The Orthogonal Galaxy
Chapter 16

Carlton Zimmers’ research team stepped out of awhite shuttle van in a large parking lot. Zimmer looked more tired than ever, while the students looked likeenergetic, bright-eyed children on a field trip. Nonchalantly, Zimmer thanked the driver ofthe van and walked towards the adjacent building—an inauspicious off-whitestructure of four stories in height with no windows and only the identifyingnumber 30 placed high on its wall.

“Not much to look at, huh?” Reyd said, breakingthe silence.

“No, you’re not!” Kath shot back at her fellowstudent as she turned and slugged him on the shoulder for his irreverence atthis space exploration monument.

“It doesn’t have to be much to look at,” Joram rebutted. “Just think of the history, Reyd,”

Zimmer settled the squabble once and forall. “Would you all prefer to stand outhere and debate the architectural merits of Mission Control, or would you liketo go inside and get a closer look at our beam.”

Without a word, the three followed the professorinside the foyer of the building, where a tall middle-aged man was waiting withan outstretched hand.

“Dr. Zimmer.”

“Stan… so kind of you to meet us here.”

“It’s no problem, Professor.

“Students, this is Staneck Rodgers—missionspecialist for the Mars mission.” Zimmer introduced each of his students to theNASA engineer.

“I’m glad you all could come see themission. I, for one, have lost plenty ofsleep—mostly over the astronauts, you’ll understand—but also out of curiosityover this mysterious object. I reallyhope this mission will shed some light on its origin and makeup.”

Walking towards a security desk at the foyer,Stan proceeded with business. “I’ll needeach of you to sign your name and provide our security guard, with a set offingerprints.”

Reyd went first, and Kath remained close by tofollow after him. Joram lingered alittle behind in order to bend his ear towards the conversation ensuing betweenRodgers and Zimmer.

“No, professor,” Joram overheard Staneck as heshook his head. “There have been noanomalies with the mission. Everythingis going smoothly. We had a cleanseparation of the USL from the shuttle at 0913 hours this morning. In approximately 45 minutes, we should havepaddle separation. Data collectionshould begin within a few minutes of trajectory correction for each of thetwelve paddles.” Stan looked at hiswatch. “Things should start gettingbusy, and hopefully interesting, in about an hour or so.”

“And the astronauts, Stan?” inquired Zimmer witha concerned tone in his voice.

“No fresh evidence, Professor—” Stan answered asZimmer lowered and shook his head. “—butremember, they are simply following strict protocol to preserve the environmentin the bunker. Once they are awaitingrescue, they must remain locked inside, otherwise they compromise too muchoxygen.”

“Come on, Stan,” Zimmer protested. “Protocol or not, what would you do? Tell me that you wouldn’t come out duringEarth-sight with a field scope and look for a high-luminosity morsesignal. You would have to have nerves ofsteel to wait inside your Martian gravesite, not knowing if or when you weregoing to be rescued.”

“Astronauts are trained to follow everyinstruction, Professor.”

“Then why are we sending the signal, Stan? We have stations on three separate oceanicislands, constantly transmitting a night-time light source in morse code, sothat the astronauts know about the mission and its timeframe. If we thought they wouldn’t emerge, wewouldn’t send the signal.”

“The astronauts are never notified of theemergency communication signal. Theyhave no idea that such a procedure exists, simply because we don’t want totempt them to surface too often and squander their environment. The signal is only intended for them to seeunder dire circumstances.”

Zimmer laughed in ridicule. “So we tell our men to wait it out, but wesend a signal that they’re never supposed to see anyway. I just don’t understand these emergencyprocedures very well.”

“I’m sorry, Professor. Even I didn’t know about the emergency lightsignals. Until this had occurred, theywere highly classified. Remote islandswith no human contact were selected in the South Pacific, North Atlantic, andIndian Oceans. High-intensitysolar-powered light sources with remote satellite communication capabilitieswere set up and known only by a few top NASA personnel until they were turnedon. Even though these islands areridiculously remote in most cases, any airplane within a few thousand milescould see the light shining way up into the atmosphere at nighttime. NASA had to declassify them with a formalpress release the moment they turned them on.”

“Did Gilroy know?”

“Yes, Professor.”

Zimmer shook his head in disgust.

“Well I am glad that they declassified it, sothat every future astronaut in the inner solar system will know that he canstill receive communications from Earth. I just think it is atrocious to make those two men suffer the constantemotional stress of imagining death by slow suffocation in a lonely Martianchamber. To build into emergencyprocedures the knowledge that Martian astronauts in distress are to be left inthe dark—perhaps both figuratively and literally—I don’t think the public isgoing to be too happy with NASA once they realize—”

“All done, Professor,” Zimmer was too busyopining on the state of the astronauts that he entirely missed Kather’sappearance, nor did Kath realize until it was too late that she had interrupteda conversation in a rather tense moment.

“I’m sorry—we’ll just—just wait over here.” Kath stammered.

“No, no, Miss Mirabelle. Your timing is appropriate. Mr. Rodgers and I were just finishing ourconversation, and I know he has some pressing matters to look after.”

“My apologies, Professor. There really is nothing more we can do exceptget that shuttle down to Camp Mars as quickly as possible and return thoseastronauts to Earth. This is our toppriority, I assure you.”

“I am glad to hear it.” Then changing the subject, Zimmer proceeded,“Why don’t you show us to the control room, and we’ll let you get back togetting those astronauts back!” Hesmiled and gestured that there were no ill-feelings. Deep down, he did know that NASA was doingeverything they could to return the astronauts to safety.

Stan gestured to the group to follow him down along sterile hall awash with bright LED lighting from two contiguous rows oflights along the ceiling and another along each of the walls. At the end of the hall, he turned to hisright, and all followed him except for Joram Anders.

“Excuse me,” he called out.

The entire party halted and turned to Joram.

“Shouldn’t we be going that way?” indicating theopposite direction in which Rodgers was leading them.

Kath looked intently down Joram’s hall way, andthen back to Stan’s chosen hall. “JoramAnders, why on Earth would you suggest that? These halls look identical.”

“It’s just that the Mars mission control room isdown that way,” Joram stated matter-of-factly.

“What?” Reyd said rolling his eyes. In exasperation, he probed, “How would youpossibly know that?”

“I’ve been on the observation deck of the controlroom for the Mars mission.” Noticingthat all were still perplexed, he sighed and continued. “In high school, my family came to Houston tovisit relatives. They indulged me in atrip to the space center here, where a tour took us onto the observation deckof the Mars mission control. Perhaps thecontrol room has moved since then?”

“No, Joram,” said Stan with a smile. “The control room is still down there. By the way, I’m impressed that you rememberedthat little detail all of these years. There are no windows in here to retain any sense of direction.”

