“That’s why I’ve asked Chief of Engineering Jeff Wheeler to be here. You and your team are going to have to find a way to get there and do it in only three months,” Mr. Smith said, shuffling his papers into some kind of unknown order that only the man could decipher.
“I’ve told you twice already, even if we worked around the clock, we’d need close to half a year to get anything worthy to attempt this mission. It’s impossible.”
“I didn’t think you NASA types were so pessimistic,” Mr. Smith said.
“Not pessimistic, realistic. Just the safety protocols alone will take several months.”
“That’s why there will be no safety protocols, Crandon. You just need to get us up there and do it fast. No other mission parameters.”
Rock sighed, looking around the table. He saw no appetite from any of his team members to even join the discussion. In fact, it looked like Marge despised the man and Lisa had a look on her face indicating physical violence was being contemplated. Jack just looked tired, and Tom, as always, appeared to be bored with their conversation. Only Jeff was listening intently, apparently not accustomed to dealing with Mr. Smith on a regular basis.
“You understand the implications of what you’re saying?” Rock asked.
“Completely. Remember, Crandon, you’ll have nearly unlimited resources once congressional approval has been secured.”
“That’s not the part that worries me. Where do you think we’re going to find suitable volunteers for a mission like this with a high risk and, if I may be blunt here, a likely chance of death?” Rock said, frustration rising in his voice.
“We have just the right people in mind,” Mr. Smith said, displaying his unusual smile that reminded Rock of a hyena just before it was about to feed.
Russian Space Station Gordust (Pride)
Low Earth Orbit
Day 4
* * *
“They said what?” astronaut Julie Monroe exclaimed, looking more than upset and sounding very pissed off.
“I’m very sorry, comrade Julie. That is the last communiqué we received from our commander. You’ll have to be ready to depart the day after tomorrow,” cosmonaut Yuri Temshenko said from overhead where he was floating above the intersection of the habitation modules of the space station.
“Stop already with the comrade thing. You’re entirely too archaic for this century,” Julie said, pushing off from the bulkhead and twirling ninety degrees by latching on to the handrail protruding from the base of her habitation module and then disappearing from view.
“Don’t take it personally, Yuri. She’s just upset about her experiment. It requires twice daily observations, and she’s sure you’re not going to spend the time to continue it. She spent two years preparing for it,” Craig Alders said from his habitat tube.
“All forgiven, my friend. I would be angry, too, if your government kicked me off of your space station,” Yuri replied, spinning upside down so he could see Craig with the same orientation.
“Except we don’t have a space station.”
“I’m sure it would have been a nice play station,” Yuri said, and Craig wasn’t sure if the man misspoke or was jesting again. Yuri had to be one of the funniest but less than serious astronauts Craig had ever encountered. It made him question not only the Russian cosmonaut vetting process but if the Russians even had a vetting process.
“So, will there be a special launch for the personnel change?” Craig asked.
“Undoubtedly,” Yuri said. “We weren’t supposed to be provisioned for another three weeks. From the rumors we’ve heard, there is something planned that requires extra space on board the Gordust. Speculation will only get you so far.”
“So no one’s saying earth-side, then?”
“Nyet. Not a word, sorry.”
“Well, if you hear anything, let us know. I’ll wrap up some of our documentation and secure our belongings, but we have a day and a half so no hurries.”
“No, take your time. Enjoy the view for another day. Very pleasant from up here,” Yuri said, moving over to a porthole and looking down at the earth, which was moving by at over seventeen thousand miles per hour.
Craig moved to a second porthole. “It’s beautiful. I’ll miss this place.”
“I’m sure you will. But cheer up, you’ll be back, I’m sure, or have your own station soon someday.” Yuri clapped Craig on the back and smiled.
Craig took one last look at the blue-green planet below and pushed off back to his habitat to prepare for his return.
“Chto eta bilo?” Olga Petrov asked, gliding up to Yuri and looking to make sure the Americans were out of earshot. Not that it mattered as long as they spoke Russian, but better to make sure. “Do they know?”
“Just that they are leaving. I just now told them, but not the reason for it. We have to make room for the new crew now, Olga. Pravda, we don’t really know anything either.”
“We know more than they do,” Olga said, moving to close the hatches on the habitat tubes Julie and Craig had used.
“What would we know, Olya?” Yuri said, using her diminutive.
“We are going to the moon, Yuri. I know we are, but I don’t know why. Not yet.”
“Perhaps, Olya, but I’d be careful not to think upon that too much. Not until we see what Roscosmos sends up,” Yuri said.
Olga simply smiled.
5 Planning
Vostochny Cosmodrome
Siberia, Russia
In the near future, Day 6
* * *
Vladimir watched the large Energia IV lift off from the Vostochny Cosmodrome with its atmospheric reentry vehicle perched atop the medium-sized lifter. He knew the next two days included two more launches of the same type booster, all for the space station. He was satisfied after sixty seconds when the counter rolled past T 1:00 that the rocket would enter low earth orbit without incident. He turned from the observatory platform and headed back to the elevators to schedule the next tasks for his agency.
