"If the President's going to make a statement, then he probably doesn't know that this could be some sort of preemptive strike," I said.
"I've put in a call and someone is trying to get a message through to him, Anson. Right now that isn't easy," Tabitha replied still in a sad tone of voice.
"Doc, you can't think that they have already built a warp missile, do you?" Jim asked. From his tone of voice I could tell that he had "turtled-up" and was ready to take whatever punches he had to until we figured out a strategy to fight back with. Good boy.
"It adds up," I remarked. "They could have been working on this thing from the beginning. Johnny Cache must have been giving them data and blueprints and reports from the first day. We've got to find out if there were any ships up at the time of the incident."
"Already ahead of you, Anson," Tabitha laid some large printouts on the table. "A friend of mine that I roomed with in undergraduate flight training works for an agency on the Beltway. He just secure-faxed me these documents and satellite photos. An unannounced launch of a manned Chinese spacecraft took place yesterday. The location of the spacecraft at the time of the impact in Colorado was almost three hundred kilometers directly over Boulder."
"Damnit Jim. It looks like they did better on the guidance calculations than we did. Unless it was a mistake?" I glanced around the room and got the impression that nobody believed the accident theory. "Then are we all in agreement that we think this was deliberate?
"Anson, I can't see it any other way." Jim pulled at his lower lip.
"Uh . . . what is the lift capacity of the Chinese rocket?" Rebecca asked.
"Why?" I wanted to know just where was she headed with that?
"Well," she began, "could it carry two of them?" You could have heard a pin drop for about three seconds. Then Colonel Tabitha Ames marched to the door. She stuck her head out and began barking orders to several of the noncoms. Then she turned to our crew.
"Anne Marie, Sara, Al, I need to see you three now!" They came running up to her.
"What's up, Mom?"
"You three go find the lift capacity of the recent Chinese manned launch vehicles. Al, determine how many ECC's and warp generators could be put in one. Sara, work with Al. Annie, find out how many of these rockets the Chinese have and how long it takes to prep one for flight. I need that info yesterday."
"Yes, Colonel." Anne Marie snapped a salute and bugged out. Al and Sara followed.
Tabitha turned back to us, "Anson, you and Jim find us a way to detect those damn things before they get off the ground. 'Becca, you up to earning your keep?"
"I feel strong enough to wrestle a Gundark!" She smiled but none of us laughed.
"Good. Let's you and me figure out how soon before we could get another Zephram built."
"Okay!" 'Becca responded.
"Hey hold on a minute," Jim said. "We don't have to build another Zephram. A missile that weighs one kilogram moving near the speed of light would do just about as much damage. Remember that the kinetic energy transferred is one half mass times velocity squared. In this case velocity is orders of magnitude more than mass. So, the mass isn't a big factor."
I butted in. "We could build basketball sized missiles perhaps. We just have to reconfigure the geometry of the warp coils. God, I hope the Chinese haven't thought of that. Someone tell the girls to plan to that design. Jim and I will work it out later. First, we need to build a detector. Come on, Jim." We made a break for the door and were off to find a whiteboard somewhere.
Three hours later, Jim and I had discovered why our system wasn't as accurate as our counterpart's missile. During our tests of the warp fields, we could never get the mathematical models to converge to a solution that would match the experimental data. This was because there was another source somewhere else being operated at the same times that we operated our tests. Johnny must have been slipping our schedule to his contacts all along. The effects of the other warp field on the other side of the planet, although a couple orders of magnitude smaller due to distance, put a gravitational pole out at infinity (mathematically speaking) and our feedback calculations never could account for it. I never thought that there should be a pole there because it didn't fit the physical model I understood for the world. But it was experimental data and if something is there, it is there. The theory is just not right. I had always attributed our problem with some frame dragging effect or some other General Relativity phenomena that wasn't well understood. Incomplete theory was the problem, or so I thought. As soon as Jim and I thought to add a second warped field to our model and ran the calculation in the computer, the model converged to a solution! We had precise navigation licked. We also knew how to find other warp generators being tested. The field coils for any missile would have to be experimentally aligned. It's during that procedure that we would detect them as poles in our system and measure precisely where they were to within a few meters.
Anne Marie poked her head in the conference room. "Anson, Mom would like to see you and Jim. How's it going?" she asked.
"Great! Jim deserves a Nobel Prize," I said.
"Mom always said that he was the real brains of this outfit." Anne Marie laughed.
Annie led us to a hallway and handed us off to two armed guards. "See ya in a bit."
At the end of the hallway one of the guards handed me a clipboard and said, "Gentlemen if you will please sign in."
Jim and I signed the paperwork as the other guard worked a combination on the door. Jim handed the first guard the clipboard back and he handed us each a visitor's badge that said "Escort Not Required." Jim and I entered the room to find Colonel Ames in full dress uniform and talking to a large flat-panel screen. I felt a little underdressed. I'm not sure Jim cared.
"Mr. President, we're fairly certain that this was the only system in orbit at this time. The electromagnetic pulse created just before impact was detected by our early warning and nuclear detonation satellite system, which accurately measured it. The early detection satellite measurements allowed us data enough to determine the size of the warp missile. It was basically a carbon copy of the unit known as Zephram—the brief you have already seen." Tabitha stopped for air and turned to introduce us.
"Mr. President, you already have met Dr. Anson Clemons and this is his associate Dr. Jim Daniels." She paused.
"Hello Mr. President," I said. Jim just nodded.
The President began speaking, "This is a fine damn mess you've caused, fellows! There are over fifty million people that are estimated dead and what am I to tell the public?"
Tabitha started to speak but I stepped in.
"Tell them it was another meteor, a bigger one. Only a handful of people know otherwise, unless the Chinese have made some ultimatum we're unaware of. We have figured out how to detect them. It's just a matter of time before we can counter them."
"Counter them! Are you suggesting we get into some sort of all-out secret war? Congress would never go for that. Besides, in this day and age war would be hard to cover up, especially given large numbers of casualties."
"Mr. President, these missiles are undetectable by anybody on the planet except for the people in this room and the people in a room similar to this in China. Looking at what has happened thus far, I would venture to guess that our opponents plan to play this one out to the end. We can gather intelligence on them. Determine how far along they are with more of these weapons and slow them down until we can catch up and take them out. And when we do take them out, we will take out their entire government and infrastructure. We will remove their capability to make war at all, in one complete and precise strike. Then we can offer to go in and help them rebuild their government and infrastructure, but this time it will be a capitalist system that is completely allied with us, or else."