Star warriors.

• Author: Barrett, Paul M.

Star Warriors.

Rod Hyde hates the Soviets. He fears they will take over the world. He jokes-- earnestly--about rearranging Soviet society with a few well-placed H-bombs. Pressed to explain his views, Hyde concedes that he doesn't "give a shit what [Soviet leaders] do to their own people,' or to anyone else, for that matter--as long as the Kremlin doesn't get in the way of his escaping from Earth in his own spaceship. "What I want more than anything is essentially to get the human race into space,' says Hyde. "After that, I don't worry about the Soviets anymore.'

This is no pimply ninth-grader, dreaming about blowing away the Klingons so that he can join forces with Captain Kirk and the Enterprise. At 31, Hyde is a senior scientist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, where in his spare time he designs sophisticated spacecraft. He earns his salary developing lasers for the Reagan administration's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) and is one of the subjects in William J. Broad's intriguing group portrait of this nation's youthful "star warriors.'*

* Star Warriors. William J. Broad. Simon & Schuster, $16.95.

Broad, a science reporter with The New York Times, paints with rough, impressionistic strokes. One can't help wondering whether he skipped the polishing stage altogether in order to get this short book out in time for summit season. He nevertheless succeeds in combining a comprehensible explanation of SDI with a lively diary of a week-long visit to the Livermore lab, one of the government's two main nuclear weapons design facilities.

Rod Hyde attracts Broad's attention not as an exceptional character but as a typical one. Livermore, according to Broad, is a sprawling fraternity of nerd-geniuses who never grew out of their fantasies. It's a world where the ice cream and Coca-Cola abound, where scraggly-bearded young men in blue jeans get to stay up all night working on ray guns. Broad cleverly illustrates how enthusiasm for beating up on the Soviets fits into a generally juvenile social setting--tough talk, no girls, incessant outings to Burger King. He also describes the SDI researchers' fierce desire to discover the darkest secrets of the atom, regardless of the consequences. Lurking in the background of this picture, watching over the chaotic activity, is Edward Teller, principal developer of the hydrogen bomb, founding father of Livermore, and influential advocate for strategic defense. By illuminating the attitudes and goals of the Livermore...