Thomas Hoover - Project Daedalus

"Zero minus eighteen hours." Yuri Andreevich Androv stared at the green screen, its numbers scrolling the computerized countdown. "Eighteen fucking hours."

As he wheeled around, gazing over the beehive of activity in Flight Control, he could already feel the adrenaline beginning to build. Everything depended on him now. The vehicle was as ready as it was going to be: all the wind tunnel tests, all the computer simulations, even the supersonic test flights-everything said go. Daedalus I was going to make history tomorrow morning.

Except, he told himself, it's going to be a very different history from the one everybody expects.

"Major Yuri Andreevich Androv, please report to Hangar Quadrant immediately."

The stridency of the facility's paging system always annoyed him. He glanced at the long line of computer screens one last time, then shrugged and checked his watch. Who wanted him?

Well, a new planeload of Soviet VIPs reportedly had flown in yesterday, though he hadn't seen any of them yet. He figured now that everything looked ready, the nomenklatura were flooding in to bask in triumph. Maybe after a day of vodka drinking and back slapping with the officials in Project Management, they'd sobered up and realized they were expected to file reports. So they were finally getting around to talking to the people who were doing the actual work. They'd summon in a few staffers who had hands-on knowledge of the project and commission a draft report, which they'd then file, unread, under their own names. Typical.

He reached for his leather flight jacket, deciding on a brisk walk to work off the tension. The long corridor leading from the East Quadrant to the Hangar Quadrant took him directly past Checkpoint Central and the entry to West Quadrant, the Soviet sector, which also contained the flight simulator and the main wind tunnel, or Number One, both now quiet.

As he walked, he thought again about the new rumor he'd heard in the commissary at lunch. Gossip kept the Soviet staff going-an instinct from the old days-but this one just might be true. Some lower-level staffers even claimed they'd seen him. The Chief.

Word was Tanzan Mino himself-none other than the CEO of the Daedalus Corporation-had flown in this morning, together with his personal bodyguards and aides. The story was he wanted hands-on control of the first hypersonic test flight, wanted to be calling the shots in Flight Control when Daedalus I made history.

Finally. The Big Man has decided to show his face.

"Yuri Andreevich, just a minute. Slow down."

He recognized the voice immediately and glanced around to see Nikolai Vasilevich Grishkov, the portly Soviet chief mechanic, just emerging from the West Quadrant. His bushy eyebrows hung like a pair of Siberian musk-ox horns above his gleaming dark eyes.

"Have you seen her?" Grishkov was shuffling toward him.

"Seen who?" He examined the mechanic's spotless white coveralls. Jesus! Even the support crews on this project were all sanitized, high-tech.

"The new woman. Kracevia, moi droog. Ochen kracevia. Beautiful beyond words. And she is important. You can tell just by looking."

"Nikolai, there's never been a woman in this facility." He laughed and continued on toward Security. "It's worse than a goddam troop ship. You've finally started hallucinating from lack of pezdyonka."

"Yuri Andreevich, she's here and she's Soviet." The chief mechanic followed him. "Some believe she arrived this morning with the CEO, but nobody knows who she is. One rumor is she's Vera Karanova."

"Who?" The name was vaguely familiar.

"T-Directorate. Like I said, no one knows for sure, but that's what we've heard."

"Impossible." He halted and turned back, frowning.

"That's just it, Yuri Andreevich," he sighed. "Those KGB bastards are not supposed to even know about this project. That was everybody's strict understanding. We were to be free of them here. But now…" He caught the sleeve of Androv's flight jacket and pulled him aside, out of the flow of pedestrian traffic in the hallway. "My men were wondering. Maybe you could find a way to check her out? You have better access. Everybody wants to know what's going on."

"KGB? It doesn't make any sense."

"If she's really… I just talked to the project kurirovat, Ivan Semenovich, and he told me Karanova's now number three in T-Directorate."

"Well, there's nothing we can do now, so the hell with her." He waved his hand and tried to move on. "We've both got better things to worry about."

"Just keep your antenna tuned, my friend, that's all. Let me know if you can find out anything. Is she really Karanova? Because if she is, we damned well need to know the inside story."

"Nikolai, if I see her, I'll be sure and ask." He winked. "And if she's the hot number you say, maybe I'll find time to warm her up a little. Get her to drop her… guard."

"If you succeed in that, moi droog," he said as his heavy eyebrows lifted with a sly grin, "you'll be the envy of the facility. You've got to see her."

"I can't wait." He shrugged and moved on toward the Hangar Security station, at the end of the long corridor. When he flashed his A-level priority ID for the two Japanese guards, he noticed they nervously made a show of scrutinizing it, even though they both knew him perfectly well, before saluting and authorizing entry.

That nails it, he told himself. Out of nowhere we suddenly have all this rule-book crap. These guys are nervous as hell. No doubt about it, the big nachalnik is on the scene.

Great. Let all those assholes on the Soviet staff see the expression on his face when the truth comes out. That's the real history we're about to make here.

As he walked into the glare of neon, the cavernous space had never seemed more vast, more imposing. He'd seen a lot of hangars, flown a lot of experimental planes over the years, but nothing to match this. Still, he always reminded himself, Daedalus was only hardware, just more fancy iron. What really counted was the balls of the pilot holding the flight stick.

That's when he saw them, clustered around the vehicle and gazing up. He immediately recognized Colonel-General of Aviation Anatoly Savitsky, whose humorless face appeared almost weekly in Soviet Military Review; Major- General Igor Mikhailov, whose picture routinely graced the pages of Air Defense Herald; and also Colonel-General Pavel Ogarkov, a marshal of the Soviet air force before that rank was abolished by the general secretary.

What are those Air Force neanderthals doing here? They're all notorious hardliners, the "bomb first, ask questions later" boys. And Daedalus is supposed to be for space research, right? Guess the bullshit is about to be over. We're finally getting down to the real scenario.

And there in the middle, clearly the man in charge, was a tall, silver-haired Japanese in a charcoal silk suit. He was showing off the vehicles as though he owned them, and he carried himself with an authority that made all the hovering Soviet generals look like bellboys waiting for a tip.

Well, Yuri Andreevich thought, for the time being he does own them. They're bought and paid for, just like us.

"Tovarisch, Major Androv, kak pazhavatye," came a voice behind him. He turned and realized it belonged to General Valentin Sokolov, commander of the MiG 31 wing at the Dolinsk air base on Sakhalin. Sokolov was three star, top man in all the Soviet Far East. Flanking him were half a dozen colonels and lieutenant colonels.

"Comrade General Sokolov." He whipped off a quick salute. Brass. Brass everywhere. Shit. What in hell was this all about?

Now the project director, Taro Ikeda, had broken away from the Soviet group and was approaching. "Yuri Andreevich, thank you for coming." He bowed deferentially. "You are about to receive a great honor. The CEO has asked for a private conference with you."