“Yeah… it’s odd that I remember. I guess I was just so enthralled by the visitthat I still remember it like yesterday.”

“Wow,” Stan exclaimed with genuineamazement. “Anyway that control room isdevoted to the current activities of the rescue mission. You will not be going down there rightnow. Instead, I’ll be taking you to adifferent control room, which is monitoring the remote controlling and datacollection of the unmanned mission to examine the beam.”

“Once the Unmanned Space Lab—or USL—left therescue vehicle, a set of engineers has been assigned to handling the activitiesof that mission down here. Follow me, Iwon’t lead you astray.”

With a smile, Stan turned and did not lead themastray, as promised. He opened a door toa control room, somewhat smaller than the Mars control room that Joram hadvisited during his adolescence. Therewere just two small rows of consoles on the main floor, and a smaller arenaencased with glass for civilian observation of the control operations.

Joram was surprised to notice that the room wasfairly full of individuals with visitor’s badges and laptop computers. As if noticing the question on Joram’s face,Stan spoke up.

“As you can see there are already a fair numberof individuals representing the press here,” Stan pointed out. “We do have four reserved front row seats foryour party, Dr. Zimmer.”

“Thank you so much for your generous hospitality,Stan.”

“Press?” asked Kath. “I’m actually surprised they are all hereinstead of monitoring the rescue mission down Joram’s preferred hall.” She cut Joram a playful glance, who returnedwith a feigned smile.

“Actually, the press will be thronging thecontrol room down there tomorrow when the rescue shuttle makes its descent andlanding outside of the Camp Mars crater.”

“Outside the crater?” asked Joram. “Why not land in the crater.”

“Well, the runway is useless, as it is litteredwith shards of solar panel debris. Theshuttle will have to make a somewhat risky vertical landing outside theentrance to the crater and then make their way to the bunker in the middle ofthe crater. With the landing in themorning, they should be able to recover the astronauts sometime by tomorrowafternoon, assuming they can replace a relatively unimpeded entrance to thebunker.”

“That should be easy, shouldn’t it?” askedKath. “We know that the astronauts hadalready surfaced after the disaster.”

“You are right, Kath,” answered Zimmer quickly,“but you’ll also recall that we didn’t get to see the state of the camp for acouple of weeks. It could be that thedevastation was not a single event, and that obstructions have since blockadedall entrances. For example, we have notseen the astronauts wander out since the dust has settled. As you know, there has been about as muchtabloid-generating drama by the media on both the astronauts and on thebeam. These individuals want to be thefirst to write up the scoop on the beam. I hope they don’t engender a sense of panic in their reporting of ourexperiments. We certainly don’t need orwant mass-scale fear or panic. Riots,looting, chaos.”

“Do you think it can get that bad, Professor?”Kath asked quietly.

“Not if I have anything to say about it. I have been trying to allay much of thepublic concern, and will continue to do so. Let us not worry about that now, and take our seats. The show is about to begin, Team.”

With that ending, Stan excused himself in orderto continue with flight operations for the rescue mission. Zimmer and students entered into theobservation room and took their seats with great anticipation for what wouldsoon unfold.

…

Conversation was light among the trio of researchstudents. The anxiety was apparent. Kath twirled her hair with her lefthand. Reyd nibbled on his fingernailsand cuticles. Joram, already at the edgeof his seat, gazed at the various monitor displays. A main central display showed a live image ofthe beam, representing the closest imagery ever obtained. On the right, there were six smaller displaysthat were presently black except for a caption at the bottom of each. “Paddle one.” “Paddle Two.” And so forth. On the left, a sea of data indicated thestatus of the mission. Finally, justbelow the central monitor, a thinner display contained a digital map indicatingthe locality of the USL with respect to the beam. The USL was represented as a needle-likeprojection with twelve red dots on top of it.

Joram noted that the map indicated that the USLwas beginning to decelerate as it neared the beam, with reverse thrusters fullyengaged. Soon, the USL would stop andlaunch its twelve research stations, called paddles, towards the beam.

“This is the Public Affairs Officer of MissionFlashlight,” the students heard a voice from speakers overhead.

Joram scanned the various stations of missioncontrol to replace the source of the voice. Silver placards were placed along a counter-top that ran the length ofboth rows. In all capital letters, theplacards spelled words and acronyms such as CONTROL, NETWORK, FIDO, GUIDO. Ah, there it was… PAO. In the middle of the second row of stations,Joram saw the bald spot on the back of the head of a silver-haired engineer whosat at the public affairs station. Thisis the man who would exclusively communicate all mission activities to thepress booth and anyone listening to the appropriate communication channelaround the country. He was currentlyengaged in conversation with a middle-aged woman with short blonde hair sittingin the front row, at a station labeled FLIGHT. She nodded her head to the PAO, and then spoke into a headset as shereturned her gaze forward, looking at the data scrolling by.

“The FLIGHT officer has noted an ETA of justunder 4 minutes, 30 seconds. PAYLOAD ispowering up and confirming the status of each paddle. Power-on-self-test should complete in approximately6 minutes. So far, all systems are a‘go’ on payload delivery.”

“Well, team,” Zimmer whispered as he glanced overat his wide-eyed astronomy students. “This is where I get off.”

Eyes growing wider, the Professor explained. “I’ll be spending the rest of the missiondown there.” Zimmer indicated an emptychair at the FLIGHT station, next to the blonde, who was now standing andrelaying instructions to somebody seated at the NETWORK station at the otherend of her row. “NASA has asked me toprovide real-time decisions in light of data received from the paddles.” He paused briefly and took a deep breath inrealization. “The next time I see you,we’ll have lots to talk about. Take goodnotes on every idea that comes to you, and enjoy the show.”

At that, all three students watched the professoropen the door and leave them for the more spacious and hectic atmosphere ofmission control. Seating himselfquietly, he greeted the engineers around him, promptly put on a headset, andsat back in his chair, while others around him maintained their efforts.

The PAO announced the next milestone in themission. “FLIGHT informs me that the labhas obtained resting velocity and has turned over main mission operation toPAYLOAD. Payload chamber doors aresequencing. NETWORK is providingreal-time imagery of the hatch for mechanical observation.”

The main monitor no longer showed the growingbrightness of the yellow beam, but instead changed its view to a camera lookingstraight down on top of the USL. A longrectangular chamber was coming to view as curved doors slid underneath the cylindricalbody of the vehicle. Within moments, thedoors were fully open, and the inside of the chamber depicted its payload of adozen three-foot round iridescent objects each sitting at a 45-degree anglewith the doors of the chamber.

These paddles were loaded with observational andtelecommunication equipment. Cameras,sensors, and on-board laboratory equipment would be able to instantly detect,measure and determine the impact of material and radiation. Tens of thousands of sensors made up thearray of each paddle, which would be able to communicate the pattern of anymaterial being emitted by the beam.

