Skywave

by K Patrick Donoghue

  “I probably am.” Ajay smiled. “Anyway, I don’t think I would have put two and two together without Kiera’s video…and her declination analysis.”

  Morgan, who’d seemed lost in memories for the balance of the conversation, said, “Declination?”

  “Yeah. Kiera plotted Earth’s declination with Jupiter for each of the six recordings,” Ajay said.

  Morgan held up the photograph of the Nuada crater. “And that helped you find this?”

  “Eventually, yes, but that was the last piece of the puzzle, not the first,” Ajay said. He turned back to Kiera. “So, if you remember, in each recording the clicks fade in, peak and then fade out?”

  Kiera nodded. “Yeah, somewhat. Not all the recordings have the full cycle, but the pattern was pretty consistent.”

  “Right,” Ajay said. “Sometimes the person making the recording started it too late to hear the buildup or stopped recording before the clicks faded away entirely, but on every recording you can hear a peak click.”

  “Really?” Kiera said.

  “Yes. I went back and listened to all six recordings, using one of the spectrum analyzers in Mission Control to compare the clicks,” Ajay said. “And I was able to find the peak click in each recording.”

  He looked around at his rapt audience, then continued his explanation. “Kiera had a chart of Callisto’s coordinates she used to make the video in the presentation. It showed Callisto’s position at the beginning, middle and end of each recording. I used that to approximate when the peak click in each recording occurred. It wasn’t very scientific, just sort of a swag.”

  “You noticed a pattern,” Amato observed.

  “Exactly!” Ajay said. “The peak clicks always happened before Callisto reached the center point of its crossing in front of Earth, which told me the signals were coming from the leading side of Callisto vis-à-vis Earth.”

  There was a pause in the conversation as Ajay’s statement sunk in. When no one challenged his conclusion, Ajay said, “Then I used Kiera’s declination data to figure out the rest.”

  He told them he noticed relative volumes of the loudest clicks on each recording were of different intensities on the spectrum analyzer. Kiera pointed out this was the result of Io’s position in relation to Callisto.

  “No, that’s not how I saw it,” Ajay said. “It was in the declination data. The higher Earth sat on the celestial horizon relative to Jupiter, the louder the peak click volume, and vice versa.”

  Dante said, “I see what you’re getting at. Since the peak clicks came from the leading side of Callisto, that told you to look at its western hemisphere. Since the loudest of the peak clicks happened when Earth was higher compared to Jupiter, that told you the clicks were coming from the northern hemisphere…or northwestern hemisphere, to be exact. Zero to seventy degrees north, ninety to one hundred eighty degrees east.”

  Ajay nodded, a wide smile on his face.

  “But how did you come up with these four craters?” Morgan asked.

  “Now that’s an interesting question,” Ajay said, now fully into the description of his deductions. “There was a large spread of the peak click volumes between the recordings. That suggested to me the source of the clicks had to be closer to Callisto’s north pole rather than its equator. When Earth was at its lowest declination, the peak click was the weakest. When Earth was at its highest declination, the peak click was the strongest.”

  “That explains the latitude,” Morgan said. “But how did you narrow to the four craters on this list? There are thousands of craters, if not tens of thousands, in the area you staked.”

  “I went online and found a map of Callisto on the U.S. Geological Survey website. It’s a composite of photographs taken by Galileo and Voyager-2. I looked for large craters on the northwest, Earth-facing side of Callisto and found four that stood out as large landmarks. I figured whoever created the distress beacon would want to make it easy to find.”

  Callisto’s crater Nuada is located at 62.3°N, 87.5°E. On Earth, these coordinates would put a visitor in the middle of Siberia. On Callisto, it would put one at the spot of the final resting place of the fully intact U.S.S. Cetus Prime.

  “Ajay, once again you’ve proved your place on this team,” Amato said.

  “Thank you,” Ajay said. “Now I have a question, if you don’t mind.”

  “By all means,” Amato said.

  “What the heck is that?” Ajay asked, pointing to the other pen-drawn circle on the photograph.

