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“I have only until noon,” the man continued. “Just ten minutes. Will you listen?”

  Kazumi cocked his head. The African countries displayed in the connection status were directly under London. It should be about six in the morning there, nine hours behind Japan.

  “Jay, where are you calling—”

  “Who is there?” Jay interrupted, either intentionally or because of lag in the connection. “Is that one of your staff behind you?”

  Kazumi turned to see Akari standing behind him. Her display goggles were on, and a keyboard was already strapped to one of her arms.

  “Sorry,” Kazumi said to her. “Did I wake you up? I borrowed your projector.”

  “No problem,” Akari said. “But it doesn’t sound like we have time to discuss that right now.” She crouched down so that her face was visible in the frame alongside Kazumi’s. “Hello there. I’m Akari, engineer at Meteor News. Nice to meet you, Jay.”

  So Akari could speak English too. It didn’t seem like Jay had anything too complicated to say, but it was a relief to have someone help him with the listening. Akari pulled up a chair and sat beside him.

  At the other end of the call, Jay looked taken aback. “An honor to meet you,” he said finally. “Here is what I want to tell you. It is about the objects around SAFIR 3. Listen closely, yes? They are spacecraft with a tether-propulsion system of my invention, known as the ‘space tether.’ ”

  “Space tether?” Akari whispered to Kazumi.

  Kazumi shook his head. What Jay had just said was impossible. They must have misheard him. “These objects,” Kazumi said, taking care to separate his words, “are electrodynamic—space tethers—made by you?” He pronounced “space tethers” especially slowly and clearly, so that there could be no mistake.

  This wasn’t the first time Kazumi had heard of this technology, referred to variously as electrodynamic tethering, inductive tethering, and tether propulsion. But it was still only supposed to be in the early experimental stage. Even Japan’s space agency JAXA, despite its reputation for eagerly exploring new propulsion systems, had only run a few trials so far. It was the latest idea for spacecraft propulsion, but at this point it was more fantasy than reality.

  “Electrodynamic … ?” Jay repeated. “Yes. Exactly.”

  Kazumi stared.

  “But,” Jay continued, “Also, no. I did not make them.”

  “What do you mean? You are—”

  “I do not know who made what is up there now,” Jay said, interrupting Kazumi for the second time. Akari reached out unobtrusively to click record on the video call. “But the system is of my design. Please, tell someone! The idea came from me!”

  “Why did you contact us, Jay?” asked Kazumi. “Why not tell this to NASA or the space agency in your own country? I am sure they would listen.”

  If Jay really had designed a space tether that was currently in orbit, a Japanese shooting star forecast service was hardly the first place he should contact.

  “Please, Kazumi. There is no time. It is impossible. Ir— … —lease.” His voice began to break up. “… send … papers …”

  “Sorry, Jay,” Kazumi said. “I could not hear you. Can you repeat—”

  As if by way of reply, a file transfer request appeared in the chat window. Kazumi clicked the Accept button, but the file didn’t begin downloading. Akari began to tap furiously at the keyboard on her left arm, eyes never leaving the screen.

  “What is this, Jay?” asked Kazumi. The sound came back clearly for just a moment.

  “Proof. My papers on the space tether, from five years ago. They are not reaching you?”

  “No, they aren’t,” Kazumi said. The file transfer dialogue was open, but the download still hadn’t begun.

  “Thirteen, fourteen.” Akari said. “Too slow.” She leaned in close to the camera.

  “Jay, this file you are sending is being censored. Censored!”

  “Mahhodotsiman!”

  As Jay buried his face in his hands, the download finally began. It was a PDF, about 130 kilobytes. The progress bar moved agonizingly slowly.

  “I don’t know any African languages,” Kazumi said quietly to Akari.

  She shook her head. “What are you talking about? That’s Persian. Jay’s in Iran.”

  No, he isn’t, Kazumi protested, pointing at the connection information showing a connection in Africa, but Akari grabbed his arm and pulled it back. Kazumi saw pages of text scrolling across her eye display.