“Launching paddle number one.”

The forward-most paddle began to lift seamlesslyfrom the chamber. Once the round diskhad emerged, a long shaft used for steering and guiding the paddle indicatedexactly why the term ‘paddle’ had been used for the objects. It resembled a holographic video disk on asilver Popsicle stick. The paddlecleared the payload bay, rotated, and straightened, yielding a burst of colorreflected from the Sun.

“Paddle one is heading for rendezvous on the farside of the beam as paddle two begins launch.”

One at a time, the first six paddles were eachsuccessively launched in this manner, and the trajectories, marked by six reddots on the map display, began their journey towards the beam. Monitors for paddles one through six alsobegan to convey statistics and images from each of the paddles. They approached the beam in a precalculatedmanner, such that all six pointed directly towards the beam in sixty degreeintervals, thus allowing a full study of the beam on all of its sides.

Complete silence from inside the observation deckas well as from the PAO indicated growing tension and curiosity. Activity from the control floor bustled as aflurry of directions were passed back and forth from CONTROL, NETWORK, andPAYLOAD. Zimmer—still reclined in hisseat—appeared to be the only relaxed individual in the front row, but Joramcould see enough of his face to note that he was devotedly attentive to thedata as it came across the various monitors and displays.

The paddles all appeared to be in position, andafter a nearly unbearable silence, the team began to wonder why the missionseemed to be on pause. The PAO appeasedtheir doubts, “Paddles are now in position for deployment into the beam, but FLIGHThas recommended a delay for delivery of sensory data. Deployment into beam is estimated at fourteenminutes.”

While the students felt that they couldn’t bareanother moment of anticipation, the more-experienced Zimmer knew that patienceand data collection was needed at the moment. It would be inexcusable to compromise the mission after millions ofdollars had been spent on it should a hasty judgment jeopardize the entireeffort. Further, Zimmer knew that theworld had already waited for weeks to obtain answers. Another fourteen minutes would not break thebank.

Insilence, the students waited anxiously. Kath had to place a steadying hand on Joram’s knee to remind him torelax once and then twice. On the thirdattempt, Joram turned and whispered, “Sorry, Kath, but the suspense is killingme. What are they waiting for?”

Kath only shrugged, but Reyd, seated on the otherside of her leaned across her and breathed an explanation. “Zimmer is a very deliberate person. He never makes hasty decisions, but weighsall of the data first. You won’t have towork with him too long to realize this.”

“The NETWORK officer advises the team that thepaddles are all in good health, and that no extraordinary sensory informationhas been obtained by any of them. FLIGHTadvises that the mission proceed ahead. The mission has calculated that the paddles are presently located 25kilometers or 15 miles away from visible extent of the beam, and that theminimum diameter of the beam is calculated at about 12000 kilometers or alittle less than 7,500 miles. CONTROL isadvised to begin coordinated acceleration of the paddles up to 1 kilometer perminute, which is a little over 35 miles per hour.”

The map began to indicate the movement of the sixpaddles towards each other as they closed in on the beam. Joram fixed his focus on the six displays ofthe paddle’s cameras, which were pointed directly toward the beam. Each image simply contained a bright yellowlight with very little form or shape to it. There was a flickering of intensity and it appeared that the light leaptall around, as though a million fireflies were densely packed together in aglass jar placed in the blackness of outer space.

Superimposed on the bottom right of each imagewere two vertical bars with gradient shading from blue at the top to red at thebottom. One labeled ‘light intensity’had about a third of the meter filled with red. The other bar was labeled ‘particle density’. It had just a hint of red for each of thepaddles. On the bottom left, he saw apair of numbers indicate the speed of the paddle and its distance to the centerof the beam. He watched as the paddlesaccelerated from 20 to 30 to 40 and eventually to 58 km/h. He also saw the distance decrease from 12,050km… 12,010 km… 11,080 km.

As the distance decreased, he noticed that thelight intensity was increasing uniformly for each paddle. He leaned forward and furiously scribblednotes on his Digital Note Tablet, stopping mid-sentence as a cold shiver passedthrough his spine. His head whipped upto look at Zimmer, only to replace an empty chair. Furiously, his eyes raced through the control room to replace his mentor,and spotted him standing on the right hand side of the front row, scanning thepaddle imagery and data. His head slowlyturned back to the observation room, where he could just make out the wide-eyedstare of Joram Anders. Zimmer gave asingle and nearly imperceptible nod of recognition. Teacher and pupil were in sync with the same discovery.

Kath noticed the exchange. “What’s wrong?” she implored.

Joram looked behind him to notice the throng ofmedia and realized the need for discretion. He raised a finger to indicate that he needed a moment and returned tohis tablet in order to finish his observation and conclusion. With an exclamation mark, he handed his notesover for Kath and Reyd to read.

“1912 hours. Paddles reach visible extent of beam at a distance of 12000 km fromcenter of beam. Light intensity isuniform at all six positions around the beam, and yet paddle 2 is on the sunnyside of beam, while paddle 5 is on opposite side of beam from sun. Conclusion: beam does not reflect sunlight… it generates light from within!”

After reading Joram’s notes and understanding themagnitude of this discovery, Kath and Reyd looked back up to the displays and noticedthat indeed, all of the live camera images from each of the six paddles had thesame intensity of yellow flickering light. The predominant theory was that the beam was just the tail of a comet reflectinga large density of ice or rock chunks, but discovering the brightness of thebeam on its side opposite of the Sun proved that this clearly could not be thecase.

The thoughts of the students were broken by anannouncement from the public affairs officer. “Paddles are communicating a slight radiation increase as they begin toenter the visible extent of the beam. Some sensors are detecting impacts of small quantities ofhighly-quantized positively-charged particles. Mission specialists indicate that extremely small masses indicate a veryfine dust of atomic-sized materials.”

Joram watched the paddles and noticed that the‘particle density’ bars were showing more red now, and that the red was slowlybeginning to fill the bars of each paddle, at which he noticed the image of oneof the paddles—paddle three, to be precise—went black.

“NETWORK indicates a sudden communication failurewith paddle three. They are seeking toreengage the paddle via commands to the Unmanned Space Lab.”

After a lengthy pause, the commentary continued,“NETWORK is currently studying whether a radiation spike inside of the beam mayhave caused the failure, but… we have… yes… NETWORK confirms outage in paddlesone and four. A significant andunanticipated communication breach has occurred now with three… four paddles,as paddle two has also lost comm with the USL. Paddles five and six are now spiking heavily with impact sensory data,as they receive as much as 12000 fine-particle impacts per second. CONTROL is beginning to rotate direction ofpaddles five and six to reduce the amount of direct impact density in casesignificant and irreparable damage has been incurred…”

The voice trailed off shortly after the remainingtwo images went black. Joram noticedthat all six red dots that had submerged into the beam had disappearedcompletely from the map. By allindicators, the beam had simply eaten up all six paddles.