  “One mystery at a time, my boy,” Amato said, taking the photograph back from Ajay. “One mystery at a time.”

  After a short break, during which time Amato asked Mark to print enlargements of the image of Cetus Prime, the group reconvened to discuss next steps.

  “It’s hard to tell with all the ice and rock around it, but it looks like it’s in one piece. The fuselage isn’t bent and there aren’t any visible holes,” Dante said.

  “One of the solar panels took a hit from something, but the other one looks good,” Morgan said.

  “What about the instrumentation pallet?” Amato asked.

  “Unfortunately, the image is too blurred. We need a better-resolution shot,” Kiera said.

  Amato turned to Dante. “How low can you take CUBE-2 on the next pass?”

  Holding up his copy of the photo, Dante said, “The original of this one was taken at one hundred fifty kilometers above the surface. Paul and I were talking about it earlier and we think we can spiral down to one hundred kilometers without a problem.”

  “That’s right,” Morgan said. “If Callisto had a thicker atmo, we wouldn’t be able to pull it off. The CUBEs aren’t aerodynamic. At the speed CUBE-2 would be descending, it would rip apart as soon as it encountered atmospheric pressure. But Callisto’s atmo isn’t much different than our moon’s, so the thrusters should be all we need to maneuver and there should be minimal air pressure resistance.”

  “One hundred kilometers…hmmm,” Amato said. “There’s no way to get closer?”

  “Oh, we can get much closer but you’ll probably lose the CUBE,” Morgan said.

  He explained the issue was one of speed. The spiral maneuver, using thrusters to turn and brake, would allow the CUBE to spend a lot of time over the crater as it descended in wide circles above it.

  “We could make our spiral path much wider, slow the CUBE down enough to get within a couple of miles of the crater without too much of an issue. It’d take a while, but it’s doable,” Morgan said. “However, then we’ve got the problem of regaining speed to get back in orbit. Who knows how the VLF engine will work that close to the surface? I think there’s a strong chance it would crash.”

  Kiera jumped into the conversation. “I agree. Callisto’s ionosphere is very strange. It’s so thick with ions, it completely blocks Jupiter’s magnetic field, and the closer you get to the surface, the more it intensifies. That’s why there’s so little surface radiation. If CUBE-2 gets within a mile or two of the crater, it’s possible the concentration of ions at that altitude might affect the engine’s dynamics.”

  When she finished speaking, Dante said, “Not only that, getting that close won’t buy us anything from a photo quality standpoint. The resolution of the imager aboard all the CUBEs maxes out at two meters per pixel at a range of one hundred kilometers.”

  “I wasn’t thinking of the still-imager. I was thinking of the video cameras,” Amato said.

  “No way, Augie,” Morgan said. “Even if we could manage to get the CUBE down close enough to get high-quality video without crashing, we couldn’t slow down enough to get good footage. It would be like taking a video of something directly below a fighter jet at treetop level, only worse. We’d come in so hot, the photos would be nothing but blurry streaks.”

  “Avery Lockett figured out a way. He landed in that crater, Paul. He didn’t crash. He landed. There were no landing thrusters on Cetus, but somehow he did it,” Amato said.

  “A magic trick I
can’t explain,” Morgan said. “Nor could we possibly duplicate it. If we had live, manual control of a CUBE, we might have a fighting chance. But not with a thirty-five-minute comms delay. It’s not worth losing CUBEs to find out how he did it through autopilot trial and error. You’re better off sending a new set of CUBEs with gear to do the job right, including landers that can drop into the crater. Cetus isn’t going anywhere.”

  Amato held up his hands in surrender. “All right, all right. I concede. Let’s go ahead with the hundred-kilometer option.”

  “I’ll get right on it,” Dante said.

  As he rose to leave the conference room, Amato said, “Hold on, Dante. Before you go, I want to discuss the other image.”

  Amato handed around another set of enlargements that focused on an unusual structure abutting the crater’s northern wall. When the group received their copies, they studied the blurred image while Amato said, “I am not a geologist, but I’ve seen enough craters to know that’s not a natural formation.”

