The Solar Sea

by David Lee Summers

  Again, Quinn flapped his hand in the air, as though the words had a disagreeable smell. “Do you suppose there are more of those particles at our quinitite manufacturing facility?” He pointed skyward.

  "Are you asking whether we should mine the Moon for these particles?” Alonzo's eyebrows came together.

  Quinn nodded.

  The scientist shook his head. “There were only a few of these particles ... not enough to indicate that there's any great quantity on the Moon itself. It's like they're being generated from somewhere else in the solar system and we're only seeing the ones that pass by the Moon."

  "Where in the solar system?” Quinn leaned in toward his computer monitor.

  Again, Alonzo shook his head. “I don't know."

  "What would you need to find out?"

  Alonzo typed something on his keyboard. A graph appeared on Quinn's monitor. “The particles produce a very unique spectral signature in the radio band. I'd need to do a survey using a radio telescope like the Very Large Array in New Mexico."

  "Is that facility still operating?"

  Alonzo nodded. “It's old, but it's a good telescope for planetary work."

  "The VLA has performed surveys of the solar system, hasn't it?” asked Quinn. “Can't you use archival data. It would save us some money."

  Alonzo took a breath and let it out slowly. “I've looked. There have been some broadband surveys near the spectral region, but nothing that exactly overlaps this—nothing that helps."

  "Very well, then. I'll get you some observing time.” Quinn reached out to terminate the connection.

  "Mr. Quinn,” interrupted Alonzo, “May I ask what you plan to do if we find more of the particles?"

  Quinn inclined his head, regarding the scientist for a moment, then took the report and flipped to the final section. “You're the one who gave me the ideas. Experimenting with time travel is one possibility. It would certainly bring us some good press."

  Alonzo's face went pale as he looked away. He licked his lips. “A weapon is another ... you could send an enemy into the fourth dimension. They might disappear forever."

  Jerome Quinn stood and walked to the window, letting Alonzo see only his back. “No matter what the application, if you find those particles, you'll have helped Quinn Corp more than you can imagine. I'll make sure you get a raise—stock options if you want them. Weapons make a lot of money for the manufacturer."

  "I think Quinn Corp would get better press from a time machine and it could bring us still more money,” argued Alonzo, sounding uncertain. “The particles could even open the door to interstellar travel."

  Quinn turned and smiled. “I like the way you think. No matter what the application, those particles will easily increase Quinn Corp's worth ten-fold. If you find them, how do you propose to get them?"

  Alonzo stammered as though caught off guard. “We'd need a spaceship...” he said after a moment.

  Quinn sat and eyed Alonzo carefully. “My son told me about an idea he had for a spaceship once. He called it a solar sail. Have you heard of them?"

  "Y-Yes,” stuttered Alonzo. “The idea's been around for a while."

  "I want you to look into it, see if Quinn Corp has the resources to build one of those ships."

  Mute, Alonzo nodded.

  Quinn reached over and terminated the connection, then sat back and folded his arms.

  * * * *

  In his dorm room at MIT, Thomas Quinn stared wide-eyed at his computer screen. Hand shaking, he reached over and turned off the computer. He took a swig of the soda sitting on the desk, blinked a couple of times, then punched the sky and shouted, “Yes!"

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Chapter 1

  The Very Large Array

  John O'Connell was intently watching an old science fiction show about a starship that traveled to and explored alien worlds. He loved shows like that, but they were harder to find as the years wore on. People just weren't as interested in exploring space as they used to be. As the show finished, he sat back, adjusted his thick glasses and clicked the remote, shutting the television off. It was time to check the status of the Very Large Array telescope antennas.

  The VLA—as the telescope was known—was about fifty miles away from the control room where John sat, on the plains of San Augustin. Old antennas with varying shades of white paint and black graffiti stretched out across the landscape like giant flowers blossoming from the desert. Even though funding for new paint had been cut years ago, the sight was still awe-inspiring. Though John preferred to work at the array site, he was in the Array Operation's Center in Socorro, New Mexico within easy walking distance of his faded adobe house.

