Skywave

by K Patrick Donoghue

  “Callisto,” Brock said.

  Pritchard crossed his arms and closed his eyes. Was it possible?

  “Think about Christine and Avery’s mood in that message,” Brock continued. “They were happy, Dennis. They looked relieved. Their plan worked and they were relieved. They thought they had found a way to come home.”

  “If you’re right,” Pritchard said, “why is Amato entering orbit? I mean, if he’s replicating Cetus Prime’s journey, why isn’t he trying a slingshot?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he thinks something went wrong with the maneuver. Maybe he thinks Cetus crashed into the moon,” Brock said.

  “What would lead him to think that?”

  “Again, don’t know. But…I think we might have a way to find out if he’s right,” Brock said. When Pritchard looked up at her with a quizzical expression, she uttered one word: “Galileo.”

  Brock went on to remind Pritchard that NASA’s Galileo probe had performed eight flybys of Callisto, the first of which occurred in November 1996 — sixteen months after Cetus Prime’s last transmission. The last of the flybys, she told him, took place in May 2001 and was the closest approach a probe had ever made to Callisto, passing within eighty-six miles of the surface.

  “Galileo took pictures, Dennis. Lots of pictures. Some of them have resolutions as tight as fifteen meters.”

  “Well, what are we waiting for, let’s start going through them!”

  16: SIBERIAN SURPRISE

  Mission Control

  A3rospace Industries Command and Control Center

  Mayaguana Island, The Bahamas

  October 31, 2018

  Kiera turned away from her console monitor and squeezed her eyes shut to quell the burning. When she opened them again, she scanned the countertop on both sides of her keyboard and then called out, “Okay, who swiped my eye drops?”

  Aside from a few catnaps over the past forty-eight hours, Kiera had manned her station to assist the INCO specialist in examining radar data from CUBE-8 and 10. Each time a new downlink arrived from the CUBEs, she watched grainy, grayscale echo images slowly populate her screen, hoping to detect more than clumps of space rubble caught in Callisto’s orbit. But, so far, after looping two-thirds of the moon’s latitude bands, neither INCO nor Kiera had identified a single object that could be part of Cetus Prime.

  Yet, something was still broadcasting radio signals from the vicinity of Callisto. Ajay had recorded a Radio JOVE broadcast two nights beforehand and the distinctive clicks sounded out in the usual three-minute increments.

  Kiera hoped the recent addition of CUBE-2’s infrared spectrometer to the search party would make a difference. She had been surprised Amato was willing to risk CUBE-2 to a UMO attack by turning on the spectrometer, but he’d supported Dante’s recommendation to beef up the search effort with a minimal amount of protest. After all, they’d not run into a single UMO since the encounter in the asteroid belt.

  To minimize risk to the other CUBEs, Dante pulled CUBE-2 from the fleet and had it begin its infrared scans around Callisto’s northernmost latitude while the rest of the fleet accompanied CUBE-8 and 10 as they scanned the moon’s lower third with their radars.

  “Now, if we can just get a sharp edge or a sloped surface to show up on radar or infrared,” Kiera thought.

  Before resuming her inspection of radar scans, Kiera stretched out both arms above her head and yawned. To her right, she heard someone clear his throat. She turned to see Ajay standing beside her with a folded slip of paper in his hand.

  “Hey,” she said. “Have you seen my bottle of eye drops?”

  “Uh, no,” Ajay said. “Wait, is that it?”

  He pointed toward Kiera’s feet. She leaned to the right to see underneath the countertop and spotted the small white bottle resting against the workstation frame. “So that’s where they went!”

  Ajay bent down and retrieved the bottle. “Here you go.”

  “Thanks. My eyes are killing me,” Kiera said.

  While she administered the drops, Ajay sat down at the adjoining workstation and asked, “Do you have time to talk?”

  “Yeah, sure. I could use a break,” Kiera said, wiping away excess rewetting solution dripping down her face. “What’s up?”

  “So, I know I’m no expert, but I’ve been thinking…shouldn’t we be looking on the surface, too?”

