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  Bruce wasn’t writing anything down, but Freeman could see the gleam of understanding in his eyes. He couldn’t help but think back on the time he’d given the same explanation to Major Fernandez with less satisfying results.

  “Let’s say this is the target satellite,” Freeman said, holding up his index finger and moving it in a slow horizontal line. He then let his left hand approach it at an angle from below. “The ASM-140 closes with its target from below and hits it from the front. If the target is the Rod from God, the final relative velocity would be ten klicks per second. But …” He opened the fingers of his left hand as if to grasp his right index finger. “… five klicks from the target, the ASM-140 launches an electronic attack. Two klicks from the target, it fires a volley of slugs, like a shotgun. The aim isn’t to destroy the satellite, just to render it inoperative, either with ECM or by riddling it with holes.”

  “So that’s why the plan’s called ‘Seed Pod,’ ” said Chris, nodding.

  “It’s not a bad name,” Freeman said. “The slugs are just three millimeters in size. The attack really is like a barrage of seeds from one of those plants with an explosive pod.”

  “Three millimeters, though?” Bruce held his thumb and finger close together. “If slugs that tiny hit at that velocity, wouldn’t the energy just vaporize them? They couldn’t get through composite armor.”

  Freeman was startled that Bruce knew as much as he did. Not to mention the fact that he was right. Armor was standard in orbit. The International Space Station had three layers protecting its front end: an innermost airtight wall, a Kevlar fiber layer, and a thin shield of gold known as a Whipple bumper on the outside. Any tiny pieces of debris that hit the station were vaporized by the heat of the collision. They might punch a hole in the bumper and the Kevlar layer, but the airtight wall would never suffer more than a dent. And a Whipple bumper was standard equipment even on an unmanned satellite. It worked on the same principle as composite armor.

  “Bruce used to drive a tank,” Chris said. “The CIA took pity on him and took him in because he looked so cramped in there.”

  She was joking, but it was true that the ASM-140’s armor-piercing slugs worked on a similar principle to antitank missile warheads designed to penetrate the composite armor of their targets.

  “Let me guess,” Bruce said. “There’s ‘heavy metal,’ ” Bruce said, making quotation marks with his fingers, “at the core of each slug. Am I wrong?”

  “No,” Freeman said. “The cores are heavy, all right.”

  Bruce scratched his head. “But that doesn’t make any sense. Depleted uranium in new technology?”

  This was the dark side of the ASM-140. There was no way around it: depleted uranium was notoriously harmful to human health. The plans had originally called for tungsten instead, but Lockheed, who owned the patent on depleted uranium, had craftily pointed out that tungsten was produced in a competing nation: China.

  “One small consolation,” Freeman said, “is that the slugs have basically no orbital velocity. They fall into the atmosphere and burn up right away.”

  “And become shooting stars,” Bruce said. “Okay, next: What happens at the moment we kill the satellite? Can other countries see what’s happening?”

  “Surely the CIA must know better than me?” Freeman said. “Military satellites from all over the world are constantly watching the North American continent. The launch of ASM-140 will be out in the open for everyone to see.”

  “Daryl,” Chris broke in. “To keep North America under constant observation, you need geosynchronous satellites in the right place. Only a handful of countries operate satellites like that: Russia, China, the UK, and France. We just need to make sure everyone gets the right message behind the scenes.”

  This was news to Freeman.

  “Besides, if we can get a UN resolution to eliminate the Rod from God, it doesn’t matter whether we’re spotted doing it or not,” Chris continued. “That’s why we need you to prove that this object SAFIR 3 is an orbital weapon. It’s a big responsibility.”

  Freeman looked up at the soot-smudged ceiling. I should have known.

  How could he get them to understand how ridiculous it would look to send up a cutting-edge weapon to take care of a single empty rocket body?