Reyd placed his head in his hands, while Kath’strembling right hand was covering her mouth firmly. Joram looked to the control room floor, whereZimmer was observed relaying orders into his headset while fixing his stare onthe monitor at his station. He stood up,dropped his headset down onto the station, and paced to the back of the controlroom, where he attempted to gain a better big picture of what little dataremained on the wall in front of him.

“Mission control confirms the loss ofcommunication with all six paddles. NETWORK is attempting to reestablish comm, but the team assumes a totalloss of paddles to an unknown failure.”

…

“Communication scrambling, perhaps?”

“Please elaborate, Mr. Eastman.”

“Well, Professor, I was just thinking thatperhaps once the paddles penetrated the outer sheath of the beam that theradiation emission of the beam superimposed on the communication signal wouldcause the signal to scramble sufficiently to lose complete comm.”

“Hmmm… I’m not sure, Mr. Eastman. Recall that we sent paddles four and five tothe opposite side of the beam from where the USL was, and the communicationsignal apparently was able to arrive unimpeded even though those signals had togo directly through the beam.”

“I suspect radiation damage,” Kathannounced. “The paddle detectedradiation, but could not identify it—similar to what happened here on Earth atTime Zero, right?”

“Could be, Miss Mirabelle. While the paddles are radiation-hardened, weare unable to test its ability to reject radiation that we have notidentified.”

Turning to Joram, Zimmer continued. “Mr. Anders, you’ve been quiet. What do you think?”

“Well, I don’t know, honestly, but since we’rebrainstorming, I’ll throw another idea out there. What about particle impact damage? I noticed that the impact density was peggedat about 68000 per second. I calculatedthat to be about 60 impacts per square inch per second.”

“But none of the paddles ever indicated anythinglarger than an atom.”

“You see, that’s where I’m confused. How can none of this matter coalesce intolarger bodies? What could possiblypulverize and energize this matter so greatly?”

“I don’t know, but this is all good data, Joram,”reminded Zimmer. “The media right now ishaving a field day over this. They’retransmitting articles to their editors on the failed mission, but they arewrong. We have some very great data thathas yielded some new understanding that we didn’t have before. The beam is actually emitting its own light,and not reflecting sunlight as previously believed. We know that the beam physically consists ofhighly-quantized atomic particles. And…we still have six paddles to go.”

“How is that going to help us, Professor?” Kathasked sincerely. “The first six weregobbled up by the beam. Won’t the nextsix meet a similar fate?”

“Perhaps, but we now know how to maximize ourodds for utilizing the last six better. In case we did experience radiation or particle damage, we will injectthe paddles in parallel to the direction of the beam, instead of letting themapproach in a perpendicular fashion.”

“How will that help?” Kath inquired.

“It’s like when you were a kid and stuck yourhand out of the car as it was moving. When you placed it perpendicular to the flow of the air, it met greatresistance, right? But when you turnedyour hand 90 degrees the force of the wind subsided. We’re going to hope that we can avoid the‘wind’ of the beam by injecting the next three paddles in a parallel fashion.”

“Three paddles?” asked Joram.

“We started with twelve, and now we’re down tojust six. I don’t want to spend them allon one remaining experiment. Instead ofspreading six paddles out in 60 degree increments, we’ll place three of them in120 degree slots instead, and then if we need to we’ll have a third shot atdata collection with the final three paddles.

“Also, we’re going to take it much slower now aswe penetrate the visible extent. We weregoing faster than we knew we should when we hit the border at 60 kilometers perhour. So… by changing direction andslowing the speed, we’ll keep our fingers crossed for some better results.”

Zimmer scanned the faces of his three graduatestudents, probing for visual clues as to their thoughts. “Anything else you’d like to discuss beforewe go back to the control room, Team?”

Kath shook her head and Joram shrugged, but Reyddid have one more question to ask. “Professor, so far you’ve been listening to a lot of our hair-brainedideas, but you haven’t shared your thoughts on this. What do you think we’re dealing with?”

Zimmer gave a deep sigh and measured how he wouldanswer the question. His answer wasuninspiring. “I think we’re looking atthe tail of a comet.”

“But the tail is potentially light years inlength, and it gives off light even weeks after the comet passed by,” Reydrebutted.

“Mr. Eastman, you asked me what I thought. I gave you an answer. I honestly believe that we are looking at thetail of a comet, but an exotic one tobe sure.”

“Exotic?” asked Joram, seeking furtherclarification.

“If I could describe it with greater clarity, Mr.Anders, I would do so. We don’t have allof the answers yet. We need the paddlesto stay in the beam long enough to transmit back to us the material makeup ofthe beam. Then, we might be able toformulate sowme decent theories.”

“Professor, do you believe the comet isresponsible for the destruction on Mars?” asked Kath. “The beam occurred a few days after thedamage. Did we really miss seeing it forthat long?”

“It could be that the tail was there all along,but that for some reason, the matter didn’t start illuminating until it reacheda particular state. We know that thelight is starting to fade out… it may have also faded in. I know that doesn’t adequately answer yourquestion, but again, the only word I have to describe it now is exotic. Any other questions?”

The three looked at each other and at ProfessorZimmer, but they knew that for all of the questions that could be asked, theanswers just weren’t there yet. Wellunderstood—and yet unspoken—wasone simple fact: if paddles number seventhrough twelve did not perform adequately, those questions may never beanswered.

As the quartet were left to their thoughts andconcerns, the door to the conference room opened up. Dr. Gilroy stepped through with Stan Rodgers.

Gilroy bounded towards Zimmer with anoutstretched hand. “Dr. Zimmer, it’s great to see you again.”

“Thank you for opening up your marvelous facilityto my research team, Dr. Gilroy.”

Gilroy nodded in recognition of the trio ofstudents who stood at attention across the table. “I’m sorry that the mission didn’t go better,Carlton.”

“Actually, I think it went very well, Vurim.”

“But you lost the paddles.”

“We lost half of the paddles, and we gained a fewmore pieces of the puzzle, and we have confidence that we’ll get even more by abetter-informed application of the next paddles.”

“So you have a plan of attack for continuing themission?”

“Indeed.”

“When would you like to start back up,Professor?”

“As soon as possible.”

Gilroy turned to his mission specialist. “Stan, can you please round up the Flashlightteam? It looks like we’re back inbusiness.”

“Shall we inform the press as well, Doctor?”

Zimmer burst in. “No! I’d prefer that the presswere not involved in the next phase of the mission. Besides, they got their story, and there isno need to waste their time should that story not be enhanced. If there is much to write home about afterthe show is over, we can hold a press conference.”

