«And get locked in a capsule with you?»
His grin returned. «It’s an intriguing possibility.»
«Some other time, captain,» she said. «Right now we have to get you through your pre-flight and off to meet the general.»
General Lesmore D. («Hatchet») Hatch sat in dour silence in the small briefing room. The oblong conference table was packed with colonels and a single civilian. They all look so damned serious, Kinsman thought as he took the only empty chair, directly across from the general.
«Captain Kinsman.» It was a flat statement of fact.
«Good, em, morning, General.»
Hatch turned to a moon-faced aide. «Borgeson, let’s not waste time.»
Kinsman only half-listened as the hurried introductions went around the table. He felt uncomfortable already, and it was only partly due to the stickiness of the crowded little room. Through the only window he could see the first glow of dawn.
«Now then,» Borgeson said, introductions finished, «very briefly, your mission will involve orbiting and making rendezvous with an unidentified satellite.»
«Unidentified?»
Borgeson nodded. «Whoever launched it has made no announcement whatsoever. Therefore, we must consider the satellite as potentially hostile. To begin at the beginning, we’ll have Colonel McKeever of SPADATS give you the tracking data first.»
As they went around the table, each colonel adding his bit of information, Kinsman began to build up the picture in his mind.
The satellite had been launched from the mid-Pacific, nine hours ago. Probably from a specially rigged submarine. It was now in a polar orbit, so that it covered every square mile on Earth in twelve hours. Since it went up, not a single radio transmission had been detected going to it or from it. And it was big, even heavier than the ten-ton Voshkods the Russians had been using for manned flights.
«A satellite of that size,» said the colonel from the Special Weapons Center, «could easily contain a nuclear warhead of 100 megatons or more.»
If the bomb were large enough, he explained, it could heat the atmosphere to the point where every combustible thing on the ground would ignite. Kinsman pictured trees, plants, grass, buildings, people, the sky itself, all bursting into flame.
«Half the United States could be destroyed at once with such a bomb,» the colonel said.
«And in a little more than two hours,» Borgeson added, «the satellite will pass over Chicago and travel right across the heartland of America.»
Murdock paled. «You don’t think they’d … set it off?»
«We don’t know,» General Hatch answered. «And we don’t intend to sit here waiting until we find out.»
«Why not just knock it down?» Kinsman asked. «We can hit it, can’t we?»
Hatch frowned. «We could reach it with a missile, yes. But we’ve been ordered by the Pentagon to inspect the satellite and determine whether or not it’s actually hostile.»
«In two hours?»
«Perhaps I can explain,» said the civilian. He had been introduced as a State Department man; Kinsman had already forgotten his name. He had a soft, sheltered look about him.
«You may know that the disarmament meeting in Geneva is discussing nuclear weapons in space. It seemed last week we were on the verge of an agreement to ban weapons in space, just as testing weapons in the atmosphere has already been banned. But three days ago the conference suddenly became deadlocked on some very minor issues. It’s been very difficult to determine who is responsible for the deadlock and why. The Russians, the Chinese, the French, even some of the smaller nations, are apparently stalling for time … waiting for something to happen.»
«And this satellite might be it,» Kinsman said.
«The Department of State believes that this satellite is a test, to see if we can detect and counteract weapons placed in orbit.»
«But they know we can shoot them down!» the general snapped.
«Yes, of course,» the civilian answered softly. «But they also know we would not fire on a satellite that might be a peaceful research station. Not unless we were certain that it was actually a bomb in orbit. We must inspect this satellite to prove to the world that we can board any satellite and satisfy ourselves that it is not a threat to us. Otherwise we will be wide open to nuclear blackmail, in orbit.»
The general shook his head. «If they’ve gone to the trouble of launching a multi-ton vehicle, then military logic dictates that they placed a bomb in it. By damn, that’s what I’d do, in their place.»
«Suppose it is a bomb,» Kinsman asked, «and they explode it over Chicago?»
Borgeson smiled uneasily. «It could take out everything between New England and the Rockies.»
Kinsman heard himself whistle in astonishment.
«No matter whether it’s a bomb or not, the satellite is probably rigged with booby traps to prevent us from inspecting it,» one of the other colonels pointed out.
Thanks a lot, Kinsman said to himself.
Hatch focused his gunmetal eyes on Kinsman. «Captain, I want to impress a few thoughts on you. First, the Air Force has been working for nearly twenty years to achieve the capability of placing a military man in orbit on an instant’s notice. Your flight will be the first practical demonstration of all that we’ve battled to achieve over those years. You can see, then, the importance of this mission.»
«Yessir.»
«Second, this is strictly a voluntary mission. Because it is so important to us, I don’t want you to try it unless you’re absolutely certain—»
«I realize that, sir. I’m your man.»
«I understand you’re transferring out of the Air Force next week.»
Kinsman nodded. «That’s next week. This is now.»
Hatch’s well-seamed face unfolded into a smile. «Well said, captain. And good luck.»
The general rose and everyone snapped to attention. As the others filed out of the briefing room, Murdock drew Kinsman aside.
«You had your chance to beg off.»
«And miss this? A chance to play cops and robbers in orbit?»
The colonel flushed angrily. «We’re not in this for laughs. This is damned important. If it really is a bomb …»
«I’ll be the first to know,» Kinsman snapped. To himself he added, I’ve listened to you long enough for one morning.
Countdowns took minutes instead of days, with solid-fueled rockets. But there were just as many chances of a man or machine failing at a critical point and turning the intricate, delicately poised booster into a flaming pyre of twisted metal.
Kinsman sat tautly in the contoured couch, listening to them tick off the seconds. He hated countdowns. He hated being helpless, completely dependent on a hundred faceless voices that flickered through his earphones, waiting childlike in a mechanical womb, not alive, waiting, doubled up and crowded by the unfeeling, impersonal machinery that automatically gave him warmth and breath and life.
He could feel the tiny vibrations along his spine that told him the ship was awakening. Green lights started to blossom across the control panel, a few inches in front of his faceplate, telling him that everything was ready. Still the voices droned through his earphones in carefully measured cadence:
three … two … one.
And she bellowed into life. Acceleration pressure flattened Kinsman into the couch. Vibration rattled his eyes in their sockets. Time became meaningless. The surging, engulfing, overpowering noise of the mighty rocket engines made his head ring, even after they burned out into silence.
Within minutes he was in orbit, the long slender rocket stages falling away behind, together with all sensations of weight. Kinsman was alone now in the squat, delta-shaped capsule: weightless, free of Earth.
Still he was the helpless, unstirring one. Computers sent guidance instructions from the ground to the capsule’s controls. Tiny vectoring rockets placed around the capsule’s black hull squirted on and off, microscopic puffs of thrust that maneuvered the capsule into the precise orbit needed for catching the unidentified satellite.