The Glass Lady (4 page)

“Beside Commander Wiegand is Dr. Jaime Swisher from Lawrence Livermore Labs, Nevada. To Jaime's left is Dr. Kathleen Burtscher from Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory and liaison to the White Sands, New Mexico, High-Energy Laser Systems Test Facility.”

The thin woman smiled and stroked dark wisps of hair from her healthy, tanned face.

“And at the end of the table is Dr. Joseph Vazzo from the Department of State, Soviet Technical Studies Group. Nice to see you, Joe.”

The graying diplomat nodded.

“Well, to get down to business.” Admiral Hauch, Annapolis 1954, shifted a pile of papers as he glanced up at the clocks along the wall: Two o'clock in the morning, Washington time. “It's LACE. And we have a problem.”

The Admiral paused as his words cleaved the quiet air within the glass chamber. One dozen tired faces looked up from steaming coffee cups. Half a dozen cigarettes were smashed into pewter ashtrays engraved THE JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF. The Admiral continued.

“It's TRIAD.”

“But TRIAD doesn't fly, even boilerplate-experimental for five years at best, Admiral,” the woman said with assurance.

“How familiar are you with TRIAD, Dr. Burtscher?” the Admiral inquired in a cordial tone.

“Same as everyone here. It's our spaceborne, laser weapons system with three elements: Alpha Project—a chemical laser, five megawatts, 2.7 microns in wave length. And LODE—Large Optics Demonstration Experiment by Hughes Aircraft—a four meter firing mirror. And Talon Gold—Lockheed's laser aiming-radar for tracking missile targets from space. I read the same technical reports as everyone else here. The laser satellite should fly in five years at the earliest.”

“Very good, Kathy. Very thorough. One more detail, however: DARPA's laser, killer satellite
is
flying . . . in space . . . right now. General Burns?”

The youthful, sandy haired officer looked uncomfortable as he addressed the company.

“The orbiting laser platform was launched February 14, 1990, on a Delta-2 missile from Cape Canaveral. It was contained in the announced mission of the LACE/RME spacecraft flying in a 130 nautical mile circular orbit with orbital inclination of 38 degrees. We announced the mission as simply a benign test of the LACE and RME satellites publicized as laser target drones.” General Burns shuffled through his stack of confidential documents. “LACE was to be only the Low-power Atmospheric Compensation Experiment: a flying target for ground-based lasers. The bird's 210 optical sensors were to monitor low-powered laser beams fired from the Air Force Maui Optical Station, Mount Haleakala, Maui, Hawaii. The Naval Research Lab built LACE for the public purpose of testing the distortion caused by the atmosphere to ground-based lasers firing into space.

“RME was announced as part of the McDomnell Douglas Delta-2's double payload. RME was billed in the press as the Relay Mirror Experiment: another drone with adjustable mirrors for testing whether or not a ground-based laser could bounce off of steerable, space-based mirrors for targeting on other satellites. RME was to carry twelve mirrors adjustable four thousand times every second.”

General Burns looked uncomfortable and pained.

“The Alpha laser was carried live. It had been successfully test fired for the first time on April 7, 1989, at TRW's plant at San Juan Capistrano, California. And it did not carry the older Talon Gold aiming device. Talon Gold on LACE carried the working optics of Teal Ruby: the spacecraft AFP-888, infrared tracker by Rockwell. We announced in January of 1990 that the five-hundred-million-dollar Teal Ruby was being put into mothball storage at Norton Air Force Base, California. In actuality, Teal Ruby went to Canaveral's 6555th Aerospace Test Group for integration with Talon Gold and mating to the LACE/RME spacecraft. Teal Ruby was further enhanced by combining it with certain parts of the CIRRIS infrared missile tracker which had been removed from the AFP-675, Lockheed satellite. You may remember that CIRRIS flew manned on the fourth space shuttle flight.”

“Thanks, Tom. General Gordon, if you will fill in the blanks, please?”

“Admiral: The LACE test article was designed only for evaluation of the tracking optics. The Talon Gold sight was to be targeted on one of our three modified recon satellites, the Block 647 spacecraft built by TRW.”

“And?” interrupted General Cochran from Defense. “I followed that mission. It did not carry a live killer laser, as far as I know. Only the ranging and aiming device with modified Teal Ruby electronics.” The General looked hard at General Gordon. “Did it, John?”

General Gordon studied the grim face of the Admiral who nodded him on.

