There were a prolonged silence. The shuttle crewmen were reviewing their flight plan notes when Watkins looked up and noticed McCormack's tanned complexion had assumed a deathly pallor.
The general said nothing, but continued to listen to the chief of staff. Finally, after some minutes, he silently hung up the phone. By this time all three men had taken notice that McCormack's face had turned ashen.
"Uh, General?" queried Townsend. "Anything wrong?"
Some seconds elapsed before McCormack could find his voice. With a croak, he said, "There's been a change in plans."
Jacob Classen's slender frame heaved a sigh of relief as the payload canister holding the Anik satellite and COSMAX telescope was finally secured to its transporter. It had been a long and tiresome exercise to transfer the delicate instruments from the Constellation to the gantry, to the payload canister, and finally onto the transporter; but the unloading was finally over with, and now maybe he could grab a little nap.
The driver of the payload transporter fired up the engine and started backing away from the rotating gantry superstructure with the vehicle's "creep" mode. The bizarre flatbed transporter with forty-eight wheels could travel forward, backward, sideways, or pirouette on its own axis if need be. But right now it was simply inching away from the superstructure at 0.014 mph. Once clear of the gantry tower, it would rev up its engine and drive off toward the payload processing building at a thunderous 2 mph.
Classen took off his hard hat and ran a hand through his white hair. He handed his preflight clipboard to his deputy, then headed for the service trailer and his cot. He had always promised himself not to be a victim of the proverb "Tired men make mistakes."
"The beauty of the design is its simplicity," crowed Vostov. "The Progress solid-fuel engine will be secured inside of the mating collar prior to launch. All you have to do is insert the 'male' end of the collar into the 'female' center engine nozzle, then install the explosive bolt clamps," he said while pointing at the diagram. "Brilliant, is it not?"
Cosmonauts Lubinin and Yemitov nodded their assent. Popov needn't have worried that Vostov might be uncooperative. The Chief Designer was so effusive about his design creation that the main problem was getting the man to shut up.
"You know, of course, I completed this design in a matter of hours, to exacting specifications."
"Yes, Comrade Chief Designer," replied the swarthy Lubinin. "Which brings up an important point. The tolerances on this mating collar must be precise. If the circumference of the collar is too large, it will not fit into the nozzle. If it is too small, the clamps may not reach over the lip of the nozzle. Are you sure about the specifications?"
In a condescending voice, Vostov said, "My dear Lubinin. The Americans are fools. They publish all of their sensitive scientific data widely." Vostov instinctively looked around the conference room, which had been converted into a makeshift drafting room, before speaking. "Our Comrade Chairman of State Security would have you believe his spies are working feverishly to steal away our enemy's precious secrets. Hah! It is often a matter of going into an American bookstore or library for the data. The problem is not too little technical information. It is too much. Look at this," he said, gesturing to a pile of books and documents on the conference table. He extracted one and opened it to a page which showed a cutaway schematic diagram of the American shuttie.
Lubinin and Yemitov looked on and were surprised. Their access to such material was limited, and they were somewhat in awe of the pile of documents on the table. Yemitov's blue eyes blinked as he murmured, "Amazing."
"Yes, amazing," echoed Lubinin. "But if the Americans are such fools, Comrade Chief Designer, why do they have a successful shuttie program, while two of the Rodina's orbiters have burned into cinders during reentry?"
Vostov's ebullience vanished. He looked at Lubinin carefully, detecting a steely character behind the friendly round face and brown eyes. Apparently this cosmonaut was not one to be trifled with. "I was allowed to examine your service record," the Chief
Designer said cautiously. "You flew combat missions in Afghanistan, is that not so?"
"Da," replied Lubinin.
"It also reported you shot down two Pakistani F-16s, I believe."
Lubinin shrugged his muscular shoulders. "Da. They said we violated their airspace. We charged them with violating Afghan airspace. To tell the truth, I cannot say who violated what. I was too busy dodging their Sidewinder missiles to pay attention to navigational matters. In any case, it taught me to respect American equipment."
The overweight Vostov nodded his understanding. "You know, I had nothing to do with our shuttle's airframe design, and I have not a clue as to what caused their destruction. I was only recendy given authority over the entire program."
"Yes, Comrade Chief Designer," said Lubinin in an understanding voice, "I know this. But the engineers who designed our shuttle obviously had access to this mountain of data, and still it failed. In view of this, you can understand my concern about precise specifications?"
In an uncharacteristic human gesture, the Chief Designer put his arm around the cosmonaut. "I understand, Comrade. And Vostov shall not fail you."
"That is comforting, Comrade Chief Designer. Now then. 1\vo questions. First, how do we trigger the engine?"
It was back to business. Vostov said, "You will be given a remote-control triggering device to ignite the solid-fuel motor. You will have to be in EVA and outside the Soyuz capsule to make sure it works, because the remote transmitter is small and emits a weak line-of-sight signal. You will have to trigger it. The American astronaut cannot. You also must communicate with the American about the precise timing and inclination of the firing angle. I assume that is why the two of you were selected. You both speak English, do you not?"
Lubinin nodded, then asked, "Where do we go from here?"
"I will take the drawings to Leningrad and have the collar cast," replied Vostov in a businesslike voice. "Popov is having the launch vehicles prepared at Baikonur, and the collar will be shipped there as soon as it is completed. When it arrives I will personally supervise the welding of the collar to the Progress engine. We will meet again at the cosmodrome."
"Boosters breaking through cloud cover… Initial launch detection profile indicates twenty-three vehicles and increasing. Time to impact of lead missile elements is twenty-eight minutes, twenty-three seconds… Infrared and velocity analysis define elements as SS-11, SS-18, and SS-19 booster vehicles… missile count now eighty-seven and increasing rapidly… Time to impact of lead elements is twenty-seven forty-two."
Thomas Havelichek scratched his dark red beard while watching a bird's-eye view of the northern hemisphere on the custom-designed thirty-inch color monitor. Out of the Soviet Union a forest of white pencil lights, representing intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), were arcing northward toward the Arctic Circle. Beyond the polar ice cap lay their targets in North America.
Havelichek could have superimposed the numeric attack data onto his screen, but he felt it distracted his attention from the graphic display. Instead, his assistant read out the flight profile data on the attacking missiles, while he operated the SDI platform's fire-control systems. "Okay, Gilda," he said, while tapping his keyboard, "reactor power to ninety-three percent… Target acquisition and prioritization initialized. Isotope is charging…"