Project Cyclops Part 10

At this moment he was blended into a sea of shirt-sleeved technicians glued to the computer screens in Command Central, the nerve center of the entire operation. The young Americans all worked in a room slightly smaller than three tennis courts, with rows of light-beige workstations for the staff and three giant master screens that faced out from the far wall. The soft fluorescents, cheerful pale-blue walls spotted with posters and the large SatCom laser-eye logo, muted strains of Pink Floyd emanating from speakers somewhere in the corner, and circulated air carrying a hint of the sea--all made the perfect environment for the nineteen young workers s.p.a.ced comfortably apart at the lines of desks this evening shift.

As they watched, the superconducting coil ratcheted increasingly larger bursts of energy into the accelerator, pumping it up. At twelve gigawatts the Cyclops should--if all went well--begin to lase.

The coil, a revolutionary new concept for storing electrical energy, was situated deep in the island's core. It was a near-perfect storage system, permitting a huge current of electricity to circulate indefinitely without resistance, ready to produce the ma.s.sive, microsecond pulses of power. The heart of the system was an electromagnetic induction coil 350 feet in diameter and 50 feet high embedded in a natural cave in the island's bedrock. The coil itself was a new niobium-t.i.tanium alloy that became superconducting, storing electricity without resistance losses, at the temperature of liquid nitrogen. A vacuum vessel almost like a giant Thermos bottle surrounded the coil and its cryogenic bath.

The coil fed power into a particle accelerator that drove the complex's centerpiece, the Cyclops--a free-electron laser designed to convert the energy stored in the coil into powerful pulses of coherent microwaves.

The supercomputer would then focus these with the phased-array antennas into the propulsion unit of the s.p.a.ce vehicle. That unit contained simple dry ice--the only thing simple about the entire system--which would be converted to plasma by the energy and expand, providing thrust for the vehicle.

"Cally, we have ten point three gigs," LeFarge announced confidently.

He was absently stroking his wisp of beard. "Power is still stable."

"Good." She watched the readout on the computer screen in front of her as the numbers continued to scroll. If the Cyclops performed the way the engineers were all predicting, the world's most powerful laser was about to go critical. A thrill coursed through her.

The idea was brilliant. By directing the energy to a s.p.a.ce vehicle, you kept the power plant for its rockets on the ground. Unlike conventional rockets, the vehicle's weight would be virtually all payload, instead of almost all fuel. It would cut the cost of launching anything by a factor of at least a hundred. . . .

Now a green oscilloscope next to the computer screens was reading out the buildup, a sine curve slowly increasing in frequency.

"Eleven point one," Georges announced, barely containing a boyish grin.

"We're still nominal."

Cally glanced at the screen. "Let's keep our fingers crossed. Almost there."

"By the way," Bates interjected, "a.s.suming everything goes well here tonight and the storm lets up, I've scheduled myself on the Agusta over to Kythera in the morning. A friend of mine was sailing near there, and I'm a little worried. I just tried to reach him on the radio and got no answer. Maybe his radio got swamped, but I want to find out." He was turning to head back to his office. "Now, though, I've got some calls in to Tokyo. So keep me informed on the countdown, and your feelings on the weather."

More investors, she caught herself thinking. Begging. Which must mean the money's getting tight again. But hang in there just a couple more days, Bill, and we're gonna show the world a thing or two. They'll be begging _you _to let them invest.

"I just came in to give you some moral support," Bates continued, pausing, "and to tell you I think you're doing a terrific job."

"Bulls.h.i.tting the help again?" She laughed, not quite sure she believed his tone.

"Why not? It's free." A scowl. "But just keep up the good work." He had extracted a leather tobacco pouch from his blue blazer and begun to fiddle with his heavy briar pipe. She started to ask him to please not smoke here with all the sensitive Fujitsu workstations, but then decided they were his workstations. "If this thing flies, literally, I'm going to give you a vulgar stock option. Another one. For putting up with me."

"How about a bottle of aspirin?" She made a mock face. "I don't have any time to spend the money."

"I'm going to take care of that, too. After this is over, I'm going to have you kidnapped by a Greek beachboy and taken to some deserted island where there's only one way to pa.s.s the time." He frowned back, a wry crinkle pa.s.sing through the tan at the corner of his eyes. "Twenty years ago I might have tried to do it myself."

"Still hoping to get me laid?" She gave him her best look of shock, and they both had to laugh. The s.e.xual electricity was there, whether either of them wanted to admit it or not.

"There's a time and place for everything," he went on, showing he could hint and not hint at the same time. "You're definitely working too hard."

"I can't take all the credit." She knew when to be self-effacing and when to change the subject, fast. "We owe all this to the Bed Sox's oldest living fan."