“It did . . . Alpha Project was carried hot: One hydrogen-fluoride, infrared, chemical laser at five megawatts.”

“Mother of God,” Joseph Vazzo of the State Department breathed as he rocked back in his tall chair.

“And it worked beyond our expectations—quite unplanned, I would hasten to add.” The Admiral squirmed with discomfort.

“How unplanned?” demanded the gray-haired man from State.

The Admiral exhaled a long and tired breath as he looked his interrogator in the eye.

“Two days ago, the LACE spacecraft severely damaged and perhaps destroyed by a stray laser blast the Russian, Kvant-3 vehicle.” Admiral Hauch spoke gravely. “The Kvant-3 module was on a five-day automatic rendezvous and docking mission to link up with the Soviet's Mir space station. Thank God Kvant-3 was unmanned! Kvant-3 is part of their Module-D program of sending up so-called building block units for attachment to Mir.

“LACE's Alpha laser literally got off one lucky shot. Mir flies in a much steeper, nearly polar orbital path, and higher than LACE. But Kvant-3 on its automatic way to Mir had a one-in-a-million nodal crossing where the orbits of LACE and Kvant-3 crossed. LACE simply looked sideways and let Kvant-3 have it broadside.”

“John,” General Cochran inquired, “do the Russians know that we have hit them?”

“We're not sure yet. They haven't said a word in two days. We're hoping they think it was internal damage, some kind of stray voltage spike. We are hoping . . . I can tell you this: Through the usual channels, the Russians have asked for a closed technical conference between our people and theirs in Vienna.”

“When?” inquired Deputy Secretary of State Vazzo, more restrained.

“Later today, mid-morning our time, Joe.”

Secretary Vazzo said nothing.

“Dr. Swisher?”

“How could it have happened, Admiral?”

“Don't know, Jaime. The LODE optics and Alpha Project laser are both designed fail-safe with triple redundancy in range safety. We know from the data over the last few weeks that we're not even close to the anti-missile, laser-aiming goal of accuracy to within two-tenths of one millionth of a degree on Talon Gold. And we still have quite a bit of jitter in the beam-focusing mechanism. Our best guess is that if LACE had actually aimed at Kvant-3 . . . she would have missed by a country mile. It just let one slip—at the wrong time, in the wrong corner of the sky.” The Admiral looked very tired as he shook his head. “We're here at two o'clock in the morning to figure out how to disable LACE from the ground.”

“Turn it
off
”demanded the man from State.

“Can't, Joe,” responded General Gordon, who lived in a hole in the Denver mountains. “Can't. It's burned out her own encryptor. She will acknowledge an uplink telemetry signal from the ground, but she cannot seem to use her onboard encryptor to decode the signal.

“We expect a transient SGEMP. Let me explain: LACE is at the front, the very tip, of our avionics technology. Her innards are mostly what we call VHSIC—or very-high-speed integrated circuitry. These are tightly packed electronic modules, very sensitive to stray electrical fields. The laser energy of Alpha generates a low-level field of radiation within the spacecraft. This field can engulf a satellite in an SGEMP—system-generated electromagnetic pulse.

“That's what we think we have in LACE: a magnetic pulse from radiation creating a stream of electrons which are really electrical currents trickling down into our tightly packed electronics. This radiation drips down, the stream of electrons trickles inside LACE, and we have a short or some other electrical failure, like a burned-out code encryptor relay . . . LACE is crippled, but alive. Very much alive and on her own.”

“Shot herself in the foot, aye, Admiral?” asked the man from State.

The Admiral nodded without words.

“I called you here at this outrageous hour of the night to ask for a real-time status report on all of your laser projects. The people upstairs want to know what we have on-line in our nearspace laser arsonal to kill LACE.” The Admiral did not turn his face toward the Deputy Secretary of State.

“Let's start with you, Commander Wiegand. How is Project Sea Lite?”

“One minute, Admiral,” interrupted the Marine stenographer who opened his eyes blinking at the glare. “Have to replace the paper.” Quickly, the young Marine threaded the end of a thick ream of steno paper into his machine. “Okay, Admiral. Sorry.”

“Commander?”

“Admiral, the Navy's Project Sea Lite is a laser weapon in development since 1980. We have test fired TRW's, 2 point 2 megawatt, deuterium-fluoride laser at 3 point 8 microns wave length. But it's not operational. Our next step will be MIRACL, the Mid-Infrared Advanced Chemical Laser. It's pumped by a pulsed xenon lamp. We've already fired it at White Sands.”

