The Orthogonal Galaxy

by Michael L. Lewis

  Joram looked behind him to notice the throng of media and realized the need for discretion. He raised a finger to indicate that he needed a moment and returned to his tablet in order to finish his observation and conclusion. With an exclamation mark, he handed his notes over for Kath and Reyd to read.

  “1912 hours. Paddles reach visible extent of beam at a distance of 12000 km from center of beam. Light intensity is uniform at all six positions around the beam, and yet paddle 2 is on the sunny side of beam, while paddle 5 is on opposite side of beam from sun. Conclusion: beam does not reflect sunlight… it generates light from within!”

  After reading Joram’s notes and understanding the magnitude of this discovery, Kath and Reyd looked back up to the displays and noticed that indeed, all of the live camera images from each of the six paddles had the same intensity of yellow flickering light. The predominant theory was that the beam was just the tail of a comet reflecting a large density of ice or rock chunks, but discovering the brightness of the beam on its side opposite of the Sun proved that this clearly could not be the case.

  The thoughts of the students were broken by an announcement from the public affairs officer. “Paddles are communicating a slight radiation increase as they begin to enter the visible extent of the beam. Some sensors are detecting impacts of small quantities of highly-quantized positively-charged particles. Mission specialists indicate that extremely small masses indicate a very fine dust of atomic-sized materials.”

  Joram watched the paddles and noticed that the ‘particle density’ bars were showing more red now, and that the red was slowly beginning to fill the bars of each paddle, at which he noticed the image of one of the paddles—paddle three, to be precise—went black.

  “NETWORK indicates a sudden communication failure with paddle three. They are seeking to reengage the paddle via commands to the Unmanned Space Lab.”

  After a lengthy pause, the commentary continued, “NETWORK is currently studying whether a radiation spike inside of the beam may have caused the failure, but… we have… yes… NETWORK confirms outage in paddles one and four. A significant and unanticipated communication breach has occurred now with three… four paddles, as paddle two has also lost comm with the USL. Paddles five and six are now spiking heavily with impact sensory data, as they receive as much as 12000 fine-particle impacts per second. CONTROL is beginning to rotate direction of paddles five and six to reduce the amount of direct impact density in case significant and irreparable damage has been incurred…”

  The voice trailed off shortly after the remaining two images went black. Joram noticed that all six red dots that had submerged into the beam had disappeared completely from the map. By all indicators, the beam had simply eaten up all six paddles.

  Reyd placed his head in his hands, while Kath’s trembling right hand was covering her mouth firmly. Joram looked to the control room floor, where Zimmer was observed relaying orders into his headset while fixing his stare on the monitor at his station. He stood up, dropped his headset down onto the station, and paced to the back of the control room, where he attempted to gain a better big picture of what little data remained on the wall in front of him.

  “Mission control confirms the loss of communication with all six paddles. NETWORK is attempting to reestablish comm, but the team assumes a total loss of paddles to an unknown failure.”

  …

  “Communication scrambling, perhaps?”

  “Please elaborate, Mr. Eastman.”

  “Well, Professor, I was just thinking that perhaps once the paddles penetrated the outer sheath of the beam that the radiation emission of the beam superimposed on the communication signal would cause the signal to scramble sufficiently to lose complete comm.”

  “Hmmm… I’m not sure, Mr. Eastman. Recall that we sent paddles four and five to the opposite side of the beam from where the USL was, and the communication signal apparently was able to arrive unimpeded even though those signals had to go directly through the beam.”

  “I suspect radiation damage,” Kath announced. “The paddle detected radiation, but could not identify it—similar to what happened here on Earth at Time Zero, right?”

  “Could be, Miss Mirabelle. While the paddles are radiation-hardened, we are unable to test its ability to reject radiation that we have not identified.”

  Turning to Joram, Zimmer continued. “Mr. Anders, you’ve been quiet. What do you think?”

