by Ed Thrush
"Do you think it is sending telemetry somewhere?" Rhea asked.
"Could be or it is storing up to send a batch at once or even deliver back in person; let’s hope the instruments pick up something, at least something we can work with."
As the sun set they continued their observation and measurements. They decided it might be quiet for a while and maybe needed or worked in conjunction with the sun – why something that advanced would need the sun was perplexing. But at least that was the hope. The suits were incredibly heavy and they were both exhausted with fatigue and hungry. Despite the cooling system, Ed was sweating heavily as they moved. Rhea looked over. “Bet you’re burning up in there, feels good to me.” She knew he hated room temperature because of his damn metabolism. She had fond memories of teasing him about it, she would get close to him under the covers in bed and in a short time he would be burning up. She missed the pleasure of torturing a man. They hurried back to the capsule to study what data they had collected.
*****
Chapter 6
Monday 7:30 PM _ DATA
Rhea sat at the fold out table originally intended for zero gravity twirling her long black hair into rings and looked at some figures she had just written down. She was pretty relaxed since they had set dozens of alarms to go off for any activity. Judging by the last performance, they probably would not need the alarms. Ed walked in, “There’s nothing like space station pizza! I picked a spicy one. I still have tears in my eyes. Found anything yet?” Rhea looked over at him. He still looked cute to her with the shoulder length brown hair that curled like her hair never would. His beard was neatly close cropped. He was still in great physical shape. But then she remembered how each was self-centered and always so occupied so they would see little of the other, she stared back at her notes.
“We’re not getting anything in the usual frequencies, except for that flash. We still have the magnetic flux to look at; we might find something there that may lead us to power sources. That light burst burned out some video cameras. We did have one with a filter on it, but it appears on video like it did to us, just a flash. The spectrum analyzer picked up a pulse of x-rays, gamma rays, and extremely high-powered ultra-violet light. The time was barely a single picosecond.”
“A picosecond! Are you sure? A trillionth of a second?” Ed stared in disbelief. “Well it could have been even faster I suppose, (though I don’t know how) that is as fast as the equipment will record.” Ed looked off distantly, “That would require a switch and some form of capacitor made of energy or miniaturized particle accelerator with an incredible amount of power. We need to remember. We only saw the flash. We don’t know how the ‘picture’ is developed, if it is a picture. How do you collect the feedback from such a transmission? How far did it go?”
Rhea flipped through color geographic charts, “Here we go, sensors are labeled according to distance, A is 10 feet, B 100 feet, C 1000 feet. The next part of the label is the degrees from north. So let’s check A343, B46, and C150 for a good sample. She moved over to one of the computers, clicked the sensor telemetry window and selected the sensors, “They all get very high intensities, there is very little die off. That flash would probably make you blink if you were looking from the moon! The visible light was basically the entire spectrum – and then some. In fact, now that I see the whole report, there is nothing left out! The entire known spectrum is represented. It's just a matter of intensities. There are low frequencies starting at fractions of a Hz to very high GAMMA rays. Can they actually get intelligent reflections from all this noise? It’s the entire spectrum as we know it blasted out of a shotgun!”
Ed looked at the ceiling, “Maybe it’s not reflections. Maybe it’s some type of bi-directional carrier wave that feeds the response to the energy pulse directly from the source. This could make the data received give positional data, even 3 dimensional molecular indicators. It would be like combining a huge CAT scan of an entire city with that of a GPS location of every particle. Those flying microscopic robots we saw may give some other clues; do we have any reading on them?”
“We have high resolution video.”
They moved over to the large video screen that covered a whole wall. Ed Sneered. “I hate these projectors.”
Rhea grabbed the remote, “It’s not a projector brick head. It’s direct view with 1000 pixels per square inch.”
“You can’t be serious! We would need a small supercomputer with tons of memory to drive that at a decent pace.”
“Its in the back, in the refrigeration unit.”
