Thomas Hoover: Project Daedalus

"You just made up my mind," he said, and nodded toward Vance. "Go."

"Firing one and two," was the radio response.

Vance grabbed the throttles. "Petra, do you read me?"

“Yes,” she answered in English.

"Give me alpha sixty." He rammed the throttles forward, clicking them into the Lock position, igniting the afterburners. Next he yanked the sidestick into position.

The cockpit rotated upward, automatically shifting to compensate for the changing G-forces. In front of his eyes now was a wide liquid crystal screen that seemed to be in 3-D. The left side resembled the heads-up display, HUD, common to jet Fighters, providing altitude, heading, airspeed, G-forces in a single unified format. The right side showed a voice-activated menu listing all the screens along the wall.

"Read me fuel," he said, testing it.

Immediately the numbers appeared, in pounds of JP-7 and in minutes, with and without afterburners. The G-force was now at 3.5 and climbing, while the digital altimeter was spinning.

“Systems alert,” Petra announced suddenly, ”hostile radar lock. And hostile IR interrogation. Two bogies, closure rate nine hundred sixty knots.”

They weren't kidding, Vance thought. He glanced at the altitude readout. Daedalus was hurtling through thirty thousand feet, afterburners sizzling. But an AA-9 had a terminal velocity well over Mach 3. Add that to the Foxhound's 2.4… "Petra, give me estimated time of impact."

“Extrapolating closure rate, I estimate impact in forty- three seconds.”

Their acceleration had reached 3.8 G's, but fuel was dwindling rapidly, already down to twelve minutes.

"Give me RWR and IRWR, screen one," he commanded.

The liquid crystal panorama inside the helmet immediately flashed, showing the unfriendly radar and infrared interrogations. The two Acrid AA-9s-that's what they had to be-were gaining altitude, tracking them like bloodhounds. One was radar locked, while the other showed active-homing IR guidance. The exhausts of Daedalus's afterburners must look like a fireball in the sky, he thought.

He scanned the menu for electronic countermeasures (ECM) capabilities.

"Petra, commence radar jamming."

“Commenced. Estimated time to impact, thirty-eight seconds.”

The missiles were still closing. Even if the radar-guided AAM could be confused, Daedalus had no way to defeat infrared homing.

The left-hand display now showed they had accelerated to Mach 4.2. The throttle quadrant was locked into the afterburner mode, but outrunning AAMs was like trying to outspeed a smart bullet.

He watched the dials. Mach 4.3. Mach 4.4.

“Estimated time to impact twenty-eight seconds.”

"I'm not sure we're going to make it," he said into his helmet mike. "We may have to try initiating the scramjets early."

"No, it would be too risky," Androv replied. "The skin temperatures at this altitude. The air is still so dense the thermal stresses…"

Vance checked the screen again. "Altitude is now thirty-eight thousand feet. I'm going to level out some, try and boost our Mach number. One thing's sure, we can't make it if we hold this attitude. Besides, we're burning too much fuel. Either we chance it now, or we get blown to smitherines. We've got no choice." He shoved the sidestick forward. For this he didn't plan to bother with Petra.

“Time to impact, twenty seconds,” she reported tonelessly.

By trimming pitch, Daedalus started accelerating more rapidly. Airspeed scrolled quickly to Mach 4.6.

“Time to impact, fifteen seconds.”

Nine and a half minutes of JP-7 remained. Just enough to land, he thought, if we ever get the chance.

Mach 4.7.

"Eva, take a deep breath. We're about to try and enter the fourth dimension."

"I… can't… talk."

Then he remembered Androv had said she might pass out. Now he was starting to wonder if he wouldn't lose consciousness too. He was sensing his vision starting to fade to gray, breaking up into dots. The screen noted that their acceleration had reached eight G's and was still climbing. Fighting for consciousness, he reached down and increased his oxygen feed, then contracted every muscle in the lower half of his body, trying to shove the blood upward. The G-indicator on the left-hand screen had scrolled to 9.2.

“Time to impact, ten seconds.”

Mach 4.8.

He reached down and manually locked the pitch on the compressor fan blades into a neutral configuration. They immediately stalled out, causing Daedalus to shudder like a wounded animal. Then he heard the voice of Petra, and a new signal flashed on his helmet screen.

“We have nominal scramjet geometry. Commence ignition sequence.”

She'd reconfigured the turbines, meaning Daedalus was go for hypersonic. He grappled blindly behind the throttle quadrant and flicked the large blue switches that initiated the hydrogen feed. But would the supersonic shock wave inside the engines fire it?

“Time to impact, six seconds.”

"Let's go." Reaching for the throttle quadrant, he depressed the side button and then shoved the heavy handles forward, sending a burst of hydrogen into the scramjets' combustion chambers…

Daedalus lurched, then seemed to be tearing apart, literally disintegrating rivet by rivet.

Friday 9:57 A.M.

"We have detonation," Colonel Arkadi reported into his helmet mike. His twin-engine Foxhound was already in a steep fifty-degree bank.

"We copy you," General Sokolov replied. "Can you confirm the kill?"

"The target is outside my radar and IR," he said, wishing he had some of the new American over-the-horizon electronics he'd heard about. "But both missiles reported impact. I've ordered the wing to chop power and return to base. We're already on auxiliary tanks as it is."

"Roger," came the voice from Flight Control in Hokkaido.

"We downed her, Comrade General. Whatever she was, there's no way she could have survived those AA-9s. The target is destroyed."

Friday 10:16 A.M.

Tanzan Mino closed his eyes and sighed. The financial portions of the protocol would still stand on their own; the arrangement could be salvaged somehow; it would merely require finesse.

The shocked faces of the Soviet brass standing behind him told of their dismay. Daedalus, the most marvelous vehicle ever created, had literally been within their grasp, and now… both prototypes destroyed.

But at least, at least it hadn't fallen into the hands of the Americans. No more humiliating episodes like that in 1976 when the traitorous Lieutenant Viktor Belenko defected with a MiG 25 Foxbat, exposing all its secret electronics to the West. Friday 10:16 A.M.

A slam of acceleration hit him, and he felt a circle of black close in on his vision. It was the darkness of eternal night, the music of the spheres. His last sight was the airspeed indicator scrolling past Mach 6.1. Almost four thousand miles per hour.

The starship Daedalus had just gone hypersonic.

He didn't see it, but look-down radar had shown the two Acrid AA-9s exploding a thousand feet below. When the scramjets powered in, the infrared-homing AAM lost its lock on them and detonated the other missile, sending a supersonic shock wave through Daedalus. AAMs, however, were now the least of their problems.

Skin temperature was pushing 2,200 degrees and the cockpit was becoming an incinerator. At forty-eight thousand feet they were rapidly turning into a meteorite.

His vision was gone, but just before losing consciousness he shoved the hydrogen throttles all the way forward and yanked back on the sidestick, sending them straight up into the freezing black above. Friday 10:19 A.M.

Altitude seventy-three thousand feet. Airspeed nine thousand knots.”

"Petra, raise helmet." He was slowly regaining his sight as the G-loads began to recede. The cockpit was an oven, overwhelming its environmental control equipment, clear evidence vehicle skin temperature had exceeded design.