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"May I ask the deputy of the First Chief Directorate to enlighten me on this new operation?"

  "Of course," Maisky said sociably. "You are to use whatever electronic capability under your command to force the United States space shuttle down in Cuban territory."

  "Did I hear you correctly?" asked Velikov, stunned.

  "Your orders, which come from Comrade President Antonov, are to break into the computerized guidance control sensors of the space shuttle Gettysburg between its earth reentry and approach to Cape Canaveral and direct it to land on our military airfield at Santa Clara."

  Frowning, baffled, Velikov openly stared at Maisky as if the KGB deputy were mad. "If I may say so, that's the craziest scheme the directorate has ever conceived."

  "Nevertheless, it has all been worked out by our space scientists," Maisky said airily. He rested his foot on a large accountant's-type briefcase. "The data are all here for programming your computers and training your staff."

  "My people are communications engineers." Velikov looked totally lost and sounded the same way.

  "They don't know anything about space dynamics."

  "They don't have to. The computers will do it for them. What is most important is that your equipment here on the island have the capability to override the Houston Space Control Center and take command of the shuttle."

  "When is this act supposed to take place?"

  "According to NASA, the Gettysburg begins her earth reentry roughly twenty-nine hours from now."

  Velikov simply nodded his head. The shock had quickly melted away and he regained total control, calm, mind clicking, the complete professional. "Of course, I'll give you every cooperation, but I don't mind saying it will take more than an ordinary miracle to accomplish the unbelievable."

  Maisky downed another glass of vodka and dismissed Velikov's pessimism with a wave of the hand.

  "Faith, General, not in miracles, but in the brains of Soviet scientists and engineers. That's what will put America's most advanced spacecraft on the runway in Cuba."

  Giordino stared dubiously at the plate sitting on his lap. "First they feed us slop and now it's sirloin steak and eggs. I don't trust these bastards. They probably spiced it with arsenic."

  "A cheap shot to build us up before they tear us down again," said Gunn, ravenously digging into the meat. "But I'm going to ignore it."

  "This is the third day the goon in room six has left us alone. Something smells."

  "You'd prefer having another rib broken?" Gunn muttered between mouthfuls.

  Giordino probed the eggs with his fork, gave in, and tried them. "They're probably fattening us up for the kill."

  "I hope to God they've laid off Jessie too."

  "Sadists like Gly get turned on beating women."

  "Have you ever wondered why Velikov is never present during Gly's punch parties?"

  "Typical of the Russians to let a foreigner do their dirty work, or maybe he can't stand the sight of blood. How should I know?"

  Suddenly the door was flung open and Foss Gly stepped into the cell. The thick, protruding lips parted in a smile, and the pupils of his eyes were deep, black, and empty.

  "Enjoying your dinner, gentlemen?"

  "You forgot the wine," Giordino said contemptuously. "And I like my steak medium rare."

  Gly stepped closer and, before Giordino could guess his intentions, swung his fist in a vicious backhand against Giordino's rib cage.

  Giordino gasped, and his entire body jerked in a convulsive spasm. His face went ashen, and yet, incredibly, he gave a lopsided grin, blood rolling through the hairs of his stubbled chin from where his teeth had bitten his lower lip.

  Gunn rose up from his cot on one arm and heaved his plate of food at Gly's head, the eggs spattering the side of the torturer's face, the half-eaten meat scoring a bull's-eye across the mouth.

  "A stupid reaction," Gly said, his voice a furious whisper. "One you'll regret." He reached down, grabbed Gunn's shattered ankle, and gave it a sickening twist.

  Gunn clenched his fists, eyes glazed in pain, but uttered no sound. Gly stepped back and studied him, seemingly fascinated. "You're tough, very tough, for a little man."

  "Crawl back in your hole, slime," Giordino gasped, still catching his breath.

  "Stubborn, stubborn," Gly sighed wearily. For a quick second his eyes took on a pensive look, then the black emptiness returned, as cold and evil as if chiseled on a statue. "Ali, yes, you distracted me. I came to deliver news of your friend Dirk Pitt."