“Okay, now I do feel like I’m on a spaceship.”
“You are!”
“Well…yeah…ours. Except that we’re firmly in the ground, more like a cave ship, or one of those doomsday cabins….” He was warily looking around, “Let’s see what we got.”
Rhea clicked the remote on button, “We had a telephoto lens directed at the mouth of the ship to catch any views inside and it caught the flying micro-bots or whatever coming out.”
Ed Nodded, “Let’s start at the opening of the shell.”
They both got vertigo as she called up the video, looking at the huge screen was like being in an Imax theater except that was film and this was lots of digital data, and there appeared to be no end to the detail. This became apparent when she zoomed in on the “mouth” of the craft, “Okay here we go.”
The edge of the craft had the same metal & glass look as the rest. As the video moved forward in time they noticed the glassy surface begin to gel and shimmer around the seam. Then it opened. It was black inside, and then the bug bots swarmed out. Rhea stopped it there and turned on the zoom.
“Well it’s pretty fuzzy at maximum but you can still get an image.”
“Looks something like a dragon fly, with rear propulsion, some kind of reversed spoiler on the back and…well and that looks like a lampshade on the front half.”
Rhea twisted her lip. “That’s weird, why have such an odd shape if you want to fly fast and far.”
“We’re only beginning to understand aerodynamics and turbulence in the miniature world; they obviously have this part right anyway.”
“How do we know they all came back?
“We don’t.”
“Well I hope they are only tourists…I just saying”
*****
Chapter 7
Tuesday 6:30 AM _ INTRUDER
Throughout the night they were all looking through the monitoring equipment. There was nothing. No discernable activity. “I guess it likes the light,” Rhea was trying to cool her cup of tea while staring at the row of monitors.
“Or maybe, it needs to digest what it got so far and send back a signal,” Ed said over his shoulder, watching his own row of monitors.
Rhea tapped a pen against her head, “Digest maybe, but don’t you think we should have seen something if a contact was attempted?” As Ed was about to reply, the infrared meter targeted a moving object at high speed approaching the craft from the rear; the acoustic sensors were reading high noise levels. Both guided the visual cameras to the approaching object. “Jesus, it’s somebody on a motorcycle! I got to tell them to tighten security up on the back end, he should have never got through. Now he is too far from security and too close to us!”
Rhea ran for the hatch cover and climbed up and out; she grabbed a special high power rescue strobe on the way. Walking over a few feet she watched as the rider raced under the huge ship and approached near her. She aimed the light and pressed the trigger as she shielded her eyes. The flash blinded the driver who braked a little too hard and slid a few feet from her. The rider got up and ripped off his helmet. What did you do that for? First I see this huge cool sculpture suddenly appear on my trail, and then I get blinded. What gives?” He said blinking and rubbing his eyes.
“It’s not a sculpture, why do you think we have military and enough weapons to take out a country?”
He looked at her, “Military? I don’t live near the main roads, s
o I guess I missed something.”
“How did you get here?” Rhea demanded.
“Like I normally do, I cut through a tight crevice in the hillside; it drops me right on the flats.
Rhea stared over where he pointed and sighed, she noted the only good thing is the crevice was only barely big enough for a bike, “Come on, you can’t stay here, there may be activity soon, this area is sealed off – supposedly anyway, follow me.”
“Follow you…” He looked around at the endless salt flats puzzled,”… where?”
“Down here.”
“This is weird.”
“What’s your name?”
“Zagreus, Zagreus Stoic.”
“What kind of bike is that anyway, I used to ride, I’ve never seen anything like that.”
“It’s a hybrid gas/electric prototype, it won’t go for a long ride, but it will beat any gas only model in 0-60. I work with my father on performance enhancements for racing them, and stretching the electric supply. We’re working on a patent for it.”
Ed looked up at the visitor climbing down the stairs; “Well I certainly hope you haven’t brought about the end of the world with your morning ride. Luckily, I don’t see any readings to suggest a problem yet.”