  The VLA was collecting data from the planet Saturn. The antennas were all functioning properly. John collected the data for an observer he neither knew, nor really cared about. The name Thomas Alonzo meant nothing to him. John was more concerned about his job. In spite of the fact that the VLA was a proven workhorse telescope, Congress threatened to close the doors. The money, they said, could be used better elsewhere. John wasn't sure what he would do with his life if the VLA were shut down.

  He looked at his watch and yawned. The observations he was taking wouldn't be finished for another two hours. Time, he decided, to surf the Internet and see what was happening in the world. He lifted a tattered blue Cassini 2 baseball cap from his head, brushed back an errant strand of sandy blond hair, and replaced the cap while adjusting his position in front of the computer terminal. He went to one of his favorite news sites and read about the state of Middle Eastern relations.

  "The U.S.S. Daniel B. Sherman under the command of Captain Natalie Freeman has been ordered to the Persian Gulf,” began the article that appeared on the screen. “Given Freeman's success handling the Jordanian crisis, hopes are high that she will be able to negotiate a trade settlement and bring more oil to the United States."

  The voice of the President of the United States, Oscar Van der Wald, sounded from the computer's speakers: “Iraq has been a valuable ally ever since their liberation earlier this century. We wish to stay on good terms with the new administration in Iraq while negotiating better oil prices. I can think of no one more qualified for the job than Captain Freeman."

  John folded his arms, growing tired of the web. Rarely, if ever, was there any actual news. Rather, all he saw were opinions of people who knew as little as he did. He stood, stretched, then walked over to the coffee maker and retrieved an old white mug. Sipping overdone coffee, he stared out the windows at the small town of Socorro. While the day itself was lovely with fluffy gray-white clouds hanging in a brilliant blue sky, he couldn't help but wonder if he would ever get out of the little town. Beyond the grassy field, just outside the window, John saw his small adobe house. He sighed, wondering how he could keep paying rent on an operator's salary. Again, he looked at his watch. With some relief, he realized that forty minutes had passed.

  He returned to his terminal and brought up a visual display of the radio signal from Saturn. He looked at the image, blinked twice, then smacked the side of the monitor.

  "Hey, Alan!” he called to the site's programmer working at a nearby console. “Can you take a look at this thing? I'm getting some kind of double image on the monitor."

  Alan Jones looked over and tugged on his long, dark beard. On the screen, he saw Saturn in red. Surrounding it were the dull blue, radio-quiet rings. Next to Saturn, in the plane of the rings was a bright yellow ball. “That's not a double image. It looks more like some other object."

  John snorted. “What kind of object is it, though?” He looked at the color scale. “That thing's almost got the radio emission of Jupiter. It's gotta be a glitch—some kind of signal creeping in from somewhere, or old data."

  Alan sat back and smiled. “You may know telescopes, but you don't know computers. You can't superimpose old data on a real-time display like that."

  "Then how do you explain it?” demanded John.

  "Supernova,�
�� said Alan. “Or some previously undiscovered galaxy. Maybe they'll name it after you."

  "Get real. And get over here and look at this thing, will ya? I don't want to call the boss in here for some kind of glitch."

  "Whatever.” Alan took his time finishing the task that John had interrupted, then sulkily made his way over and plunked down in the operator's chair. Lithe, pale fingers tapped on the keyboard for some minutes. At last, he looked up at John. “Whatever you're seeing is real. There are no programs running, other than the autocorrelator that's giving you the display. That thing's really in the sky."

  John removed his baseball cap and scratched his head. “I better get Jack in here to take a look at this.” He referred to his boss, the Supervisor of Observing Support. “We're recording all this data, aren't we?"

  "Does President Van der Wald get hair transplants?"

  John grimaced, then picked up the phone. A few minutes later, Jack Spear stepped into the control room. “Whatcha’ got?"

