Worlds in Chaos (31 page)

An hour later, Judith called Keene in his office to say she had Idorf on a link through Amspace. “You did it!” Keene got up to close the door with a foot and then resumed his place before the screen. “Good girl. I knew you’d hack it.”

“It wasn’t me,” Judith told him. “I was still working on it. This is incoming. He’s calling you.” Moments later, Keene found himself looking at the lean, hawkish features with the reddish hair and raggedy beard. Idorf didn’t look in the friendliest of moods; neither did he have time for social pleasantries.

“Dr. Keene, I’m sorry if this is inappropriate, but I don’t pretend to understand how things work in your world. I’m contacting you because you are a person who gets attention and can convey a message to the proper people; also, I respect you as someone whose word can be relied upon. I cannot say the same for many of the others that I’ve been hearing recently. My impression is that they are likely to say anything they think I want to hear if they believe it might get them what they want. I’m told this is what you call politics.”

Play this ree-al easy
, Keene told himself. He tried to look composed. “I appreciate the compliment, Captain Idorf. How can I help?”

“Are you aware that the departure of our delegation is being obstructed?”

“No, I wasn’t. I knew there was a block on communications, and in fact was trying to get through to you via Amspace to find out more. I’m back in Texas now, away from it all. What’s happening?”

“The transportation that was supposed to be made available to bring them back up to the
Osiris
is not forthcoming. I am also informed that the emigrants who have been booking earlier flights to the Tapapeque base in Guatemala have been put on hold.” Keene started to inject that he knew something strange was going on in Washington, but Idorf went on, “Today, I announced that if your government was not going to provide a shuttle to bring our delegation up, I would send one of our own surface landers down to get them. I was
warned off
by Terran defenses, Dr. Keene! They advised me that any such unauthorized landing would be treated as a hostile act, and the craft seized. So, are we at war now, eh? Does Earth jump to the only kind of solution it has ever been able to conceive for any problem?”

Keene was aghast. “My God! Look . . . I know something’s been—”

“Ah, but that’s not the end of it. Two hours ago, I was advised of an intention to send a military boarding party up to this ship and asked to cooperate peacefully ‘for our own security and protection,’ whatever that is supposed to mean. . . .”

“
Jesus Christ!
I—”

Idorf’s hand appeared in the foreground on the screen, pointing a finger. “Very well, they have made their rules clear. Now this is what I would like you to convey, if you would, to whoever down there should hear it. Years ago, when relations between our two societies were more strained than in recent times, there seemed a real possibility that Earth might send an expedition to take over Kronia forcibly. We devoted considerable effort of the kind that produced vessels such as this one to the development of advanced defense systems, and it has been our policy ever since to build all new ships with a dual-role capability. The
Osiris
is armed, Dr. Keene. The weapons that it carries are of extreme potency. We will fire upon any craft, manned or otherwise, that attempts approaching closer than one hundred miles without authorization, whether or not it acknowledges further warnings. I trust you will have gathered by now that I am not of a mood to make jokes. I’m hesitant to put this to the people I’ve listened to today, because I fear they might attribute the same slipperiness to my words as appears to apply to their own. But as I said, you strike me as someone who will put it in the right way, to the right persons. Have I been clear enough? And if so, will you do as I ask?”

Keene eased himself back in the chair and exhaled a long, silent whistle. “Yes. Perfectly clear, Captain. . . .” He thought furiously about how much it might be wise to divulge. Finally, he decided that the way to respond to candor was with candor. “I already knew that the ship was armed,” he said. “When we visited you, a colleague and I strayed off the path we were supposed to be on, and saw inside one of the hub cupolas. The machinery looked like an ejector, and whatever it launches is obviously nuclear. What is it? At a guess—some kind of fission-pumped, multipointing beam device? X-ray laser, maybe?”

Idorf’s eyebrows arched. “I respect your frankness, Dr. Keene. And you are remarkably well informed. Each capsule deploys a gigajoule charge and generates multiple, independently targetable beams at a ten-thousandth of an Angstrom. I don’t think I have to spell out what that would do to a target at a hundred miles.“

Or a thousand,
Keene thought to himself. “I am a nuclear engineer,” he said. “And I worked in plasma physics research for a while. In fact I’ve been involved in studies of that kind of system. How much of the specification are you prepared to release?”

Idorf shrugged. “As much as it takes to convince them.”

“I think I can do that for you,” Keene said dryly. “Okay, let me ask you for some numbers.” He paused and looked at the screen quizzically. “But first . . .”

Idorf waited. “Yes?”

“What’s going on? Do you know any more than I do? . . . What is this all about?”

“Nobody’s told you yet, eh?”

