Rogue Stars

by C Gockel et al.

  “Now is not the time, Crandon,” Smith said.

  “You heard me, Smith, what’s happening on your end?” Rock asked, louder this time.

  Smith must have been in a hurry as his response was quick and desperate. “They lost both their lander and orbiter. Now what’s going on there?”

  Rock knew the NSA covered HUMINT or human intelligence and they had the linguists to do the job. If he said the Chinese lost their entire mission equipment, then this was being confirmed by HUMINT or actual personnel involved in the lunar operation, not just speculation or a wild hunch.

  “Their telemetry stopped at oh three forty-seven hours. It appears to confirm what you said,” Rock responded.

  “You’re sure it’s a full equipment failure?” Smith asked, his tone rising a bit, perhaps a touch of anxiety displayed within it.

  “No, I said their telemetry ceased. There were no updates to the data stream. We have no way of knowing the status of their equipment,” Rock said, trying hard to keep his tone level. He didn’t like the man putting words in his mouth.

  Smith breathed heavily for a second and then said something muffled to someone else in the room where he was before uncovering the mouthpiece. “All right, then you’re not receiving any electrical signals.”

  Rock looked at his team and was glad they weren’t hearing this conversation. He knew it would frustrate them more than it was himself, and he was getting impatient with the good Mr. Smith. “Not from the Chinese probe or its orbiter. We are, however, receiving RF signals from a secondary source.” Rock knew this was going to get complicated.

  “Secondary? What secondary? Are you sure?” Smith asked, audibly flustered.

  “Source unknown. Type unknown. Signal strength one-point-two gigawatts. Frequency range covers the entire RF spectrum from three hertz to over three hundred gigahertz,” Rock said.

  He could see Marge shaking her head as she sat down in her chair and turned to face her monitors. She was perhaps the only team member close enough to his console who could hear him well enough to know what he was doing. Rock often resorted to scientific jargon when he was frustrated with Smith, and it was a surefire way of getting the man to back down during showdowns similar to this one.

  Smith sighed. “Can you put that in layman’s terms, Crandon?” This was Smith’s way of giving in and allowing Rock to do his job.

  “Chief!” Lisa exclaimed, almost shouting. “Listen to this!” She leaned over and raised the volume on her external speaker while unplugging her earphones so that the radio signal reverberated off the large control center walls, despite their sound-dampening materials.

  A loud series of beeps were coming through her speaker in a repetitious manner, clearly audible and clearly understood, much like Morse code. First three quick beeps and then a pause followed by four beeps, another pause, and then five beeps.

  “Is that what I think it is?” Rock asked, ignoring Smith who was practically yelling into the phone, upset at being ignored.

  “Yes, Richard, I listened to it completely at first. It will go to ten tones and then a triple pause with some sort of data spurt and then it starts over at one,” Lisa said, excitement in her voice.

  “So what? The Chinese equipment rebooted to fail safe?” Jack asked, looking at Lisa.

  “Oh my God . . .” Marge said, standing without ever removing her eyes from her monitor. She looked pale, and she had brought her hands to her face, covering her mouth, drawing her elbows in tight against her side. She seemed shaken.

  “Marge, are you all right?” Rock asked, about ready to step around his own console to approach her.

  Marge was galvanized into action, suddenly typing commands into her keyboard and then finally motioning to Rock. “Check the new data feed from console eighteen.” She never took her eyes off her monitor.

  Rock refreshed his screen, replacing the prior RF feed from Lisa with the unmanned console information Marge had streamed his way. A blank screen appeared, and each time a tone was heard, the screen dazzled in light as if a thousand tiny sparks were lit and then died in a millisecond. The display kept pace with the repeating tone, constantly lighting up in cadence with each audible occurrence. At the top of the screen, Rock could see the display subject NEUTRINO looking at him in mock shock, daring him to believe.