  John pointed at the bright object on the screen. Spear scratched his chin, then walked over to a bookshelf and picked up a copy of The Astronomical Almanac. He rifled the pages a few times until he found what he was looking for. “If I didn't know any better, I'd say that hot spot was Titan."

  "You mean Saturn's big moon?” John's brow furrowed “So, do you think it's a glitch or a discovery?"

  Jack sat down at the console and called up the instrument settings. “Hard to say. This is a really unusual frequency for planetary observation. There's really no archival data to compare it to. Who are you taking these observations for?"

  John rifled through notes on a clipboard. “Some guy named Thomas Alonzo. He's with a private company that bought time on the telescope."

  "Better grab a few extra minutes on Saturn—my authority,” said Spear. “I think I've heard of Thomas Alonzo. He's a real hotshot scientist at Quinn Corp. He'll be ecstatic if this is a discovery, but there'll be hell to pay if it's a glitch and we missed something because we stopped observing.” Spear stood up, looked at the screen one last time, then returned to his office. John sat down in the vacated chair, removed his thick glasses, and rubbed the bridge of his nose, thinking he had been working too hard.

  * * * *

  The next day, Jerome Quinn was in a meeting with several department managers when an image of Saturn appeared in the message window of his computer. Next to Saturn was a bright, glowing ball and the word ‘Eureka!’ Quinn discreetly cleared the image, then brought the meeting to a close. The managers shuffled papers into their briefcases and left the office.

  As soon as the door latched, Quinn brought up the message window and called Thomas Alonzo. The scientist was beaming happily. Quinn was taken aback by how young he looked. “You found something?” Quinn's eyes narrowed as he studied Alonzo's face.

  The face vanished from the screen and was replaced by the image of Saturn. “The brightly glowing ball next to Saturn is its moon Titan. The moon is literally blanketed in chronotons."

  "Chronotons?” Quinn shook his head.

  "My name for the time particles,” explained Alonzo.

  Quinn nodded thoughtfully and turned his chair, so he was facing the window as Alonzo's face reappeared on the computer screen. “Have you looked into the idea of constructing a solar sailboat?"

  "I've drawn up a complete set of plans and run them by the engineering department for review,” reported Alonzo. “We can start construction at the factory on the Moon as soon as you give the word."

  "The word is given.” Quinn stood and stepped up to the window. “I should make an announcement to the press—let them know about the ship we're building."

  "I thought you wanted to keep this project a secret."

  "I want to keep the time particles—the chronotons—a secret,” corrected Quinn. “People are going to notice a giant solar sailing ship when it's launched into lunar orbit. Our competitors on the Moon will, at least. We need to let them know what we're doing."

  "Aren't you afraid that our competitors will try to race us to Titan?"

  Quinn gave a curt nod. “Come up with a cover story, something plausible but not too interesting to our competitors."

  Alonzo's eyes went wide as though he'd just been presented with a math problem beyond his abilities. “Won't our competitors be suspicious?"

  "Of course they will.” Quinn returned to the chair. “The idea is simply to get them looking in the wrong direction. You have the plans for the ship and you know what we're looking for. They'll waste time confirming our discovery, then waste more time trying to figure out what we really discovered. By then, you should be well on your way."

  Alonzo nodded. His glee had dissolved and he now wore a deep frown as though faced with more responsibilities than he'd ever imagined. “I'll need a crew for the ship. It's going to take time to locate the best people and train them."

  "You're in charge of that, too.” Quinn sat back, folded his arms, and studied the face on the screen some more. Though he didn't want to admit certain possibilities, he found himself pleased by them nonetheless. “You're one of my most discreet employees. I trust you to see this mission through."

  Alonzo swallowed hard. “I'll do my best, sir."

  * * * *

  John O'Connell walked from his house to work, arriving early for his two o'clock shift. He took over from a bleary-eyed woman named Neriah Smith. According to the staff schedule, she'd been on duty since four in the morning. “You look beat,” said John.

  "So would you after ten hours on duty."

  "You should go home and get some sleep."

