“Yeah,” said Traynor in a reverential whisper. “I can see it. I can see it.” He turned to Gwillam Forte and stuck out his hand. “I think you’ve just assured my election to the United States Senate, Will. I don’t know how to thank you.”
“Forget it, Tom,” Forte said.
And he meant it.
Back at Hobby Airport in Houston at 10:30 a.m., Gwillam Forte found Station KATY-TV’s news helicopter, Fubar, gassing up to cover a condominium fire in Pasadena. Since the Houston Herald owned the television station, and Forte owned the newspaper, he was able to persuade the pilot to drop him off at SD-1 en route to the fire, sparing the use of his private helicopter. He hadn’t got rich by throwing his money around.
In that section of SD-1 devoted to the Texas project, he met by prearrangement with Emilio Salvatore in the model chamber, a large room occupied by two scale models of the U.S.S. Texas in cradles, side by side. Constructed on the scale of one to forty, they were nearly fifteen feet long, with the foremast truck lights reaching almost to the level of Forte’s shoulders. To casual inspection, the models were identical, but close study would have revealed differences. Differences were the reason for the models: one represented the Texas before work had begun on her while the second incorporated every change, however minute, made since then. The technical men feared that small alterations in appearance dictated by the renovation, which might not be noticeable from day to day, in time would be noticeable in aerial photographs or to Russian high-resolution satellite reconnaissance from space. So long as the changes were, taken together, minuscule to the unaided eye, Forte’s experts judged that they would not be detected, by friend or enemy.
“Notice anything?” Emilio asked, when the two men were alone.
Gwillam Forte looked from one model to the other. He shook his head.
“Look closer,” prompted the weapons expert. “Look at the deck mounts for the Elbows carousels.”
Forte bent down and inspected the tiny circular arrays of pale blue dots at intervals along the main deck, where the carousels would be anchored the night before the Russian fleet appeared on the Houston Ship Channel. Again he shook his head.
“Good,” said Salvatore with satisfaction. “On the outboard side of each carousel, we’ve replaced sections of the scuppers with strips of a cobalt-manganese-nickel steel alloy. Rub it with your fingers.”
Forte did so with the tips of the fingers of his artificial right hand, the more sensitive of the two.
“Feels rough.”
“In full scale, that roughness resolves into thimble-size protuberances. They throw up a powerful magnetic field.”
“What’s the point?”
“I got to thinking, what if the Russians, instead of sinking the Texas out of hand, zeroed in on the Elbows? That’s a possibility, you know, if they aim at the source of the electron beams firing at them. Then the Elbows would be knocked out, leaving the Texas afloat, and no international incident to torpedo the protocols.”
“That’s a risk, I suppose, but one we have to take.”
“No, we don’t. If they can’t knock out our Elbows, they’ll have to gun for the weapons platform-that is, sink the ship. The magnetic devices make sure they do.”
“How?”
“Simple. These magnetic strips are energized by the ship’s nuclear generators. When an enemy proton beam locks onto an Elbows carousel, it triggers activation of the magnetic field just in front of it, and the incoming particle beam is deflected.”
“If it’s deflected, it would hit another part of the ship.”
“That’s the idea, isn’t it? But in reality, the deflected particles will do very little damage. Think of a powerful water jet directed against the side of a building-in this case the magnetic field: the jet breaks up into a shower of droplets that can drench you, but not knock you off your feet as the jet can.”
“And what about our Elbows beam, when it hits that magnetic field?”
“Same thing. It’s dispersed in a shower of relatively harmless radiation. But remember, that happens only when the enemy’s proton guns are firing directly at a carousel. With seventy-two carousels firing at once from the Texas, in self-defense they’ll have to sink the ship fast. Or, so they’ll think in the panic of the moment.”
“I see. Have you tested this setup?”
