Voyager

by Carl Rackman

Victor leaned over and said in a stage whisper, “Hi, Callie. Jerry’s just running the last batch of telemetry through the computer to see if there’s any change from before the last transmission.”

  “Thanks, Victor. Did you see it?”

  Ortiz nodded. “Uh-huh. It’s a problem, Callie.”

  “Okay.” She could sense Jerry’s shoulders stiffening.

  The other engineer present, Morris Brymon, turned his head slightly to look askance over his shoulder. Both were signs of polite rebuke. Callie and Ortiz clammed up to await the verdict.

  After a few more tense minutes, Jerry gave a couple of mouse clicks and the printer beneath the adjacent desk burst into life.

  He sat back from the keyboard and swivelled round to take them in. He addressed them all but was looking right at Callie. “Okay, folks. Voyager One is trying to download data off-schedule and without prior interrogation from Mission Control. We need to negotiate something at real short notice with DSN to bring in the data.”

  Callie shrugged. “You know that’s not going to be easy. How much time are we talking about?”

  Jerry shrugged in return. “I’ve sent Voyager One a request for the amount of data it wants to send. Obviously, I’m not going to know more ‘til tomorrow night.”

  The thirty-five-hour wait for the other half of a conversation was part of the deal with Voyager; it was the equivalent of snail mail.

  Callie began to troubleshoot. “We only cleared the tape about two months back. How could Voyager One have maxed out its capacity in that time? We’ve only been collecting spectrum analysis since the plasma sensor went belly up. Did you pick up anything from the last downlink?”

  “Yeah, actually.” Jerry fumbled his fingers for a second before he turned to the screen and brought up a table of numbers that would have meant nothing to the uninitiated. “I caught a spike, a few milliamps, but it energised the camera circuit. Just for a few seconds.” He looked uncomfortable. It was a very unusual response for the unflappable engineer.

  Callie felt the knot of tension once more. “That system was shut down twenty-five years ago.”

  Jerry shrugged. “Voyager’s an old lady, Callie. She’s way past her sell-by date. She’s been out in that cold for a very long time. I’ve seen some of these flips maybe a half-dozen times. It could be nothing.”

  “There’s no way it could have been us?”

  Jerry shrugged again. “We’ve only sent the two system check requests. Nothing else scheduled until next week.”

  The team knew that any dormant on-board system could be snuffed out by electronic surges or spikes and irretrievably lost; the only glitches in the program so far had been caused by human errors right here on Earth.

  Callie continued to look for other options. “What about Voyager Two?” The two Voyager probes were identical, so comparisons between their systems were helpful to gauge faults.

  Jerry shook his head. “The first thing I checked. All systems nominal.”

  “Could the camera have been activated? Could Voyager have recorded images?”

  Jerry shifted uncomfortably again. “I can’t tell from the last data routine, Callie. As far as this tells me, there was a momentary spike in the power to the camera. But it doesn’t tell me if the camera was working. Like we said, it’s been disabled for twenty-five years. But visual data takes up a lot of memory, so Voyager could have taken pictures. I won’t know until the next downlink.”

  “When is the next routine due back?”

  Jerry pursed his lips. “I should get the downlink off DSN at fifteen thirty hours.”

  “Okay. Get the whole team in, and we’ll meet in Mission Control at sixteen hundred hours. If any of the dormant systems come back online, it could be a one-off ghost in the machine, or it could mean the electrical distribution system is deteriorating. Get everybody in. This could be nothing, or it could be everything.”

  The other engineers nodded approvingly. Jerry turned back to his terminal.

  Brymon slid from the edge of the desk and stood up, making the change in his pocket jingle. He single-handedly kept the vending machine company in business. He was also the team comms specialist, so he was going to need the sugar rush to get him through the afternoon. “I’ll see if there’s any noise or foreign signals. We can trace if anyone tried to contact the probe from DSN or the operations facility.”

