“What about the repair?”
“It’ll have to wait for tomorrow. I’ve got other plans.”
“Oh, yeah? You got a hot date or something?” Michael punched him playfully in the side.
“Yeah, with a mysterious, sexy celestial body.”
“Aha, I always knew you were the romantic type.”
With a hum, the hatch closed behind him. Finally, he was back in the workshop with his telescope. This time he would be able to work in peace and quiet. Carefully and without touching anything because he didn’t want to shift something accidentally, he closed one eye and put the other up to the eyepiece.
He didn’t see anything.
But that also made sense. He had been gone for almost an hour, meaning the object must have moved during that time. He called up the preliminary trajectory data on the computer, calculated a new position using that data, and oriented the telescope to the new position. There was still nothing in his field of view. He scratched his chin and concluded it was too early to worry. Preliminary trajectories were seldom right on the first try. Usually they were inexact, because they were missing some information.
He had the computer calculate other possible positions. He moved the telescope to each of these locations, sorted in terms of decreasing likelihood. He couldn’t find the object anywhere. Shit. He’d lost it, all because of Michael’s strange doings.
Just stay calm, Giordano. Maybe you should start over from the beginning. Where did the ELT in the Andes find evidence? He reset the coordinates again and then moved the telescope along the orbit. It was a long, tedious task, and it didn’t appear to make any sense. But he might have had made an error somewhere. The computer hadn’t placed any illuminated label over this barely distinguishable speck of light, which would have told him the name of the object. But the asteroid belt was still between the ship and the object. The risk that he had mistaken the object for one of the more significant asteroids wasn’t great, but it was still possible.
There! He hadn’t expected it, but there was a pinpoint of light in the field of view that shouldn’t be there. Giordano entered the data into the computer. It wasn’t any of the known asteroids. But the object that he had observed before would have already been much farther along its orbit. Had he found a new celestial body? He’d be far from disappointed. Finally, there would be an object in the universe carrying the name of his choice, the name of his mother, Paola Bruno. That was what he’d wanted ever since he was a kid.
The object moved out of the central area of focus and became blurry. But it hadn’t moved to the right as would be expected, and it traveled to the left instead. That didn’t fit at all with his earlier observations. One possibility was a previously unknown celestial body that was orbiting the wrong way around the solar system, that is, a real oddball. That would make it very fitting if it were to be named after his mother. Either that or the object had changed its direction of motion by somewhat less than 180 degrees. That would mean it wasn’t a celestial body at all. It would have to be an artificial object, a spaceship.
Giordano began writing a memo to the Minor Planet Center to report his discovery. But then he began to reconsider. He’d look like a fool if he sent a report that turned out to be just a spaceship. He hadn’t even checked what human-made constructions were flying around out there. Where was the Europa probe that was supposed to bring material from the ice geysers of Jupiter’s moon back to Earth? What other missions were still underway out beyond the Asteroid Belt? He really should check that before sending any reports. But, at the same time, he also knew that it would be a fruitless search. No probe made by man could have changed its course so radically within such a short amount of time.
He stopped his search in the NASA databases before he’d really even begun. Maybe he would be the biggest laughingstock among the astronomical community, but the risk of that seemed low. He decided he’d send his observations to the MPC. Let them decide what to do next and see what they could find. He sent his already recorded data. His stomach growled. It was time for dinner, but he didn’t want to waste his valuable time with eating. He stayed at the telescope.
Copyright © 2021 by Brandon Q. Morris and Cliff Allister
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Translator: Stephen Vladimirov
Editing team: Marcia Kwiecinski, A.A.S., and Stephen Kwiecinski, B.S.
Cover design: Rigest Rami
Helium 3: Death from the Past (Helium-3 Book 2) Page 30
