What the hell? Why am I slowing this fast?

The answer comes in a flash of embarrassment.

Oh, jeez, the boards!

He flicks the speed brake closed and feels the jet’s aerodynamics improve instantly from those of a boulder to something more resembling a flying machine.

The field is a mile back to his left now, the altitude at five thousand, and he calculates the wind and decides to make an early turn, sliding the F-106 around to the left with his eyes on the end of the runway and lining up, checking his speed before committing the landing gear, which will slow him even more.

The speed is just above target, the end of the runway moving beneath his nose less than a mile out as he aligns with the concrete ribbon and drops the gear. The runway numbers stop moving forward in his windscreen, and he meters the jet over the threshold fifty feet high at a hundred and seventy, using the speed brake to help him settle onto the concrete, which is disappearing fast.

He’s on the wheel brakes, metering the pressure, wondering if he should have used aerobraking, the craft slowing through a hundred with less than two thousand feet of runway left. He presses harder on the pedals, worried about blowing the tires but slowing as the far end of the runway hurtles toward him.

And just as quickly he’s at the end, rolling the jet off on a taxiway at twenty knots and bringing her safely to a complete stop clear of the runway.

Owen powers open the canopy, runs the shutdown checklist, and starts removing his helmet—aware of a flurry of vehicles approaching from the southeast part of the field. He pulls the helmet free just as several Air Force cars pull into view and turns quick attention to scratching the place on the right side of his face that’s been bugging him since takeoff.

A crew chief is placing a ladder now to his left.

“Did we make it?”

“Sir?”

“The shot. Was it successful?”

Chris Risen doesn’t feel like a four-star general at the moment. More like a green lieutenant watching something momentous but completely out of his control as lines and vectors merge on the small screen. Outwardly his image is as secure and professional as ever. Inside he’s on edge, his heart in his throat.

“Status, Chief?” he asks quietly of the chief master sergeant.

“Missile at one hundred seventy-five miles and climbing, sir. It’s… a little off profile, but closing.”

“Show me the intercept solution, please.”

New lines appear on the display, one red, one blue.

“General, the blue line is the missile, the red, as you know, the proton shroud.”

“Am I seeing that right? Are they going to miss?” He hates to believe it, but the computer is projecting the missile to pass behindthe oncoming shroud.

“That dot is the current projection… I mean, without the missile speeding up. That’s where the missile will be along the shroud’s orbital path as it crosses. But the missile should speed up.”

“God, I hope so.”

“The corrections are real time.”

As they speak the display shifts, the intersect point moving closer to the shroud, overtaking it slowly from behind, the digital readout of the missile’s speed indicating a steady acceleration.

“The second stage has a thirty percent reserve boost capacity, sir.”

Another jump in the missile’s speed registers as the altitude continues upward.

Come on, come on!Chris thinks. Less than five hundred miles separate the two objects, the missile racing to close at a forty-eight-degree angle.

Once more the computer updates, moving the intercept dot within a mile of the shroud, still to the rear. The speed of the missile is over seventeen thousand nine hundred miles per hour, and as he watches, the display upgrades it to eighteen thousand.

“Almost, sir.”

“Time to impact?”

“Thirty seconds.”

“Jesus, I’m too old for this.”

“Yes, sir. I am, too.”

“Like waiting to find out if your girlfriend’s pregnant.”

The chief turns with a smile and a puzzled look, unsure how to take this. Just as quickly he returns his gaze to the closing race.

“Twenty seconds.”

The red intersecting projection dot is less than a quarter mile behind the shroud as the two objects close within seventy miles of each other.

“Fifteen.”

The predictor dot moves to a tenth of mile behind the target, the missile’s speed still increasing.

“Ten seconds.”

Goddammit, FLY, you bastard! Come ON!

The gap between dot and shroud closes a bit more, but still not colocated. The speed readout on the missile is now eighteen thousand five hundred.

There’s no margin for failure here! God, please help us make this happen,Chris thinks, his teeth clenched as the two icons converge in real time on the screen.

“Five, four, three…” the chief intones.

The predictor red dot is almost on top of the shroud’s icon now.

“Two, one…”

The dots merge and the computer-generated picture freezes.

“Now.”

“Now what? What happened?” Chris demands.

“Stand by, sir. Switching to real-time radar.”

The screen flashes black and then to a two-dimensional display of NORAD’s radar, which is tracking an exploding spray of objects that seem to be at an angle to the original track of the proton shroud.

“We got it,sir! Direct hit! Damn, that’s a beauty!”

“Direct hit?”

“All the debris is flying off at a twenty-degree angle.”

“Everything?”

“I’m looking, General. Yes, sir! We freakin’ did it! Everything!”

“Holy Moly.”

“Yes, sir! Woo-hoo!”

“I’ll second that, Chief. That was too close without a defibrillator standing by. And if you’re sure, tell the Sit Room while I call ASA.”

“They’ll make it, sir. No impact. Not even a bolt.”

The sudden resumption of noises he doesn’t want to know about from his parents’ bedroom startles him for a second. But Alastair’s attention quickly returns to the screen and the alert he’s about to send to thirty-three of his e-mail friends, what were once called pen pals around Australia and the world. Especially Becky Nigel, the only girl he really likes, who keeps in touch despite her British father’s moving his family all the way back to the U.K.

Hey, mates! I’ve stumbled on a really cool, hardworking scam artist trying to wind me up. He sez he’s stranded in a private spaceship. LOL! The bloke’s creative, I’ll give him that. And other than the mushy stuff about his first love and all, thought you might want to have a look. It’s coming across as a continuous scroll so you have to record it yourself. I’m sending the first stuff I captured.

He includes the Web address and triggers the screen back over to the evolving message from Kip.

Sorry to break the narrative, but something really strange just happened up here. Of course, here I am apologizing to a hard drive. But hey, a human will read this someday, won’t you?

Yesterday I got all excited when something glimmered on the horizon and I started thinking about rescue craft. I won’t make that mistake again, but I swear I saw an explosion in the same direction a few minutes back… some sort of a burst of sparkles, of what looked like sparkles, as if metal was reflecting in the sun, which is behind me at the moment. Then it seemed to move to the left and disappear. Poor Bill would probably have known what it was… some space phenomenon all astronauts consider routine but gets an amateur like me all excited.

Anyway, where was I?