  "What about him?"

  "He tried to escape and was drowned."

  "You're lying," said Gunn.

  "A Bahamian fisherman found him. The American consulate has already identified the body, or what was left after the sharks were finished with it." Then Gly wiped the egg from his face, removed the steak from Giordino's plate, dropped it on the floor, and ground his boot in it. "Bon appetit, gentlemen."

  He walked from the cell and locked the door behind him.

  Giordino and Gunn looked at each other in long silence, a sudden realization growing within them.

  Then their faces lit up with broad grins that quickly turned into laughter.

  "He did it!" Giordino cried, his elation overcoming his pain. "Dirk made it home free!"

  <<51>>

  The glamour experiments on the space station Columbus centered on the manufacture of exotic medicines, the growth of pure crystals for computer semiconductor chips, and gamma ray observation.

  But the bread-and-butter activity of the forty-ton settlement on the fringe of the last frontier was the repair and service of satellites.

  Jack Sherman, commander of the station, was in the cylinder-shaped maintenance module helping a team of engineers jockey a satellite into a repair cradle when a voice came through the central speaker.

  "You available, Jack?"

  "I'm here."

  "Can you come to the command module?"

  "What's up?"

  "We've got some joker breaking into our communications channel."

  "Pipe it down here."

  "Better you should come up."

  "Give me a couple of minutes."

  The satellite secured and the airlock closed, Sherman peeled off his pressure suit and slipped his boots into a pair of slotted rails. Then he walked in a sliding motion through the weightless environment to the brain center of the station.

  His chief communications and electronics engineer simply nodded at his approach. "Listen to this." He spoke into a microphone mounted in a control panel. "Please identify yourself again."

  There was a slight pause and then "Columbus, this is Jersey Colony. We request permission to dock at your station."

  The engineer turned and looked up at Sherman. "What do you think? Must be some weirdo on earth."

  Sherman leaned over the panel. "Jersey Colony, or whatever you call yourself, this is a closed NASA channel. You are interfering with space communications procedures. Please break off."

  "No way," came the strange voice. "Our lunar transfer vehicle will rendezvous with you in two hours.

  Please advise us on docking procedures."

  "Lunar what?" Sherman's face tightened in anger. "Houston Control, do you copy?"

  "We copy," came a voice from the Houston Space Control Center.

  "What do you make of it?"

  "We're trying to get a fix on it, Columbus. Please stand by."

  "I don't know who you are, fella," snapped Sherman, "but you're in deep trouble."

  "The name is Eli Steinmetz. Please have medical assistance standing by. I have two injured men onboard."

  Sherman pounded a fist on the back of the engineer's chair. "This is crazy."

  "Who am I communicating with?" asked Steinmetz.

  "This is Jack Sherman, commander of the Columbus."

  "Sorry about the abrupt intrusion, Sherman, but I thought you'd been informed of our arrival."

  Before Sherman could reply, Houston Control returned. "Columbus, his signals are
not coming from earth, repeat, not coming from earth. They originate in space beyond you."

  "All right, you guys, what's the gag?"

  The voice of NASA's director of Flight Operations broke in. "No gag. Jack, this is Irwin Mitchell.

  Prepare your crew to receive Steinmetz and his colonists."

  "What colonists?"

  "About time someone from the ìnner core' showed up," said Steinmetz. "For a minute there, I thought we'd have to crash the front gate."

  "Sorry, Eli. The President thought it best to keep things quiet until you reached Columbus."

  "Will someone please tell me what's going on?" Sherman demanded in exasperation.

  "Eli will explain when you meet him," answered Mitchell. Then he addressed Steinmetz. "How are the wounded?"

  "Resting comfortably, but one will require major surgery. A bullet is lodged near the base of the brain."

  "You heard, Jack," said Mitchell. "Alert the crew of the shuttle. They may have to advance their departure."

