“I’ll tell the others.”
“Do that,” Hartley said. “See you in a few days.”
After he hung up, Ripley turned again to stare out the window, even more confused than before. If he’d read Hartley right, something had apparently happened in the past couple of days to make the Japanese even more sensitive about security than they normally were. Whatever it was had apparently got the attention of the top brass. What Hartley had really said was that he wanted Ripley and his Tiger team to keep their eyes and ears open and their mouths shut. They were supposed to spy on the Japanese.
It was 9:00 A.M. when Ripley got back. Guards had been posted at the door and he had to show his ID before he was allowed inside, where he pulled on paper booties over his shoes and a paper cap over his scalp and went into the assembly bay.
Hagoromo II, which was to dock with Freedom from where it would send a series of probes to the moon, was attached to a massive trolley arrangement that allowed it to be carefully moved to and from a loading crane that would place it on a huge truck for transport to the launch pad. Because of the increased size of the new H2C, the satellite could not be mated to the rocket in the vehicle assembly building. It had to be done on the pad until a larger VAB was constructed.
Towering nearly forty feet above the floor, the gigantic satellite was twelve feet in diameter in its stowed position and weighed nearly ten metric tons. It was to be the largest object ever sent into earth orbit by any country except the U.S. and Russia, and it would mark Japan’s first serious entry into the space launch business. Not even the French Arianne rockets could launch such a complex payload into orbit.
Once it rendezvoused with Freedom, gigantic solar panels would extend like the wings of a butterfly to a distance of 150 feet on each side. Narrow beam antennae and compact satellite dishes would be uncovered, as would a dozen variously shaped probes that would be used to study everything from the solar wind to the Earth’s magnetic field and the forces of microgravity caused by the bulk of the international space station itself.
Almost completely sheathed in gold foil for heat management in space, only six access panels at various points on the big satellite were open, exposing the electronic circuitry within, to which were attached cables and leads from a dozen pieces of test equipment. As many technicians, including the four NASA Tiger team members, were putting the satellite through its electronic paces in a procedure called fault tree analysis. One by one, each point in each circuit was artificially brought to a failure mode, and the results were monitored and analyzed. So far the Japanese-designed redundant systems seemed to work perfectly.
Maggie was studying the display on a Tektronix frequency spectrum analyzer and she looked up. “Did Hartley give you the usual pep talk?”
“He’s invited us for some beers and a cookout when we get back,” Ripley said. “Just like old times.”
She gave him a double take. The others were out of earshot for the moment. “What are you talking about, Frank?” she asked in a low voice.
Ripley reached over and adjusted a control on the scope. “I’m not sure, but Hartley wants us to keep our eyes open. Something’s going on that has the brass worried. They’ve even posted guards on the front door now.”
“About the Japanese, the launch?”
“I guess so. He wanted to know if we’d noticed any change in attitudes around here over the past couple of days.”
“What’d you tell him?”
“Not much, because I think we’re being spied on.” He told her about the conversation he’d had with Kimura.
Maggie stepped back. “What the hell is going on?”
“Take it easy and do your job. But watch what you say and keep your eyes open, okay?”
She wanted to argue but she didn’t.
“I’ll get the word to the others. In the meantime, how are the diagnostics coming?”
“Everything is suddenly within specs, Frank. And I mean everything. Until now I was happy, but I’m not so sure anymore.”
“Don’t go looking for something that’s not there,” Ripley warned.
She managed a smile. “That’s why they pay us the big bucks. But this isn’t going to take us six hours. We’re already mostly done. Don has okayed the locking collar. He says it was replaced last night.”
Ripley glanced up at the portalift platform raised to the top of the satellite. Don Wirth, their metallurgical engineer, was lying on his stomach inspecting the retaining bolts that held the collar in place. “How do you know?”
“He put his initials under one of the latches. They were gone this morning.”
“You’re kidding.”
Maggie shook her head.
“Kimura is going to have a bird when he finds out.”
“They probably haven’t noticed. The collar was bad, so they replaced it. If Kimura was going to say something he would have nailed us with it first thing this morning.” Maggie was smiling as if she had a secret.
“What?”
“They won’t find my initials.”
Astronauts had the biggest egos in the world, and there were times when they acted like children. The practical joke had risen to an art form at Houston and especially at the Cape. But their hijinks were never at the safety of a mission. Never.
“Maybe that’s why they suddenly got pissed off at us. They don’t take jokes lightly.”
“I did it a half hour ago.”
“Are you going to tell me where?”
“Nope,” she said, smiling sweetly. They would never have anything more than a casual affair, which also was quite common among the engineering staff, but Ripley did care for her, and he suddenly found that he was worried about her and the others. Hartley’s strange phone call had set him off.
He glanced up at the diagnostic center windows. Kimura, his hands behind his back, was staring down at them, a frown on his face.
“They want to treat us like hell, we’ll give it right back to them,” Maggie said. She smiled and waved at Kimura, who just stared at her. “It’s a one-way street with them, Frank. They take our technology, but they don’t give anything back in return.” She looked at the towering satellite. “We don’t know one-tenth of what’s inside this bird.”
“We’ve seen the blueprints and schematics.”
“That’s right, but we never got to look inside from the mainframe out. That was all done long before we got here.”
“What are you getting at?”
“I’m going to spend six months on Freedom with this thing attached to it. I’d like to know a little more about it than I’ve been told, that’s all.”
Ripley looked up again at the bay windows. Kimura was gone, but he retained the impression that they were being watched. Hartley’s warning was beginning to seem ominous, and the sooner they were out of here the better he was going to feel.
FIVE
Howard Ryan’s house was a surprisingly modest split-level on a large lot with a lot of trees, shrubbery and rose bushes in full bloom. The backyard overlooked Lake Barcroft, and getting out of his Nissan in the driveway a few minutes after 7:00 P.M. McGarvey could smell a charcoal grill in action somewhere. Some kids were shooting buckets in a driveway down the street. The neighborhood was very pleasant, not at all what McGarvey had expected.