Four minutes came and went, while MacIlheny and the others smoked
cigarettes and tried to maintain a certain amount of calm as they
waited.
At the end of the four minutes, the phone rang. Blake, who was nearest,
answered.
"Yes. Good! Okay, thanks, Dr. Vanner!" He cradled the receiver and
turned to MacIlheny. "The Observatory. They've spotted Number Four.
She's slowed way down and dropped. They're feeding the orbit figures to
Orbits Division now, by teletype. She evidently hit a fast meteor, head
on."
MacIlheny nodded. "It figures. Tell Orbits to feed us a computation
we can sight by--feed it directly into the Brain first, so we can
get things going. We've got to get that satellite back up where she
belongs!"
As the figures came in, it became obvious that the orbit of Number
Four had been radically altered. Evidently, a high-speed, fairly
massive meteor had struck her from above and forward, slowing her
down. Immediately, the satellite had begun to drop, since angular
acceleration no longer gave her enough centrifugal force to offset the
gravitational pull of the Earth. As she dropped, however, she picked up
more speed, and was able to establish a new, different orbit.
With this information fed into it, the electronic brain in the top
twenty floors of the CGC Building went smoothly to work. Now that it
knew where the satellite was, it could again focus the beams on her.
Since the direction and velocity of the artificial moon in her new
orbit were also known, the trackers could hold the beam on her.
MacIlheny rubbed his chin with a nervous forefinger as he watched the
instruments on the control board come to life again as contact was
re-established.
Meanwhile, Orbits Division was still at work. In order to re-establish
the old orbit, the atomic rocket engines in the satellite would have to
be used. Short bursts, fired at precisely the right time, in precisely
the right direction, would lift her back up to where she belonged.
It was up to Orbits Division to compute exactly how long and in what
direction the remote-controlled rockets should apply their thrust.
As the beams again locked on the wayward satellite, MacIlheny kept his
eyes on the control board. Lights flickered and rippled across the
panel; needles on various meters wavered and jumped. MacIlheny watched
for several seconds before he said:
"Blake! What the hell's wrong there?"
Blake watched a set of oscilloscopes, four green-glowing screens which
traced and re-traced bright yellow-green lines across their surfaces.
His dark brows lowered over his eyes.
"We can't get anything to her, Mac. She's dead. Either that meteor hit
her power supply or else it did more damage than we thought."
"No control, then?"
Blake shook his head. "No control."
MacIlheny frowned. If the remote controls wouldn't work, then it
wouldn't be possible to realign the orbit of the satellite. "Keep
trying," he said. Then he turned from the control board, went to the
phone, and punched the number of the Orbits Division.
"Orbits Division, Masterson here," said a gruff voice from the other
end.
"This is MacIlheny. How does that orbit on Number Four look now?"
"We've got it, Mac. I'll send the corrective thrust data to the brain
as soon as--"
"Never mind the corrective thrust," MacIlheny interrupted impatiently.
"We can't use it yet. We don't have any positive contact with her;
she's dead--no response to the radio controls."
"You mean you can't get her out of that orbit?" Masterson's voice was
harsh.
"That's exactly what I mean. She's stuck in her new orbit until we find
some other way to change it. It can't be done from here."
There was a pause at the other end, then Masterson said: "Mac, I hate
to say this, but you've got a hot potato on your hands. That thing's in
a cometary orbit!"
"_Cometary?_"
"That's right. Instead of a normal, near-circular path, she's going in
an elongated ellipse. At perigee, she'll be less than a hundred and
fifty miles above the surface."
"_Uh!_" MacIlheny felt as though someone had slugged him. If the
satellite went that low, the air resistance would slow her even more
before she broke free again. Each successive passage through the
atmosphere would slow her more and more until she finally fell to
Earth. If she fell into the ocean, that would be bad enough; but if she
hit a populated area....
* * * * *
Fortunately, by that time her velocity would be considerably cut down;
if she were to hit the atmosphere with her present velocity, the shock
wave alone would be disastrous.
"Okay," said MacIlheny at last. "Notify every observatory within sight
range of her orbit! Keep a check on her every foot of the way! We'll
have to send up a drone."
"Right!" There was a subdued click as Masterson hung up.
MacIlheny turned. Blake was standing beside him. "I've got White Sands
on the line, Mac."
MacIlheny flashed an appreciative grin. "Thanks, Blake." He went to
Blake's office and closed the door. In the screen of the visiphone, he
saw the face of Paul Loch, of Commercial Rockets, Inc., White Sands.
"How's it going, Mac?" Loch asked. "I understand you're having trouble
with Number Four."
"It's worse than just trouble, Paul," MacIlheny told him. He carefully
explained what had happened.
Loch nodded. "Looks rough. What do you figure on doing?"
"How much will it cost me to rent one of your RJ-37 jobs with a drone
robot in it?"
"Fully fueled?" Loch thought a moment, then named a figure.
"That's pretty steep," MacIlheny objected.
