The communications officer sat bolt upright as if he'd been goosed with an electric cattle prod. "Commander! I have a transmission on the preset S-band frequency coming through the encryption device." A table had been set up next to the commo officer's console, with a large metallic box resting on top of it. Several coaxial cables ran from the box and into an open panel on the console. The commo officer held his earphones tighter. "The transmission is coming through clearly… in English."
Col. Oleg Malyshev, the mission commander who had presided over the burn-up of the Suslov, nodded to the commo officer and said, "Switch to my microphone." The young man did as instructed, and Malyshev listened… not believing what he was hearing.
"Flite Centre, this is Intrepid. Do you read? Over… Flite Centre, this is Intrepid. Do you read? Over."
Malyshev tried to ignore the three men standing over him and concentrated on the transmission. As a former military attach^ stationed in London, Malyshev knew the English language fluently. He keyed his microphone switch. "Intrepid, this is Flite Centre. We read you five by five. Repeat, we read you five by five. What is your status? Over."
Of the troika standing behind Malyshev, Popov was also fluent in English, and Kostiashak spoke the language better than most Englishmen. General Secretary Vorontsky had a tiny foreign vocabulary. All three men wore headsets.
"Flite Centre, this is Intrepid. Listen and listen good. We have trouble. The other two crewmen are dead, but one of them managed to damage a circuit panel before he died. The damaged panel controls the rockets of the orbital maneuvering system. All other systems are functional, but I cannot, repeat cannot, fire the retro rockets."
Malyshev was stunned, but kept his mind working. The spacecraft had only a small window of time to communicate, and he couldn't waste a millisecond. "Intrepid, this is Flite Centre. Can you repair the damage?"
"Negative, Centre. I do not have the on-board capability to make any repairs. I can still maneuver the pitch and yaw thrust-ers and my fuel cells are functioning properly, but the OMS engines are dead. Got that? Dead. Whatever solution there is, it has to come from you, Flite Centre, and it's got to be fast. The Americans will not leave me up here."
"What is your life-support situation, Intrepid! Over."
"Approximately thirty days of life support," said Iceberg testily. "But we won't have near that long. Do you understand?"
The time window was about closed.
"Yes, Intrepid, we understand you. We will study the problem and advise you two orbits from "now when you pass over the Irkutsk station."
"Roger. Will comply. Intrepid, out."
Malyshev ran a hand through his sweaty blond hair. He was amazed at how flat and detached the American's voice had been. Particularly since he'd just reported an unmitigated disaster.
"I did not understand the transmission," complained the General Secretary. "What did he say? When will he be landing?"
Popov, Kostiashak, and Malyshev all sought to avoid his inquiring glance, and no one volunteered to translate. Their reluctance was not lost on Vorontsky, who said, "Vitali — tell me at once. What did the pilot say?"
The KGB Chairman paused, but did not mince words. "The pilot—our pilot — had to kill the two other crewmen aboard. Apparently there was a struggle of some kind, and some of the electronic equipment aboard was damaged. His life-support systems are functioning, but he cannot fire his retro rockets. That is to say, he does not have the capability to fire his rockets and return to earth."
The General Secretary crashed his headset down on the console. "Cannot return to earth? You mean he has killed two American astronauts and now he is stuck up there?'' Entire rows of technicians slunk down into their chairs, trying to disappear under their consoles. "Why was this not planned for? What do you think the Americans will do? They are not going to sit on their hands and let this spaceship and its caigo drift along! No! They will find some way to retrieve it! Then where will we be?" Vorontsky paused, collecting his breath and his thoughts for another salvo. "Vitali, you are responsible for this! It was you who persuaded me to pursue this insane conspiracy!"
Mission Commander Malyshev had been boar hunting once. He'd seen one of the animals go berserk after being wounded by a poorly aimed shot. It was much like this.
The KGB Chairman was surprisingly unemotional. "General Secretary, let us not jump to premature conclusions. There is a problem, yes. But we do not yet know the full dimensions of the problem."
"We know the goddam ship is stuck up there and not coming down!" screamed the General Secretary. "In St. Peter's name, man! We are talking about our heads!"
"Quiet, both of you!" Heads spun around to look at Popov, holding up a hand to indicate he wanted silence. This commanding posture was 180 degrees from his usual flustered demeanor. A few moments passed before he muttered, "Yes… yes. It could very well work." The stocky general turned to Malyshev. "Find Vostov. Wherever he is. And get him to the flite conference room. Then go pull whatever engineering charts we have on the American shuttle. Now!"
Malyshev fled from the room, joyful to be out of the danger zone.
"What are you doing, General Popov?" queried Kostiashak.
Popov looked at the KGB chieftain and the General Secretary with contempt. TWo space pioneers had died — Americans, true-but kin in many ways to their Russian counterparts who ventured into the ether, and all these two vermin could think about was their own skins. Perhaps the contempt helped stiffen his spine. With a look of disdain, Popov responded to the Chairman's question with, "Do you not understand? I am an engineer."
Drifting quietly in the vacuum of deep space, moving in sync with the rotation of the earth, was a remarkable piece of engineering that most technicians could only dream about and never touch, for nothing quite like it existed on the ground. Shaped like a huge ice cream cone with a beanie propeller on top, this object was Eardrum, the present-day successor to a string of satellites known by exotic code names like Rhyolite, Jumpseat, Magnum, and Vortex. Of this technical pedigree, Eardrum was probably the most aptly named, for it was America's biggest electronic eavesdropper in space.
Russian radio transmissions, telephone microwaves, TV shows, radar signals, car phones, missile telemetry — they were all scooped up by Eardrum as if it were a giant vacuum cleaner, then transmitted to the National Security Agency's compound at Fort Meade, Maryland, where they were sifted and analyzed.
It was by far the largest artificial satellite circling the earth-even eclipsing the Star Wars prototype platform in size. It was so big, in fact, that it had had to be assembled piece by piece in low earth orbit before being boosted to its higher, geosynchronous position.
Its huge parabolic reflector had to be of enormous dimensions — a diameter of 720 feet — because a high-gain antenna was needed to capture faint radio signals. So sensitive was the apparatus that, when combined with its ultrahigh-speed frequency scanner, even directional microwave transmissions could be picked up by the Pacific Eardrum, or its sister satellite drifting over the Atlantic. And directional microwaves carried a treasure trove of telephone conversations.