The Orthogonal Galaxy
Chapter 12

“Hello,Reyd,” said Kath cheerfully as she leaped through the door of the commonroom.

Reyd Eastman gave a start. “Kath. Joram. Glad you could finallymake it.” He frowned while looking athis watch. “Zimmer’s been asking for youguys for a while now.”

Joram’s eyes widened in concern. “What did he say, Reyd?”

“Something about replaceing some more reliable grad students to make historyby studying one of the most bizarre astronomical phenomena to occur in the lastcentury.” Reyd’s smirk gave away his practicaljoke.

Kath, who by now had approached to within armsdistance, slugged Reyd in the shoulder. “You need to practice your pokerface! By the way, why didn’t you ridedown with us?”

“Oh, I have an aunt who lives in Lake Elsinore,so I stayed at her place last night. Itbreaks up the drive nicely.”

The trio turned towards the door as they heard itfly open. Professor Zimmer marchedbriskly into the room. “Ah, Joram. Kath…Glad you could finally make it. I wasbeginning to wonder if I was going to have to replace some more reliable graduate students to makehistory by studying one of the most bizarre astronomical phenomena to occur inthe last century.”

With jaws dropped, Kath and Joram turned quicklyto Reyd, who could only shrug his shoulders with as much surprise as they. Did Zimmer overhear their conversation?

“Just kidding, you two,” smiled the professor.

“Professor, you seem rather chipper thisevening,” Kath observed.

“Ah, that’s because I have just heard some greatnews, Kath!”

“What’s that?”

“I received a call from Dr. Gilroy atJohnson. An observatory has yielded anencouraging piece of evidence. Itappears that our Martian astronauts are…” Zimmer paused for effect and thenlowered his voice to a whisper, which was betrayed by the twinkle in his eye,“…alive!”

Kath let out a screech, Reyd sighed with muchrelief, and Joram applauded.

“How did they discover that, Professor?” askedJoram eagerly.

“Turns out that they left a message with some ofthe rubbish: S.O.S, it spells. They were able to trace two sets offootprints leading to the opening where they were able to lay out the letterswith a series of beams to make the three block letters needed.”

“Professor, I saw the destruction,” pointed outReyd. “There was nothing leftstanding. How could they survive that?”

“Apparently, the last communication that we hadwith the astronauts occurred while they were in the bunker—deep underground. They were supposed to be ontheir way to a maintenance task, but they had forgotten a set of tools in thebunker.”

Kath breathed deeply. “What a stroke of luck… what a miracle!”

Changing conversation abruptly, Zimmer announced,“Now, I must inform you that I will not be able to assist your efforts in theobservatory tonight. I must attend ameeting of some urgency. You three willhave to proceed on your own. You havethe information from our meeting on campus earlier this week, correct?”

The three nodded their heads as Zimmer eyed histhree students for their affirmative response. “Good!” he said clapping his hands. “You may proceed to the observatory to begin your preparations for theevening.”

Zimmer left the room, closing the door behind himwith a pace that was quicker than his entrance.

“I wonder what that was all about,” Kath musedwith her hands on her hips.

“Dunno. But let’s go make history!” Joram directed with excitement. This was the team’s first trip back toPalomar, and he had been eager to continue exploring ever since they returnedback to the university.

…

The trio of graduate students huddled around themain control panel of the observatory. For the first couple of hours, the team organized themselves as best asthey could without their mentor. Theypoured over the data that had been collected from the resident astronomers, aswell as that of other observatories around the globe.

First looking at optical data collected fromtheir very own 26” telescope, they were able to conclude that the brightness ofthe yellow beam was growing steadily in intensity. In the past week, the apparent magnitude ofthe beam had gone from a barely visible 6.3 when it was first detected to itspresent 1.3, making it as bright as some of the brightest stars in thesky. They had been able to calculatethat the beam was about 120 miles wide and passed by Mars at a minimum distanceof 12,500 miles—a near miss in astronomical terms—and that the line wasperfectly parallel to the plane of the Milky Way. This was a significant contribution, andallayed much of the tension and concern surrounding the beam.

