Joseph H2O2ward RIDING THOR'S HAMMER In the last century every fighter was given a name like Thunderjet or Tomcat. The Air Force doesn't want publicity for the F-180 program, so each of us now names his own, unofficially. It was a warm summer evening on Dover Air Force Base when I approached my F-180 "Thor's Hammer" for the 1000th time. I remember it well, because I was thinking, something's going to happen tonight. I joked with the ground crew a few moments, then climbed the short ladder into the belly of the stub-winged poly-amorphous titanium and plastic craft and waved out the hatch as they rolled the ladder away. There was room aplenty for me in the rearward cabin of this ungainly beast, as the gigantic air scoops in the front narrowed to feed the ramrocket engines. Due to the shape of the magnetic pole pieces of the ionic air-induction system, empty space was needed here; so why not make things comfortable? I sat on the vinyl-upholstered chair that folded out of the wall, fastened my flight harness, turned on the reading light, and perused the Dover "Air Lifter". Then came the jerk as an old but strong C-17 took up the towline and began accelerating down the runway. I said, not that I needed to, "Mannet! You fly it for a while. OK?" The ManNet -- multi-array neural-network electronic transputer -- answered, "OK, boss." I settled into my reading. When the last US ICBM was destroyed under the Final Zero Treaty, we knew that Russky had sequestered at least two subs and 100 ground-based missiles; but we didn't know where. Being an open society, we could hide none. The politicos decided we'd play it mostly straight and make up for the lack through high tech. I gave Thor's Hammer a pat on his bulkhead. Their missiles were old-generations behind current technology. Deadly, but killable by manned aircraft. Probably. We had been able to keep secret that we had some anti-sat satellites disguised as other things, in violation of the ABM Three Treaty; and a good thing that was. One day we shot out of the sky three illegal Russky look-down, shoot-down nuke launchers. Though enraged at our betrayal of their betrayal, they didn't complain. Our violations were nothing compared to theirs. Funny thing is, the whole world knows what they're doing. If everyone pretends ignorance, however, diplomacy has won, and peace is served. Sure it is. But I'm a military man, so I don't understand the finer points of world affairs, I'm told. I'm just a slob who has to protect the eternal innocents from the bad bear's wrath if he ever gets stirred up. We'd lifted off the runway and reached a speed that made the ride rough even with ManNet at the controls. Below about 14 kilometers this thing flies bad as a square box. Well almost. It lands rather hairy. The treaties allowed no strategic nuclear warheads on any delivery system, and no space-launched or unmanned ground-launched missile killers. They said nothing about manned anti-missile aircraft or tactical nukes. No one could imagine an airplane that could hunt missiles. The Russians laughed at the silly wording our diplomats insisted upon. Why, that would require many quantum leaps in computerization, pilot protection, ergonomics and human engineering. But down in the Pentagon and in private industry were some very bright folks. I always get nervous sitting around, so I decided to hook up. I unharnessed from the chair, zipped off my coverall, and lay face down, naked, in the pilot's bed. I arched my hands over my head, the right one holding the joystick between thumb and forefinger, the left one grabbing the rubbery squeeze grip of the fire control. Though mental signaling has been around in one form or another for decades, the most precise control for an airplane is still the joystick coupled with brainwave stepping. The hand precisely and instinctively moves the stick, while the brain determines the stick's sensitivity in 3 steps from fine to gross. Likewise the other hand determines when to fire, while the choice of weapon is done by thought or voice. Too many false or premature firings result from the attempt to think-trigger a weapon. If the brain must control directly an analog (sliding) function, rather than a discrete (stepped) function, that function should be simple and one-directional, such as thrust. Steering, which operates in many directions, is just too complex at the present level of technology. Of course, all actions are done through ManNet and the guidance computers. Humanly this thing is totally unflyable. None-the-less the F-180 is transparently obedient to the pilot, even to self-destruction, as though the tiny stick were linked directly to flaps and rudder. It must be that way when chasing missiles. "Mannet, cover me," I