The Krone Experiment by J. Craig Wheeler Page B

lack of gravity.
Each opened independent safety switches on opposite sides of the
console, and then Jupp lifted a cover and thumbed a heavy toggle
switch. They watched on the TV monitor as the twin doors on the
large cargo bay swung open. Wahlquist fitted his hands into the
manipulator controls. His gaze switched rapidly back and forth from
the monitor screen to the rear window above the console, which
provided a direct view into the cargo bay. In the bay, the long,
skinny, elbow-jointed manipulating boom came alive, an extension of
Wahlquist’s own muscles and nerves. He moved the boom to the only
item in the large storage area. It was a cylinder twenty feet long
and four feet in diameter. From the end of the cylinder extended a
shaft that ended in a special fitting designed to be gripped by the
manipulator boom. Wahlquist moved the boom to the shaft, then made
the fine adjustments to align the clamp on the boom with the
fitting. Slowly he closed the jaws on the clamp. Satisfied that the
mating was exact, he threw a switch that locked the boom onto the
shaft with an unbreakable vise grip. He threw another switch on the
console and watched on the TV monitor as the tubular casing
separated along its length and peeled back like a long skinny clam.
He then used the boom to heft the shaft and hold it aloft, pointed
straight out from the bay toward the Earth below. Nestled along the
shaft, cleverly and compactly aligned, were the segments of a
mirror. At a signal, the many pieces would carefully unfold and
arrange themselves like a gigantic polished umbrella, half again as
big in diameter as the shuttle craft itself.
    Jupp returned to the pilot’s seat. They were
in an orbit that carried them northward over China and Siberia,
across the pole and down over the eastern seaboard of the United
States. So far, so good. The shuttle, Cosmos 2112, and all other
Soviet satellites capable of interference were monitored closely
both from Earth and from space. There was no sign of excess Soviet
interest or activity. Shuttles did not usually adopt polar orbits,
but they were not unknown, especially when a surveillance satellite
had to be deposited in such an orbit. The mirror stayed folded
against its supporting shaft to avoid adding premature confirmation
to suspicions that must be growing.
    The first tricky part was to close on the
Cosmos, using the mirror for protection. The Cosmos was a long way
out, in a parking orbit one day long canted a bit with respect to
the Earth’s equator. In twelve hours it would swing from some
distance north of the equator to an equal distance south, but at
the same longitude since as the satellite completed a half orbit,
the Earth would complete a half revolution, maintaining the
alignment. From the Earth, the Cosmos seemed to drift slowly north
and south, passing over a particular point on the Earth twice a
day. They would keep a maximum distance by going up in their polar
launch orbit, at right angles to the orbit of the Cosmos. There was
no place to hide in space from the weapon that shot beams at the
speed of light, but at least aiming would be more difficult at
greater distances.
    To minimize direct ground-based surveillance
by the Russians, they waited until they were over the west coast of
South America headed for Antarctica and the Indian Ocean beyond.
Then Jupp programmed the rockets to begin the meticulous ascent
toward the Cosmos, which hovered near the spatial gravesite of its
recent victim. They climbed in an open spiral, belly of the
spacecraft up, the necessary orientation for ascent because of the
preset angle of the rockets. They circled once every few hours at
first while the Cosmos hovered near the northern swing of its cycle
over the southern Urals. The time for an orbit lengthened as they
rose until they were at an altitude slightly less than the Cosmos
and also orbiting once in about twenty-four hours. They were high
over Panama while the Cosmos drifted lazily southward