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trip.
    â€˜Who’s coming besides Clayson and Wedderkind?’
    Connors pivoted around from the west window. ‘Fraser’s bringing Gene Samuels, and McKenna’s on his way too.’
    Samuels was head of the DIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and McKenna, the director of the CIA. Another keen Sunday fisherman, he had been dug out of the Canadian woods near the Minnesota border.
    The chair the President sat in matched the one behind his desk in Washington. He liked chairs that rocked
and
swivelled. ‘Who else do you think we should call in on this?’
    â€˜Nobody.’ There are too many of us in on this already, thought Connors. Was it possible that he could have totally misjudged the Russians’ intentions? Obviously. The few simple facts spoke for themselves. He sensed that the President had already linked the radar breakdown with whatever it was that the Russians had put into orbit.
    Silvermann came in. ‘Anything I can do?’
    â€˜Yes,’ said the President. ‘See if you can rustle me up a chicken sandwich or something. How about you, Bob?’
    â€˜No, thanks. I already had lunch.’
    â€˜One chicken sandwich –?’
    â€˜Two.’
    â€˜Coming up,’ said Silvermann. The door closed behind him.
    â€˜Do you think we should go back to Washington?’
    â€˜No. I think we should sit tight.’ Connors sat down facing the President. ‘Let them come to you. If we’re going to get into a hassle, at least we can do it in private.’
    The President thought it over and nodded his agreement. He leaned on the desk, cupped his nose and mouthbetween the palms of his hands and closed his eyes. Tell it to me over again.’
    â€˜It’s in a circular parking orbit, north to south over the poles, once every four hours. Speed, thirteen thousand plus. Altitude four thousand miles. Two of NASA’s tracking stations are on to it now. Plus Jodrell Bank.’
    â€˜Why is it orbiting so far out?’
    â€˜Nobody’s come up with a good answer to that yet. It could be to avoid detection. Most of the skin-tracking radar stations – they’re the ones that track satellites by bouncing a pulse off the satellite itself – only operate effectively up to a height of about a thousand miles. Most tracking in deep space depends on receiving a signal from the spacecraft itself.’
    â€˜And that’s where the radio telescopes come in.’
    â€˜Right. They can pinpoint and amplify radio signals from more than a million miles away. We’ve bounced radar pulses off Mars, but to do it you need one hell of a lot of power.’
    â€˜Like they have at Jodrell Bank.’
    â€˜Right,’ said Connors.
    â€˜Don’t we have optical tracking equipment?’
    â€˜Yes, a whole stack. The Air Force has a setup down in New Mexico that can pick up satellites twenty thousand miles away. The problem with optical sensors is that they only work when their part of the world is in darkness and the satellite is illuminated by the sun.’
    â€˜I can wait till tonight,’ said the President. ‘If it’s as big as you say – ’
    â€˜Well, ah – those figures are provisional. There seems to be some difficulty in estimating its size accurately. The type of signal that is bouncing back indicates that the spacecraft has a surface that absorbs or distorts radar waves. Like the Air Force’s new stealth bomber. Andnone of our monitoring units have picked up any of the usual telemetric transmissions to Russian ground stations.’
    A wild ray of hope brought a mild grin to the President’s face. ‘Maybe the English were right about that part of it. Maybe the Russians have lost contact. That really would be something, wouldn’t it?’ He stood up.
    â€˜Yes.’ Connors hesitated. ‘The only problem is that Jodrell Bank has recorded two slight changes in the angle of orbit since they first