The President arrived at the conference room ten minutes too early, catching many of his advisors and staff off guard. He took his seat and ordered his aide to read the message they had just received. A few stragglers came in from the hall, and when the room had hushed, the aide began.
"This message was received at 9:17 AM from the Kremlin. 'The actions currently being undertaken by the government of the United States demonstrate their blatant disregard for the peaceful use of space. By placing this device in an orbit to overfly Russian territory, the United States has violated our airspace and as such, encroached upon our national sovereignty. This action can not be tolerated and it is the intent of the Russian people to bring this device to the attention of the world.' End of transmission."
"They still sound like communists," jabbed the Air Force Chief of Staff.
"Same choir, different song," responded Alexander.
"Gentlemen, gentlemen... Are the Russians serious? Do they really believe we put that up there?" asked the President.
"Yes," stated Dr. Adams, "They have no choice but to deduce that we are the only country capable of doing so."
"No," disagreed Dr. Chandler, "At no time previous have the Russians attempted to steal one of our satellites. Why would they be doing so now?"
"I agree with Dr. Chandler," offered Dr. Barrister, earning him a raised eyebrow from Adams. "The Russians seem quite adamant about their launch, knowing full well the political implications. I believe they are following the same line of thought as are we: the object isn't ours, it isn't theirs, and they have to find out where it came from."
"Doctor, are you beginning to agree with Dr. Chandler's theory that it is an alien spacecraft?" inquired the President.
"It is a possibility, sir."
"Mr. President, there is another option we haven't discussed," said Adams. "Perhaps this is a ruse or decoy to attract our attentions from the Cosmos satellite. Perhaps they feel that if they can draw enough of our assets away from Cosmos 1953, it will diminish our chances of successfully monitoring the fuel rod ejection code."
"Perhaps, Doctor, but the stakes seem a little high just to save a dying spy satellite," said the President.
"They just got higher," called the Director of Central Intelligence, entering the room and taking his seat. "Sir, I didn't realize you'd started early... I was on the phone to Langley," apologized DCI.
"No problem. What have you got?"
"We're getting priority messages from all over Russia. Nuclear subs pulling out of their berths, bombers being shuffled to alternate fields, leaves cancelled. The Embassy has reported stepped up civil defense activity in Moscow. It may be a bluff... but they have definitely escalated their war readiness."
"They confirmed they intended to snag the bogie," informed the President. "The message claimed their airspace had been violated."
"We've been violating their airspace for thirty years with our photo recon satellites. They have never found it necessary to act against them," said DCI. "My people at Langley are beginning to explore the possibility that this may be a device of 'other-wordly' origin."
"Thank you... General," called the President in the direction of the Air Force Chief of Staff, "how would you respond to the Russians stepped up military activity?"
"In light of the Russian action, I recommend we escalate to DEFCON 3, sir. The action will not put us on a war footing, but it will place our nuclear forces on a higher state of readiness. If we had to go to war right now, the only bomber's we'd get in the air before the first ICBM's hit would be the sixty or so on alert. At DEFCON 3, we'd put them in the air, and place ninety others on alert, ensuring the survival of more than twice as many aircraft."
"Will the Russians see this as a threat?"
"No, sir. They will see it for what it is: a sign of readiness. Hopefully, it will act to deter them from attack. The airborne bombers will remain near their bases at DEFCON 3, it is not until DEFCON 2 that they proceed to their failsafe positions on the edge of Russian airspace."
"Very good: we go to DEFCON 3," ordered the President. "If no one has anything else, I have a previous commitment and wish to maintain an appearance of business as usual. I'll rejoin you in one hour."

General Hanson was having a bad day, and it was about to get worse. His secretary sent the call to him at the launch control center. When he got the news, he stomped his way back to his office, cursing and thinking, hoping for any answer other than the obvious. There wasn't time to consult his superiors; he was going to have to act and hope for the best.