There were still many lay people who were swayedby the media to conclude that it had to be an alien spaceship, but thescientific community had concluded convincingly that this was very likely agalactic phenomenon, because of its orientation to the plane. Nevertheless, in the back of everyone’s mindwas the fact that some radiation event began exactly in the direction of thebeam, and that it was detectable from Earth, from the Sun, and on Mars aroundthe same point in time—evidence, say the visionaries that it must have been aspace craft emitting the radiation as it passed by at very high speeds—perhapseven nearing the speed of light—and that the trail left behind was simply theexhaust of the passing UFO.

Reyd was the first to broach the subject. “You know what the media is saying don’tyou?”

Kath shivered at the allusion. “It’s easy for them to spew off irrelevanttheories. It’s harder for me toscientifically study this phenomenon with the thought that just maybe I don’twant to discover what the source of it is.”

“Oh, Kath,” rebutted Reyd. “It would be a marvelous discovery to learnof extra-terrestrial intelligence. Youknow Zimmer has been eager in this subject for some time.”

“What, the parallel earth?”

“Sure, I mean, what comes with a parallel earth?” Reyd paused too short for either of his peersto craft an answer. “Parallelbeings! That’s what comes from aparallel earth!”

“But if that was a spaceship, then we have noparallel. And if the conspiracytheorists are right, our solar system just got buzzed by some alien shipscouting out our neighborhood. And lookat the damage which that one ship caused on Camp Mars. Now that the scout has buzzed us, the rest ofthe troops will move in and take over. It could be the end of us, Reyd. I don’t want to discover our Armageddon.”

“Kath, you worry too much.” Changing subjects Reyd asked her, “So what isyour theory, then? What is thatthing?” Reyd pointed to the screen wheresome of the latest images of the beam twinkled mysteriously.

“I… I don’t know.”

“Jor. Whatdo you think?” Reyd turned to his othercolleague.

“Wha? Huh?” Joram had completely missedthe conversation as he scoured the data.

“Could this be a UFO, Joram?”

“UFO? C’mon, Reyd,” Joram snorted. “You need to pay more attention to the data,and less attention to the media.”

Quickly changing the subject back to theirresearch, Joram announced, “There is no telling how long this thing is. I mean, it could be several light-yearslong.”

“What?” Reyd and Kath synchronized their stunned response.

“Why is that so surprising?” Joram turned awayfrom the monitor to look at his colleagues. “Just because we’ve only seen measurable effects from our inner SolarSystem… don’t think that the thing is local to us. Where does the beam begin? And where does it end?”

After a pause, Reyd said, “Why don’t you tell us,Joram? You seem to be the authority onthe subject.”

“No,” Joram tried to avoid a confrontation. “I’m just like you two… trying to learn whatthe heck this is.”

“Sorry, Joram,” Reyd reined in hisaggressiveness. “So tell us. Why do you think it is so sizable?”

“Visual clues indicate that for at least 7000Astronomical Units in both directions, the beam has at least the same absolutemagnitude. Thus, I wonder how muchfarther the beam extends in both directions before it fades? But more importantly, what the heck iscausing such a phenomenon? It is sostrange.”

“It must be some jet of radiation, and if we canfigure out which way it is coming from, we can go back and replace the star thatis giving it off,” suggested Reyd.

“Which way do we go? We don’t really know which way itoriginated? Nor do we really know itsheading. We only know how far it is fromMars,” Joram responded.

“Well, we can figure out its heading if we getone or two more location points. Can wemeasure it against any other planets?” Kath asked. “If we can get some triangulated data, weshould be able to calculate its distance to other planets via parallax.”

Parallax is exactly what astronomers used tocalculate its distance from Mars. Bycollecting visual data from two different observatories, at extreme latitudes,they could see the relative difference in the two images. In an image shot from a North Americanobservatory, the beam would appear to be just South of the Martianequator. The opposite would be the casefor a South American observatory. SinceMars is relatively close enough to Earth to perform just such a calculation,scientists were able to observe that the beam passed by Mars at a distance ofjust 12,500 miles. This allowedastronomers to calculate that its distance from Earth was over 100 times asmuch at about 1.4 million miles.

