A finger of white fire appeared suddenly from about one kilometer up and continued in a fading fashion until a ball of glowing slag appeared at the end of it. Every speck of dust unlucky enough to be in the path of the laser beam was vaporized in the gigawatt-sized energy flux. The effect was temporary, as the bits of dust and debris flashed into vapor and cooled, nevertheless the overall effect was startling to those on the outside. The rock, an irregular fragment of the Moon about the size of a large man's fist, took a bit longer, but it was not more than a minute or so before it, too, became a cloud of cooling, invisible vapor. The laser, deprived of a glowing target at the end, turned itself off and swiveled to point vertically downward at its base, safe and secured.
Discovery
UNSOC Lunar Colony Michael Collins, November 8, 2082, 0232 EDT
The skies cleared above the Spartanburg, South Carolina towards evening, so Billy John Dels ordered a pizza. It was going to be a long cool night in the Spartanburg Observatory, and as a young grad student, he needed his fuel.
It was close to midnight when he felt the call of nature. Billy turned away from the eyepiece of the three-meter telescope to rest his eyes for a minute and missed it. He wearily climbed down from the stool inside the observer's cage and walked over to the door leading to the rest of the observatory. Passing through it, he emerged in a red-lit anteroom that any film developer from the last century would recognize as a darkroom. Ensuring that the observatory door was shut and latched, he opened the door on the opposite side of the light-lock chamber to emerge into the rest of the observatory proper.
He groused privately to himself. The new observatory director just didn't understand what a hassle it was for the overwhelmingly male staff manning the big scope to have to walk so far just to use the urinal. The old director turned a blind eye to the occasional sight of a staff member just letting fly over the ledge that circled the dome itself. Billy did admit, though, that the new director was making some good changes to the observatory as well, including long overdue optics and tracking upgrades.
Small price to pay to raise the Spartanburg Observatory up in the world.
He finished his business in the restroom, rubbed his eyes wearily, and used the paper towel to open the door. Billy almost ran down the director. What the hell is she doing here?
“Good, ah, morning, Mr. Dels,” said Jama Fenester, the director of the observatory. She smiled faintly. “I know it's a hassle, using the men's room, but there's actual corrosion in some of the foundation.”
“Yes, ma'am,” Billy said. He tried to figure out something to say to the director. After all, it wasn't often that a simple grad student gets a few minutes with the head of the whole observatory.
“How is your thesis coming along?” she asked, letting him off the hook.
“Slow, ma'am, like all PhD theses, so I've heard.”
She waved him to precede her down the hall. “Enlighten me.”
Billy was on familiar ground here. “The explosion on the South Polar region of the Moon is completely unexplained. There is no known event that would account for the sheer amount of debris flung into cis-lunar space, while leaving no trace on any photogrammetry prior to the event. The spectrum of the actual event was never captured; the first reliable spectra came from approximately twenty-five minutes after the initial burst of light. They are completely featureless, with the exception of the expected absorption lines from vaporized chemical species of known lunar material.”
She nodded. “Grad students are going to be plowing that ground for theses for a few decades. What's your angle?”
“I believe that it was an impact event, but the penetrator somehow triggered a low-grade nuclear reaction in the regolith. The spectra of subsequent debris impacts on the surface of the Moon seem to show broadening of the absorption lines consistent with the presence of neutron-activated isotopes.”
Jama smiled. “I bet you've been spouting that synopsis so much you do it in your sleep.”
Billy put his hand on the doorknob to the light-lock. “I sometimes have nightmares about it, ma'am. Well, this is my stop.”
“May I come in?” she asked. “I'd like to visit Cyclops.” The single-eyed telescope had acquired that name years before Billy had seen his first star.
Billy blinked rapidly at her. “Certainly! It's yours, after all. You don't need to ask permission.” He opened the door and waved her through into the light-lock. He closed the outer door and ensured that the switch labelled 'Cyclops in use' was in the on position.