  “Later,” she said. “Move.”

  “What?”

  “Move, please! Now! There’s no time!”

  Akari pushed Kazumi out of the way and seized the laptop.

  “What are you doing?” Kazumi demanded, trying to snatch it back. Akari held up one palm to silence him, typing something into the chat window with her other hand as she shouted into the camera.

  “Jay, click on the URL I’m about to send you!”

  “Got i—”

  Jay’s image froze as the sound cut out midword. The file download stopped. The connection had been terminated.

  “Now look what you’ve done!” Kazumi said.

  “It wasn’t me,” Akari said, pointing at the whiteboard. “Your call with Jay was cut off by the Iranian government.”

  A new window had been added on the conference room’s screen, beside the launch livecast. A woman was looking at the camera with a pained expression. At the bottom of the screen was the station’s logo: Al Jazeera.

  “… confirm that as of noon today,” the woman on the screen said, “the Iranian government has severed the country’s Internet from the rest of the world.”

  The camera panned to one side, revealing a city street. In the background, a man with a potbelly was pulling the shutters down over a window full of computers.

  “Internet cafés have also been closed down,” continued the black-clad anchorwoman. The potbellied man yelled something at the camera and then pasted a green poster over his shutters.

  “The government has made no public announcement about the disconnection,” said the woman. “Student groups have declared that they will stage protests to demand free access, but if the Internet remains unavailable for too long, the possibility of the demonstrations turning violent cannot be discounted.”

  A caption appeared: inner tehran. The streets were full of colorful strips of paper, as if countless posters had been torn to pieces. A woman with her face covered by a scarf hurried past. Iran, Kazumi mused. So an engineer from this Islamic nation had developed the working theory behind the space tether? While unable even to connect to the Internet? Kazumi had never even imagined such a thing.

  “Al Jazeera reporting via satellite link,” the anchorwoman continued. “This is Tehran, signing off.”

  “Sorry about that, Akari,” Kazumi said. He should have paid more attention to Jay. But it was too late now. Jay couldn’t get in touch with anyone outside Iran. Would that half-downloaded file they’d received from him even be readable?

  “No problem,” Akari said. “But forget about that. Let’s see if we can find Jay. He hit that URL just before his connection dropped out, so he should be in the access log. I’ll reconstruct the PDF we got half of too. You want to read it, right?”

  “Yes, please,” Kazumi said.

  “I guess the launch is over by now.”

  Akari was right. On the conference room screen, Loki 9 was soaring into the clear night sky, long white trail behind it. The launchpad was still roiling with a mass of steam. It looked like all had gone well.

  “That’s okay,” Kazumi said. “I’ll watch the recording.”

  He turned his thoughts back to the space tether. If Jay was right about those objects floating around SAFIR 3, they made up a cloud of miniature spacecraft, each one capable of moving freely in orbit. He had to tell someone what was up the
re waiting for Ronnie. With Jay’s name attached, of course.

  But who?

  He thought back to the hackathon where he’d developed the first prototype of Meteor News. Who was that JAXA employee he’d met there? That was it: Kurosaki. And Kazumi was pretty sure he still had his private contact details, too.

  Sun, 13 Dec 2020, 08:45 +0000 (2020-12-13T08:45 GMT)

  Project Wyvern

  Pure excitement!

  I have no words. Does that make me a failure as a journalist? No way! Sometimes there are no words. And a rocket launch is one of those times.

  Have you ever seen one in person? This wasn’t my first. Back in 2000, when I was eight (no calculations, please), Ronnie took me to see the Space Shuttle go up, headed for the ISS.

  We were on the observation deck, three or four miles away from the rocket. Ronnie was standing, and I was on his shoulders.

  There was a cloud of steam and light big enough to hide the shuttle. I thought I heard a whoosh, and then suddenly the loudest noise I had ever heard rumbled right through me. Ronnie lost his balance and dropped me onto the floor of the observation deck.

