Nolan Orion stood in a quiet backstage greenroom, his hands clasped behind his back as he gazed out the window. In the dim light of dusk, he could see across the flat, Nigerian plain to a sprawling facility in the distance, consisting of thousands of towering steel pylons supporting enormous microwave collection panels. To its side was a huge, modern command-center building with a roof bristling with huge antennas and satellite-uplink dishes. Countless technicians and scientists were at work ins...