Starfire (45 page)

Despite the sudden shutdown, the celebrations continued at the lab at Cal Poly, and President Phoenix was applauding just as enthusiastically as everyone else. “Congratulations, Miss Cavendish, Mr. Eagan,” he said. He was directed by his traveling campaign manager where to stand and face, and he had the two team leaders at his side and the large monitor showing the others over his shoulder when the cameras started to roll.

“I was privileged to attend and watch an amazing occurrence here at Cal Poly: the first successful transmission of electrical energy from space to Earth,” he said. His staff had prepared several sets of remarks for him, including a speech in case Starfire didn't work, the spaceplane was lost, or the device destroyed the space station. He was overjoyed—and relieved—to be giving this version. “Although just in its infancy, this is a remarkable achievement, made no less remarkable by the fact that a team of undergraduate college students designed, built, installed, and operated it. I'm very proud of these young people for their achievements, and it highlights perfectly what an investment in education, technology, and space sciences can produce. Congratulations, Jodie, Brad, Casey, and Jerry, and to the entire Starfire team.” The president stayed for several minutes longer for pictures, then departed.

W
HITE
S
ANDS
M
ISSILE
T
EST
R
ANGE

A
LAMOGORDO
, N
EW
M
EXICO

T
HAT
SAME
TIME

“How far are we from that antenna, man?” the pilot of a Cessna 172 Skyhawk asked, sweeping rows of brown dreadlocks out of his eyes. “Everything looks the same around here.”

“About ten more minutes,” the man in the right seat said. He was using a map application on his smartphone to navigate the little plane. Like the pilot, he had long, shoulder-length, dirty-looking hair, a beard, mustache, and thick glasses. The pilot was wearing a Hawaiian shirt, knee-length Bermuda shorts, and sneakers; the right-seater wore a T-shirt, cutoff jeans, and sandals. “Stay on this heading.”

“All right, all right,” the pilot said. They had lifted off from Alamogordo–White Sands Regional Airport about a half hour earlier and headed northwest, entering Holloman Air Force Base's Class-D airspace without talking to anyone on the radio. “You sure you got the right spot, man?” the pilot asked.

“The news reports about the test pointed it out pretty clearly,” the other man said. “We should see it when we get closer—it's pretty big.”

“Man, this is loco,” the pilot said. “They said on the news that no aircraft will be allowed to fly near the antenna.”

“What are they going to do—shoot us down?” the navigator said.

“I don't want to get shot down, man, not by the military or this . . . phaser beam, laser beam, whatever the fuck it is.”

“I don't want to fly over the antenna, just close enough so they'll cancel the test,” the navigator said. “This is an illegal test of a space weapon, and if the federal government or the state of New Mexico won't stop it, we'll have to do it.”

“Whatever,” the pilot said. He strained to look out the windows. “Are we getting . . .
holy shit!
” There, off to their left, not more than a hundred feet away, was a green military Black Hawk helicopter with U.S. AIR FORCE in large black letters on the side, flying in formation. The helicopter's right sliding door was open, and a crewmember in a green flight suit, helmet, and lowered dark visor was visible. “We got company, man.”

The helicopter crewmember in the open door picked up what looked to be a large flashlight and began blinking light signals at the Cessna pilot. “One . . . two . . . one . . . five,” the pilot said. “That's the emergency distress freq.” He changed his number one radio to that frequency.

“High-wing single-engine Cessna, tail number N-3437T, this is the United States Air Force off your left wing, transmitting on GUARD,” they heard, referencing the universal VHF emergency frequency. “You have entered restricted military airspace that is active at this time. Reverse course immediately. The area is active and you are in great danger. Repeat, reverse course immediately.”

“We got a right to be here, man,” the pilot radioed. “We ain't doin' nothin'. Go away.”

“November 3437T, this is the United States Air Force, you are putting yourself in great danger,” the helicopter's copilot said. “Reverse course immediately. I am authorized to take any action necessary to prevent you from proceeding into restricted airspace.”

“What are you going to do, man—shoot us down?” the Cessna pilot said. The helicopter did have a long tube thing on its nose that looked like a cannon—he didn't know it was just an air refueling probe. “Listen, we just want to stop the Starfire test, and then we'll go back home. Go away.”

At that, the Black Hawk suddenly accelerated and did a steep right turn, passing in front of the Cessna not more than one hundred feet away, its rotor disk filling the Cessna's windscreen. The startled pilot cried out and yanked the control yoke back and to the left, then had to fight to regain control as the little airplane almost stalled. They could hear the helicopter's rotor beats thumping against the Cessna's fuselage as it circled around them.

The Black Hawk appeared off his left wing seconds later, closer this time, the beat of the rotor blades now thunderous, as if a giant invisible fist were beating on the side of their little airplane. “N-3437T, reverse course immediately! This is an order! Comply immediately!”

“Is that dude crazy, man?” the pilot said. “I nearly crapped my pants!”

“I see it! I see it, I see the antenna!” the right-seater said. “A little to the right, on the horizon! Big round sucker!”

The pilot followed his passenger's pointing finger. “I don't see nothin', man, I don't— Wait, I got it, I got it,” he said. “That big round thing in the desert? I'll head over to it.” He put the little Cessna into a steep right bank . . .

. . . and as soon as he did so, the Black Hawk helicopter made a steep left turn, blasting the Cessna with its powerful rotor wash. The action flipped the Cessna completely upside down. It entered an inverted flat spin and crashed into the New Mexico desert seconds later.

S
EATTLE
, W
ASHINGTON

A
FEW
HOURS
LATER

“Congratulations, Jung-bae, on a successful test of Starfire,” Dr. Toshuniko “Toby” Nukaga, professor of aerospace engineering at Cal Poly, said via a video teleconference hookup on his laptop computer from his room at an upscale hotel in Seattle, Washington. “I just heard the news. I'm sorry I couldn't be there, but I am chairing a conference up in Seattle.”

