conscious mind, and James could receive that information as if it came from his own five senses. But James no longer had five senses-he had hundreds, thousands of them. The radar altime- ter was a sense. The radar was a sense. So was the laser range- finder. Dozens of thermometers, aneroids, gallium-arsenide memory chips, limit switches, logic circuits, photocells, volt- meters, chronometers-the list was endless and ever-changing.

But it was an enormous shock to the system to find that the list of senses had grown from five to five thousand, and here ANTARES was no help at all; when the "room" was full it simply began cramming in more input sources. For James the new impulses weren't coherent or understandable. They were random flasNs of light or crashes of sound, battering his con- . d, all fighting for order and recognition. Put another scious min way, as he once had, it felt like a crushing wall of water, a wave of unbearable heat, and the swirling center of a thunderstorm all mixed up at once. And ANTARES was relentless. The instant Ise was set aside, a hundred more took its an image or an impu place. The computer only knew that so much had to be learned.

It had no conception of rest, or defeat, or of insanity.

Suddenly, then, the flood of input was gone. The tornado of data subsided, leaving only a room full of seemingly random bits of information lying scattered about. The furniture was over- turned-but it was all there, all intact. Now, like a benevolent relative or kindly neig hbor, ANTARES began sorting through the jungle of information, creating boxes to organize the infor- 62 DAIE BROWN.

mation, placing boxes into boxes, organizing the mountains of data into neat, cohesive packages.

The random series of images began to coalesce. Undecipher- able snaps of sound became long, staccato clicks; the clicks turned to a low whine; the whine turned into waves of sounds rising and falling; the waves became words, the words became sentences. Flashes of lights became numbers. And then the numbers disappeared, replaced by numbers that James wanted to "see. "

The energy surges generated by ANTARES were still cours- ing through James' body, but now they were acting like am- phetamines, energizing and revitalizing his body. He was aware of DreamStar all around him, aware of its power waiting for release.

James' eyes snapped open, like those of a man awaking from a nightmare. Swiveling his heavy helmet on its smooth Teflon bearings, he looked across at Cheetah's open canopy. Powell was busy in the forward cockpit; McLanahan was watching his instruments. But he must have read something in the instruments in Cheetah's aft cockpit, because just then McLanahan looked over toward him. He could see the DreamStar project director with his oxygen visor in place, apparently talking on the radios.

Patrick was looking directly at him now-was he talking to him..... ?

. . . And suddenly the energy was unbearable. It was as if DreamStar was a wild animal straining on a leash, hot with the scent of prey, demanding to be released.

James looked down at the left MFD, the multi-function dis- play, on the forward instrument panel. He imagined the index finger of his left hand touching the icon labeled -VHF- 1. " Im- mediately the icon illuminated. Now, hovering right the in re front of his eyes, was a series of numerals representing the pre- programmed VHF radio channels-the image, transmitted from DreamStar's computers through ANTARES to his optic nervous system, was as clear and as real as every other visual image. He selected the proper ship-to-ship channel on the computer- generated icon and activated the radio. The whole process, from deciding to activate the radio to speaking the words, took less than a second.

"Storm TWo ready for engine start," James reported. Al- though the ANTARES interface did not take away his ability to 63.

speak or hear, all traces of inflection or emotion usually were filtered out. So the voice that Patrick heard on the radio was eerie, alien.

"Welcome back, Captain," Patrick said. "I saw you come out of theta-alpha. Ready to do some flying?"

"Ready and waiting, Colonel."

"Stand by." Patrick switched to a secondary radio. "Storm Control, this is Storm One."

In the underground command post of the High Technology Ad- vanced Weapons Center a four-star Air Force general seated at a large cherry desk replaced a phone on its cradle, then looked down with disgust at his right leg. He reached down, took his right calf in both hands, straightened his leg, then raised himself out of his leather seat using the stiff right leg as a crutch. Once fully standing he unlocked the graphite and Teflon bearings in the prosthetic right knee joint, allowing it to move much like a regular leg.

An aide held the office door open for General Bradley Elliott as the director of HAWC stepped out and down the short hallway to the command post. He used a keycard to open the outer door to the entrapment area. A bank of floodlights snapped on, filling the entrapment area with bright light, and the outer door auto- matically locked behind him.