  “Nah,” she said. She pointed at a full image of Callisto on the center screen of the Mission Control display monitors. “Look at all those craters. If Cetus Prime got sucked in by Callisto’s gravity it would have smashed into it like any other space rock.”

  “I realize that, but—”

  “And if it smashed into Callisto, there wouldn’t be a ship left to send the radio signals.”

  “I understand.” Ajay leaned forward and whispered, “But what if it didn’t crash?”

  “Say what?”

  “You know, what if it landed. On the surface,” he said.

  “No chance,” Kiera said. “Cetus Prime had no landing gear. It wasn’t built to do anything but fly from Earth to Mars.”

  “I’m not suggesting it landed on its own. I’m suggesting it had a little help,” Ajay said, his voice still low.

  Kiera turned back to her console monitor and reactivated the radar scan program. “You should get some sleep, my friend.”

  “No, I’m serious. What if the UMOs helped it land,” Ajay said.

  Without making eye contact, she said, “And why, pray tell, would they do that?”

  “I don’t know, but I’ve been wondering…” Ajay’s voice trailed off as he directed his gaze to the image of Callisto on the wall screen.

  “Wondering what?”

  “Don’t you think it’s strange we haven’t run into any UMOs yet?”

  While examining a new radar image, Kiera said, “Yeah, I guess.”

  “And correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t Dante say in yesterday’s briefing that Callisto’s atmosphere is very thin even though its ionosphere is quite strong.”

  Kiera yawned again. “That’s what he said.”

  “Well, isn’t it possible that means the UMOs might be closer to the surface? The reason we haven’t run into any yet is because we’re orbiting too high,” Ajay said.

  Turning to look at Ajay, Kiera said, “Theoretically, I guess that’s possible.”

  “So, if the UMOs brought Cetus Prime here—”

  “Whoa! Hold on there, Elroy,” Kiera said. “Who said anything about the UMOs bringing Cetus Prime here?”

  “Well, how else did it get here?” Ajay asked.

  “Nobody knows for sure.”

  “But you’d agree UMOs were involved at some point, wouldn’t you?”

  “Yeah. But as you’ve seen, there aren’t any UMOs here…so far…and none have followed our CUBEs since we left the asteroid belt. Now, look, I’ve got to get back to work. Okay?”

  “But—”

  “Blah, blah, blah. Not listening,” Kiera said, turning back to the monitor.

  “Not even if I told you I think I know where it is?” Ajay asked.

  “Nope.”

  Ajay stood and began to walk away with the folded paper pinched between his fingers. Looking down at the slip as he moved toward the Mission Control exit, he came to an abrupt halt and turned around.

  Kiera was so immersed in her radar scans, she never saw him return to her workstation and place the paper cube next to her eye drops. It wasn’t until she returned from fetching an energy drink from the hallway kitchenette that she noticed the paper. She popped the can’s tab, gulped down a slug of the stimulant-laden contents and unfolded Ajay’s note.

  0° to 70°N, 90° to 180°E

  Nuada? Oski? Rigr? Tyn?

  When Kiera appeared in the doorway to Dante’s office, Ajay’s note in her hand, she found Dante engaged in conversation with Morgan about the first infrared spectrometer scans. Dante noticed the blur of motion from the doorway and looked up. “Hey there, come on in
.”

  “I’m sorry for interrupting. I’m looking for Ajay. Have either of you seen him?” she asked.

  “Not lately,” Dante said.

  “Me, either,” Morgan said. He pointed at the paper in her hand. “Why? Did you get a blip?”

  “Huh?” Kiera said, gazing down at Ajay’s note. “No, nothing yet.”

  “Neither have we,” Dante said, tossing a printed infrared scan image onto his desk.

  “You might try Rorschach. Ajay spends a lot of time onboard,” Morgan said.

  “Okay, thanks,” she said, her voice faint. With her eyes still focused on the note, she turned to leave. From the moment Kiera received Sarah’s first text about Ajay, she’d wanted to dismiss everything about him. He was an amateur, a goofball who lived in a fantasy world where aliens were the answer to any unexplained phenomenon he encountered. Yet, his instincts had led them this far. Squeezing the paper between her fingers, Kiera asked herself why it was so hard to trust his instincts a little farther into space.

