The Orthogonal Galaxy
Chapter 8

JoramAnders looked at his watch as the helicopter touched down on PalomarMountain. 12:50 AM. He did not feel the exhaustion of his studiesof the day, his meal with Kath that evening, the surprise summon to meetProfessor Zimmer at the Burbank Airport, or the relaxing helicopter ride, whereKath rested on his shoulder during the entire flight. Instead, adrenaline was flowing from theexcitement and fortune of being at an astronomical observatory at the invite ofhis boyhood idol. Attempting to orienthimself to his surroundings, his eyes searched the darkness withoutsuccess. The CalTech observatory wasstrategically located as far away from light pollution as Southern Californiawould allow. As he stepped onto thehelipad, all he could see were the flashing lights of the helicopter, a rim oflights circling the pad, the canopy of stars overhead, and a dimly lightedpath.

“Pleasefollow me,” the professor instructed as he set out for the path. His trio of blurry-eyed graduate studentsfollowed with a quickened pace, as if Zimmer had not been the least fatigued byhis day of instruction in the planetarium, the flight to and from Johnson SpaceCenter, the intense focus and study on the troublesome data from Mars, and now,the helicopter ride to Palomar.

Duringthe hike from the helipad, the darkness was met with silence. The stunned students did not know what tosay, or if anything should be said at all. At last, they arrived at a white dome-topped cylindrical structure. Joram suspected that this wasn’t thestructure which housed the 200-inch Hale telescope, famed as the largesttelescope in the world for several decades of the twentieth century.

“Students,” Zimmer announced, “this is ourvery modern and accurate 26-inch telescope. It is one of our very best for studying near-earth objects, such as ourvery own solar system. With this, Ibelieve we will obtain the best possible quality images to help us with ourstudy surrounding the events which have transpired on Mars. Please follow me to the control room, whereyou will be performing all of your data collection and studies this evening.”

As theyentered the control room, aptly stacked with computers, monitors and controlequipment, Zimmer oriented them as quickly as possible to theirworkstations. He began with instructionsto Kath.

“Kath,you will work here.” He gestured to aworkstation. “Your first task will be toget on the phone for a conference call to Israel to discuss Martian atmosphericand meteorological conditions with experts there. According to our observatory administrator,there should be a sheet instructing you on the headset and the contactinformation of the individual who has been studying the situation.

“Joram,Reyd will acquaint you with the equipment over here.” Zimmer pointed out alarge panel of instruments and controls, equipped with several largeflat-screen monitors, already containing a set of initial data on Mars.

“I willbe up on that platform over there, fine-tuning the controls of the telescope asneeded in an effort to obtain the necessary images. Camp Mars is currently in view from Earth,and will be so for the next 4 hours. Myfirst effort will be an attempt to get as many visual clues as to conditions inthe vicinity of the camp. Once Earthsethas occurred—that is, when Earth will not be visible to the astronauts—I willthen search for clues surrounding the missing satellites and shuttle, as wellas to lock a visual on the lone signaling satellite, which we know to still befunctional. I would like to give you amuch better briefing and overview of the equipment and task on hand, but timeis critical. Are there any questions?”

Reyd wasfamiliar with Professor Zimmer’s terse manner of instructing research studentsin their duty, and shook his head knowingly. Joram and Kath, on the other hand, returned glassy-eyed stares to theprofessor, still in shock over this sudden change of activity in their lives. Zimmer drew closer to them in a gesture ofunderstanding.

“Joram,Kath,” his voice softened. “Anyquestions?”

“Well,not yet,” Kath was the first to answer. “I’ll just head over there, peruse my instructions, and get on the phonewith the team in Israel.”

Zimmersmiled and nodded. “Thank you.”

“Joram?” Zimmer prompted, staring at the individualwhose potential the professor was eager to explore and develop.

Joramdid have a question, but he was hesitant to ask why on earth the professor hadchosen him for this trip. Reyd, ofcourse, had the expertise on the equipment. Kath had credentials from her studies of meteorology. He was just a star-gazer from Kansas. Prudence took control of his curiosity, andhe realized that the professor could not be bothered with a question of such atrivial nature, when the lives of astronauts were at stake. “No, sir. I’m sure Reyd will bring me up-to-speed quickly.”

“Great!”Zimmer clapped his hands together, wheeled himself around, and was the first toreach his station. Kath filed off nextin the opposite direction, while Reyd took his seat at the console. Joram remained rooted for just a moment as hewatched the professor begin his work. Then excitement and adrenaline took over. With an excited spring in his step, he caughtup to Reyd and took a seat next to him, ready, willing, and eager to learn thecontrols of the observatory, with which he hoped to become intimately familiar.

…

“Ok…yes, I do see that now… Aha… Yep,”Kath’s tired yet pleasant voice spoke into the headset. “Yes, I’m starting to figure the system out,Ravid. I’m sorry about this… you don’treally have the time to be helping me ramp up on this computer, while there isimportant research to be done on the weather…. Well, thanks for your encouragement. I hope I can be of some help as well.”