Gilroy weighed this request for severalmoments. All eyes rested on him. “Stan, gather the team into the control room…but do not make an announcement to the press.”

“Thank you, Vurim,” Zimmer spoke with relieved andgracious tones.

“You realize, Carlton that this is highlyunorthodox. We rely on a fairlycomplicated relationship with the press and their interaction in Washington.”

“They’ll forgive us if we have anything juicy toshare with them, and if not, they won’t care anyway.”

Gilroy turned towards the exit as the door slowlyswung shut behind Stan. “Good luck,Carlton. We really need to solve thismystery for the sake of the entire space program.”

“We’ll do our best, Vurim.”

…

Three red dots came to rest at the end of curvedlines indicating their trajectories on the map. They flanked the yellow line, indicating their position to descend intothe territory from which six prior dots never emerged.

The setting felt very familiar to Joram, as hesat in the same seat of the observation room monitoring the yellow images beingtransmitted back from the paddles. Butthere were a few differences. Now there were only three images now instead ofsix, the observation room was vacated of the presence of the media, and severalnew control team members occupied seats on the control room floor—the othershaving been dismissed sometime before 11:50 PM, when the CalTech team reenteredthe control room.

In the pre-mission activity, Joram kept a closeeye on Zimmer, who was wandering from station to station, communicating withthe NETWORK, GUIDANCE, and FLIGHT team members. Joram also noticed the absence of the PAO, who was dismissed since themedia was not invited to this second round of mission activity. The grad students all knew that this meantthere would be no play-by-play commentary in the observation room. Instead, they would have to take fastidiousnotes on visual clues only and draw their own conclusions as to how the missionwas proceeding.

“GUIDO, please continue with synchronization ofacceleration at 00:15 hours local time,” Professor Zimmer spoke into hisheadset after sitting in his chair at the FLIGHT station. A digitally projected clock in the upperleft-hand corner of the mission display wall currently showed the time as 12:12AM central time. A similar displaynearby read 1 day, 14 hours, 59 minutes, and 7 seconds indicating the start ofthe Flashlight Mission as indicated by the separation of the Unmanned Space Labfrom the rescue vehicle the day before.

GUIDO, the commonly applied name for the guidanceofficer responded to the command. “Roger that FLIGHT command. GUIDANCE is confirming a unified start-uppattern at 00:15 hours with paddles seven, eight, and nine ramping up to 30km/h for 12 minutes, at which time all three units will uniformly decelerate to18 km/h as they penetrate beam boundary. Paddles are already rotated for parallel immersion into beam in order tominimize impact of particles as previously discussed.”

Satisfied with the response from GUIDANCE, Zimmerchecked in on the other teams as well. “NETWORK, please commence impact and radiation detection and assessmentin T minus 5 minutes,”

“Roger that, Professor!”

“Now we cross our fingers and wait,” Zimmerbreathed to his companion at the FLIGHT station after switching off hisheadset. The quiet of the room induced atension that the graduate students were already growing accustomed to. Kath twirled her long hair. Reyd took deep breaths and tried to relaxwith his hands locked behind his head. Joram’s hand was trembling as it waved over his note tablet.

After fifteen minutes of anticipation, the reddots were slowing down, when particle impact began. The paddles penetrated into the beam and datarushed across the monitors. Deeper intothe beam they went. Zimmer heaved a sighas the paddles were observed communicating even as they passed the point of noreturn for the first six paddles. Joram,Kath, and Reyd gave each other knowing glances and slight nods of the heads toindicate that Zimmer was dead-on in his suggestions to rotate the paddles awayfrom the beam’s direction of travel and to penetrate more slowly than before.

“CONTROL observing rotational acceleration inpaddle number nine, currently at 0.65 degrees out of intended plane ofdescent. Paddles seven and eight holdingat zero degrees. Attemptingcounter-active maneuvers to restore paddle nine to a zero degree rotation.”

Zimmer responded quickly, “CONTROL, we’re gonnahave a very difficult time maintaining location of these paddles if we have tocontrol them with a twenty-minute lag of communication. Please program all three paddles forcoordinated automatic calibration.”

After a brief pause, “Um… FLIGHT, we don’t seeautomatic calibration as a feature on the paddles.”

Zimmer flipped rapidly through a binder on hisdesk as he responded, “It’s in the requirements document, CONTROL… section4.23.3.”

It was CONTROL’s turn to flip through a binder attheir station. “FLIGHT, we arecross-referencing section 4.23.3. Pleaseconfirm.”

“4.23.3 confirmed.”

“FLIGHT, requirement 4.23.3 was opted out of theretrofit of the paddles according to our docs.”

“What?” Zimmer stood up and glared at the CONTROLstation behind him. “Are you sure that4.23.3 was not implemented?”

“Yes, sir. It says here in section 4.23.3, ‘Requirementdenied. Budget overrun.’ Command has been sent to back-thrust on rollwhich is now at 0.83 degrees. CONTROL isalso noticing additional yaw of the paddle in the down-stream direction of thebeam. Command has been sent to correctfor yaw once roll is… Um… accelerationof paddle nine down-stream is greater than anticipated… rotational accelerationincreasing roll to 1.77 degrees… make that 2.16…”

Zimmer put his head in his hand as he saw thewriting on the wall. At the speed oflight, control signals from Houston, Texas would take ten minutes to reach thepaddle. By that time, the paddle wouldbe erratically out of control, and its yaw, roll—and perhaps pitch—would begrossly out of the reach of the CONTROL officer to correct. Paddle nine had effectively completed itsservice already.

“CONTROL reports a rapidly degrading roll andacceleration on the yaw… paddle nine now traveling at 85 km/h down-range… 113km/h. FLIGHT, CONTROL requests to abortpaddle nine from the flow of the beam in order to regain control. Particle impact at 27.5 degree roll is nowaccelerating the paddle rapidly down-range.”

Zimmer spoke calmly, “How do you propose to gaincontrol before the paddle is out of range of comm with the USL, CONTROL? You would first have to successfully controlthe yaw in order to point the paddle away from the beam and then accelerateaway from its center.”

Without responding to the original question, thevoice from the other headset continued, “Down-range acceleration at… at… four…no… six…” The voice trailed off as theimage and associated data for paddle nine went black.

“Did you see that red dot?” exclaimed Kath insidethe observation room. “It seems like allof the paddles so far are making a rapid 90 degree turn downstream just beforethey disappear. What could be going on?”

Reyd was the first to offer a response. “It looks like they lost control of it and itwent haywire.”

“Why are they losing control to begin with? The math indicates that the particle impactis just not sufficient to knock these things off course” Kath said incredulously.

“I don’t know,” offered Reyd weakly, “What do youthink, Joram? Joram?”

