Von Neumann’s War

“Sure, we could even build the camera with a clever plastic spring-wound timing system. The optics on the telescope would be heavy, though. Most of the glasses would only work worth a damn in the visible spectrum. Infrared would be possible with some glasses and the right film. The wavefront error would be horrible without being able to put a deformable mirror or tip-tilt corrector in there to take out atmospheric distortion.” Roger thought out loud while removing his ball cap and rubbing his fingers through his hair.

“Yes, yes, Roger. But could you do it? Fuzzy images would be better than none.” Ronny rested his elbows on his big metal desk as he steepled his fingers together and leaned his chin on them.

He laughed to himself at the thought of all the metal inside the redoubt. In the wiring, the computers, the monitors, the structure, and even the furniture. He considered that ironic or crazy; old construction habits must be hard for the corps of engineers to break. But at the same time he knew that if the redoubt fell a metal or a plastic desk would make no difference.

“Sure we could. How do we get it up and back is the question.”

“Perhaps we should learn from history, heh?” Ronny smiled.

“What do you mean?”

“KH-1 through KH-7 ring a bell?”

“KH-1 through 7,” Roger mouthed. “Hmm, KH is Keyhole, oh, sure the Corona project, but… heh.” Roger knew exactly where Ronny was going with the comment. Corona was the first spy satellite program. It was a little satellite that was launched into a decaying low Earth orbit. The little satellite had a camera in it that snapped a bunch of pictures on a timer and then it fell back to Earth. The camera box was caught by a big net that was pulled behind an aircraft. Roger knew that aircraft were out of the question, but parachutes or something similar might work.

“I thought you would get it.” Ronny laughed. “How do we get it up and back?”

“A rocket with completely composite components and mechanically driven guidance systems with no metal, no radios. The satellite takes a couple orbits worth of photos and plummets back to Earth. We use an air pressure gauge to release a chute with all-composite parts and then we just go pick up the film canister.” Roger started running the idea through the design process in his head. The last two missions had made him very sharp with the process and he was already thinking about the mission components.

“Can we do it?” Ronny asked.

“We can do it. I better get to work.” Roger ran out of Ronny’s office, looking for Tom Powell and John Fisher.

“Good lad.” Ronny leaned back in his chair and sighed.

* * *

Dr. Richard Horton rummaged through the antechamber of the old copper mine looking for his RJ-45 connector crimping tool. He had sworn that he had set it on top of the spool of Category-5 Ethernet wire that he had brought with them.

“Is dis vat you are looking for?” Helena asked holding up a coaxial cable crimping tool.

Richard paused for a second to take in her sexy thick Russian accent before responding to his very young and very beautiful wife. He had found her a year before on RussianWives.com. It had only cost him sixty-three hundred dollars and a plane ticket to pick Helena Terechenkova from the catalogue and fly her to the States. Getting a lawyer to straighten out the paperwork had taken another two thousand. After staying with Richard Horton for three weeks, Helena decided that he would do and married him. That translated into: living with Dr. Horton was less of a hell than living under the oppressive thumb of the drug lords in the bad part of St. Petersburg. Richard could care less why she stayed; just that she stayed and married him was enough to satisfy him. The occasional treat of sex with Helena made it more than satisfying, at least for him. From Helena’s standpoint, the sex was worth getting out of Russia — but just barely. She knew that Richard Horton meant nobody any harm and that he was a nice person, but besides that he was a crazy conspiracy nut, which meant that they moved around, used assumed names often, and lived in the oddest places. Helena tried to tell herself that his paranoia was just entertainment.

Entertaining or not, he eventually got on her damn nerves. Had aliens not come to take over the world, she would have probably left him. But for now he seemed like her best bet for survival. Who knew, he might even eventually grow on her. That part was unlikely, but Helena was a survivor and she was going to make the best out of the situation — no matter what.

“Sorry, dear. That’s for crimping connectors onto television cable. We’re looking for the crimping tool for putting one of these onto this.” He held up an RJ-45 Ethernet connector and the frayed end of a piece of Ethernet cable.

“Oh, dat one, yes I seen it over dere,” Helena pointed to the tool box sitting on the tailgate of the pickup truck parked in the entrance to the mine.