said; and the molded top of the pilot's bed sealed me in. The gee forces are incredible. The bed power-swivels in every direction to best distribute the pilot's blood in all maneuvers. It is linked to Mannet. I breathed through the airtube, looked through the eyetubes, switching my gaze mentally from one scanner to another. I felt the bed start to rotate, helping to disorient me from the position I had been in. I was trained to ignore all gee forces upon my body and was tactily isolated as much as possible. Regardless of the bed's position, forward to me had to be Hammer's forward. I had to be Hammer, moving my hands totally unconsciously. Before me was the C-17. I zoomed my gaze close. Over the local intercom I said, "Hey, C-17 Cap. This is Thor's Hammer." "That you, Bill?" "Who else? Don't tell me you're back from California, Ted." "It rained three days in a row; and we're still a C-17 pilot short, you know. So I showed up early." "Good idea. No use wasting leave, huh? You know you've got a piece of skin hanging loose under your right wing, inboard of the engines." "That so? How big?" "Not big." I spoke to Mannet that I wanted range-and-measure capability. You can't really send or read thoughts; but a few simple thought patterns can elicit corresponding brainwaves that ManNets can read. They reply through code on pressure points on the back of the head and neck that a trained pilot translates to thought without noticing. Non-flight commands must be verbal to save the precious thought-commands for the most needed and intuitive functions. I got the range and measured the rip. "Eighteen centimeters," I finished answering Ted's question. "Probably closes right up on the ground." "Should have been caught, dammit." "Unless it just happened." "Maybe. Is it getting worse?" "Looks stable." "Keep an eye on it, huh?" "Sure." "Thanks, Bill." As our speed and altitude grew, the wing got no worse; and we reached a point at which the C-17 could accelerate or climb only sluggishly. "Time to let go, Bill," said Ted. "Disengaging," I said. "Let go of the towline, Mannet." I felt the bump. I felt myself slowing. "Free and clear, Ted." "Free and clear," he confirmed. "Break a wing." "You, too, Ted." The instant I released, I began to fall. I waited the five seconds that safety required, then fired my motor and headed off and up, angling away from the C-17. Mannet still navigated, for he knew precisely where we were going tonight; I did not. I had only to pinch the stick to take control. In my mind I stretch forth my hands. I am Superman, cape undulating wildly in the howling air stream, wrenching at neck and shoulders too strong to care. I am a bird, a bird more powerful than bird has ever known, laughing at the earth-bound, soaring alone above the others. I will myself ahead. The rocket thrusts harder, but not too strongly, just yet. I'm still in the soupy troposphere, the air piling thickly in front of me. Above it, above it I surge, where the wind is thin and my shape no hinderance. Soon my wings will swell and extend as I glide faster than a shriek through the blackening sky. The arctic rolls beneath me as I attain my patrol altitude off the northern reaches of Siberia. I am a lonely bird, searching for prey I hope never to find. I range outward with my scanners to search for my fellows. There is one twelve kliks off my right wing, another forty ahead to the left, as they execute their computer-randomized search patterns. The arctic is in sunlight. It sparkles like a huge lopsided diamond atop the ring of dawn and evening that circles the planet, though I cannot see the whole ring this close. I wish to contact my fellows. It is not allowed outside of combat. I am a lonely bird. But I don't enter a search pattern. My wings don't extend. I continue to climb straight and steadily over Siberia, my throttle opening further, though I have not willed it. "Mannet! Am I doing orbital tonight?" "Yes," comes his reply a little later through the eartubes. I strain toward polar orbit, extending my ionic field ahead of me to gather and cram increasingly rare oxygen and ozone molecules into my scoops, switching to lox when breathing is too strained. Shortly I rendezvous with the refueling ark, topping off my kerosene and receiving a harness of oxygen and fuel tanks. I am technically a ground-launched, manned killer satellite tonight. I won't be up here more than 48 hours. I don't break the treaties. What makes the world situation so unstable is that the bear doesn't believe we have a creditable defense against the missiles he pretends not to have, nor against his ground-based armies. I can do nothing about the latter. No one really knows what I can do about the former. But Georgi Gorbachev, who