by Greg Krojac
“Good morning Administrator, Deputy Administrator, ladies and gentlemen. What I am going to say will seem impossible but I ask you all to keep an open mind. May I first draw your attention to the main screen? You’ll see three measurements for each of the two Voyager spacecraft; note the distance of the Voyager 1 space probe from Earth, in both kilometres and AUs, its distance from the Sun, and the roundtrip light time from the Earth. It’s nothing unusual. We’ve all seen these figures and watched them as they increase by the second. We’ve seen them hundreds of times. Thousands. But I want you be aware of them while you listen to what I have to say.
“Twenty-four hours ago I was up to my neck in the icy waters of the Bering Sea, behind a fishing trawler, examining an object that had been caught in their nets. I’d been visiting my aunt in Anchorage, when I received an urgent phone call from NASA to drop everything and go investigate an unidentified object. I fully expected it to be sunken space debris or perhaps, a fallen satellite.”
Another key press and the advancing distances were replaced by a photo of the object trapped within the trawler’s netting. This then dissolved to reveal another image of the object, this time sitting captive in a JPL laboratory at Pasadena. Her audience murmured as Sitara took a deep breath, knowing that she was about to say the unthinkable.
“The spacecraft that we recovered from the sea is Voyager One.”
A hush fell over the room. The assembled scientists knew what the object looked like, but Sitara had said the unutterable. She continued.
“I had my suspicions as soon as I saw the object, but they were confirmed when I began to examine the Bus at the base of the High Gain Antenna. I noticed that there were other mountings with nothing attached to them. That’s when alarm bells really started ringing. I opened each of the ten compartments in turn, expecting to find electronic subsystems and instrumentation - but they were empty. They were all empty.”
Administrator Healey interrupted Sitara. The very thought that the vehicle in their labs being examined by their scientists could be Voyager One was absurd, but the empty compartments of whatever the spacecraft was concerned him too.
“Doctor Khan, are you saying that these compartments had been opened, the contents deliberately removed, and then resealed?”
The Administrator listened to the words as he said them, thinking how preposterous they sounded when spoken out loud. Whatever it was, the object couldn’t be Voyager One.
“They certainly appear to have been, yes.”
“Could they not have been damaged by collision with a foreign object wandering the Solar System?”
“There was no evidence of any impact, sir. The Bus is intact. The compartments do seem to have been opened and resealed.”
“Could they have been interfered with here on Earth?”
“Of course, there’s always a small chance that they were, but I don’t believe that happened. Why would anyone remove some parts and leave the others? Surely it would make more sense to take the whole spacecraft.”
Sitara knew how crazy she sounded. Voyager One was well over thirteen billion miles away, and getting further away with each passing second. Another murmur flowed around the room, as the audience tried to process what they had just heard. The objective of the two Voyager missions was to explore the Solar System, and then to seek out new horizons and possibly encounter new civilizations. Nobody wanted to say the words but everybody understood the implications of the missing parts having been removed, and not broken off. Sitara waited for the hubbub to die down.
“I suspected that I was looking at Voyager One, but didn’t want to believe it myself. I mean, it’s crazy. Isn’t it? But several other pieces of equipment were clearly missing, among them several Subsystems, Spectrometers, Antennae, and Thermoelectric Generators. None had been broken off; they had all been deliberately removed.”
The audience watched as photos of the anchor points to the supports upon which the equipment had been mounted zoomed into view. The items had definitely been carefully removed, not broken off. The Administrator stood up.
“This is impossible. It can’t be Voyager One. It must be a copy, although I can’t for the life of me think why anyone would want to dump an imitation space probe into the ocean.”
He turned and pointed to the smaller screen, which was still showing the two Voyagers’ distances from the Earth. The values were still increasing.
“Look. There’s the proof. Both Voyagers are still there, travelling away from us. Voyager One can’t be in two places at the same time. It’s impossible. This has to be some kind of hoax. What other explanation could there possibly be?”
The Director of the IVVF offered a possible explanation.
“Perhaps we’ve unknowingly suffered a cyber-attack, perhaps our network’s been hacked. Perhaps those numbers changing on the screen are false.”
The Administrator shook his head.
“No, it can’t be as simple as that. Firstly, we have one of the most robust IT security systems in the world. I hesitate to say we’re 100 percent safe but we’re as close as it’s possible to get without calling ourselves perfect. And, even if that scenario were true, it would mean that Voyager One has turned around and returned to Earth in a matter of a few days. Considering that it’s been travelling in the other direction for over forty years, I think we can rule that one out, don’t you?”
The Deputy Administrator interjected.
“It’s madness, I know. But our top forensic scientists have been examining the object non-stop, since it arrived at the lab, and all the evidence is pointing to the object being Voyager One. The same space probe that was launched from Cape Canaveral on September 5, 1977.”
The Administrator shook his head.
“Which it can’t be. The laws of physics don’t allow for it. This has to be a hoax.”
