Powersat

Geosynchronous Orbit

Gilly Williamson had killed men before. The first time was when a daft policeman barged in on him in the cellar of the safe house where he was wiring a car bomb. Before he could even think about it, Williamson put four nine-millimeter bullets through the fool’s chest.

He expected to feel guilty about it. He expected it would give him nightmares. But it didn’t. It was him or me, he knew. The damned idiot hesitated and I didn’t. That’s the difference between life and death.

Of course, the bombs he devised killed dozens, perhaps hundreds. He had never kept score. But personal killing, face to face, that was a different matter. There was the informer that was going to rat out the whole cell to the Tommies. He was stupid enough to warn Gilly over pints at a pub in London. Gilly had thanked him from the bottom of his heart and then, after they walked together to the bastard’s car parked back in the alley, Gilly had brained him with the fool’s own electric torch. He’d looked so surprised when the first blow cracked his skull open. In a few seconds you couldn’t recognize his face at all.

That was when Gilly had to leave the United Kingdom, leave his wife and kids and travel to blasted North Africa. Casablanca. Nothing like the movie, he found. Then Oran, another cesspit full of gabbling Arabs. In Tunis he was recruited by The Nine, although he never met any of the mucky-mucks, just their flunkies.

He knew he had cancer, he’d know it since he’d been diagnosed by the Public Health doctors back in London. Cigarettes, they claimed. Bad genes. Bad luck. What difference? He knew he was going to die and the only question was: How could he provide for his wife and kids?

This one-way mission to the satellite was his answer. Williamson had mailed the bank receipt to his wife before he’d gone off to the remote training base in the stark granitegray mountains of northern China.

Now he hung suspended on a tether halfway between the enormous satellite and the transfer craft where Nikolayev waited for them to finish their tasks. Below him glowed the blue and white-flecked Earth. Beyond it he could see a crescent Moon, small and slim like the symbol on Arab flags. There were stars out there, too, but Williamson could only see a few of the brightest through the dark tinting of his helmet visor and he paid no attention to them.

He had finished his wiring task nearly half an hour ago. The satellite was no longer beaming power through its antenna. Once they removed the antenna and attached the new, special one they’d carried up with them, their job would be finished. Then it would be up to the crew on the ground to point that antenna where they wanted it.

But before that could happen, Williamson had one additional task to do. Nikolayev. The Russian was a mercenary, a professional cosmonaut who’d been paid to carry these two men to the power satellite. He didn’t know what they were doing to the powersat and he didn’t care. He expected to wait for them to finish their work, whatever it was, and then fly them back to a landing in Kazakhstan.

But that wouldn’t do. The plan called for no witnesses. The whole point of this operation was to make it look as if the powersat had malfunctioned. Accidentally. Williamson and Bouchachi were even going to reattach the regular antenna once they got word from the ground that they had accomplished their mission. Then they’d fly off into deeper space, where nobody would think to search for them. And die there.

Nikolayev had no inkling of that part of the plan. He expected to return home.

Time to disabuse him of that, Williamson told himself as he made his weightless way hand over hand along the tether that connected to the waiting transfer craft.

“I’m coming in,” he called to Nikolayev through his suit radio.

“Come ahead,” came the cosmonaut’s bored voice. “Hatch is open.”

Everything took an extra effort in zero gravity. Williamson had thought it would all be easy when everything was weightless, but he found that it was hard work even to stretch out his arms. Maybe it’s the bloody suit, he thought. It’s as stiff as a corpse.

Slowly, sweating with the effort, he hooked his boots on the rim of the open hatch, then wormed his way inside the spacecraft. Nikolayev was strapped into the middle seat, sealed up in his suit and fishbowl helmet.

“Close the hatch,” the cosmonaut said, “and we can fill cabin with air again. Take off helmets, relax a while.”

“Not just yet,” Williamson said. He pulled out the knife he’d carried in the pouch on his trouser leg and slipped it out of its sheath. The blade was clean and slim and sharp.

Nikolayev looked puzzled. “What’s that for?”

“For you.”

With a swift slash, Williamson sliced open the chest of the cosmonaut’s suit. Nikolayev’s eyes went so wide Williamson could see white all around the pupils. The suit material was tough, layer upon layer of fabric and plastic. Williamson hacksawed through it, laboring hard. The Russian tried to parry the knife slash, but in the spacesuit he was hopelessly clumsy. And far too late.

“What have you done?” Nikolayev screamed.

Williamson said nothing. The Russian gasped for air, clawed at his helmet with both gloved hands, then suddenly lunged at Williamson. Gilly pushed him off easily and watched him shudder inside his cumbersome suit as the air ran out of it and the fabric decompressed like a punctured balloon. Nikolayev’s screams and flailings faded away and he slumped in the seat, quite dead. Williamson said to himself, I’ve done nothing that I won’t be doing to myself soon enough.

“Sorry, mate,” Williamson whispered. “No witnesses, you know.”