Thomas Hoover - Project Daedalus

"If those damned scramjets up there," he pointed skyward, "actually achieve ignition when they're supposed to."

"I've studied the static-test data carefully. At the propulsion facility they routinely achieved ignition at Mach 4.8. The numbers were there and they looked all right. Temperature regime, pounds thrust, all the rest."

What's really happening, Yuri thought suddenly, is they've taken our engineering design and built it. But what if we're just being used somehow, having our brains picked, our expertise stolen? Then what?

He said nothing, though, just listened quietly as the older man continued.

"Also, the new ceramic composite they've come up with for the fuel injection struts was heated to thirty-five hundred degrees Fahrenheit and repeatedly stress-tested. Those data were particularly impressive. You know, the struts have always been the Achilles heel for a scramjet, since the fuel has to be injected directly through them into the combustion chamber. They have to withstand shock waves, and thermal stresses, far beyond anything ever encountered in a conventional engine. Nobody else has ever come up with a material that can do it. Not us, not the Americans, not anybody. But now, their high-temperature materials and liquid air cycle have finally made the scramjet concept a reality. The last roadblock is gone." He looked up, still marveling. "All we or the Americans can do is make engineering drawings of those engines, just pictures."

"I hope you're right. But when we switch over from JP-7 to liquid hydrogen, nobody knows what can happen. It's never been done before."

"Are you really worried?" The old man studied him.

"Damned right I am. Who wouldn't be?" He looked around at the milling Japanese technicians, then lowered his voice. "And I'll tell you something else. There're other things around here worrying me too, maybe even more. Something about this project is starting to feel wrong."

"What do you mean?" Andrei stared.

"I'm beginning to suspect… I don't know. So far it's just a sense, but-"

"Yuri, let me tell you a hard fact," the elder Androv interjected. "Like it or not, this project is the only chance the Soviet Union has to ever own a vehicle like this."

"That may be true, but if we-"

"Remember the sad fate of the TU-144," he went on, "the supersonic passenger plane we built based on some engineering drawings for the Concorde we managed to get hold of. We copied it, but we got it wrong, and in 1973 we had that horrible tragedy at the Paris Air Show, when it crashed in a ball of fire. That was the end of it. We failed, and it was humiliating. The Soviet Union couldn't even build a supersonic passenger jet. The real truth is, we didn't have the computers we needed to design it." He looked up, smiling. "But now, all that humiliation will be undone."

Yuri suddenly realized his father was being swept up in his dreams. The same way he sometimes got lost in those damned string quartets, or reading Euripides in the original Greek. He was going off in his fantasy world again. He couldn't see that maybe he was being used.

"Have you ever wondered where this project is going to lead? Where it has to lead?"

"It will lead the way to peace. It will be a symbol of cooperation between two great nations, demonstrating that the human spirit can triumph."

"Moi otyets, it could just as well 'lead the way' to something else entirely. Don't you realize what's happening here? We're giving away our thruster engineering, Russia's leading technology. It's the one area where we still lead the world. We've just handed it over… for the price of one fucking airplane. And even if we eventually get our hands on these prototypes, we can't build more without begging the materials from them. We can't fabricate these composite alloys in the Soviet Union."

"But this is a joint venture. Everything will be shared." He smiled again, his face gnome-like beneath his mane of white hair. "It will also give us both a chance to overcome the lead of Europe and America in commercial passenger transport in the next century. That's what this is all about. The future of nonmilitary aviation, it's right here."

"Do you really believe that?" He stifled a snort of incredulity. "Don't you see what this vehicle really is? Let me tell you. It's the most deadly weapons delivery system the world has ever seen. And we're showing them how to build it, even testing it for them to make sure it'll perform."

"The Daedalus will never be a military plane. I would never have participated if I thought-"

"Exactly. That's what they want us to believe. But it sure as hell could be. And Mino Industries will be the only company on earth that can actually build more of them." He sensed it was useless to argue further. Nothing mattered to Andrei Petrovich Androv except what he wanted to believe. At this point, nothing could be done to expose the dangers, because nobody on the Soviet team would listen.

Or maybe there was something. Why not make a small revision in the test flight? Once he was aloft, what was anybody going to do? He would be up there, alone. If he could get around their flight computer, he might just show the world a thing or two. He'd been thinking about it for weeks now.

"All right." He turned back. "If this thing is supposedly ready to fly, then I'll fly it. But get ready for some surprises."

"Yuri, what are you planning?"

"Just a small unscheduled maneuver." The hell with it, he thought. "They've got seven days, and then I take it up… and power-in the scramjets. I'm ready to go. Tell Ikeda to prepare to have liquid hydrogen pumped into the tanks."

"But that's not how we've structured the test schedule." Andrei examined him, startled. Yuri had always been fiery, but never irrational. "We need ten-"

"Fuck the schedule. I'm going to take this vehicle hypersonic in a week, or they can get themselves another test pilot." He turned away. "Reschedule, or forget it. We don't have much time left. Once all the agreements are signed-"

"Yuri, I don't like this." His eyes were grave. "It's not-"

"Just tell them to get Daedalus I prepped. I think these bastards that call themselves Mino Industries have a whole agenda they're not telling us about. But I'm about to rearrange their timetable."

Thursday 2:51 A.M.

A very wet, very annoyed Michael Vance rapped on the door of Zeno Stantopoulos's darkened kafeneion. He'd walked the lonely back road into Iraklion in the dark, guiding himself by the rain-battered groves of plane trees, olive, and wild pear, trying to figure out what in hell was happening.

To begin with, members of the intelligence services of major nations didn't go around knocking each other off; that was an unwritten rule among spooks. Very bad taste. Maybe you tried to get somebody to talk with sodium pentathol or scopolamine, but guns were stupid and everybody knew it. You could get killed with one of those things, for godsake.

So this operation, whatever it was, was outside the system. Good. That was the way he had long since learned to work.

There was a lot on his mind, and the walk, the isolation, gave him a chance to think over some of the past. In particular, the austere Cretan countryside brought to mind an evening five years ago when he'd traveled this little-used route with his father, Michael Vance, Sr. That occasion, autumn brisk with a first glimmering of starlight, they'd laughed and joked for much of the way, the old man occasionally tapping the packed earth sharply with his cane, almost as though he wanted to establish final authority over the island and make it his, once and for all. Finally, the conversation turned serious.

"Michael, don't tell me you never miss academic life," his father had finally brought himself to say, masking the remark by casually brushing aside yet another pale stone with his cane. "More and more, your theory about the palace is gaining credence. You may find yourself famous all over again. It's an enviable position."