  “Well, I don’t know, honestly, but since we’re brainstorming, I’ll throw another idea out there. What about particle impact damage? I noticed that the impact density was pegged at about 68000 per second. I calculated that to be about 60 impacts per square inch per second.”

  “But none of the paddles ever indicated anything larger than an atom.”

  “You see, that’s where I’m confused. How can none of this matter coalesce into larger bodies? What could possibly pulverize and energize this matter so greatly?”

  “I don’t know, but this is all good data, Joram,” reminded Zimmer. “The media right now is having a field day over this. They’re transmitting articles to their editors on the failed mission, but they are wrong. We have some very great data that has yielded some new understanding that we didn’t have before. The beam is actually emitting its own light, and not reflecting sunlight as previously believed. We know that the beam physically consists of highly-quantized atomic particles. And… we still have six paddles to go.”

  “How is that going to help us, Professor?” Kath asked sincerely. “The first six were gobbled up by the beam. Won’t the next six meet a similar fate?”

  “Perhaps, but we now know how to maximize our odds for utilizing the last six better. In case we did experience radiation or particle damage, we will inject the paddles in parallel to the direction of the beam, instead of letting them approach in a perpendicular fashion.”

  “How will that help?” Kath inquired.

  “It’s like when you were a kid and stuck your hand out of the car as it was moving. When you placed it perpendicular to the flow of the air, it met great resistance, right? But when you turned your hand 90 degrees the force of the wind subsided. We’re going to hope that we can avoid the ‘wind’ of the beam by injecting the next three paddles in a parallel fashion.”

  “Three paddles?” asked Joram.

  “We started with twelve, and now we’re down to just six. I don’t want to spend them all on one remaining experiment. Instead of spreading six paddles out in 60 degree increments, we’ll place three of them in 120 degree slots instead, and then if we need to we’ll have a third shot at data collection with the final three paddles.

  “Also, we’re going to take it much slower now as we penetrate the visible extent. We were going faster than we knew we should when we hit the border at 60 kilometers per hour. So… by changing direction and slowing the speed, we’ll keep our fingers crossed for some better results.”

  Zimmer scanned the faces of his three graduate students, probing for visual clues as to their thoughts. “Anything else you’d like to discuss before we go back to the control room, Team?”

  Kath shook her head and Joram shrugged, but Reyd did have one more question to ask. “Professor, so far you’ve been listening to a lot of our hair-brained ideas, but you haven’t shared your thoughts on this. What do you think we’re dealing with?”

  Zimmer gave a deep sigh and measured how he would answer the question. His answer was uninspiring. “I think we’re looking at the tail of a comet.”

  “But the tail is potentially light years in length, and it gives off light even weeks after the comet passed by,” Reyd rebutted.

  “Mr. Eastman, you asked me what I thought. I gave you an answer. I honestly believe that we are looking at the tail of a comet, but an exotic one to be sure.”

  “Exotic?” asked Joram, seeking further clarification.

  “If I could describe it with greater clarity, Mr. Anders, I would do so. We don’t have all of the answers yet. We need the paddle
s to stay in the beam long enough to transmit back to us the material makeup of the beam. Then, we might be able to formulate sowme decent theories.”

  “Professor, do you believe the comet is responsible for the destruction on Mars?” asked Kath. “The beam occurred a few days after the damage. Did we really miss seeing it for that long?”

  “It could be that the tail was there all along, but that for some reason, the matter didn’t start illuminating until it reached a particular state. We know that the light is starting to fade out… it may have also faded in. I know that doesn’t adequately answer your question, but again, the only word I have to describe it now is exotic. Any other questions?”

  The three looked at each other and at Professor Zimmer, but they knew that for all of the questions that could be asked, the answers just weren’t there yet. Well understood—and yet unspoken—was one simple fact: if paddles number seven through twelve did not perform adequately, those questions may never be answered.

  As the quartet were left to their thoughts and concerns, the door to the conference room opened up. Dr. Gilroy stepped through with Stan Rodgers.