“Jack, can either system hit LACE from the ground?” asked General Breyfogle of the Marines.

“Maybe in about ten years, Ed.”

“Thanks, Jack. Jaimie, what's cooking in your New Mexico projects?”

“Well, Admiral, we first fired the Dauphin Project laser in 1980. We're working with Lawrence Livermore labs on it. It's an X-ray-pumped laser using argon-flouride in a pulsed mode. It is designed to kill a missile by impulse—a lethal radiation shockwave . . . But we are maybe fifteen years from having anything operational. At Los Alamos, we're also working on the free electron laser, known as FEL. We've just developed a photoinjector device which can increase FEL beam brightness one hundred times and boost power output from twenty to forty megavolts. But for right now, no way, Admiral.”

“Alright, Kathy, what about your excimer laser tests in the west?”

“In March 1988, we finally fired an eight-hundred megawatt, raman-shifted, excimer laser into the sky from Western Research Corporation's San Diego facility. Although it was our highest power excimer test to date, we can only sustain the beam for half a microsecond. We've also had some success with an iodine-pulsed laser, pumped by magnetic flux, compression generators. Anti-satellite radiation is created by a bleaching-wave effect. But, Admiral,” the pretty scientist frowned, “we certainly are a decade away from knocking down something as big as the LACE spacecraft. Sorry.”

“Thanks, Kathleen. General Burns, what about your two flying vehicles, Pegasus and BEAR? Can we disable LACE with either of your babies?”

All eyes focused sleepily upon the sandy-haired officer.

“Well, Admiral, BEAR is our Beam Experiment Aboard Rocket payload. It is our first flying neutral particle beam antimissile weapon, as you know. But it was the most fundamental of early tests. She popped up to 126 miles on only a nine-minute flight. The particle beam was then cycled briefly through a firing sequence aimed at points up to only six miles away. The beam has a maximum power of one megavolt fired at five bursts per second. Just too primitive, Admiral.” The General shrugged with visible disappointment.

“Okay, Tom. How about Pegasus? Could it be rigged to catch and destroy LACE?”

“Not likely, Admiral. Pegasus is an air-launched missile designed to orbit very small payloads, too small to carry the electronics needed to find LACE. And there aren't any explosive devices small enough to do the job if we could get them close enough to LACE. I just don't have anything for you.”

“How about HOE, Tom?”

“Now that is a real breakthrough, Admiral. The Army's Homing Overlay Experiment succeeded in destroying an incoming drone missile in June 1984 during an all-up test of the Talon Gold tracking device. It was HOE's fourth test flight. We launched a Boeing Minuteman target missile from Vandenburg Air Force Base, California. Our interceptor missile was launched from Mech Island in the Pacific atoll of Kwajalein. One hundred miles up, our interceptor destroyed the Minuteman target . . . But, Admiral, HOE had three prior failures in February, March, and December 1983. HOE may be able to score on an incoming ballistic target 25 percent of the time, but it simply is not designed to pursue a target which is in orbit. Not enough energy. Sorry, Admiral.”

“Okay, Tom. Thanks. B.C., what about ALL?”

“Also not powerful enough, Admiral. The Airborne Laser Laboratory has flown since 1981 in modified, conventional aircraft. As you know, ALL is a carbon dioxide, dynamic laser. But its 400 kilowatts of power and her one-meter optics won't even warm LACE's skin.” The officer frowned. On General Cochran's shoulder, a lovely blue emblem read: “Airborne Laser Laboratory: PEACE THROUGH LIGHT.”

“So,” sighed Admiral Hauch as he pushed himself from the table. “No one has anything operational for shooting down our wayward bird after three and a half billion dollars funded for this research in 1990 alone?”

“
Your
wayward bird,” counseled the man from State. “And you're only half correct.”

One dozen exhausted faces studied Joseph Vazzo's strongly lined face.

“There is a ground-based, anti-satellite laser which can vaporize LACE.” The gray haired diplomat was grim. “And it's not ours . . .” He savored the dramatic pause. “Its code name is TORA and the laser weapon—I would call it a cannon—belongs to the Soviets. We've watched it for 10 years. We damn near have the wiring diagrams from our boys in trenchcoats. They've built it at Saryshagan, in Mother Russia: A flash-initiated, iodine-pulsed killer laser. It's the size of a football field: Twelve Pavlovski, magnetocumulative generators around one monster of a pulsed betatron.”