Thesound of Kath’s voice filled the room, but was occasionally interrupted by anexchange between Reyd and Zimmer. “Isthat any clearer, Reyd.”

“I stillcan’t make anything out, Professor. Thefeatures just aren’t coming through that clearly. Even the common areas of varying lightintensity aren’t coming through as expected.”

“Ok, itlooks like the dust storm is still pretty intense down there then. I’m going to try to zero in on OlympusMons. We should be able to at leastcalibrate our image quality there… the peak has got to be above the duststorm.”

Joramfocused on the images of Mars, and while he knew enough about the planet toreplace his way around the geographical features, he admitted that he was lostwith this view. Finally, however, as thetelescope zoomed and focused in on the massive dormant volcano, he gasped atthe sight of it. He was surprised to seethe mountain come into view.

“Somethingwrong?” Reyd turned to Joram with concern in his voice.

“It’sdelightful!” Joram exulted boyishly. “I’ve just never seem Mars so clearlydepicted.”

Indeed,the reddish-brown caldera and impact craters deep on the top of the volcanowere in exquisite view. Anders easilydiscerned which impacts were older based on the portion of the crater which wasobscured by more recent impacts.

“Thatlooks good, Professor,” I’m seeing the top of the mountain in clear view. Looks like we could use a littlesharpening… That’s better… better…perfect!”

“Howmuch of the mountain is in clear view, Reyd? How far down are we obscured by the dust storm.”

“I’m notreally sure. I’m not very familiar withthe features of the mountain. I’ll haveto digitize the image and compare it to the database. It should just be a couple of minutes.”

Loweringhis voice, Reyd continued to speak to his fellow student. “So, to get to the image database, Joram,simply gesture with your finger like this to pull down the database menu,select Solar System, and then Mars. Youcan see a list of objects here. We’llselect mountains and just scroll down the list here… Nereidum Montes, Oceanidum Mons, OctantisMons… Ah, there we are, Olympic Mons.

“Now thedefault view, as you can see is straight above the top of the mountain, butwe’ll want to rotate the 3D image to coincide with the angle of thesatellite. Hover over the mountain withyour finger and drag like this… Ok, itlooks like we have an approximate angle, judging by our picture on theright. Now, we just need to spin themountain around to the correct side. Todo that, we move our finger in a little bit closer and swipe with a curvingmotion like this to spin the digital image around, and there. Now, we’ll pull down the tools menu, andselect the measure tool. We’ll pull itto about here. Well that looks like apretty close match.”

Reydpointed to a feature on the side of the mountain in both the left and rightframes of his monitor where the digitized image and the live image of Olympuswere depicted respectively.

“Ok, so thatgives us the distance along the slope, but we need to know the elevationdifference between these two points, so we gesture with a spiral—like drawing alower case ‘E’ in the air—to give us the elevation.”

Anothervoice interjected from the back. “Thirty-twothousand feet!”

WhileJoram focused on the controls of the system, he didn’t notice that ProfessorZimmer had now appeared behind the two students observing the data.

“Wow!” Joram exclaimed. “That’s some elevation… several thousand feettaller than Mount Everest altogether! But then again, Olympus does stand eighty thousand feet above thesurface of Mars! Does that means we’reseeing a dust storm that is nearly fifty thousand feet deep?!”

Zimmerfrowned as he turned to look at Kath, hoping that her time spent on the phonemay provide some additional clues.

“Yes, Ido see the wind patterns and speeds now on my computer, Ravid.” Kath wasquickly ramping up on the weather simulations that the team in Israel had beenputting together for the last twelve hours.

“So, ifI understand correctly, we have a ton of dust in the air, but not muchwind. It looks like average global windspeeds are about fifteen kilometers per hour, and that the maximum is aboutfifty, right?”

“Yesthat is correct,” said Ravid. “It isactually a calm day on Mars. This dustjust makes no sense.”

“Thisthing seems to cover the entire planet, right now. How large can dust storms get to, Ravid?”

“Well,storms can cover the entire planet, and when they do, they can last for a month.”

Kath letthis last comment settle. “Ravid… areyou telling me it could be a month before we get a visual on the astronauts upthere?”

“I don’tthink so in this case, Kath. The typicalscenario for a global dust storm is that wind speeds reach one hundredkilometers per hour. This kicks up dust,which absorbs sunlight and heats the atmosphere. This heating then creates convection thatonly increases the wind even more. Bythe time these atmospheric conditions subside, we’re talking easily a month ofglobal dust cover. However, the windsare too light in this case.”

“But youjust told me that dust in the air will heat the atmosphere…”

Ravidcompleted her sentence, “… and increase the winds. Yes, this is what has us very concerned,also. If that proves to occur, then itmay be weeks before we are able to assess the status of the astronauts. At this point, we don’t believe that willhappen and must hope for the best. We needto break through visually as soon as possible to understand how the astronautsare coping with this atmospheric anomaly.”

Kath’seyes raced across the screen. Sherotated the planet to the east, west, east, and west again in order to get abetter picture of the wind patterns across the globe. She tilted it north and south in order toassess the differences between the polar and equatorial patterns.

