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1

Silhouetted against the deep blue horizon of the stratosphere, Trans-United Flight 52 cruised westbound toward Japan.

Below, Captain Alan Stuart could see pieces of the sunlit Pacific between the breaks in the cloud cover. Above was subspace—an airless void without sun or life. The continuous shock wave generated by the giant craft's supersonic airspeed rose invisibly off its wings and fell unheard into the mid–Pacific Ocean.

Captain Stuart scanned his instruments. It had been two hours and twenty minutes since the flight had departed San Francisco. The Straton 797 maintained a steady Mach-cruise component of 1.8—930 miles per hour. The triple inertial navigation sets with satellite updating all agreed that Flight 52 was progressing precisely according to plan. Stuart picked up a clipboard from the flight pedestal between himself and the copilot, looked at their computer flight plan, then glanced back at the electronic readout of position: 161 degrees, 14 minutes west, 43 degrees 27 minutes north—2100 miles west of California, 1500 miles north of Hawaii. "We're on target," he said.

First Officer Daniel McVary, the copilot, glanced at him. "We should be landing at Chicago within the hour."

Stuart managed a smile. "Wrong map, Dan." He didn't care for cockpit humor. He unfolded the chart for today's mid-Pacific high-altitude navigation routes and laid it on his lap, studying it slowly with the motions of a man who had more time than duties. The chart was blank except for lines of longitude and latitude and the current flight routes. Flight 52 had long left behind any features that mapmakers could put on a chart. Even from their aerie of over twelve miles altitude, there was no land to be seen over this route. Captain Stuart turned to First Officer McVary. "Did you get the fourth and fifth sectors in?"

"Yes. Updates, too." He yawned and stretched.

Stuart nodded. His mind drifted back to San Francisco. His hometown. He'd done a television talk show the previous morning. He'd been anxious about it and, like an instant replay, snatches of the conversation kept running through his brain.

As usual, the interviewer had been more interested in the Straton than in him, but he'd become accustomed to that. He ran through the standard spiel in his mind. The Straton 797 was not like the old British/ French Concorde. It climbed to the same altitude the Concorde did, but it flew a little slower. Yet it was measurably more practical. Armed with some aerodynamic breakthroughs of the '90s, the Straton engineers had aimed at less speed and more size. Luxury coupled with economy of operation.

The aircraft held 40 first-class and 285 tourist-class passengers. For the interview, he remembered to mentioned the upper deck where the cockpit and first-class lounge were located. The lounge had a bar and piano. One day when he was feeling reckless he would tell an interviewer that it had a fireplace and pool.

Stuart had spouted the advertising hype whenever he couldn't think of anything else to say. The Straton 797 flew faster than the sun. Slightly faster than the rotational velocity of the earth.

At a cruise speed of close to 1,000 miles per hour, Flight 52 should arrive in Tokyo at 7:15 A.M. local time, though it had departed San Francisco at 8:00 A.M. At least that was usually the case. Not today. They had departed San Francisco thirty-nine minutes late because of a minor leak in the number-three hydraulic system. While the mechanics changed the bad valve, Captain Stuart and his flight crew spent the delay time reviewing their computer flight profile. An updated winds aloft forecast had been sent to them, and Stuart had used the new wind information to revise his flight plan. They would fly south of the original planned routing to stay away from the worst of the newly predicted headwinds.

Time en route would be only slightly greater than usual, at six hours and twenty-four minutes. It was still impressive; grist for the media's mill. Across seven time zones and the International Date Line in less than a working man's day. The marvel of the decade.

But it was a little frightening. Stuart remembered the time he had been candid during a magazine interview. He had honestly explained the technical problems of supersonic flight at 62,000 feet, like the subtle effects of ozone poisoning and the periodic increases in radiation from sunspots. The interviewer had latched on to some of his points, exaggerated others, and had written an article that would have scared the hell out of a Shuttle astronaut. Stuart had been called in to speak to the Chief Pilot about his candor. Never again. "I did another one of those damned TV interviews. Yesterday morning."

McVary looked at him. "No kidding? Why didn't you tell us? Not that I would have gotten up that early…"

The junior pilot in the cockpit, Carl Fessler, who sat behind them at the relief copilot's position, laughed. "Why do they always pick on you, Skipper?"