“Oh, stop it,” Jama said, chuckling. “You don't need to do a checklist just because I'm around. Jeez.”
Billy was nervous and fumbled around Jama, but covered it as well as he could. “Door secured, Ms. Fenester. You can go on through,” he said. He wanted nothing more than to get out of this claustrophobic little room, suddenly aware that Ms. Fenester, Jama, was actually attractive, if you liked your women twenty years older. She took her time opening the inner door while he backed away from her as much as he could. Don't need to crowd her and make her feel like you were putting the moves on her, dumbass.
Jama opened the inner door and blinked several times in the sudden gloom before exiting the light-lock. As soon as she was clear, Billy rushed into the dome, firmly closing the door behind him.
As always, the feeling of vastness inside the dome gripped him, and with it, a feeling of caution. It really wasn't all that roomy on the floor of the dome, with desks, electronics, and the actual scope secure in its iron frame taking center stage. Jama walked to the brass railing, smoothed from countless hands over the decades from researchers and the public alike. She gripped it and waited for her eyes to adjust.
“What's the setup?” she asked.
“I've got Cyclops tracking the Moon, in particular the Sea of Storms area. There's an impact that will happen in about twenty minutes there, and I've got the light going into the spectroscope. By the way, I do want to thank you for ordering that beautiful Nychron counter. The new sub-micron sensor is just fantastic in measuring the Doppler lines in a spectrograph.”
“Glad to help,” she said. Although an astronomer herself, she had drifted to the equally vital work of administration over the years. Her observing time on Cyclops dwindled to zero as her duties increased, but she kept up with the field and was able to find funding to keep Cyclops relevant despite the telescope's small size.
“The Nychron can take complete spectra ten times a second, and will dump them into the storage area…what the hell?” Billy stopped his semi-presentation when he noticed the large number of spectrograms stored in the previously empty area. “I was certain that was empty just before I left.”
Jama held her tongue as Billy shifted into high gear. “Ma'am, can you help me for a minute? Sit down right here. Look, I've got Nikkie set to auto-record, and she recorded something but I don't have the time to check it out before the impact. Can you look around for, oh, I need a spare twenty gigabytes to shove these spectra into within fifteen minutes or we're all dead.”
Jama dropped into the proffered chair and started hunting through the computer for a spare spot. She didn't go into the research computer network often, but it wasn't completely unfamiliar to her. “Got it! Go to Disk 57, partition #3F. Khaaaaaan!”
“You do it, please. I'm using Disk 33, partition#6C. Good catch. You know your Star Trek.”
“Working,” Jama said, mimicking the voice of the original Star Trek computer while setting up the move command. “Execute.” She looked over to Billy, who was pulling a replay of whatever it was that triggered the Nychron.
“What the hell?” he said. “Some jackoff lasering planes?” He scrolled through the images. “Oh, now that's just flat out bizarre.” On the screen, a bright line was visible on the face of the Moon, sweeping around its face like a clock hand.
“Done,” she said. “Three minutes to impact. Hardly exciting.”
“Naw. Couldn't be.” Billy continued to look at the recording while Ni
kkie triggered, filling the storage area with spectra from the forgotten impact event.
Jama smiled as she tracked the observation of the impact and waited until the spectrograph stopped recording. She waited a couple of minutes, then tapped Billy on the shoulder. He twitched her finger away like it was a fly.
“Shouldn't you file your observations away?” she asked him. “Mr. Dels? Billy John Dels? Answer me!”
Billy jumped a few inches in his chair. “Yes, ma'am?” he replied. He looked at her, she looked at him, raised her eyebrows, then pointed at the screen showing a list of filenames, shining dimly through the red gel filter. “Your observations?”
“Oh, dammit!” he said, blurring into motion. “Damn, damn, damn!”
“Don't worry,” she said. “It's all there. I watched the whole thing.”