“Ravid,”she spoke into the phone after a long silence. “So we’ve assessed that this is not a typical wind-induced solarstorm. I don’t want to ask stupidquestions, but could this be caused by an impact?”

“No, itis not a stupid question. We keep comingback to that question ourselves. However, we have seen impacts, and it doesn’t have the characteristicsignature of an impact. For example,impacts are always more localized. Thislayer of dust covers 75% of the surface of the planet.”

“Howabout a really big impact, then?” Kathoffered.

“Animpact that you are suggesting would have to come from a known object. Radio astronomers would have certainlydetected an object this large as a shadow in the magnetic signature of thesolar system. Besides, an impact of anobject that kicks up this much dust would have to be large enough to alter theorbit or rotation of the planet. We haveno indication that this has happened.”

“Lots oflittle objects, then?”

“Againtoo much dust. Small objects would not kickup this much dust.”

“Can wetell how high the dust has been? Perhapsthe objects kicked up the dust, and then the wind continued to agitate it, bykicking it up higher and higher into the atmosphere. No that sounds ridiculous, again, because thewinds aren’t strong enough.”

Kathreceived a tap on her shoulder. She gavea start and turned around quickly to see who had been watching her.

“Kath,can you put Mr. Avram on the speakerphone for me,” Professor Zimmer asked.

“Ravid,I’m going to put you on the speaker. Professor Zimmer would like to talk to you.”

Withthat, Kath looked around to replace Joram. He was still engaged with Reyd. Their voices were low, but she could tell by their gestures that Joramwas engaging Reyd in a question and answer session on the control panel theywere working together. Reyd pointed to aseries of buttons on the control panel, and Joram responded with a nod. Another gesture, another nod.

“Ravid,this is Carlton Zimmer.”

“Goodevening, Professor. How are you?”

“Tired,naturally, and perplexed. Hey, Icouldn’t help overhearing that you two were wondering about the depth of thedust cloud?”

“Yes, wethink it would help us to understand how much volume we are talking about. We suspect that it is thousands of feet deep,based on the obscurity of features that we have observed. However, we cannot tell for sure with the imageswe are working from.”

“We justgot a visual lock and measure on Olympus Mons which indicates the depth of thecloud to be nearly 50 thousand feet at this region.”

Therewas silence on the other end.

“Ravid,are you still there, can you hear me ok?”

“Yes,professor, but… that just can’t be! Howcan it be that deep? Typical dust stormskick up no more than ten kilometers into the atmosphere. Here we are talking fifteen kilometers… andthere is no wind to do this. Are yousure of your calculation?”

“Itlooks accurate to me. Unless—it couldalso be that the dust has whipped up on the slope of the mountain as well,giving us the impression that the cloud is really that deep.”

“Professor,the atmosphere is so thin at those elevations that the dust should settlequickly above even thirty thousand feet, let alone fifty thousand. It’s a fascinating data point, but it onlycreates more questions and fewer answers. I will have to share this with my team and see if we can make sense ofit.”

“Well, Iwill let you get back to Ms. Mirabelle. She’s probably got more questions for you as well. In the meantime, I’ll go take a look at theTharsis region. If the cloud is truly atfifty thousand feet, then we will be able to assess this from the elevation ofthe cloud on these mountains. If thecloud is simply whipping up on the slopes of these mountains, then we may see adifferent elevation profile on these mountains than we do on Olympus.”

“Thatwill be a very helpful piece of data. Thank you, Professor. Keep usinformed if there are any further developments.”

“We’lldo just that, Ravid. And good luck onyour end as well.”

Kathplaced the headset back on her head again as Zimmer walked back to thetelescope. From the sound of theconversation, she quickly returned to her brainstorming session with theIsraeli areologist. He approached Reydand Joram to inform them of their next data collection effort.

“Gentlemen,”Zimmer stated as he sat down in a vacant chair next to Reyd. The two students leaned away from the consolewhich had engaged their attention for nearly an hour. “We are going to the Tharsis Region. Dr. Avram, an atmospheric specialist withwhom Kath is speaking, is baffled by the dust patterns on Mars. We believe that we have found a fiftythousand foot cloud of dust covering much of the surface of Mars. However, we’re not sure if the cloud reallyisn’t lower, and that we’re seeing dust coming off of the surface of OlympusMons itself.

“Inother words, we need to figure out if the dust has only kicked up a few hundredfeet from ground level all the way up the slopes of the mountains. If we look at a smaller mountain peak, wherethe atmosphere is more dense than it is on the upper reaches of Olympus Mons,we might get a clearer idea of how much dust we really have swirling around upthere.”

Wheelingback to the telescope platform, Zimmer announced, “Give me a few minutes todial in the coordinates and calibrate the surface angle for best imagery. You guys might want to warm up the imagedatabase for the Tharsis Mountains. We’ll be performing similar elevation calculations there as well.”

Theprofessor returned to the telescope and began calculating coordinates forAscraeus Mons, the tallest mountain in the Tharsis Region, and the secondhighest peak on Mars.

Reydwhispered to Joram, “My money is on the professor’s theory, and the dust provesto be a thin layer that’s just being stirred up to low levels all over theplanet.”

