Since we have only guesswork to go on concerning the composition of comets, we're doing the 'worst case' design for the separation system, which makes our engineering task formidable indeed. In a manned mission, we can't afford to take too many risks, instructions from the Department of Space Defense notwithstanding. We think we can lick the problem in three years but probably not in two, no matter how many corners we cut. In order to keep to our schedule, we have to have this test completed within one year." He paused briefly to brush an imaginary speck of dust from the top of his spotless mahogany desk. He picked up his tea cup and Ciano seized the opportunity to leap in,

"Like I said, the problem ain't exactly insoluble. Alter all, the Russians have come up with an answer. And so have others—that's where you come in, Sam, my boy."

"I was wondering about that." Sam wandered over to the huge window and admired the spectacular view.

Ugo went on, "One of the maverick Japanese new-tech companies has recently succeeded in producing just the kind of separation system we need. They developed it for manufacturing work in space. But it's an industrial secret and they're holding it tight. We've gleaned just enough info to be pretty sure it'll do the job for us."

Sam scanned the multitude of buildings below. "So buy it. This outfit doesn't look short on capital."

"Now you've come to the soul of the problem," Ugo said. "They won't sell us that sucker at any price."

Sam smiled. "So you want me to steal it for you? Or bribe somebody?"

McNaughton maintained a poker face and said nothing.

"Hell, we're among friends here," Ugo said. "Sam, we already tried to bribe them. We struck out clean. Luckily it didn't turn into a public scandal."

"So now you need an expert on breaking and entering?"

"Sam!" Ugo's hand clapped dramatically over his heart, the picture of wounded innocence. "Would I ask you to do such a thing? Look, you're a persuader, Sam, you got contacts all over the world. Admittedly, I'm a genius, but I can't twist arms like you can. Surely you know somebody in the Japanese government you can talk to, maybe blackmail a little. Nothing really illegal. Of course," he shrugged and spread his hands helplessly, "if you gotta shoot somebody, that's okay, but don't get caught—and get us that separator."

"I'm not hearing this," McNaughton said.

"What's the name of the Japanese company?" Sam asked.

"Uchu Kogyo K.K., which translates as Space Industries, Incorporated," McNaughton said. "The president is one—" he consulted a file on his desk, "—Goro Kuroda, if I have the pronunciation correct." He didn't catch Sam's quick smile.

Sam continued to study the sprawling facility he low. "How come the Japanese got this thing first? Your company must be nearly as big as NASA. Weren't your R&D people working on it?"

"Not our line of work." McNaughton shrugged. "It wasn't a priority project with us until now. General Spacecraft does very little generalized research. Our contracts usually involve weather and communications satellites as well as defense and Intelligence contracting. You're well aware that that means mostly orbital technology. Our investors don't like to see their money spent on non income-generating projects. Why should they?"

"Japan, on the other hand," Ciano said, maliciously, "is different. Lots of entrepreneur spirit there, and lots of government cooperation. They ain't afraid of a little risk." McNaughton said nothing, but his left eyebrow went up a fraction of an inch at the word, "little."

"All right," Sam said. "I'll take care of it. Mr. McNaughton, I need to make a transpacific call under Utmost Secret code. Is there a phone here that can handle it?"

"Well," McNaughton said uneasily, "despite all our government work, I've never heard of Utmost Secret, but my desk phone is supposed to have all the latest security gadgets."

"It'll have to do. Mr. McNaughton, I'm going to have to ask you to leave the room while I make this call. I won't take long."

"Uh, Sam," Ugo said queasily, "maybe I should to with Ian. I mean, I don't—"

"You stay here, Dr. Ciano," Sam said, sternly. "As Deputy Director of Project Bounty Hunter, you are going to have to be in on this."