  Sun, 13 Dec 2020, 02:14 -0800 (2020-12-13T10:14 GMT)

  A Seattle Hotel

  The commercial for some local business ended, and the screen filled with yet another shot of Loki 9 blasting off while the announcer groped for yet another way to say “amazing.” The third or maybe fourth “cool” was the last straw for Shiraishi.

  “We’re in a hotel,” he said. “Can’t we at least watch cable?”

  “No,” Chance replied. “And even if we did, you’d just complain about their coverage instead.” One of her first acts as Shiraishi’s handler had been to cancel his cable subscription. Not only did the contract contain a record of his address, the cable company also had a deal with the CIA to supply data on everything their customers viewed. Even in hotels, Chance herself only watched broadcast television. If you couldn’t receive it with a regular television set, she wasn’t interested.

  As Chance reached out for the remote to switch the television off, she noticed light spilling from her editor’s bag. She pulled out her tablet and checked the notifications.

  “It’s here,” she said. “The results of our investigation into Meteor News.”

  “They work fast at the Cyber Front, I’ll give them that. It hasn’t even been four hours. So what did they learn?”

  “All they’ve found out is that it’s run by a single person, one Kazumi Kimura. Domain registrations and all other public information use the details of a shared office space attached to Shibuya Station in Tokyo. The phone number and address are both just forwarding services, untraceable to any particular address. He’s well hidden.”

  Taking the tablet from her, Shiraishi rubbed his chin. “So either he’s a security freak, or he’s hired an engineer who knows what he’s doing in that area … Probably wouldn’t fall for a spear phishing attack either. Hey, what about this number?”

  He showed Chance a web page he’d found after a few searches: Mary@Fool’s Launchpad. With a smile, he reached out and tapped at a phone number on the page.

  “ ‘English customer support,’ it says here. Give her a call, Chance. I think this just might be the chink in Kazumi’s armor we’re looking for.”

  Chance pulled out her phone, set it to speakerphone, and tapped in the number. They heard it ring three times before the other end picked up.

  “English reception, Fool’s Launchpad, this is Mary Nomura,” came a voice in smooth English.

  “Hello, Mary.”

  “Our business hours for today are over,” the voice continued. “If you would like to leave a message for an individual service, please press …”

  Chance listened for a few more seconds, then muted the mic.

  “Meteor News is number five. Can I hang up?”

  Shiraishi nodded, closed his eyes lightly, and turned his head gently from side to side.

  “Let’s see … Right now in Tokyo it’s Sunday night. After dinner tomorrow, let’s try to get all the information about Kazumi we can out of our new friend Mary. I’ve dealt with these outfacing English-speaker types before. They don’t care who their client is—they’ll take the side of whoever speaks better English. They’ll blab anything if they think it’ll impress. Notification for you, by the way.”

  A new message alert had appeared on the tablet: Surveillance target Doctor Jamshed Jahanshah has made contact with an individual outside Iran.

  Chance took the tablet back from Shiraishi and checked the details. It seemed that Dr. Jahanshah had sent the space tether paper to a recipient outside Iran. The Iranian authorities had detected the transmission and shared the information with North Korean intelligence.<
br />
  Her hand tightened around the table. The IP address the papers had been sent to was linked to a shared office space in Shibuya called Fool’s Launchpad.

  “Not bad, Kazumi,” Shiraishi said, chuckling and shaking his head. Chance shot him a look before deciding on a particular operative they had stationed in Tokyo.

  “I’ll have someone pay them a visit when we call Mary,” she said. “I think this is something we need to discuss in person.”

  Mon, 14 Dec 2020, 09:25 +0900 (2020-12-14T00:25 GMT)

  Fool’s Launchpad, Shibuya

  Kazumi sat in the window seat he’d managed to snag and spread out the supplies he’d bought at the Tokyu Hands department store the previous night just before it closed. A magnetic sheet, two foot-long copper rods, a battery box complete with a switch, an acrylic plate, double-sided tape, and a sewing needle.

