'I agree and so, it seems, do our Soviet counterparts. Drilled is the word the translators came up with. A hole, a half a centimetre to a centimetre in diameter,' right through the ship. No evidence in the first couple of decks because of fire damage, but from there on down, a clean little hole, right through every deck and out the bottom of the hull.'

'That's the son-of-a-bitch, all right. Did you catch the reference to the sonar?'

'Ah, right, it's here on page -' Isaacs leafed through the report, 'page fifty-seven. Sonar operator picked up a sudden strange signal just as the fire klaxon sounded and all hell broke loose.

'So,' Isaacs continued thoughtfully, 'you are Yuri Blodnik reading this report. What do you conclude?'

'Noise above,' summarized Martinelli, 'a hole drilled vertically through the decks, and a sonar trace below. I'd say I'd been shot.' Martinelli dramatically clasped his hands to his heart and then thrust a pointed finger at the ceiling. 'And the varmint what did it was up there!'

'All right, Tex ,' Isaacs smiled, 'and just what were you shot with?'

Martinelli grew serious. 'Not a conventional projectile. You'd need a hell of an explosive punch to penetrate all that steel, and then you'd rip things up, not drill any dainty little hole. If it's not an explosive, then it'd have to be a slug with tremendous velocity.'

Martinelli could see the idea flare in Isaacs's eyes and spread across his face as his brow unfurrowed and his dun came up. Isaacs pointed a finger at him.

'A meteorite.'

Martinelli stared at him and then slowly nodded in comprehension.

'The damned carrier was hit by a meteorite!' Isaacs exclaimed. 'We've worried about them mistaking a large meteor for a nuclear explosion and launching a retaliatory strike. Now they get hit by a small one, a chance in a million, and they think it's a beam weapon.'

'Damn, that smells right.'

'We've got to convince the Soviets of that, particularly whoever decided a beam weapon was involved.'

Isaacs reached for a pad and began to make notes. 'We need to know who that person was, or what group, and how they think. Bureaucratic types? Someone in intelligence? Scientists? And, if so, government flakes or independent thinkers? We need evidence. What would a meteorite do? Can it do this? I'll set my team on that. We'll need a projectile specialist. Maybe there's some work in the labs, Los Alamos or Livermore. Too bad there's not more specific information here,' he tapped the report, 'on the nature of the punctures, stress on the surrounding metal, flaring at the rim. There should be contamination by meteoritic material, but that would require a specific metallurgical examination of a sample from around the holes. We've got to get them to do that.

'You get with Boswank and find out about the decision structure here. We'll do a report outlining the effects of meteorite impact, feed that to them through channels, and see if we can get them to look at those punctures in detail. If they can convince themselves, that'll be best. Great! We can move on this.'

'Won't hurt to be quick,' advised Martinelli. 'I just got word about Drefke's meeting with the National Security Council yesterday. It went just the way you called it.'

'The space shuttle?'

'Yep, the Joint Chiefs came out pushing hard for sending the shuttle after Cosmos 2112. Their arguments were almost a parody of what you predicted for Drefke day before yesterday. Can't let the Russkis get away with this, or they'll start picking off all our birds like sitting ducks. Got to hang tough. And, of course, they're drooling' to get their hands on the laser itself, do a little satellite vivisection.'

'Damnation!' exclaimed Isaacs, pounding his fist on the desk. 'Can't they see the danger of escalating this flung? The last thing the human race needs is a whole new way to make war! Good Lord! We have no idea where it will lead.'

'Hey!' protested Martinelli. 'You're talking to the wrong guy.'

'Sorry,' Isaacs slumped back in his chair, 'but what a tragedy, especially if it's all an overreaction to a freak of nature. Oh, damn!'

He thought quietly for a moment. 'Just what do they suggest? All we need is for the Cosmos to blast the shuttle as it approaches. No way we could keep that from the public. The President couldn't resist the war cries.'

'Well, of course, they've been planning for just such a contingency all along. Apparently, as well as working on laser systems, the Livermore people have been working on defences as well. They've designed a highly reflective, collapsible mirror specifically for the shuttle. It's been rocked in a warehouse for some time. The shuttle swings this thing overboard with the manipulating boom and positions it to reflect any laser blast as they close in. Just how they immobilize the satellite to get it in the cargo bay and bring it home isn't clear to me.'

'Isn't it too big?' Isaacs wanted to know.

'In a sense, but the Soviets know how big the shuttle bay is. The satellite is basically the upper end of one of their big booster rockets.'

Isaacs nodded.

'Apparently, they added some external gew-gaws specifically designed to make the whole thing too large to fit in the cargo bay. The idea is that the crew should take a torch to it with a space walk, cut it up into manageable-size pieces. In principle it'll fit.'

'Great,' exclaimed Isaacs with irony. 'And when do they advise trying to attempt this insanity?'

'The next shuttle launch is in the middle of April, two weeks from now. That's what they're pushing for. The idea being, of course, to strike while the iron is lukewarm. They'd like to launch yesterday, but the shuttle isn't so flexible.'

'Madness! And they think the Soviets won't then blow away one of our communication link satellites, Comsat or some such thing?'

'The argument is that Cosmos 2112 is the only laser they have flying.'

'But we didn't know that until two days ago!'

'Tell that to mah buddy, the President.'

'How's he leaning?'

'I didn't get any feeling for that, third hand, but the brass is pushing hard. They've pumped a lot of dollars sideways into NASA for the shuttle. They want to play with their toy.'

'But they must have war-gamed this kind of thing.'

'I suppose it can be contained in some scenarios.'

'Yeah, in one per cent of them. Voice, we've got to convince our side about this meteorite, too. That seems to be the only sure way to show that the Soviets had some justification and that we don't need to retaliate.'

'You'll have to start in-house. Drefke will relay any report you write, but you know how his antennae are tuned to the White House. He's apt to take his cues from the President. And McMasters clearly won't be much help.'

'That's a fact,' Isaacs agreed. That was quite a show he put on the other day.'

'It was clearly his only tack. He had to really push the Russians as bad guys to keep Drefke from thinking too deeply about why FireEye was shifted in the first place. Now he's painted himself into a corner. He'll have trouble turning around and saying, well, maybe they're not so nasty after all, a little hasty with their death ray, but really not bad chaps.

'The other factor is,' Martinelli continued, 'that this meteorite idea and follow-up has to come from your group and his negative instincts won't allow him to embrace it with a lot of enthusiasm.' The two men sat in silence for a moment, then Martinelli rose.

'I'll go see Art; we'll try to get some dope on the channels this report went through.' Martinelli waved the document as a farewell gesture and paused.

'There's a bright side to all this, you know. If this trick with the shuttle backfires badly enough, we won't have to worry about getting our taxes done on time.'

'Thanks a lot, Vince.' Isaacs grinned at the black humour. 'Silver linings like that I can do without.'