  She rolled her eyes at the obviousness of the suggestion, then stood and yawned. She was a little too short and a little too heavy to be what most people called beautiful, but John still found her to be an attractive woman. As she collected her belongings, he sat down at the terminal and logged himself in, then pulled up the observing roster and noted it was routine stellar observations—calibration data for a new telescope being built somewhere else. He started the prescribed observing routine, then surfed the Internet for the day's news.

  Neriah mumbled a goodbye and left. After the door closed, Alan Jones looked up from his computer console. “You know, you should ask her out on a date sometime."

  "You should mind your own business,” retorted John, not looking up from his console. “Besides, I did ask her out once."

  "Turned you down, did she?” asked Alan with a lilt in his voice.

  John just shook his head. There wasn't anything of interest on the news site and he was about to move on when a link flashed. It said something about a new space mission being announced. He selected the link and a live video in progress streamed onto the screen. A man and a teenage boy stood behind a podium at a large house. John guessed it must be in California given the orange trees and the time stamp that said a few minutes after one o'clock—an hour before New Mexico's time. The caption identified the two as Jerome Quinn, owner of Quinn Corp, and his son Henry.

  "It is our hope that the Aristarchus project will usher in a new era of space exploration,” explained the elder Quinn while his son looked on admiringly. “Quinn Corp was one of the first companies to build manufacturing facilities on the Moon. Important as our lunar facilities are, we recognize that lunar resources are not unlimited. The time has come, therefore, for us to push outward, to see what other resources are available. To do that, we have devised plans for a space vessel that will use sunlight to sail to Jupiter and then on to Saturn—the first manned mission to the outer planets."

  John blinked, remembering Quinn Corp's connection to the unusual observation of Titan, two days before. He looked up. Alan Jones stood, peering over his shoulder at the news broadcast.

  "Do you think this has anything to do with our Saturn observations?” asked John.

  Alan shrugged. “It would make sense. Spear said we'd never observed Saturn at that particular frequency before."

  O'Connell nodded. “They were looking for
something."

  "And they found it,” said Jones.

  "O'Connell,” called Jack Spear, poking his head through the doors of the control room before Alan could speculate further. “I have a phone call for you in my office."

  "Can't you just transfer it here?” John pointed to the phone next to his computer console.

  Spear shook his head. “They say it's confidential.” The observing supervisor ducked his head back through the doors.

  "So, how do you rate confidential phone calls?” asked Alan.

  "It's gotta be Neriah,” teased John. “She's probably calling to say she's sorry we didn't keep going out and she wants to go to dinner tonight."

  "Yeah, right.” Alan smirked as he sat down in the operator's chair, taking over while John was away from his post.

  Stepping down the corridor to Spear's office, John wondered who was calling. He dreaded a call about his elderly mother in Nebraska who was in poor health. When he arrived at Spear's small office, the supervisor handed him the phone, then ducked out of the room.

  "Hello,” said John, nervously.

  "Hello,” came a voice at the other end of the line. “I'm with Quinn Corp's Aristarchus project. Have you heard about us?” The voice on the other end of the line had a slight quaver, as though the speaker wasn't used to spending time on the phone.

  "Just now. The announcement's just been on the news."

  "Good,” said the speaker. “I'm the project engineer. I'd like to schedule a meeting with you. I'm looking for some equipment operators and I believe your VLA experience would suit you well for the position I want to fill."

  "I like my job here,” said John.

  "You know as well as I do that the VLA's days are numbered,” said the quavering voice.

  "Who are you?"

  "My name's Thomas Alonzo. I'm Pilot Manager of the Aristarchus as well as the project engineer."

  * * * *

  Thomas Quinn was home from college for Spring Break. He met his father walking around the grounds of the family home. Birds chirped in the distance. The hundred acres of grass surrounding the house were trimmed to perfection. Many of the fruit trees were in bloom, causing Thomas’ nose to run. Nevertheless, spring signaled a new hope. “Is it really true that you've started building a solar sail on the Moon?” he asked.