“That’s the one,” Kelly agreed. He kept his hands plainly in sight on the back of his seat and the one in front of him. Suggs, on the other half of the double seat, tried again to fit the cuff.
“I assumed so,” Pierrard said. “I think I can say that at least we share common emotions, Mr. Kelly, when we’re forced to deal with one another.”
The old man paused, then went on. “We – the proper parties – are in negotiation with the parties who claim to have captured Fortress.”
“Claim?” repeated Kelly, glancing over at Redstone.
“I misspoke, Mr. Kelly,” Pierrard said. “Litotes when bluntness would have been appropriate. They have accurately targeted and released a number of the nuclear weapons from Fortress, so common sense indicates that they are fully in control as they claim.”
Pierrard’s hand began to play with the hidden meerschaum. “They did not,” he continued, “expect that news of a nuclear attack could be obfuscated; I cannot claim that it was totally concealed for over a day in both the countries which were victimized. There has been a considerable outcry at ‘launching disasters’ with attendant loss of life … but the, the ‘Aryan Legion,’ as they choose to style themselves now, has received no publicity. As you can imagine, the capabilities designed into Fortress do not include general broadcast equipment.” He permitted himself a tight smile.
“So you figure they’re going to up the stakes with something you can’t cover up,” Kelly suggested.
“Moscow and Washington, we feared,” agreed Pierrard. “Perhaps only Moscow, if they are what you tell us, Nazi holdouts . . . but the result will be the same, since the Soviets can be expected to respond against the presumed perpetrators, the West.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard that estimate already,” the veteran agreed, remembering the rain-swept walls of Diyarbakir and the thing, Wun, that spoke to him there. “Shit.” He made sure he held the older man’s eyes as he added, “How did the X-ray lasers work?”
Something else he hadn’t any business knowing, Kelly thought and Pierrard knew quite well. That one wasn’t going to be decoyed into answering a question whose premises went beyond anything Kelly was cleared for.
“Perfectly,” Pierrard said coolly. “The Soviets attacked with three flights of twenty missiles apiece. Each salvo was destroyed by a single unit of the defensive constellation, operating presumably in an automatic mode. We do not know that the” – he coughed – “Aryan Legion can launch additional defensive satellites as the normal complement would have done … but since on the next pass both the silo farms from which the Soviets launched received multiple bombs from Fortress, neither superpower is likely to proceed further in that direction.”
“Yeah, well,” Kelly said. He turned to look out the window, although without seeing much of the scenery – one-story buildings, mesquite bushes, and dust. “Yeah. Well, I’ll be glad to get it over with myself.”
“You can’t see out the cockpit windows,” said Tom Kelly cautiously. “I can’t see through the windows.”
“Ummm,” agreed Desmond, the project scientist who had been the bright spot in Kelly’s previous visit to the Biggs Field installation. “You’re going to have enough problems, Mr. Kelly, without being cooked by the beams that raise the ferry. They’re very precisely directed, but both the distances and velocities involved are considerable and will magnify slight misalignments.”
“Check,” said Kelly, nodding ruefully. “And we’re talking the same wavelengths as the warming racks at the local hamburger joint. Sorry, should’ve thought.”
The suit – the space suit, though it shocked Kelly to think of it that way – was bulky and constricting because of its weight and stiffness, though it did not feel tight. His mind was treating the garment as protective armor rather than a burden. That was good in a way, but the suit really was both – and the fact that his subconscious was more concerned about the threat to him than the object he had to achieve was more than a little bothersome.
“You won’t be able to do anything with the controls anyway.” The scientist seemed to think he was offering reassurance. “So it doesn’t matter whether or not you can see.”