“But allof the circumstances have just been bizarre enough so far that I wouldn’t besurprised if we really have a fifty thousand foot tall dust cloud,” Joramrebutted. “Remember that this dust isreally just a barrier to the real task at hand here. We need to replace out how a group of satellitesand a shuttle just disappear into thin air, or thin space. I’m guessing there is a link to thedisappearance and the dust… hopefully, if we solve one mystery, we get all ofour questions answered.”

“That’sa good point. Either way, let’s starttaking a look at the Tharsis Mountains, shall we?”

Reydstarted negotiating the database menu again, when he stopped suddenly.

“What’swrong?” asked Joram looking at his companion.

“Well,I’m trying to recollect the names of the mountains that the professor needs usto look at… but I’ll just go to the ‘regions’ portion of the database to replacethe names of the Tharsis mountains. Iknow I’ve heard them, but I forget now.”

“Ascraeus,Arsia, and Pavonis,” Joram said.

“What?” Reyd didn’t grasp that his peer had justnamed all three Tharsis mountains in two seconds.

“Oh, I’msorry… I gave them to you in order of elevation. Did you want them in terms of theirgeographic alignment. Ascraeus is thenorthernmost, Arsia is on the south end, and Pavonis sits right between them.”

Reyd’sjaw dropped as he stared at Joram. “Where did that come from?”

Joramblushed a bit. He did not intend tocondescend, but being caught up in the moment of research, he couldn’t helpblurting out a little too much knowledge perhaps. “I’m sorry… I read a book on Martiangeography a couple of years ago. Thechapter of Martian mountains really left an impression on me, I guess.”

“Apparentlyso.” Reyd flushed slightly as he shookhis head in amazement and turned back to the console. He got ready to dial into the Ascraeusdatabase in an attempt to beat Zimmer to the punch, while the telescope wasquickly zooming towards its new subject. “Ascraeus Mons… there it is.”

Zimmercalled out, “How does she look, Reyd.”

“Itlooks great, professor. However, wedon’t have quite the same angle on the slope of the mountain, as we did forOlympus. It might be tricky to pick aspot that we’ll want to measure from the digital image.”

“Thelava flows might help us replace our spot,” Joram pointed out on the databaseimage. “They extend all the way aroundthe mountain.”

Jorampointed to the northeast and south sides of the mountain where dark slits cutall the way around the mountain. Largergashes where those of dried up lava flows at the surface of the mountain.

“Thoseare really amazing geologic structures there,” admitted Reyd. “At this zoom level, those flows make themountain look more like a scratching post than a volcano. It makes for a very distinguishablefeature. However, they may be too low inelevation for them to be any use to us. Wow… look at the scar over on the west side of the mountain where itlooks like a landslide has left a huge gash in the mountain. Again, that’s way too low to be of use to us,but what about this?”

Reydpointed to the east side of the mountain. “These pits here may be caves or perhaps the end of lava tubes openingup on the surface of the mountain. Someof these might be high enough. Otherwise, there isn’t a whole lot of distinguishing features around themountain to tell where a cloud may end.”

“Take alook at the live image right there.” Along finger belonging to Professor Zimmer had reached between the pair ofstudents and pointed to the live image on the monitor. Just above the cloud was a distinguishingfeature, either a cave, or perhaps a large boulder, but it was easily spottedby the shadows being cast by the afternoon Sun.

“Let’ssee.” Reyd worked quickly to spin andfocus on the object. “That’s just northof west on the mountain. Interesting, Ididn’t remember noticing many features on that part of the mountain. Could that be a new exposure or perhaps acrater?”

Silenceensued for a few minutes as the two teams examined both the left and rightframes, as if watching a rapid volley at a Wimbledon tennis match.

“Righthere,” Joram pointed on the left side of the screen. “Look at the database image. The lighting isn’t as favorable, but I thinkthere is a slight difference in coloration which may match to the shadow in thelive image.”

Zimmersuggested, “Hey, Reyd… can we scan the remaining images in the database? It would be nice to replace an image withsimilar afternoon lighting in order to pinpoint that structure.”

“Yes,sir.” Reyd negotiated through the menusquickly to bring up the full catalog of images available. He set the default 3D model to provide awest-side angle.

The teamscanned through image after image for a couple of seconds each. After flipping through more than a dozenpictures, Zimmer shouted, “There!” Hepointed at a pinpoint of a black spot, not as large as that of the live image,but certainly in the same location. “It’s a shadow,” Zimmer stated confidently. “It’s not being cast as long in this image,certainly because it was taken earlier in the day, but make no mistake, that’sour spot.”

Withaccepting nods from his students, Reyd went quietly to work, clicking andmeasuring. He leaned back in his chairand clasped his hands behind his head, as the trio of astronomers clearlyunderstood the data they were looking at.

ProfessorZimmer nodded approvingly. “Kath!”

Kathgave a start and spun around quickly.

“Kath,do you still have Dr. Avram on the phone?”

“No,Professor, but I can call him back. Whatdid you replace out over there?”