The Administrator pointed again to the ever-increasing distances displayed on the lower screen.
“I mean. Look. It’s out there. Systems have been checked, double-checked, triple-checked. Voyager One has left our Solar System and is getting further and further away from us. That’s Voyager One out there - what we have in our lab simply cannot be Voyager One.”
Sitara was tempted to bite her lip, but she had to say something.
“Unless…”
The Administrator was prepared to hear any suggestion at the moment.
“Unless what, Dr Khan?”
“It sounds crazy.”
“Spit it out Doctor. We’re looking crazy square in the eyes already. You can’t make it any worse.”
“Well, a few minutes earlier, you said that Voyager One can’t be in two places at the same time.”
“It can’t.”
“But what if it can? I mean, I know it sounds absurd, but perhaps it is in two places at the same time? We’ve proved that an electron can be in two places at one time. So can photons. What if it’s only because we don’t yet have the technology to do so that we can’t do the same with larger objects? What if extra-terrestrials have developed advanced technology to do so? It sounds impossible, yes, but if we weren’t open to the possibility of there being intelligent life being out there in the cosmos, SETI wouldn’t exist. And we certainly wouldn’t have put the Golden Records on the two Voyagers. Those compartments didn’t open, remove the contents, and then close by themselves. And the missing equipment didn’t just fall off. It was taken.”
Sitara had the bit between her teeth. Normally she wouldn’t have had the nerve to propose such an outlandish hypothesis, but she’d detected a sense of urgency in the room. The whole situation was bizarre; perhaps an absurd suggestion wouldn’t necessarily be out of place.
“It’s like Schrödinger’s Cat. It appears that Voyager One is here on Earth, being examined by our forensic team, while simultaneously being over thirteen billion miles away travelling out of the Solar System. With no definitive evidence to the contrary, until we can prove otherwise, we have to accept that somehow Voyager One is both her
e and out there in Space. Voyager One is Schrödinger’s Cat.”
Up until and after Voyager One had left the Solar System in 2012, it had been communicating with the home planet and was still doing so. The signal would eventually be irretrievable, but that hadn’t happened yet. It had sent back data about Saturn, Jupiter, and Jupiter’s moon Titan, information that could only have been obtained if the space probe were physically in those locations. The Deep Space Network of antenna arrays had continued to send and receive messages even though the spacecraft was now travelling outside the Solar System. Admittedly, having access to the Deep Space Network for only six to eight hours per day, it was entirely possible that Voyager scientists wouldn’t actually be physically monitoring the craft if something extraordinary were to happen, but nothing untoward had occurred as far as they were aware, certainly nothing like a return to Earth at technologically impossible speeds.
Then there was the fact that equipment had been removed from the earthbound space probe. That would infer both intelligence and dexterity, meaning that the probe had succeeded in its auxiliary task of making contact with extra-terrestrial beings, a fascinating yet ultimately frightening thought. However, the common consensus at the meeting concurred with the Administrator. The spacecraft at JPL had to be a fake.
DAY THREE
26 April– Infected 281 Dead 0
“What do you mean, he’s not saying anything? Didn’t he come forward of his own accord?”
Sitting at his desk in his spacious Washington office, the Administrator had a good idea what the response to his question would be. If he were in the same position he too would insist on some reward. The Deputy Administrator outlined the retired employee’s demands.
“He wants immunity from prosecution and his pension upgraded to a full senior management pension with a lump sum payment of two hundred thousand dollars.”
“He’s asking a lot.”
“He knows that, but he also realises the enormity of the situation at hand. He has a granddaughter with severe medical problems and says he needs to safeguard her future.”
“But how does he know about our Voyager One conundrum?”
The Deputy paused for a second. He didn’t like the obvious answer.
“I don’t know. I guess we have a leak somewhere.”
“Shit.”
“Shit indeed, Tony. We need to find out who it is, but that’ll have to wait for the moment.”
“Agreed. Put another hundred thousand dollars in the pot, but don’t use it unless we have to.”
“Understood.”
The Administrator stood up and paced around the room for a few seconds, his right hand stroking his neatly coiffured beard. He placed both hands palm-down on top of his large mahogany desk and leaned into them.
“And make it conditional on his agreement to a polygraph. I know he has us by the balls, and that lie-detector tests aren’t how we would normally do things, but he doesn’t know that. I need time to get the President on board. Pardons are his department.”
Three hours later, ex-assembly engineer Jonas Wade was sitting in a sparsely furnished and dimly lit room, facing an emotionless heavy-set man, whose receding dark hair was just beginning to grey at the temples. On the table that separated them was a polygraph machine. Jonas Wade didn’t much like the idea of having to undergo this procedure, but he needed the money. The emotionless man’s assistant attached nodes onto various parts of Jonas’s body and nodded to the interrogator, who looked straight into the eyes of the engineer.