Billy kept muttering imprecations at his lack of awareness. This is gonna get me canned, for sure! Thesis-level observations, a scope with a big backlog of observations, and here I am, blowing it with the director staring over my shoulder. Hell, SHE had to do my work observing the event.
A flicker of red light from the light-lock caught their attention. “Billy John?” asked one of the older researchers. “How are you doing here? Your obs time's up in about five. Do you need more? Otherwise, I need to take a light-curve on Comet 2054-P. There's word that it's in outburst.”
“Uh,” said Billy. “I think I'll be done in time. Console B is clear.”
“No problem.” The older researcher came in with his hands full: tablet, commpad, a book, and a zip-up folder that probably held his notes. He fumbled around, depositing everything on the console, and almost dropped the can of soda he was holding when he noticed that Billy John had company.
“Sorry, I didn't know you were occupied.”
Billy snorted. The rumors of grad students sneaking dates into the dome never died, but the reality was that an astronomer hunched over a scope rarely had time for entertaining a date. Still, the rumors persisted because, occasionally, they were true.
“Kwaze, have you met Ms. Fenester, our director?” said Billy with relish. Kwaze was not a bad sort, but he deserved this shock for the slight on Billy's reputation.
“Ms. Fenester,” Kwaze choked out. “I didn't see you there.”
“Obviously, otherwise you'd have done a better job hiding that soda. You know the rules.”
“Yes, ma'am.” Kwaze made as if to get up, but Billy stopped him. “I'll take it back to your cube, Kwaz. I'm done with Cyclops now.”
***
“What was that all about?” asked Jama, as they made their way back to the floor holding the offices of the observatory staff. “You two have a problem?”
Billy shook his head. “No. I've never snuck a date into the dome—I've got more class than that. I just thought I'd zing ole' Kwaze for making me look bad. I didn't know he'd have a coke with him.”
“Where's yours?” she asked. “And don't say you didn't have one—I've seen how many show up in the trash cans in the dome.”
“Aw, Director,” began Billy.
“Don't 'aw, director' me. It's dark in there, you forget where you put the can, and one stray gesture and we're replacing ten thou in console electronics.”
“I know the arguments, ma'am. You've been an observer. You know how cold and thin the air is. How dry. And tonight, you saw what happens when one leaves the scope for a few minutes.”
“Just because I won't let you pee over the rail of the dome?” she finished. “Yes, I've been an observer. At Mauna Kea, of all places. The air here is like soup compared to way up a volcano. I don't know how they do it in South America. Still, we have to protect the equipment.”
“Then put in cupholders, why doncha?” said Billy, forgetting completely who he was talking to. “Problem solved.”
Silence reigned.
“Uh, Ms. Fenester?”
“That was a great suggestion, Billy,” she said. “I should have thought of it when I made the rule.” She walked him to his cubicle. “What happened?”
“I forgot who I was talking to,” said Billy. “I also forgot to take the observation, and you had to do it. I guess I'll have to make do with this data, if you'll let me have it. I know I'm done here.” He started looking around his cubicle. Two years down the drain.
A touch on his arm startled him.
“Stop acting like an undergrad,” she said. “The observation was automatic, and I refuse to be addressed like I am some sort of royalty. So, stop moping around and tell me what was so unusual about that data that you forgot about your impact.”
***
Even Irma had to admit the test was a complete success. The amount of power, though! To reach out, find a rock, and hit it with enough light energy to vaporize it? The targeting, well, she knew enough about computer controlled servos that she was sure it would work. But the solid bar of light, vaporizing all that got in its way, that was something else! In her mind's eye, she saw every bad disaster movie from the last hundred years and knew deep in her soul the Earth was in danger from these lasers. Perhaps not now, today, with this crew, but in the future, when madmen could use these tools to bend the Earth to the Moon's will.
“I don't care what the beam-spread is when it gets to Earth,” she declared. “Or that the atmosphere is opaque to the laser's frequency. In fact, that's the problem! The precious atmosphere will absorb all this energy, gigawatts of it. Who's to say that it won't light the atmosphere on fire?”
