all defense-industry stocks with the advent of glasnost, perestroika,
the opening of Eastern Europe, the unification of Germany. Sky Masters,
Inc., had to indeed prove itself on each flight. But Jon Masters had
always let the pressure roll off his back. He paid lip service to the
concerns of his board of directors and partners, and treated military
experts like Foch and scientists like Kaddiri as part of his road show.
He listened only to those who agreed with him. Sometimes he seemed too
busy having a good time to see the danger in what he was doing. Colonel
Ralph Foch clearly was not having a good time. He turned away from
Masters and checked the data readouts being transmitted to Masters'
launch aircraft from the White Sands Missile Test Range; the data was a
collection of sensor readings, meteorological-balloon measurements, and
satellite observations about conditions both in the atmosphere and in
the region of space that the four NIRTSats would travel. Foch checked
several screens of data with a checklist and binders of computer models
devised for this launch, then compared the information with corrective
actions being reported by Masters' launch aircraft as well as the data
from the ALARM booster itself. Since the launch was, in effect, the
ALARM booster's first stage, the rocket was already "flying" the
mission-issuing corrections to the jet's flight crew, updating its
position, and continually plotting its new route of flight-while still
within the cargo bay of the converted DC-10. "You're right on the
borderline, Doctor Masters, " Foch finally said. "But you're still
within the safety margin. Pending final clearance from White Sands,
you're cleared to launch." Foch swung his headset microphone in place
and made the radio call to the missile-range headquarters, recommending
clearance to launch. With airborne clearance received, the ground range
safety headquarters made a last-minute sweep of the range, alerted
Albuquerque Air Route Traffic Control Center to assist in keeping
aircraft out of the area, then issued final range clearance. Masters
grinned at Helen. "You've got the con, Helen." He liked to use
nautical terms like "con" although Masters had never been near a naval
vessel. "Initiate launch sequence. "Crew stand by for launch sequence,
" Kaddiri sighed over interphone as Masters made his way aft with the
two launch technicians. Kaddiri began to read off the fifty-one-item
checklist steps, most of which were simply verifying that the computer
was reporting the proper readings and was progressing smoothly, with no
fault reports. The automatic countdown stopped on step 45, "Final
Launch Clearance, Crew Notified, " at T minus sixty seconds, where the
computer initiated an automatic countdown hold and transferred control
back to Kaddiri. "T minus sixty second hold, " she announced. "Flight
controls visually inspected and checked in manual mode." Jon Masters
liked to accomplish this last check himself instead of sitting up on the
launch-control console-it was his last look at each missile before
sending it out into the world, like a parent dressing the child before
sending him off for the first time to kindergarten. Both launch officers
and Masters checked the long, slender scissor wings and vertical and
horizontal stabilizers on the tailplane. When they reported OK, Kaddiri
activated the flight-control self-test system. The scissor wings
swiveled out two feet until several inches of the wingtips were visible,
and the rudder and stabilators on the tailplane jumped back and forth in
a pre-programmed test sequence. "Self-test in progress, " Masters called
out. "X-wing to fifteen-degree position, left wingtip right. . .
rudder right. rudder center . . . rudder left . . . left stab up .
. . center . . . down . . . center . . . right stab up . . .
center . down . . . center." The test lasted only ten seconds.
Kaddiri canceled the selftest, then manually set the booster to launch
configuration. The wings swiveled back to lie along the top of the
booster's fuselage. "Verifying flight-control settings for launch, "
Masters called out. "X-wing centered. Rudder centered. Stabilators set
trailing-edge down position, the nose of the ALARM booster would dive
down and away from the DC-10 after launch, minimizing the risk of
collision. "T minus sixty countdown hold checklist complete, " Kaddiri
reported. She checked the navigational readouts. "On course as
directed by Roosevelt-One, time remaining in launch window one, six
minutes fourteen seconds." By then Jon Masters had walked up beside her
and had taken his seat again, taking a big swig from a squeeze bottle.
"Resume the countdown, " Masters said, watching the TV monitors on the
console. As he spoke, the pressure-secure bay doors on the lower
fuselage snapped open, revealing a lightgray cloud deck a few thousand
feet below. Other cameras mounted on the DC-10's belly, tail, and
wingtips showed the gaping forty-foot hatch wide open, with the ALARM
booster suspended in the center of the dark rectangle. "Doors open.
