"Did you tell them, sir?"
"Not yet, but I will. But there are going to be other governments interested pretty quickly. Nobody wants something like that falling down on their heads. We may have to send up a hydrogen bomb and blow it out of existence if you can't get it back into a safe orbit."
"I know." He paused. "Mr. President, I have an idea. Suppose we load the RJ-37 with a thermonuclear warhead. If we can't change the orbit of the satellite, we'll blast her."
A slow grin spread across the face of the Chief Executive. "Very neat, Fitz; it'll also mean the government will have to underwrite the full insurance cost of the RJ-37 if you have to detonate the bomb."
MacIlheny grinned back. "It will, at that. But don't worry, Mr. President; I won't set off the warhead unless I absolutely have to. I want to save that satellite—not destroy it."
"All right, Fitz. I'll call White Sands and authorize the whole project. And I'll try to keep the foreign governments happy."
"Fine, sir. We'll know more after her first passage through perigee. If her orbit changes too much—"
"I'll leave it up to you, Fitz. Good luck."
The special controls for remote operation of the RJ-37 were in a room just off the main monitors. It was set up just like the control cockpit of the ship itself, with all the instruments in their proper places. If a pilot moved a control knob here, the same knob would move the same amount in the ship. Instead of the heavy paraglass window in the nose of the ship, the control room in the CGC Building had a wide, three-dimensional color TV screen. It gave the illusion of actually being in the ship.