“Fire?” asked Horst. “Sure, there's some methane, but that's so scarce that even if some of it was in the beam, it wouldn't actually create a flame.”
“Hey, don't try that 'I don't know nuthin' routine with me! We all know about nitrogen oxides. Who's to say that this beam won't kick the atmosphere over the edge until all the nitrogen and oxygen combine, all over the planet?”
McCrary put out his hand. “Hang on, everyone. We can't dismiss anything. Ms. Huertas, I know you have a number of followers. Have them put together a paper supporting this as a danger, and I'll have the scientists and some of my engineers look at it. Until then, we'll find another candidate rock to perform a second test. Don't worry, Ms. Huertas, we'll let you know and observe.”
He stood up, ending the test. “I know you all have a lot of data to crunch, so for now, this test is over. Ms. Huertas, I'd like to see your paper within the next three days. We'll give the science a day or two to answer, then we'll have a meeting one week from today. Is that satisfactory?”
Everyone signaled their assent, though some replies sounded begrudged.
“OK, everyone back to their regular jobs,” said McCrary, turning away. It was hard to depart in a dignified manner when one floated between steps.
***
Billy hated wearing a suit, but he could well understand why he had to. A late-night visit from the Director of the Spartanburg Observatory was one thing, but a formal presentation in front of the Observatory staff, and incidentally his PhD board, was something else. It wasn't even his thesis he was presenting, either.
Ms. Fenester opened the meeting. “This will be an informal presentation by Mr. Dels, one of our graduate students, about an anomalous observation that occurred last week. This is being done at my specific request. Mr. Dels.”
Billy John stood up, acutely aware that his audience included not just the people in this room, but an untold number of observers on the Internet via streaming video. Keep to the data. Forget everything else but the data.
“At 0232am local time on November 8th, an automated spectrograph recorded highly anomalous readings from the Mare Crisium.” He ran through the entire chain of events, from the purpose of the original observation through the end of his scheduled observing time.
“An analysis of the recorded spectrographic light revealed emission lines consonant with known molecular species in Lunar regolith. By itself, it is unremarkable. What is astonishing is the following.” He flashed a graph up on the screen. “Here is a typical emission lin
e from aluminum—a known constituent of lunar rock and soil. When I used the Nychron's sub-pixel enhancement feature, I was able to discern this.” He toggled the next image, overlaying it on the first.
“You see here the extraordinary broadening of the emission line, indicating an exceptionally high temperature. The aluminum atoms that generated this emission line were at a black body temperature measurable in the hundreds of thousands of degrees. Now, note the spectrum recorded at 02:32:51.223.”
The image on the screen swooped off to the top left corner, while a second image, superficially similar, replaced it. “At the time this image was recorded, the spotting scope recorded the passage of this artifact across the field of view.” The spectrum flew to the top right of the screen, while another image replaced it in the center of the screen. “The CCD chip was oversaturated at this point. You can see the image of the Moon behind it. The star-like rays at forty-five degrees are artifacts left on the image from the thin wires supporting the diffraction grating in the optical path. Note the still-present white line from this brilliant object.”
“But what are we looking at?” asked one of the older scientists. “Stop playing this game and tell us what we're seeing!”
“Doctor Fazad, please, hold your comments until the end of Mr. Dels' presentation,” said Doctor Circe, Billy's PhD advisor. “There's a reason for all of this.”
“Screwing around, I ain't got all day for this,” the old man said, subsiding.
“Continue, please,” said Doctor Circe.
“If you look carefully, you will see that the glow from this object is actually throwing shadows on the surface of the Moon from geographic features. It is difficult to see at first, but is easily apparent when the images are played in sequence.” Billy manipulated the controls. “The counter at the bottom has been added, T minus zero is when the object first emits light.”
The Moon appeared on the screen. “Image stabilization was used to reduce image jitter in the night air,” he said as the seconds counted down from ten to zero.
Come In, Collins Page 13