  He got to work. First, he used the double-sided tape to stick the two well-polished copper rods to the acrylic plate. He arranged them in parallel, like two rails. Next, he laid down a narrow strip of magnetic sheet in the gap between the rods. Finally, he connected the copper wires extending from the battery box to the ends of the rails.

  Done. All that remained was to place the needle across the rails and turn the device on.

  What he had created was a miniature version of the design at the top of the PDF he’d received from the man calling himself Jay the previous night: “An Overview of the Continuous Space Tether, with Experimental Results.” The paper was credited to Fahim Hamed and Jamshed Jahanshah as coauthors, and Kazumi suspected that it had been the latter who had contacted him. Only about a quarter of the PDF had been recoverable, but he could tell even from the abstract that the ideas in it were quite advanced. Having no background in electrical engineering, Kazumi had not really been able to understand the circuit diagrams and equations that filled the second half of the paper, but he was still buzzing with the thrill he’d felt when he had worked out what Jamshed’s awkward English was getting at.

  Kazumi carefully placed the sewing needle on the rails, then flipped the switch on the battery box to on.

  The needle quivered, then began to roll along the rails. A body had been set in motion through electric current alone. Success! He understood the theory, but seeing the needle move in front of his eyes made it real. It was barely as strong as a breath, but this was the Lorentz force—the force that drove Jamshed’s space tether propulsion system.

  “What’s that, a rail gun?” Watanabe was peering over his shoulder.

  “Sorry, I’ve made a bit of a mess. I’ll clear it up before I go home.”

  “It’s no problem. You’re here every day anyway. Just leave a reservation card on the desk. You sure were concentrating hard, though. Actually, I have a favor to ask …”

  Watanabe showed him a tablet displaying a wireframe website layout. He always had multiple website contracts going on at once and made a point of sharing them with other members of Fool’s Launchpad. Kazumi had accepted his share of the subcontracting as well.

  “I’m sorry,” Kazumi said. “I appreciate the offer, but for the next month or so I’m going to focus on this. I’ve already got enough to cover my expenses.”

  “That’s too bad,” Watanabe said. “You do great work on these sites—the little details, you know?” He peered at the experimental apparatus again with obvious interest. “This is a model rail gun, right? Is Meteor News expanding into weaponry now?”

  “Good morning, Watanabe-san!” A miniature landslide of electronic devices clattered onto the table opposite Kazumi. Akari had arrived.

  “Good morning, Akari,” said Watanabe. “Thank you so much for last week—that settlement business. The client understood when I put it to them the way you told me to. Please don’t hesitate to set me straight again in the future.”

  Kazumi was impressed with how quickly Watanabe could admit that he had been wrong, especially after how thoroughly Akari had embarrassed him at the AMX last week. Here was a real adult.

  “No, no, I should have been more tactful about it,” said Akari. Then she turned her eyes to the experimental apparatus, two copper rods hooked up to batteries. “What’s that?” she asked Kazumi.

  “An experiment,” Kazumi said. “I’m trying to get my head around this space tether thing.”

  “What’s a space tether?” Watanabe asked, looking to Kazumi for answers. The man could hardly be expected to just walk away at this point, so Kazumi decided to use this as an opportunity to learn how well he had come to understand the space tether. Trying to explain something to other people, he knew, was the truest test of your own understanding.

  “The space tether is a kind of conductive tether system,” he began. “An engine for use in space, especially in orbit around planets with magnetic fields. Have you heard of the Lorentz force?”

  Akari shook her head, but Watanabe nodded. “This thing, right?” he said, holding up his left hand with a hint of smugness. His thumb was pointed at the ceiling, his index finger straight forward, and his middle finger off to the right: each digit was orthogonal to both of the others. “Fleming’s left-hand rule. Middle finger is the direction of the current, index finger is the direction of the magnetic field, thumb is the force on the object. What? Engineering was my major.”

  “Sorry,” said Kazumi. “I didn’t realize that.”