  I sat there on my butt watching as an arrow of light stretched up into the clear blue sky, until the white clouds had disintegrated and the last glittering point winked out.

  That was my first rocket launch. I made a presentation at school about how exciting it was, but I could tell that my classmates didn’t really get it. I swore that I would find a way to explain it to them—that I would make them understand how life changing it was.

  Today, I looked back from the opposite perspective. I was up in the tower at Launch Complex 36, and there was the observation deck. It was lit up, but it was so far away that it just looked like a thin line. Amazing to think that the shock of the launch had been powerful enough to knock a full-grown man off-balance that far away! Well, if I’m honest, I don’t mean “amazing.” I mean “terrifying.” Because this time, that same energy would kick me right in the back.

  I waved for the cameras, but my legs were shaking the whole time. I entered the Wyvern through the hatch, took my seat, and began running through the launch protocol. I didn’t stop shaking once.

  I felt ten times the energy of the loudest noise I had ever heard in my life vibrating beneath me. Then the countdown from Mission Control began in my helmet.

  Three. Two. One. Liftoff!

  The vibration stopped for just a moment, then there was an even louder noise in my helmet and my whole body was slammed back into the seat. I tried to cry out. No—I couldn’t not cry out. I couldn’t tell you if it was closer to a yell or a scream. But it was the loudest noise I could make. I hope it didn’t worry Ronnie or Mission Control. The camera should have told them that I wasn’t scared, but shaking with joy. Still …

  *

  When the noise cut out again, we were in space.

  It first hit me when I saw blue light through the Wyvern’s cupola.

  We were in space.

  That light was from Earth!

  My instructors back at journalism school always dinged me for overusing repetition. They agreed with my textbooks—useful tool, must be used in moderation. But I’m going to ignore what they taught me now.

  I’m in space! Space! In SPACE!

  Next time, I hope to report on the experience of zero G. Should be a stimulating one! Ronnie is as excited as a little boy—nothing like his usual impatient, irritable self.

  Wow! There goes a shape I’d only ever seen on maps before. The Americas!

  Note for editors: Now that I’m in space, please use GMT format for my dateline.

  — Judy “Columbus” Smark

  4 Standby

  Sun, 13 Dec 2020, 02:03 -0700 (2020-12-13T09:03 GMT)

  The Buffalo Café, Colorado Springs

  “… Two! One! Liftoff!”

  The shining white rocket on the television screen burst through pale cloud cover into the night sky. The patrons in the Buffalo Café raised their glasses as one and cheered. Though it was the middle of the night, this steak house five minutes from Peterson Air Force Base was alive with celebration. Beer foam flew as the clink of glass on glass rang out across the room.

  Freeman could only shrug at the racket. Bruce had his fingers in his ears. Beside him, Chris sipped her martini with unbelievable composure.

  The television cut to a close-up of Judy Smark screaming with joy as tears ruined her makeup. A merciless chorus of whistles and boos rose from the audience in the steak house as they rewatched the special news feature on Loki 9’s launch that had played half an hour earlier. Then the television cut again, to an ex-chief of NASA rhapsodizing on the dawn of private space tourism, and the crowd began to settle down.

  Bruce, wearing a leather jacket instead of his usual suit, raised his glass perfunctorily to another patron coming from the counter. “Should have expected this from a NORAD town,” he said.

  “No kidding,” said Chris, looking up from her martini glass. “And it’s been how many years since Cheyenne Mountain closed down? Amazing.” Her white hair was down, and she’d changed into a floral-print dress that made her look like a retiree come to drag her irascible husband home from his local watering hole. No one would have imagined that she was with the CIA.

  She turned to Freeman, setting her glass down with a smile. “Sorry about calling you here in the middle of the night,” she said.

  “There’s no need to apologize, ma’am,” Freeman replied. “How can I be of assistance?”

  “First of all, by explaining this,” Bruce said. Without putting down his glass, he pointed both index fingers at the ceiling, then at Freeman, then off to the left. “Lintz and Fernandez did this routine for you. Tell me what it means.”