Two security guards armed with Uzi submachine guns came through the doors on either side of the area. They slowed when they recognized who it was but didn't alter their moves. While one guard quickly pat-searched Elliott and ran a small metal scanner over his body, the other stood with his Uzi at port arms, finger on the trigger. The metal detector beeped when passed over Elliott's right leg. Elliott tolerated it.

The guards watched as Elliott signed in on a security roster and double-checked the new signature against other signature samples and the signature on Elliott's restricted-area, badge pinned to his shirt. Satisfied, the guards slipped away as quickly as they had appeared.

A tall black security officer wearing a nine-millimeter Beretta automatic pistol on his waist walked quickly to the general of- ficer as he emerged from the entrapment area. "Sorry, sir,"

Major Hal Briggs said, handing Elliott a cup of coffee. "New guy on the security console. Buzzed the sky cops when the metal 64 .

detector in the entrapment area went crazy. He's been briefed again on your ... special circumstances. "

"He did right. You should have commended him. The re- sponse guards too."

"Yes, sir, " was all Briggs had time to mutter as Elliott pushed on past him and entered the communications center. One of the controllers handed him a telephone.

"Storm Control Alpha, go ahead."

"Alpha, this is Storm One. Flight of two in the green and ready to taxi.- "Stand by," Elliott said. As he lowered the phone Briggs handed him a computer printout.

"Latest from Lassen Mountain Space Tracking Center,"

Briggs said. "Three Russian satellites will be in the area during the test-window: Cosmos 713 infrared surveillance satellite still on station over North America in geostationary orbit, but it's the other two we're concerned w ith. Cosmos 1145 and 1289 are the kickers. Cosmos 1145 is a low-altitude, high-resolution film-return photo-intelligence satellite. Cosmos 1289 is a radar- imaging film-return bird. We believe th@y're mainly ground- mapping satellites with limited ability to photograph aircraft in flight, but obviously they can be damaging. Both will be over the exercise area during the test throughout the day. Do you want to reschedule, sir?"

"No," Elliott said. "I don't want to give the Russians the pleasure of thinking they can disrupt my schedule with a couple of old Brownies. Just make sure DreamStar and Cheetah stay in the bluff while they're overhead.

He took a sip of coffee, scowled at it, then set the cup down with an exasperated thump. "Besides, it seems like they have all the information they need on DreamStar anyway. I could have dropped my teeth when I saw the DIA photo of the Ramenskoye 1 Flight Test Facility in Moscow with the exact same short-takeoff- and-landing runway-test devices as ours here at Dreamland. The exact same ones. In precisely the same position right own to the inch. "

"We've known the Russians have been working on high- ".

performance STOL fighteT-aircraft for years, sir .

"Right. Exactly as long as we've been working on them here at Dreamland. We launch Cheetah, they launch an STOL fighter.

We develop a supercockpit for DreamStar, and four months later

65.

we intercept plans for nearly the same design being smuggled into East Germany. The Joint Chiefs will close down Dreamland if we don't stop the leaks around here."

"I'm rechecking the backgrounds of every person remotely connected with the project," Briggs said. "DIA is rechecking thousand the civilian contractors. But that adds up to over five people and more than a hundred and fifty thousand man-years'

worth of personal histories to examine. And we do this every year for key personnel. We're just overloaded-- ,I know, I know," Elliott said, picking up the phone again.

"But we're running out of time. For every success we have on the flight line we have one defeat with intelligence leaks. We can't afford it." He keyed the switch on the telephone handset.

"Storm Flight, this is Alpha. Clear for engine start. Call for clearance when ready for taxi."

"Roger," McLanahan replied.

Elliott turned to Briggs. "Join me in the tower when you've gotten the overflight update on those two Russian satellites. Be- fore I have you work your tail off to find our security leaks, the least you can do is watch a little of our success."

-Wouldn't miss it for all the stolen STOL plans in Ramen- skoye," Briggs said, and immediately regretted it as Elliott gave him a look and limped out of the command post.

-Storm TWo starting engines," James reported to Powell. The pilot of the F-15 Cheetah barely had time to acknowledge when the whine of the engine turbines pierced the early morning still- ness.

Engine start was triggered by a thought impulse that selected the "engine start" routine from the "home" menu transmitted to James by ANTARES. Computers instantly energized the engine-start circuits and determined their status; since no exter- nal air or power was available, an "alert" status would be per- formed.

