"I still don't see—"
"If Skybolt is supposed to be a defensive weapon, protecting us against strategic nuclear weapons, what's Silver Tower still doing over the Arabian Sea?"
He paused for a moment. "Surveillance. It's still by far the best surveillance platform we've got. And it can help protect the fleet from a sneak cruise-missile attack…"
"Or fighter attack? Bomber attack?"
"Sure…"
"How about hitting the Arkhangel directly? I wonder what Skybolt would do against a carrier? Blow up a few planes on its decks? Set off a weapons magazine? Do some serious damage to electronics? Maybe even kill a few sailors on deck. Why not go one better? You don't have to be a think-tank guru to come up with the idea. Just a sincere dedicated chief of staff, secretary of defense — or president? The Russians are going to have the Brezhnev leave the Persian Gulf and sail to South Yemen for resupply. They say that it will rejoin with the Arkhangel and form a new, stronger battle group to hit the Nimitz again. So why isn't it logical we attack the Brezhnev? Attack it when it gets to port? But better still, why don't we run our laser over the Arkhangel's home port of Vladivostok? Or Murmansk? Or Leningrad? Or Moscow?"
"That's going pretty far, Ann."
"Maybe, but are you so sure? You used to work on Space Command planning staffs. What if you now had weapons with the destructive capability of Silver Tower and Skybolt? Can you really say you'd never consider using them to stop a war before it starts? Preemptive strike? Surgical strike? Or just good old saber-rattling from seven hundred miles in space?"
"I don't believe we'd ever do that."
"I wish you would convince me. But you know as well as I, too much success, like Skybolt has had now, can breed a need for more and more… I wanted to develop it for defensive reasons only. But now…"
He didn't argue with her, but turned away and stared at the huge ridgelines of fog rolling across the bay. They stood together quietly for a long time, until she noticed him shifting his weight from one leg to the other. "We should leave," she said. He followed her back to the car.
Rush-hour traffic had thinned as they made their way down Mount Diablo Boulevard to the Nimitz Highway and on into the Oakland-Alameda Naval Base. When they reached the gate and showed their IDs, the shore patrolman pointed toward a waiting staff car parked at the reception area. "Admiral Clancy is waiting for you, General. His driver will take you and Dr. Page."
Puzzled, Saint-Michael returned the SP's salute, turned across traffic into the parking lot and parked beside the large navy-gray sedan. The driver saluted and held the doors open for them. "All this for a simple debriefing?" Ann said, peering out the darkened windows. She could see very little in the fog and haze surrounding the base. "We're not heading for carrier group headquarters, either. Driver, where are we going?"
"Slip seventeen, ma'am."
"But we are going to meet Admiral Clancy. Saint-Michael said. "Yes, sir. He's waiting."
Ann shrugged, "The boonies. We may as well sit back; it'll be a long ride."
The base was not very large, but the warehouses, docks, and buildings that they were forced to weave among made the trip seem endless. After ten minutes they pulled alongside a long, dark drydock area in front of a maintenance enclosure. The drydock was filled with oil-clogged water and a bit of debris, but it was still relatively fresh-looking water; the drydock basin had only recently been filled with seawater. The enclosure was contained on all sides, but by the looks of the four-inch-diameter hawsers leading to the diesel, ship-moving "mules" on the pier, the vessel inside was huge.
The driver stopped at the foot of a security tower located a hundred yards from the maintenance enclosure, opened the door for his two passengers, saluted, then quickly departed. "This is getting very strange," Saint-Michael said. "I wonder what—"
Suddenly, a horn began to sound from loudspeakers on the maintenance enclosure. The two rail-mounted mules outside the enclosure were started, and the front door of the enclosure began to slide open. "I think we're about to find out."
When the doors were fully opened the mules took up the slack on the hawsers, and with clouds of diesel exhaust billowing skyward, the tractors began to pull on the vessel hidden inside. It had only been pulled a few feet out of the building when Ann suddenly grabbed his arm. "It's the California," she said, "Number thirty-six. They brought the California back to Oakland." But as it was gently pulled out of its enclosure it was obvious it was not the same California. "I hardly recognize her. Look — I'm not sure but I think those are twin missile-launch rails on the nose."
"And two RAM missile-launchers on the forecastle," he said. "Also cannons everywhere… but what the hell is that?"
The California was a bit more than halfway outside when they both gaped at a huge new structure just behind the midships masts. Four massive legs dozens of feet high and several feet wide sprawled across the entire aft section of the ship; it appeared the battleship had had to be lengthened a few feet in the stem just to accommodate the huge legs.
Two RAM missile launchers were mounted between the legs to provide defensive cover for the rear quadrant of the ship, but the most impressive new feature was the device on top of the pedestaclass="underline" a huge elongated dish — at least forty feet wide and fifty feet long, arranged so that the long part of the dish was parallel to the ship's beam. The dish had two sections of steel folded down on top of it, hinged on the sides and supported by hydraulic pistons. "What the hell… I've never seen anything like that," Saint-Michael said. "it looks like some kind of wing, but on a navy warship…?"
The California was towed clear of the enclosure and the maintenance and security towers surrounding it, then pulled to a halt by two mules in the rear. A gangway was set in place with the familiar "USS CALIFORNIA" on the canvas sides, but,its vessel designation no longer read "CGN-36"; it now read "DWRS-36."
"Well, stop gawking and get up here," they heard from the ship. They looked up the newly painted side of the California and saw Admiral Clancy waving them toward the gangway. According to naval etiquette, they saluted the colors aft, then the officer of the deck, and then hurried up the gangplank and were met by the admiral. "Permission to come aboard, Admiral," Saint-Michael said, saluting him. Clancy returned the salute. "Get your butts up here. I've been waiting all day to show you this."
They had to step lively to keep up with Clancy, who rushed up to the bridge and then around the catwalk facing aft across the huge device sprawled over the California's fantail. "All right, all right, Admiral," Saint-Michael said as they finally stopped and stared out over the top of the curved stack of dish-like plates mounted on the ship. "What is all this?"
"The future, Jason." Clancy turned to a lieutenant commander waiting behind them. "Hit it, Commander."
"Aye, sir." A few moments later a loudspeaker blared, "Attention on deck. Stand by to deploy array panels."
A deep-throated rumbling began on the pedestal below them, and suddenly the curved panels on top of the pedestal began to move, unfolding like giant flower petals. In less than a minute they had dropped into place. The device was now an oblong dish one hundred feet long and forty feet wide at its broadest point, deeply curved in the center. At the precise center was a receiver horn. On the face of the dish was painted "USS CALIFORNIA." Then the dish began slowly to incline and swivel until it was pointing almost directly south, its rim almost touching the two pedestal legs supporting it. "Not a bad piece of work, right, Jas?"
"Not bad, Admiral, but what is it?"
"You haven't figured it out?" He gestured at the dish with a sweeping wave of his hand. "This, sir, is my new California-class SBR, fleet command and control ship. And that is my space-based radar data transreceiver. "