  Callie nodded. “Morris, would you be able to go up to Spaceflight Ops and track our comms from the Lab?”

  The unscheduled trip was not Brymon’s preferred plan for a Friday afternoon, but he knew it made logical sense. “Sure, boss.” Brymon sounded gruff, but his eyes betrayed no resentment. He checked his watch. “I’ll text you when I get up there.”

  “Thanks, but I still need you back here for the conference at four.”

  “No problem, Callie.” He left ahead of them to his own office down the corridor.

  Ortiz walked Callie out to the corridor where she paused outside her office.

  “Victor, keep this one quiet until we get the team together.”

  “You got it, Callie.” He turned back towards the elevator.

  Callie stood in front of her door. The words of her job title suddenly loomed accusingly in her sight, reminding her of her responsibility.

  CAROLYN WOOLF

  PROJECT MANAGER

  VOYAGER INTERSTELLAR MISSION (VIM)

  She swallowed. Get a grip, Callie! She had a serious case of the jitters. How many glitches had they encountered as a team in the past twenty-five years? But the persistent sense she had wouldn’t go away. This felt like something big.

  She logged into her computer and saw about three dozen e-mails that had arrived since leaving the office. Most were circulars and various memos, but one caught her eye.

  ‘Urgent: Reschedule’ from Maggie Riley, Trask’s assistant. Probably rescheduling their botched meeting. Correction: Callie’s botched meeting.

  Attn. Ms Woolf,

  AD Trask says you can call him on his direct line: 818-555-4200. He’ll pick up.

  He can meet you, same venue, at 1330 on Friday, September 9, 2016. Let me know ASAP if you can make it.

  Kind regards,

  M Riley

  Executive Assistant to Mr Trask

  Callie typed a quick reply and then began a new e-mail addressed to the group of core personnel who represented the Voyager Interstellar Mission. She marked it ‘URGENT AND CONFIDENTIAL’.

  Ladies and Gentlemen,

  I apologize for the short notice, but I need to call an urgent case conference for 1600 TODAY (Friday, September 2) at Woodbury Mission Control. This to discuss an urgent, real-world issue on board Voyager 1.

  This information is currently confidential. Do not share it outside the VIM project team.

  Please reply ASAP – it is very important that all project engineers are present, in particular comms and ground tech support.

  Callie Woolf

  Project Manager, VIM

  That would get their attention. She expected a bunch of replies by lunchtime and instinctively knew which of the team would drop everything to make it, and who would arrive grumbling and ready to leave before they got there. Well, tough break, guys. Every project engineer had signed up for unsociable hours and on-call availability. The forty-year-old probes, travelling at 37,000 miles per hour 12 billion miles away, didn’t care about people’s weekends on Earth.

  Just to push the point home she followed up with a text alert to the team. The feeling rose in her stomach again. For whatever reason, this was something new; she felt nervous in a way she hadn’t felt for several years – since the last landmark event in Voyager’s already stellar history.

  She checked the clock on her wall – five hours until the meeting. She had a lot to do.

  Chapter Three

  Thursday, 8th September 2016

  London Heathrow Airport, England

  Matt stepped from the crew bus feeling the pleasant warmth of late summer on his face as he pl
aced his airline cap on his head. He straightened his jacket and pulled down his cuffs to display the three shiny rings on his sleeves, each stitched into his dark blue uniform in weaves of fine silver wire. He pulled up the towing handle of his sturdy Samsonite suitcase, placed his flight bag square on the top, and set off for the terminal doors dragging the wheeled suitcase behind him.

  He saw himself approaching the double doors reflected in the glass – he cut a trim figure and looked every inch the airline pilot: smart, dark-haired and blue-eyed, with a confident step.

  He passed through the automatic doors as they opened and walked purposefully through the terminal aware of the many eyes following him. He was determined to remain casually focused on the door at the far end where he would deposit his bag before proceeding downstairs to the crew reporting centre. It was part of a ritual he completed a dozen times a month all over the world, and it never grew old.