*****
Chapter 8
Tuesday 6:35 AM _ COLLECTION
“We got action!” Rhea yelled out.
Several alarms were going off; Ed switched the wide-angle video to the large high definition screen. “We can do introductions later” Ed nodded to Zagreus, “ We have the main ‘door’ opening again.”
Just as before the mouth of the huge craft opened and this time a large cylinder made with the same diamond coating as the main craft floated slowly out and shot right up into the sky. The ground vibrated with low frequency similar to the original landing, albeit a little less disorienting.
Rhea got on the communications line. “Get me the NASA line, hey you guys see that? Good. That’s what we figure, about 2000 feet high and just as wide. And it is expanding, increasing its size. Feed me as much as you can get from the tracking, thanks…it what? Oh no!” She closed the voice line. She just looked at the floor.
“What is it?
“In just minutes that huge space can has gobbled up two satellites and is heading for several more, we should have the visual satellite tracking data on the screen now, look there goes the a TV satellite, NSA, Cell Phone. But it is skipping several. Good God! It’s taking a sample of every different kind of satellite; there goes Hubbell, where is it heading now, no not that!”
Ed turned to the wall and hit it with the side of his fist, “The space station, of course, it’s one of a kind. There were 12 people on board, two are friends of mine…” Ed just closed his eyes.
Zagreus, who everyone had forgotten about, noticed the display at the bottom of the screen changing.
“What do those numbers mean?”
Ed shook himself out of his own thoughts and looked over. “That’s velocity, we have to hope some of the observatories or remaining satellites are watching and we get their data now if any are transmitting, NASA can only measure under 100,000 MPH with this tracking. I’m pretty sure 99,999 was not the final speed. Look, it’s already off the grid, let’s find out where it went”
Mike was in the room now.
“Rhea that will have to wait, we have a call in on the hot line, I’ll put it on the speaker.”
“Dr. Hyris, This is Hestia Sawyer, I’m calling from the White House, I need to have you on the line for the president, now!”
“I’m ready,” Closing her eyes, she knew what to expect.
“Dr. Hyris, I am being kept informed from your site, NASA and the pentagon. The capture of our satellites, along with some other countries, and the apparent running off with them would appear now to put the situation in the category of highly destructive if not hostile. We …hold on…I don’t care…give me what you got…sorry about that, we have a very rough estimate of at least ten trillion dollars in space hardware from all major nations has disappeared. As you realize, we have lost a sizable portion of phone, television, surveillance and several trillion in just your area of science alone, and the unfortunate loss of life on the space station. Now tell me, what do you suggest I do?”
“Mr. President, looking over the inventory of all the spacecraft taken, it would appear to be taking a sample of every item that is unique and sending it home to look at.”
“But why would it take another intelligent races technology instead of just studying it on location?”
“Sir…that would be one correct way of thinking. That is if we were dealing with humans or humanoids that have the capacity of some type of rational or even ethical thought. I fear we may be dealing with a type of society or even software that regards us merely as fossils to be observed dead or alive.”
“What do you mean a type of technology? Don’t you mean a culture?”
“Yes…it may be a culture all right, but it may be a subculture of scientific probes or systems that are given basic instructions and just sent off. One possibility is that we may be dealing with a fossil ourselves, left over from some long dead civilization. I hope I am wrong because this means there is no one to talk to at all. And no way to reach the ‘Off’ switch. Whatever type of machines they have may not be able to listen. I think the answer may lie inside the beast. We need to get inside the next time it yawns before any more of Earth gets studied to death. Our weapons would be useless anyway against these materials. Though one idea might be a charged multi layer carbon fiber net to trap its activities, it probably does not expect that type of resistance in its landing area selection, I know the netting material is not far from here so we can get that around it fast, then we can work on getting inside. It should work on the main craft but it is unknown about other surprises inside it”
“Alright, are you sure nuclear options are out.”