Stuart shrugged. "Some idiot in public relations thinks I come across good. I'd rather fly through a line of thunderstorms than face a camera."

McVary nodded. Alan Stuart was every inch the image of the competent captain, from his gray hair to the crease in his pants. "I wouldn't mind being on TV."

Stuart yawned. "I'll suggest it to PR." He looked around the flight deck. Behind McVary, Fessler was typing into a portable computer—an electronic equivalent of a ship's log—with backup data from the instrument panel. McVary had returned to staring blankly ahead, his mind, no doubt, on personal matters.

The usual mid-flight routines had laid their blue veil over the crew. The blue mid-Pacific blues. The doldrums, as they were called by seamen—but this ship was not becalmed as a ship caught in the doldrums. It was ripping along at close to the velocity of a bullet. Yet there was really nothing, at that moment, for the three pilots to do. At 62,000 feet, all the weather was beneath them. An hour before, they had flown over an area of bad weather. Some of the towering cumulus clouds had reached up high enough to at least give any of the crew and passengers who cared to look at them something to see. But there had not been even the slightest turbulence at those altitudes. Stuart would have welcomed a little bump, the way truck drivers did on a long haul across endless smooth blacktop. He glanced out the front window again. There was one thing to see that never ceased to fascinate him: the rounded horizon line that separated earth from subspace.

The autopilot made small and silent corrections to keep the flight on the preprogrammed course. Stuart listlessly laid two fingers of his right hand on the control wheel. He had not steered the 797 manually since right after takeoff. He would not use the control wheel again until the final moments of their landing approach at Tokyo.

Carl Fessler looked up from his portable computer. He laid it down on the small table next to him. "What a lot of crap this backup data is. Most of the other airlines don't do this crap anymore."

Stuart took his eyes off the horizon and glanced back at his relief copilot. "I bet we could find some eager young new-hire pilot to take your place. He'd probably type faster, too." Stuart smiled, but he had been pointedly serious. He had little patience for the new breed. They had a job that was fifty times better than what had come before, yet they seemed to complain constantly. Did they realize that thirty years ago Alan Stuart had to hand-plot each and every route segment before climbing into the copilot's seat? Spoiled, Stuart said to himself. Telling them about it was a waste of time. "If we land in the teeth of a monsoon at Tokyo, you'll earn your day's pay, Carl."

McVary closed his copy of Playboy and put it into his flight bag. Reading was not authorized, and Stuart was starting to get into one of his Captain moods. "That's right, Carl. Or if one of these lights starts blinking, we'll find something useful for you to do real quick."

Fessler could see which way the wind was blowing. "You're right. It's a good job." He swiveled his seat slightly toward the front. "In the meantime, are you guys any good at trivia? What's the capital of Rwanda?"

McVary looked back over his shoulder. "Here's a trivia question for you. Which one of the stews has the hots for you?"

Fessler suddenly looked alert. "Which one?"

"I'm asking you." He laughed. "Look, I'll press the stew call button, and if fate brings you your secret lover, I'll nod. If not… well, you have ten left to wonder about." He laughed again, then glanced at Captain Stuart to read his mood. The old man seemed to be taking it well enough. "Skipper, anything for you?"

"Might as well. Coffee and a pastry."

"Coffee for me," Fessler said.

McVary picked up the ship's interphone and pushed the call button.

Flight attendants Sharon Crandall and Terri O'Neil were in the first-class galley in the main cabin below when the light blinked. Terri O'Neil picked up the phone. After a brief exchange with McVary, she hung up and turned to Sharon Crandall.

"They want coffee again. It's a wonder they don't turn brown with all they drink."

"They're just bored," said Crandall.

"Too bad. Walking all the way upstairs every time the cockpit crew needs a diversion is no fun." O'Neil took out a dish of pastry and poured three coffees.

Crandall smiled. Terri was always carrying on about something. Today, it was walking to the cockpit. "I'll go, Terri. I need the exercise. I have to go down to the pit pretty soon to help Barbara Yoshiro." She nodded toward the service elevator that led to the lower kitchen. "There's no room to move down there."

"No. Take a break. If anyone needs the exercise, it's me. Check these hips."

