“In that case, there’s no way to avoid a Russian invasion in 2001.”
“There is a way. The Soviet fleet will arrive six or seven months from now on the trial summer cruise. The Soviets will be on their best behavior, to convince the Americans of their peaceful intent. If this facade can be shattered, if the Americans can be made to see that the pearly smile conceals a sharp set of bear’s teeth, then perhaps your countrymen will forget their television programs and ball games and Big Macs long enough to put their defenses in order. Only a dramatic incident, an incident that lays bare Russia’s true character, can save your country now.”
“A dramatic incident,” Forte mused. “Like what?”
“Do you recall the Panay?”
“No.”
“No. That would be before your time. During the Japanese struggle to conquer China in the 1930s, the invader found the presence of American warships on the China station an annoyance and an embarrassment. As a hint to keep their distance, a Japanese warplane ‘accidentally’ dropped a bomb on the U.S.S. Augusta, killing a sailor. Their ‘apology’ was accepted, but the Americans remained. Another incident was arranged, the bombardment of the American river gunboat, the Panay, on the Yangtse. In this incident, two American sailors were killed. Again an ‘apology,’ but the aggression was so blatant that it produced a nationwide wave of outrage, entirely unanticipated by the Japanese. The
American anti-Japanese policy, the embargo on arms and oil, the internment of Japanese during World War II-all these had their inception in the bombing of a simple gunboat.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” Forte said. “So what?” Admiral Nikolai Vasilievich Grimm reached for another cigarette, took his time about lighting it, and let the silence build. Finally he looked Gwillam Forte in the eye.
“If such an effect could be produced by the bombardment of a riverboat, just think what one might do with a battleship.”
3 JANUARY 1998
It had been three and a half years since Gwillam Forte set foot on the U.S.S. Texas. His hospital shipmates superintending the ship’s rebirth were disappointed and resentful of his seeming disinterest in their work, he knew, but though he kept scheduling inspection trips, somehow they never materialized. Something about the ship made him nervous and apprehensive. Every time he thought of visiting it, a foreboding shadow seemed to close out the sun.
But since the conference with President Wynn a week earlier, he knew he could avoid the Texas no longer. The ship had been given one last mission, and it was up to Gwillam Forte to make her ready.
At 7:30 a.m. on the first raw, dirty, windy day after the White House conference, the kind of day that would discourage casual visitors, Forte’s limousine pulled up to the Texas basin. The only figure visible on deck was that of Ski Modeljewski, in charge of hull painting. His chilled, cigarette-scarred face and hands, Forte reflected, bore a striking resemblance to the pitted, blue-gray exterior of the ship itself-except for the ironic smile that greeted him.
“About time you came for a look-see, Captain.”
Forte made an apologetic gesture. “You know how it is with us tycoons, Ski-affairs of state, momentous decisions, nations trembling at our every word-”
“And your secretary trembling on your lap-sure, I understand. Well, how’s she look to you-the ship, not the secretary?”
“Same as always,” Forte replied truthfully. “Awful.”
Ski beamed. “If it looks the same after forty-one months of hard work, we’re doing pretty good. Want a rundown?”
“That’s what I’m here for.”
“Right.” Ski led the way down the gangway to the concrete pier. Beneath his hooded parka his shoulders were hunched against the cold drizzle. He extended a hand whose gnarled and misshapen knuckles said all there was to say about the methods of Vietcong interrogators. “If you look close at the water line,” he said, “you just may notice how clean it looks below the surface. One group of engineers said that after we refinished the ship’s bottom, we should attach fake algae and barnacles, make it look natural. But we took a vote, democratic-like, and I decided that the water is dirty enough to conceal any possible contrast with the way it was before.”
“Anyway, why fake barnacles and algae?” asked Forte. “As I remember, the real stuff needed no encouragement.”
Ski looked at him appraisingly. “You are out of touch. I’d better start at the beginning . . .”
In the beginning, a special access chamber was constructed and attached by an accordion umbilical to the tunnel air lock. This umbilical extended out to the bottom of the ship, where the chamber was held flush against the hull by electromagnets; a neoprene seal kept the water out once the accordion tube was pumped dry. The work crew then entered through the air lock, set up tubular-steel stages, and began the painstaking job of replacing the bottom paint.
The old paint was removed with organic solvents. The steel side and bottom plating, rough and pitted through nearly a century of corrosion, was ground down to the smooth texture of an optical lens. The rivets holding the plating to the hull stringers were drilled out, and replaced by the titanium equivalent of tree nails, holding the plates together by pressure, having been turned out .04 mm larger than the holes into which they were driven. Their exterior projection was then ground down to the level of the surrounding plate. Finally, an enormously powerful electrical charge was applied to the titanium plug and steel plate, causing a mutual migration of molecules from one metal to the other and resulting in a superstrength bond. When each section of hull was finished, it had the glassy smoothness of a funeral director’s smile.
To this surface was applied, by ionic exchange, a very fine coating of an epoxy resin that not only excluded contact between metal and water but was itself only a few molecules thick. The surface was so smooth-far smoother than the polished steel beneath-that hull resistance was practically eliminated. The frictionless, laminar flow of water around the ship’s hull, engineers computed, would increase the speed of the Texas by more than twelve knots at maximum speed, with no increase in power. The epoxy alone, bonded to the polished surface of the hull, in effect boosted the ship’s speed more than fifty percent.
As for algae and barnacles, there were none to befoul the ship’s bottom, causing a turbulent flow of water to reduce the vessel’s speed. They couldn’t survive, let alone reproduce, in the basin’s waters, thanks to time-release canisters of algacides and molluscicides now anchored at intervals in its depths.
The stagnant water of the ship’s basin was, as Ski noted, sufficiently murky to obscure the bottom’s transformation from all but the most careful observation. The ship’s exposed superstructure was another story. Similarly treated and covered with epoxy resin, it received several other coats of paint, the last one of the same old dirty blue-gray with which it had started.
At least, so it seemed. The blue-gray paint was essentially the same in optical reflectivity and grain, but chemically it was a totally new product, devised in the research labs of Sunshine Industries, Inc., especially for the Texas. Gwillam Forte himself had given his chemists the seed of the concept, from which grew a whole plant dedicated to the paint’s manufacture. He had remarked one day to his chief chemist, Dr. Tom Lee, when they were discussing the exterior paint, that resonance might be the answer.
“You know that old gag about the soprano who hits A above high C, and the mirror shatters?”
“Sure.”
“So make a paint that will shatter and flake off, when it’s subjected to a high-frequency sound wave.”
The chemist suppressed an urge to laugh. “You may be a crackerjack businessman, Will,” he said, “but as a scientist . . . You see, glass is a noncrystalline but rigid substance that can, it is true, resonate when excited by the proper sound frequency. If the amplitude is sufficient, then the glass may indeed shatter. Paint, on the other hand, displays the essential features of a hot fudge sundae in this respect. There is no single frequency at which it will resonate. Given its structure, there can’t be.”
“Then change the structure,” Gwillam Forte suggested coolly. “Change it fast, and change it right. I want a paint that can be made to flake off completely, instantly, and without residue. If resonance isn’t the answer, then find out what is.” He regarded the scientist with wintery eyes. “I’m counting on you, Dr. Lee.”
Dr. Lee knew from the experience of others at SII that if he met the challenge, his career would be secure. If he didn’t, of course there was always his widowed sister’s chicken farm. Dr. Lee loathed chickens.
Perhaps because of this aversion, he worked his staff round the clock until they perfected a paint that, surprisingly enough, did what Forte demanded. When subjected to a 180,000-volt jolt of electricity, it instantaneously atomized in the air.