Earth-based parallax—using points on oppositesides of the Earth—worked very well for replaceing distances when the measurementwas in the inner Solar System. But suchcalculations would be more difficult when trying to measure the distance of thebeam from, say, Neptune, or Jupiter. Instead, the team would need to use a point farther away from Earth.

As the team had mentioned this point, Reydsuggested, “The Kepler3 telescope! Amoon-orbiting telescope should enhance our parallax, don’t you think?”

“Um… we don’t exactly have access to Kepler3,”pointed out Kath.

“Actually, we sort of do!” said Reyd. This piqued Kath and Joram’s curiosity asthey shot a quick glance at each other. “Zimmer has access to the Kepler3 through his Parallel Earth team. I actually know a couple of the team members. If I explain our situation, I think we canget some help from the team.”

“Well, giddyup!” Kath said as she slapped Reyd onthe back.

With that, Reyd dialed his cell phone and engagedin a conversation with a fellow graduate student. Kath and Joram strained to follow at leasthalf of the conversation. Within acouple of phone calls, and a few minutes of precious observatory time, Reydhung up his phone and gave a thumbs up.

“Keelor Jefferies is gonna call me back in about10 minutes. He’s briefing the currentKepler3 astronomers. What we need toreplace are planets in the vicinity of the beam.”

Reyd sat down at the main control terminal anddialed up the database on the Solar System. Within one minute he had a space map depicting the current locations ofall of the planets.

“Boy, not too many are in good position. They’re either on the other side of the Sun,or they’re simply not close enough to the trajectory.”

“Yeah, we’re looking for a line like this,” Joramindicated as he drew an invisible line on the monitor with a pencil he found onthe console.

“Could Uranus work?” Kath said. “A bit far, but maybe we can get an imagewith the beam and Uranus together. I’mthinking that Saturn is a better choice, but it would be nice to have a thirdpoint along the line, so we can convince ourselves that we have the linecorrectly calculated.”

“What about some dwarf planets, Reyd?” asked Joram.

“Good question. Let me dial those into this map.”

As a handful of the larger dwarf planets appearedon the map, Joram pointed to a promising candidate. “Eris! Right there!”

“Good call, Jor!” Reyd congratulated. “I like thefact that we can replace a point farther out in the solar system, too, as thatwill give us two pretty distant points to more accurately project theline. Hey, wasn’t Eris discovered hereas well?”

“Yeah, I think you’re right,” said Kath. “That’s kind of cool... using Eris to help uswith another important discovery right here at Palomar.”

“Let’s get this thing pointed at Eris,” Reyd saidas he stood and proceeded towards the telescope platform. Joram and Kath followed, as both were eagerto see and learn the controls of the telescope. Reyd was the only member of the team to have previously been trained byZimmer on the telescope controls.

Within a few minutes, Reyd had the coordinatesdialed into the telescope, and it whizzed to its new location.

“Joram, do you remember enough of the console tobe able to feed back the quality of the image to me?”

“I think so.”

Joram descended from the telescope platform, andKath followed behind as Reyd’s cell phone rang.

“Keelor! Thanks for calling back… yeah… point that thing at Eris, would you… be sure to grab the exact coordinates fromPalomar-26. They’re currently dialed inexactly where we want, so you should be able to get them from theintranet… We’ll also need an image onSaturn… Just give us something with the beam, we can adjust the zoom of theimage to overlay with ours later… Yeah, I’ll bring up Kepler live on themonitor in just a moment… Hey, thanks man… this is really going to help us movethis effort forward… sure… I’ll give you a call tomorrow and let you know… Yeah, you too.”

When Reyd hung up, Joram announced, “Looks good,Reyd, but we can zoom in a little to get a better calculation from the image.”

“Sure thing… how’s that?” Reyd asked.

“Great. Come take a look.” Joramresponded. “We got really lucky withEris, because it has such an eccentric orbit.”

“How so?” asked Kath.

“It’s way out of the plane of the solar system,but it’s close to intercepting the plane right now, and the positioningcouldn’t be better to measure a second point along the line.”

