“I now ask you jury members, how confident are you? Experts did not say that they knew ‘beyond reasonable doubt’. They said, ‘with a high degree of confidence.’ There are many questions that remain unanswered in this case. Does that not give you ‘reasonable doubt’?
“Finally, let me remind you that one of your peers has already been removed from their service by the court for suspicious interactions, leaving two alternates left here today. We do not know exactly what these interactions entail, but we believe that they were approached by an unscrupulous individual seeking a verdict against Mr. Joonter. It was a very odd development in the case which only left this courtroom filled with more questions, and fewer jurors.”
Warron paused to take a deep breath and looked earnestly over at his client. “This man, Paol Joonter, is a good, hard-working businessman, whose award-winning accomplishments as CTO of LifeTech, Incorporated are widely-known in his industry, and are widely-appreciated in our homes and lives. I implore you to know what I know—that this man is innocent of the crimes for which he is being charged, and to return a verdict of not guilty. Thank you.”
With his case closed, he nodded to the judge as he took his seat. Without fanfare, the judge gave final instructions to the jury, and adjourned them for deliberations. Paol Joonter watched as the jury was led out of the courtroom by the court clerk. As the door closed, he knew that the fate of his future—and that of his family—was left in the hands of this group of people who certainly did not know who the real murderer was any better than he did. He was completely powerless in the matter now. The jury now contained full discretion over his future.
Chapter
8
Joram Anders looked at his watch as the helicopter touched down on Palomar Mountain. 12:50 AM. He did not feel the exhaustion of his studies of the day, his meal with Kath that evening, the surprise summon to meet Professor Zimmer at the Burbank Airport, or the relaxing helicopter ride, where Kath rested on his shoulder during the entire flight. Instead, adrenaline was flowing from the excitement and fortune of being at an astronomical observatory at the invite of his boyhood idol. Attempting to orient himself to his surroundings, his eyes searched the darkness without success. The CalTech observatory was strategically located as far away from light pollution as Southern California would allow. As he stepped onto the helipad, all he could see were the flashing lights of the helicopter, a rim of lights circling the pad, the canopy of stars overhead, and a dimly lighted path.
“Please follow me,” the professor instructed as he set out for the path. His trio of blurry-eyed graduate students followed with a quickened pace, as if Zimmer had not been the least fatigued by his day of instruction in the planetarium, the flight to and from Johnson Space Center, the intense focus and study on the troublesome data from Mars, and now, the helicopter ride to Palomar.
During the hike from the helipad, the darkness was met with silence. The stunned students did not know what to say, 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 the structure which housed the 200-inch Hale telescope, famed as the largest telescope in the world for several decades of the twentieth century.
“Students,” Zimmer announced, “this is our very modern and accurate 26-inch telescope. It is one of our very best for studying near-earth objects, such as our very own solar system. With this, I believe we will obtain the best possible quality images to help us with our study surrounding the events which have transpired on Mars. Please follow me to the control room, where you will be performing all of your data collection and studies this evening.”
As they entered the control room, aptly stacked with computers, monitors and control equipment, Zimmer oriented them as quickly as possible to their workstations. He began with instructions to Kath.
“Kath, you will work here.” He gestured to a workstation. “Your first task will be to get on the phone for a conference call to Israel to discuss Martian atmospheric and meteorological conditions with experts there. According to our observatory administrator, there should be a sheet instructing you on the headset and the contact information of the individual who has been studying the situation.
“Joram, Reyd will acquaint you with the equipment over here.” Zimmer pointed out a large panel of instruments and controls, equipped with several large flat-screen monitors, already containing a set of initial data on Mars.
“I will be up on that platform over there, fine-tuning the controls of the telescope as needed 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. My first effort will be an attempt to get as many visual clues as to conditions in the vicinity of the camp. Once Earthset has occurred—that is, when Earth will not be visible to the astronauts—I will then search for clues surrounding the missing satellites and shuttle, as well as to lock a visual on the lone signaling satellite, which we know to still be functional. I would like to give you a much better briefing and overview of the equipment and task on hand, but time is critical. Are there any questions?”
Reyd was familiar with Professor Zimmer’s terse manner of instructing research students in their duty, and shook his head knowingly. Joram and Kath, on the other hand, returned glassy-eyed stares to the professor, still in shock over this sudden change of activity in their lives. Zimmer drew closer to them in a gesture of understanding.
“Joram, Kath,” his voice softened. “Any questions?”
