INVASION USA (Book 2) - The Battle For New York by T I WADE Read Free Book Online

again and connected the two computers together. The telescope and its now simplified computerized system suddenly managed to transmit to Carlos’ computer. They were in business.
    “We need to talk, friend,” Carlos said seriously as he looked for his notepad. It took him several pages, but he found the location of Navistar P and typed it into the computer. The whole system took a while to calculate the input with the computer thinking like an old man playing chess but slowly the transmitter attached to the telescope moved, as it was ordered to by the computer, and then stopped.
    Carlos typed in the satellite’s call sign code he had written down on his pad and pushed the “Send” button. Nothing happened for several long seconds. The screen’s DOS cursor just blinked back at him, but suddenly Navistar P asked him if he wanted it to turn on.
    “Nothing four Ph.D.s, an old man, and a young man couldn’t handle,” smiled Lee Wang. “If I remember my studies over the last three years here, this one might work like the Chinese communication satellites up there.”
    “How many do they have?” Carlos asked.
    “Several, and I have tracked them and also communicated with them,” replied Lee. Carlos suddenly felt like he was a student and Lee Wang was his teacher!
    “Do you have your information here?” Carlos asked. “Of course,” was Lee’s answer. “It is in my head.”
    “Let’s see what Navistar P can do first, and then we can check out the opposition,” Carlos said, typing in the command to turn the lost satellite back on. “I’ve just realized that whatever we do, we won’t be able to see the photos the satellite sends us anywhere.”
    “Start-up will commence. Time estimated, three minutes
,” wrote the cursor on Carlos’ screen.
    “If it has digital pictures it can send us, how are we going to see them?” Carlos asked. “I don’t think this DOS screen is going to give us any color photos.”
    “I think you are right, but I know what will,” Lee Wang answered, and he was gone.
    “Main directory online,”
wrote the cursor, and suddenly Carlos knew what this lost satellite was designed to do. There were several sections on the directory:
     
    A. Continuous Feed Photo Display
    B. Communication Feed-in
    C. Communication Feed Memory Read-out
    D. Communication Bounce Angle
    E. Automated Setup for Bounce Feed
    F. Termination Sequence
    G. Deactivation
     
    It was something that shocked him to his core. In the 1970s, the Air Force had actually designed a satellite that could send down continuous photos of Earth, as well as be used as a communications bounce-off system. A signal could be sent to its memory and the computer in the satellite would find the longitude and latitude coordinates of where the sender wanted the message to be relayed, and it would then relay the message. Carlos suddenly figured out how he could set up nationwide communications. It was a shock that they had built this system so early and had never used it. The Air Force had just let it get lost and forgot about it when it went offline.
    Lee Wang came back with an old screen and the small computer it sat on. He began to put it together. “This is something that has been forgotten on the other side of the observatory and I think it is an original data-processing PC and terminal from the telescope from the early 1980s. This old piece of machinery was stored behind several more modern ones and I was surprised to find it. It is an Amiga PC computer sold by Commodore in 1985, the newer version of the old Commodore 64 and has better graphics. I studied this when I came over to America. This is the first computer I ever owned, and I pulled it apart and put it together several times. Unfortunately, it is not upgradeable.”
    “That’s Steve Crockett’s old computer,” acknowledged Carlos, “and I think one of the original terminals he must have used when they built this observatory. They must have transferred over to more modern