installation, their fo¬cused beams would be invisible outside a hundred-yard perimeter of the nose cameras.
The asphalt beneath him, swept by the freezing winds of Hokkaido, was a special synthetic, carefully camouflaged. He knew it well. Two nights earlier he'd come out here to have a talk with the project kurirovat, Ivan Semenovich Lemontov, the lean and wily Soviet officer-in-charge. For¬merly that post had belonged to the CPSU's official spy, but now party control was supposed to be a thing of the past. So what was he doing here?
Whatever it was, the isolated landing strip had seemed the most secure place for some straight answers. As they strolled in the moonlight, the harsh gale off the straits cutting into their skin, he'd demanded Lemontov tell him what was really going on.
By the time they were finished, he'd almost wished he hadn't asked.
"Yuri Andreevich, on this project you are merely the test pilot. Your job is to follow orders." Lemontov had paused to light a Russian cigarette, cupping his hands against the wind to reveal his thin, foxlike face. He was a hardliner left over from the old days, and occasionally it still showed. "Strategic matters should not concern you."
"I was brought in late, only four months ago, after the
prototypes were ready for initial flight testing. But if I'm flying the Daedalus, then I want to know its ultimate pur¬pose. The truth. Nobody's told me anything. The only thing I'm sure of is that all the talk about near-space re¬search is bullshit. Which means I'm being used." He had caught Lemontov's arm and drew him around. The of¬ficer's eyes were half hidden in the dark. "Now,
The asphalt beneath him, swept by the freezing winds of Hokkaido, was a special synthetic, carefully camouflaged. He knew it well. Two nights earlier he'd come out here to have a talk with the project kurirovat, Ivan Semenovich Lemontov, the lean and wily Soviet officer-in-charge. For¬merly that post had belonged to the CPSU's official spy, but now party control was supposed to be a thing of the past. So what was he doing here?
Whatever it was, the isolated landing strip had seemed the most secure place for some straight answers. As they strolled in the moonlight, the harsh gale off the straits cutting into their skin, he'd demanded Lemontov tell him what was really going on.
By the time they were finished, he'd almost wished he hadn't asked.
"Yuri Andreevich, on this project you are merely the test pilot. Your job is to follow orders." Lemontov had paused to light a Russian cigarette, cupping his hands against the wind to reveal his thin, foxlike face. He was a hardliner left over from the old days, and occasionally it still showed. "Strategic matters should not concern you."
"I was brought in late, only four months ago, after the
prototypes were ready for initial flight testing. But if I'm flying the Daedalus, then I want to know its ultimate pur¬pose. The truth. Nobody's told me anything. The only thing I'm sure of is that all the talk about near-space re¬search is bullshit. Which means I'm being used." He had caught Lemontov's arm and drew him around. The of¬ficer's eyes were half hidden in the dark. "Now,