“Well, not yet,” Kath was the first to answer. “I’ll just head over there, peruse my instructions, and get on the phone with the team in Israel.”
Zimmer smiled and nodded. “Thank you.”
“Joram?” Zimmer prompted, staring at the individual whose potential the professor was eager to explore and develop.
Joram did have a question, but he was hesitant to ask why on earth the professor had chosen him for this trip. Reyd, of course, 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, and he realized that the professor could not be bothered with a question of such a trivial 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 to reach his station. Kath filed off next in the opposite direction, while Reyd took his seat at the console. Joram remained rooted for just a moment as he watched the professor begin his work. Then excitement and adrenaline took over. With an excited spring in his step, he caught up to Reyd and took a seat next to him, ready, willing, and eager to learn the controls 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’t really have the time to be helping me ramp up on this computer, while there is important research to be done on the weather…. Well, thanks for your encouragement. I hope I can be of some help as well.”
The sound of Kath’s voice filled the room, but was occasionally interrupted by an exchange between Reyd and Zimmer. “Is that any clearer, Reyd.”
“I still can’t make anything out, Professor. The features just aren’t coming through that clearly. Even the common areas of varying light intensity aren’t coming through as expected.”
“Ok, it looks like the dust storm is still pretty intense down there then. I’m going to try to zero in on Olympus Mons. We should be able to at least calibrate our image quality there… the peak has got to be above the dust storm.”
Joram focused on the images of Mars, and while he knew enough about the planet to find his way around the geographical features, he admitted that he was lost with this view. Finally, however, as the telescope zoomed and focused in on the massive dor
mant volcano, he gasped at the sight of it. He was surprised to see the mountain come into view.
“Something wrong?” Reyd turned to Joram with concern in his voice.
“It’s delightful!” Joram exulted boyishly. “I’ve just never seem Mars so clearly depicted.”
Indeed, the reddish-brown caldera and impact craters deep on the top of the volcano were in exquisite view. Anders easily discerned which impacts were older based on the portion of the crater which was obscured by more recent impacts.
“That looks good, Professor,” I’m seeing the top of the mountain in clear view. Looks like we could use a little sharpening… That’s better… better… perfect!”
“How much of the mountain is in clear view, Reyd? How far down are we obscured by the dust storm.”
“I’m not really sure. I’m not very familiar with the features of the mountain. I’ll have to digitize the image and compare it to the database. It should just be a couple of minutes.”
Lowering his 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. You can see a list of objects here. We’ll select mountains and just scroll down the list here… Nereidum Montes, Oceanidum Mons, Octantis Mons… Ah, there we are, Olympic Mons.
“Now the default view, as you can see is straight above the top of the mountain, but we’ll want to rotate the 3D image to coincide with the angle of the satellite. Hover over the mountain with your finger and drag like this… Ok, it looks like we have an approximate angle, judging by our picture on the right. Now, we just need to spin the mountain around to the correct side. To do that, we move our finger in a little bit closer and swipe with a curving motion like this to spin the digital image around, and there. Now, we’ll pull down the tools menu, and select the measure tool. We’ll pull it to about here. Well that looks like a pretty close match.”
Reyd pointed to a feature on the side of the mountain in both the left and right frames of his monitor where the digitized image and the live image of Olympus were depicted respectively.
“Ok, so that gives us the distance along the slope, but we need to know the elevation difference between these two points, so we gesture with a spiral—like drawing a lower case ‘E’ in the air—to give us the elevation.”
Another voice interjected from the back. “Thirty-two thousand feet!”
While Joram focused on the controls of the system, he didn’t notice that Professor Zimmer had now appeared behind the two students observing the data.
“Wow!” Joram exclaimed. “That’s some elevation… several thousand feet taller than Mount Everest altogether! But then again, Olympus does stand eighty thousand feet above the surface of Mars! Does that means we’re seeing a dust storm that is nearly fifty thousand feet deep?!”
Zimmer frowned as he turned to look at Kath, hoping that her time spent on the phone may provide some additional clues.
“Yes, I do see the wind patterns and speeds now on my computer, Ravid.” Kath was quickly ramping up on the weather simulations that the team in Israel had been putting together for the last twelve hours.
“So, if I understand correctly, we have a ton of dust in the air, but not much wind. It looks like average global wind speeds are about fifteen kilometers per hour, and that the maximum is about fifty, right?”