  Kiera stood and said, “Be right back. Need to get a ruler.”

  “Very well,” Amato said. As Kiera left the conference room, he turned to Morgan. “Paul, what’s your opinion?”

  Morgan tugged at his bushy mustache and shook his head. “Beats me, Augie. I’d love to say it’s a trick of lighting, some bizarre shadow of the crater wall, but I don’t think it is.”

  “Dante?” Amato asked.

  “Whatever it is, it’s huge. This crater’s, what, forty miles across?” Dante said. “That thing must be a couple miles long.”

  Kiera returned to the room with her ruler and began taking measurements of the original photograph of the full crater while the others continued to talk.

  “Ajay? You’ve been awfully quiet. What do you think?” Amato asked.

  “Oh, you know what I’m going to say,” Ajay said with a smile.

  Amato chuckled. “Yes, I suppose I do. Go ahead, we’re all thinking it, you might as well be the first to say it. It is your discovery, after all.”

  Ajay crossed his arms, cocked his head to the side and said, “Dat, my bruddas and sistas, is one hundred percent purefire alien shiz.”

  As the others laughed, Ajay straightened up in his chair and cleared his throat. “Elroy aside, I’d say it is an alien base of some kind, seeing how it’s shaped to fit the curve of the crater wall.”

  “As crazy as it sounds, I have to agree,” Morgan said. “Even though it looks crusted by ice and rock in spots, it does look more like a fixed structure than, say, a spaceship.”

  Kiera joined the conversation. “I just did some calculations. Cetus Prime’s located less than two miles from it, right around 1.8 miles. The structure itself is 2.4 miles long and about a half mile wide. Obviously can’t tell how tall it is, its shadow is obscured by the crater wall’s shadow, but to my eye it looks a heckuva lot taller than Cetus.”

  Morgan turned to Amato. “What do you think, Augie?”

  Amato stared down at the picture, then up at Morgan. “I think I’d like to sacrifice CUBE-2 to get a closer look.”

  “Roger that,” Morgan said. “Come on, Dante, let’s go make it happen.”

  Later, with CUBE-2 programmed to make its death spiral into Nuada, Morgan caught up with Amato in the Rorschach bay. The elderly engineer sat on a bench admiring the starboard side of his creation. Morgan sat down next to him and the two sat in silence for several minutes. Finally, Amato asked, “What do you think happened to them, Paul? Why did they come here?”

  “No clue. My mind’s racing just trying keep up with all the possibilities,” Morgan said.

  “Mine too,” Amato said.

  After another stretch of silence, Morgan said, “Augie, I have a big favor to ask.”

  “Yes.”

  “We’ve got about twelve hours before CUBE-2 starts its maneuver. I’d like to try something before it goes in.”

  “Try what?”

  “Well, it’s a shot in the dark, but I think we ought to at least consider giving it a go,” Morgan said. “But I need to round up a few people to try it. If I can’t get them here before CUBE-2 jumps off, I’m sure we can get them to walk us through it by phone.”

  “What are you talking about? Round up who? To try what?”

  “I want to see if I can get Cetus Prime’s computers to turn on. See if there’s anything we can download, see if the crew left us any messages,” Morgan said. “I can’t do it myself. I need some of the fellas from the Cetus mission team. The guys I need are retired, but I know how to get hold of them.”

  “But, Paul, how’s that possible?”

  “It may not be, but, then again…”

  17: BLACKOUT

  En Route to the White House

  Washington, D.C.

  November 1, 2018

  There were no protestors or media when Pritchard exited NASA headquarters on this occasion. The controversy sparked by Amato’s earlier CUBE follies had faded in the consciousness of all but the most strident of alien conspiracists. Replaced by the start of the football season, the new school year and the froth of the upcoming midterm elections, average Americans’ eyes and ears were tuned to terrestrial matters. The same could be said of the good citizens of Earth’s other nations, albeit for different local distractions.