“Thank you, sir,” Jerry said. He was in a trailer about a mile from the Starfire rectenna site in the White Sands Missile Test Range northwest of Alamogordo, New Mexico, surrounded by laptop computers used to monitor the power and steering systems aboard Armstrong Space Station. Seven team members were with him, high-fiving one another as they began analyzing the mountain of data they had received. “I am sorry you could not be here as well, sir. You were the driving force behind this project from the very beginning.”

“The credit belongs to you and the others on the project team, Jung-bae—I was only the facilitator. So, how much energy did you transfer?”

“One-point-four-seven megawatts, sir.”

“Outstanding! Well done!”

“It had to be cut short because an unauthorized aircraft entered the range.”

“I had heard that some protesters were going to try to disrupt the test by flying a private plane over the rectenna,” Nukaga said.

Jerry blinked in surprise. “You did, sir?” he asked incredulously.

“Jung-bae, I'm here in Seattle at the annual conference of the International Confederation of Responsible Scientists,” Nukaga said. “There are over a hundred groups represented here of scientists, politicians, environmentalists, and industry leaders from all over the world—we even have the presidential candidate, former secretary of state Stacy Anne Barbeau, here to give the keynote later today.

“We also have a few rather radical groups here too, and one of them, Students for Universal Peace, approached me to complain that Cal Poly was involved in a weapons development program with Starfire,” Nukaga went on. “I assured them we were not, but they insisted. They said it was their duty to do anything they could to stop the Starfire test firing, even if it put their lives in jeopardy—I actually think they were
hoping
someone would get shot down by the maser just to prove it really was a weapon.”

“That is unbelievable, sir,” Jerry said. “Why did you not tell us about this?”

“I only half believed it myself, Jung-bae,” Nukaga said. “Frankly, the kids that confronted me looked like they didn't know where their next meal was coming from, let alone having the wherewithal to hire a plane to fly over a government restricted area hoping to get shot down by a maser beam from space. So.” Nukaga was obviously anxious to change the subject. “Mr. McLanahan and Miss Huggins looked good aboard the military space station. I saw one of their press conferences last night. Are they doing well?”

“Very well, sir.”

“Good. Any problems? Any difficulties with the equipment or software?” Jerry hesitated and averted his eyes from his camera for a brief moment, and Nukaga noticed it right away. “Jung-bae?”

Jerry wasn't sure if he was supposed to be talking about anything having to do with Starfire and the space station on an unsecure network—the team leaders had decided to discuss among themselves what got released and what didn't—but Nukaga was one of their professors and an early but somewhat reluctant supporter of the project. “There was a potential problem with the relay I designed that allowed power to flow from the lithium-ion capacitors to the microwave generator, sir,” he said finally.

“A ‘potential' problem?”

“It did not fail today, but . . . it was not one hundred percent reliable,” Jerry said uneasily, “and with the president of the United States attending the test firing at Cal Poly, we wanted to ensure we could hit the rectenna with maser energy.”

“Well, you did so,” Nukaga said. “The test was a success. I don't understand.”

“Well, we . . . we did not use the energy we collected with the nantennas and stored in the capacitors.”

“Then what energy did you use?”

“We used power from the . . . the magnetohydrodynamic generator,” Jerry said.

There was silence on the line for several long moments, and on the video monitor Jerry could see the growing expression of disbelief on Nukaga's face; then: “You mean,
you activated the laser
aboard Armstrong Space Station,
Jung-bae?” Nukaga asked in a breathless, low, incredulous tone.

“No, sir,” Jerry said. “Not the laser. The free-electron laser itself was deactivated so we could use the laser's subsystems for Starfire. We just used its energy source to—”

“That MHD generator was
still operational
?” Nukaga asked. “I was led to believe that all of the components of the Skybolt space laser had been deactivated.” Jerry had no response to that. “So the one-point-four megawatts you collected with the rectenna came from the MHD and not from Starfire?”

“Yes, sir,” Jerry replied. “We had validated everything else: we collected solar energy, stored the electricity, powered the microwave generator with it, and shot maser energy with the Skybolt's reflectors, collimators, and steering systems. We just needed to hit the rectenna with maser energy. We wanted to do it on the first try, with the president of the United States watching. The MHD generator was our only—”

“Jung-bae, you fired a beam of directed energy at a target on Earth,” Nukaga said. “You shot one megawatt of energy for over two minutes at a distance of over two hundred miles? That's . . .” He paused, running the calculations in his head. “That's over
three million joules
of energy fired by the MHD from that military space station! That's
three times
the legal limit, at a distance almost
four times
the allowed range! That's a serious violation of the Space Preservation Treaty! That's an offense that can be prosecuted by the International Court of Justice or heard by the United Nations Security Council! Space weapons, especially directed-energy weapons, are not allowed to be employed by anyone, even students!”

“No, sir, that cannot be right!” Jerry said, confused, afraid he had said too much and betrayed his colleagues, and afraid of raising the anger of his favorite professor and mentor. “Starfire is a solar power plant, not a space weapon!”

“It was, Jung-bae, until you abandoned using solar power and used the illegal military space laser's power source!” Nukaga cried. “Don't you understand, Jung-bae? You can use fireworks to celebrate the New Year, but if you use a Scud missile to do so, it changes and contaminates the very nature of the spirit you were trying to express, even if you don't attack anyone or blow something up. That's why we have laws against using such things for
any
purpose.” He saw the panicked expression in Jerry's eyes and immediately felt sorry for him. “But you were in New Mexico, were you not?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did they consult with you on the decision to use the MHD generator?”