Moonstruck. Part 5

"I needed you here. You can't act nearly as convincingly as you can storm off in high dudgeon. QED."

He should be furious at the manipulation, Kyle thought, but somehow he wasn't: he'd rather be here than Washington. "Sometimes I marvel that you never ran for President."

Britt arched an eyebrow by an understated millimeter. "I didn't have to," he said.

CHAPTER 6.

Russia Protests U.S. Arms Sale to Ukraine -NBC Moscow Bureau Treasury Threatens Cutoff of Loans to Russia -Voice of America

Nationalists Favored in Russian Federation Elections -CNN.

There could be very few matters more pressing than interstellar visitors and their advanced technology, but a foolish humankind seemed to have found one: a return to nuclear madness. Bellicose speeches and resurgent Russian nationalism were bad enough; now Kyle found himself immersed in a far scarier nightmare. As world tensions inexplicably climbed, the White House asked him to spearhead Franklin Ridge's round-the-clock research into a national-security disaster: the rash of failures in "national technical means," diplomat-speak for spy satellites. If, as everyone suspected, the Russians were killing the satellites, how were they doing it? And why?

And what would happen when, despite the nation's best efforts to build and launch replacements, America found herself blind?

* * * Franklin Ridge National Labs nestled into a secluded and pristine fold of the Allegheny Mountains. The location was isolated but still an easy drive from many East Coast cities.

National crises do not recognize weekends, but Kyle took one anyway. The data made no sense. He

needed an outside, fresh perspective, and he knew where to find it. And from whom.

Darlene Lyons had stayed on the Galactic Studies Commission when he'd left. "Someone," she had opined, "has to champion reality there." He remembered the words, and hoped that they would generalize to his new problem, as he rang the doorbell of her Georgetown duplex.

After a welcome hug and some pleasantries, he wound up perched on the front edge of a sofa, picking at crackers and cheese. He picked, as well, at words, unsure how much to say even as he reminded himself that he had invited himself over.

"Is there a scintilla of a reason for you to be here?" She studied him over a gla.s.s of Chablis.

Scintilla was the compartmented code word for the top-secret satellite investigations at Franklin. Startled, he almost spilled his own drink."So much for the theory that my innate charms brought you." Setting down her gla.s.s, she stacked a napkin with crackers. "Yes, I'm cleared for Scintilla. What about it?"

"You know that the spysats have been killed with X-rays?"

She nodded.

"A couple of the birds were grazed by the beam before getting fried. The final telemetry lets us approximate the power density of the beam as it locks in." He'd reached the part of the a.n.a.lysis that most

upset him; he drained his gla.s.s and with a trembling hand poured a refill. "I don't believe that the Russians-or anyone here on Earth-could generate that beam. I think the F'thk are meddling."

Settling next to Kyle on the sofa, she laid a hand on his elbow. "We think so, too."

"The commission?"

"State." It was now her turn to look uncomfortable. "I don't have a code word to exchange for this one.

Just keep it to yourself.

"According to H'ffl, the Galactics have their own factions. It's been centuries since the Galactics last discovered a new species possibly eligible for membership. For all that time, their Commonwealth has been evenly split between more-or-less authoritarian states and more-or-less democratic, individual- rights societies. That the nations of Earth are split between the two philosophies has thrown the

Galactics for a loop: neither side feels comfortable about how we'd affect their power balance. Earth was almost not contacted for that reason.

"The F'thk are basically libertarian, in the individualist camp; that's why they came first to Washington.

H'ffl has told several American diplomats, me among them, of his biggest fear: he has reason to believe one of his legation is an agent for an authoritarian species. He is not sure which, and he doesn't think it's important. What does matter is that the statists are determined to a.s.sure their side a majority-and they will do anything to avoid a defeat."

Kyle rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "So this alien spy is behind the nationalist authoritarian resurgence in

Russia? They want to tip Earth's balance of power to tip their commonwealth's?"

"There's no direct evidence the Russian situation isn't a homegrown political phenomenon. It's far from uncommon for beleaguered parties in power, or those who want to a.s.sume that power, to look for a foreign enemy and play the nationalism card. The scary question is, will alien chicanery cause the Russians to do something foolish?"

"The Galactic authoritarians may win if the nationalists take back Russia. They avoid losing, in any event, if the Earth immolates itself."