  As Pritchard walked along Sixth Street, heading for the White House, he gazed at the faces of those he passed. Whether people on their way to meetings, tourists heading for museums or street vendors tending their carts, all moved about with a sense of purpose. Some wore smiles and chattered. Others snaked through pedestrian traffic with determination, their faces stern and focused. There was also, of course, a contingent of people caught in their own little universe, striding across D.C.’s busy streets with cell phones glued to their ears with nary a look at the cars bearing down upon them.

  Gripping the handle of his briefcase, Pritchard felt his stomach churn. For the pictures he carried to the White House would be more disruptive to everyday life across the planet than any event in human history. Unable to look at the untroubled faces of passersby any longer, Pritchard shifted his eyes to the edifice of the National Air and Space Museum one block ahead.

  One of the most popular museums in America, the Air and Space Museum is filled with testaments to the country’s ingenuity and bravado. From Kittyhawk to Canaveral, in the span of sixty-six years, American-inspired powered-air flight took humans from one hundred twenty feet off a North Carolina beach to the surface of the Moon. Since then, through triumphs and tragedies, NASA spacecraft have stretched the bounds of exploration in every direction throughout the solar system, including lonely Voyager-1, now 13.2 billion miles from Earth and forty-one years into its journey into interstellar space.

  Yet, all of NASA’s accomplishments stacked together would not withstand the blowback of Amato’s discovery. For there was no way to tell the tale without exposing decades of deceit that would forever stain the agency, the military and the administrations that had presided over the subterfuge.

  Turning away from the museum, Pritchard proceeded across the National Mall, a wide, grassy expanse of crisscrossing streets and trails that separates the Lincoln Memorial at one end and the U.S. Capitol at the other, with the Washington Monument obelisk in between. Pritchard took in the proud symbols as he walked along and wondered if even they could survive the coming storm.

  Situation Room, The White House

  Washington, D.C.

  When Pritchard entered the room, he was surprised to see a much smaller group than he had anticipated. Brett Shaw, the national security advisor, had told him to bring twenty copies of the photographs as he expected the full National Security Council to attend. But the only people in the room were Shaw, Elliott Zimmer, the secretary of defense, and General William Warner, the commander of U.S. Space Command.

  Shaw rose from the table to greet Pritchard. “Hello, Dennis. Come sit by me.”

  “All right,” Pritchard said. Before heading for the seat proff
ered by Shaw, Pritchard stopped to shake hands with Zimmer and Warner. “Secretary, General, good to see both of you.”

  Zimmer’s expression was sour but his reply was cordial, his demeanor no different from any other time Pritchard had met with him. Warner’s greeting, on the other hand, surprised Pritchard. The man’s handshake was brief and he barely looked at Pritchard, not exactly the kind of greeting one would expect between contemporaries and longtime colleagues.

  Pritchard had known Warner for more than twenty-five years, all the way back to the days when Warner was a Mission Control duty officer for the Department of Defense at the Johnson Space Center and Pritchard was INCO for several Shuttle missions. Given the different directions of their career paths thereafter, they’d not worked with one another again until Amato’s CUBE odyssey brought them back together.

  Over the past three months, they’d spoken at least once a week to discuss the latest developments regarding Amato’s SatFleet, and in between they had corresponded via email to prepare status briefings for the president, Shaw and Zimmer whenever developments warranted. Their conversations had been relaxed and open, something not always true in interactions between the military and NASA. A fact that made Warner’s greeting all the more curious.

  Joining Shaw on the opposite side of the table, Pritchard said, “I thought you said the full council would be present.”

  Shaw darted a look over Pritchard’s shoulder at Zimmer and Warner. “Sorry about that. Given the sensitive nature of the situation, Elliott suggested we stick to our mini task force. The president agreed.”

  “Damn right I did,” Zimmer said. “Until we have the situation under control, the smaller the group, the better. The last thing we need right now is a leak.”

  The door to the room opened and the four men turned to see President Andrew Jennings and his chief of staff, Danielle Hawkins, enter. Pritchard found himself surprised yet again. He had expected the president would be stern and somber, if not outright angry. But he was all smiles and handshakes. Perhaps he had already unloaded on Hawkins, for she looked girded for battle with clenched jaw and a cold stare.