"You know of course," said Dundon, "that the satellite has been completed and is in orbit. The first crew went up on 9 September. Construction was finished on 20 September and the full crew was aboard within twelve hours. The whole thing went off without a hitch. There wasn't one thing we hadn't anticipated. We sent the green light to the president and sat back to wait for the Russians to find out what was 'up.'" He grinned momentarily at his joke.
"The station was in orbit for a week," he went on, "and we were in constant radio contact. Furthermore, we had it under radar and telescopic observation, either one or the other or both, twenty-four hours a day, from points all over the Earth. Some of that I guess you know. The purpose is mainly to supplement the station's own radar. We don't want anything going near that station without our knowing about it real quick."
"And we know damn well," he said more slowly, his puzzlement beginning to show in his voice, "that nothing went near that station."
Web still waited, not following at all. Dundon sat on the edge of his desk, beginning to fidget now as he talked. His stubby fingers were running continually through his thin gray hair, and tightening his tie, and tugging at his buttons, and toying with the desk top. He had been under a great strain for a long time and it was obvious.
"On 28 September," he said evenly, "—now get this—on 28 September, in the middle of the afternoon, we lost radio contact with the station. It cut off in the middle of a weather observation, just like that. There were no background sounds at all, no noise or confusion. Just silence. We waited, figuring of course that they had blown a tube, or something, but we didn't hear a thing. After a few minutes we began to get worried. They didn't come in on the emergency radio either.
"Radar reported the satellite was still in the regular orbit. Nothing looked wrong, but we couldn't contact her. After a couple of hours we began to get panicky. We figured a small meteor had hit her. A big one would have knocked her out of orbit, but a small one might have penetrated through and knocked out both radios without altering trajectory to any noticeable extent. We figured that that must have been it, because by this time five hours had passed and we hadn't heard a word.
"So then we managed to get Visual, as soon as it got dark and the satellite orbited to position. We had a prearranged system of light signaling to be used in case both radios failed. In the telescopes we could even see the reflectors sitting right out on the hub, completed untouched. But we waited all night and we never got a thing.
"Now dammit, it couldn't have been a meteor!" Dundon began to pace back and forth and both Web and the colonel followed him, absorbed.
"The station is shaped like a doughnut, with solid bulkheads all around. How could one meteor go all around the damn thing, kill everybody in it, knock out two separate radios, and still not disturb the orbit. It would take a swarm, obviously, even if you forget about the orbit, but there would have to be holes. And we had a close up view of that station, as close as the house across the street, and there wasn't a hole to be seen.