“You’ve got a fault,” somebody said.
“Impossible. Triple redundancy circuits. Something funny’s going on.”
A low hum followed by the dull thud of a heavy object striking solid resistance came from above their heads. Every face turned upward. The massive steel door had closed in the far wall of the gallery, sealing off the Control Room. Indignant voices rose up on all sides.
“What in hell’s going on?”
“Somebody’s flipped.”
“Christ! It’s all gonna screw up.”
Then one of the operators at a monitoring station a few feet away from the coordinator became excited. “Access doors to generator floors, accelerators, J-reactor, modulator levels, and computer floor have all closed. The entire system is sealed off and all local controls have been deactivated by Control Room override.”
“What’s he talking about?” Reyes demanded. The coordinator slumped back in his seat and showed his upturned palms.
“The whole system is being controlled by those two guys up there.” He pointed up toward the gallery. “We can’t get in, and they’re not talking to us. We can’t get at any part of the machine either.”
“Well . . . damn it . . . what can you do?”
“Nix.”
“Can’t you pull the plug on the damn thing—or something?”
“Wouldn’t do any good. It’s got its own generating station below that can run for years. There’s no way we can get in at that either.”
Reyes spun round to confront the group of agitated Presidential aides. Sherman himself seemed to be taking the situation more calmly than anybody . . . unnaturally so. His reaction, or apparent lack of one, served only to confuse the Vice President more.
“I don’t understand it,” Reyes said. “Alex. What are you going to do?”
“You’ve just heard,” Sherman told him. “It doesn’t look as if there’s anything we can do. So I guess we just have to do what the old lady said—if it’s gonna happen anyway, lie back and enjoy it.”
Carlohm, who had been conferring with his staff officers and studying the details of the reports coming in on the displays, interrupted. “Excuse me. Can I update you on our evaluation of the situation. Not all enemy satellites have been destroyed. Their strategic bombardment system and orbital lasers have been eliminated, but their capability for intercepting our own satellites with space-launched missiles is still intact. Since it looks as if we might not be able to rely on further J-strikes, I suggest we alert our conventional defenses to prepare for independent action.”
“Very well,” Sherman agreed. “From now on we treat this as a conventional operation. You now have sole command of all forces. Act as you see fit.”
Carlohm issued a brief list of instructions to his staff, who dispersed to translate them into orders for the commanders of the Western defenses. Within minutes, salvos of missiles were discharged by the surviving enemy satellites; ground launchings were detected from Siberia to South Africa, which proved to be not ICBMs but interceptor missiles streaking upward to join in the assault on the unscathed Western satellite array. As the attacking waves closed in upon their targets, orbiting lasers and defensive missiles were brought into action to counter them.
During the next fifteen minutes the pattern of attrition unfolded: The enemy missiles were not getting through. All the calculations and simulations had shown that even with all the most favorable assumptions, the Western defensive system could never achieve the kill-rate that was being indicated on the screens. Something else was at work. That something could only be the J-weapon, which made it all the more strange for the two scientists to seal themselves in.
Then a new and inexplicable trend became apparent in the reports: a terrible toll was being taken of the friendly ORBS and laser satellites. The enemy missiles were not getting through to their targets, and yet the targets were being destroyed. Suddenly Carlohm realized what was happening.
“It’s those two crazy bastards up there!” he yelled, turning purple. “They’re wiping out our own satellites!”
At the end of an hour the situation was clear. Neither side was left with the means of delivering a strategic attack from orbit, both having lost their ORBS systems entirely. However, since the East had suffered the loss of its system in the first swift blow, it had been obliged to attempt to redress the balance by sending its anti-satellite missiles against the ORBS system of the West, which at that time had been still intact. This had forced the West to respond by firing off much of its stock of antimissile missiles.