  “Marge . . . You fed me the stream from the New Mexico neutrino detector?” Rock asked, dropping the phone to the ground and placing both hands on his console counter, steadying himself as he felt his head getting lighter, the feeling of dizziness now pervading his senses.

  “Ah huh,” Marge responded, also leaning now on her console.

  “What the hell?” Jack said, but his words fell silent.

  “Not possible.” Rock heard himself, so softly he could barely hear his own words.

  Marge stood upright, gaining her composure, and finally tore her gaze away from her monitor to look at her colleagues. No need to look at Rock, he knew what the streaming feed of neutrinos meant.

  “Source of the secondary signal is designated extra-terrestrial,” Marge said, her voice firm and her findings undeniable. The scientific part of her mind was finally grasping the significance of the data.

  “Oh bloody hell,” Tom said.

  2 Executive Decisions

  White House

  Washington D.C.

  In the near future, Day 2

  * * *

  Richard “Rock” Crandon stood in the hallway outside the large conference room located in the main building of the White House. He knew that passing through TSA security lines at the nation’s airports could be challenging, not to mention time-consuming, but his ordeal this morning made those security checks pale by comparison.

  “Don’t use all that techno-jargon talk you’re so fond of,” Mr. Smith said, grabbing his suitcase from the conveyer belt and straightening his tie.

  “Rock will be just fine, Mr. Smith. Try being a bit more diplomatic when you discuss our team’s findings,” Director John Lui said, stuffing a few more personal items into his pockets from the small white tray nearby.

  Mr. Smith looked at Lui sideways but kept quiet. NASA was one of the few agencies that reported directly to the White House, not subject to a cabinet-level position or other bureaucratic department.

  “Come with me, gentlemen,” a nameless administrator said, motioning for them to follow him into a nearby conference room. The room was larger than most that Rock had seen, and several people were already inside waiting for the president and staff to arrive. Rock checked his temporary identification badge, making sure it was secured and displayed properly. He didn’t fancy a misunderstanding with the Secret Service only a few months after the assassination attempt on the president’s life.

  Another aide swung his hand, waving them to be seated at a rectangular table. Each of their names were stenciled in the finest calligraphic font by hand on cards placed in front of each seat on the table, indicating their assigned seats. The mere act of preparing for a presidential meeting was well orchestrated, and Rock thought this was very similar to a NASA operation.

  Within seconds of sitting, several Secret Service agents entered the room from a different door and the president’s chief administrative aide called for everyone to rise. Rock stood and watched as the madam president entered, taking her seat at the center of a very long, wooden conference table.

  “You may be seated,” the man said.

  “This meeting is called to order. Let the minutes reflect the security level at Alpha-One.” Rock noticed a transcriber stationed in the far corner typing at a steno machine furiously, recording the meeting in distinct detail. The president swung her head to look at everyone seated at the table, even looking at Rock before finishing her sweep. Rock thought this was a formal courtesy until the president returned her gaze to look directly at him.

  He felt a nudge under the table from Mr. Smith and then heard a slight whisper in his ear as the unruly man leaned closer to him. “No techno-babble.”
>
  Rock felt anger again, but it was tempered by the fact that he was more than a little uncomfortable with the gaze of the president upon him. In fact, her gaze was quickly turning into a stare, and he wasn’t the only one to recognize this. He quickly forgot about his pesky, over-controlling handler as the president continued to look at him.

  The woman was slight in stature, but her stern countenance commanded respect. Rock barely noticed the scars of surgery behind her left eye and above her left ear. He was sure the president would have received the highest level of medical care, to include plastic surgery, but there is only so much a skilled surgeon can do when a nine millimeter ricochets off of someone’s skull.

  One Secret Service agent had died in the attack, and another was wounded. Rock remembered it well, and the anxious hours afterward as an entire nation, indeed the entire world, waited until news broke that the president was still alive and had suffered a fractured skull instead of the intrusion of a bullet into her cranial cavity. News reports had the would-be assassin as a Jihadist, but enough conspiracy theories circulated to cloud the facts of the attempt. What was important now was that she was alive and fully in command of the United States of America. Given the vice president’s track record, this was an actual relief to more than just the members of her own political party.

