Thomas Hoover - Project Daedalus

"Then don't waste any more time. Already two attempts by my London oyabun to recover the protocol have been mishandled. He sacrificed three men; two of them were like sons to me. Now I'm beginning to think Vance was responsible."

"We still do not know what happened in Greece." The dark-eyed kobun watched with relief as Neko returned her attention to the window, tail switching. "Authorities there advise that all our men were found shot, one in Crete and two at Delphi. They have an investigation underway, but they only will say that different weapons were used in each case."

"They will be avenged." Tanzan Mino flexed his knuckles together thoughtfully, feeling his resolve strengthen. "I am sending four kobun to London tonight. My personal Boeing is being fueled and readied as we speak. Tell them I will radio initial instructions after they are in flight. Further orders will be channeled through the Docklands office."

"But the man… Vance? If the woman is part of the 'deal' he wants in order to forward the funds, then-"

"That is all." His dark eyes had grown strangely opaque. "As soon as I've completed my 'arrangement' with him, they will kill her." Tuesday 2:00 P.M.

The meeting was in the North Quadrant of the Hokkaido facility, in the senior staff briefing room. The project kurirovat, Ivan Semenovich Lemontov, was at the head of the table as co-moderator. Flanked on his left was Petr Ivanovich Gladkov, the youthful director of aeronautics; Felix Vasilevich Budnikov, robust director of flight control systems; and Andrei Petrovich Androv, director of propulsion systems. On Lemontov's right was the other comoderator, the Japanese project director, Taro Ikeda.

Seated across the metal table, facing them all, was Yuri Andreevich Androv.

"We will begin today's agenda by reviewing Monday morning's test flight," Ikeda began, speaking in Russian. He was chairing the meeting as though by mutual consent. Soviet booster technology and aerodynamic know-how might be what made the project go, but when all was said and done, it was the money that talked. And the project financing was Japanese. "The pilot's report will be our first item."

Yuri nodded and glanced at the notes on the table before him. Make this quick, he told himself.

"I'm happy to report that, once again, the handling characteristics of the vehicle correlated closely with our up-and-away simulation in the Fujitsu SX-10. On takeoff the vehicle rotated very nicely into a lift-off attitude of six point five degrees. My target attitude was seven point five degrees, and once I'd captured that I accelerated out to seven hundred knots, then climbed to forty-nine thousand feet for the first series of maneuver blocks-the roll maneuvers, pitch maneuvers, and yaw maneuvers-intended to verify handling characteristics and control activity at high altitude. As on all other flights, the directional stability was excellent, with a very large restoring moment. In the yaw maneuvers, one rudder kick gave me an overshoot but the vehicle immediately steadied. And the pitch maneuvers again showed that her actuating system enhances stability very fast. In fact, all maneuvers matched our simulations within acceptable limits. I also did some banks up to fifty degrees to get the stick force as I pulled back. The turn performance matched specifications, with very little control activity required. I also carried out some bank-to- bank maneuvers, to get the roll rates; the block included quarter stick, half stick, and three-quarter stick. Very stable. The augmented controls did not move out, that is, move around a lot."

He paused for breath, stealing a glance at the room. Just bury them in data overload, he thought. Don't give them time to ask questions.

Before anyone could speak, he pressed on. "I also took the vehicle through the prescribed block of throttle maneuvers. Remember that in ramjet mode the engines are fan-controlled, with all controls in the initial stage. As scheduled, I pulled all the throttles to idle and then took them all the way up to rated thrust. And as always, they were very responsive and didn't have to hunt for their setting."

"Good," Ikeda said, "but the main reason-"

"Exactly. As scheduled, at 0210 hours I terminated JP-7 feed to the portside outboard trident, causing an unstart. With asymmetric thrust, I expected adverse yaw, as in the roll maneuver, but the control system stabilized it immediately. I also assumed there'd be some sideslip, so I put rudder in, but then I realized handling was going to be feet on the floor. This vehicle is a dream." He paused to smile. "Anyway, I then initiated restart at 0219 hours." He shoved forward the documents piled by his side. "These charts indicate that rpm achieved ninety percent nominal within eleven seconds. All the-"

"I've already reviewed those," Ikeda interrupted, not looking down. "We are pleased with the results of your maneuver blocks, Major Androv, and also the vehicle's turboramjet restart characteristics." He cleared his throat. "However, there was another maneuver last night that does not please us."

Here it comes, Yuri thought. The fucker wants to know what happened. Get your story ready.

"As you are undoubtedly aware," Ikeda continued, "the Japanese space program has an advanced spacecraft tracking center at Tsukuba Science City, with two Facom M-380-R primary computers. The center is linked to a tracking antenna at Katsura, near Tokyo, as well as to one at the Masuda station, near our spacecraft launch pads on Tanegeshima." He glared at the younger Androv. "You are cognizant of that, are you not?"

"I am." He met Ikeda's gaze.

"We engage those tracking stations for your test flights because of the altitudes involved. When Daedalus is airborne, all their other assignments are temporarily shunted to our deep-space tracking facility on Okinawa, in the south." He paused again, as though to control his anger. "In other words, we have arranged it so that the stations at Katsura and Masuda are dedicated to your flights whenever you take her aloft. You are aware of that as well?"

"Of course." Yuri started to smile, but stopped himself.

"Then we are puzzled, Major Androv. How do you explain the following events? At 0230 hours you shut down your air-traffic-control transponder. That was proper, since you were scheduled to switch to classified frequencies. But you did not report immediately on those frequencies, as specified in the mission flight plan. For approximately twelve minutes we had no navigational information from you whatsoever. Also, radio and computer linkages were interrupted."

"An inadvertent mistake," Yuri said, shifting.

"We thought so at first. In fact, both our tracking stations automatically performed a computerized frequency scan, thinking you'd switched to the wrong channels by accident, but you had not. You deliberately terminated all communications. We want to know why."

"I was pretty busy in the cockpit just then. I guess-"

"Yes, we assumed you would be, since you insisted on shutting down the navigational computers," Ikeda continued, his voice like the icy wind whistling across the island. "We find your next action particularly troubling. At that time we still had you on tracking radar, and we observed that as soon as the transponder was turned off, you altered your heading one hundred forty degrees… south, over the Japan Sea. Then you performed some unscheduled maneuver, perhaps a snap-roll, and immediately began a rapid descent. At that moment we lost you on the radar. With no radio contact, we feared it was a flame-out, that you'd crashed the vehicle. But then, at exactly 0242 hours you reappeared on the Katsura radar, ascending at thirty- eight thousand feet. At that time radio contact also was resumed." Ikeda paused, trying to maintain his composure. "What explanation do you have for this occurrence, and for what appeared to be an explicit radar-evasion maneuver?"