claims to be the son of Mikhail, has threatened several times to blow up an American city or two if we continue to help the Iranian and Mexican rebels. Not that he has any bombs or delivery systems, of course. He'll just blow us up rhetorically. And so we watch, playing a game of ducking in and out of treaties, hoping for a premier who's a little less crazy. Trying to forestall the unthinkable. Hours into my watch, the unthinkable happens. "Bogeys, dead ahead low." Ninety-six ground-launched missiles appear to the recon satellites, seven of them from the Middle East, where we've got no atmospheric prowlers. But I'm coming up through the Indian Ocean; and another killsat is smack over the site. "Overview," I say the code word to Mannet. A satellite-coordinated video-game display in my eyetubes shows the entire Eastern Hemisphere, with all missiles and killcraft. "Localize. Small reduce. North. North. West. Half south." I get the size and placement I need. I see only me and the other killsat, plus the seven missiles. Automatically we are heading for intercept, myself accelerating, my partner slowing, both dropping out of orbit. "Splitting targets," says Mannet. My screen shows only me and three missiles. The other guy has four. Good luck. "Ready all boostbusters," I say. I squeeze them off at intervals. They're long-range net-casting radar-homers designed to take out ICBM's still under power, far below, before the multiple warheads and decoys have been deployed. I don't get to watch. "Bogeys high." The 3-D vidscreen shows a dozen anti-sat rockets coming down from above, no doubt launched from one of Russky's peaceful weather satellites. "Evade sequence two?" asks Mannet. "Hell, no. Too many. Too dispersed." Straight ahead, I think and thrust. "No. Cancel. Cut all power." "Bad idea." "Do it, Mannet." As I fall toward the atmosphere at higher-than-orbital speed, I see the missiles converging upon me, their range numbers ratcheting down too quickly. "Prepare equatorial orbit, Mannet." "You can't outrun them." "Do it!" "East or west?" "Toward the west, bass-ackwards." I will full maneuvering thrust, now! I feel the sickening lurch of Thor's Hammer -- myself -- steering hard around. When heading is established, I take the stick, nose up further, and thrust with all my mind. I must have blacked out. When I regain consciousness momentarily, the missiles, coming from a standard eastwardly orbit have slid beyond and below me. Most are falling earthward, unable to turn in time. But three were far enough away to react; and they're crawling up my tail. Close to blackout again -- the thrust slowly backed off when I went under, but restored when I came to - I ease off on pushing. I let Mannet take the stick; think quickly. Can't avoid heat-seekers which have matched my velocity. Ten seconds, estimated, to detonation. "Mannet! Bogeys nuclear?" "Probably." "Dump two nukes, now -- arm nukes!" I see on the vidscreen two of my own anti-warhead missiles falling unpowered to the rear as I accelerate away, the three bogeys catching up. Willing hard acceleration, but not enough to spoil my reactions, I wait till the bogeys are almost upon my trap. Too close, too close. I simultaneously think top acceleration and squeeze the fire grip. It is a strange thing, an unexplainable thing, this unique relationship of man and machine. Sometimes two, sometimes one. I shout orders or think them or move my hands or do all at once. I hear or feel Mannet's thoughts, sometimes both. Yet it is all intuitive. The greater the emergency, the greater the chance I will yell out loud; but Mannet has already, ofttimes, carried out the brainwave order. I am musing. I know that I drift in and out from sleep to dreamy consciousness. I am hurt. I don't know how nor how badly. Time has passed. Mind and neural net merge in battle. The neural net is not intelligent, not self-aware. It seems so, it seems to merge. Always it is companion; two minds in one bird, the ersatz giving the human the illusion of company. I am a lonely bird, a broken bird, flying blind and crippled through the cosmos. Slowly I became aware of being awake. I had asked, as if in a dream, for Mannet to give me a drink. No water came. I'd been out for a long time. I summoned up some saliva. "Mannet, where are we?" "I don't know." "You must know." "We are outside my coordinates." "That's impossible. You cover the whole Earth." "I do not know where I am." "I set off some nukes close by, didn't I?" "Yes." "They must have damaged you." "The electromagnetic shock confused me for a while. We are intact. No major shrapnel hit us; but the vapor front gave us a jolt. I recovered from shielded backup files; but you sustained some damage, whether from the jolt or