Reyd rolled up his sleeve, and looked at hiswatch. 10:49 PM. There was still plenty of time in the eveningfor making some observations and calculations. For a couple of hours the students pointed the telescope at Eris andSaturn respectively, collecting images, comparing them to Kepler3, situatednearly a quarter million miles from Earth. With scientific calculators, computers, and plain old pencil and paper,the students worked out the various calculations based on parallax betweenPalomar-26 and Kepler3.

“Ok, there’s our line!” said Reyd after lookingat his watch. “2:12 AM! Where does the time go?”

He stood up and walked away from the console withboth hands behind his neck, working out some tightness in his neck andshoulders. He looked back to see Joramhuddled over the console, while Kath watched intently. She knew Joram Anderswellenough to know that hewas concerned with something.

“I think we need to rework these numbers,” heannounced.

“What do you mean?” asked Reyd. “We got three points, and they come darn nearto as straight of a line as can be expected.”

“But it’s not perfectly straight,” Joramanswered.

“Well, of course not… there will be some error inmeasurement, and perhaps some round-off error in our calculations.” Reyd returned to the console, agitated at hiscolleague’s perfectionism.

A look of deep intent and concern clouded Joram’sexpression. He drew his lips into atight line before blurting out, “Look, guys. Our so-called line bends in towards Saturn. Either we’ve calculated the distance toSaturn too close, or the distance to Eris too far.”

“Or,” Reyd suggested, “we don’t have a validmeasurement for the distance to Mars.”

“I think Mars is our reference point.” Joram shook his head. “It should be the one we can get closesttoo. Besides, several different teams ofprofessional astronomers all agree on the number. We’re just a trio of grad students. I’m guessing we’re more likely to bewrong. Let’s just rework the numbers.”

“Joram, that’ll take another hour!”

“It’ll be an hour well spent.”

Reyd disagreed, especially when he looked at hiswatch at 3:04 AM when a fresh stab at the calculations provided effectively thesame exact results.

“We need to go back to the drawing board and grabfresh images. Perhaps we botched thetime or coordinates of one of our shots.” Noticing that Reyd was displeased with this suggestion, he continued. “I’m sorry, Reyd. I just think that if we can’t nail this lineexactly down, then when we trace it back to replace its source, the margin oferror is going to cause us to miss the source of the beam altogether.”

“Ok, we still have tomorrow night to start ourtrace,” Reyd agreed.

Kath jumped in. “I agree with Joram. Besides,this is our research project, gentlemen. We’re not just in this for the weekend, but for the long haul. Let’s not forget that it could take anappreciable amount of our graduate education to solve this puzzle. We just need to be patient and careful withour work.”

With a fresh set of images, and a clean slate forcalculations, the team ended up with yet the same results.

“I can’t believe this,” said Reyd. “It’s 5:15, and we’re no farther than we werehours ago. Well, now we’re running outof nighttime to do anymore data collection for today.”

Joram didn’t hear Reyd’s tirade, but insteadcontinued to focus on the data. Just asReyd was about to storm out of the observatory, Joram called. “Reyd! Kath! I think I know what’shappening!”

“Whatcha got, Joram?” Kath was the first by hisside.

“It looks very close to a line, because it isvery close to a line, but it’s really an arc—an orbital arc.”

“An orbit!” exclaimed Reyd in disbelief. With a deprecating smile on his face, heasked skeptically. “What exactly wouldit be orbiting, Joram?”

Joram looked up at his colleagues. “It’s orbiting the Milky Way—in other words,it is orbiting our very own galactic core. It’s an orbital object, you guys!”

“Explain,” replied Reyd skeptically.

Joram retraced his calculations with hispartners. “Our solar system is 26000light years away from the galactic core, right? That’s a circumference greater than 1010 AstronomicalUnits. The distance from Mars to Eris isabout 100 AUs, so we’re talking a ratio of 1 to 108. Now, on my calculator, if I divide 360 by 108,and then multiply by 60 arc minutes and follow that with 60 arc seconds andthen by 1000 for milliarcseconds. We’relooking at a mere milliarcsecond. Thatsmall of an arc is always going to look like a line, but the deviation that Ihad pointed out matches perfectly with the arc that I just described.”