  Gilroy bounded towards Zimmer with an outstretched hand. “Dr. Zimmer, it’s great to see you again.”

  “Thank you for opening up your marvelous facility to my research team, Dr. Gilroy.”

  Gilroy nodded in recognition of the trio of students who stood at attention across the table. “I’m sorry that the mission didn’t go better, Carlton.”

  “Actually, I think it went very well, Vurim.”

  “But you lost the paddles.”

  “We lost half of the paddles, and we gained a few more pieces of the puzzle, and we have confidence that we’ll get even more by a better-informed application of the next paddles.”

  “So you have a plan of attack for continuing the mission?”

  “Indeed.”

  “When would you like to start back up, Professor?”

  “As soon as possible.”

  Gilroy turned to his mission specialist. “Stan, can you please round up the Flashlight team? It looks like we’re back in business.”

  “Shall we inform the press as well, Doctor?”

  Zimmer burst in. “No! I’d prefer that the press were not involved in the next phase of the mission. Besides, they got their story, and there is no need to waste their time should that story not be enhanced. If there is much to write home about after the show is over, we can hold a press conference.”

  Gilroy weighed this request for several moments. All eyes rested on him. “Stan, gather the team into the control room… but do not make an announcement to the press.”

  “Thank you, Vurim,” Zimmer spoke with relieved and gracious tones.

  “You realize, Carlton that this is highly unorthodox. We rely on a fairly complicated relationship with the press and their interaction in Washington.”

  “They’ll forgive us if we have anything juicy to share with them, and if not, they won’t care anyway.”

  Gilroy turned towards the exit as the door slowly swung shut behind Stan. “Good luck, Carlton. We really need to solve this mystery for the sake of the entire space program.”

  “We’ll do our best, Vurim.”

  …

  Three red dots came to rest at the end of curved lines indicating their trajectories on the map. They flanked the yellow line, indicating their position to descend into the territory from which six prior dots never emerged.

  The setting felt very familiar to Joram, as he sat in the same seat of the observation room monitoring the yellow images being transmitted back from the paddles. But there were a few differences. Now there were only three images now instead of six, the observation room was vacated of the presence of the media, and several new control team members occupied seats on the control room floor—the others having been dismissed sometime before 11:50 PM, when the CalTech team reentered the control room.

  In the pre-mission activity, Joram kept a close eye on Zimmer, who was wandering from station to station, communicating with the NETWORK, GUIDANCE, and FLIGHT team members. Joram also noticed the absence of the PAO, who was dismissed since the media was not invited to this second round of mission activity. The grad students all knew that this meant there would be no play-by-play commentary in the observation room. Instead, they would have to take fastidious notes on visual clues only and draw their own conclusions as to how the mission was proceeding.

  “GUIDO, please continue with synchronization of acceleration at 00:15 hours local time,” Professor Zimmer spoke into his headset after sitting in his chair at the FLIGHT station. A digitally projected clock in the upper left-hand corner of the mission display wall currently showed the time as 12:12 AM central time. A similar display nearby read 1 day, 14 hours, 59 minutes, and 7 seconds indicating the start of the Flashlight Mission as indicated by the separation of the Unmanned Space Lab from the rescue vehicle the day before.

  GUIDO, the commonly applied name for the guidance officer responded to the command. “Roger that FLIGHT command. GUIDANCE is confirming a unified start-up pattern at 00:15 hours with paddles seven, eight, and nine ramping up to 30 km/h for 12 minutes, at which time all three units will uniformly decelerate to 18 km/h as they penetrate beam boundary. Paddles are already rotated for parallel immersion into beam in order to minimize impact of particles as previously discussed.”

  Satisfied with the response from GUIDANCE, Zimmer checked in on the other teams as well. “NETWORK, please commence impact and radiation detection and assessment in T minus 5 minutes,”

  “Roger that, Professor!”

