Emprise by Michael P. Kube-McDowell Page A

satellite earth station with low-noise receiving equipment for the 1 to 10 gigahertz range. There were dozens of them, not just observatories. Surely one must be intact.”
    “There is an INTELSAT ground station at Burton-upon-Trent, but whether it can do what you ask I can’t say. Write down your needs and I will find out.”
    “I want all of us there—the whole team. Bring as many guards as you like, but the whole team has a right to be there.”
    “I’m glad you are feeling better enough to be presumptuous,” King William said. “I’ll see what can be arranged. But you must realize that I can make no promises even if this test is conducted, that if you fail—”
    “Then we’ll be executed,” Aikens said soberly. “And fifty or a hundred or five hundred years from now, when the Cassiopeians make good on their promises, everybody will know that we were right. But that will be too late, for us and for you, because all the options will be gone.”
    “You are feeling better,” King William said approvingly. “Now, is there anything else?”
    Aikens thought for a moment.
    “Yes,” he said finally. “What’s today’s date?”
    At ten A.M. on the Tuesday following, the Royal Coach trundled off down the tracks toward Southampton, bearing the King, his personal servants, and a monarch’s idea of luggage for a vacation. That was all subterfuge and window dressing, made complete by the presence of one of William V’s doubles.
    The real King was aboard one of two identical RAF turbo-copters which had touched down on the palace helipad before dawn. The first had ferried diplomatic mail to Heathrow; the second carried the Home Secretary to an industrial conference in Birmingham. Both headed for Burton-upon-Trent when then-face missions were complete. His mail had had the King and his technical advisor for company; the Home Secretary, a narrowband multi-channel receiver pulled from the warehouse once known as the Royal College of Science.
    A third turbocopter, this with Medivac markings, had filed a flight plan to Oxford, taken on six passengers, and lifted off from Heathrow. It too, was bound for Burton-upon-Trent, carrying Aikens, Schmidt, and Anofi. Eddington, Aikens had been told apologetically, was in Maudsley Hospital in Croyden and unable to travel. There was no further word on why he was there, and Aikens wondered to himself if Eddington was some sort of hostage to guarantee their behavior.
    Not that there was any chance of them escaping. Except perhaps for Anofi, it was not in their nature, and besides, the three Royal Marines escorting them were alert and well-armed.
    While Anofi and Schmidt chatted happily, obviously of the mind that their troubles were over and the detection of the signal a mere formality, Aikens occupied himself with calculating the coordinates which would be used for the intercept. His own good spirits were chastened by the recognition that there were many ways the trip could end badly for them, and but one chance it could end well. If the coordinates were good, if the equipment was adequate, if die transmission had continued, if… Worry made the short trip longer.
    They were the last to land on the close-cropped pasture adjoining the INTELSAT station. The gleaming white dish, some twenty metres across, was inclined southward at the low angle Aikens expected of an antenna trained on a geosynchronous satellite. On disembarking, Schmidt became dismayed at the sight of it.
    “It’s a fixed dish,” he said in disbelief.
    “No, it’s movable. Hand gearing, though,” Aikens said, pointing to the mounting. “We’re certainly not going to be doing any tracking.”
    “That’s all right—the intensity curve will let us get a measurement of the width in space of the beacon and calculate backward to estimate the distance to the source,” Anofi said.
    “Optimist,” Schmidt muttered. King William came to join them as they walked up the slight rise to the station gate.
    “I have some