“So you think this thing is orbiting the galaxy?”Reyd wrinkled his brow as he let the concept settle.

“Yes.” Joram affirmed. “Definitely!”

Both heard a suppressed sob from behind them andturned to see a horrified Kath staggering backwards and growing very pale. Joram jumped out of his seat and raced to herand braced her by wrapping his arm around her waist.

“Kath, you’re not feeling well. What’s wrong?” Joram asked as Reyd arrived with a chair.

“Sit down, Kath,” instructed Reyd.

Her gaze was fixed towards the console, but theblankness of her expression was clear that she was focusing on some point muchfarther away… perhaps on the yellow beam itself.

Shaking her head vigorously, she came back to hersenses. “Guys, listen… this thing isgrowing brighter, isn’t it?”

“Well… yes… we do know that,” Reyd answered.

“Don’t you see? Maybe it’s not actually orbiting the galaxy. Maybe it’s emanating away from the galacticcore. It’s… it’s like a ripple. Throw a pebble in a pond, and the ripplecontinues outward, right?”

“Great point, Kath!” Joram said. “All this time, we were assuming that it wasa trail of some sort, but maybe it is some light coming from the center of thegalaxy.”

“Not just light, Joram! It’s carrying some sort of annihilatingradiation with it. Something powerful enoughto obliterate Camp Mars.”

“Not so, Kath.” Joram argued. “The beam is on the inside of Mars withrespect to the galactic core.”

“Joram… that’s just the visible ripple. There must be another invisible ripple aheadof it which is carrying the destructive force.” She looked up at the two men, each more concerned about her well-beingthan a beam of emanating radiation. Shepropelled herself out of the chair and raced to the monitors where a smatteringof the evening’s images were still available, each showing the glow of a yellowstreak.

“Guys, listen to me! You don’t get it, do you? That thing is heading… towards… Earth!”

Now it was the men’s turn to grow pale.

“Kath, are you suggesting what I think you’resuggesting?” The dawn of realization wassetting in for Joram Anders.

“The thing is going to destroy half of the Earth,leveling every building it hits, and crushing every living thing. They’ll be the lucky ones, because they’llnot even know what hit them. Theinhabitants on the other side, however, will not be so lucky. On land, we’ll see a dust storm just like wesaw on Mars. It will block out the Sun’srays for weeks, plummeting temperatures to inhospitable levels and freezingcrops worldwide. On sea, it will wretchsea water miles into the air. Gravitywill force trillions of tons of moisture back into the oceans, creating globaltsunamis that will wash every coastal area on the planet into the depths of theoceans.”

Kath’s voice trailed off into sobs. Joram and Reyd stood rooted to the spot inhorror of Kath’s scenario.

“The astronauts,” Joram pointed out. “They lived by going underground.”

“Sure, you can come back out of your hole in a fewweeks, but what are you going to eat. How will you keep from freezing in the severely global winter. There will be no survival.” Kath was devastated.

“Scientists for a long time have known there arecycles of mass extinction.” Reyd pointedout. “Could this be some cyclicradiation event coming from the black hole that forms the center of ourgalaxy? Perhaps so much energy getssucked into it that the black hole must eventually belch out a burst of violentenergy… kind of like a geyser bursts out water to relieve it of the pressurebuild-up of super-heated water and gasses.”

Trembling violently, Kath pulled a cell phone outof her purse and began to dial.

“Who you calling?” Reyd asked as color continuedto flush from his face.

“Zimmer.”

“You have Zimmer’s cell phone number?” Reyd was impressed.

“It’s on caller ID from when he called us thatfirst evening, remember?”

“But didn’t he say he had something more urgentto attend to.”

Kath’s jaw dropped as she threw up her hands indespair and shot an irritating and disgusting glare at her peer. “Urgent?! More urgent?! You id—

“Professor Zimmer. This is Kath Mirabelle.”

…

Carlton Zimmer was escorted into a conferenceroom by Dr. Vurim Gilroy at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. Gilroy had convened an investigative taskforce for the emergency mission that would be required to rescue the astronautswhose life support system was being quickly depleted.