Reyd and Kath turned to notice that Joram was soabsorbed in thought that he didn’t even hear his name being called. Kath walked over to where he was standingagainst the Plexiglas wall of the observation room. Placing a hand on his shoulder, shewhispered, “Joram?”

Joram turned with a confused expression on hisface.

“What are you thinking about?” Kath asked nowthat she had his attention.

“Well, I don’t know what to make of it. It took no longer than a minute for thepaddle to completely disappear. It musthave a very weak signal strength to lose contact with the USL thatquickly. They probably need all of thepower for propulsion and stabilization, huh?”

“But, did you see how the red always does a rapid90 degree turn just before going blank?” Reyd asked.

“Yeah, I did see the red dot, but we’ll have toreview the data to see its actual acceleration.”

All three graduate students turned back to thedisplay. A couple of missionspecialists, including Zimmer, were now standing, but a flurry of activitybegan when the students noticed a brief image on the paddle nine display.

“Wait!” said Reyd, maybe it still has a heartbeatafter all. But, as quickly as itappeared, it disappeared.

“NETWORK?” called out Zimmer firmly.

“Yes, Professor?”

“Please get me the data which we just receivedfrom paddle nine. I want its exactlocation and speed. Everything, NETWORK…just get me all of the data, please.”

“We’ll do, FLIGHT. Give us just a couple of minutes to translatethe raw data.”

Zimmer realized that in the fight to regainnumber nine that paddles seven and eight had been mostly ignored. “CONTROL, it looks like there is movement onseven and eight. Please confirm.”

“FLIGHT, we are seeing very slight down-flowacceleration, but we are noticing significant deviation in cross-sectionallocation.”

“NETWORK, any abnormal data collection from sevenand eight?”

“Plenty of minute particle impact mostlyoccurring on the under-side of both paddles.”

Zimmer gave a brief exclamation, “CONTROL, trynot to lose these… keep them under control!” Then he threw his headset to the desk and raced towards the back of theroom.

Bursting into the observation room, the wide-eyedstudents stood riveted. “Do you seeit?” Zimmer announced almostbreathless. “Look at the trajectory ofthe remaining two dots!”

The students did indeed see ‘it’.

“Why they’re moving inside the beam… in a corkscrew fashion!” Kath announced.

Zimmer blurted out “That is the flow of ourbeam. The particles are swirling aroundin the beam as they travel down-stream.”

“What could cause that, Professor?” asked Joram.

“I think we are indeed seeing the tail of a fastspinning comet that is spewing off some highly radioactive material. I must get back, but please continue toobserve closely, and discuss among yourselves what you make of all of this. We will continue to monitor the trajectory ofpaddles seven and eight and collect as much impact and radiation data aspossible. We’re going to solve thispuzzle, Team!”

In a flash, the aging—yet nimble—astronomer,raced back to his position, and placed the headset back on.

The control officer was already speaking, “shouldbe able to control the rate of acceleration, since the direction of seven andeight is much more stable. Signal sentto counter-balance the rapidly increasing rates of cross-sectional rotation.”

Zimmer shook his head as he spoke in dismay, “Arewe losing these as well, CONTROL?”

“We are doing our best, Professor, but the commsignal will still require several minutes to arrive.”

Zimmer leaned far back in his seat, closed hiseyes, and listened as CONTROL managed to let two more paddles slip away all tooquickly. He knew, however that hecouldn’t blame his teammates on the control floor. The lack of automatic control calibrationthat he placed as a requirement on the paddles was denied by some bean counterin Washington D.C., who knew everything there was to know about budgets, andabsolutely nothing about what was needed to make a mission succeed. Here, millions had been spent on preparingthe mission, and at least one required retrofit on the experiment paddles wasexpended. Zimmer was confident that withthis feature, the paddles would still be collecting data and providing valuableinformation that would be needed to solve the mystery.

…

The clock on the small conference room wall read01:25. The smell of steaming coffee permeatedthroughout as well, as all four individuals sat around a rectangular table,sipping the elixir that they needed to keep them going for the third—andfinal—round of the mission.

Professor Zimmer heaved a weary sigh and rubbedhis blurry eyes. “Ok, so we still havethree paddles, Team. As you have nodoubt noticed, we have had great difficulty in controlling the first nine asthey entered the beam. Because of anoversight in paddle construction, I have no hope that we will keep the finalthree paddles for any significant amount of time either. How do we best utilize them to understand thebeam? I need every thought and idea thatyou can come up with to help us maximize our learning.”

Reyd offered the first suggestion, “If we aren’tgoing to have them for much time, then I suggest we ram the beam with one atfull speed.”

“What do you think we might learn from this, Mr.Eastman?” Zimmer inquired.

“Maybe we could drive it straight through thebeam and have it emerge out the other side. I’d like to see if we can get to the center of the beam.”

“Let’s not forget that the beam is 12000 kmwide. The paddle can obtain a safemaximum velocity of 400 km/h. It wouldtake thirty hours to get all the way through, and we haven’t had more than afew minutes with any of the paddles yet. However, I—like you—would love to pentrate as deeply as we can. Perhaps we will get some imagery or sensorydata telling us what is in the beam as we get closer to the center.”

“Speaking of the center,” Kath voiced softly yetconfidently, “since we know that the beam demonstrates a very turbulentcorkscrew flow, I wonder if we get to the center and all will be calm andquiet.”

“Not a bad idea, Miss Mirabelle. But how to get it there? We’ve entered at two different speeds and anglesand we can’t seem to get very far into the beam. We could, perhaps, tear through as Mr.Eastman suggests, and decelerate quickly once we near the center—if we can getthat far. We’ll keep it in mind.”

Zimmer glanced over at Joram. “Two paddles, two ideas from two teammembers. What do you say, Joram? If you had full control over paddle numbertwelve, how would you use it?”

“My idea is similar to Reyd’s… drive it at fullspeed—”

“Boys,” Kath snorted. “It’s all about speed, isn’t it?”

Joram feigned to ignore her as he fixed his gazeon Zimmer. “Drive it at fullspeed—upstream.”

Zimmer gave a twitch which looked like an effortnot to betray some thought which he had not shared with the team. He swallowed, cleared his throat, andproceeded in a normal tone. “Upstream,Mr. Anders? What do you mean by that?”

“I mean rather than hitting the beam at 90degrees, I’d like to penetrate the beam at a very shallow angle with the pedalto the metal, Professor.”

Looking intently at his pupil, he queriedfurther. “Why would you want to dothat? What do you intend to gain?”

“I—I don’t—well, I guess I don’t reallyknow. Just a gut feeling, you cansay.” Anders was hiding something andeven at this late hour, his transparency was readily perceived by all.

“C’mon, Joram,” Kath leaned closer towardshim. “Tell us what you’re reallythinking.”

“Oh, I don’t really know what we should do withthe paddle. It’s late, and I’m notthinking clearly,” conceded Joram, attempting to deflect the scrutiny. “Professor, what do you think we should dowith the paddle?”