"Sergeant, this is Hanson," said the General in the phone. "Is Mr. Miller still out there?"
"Ah... No sir, he isn't."
"Do you think you can find him?"
The sergeant realized he was going to have to bite the bullet. "Sir, Mr. Miller refused to leave the building and I was forced to take him into custody."
"Well, shit!" yelled the General in frustration. He paused for a moment to regain his composure. "Sergeant, bring him to my office right away." The sergeant acknowledged the General's orders and left his station to fetch Miller.
Hanson paced the floor of his office rehearsing the speech he was about to have to make, when the door was suddenly flung open and Miller stepped inside. "Hanson! What the hell's going on!"
"Mr. Miller's here to see you," announced the General's secretary from outside the door.
"Miller, have a seat," said the General as he closed the door.
"Have a seat! Are you crazy? You had me thrown in jail for trying to do my job and save your butt from getting fried when you launch Columbia and she blows up on the pad because you've ordered all the civilians to go home which is not within your jurisdiction as you are military and they are civil service not that you'd care since you've commandeered a NASA ship to be used for some military secret mission without any regard for the cargo of that ship because of this 'launch or die' attitude you've adopted--"
"Miller!" screamed the General--
"Don't you realize you're endangering a multi-billion dollar spacecraft, not to mention the lives of the crew--"
"Miller! Sit down, and shut up!" commanded Hanson. Miller stopped talking long enough to sit in one of the chairs in front of the General's desk. "Now you listen to me. I've had my ass nailed to the wall once today, and that was by the President of the United States. I don't intend on taking any shit from you! I don't like what's going on here any more than you do; but I, unlike some people I know, follow my orders."
"Here's the story, short and sweet. Last night an object appeared in orbit. As it might be a Russian space weapon Washington wants it brought down. We've got to get it, but the Russians are going to try to beat us to it. Did I leave anything out? Oh, yes. Did I mention that we are on the brink of nuclear war?"
Miller sat stunned. "Sir... I... I didn't know. If you'll let me explain: We just want to do our jobs. With only military personnel, you're understaffed. If you'll let me talk to the GS folks, I'll get them in here to help; no questions asked."
"You think that will work?"
"They are professionals. If I tell them to return to their stations they will do as they are told."
"And you can get them in without mentioning the bogie?"
"Yes sir, you can count on my total cooperation."
"I'm glad you feel that way, Miller, because Colonel Fletcher's plane went down outside of Atlanta five minutes ago, so you're going to command Columbia."
"What!" yelled Miller. "I can't fly this mission! I've never commanded a shuttle before. You need a military pilot... You'll have to scrub the launch!"
"Miller, you trained half the shuttle program's astronauts, developed the simulator, and have co-piloted three shots. Columbia goes up. If you don't take it, I get Major Hawkins to command the mission. We both know you're the better choice."
Hawkins had never even piloted the simulator, thought Miller. He was a good astronaut and an excellent pilot, but he just wasn't ready to command the shuttle. "Well," said Miller, "I guess if you want something done right, you've got to do it yourself."
"Suitup," ordered the General, "We're at T minus eighty minutes on a no holds countdown." Miller left the room and Hanson withdrew a bottle from his desk drawer. "This job is going to kill me yet," he said to himself, and chased his words with half the bottle of Malox.

Lt. Col. 'Curly' Cartwright had earned his nickname for the obvious reason: he had no hair. Of course he wasn't completely bald, he had enough hair on the sides of his head to have it shaved into a crew cut. When he was younger he had left it a little longer, but as his hairline receded, he found that being a Marine was a good way to hide male pattern baldness.
For the first five minutes after Hanson's call, Lawrence and Morrison had been content to entertain themselves by watching Cartwright. He would pace across the room, study the wall for a moment, swear under his breath, turn, and pace the length again. Upon reaching the other side, he would repeat the activity, thus perpetuating the process. Eventually, boredom overcame them, and they began to converse among themselves.