“Carlton, thanks so much forcoming back soquickly.”

“Well, I’m glad to assist in any way I can,Vurim.”

Dispensing with pleasantries, the NASA programmanager got right to business. “Sincewe’ve already lost one astronaut this week due to the bizarre phenomenon, we’dhighly value your input as to what we’re up against. I know that you’ve told us that you reallyhaven’t yet figured out what we’re dealing with, but you are still the mostknowledgeable, and your opinions will be highly respected among the entire teamI’m sure.

“Carlton, we don’t want to lose Boronov andO’Ryan, but we’ll be in even hotter water if we lose the rescue crew. They’ll be completely vulnerable up there inthe unprotected expanses of space.”

Zimmer paused for a moment. “Vurim, you’re not suggesting that we mightleave those astronauts up there are you?”

“No—at least not at the moment—but we need toconsider all of the risks.”

“If you go to the American public and tell themthat you do not intend to at least attempt to save the astronauts, there willbe outrage.”

“The rest of the team will be here in 15 minutesCarlton. Let’s lay everything on thetable then. You’ll recognize most of themembers of the team from our last meeting. However, the director of NASA will also be in attendance. This thing is out of my hands, Carlton. The ultimate decision will come fromWashington.

“Can I get you anything to drink?”

“A bottle of water will be fine, thank you.”

Gilroy left Zimmer in the quiet conference roomto gather his thoughts while he went to collect a bottle of water for hisguest, but within a couple of minutes, others began to convene in theconference room. Zimmer rememberedeveryone from the last time he was at Johnson, although he did not recall mostof their names. The atmosphere wasslightly more relaxed this time, considering that the team at least knew thattwo of the astronauts were still alive.

As Gilroy returned to the room, he not only had abottle of water with him but also a man Zimmer immediately recognized as thedirector of NASA. He was attired in adark suit, blue tie, and black wingtip shoes. He was the very appearance of diplomacy and policy making, and Zimmerwas sure to not appreciate his presence at the meeting, simply because thesewere the types of people so far removed from scientific discovery andunderstanding, yet they were also very crucial in its funding.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, I’d like to introduce allof you to Dr. Marrak Henley, the director of NASA.” He then went around the table introducingeach team member to the director.

The meeting began at 1:35 AM. There was a general briefing on thesituation, and all known data points were provided. After a 40-minute overview, Gilroy led theteam in a frank discussion about a rescue mission. Launch windows were mentioned and astronautavailability determined. It wasgenerally agreed by all that rescuing the astronauts was extremely feasible,and that well-studied emergency plans were already in place for just such arescue. Through the ninety minutes,Zimmer had been quiet, yet attentive to the discussion that he thought may bewrapping up, when Henley turned towards the astrophysicist.

“Dr. Zimmer, we’ve been hearing much from themedia, from the scientific community about this yellow beam. We’ve heard enough to believe that it isdirectly linked to the Camp Mars disaster as well as to the loss of AymanHardy. When our rescuers get up into thecompletely unsheltered expanse of space between Earth and Mars, how can we becertain that another event does not cause the loss of more astronauts andresources?”

“Well that is the question of the day,right?” Zimmer stood from his seat tocreate a position of strength. He beganwalking slowly along the length of the table. “I mean, if we can answer that question, it will help us determineconclusively whether the benefit of the mission is worth the potentialrisks. We do not know what the yellowbeam is, and we have not proved that it is related to the destruction of CampMars. However, it is highly reasonableto assume that it is. I can’t give youmy word that this thing will not again attack our inner Solar System, but hereare my thoughts about making the decision to save the astronauts. First, America will expect—perhaps demand—aneffort. If it fails, will they blameyou? Certainly. If you don’t make the effort, will they blameyou? Definitely. There are always risks involved in mannedspace exploration, but you have devoted astronauts who are determined in thiseffort in spite of those risks.

“My guess is that you already have enough astronautswilling to make the effort that you could fill three or four teams ofrescuers. They will gladly risk theirlives to make the attempt. If you don’tgive them the chance, they will always live with the decision to allow CampMars to become Graveyard Mars. Theywon’t be able to sleep at night, and I’m hoping that you wouldn’t be able tosleep either if you make the decision to not go.”