"Okay. You go." They both laughed. "I'll do the cleaning up," Crandall said.

Terri O'Neil picked up the tray, left the galley, and walked the short distance to the circular staircase. She waited at the base of the stairs while an elderly, well-dressed woman worked her way down.

"I'm sorry I'm so slow," the woman said.

"Take your time. No rush," O'Neil answered. She wished the woman would move a little faster.

"My name is Mrs. Thorndike." She introduced herself with the automatic manners of the old, not recognizing or caring that modern travel didn't require it. "I like your piano player. He's quite good," the woman said. She stopped on the bottom step to chat.

O'Neil forced a smile and balanced the tray of coffees and pastry against the handrail. "Yes. He's good. Some of them are even better than he is."

"Really? I hope I have one of the better ones on the flight home."

"I hope you do."

The old woman finally stepped aside and the flight attendant trudged up the stairway. Strands of "As Time Goes By" floated down to O'Neil over the normal inflight noises. With each step the singing of the more gregarious passengers got louder.

When O'Neil reached the top of the staircase, she frowned. Three of the male passengers stood arm-in-arm around the piano. So far, they were content to sing softly. But she knew that whenever men acted openly chummy while they were still sober, they were certain to become especially loud after they began to drink. Alcohol released the Irish tenor in them. O'Neil knew they would soon get their chance, since she was supposed to open the bar in a few minutes. She wished the airline would go back to the old-fashioned lounge instead of the aerial nightclub.

"Hello," O'Neil called to the young piano player. She could not recall if his name was Hogan or Grogan. He was too young for her anyway. She edged her way around half-a-dozen passengers, across the heavily carpeted lounge, and toward the cockpit. With the tray balanced in her hands, she tapped against the fiberglass door with the toe of her shoe. She could see from the shadow that someone in the cockpit had leaned up against the door's tiny section of one-way glass to see who had knocked.

Carl Fessler unlocked the door for her, and O'Neil walked into the cockpit.

"Coffee is served, gentlemen."

"The pastry is mine, Terri," Stuart said.

Everyone took a plastic cup, and she handed Stuart the pastry dish.

Stuart turned to Fessler. "Carl, see if the passengers' flight-connection information has come in yet." Stuart glanced down at the blank electronics screen on the pedestal between the two flight chairs. "Maybe we missed it on the screen."

Fessler looked over his shoulder toward the right rear of the cockpit. He had left the data-link printer's door open. The message tray was still empty. "Nothing, Skipper."

Stuart nodded. "If we don't get that connection information soon," he said to Terri O'Neil, "I'll send another request."

"Very good," said O'Neil. "Some of the first-class passengers are getting nervous. Having a printout of connection updates works even better than giving them Valium." While she spoke with the Captain, O'Neil could see out of the corner of her eye that Fessler and McVary were looking at each other in a peculiar way, evidently conveying some sort of signal. Terri realized that the First Officer and Second Officer were playing a game—and that she had become part of it. Boys. After everyone mumbled his thanks, O'Neil left the flight deck and closed the door behind her.

Captain Stuart had waited for the coffee and pastry as though it were a special event—a milestone along a straight desert highway. He ate the pastry slowly, then sat back to sip at his coffee. Of the three of them on the flight deck, only Stuart remembered when everything they ate was served on real china. The utensils then were silver and the food was a little less plastic as well. Now even the aromas were a weak imitation of what he had remembered as a new copilot. The whole cockpit smelled different then. Real leather, hydraulic fluid, and old cigarettes; not the sterile aroma of acrylic paints and synthetic materials.

Alan Stuart's mind wandered. He had flown for Trans-United for thirty-four years. He'd crossed the Pacific more than a thousand times. He was a multimil-lion-miler, although supersonic speeds had made that yardstick meaningless. Now he was losing count of his hours, miles, and number of crossings. He sighed, then took another sip from his plastic cup. "I don't know where the company buys this lousy coffee," he said to no one in particular.

Fessler turned around. "If that's a trivia question, the answer is Brazil."

Stuart didn't answer. In a few seconds his thoughts had slid comfortably back to where they had been. Supersonic transports were not actually flown; they were just aimed and watched. What modern pilots did mostly was to type instructions into onboard computers, and that was how actual flight tasks got accomplished. It had become such a passive job—until something went wrong.