Silence ensued for several moments. Zimmer weighed the question a little, butconsidered the exchange from Joram even more. Not yet ready to betray his own thoughts yet, or what he suspected to beJoram’s thoughts, he wrapped up the meeting as follows.

“Three paddles… three suggestions. I actually like all of them. At this point, I’d like to start with Mr.Eastman’s proposal. If we can indeed getthe paddle all the way through at high speed, we might be able to make evenmore use of it. Depending on theoutcome, we’ll take Miss Mirabelle’s suggestion second, and see if we might notbe able to rest a paddle in the center of the beam. If we’re successful, we might be able to keepthe paddle there for days in order to collect images and data from theinside. Mr. Anders, your paddle will golast, since it appears to be the most reckless idea of all to go full tiltupstream, and since you have not given us a well-founded reason behind yoursuggestion—unless you care to do so now.”

With this last phrase, Joram broke off eyecontact with Zimmer and looked, instead, at the clock on the wall. He was uncomfortable with the change ofexpression on Zimmer’s face, and hoped not to give him an opportunity to discernhis thoughts. Perhaps if he avoided eyecontact, Zimmer would not be able to penetrate his mind.

“All right, then,” Zimmer stated as he stood fromhis chair, realizing that Joram Anders was not going to reveal himself. “Let’s get back in there for the final push.”

…

The door to the observation room closed. Reyd and Kath unleashed on Joram.

“What was that exchange back there, JoramAnders?” Kath scolded.

“Huh?”

“Don’t ‘huh’ me. There was something fairly tense back there. You, Zimmer?”

Reyd opined on the matter. “Well, yeah. When a college professor asks you a question, it’s usually a good ideato answer.” The last word came out louderthan even Reyd had intended.

“Look guys, it’s just late… I’m tired… Besides, Idon’t think he really looked very reprimanding of the matter.”

“Oh, come on, Joram,” Kath said. “You have admired Carlton Zimmer since youwere practically in diapers. You arerealizing your dream of studying under him. Why would you jeopardize your standing with him with this reticence?”

Joram wanted to change the subject and defuse thetension. “Hey, I’ll have you know I wasout of diapers by the time I was eight.”

Realizing that his attempted humor didn’t exactlywork as well as he would have liked, he tried a more sincere tact. “Look guys, I now know that I shouldn’t havesuggested going upstream, because… well, it’s a stupid idea, and I’m sure I’velost better judgment this late in the evening.”

“What is the idea, Joram?” Kath implored.

“No, Kath—it’s—please forget it. I’ll tell you someday—I promise—when we canall look back and have a good laugh about it.”

Kath didn’t look convinced.

“I promise,” Joram stated with a tone offinality.

Realizing she wasn’t going to pull it out of him,Kath honored Joram’s last word on the subject. “Ok, ok… I’m sorry to be so pushy about it. Let’s sit down and watch the show, shall we?”

After a brief pause, Reyd tried to loosen up alittle bit. “It’s too bad there aren’tany couches in here to lie down on. Paddle eleven is just now being undocked. It’ll be at least a half hour before thepaddles are in place for deployment.”

“Hey, I’ll keep an eye out on the progress if youguys want to close your eyes and catch a few winks.” Joram’s offer was genuine and was readilyaccepted by Reyd, and reluctantly agreed upon by Kath. Both were grateful for the offer and quicklyfound a position in their seats in which they could refresh themselves for amoment.

Joram slowly paced back and forth along the frontof the room, his gaze focused on the mauve carpet that was compressing underhis feet. The full-length glass wallmade it easy for Zimmer to occasionally peer in. It was clear that Joram was heavily burdened,and Zimmer suspected he knew the reason for his turmoil—particularly if it wasdue to the same concern which he himself carried with him since earlier in theevening.

The time dragged on for Joram, as he paced andweighed his concerns in his head. “Whata ridiculous theory. Why did I eversuggest upstream? Will this change myrelationship with Zimmer? Will he lookfor a replacement on his research team? I didn’t mean to disrespect his authority or intelligence. What a ridiculous theory.”

His mind raced. Time flew by rapidly. He heard atap on the glass wall separating himself from the control room. Joram looked up, and saw Zimmer point to hiseyes and then to his watch, as if to say, “Showtime, Mr. Anders!” Joram looked at the clock on the control roomwall and then back to Zimmer with a knowing look on his face. He nodded as he wheeled around to wake Reydand Kath. The three students resumedtheir vigilance on the mission as they saw a red dot indicating paddle numberten racing towards the beam. They couldsee the data set against the background of the yellow flickering image. 384 km/hr. The paddle was at maximum velocity, and was about to penetrate the outerextent of the beam.

The next several minutes proved tense. All remained quiet, breathless, and attentiveto see how far the paddle would be able to penetrate the beam. Reyd kept glancing at his watch. So far, none of the paddles had gottenfarther than approximately a few miles inside the particle-rich beam.

Exuberantly, he worked the math. “This might just work, Guys! We’re looking at four miles of progress perminute. We’re about ten minutes into theexperiment. That’s 40 miles so far”

Kath responded quietly. “Dang it! You spoke to soon, Reyd… the position is degrading.” The red dot was veering downstream rapidly.

On the control room floor, sensors startedfailing, the image went black, the red dot demonstrated a final 90-degreecurved directory, and transmission ceased completely.

Reyd stood up. “There must be some larger debris in there breaking these thingsup. That’s just got to be the answer.”

Joram rebutted. “I don’t think so, Reyd. None ofthe sensors have detected anything larger than a small grain of sand. Wouldn’t we start to see some larger objectsbefore a large rock blasts it away? Ifthat theory were true, you’d start to see pea-sized pebbles, then golf-ballsized rocks, and then a basketball offering that would knock it out forgood. From sand to large rock withoutanything else in between? Maybe, but I’dthink the odds are highly against it.”

“So what then, Genius?” Reyd’s fatigue induced a hasty and defensiveposture.

Joram shook his head. “It would all make sense if the debris werelarger, like Reyd proposed. I couldtotally see the debris start to move the paddle downstream and eventually causeit to break up. But you can’t make thatconclusion with the small size of the debris that is impacting thesepaddles. The math simply doesn’t stick,no matter how fast our sand is moving through this hourglass.”

Zimmer stepped into the room with a dejected lookon his face. “Two paddles to go team, andit’s looking like we won’t penetrate this thing far enough. Kath, since Reyd’s paddle could barely scrapethe surface, what do you want to do with your paddle now?”

Kath looked down at the floor, and then looked upat Zimmer. “I’ve been thinking a littlebit about Deneb, Professor.”