By which she meant Isaac Mannheim, the retired MIT professor whose revolutionary propulsion idea had made the whole project possible. In 1969 he had demonstrated his ground-based laser concept to NASA, but they had backed away, claiming they had too much invested in conventional chemical rockets. But he knew it would work, knew it would change the way s.p.a.ce was used, so he had taken the idea to entrepreneur William Bates and offered to sign over the patents for a piece of the profits. Bates was impressed. He took him up on the offer, raised the money, and then hired the best aeros.p.a.ce engineer he could find to head up the project. Together they were a perfect team.

Mannheim, with flowing white hair and tweedy suits, was now in his seventies and lived in retirement in Cambridge, Ma.s.sachusetts. He was due in tomorrow, just in time to watch the first lift-off of a full- scale vehicle. When he arrived in Athens, Cally always dispatched the company Agusta to pick him up. A first-cla.s.s corporation, she figured, ought to behave like one.

"If the Cyclops power-up goes off without a hitch tonight, then we should have plenty of good news for him this trip," Bates said. "I'll let you be the one to brief him."

"Oh, he'll know it all before he gets here. He calls me every day at 1700 hours, our time, to check things out. I could use him to set my watch."

"Isaac's like the voice of our conscience, always telling us to work harder and better. Well, good for him." He smiled and flicked a gold lighter. The young technicians around the room gave him a disapproving glance, but kept their silence. The boss was the boss.

Besides, everybody in Command, poised in front of their screens, had other things to worry about.

8:22 P.M.

Eric Hamblin, formerly of Sweet.w.a.ter, Texas, had worked as a guard for SatCom for the past two and a half years and he loved the job. He was twenty-four, a college-dropout casualty of the go-go eighties who got to spend his afternoons hanging out on one of Greece's most beautiful islands. He was tall, thin, and bronzed to perfection. During his weekends on Crete he could almost pa.s.s for French as he cruised the German Frauleins who lined the sands in their string bikinis.

Tonight he had come on duty at seven o'clock--actually a couple of minutes later than that, since he'd been on the phone to a girl from Dresden to whom he had made some pretty overreaching promises. She wanted to come back to Crete this weekend and do it all over again. He grinned with satisfaction, kiddingly asking himself if he had the stamina.

He sighed, then strolled on down the east perimeter. The security here at this end of the island was good, as it was everywhere: the tall hurricane fence was topped with razor wire and rigged with electronic alarms. Of course you couldn't see all the security, which meant the place did not feel confining or scary. Which suited him fine. He was wearing a .38, but it was mainly for show. He wasn't sure he could hit anything if--G.o.d forbid--he should ever have to draw it.

Besides, the island was surrounded by miles and miles of water, the deep blue Aegean. The whole scene was a f.u.c.king hoot, and he gloried in it. Sea, sand, and--on weekends--hot-and-cold running German s.n.a.t.c.h. Who could ask for more?

Andikythera was, indeed, a travel poster come to life. Though it still was owned by the Greek shipbuilder Telemachus Viannos, as part of his major investment in the company, Bates had negotiated a long-term lease for SatCom, and by the time the technical staff started arriving, the few Greek shepherds on the island had been comfortably relocated to Paros. Construction began almost immediately after Bates took over, and soon it was almost like one giant Cal Tech laboratory. Everything from Big Benny, SatCom's Fujitsu supercomputer, to the phased-array microwave installation was state of the art. Here SatCom had created a launch facility that was within ten degrees lat.i.tude of Cape Canaveral, totally secure from industrial espionage, and perfectly situated to send up a major network of communication satellites.

Even now, though, the island remained unbelievably picturesque--its sharp white cliffs ab.u.t.ting the deep blue sea, then rising up in craggy granite to a single peak at one end, where the phased-array transmission antennas were now. Its flawless air sparkled in the mornings, then ripened to a rosy hue at sunset. For security and safety, as much as for aesthetics, the major high-technology installations had been secured deep in the island's core. Command was at one end, situated behind sealed security doors, and a tunnel from there led down to the power plant, installed a hundred and fifty meters below sea level. Guarding this small piece of paradise had been a snap.

Hamblin scratched at his neck and moved on through the sand. He despised the shoes they made him wear and wished he could be barefoot, untie his ponytail and let his sandy hair flow free around . . .

What was that? The east perimeter was totally dark, but he caught a sound that almost could be . . . what? A chopper approaching? But there were no lights anywhere on the eastern horizon, and the pad was dark.

n.o.body flew Mr. Bates' fancy new Agusta 109 Mark II at night.

Especially with no lights.

No mistaking it now, though. A whirlybird was coming in. He could clearly make out the heavy drumbeat of the main rotor.

8:24 P.M.

Salim altered the throttles when they were about ten meters above the pad, and they started drifting sideways. For a second it looked as though they might ram the Agusta, but then he applied the clutch, stopc.o.c.ked the engines, and hit the rotor brake. The Hind safely touched down, tires skidding. They were in.

Best of all, there'd been no radar warning alert from the instrument panel. Around them the facility was dark and, as he shut down the engines, deathly quiet. The wheels of the retractable landing gear had barely settled onto the asphalt before the main hatch was open and the men were piling out, black Uzis ready, the first rounds already chambered.