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By Root 695 0

contacts. All it did was to receive a collection of signals like those generated by an orbiting Flying Cloud satellite, cued in turn by one of the DSPS birds at geosynchronous height. The computer relayed this information to the ground-control computer, which examined its criteria for weapons-free authority and decided that they had been met. It took a few seconds for the lasers to power up, but they reported being ready a few seconds later. The fact that the lasers in question did not exist was not pertinent to the test. The ground mirror did, and it responded to instructions from the computer, sending the imaginary laser beam to the relay mirror eight hundred kilometers overhead. This mirror, so recently carried by the space shuttle and actually in California, received its own instructions and altered its configuration accordingly, relaying the laser beam to the battle mirror. This mirror was at the Lockheed factory rather than in orbit, and received its instructions via landline. At all three mirrors a precise record was kept of the ever-changing focal-length and azimuth settings. This information was sent to the score-keeping computer at Tea Clipper Control.

There had been several purposes to the test that Ryan had observed a few weeks before. In validating the system architecture, they had also received priceless empirical data on the actual functioning characteristics of the hardware. As a result they could simulate real exercises on the ground with near-absolute confidence in the theoretical results.

Gregory was rolling a ballpoint pen between his hands as the data came up on the video-display terminal. He'd just stopped chewing on it for fear of getting a mouth full of ink.

"Okay, there's the last shot," an engineer observed. "Here comes the score "

"Wow!" Gregory exclaimed. "Ninety-six out of a hundred! What's the cycle time?"

"Point zero-one-six," a software expert replied. "That's point zero-zero-four under nominal-we can double-check every aim-command while the laser cycles-"

"And that increases the Pk thirty percent all by itself," Gregory said. "We can even try doing shoot-look-shoot instead of shoot-shoot-look and still save time on the back end. People!"-he jumped to his feet-"we have done it! The software is in the fuckin' can!" Four months sooner than promised!

The room erupted with cheering that no one outside the team of thirty people could possibly have understood.

"Okay, you laser pukes!" someone called. "Get your act together and build us a death ray! The gunsight is finished!"

"Be nice to the laser pukes." Gregory laughed. "I work with them too."

Outside the room, Beatrice Taussig was merely walking past the door on her way to an admin meeting when she heard the cheering. She couldn't enter the lab-it had a cipher lock, and she didn't have the combination-but didn't have to. The experiment that they'd hinted at over dinner the night before had just been run. The result was obvious enough. Candi was in there, probably standing right next to the Geek, Bea thought. She kept walking.

"Thank God there's not much ice," Mancuso observed, looking through the periscope. "Call it two feet, maybe three."

"There will be a clear channel here. The icebreakers keep all the coastal ports open," Ramius said.

"Down 'scope," the Captain said next. He walked over to the chart table. "I want you to move us two thousand yards south, then bottom us out. That'll put us under a hard roof and ought to keep the Grishas and Mirkas away."

"Aye, Captain," the XO replied.

"Let's go get some coffee," Mancuso said to Ramius and Clark. He led them down one deck and to starboard into the wardroom. For all the times he'd done things like this in the past four years, Mancuso was nervous. They were in less than two hundred feet of water, within sight of the Soviet coast. If detected and then localized by a Soviet ship, they would be attacked. It had happened before. Though no Western submarine had ever suffered actual damage, there was a first time for everything, especially if you started taking things for granted, the