Skydancer Read Online Free PDF

problems, and with the vital test launch of the new Skydancer warheads coming up, Carrington had been determined that if the firing failed, it would not be because of inadequate practice with the systems beforehand. During their journey across the Atlantic they had repeatedly run through the complex countdown procedures. On the first four successive runs, four different electronic faults had appeared which could have caused an abort if the launch had been for real. The engineers had sweated and cursed as they grappled with the printed-circuit panels. Eventually they had solved all the problems, but only after four perfect tests did the captain consider they were ready.
    â€˜Can I bring you a cuppa tea, sir?’ the chief steward poked his head round the cabin door, which had been left half open.
    â€˜Ready for the rock shrimps?’ the commander asked, when the tea was brought in. They were a speciality around Cape Canaveral.
    â€˜Er . . . well, I’m a steak man myself, sir,’ the steward answered with a grin of anticipation of his run ashore.
    â€˜You should try ’em. They steam them in beer, you know.’
    â€˜Yes sir, I know. Some of the lads go for them, but me . . . well, I know what I like.’
    When Alec Anderson arrived home that evening from one of the most harrowing days he had ever spent at the Ministry of Defence, he had timed his return to the house in North London to coincide with the moment when his wife Janet would be too preoccupied with the children to bother him with questions. He knew he could not disguise his anxiety, and if he had to tell her what had happened that day, she would make matters worse with her worrying.
    Anderson was aged thirty-seven and had been doing very well in his career as a civil servant. He had enjoyed a succession of good promotions through a wide variety of departments – just what was needed if he was to succeed in reaching the top of the professional tree, and he was an ambitious man.
    The position he now held as head of the Strategic Nuclear Secretariat had been one of the ripest plums on that tree, and he had plucked it eagerly when offered to him some six months earlier.
    â€˜Hullo. You’re early,’ Janet called from upstairs. The sound of running bathwater and the high-pitched chatter of his two small daughters told him that his return had been well timed.
    â€˜Had to bring some work home,’ he shouted up to her. ‘I’ll be in the library.’
    â€˜Library’ was a somewhat pretentious word for the front room of their suburban Edwardian house, but it was the place where he kept his father’s old roll-top desk and the few possessions that he really valued. On the shelves of a glass-fronted mahogany cabinet there were rows of leather-bound volumes in varying states of repair, and most of the Latin text-books from his schooldays. On the walls hung his most prized items of all, miniature paintings that he had collected over the past fifteen years – delicate watercolours of lakes andcastles painted by Victorian artists making the Grand Tour of Europe.
    He rolled open the lid of the desk and switched on the brass lamp that shone down on to the tooled green-leather interior, marked with the ink stains of past decades. From his briefcase he pulled a file, and spread it open before him. His eyes did not focus on the printed pages, though; the file was there only to provide an excuse for the seclusion that he sought.
    Anderson had always favoured Britain being a true nuclear power. Having developed the technology in the first place, it would undermine the country’s stature to abandon it, he believed. He had always argued his case forcefully in the Ministry with those of his colleagues who considered a British nuclear deterrent redundant alongside the massive American arsenals. His fluent advocacy of the case had clearly played a part in his selection for his present job.
    He even used to expound his