  “Kiera? You okay?” Dante asked.

  “I’m sorry, what did you say?” Kiera asked, turning back toward Dante.

  “I asked if you’re okay. You look spooked,” Dante said.

  “Oh. No, I’m fine. It’s just…”

  “Just what?” Dante asked.

  “It’s probably nothing, just Elroy nonsense,” she said. “I’ll catch up with you later.”

  Kiera turned and left the office, leaving Dante and Morgan exchanging puzzled looks and shrugs. As she made her way back to Mission Control, Kiera could not take her eyes off Ajay’s note. Was it possible? Had they landed? Had the UMOs helped them land? If they had, Kiera believed there was no chance the CUBEs could find the ship among the endless sea of craters on Callisto’s surface. Not with the CUBEs they had available to conduct the search. Their equipment was all wrong, the job too big. She unfolded the note and stared once again at the coordinates and crater names. Where did he get these?

  Seconds later, she walked through the doorway of Dante’s office again and handed him Ajay’s note. “Any chance you can spare a camera on CUBE-2’s next pass?”

  NASA Headquarters

  Washington, D.C.

  “What are they up to now?” Pritchard asked.

  “They’ve divided the fleet,” Brock said, pointing at her computer monitor. “See, one of them has gone back to the north pole. The others are still making passes of the southern hemisphere.”

  “What do you think it means?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. The last intercepts we received from Black Eye were more radar scans of space rocks, but they’re several days old,” she said.

  Black Eye, the DoD spy satellite monitoring communications between the SatFleet and Amato’s tracking and data relay satellite, had captured the unencrypted scans and passed them to NASA…after a review by U.S. Space Command.

  “Have they made any scans of the surface?” Pritchard asked.

  “If they have, Space Command’s sitting on them,” Brock said.

  “Hmm…assuming Space Command’s not hiding anything from us, that means one of two things,” Pritchard said. “Either we’re wrong and Amato’s not searching for Cetus…or…he doesn’t think it crashed. He thinks it’s caught in orbit.”

  “Or…they’re starting their search for Cetus in orbit before they turn their attention to the surface.”

  “But, Helen, if Avery was attempting a slingshot, Cetus would have been coming in too fast to end up caught in Callisto’s orbit,” Pritchard said. “And if he did get caught, that would have meant he miscalculated his vector and came in too steep, in which case he would have crashed. End of story.”

  “Well, maybe Cetus ran out of steam before it reached Callisto,” she said.

  “I guess that’s possible, but why would Amato leap to that conclusion? Why would he start there?”

  “I don’t know. I suppose he’s just being meticulous. Or he looked at all the craters and decided it wasn’t worth it to search the surface.”

  “Maybe.” Pritchard stared at the moving icons on the computer screen, then turned to Brock. “Speaking of craters, how’s the Galileo photo search going?”

  “No better than it was yesterday. Too many craters and too much area to cover. It’ll take weeks, if not months, to do it right. And, as we’ve discovered, Galileo only photographed portions of Callisto. We’re missing huge sections of the surface.”

  “Yeah, that’s disappointing,” Pritchard said. “But at least we have a good portion of the equatorial band. If Cetus tried a slingshot it would have been angling for the equator to get the biggest push, so maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  The Rorschach Explorer

  A3rospace Industries Command and Control Center

  Mayaguana Island, The Bahamas

  Strapped into the commander’s chair, Ajay stared out Rorschach’s cockpit window, imagining the spacecraft approaching Callisto. Behind it, filling the cockpit’s horizon with brilliant swirls of color, was its gargantuan parent, Jupiter.

  Though Callisto is 1.1 million miles from Jupiter, roughly four times farther away from its host planet than the Moon is from Earth, Jupiter is so large, one thousand three hundred Earths could fit inside it. One standing on the surface of Callisto looking toward Jupiter would see nothing on the horizon but the gas giant looming overhead. What an amazing sight that would be, Ajay thought.

  Closing his eyes, Ajay pictured himself standing atop a Callisto crater watching Io, Europa and Ganymede, Callisto’s companion moons, cross in front of Jupiter as they orbited, their shadows casting black orbs on the planet’s surface as they moved.