“Fair enough,” said Henley without emotion. “I appreciate your candor and your opinion,Professor. I was already mostly off thefence in favor of the mission. Yourinsight helps convince me that we will go. Dr. Gilroy, I will expect daily reports between now and launch nextThursday as to the status of the preparation of the vehicle and its crew.”

“Absolutely. I will have those daily reports to you by 5:00 PM central time.”

“Well, gentlemen. If that’s all…”

Zimmer was surprised at how easily Henley wasconvinced to run the mission. Emboldened, he added, “Vurim, if I may add just one more thing before weconclude, I know that our highest priority is the rescue of the astronauts, butI think you do yourself and NASA a disservice without looking ahead.”

“Looking ahead, Professor?” Gilroy’s eyesnarrowed in curiosity.

“If we cannot determine what this beam consistsof, we may never know what exactly it did to destroy the camp. The future of manned space exploration may bein jeopardy if we cannot comfortably comprehend the forces that can alter ourexploratory efforts.”

“What do you propose, professor?”

“Since we are sending a crew millions of milesaway to rescue the astronauts, why not spend an extra day or two on a side tripto study this phenomenon.”

“I do not feel comfortable with that idea,Professor,” announced Henley, as the team members once again took their seatsin realization of a drawn-out discussion. “You’re asking us to fly one of our ships into the beam that could bearhighly destructive forces. This needs toremain focused as a mission of rescue, not discovery.”

“I understand that Dr. Henley. I’m not suggesting that we fly into it, but Ibelieve we have some ruggedized probes that could be easily deployed from adistance in order to study the beam close up. Of course, the craft would keep a safe distance, and I realize that itwould come after the rescue. And… ifeither Boronov or O’Ryan are in physical or medical peril, we would scrap theexperiments, and rush them back home.”

“Define safe distance, Professor.” Henleycontinued to press. “Who would be ableto determine with any confidence how close we can get?”

“The ship would have to come no closer than italready is approaching. We’ll already bewithin 10000 miles of the beam according to our calculations. This is already a distance which is certainlycloser than desired, but the probes can be launched from the ship and traversethe remainder of the distance themselves.”

“Really, Professor,” dismissed the NASAdirector. “We simply cannot worry aboutexperiments when the lives of astronauts are at stake.”

“I understand your position, Dr. Henley, but Ithink it would be prudent to consider the future. If we can’t identify the beam—if we can’tunderstand the physical phenomenon that leveled Camp Mars, then we can nolonger feel comfortable with space exploration in general. We’ll always be too frightened of theunknown. For the future of NASA andscientific space exploration in general, we simply must figure out what thisthing is, and to do that, we’re going to have to visit it. It can’t hurt to add the probes to thepayload and spend an extra day in the orbit of Mars to get them dispensed.”

Dr. Henley weighed Zimmer’s arguments. If Zimmer was right, then public opinioncould sour on the mission of NASA, and that would put his own job in jeopardy.

Henley turned towards Gilroy. “Vurim, we have less than a week to organizethe rescue effort. Would we have time toconsider these experiments as well?”

“I would need more people, Joe. My team will be tasked 24/7 with the task ofgetting the rescue effort put together before then. But, if there was another team available whocould also work full throttle on the experimental payload, we might be able topull it off. Of course, we’d need yourhelp, Carlton.”

“You would have my full attention over the nextweek on any issues that come up. I needto return to my research team in California to collect the data andobservations that they have made over the weekend, and with that data, we willcomprise a set of experiments which should help us figure out what we’redealing with here.”

After a brief pause, Gilroy dismissed themeeting, and on the way out of the room, Zimmer felt a vibration in his coatpocket. He pulled out his cell phone,looked at the number, but did not instantly recognize it. “It’s 5:30 AM in California… who would be callingme at this hour.”

“Hello, this is Carlton Zimmer.”

Zimmer answered to hear a quavering, distraughtvoice on the other end. “ProfessorZimmer. This is Kath Mirabelle.”