“Good morning, Mr Wade. My name is Mr Anderson. I shall ask you a number of questions which I want you to answer truthfully. The first few questions will be to provide a benchmark in order to analyse your responses. Do you understand?”
Jonas nodded his agreement and Mr Anderson started his interrogation, while the Administrator and his deputy looked on from the other side of a two-way mirror.
“What is your job, Mr Wade?”
“I’m retired. Before that, I was an assembly engineer for JPL.”
“Were you involved in the assembly of the Voyager One space probe, Mr Wade?”
“Yes.”
The needle of the polygraph machine busily darted up and down the paper. So far none of the responses were unexpected. After several more simple questions, Mr Anderson moved on to a more relevant line of questioning.
“You say that you can provide proof that the space probe in our custody, is the very same spacecraft which you helped assemble. Is that true?”
Jonas took a deep breath. He knew that he needed to be honest if he were to receive his payment. He wasn’t dealing with fools.
“I believe so.”
The Administrator turned to his Deputy.
“I believe so?”
The interrogator turned his head towards the reflective glass and nodded. The Deputy clarified the response.
“Technically, it means that he does believe that he can prove whether our space probe is the real Voyager One or not.”
“So, as far as he is concerned, what he is now going to tell us is the truth.”
“Exactly.”
Mr Anderson showed no emotion but inside he was secretly excited. The information that he was about to become privy to was extraordinary. He would love to have been able to tell his wife about his day when he got home that night, but he knew he couldn’t. He turned back to face Jonas.
“What is this proof, Mr Wade?”
Jonas knew that he was about to cross a line, that he would be unable to retract what he was about to confess, but his daughter needed certain house conversions to be made in order to make his disabled granddaughter’s life more comfortable. He knew what he was doing.
“May I have a cigarette?”
The interrogator’s assistant pointed to a no smoking sign on the wall. Jonas shrugged his shoulders.
“No harm in asking.”
The interrogation continued.
“How can you prove that the space probe we have in custody is the original Voyager One?”
Jonas grinned. Not a sardonic grin but more a grin of self-indulgent pleasure as he remembered what he had done on that day over forty years ago.
“I left some of my DNA on the inside of one of the panels. Just a small speck of blood, you know, but still enough for part of me to go into space.”
The Administrator and the Deputy looked at each other aghast. Did he really just say that? Surprised as Mr Anderson was at this revelation, he didn’t react and he simply continued his line of questioning.
“How did you do that?”
“I was responsible for mounting the communication subsystem into one of the Bus compartments. It was a simple thing to nick my finger and leave a tiny bloodstain on a mounting bracket before attaching the subsystem to the back of the compartment. Especially back then.”
“What do you mean, especially back then?”
“Well, security is much better now. I’m sure I couldn’t do it these days without being spotted.”
“Tell us how you did it.”
Jonas’s confidence was growing.
“There’s no point in telling you now. It was forty plus years ago. Systems and processes have completely changed. I did it. That’s all you need to know.”
The interrogator changed the direction of the questioning.
“Why did you do it?”
“Call me a fool if you like, but I’d always wanted to be an astronaut. I also knew that was never going to happen. I was never fit enough, not even then, when I was younger. So I thought I’d do the next best thing and send a bit of me into space.”
Administrator Healey wanted to know how his staff hadn’t spotted the bloodspot during their forensic investigations, but that would have to wait. He took his phone from his pocket and sent a text to the investigating team supervisor to stop what they were doing and remove the panels from the communications subsystem compartment for more intensive screening.
The interrogator felt his phone vibrate
in his pocket and took it out, tapping the touchscreen to activate the display. He read the message silently and then repeated its content.
“We’ll need a sample of your DNA, Mr. Wade. Do you agree to us taking a saliva sample?”
Jonas felt that now he was in control of the situation.
“It’ll cost you another fifty thousand bucks.”
The interrogator’s phone vibrated again.
“Agreed.”
Jonas was happy with that.
“Fifty grand, just for spitting into a test-tube. That’s what I call a bargain.”
The Administrator returned to his office with his deputy, leaving Mr Anderson to identify the source of the leak, and poured a couple of large scotches for himself and Roger Nelson. He sat down in a burgundy leather armchair, his favourite of the two that were in his office, and rested his glass on the coffee table that separated the two men. His deputy, sitting opposite him in a matching chair, took a sip of his own drink and placed it back on the table. Tony Healey leaned forward a little.
“So Roger. What do you think? Do you think that this may be the proof we’re looking for?”
The Deputy nodded.
“It looks like it, Tony. It all depends if the DNA has survived the rigours of space. There was a recent experiment that proved that genetic material could survive a flight through space and re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere, at least for a short journey. It was proven by a team of scientists from the University of Zurich. But we have no idea if DNA could have survived for this long and over such a large distance. But – and it’s a ‘but’ with a capital B - if there’s enough of it still intact, and it matches that of Jonas Wade, a whole new can of worms will open up.”