As he arrived several floors below the observatory deck, he nodded in satisfaction at their new quarters, which were much improved over the old Baikonur facilities in Kazakhstan. That place was a dump, he thought to himself, and he wouldn’t miss the many reminders of the comrades who had died there over the years. Back in the Soviet era, half of the incidents weren’t even reported. Those had been hard times.
He had been thoroughly briefed and understood the mission as it related to his agency. The first launch would ensure the Americans were vacated from the Gordust Space Station as well as providing provisions for the next two months. The second booster was to carry a special fuel module designed to change the entire orbit of the station. Something like this had never been attempted before, but the stakes were high enough that the Kremlin felt that all other assets, including his cosmonauts, were expendable.
For that reason, the remaining technicians would not travel to the station until the riskier orbit changing burn occurred. If there was a catastrophic failure on board the station, this would limit the loss of life to only two cosmonauts, instead of the planned six.
Then there was the fourth launch. The massive Energia X was even now being prepped to launch a lunar reconnaissance orbiter around the moon. This would at least insure that they could monitor the object if nothing else. Currently they didn’t have a lunar lander that was capable of returning to the earth, much less lunar orbit. Dmitry had an entire team of engineers working overtime on that at a secret location outside of Moscow. If the Russians couldn’t land there yet, they’d be sure anyone else that tried couldn’t do so unobserved.
“You look worried, Vlad,” Irina Koroleva said, standing to greet him.
“It’s nothing, Irina, just the magnitude of what we’re about to do,” Vlad said, walking over to his chair in his office.
Irina followed him but didn’t enter, instead preferring to lean against the doorjamb. “I take it the launch went well.”
“You listened?” Vlad
asked, wiggling his mouse and bringing his computer out of hibernation.
“Of course. The launch sounded like it went perfectly, as usual, so what’s the problem, Vlad?”
Vlad wasn’t in the mood to discuss particulars. During a lapse in judgement last year, he found himself in an affair with the attractive woman. It didn’t last long, but her familiarity with him never ceased. Oh, she wouldn’t call him Vlad in front of the rest of his staff, but at the start of the weekend, with most administrative staff at home and the technical staff overseeing the launch, he found himself alone again with the woman and it made him uncomfortable, to say the least.
“No problems, Irina. I’m just worried about the amount of launches we have planned in such a short period of time. Our staff has already been working around the clock and, though tired, it will only get worse before it gets better.”
“Ah yes, but at least there will be a break after the heavy launch, no?”
“Da, at least we can take a few days off then. I’m sure the crews will need it. Speaking of which, why don’t you take some time off? I’m sure the paperwork will be here on Monday.”
“Vlad, if I didn’t know you, I’d say you wanted to get rid of me,” Irina said, now approaching his desk and slowly sitting on the side edge.
“Nonsense,” Vlad lied, noticing her long slender legs and really regretting last year’s lapse in judgement. “I’m glad you’re here. Perhaps you’re right. We work hard, get everything in order, and be ready for a well-deserved rest after we launch the heavy.”
“Sounds like a plan, Vladimir,” Irina said, leaning forward so close he could smell her perfume. “We can celebrate then,” she said, abruptly standing before he could protest and heading for the door. “It will be good for us,” she said, giving Vlad one last look that portended trouble, and then leaving the man to his work.
God help me, Vlad said, shaking his head. If this mission didn’t kill him, Irina would.
Irina sat at her desk and finished documenting and filing the reports as required for the launches. She downloaded the data of all four launches, the one that was just executed as well as the other three planned, onto a small portable thumb drive which she then inserted into her RF device that she had been given long ago, sewn into a hidden pocket of her purse.
Vlad was happy to say good evening to her as she left the base, passing through security, which was much more lax than encountered when entering the base, and walked to her car. Most Russians used public transportation, but out here a vehicle was a necessity due to the base’s isolation. It took her over twenty minutes to reach the small town where most of the base personnel lived. She parked her car in the garage and exited to the street, walking about three blocks before arriving at the large bar.
The place was fairly full from not only base personnel off duty at the moment, enjoying a rare respite after the first day’s launch, but also from the miners and loggers of the two other localized industries that the bar served. She was late by about ten minutes, but she knew her handler always had someone there, anyway. Her instructions were always the same. Go to the bar, spend thirty minutes there, and then leave. She knew the data was encrypted and stored in a portable RF query device that detected an incoming signal, which, if matched properly to its password coding, prompted the device to release its data stream.
What she didn’t know was the identity of her handler and who he or she represented. Irina felt only a tinge of guilt at what she was doing, but it often went away when she checked her Swiss bank account following each transaction. When she had enough, she was going to leave for good. Besides, how important could space secrets be, anyway? Not like she was transferring nuclear ballistic missile details.
She ordered her usual salad with hot tea and toasted bread. Looking around never helped; she first thought she’d be able to see someone every time she performed a transfer, but the bar always seemed to have different people in it no matter how attentive she was. Her affair with the program director was pure icing on the cake, allowing her access to his work space and facilitating the espionage she was doing. Too bad he ended the relationship, but it was obvious he didn’t feel right about just kicking her to the curb, at least not just yet. The money was good, and she didn’t care who had her data as long as she got paid. She’d get out of this Siberian hellhole for good, one way or the other.
