"And your alternative?" Govorov asked in a monotone that denied what he was feeling inside. "Come on, Nikolai Gulaev. I know you are going to say it…"
"Elektron?" Gulaev said matter-of-factly.
Without a word or expression Govorov picked up the telephone on his desk and punched an office extension. "Operations? General Govorov here. Find an immediate replacement for Lieutenant Colonel Gulaev on the console duty desk, effective immediately and until further notice. No reason… by my authority … Yes, I also need a clerk to get some orders cut for me … Yes, he's fine… get him in here immediately." And he hung up. "Lieutenant Colonel, you have just said the magic word." Under the bewildered gaze of the young officer he stood, walked over to a steel locker in a far corner of the office and pushed it aside, revealing a wall safe. In a few moments he was holding a red-covered notebook, which he promptly dropped into Gulaev's hands. "Elektron is fight. And it is now your project. Yours alone. That document outlines all the procedures necessary to implement the deployment of two Elektron spacecraft with specialized weapons. I—"
Gulaev could not help but interrupt. "What sort of weapons?"
"Patience. I will draft special orders authorizing you to implement those instructions. You are released from all duties except those outlined in that folder. The folder is classified top secret. Absolutely no one is authorized access to the information in it below the office of first deputy minister. Understood?"
Govorov didn't wait for a reply. "Collect your special orders from my office in one hour. I will expect daily reports from you on your progress. Report to your station on the main console until your replacement arrives."
Gulaev snapped to attention and hurried out. As he did, Govorov glanced at the old-fashioned analogue clock on the wall. How fitting that the most technologically advanced organization in the Soviet Union used a round sweep-hand clock to tell time. Govorov hated the clock. It reminded him of what the Aerospace Forces of the Soviet Union — all of the armed forces of the Soviet Union, for that matter — were like. Some were still no further advanced than that fifty-year-old clock. And some dinosaurs would prefer they were back in the days when that clock was made, when the Soviet Union was one of the most devastated, mistrusted, divided, oligarchical and bankrupt countries on earth. Then a weak and demoralized Russian military followed Joseph Stalin, the ruthless, power-obsessed dictator, into virtual ruin. Now another weak and demoralized military was about to follow another power-hungry head of state into a certain clash with the most powerful nation on earth. This time, though, Govorov was determined to turn aside certain failure…
Gulaev was right. It was Govorov's responsibility, his duty to do everything he could to forestall a Soviet defeat in Iran and the Persian Gulf and anywhere else. Gulaev now had the responsibility for activating the secret plan for the destruction of Armstrong Station — Govorov's job would be to convince the minister of defense to hold off Feather until the secret operation could be set in motion.
Govorov ordered his plane immediately fueled and ready for departure in an hour. By then Gulaev would have his orders and Govorov would be off to Moscow to try to convince the Kollegiya to avoid suicide and face facts. He would much rather be going up against the enemy. Dinosaurs were hard to kill…
CHAPTER 12
As Ann Page had predicted, her report on the potential Skybolt project delays caused by moving the space station into a geosyncronous orbit over the Middle East had negligible effect on Space Command. Saint-Michael had gotten the green light, and for the past several days the space station's crewmembers, had worked overtime gathering information and staying on alert for a Soviet response. A Soviet response. Put that way, it sounded so neat and tidy, so impersonal and even reasonable, Ann thought. Like playing a game of chess. She imagined just how devastating a Soviet "response" might be and felt a chill. She was actually glad she had her work to concentrate on. She'd have been a nervous wreck, standing in the command module and watching the display screen read out possible threats.
Kevin Baker put aside another relay circuit board and sat down beside her on a small workbench in the cluttered Skybolt module.
Ann looked at him. "I was thinking about how unreal a lot of this is. What might be happening down below. The fact that we're even up here in space at all…"
Baker nodded. "I know what you mean. I think of all the years I spent in labs… not quite like this but you know, filled with the same clutter. And no one giving much of a damn. And now suddenly I seem to be at the center of everything that's important, but the feeling is pretty much the same. Solve the problem, devise solutions, check out hypotheses—"
"And what's your favorite? Hypothesis, that is… How can we get this laser of ours to do what it's supposed to do?"
Kevin noted the word "ours" and was pleased. "Well," he said, looking at the maze of wires and circuit relays in front of him, "why don't we start with this left GCS-B data relay? What do you have connected to it'? Looks like platinum. "
"It is platinum. That's the MHD master superconductor relay. I call it the toaster."
"Not a bad name for it, This is the first superconducting relay I've seen that's smaller than the size of a cement truck. So where's the automatic test center?"
Ann motioned to the ceiling and Baker let out a low groan. Working on the ceiling might have been old hat for her, but his station laboratory had been a virtual recreation of his earth-bound laboratory, where computers never floated to the ceiling. Shaking his head, he lifted toward the ceiling, anchored himself on Velcro-covered footpads and punched instructions into the test computer. The renewed frustration in his voice echoed throughout the Skybolt module. "What is this?" gesturing to sixteen long rows of numbers.
"It's a linkage of all the relative program sequence codes of the relay circuitry. There are sixty-four displays of each two hundred fifty-six bit word. You need to cross-check each display with—"
"Wait a ininute. That's over sixteen thousand data bits…"
"For the left MHD relay circuitry data bus," Ann continued. "There's another check of the right data bus and the main driver."
"God, how can we check all this? It'll take days. Maybe weeks. "
"I haven't run through the whole check," she told him. "The toaster has run perfectly for two years. I've got three hundred other components that I'd suspect before the toaster, so it gets a lower priority. I'll check it later."
Baker seemed not to hear her as he twisted off four Camlock fasteners on the tiny self-test console, lifted the front panel clear and peered inside. "Good, at least you have standard connectors in this thing. I'll rig up a fiber-optic network line from Skybolt to my lab. I can plug my computer right into this console and have it check all the data registers for us. It'll do the check in a few minutes and give us the answer in English, not in this hexadecimal gobbledegook. You'll be able to monitor your toaster continually after this."
"That's great, Kevin. How soon can you get it set up?"
"A few hours for the network line and connections, and a few more to write the program to compute and cross-check the checksums. "
Ann nodded, looked at the self-test console. "Do you really think the problem is in there?"
"Don't know a lot about superconducting relays. In fact, I know damn little about most of the other toys you have in here. But your self-tests aren't telling you what the problem is. We've gone over most everything else except this thing. I'd say the problem has to be here." He detached himself from the ceiling and glided back to the deck.