the sustained full acceleration I cannot tell." "Why didn't the fail-soft work? Why didn't the acceleration reduce when I went out?" "While I was confused, the failsafe programming did not operate. You sustained unknown duration of full gees while unconscious." "Wonderful. No wonder I feel like the inside of a pipe-smoker's mouth." Mannet had no programming to reply. "Mannet. Where the hell are we?" "I don't know." "Give me a screen. The forward screen." Nothing there. White dots. Stars. "Give me a screen with an object in it." Earth appeared. The whole Earth. A blue and white ball in the blackness. "Oh, hell. Range please... I said, 'Range'! C'mon!" "You've got it. Left eye." "I can't see it." Lovely. "Switch to right eye. "Oh, hell. Can you get to land?" "I have ground-com. Discussing fuel and navigation problems." "Thanks good buddy. I don't feel so good. I need water. Open bed." "It's cold out there." "How cold?" "Minus 8 degrees C. Conserving power." "Warm enough to get a drink. Open bed." I felt the coldness on my backside, remembered weightlessness just in time to keep hands and feet under the straps. Thus I was not propelled outward by vomiting. I yelled, "Suck!" just in time; and it all went in the tube. It hurt so much I couldn't move for ten minutes. "Close bed." "There's blood in your vomit." "Go to hell." "Ground-com says we can land." "Good. Go to hell, anyway." I was out for a while; then I did get up for some food and drink. The water was ice, so I threw a couple bags of it into the microwave, which still worked. I couldn't hold much. Got back in bed before I froze. The Defense Dept. caught shrapnel for spending $3000 for the "luxury" of a ruggedized microwave in each F-180. Pilots going soft, the politicians said. I'll give them soft... if I live to talk to them. I mostly slept; and my left eye cleared up some. I must have bled into it. I didn't look at a viewscreen the whole time. Just ate when I could and tried to will my body from coming apart. I was that hurt, that I didn't care. Maybe my brain was hurt. Elimination was a scream. Air got stale. Water and snacks ran out. Voice radio never worked; not meant for such long range; maybe broke; but Mannet relayed a few words of encouragement from Dover AFB. I didn't care about that much, either. Mannet said we were almost in. Couldn't name the country where we'd land. If he'd gone bonkers and we were nowhere, I didn't want to know. I was sleeping when we landed. The jar of touchdown must have awakened me. Even though I was shaking from malnourishment, I think I felt better. Hard to tell. "Ok, Mannet. Give me a view." Out of air, water, food, fuel - we'd landed on the moon. The realization seeped through me like a cold, dead liquid. I lay in bed. Wrong-way equatorial orbit was the last directional order I'd given, then an unknown period of full acceleration. Escape velocity. A miraculous landing. And the end was the same. I'd have laughed, except it hurt. I was startled out of my funk, when someone knocked on the door. "Mannet! Underview, multiple." Several video windows revealed a spider's-eye-view of two rovers and several people and a huge tube with its mouth fastened around the hatch. "Mannet! Open hatch. No! Cancel!" What if they were Russians? "Arm self-destruct. Code, Stasis." "Doomsday ready, boss. Nice knowing you." "Same here." I looked over the party. They were dressed in the latest American sofsuits, Old Glory on their shoulders. I opened bed and sat up. "Open door." If they weren't what they seemed, I had but to say one word before they gunned me down. A suited head and shoulders came through the hatchway and stopped. I held my breath. The sunscreen on the faceplate began transparenting. "Ted!" I gasped. His lips said, "Hi, Bill," then grinned like an idiot's. He opened his headpiece. "It stinks in here." "So do you. When did you become a vacuumhead?" The cabin turned slowly. "I've been space-rated longer than you have, airplane jockey. Every time I go on vacation to California, I wind up on the moon." "I thought you had a hell of a lot of leave. What happened last time? Flight get cancelled?" "Yeah, and a good thing for you. When ground control found out about your predicament and the computers figured they could get Thor's Hammer to the moon, there was a freighter ready; and I was sent up with the Bobbsey Twins, a couple of girls who want to make you feel good. They figured you were suffering from too many gees and possibly radiation; and for some unfathomable reason thought you were worth salvaging." "How'd you beat me here?" "You took the slow route. Six days." "That's impossible. Oxygen re-gen wouldn't last." "It would if you slept most the time, which you did." I was getting very tired