"They'll take a weapon with them," commented Lawrence.
"Oh sure. They'll have to be able to get Columbia out of the way to get the bogie," agreed Morrison.
"Columbia will launch first, so if they launch Buron, it means they've got a weapon."
"I bet they use a guided missile."
"No. They'd have to score a direct hit. Proximity fuse wouldn't be any good unless they used a neutron warhead."
"They could use a heat seeker."
"It might accidentally lock on the sun and track it. I bet they send some cosmonauts out to get our astronauts."
"Nah. What would they do, throw rocks at us?"
"They'd use guns."
"The recoil would blast them out of orbit."
"Miniature rocket projectiles could be made to be recoiless."
"Hey, I know: swords! All you have to do is cut their pressure suit."
"Yeah. Or maybe individual rocket packs with lances, spikes, and huge razor blades on them."
"Sort of like... stellar jousting."
"Would you two be quiet!" shouted Cartwright, never breaking his stride. "You sound like you're writing a script for a sci-fi movie. If either of you were worth your brass you'd find a way to get me and an F-14 up there to cover Columbia."
"Well..." started Morrison, but he was stopped by Lawrance's elbow making a surprise sortie to his ribs.
Cartwright turned and looked at the two. "Well... What?"
"Nothing," stated Lawrence timidly.
"Captain Morrison," said Cartwright in a forceful tone placing unusual inflection on the man's name.
"We might as well tell him," whispered Morrison.
"I don't know," whispered Lawrence.
"If you two geeks have something up your sleeves, you better let me in on it, or I'll wring your collective necks," threatened Cartwright.
"There might be a way," started Morrison.
"Might--" punctuated Lawrence.
"--To help Columbia," finished Morrison.

The TF-15 set down on the long, shimmering, runway used for shuttle landings at Canaveral, and taxied to one end where several vehicles were waiting. Once stopped, a ground crew immediately attached a ground cable to the aircraft and rolled a short boarding ladder to the rear of the cockpit. Captain Mia climbed from the plane and was helped out of her parachute by another man.
"Captain, I'm Dr. Andrew Lyke," he explained as she stepped out of the harness. "I'm a NASA flight surgeon and have been sent to help you get ready for the launch." The doctor lead her to a small RV that was waiting on the edge of the runway. The inside of the vehicle was white and reminiscent of an ambulance, but was actually a mobile medical laboratory.
"First thing, Captain," said Dr. Lyke as the RV began to move, "is for you to strip off those fatigues and get on a flight suit."
A Navy nurse withdrew a gray one piece flight suit from a closet at the front of the truck and handed it to Mia. "That's a large, so it might be loose in the shoulders," explained the nurse as she packed Mia's uniform into a shoulder bag. "But that's better than it being too short."
"Yes," said the doctor, "You are a little tall for an astronaut; just right for a model." Mia let the comment pass, as she had other things on her mind, like being blasted into space atop half a million gallons of volatile liquid hydrogen and oxygen with two huge firecrackers strapped to each side meant to explode at a controlled rate.
Mia was tugging at the velcro straps on the flight suit in an effort to customize its fit, when the doctor approached her with a needle. "Roll up your sleeve," he instructed as he swabbed the inside of her elbow. "Have you eaten breakfast?"
"No. I had just returned from working last night when I received the call."
"Good. This will help you with the motion sickness associated with first time shuttle flights. You're better off not eating, as it usually takes several hours to acclimate to freefall." The doctor gave her the shot, disposed of the needle, then offered Mia a pill.
"This is a mild tranquilizer. Since you are not a trained astronaut, you might want this to combat launch stress."
"Will it knock me out?"
"No."
Mia considered her place on the mission. She was to advise the crew as to how to handle the bogie, even though she had no better idea what it was than the crew. Her only hope of being an asset to the mission was to remain alert and ready. "I don't need it," she stated, and the doctor replaced the pill.