Thirty seconds to go. . Those thirty seconds seemed to take hours to
pass. Masters was about to call to Helen to ask if there was a problem
when she started counting: "Stand by for launch . . . five . . four
. . . three . . . two . . . one . . . release!" It was a
strange sensation, a strange sight. The ALARM booster just seemed to
shrink in size as it fell out of the launch chamberlt continued to fly
directly underneath the open doors as if it were frozen in place. The
doors stayed open long enough so that Jon could see the X-wing begin to
move slightly to provide a bit of stability as it cruised along. The
DC-10's tail heeled upward as the twenty-one-ton rocket dropped awayit
would take a minute for the movable counterweight tank to rebalance the
plane. The crew members in the cargo section held on firmly to
handholds in the ceiling or bulkheads as their bodies were pressed to
the floor. "Rocket away, rocket away, " Helen called out. Immediately,
the DC- 10 began a 30-degree bank turn to the left, and Roosevelt-I was
lost from the bomb-bay camera. Helen switched to a wingtip camera to
monitor the motor firing. "We're clear from booster's flight path, "
Kaddiri called out. "Coming up on first-stage ignition... ready,
ready... now. Like a giant stick of chalk drawing a fat white-yellow
line across the sky, the first-stage motor of the ALARM booster ignited,
and the rocket leaped ahead of the DC- 10 in a blur of motion. When the
rocket was about a mile away, the X-wing scissored out until the wing
was almost perpendicular to the rocket's fuselage, and the ALARM booster
reared its nose upward and began to climb. Nineteen seconds after
launch, the booster was traveling almost twice the speed of sound and
had recrossed its launch altitude as the wing generated lift. Seconds
later, the rocket was lost from view, traveling too fast for the
high-speed cameras to follow. "T plus thirty seconds, Roosevelt-One
on
course, all systems normal, passing one-twenty-K altitude, velocity
passing Mach three, " Kaddiri reported. "Launch-chamber doors closed,
chamber repressurized, " one of the techs reported. "Ready to reload."
They were in no hurry to load Roosevelt-Two into position on this
mission, but Masters liked to practice rapid-fire procedures to
demonstrate that a multiple ALARM launch within a single launch window
was possible. "T plus sixty seconds, fifteen seconds to first-stage
burnout, " Kaddiri reported. "Altitude one-eighty K, passing Mach six,
pitch angle thirty degrees. All systems nominal." Using the scissor
wings to augment the motor's thrust with lift, the booster climbed
quickly through the atmosphere. As the air started to thin and less
lift was being generated by the wings, they scissored back closer and
closer to the booster's fuselage until, just before first-stage motor
burnout, the wings were fully retracted back along the body of the
rocket. Seventy-six seconds after ignition, the first-stage motor
burned out and the rear half of the fifty-feet-long booster, carrying
the rear tailplane and the scissor wings, separated from the rest of the
booster. The rocket was at the very edge of space, nearly 250, 000 feet
above Earth. Nine seconds later, the second-stage motor ignited,
sending the booster streaking into space. The first-stage section began
its controlled tumble to Earth, and four recovery parachutes opened at
sixty thousand feet above ground. A specially equipped Air Force C-130
cargo plane would snag the parachute in midair and reel the firststage
booster in somewhere over the northern section of the White Sands
Missile Test Range. This recovery procedure would allow them to use the
ALARM booster system anywhere in the world without hazard to people on
the ground, even near heavily populated areas. The second- and
third-stage motor sections would re-enter the atmosphere from space and
burn up. "Good second-stage ignition, " Kaddiri reported. "Altitude
passing three hundred forty K, velocity passing Mach eleven, on course."
She turned to Foch with a look of concern, then at Masters.
"Second-stage nozzle reports a gimbal-limit fault, Jon. It might have
over corrected for winds at altitude and sustained some damage." Masters
had a stopwatch counting down to the second-stage burnout. "Forty
seconds to second-stage burnout, " he muttered. "Is it still hitting a
stop? Is it correcting its course?"
"Continuous faults on the nozzle, " Kaddiri replied. "It's maintaining
course, but it might slip out of stage-three tolerance limits." The
third-stage section of the booster was much smaller than the first two
stages, designed only to increase the booster's velocity to Mach 25 for
orbital insertion; it could not perform large course corrections. If
the second-stage motor could not hold the booster within a gradually
narrowing trajectory corridor, the booster could slip into a useless and
possibly dangerous orbit. Numerous "safe" orbits were computed where the
NIRTSat satellites would not interfere with other spacecraft and where
they could be "stored" until it was possible to retrieve them, but it
was usually very difficult to place a malfunctioning booster into a
precomputed "safe" orbit. If it could not be placed in a position where
it was not a hazard to other satellites, it could damage or destroy
dozens of other payloads and re-enter the atmosphere over a populated
area. Before that could be allowed tohappen, they would destroy it.
That was exactly what Foch had in mind as he opened the plastic-guarded
safety cover on the command destruct panel. Foch, Kaddiri, Masters, and
the ground safety officers at the White Sands range could command the
ALARM booster to self-destruct at any time; now that the booster was
flying, Masters had very little authority over its disposition-he could
not override a "Destruct" command. "I told you this might happen,
Doctor Masters, " Foch said. "The booster was obviously shaken off
course by the strong, high-altitude winds, and it sustained some damage
and can't correct its course enough." But Masters sat back and, to
everyone's surprise, put his feet up on the control console. "Ten
seconds to second-stage burnout, " he said, sipping his soda. "Sit
back, relax. It'll stay in the groove long enough."