"That's how it looks," Darlene agreed.

"How's the US commission stand on this? Other countries? Should we ask the F'thk to leave?" Which is not to say they would necessarily honor such a request.

"Won't happen." She shook her head. "Everyone's afraid that the last guy seen got the latest techie favor from them. So every country except the last one visited wants the F'thk to stay long enough to see themagain."

"And every new stopover ratchets up the anxiety level that much more." He drained his wine, unable to see any escape from the dilemma.

* * * Hammond Matthews was a belt, suspenders, and Krazy Glue sort of scientist-his findings, however counterintuitive, were thoroughly tested before he ever verbalized them.

Matt sprawled the length of what had been, until recently, his own sofa in his own office. With a shoulder-length mane of blond hair, strong jaw, pale blue eyes, and absolutely no hint of a tan, Matt looked like a vampire beach b.u.m. He wore chinos, a knit shirt, and sandals, his one suit and tie stored

until the next Washington visitor arrived.

"Heart attacks," echoed Kyle cautiously. When he had asked Matt to search for interesting correlations with Galactic activities, he'd not expected medical coincidences.

"Heart attacks," confirmed Matt. "Every city hosting a Fellowship Station shows an increase."

"Unfortunate, but surely a natural enough response to the excitement. I was on the Mall, you know, when they came to DC."

"In every case, the pattern began days after the visit. Interestingly, pacemaker failures account for most

of the increase."

Kyle caught the implication-he remembered the warning plaques on early microwave ovens. "Orbs

don't emit microwaves, or any RF. Commission physicists monitored orbs from the day after I got my first. No orb has ever been seen to radiate anything.""And I'll bet every one of those measurements took place inside a Faraday cage."Of course the orbs were observed inside electromagnetic shielding. How else suppress . . . external signals . . . that could interfere . . .

Spotting the LED of enlightenment over Kyle's head, Matt climbed to his feet. "Let's step down to the radiometry lab."

Radiometry was a windowless room whose walls, floor, and ceiling hid a lining of grounded copper foil.

With its metal door closed, the entire lab was a Faraday cage. Around the room, antennas of every description stood in storklike vigil. Orbs, in various states of disa.s.sembly, were everywhere-not that dissection had explained anything. ("No user-serviceable parts," he thought inanely.) In three corners, frameworks of two-by-fours covered with fine-mesh copper screening enclosed smaller test s.p.a.ces for the conduct of precision experiments.

The workbench along the back wall supported a parabolic antenna aimed at an intact orb. A power cable snaked from the dish antenna's blocky base to a power supply on a lower shelf. Thinner signal cables connected several small dipole antennas arrayed around the orb and around the parabolic dish to a rack of instrumentation.

"We could approximate the carrier frequency from the sensitivity of pacemakers, but it was trial and error to find a signal coding to which the orb responded-if we weren't simply imagining things." Matt rested a hand on the test rig. "Courtesy of your commission's observations, at least we knew that the F'thk favor phase-modulated transmission. The control computer ran through twenty-odd thousand permutations before finding a pulse sequence to which the orb responded."

At Kyle's eye level on the instrument rack, the screen of a digital storage oscilloscope showed two flat

traces: no signals in or out. Kyle took a deep breath. "Show me."

A mouse click triggered the beamcast; the lines on the DSO screen instantly mutated into complex waveforms. A bit of typing made the computer translate both phase-modulated signals into the more familiar format of binary pulse trains.

Whatever the orb had to say took lots of bits.

CHAPTER 7.

"You've got fifteen minutes," said Britt Arledge. "Since the world is coming apart at the seams, be happy

for that."

The White House office was spartanly furnished and fanatically organized. For once, Kyle appreciated the obsessive order-it made it that much easier to spot the Galactic orb he felt certain would be present.

He quickly spotted one on a bookshelf beside the room door.

He sidled to one end of Britt's desk, blocking with his back the line of sight between Britt and the orb, before taking from his pocket a folded sheet of paper. Raising the other hand to his mouth, he made the universal "shh" gesture.

Britt read the note without visible reaction. "You know, I feel like some coffee. Care to join me?"

They went instead, Kyle leading the way, to a previously arranged cubbyhole in the next-door Old