  "I'll take care of it," Sherman said. His voice settled and the tone was calm, but he was far too intelligent not to be bewildered. "Just where in hell does this. . . this Jersey Colony come from?"

  "Would you believe the moon?" Mitchell replied.

  "No," said Sherman flatly. "I damned well wouldn't."

  The Theodore Roosevelt Room in the West Wing of the White House was once called the Fish Room because it contained aquariums and fishing trophies of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Under Richard Nixon it was furnished in Queen Anne and Chippendale style and used for staff meetings and occasional press conferences.

  The walls and carpet were in light and dark shades of terra-cotta. A painting of the Declaration of Independence hung on the east wall over a carved wooden mantel. Sternly surveying the room from the south wall, Teddy Roosevelt sat astride a horse in a portrait painted in Paris by Tade Styka. The President preferred this intimate room over the more formal Cabinet Room for important discussions partly because there were no windows.

  He sat at the head of the conference table and scribbled on a note pad. On his left sat Secretary of Defense Jess Simmons. Next to him came CIA Director Martin Brogan, Dan Fawcett, and Leonard Hudson. Douglas Oates, the Secretary of State, sat immediately to his right, followed by National Security Adviser Alan Mercier and Air Force General Allan Post, who headed up the military space program.

  Hudson had spent over an hour briefing the President's men on the history of the Jersey Colony. At first they sat there stunned and silent. Then the excitement set in and they fired a barrage of questions that Hudson fielded until the President ordered lunch served in the room.

  The utter astonishment gave way to enthusiastic compliments for Hudson and his "inner core," which slowly faded to grim reality at the report on the conflict with the Soviet cosmonauts.

  "Once the Jersey colonists return safely to Cape Canaveral," said the President, "perhaps I can appease Antonov by offering to share some of the immense data accumulated by Steinmetz and his team."

  "Why should we give away anything?" demanded Simmons. "They've stolen enough of our technology as it is."

  "No denying their thievery," replied the President. "But if our positions were reversed, I wouldn't allow them to get away with killing fourteen of our astronauts."

  "I'm on your side, Mr. President," said Secretary of State Oates. "But if the shoe was indeed on your foot, what course of retribution could you take?"

  "Simple," said General Post. "If I were Antonov, I'd order the Columbus blasted out of the sky."

  "An abhorrent thought, but one we have to take seriously," said Brogan. "The Soviet leaders must feel they have a divine right to destroy the station and everyone on board."

  "Or the shuttle and its crew," Post added.

  The President stared at the general. "Can Columbus and Gettysburg be shielded?"

  Post gave a slight shake of his head. "Our X-ray laser defense system won't be operational for another fourteen months. While in space, both the station and the shuttle are vulnerable to the Soviet Union's Cosmos 1400 killer satellites. We can provide solid protection for the Gettysburg only after she passes through earth's atmosphere."

  The President turned to Brogan. "How do you see it, Martin?"

  "I don't think they'll target Columbus. They'd be leaving themselves wide open for us to retaliate against their new Salyut 10 station. I say they'll try for the shuttle."

  An icy silence settled over the Roosevelt Room as every man present struggled with his own thoughts.

  Then Hudson's face took on an enlightened expression, and he rapped his pen against the table surface.

  "We've overlooked something," he said in a level tone.

  "Like what?" asked Fawcett.

  "The true purpose behind their attack on Jersey Colony."

  Brogan took the lead. "To save face by destroying all trace of our breakthrough in space."

  "Not destroy but steal," Hudson said fervently. "Murdering the colonists wasn't an eye-for-an-eye punishment. Jess Simmons hit on it. To the Kremlin's way of thinking it was vital to seize the base intact in order to help themselves to the technology, the data, and the results of billions of dollars and twenty-five years of work. That was their goal. Revenge was secondary."

  "He makes a valid point," said Oates. "Except that with the colonists on their way to earth, Jersey Colony is up for grabs."

  "By using our lunar transfer vehicle we can have another crew on site within two weeks," said Hudson.