"The decision doesn't rest with you this time, Masters, " Foch fumed.
"The command'll come from White Sands or the Air Force Space Tracking
Center. White Sands will initiate the destruct sequence. If their
command doesn't work, I initiate mine."
"Well, well.. ." Masters laughed, pointing to the computer monitor.
Foch turned to look. "Second-stage burnout, and Roosevelt-One is still
on course." They studied the readouts for a few more moments. The
booster, headed into a polar orbit over Canada, was picked up by Alaskan
radar sites as it continued its climb to its orbit altitude. Soon its
orbital insertion would be picked up by space-tracking radars at San
Miguel Air Force Station in the Philippines, and the NIRTSats would
begin their work. After a while, Masters turned to Foch with a smug
expression. "Minor course corrections being made, but it's right on
course. Expect third-stage ignition in four minutes." He took another
big Sip of soda, then punctuated his victory with a loud burp. "I'd get
your finger away from that destruct button if I were you, Colonel. The
Navy wouldn't appreciate you blowing up a perfectly good booster." CLARK
AIR BASE, ANGELES, PAMPANGA PROVINCE REPUBLIC OF THE PHILIPPINES
PHILIPPINES INDEPENDENCE DAY SUNDAY, 12 JUNE 1994, 1147 HOURS LOCAL One
of the first major uses of Masters' new NIRTSat constellation of
real-time position and communications reporting capability for Air Force
aircraft was a few days later-and it was the most inauspicious. It was
the day the last of the United States Air Force's aircraft departed the
Philippines as the Americans turned over their military bases to full
Filipino control. The satellites would control the last of the American
fighters and tankers as they withdrew from the Philippines to bases in
Japan and Guam. Headquarters of the U.S. Air Force's Thirteenth Air
Force at Clark Air Base, sixty-five miles north of Manila, was in a
magnificent white six-story stucco building, at the end of a long grassy
mall between the NCO and officers' family-housing areas. Both sides of
the mall along the Weston and Wirt Davis avenues had once been lined
with flags of the numerous military units of several nations that had
liberated the Philippines from Japan during World War II, standing as a
monument to those who had died defending this island nation against the
Axis. Now the sixty poles were vacant except for the three flagpoles at
the head of the mall opposite the headquarters building-the flags of the
Philippines, the United States, and the U.S. Air Force. From his vantage
point on the review stand in front of the headquarters building, Major
General Richard Stone noticed that someone had lowered the American flag
down several f
eet from the top of its staff-it almost appeared to be at
half staff. Perhaps it should be so. Stone's aide, Colonel Michael
Krieg, stepped over to his boss and handed him a Teletype report.
"Latest on that skirmish near the Spratlys, sir, " Krieg said. "The
Chinese are still claiming they were attacked by heavy antiship weapons.
Twentyseven Filipinos dead, six Americans, and five missing."
"Christ, " Stone sighed. He had watched the repercussions build over
the last week since the skirmish. "Do the Chinese expect anyone to
believe that? Why the hell would an oil company have any antiship
missiles on an oil-exploration platform?"
"They did have machine guns, sir. Twenty-millimeter. World War Two
vintage American Mk 4. Pretty good operating condition, too-before the
Chinese melted it with a Fei Lung-7."
"Idiots, " Stone muttered. "Opening up on a warship like that. So what
are the Chinese doing now?"
"Laying low, " Krieg replied. "Only occasional incursions in the
Spratly Island neutral zone. President Mikaso's government is being
very understanding about it so far. Vice President Samar issued a
statement calling for reparations from the Chinese."
"Lots of luck." "Vice President Teguina called for an investigation-not
of the Chinese, but of Mikaso's government, " Krieg added. "Of Mikaso $
government? Not the Chinese? 'Coursethat's typical, " Stone said.
"Whatever it takes to distance himself from Mikaso.. . just as he's
always done. Anything for a headline."
"The little bastard's got balls, that's for sure. Major General Stone
grunted. "You can say that againTeguina loves to stir things up. Now,
what do we have out there keeping an eye on things?" Krieg looked at his
boss with a look of pure concern. "In two hours-nothing."
"What?" "Message from CINCPAC." CINCPAC was the acronym for Commander
in Chief Pacific Command, the U.S. military organization responsible for
all military activities from the West Coast of the United States to
Africa. "He wants no combat aircraft or vessels near the area until they
can get a reading from the Chinese. Strictly hands off."
"Well, what did we have out there?" Stone grumbled, irritated at