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had veered eastward.
    Worse, it had begun to lose altitude.
    The rectangular boxes showed a successive deterioration in both altitude and velocity. As the rocket kept diving, Unruh had been praying the damned thing would burn up, though he did not know whether or not that was a wise hope. What happened to a nuclear payload burned by friction in the atmosphere?
    The booster rockets had apparently been expended shortly before the vehicle had passed over the Chinese border.
    Unruh wondered if the Japanese Air Defense Force had scrambled. They would have been watching the launch, too, and for a few minutes, the track looked exactly like an incoming ICBM. Panic time.
    The rocket was down to 90,000 feet when it passed south of Tokyo.
    On the map, the yellow line stopped abruptly at a serene place in the northern Pacific Ocean.
    The map suddenly looked quiet.
    On the plotting board, the technician labeled in: POINT OF IMPACT-26° 20' 22"N, 176° 10' 23"E .
    Evoy was standing over the second console, a spare headset clamped over his ears as he listened to the communications from Meade.
    He turned around to face Unruh and called across the room, “They’ve intercepted some television shots. It was being telecast live.”
    “Wonderful,” Unruh said, though he did not much care. “Just tell me what the hell happened.”
    “The main engines flamed out. That’s what cost them velocity. It sounds like they lost all control.”
    “What else is going on?”
    “The people at NSA are trying to sort it out,” Evoy said. “It’s a bit like July Fourth in hell. The radio frequencies are chaotic.”
    After a moment, Evoy added, “They tried to destroy the vehicle by remote control, but it didn’t happen.”
    “Anyone mention the payload?” Unruh asked.
    “Not on the air in the clear. They’re trying to decode some encrypted messages aimed for Moscow.”
    Unruh told the operator of the first console, “Call Defense Intelligence Agency and tell them to get their aerospace and nuclear experts out of bed. We want them standing by. Get someone from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission also.” The technician nodded and began to dial the Defense Intelligence Agency.
    Unruh held his phone against his ear and waited. His ear was sweating.
    “Stebbins,” the Director of Central Intelligence said, from wherever the duty officer had found him. He did not sound as if he had been asleep. “My line is not secure.”
    “Mark, this is Carl.”
    “Problem?”
    “A big one, maybe. The Red Star package didn’t make orbit.”
    “This is the one we’ve been concerned about?”
    “Yes.”
    “Burn up, did it?”
    “No. It didn’t achieve the altitude or speed for that.” Unruh glanced at the screen. “Maxed out at Mach five-point-six.”
    “It didn’t break up? Didn’t tumble?”
    “No, not from what we’re reading. Took a clean dive into the Pacific.”
    “Shit. Where?”
    Unruh again looked to the screen. “It looks to be some two thousand miles east of Japan.”
    “Put me in an American perspective.”
    “Southwest of Midway, fifteen hundred miles west of Honolulu.”
    There was a pause while Mark Stebbins digested that. Then he said, “I’ll call the National Security Advisor. You get together whatever data you can grab and meet me at the White House.”
    Mark Stebbins hung up abruptly. He was not big on lingering goodbyes.
    Unruh replaced his own phone in its cradle. “Jack, we want a videotape of the tracking screen data, plus audiotape of all the voice transmissions. Copies of the TV coverage. Tell the people at Meade to concentrate on this event.”
    “Are we worried yet?” Evoy asked.
    “I don’t know about the people across the Potomac, but I am.ˮ
    *
    0044 HOURS LOCAL, COLLEGE PARK, MARYLAND
    When the phone rang, Avery Hampstead’s eyes fluttered open. He lost whatever dream had been showing that night, and he could not recall one fragment of it, though he thought it must have been pretty good. He had an