“Thirtythousand feet, Kath. The cloud is atthirty thousand feet on Ascraeus Mons. On Olympus Mons, it was fifty thousand feet above mean surface level, soit would appear as if the height of the dust cloud is relative to the surfacefeatures.”

“Thatmeans there isn’t as much total volume of dust in the atmosphere, right,Professor?” asked Joram buoyantly.

“Yesthat is correct, which means…”

Kath,the meteorologist, finished his sentence. “…it won’t absorb as much heat, won’t generate as much wind, and willsettle out quicker. Maybe we’ll be ableto see our astronauts soon!”

ProfessorZimmer looked at his watch. 3:30AM. He dashed back to the telescope controls. “Reyd, small mountains… give me coordinatesto one of the smallest mountains on the planet.”

Reyd’seyes opened wide as he grasped Zimmer’s plan.

“If wereplace the dust low on a small mountain, then we will know for sure that the dustis not thick. I’ll dial up the listright away.”

Reydspun back to the control panel quickly, and worked the menus again. Within moments, a spreadsheet emerged on thescreen with a long list that Reyd sorted by ascending elevation.

“Professor,”Reyd announced abruptly. “Some of thesefeatures are below the zero elevation. What elevation should we start our search at?”

“Reyd,”Joram pointed to the screen. “Can weeliminate all of the patera from the list? These are usually low-lying craters that won’t benefit us. We need just the mons features that actuallyproject upward from the surrounding surface.”

“Yes,”Reyd nodded. “Good point. Let me filter farther.”

WhileReyd worked, Joram jumped to his feet, startling his partner at the controlpanel. He raced towards Zimmer. “Professor! What about Valles Marineris? Rather than iterating on various mountain elevations, we should look atMarineris! The canyon is of variedelevation throughout, and if the cloud is relatively low to the nape of theplanet, then we’ll be able to see the canyon walls, and we’ll be able to tellexactly how deep the cloud is inside of the canyon. Besides, Marineris is to the east of Tharsis,where the sun will be setting soon. We’ll have good afternoon shadows to give us perspective of the canyonwalls.”

Zimmersmiled at Joram and hopped down from the telescope. “Ok, then… give me coordinates to Marinerisand an image of the canyon system. Thatis one long trench, and we’ll need to figure out where to start looking.”

Withinmoments, an elevation-shaded relief map of the deepest canyon in the solarsystem was portrayed on the full widescreen monitor, replacing both the liveand historic images of Ascraeus Mons.

“Well,let’s start right here in the middle,” the Professor stated.

“TheCandor region,” interjected Joram. “Excellent choice, Professor. Wecould start here in the Candor Chaos and work our way to its chasm, where theelevation differences are varied, and the walls are more step-like than themain branch of the canyon. We can tellbased on which steps are exposed, the elevation of the dust cloud, I believe.”

Joramdidn’t notice that both Reyd and Zimmer were staring intently at him as hefocused on the screen.

Reyd wasslowly shaking his head. “How… how doyou know all of this?”

Zimmer’seyebrows were raised. He wasn’t certainwhether to be irritated or impressed with this upstart college kid. “Candor, it is! Coordinates, please!”

Zimmerbounded back to the telescope and arrived in time for the coordinates fromReyd. He worked rapidly at thecontrols. “What do you see gentlemen?”

“A lotof dust,” answered Reyd sharply.

“Can weside-by-side the current coordinates, Reyd?” asked Joram. “We need a clear reference to see where we’reat here.”

Onceagain, the screen was split with the live image on the right and the bestdatabase image on the right. Both imageswere bounded by the same exact coordinates, guaranteeing that the mouse cursorhovered over exactly the same location on both images.

“Wow!” Joram exclaimed. “Look at that, Reyd.”

“Professor,can you zoom in on grid cell D6? Joram’sfound something interesting here.”

Bothstudents leaned forward in their chairs.

“Professor?”called Reyd. “You should come see this.”

Zimmerscaled down the telescope platform again and met up with his students. He turned to Kath. “Kath, can you come take a look at this?”

“Absolutely,Professor.” She looked over Reyd’s leftshoulder intently. “What exactly am Ilooking at?”

Theprofessor briefed her on the discovery. “This, Kath, is Valles Marineris, the longest canyon in the solarsystem, and if some sources are to be believed…” He cut a glance over at Joram“…we are looking around the Candor region.”

Joramblushed while shrugging his shoulders almost imperceptibly.

TheProfessor continued: “Anyway, look atthis billowing cloud of dust. This isdown inside the canyon. And right here,you can see the border of the canyon wall. Any ideas what might cause a dust cloud like that to occur?”

“I’mhaving a hard time with perspective here. How wide and deep is the canyon here?” asked Kath.

“Aboutone hundred miles wide and three miles deep,” answered Reyd.

“Threemiles deep? That thing is three milesdeep? And I thought the Grand Canyon wasimpressive… My goodness.”

ProfessorZimmer brought Kath back to the task at hand. “Any ideas about this cloud, Kath?”

“Well,it looks like it’s bubbling up from the middle. I’d say that there must be wind rushing down both sides and creating aviolent turbulence right in the middle.”

