Bill Bates was still in his office, trying to do some heavy thinking
and put his problems into sequential order. The first problem was that
the bastards were killing his people, mostly just to make an example
and instill terror. The next one he wasn't so sure about, but from what
he had seen in his occasional glimpses of Control, Cally was missing.
Apparently she had gone off with the fucker who called himself Number
One and hadn't come back. Was she down at Launch? Doing what?
Well, Calypso Andros was a tough cookie. They might pressure her and
threaten her, but she would stand up to them. These terrorists were
just cowards with automatics; he could smell that much a mile away.
The next problem was SatCom itself. He hated to find himself thinking
about it at a time like this, but the company was built on a pyramid of
short-term debt--construction loans that could be rolled over and
converted to long-term obligations only if the test launch proceeded as
scheduled. It already had been postponed once, and the banks were
getting nervous. If these thugs derailed the Cyclops for any length of
time, the banks were going to move in and try to foreclose on all the
computers and equipment. The litigation would stretch into the next
century.
SatCom. On the brink. High-risk all the way, but what a dream. Almost
there, and now this.
He found himself thinking about his wife, Dorothy. She had been
supportive--she always was--from the very first. Maybe after eighteen
years of struggle she had had misgivings about gambling everything on
this one big turn of the roulette wheel, but she had kept her thoughts
to herself. Which was only one more reason why he loved her so. She had
been all their married life, always there with a real smile and a hug
when the going got the roughest. It made all the difference.
But now, now that the whole enterprise was in danger of going down the
tubes, he felt he had let her down. For the first time ever. Even his
briar pipe tasted burned out, like ashes. He had taken every cent he
could beg or borrow and had gambled it all on space. Only to have a
group of monsters barge in and wreck everything. Now what? He honestly
didn't know.
He had flown an A-6 Intruder in Vietnam, but hand-to-hand with
terrorists was something else entirely. The bastards had shut down all
the communications gear when they moved in. The phones were out, the
radio, and even his personal computer terminals had been shunted out of
the system. He could count and he knew what automatic weapons could do.
No, this one was out of his control.
He glanced around his office, paneled in light woods and hung with
photographs of Dorothy and the two boys--his favorite was during a
regatta in Chesapeake Bay. There also were photos of the Cyclops system
and the VX-1 vehicle, the latter caught in the austere light of
sunrise, the blue Aegean in the background.
He shook his head sadly, rose, and made his way out into the cavernous
room that was Command. The fluorescent lights glared down on a
depressing sight--the staff disheveled and living in stark fear--one
armed hood at the computer, another lounging by the doorway. . . .