  "The two cosmonauts who are sitting in Selenos 8," Simmons said. "What's to stop them from simply walking in and taking over the abandoned colony?"

  "I'm sorry," Hudson answered. "I forgot to mention that Steinmetz transported the five dead Russians back to the lunar larder and loaded them on board. Then he forced the surviving crew to lift off and return to earth by threatening to scatter them over the moon's surface with the last rocket in his launcher."

  "The sheriff cleaning up the town," Brogan said admiringly. "I can't wait to meet this guy."

  "Not without cost," said Hudson quietly. "Steinmetz is bringing back two seriously wounded men and one body."

  "What is the name of the dead man?" asked the President.

  "Dr. Kurt Perry, a brilliant biochemist."

  The President nodded at Fawcett. "Let's see that he receives a proper ceremony."

  There was a slight pause, and then Post brought the discussion back on track. "Okay, if the Soviets didn't get Jersey colony, what are they left with?"

  "The. Gettysburg," Hudson answered. "The Russians still have a chance at pirating a treasure trove of scientific data."

  "By snatching the shuttle out of the air?" Simmons stated sarcastically. "News to me they have Buck Rogers on their side."

  "They don't need him," Hudson retorted. "It's technically possible to program a deviation into the flight guidance systems. The computers can be fooled into sending the wrong signal to the drive elevons, the thrusters, and other equipment to control the Gettysburg. There are a thousand different way to nudge the shuttle off its course a few degrees. Depending on the distance from touchdown, it could be thrown off as far as a thousand miles from the Kennedy spaceport at Cape Canaveral."

  "But the pilots can override the automated system and land on manual control," protested Post.

  "Not if they're conned into thinking Houston Control is monitoring their return flight path."

  "Is this possible?" asked the President incredulously.

  Alan Mercier nodded. "Providing the Soviets have local transmitters with the capacity to overpower the shuttle's internal electronics and jam all signals from Houston Control."

  The President exchanged grim looks with Brogan.

  "Cayo Santa Maria," Brogan muttered miserably.

  "An island north of Cuba containing a powerful transmission and listening facility with the necessary muscle to do the job," the President explained to the others.

  "Maybe they haven't caught on that
our colonists have left the moon," Fawcett said hopefully.

  "They know," replied Hudson. "Once their eavesdropping satellites were aimed toward Jersey Colony, they've monitored every one of our transmissions."

  "We'll have to come up with a plan to neutralize the island's equipment," suggested Post.

  Brogan smiled. "Just so happens there is an operation in the works."

  Post smiled back. "If you're scheming what I'm thinking, all I'd like to know is when."

  "There is talk-- purely a rumor, mind you-- that Cuban military forces are going to launch an attack-and-destroy mission sometime after midnight tonight."

  "And the departure time of the shuttle for home?" asked Alan Mercier.

  "0500 tomorrow," Post answered.

  "That settles it," said the President. "Inform the commander of Columbus to hold Gettysburg on the docking platform until we can guarantee its safe return."

  Everyone around the table seemed satisfied for the moment, except Hudson. He had the look of a boy who had just lost his puppy to the county dogcatcher.

  "I just wish," he muttered to no one in particular, "it was all that easy."

  <<52>>

  Velikov and Maisky stood on a balcony three levels above the electronic listening center and looked down on a small army of men and women who manned the sophisticated electronic receiving equipment.

  Twenty-four hours a day, giant antennas on Cuba intercepted United States civilian telephone calls and military radio signals, relaying them to Cayo Santa Maria, where they were fed into the computers for decoding and analysis.

  "A truly superb job, General," said Maisky. "The reports on your installation have been far too modest."

  "A day doesn't go by when we don't continue the expansion," Velikov said proudly. "Besides the business end of the complex there is a well-supplied dining room and a physical conditioning center with exercise equipment and a sauna. We even have an entertainment room and a barber shop."

  Maisky's gaze rose to two screens, each ten by fifteen feet, on different walls. The left screen contained computer-generated displays while the right showed various data and intricate graphs.