I flinched with surprise and automatically looked over my shoulder at the technician standing by to operate the airlock. He was busy admiring the four new videocassettes Sam had brought, wondering what was in them as he studied their labels.
“What are you talking about?” I meant to say it out loud but it came out as a whispered croak.
Sam flashed a cocky grin at me. “Come on, everybody knows you guys are making gem-quality diamonds out of methane gas in your zero-gee facility. Pump a little extra methane in and make me a couple to sell Earthside. I’ll split the profits with you fifty-fifty.”
“Impossible,” I snapped. Softly.
His smile became shrewd. “Look, Greg old pal, I’m not asking for any military secrets. Just a couple of stones I can peddle back on Earth. We can both make a nice wad of money.”
“The diamonds we manufacture are not of gemstone quality,” I lied.
“Let my friends on Forty-seventh Street decide what quality they are,” Sam whispered.
“No.”
He puffed out a sad sigh. “This has nothing to do with politics, Greg. It’s business. Capitalism.”
I shook my head hard enough to sway my entire body.
Sam seemed to accept defeat. “Okay. It’s a shame, though. Hell, even your leaders in the Kremlin are making money selling their biographies to western publishers. Capitalism is swooping in on you.”
I said nothing.
He pulled the helmet over his head, fastened the neck seal. But before sliding down his visor he asked, quite casually, “What happens if Zworkin finds out what’s on the videos you guys have been watching?”
My face went red. I could feel the heat flaming my cheeks.
“Just a couple of little diamonds, pal. A couple of carats. That’s not so much to ask for, is it?”
He went through the airlock and jetted back to his own craft. I would have gladly throttled him at that moment.
Now I had a real dilemma on my hands. Give in to Sam’s blackmail or face Zworkin and the authorities back on the ground. It would not only be me who would be in trouble, but my entire crew. They did not deserve to suffer because of my bad decisions, but they would. We would all spend the rest of our lives shoveling cow manure in Siberia or running mining machines on the Moon.
I had been corrupted and I knew it. Oh, I had the best of motives, the loftiest of intentions. But how would they appear next to the fact that I had allowed my crew to watch disgusting pornographic films provided by a capitalist agent of the CIA? Corruption, pure and simple. I would be lucky to be sentenced to Siberia.
I gave in to Sam’s demands. I told myself it was for the sake of my crew, but it was to save my own neck, and to save my dear family from disgrace. I had the technicians make three extra small diamonds and embedded them in the ice cream when Sam made his next visit.
That was the exact week, naturally, when the Russian Federation and the western powers were meeting in Geneva to decide on deployment of space weapons. Our own Red Shield system and the American Star Wars system were well into the testing phase. We had conducted a good many of the tests ourselves aboard Mir 5. Now the question was, should each side begin to deploy its own system or should we hammer out some method of working cooperatively?
Sam returned a few days later. I did not want to see him, but was afraid not to. He seemed happy and cheerful, as usual, and carried no less than six new videos with him. I spoke to him very briefly, very coldly. He seemed not to be bothered at all. He laughed and joked. And passed me a note on a tiny scrap of paper as he handed me the new videos.
I read the note in the privacy of my cubicle, after he left. “Good stuff. Worth a small fortune. How many can you provide each week?”
I was accustomed to the weightlessness of zero gravity, but at that instant I felt as if I were falling into a deep, dark pit, falling and falling down into an utterly black well that had no bottom.
To make matters worse, after a few days of progress the conference at Geneva seemed to hit a snag for some unfathomable reason. The negotiations stopped dead and the diplomats began to snarl at each other in the old Cold War fashion. The world was shocked. We received orders to accelerate our tests of the Red Shield laser that had been installed in the laboratory module at the aft end of our station.
We watched the TV news broadcasts from every part of the world (without letting Zworkin or ground control know about it, of course.) Everyone was frightened at the sudden intransigence in Geneva.
Zworkin summed up our fears. “The imperialists want an excuse to strike us with their nuclear missiles before our Red Shield defense is deployed.”
I had to admit that he was probably right. What scared me was the thought that we might strike at them before their Star Wars defense was deployed. Either way it meant the same thing: nuclear holocaust.
Even thickheaded Korolev seemed worried. “Will we go to war?” he kept asking. “Will we go to war?” No one knew.
Needless to say, it was clear that if we did go to war Mir 5 would be a sitting duck for Yankee anti-satellite weapons. As everyone knew, the war on the ground would begin with strikes against space stations and satellites.
To make matters even worse, in the midst of our laser test preparations Sam sent a radio message that he was on his way and would rendezvous with our station in three hours. He said he had “something special” for us.
The crisis in Geneva meant nothing to him, it seemed. He was coming for “business as usual.” Zworkin had been right all along about him. Sam was a spy. I was certain of it now.
A vision formed in my mind. I would personally direct the test of the Red Shield laser. Its high-energy beam would happen to strike the incoming American spacecraft. Sam Gunn would be fried like a scrawny chicken in a hot oven. A regrettable accident. Yes. It would solve my problem.
Except—it would create such a furor on Earth that the conference in Geneva would break up altogether. It could be the spark that would lead to war, nuclear war.
Yet—Sam had no business flying a Yankee spacecraft so close to a Soviet station. Both the U.S. and the Russian Federation had clearly proclaimed that the regions around their stations were sovereign territory, not to be violated by the other side’s craft. Sam’s visits to Mir 5 were strictly illegal, secret, clandestine, except for his first “emergency” visit. If we fried him we would be within out legal rights.
On the other hand—could the entire crew remain silent about Sam’s many visits? Would Zworkin stay silent or would he denounce me once we had returned to Mother Russia?
On the other hand—what difference would any of that make if we triggered nuclear war?
That is why I found myself sweating in the laser laboratory, a few hours after Sam’s call. He knew that we were going to test the laser, he had to know. That was why he was cheerfully heading our way at this precise point in time.
The laboratory was chilly. The three technicians operating the giant laser wore bulky sweaters over their coveralls and gloves with the fingers cut so they could manipulate their sensitive equipment properly.
This section of the station was a complete module in itself; it could be detached and de-orbited, if necessary, and a new section put in its place. The huge laser filled the laboratory almost completely. If we had not been in zero gravity it would have been impossible for the technicians to climb into the nooks and crannies necessary to service all the hardware.
One wide optical-quality window gave me a view of the black depths of space. But no window could withstand the incredible intensity of the laser’s high-power beam. The beam was instead directed through a polished copper pipe to the outside of the station’s hull, which is why the laboratory was always so cold. It was impossible to keep the module decently warm; the heat leaked out through the laser beam channel. On the outer end of that channel was the aiming mirror (also highly polished copper) that directed the beam toward its target—hypothetical or actual.