Less than a second later the ignition-circuits were activated and a blast of supercompressed nitrogen gas shot into the sixteenth-stage compressor of DreamStar's engine. Unlike a con- for one compressor ventional jet engine, it was not necessary stage at a time to spin up to full speed-all compressor stages Of its engine were activated at once, allowing much faster starts Less than twenty seconds later the engine was at idle power and 66 .

full generator power was on-line. Once the engine-start choice had been activated, the computer knew what had to be done next-James just allowed the results of each preprogrammed check to scroll past his eyes as the on-board computers com- pleted them.

"Storm Two engine start complete, beginning pre-takeoff checks.

"Amazing," Powell murmured in Cheetah. He had begun his engine-start checklist at the same time James had, but he had barely had his left engine up to idle-power by the time DreamStar's start-sequence was completed.

Immediately after James made his report to McLanahan 11u Powell, he commanded the start of an exhaustive computer check of all of DreamStar's systems. With the engine powering two main and one standby hydraulic pump, energy was available to DreamStar's flight controls. Outside, the check made Dream- Star's wing surfaces crawl and undulate like the fins of a manta ray. From outside the cockpit the flight-control check was almost surreal . . . each wing bent and unbent in impossible angles, stretching and flexing more like a sheet of gelatin rather than hard fibersteel. The process from hydraulic system power-up to full flight-control certification had taken fifteen seconds.

Next was an electrical system check. Total time for a complete check of two generators, two alternators, one emergency gen- erator, and two separate battery backup systems: three seconds.

James stayed immobile during the checking process, allowing his senses to be overtaken by the rush of information.

The aircraft itself was like a living thing. Personnel were not allowed near the aircraft during the preflight because damaging radar, electromagnetic and laser emitters were being activated all around the aircraft at breakneck speed. The throttle advanced and retarded by itself. The mission-adaptive wings continued their unusual undulations, arching and bending so wildly it seemed they would bend clean in half or twist right off the fu- selage.

Through it all James was constand informed about each sys- tem's exact status and operation. He could no longer feel his feet or hands, but he knew which circuit in the superconducting radar was energized, and through that system he knew down to the 67.

millimeter how far Cheetah was parked from him. He knew the position of Drearnstar's canards, the pressure of the fluid in the primary hydraulic system and the RPMs of the ninth-stage en- gine's turbine, just as one might know which way his toes were pointing without seeing them or the way one picks up a pencil and begins to write without consciously thinking about the ac- tion. ANTARES had cut James off from monitoring his own body, had relegated that function to a deeper portion of his brain and had shifted his conscious mental capacity to the task of operating a supersonic fighter plane.

Suddenly, DreamStar ceased its wild preflight movements, and the engine throttle returned to idle . . .

"Storm One, TWo is in the green, ready for taxi," James reported.

"My radar's not even timed out," Patrick said to JC. Pow- ell. "How are you coming on your preflight?"

"Few more minutes."

"How can he accomplish an entire systems preflight in just a few minutes? "

"How long does it take you to wake up from a nap?"

told him as he put the finishing touches on the preflight he had begun long before. "How long does it take you to ask yourself how you feel? That's what ANTARES is like. If something was wrong with DreamStar, Ken would feel it just like he'd feel a sprained ankle or a crink in his neck."

Where Ken had banks of computers to check his avionics, manually had to "fail" a system to check a backup system, or manually deflect Cheetah's control stick and have the wing flex checked by a crew chief to verify the full range of motion of the fighter's elastic wings. But after a few,minutes of setting switches and checking off items in a checklist strapped to his right thigh, he was ready to go.

Patrick keyed his microphone: "Storm Control, this is Storm One flight. Wo birds in the green. Ready to taxi General Elliott was now on top of Dreamland's portable con- trol tower, a device fifty feet high that was set up and taken down for each mission to confuse attempts by spy satellites to pinpoint Dreamland's many disguised dry-lakebed runways.

Major Hal Briggs had just come up the narrow winding stairs and handed Elliott another computer printout when Patrick made his call.

68 .

"Those Cosmos peeping Toms start their first pass over the range in fifteen minutes," Briggs said. "They've got our test time scoped out almost to the minute. Those satellites will be overhead every fifteen minutes for the next two hours-exactly as long as this scheduled mission."

"Another damned security leak. And I scheduled this mission only two days, ago."