just talking. "Thanks, Ted," was the last thing I could croak out. "S'all right. What're friends for?" I was cared for at the secret Cleveland AF Moonbase by a pair of fraternal twins named June and Joan, two osteopaths who blended conventional medicine with a marvelous touch of chiropractic and acupuncture. In a couple of weeks I felt merely ill. June and I hit it off. We could talk for hours. I know she liked me; and I was head-over-heels for her. I still am. She hasn't answered my letters. She won't. Not one of Russky's warheads hit a single US city or installation, though six got through with their guidance systems damaged, to kill and maim tens of thousands in smaller towns. We'd known where their missile subs were; and when our intelligence net said attack was imminent, we'd blown them out of the water with cruise torpedos. That was what prompted the launch of the USSR's ground-based ICBM's. Our F-180's destroyed or damaged them all, though not without casualties. The Ten Minute War lasted somewhat longer than that; and I was a hero, the whole Free World following my extraordinary trip to the moon. "You're a man of great stature back on Earth," June told me, beaming. I fear I didn't cover the pain in my face quite quickly enough with that smile. "Thanks very kindly," I replied. Downcast, herself, she said, "I'm afraid they're going to cut up your fighter for parts. They're needed up here; and it's not in such good shape." "Cheer up, Big Girl," my pet name for her, "I'd already figured that out." She smiled, too; but there was water in her eye. I knew I'd lost her; that, indeed, she'd never been mine. "You're a genuine hero," she said. "What hero? I ran before I knew I'd killed my targets. Of course, I had planned to come back and finish up. It's just that orbit was the right direction for a while..." "You don't have to explain anything. You got them. Don't be a nerd." I wanted to say something, but couldn't. She left. After they'd taken their best shot, we threatened the now-naked Soviets with nukes of our own (which I don't even know that we have, but then I'm not privy), forestalling their reinvasion of East Europe while taking back Mexico and the Philippines. Though designed in desperation to skirt some treaties, the F-180 air and space fighters have proven the value of the man-machine interface beyond even their designers' expectations. Computers can react faster, tell warheads from decoys better, take more gravities and radiation and general abuse; but they don't have the creativity to do the over and above, the things they weren't designed for. Like avoiding heat-seeking missiles by nuking yourself and then shooting the moon, albeit accidentally. My partner in knocking out the Mid-East missiles turned out to be Dooley "The Mighty Atom" Donegal. He'd caught only three of his four ICBM's in boost phase. The other deployed its MIRVs and decoys while he was ducking some rockets which eventually tagged him kind of hard. Without weaponry or fine control, he managed to get onto the ballistic and bump every damn warhead with his "Flying Anteater", the last of them on the way down. Perhaps some of them survived and were among those which detonated but missed their targets, averting much greater tragedy. He dumped his auxiliary tanks and engines; but still landed rather messy, so I got the bed next to his, Earthside, where I still needed medical attention. In addition to loosing Thor's Hammer, who felt like a companion even if he didn't really think (neither does a dog), I had to listen to Dooley's constant complaining. Yeah, I agreed with him on one thing. Since the Russkies knew all about our activities on the far side of the moon, the American taxpayers should have, too. Well, now we do. But he was off base on his other crusade. Our people are not unfairly discriminated against; and I stress the word, unfairly. Since we helped save America, we've been treated better than perhaps any time in our history. In fact, people trip over themselves to accommodate us; and that's plain embarrassing. Like others with differences, we want just to be treated normally, as far as possible. Not until the Ten Minute War and my moon flight did most folk realize that the extreme gee forces generated by a missile fighter are too punishing for a normal-sized person, so all F-180 pilots -- men and women -- must be dwarfs, and little ones at that. Most are what used to be called midgets, whose heads and trunks are proportionately small to their limbs. And the kind of discrimination which hurts the most can't be legislated away. June loves me, yet no court can make her feel the way she wants to, and could, if I were three feet taller. No king can rule by fiat, in matters of the heart.