“The hell you say, Tarzarov,” Gryzlov said angrily, but with a smile on his face. “I will not give one inch to this weak-kneed excuse for a head of state.” He hit the hold button again. “Are you saying Barbeau is lying, Phoenix?” he asked, no longer using Phoenix’s title or even addressing him as “Mister”—Phoenix’s opening move was a defensive one, and Gryzlov wanted there to be no doubt about who was now in control of this situation.
“I’m telling you the facts, Mr. President: Starfire is not a directed-energy weapon,” Phoenix said. “It is an experimental space solar-powered power plant designed by some California engineering students. The Skybolt free-electron laser was deactivated. The students’ experiment was to beam electricity from space to Earth. That’s it. The small plane crashed because its pilot was stupid, not because it was hit by the maser. The solar power plant is not a threat to anyone on the ground and will certainly not disable airplanes, elevators, trains, or anything else. You’re creating a panic over a harmless college experiment. Neither that project nor the space station is any threat to you.”
“Phoenix, I simply do not believe you any longer,” Gryzlov said. “You can do one thing only to restore my faith in your words: detach the laser module from the space station immediately. If you do this, I will not implement the enhanced restriction of Russian airspace, and I will enter in negotiations with you to create a permanent treaty on space weapons. All I care about is offensive weapons in space that might be a threat to Russia. Perhaps I received bad information about the nature of the device, but it still does not alter the fact that you have used the Skybolt module to shoot directed energy at the surface of the Earth, and that cannot be tolerated.”
Gryzlov noted the long silence on the other end of the line; then: “I will consult with my advisers, Mr. President,” Phoenix said finally.
“Very well,” Gryzlov said. “You have two days, Phoenix, and then Russia will defend its airspace and low Earth orbit as we would our motherland, with every man, woman, and child, and every weapon in our arsenal, at our disposal. That I promise, Phoenix.” And with that, he threw the phone back onto its receiver.
Sergei Tarzarov put the dead extension back on its cradle. “I think he will do as you ask and detach the laser module from the military space station,” he said. “He will certainly concede that. May I suggest—”
“No, you may not, Tarzarov,” Gryzlov interrupted. He turned to Minister of Defense Sokolov and Chief of the General Staff Khristenko. “I will give the Americans their two days to detach that Skybolt module from the space station, and I will allow them to fly manned capsules to their space station only if they inform us of their exact flight path and destination before launch, and if they do not deviate from that flight path by as much as a degree or meter. If they do not inform us, or if they deviate from their flight path, I want the spacecraft destroyed. The spaceplanes will be engaged whenever they come within range of our weapons.”
“What about details of their cargo or passengers, sir?” Foreign Minister Titenov asked.
“I no longer care what they might be carrying,” Gryzlov said. “From now on I am assuming that every spacecraft launched by the Americans carries a space weapon and is a danger to Russia. The Americans and that spineless president Phoenix are liars and a danger to Russia. I will treat them like the enemies they are, I will not concede anything, and I will work from the assumption that America is just waiting for the right opportunity to strike, so we must be ready to strike first.”
NINE
Gun battles are caused by outlaws, and not by officers of the peace.
—JOHN F. KENNEDY
ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE, OVER NORTHERN CALIFORNIA
THAT SAME TIME
President Phoenix replaced the phone on its cradle. “That went swimmingly,” he murmured wearily. He was heading north to Portland, Oregon, for his next day of campaign stops. “You guys hear all that?” he asked into his video teleconference camera. All three participants in the video teleconference—Vice President Ann Page, National Security Adviser William Glenbrook, and Secretary of Defense Frederick Hayes—responded in the affirmative. “I screwed the pooch. I should’ve called you guys up and asked your opinion before I authorized the Cal Poly students to use the nuclear generator. Thanks to Barbeau, Russia thinks I just fired a death ray. I don’t feel as if I have any choice here, guys, but to detach that Skybolt module. Thoughts?”
“I would’ve advised going ahead with using the MHD generator test if you had asked me beforehand, Mr. President,” Ann said. “All we did was allow the Cal Poly students to demonstrate their technology—we didn’t fire a space weapon. Starfire is not a space weapon, no matter how much Barbeau and Gryzlov say it is.”
“The question now is: Do we think Gryzlov will dare attack if we fly a spaceplane over Russia?” the president asked.
“He’s taking steps to try to convince us that’s exactly what he’d do,” Glenbrook said. “Launching that Elektron spaceplane into an intersecting orbit with the space station? That was a deliberate action.”