“They have now made their countermove. They’ve surrounded the two satellites with a pack of six hunter-killer satellites. These contain only conventional explosives, but they’re powerful enough to neutralize our nuclear device. The concern is that the protective circuits will not respond to a blast wave. The Soviets are betting, or bluffing, that we are vulnerable to the hunter-killers.
“Our task is to anticipate the intelligence gathering operations that will be necessary to map out their tactical possibilities, and our appropriate responses. As of forty-five minutes ago, the Soviets had not tried to aim the laser, but they could force the issue at any moment.”
Isaacs signaled, the lights were dimmed, and a slide projected at the end of the room. The people sitting too near the screen shuffled their chairs around and craned their necks.
“This was taken from one of our KH-11 satellites from about 5,000 miles,” Isaacs continued. “The laser satellite is the cylinder at the tip of the yellow arrow. You can make out some details on it if you look closely, and, of course, the image can be reprocessed to bring them out. The small spot at the tip of the white arrow is our device.”
“What’s the actual spatial separation there?” a voice asked.
“About two hundred meters,” Isaacs replied. “The effective range of the device is much greater, the proximity was chosen mainly for psychological effect. You’ll notice that our device is located along the long axis of the laser satellite; the laser fires out the side. The small dots at the tips of the six shorter yellow arrows are the hunter-killers.”
“That’s an odd configuration they’re in,” said Bill Baris from somewhere down the table. “Unless there is a funny projection effect, they seem to be in two groups of three and closer to the big laser satellite than to ours. Why would they do that? Won’t they do themselves as much or more damage as they do us?”
There was a silence for thirty seconds, then a sudden voice.
“Shaped charges! I’ll bet they’re shaped and specifically aimed away from the laser and toward our device.”
There were murmurs of agreement, then Baris again.
“We’ll need some close-up photos to see if the hunter- killers have distinguishing features and if there is a pattern in their orientation that suggests they are aimed. I bet we find they’re positioned so that any recoil will miss the laser. We’ll need ground intelligence concerning their manufacture.”
Another voice. “If we assume they’re shaped, we can work out the spread angle of the explosion from the positions they’ve been deployed in, assuming they’re all designed to hit us and none to damage the laser.”
Isaacs listened to this interchange with the satisfaction he always took when the ideas began to flow in one of these sessions. He had worked hard to assemble this crew and rarely failed to admire their performance. It was a good thing someone could think this morning. His mind was numb.
“How did we get in this fix?” someone inquired. “Surely we saw the hunter-killers converging?”
“The Soviets play good chess,” Isaacs responded. “They know how to use their pawns. They correctly anticipated our dilemma as they moved the first one up. We had promised to fire the nuke if the laser were used. But it’s a very different story to fire the first nuclear device in space in a generation when neither the laser nor even the hunter-killer is actually used, just repositioned. I think there was also a failure to realize that the heat sensitive circuits might not be triggered by an explosion until extensive physical damage was already done. In any case, once they had bluffed the first one into position, adding others wasn’t much different.”
“We could up the ante,” someone suggested. “Put up another nuke at a greater distance, but still in kill range. If the hunter-killers take out the first, we take out everything left with the second nuke. And we lay down an ultimatum. Use one or both nukes if any hunter-killers approach the second.”
Isaacs made a couple of personal notes to augment the record of the session, which would be transcribed and stored in computer memory. “The President may not want to escalate in that direction,” he replied. “Let’s see what else we can come up with.”
“What’s to keep the Russians from putting up their own nuke?”
“They may be trying to keep some lid on this in their own way,” answered Isaacs. “But that’s clearly one of their options.
Let’s come back to that and see if we can map out what would drive them to it.”
“How fast are those hunter-killers?” a new voice asked. “Can the nuke be scooted somewhere else before they can respond? For instance out of their range, but still within nuclear range?”
Another voice answered. “Tough to outrun an explosion.”
“Yeah, true,” the first voice answered thoughtfully, “but at least you would be putting the pressure on them to make the first overt move.”
“Maybe,” came the second voice, “but if you force them to blast the nuke, they may figure they’re already committed and start using the laser on everything else in orbit.”
Isaacs had the projector turned off and the lights back on. Around the room, people sat erect from the postures they had assumed to peer at the slide.
“Let’s talk some more about the options of the Soviets,” Isaacs requested. “What are they apt to do?”
“Well,” said Baris, “they could fire a charge over our bow, so to speak, if the charges are shaped and the explosion can be directed, just a little sabre rattling without changing the status quo. Or they could go for broke, zap us with a hunter- killer then use the laser with impunity. Or they could just fire the laser, betting that we won’t use the nuke even if the laser is actually used. Hunter-killers don’t do them much good then, but there is some chance any explosion would trigger the nuke, and they may not want to risk that.
“Come to think of it,” Baris wagged a finger, “maybe they would want to try exactly that, just go ahead and use the hunter-killers. If the nuke goes, they have us for using atomics in space. If we chicken out, they have free use of the laser and our vaunted nuclear threat comes to nothing. Just the kind of pitiful giant posture they like to trap us in.”
Baris scratched his head as he thought. “If that’s their most obvious move, then we just force them to it if we try to move the nuke out of range of the hunter-killers. That seems to me to be the question. Will they risk our wrath and perhaps a nuclear explosion by using the hunter-killers, or just sit tight? Do we use the nuke without direct provocation, or try to horse it out to a greater distance? Or do we just sit with them and sweat blood?” He stopped and looked around the room for a reply.
The discussion continued for an hour and a half. They continued to produce ideas, filtering out the unproductive ones, refining and developing the good ones. A priority list of intelligence targets was constructed and assignments handed out. Isaacs finally called a halt so that all could turn to their individual tasks.
The next day, Monday, Isaacs finally found some time to pursue his personal agenda. He’d promised Danielson more data to refine her predictions of the upcoming event in Nagasaki. Now he looked across the desk at the young Navy lieutenant. Philip Szkada had been placed in nominal charge of the Navy’s surveillance of the strange sonar signal. Although the day was officially a part of the three-day holiday weekend, he had agreed to meet Isaacs in Rutherford’s old office.