“Like the speed of light being a constant.”
“How’s that?”
Mary explained. “Einstein fixed a limit on the speed of light to make special relativity work. So, no surprise when the velocity actually was a constant. They assumed it was and their bias confirmed it.”
Kate considered her comment. Under certain conditions, neutrinos had broken past the limit, leading to several mind-bending puzzles in her understanding of time and space, but nothing on a practical level. Still, as a thought experiment, Mary was correct. “Because I felt a ship was on its way, I assumed what we found was the ship from Ross 128. It could be something other from somewhere else, too.”
Mary smiled. “Perhaps this object is a piece of junky old space garbage from a passing cargo ship. Or if it is alien, it could be a surveillance probe designed to watch us, learn stuff, gather intelligence.” She leaned closer to Kate. “Maybe it’s not the Rossians you’re expecting at all.”
Somewhere between leaving the Spacer Program and rotting away on Luna, she’d missed a beat.
What’s happened to you? Where’d this lack of discipline and focus come from? Mary’s right: this thing isn’t necessarily a ship at all.
She vowed not to make that mistake again, and never to underestimate Jim’s daughter, despite her age. There’s a reason the TSA chose her for this summer internship.
“Thanks, Mares, that’s brilliant. I’ve let my bias creep in to the survey, and I’ve jumped to conclusions way too early. Keep checking on me, will you?”
“Sure.”
“Now then, do we agree that whatever is out there could be a vessel, but not necessarily the Rossian one?”
“Yes, it’s a definite possibility. But it could also be space debris or a probe. That would explain the lack of a heat signature, right?”
“True, true.” Kate’s attention shifted back to the monitor as the filtering algorithm for the GPR data chimed. She pressed the button on the screen and streams of numbers raced by.
“So, if it’s not an alien ship and carries no detectable organic life on it, then perhaps we need to consider different tests, other surveys.”
“Exactly. We’ll see what the processed images reveal, then adjust our approach to the anomaly. Meanwhile, I’d better fire a note off to Stan and the others in New York telling them about the ruined survey data and that we’ll return to this area later this season for a re-do.”
Mary looked at her, puzzled. “Should we send them the images from today?”
“No, not yet. Let’s transfer all the data to the memory tube again. I want to keep this as quiet as possible, just in case. That’s why I’ll tell him we’re moving on to another survey target.”
The pair began data cleaning protocols and scheduled the image processing to run over the next few hours. After a quick dinner, they retired to their bunks. Kate fought the urge to reach for her knife that overwhelmed her after being schooled by Mary, and instead closed her eyes and cat-napped.
“Can I ask you something, Kate?”
Mary’s voice startled her and killed the mental drift. She inhaled and whispered, “Sure, anything.”
Several moments passed before Mary spoke, her voice soft and distant like an echo from Kate’s childhood.
“Why do you cut yourself?”
FOUR
Kate
Kate had not slept well. Normally, the comforting white hum of the lab’s oxygenator, scrubbers and recyclers would lull her to sleep in minutes, but yesterday’s events replayed continuously in her mind. Before retiring for the evening, she reviewed the initial imaging results and followed a more objective approach in its analysis. The anomaly was clearly artificial; they confirmed its dimensions, approximately twenty by ten meters, resembling a small shuttle craft or scout ship, streamlined for efficient movement through atmospheres. However, the lack of heat signatures or evidence of an ambient power drive raised a doubt that this was, indeed, a space craft—let alone the anticipated Rossian ship. It required further investigation.
And Mary’s question, which she avoided answering completely, remained hanging in the air like an unanswered question.
She pulled herself out of her bunk and grabbed a water gel from the biofeeder, then downed a couple of gulps. It wasn’t close to the water back on Earth, and Kate still hadn’t grown accustomed to it. This recycled mix of waste and H2O teased from the Moon’s crust tasted flat and tin-like. The unit also dispensed her anti-rad pills, and she popped them down too, an artifact of her Spacer days to prevent more cancer cells from blooming.
