Sonobuoys dropped from helicopters or aircraft were remote sonars, transmitting their findings to shipboard or aircraft receivers where computers kept track of the readings.
“We might be able to determine their search patterns Hampstead said. “That would help our subs when they reach the area.”
“Maybe. And maybe that reactor is too far down for the subs.”
“I’m inclined to agree with that position,” Hampstead said. “Do the Russians have more than one submarine on the scene?”
“Not that we know about yet. But if they don’t, I’d bet there’s more on the way.”
“No bet.”
“How about the nuclear people? They get there?”
“Yes. Yesterday afternoon.”
“Any insights?”
“None that I saw or heard when I met and talked to them,” Hampstead told him. He shifted his position at the table so he could see the confab in the corner. “They look very serious, though.”
“We might have some additional help for them in a little while.”
“What kind of help?”
“Some…assets inside Plesetsk have gotten a message out to the effect that there’s a computer-modeling program being run on the results of smashing a Topaz nuclear reactor into the ocean.”
“Damn. Details?”
“None yet. We’re trying.”
“Would it be any good, if we did get the information?”
Hampstead asked.
“The man in charge is Pyotr Piredenko. He’s Director of the Flight Data Computer Center, and our dossiers say he’s tops in the field. Anything we could get out of his shop would hold some credibility, I think.”
“All right, good. Is there anything we’ve talked about here that I shouldn’t pass on to Brande?”
“Hell, Avery, I’ve lost track of what’s secret or not. Tell him anything you think he should know.”
“Before, you told me to withhold some information, Carl.”
“Yeah, but it’s all out now, and he’s already made his decision.”
“I hope it wasn’t the decision to die,” Hampstead said.
Kim Otsuka was up early, as usual. Despite the fact that the Orion would be losing about an hour a day as she crossed time zones, Otsuka would not give up her discipline of rising at four-thirty. Her best work was done in the early morning.
She had dressed in jeans, a sweatshirt, and a windbreaker, then slipped out of the guest cabin she was sharing with Svetlana Polodka. Kenji Nagasaka was at the helm when she went through the bridge area, and she stopped to talk with him for a few minutes. He was twenty-two years old, with lanky black hair, and had a crush on her. He was a countryman, but other than that, they had nothing in common.
No one was tending the galley at that time of the morning, and she fried an egg for an egg sandwich, then carried it out to the narrow port-side deck to eat it.
Pink tendrils of dawn were creeping up the sky behind the ship. The wind was cold, and she zipped the windbreaker tight against her throat. The rushing whisper of the hull through the water was soothing.
Yellow light splashed on the side deck as the door opened behind her, and irritated at losing her privacy, Otsuka turned to see Dokey standing in the hatchway.
He stepped outside, letting the door close against his foot, so the wind would not slam it shut and wake others. He was wearing an older model sweatshirt featuring a teamster tuna in a “Caterpillar” baseball cap driving a canned people truck. He was holding two steaming mugs, and he handed one to her.
“Mornin’, Kimmie.”
“Thank you, Okey.”
She held the mug up and checked it against the light from the porthole in the door. It read, “Sit on my lap and well talk about…”
She turned the mug around. “… whatever comes up.”
“You have a dirty mind, Okey.”
He leaned against the rail beside her. “My mind’s all right. It’s normal. It’s all these people with subnormal, laundered minds that take the fun out of life.”
“You must build a robot that thinks the way you do.”
“I thought about it, but the trouble is, the damned thing would be programmed with my own fantasies. There’s no surprises there.”
Sipping from the mug, she felt the warmth course through her. It was good coffee, made with eggshells, and from the old-fashioned blue enamel pot that was kept hot twenty-four hours a day. Those who did not like it that way were welcome to decaffeinated instant coffee.
Otsuka leaned forward to put her elbows on the railing next to Dokey. They both stared down at the dark water swishing past the hull.
“I’m glad you came along with us, Kim.”
She laid a hand on his forearm. “It is better to be with my friends.”
“Damned right.”
He did not move his arm, but he did not place his free hand on top of her own, either. Despite Dokey’s aggressive banter and T-shirts and mugs, he was not really all that comfortable with women. She had noticed that about him.
She wondered what that robot, programmed with Dokey’s own fantasies, would actually…
“That’s it!” she cried.
“That’s what?”
“The problem.” She could visualize the thousands of lines of computer instructions, and she scanned them in her mind. “Your fantasies don’t work!”
Dokey stood upright. “They don’t?”
“No. And mine don’t, either. Not for Celebes. Come with me. Hurry!”
Otsuka led the way down the side deck, pulled open the door to the laboratory, and rushed inside.
“Okey, I need the S-twelve board.”
He knew what she meant. Stopping to grab a screwdriver and socket set from one of the workbenches, Dokey turned around and went back out to the port-side deck.
Otsuka walked back to the starboard corner of the lab. Five computer terminals were lined up there, each in its own small cubicle. The last machine was used primarily for programming ROMs, read-only-memory chips that were inserted into logic circuits. Some of the programming used with MVU’s robots was inserted into memory, or onto hard disk, after the robot’s computer was activated, particularly programming that was dedicated to a particular task. That was random access memory, and the programming instructions were lost each time the machine was shut down.
With Gargantua, as with the smaller robots, some instructions were permanently entered into chips, governing actions that were repetitive and not expected to change. The closure rate of the pincers, or fingers, for example. Or the degree-range of arc associated with an elbow movement, for another.
Otsuka turned on the last computer terminal and the one next to it. Shoving the extra chair out of the way and pulling the keyboards close together, she sat down and prepared to operate with both computers. Lifting the intercom handset hanging on the partition, she punched two numbers.
“Radio shack. This is Bucky.”
Bucky Sanders traded off watches with Paco Suarez. “Bucky, this is Kim. Please block other accesses to the satellite channel, and hook Terminal Four into it”
“You dialing into the IBM?” he asked. MVU had a leased IBM minicomputer isolated in its own room on the manufacturing floor in San Diego. It was utilized for the more massive programs, or for a higher calculation speed, when the stand alone computers were too small or too slow.
“Yes.”
“How long you going to be?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe hours. Dane will approve it, if you ask him.”
“Nah. Consider it done.”
By the time she had both terminals up and had keyed her access codes into number four, connecting with the San Diego machine, Dokey was back, carrying a twelve-inch-square circuit board that was jammed with components. Without asking her what to do, he selected an adaptor from several different types stored in a drawer and plugged it into the board. Another adaptor cord connected the board to the programming terminal.