  A sharp tug on his shoulder caused Ajay to lurch. His eyes opened to see Kiera standing beside him, looking annoyed. “Are you deaf?”

  “Oh, sorry, what did you say?” Ajay asked.

  She gripped his arm. “Come with me. Now!”

  A short racewalk later, Ajay and Kiera entered the Mission Control briefing room. At the table awaiting them were Dante, Morgan and Amato. On the table in front of Amato was the creased, unfolded slip of paper with Ajay’s note.

  Amato stood and invited Ajay to sit at the head of the table. Ajay protested but Amato insisted, his voice raised above the Nepali accountant’s. As Ajay slunk into Amato’s chair, he looked around. It was then he saw Morgan’s weepy eyes and the printout on the table in front of him. The astronaut slid the page across the table toward Ajay. Barely able to speak, Morgan asked, “How?”

  Ajay looked down at the printout. It was a photograph of a crater. Below the picture, someone had scribbled Nuada. On the picture itself, someone had drawn two circles with a ballpoint pen. Ajay’s eyes drifted to the smaller of the circles. Inside the rocky, jagged crater, among the scattered debris at its center, was a puffy straight line with long rectangles protruding on each side, their shadows appearing as wings on the crater floor.

  Morgan pushed himself out of his chair and approached Ajay. His shoulders heaved as he sobbed. He stretched out his arms and bear-hugged Ajay, nearly toppling the chair in which Ajay sat. “You did it…you found them…thank you.”

  Ajay didn’t know what to do. He looked to the others at the table; tears were in all their eyes. Kiera said, “All hail Elroy.”

  Amato was the first to regain his composure. He held up the photograph and asked, “Tell us, Ajay. How did you do this?”

  “I don’t know,” Ajay said. “It was just a guess.”

  “Oh, come now,” Amato said as he tapped Ajay’s note. “This was more than just a guess. Something led you to these coordinates, to these craters.”

  Ajay turned toward Kiera. “It was your presentation.”

  He told the team Kiera had given him electronic copies of her presentation to Amato in which she posited the idea the clicks originated from a lost probe, as well her independent analysis of Radio JOVE’s recordings. He said he hadn’t looked at them back then, but after the first day of unsuccessful Callisto radar scans, he decided
to read through the presentation and review Kiera’s analysis.

  “I’ve always believed the clicks came from something on the surface,” Ajay said. “I guess I wanted to see if there was anything in Kiera’s presentation that might help me prove that.”

  Nothing stood out, he told them, until he read her explanation for the varying degree of the clicks’ signal strength on different Radio JOVE recordings.

  “It was the part where Kiera said the click strength was due to the relative positions of Callisto and Io,” Ajay said. “She pointed out that on recordings when the two moons were in close proximity, the clicks were louder. When the moons were farther apart, the clicks were softer.”

  Continuing on, he said, “She had this video. It showed a time lapse of Callisto’s and Io’s positions as seen from Earth, looking toward Jupiter, for each recording. She had excerpts of the Radio JOVE audio that played alongside the time lapse.”

  Amato interrupted Ajay and asked Kiera to retrieve her laptop and the original of the presentation. As she bolted out of the conference room, Ajay asked, “Should I wait ’til Kiera comes back?”

  “No,” Amato said. “Proceed.”

  “Okay, well, when I watched the video and listened to the recordings, I realized Kiera had overlooked something.”

  “What was that?” Amato asked.

  “When I met with her in Cocoa Beach, I told her that the clicks start off at low volume and pick up in intensity over the course of a recording before they fade out at the end,” Ajay said.

  Kiera entered the room halfway through Ajay’s sentence. Amato asked him to repeat what he had said. When finished, Ajay looked at Kiera and said, “Remember?”

  Without hesitation, Kiera said, “I do.”

  “Well, I said it then, and I believe it now. I thought the volume rise and fall indicated the clicks originated from a fixed position on the moon.”

  “Yep, that’s what you said,” Kiera replied. She turned to Amato and Dante. “I’ll admit, I didn’t believe him. Honestly, at that point, I thought he was nutso.”