Anna Chutesov took the seat that gave her the clearest view of their faces. This was not a time for shirking or flinching. Something terrible had happened, and she had been summoned to help deal with it.
"Now," began the General Secretary. "Our shuttle is in American hands. Now everyone knows this. Koldunov will explain the basic situation."
Koldunov rose to his feet like an instructor before a class, causing the military representatives of the KGB and GRU to sneer. They did not like civilians, especially scientist civilians.
"I will be brief," said Koldunov, and Anna leaned back in her chair because she knew when a man said he would be brief it was a preemptive move to keep the audience from getting restless too soon.
"We lost voice contact with the Yuri Gagarin at twelve hundred hours this afternoon," he went on. "Attempts to make the crew respond continued for several hours, in vain. During that time, there was only one communication from the spacecraft. A single voice, speaking English."
"Which crewman spoke?" asked Anna Chutesov, immediately and instinctively going to the heart of the matter.
"That is the first impossible part. None of them spoke."
"None?"
"There was a crew of three. The voice belonged to none of them."
"How can you be certain?" demanded Anna, her blue eyes like ice.
"Two reasons: voiceprint identification, and the fact that all three crewmen spoke excellent English. The voice from the shuttle spoke turkey English."
"Pidgin English," said Anna, and the General Secretary smiled. Anna was excellent with details. That was her genius.
"Tell her what the voice said," the General Secretary ordered.
"Hello is all right," Koldunov said in English. "It makes no sense. And here is the voiceprint readout." He pulled a long sheet of paper from a brown folder and slid it to the center of the table.
The graph showed four horizontal lines. The top three were like lightning crackling across the page. The bottom one was straight with slight waves just barely visible.
"This is the unfamiliar voice?" asked Anna when the sheet at last came to her.
"Yes," said Koldunov. "Our expert insists no human larynx could cause that kind of readout, but . . ." Koldunov simply shrugged.
"A stowaway," insisted the KGB head.
"You see spies in your soup," Anna said flatly.
"Prior to the accident, the Gagarin encountered a space object of unknown origin and attempted to salvage it," Koldunov went on.
"What idiot gave that order?" said the GRU chief, looking at Koldunov accusingly.
"This idiot," said the General Secretary coolly. "The object might have been an artifact of extraterrestrial origin. It was my decision to risk the mission to obtain it. I admit I may have erred, but the risk appeared worth the prize."
"What was the Gagarin's mission?" asked the KGB head.
"I do not know," admitted Koldunov.
The General Secretary waved for the GRU chief to answer.
"To deploy a highly secret military payload," the GRU chief said reluctantly.
"What payload?" asked the KGB head, sensing an opportunity to pry into the affairs of his GRU rival.
"It is classified," the GRU chief answered resentfully. The General Secretary made a soothing gesture with his hands. "I have called the four of you here for specific reasons," he said. "Koldunov was responsible for the shuttle, our illustrious GRU comrade was in charge of the Sword of Damocles. Anna and the KGB will be in charge of recovery operations. Be good enough to put aside these tiresome interministry rivalries and let us get down to business. And sit down, Comrade Koldunov. This is not a school lesson."
Koldunov dropped into his chair so hard he passed gas from the shock.
"What is the Sword of Damocles?" Anna Chutesov asked the GRU chief.
"The ultimate insurance against an American first strike," the GRU chief said proudly.
"Oh, really," Anna replied, arching an elegant eyebrow. "Don't tell me. Let me guess. It is some kind of a doomsday device. No?"
"How did you know?" demanded the GRU chief indignantly. "It was a secret of highest order."
"I did not know," Anna said acidly. "I guessed. I know how your military minds work. If you cannot win a war, you do not want the other side to survive."
"It is not like that," the GRU chief said.
"No! Then tell me what it is like," Anna ordered.
"It is a satellite. To American sensors, it would appear as a communications satellite. In truth, it has that function. It is a microwave relay device. But that is not its primary purpose. As long as it received a countermand signal, sent each May Day, the primary function would remain dormant. If it failed to receive the countermand, it would activate, and assume a geosynchronous orbit over the continental United States. Microwave bombardment would begin immediately."
"An interesting idea," said the KGB head in spite of himself. "If the Americans ever launched a successful first strike, there would be no Russia to send the countermand signal. By winning, the Americans would initiate their own doom. What do these microwaves do-fry them all like TV dinners?"
"No," said the General Secretary. "The microwaves do not kill people. They sterilize them by raising their body temperatures ever so slightly. We have had many incidents of sterility caused by exposure to small microwave dosages among our radar technicians of both sexes. That was the inspiration. In the men, it destroys the semen-producing capabilities of the testicles. Woman cease to ovulate. You see, it is all quite humane. Our revenge from beyond the grave would be the slow extinction of the American population."
"Killing the unborn is not humane," said Anna Chutesov bitterly. "Why not just fry them and be done with it?"
"If any other nations survive a nuclear exchange, we do not want the Russians to be remembered as the extinct race who had their macabre revenge," the General Secretary explained, "but as a peace-loving people who were cut down in their prime by the warmongering Americans, who subsequently became extinct, possibly through divine retribution. It would be good P.R."
"P.R.! P.R.!" shouted Anna Chutesov, leaping to her feet. "We will all be dead anyway. Who gives a damn about P.R. All that effort for what? Revenge? Better that you place the satellite in orbit and shout its capabilities to the world. Then it would be a deterrent. As mad as nuclear weapons, but a deterrent. By keeping this so-called Sword of Damocles a secret, you accomplish nothing except to be able to congratulate yourselves in advance for a Pyrrhic victory in the event of ultimate defeat. This is insane."
The General Secretary frowned. He did not like it when Anna Chutesov yelled at him. It set a bad example. But Anna always spoke her mind without fear of consequences. She was too valuable to liquidate. And she delivered.
"It is a good idea," he said quietly.
Anna slid back into her seat, her eyes blazing.
"We'll never know now, will we? The Sword of Damocles satellite is now in American hands. Once they dissect it, they will understand its true function. They will either have an excellent propaganda gift or they will quickly and quietly deploy a Sword of Damocles of their own. Wonderful. We can have a new kind of war. You men love that. Instead of killing each other, we will sterilize one another's populations. Slow extinction. Barren couples going childless to their graves. Children growing up without younger brothers or sisters. In ten, fifteen years, there will be no more children. In twenty, we will exist in a world of adults. In eighty or so years the last doddering remnants of the human race will be living out their final years. What will they do? Will they bemoan you fools who made it all come to pass, or will they fight toothlessly to be the last living human on earth?"