kiss his ass, and you buy time until you have a chance to escape from him, or until you can gain the advantage and subdue him.
“What these people are demanding is not that impossible to do. The demands are not even unreasonable . . . at least not yet. What they want changed are policies that the majority of the nation have been complaining about for years. They want less government control over people. Only your bureaucratic pride and your personal power is at stake here, and as a technical expert, I’m telling you that they have the ability, as of this moment, to make you eat your pride. I hope I’m getting through to you,” this last with a jab of his finger toward the senator.
With that, Dr. Stickle grabbed up his briefcase and stalked out of the hearing room amid winking flash cameras and a rising babble of voices.
VII
On July 15, Joseph Miller, Harold Tanner, Casper Franklin, Jack Mota and White House Chief of Security, Lloyd Dahner, sat with President Robert Vanderbilt in the ready room just off his day office. Vanderbilt sat at a large, ornate desk, legs crossed, absently running his finger around the rim of a drinking glass that sat on his blotter.
Vanderbilt was a big-boned man in his late fifties, with archaic, mutton-chop sideburns and thinning, curly, brown hair that was graving at the temples. With the exception of a slight belly, he was in generally good physical shape. He had a callous sense of humor, and often used it at the expense of those around him.
“So, you don’t think they can fire again, Harold?” he was asking Tanner.
“Of course, we don’t know for sure, Mr. President,” replied Tanner, his face a worried frown, “but we’ve been unable to detect any sign of a thermal-energy signature in space. If the generator that powers the thing is chemically fueled, there should be one. Even if it uses a fission pile, it must have a heat radiator of some sort in order to get rid of the waste heat from the energy conversion system. No machine is one hundred percent efficient, so all heat engines must radiate some excess heat.
“According to Stickle and his experts, an orbital laser weapon would have to either generate power as it needs it, feeding it directly to the laser cavity during the firing sequence, or else generate the power prior to firing, in order to charge up an energy storage system, which would then supply the energy to the laser when called for. In either case, we should be able to detect waste heat being emitted as radiant energy, and so far, there is none.
“This leads us to believe that it was sent up with a one-shot charge already stored in some sort of energy storage capacitor. Since there was no fuel to be burned, there was no detectable heat signature when the thing fired.
“But, if it has no fuel, it can’t recharge itself, either. A solar energy array could supply energy to such a weapon, but it would be slow to recharge, and due to the power requirements, the array would be very large, and certainly visible to our radar.
“Based on the lack of a heat signature, and the absence of a solar generator, we think it was a one-shot device, designed to get our attention.”
“I’d say they accomplished that, all right,” said Vanderbilt, absently studying the whiskey glass. “But what about fuel cells, that kind of thing?”
“Same argument. They generate heat.”
“What about the energy beam itself? Can’t your satellites detect it, and trace it back to the weapon?”
“We’re working on it, Mr. President,” said Tanner. “The scientists all agree that if the beam frequency is in the high-energy part of the spectrum, it must ionize gas particles as it passes through the atmosphere, leaving an electrically charged path that exists just for an instant, something like a lightning stroke. The problem is, the area of space that it can be within is enormous. It is literally like looking for a needle of light in hundreds of thousands of cubic miles of
“What these people are demanding is not that impossible to do. The demands are not even unreasonable . . . at least not yet. What they want changed are policies that the majority of the nation have been complaining about for years. They want less government control over people. Only your bureaucratic pride and your personal power is at stake here, and as a technical expert, I’m telling you that they have the ability, as of this moment, to make you eat your pride. I hope I’m getting through to you,” this last with a jab of his finger toward the senator.
With that, Dr. Stickle grabbed up his briefcase and stalked out of the hearing room amid winking flash cameras and a rising babble of voices.
VII
On July 15, Joseph Miller, Harold Tanner, Casper Franklin, Jack Mota and White House Chief of Security, Lloyd Dahner, sat with President Robert Vanderbilt in the ready room just off his day office. Vanderbilt sat at a large, ornate desk, legs crossed, absently running his finger around the rim of a drinking glass that sat on his blotter.
Vanderbilt was a big-boned man in his late fifties, with archaic, mutton-chop sideburns and thinning, curly, brown hair that was graving at the temples. With the exception of a slight belly, he was in generally good physical shape. He had a callous sense of humor, and often used it at the expense of those around him.
“So, you don’t think they can fire again, Harold?” he was asking Tanner.
“Of course, we don’t know for sure, Mr. President,” replied Tanner, his face a worried frown, “but we’ve been unable to detect any sign of a thermal-energy signature in space. If the generator that powers the thing is chemically fueled, there should be one. Even if it uses a fission pile, it must have a heat radiator of some sort in order to get rid of the waste heat from the energy conversion system. No machine is one hundred percent efficient, so all heat engines must radiate some excess heat.
“According to Stickle and his experts, an orbital laser weapon would have to either generate power as it needs it, feeding it directly to the laser cavity during the firing sequence, or else generate the power prior to firing, in order to charge up an energy storage system, which would then supply the energy to the laser when called for. In either case, we should be able to detect waste heat being emitted as radiant energy, and so far, there is none.
“This leads us to believe that it was sent up with a one-shot charge already stored in some sort of energy storage capacitor. Since there was no fuel to be burned, there was no detectable heat signature when the thing fired.
“But, if it has no fuel, it can’t recharge itself, either. A solar energy array could supply energy to such a weapon, but it would be slow to recharge, and due to the power requirements, the array would be very large, and certainly visible to our radar.
“Based on the lack of a heat signature, and the absence of a solar generator, we think it was a one-shot device, designed to get our attention.”
“I’d say they accomplished that, all right,” said Vanderbilt, absently studying the whiskey glass. “But what about fuel cells, that kind of thing?”
“Same argument. They generate heat.”
“What about the energy beam itself? Can’t your satellites detect it, and trace it back to the weapon?”
“We’re working on it, Mr. President,” said Tanner. “The scientists all agree that if the beam frequency is in the high-energy part of the spectrum, it must ionize gas particles as it passes through the atmosphere, leaving an electrically charged path that exists just for an instant, something like a lightning stroke. The problem is, the area of space that it can be within is enormous. It is literally like looking for a needle of light in hundreds of thousands of cubic miles of
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