“Whatcould cause that?”

“Asudden drop in barometric pressure inside the canyon perhaps? That could cause a vacuum-like effect andsuck the wind from the plateaus above… or a sudden change in temperature insidethe canyon to cause convection… or…”

“Or…”Joram interrupted while he pushed the mouse cursor along the canyon wall in thedatabase image. “Or… the canyon wall iscrumbling.”

Zimmercouldn’t help chuckle at this suggestion, mainly because of the matter-of-factnature of Joram’s idea. “What do youmean by that, Joram?”

“Well,Professor, at first, I thought the images weren’t lined up very well, becauselook at the cursor here on the south side of the canyon. It is set some distance inside of the liveimage. But then, if you point the cursorto the north canyon wall, it also looks offset from the canyon wall, but in theopposite direction. Simply put, thewidth of the canyon is narrower in this satellite photo than it is over here inthe live image.”

Zimmeroffered an explanation. “Perhaps thezoom factor is different? Reyd, can youcalibrate the two images?”

“I don’tthink so, Professor,” countered Joram. “Look up here in the Candor Chasm. There is a ridge right here. Itis inside the rim of the canyon, and yet it overlays perfectly on both images.”

“Joram…this is ludicrous. Mars is not ageologically-active planet. There is norain to erode the surface features, and there isn’t enough wind to causelandslides like this! For centuries, wehave relied on pretty much the same exact look at Mars. Today, you’re telling me that Marineris isgrowing wider?”

“Professor,it fits with the billowing cloud. If thewalls of the canyon were crumbling, tons of rocks and sand would rush down theslopes, creating a downdraft that would meet in the middle and balloon up fromthe canyon.”

Theprofessor buried his head in his hands and rubbed his eyes deeply. He turned away from the students. “How does this happen?” Sarcastically, he offered, “Has somebody justnuked the surface of Mars? That mightexplain all of the dust, and crumbling canyon walls.”

“Professor,”Kath interjected. “I would propose inthis case that the wind patterns for a nuclear reaction would be too violentfor this. We aren’t seeing the kind ofwind needed.”

“Agreed,Kath. It was a ludicrous theory to beingwith, but it’s just that this is growing more and more frustrating,” hewhispered as much to himself as to his students. Turning back, he completed his thought. “Team, what we really need are more answers and fewer questions. It seemsthat with every turn, this whole mystery grows more and more complicated.”

Reyd wasthe first to try to console the professor. “There does appear to be one answer, Professor.”

Zimmerlooked up and gave a half-smile to his student.

“We nowknow that the cloud is not deep enough to obscure the entire canyon. We can see some of the walls. The cloud may be a couple of thousand feetthick, but certainly is not fifty thousand feet thick.”

“Wemight be able to get a better estimate,” began Joram. “If we scan the telescope along the canyon tothe west, it will bring us to the Labyrinth, where we will be able to seevarious depths of the canyon and whether the cloud fully covers these moreshallow regions or not.”

Withoutsaying a word, the professor scaled the telescope platform again. Slowly guiding the telescope towards thewest, they continued to see the occasionally billowing cloud of dust,indicating that the dynamics of the event causing this phenomenon were notlocal to the Candor region. Where cloudswere not billowing, they saw a flat layer of dust hanging off of the valleyfloor. As they approached the westernedge of the canyon, a massively wide expanse ended abruptly into a series ofcanyon narrows which intertwined in a chaotic, mazelike structure known as theNoctis Labyrinthus.

Jorambroke the silence. “The Labyrinth of theNight. Professor, this iswonderful! We are nearing the end of thelabyrinth where the canyons get narrower and shallower and yet we are stillable to make them out.”

“What isthe depth of the canyon here?” asked the professor turning away from thetelescope controls and looking at his trio of helpers intently.

Reydclicked the mouse a couple of times and noted the elevation on the plateauabove and the floor below. “Twelvehundred feet, Professor!”

“Twelvehundred feet,” the professor nodded approval. “That sounds much better than fifty thousand feet! Kath, please call Dr. Avram again and let himknow of our results. See if you can gethim to assess a time frame for when this type of dust will settle out and giveus a visual on the camp.”

“Yes,sir.” Kath raced back to her station andquickly placed the headset on her head.

“Gentlemen,”proceeded Zimmer. “It is time for us toturn our attention to the satellites. I’d like to get a visual lock on Satellite Four. Could you please calculate its currentposition and provide me with coordinates? If we can replace this satellite, then we’ll be able to tune our telescopeaccordingly, and spot the remaining satellites in their current locations. Then, we’ll turn our attention to theshuttle, although it might be tougher to calculate its precise location anddistance. Looking at my watch, I can seethat we only have about an hour of nighttime left, so we’ll still have much todo tomorrow night as well.”

WhileReyd pounded at the keyboard in front of them in an effort to make some veryhurried calculations, and while Kath reintroduced herself to Ravid Avram tonotify him of their discovery, Joram was beginning to feel a bit morehelpful. His knowledge of the Martianterrain and suggestions for where to turn to for answers was proving to be avaluable asset to the team after all. Turning in his chair, he saw Professor Zimmer reclining in a chair withhis hands behind his head and his eyes closed.

