Lemontov had grunted, then pulled away and drew on his cigarette. Finally he spoke: "Yuri Andreevich, sometimes it's wiser to leave strategy to the professionals. You do your job and I'll do mine."
Yuri remembered how he'd felt his anger boil. He'd begun to suspect that certain CPSU hardliners like Lemontov, together with the military or the KGB, had their own plans for the vehicle. But what were they up to?
"Look, I'm doing my job. So how about a little openness, a little glasnost? This is not supposed to be like the old days."
Lemontov had drawn a few paces ahead on the tarmac, walking briskly, with the quick energy that had brought him to his powerful party post. Finally he'd slowed and waited for Yuri to catch up. He had made a decision and he had made it quickly. That was characteristic.
"Yuri Andreevich, in a way you represent part of our 'technology exchange' with Mino Industries. You have an indispensible role to play here. This whole program depends on you."
"I'm well aware of that." However, it hadn't answered his questions.
"Then you should also be aware of something else. This undertaking is a small, but highly crucial, part of something much larger. Nothing less than the fate of the Soviet Union in the next century rests on whether Project Daedalus succeeds."
"What do you mean?" Yuri had watched him walk on, feeling his own impatience growing.
Lemontov had turned back again, brusquely. "This hypersonic spacecraft is the symbol, the flagship, of a new Soviet alliance with the most technologically advanced nation on earth. Even a 'flyboy' like you should be able to grasp that. Through this alliance we eventually will find a way to tap all of Japan's new technology. The world of the future — advanced semiconductors, robots, biotechnology, superconductivity, all of it — is going to be controlled by Japan, and we must have access to it."
Yuri had listened in silence, once more feeling he was being fed half-truths. Then Lemontov lowered his voice.
"Yuri Andreevich, by forming what amounts to a strategic alliance with Mino Industries, we will achieve two objectives. We will gain access to Japanese technology and capital, to rejuvenate Soviet industry and placate our people. And we will strike a preemptive blow against the peril of a new China on our borders in the next century."
"China?" Yuri had studied him, startled.
"My friend, don't be fooled by summits and talks of reconciliation. Neither we nor China care a kopeck about the other. Think about it. In the long run, China can only be our nightmare. If America had to look across its Canadian border and see China, they too would be terrified. China has the numbers and, soon, the technology to threaten us. It's the worst nightmare you or I could ever have." Lemontov had paused to crush out his cigarette, grinding it savagely into the asphalt. "We must prepare for it now."
The hardliners have just found a new enemy, Yuri had realized. The Cold War lives!
"Like it or not," Lemontov had continued, "and just between us I'm not sure I do like it, we have no choice but to turn to Japan in order to have an ally in Asia to counter the new, frightening specter of a hostile China rising up on our flank."
"So how does Daedalus figure into all this?"
"As I said, it is the first step in our new alliance. From now on our space programs will be united as one." He had sighed into the icy wind. "It will be our mutual platform for near-earth space exploration."
"With only peaceful intent?" Yuri had tried to study his eyes, but the dark obscured them.
"I've told you all you need to know." A match had flared again as he lit another cigarette. In the tiny blaze of light he gave a small wink. "Even though the Daedalus could easily be converted to a… first-strike platform, we naturally have no intention of outfitting these prototypes, or later production models, for any such purpose. The Japanese would never agree."
What had he been saying? That the hardliners were planning to seize the vehicles and retrofit them as first- strike bombers? Maybe even make a preemptive strike against China? Were they planning to double-cross the Japanese?
What they didn't seem to realize was that these vehicles didn't need to be retrofitted. Daedalus was already faster and more deadly than any existing missile. It couldn't be shot down, not by America's yet-to-be-built SDI, not by anything. And speed was only part of the story. What about the vehicle's other capabilities?
He switched his helmet screens momentarily to the infrared cameras in the nose and studied the runway. Infrared. Pure military. And that was just the beginning. There also was phased-array radar and slit-scan radar, both equipped for frequency hopping and "squirt" emissions to evade detection. And how about the radar altimeter, which allowed subsonic maneuvering at low altitudes, "on the deck"? Or the auxiliary fuel capacity in the forward bay, which permitted long-distance sustained operation?
No "space platform" needed all this radar-evasive, weapons-systems management capability. Or a hyper-accurate inertial navigation system. Kick in the scramjets and Daedalus could climb a hundred thousand miles straight up in seven minutes, reenter the lower atmosphere at will, loiter over an area, kick ass, then return to the untouchable safety of space. There was enough cruise missile capacity to take out fifty hardened sites. It could perform troop surveillance, deploy commandos to any firefight on the globe in two hours… you name it. He also suspected there was yet another feature, even more ominous, which he planned to check out tonight.
While the Soviet military was secretly drooling to get its hands on this new bomber, sending the cream of Soviet propulsion engineers here to make sure it worked, they already had been outflanked. Typical idiocy. What they'd overlooked was that these two planes still belonged to Mino Industries, and only Mino Industries had access to the high-temperature ceramics and titanium composites required to build more. Tanzan Mino held all the cards. He surely knew the capabilities of this plane. Everything was already in place. Mino Industries now owned the ultimate weapon: they had built or subcontracted every component. Was Lemontov such a dumb party hack he couldn't see that?
All the more reason to get the cards on the table. And soon.
So far the plan was on track. He had demanded that the schedule be moved up, and Ikeda had reluctantly agreed. In four days Yuri Androv would take Daedalus into the region of near space using liquid hydrogen, the first full hypersonic test flight. And that's when he intended to blow everybody's neat scenario wide open.
He felt the fuselage shudder as the trucks disengaged from the eyelets on the landing gear. Then the radio crackled.
"This is control, Daedalus I. Do you read?"
"Daedalus I. Preflight nominal."
"Verified. Engine oil now heated to thirty degrees Celsius. Begin ignition sequence."
"Check. Daedalus I starting engines." He scanned through the instrument readings on his helmet screens, then slipped his hand down the throttle quadrant and pushed the button on the left. He could almost feel the special low-flashpoint JP-7—originally developed for the high-altitude American SR-71 Blackbird — begin to flow from the wing tanks into the twelve turboramjets, priming them. Then the ground crew engaged the engines with their huge trolley-mounted starters. As the rpm began to surge, he reminded himself he was carrying only 2,100,000 pounds of fuel and it would burn fast.
He switched his helmet screens to the priority-one display and scanned the master instrument paneclass="underline" white bars showing engine rpm, fuel flow, turbine inlet temperature, exhaust temperature, oil pressure, hydraulics. Then he cut back to the infrared cameras and glanced over the tarmac stretching out in front of him. Since the American KH-12 satellite had passed twenty minutes earlier, flight conditions should now be totally secure.