RECKONING

"Stop engines."

The telegraph rang in reply to the captain's command, and the vibrations coming from the engine room of the British cruiser H.M.S. Troy died away. The foam around the bow melted into the blackness of the sea as the ship slowly lost her momentum, silent except for the hum of her generators.

It was a warm night for the North Atlantic. The sea was glassy-calm and the stars blazed in a sparkling carpet across the sky from horizon to horizon. The Union Jack hung limp and lifeless in its halyards, untouched by even a hint of breeze.

The crew, over two hundred of them, was assembled on the foredeck as a lifeless body sewn in the traditional sailcloth of a bygone era and shrouded by the national flag, was carried out and poised at the ship's railing. Then the captain, his voice resonant and unemotional, read the sailor's burial service. As soon as he uttered the final words, He nodded. The slat was tilted, and the body slid into the waiting arms of the eternal sea. The bugle notes were clear and pure as they drifted into the quiet night; then the men were dismissed and they turned silently away.

A few minutes later, when the Troy was under way again, the captain sat dowry and made the following entry in the ship's log:

H.M.S Troy. Time 0220, 10 August 1988.

Pos. Lat. 41°46'N., Long. 50°14'W

At the exact time in the morning of the White Star steamer R.M.S Titanic's foundering, and in accordance with his dying wish that he spend eternity with his former shipmates, the remains of Commodore Sir John Bigalow, K.B.E., R.D., R.N.R. (Retired) were committed to the deep.

The captain's hand trembled as he signed his name. He was closing out the last chapter of a tragic drama that had stunned the world . . . a world the likes of which would never be seen again.

At almost the same moment, on the other side of the earth somewhere in the vast desolate wastes of the Pacific Ocean, a huge cigar-shaped submarine crept silently far below the languorous waves. Startled fish scattered into the depths at the monster's approach, while within its smooth black skin, men prepared to launch a quad of ballistic missiles at a series of divergent targets six thousand miles to the east.

At precisely 1500 hours, the first of the great missiles ignited its rocket engine and burst through the sun-danced swells in a volcanic eruption of white water, rising with a thunderous roar into the blue Pacific sky. In thirty seconds, it was followed by the second, and the third, and, finally, the fourth. Then, trailing long fiery columns of orange flame, the quartet of potential mass-destruction arched into space and disappeared.

Thirty-two minutes later, while homing in on their down-range trajectory, the missiles abruptly blew up, one by one, in gigantic balls of flame, and disintegrated while still some ninety miles from their respective targets. It was the first time in the history of American rocketry that anyone remembered that the attending technicians and engineers and military officers who held rein on the nation's defense programs had ever cheered the sudden and seemingly disastrous end to a perfect launch.

The Sicilian Project had proven itself an unqualified success on its first try.