Keene showed his palms. “I’ve been trying to find out all day. It’s almost like you said. The whole of the Washington’s acting as if there is a war about to break out.”

Idorf regarded him fixedly for a few seconds; then, he seemed to make up his mind and nodded. His expression was grim. “Yesterday evening, I passed some news down to Gallian that had just come in from Saturn. Our observatories there have been able to make measurements that won’t be possible here for a few more days until Athena moves farther out from the glare of the Sun. It seems we can forget further speculating about whether the electrical environment can be altered, Dr. Keene. Athena has come out from perihelion on a changed orbit. It isn’t going to cross fifteen million miles ahead of Earth as was previously thought.
It’s coming straight at us!
”

Keene called Cavan on a secure channel to inform him as he had promised he would. Cavan seemed too stunned to make much by way of reply just for the moment. However, he wouldn’t be the person to send Idorf’s message through, since doing so would invite questions about his and Keene’s previous dealings. Instead, on Cavan’s recommendation, Keene contacted a presidential defense advisor called Roy Sloane and passed on Idorf’s warning. To back it up, he quoted the figures that Idorf had revealed, adding a few pertinent observations that he and Wally Lomack had made during their visit. He kept strictly to the script that Idorf had indicated, making no mention of Athena. Sloane was familiar with Keene’s name, took the warning seriously, and asked Keene to leave it with him. Thirty minutes later, he called back.

“You say that you and your colleague Wallace Lomack actually saw these weapons with your own eyes, Dr. Keene?” he checked.

“Yes, that’s right.”

“You can describe the construction and layout, detail the main assemblies, give performance estimates?”

“Not of the actual pods, which were in shielded storage. But of the hoist and ejection systems, yes. And some idea of functions from the local backup controls.”

“We need both of you here, Dr. Keene. Can you contact Mr. Lomack down there and tell him he needs to get ready to travel tonight? Or would you rather we have one of our people call him?”

“
Tonight?
I don’t know if we can get a flight at that notice,” Keene said.

“Oh, we’ll take care of that. When you’re coming to meet the President, it’s on Uncle Sam’s tab.”

Keene called an astonished Wally Lomack and told him the minimum that was necessary at that point. He debated with himself about telling Vicki everything but decided that until he knew more than he did, there was little purpose to be served. So, giving her just the Idorf’s-warning part of the story, he entrusted the office into her charge once again and drove home. He just had time to pack his bag once again before a staff car with a lieutenant and a WAVE driver arrived from the Corpus Christi Naval Air Station at the end of Flour Bluff to collect him. From Keene’s place they went on to Lomack’s house to pick up Wally, and from there to the airfield, where an executive jet with Navy markings was warmed up and waiting. They flew to Andrews Air Force Base, Washington, and were met there by a car from the White House vehicle pool. The radio was running a program about vacation spots in South America for the rest of summer and fall. Athena was due to intercept Earth in less than three weeks.

PART TWO

SATURN:

NURTURER OF LIFE

25

The meeting was clearly destined to run through into the early hours. It was being held in what Keene had been told was the Yellow Room in the South Wing, furnished in Queen Anne period against a background of satin hangings, ochre carpeting, redwood panels, and landscape paintings. Twenty or so people were present, including President Samuel Hayer, David Novek, head of the National Security Council, William Born, Deputy Secretary of Defense, and General Patrick Kilburn of Air Force Space Command. Voler was there also, with his astronomer colleague Tyndam, so far acting as if Keene didn’t exist. He spent a lot of time conversing with a man called Vincent Queal, apparently from one of the intelligence agencies. Most notably absent was the Vice President, Donald Beckerson, who was conferring with defense officials at the Pentagon.

A large wall screen uncovered by sliding panels showed several views of the
Osiris
and a chart of its internal layout that the Kronians had released some years previously. On it, the weapon-launch housings were left unidentified and the armory serving them conveniently obscured by other details of the structure. Keene had described his and Lomack’s impressions close-up, and outlined the nature of the weapons. After being launched a safe distance from the vessel, each pod would detonate a moderate nuclear charge at the center of an array of heavy-element lasing rods, probably in the order of six feet long, that could be aimed independently at a mix of near and distant targets. In the billionths of a second before the rods and the ellipsoid-walled focusing cavity surrounding them were vaporized, the energy from the bomb would be concentrated into intense beams of X rays aligned along the rod axes, which could be aimed with precision. From the scale of the hoist machinery between the shielded armory where the weapons were stored and the launch housings, Keene guessed that the pods carried a propulsion unit, indicating that they needed to get a long way from the ship before activating. This gave a minimum estimate for their power, which fitted with the numbers that Idorf had supplied. Keene explained from beside a table near the screen, where he had placed his notes.