A moment later the van stopped at Pad 39A, and two ground crewmen escorted Captain Mia to the gantry elevator. As the elevator lurched upward, Mia's knees buckled and she almost collapsed. As they rose beside the black and white spacecraft, her breathing began to accelerate and her heart pounded in her head. She was beginning to wish she'd taken the pill after all.

Captain Lawrence grabbed a jeep from the motor pool while Captain Morrison made a call to security. A moment later the three men were on their way to a secure compound a few miles away. "This is a long story" started Morrison, as Lawrence drove. "Do you remember Stormhead Hollaway?"
"Vaguely... Air Force General... In charge of some of the test programs?" guessed Cartwright.
"Right. He got his name flying Sabrejets in Korea. One day he and his wingman were on the way back from a sortie when they were jumped by six Migs. Hollaway's wingman had caught some triple 'A' and his plane was crippled, so Hollaway charged the Migs to bait them away. All six gave chase, so he headed straight into a thunderstorm. He flew into the head of the storm and the Mig's followed him in. When he came out the other side, two of the Migs had been struck by lightning, two others forced down by the high winds, and the fifth had turned back for home. When the remaining Mig cleared the clouds, the last thing he saw was Hollaway waiting for him, guns blazing."
"He was given credit for all five kills and saving his wingman. As he rose through the ranks and bounced from base to base, his temper and unorthodox style reinforced his nickname. Eventually he came to Edwards where he was assigned to the F-103 project."
"The F-103 was a ramjet powered interceptor that was meant to fly at Mach 5 and shoot down incoming ICBM's in low Earth orbit. Eventually, the project was canned because it was determined that the pilot wouldn't have enough control to engage more than one or two targets. Hollaway didn't agree that the project should be scrapped and proposed the aircraft be modified to carry a payload and act as a space plane."
"Sounds like you're talking about a Trans Atmospheric Vehicle," stated Cartwright.
"That's about right. Hollaway was a visionary," offered Lawrence, "Way ahead of his peers."
"Yeah," continued Morrison. "The project was cut before a prototype could be built, but Hollaway wouldn't give up. He knew that eventually space travel would become routine, and that there would come a need for a craft that could be launched on a moments notice without a window. Whether on a rescue mission, ferrying spare parts to stranded spacecraft, interception, or laying space mines, Hollaway knew the vehicle had to be built."
"So, he formed his own research team. He recruited the brightest minds from other projects to work for him after hours or in their spare time. During slow times, when there weren't other things going on, Hollaway had people working twenty-four hours on his spaceplane. To finance it, he siphoned funds from other projects or intentionally ran them over budget and took the difference."
"He embezzled the money?" asked Cartwright.
"Embezzling is a harsh word. I doubt he ever took a penny for his own use. What he did was redirect funds where he thought they'd do the most good. Eventually, he was forced to retire, and had no one to carry the project on. Lawrence and I have been working on it a little here and there, but Hollaway's cash stash has almost run dry. When that happens the project will reach the end of its evolution."
Lawrence identified himself to the guard, passed through a gate, and drove to a side door on the second hanger. The three officers dismounted the jeep and Morrison unlocked the large pad lock on the door. Cartwright stepped into the black darkness of the windowless hangar and was amazed at how cool the air was.
Morrison turned on a flashlight and began to walk to the back of the hanger as he talked. "Since Hollaway didn't have the money to start from scratch, he had to modify what was available. The original was designed to achieve an altitude of 250,000 feet and a speed of 3,600 miles per hour. It was later upgraded to an 'A2' modification allowed it to break 350,000 feet and 4,000 mph. We estimate that we can now maintain three orbits at 120 miles with the latest changes."
The sound of the captain throwing the circuit breakers echoed through the cold, still air, and one by one the overhead light pierced the darkness. Cartwright started toward the middle of the hangar as the lights began to show the detail of the craft: first its stubby black tail, next its long slender body with short razor wings, and finally the pointed nose and two small cockpit windows. "Morrison, you aren't serious," uttered the colonel.