  “. . . and the main presentation will be performed by National Security Director—” The chief of staff never got to finish his opening presentation.

  “We understand that, Thomas,” the president said, never taking her eyes off of Rock. “Deputy Director Richard Crandon, correct?” she asked, looking him in the eye.

  “Yes, Madam President.” Rock nodded his head, remembering to swallow and breathe.

  “I’m more interested in hearing from NASA right now, if you don’t mind, Thomas. We can have the presentation shortly thereafter,” she said with a slight waving motion of her hand. Dismissing him or signaling him to silence? Rock didn’t know, wasn’t sure, and wasn’t about to ask.

  “As you wish,” her chief of staff said too regally for most of those in the room. This was, after all, a republic, not a monarchy.

  “I can brief you on the NASA operations, Madam President,” Mr. Smith chimed in, leaning forward, trying to make himself more visible to the president. For once, Mr. Smith and Rock were in agreement. Better if he performed the briefing since he was liaising between three key agencies and Rock felt he was more in the dark than in on the program.

  “I appreciate your offer, Mr. . . .” An aide leaned in close to the president. “Mr. Smith, but I’d prefer to hear about the actual discovery and its significance from Deputy Director Crandon,” she said, finally releasing Rock from her gaze just long enough to reward Mr. Smith with a perfunctory glance.

  “You have the entire report, Madam President. I submitted it myself yesterday evening,” Mr. Smith said. Indeed, less than thirty hours had passed from the lunar discovery till this very meeting with several of those hours spent sleeping on a private government jet on the way from Houston to Washington D.C. In fact, Rock’s team members were still sequestered in the NASA control center, building two, and they weren’t happy about it either.

  The president waved him off, not bothering to address him verbally this time. “I read the report, but I want to review how you and your team recognized what you were dealing with.”

  “It wasn’t my discovery, actually, Madam President. Dr. Jones discovered the actual significance of the signals,” Rock said, referring to Marge’s neutrino discovery.

  “I understand you being hesitant, but you represent the entire NASA ELINT team, so please, share with us your assessment,” the president said.

  Rock felt easier after the initial anxiety that the president quickly put to ease. In fact, he had all but forgotten about Mr. Smith, who was fidgeting anxiously in the chair next to him. His boss, John Lui, sat quietly, unmoving and not indicating either way if he approved or not of the direct questioning by the executive branch.

  “Well, initially my team noticed that the telemetry feeds had ceased updating,” Rock began, looking around the table, seeing many stone-hard faces concealing who knew what kind of feelings and emotions. “Almost immediately after the data feed loss, we encountered several strong signals across the RF band.”

  Rock paused to see if anyone would interrupt. Apparently the Mr. Smith lesson was fresh in everyone’s minds as no one said a word. “Our first indication that something was amiss wasn’t the radio frequencies. Those exist even as background noise throughout the universe, rather it was the signal strength of those frequencies . . . They were literally off the chart in strength. They radiated in the gigawatt range of power output when the entire Chinese space mission wasn’t capable of summoning even a megawatt of power at the most.”

  At this, the president did interject. “So you’re saying the radio signals were stronger than what the Chinese could produce?”

  “Exactly,” Rock answered, pleasantly surprised that the president summarized his information so succinctly. “It was only after this revelation that Assistant Mission Leader Marge Jones noticed, and pulled, the feed from the neutrino detection tank at Los Alamos.”

  The president flipped through a few pages stapled in front of her that she had pulled from one of three manila folders, and began reading. “When the tertiary scientific data stream was noticed, Analyst Jones declared the signal source as ‘extra-terrestrial.’ Is that correct, Deputy Director Crandon?”

  “Ah, yes, that is how it occurred, Madam President,” Rock responded.

  “What is tertiary referring to here?” her chief of staff asked, looking at his own set of papers.