In the old days, there was much more work, but much more fun. There were the long layovers in Sydney, Hong Kong, Tokyo. Some days in the Straton he would sit in his twelve-mile-high perch and look down on the routes he had flown as a young man. Old Boeing 707s—the original jets. And the captains that he had flown with had once flown the DC-4s, DC-6s and DC-7s on those very routes. Even with the old 707, they needed to make refueling stops everywhere. The lighter passenger loads meant that the flights operated only a few times each week, so they had several days' layover in lots of remote and faraway places. Life, he was certain, had been simpler yet more exciting then.

Carl Fessler tapped his pencil on the digital readout of the Total Airframe Temperature gauge. He was beginning another round of required entries into the portable backup computer, entries of their mid-flight aircraft performance numbers. Records of every sort, to be fed into the company mainframe computer and never to be seen again.

The Total Airframe Temperature needle sat on 189 degrees Fahrenheit, closing in on the red-line mark of 198. The operational limits at 62,000 feet were always a matter of temperatures and pressures, reflected Fessler. The Straton transport's skin was not to exceed its designated limit. If necessary, Fessler would tell the Captain and he would slow the ship down. The environment they operated in was hostile enough. Don't press it. "What's the capital of Japan?" he asked without looking up from his paperwork.

McVary glanced over his shoulder. "Mount Fuji?"

"Close," said Fessler. "But not close enough for you to try to land on it." Fessler entered the final figures into the computer and looked up at the windshield. Just beyond the glass and the aluminum-and-titanium alloy skin of the 797 was a slipstream of air moving so fast that anything its friction touched was instantly heated to over 175 degrees Fahrenheit. Yet the actual temperature of the atmosphere outside was 67 degrees below zero. The air itself was thin enough to be nonexistent. Less than one pound per square inch—one-fifteenth the normal sea-level amount. The oxygen composition was less than one percent. The mass was unbreathable anyway, since the pressure was too low to force the few oxygen molecules into the lungs. Subspace, reflected Fessler. Subspace was not what he'd been hired for five years before. But here he was.

McVary suddenly sat erect in his seat and put down his coffee. "Skipper, what's that?" He pointed to his right front. There was a small dot on the horizon—hardly more than a speck against the cockpit glass.

Stuart sat up and put his face closer to the wind-shield.

Fessler put down his coffee and turned in his seat to look.

They watched the dot on the right side of the wind-shield. It was moving across their front, apparently at an oblique angle to their flight path. It was growing slightly, but not alarmingly. It did not—at least for the moment—pose any threat of collision.

McVary relaxed a bit. "Must be a fighter. Some military jet jockey horsing around."

Stuart nodded. "Right." He reached into his flight bag and pulled out a pair of binoculars, a good set of Bausch & Lomb that he had bought in Germany many years before. He carried it as an amusement. He used to watch ships, planes, and faraway coastlines when he flew low enough to see something worth looking at. He'd meant to take them out of his bag long ago, but habit and nostalgia—he'd seen a good deal of the world through them—had postponed the retirement of the glasses. He adjusted the focus knob. "Can't make it out."

"Maybe it's a missile," McVary said. "A cruise missile." He had been an Air Force pilot, and his mind still worked in that direction.

Fessler half stood near his console. "Would they shoot it up here?"

"They're not supposed to," said McVary. "Not near commercial routes." He paused. "We did deviate pretty far south today."

Stuart twisted the focus knob again. "Lost it. Wait… Got it…."

"Can you make it out, Skipper?" asked McVary, a slight edge to his voice.

"Funny-looking. Never seen anything like it. Some sort of missile, I think. I can't tell. Here." He handed the binoculars to McVary. "You look."

The ex–fighter pilot took the glasses. Even without them he could see that the object had gotten closer. To the naked eye it appeared to be a sliver of dark-colored metal against the blue sky. He raised the glasses and adjusted them. There was something very familiar about that object, but he couldn't place it. It was hard to get a perspective on its size, but instinctively he knew it was small. "Small," he said aloud. "And at that speed and these altitudes it could only be military."

Fessler stepped closer to the front windshield. "Whose military?"