Loch spread his hands. "Actually, it's just a guess; but I'm pretty
sure we won't be able to get insurance on her for something like this.
What do you plan to do?"
"I want to take an RJ-37 up there to Number Four and use it to put the
satellite back in a safe orbit. It'll have to be done quickly or we'll
lose the satellite and a few thousand square miles of Earth."
Loch paused again, turning the idea over in his mind. MacIlheny said
nothing; he knew how the mind of Paul Loch worked. Finally, Loch said:
"Tell you what; get the Government to underwrite the insurance, and
we'll give you the RJ-37 at cost. Fair enough?"
MacIlheny nodded. "Get her ready. If the President won't okay the
insurance, we'll have to pay the extra tariff. We absolutely can't
afford to lose that satellite."
"It'll be ready in half an hour," Loch promised as he cut off.
MacIlheny began punching the code numbers for Washington, but the phone
rang before he was through.
_Pure luck_, MacIlheny thought to himself as the President's face came
onto the screen.
"Evening, Fitz," said the President of the United States.
"Good evening, Mr. President."
"Fitz, I understand you're having a little trouble with one of your
satellites. The Naval Observatory tells me it's in a collision orbit
of some kind. Where will it come down?"
MacIlheny shrugged. "I don't know, sir. It'll depend on how much
resistance it offers to the atmosphere at that altitude, and that will
depend on how badly it was torn up by the meteor."
"I see. What do you propose to do?"
"I'm going to try to get one of Commercial's RJ-37's up there to put
her back on course. I don't want to lose a twelve-million-dollar space
station."
"I can understand that, but--" The President looked off his screen
suddenly as though someone had attracted his attention. "Hold the line
a minute, Fitz," he said. And the screen went blank. MacIlheny waited.
When the President came back, he wore a frown on his face. "The French
government has been informed of what has happened. They want to know
what we intend to do."
"Did you tell them, sir?"
"Not yet, but I will. But there are going to be other governments
interested pretty quickly. Nobody wants something like that falling
down on their heads. We may have to send up a hydrogen bomb and blow it
out of existence if you can't get it back into a safe orbit."
"I know." He paused. "Mr. President, I have an idea. Suppose we load
the RJ-37 with a thermonuclear warhead. If we can't change the orbit
of the satellite, we'll blast her."
A slow grin spread across the face of the Chief Executive. "Very neat,
Fitz; it'll also mean the government will have to underwrite the full
insurance cost of the RJ-37 if you have to detonate the bomb."
MacIlheny grinned back. "It will, at that. But don't worry, Mr.
President; I won't set off the warhead unless I absolutely have to. I
want to save that satellite--not destroy it."
"All right, Fitz. I'll call White Sands and authorize the whole
project. And I'll try to keep the foreign governments happy."
"Fine, sir. We'll know more after her first passage through perigee. If
her orbit changes too much--"
"I'll leave it up to you, Fitz. Good luck."
* * * * *
The special controls for remote operation of the RJ-37 were in a room
just off the main monitors. It was set up just like the control cockpit
of the ship itself, with all the instruments in their proper places.
If a pilot moved a control knob here, the same knob would move the
same amount in the ship. Instead of the heavy paraglass window in the
nose of the ship, the control room in the CGC Building had a wide,
three-dimensional color TV screen. It gave the illusion of actually
being in the ship.
The remote control cockpit was occupied by a Space Service officer--a
Major Hamacher, who had been ordered up from a tour of inspection at
the Brooklyn Navy Yard. He was a square-faced, clear-eyed, prematurely
graying man in his early thirties.
MacIlheny was relieved when he saw the major; the officer looked as
though he could do the job. MacIlheny had wanted to use one of the
Company pilots, but the President had vetoed that idea. If the ship was
going to be insured by the government, then piloting it would be the
government's job, too.
It had been nearly an hour, now, since the accident which had disabled
Satellite Number Four. She had been carefully tracked by several
observatories across the face of the Earth, and the figures had been
carefully checked and rechecked.
Lower and lower the satellite dropped, as it spun around Earth in its
elongated orbit. At a hundred and fifty miles altitude, the air is
thin--thinner than the air in any but the very best vacuum tubes. But
it is still dense enough to slow down anything traveling as fast as the
satellite. The slight friction would be enough to alter the course of
the flying moon.
Major Hamacher sat in the control chair, his hat off and his sleeves
rolled up. As soon as the satellite started up again and her new orbit
stabilized, the major would take off the RJ-37 and guide it to Number
Four.
The men waited tensely. MacIlheny gnawed impatiently at the stem of his
pipe, which had gone dead minutes before without his noticing it.
They waited. Very soon, now, Number Four would hit perigee.
It never did.
The observatories saw what happened. As the satellite came lower and
lower, it looked as though it were following a perfectly normal path.
Then, quite suddenly, there was a flare of light from beneath her! She
leaped up again, under the driving thrust of her underjets.
Number Four had--somehow--changed her own orbit before the tenuous
atmosphere could even begin to drag her down.