“Mr.Anders,” the professor spoke without opening eyes or appearing to be awake atall for that matter.

“Yes,Professor.”

“Thankyou for your suggestion on using Marineris to assess the dust cloud. A very astute suggestion that has provided uswith a significant answer to an important question.”

Joram’shead lowered in humility for this recognition from a giant of anastrophysicist. “Thank you, Professor. Ireally just want to be as helpful as possible.”

Theprofessor maintained his position and did not respond, but nodded his headslowly and took a deep breath.

“Professor,”interrupted Reyd. “I believe I have thecoordinates for you, but I’m afraid that Satellite Four is behind Marspresently. It won’t emerge for another 6hours.”

“Ok, ifit wants to play hide-and-seek, then so be it. In the meantime, I think I’ll simply zoom away from the planet and putourselves into needle-in-a-haystack mode of operation. In the meantime, can you calculate theremaining satellite coordinates?”

“Yes,sir.”

As Reydtyped again, Joram sat back and watched the show. The telescope slowly zoomed away from thelabyrinth revealing Marineris on the left and Tharsis on the right. Olympus shortly came into view and a host ofother unidentifiable features, but for the most part, the entire planet seemedto be covered in a cloud of dust. Joramwas stunned that a dust storm could occur on such a global scale.

Presently,the entire globe was within the view of the telescope, and continued to diminishjust a little more before the professor locked its position. Joram continued to wonder at the view anddream about what it would be like to be on Mars. How he envied those astronauts who had beenable to step on its surface and study its features up close. And then… he saw… well… he saw something, butdid not quite know what to make of it? He leaned forward, tilting his head and wrinkling his brow.

“Reyd,what the heck is this?”

Reydlooked up to where Joram was pointing at a dim undulating yellow stripe in theupper right hand corner of the screen. He shrugged his shoulders and stated indifferently. “Imaging anomaly, I guess. We see some strange things from time to timedepending on the lighting situation and the optics.”

Reydwent back to typing on the keyboard, but Zimmer overheard the conversation andwandered over to take a look at what Joram had noticed.

“Can youtry to clean that up, Reyd? It’s acurious piece of imagery.”

“Do youthink that is necessary, Professor? It’ssurely just some image problem,” Reyd rebutted.

“It maynot be necessary,” responded Zimmer honestly. “However, I always lose faith in my data when optical abnormalities needto be filtered.”

“Understood,Professor.”

For afew minutes, Reyd and Zimmer worked on their stations respectively, talkingback and forth about their efforts to remove this figment. While the stripe was in the image, Zimmerworried about their ability to pinpoint the satellites. He figured that image problems would onlyturn their task of looking for a needle in a haystack into something muchworse.

Afterpersistent attempts to clean up the image, Reyd and Zimmer grew increasinglyfrustrated. This was not the time to behaving technical difficulties. In justminutes now, the earliest light of dawn would begin.

“Professor,may I make a suggestion?” Joram spoke out.

“Absolutely.”

“Wouldit be prudent to zoom out a little bit more and see if the optics will clean upthe stripe?”

“Couldn’thurt.”

Zimmerslowly retracted the telescope and the red globe began retreating slowly fromthe screen again. The yellow streakpersisted.

“Maybewe should try to pan as well,” suggestion Zimmer. “In case there is some pre-dawn light thatmight shift out of view with a different horizontal angle.”

This,however, drew more perplexing concern from the team, since the relativeposition of the stripe remained fixed, and as the red planet dipped out of thebottom of the image, the yellow stripe continued to pulse its dim straight beamof light just as a flashlight might do inside of a dark, dusty cave.

“Well,it just can’t be a real object,” stated Zimmer. “There must be some technical reason for this stripe to persist in oursystem. I’ll have our maintenance teamlook at it today…” He paused… “and yet,the stripe remains straight as an arrow. I would expect an imaging problem to demonstrate more curvature, becauseof the curved nature of our lenses.”

“Couldit be a tail of a meteor or some other object, Sir?” suggested Joram.

Zimmershook his head readily. “No, this… thingappears to be emanating light. Look atthe undulating pattern. If this were atail of some object, we might see some reflectivity of sunlight coming off ofthe dust and ice, but this pulsating… waving… geez… it almost looks like anAurora in a straight, thin yellow line of light. Very strange.”

“Iagree, Professor,” joined Reyd. “It maynot be an imaging problem, but it may be some rendering problem with the imagedigitization software.”

“Wedefinitely need maintenance to look at this.”

A fewmoments of thoughtful pondering and wonder was broken by the ring of a cellphone.

Zimmertapped his ear implant and answered, “Hello, Carlton Zimmer here.”

“Hello,Professor, this is Vurim Gilroy at Johnson. Have you been able to assess anything this evening?”

“Yes,Dr. Gilroy. We’ve noticed that the dustcloud is much thinner than originally anticipated. We are talking with Ravid Avram now to assessa time frame for visual assessment.”

“Anythingelse odd, Professor?”