"He's serious," answered Lawrence proudly.
"But that's an X-15 test plane!" shouted Cartwright.
"No, sir: It's an X-15K Orbital Interceptor," called Morrison as he rounded the tail of the craft.
Cartwright stood awed and confused. "What's the 'K' stand for?"
"Knothing," stated Lawrence.
"Nothing starts with an 'N,'" retorted Cartwright.
"The 'K' is the modification indicator," clarified Morrison. "The only thing original about this bird is her Iconel-X nickel alloy body. We've replaced everything from the engines to the flight computers. If it weren't for the fact that she still looks like an X-15, we might as well call her the X-31."
"You don't honestly believe this thing can still fly?" asked Cartwright, rubbing his hand across the ship's cold black skin.
"All the computer simulations confirm that the modifications are sound. Originally the three X-15's were powered by an throttleable rocket engine, using liquid ammonia and LOX. It generated 57,000 pounds of thrust for eighty-six seconds. By adding saddle tanks, they extended the duration to one-hundred forty-five seconds."
"The 'E' modification changed to a scaled down model of the shuttle's main thruster and allowed the use of hydrazine instead of liquid ammonia. Many of the parts were actually cannibalized off the Enterprise. With this engine, our burn time is three minutes, thirty seconds, and we get 8% more thrust. They could have boosted that higher, but Hollaway didn't want to overstress the airframe."
"But it's over thirty years old; I can't believe its still airworthy," protested the astronaut, who was now virtually doing a preflight.
"Don't see why not," said Morrison. "She was babied during her operational life, and has remained in this climate controlled hanger at sixty-eight degrees for the last twenty years. We are in a desert, so there isn't a speck of rust on her. She's remarkably clean-- Hollaway wouldn't open the main hangar door for fear someone would see her."
"Why hasn't it been tested?"
"Not enough money... Too many people to blow the whistle... Not only that, but she's got to be air launched from a B-52. To borrow a B-52, we'd have to admit what we'd been doing."
"Is it armed?"
"The 'G' modification replaced the three bulky flight computers with three IBM XT's. The personal computers didn't need as much space, or as complex an cooling system, so Hollaway's team scavenged a missile bay off an old F-102 fighter. He didn't actually have a plan for a weapon at the time, but when SDI got rolling, he got his hands on a wire guided missile that could operate outside Earth's atmosphere. We have one missile, and it just barely fits in the bay."
Cartwright climbed the boarding ladder that sat beside the craft's cockpit and tried to peer into the canopy. "So, it runs on three ten-year-old home computers, and instruments built in the fifties."
Morrison opened a small door on the nose, pressed a button, and two hydraulic cylinders hissed as they lifted the X-15's canopy, exposing the cockpit. "No sir. One of our contributions was to change out the three old XT's with a multi-tasking PS/2 run by a 486 processor. When we did that we had room to add a second PS/2 with a specially designed orbital navigation program we got from a guy working on the TAV. You input the orbit you want, and the computer will direct you to the right coordinates."
"How long would it take for someone to learn to fly her?"
Lawrence winked at Morrison. "Actually, sir, the X-15 was built by North American, who merged with Rockwell forming 'North American/Rockwell.' Soon, the company dropped North American from their name to become only 'Rockwell,' who, as you know, built the shuttle. Since Rockwell now had complete access to North American's designs, they based the shuttle's flight controls on the lessons learned from the X-15. If a person could fly the shuttle, and had a little fighter experience, he could fly the X-15."
Cartwright turned and looked down on the two officers. "Answer honestly: You believe I could fly this X-15 into orbit, with a weapon, to support Columbia."
"Yes sir, we do."
"Let's get to a phone," ordered Cartwright, jumping from the ladder and starting toward the door.
"What for?" asked Morrison, as he and Lawrence ran to keep up.
"I'm going to find us a B-52!"