  The terminal was a vast, empty space and a modern industrial conglomeration of glass and grey-painted steel. At each end, the great expanses of glass opened out to the unique vistas that airports always presented: open swathes of tarmac and grass with lines of gaudy tails nestled closely in smart rows. The huge airliners nosed in towards the terminal as vehicles fussed around them like schools of fish parting before the passage of a whale. This was Matt’s domain.

  He swiped his ID card and entered his pin number at the reader by the door to access the crew baggage drop. He took care to make sure the door closed behind him to deter any tailgaters. Like every airline crew member, he was drilled to be vigilant for security breaches; he unconsciously scrutinised faces and IDs whenever he was near secure access points around the airport. In Matt’s case, he was more vigilant than most.

  Inside the blank, concrete corridors marking all the non-public areas of the airport, he was efficiently polite when passing other crew; as yet he had absolutely no idea who he would be flying with on his trip. He only had a list of names, none of which were familiar to him, despite having been with the airline for almost ten years.

  After checking in his suitcase, Matt shouldered his flight bag and set off down the stairs to the crew reporting centre – here he would print off the flight paperwork for his imminent flight to Newark, New Jersey.

  It was a bread-and-butter trip at just seven hours and forty minutes on a beautiful day. A short hop across the pond and a reasonable arrival time meant they would be relaxing in a bar by 10:00 p.m. Greenwich time.

  At least that was Matt’s plan – until his phone buzzed in his pocket.

  The text was from a contact he called ‘Sam’. When Sam called, Matt was placed in the awkward position for which he had signed up several years previously. It was something else that never grew old because it was risky and deliciously secret.

  Hi Matt. Good to see you yesterday. We should meet up for coffee and donuts soon. I’m free from 12-15th. ATB Sam.

  For the last eight years, Matt had been a freelance agent of ‘The Department’, better known as the British Security Service, MI5.

  Contrary to popular lore, ‘agents’ of the Security Service were not employees of the organisation, but freelancers. They acted as covert intelligence sources (in Department slang they were called ‘chiz’).

  Agents went about their daily lives, collecting information and reporting it back to their handlers within the Department. Spying was something of an overstatement for their work.

  Matt observed flight operations and his colleagues, reported on airport security and crew behaviour and flagged any activity or conversations regarded as suspicious.

  The people who actually worked for the Department were ‘officers’. Matt was handled by an MI5 officer he knew only as ‘Sam’. All the handling officers had gender-neutral names like ‘Sam’, ‘Alex’ or ‘Jamie’ to allow either men or women to assume the identity at any given time.

  They had a simple code for passing information. Physical material was generally known as ‘coffee’, with small identifiers added to identify the drop or exchange point. ‘Coffee and donuts’ identified the Krispy Kreme concession in the airport terminal. Matt had never used it before today. The dates communicated the time of the rendezvous: 12:15 p.m.

  He quickly checked his watch – like most pilots’ it was heavy and expensive – it showed 1145. Plenty of time. He quickly tapped out his reply.

  Hi Sam, great to hear from you. Definitely up for coffee. Let me know when suits you. Rgds Matt

  He checked his watch again, purely from nerves. Thirty seconds later the phone buzzed again.

  Cool mate. Bill wants to join us. See if you can swing by his office later. You don’t need ID to get in, just turn up at reception. He’ll find you. You guys sort out a date, let me know. Laters mate, Sam.

  Crap! This was an unexpected turn. Matt typed his reply.

  Are you sure I won’t need ID at the front desk? You know what they’re like!

  There was another pause.

  No problem, mate. It’ll be cool. Bill knows you’re coming.

  Matt sighed.

  Okay mate, no problem. Will do. Speak later, cheers. Matt

  The jocular informality concealed a very serious instruction. ‘Bill’ meant a contact in US Homeland Security. ‘ID’ meant passport. He was being asked to deliberately turn up at US immigration without his passport so that the US contact would be able to meet him in Secondary Checking.