Zimmer raised an eyebrow and wrinkled hisforehead in interest. “Me too, Ms.Mirabelle. Along with any number ofpuzzle pieces that we haven’t yet put together. What do you propose?”

“Well, I’m not sure what to propose, but wehaven’t yet found a vastly massive source that could cause enough gravity todistort the light in that manner. Can wedo something to explore the gravity of the beam?”

“There doesn’t really seem to be significantgravitational pull, Miss Mirabelle. We’ve navigated several of the paddles to the opposite side of the beamwith respect to the USL. The guidanceteam tells me that there have been no abnormal course corrections due tounexpected gravitational forces.”

“Then what is causing the light bending, and howcan we study it?” Kath pondered.

“I’m not sure that we can even see the lightbending at close range. I’ve beenrecording image data from the paddles, and the images seem to indicate nobending of light, but we’ll need to run some computer simulations and renderingto compare with expected results.”

After a brief pause, Kath suggested, “Professor,can we go ahead and deploy Joram’s paddle next, and then confer about paddletwelve when we get there?”

“Great idea, Miss Mirabelle,” Zimmer agreed. “We’ll get your paddle in position next, Mr.Anders.”

Joram’s paddle, of course, met a similarfate. After slamming into the beam atfull speed in the opposite direction of particle travel, the trajectory curvednearly 180 degrees very quickly towards the direction of the beam’s flow, andthe paddle spun wildly out of control before losing contact with missioncontrol.

With one paddle to go, the team consulted sternlyover the prospects of collecting any data they thought would be useful.

“I’ve got an idea, Professor,” stated Kath asthey conversed. “It seems that justbefore the demise of each paddle, a very rapid change of course occursfirst. Maybe we’re inducing too muchstress on the paddles to have their position change so rapidly. As such, I propose that we revisit Joram’sexperiment—in reverse.”

“What?” asked Reyd with a condescending tone.

“I think,” started Zimmer with a glare of disdainfor the tactless syllable voiced by his pupil, “that Mr. Eastman means, ‘What agreat idea!’, but please do explain exactly what you mean, Miss Mirabelle?”

“I’m thinking that we should send the finalpaddle at full speed, but instead of going upstream, let’s go downstream. The possibility for greater success could beanticipated simply because we’ll be going in the direction of leastresistance. So far, we’ve gone straightinto the beam, and we’ve gone upstream. We have yet to go downstream.”

Zimmer lauded this suggestion. “Absolutely brilliant! So far, the beam has rejected our efforts topenetrate its realm. Perhaps we couldsneak in a paddle-sized particle that simply goes with the flow.”

Looking at his watch, he concluded, “0450 hours,Team. Let’s get this last paddlegoing. If we can inject it stably intothe flow, then we’ll be able to get some rest while we let the fresh morningrecruits track its progress.”

Least resistance appeared to be just the secretsauce that was needed for this one last paddle. Particle impact was a bit lighter than with any of the firsteleven. But most importantly, as missioncontrol nudged it farther into the beam, they saw it penetrate to depths of 50,60, 70 miles. Particle impact wasgrowing, but there was reserved optimism among many as this paddle had set arecord among all twelve for depth of penetration. There was a growing concern, however, on thepart of GUIDANCE.

“We’re experiencing acceleration on the paddle,inducing a velocity greater than desired. 750 km/hr… 925 km/hr.”

“GUIDO,” Zimmer blurted quickly, “please put fullreverse thrust possible to slow deceleration. We need to maintain constant velocity in order to maximize our depth anddata collection.”

“Roger that, FLIGHT, full reverse thrustersengaged, but please note that reverse thrust will only provide one tenth of theacceleration force capable with the forward direction. Acceleration continuing. 1260 km/hr. We’re losing ground, FLIGHT. Pleaseadvise.”

“GUIDANCE, we need to turn the paddle around,face it upstream and then apply full forward thrust to counter the force ofacceleration. We need to rotate suchthat the plane of the paddle is parallel to the flow.”

“FLIGHT, we’re starting to notice a new vector ofdirection. It looks like the paddle isstarting to take on a corkscrew trajectory. It will be difficult to coordinate a full parallel rotation.”

“Negative, GUIDANCE. I also see the corkscrew rotation, but thisis accompanied by a paddle roll that is coordinated with the rotation. Look. The face of the paddle is constantly facing the center. Apparently, the corkscrew is because particleimpact has started to roll the paddle counter-clockwise. We absolutely must rotate now… as parallel aspossible please.”

“Working on it, FLIGHT. Discontinuing reverse thrust and commencingrotation.”

After a grueling period of waiting and watchingthe trajectory continue to accelerate, the communication signal to reverse thedirection of the paddle upstream was received. “1850 km/hr at commence of rotation. 35 degree rotation, 2300 km/hr. 55 degrees, 3200 km/hr. FLIGHT,without any thrust, we’re accelerating more rapidly now. 4800 km/hr, 78 degrees. FLIGHT, we are corkscrewing at a rate of onespiral per 17 minutes with downrange velocity of 7500 km/hr, engaging fullforward thrust. It appears as if fullforward thrust is doing little to decrease the rate of acceleration. Velocity still increasing to 9800 km/hr. 11,650 km.”

In nearly perfect synchrony, the voice of theGUIDANCE officer ceased with the communication of paddle twelve as the imageand data on the wall monitor went perfectly black.

…

The clock in the conference room ticked loudlyagainst the quiet and dejected mood present. The time showed that it was 0610 hours. Three heads hung low with as much disappointment as fatigue when thedoor opened slowly to allow the entrance of the quickly-aging CarltonZimmer. He took a seat at the table, andhis team of pale-faced research students awaited his instruction.

“In less than twelve hours, Team, we’ve managedto burn through twelve paddles, and are we any closer to solving this mysterythan before?”

Heads shook in defeat.

“Do you mean to tell me that all three of youmissed the most important discovery of the century—perhaps themillennium?” A smile grew on his facewhile he studied his students. Reydleaned forward with opened mouth. Kathbrushed her long hair aside and cocked her head as if to hear better. Then, the smile grew more serious, as helooked towards Joram, who blushed slightly and tried to avoid eye contact withall of his team members.

“I’m not exactly sure what’s troubling you,Joram, but if it is nearly as difficult as what is troubling me about this,then I sympathize with your situation deeply.”

Zimmer walked slowly to the other side of thetable, hands clasped behind his back, and head lowered slightly. Pacing the length of the table two or threetimes, he weighed the exact words that he should use to explain his theory.

“You see—” he started slowly, still pacing, stilllooking down, “I’m just not sure how I’m going to be able to convince theworld—” A deep, raspy sigh emerged as hestopped, leaned towards the three concerned graduate students, and placed hishands on the table.

“—that we have just discovered the tail of thefirst superluminal comet—the only celestial body ever observed in the historyof man to travel faster than the speed of light.”