"We are going to stop it. Tomorrow morning, just before the test flight. It must be done."

"Good luck."

"Mr. Vance, you are with American intelligence. We are only engineers.

We know nothing about the kind of things necessary to--"

"Do you have any weapons?"

"Nothing. The guards here are all from the corporation." He lowered his voice. "Frankly, most of them look like criminals."

"They are." Vance laughed in spite of himself.

"I don't understand."

"I know you don't understand. If you did . . . but that's beside the point."

"Then will you help us?" His wrinkled face was fixed in determination.

"Do you know anything about explosives?"

"Enough. But are you really sure that's the way you want to go?" He paused. "There's a lot that can go wrong in a big facility like this without anybody knowing what caused it."

"All the sensitive areas are under heavy security now. They are impossible to penetrate."

Terrific, Vance thought. "By the way, how does your son, the test pilot, figure into all this?"

"All along he was planning to . . . I don't know. He refused to tell me. But it doesn't matter. Now that two Mino Industries guards are being put in the cockpit with him, whatever he was planning is impossible. So we have to do something here, on the ground."

"Well, where is he?"

"He is in the hangar now."

"I'll need to see him."

For one thing, Vance thought, he probably knows how to use a gun. All Soviet pilots carry an automatic and two seven-round clips for protection in case they have to ditch in the wilderness somewhere. Our first order of business is to jump some of these _Mino-gumi _goons who're posing as security men and get their weapons.

"By the way, do you know where they're keeping the American woman who was brought here with me?"

The old man's eyes grew vague. "I believe she's somewhere here in the West Quadrant. I think she was transferred here around eighteen hundred hours, and then a little later her suitcase arrive from hangar."

"Her bag?" His pulse quickened.

"Delivered by the facility's robot carts. The plane that brought you was being made ready for the CEO's trip back to Tokyo."

"Where was it left?"

"I don't know. I only--"

"Okay, later. Right now maybe you'd better start by getting me out of here."

"That is why I brought this." He indicated the brown paper package he was carrying. It was the first time Vance had noticed it. "I have in here an air force uniform. It belongs to my son."

The parcel was carefully secured with white string--a methodical precision that came from years of engineering.

"You will pose as one of us," the old man continued. "You do not speak Russian?"

"Maybe enough to fool the _Mino-gumi_, but nobody else." He was watching as Androv began unwrapping the package.

"Then just let me do all talk," he shrugged. "If anybody wonders who you are, I will be giving you tour of the West Quadrant. You should pretend to be drunk; it would surprise no one. You will frown a lot and mumble incoherent questions to me. We will go directly to my office, where I will tell you our plan."

Now Andrei Androv was unfolding a new, form-fitting uniform intended for Yuri Andreevich. The shoulder boards had one wide gold chevron and two small rectangles, signifying the rank of major in the Soviet air force. Also included was a tall lamb's-wool cap, the kind officers wore. Vance took the hat and turned it in his hand. He'd never actually held one before. Nice.

Seems I just got made air force major, and I've never flown anything bigger than a Lear jet.

He slipped off the shirt he'd been wearing in London, happy to be rid of it, and put on the first half of the uniform. Not a bad fit. The trousers also seemed tailor-made. Then he slipped on the wool topper, completing the ensemble.

"You would make a good officer, I think." Andrei Androv stood back and looked him over with a smile. "But you have to act like one too.

Remember to be insulting."

After the hours in solitary, freezing confinement, he wasn't sure he looked like anything except a bum. But he'd have no difficulty leading Doktor Andrei Androv along in the middle of the night and bombarding him with a steady stream of slurred Russian: _Shto eto? Ve chom sostoet vasha rabota?_

How did the Soviets find out he was here? he wondered. Must have been Eva. She'd got through to them somehow. Which meant she probably was still all right. That, at least, was a relief.

After Andrei Androv clanged the steel door closed and bolted it, they headed together toward the old man's personal office, where he had smuggled drawings of the vehicle's cockpit. The hallways were lit with glaring fluorescents, bustling with technicians, and full of Soviets in uniform. Vance returned a few of the crisp salutes and strutted drunkenly along ahead.

They wanted him to help blow up the plane! He was a little rusty with good old C-4, but he'd be happy to brush up fast. After that, it'd be a whole new ballgame.

Friday 1:47 A.M.

"Will he help?" Yuri Androv surveyed the eleven men in the darkened control room. The wall along the left side consisted entirely of heavy plate glass looking out on Number One. That wind tunnel, the video screens, the instrument panels, everything was dormant now. Aside from a few panel lights, the space was illuminated only by the massive eight-foot-by-twenty-foot liquid crystal screen at the far end now scrolling the launch countdown, green numbers blinking off the seconds.

Except for Nikolai Vasilevich Grishkov, the Soviet chief mechanic, all those gathered were young engineers from Andrei Androv's propulsion design team. Grishkov, however, because of his familiarity with the layout of the hangar, was the man in charge.

"I just spoke with Doktor Androv, and he believes the American will cooperate," Grishkov nodded. "He will bring him here as soon as he has been briefed."

"I still wonder if I shouldn't just handle it myself."

"It would be too dangerous for you, Yuri Andreevich. He knows about explosives. Besides, you have to be ready to fly the other plane,_ Daedalus II_, right after the explosion. Nobody else can take it up."

He laughed. "Steal it, you mean."

"Yuri Andreevich, we have made sure it's fueled and we will get you into the cockpit. After that, we will know nothing about--"

"One other thing," he interjected, "I want it fueled with liquid hydrogen."

"Impossible." Grishkov's expression darkened, his bushy eyebrows lifting. "I categorically refuse."