  “It’s fine, it’s fine. So, what about the Lorentz force? If that’s your engine, then I guess the lines go like …” Watanabe twisted his wrist to get his thumb parallel to the rails. His index finger—the magnetic field—pointed straight down, while his middle finger—the electric current—pointed in the same direction as the needle.

  “Thanks. That’s right,” Kazumi said. He put the needle on the rails again and hit the switch. The needle trembled and rolled along the rails. “So what this experiment shows is the needle moving through the magnetic field created by the magnetic sheet as current flows through it. The space tether does this too, but in space.”

  Kazumi picked up the needle between his right thumb and index finger. After a moment’s thought, he held it vertically.

  “Let’s say that this is a metal cord—a tether—floating vertically in orbit around Earth.”

  Watanabe and Akari nodded.

  Kazumi moved the fingers of his left hand in a plane that passed through the needle. “This is the magnetic field,” he said. “It’s guaranteed to be there if you’re close enough to Earth. So, you pass a current through the tether, and the Lorentz force comes into play.”

  Kazumi moved the needle to the left.

  “I get it,” Watanabe said. “But wait. It’s a current, right? If there’s no circuit, how can electricity flow?”

  Akari tilted her head in confusion, but Kazumi appreciated the question.

  “You put an electron gun at one end of the tether,” Kazumi said. “The tether spits out electrons from that end and attracts free electrons from its surroundings at the other. The result is a direct current.”

  The propulsive force was small, but because no fuel was required at all, you could use the tether to keep satellites in low orbit from losing velocity to the atmosphere and falling to Earth. JAXA was also investigating techniques for attaching the tether to debris objects and intentionally propelling them down into the atmosphere to burn them up.

  “What I’m investigating is a slightly unusual system thought up by an Iranian scientist. In orbit, tidal forces mean that a long object like a tether stands upright. But that means that the direction of the Lorentz force is decided by the magnetic field.”

  Kazumi turned the needle over onto its side and pointed it in one direction, then another.

  “So Dr. Jahanshah thought up a self-rotating tether-propulsion system. And he called it the space tether.”

  If the tether could be turned horizontal, the Lorentz force could be made to act in any direct
ion. The concept of a self-rotating inductive tether wasn’t original to Jahanshah, but what made his unique was that the weight that moved on top of the tether was constantly unstable. The system was constantly trying to right itself under the tidal forces; if you kept it unstable and in motion, slight Lorentz forces were continuously being generated, and these could be fed back to drive rotation.

  Akari’s eyes sparkled. “If it can rotate itself, then it can move anywhere in orbit, and it’ll always be pulled tight. Using a moving weight to make it unstable is a bit brute-forcey, but I bet it works fine. Wait—so that’s what … ?”

  “Right,” said Kazumi. “That’s what the objects flying around SAFIR 3 are.”

  Noticing Watanabe’s quizzical expression, Kazumi explained about the ten thousand–plus objects in orbit, mentioning that they weren’t in the catalog that contained everything ten centimeters or longer.

  “Well, they must be smaller, then,” Watanabe said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his smartphone. “All a tether needs at its end is an electron gun, a GPS, and a gyro sensor, right? That would all fit on a smartphone board. Use a Qualcomm chipset and it’d be the size of a five hundred–yen coin.”

  Akari nodded.

  All at once, the space tether appeared before Kazumi in his mind’s eye. He could see it: a line two kilometers long with a tiny object at each end, maybe a two-inch cube. A resin case. That wouldn’t show up on debris-tracking radar, which explained why it wasn’t in the catalog. It was unnerving to not know who was flying those things, and why, but there wasn’t much he could do to remedy his ignorance in that area.

  “Well, you’ve got an interesting problem there, Kazumi,” Watanabe said cheerfully. “Congratulations. The month will fly by. If there’s anything I can help with, let me know. And—”

  There was a flash of light and a noise somewhere between a pop and a click. As they turned their heads to the source of both, they heard Mary scream. There she was, hugging the counter she’d redecorated to look like a café.