An amber light flashing on the comms panel showed a message had arrived over night from Titanius headquarters, audio only. Kate glanced at Mary who was still asleep in her bunk and squeezed the remote receiver into her ear. Dana Goran’s stern, perpetually angry voice greeted her.
“LGL this is Titanius HQ. I trust all is well.” Static crashed across the transmission from sunspot activity, or possibly magnetic flare-ups from the Mare Marginis. “. . . the latest seismic data. Stan tells me you ran into some problems with line noise. . . (garbled) . . . to check in and offer help. There’s considerable interest in the magnetism out there at the limb, as you know.” More garbled audio appeared. Kate adjusted the filters with little effect. “. . . return to the area and re-do the seismics once you’ve isolated and fixed the equipment problem. Please confirm. . . receipt. Titanius out.”
Kate replayed the message, tweaking the audio filter to capture the garbled bits lost in static without success. Still, Dana’s tone was clear and if there had been any doubt before, her serious tone with an edge of what was it, sarcasm? compelled her to re-think the day’s activities. The plan she hatched the previous night focused on conducting a few more surveys over the anomaly, including taking soil samples to search for any known radioactive tracers, indicative of space flight as they understood it. She also wanted to run a tight micro-seismic tomography array to image the interior of the object. Mary could be right: it may simply be some ship’s garbage or a chunk of one of the cargo ships on a water run. Or she could be wrong. The need to conduct the original survey line again was problematic. They’d expect results this time and when New York sees the anomaly, who knows what might happen? Kate felt like running away and hiding. She left Earth to escape the uproar over the Ross 128 signal, and now the damn business had parked itself on her doorstep.
She drew a coffee from the biofeeder and sipped, scalding the tip of her tongue. Mary stirred and came to life, joining her at the comms panel.
“What they’d have to say?” She yawned and nodded at the Titanius message header on the comms screen.
“They want us to re-do the initial survey of the Mare Marginis. Apparently, there’s more interest in those magnetic fields than anyone guessed. . . more than I thought, anyway.” Kate leaned against the panel and threw her legs on an equipment crate she and Mary prepared the day before. “Change of plans, Mares.”
Mary played the message back twice and pulled up a map of the Mare Marginis, an area right on the eastern limb of the Moon, and a primary investigation target for Titanius. “What’ll we do?”
“We must comply, of course,” Kate sighed. “Mind you, we could burn some other surveys while we’re there.” She stared at Mary and folded her fingers together behind her head. “The high-resolution GPR will take the longest to perform, and I will ditch the planned micro-seismic tomography lines if we have to configure the original survey again.”
“I can collect soil samples while you drive the GPR. Then we could set the automatic thumper before leaving. Let it run. The new numbers should be in before we’re back at the lab.” Mary chewed a protein tab and began her morning stretching routine.
Kate remained concerned. “It’s not just that. Look, as soon as that data comes in, it’ll show Titanius exactly what we found the other day: a large anomaly, maybe a ship or a probe or someone’s garbage, partially protruding out of the dust around the Mare Marginis magnetic fields. Do you know
what’ll happen then?” She sat up, leaned forward. “They’re gonna send a crew to investigate. Worse, so will every other interested party and signatory to the surveys contract. The Chinese for sure, the Prussian Alliance. . . possibly the Indians, NDU and Confederate States. Plus, there are the other major resource companies operating out here: Intersol Geospace, and Polaris Mining Corp.”
Mary’s eyebrows furrowed, and she took a deep breath. “I don’t get it.”
“The only thing keeping us safe and alone at the moment, running mind-numbing surveys on this rock, is the international agreement to limit mining and exploration on Luna. But if others even remotely suspect there’s a ship up here—no matter it’s origin—they’ll figure someone else has broken the treaty and the game will be on.”