  Freeman scratched his head. Of course they’d noticed. He saw no point in lying. “It’s a runway hand signal,” he said. “You actually do it like this.”

  He set his glass on the table and showed them the signal with both arms fully outstretched. This caught the attention of a bearded man leaving the counter.

  “Hey, you with the air force, pal?” he asked. “ ‘Proceed at your own discretion.’ My favorite signal too!”

  “Cheers, Pops,” Bruce said, inclining his glass and flashing a dazzling smile at the man. Then he turned back to Freeman. “Got it,” he said. “ ‘We leave it up to you,’ basically?”

  Freeman nodded cautiously.

  “Don’t worry,” Bruce said. “We’ve been around the block a few times ourselves.”

  Chris pulled out her phone, apparently no more concerned about the subterfuge than Bruce was. “We don’t care what you do on the side as long as you get that Rod from God research done,” she said. “We didn’t come here to make friends.”

  “Rod from God?” Freeman repeated. “You mean that idea about bombarding Earth with tungsten spears? Like I said earlier today, the very idea is absurd.”

  Bruce tossed back the last of his martini. “Hold up there,” he said. “We don’t just want to know if it’d really make a good weapon or not. We want to know everything. What kind of strategic range its movement implies. How long it can keep maneuvering. Whatever you can tell us.”

  “You want an assessment of the object as a spacecraft,” Freeman said.

  “Starting to sound more interesting?”

  “A little,” Freeman said, with a calculated laugh. He brought his ginger ale to his lips, but Bruce raised a finger.

  “One more thing,” Bruce said. “The ASM-140. You wrote the report, so let me pick your brain directly. Why was such a brilliant idea mothballed in the first place? We could have been shooting down enemy satellites with fighter planes right now. How awesome would that have been?”

  “Debris,” Freeman said. He leaned in toward Bruce so that he could speak more quietly. Chris casually huddled in closer as well. “You might say that the who
le problem of space debris started with ‘the flying tomato can’—the predecessor to the ASM-140.”

  “Solwind,” Chris said.

  “You’re already familiar with it?” Freeman asked.

  “Just tell us about it,” said Bruce. “We want to hear it from a real, live human.”

  Freeman gave them the basics. In 1985, the ASM-135, a.k.a. “the flying tomato can,” had been tested on P78-1, a decommissioned solar-observation satellite also known as Solwind. The test of the flying tomato can as an antisatellite weapon was successful—the satellite had been destroyed. The resulting dispersal of fragments and debris, on the other hand, had posed a threat to the burgeoning private space industry. Not to mention the fact that even the army had been horrified to see how easy, cheap, and effective the ASM-135 was—an ASAT weapon that didn’t even need a launching facility.

  The ASAT plan had been canceled, with the army citing that old cliché, “budget overruns.” The truth had to be kept from the Soviets at all costs, though hiding things that were already in orbit wasn’t easy.

  “Okay,” Bruce said. “So what’s the takeaway? Can we throw this new ASM-140 at the Rod from God?” His smile didn’t reach his eyes.

  Freeman felt something at his back: the sofa. He must have gone weak with surprise. “You mean,” he said, “you put together that plan—‘Seed Pod,’ was it?—without even looking into that?”

  “Well, it wasn’t my plan,” Bruce said. He took a gulp of the bourbon that had just arrived for him. “It came from somewhere higher up. We’re just the worker bees. When we went to ask NASA about SAFIR 3, we got the debris lecture. It’s a bit unnerving to have the Smarks up there too. We could hardly ask Colonel Lintz about that.” He gave Freeman a disarming smile. “Come on, give us the lowdown. How does the ASM-140 tick?”

  “Can I leave out everything up to the launch?” Freeman asked. “That part’s exactly the same—take it above twenty thousand klicks and point it at the target. The first stage can accelerate to Mach 7. The second stage is an Altair 3 rocket that can reach Mach 14. That’s 40 percent faster than the ASM-135.”