“No,nothing else at the moment, we will certainly continue our study tomorrowevening. Hopefully, Madrid can make somegood progress tonight as well.”

“Professor,there is a report…” Vurim paused.

“Areport, Doctor?”

“Yes… itappears that an amateur astronomer from the Mojave Desert called in a report at4:15 AM pacific time. NASA has beennotified that he discovered a faint yellow streak across the south-eastern skystretching to both horizons.”

Zimmerstopped dead in his tracks, grew pale, and fixed a gaze at the telescopemonitor, walking towards it slowly.

“Professor?”

“Vurim! We are seeing it as well, but we assumed animaging problem. This thing has novisual signature that I can ever recognize seeing.”

“There’sone other thing you should know, Professor.”

“Go ahead,”Zimmer said while remaining fixed on the yellow stripe.

“Thereare reports of a spike of electromagnetic activity on portions of Earth.”

After abrief pause, Zimmer asked quietly, “What kind of radiation are we talkingabout, Vurim?”

“Well,we’re not sure yet, but it is some form of high-energy ionizing particleradiation that is detectable, but not identifiable. It was a very quick, sudden, and low-volumeburst… we don’t believe there is any harm to communications at this point, butthere is something very odd about it, Professor.”

“Go on.”

“Thetime of impact coincides with the Martian anomalies, and only the portions ofthe Earth which were facing Mars at the time of the incident report any suchdetection.”

“So, youcalculate the impact to be about the same time as the satellite disappearance.”

“Not‘about’, Professor. Exactly the sametime.”

“Soundslike a significant piece of the puzzle, Vurim. Martian satellites disappear due to a radiation event, and the event isdetected after the radiation hits sensors on Earth.”

“Professor,there is no after. Let me clarify. The radiation is detected synchronously atseveral stations on at least three continents. Then, three minutes and forty-seven seconds later, an alarm event in ourcontrol room indicated that we’d lost communication with the satellite upthere. Considering that we are aboutforty-two million miles from Mars, three forty-seven is precisely the time ittakes for signals to travel from Mars to Earth. That means, the exact point in time when the satellite stoppedtransmitting was the same point in time when the radiation hit the Earth. They are perfectly simultaneous events.”

Zimmerweighed this new information for a moment, stood up and clapped his hands.

“Vurim! This is great news.”

“What doyou mean, Professor?”

“Well,what has stumped us the most is the exact timing of the loss of signals betweenobjects at different distances! Now, wecan relate this to a radiation event which probably knocked out all of yoursensors at the same point in time… on Earth, not up on Mars.”

“Yes, itwould seem so, but we’ve been studying the sensors, and they seemundamaged. They are able to receivesignals from test sources in the labs here at the space center… And there’s oneother thing.”

“Yes?”

“A solarobservatory in South Africa noticed a flash of intensity from the Sun—”

Zimmerpaused, not wanting to admit he knew the point Gilroy was about to make.

“—at theexact same time!” Gilroy concluded. “Well, the clock at the African facility wasn’t accurate enough to showexactness in simultaneity, but they can confirm that the event occurredapproximately at the same time, plus or minus three seconds.”

“I’mguessing the radiation couldn’t have screwed with those solar readings?”

“SouthAfrica was not in the radiation path, Professor. They were on the opposite side of the planetwhen the rays hit.”

Zimmershook his head vigorously. “I’m sorry,Vurim, but I’m not convinced. Theresimply must be a correlation. Sensorfailure is the only rational explanation. The solar event could be a coincidence.” Then he glanced back at the yellow stripe. A sickening feeling hit his stomach. His voice grew quiet, as he spoke more tohimself than to the NASA administrator. “But then again… there hasn’t been anything very rational about thiswhole mystery, has there? Dr. Gilroy,thank you for the call. We will continueto investigate.”

As hetapped his ear to terminate the communication with Gilroy, he stared at thestreak in the image. Briefing hisresearchers on the situation, he explained, “So, we have a yellow streak in thesky, the likes of which have never been seen. Further, we have a communication failure from Mars, a radiation event onEarth, and a solar flare on the Sun that all happened within three seconds ofeach other.”

“But,Professor,” Reyd protested. “Light takestwelve minutes to travel from the Sun to Mars. No single event would be synchronized between these three heavenlybodies within a matter of seconds, unless the source of the event wasequidistant to all three orbs.”

“Or,perhaps three different synchronous sources which were all equidistant to theirrespective locations,” suggested Kath.

“Yourealize,” Joram chimed in, “that either of those answers would suggestsomething orchestrated.”

“But,but whom? And why?!” Zimmer spoke more to himself than to thestudents as he fixed his gaze on the yellow undulating beam in the large videomonitor overhead. “And what does thatyellow beam have to do with it?”

Zimmershook his head slowly, his brow furrowed in confusion and frustration. “I—I—don’t know.”

As the world’s foremost expert on all thingsastronomical, he tried to formulate a theory, but failed to think of anythingreasonable. The entire room was embracedin silence. Zimmer, flanked by threeconfused graduate students, looked back up and continued to watch the yellowstreak until the light of dawn persisted in obscuring it completely from view.