Mary swallowed the last of her tab and finished her water. Her face relaxed before concern spread across it again. “Are you saying this could lead to conflict, Kate? Aren’t we past all that now?” She drew her legs up underneath her on the stool.
“You saw what happened when the TSA took over your dad’s discovery of the Ross 128 signal five years ago. And they covered up that news tight as a drum. This wouldn’t be.” She sat up straight again, nodding to the comms panel. “Titanius isn’t the only one with eyes on us. You can bet all the other major space players and military organizations are watching what we do, too.”
Geopolitical tensions on Earth had never been worse. In Kate’s lifetime alone, she’d witnessed the breakdown of America along north-south lines, with a few independent entities emerging like the California Congressional Republic and the former Washington and Oregon states. The American cold war continued. Europe seethed with alliances forming and disappearing in rapid succession, slaughtering each other as they’d been doing since the last ice age. The Russians had well-established business partnerships with global corporations and were the first to establish a mining colony on Mars. But these days, the Chinese posed the greatest threat to security. Kate figured it was a matter of time before they expanded control over all southeast Asia. The Moon, despite its inherently dangerous environment, was infinitely safer than the terran powder keg.
Mary broke the silence. “So, if and when we send the seismic data to Titanius like they’re expecting, and as soon as their clients see the anomaly, they’ll all be scrambling over each other to get here.”
“Yes.”
“And if they figure out this object isn’t an Earth ship but some other vessel or probe, then that’ll make it worse?”
Kate felt a cold shiver run up her spine. “It will. Think about it, Mary. If it is the Rossian ship we detected a few years ago, then no doubt it got here with faster than light technology, and what your dad and I saw wasn’t some glitch. Whoever gets that tech first rules the solar system for generations. I need to get them off the eastern limb and thinking about something else.”
The lab whirred to life as the automated environmental controls suggested it was daytime. Ambient light grew brighter, the power units hummed, and a series of monitoring reports flashed on the console.
Mary squinted as her eyes adjusted to the brightness. “We’re gonna be caught in the middle of a new war.”
FIVE
Mary
“Ready?”
Kate glanced over her shoulder from the LunaScoota. Mary climbed over the machine and powered up. “Want me to go first again?”
“Yes.”
Mary pulled on the hover lever and the scooter lifted off the ground. Then, easing the thruster stick forward, the paired nacelles engaged and the vehicle shot from the lab on a course toward the Mare Marginis. She threw a cursory glance back to confirm the stability of the equipment and noticed Kate trailing her.
“Throttle up, Mary.”
The machine performed well underneath her, attaining its cruising velocity of 300 km/h, splashing up moon dust in its wake. The smooth, basaltic lava flows in the Mare Crisium reminded her of the interior deserts back home, beautiful and endless, and the time she and her dad spent a summer exploring the west coast with side trips into the continental safe zones wherever possible. Burning through Nevada in a topless hovercar was the highlight for her.
“I’ve been considering this problem, and I got a couple ideas.” Kate’s voice crackled through her helmet speaker, and Mary felt the excitement.
“What are they?”
Kate and her machine pulled even with her as they approached the eastern impact crater zone. The Earth shone above like a deep blue, agate sun against the dark sky. She looked over the separation distance and said, “I want to run the micro-seismic tomography survey and find out what’s inside that thing before we send any data home.”
Her words rattled around Mary’s brain as the distance to the crater edges ticked down on her dash. This isn’t what I signed up for, she mused, but the part of her that took after her mother jumped to life, a combination of adventure and defiance, danger and discovery. She hadn’t seen Janet—couldn’t accept her as mom—since Mount Sutro, but understood she was a mercenary with the Northern Democratic Union, and responsible for destroying Earth’s only subspace transmitter. She imagined the thrill Janet experienced in dangerous situations was the same rush running through Mary’s veins: the reason she wanted to work off-planet; why she loved being here with Kate so much.
“I suppose we could always send those results from the original survey, right?”
