Thomas Hoover - Project Daedalus

"With deepest gratitude, I must tell you it is too late, Sato-sama, which I am sure you realize," Nogami said, drawing on his cigar and taking care not to disturb the ash. "So with due respect I must inquire concerning the purpose of this meeting."

"I need to locate this man Vance. Before the kobun from Tokyo arrive. If you care about his well-being, then you should remember that his treatment at my hands will be more understanding than-"

"When do they arrive?"

"As I said, we received word that they will be here tomorrow, Nogami-san. With respect, you have befriended a man who is attempting to blackmail the Tokyo oyabun. That is a career decision which, I assure you, is most unwise."

"It is made. And I am aware of the consequences. So it would appear we both know all there is to know about the future."

"Perhaps not entirely. Someone has attempted to make us think Vance and the woman were kidnapped, that they are being held somewhere beyond our reach. Perhaps it is true, perhaps it is not. But if the transaction for the hundred million is to take place tomorrow, then he must appear here. The oyabun's people may be here by then. If they are not, we will be."

"But if he has been kidnapped," Nogami's brow furrowed as he studied his cigar, its ash still growing, "then there could be a problem with the transaction. Who do you suppose would want him, besides the Tokyo oyabun?"

"That I could not speculate upon. The KGB seems to have a great interest in his activities. Perhaps they are guarding him in some more secure place. Or perhaps something else has happened." He bowed. "Again you must forgive me for this rude intrusion. It is important for you to be aware that the situation is not resolved. That you still have a chance to save yourself."

"The CEO will receive his hundred million, if there is no interference. That much I have already arranged for. When that is completed, I will consider my responsibilities discharged."

"Your responsibilities will never be discharged, Nogami-san. Giri lasts forever." His voice was cutting. "The sooner you realize that, the better."

"After tomorrow, it will be over, Sato-sama." He stretched out his arm and tapped the inch-long ash into a trash basket beside the desk.

"Tomorrow," Jiro Sato bowed, "it only begins." Wednesday 2:25 A.M.

Yuri Andreevich Androv stood facing the bulkhead that sealed the forward avionics bays, feeling almost as though he were looking at a bank vault. As in all high-security facilities, the access doors were controlled electronically.

Since the final retrofits were now completed, the Japanese maintenance crews were only working two shifts; nobody was around at this hour except the security guards. He'd told them he'd thought of something and wanted to go up and take a look at the heavy-duty EN-15 turbo pumps, which transferred hydrogen to the scramjets after it was converted from liquid to gaseous phase for combustion. He'd been worrying about their pulse rating and couldn't sleep.

He'd gone on to explain that although static testing had shown they would achieve operating pressure in twenty milliseconds if they were fully primed in advance, that was static testing, not flight testing, and he'd been unable to sleep wondering about the adhesive around the seals.

It was just technical mumbo-jumbo, although maybe he should be checking them, he thought grimly. But he trusted the engineering team. He had to. Besides, the pumps had been developed specially for the massive Energia booster, and they'd functioned flawlessly in routine launchings of those vehicles at the Baikonur Cosmodrome.

Of course, at Baikonur they always were initiated while the Energia was on the launch pad, at full atmospheric pressure. On the Daedalus they'd have to be powered in during flight, at sixty thousand feet and 2,700 miles per hour. But still…

The late-night security team had listened sympathetically. They had no objection if Androv wanted to roll a stair-truck under the fuselage of Daedalus /, then climb into the underbay and inspect turbo pumps in the dead of night. Everybody knew he was eccentric. No, make that insane. You'd have to be to want to ride a rocket. They'd just waved him in. After all, the classified avionics in the forward bays were secured.

He smiled grimly to think that he'd been absolutely right. Hangar Control was getting lax about security in these waning days before the big test. It always happened after a few months of mechanics trooping in and out.

That also explained why he now had a full set of magnetic access cards for all the sealed forward bays. Just as he'd figured, the mechanics were now leaving them stuffed in the pockets of the coveralls they kept in their lockers in the changing room.

Time to get started.

There was, naturally, double security, with a massive airlock port opening onto a pressure bay, where three more secure ports sealed the avionics bays themselves. The airlock port was like an airplane door, double reinforced to withstand the near vacuum of space, and in the center was a green metallic slot for a magnetic card.

He began trying cards, slipping them into the slot. The first, the second, the third, the fourth, and then, payoff. The three green diodes above the lock handle flashed.

He quickly shoved down the grip and pushed. The door eased inward, then rotated to the side, opening onto the pressure bay.

The temperature inside was a constant 5 degrees Celsius, kept just above freezing to extend the life of the sensitive electronic gear in the next three bays. The high-voltage sodium lamps along the sides of the fuselage now switched on automatically as the door swung inward. He fleetingly thought about turning them off, then realized they weren't manually operated.

Through the clouds of his condensing breath he could see that the interior of the entry bay was a pale, military green. The color definitely seemed appropriate, given what he now knew about this vehicle.

He quickly turned and, after making sure the outer door could be reopened from the inside, closed it behind him. When it clicked secure, the sodium lights automatically shut off with a faint hum.

Just like a damned refrigerator, he thought.

But the dark was what he wanted. He withdrew a small penlight from his pocket and scanned the three bulkhead hatches leading to the forward bays. The portside bay, on the left, contained electronics for the multimode phased array radar scanner in the nose, radar processors, radar power supply, radar transmitters and receivers, Doppler processor, shrouded scanner tracking mechanism, and an RF oscillator. He knew; he'd checked the engineering diagrams.

He also knew the starboard equipment bay, the one on the right, contained signal processors for the inertial navigation system (INS), the instrument landing system (ILS), the foreplane hydraulic actuator, the structural mode control system (SMCS), station controller, and the pilot's liquid-oxygen tanks and evaporator.

The third forward bay, located beneath the other two and down a set of steel stairs, was the one he needed to penetrate. It contained all the computer gear: flight control, navigation, and most importantly, the artificial intelligence (AI) system for pilot interface and backup.

He suddenly found himself thinking a strange thought. Since no air-breathing vehicle had ever flown hypersonic, every component in this plane was, in a sense, untested. To his mind, though, that was merely one more argument for shutting down the damned AI system's override functions before he went hypersonic. If something did go wrong, he wanted this baby on manual. He only needed the computer to alert him to potential problems. The solutions he'd have to work out with his own brain. And balls. After all, that's why he was there.

As he walked down the steel steps, he thumbed through the magnetic cards, praying he had the one needed to open the lower bay and access the computers. Then he began inserting them one by one into the green metallic slot, trying to keep his hand steady in the freezing cold.