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By Root 1241 0

because there were Marines to be seen, and only Marines were entrusted to guard the Navy's nuclear weapons. But none of those were on the pier. No, the trucks that rolled out from the weapons depot were carrying long square-cross-sectioned boxes that contained SM-2 ER Block-IVD surface-to-air missiles. When the trucks got to the cruiser, a traveling crane lifted them up to the foredeck of the ship, where, with the assistance of some strong-backed sailors, the boxes were rapidly lowered into the vertical launch cells of the forward missile launcher. It took about four minutes per box, Gregory saw, with the captain pacing his wheel-house all the while. Gregory knew why. He had an order to take his cruiser right to Washington, D.C., and the order had the word "expedite" on it. Evidently, "expedite" was a word with special meaning for the United States Navy, like having your wife call for you from the baby's room at two in the morning. The tenth box was duly lowered, and the crane swung clear of the ship.

"Mr. Richardson," Captain Blandy said to the Officer of the Deck.

"Yes, sir," the lieutenant answered.

"Let's get under way."

Gregory walked out on the bridge wing to watch. The Special Sea Detail cast off the six-inch hawsers, and scarcely had they fallen clear of the cleats on the main deck when the cruiser's auxiliary power unit started pushing the ten thousand tons of gray steel away from the floating pier. And the ship was for sure in a hurry. She was not fifteen feet away when the main engines started turning, and less than a minute after that, Gregory heard the WHOOSH of the four jet-turbines taking a big gulp of air, and he could feel the ship accelerate for the Chesapeake Bay, almost like being on a city transit bus.

"Dr. Gregory?" Captain Blandy had stuck his head out the pilothouse door.

"Yeah, Captain?"

"You want to get below and do your software magic on our birds?"

"You bet." He knew the way, and in three minutes was at the computer terminal which handled that task.

"Hey, Doc," Senior Chief Leek said, sitting down next to him. "All ready? I'm supposed to help."

"Okay, you can watch, I suppose." The only problem was that it was a clunky system, about as user-friendly as a chain saw, but as Leek had told him a week before, this was the flower of 1975 technology, back when an Apple-II with 64K of RAM was the cat's own ass. Now he had more computing power in his wristwatch. Each missile had to be upgraded separately, and each was a seven-step process.

"Hey, wait a minute," Gregory objected. The screen wasn't right.

"Doc, we loaded six Block-IVD. The other two are stock SM-2 ER Block IIIC radar-homers. What can I tell you, Cap'n Blandy's conservative."

"So I only do the upgrade on holes one through six?"

"No, do 'em all. It'll just ignore the changes you made to the infrared homing code. The chips on the birds can handle the extra code, no sweat, right, Mr. Olson?"

"Correct, Senior Chief," Lieutenant Olson confirmed. "The missiles are current technology even if the computer system isn't. It probably costs more to make missile seeker-heads with current technology that can talk to this old kludge than it would to buy a new Gateway to upgrade the whole system, not to mention having a more reliable system overall, but you'll have to talk to NAVSEA about that."

"Who?" Gregory asked.

"Naval Sea Systems Command. They're the technical geniuses who won't put stabilizers on these cruisers. They think it's good for us to puke in a seaway."

"Feathermerchants," Leek explained. "Navy's full of 'em—on land, anyway." The ship heeled strongly to starboard.

"Cap'n's in a hurry, ain't he?" Gregory observed. Gettysburg was making a full-speed right-angle turn to port.

"Well, SACLANT said it's the SecDef's idea. I guess that makes it important," Mr. Olson told their guest.

"I think this is imprudent," Fang told them all.

"Why is that?" Luo asked.

"Is fueling the missiles necessary? Is there not a danger of provocation?"

"I suppose this is a technical matter," Qian said. "As I recall, once you fuel them, you cannot