"But those spy birds weren't up there two days ago," Briggs said. "I checked. You mean-?" I "I mean the Soviets took only two days-maybe less-to launch two brand-new satellites just for this test flight, 'I Elliott said. "Well, at least they won't catch our planes on the ground.

He picked up his microphone. "Storm Flight, this is Alpha.

Taxi to hold point and await takeoff clearance. Winds calm, altimeter . . . " Elliott checked the meteorological data readouts on an overhead console ". . . three-zero-zero-five. Taxi clear- ance void time is one-zero minutes. Over."

"Storm Flight copies ten minutes. On the move." Moments later both fighters emerged from the satellite bluff and -fell in behind a jeep with a large sign that read "FOLLOW ME." The caravan moved quickly across an expanse of hard-baked sand to another smaller satellite-bluff hangar that had been towed out to the end of one of the disguised runways that crisscrossed Groom Lake in the center of the Dreamland test range. Now Cheetah and DreamStar pulled alongside each other and set their parking brakes while technicians and specialists did a fast last-chance inspection of each.

"Pre-takeoff and line-up checks," Patrick said over inter- phone.

"Roger," replied. "In progress."

"Storm Tvo ready for release," James suddenly radioed in.

"Amazing," Patrick said to "He's already done with a pre-takeoff checklist twice as complicated as ours." He keyed I the UHF radio switch. "Standby, Storm Two."

"Roger.

"MAW switch set to V-sub-X, max performance takeoff."

read off the most critical switch positions for the mission- I adaptive-wing mode, and Patrick saw that the leading and trail- I ing edges of the wings had curved into a long, deep high-lift airfoil.

"Canard control and engine nozzle control switches set to T_.

69.

AUTO ALPHA,' continued. "This will be a constant-alpha takeoff." JC. Powell always briefed his back-seater on the takeoff, abort, and emergency procedures, even though he and Patrick had flown together for almost two years and Patrick knew the procedures as well as JC. "Power to military thrust, brakes off and power to max afterburner. We'll expect negative-Y push after five seconds, with a pitch to takeoff attitude. After that we monitor angle-of-attack throughout the climb and make sure we don't exceed twenty-eight alpha in the climb-out. I'm looking to break my previous record of a seventeen-hundred-foot takeoff roll on this one . . . In case we don't get the push-down I'll cancel auto-alpha and switch to normal takeoff procedures- accelerate to one-sixty, rotate, maintain eight alpha or less, ac- celerate to two-eight-zero knots indicated and come out of afterburner. Same procedures if we lose vectored thrust after takeoff . . . All right. " Powell slapped his gloved hands to- gether, finished off the last few items of the checklist: "Circuit breakers checked. Caution panel clear. Canopy closed and locked. Seat belts and shoulder harnesses?"

"On and on," Patrick intoned.

"Checked up front. Lights set. Helmets, visors, oxygen mask, oxygen panel."

"On, down, on, set to normal."

"Same here. Parking brakes released." JC. touched a switch on his control stick. "Takeoff configuration check."

"Takeoff configuration check in progress, " responded a computer-synthesized voice. It was the final step in Cheetah's electronics array. A computer, which had monitored every step of the pre-takeoff checklists being performed, would make one last check of all systems on board and report any discrepancies.

"Takeoff configuration check complete. Status okay. "

"I already knew that, you moron," murmured to the voice. He never relied on the computerized system although he consulted it. It was, as he would frequently remind everyone within earshot, another computer out to get him. "We're ready to go, Colonel," he said.

Patrick keyed the radio switch. "Storm Control, this is Storm flight of two. Ready for departure."

Hal Briggs, on the narrow catwalk of the portable tower, spoke four words into a walkie-talkie. "Sand storm, one-seven."

70 .

His cryptic message activated a hundred security officers spread out within some four-hundred square miles of the takeoff area. They were the last line of defense aga ' inst unauthorized intrusion or eavesdropping on the test that was about to begin.

Each man checked and rechecked his assigned sector with an array of electronic sensors-sound, radar, heat, motion, electro- magnetic-and once secure, reported an "all secure" by send- ing a coded electronic tone. Only when all of the tones were received would a "go" signal be sent to Briggs.

Five seconds later he received that coded tone. "Good sweep, General," he reported to Elliott. The general took one last look at the satellite overflight schedule, picked up the mike: .'Storm flight of two, clear for unrestricted takeoff. Winds calm. Takeoff clearance void time, five minutes. Have a good one."