“That’s what I’m thinking. We’ll know later today exactly what we’re seeing, so we can get out in front of the message. If it’s space crap, no big deal and we’ll carry on. If not, we’ll cross that bridge if it comes.”
Mary scanned over to starboard. Kate had flown her machine in a wide arc as they approached the mare’s edge and the apron of the impact crater zone. “We should tell my dad.”
Silence enveloped them as they maneuvered the scooters over the craters, around ancient volcanic cones—some smashed by impacts—and on toward the Mare Marginis now bathed in light, and the shadowy anomaly.
Geophones for the seismic array were separated at one-meter intervals. It took considerable time to set up and run because the wave source—the thumper—had to be moved to each data point along both sides to get the image Kate wanted. After Mary finished helping her with the initial configuration, she collected soil samples at various grid points around the anomaly, just below the surface, and again at about 25 centimeters deep. Kate wasn’t concerned about the depth. She said if this object had been running nuclear power, they would easily see the tracer isotopes.
A couple strands of Mary’s hair had come loose from her cap and floated into her line of vision. At one point during the sampling, she paused and gazed around her. Being the only two humans on the Moon left her with a strange, intoxicating fire. She smiled.
“How’s the O2?”
Mary blinked twice, and her suit’s environmental monitoring data scrolled across her inner visor. “I’ve got two-and-a-half hours.” Kate hauled the GPR sled over a survey line a couple hundred meters away, her body appearing small and fragile at this distance.
“We’ve got extra canisters in the scooter bin, right?”
“Yes, I got visuals on them.”
“Good. I’ll wrap up after the next station. Pull out the geophones and the seismic hub, and let’s roll. The place gives me the creeps.”
Mary sensed something wasn’t right from that slight tremor in Kate’s voice. She scrutinized the surrounding area, but everything appeared as it had the last two times they’d been out here. Perhaps the magnetic fields were messing with her brain chemistry. No matter, the relief brought on by packing up was palpable.
“On my way.”
The pair cruised around the impact craters and outcrops, retracing their route to the lab. The screen on Mary’s scooter console showed Kate slipping farther behind. She eased up on her throttle.
“You good, Kate?”
“Yeah,” she said, in a voice that was anything but convincing. “Yeah, I was wo
ndering what to do next. I would like to talk to your dad about what we found, but I don’t want to do it through regular comms channels. Those are all constantly monitored.”
Mary piloted her scooter onto the Mare Crisium. “I’m betting encryption isn’t an option either?”
“Too suspicious,” Kate’s voice crackled. The scooter’s icon picked up speed on the screen.
“Could we bypass the normal comms frequencies?”
“I wish.”
Mary followed the exact path she took earlier that day, tracking the scooter’s earlier burn scars on the Moon’s surface like a monorail. “What if you used your indie-comm through a frequency multiplier and transmitted an RF signal?”
Kate’s voice grew louder. “Can you rig that up?”
“Sure. My dad’s a ham radio nut, remember? I’ve helped him build circuits and antennas and all sorts of things.” The adrenaline surged again with the idea of circumventing normal comms. Operators enjoyed bouncing signals off the Moon and satellites—even ships—and she figured if Kate threw her own signal into the mix, no one would notice or care. It would be just another odd-sounding transmission. Not foolproof, but the encryption would deter any listeners.
“Tell you what, then. While I get the new data filtered, you work your magic and we’ll give Jim a call as soon as we have the imaging results. Sound good to you?”
Mary smiled. She noticed her oxygen level had fallen into the deep amber range, but with less than half an hour to travel, she wasn’t worried about running out or having to change tanks. And she realized that everything about the last 48 hours sealed it. Her dad’s radio astronomy hobby sparked her interest in science at an early age, and she kept getting drawn in to a career as an explorer with every book she read about the old terran missions and the latest Martian colony news. The internship with Titanius and Kate was more than she had hoped it would be. She felt her soul shine like a band of light.
Echoes In The Grey Page 3
