Eagle Station

“Based on your personal involvement in regrettable past armed conflicts, I understand your ingrained habit of assuming the worst, Mr. McLanahan,” Yates said with a wry smile. “But you should remember that neither the Russians nor the Chinese are really ten-feet-tall supermen. Besides, even if there were cosmonauts and taikonauts aboard Federation 2, what does it matter? When you boil the Pilgrim 1 mission down to its essentials, all Moscow and Beijing have accomplished is a test of lunar orbit rendezvous and spacecraft systems. That’s nothing more than our Apollo 10 mission demonstrated, almost fifty-four years ago.”

Fed up, Nadia snorted. “And could your agency repeat that Apollo 10 flight today, Mr. Yates?” she asked acidly.

Somewhat disconcerted, the other man admitted, “Well, no. Until our new heavy-lift SLS rocket is certified ready for flight, we can’t—”

“Exactly,” Nadia said. “So, at a minimum, Russia and China have just shown that they can reach the moon and return safely — a capability we no longer possess. Nor should we assume that is all they have planned. Because Brad is right: there are anomalies we must explore further.” She used her tablet computer to pull up a sequence of images and then sent them to the conference room’s larger screen for everyone else to see. “For example, this odd cloud of debris observed during Pilgrim 1’s seventeenth orbit. What could it be?”

The pictures showed a swiftly dissipating cloud of radar reflective particles near the docked Federation 2 command module and Chang’e-10 lander as they circled back around from behind the moon. Obtaining those images had not been easy. The glare of reflected sunlight from the moon’s surface made it impossible for ordinary optical telescopes to see small objects in close lunar orbits. These pictures had been taken by shooting a powerful beam of microwaves toward the moon from NASA’s Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex in California. Tiny radar echoes bouncing back from lunar orbit were then detected by the world’s largest steerable radio telescope in Green Bank, West Virginia.

For a moment there was silence in the room. Then Yates chuckled. “Oh, come now, Mrs. McLanahan. You’re not seriously asking us to waste our people’s time by asking them to study a cloud of crystals from what was probably just a test of a waste dump system, are you?” His smile grew wider. “I don’t think anyone here really needs an in-depth intelligence analysis of simulated Russian or Chinese urine, do you?”

During the wave of laughter that followed the NASA bureaucrat’s quip, Nadia leaned close to Brad and muttered, “Ci ludzie są głupcami. These people are fools.”

Grimly, he nodded. “Yeah, they are.” He sighed. “Which is going to make figuring out what Leonov and Li Jun are really doing a hell of a lot harder.”

Twenty-Eight

Penglai Pavilion, Zhongnanhai, Beijing, People’s Republic of China

Some Days Later

Once a walled imperial garden, the Zhongnanhai compound’s palaces, halls, pavilions, and other buildings were now the sole province of the higher echelons of the Communist Party’s leadership cadre. In his capacity as general secretary of the Party, President Li Jun conducted most of his day-to-day administrative work inside the compound. Its spacious grounds and buildings were also used for meetings — both public and private — with important foreign dignitaries.

Penglai Pavilion occupied the southern end of an artificial island built six centuries ago for an emperor of the Ming Dynasty. Connected to the rest of Zhongnanhai only by a stone bridge, it was an ideal location for a top secret honors ceremony. Details of soldiers and stern-faced plainclothes security guards now blocked the bridge at both ends. No one without the highest possible clearance could get anywhere close to the island, let alone to the two-story pavilion.

Deftly, Marshal Mikhail Leonov finished pinning Russia’s highest decoration, Hero of the Russian Federation, on Captain Dmitry Yanin’s chest. The five-pointed gold star with its white, blue, and red ribbon dangled next to China’s Aerospace Meritorious Service medal, awarded moments before by Li Jun. He shook the younger cosmonaut’s hand warmly and stepped back.

Each country had, appropriately in Leonov’s view, reserved its highest decoration for its own members of the Federation 2 crew. That was why cosmonauts Lavrentyev and Yanin were now Heroes of the Federation, while taikonauts Tian and Liu had just received China’s Order of August the First from their own leader.

Beaming with pride, the four men stiffened to attention and saluted.

Gravely, Li Jun and Leonov acknowledged the salute. They watched in silence while security guards escorted Tian, Lavrentyev, and the others away. All four crewmen had an enormous amount of hard work and rigorous training ahead as they prepared for further military space missions.