  Very occasionally, he was tasked with transporting confidential material due to his privileged travelling position. As a pilot he had preferential access at airports, fast-track security and travelled in a secure flight deck behind an armoured, bulletproof door. Courier work of this type was more stressful as it was carried out undercover and – if he was honest – illegally. The prospect of turning a spotlight on himself by turning up in the US without a passport was a risk he couldn’t take lightly.

  Matt made his way to the lifts where he descended to the ground floor for arrivals. Tucked towards the far corner of the arrival area, away from the beaten track where arriving passengers pushing baggage trolleys laden with suitcases and duty-free bags thronged in a constant stream, sat the Krispy Kreme doughnut concession. It was little more than a counter with the branded signage around it and a small seating area.

  Matt approached the counter casually glancing at the clientele. He saw the man he recognised from previous meetings and training days as ‘Sam’ sitting at one of the tables engrossed in a newspaper and drinking from a tall cup.

  They studiously ignored one another as Matt took his place in the queue. He ordered a mocha for himself and thoughtfully picked out two doughnuts, one for his captain when he returned to the crew briefing.

  As Matt turned to leave the counter with his latest purchases, Sam got up from the table leaving his paper and cup behind.

  Matt gave him the tight little smile that British people always exchange when passing as strangers and sat down in the place Sam had vacated.

  He waited until Sam exited the area completely before ostensibly clearing away the litter the man had left behind.

  Matt surreptitiously tipped up the empty cup and deftly slid the tiny Micro SD card Sam had left underneath off the edge of the table into his other hand. He palmed it and pretended to shuffle around in his flight bag. He slid the small data card carefully into a gap in the stitching of the bag’s shoulder strap, feeling with his fingers to make sure it was snugly recessed. Then he sat back, swigged down the rest of his coffee, stuffed the doughnuts into his hat and made his way back to the lifts. His fingers unconsciously felt the gap in the stitching to make sure his mission material was still safe. The protocol was to carry electronic media separately rather than in a device; inserted into any device, even switched off, the risk was high that the data could be overridden, damaged or compromised. In the meantime, he had to discipline himself to look as natural as possible.

  Matt was calm as he walked back into the crew reporting centre and searched out the numbered carrel where he was to
meet the captain of his flight. He saw the grey-haired figure bending over the desk dressed in the same dark blue uniform, though his cuffs were adorned with an extra silver ring.

  The captain glanced around and stood straight to meet Matt for the first time.

  “Chris Beddowes.” The captain gripped Matt’s proffered hand briefly as he introduced himself, his eyes searching Matt’s and passing quickly over the rest of his face.

  Matt did the same and wasn’t surprised at what he found. Chris was a heavyset, fifty-something white man with neatly combed grey hair. Matt wondered why most British airline pilots seemed to be called Chris, Dave or Richard. Among those from a military background, the preference seemed to be Andy, Mike or, again, Dave. Though they were relatively few in number, the female pilots seemed to have a predominance of Claires. It was one of those statistical anomalies.

  Matt was very familiar with the look the captain gave him in return. His Indian surname was Ramprakash. He knew that most people meeting him for the first time found the name incongruous with the person they met. He would pass for European more readily than Asian. Though his father was Indian by origin, his mother was white British; he had inherited far more of her colouring and her blue-grey eyes. Matt himself was probably another statistical anomaly.

  He offered Chris a doughnut by way of an icebreaker. The captain accepted it with gusto. Always a good start, thought Matt. Sometimes the other pilots didn’t accept his fast food offerings – especially now that so many triathletes, fitness fanatics, and cycling nuts were common in the flying fraternity.

  The two men finished up their paperwork and knocked on the adjacent door to the small cubicle that passed as a crew briefing room. The eight cabin crew sat along the vinyl-covered benches lining two walls of the room.