Outside in the hall, the former hammer thrower was apprehensive. "Do you honestly think this can be done, Popov?" asked Vorontsky.
Popov felt like a weary teacher tutoring a not-so-bright pupil. "There are some things in our favor, General Secretary. First, the Intrepid is in low earth orbit. Low enough that its orbital path would eventually decay in two months or so, and it would tumble in an uncontrolled reentry. The thrust required to propel an object out of low earth orbit, even an object the size of the shuttle, is relatively small. If the Chief Designer can come up with a way to fabricate a thruster and attach it to the tail, then we may be able to retrieve the vessel."
"But can he do it?" The General Secretary wanted assurances.
"He is the Chief Designer of the Soviet Union, and his specialty is rocketry," Popov explained patiently. "He was Koro-lev's star pupil, and every project he has undertaken for the Rodina has surpassed everyone's expectations. If any of the Motherland's sons can do it, it is he. If he cannot, then we have failed."
The General Secretary was about to issue an unveiled threat when Vostov's voice rumbled out of the conference room.
"Popov! Get in here!"
With her nose buried in a clipboard, Maj. Lydia Strand walked through the NORAD Space Defense Operations Center, scanning her satellite run sheets. NORAD's worldwide Spacetrack radar system monitored the orbital paths of all Russian satellites, and through telemetry analysis NORAD had a pretty good idea which ones were photoreconnaissance birds. NORAD routinely kept major commands informed about Russkie recon cameras passing overhead, so sensitive American hardware could be concealed from the high-resolution lenses. The F-117 Nighthawk Stealth Fighter Squadron at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada was constantly ducking in and out of hangars to avoid detection, as were the Northrop stealth bomber prototypes based there.
One irritating characteristic of recon birds — to Russians and Americans alike — was their ability to change orbits. This happened rarely, because it consumed precious fuel, but it did happen. When a deviation was detected by the Spacetrack system, the NORAD computers immediately started beeping and blinking to notify the Spacetrack monitors in SPADOC. The new orbital path was then plotted and the major commands, like the Strategic Air Command, were notified.
Lydia Strand, Lamborghini's deputy, was gathering the latest run sheets on the recon birds for a routine afternoon staff conference, which was being held despite the turmoil over the Intrepid.
She had joined Lamborghini's staff four months ago, when her star-studded ascent up the Air Force career ladder had taken an unexpected turn. After graduating summa cum laude in physics from the University of North Carolina, Strand had joined the Air Force ("It seemed like fun") and entered the pilot training program. Much to her surprise, she found herself to be a highly skilled pilot, and she embraced her newfound love with an overwhelming passion. She graduated number one in her flight school class at Sheppard Air Force Base, and as a reward, received an atypical assignment for a woman pilot — flying F-16s back and forth to Hill Air Force Base in Utah. Hill was the worldwide center for large-scale repair and maintenance of the F-16, and it was her job to fly the Falcons into and out of the garage and give them "test drives," so to speak. When repairs were completed on an F-16, she'd take the Falcon upstairs and put it through the wringer over the Wendover Bombing Range. These shakedown flights usually went smoothly, but one time there had been a glitch, and she'd had to punch out. While drifting down in her parachute, she was transfixed by the sight of a $20-million aircraft spiraling into the desert. It was a painful spectacle, and the accident rattled her confidence — so much so that she quit sparring with her male counterparts in practice dogfights over the Wendover Range — contests she had regularly won, much to the chagrin of her macho comrades.
To restore her confidence, Strand's boss persuaded her to apply to the NASA astronaut program as a pilot. While a number of women had been selected for the astronaut corps as mission specialists, nary a one had been assigned as a shuttle pilot because of a Catch-22—you couldn't be a shuttle pilot unless you had experience flying high-performance aircraft. "High-performance aircraft" was a euphemism for "combat aircraft," and women were barred from flying in combat. They were usually relegated to flying transports (exciting), except in exceptional circumstances, such as Strand's.
She'd applied to NASA shortly after the Challenger disaster, when the space agency's fortunes were at a particularly low ebb. Maybe some reverse discrimination was working for her during the selection process, or maybe one of the committee's judges was overcome by her intellect and stark beauty; but whatever the reason, she got her acceptance letter and moved to Houston.
The two-year pilot training curriculum restored her confidence, and she was assigned as copilot on the Antares, where she performed well on a payload mission to the Star Wars platform. Four months later she copiloted the Discovery on a satellite recovery mission, and again her performance was straight out of the manual. There was chatter in high places at Houston and Colorado Springs concerning her possible appointment as the first woman commander of a space shuttle mission. But then an imponderable happened. She became pregnant, and had to make a choice — either be an astronaut, or be a mother. She opted for the latter, and petitioned the Air Force for reassignment. The Air Force complied and moved her to Colorado Springs, where she landed on Lamborghini's staff. Her husband, whom she'd met and married in Houston, was a software engineer at NASA. He followed her to Colorado and obtained a similar job as a civilian with CSOC.
As disappointing as it was to leave the astronaut program, she enjoyed her intelligence billet, finding it fascinating. Almost as fascinating as Noah, her eight-month-old son.
"Anything I should know before the staff conference?" she asked.
T/Sgt. Bill Matthews played with his keyboard. "Ummm, nothing new since the run sheet you have, except for a couple of items that just came in from our spook friends at NSA. Hang on a minute and I'll get them matched." He hit a few keystrokes and waited for the computer's response. "Yeah, this was a Progress capsule that went up to the Mir space station yesterday. Hasn't been jettisoned yet as far as we can tell. Telemetry analysis and Spacetrack plot both confirm."
"Okay," said the major. "Anything else?"
Matthews typed in a few more keystrokes while Strand reviewed her run sheets. She glanced at her watch. Only ten minutes till the conference.
The keystrokes that Matthews punched in called for a comparison of the NSA telemetry data from Eardrum against the existing orbital paths of known satellites. However, unlike the NSA's Pandora, the NORAD computer compared the telemetry against all known orbital paths, regardless of their country of origin. His green CRT screen displayed the matchup:
ANALYSIS: VOICE COMSEC SIGNAL ORIGIN:
TERRESTRIAL: 67 DEGREES, 21 MINUTES NORTH;
171 DEGREES, 14 MINUTES EAST.
CELESTIAL: 71 DEGREES, 38 MINUTES NORTH;
173 DEGREES, 51 MINUTES EAST.
63 DEGREES, 12 MINUTES NORTH;
169 DEGREES, 23 MINUTES EAST.
ALTITUDE: 122.7 MILES INCLINATION: 83 DEGREES PATH SOLUTION: STS-202L
"Uh, Major," stammered Matthews, "I, uh, think you better look at this."
Strand looked up from her clipboard and read the screen. She already knew that STS-202L was the latest Space Transportation System — that is, shuttle — mission, and "COMSEC" meant it was a secure radio transmission. She didn't pay attention to the coordinates, and simply assumed they pinpointed the location of the Intrepid's last transmission before it went off the air.' 'Two zero two Lima. That's the Intrepid, isn't it?" she asked.