  “Oh, that is the non-critical science data that the operations control center is plugged into at all times,” Rock said. “Consoles twelve through twenty monitor various non-critical mission elements of all our mission profiles during the execution phase.”

  “What kind of non-critical data are you referring to, Crandon?” her chief asked, never looking up from his briefing paper. “The discovery seems more than critical. How was it initially classified as non-critical?”

  “Well,” Rock began, exhaling again and taking a deep breath since he knew this would take time with a civilian, “several systems aren’t really critical. They simply monitor various scientific data in order for NASA to execute or support a wider range of mission profiles. For example,” Rock continued, seeing some faces furrowing their brows, indicating confusion, “one station monitors our sun for the occurrence of plasma ejections or solar flares. Another station monitors tectonic activity, assessing the strength, location, and frequency of earthquakes.”

  A few more of those looks and Rock hurried to explain. “Yes, I know plate tectonics isn’t exactly space related, but the correlation between the two is that we use orbital satellites to micro-measure the position of various key points on certain land masses thus enabling us to tell how far the upper plate moves during any certain magnitude quake. The program was funded several years ago, and through financial efficiencies and a cooperative funding program of the European Union, we’ve managed to keep the program operational several years past its end of funding date.”

  “Could we focus on the neutrino project?” the president asked politely. This was followed by an annoying nudge of Mr. Smith’s knee to Rock’s leg, reminding the NASA mission leader that his handler was still there.

  “Yes, of course, Madam President. Sorry for the digression. The neutrino monitoring program was one of several non-critical mission items that were being monitored automatically. Marge, uh . . . I mean, Dr. Jones, had the foresight to pull up the program’s data feed when we discovered a pattern in the radio signals. From that data, we were able to determine that the source was indeed extra-terrestrial,” Rock finished.

  “Exactly how did you make that determination?” the president asked.

  Rock was confused for a moment—the report spelled it all out—but since this was the president, he repeated
what he thought was in the documents in front of her. “Madam President, if you look at your report you’ll see that the neutrino activity was approximately one-point-four million times the normal base and the activity was timed perfectly with the radio signals that we intercepted from the moon. Our conclusion is obvious, is it not?”

  “It is from the report, but before I go to the legislative branch and ask for who knows how many billions of dollars in funding to retrieve this alien object, I want to make damn sure I understand what we’re getting ourselves into,” the president responded, looking at Rock once more.

  Rock understood her ability to move from diplomat to strict governess in the proverbial blink of an eye, not to mention the use of a more common profane word. “Well, as you’ve read in the report, the neutrinos aren’t detected directly. We didn’t even know for sure that they existed until we discovered the traces they left behind—”

  “I’m not sure NASA even understands the physics involved here,” Secretary Morris said. “Better to let our scientific team of physicists arrive for a full briefing on the neutrino discovery. We can have one scheduled late tonight or tomorrow morning at the latest.”

  Secretary Morris ran the newly created Department of Science and seemed to still have a grudge that the prior administration didn’t fold NASA into it. The prior president felt that computers, digital streaming, and computer technology were sciences and NASA was space related. Rock was just happy that the inclusion of his agency didn’t happen three years prior.

  “Schedule the meeting, but we don’t have time to wait. Deputy Director Crandon, finish your explanation, but briefly, please,” the president said.

  “The neutrinos are detected by the collisions that occur when one of them hits a hydrogen atom head on. These collisions are rare but measureable by their by-product, gamma rays. Usually an underwater heavy water tank and the associated monitoring equipment are all that is needed to detect the presence of these collisions. Since neutrinos are practically massless, they pass right through solid matter as if it wasn’t there. The sun itself is the primary producer of neutrinos in our solar system, and despite its massive output, we record neutrino strikes at a fairly low rate. Taken as a whole, the massive neutrino collisions we observed could only have been produced by a major energy source far stronger than anything we can produce on earth. Thus our conclusion, Madam President.”