McVary shrugged as he continued to scan. "The Martian Air Force, Carl. How the hell do I know?" He leaned farther forward. For a brief, irrational moment he thought he might be seeing the opening salvo of an atomic war. The end of the world. No. It was too low, too small, and going toward the open Pacific. "It's got to be a jet fighter… but…"

"If it gets closer, we'll turn," Stuart said. Altering the course of a supersonic transport was no easy matter, however. At cruise speed it would take him nearly four-and-a-half minutes to turn the 797 around, and during that time the ship would have flown sixty-seven miles. At any greater rate of turn, the passengers would be subjected to an unacceptable level of positive Gs. Those who were standing would be thrown to the floor. Those seated would be unable to move. He flipped on the switch for the cabin seat-belt sign, then turned in his seat and wrapped his hands around the control wheel. His left thumb was poised over the autopilot disengage button. He looked at the object on the horizon, then at his crew. The cockpit had changed quickly. It was always that way. Nothing to do, or too much to do. He glanced at his relief copilot, who was still out of his seat and looking out the window. "Fessler. Who played opposite Cary Grant in North by Northwest?"

"I don't know."

"Then get back in your seat and do something you do know. Sit down, strap in, get ready."

"Yes, sir."

Small beads of perspiration had begun to form on the Captain's forehead. "I'm going to turn," he said, but still did not press the autopilot release button on his control wheel. Alan Stuart—like most commercial pilots—was reluctant to alter course, speed, or altitude unless absolutely necessary. Jumping headlong into an unneeded evasive action was a student pilot's stunt.

The fourth being in the cockpit—the autopilot—continued to maintain the 797's heading and altitude.

The object was easily visible now. It was becoming apparent to Stuart that the mysterious missile was not on a collision course with the Straton. If neither of the crafts altered course, the object would pass safely across their front. Captain Stuart relaxed his grip on the control wheel but stayed ready to execute a turn toward the north if the object's flight path changed. He glanced at his wristwatch, which was still set to San Francisco time. It was exactly eleven o'clock.

McVary saw the object clearly now in the binoculars. "Oh, Christ!" His voice was a mixture of surprise and fear.

Captain Stuart experienced a long-forgotten but familiar sensation in his stomach. "What, what…?"

"It's not a missile," said McVary. "It's a drone. A military target drone!"

At 10:44 A.M. San Francisco time, the helmsman of the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Chester W. Nimitz made a three-degree course correction to starboard. Positioned 2,000 yards astern of the Nimitz was the cruiser Belknap and the destroyers Coontz and Nicolas. Their helmsmen also made appropriate corrections. The fleet steered a steady course of 135 degrees, making a headway of 18 knots. They rode serenely over the mid-Pacific, their position 900 miles north of Hawaii. The midmorning skies were clear and the air was warm. The weather forecast for the next thirty-six hours called for little change.

Retired Rear Admiral Randolf Hennings stood on the 0-7 deck of the carrier's superstructure. Hennings's blue civilian suit stood out among the officers and men dressed in tropical tans. The orange ALL-ACCESS pass pinned to his collar made him more, not less, self-conscious.

From the seven-story-high balcony behind the bridge, Hennings had an unrestricted view of the Nimitz 's flight deck. Yet his eyes wandered from the operational activities toward the men who stood their stations a dozen feet away inside the glass-enclosed ship's bridge.

Captain Diehl sat in his leather swivel chair, overseeing the morning's operation. He was, at that moment, in conversation with Lieutenant Thompson, the Officer of the Deck, and with another lieutenant, whom Hennings had not met. The helmsman stood attentively at the Nimitz 's steering controls.

The flurry of on-deck activities from the dawn practice maneuvers had subsided. Hennings counted half-a-dozen aircraft on the starboard quarter of the Nimitz 's flight deck. One by one, they were being taken to the servicing area on the hangar deck below. The plotting board in the Air-Ops Room had shown only one aircraft yet to be recovered. Navy 347. F-18. Pilot Lt. P. Matos. Launched 1027 hours, 23 June. Special test. Estimated time of return, 1300 hours.

Hennings had not liked that "special test" designation. It was too close to the truth—and the truth was not to be openly discussed. He would have preferred something even more routine, like "extra training."