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match the
Sant’Anna’s
thirty-five knots. The freshening wind whipped up spray from the wavetops and the sunlight, bouncing through the breakers, turned them a clear blue-green. Connors took a few deep breaths of sea air, then went back up the steps to the house.
    Just about the time the President hooked into his firstsailfish, Jodrell Bank’s data about the Jupiter probe began to clatter out of the high-speed teleprinter at NORAD’s SPACETRACK centre, Ent AFB, Colorado. It was 11:05 Mountain Standard Time. The man who got the first buzz stateside was a NORAD civilian employee, Willard D. (for Duane) Charles, from Ridgewood, New Jersey. Charles had been running a routine check on the multitudinous collection of orbiting satellites and space junk that ranged in size from a Hasselblad camera to the new Russian heavy-weight
Mir.
Jodrell Bank’s item was even bigger.
    Charles alerted SPACETRACK’S duty officer and routed the orbital data into the computer Within minutes, it had calculated Look Angle co-ordinates for every sensor station in the SPACETRACK network and was relaying the information to them. All they had to do to pick up the Jupiter probe was to point their radar or radio telescope in the given direction. There was only one small problem. The probe was orbiting beyond the range of most of the SPACETRACK radar stations.
    NORAD called General Clayson in Washington and finally located him with Wedderkind and his scientific conglomerate at the Air Force Research Laboratories in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Clayson pulled Wedderkind out of a meeting in mid-theory and told him about Jodrell Bank’s discovery.
    Wedderkind knew that Cargill had a well-earned scientific reputation, but he also knew more about the Jupiter probe than Cargill did. He put in a fast call to Arkhip Karamatov at Houston. Karamatov was head of the Russian group liaising with NASA on plans for a new series of joint space ventures. Karamatov confirmed Wedderkind’s 80 per cent hunch. The Jupiter probe was still grounded. So what had the Russians put up there? It was a question that Karamatov wasn’t able to answer. On theEast Coast, the sudden wave of speculation put a lot of people off their Sunday dinner. Clayson ordered a total security clampdown on the sighting, and called the Western White House.
    The President got the news from Connors over the ship-to-shore scrambler phone. The skipper of the
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called the Navy patrol boat alongside; the President and Silvermann stepped over the rail and headed back to shore at sixty-five knots.
    Luckily, the White House newsman had already got pictures of him smiling alongside a seven-foot sailfish.
    Connors was waiting on the jetty as the patrol boat pulled alongside. Way out on the horizon was the white blob of
Sant’Anna I’
s hull. As the patrol boat nudged the jetty, the President jumped down without grabbing Connors’ outstretched hand. Silvermann waited for the gangplank.
    The first thing the President said was, ‘How big is it?’
    â€˜We don’t have any firm data yet. First estimates put it somewhere around two hundred and fifty tons – ’
    â€˜Jee-zuss.’
    â€˜â€“ polar orbit, about four thousand miles out.’
    The President turned to Silvermann. ‘Listen, keep your boys out of the way for the rest of the afternoon. And give me a good cover story.’
    Silvermann nodded. Connors followed the President up to the house.
    From the upstairs study on the north side of the house, you could look towards the tree-lined range that shielded the head of the Sacramento Valley, northward to Mount Linn, and out across the Pacific. Two of the Secret Service men who patrolled the grounds walked briefly into view. Through the trees, further down the slope, Connors caught a glimpse of the moored patrol boat. The
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, now way out, was heading north past the point on an impromptu sight-seeing