She finished her meal, paid her bill, and then returned to her flat a few blocks away, sure that her device was queried and that the data was transferred even though she never saw her handler. Tomorrow she’d see confirmation in the form of an increased balance in her Swiss account. Irina smiled as she prepared to watch Balkovsky’s Ozera, a sort of Russian take off on Girls in the City.
NASA Space Center
Houston, Texas
In the near future, Day 6
* * *
The meeting was tedious at first until the presenter, a lady by the name of Mrs. Brown, started to discuss the SIGINT that the NSA had been working on. “So after the tenth pulse, there is a pause of exactly three seconds before some sort of high-speed data burst is recorded. The compressed signal is beyond the ability of our current receivers to decode properly, and even the first few thousand bytes that we have managed to decipher correctly are not intelligible to us at this time.”
“So how does this account for the ability of the higher line of sight RF waves to reach earth from the backside of the moon?” Lisa asked.
“Yeah,” Jack chimed in. “There is no atmosphere either to bend or reflect the lower band waves either. It doesn’t add up.”
“Unknown at this time,” Mrs. Brown said, looking from the screen at her questioners.
“You’re the SIGINT experts. You mean to tell us you can’t trace the path the radio waves are taking to reach us?” Tom asked, stifling a yawn, which did little to placate the woman.
“We analyze the signal and its stream. I’d say you space experts should have a hypothesis proposed by now,” she shot back.
“Who says we haven’t?” Marge said.
Rock wasn’t sure if his team was just probing her with necessary questions or if they were trying to push her buttons. Since she arrived, she wasn’t greeted any more warmly than Mr. Smith was, and judging by his facial expression, he wasn’t pleased either.
“Let’s just move on, shall we?” Rock said, diffusing the tension with his remark. “Mrs. Brown, let’s just say the path isn’t important for right now. What is the actual significance of the data spurt after the count up?” This referring to the opposite of a countdown since the pulses went higher in number rather than lower.
“Since the two-point-seven-megabyte stream takes twelve nanoseconds and the entire transmission lasts approximately seven hundred thousand, one hundred and eleven nanoseconds, we’ve computed the data burst to contain about one hundred fifty nine gigabytes roughly.
“That’s it?” Jack asked, surprised. “My kid’s collection of movies takes up more digital storage space than that.”
“Maybe the data isn’t comprised of alien movies,” Mr. Smith replied, a tone of sarcasm evident in his voice.
“Or the information is just enough to open another, larger data site,” Jeff said, finally breaking his silence from across the table.
“So why is the mandate to reach the moon? Why not just analyze the signals or send up an orbiter to collect data?” Tom asked.
“I’ll handle this one, Brown,” Mr. Smith said, and Rock was pleased to see he wasn’t the only one Smith addressed by surname only. “We have other information that relates to the discovery, and also the intentions of the Russians and Chinese have been clarified somewhat. Can you bring up section three on the PowerPoint?” Smith said to Brown.
Mrs. Brown leaned over the table, manipulating the laptop till a still-titled Section Three: Photographic Data became visible on the wall’s screen.
This perked Rock’s team up considerably. “You have photographs?” Tom asked.
“Next slide,” Smi
th said. “Yes, here you can see the actual object as photographed by the Chinese rover. Note the side ruler bar which is scaled in feet for reference.” Rock noted the red and white bar that denoted scale overlaid on a grainy black and white photo of what appeared to be some sort of oblong cylinder protruding from the surface of the moon and reaching a height of well over five feet.
“Is that our scale or theirs?” Marge asked.
“Theirs, and we have no reason to doubt it,” Smith said. “The interesting fact here is that your telemetry feed intercept on the mag detector.” At this, Smith rummaged through a couple of pages till he found what he was looking for. “The mag detector went past the maximum range that the Chinese instrument could handle, so it’s hard to say if there is something metallic there as small as half the size of a car or something much larger, as large as an oceangoing ship, for example.”
“You’re saying there is something metallic there, larger than the object we’re looking at now, perhaps buried under the lunar surface?” Jeff asked.
“Yes, quite possibly,” Brown jumped in, advancing the presentation to the next slide where a closer view of the object was visible as seen from the perspective of the rover.
“If I didn’t know better, I think that looks like some kind of antenna mast. How many photos do you have?” Marge asked, half standing and leaning closer to the screen, her eyes squinting at the effort.
“We only have three, but we think the Chinese have a few dozen,” Mr. Smith said.
“How’d you get the Chinese to share these?” Tom asked, looking over at Smith.
“They didn’t. We . . . acquired them by other means,” Smith said. Tom only arched an eyebrow and leaned back in his chair.
“So we have Chinese photos of an unknown alien metallic object protruding from the lunar surface and perhaps part of it potentially buried below it. This thing disabled not only the Chinese rover but the orbiter as well. Does that about sum it up?” Director Lui said from where he sat next to Rock.
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