“Oh, they might work from the outside, if you took 10 or more warheads and focused then precisely on the target and exploded at the same instant, it might break it apart.”
“Good God, at that location we would take out several states and poison large sections of the nation.”
“Then we better get moving, so we don’t need that option.”
“We do have a newer weapon we are working on, I am having it delivered, though that may take some time. “
“Try not to blow it up till we at least get inside and hopefully radio back some weakness.”
“We won’t do it at all. You’re going to do it. We have a very lightweight backpack focused nuclear device arriving in a few minutes. Can you handle that?”
“Uh…sure, we can do it.”
“We figure as you probably do that most ships are not prepared to be bombed from the inside. The command capsule will protect everyone from that type of blast, even at that close range. Good luck.”
“Thanks, we’ll probably need it.”
Rhea looked over at everybody, they all realized they were holding their breath and released it.
*****
Chapter 9
Monday 7:30 PM _ PACKING
Rhea looked around, “We need everybody on this mission but we also need people to watch the monitors back here. “ She turned towards the motorcyclist. “Zagreus, I realize we are detaining you, but we could use your help right now. We have a lot of nondestructive (for earth anyway) examination handheld modules that bounce various frequencies off objects and return a mountain of reflected data to the modules and the base at the same time.”
Zagreus seemed eager. “I use a lot of the latest metal stress diagnostic tools and fluid and combustion analytics in my motorcycle performance shop, so I’m sure I can get up to speed quick.”
“Good, I’ll get the gear and we’ll all carry as much as possible in the backpacks, front and side packs and all other pouches. Let’s also add the wide beam head lamps and the handheld focus beams. We can connect this to one battery pack if I remember correc
tly, right Comus.”
Comus looked over from his preparations, “Right”
Ed suddenly focused, “We should keep Comus nearby so that we can maximize the use of the suits and get immediate fixes if we run into trouble, maybe take a mobile repair kit if you have one.”
“I have one”, Comus chimed in. “We are developing them for the Mars mission, it will be a bit heavier here on earth but I can lug it, it’s designed as a backpack and includes a small medical unit. Mark and I are trained paramedics.”
Rhea was pleased and nodded, ”Great, let’s suit up.”
“Of course, we have one very destructive device which I have volunteered to strap on and drop as soon as possible,” Ed looked around, “I don’t know about you guys but I always feel better when I am far away from these things. They can really make a mess, even small nukes. Unfortunately this is small in size but not in output – appears to be the first backpack H-Bomb”
Rhea wanted to point out the seriousness of the moment. She was thinking. Here we go again. The scientists frolicking through the fields of discovery, oblivious of everything else.
“We have very little time here but we could spare a few minutes for anyone needing to make a call since we may not come back, and in addition the Earth may not be here for us anyway.”
Everybody glanced around and then into their own thoughts, Zagreus made a quick call, the final “I love you too” was overheard with his voice breaking up.
Rhea looked at Ed.
“No one yet? I thought for sure you would have one of those young students of yours, they hang around you like you’re a rock star.” Ed was expressionless.
“No, I just fill in the time with my new hobby of writing music and other things,”
Rhea stared intently at him. “I’d like to hear some.”
“Sure.” Ed gave a small shy smile.
Mike interrupted. “I have Major Detrick on the line, he has some very large conventional ordinance as well as a batch of nukes and it is focused on the probe. Plus there are many remote ones that are already targeted on these coordinates. If needed they will start the conventional attack, get on a jet that is waiting and launch the nukes. Give the word if you sense danger. Otherwise we wait till we receive a unique device we have called a quantum beam, this is the latest, but it needs to be about a mile away and will take six hours to get here. The guys who dreamed this up say it will do the job, the beam vibrates all the molecules similar to a microwave oven. The difference is that the heat never stops, everything is disrupted from the inside out.”