“Yes that is correct,” said Ravid. “It is actually a calm day on Mars. This dust just makes no sense.”
“This thing 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 let this last comment settle. “Ravid… are you telling me it could be a month before we get a visual on the astronauts up there?”
“I don’t think so in this case, Kath. The typical scenario for a global dust storm is that wind speeds reach one hundred kilometers per hour. This kicks up dust, which absorbs sunlight and heats the atmosphere. This heating then creates convection that only increases the wind even more. By the time these atmospheric conditions subside, we’re talking easily a month of global dust cover. However, the winds are too light in this case.”
“But you just told me that dust in the air will heat the atmosphere…”
Ravid completed her sentence, “… and increase the winds. Yes, this is what has us very concerned, also. If that proves to occur, then it may be weeks before we are able to assess the status of the astronauts. At this point, we don’t believe that will happen and must hope for the best. We need to break through visually as soon as possible to understand how the astronauts are coping with this atmospheric anomaly.”
Kath’s eyes raced across the screen. She rotated the planet to the east, west, east, and west again in order to get a better picture of the wind patterns across the globe. She tilted it north and south in order to assess 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 solar storm. I don’t want to ask stupid questions, but could this be caused by an impact?”
“No, it is not a stupid question. We keep coming back to that question ourselves. However, we have seen impacts, and it doesn’t have the characteristic signature of an impact. For example, impacts are always more localized. This layer of dust covers 75% of the surface of the planet.”
“How about a really big impact, then?” Kath offered.
“An impact that you are suggesting would have to come from a known object. Radio astronomers would have certainly detected an object this large as a shadow in the magnetic signature of the solar system. Besides, an impact of an object that kicks up this much dust would have to be large enough to alter the orbit or rotation of the planet. We have no indication that this has happened.”
“Lots of little objects, then?”
“Again too much dust. Small objects would not kick up this much dust.”
“Can we tell how high the dust has been? Perhaps the objects kicked up the dust, and then the wind continued to agitate it, by kicking it up higher and higher into the atmosphere. No that sounds ridiculous, again, because the winds aren’t strong enough.”
Kath received a tap on her shoulder. She gave a 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.”
With that, Kath looked around to find Joram. He was still engaged with Reyd. Their voices were low, but she could tell by their gestures that Joram was engaging Reyd in a question and answer session on the control panel they were working together. Reyd pointed to a series of buttons on the control panel, and Joram responded with a nod. Another gesture, another nod.
“Ravid, this is Carlton Zimmer.”
“Good evening, Professor. How are you?”
“Tired, naturally, and perplexed. Hey, I couldn’t help overhearing that you two were wondering about the depth of the dust cloud?”
“Yes, we think 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 images we are working from.”
“We just got a visual lock and measure on Olympus Mons which indicates the depth of the cloud to be nearly 50 thousand feet at this region.”
There was silence on the other end.
“Ravid, are you still there, can you hear me ok?”
“Yes, professor, but… that just can’t be! How can it be that deep? Typical dust storms kick up no more than ten kilometers into the atmosphere. Here we are talking fifteen kilometers… and there is no wind to do this. Are you sure of your calculation?”
&n
bsp; “It looks accurate to me. Unless—it could also 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 settle quickly above even thirty thousand feet, let alone fifty thousand. It’s a fascinating data point, but it only creates more questions and fewer answers. I will have to share this with my team and see if we can make sense of it.”
“Well, I will 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 the Tharsis region. If the cloud is truly at fifty thousand feet, then we will be able to assess this from the elevation of the cloud on these mountains. If the cloud is simply whipping up on the slopes of these mountains, then we may see a different elevation profile on these mountains than we do on Olympus.”
“That will be a very helpful piece of data. Thank you, Professor. Keep us informed if there are any further developments.”
“We’ll do just that, Ravid. And good luck on your end as well.”
Kath placed the headset back on her head again as Zimmer walked back to the telescope. From the sound of the conversation, she quickly returned to her brainstorming session with the Israeli areologist. He approached Reyd and 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 console which had engaged their attention for nearly an hour. “We are going to the Tharsis Region. Dr. Avram, an atmospheric specialist with whom Kath is speaking, is baffled by the dust patterns on Mars. We believe that we have found a fifty thousand foot cloud of dust covering much of the surface of Mars. However, we’re not sure if the cloud really isn’t lower, and that we’re seeing dust coming off of the surface of Olympus Mons itself.
The Orthogonal Galaxy Page 9
