And this isn’t fun anymore.

Alastair sits back, scratching his head. The syntax and tone don’t match any of the hackers he knows who might try to pull such a stunt, but then he can hardly know all the tricksters on the planet. Someone, however, is trying a sophisticated scam, and he triggers a save program to record whatever comes and sits back to watch what the trickster will try next.

Private spaceship. Yeah, sure.

Just to be certain, he triggers the Google search engine and throws the words private spaceship and Intrepidinto the search box, expecting a cascade of gobbledygook.

Instead sixteen thousand hits come back with the starting point the official Web site of American Space Adventures. Alastair sits forward slowly as he pages past the home page and reads about—the launch one day before—the name of the craft: Intrepid.

What the hell?

A smile spreads across his face. Buggers almost got me!Whoever the hacker is pulling the stunt, he’s cleverly used the right names and references.

Can’t fool me!he thinks, watching the evolving message once again. After ten minutes, he decides, he’ll run the whole thing through a matching program and see where in reality it came from.

Help, I’m trapped in a Chinese fortune cookie factory! Yeah right. A new twist on the oldest scam in the book!

The chief master sergeant toggles another command and turns to the NORAD commander. “Sixty-seven minutes left before impact, General, and thirteen minutes to target intercept.”

The special liquid crystal display he’s been controlling in a closed conference room changes views.

Chris Risen nods at the duty controller as he scans the orbital threat to ASA’s Intrepid,now displayed on the screen. The effort he set in motion is now approaching the critical moment, and with the Situation Room maintaining an open line for the President, it’s eating at him that there’s nothing NORAD can do but watch and hope.

“What will they see in the main control room?” Chris asks.

“They would see a launch, sir, but we’ve nulled it out of the computer, so it will not show.”

“And if it impacts the target?”

“They’ll see the debris with no explanation.”

“What’s the status of the ASAT launch?” He’s very aware of the serious fuel mistake.

“Bluebird Two-Three has elected to continue, sir, despite the… ah… problem. He’s positioning now for the run.”

“We have radar on him?”

“Yes, sir. I’ll bring it up.”

The track of the F-106 appears to be moving in slow motion relative to the track of the oncoming piece of Soviet space junk streaking south on its polar orbit. The Delta Dart is flying at just under six hundred miles per hour now while the target approaches at seventeen thousand. A digital readout next to the F-106’s target depiction shows his heading changing and his speed increasing as Chris settles into one of the command chairs to watch. It will be up to him to call ASA if the attempt fails, and it’s a call he does not want to make.

“He’s starting his run, sir.”

Owen Larrabe tries to ignore the persistent itching on the side of his face in a place he has no hope of reaching. Sealed inside his pressure suit, it will just have to itch, he decides. But the damned itch is leaching away his attention at a critical moment, and he summons up the willpower to combat the distraction as he nudges the throttle into afterburner. He’s level at thirty-five thousand and keeping the flight director target dead center as he lets the Delta Dart accelerate smoothly through the speed of sound, the airspeed indicator winding up toward the needed airspeed of 1.22 Mach. He sees the Mach-meter already at 1.2 and accelerating and pulls back the throttle, holding constant at 1.22 as he mentally counts down to the pull-up point, now just five miles and less than twenty-five seconds ahead. He checks his lateral flight path, reconfirms that the missile arming sequence is complete and precisely on target, pulls the F-106 into a sharp 3.8-g climb until reaching sixty-five degrees nose up, holding the attitude as the airspeed remains constant with full burner, the fighter climbing at more than forty-six thousand feet per minute, the altimeter more or less a blur as he shoots up through fifty thousand, then sixty and seventy, slowing slightly as the engine gulps for air and fuel and flames-out.

Oh, shit! Too soon! I hope the missile can compensate.

He’s coasting now up through eighty-five thousand feet, gravity slowing him rapidly. He feels the F-106 jump slightly and hears the whoosh of the missile’s rocket motor as it releases itself and starts its climb, its silicon brain aware that the launch speed is slower than it should be, the altitude more than five thousand feet shy of the mark.

He’s got worries now beyond the missile’s fate, and he tunnels in on the task of getting down safely. Bailout is always an option, but one he doesn’t want to use.

Owen pushes the stick forward and lets the F-106’s nose fall through the horizon and steeply downward as the speed builds again. He flicks open the speed brakes as he tries to restart the engine, but one glance at the fuel indicators confirms that there won’t be a restart. The engine has sucked down the last drop of fuel in the full afterburner climb, and he’s now flying a delta-wing glider with one solitary chance at a safe landing.

Only a few thin cumulus clouds dot the landscape below as the Delta Dart plunges earthward, the speed stabilizing at just under Mach 1, a small Ram Air Turbine providing the only hydraulic pressure to the flight controls. He punches up Carlsbad Muni as his destination and does a quick calculation.

Okay, the runway is twenty-eight miles east, so plan to enter a high key down the runway at eight thousand feet.

He swings the fighter’s nose to the appropriate heading, watching carefully as the altitude unwinds through forty thousand.

A bit high and fast,he decides, banking the jet into one back and forth S turn, and then resuming the course. He dials in the VHF frequency for Cavern City Unicom, the common radio channel for the airport in the absence of a control tower, and rechecks his energy profile as he triggers his transmitter.

“Pan, pan, pan, Cavern City Unicom, Carlsbad Airport traffic, this is Bluebird Two-Three, I’m a flamed-out Air Force F-106 making an emergency approach to Runway Zero-Three, Carlsbad. All traffic please stay clear. Pan, pan, pan.”

A puzzled voice with a heavy West Texas accent comes back almost instantly.

“Air Force F-106, this is Cavern City Unicom. Sir, your winds are two two zero at eighteen knots, gusting twenty-two, so I suggest you use Runway Two-One.”

“Roger, Cavern City. Thanks. Bluebird Two-Three changing to a high-key left traffic downwind for Runway Two-One, Carlsbad.”

A flurry of quick mental recalculations leads to the sudden realization that he’s no longer too high and too fast.

Okay, enter a high downwind and meter the turn to final at two miles, ah, northeast at four thousand. Gotta turn at four.

He’s dropping under ten thousand now, worrying about pulling the nose up and stretching his flight path as the Delta Dart slows below four hundred knots on the way to three hundred, which he’ll use as his maneuvering speed. But that speed is coming off too fast, and he can’t figure it out. The airport is just ahead by four miles and he turns to parallel Runway Zero-Three on his left, letting the jet slow to two ninety before continuing the descent, dropping through eight thousand as the field passes his left shoulder. At this rate, he thinks, he’ll have to turn inside one mile and delay the landing gear.