  “Now we cross our fingers and wait,” Zimmer breathed to his companion at the FLIGHT station after switching off his headset. The quiet of the room induced a tension that the graduate students were already growing accustomed to. Kath twirled her long hair. Reyd took deep breaths and tried to relax with his hands locked behind his head. Joram’s hand was trembling as it waved over his note tablet.

  After fifteen minutes of anticipation, the red dots were slowing down, when particle impact began. The paddles penetrated into the beam and data rushed across the monitors. Deeper into the beam they went. Zimmer heaved a sigh as the paddles were observed communicating even as they passed the point of no return for the first six paddles. Joram, Kath, and Reyd gave each other knowing glances and slight nods of the heads to indicate that Zimmer was dead-on in his suggestions to rotate the paddles away from the beam’s direction of travel and to penetrate more slowly than before.

  “CONTROL observing rotational acceleration in paddle number nine, currently at 0.65 degrees out of intended plane of descent. Paddles seven and eight holding at zero degrees. Attempting counter-active maneuvers to restore paddle nine to a zero degree rotation.”

  Zimmer responded quickly, “CONTROL, we’re gonna have a very difficult time maintaining location of these paddles if we have to control them with a twenty-minute lag of communication. Please program all three paddles for coordinated automatic calibration.”

  After a brief pause, “Um… FLIGHT, we don’t see automatic calibration as a feature on the paddles.”

  Zimmer flipped rapidly through a binder on his desk as he responded, “It’s in the requirements document, CONTROL… section 4.23.3.”

  It was CONTROL’s turn to flip through a binder at their station. “FLIGHT, we are cross-referencing section 4.23.3. Please confirm.”

  “4.23.3 confirmed.”

  “FLIGHT, requirement 4.23.3 was opted out of the retrofit of the paddles according to our docs.”

  “What?” Zimmer stood up and glared at the CONTROL station behind him. “Are you sure that 4.23.3 was not implemented?”

  “Yes, sir. It says here in section 4.23.3, ‘Requirement denied. Budget overrun.’ Command has been sent to back-thrust on roll which is now at 0.83 degrees. CONTROL is also noticing additional yaw of the paddle in the down-stream direction of the beam. Command has been sent to correct for yaw once roll is… Um… acceleration of paddle
nine down-stream is greater than anticipated… rotational acceleration increasing roll to 1.77 degrees… make that 2.16…”

  Zimmer put his head in his hand as he saw the writing on the wall. At the speed of light, control signals from Houston, Texas would take ten minutes to reach the paddle. By that time, the paddle would be erratically out of control, and its yaw, roll—and perhaps pitch—would be grossly out of the reach of the CONTROL officer to correct. Paddle nine had effectively completed its service already.

  “CONTROL reports a rapidly degrading roll and acceleration on the yaw… paddle nine now traveling at 85 km/h down-range… 113 km/h. FLIGHT, CONTROL requests to abort paddle nine from the flow of the beam in order to regain control. Particle impact at 27.5 degree roll is now accelerating the paddle rapidly down-range.”

  Zimmer spoke calmly, “How do you propose to gain control before the paddle is out of range of comm with the USL, CONTROL? You would first have to successfully control the yaw in order to point the paddle away from the beam and then accelerate away from its center.”

  Without responding to the original question, the voice from the other headset continued, “Down-range acceleration at… at… four… no… six…” The voice trailed off as the image and associated data for paddle nine went black.

  “Did you see that red dot?” exclaimed Kath inside the observation room. “It seems like all of the paddles so far are making a rapid 90 degree turn downstream just before they disappear. What could be going on?”

  Reyd was the first to offer a response. “It looks like they lost control of it and it went haywire.”

  “Why are they losing control to begin with? The math indicates that the particle impact is just not sufficient to knock these things off course” Kath said incredulously.

  “I don’t know,” offered Reyd weakly, “What do you think, Joram? Joram?”

  Reyd and Kath turned to notice that Joram was so absorbed in thought that he didn’t even hear his name being called. Kath walked over to where he was standing against the Plexiglas wall of the observation room. Placing a hand on his shoulder, she whispered, “Joram?”