“Yes. We’ve installed a command station aboard the flag bridge on the Texas-well camouflaged and magnetically shielded in case of malfunction of our own Elbows. We’ve had a series of night tests at each of the carousels using an experimental proton gun of a design similar to the Russian model. The system works like a charm …”
But so did that of the Russian Seventeenth High Seas Fleet, Gwillam Forte reflected at his penthouse office in the Houston Herald building that afternoon, as he scanned the press reports of the fleet’s visit to San Francisco, where it was currently anchored. As in Seattle, the fleet’s previous port of call, the keynote of the Russians’ behavior, in fact, was charm.
Russian sailors went ashore on liberty, in parties of ten, under the command of a commissioned officer and an English-speaking political adviser. They were immaculately turned out, politely attentive to the descriptions of the sights they were shown, drank nothing stronger than lemonade, and spoke, when they spoke at all, only in Marxian cliches about the brotherhood of man and the solidarity of the working masses. They toured museums, parks, and zoos, attended ball games-where they applauded both winner and loser impartially-ate sea food at Fisherman’s Wharf, exposed yards of stainless-steel teeth to press photographers, and were always back aboard ship by nightfall. The local ladies of the night had no part of their custom, nor did the sin-and-skin palaces, waterfront bars, and gambling hells, the sailors pleading-honestly if disconsolately-short liberty and low pay.
Their reception by the burghers of Seattle and San Francisco had been equally restrained and aloof. These cities not only had experience with sailors long at sea and far from home but a growing suspicion that the Washington Protocols, which would be ceremonially signed at the conclusion of the fleet visit some weeks hence, were somehow booby-trapped. The East Coast press had been so unanimous in praise of the protocols that West Coast conservatives were convinced they must be dangerous. As a consequence, they treated the Russian sailors as they would messengers of death-with respect, but a respect filled with cold foreboding.
Between the Russians and the Americans, after two Seventeenth Fleet port calls, there had been neither friction nor affection, and Gwillam Forte, perhaps alone among Americans, didn’t like it. The natural buoyancy of sailing men, which bubbles to the surface on liberty in fun and laughter, shattered beer halls and fistfights, dames and demolition, hangovers and fractured limbs, was being suppressed both by the ships’ officers and their American hosts ashore. If the visit to San Diego proceeded with the same decorum and lack of incident, the U.S.S. Texas plan was in jeopardy. After all, the American people were not likely to believe the prim and mannerly men of the Soviet Navy capable of coldbloodedly sinking a defenseless old man-of-war that had steamed out to offer them hospitality and greetings on behalf of the State of Texas. It would be completely at variance with the Russian behavior that they had already experienced first-hand. That the behavior was a well-rehearsed sham they would not pause to consider. The image, Gwillam Forte decided, would have to be altered, and at once, to conform with the true Soviet nature.
After Seattle and San Francisco, the Russians would expect the same coldly formal reception in San Diego. They would be prepared psychologically for a correct and civil welcome, but without smiles, friendly toasts, escorted tours, invitations to dine en famille.
Forte chuckled. They were in for a shock.
At four-ten that afternoon, Forte’s Gulfstream IV rolled up to the VIP gate at the San Diego Airport. Waiting on the tarmac was Mayor Archibold Grace, who was there to do Gwillam Forte, a man he had never met but knew by reputation, a favor. He was more than willing to grant it sight unseen, for Gwillam Forte was known as a man who paid his debts most handsomely.
“Mr. Mayor,” Forte said, stepping out of the plane and taking the other’s preferred hand, “I’m Gwillam Forte, a man who’s very much obliged to you for consenting to receive him on such short notice.”
“Delighted, Mr. Forte.” Grace beamed. “Welcome to our fair-”
He broke off as a pair of lovely long legs appeared in the doorway of the plane, and a moment later a breathtaking young woman in a linen suit of dazzling white descended, with a smile that made Grace forget that he was years past dreams populated by such lovely women.
“Lorry, may I present His Honor the Mayor, Mr. Archibold Grace,” said Forte, leading her by the hand to hizzoner. “Mr. Mayor, this is Miss Loretta Vine, my social secretary.”