Ben Bova - Voyagers

2. It may be possible to upgrade the existing radar installation at Kwajalein (in the Pacific Ocean) to meet the requirements of Project JOVE. Kwajalein has a considerable amount of sophisticated electronics gear in place, much of it mothballed, as a result of being the terminal end of our Pacific Missile Test Range.

3. Security at Kwajalein should be much easier than at Arecibo. DOD personnel are already on-station there and capable of maintaining absolute security integrity.

4. The Arecibo radio telescope facility can be used for Project JOVE studies, as needed, by the existing Arecibo staff without revealing the classified elements of JOVE to them.

5. For the above reasons, I strongly recommend that we move Project JOVE to Kwajalein, rather than Arecibo.

“How did you get the letter out?” asked Lieutenant Commander Tuttle. He was standing, in uniform, before the fireplace.

Stoner looked at him for a long moment. The only sound in the room was the crackling of the flames, and the occasional pop of a knot in the firewood. McDermott sat across the coffee table, in the New England rocker. Stoner had the sofa to himself; he was in his sweat suit, they had caught him in the middle of his warm-up exercises, out by the pool.

“I slipped it into a letter I sent to a friend,” he answered carefully, “slapped a stamp on it and tossed it in with the reports and other crap that your couriers carry out of here every day.”

“You didn’t give it to Jo Camerata to mail for you?” McDermott asked, a tense edge to his raspy voice.

Stoner’s mind was racing. He made himself shrug. “She might have been the one who took that batch out; I really don’t know.”

Tuttle’s round face was grimly serious. “You realize that this is a security breach of prime magnitude.”

Stoner shook his head. “I didn’t tell them anything about what we’re doing. I merely wrote to a Russian author and asked if he’d heard anything about ETI lately.”

“You mentioned Jupiter!” McDermott growled.

“And radio pulses,” added Tuttle.

“And a lot of other things,” Stoner countered. “If you guys read that letter in its entirety, you’ll see that I didn’t really tip our hand —unless the Russians already know about the Jovian radio pulses, in which case there’s no breach of security.”

Tuttle gave an exasperated sigh. “You just don’t understand the security laws, do you?”

“Or won’t,” McDermott said.

“Maybe I just don’t care,” Stoner snapped.

“You could go to Leavenworth for this,” Tuttle said.

Feeling the icy calm that always came over him when he got angry, Stoner said, “Fine. Try it. You’ll have to put me on trial, and I swear to whatever gods there are that I honestly look forward to having a day in court. At least I’ll have a defense attorney; that’s more than you guys have allowed me so far.”

The little lieutenant commander shifted uneasily on his feet and glanced at McDermott, who said nothing.

“I’m going to get myself a drink,” Stoner told them, getting up from the sofa.

“Good idea,” Big Mac called after him as he headed for the kitchenette-bar. “Fix me a bloody mary while you’re there.”

Stoner grumbled to himself. Why can’t he want something simple, like a scotch on the rocks? As he searched through the cabinets over the sink for a can of mix, he heard Tuttle call, “Got any orange juice? I’ll take it with some ice.”

“Sure thing,” Stoner said. I work cheap, he added silently.

He could hear the two of them conversing between themselves while he built the drinks. By the time he had all three glasses on a tray, Tuttle and McDermott had a large map spread across the living room carpet and were studying it intently. Stoner looked down at the legend on the map as he put the tray on the coffee table. It said, Kwajalein Atoll .

“Don’t you guys have families?” Stoner asked, taking his own Jack Daniel’s. “I mean, it’s Sunday afternoon, five days before Christmas, for god’s sake.”

“We have work to do,” Tuttle said without taking his eyes from the map.

“You want to watch football on television?” McDermott asked derisively.

“I want to see my kids in Palo Alto,” Stoner said.

“You’ll be lucky if we let you put a phone call through to them on Christmas Eve,” McDermott snapped.

Stoner slumped back on the sofa again. “So they’re sending you to Kwajalein after all. Good. You don’t deserve Arecibo. Puerto Rico’s too lush for you bastards.”

“There’s no call for that kind of language,” Tuttle said.

“I’ve already been deprived of my liberty. Don’t try to take away my freedom of speech.”

“You’ve sent classified information to the Soviet Union,” Tuttle said, his round face going slightly red. “That’s a violation of the security laws. If we wanted to we could slap an espionage charge on you.”

“And I told you before, any half-decent lawyer would put your ass in a sling over illegal detention, duress, harassment…hell, nobody even read me my rights.”

Tuttle glared at him and Stoner realized that the mild profanity bothered the little guy more than the legal position he was in.

McDermott broke up their staring match. “Now, look here, Stoner. You’ve got to realize that what we’re sitting on here is so important that we’re not going to allow little legal quibbles to get in our way.”

“Try telling that to a judge. Or a jury.”

“You won’t get in front of a judge,” Tuttle said smugly. “You’re going to Kwajalein with us and you’re going to sit on that island until we’re ready to turn you loose.”

“Which won’t be until Project JOVE is completed,” McDermott added. “Listen to me, sonny. You can be either with us or against us, but either way you’re going to Kwajalein.”

“So what difference does it make?”

“Plenty! If you co-operate with us, work with us, then the Navy’s willing to forget any charges of security violation or espionage. Right, Fred?”

Tuttle nodded. “But if you won’t co-operate, we’ll convene a federal court on Kwajalein, try you there, and keep you in a Navy brig until we’re good and ready to transfer you to a federal prison on the mainland.”

Stoner took a swallow of Jack Daniel’s. “So it’s heads you win, tails I lose.”

“Exactly,” said McDermott.

“Military justice.”

“It’s legal,” Tuttle insisted. “I checked it out.”

Stoner laughed. “Legal. Military justice is to justice as military intelligence is to smarts.”

Tuttle took it seriously. “Don’t you go maligning military intelligence. I worked in Naval Intelligence. Nothing wrong with the smarts there. And we caught you, didn’t we?”

“Yeah, I know. You guys are so smart we won the war in Vietnam,” Stoner taunted.

“That was Army Intelligence! Westmoreland. All he wanted was good news. I know plenty of Army G-2 officers who got pushed further and further out into the boondocks every time they brought in a realistic intelligence report. After enough of them got knocked off by the VC, they started to realize that all Westmoreland wanted was high body counts and optimistic pipe dreams. So that’s what they sent in, and they always got rewarded with softer assignments, closer to headquarters, where it was safer.”

“And we lost the war.”

Tuttle nodded, a bit sullenly. “But that was the Army, not us. Why, if it wasn’t for my intelligence background this whole Project JOVE might never have gotten started. When Professor McDermott first told me about the radio pulses I was the one who thought of using Big Eye to search for anything unusual. It was my idea.”