by Peter Damon
“Wow!” Michael murmured into the silence that followed. Some laughed, and others licked their lips in nervous anticipation, well aware of their weight, and in some cases, their obesity.
Gail smiled in anticipation.
“Leanne, does your smile tell me something?” Michael asked.
Leanne’s grin was near wide enough to split her face in two. “The Satellite monitoring table has been commissioned and is monitoring four satellites at the moment; one at the north and one at the southern pole that are both ours, one newly positioned over Australia for commercial purposes, and one more that we’ve held off positioning until we’re satisfied with the final tests of the software,” she told the room.
“The software does more than just monitor the health of our satellites,” Allan explained. “There’s quite a lot of administration we can do from here, such as authorise or de-authorise any of the transponders, move the container, realign any of the dishes, as well as just monitor their health, status and capacities,” he told the room.
“When does Australia come on line?” Michael asked.
“Tomorrow.”
“And then we receive their payment?” he asked.
“Sure do,” Cheryl beamed.
“So, with an income stream, we can proceed with further development,” Michael suggested, and looked towards the twins.
“Professor Rolle, Mr Bennett and we two had a long conversation one afternoon, on the Cam,” David, but it could have been Thomas, explained to the rest of those seated around the table. “We decided then, that if we were successful in getting into orbit, we would need a short term, and a long term plan.
“The short term plan was to do what we’ve done; take the chemical away from earth authorities, and begin a commercial unit that would support us in space, and fund further development and exploration.
“The long term plan was to develop the exploration of space still further.”
“Mars!” Oliver cried excitedly.
David shook his head. “Yes, and no. There are limited opportunities in our going to Mars. Whatever we do, even if it’s just an extension to what the US and Russia have already achieved, it will be viewed negatively. So we aren’t planning to go to Mars. However, we do intend to help the earth to go there.”
Michael interrupted to explain further. “I’ve already approached the US government with a proposal that will see us transporting a facility supporting 25 staff, five of which will be of our choosing. We will provide transport there and back, and all the communication facilities.”
“Isn’t that a little risky, after everything they and the others have done?” Cheryl asked.
“It is, but nowhere near as risky as sending a single woman into Europe and asking her to obtain written agreements to launch six satellites into space,” he smiled, reminding her and everyone at the meeting of the role she had played prior to their launch into orbit.
“So, where?” Oliver asked, dying to know where the twins planned on going.
Thomas touched his tablet to bring a picture of the solar system onto the screen. “Given that we shouldn’t touch a planet or a moon on the basis that it may be viewed to be profiteering from our discovery, we believe our best course would be to head even further out, to the Asteroid Belt.
“Very little detail is known of the Asteroid Belt. A couple of deep space probes have passed through it and the newer orbital telescopes have provided much clearer pictures on which to base deductions, but so far we have a lot of theorising about what it’s made up of, but very little that is definitive.”
“We’d like to fit out a second ship, smaller than this one, for a trip to it. We want to go out there and do more research, but also look to mine any metals that are scarce on earth,” David told the room.
“What sort of ship would you be looking for?” this from Allan.
“It would be something between 100 and 150 metres in length, 20 to 30 metres broad. A ferry would suit us best because of the front and back doors and large vehicle carrying space, something that has about 200 cabins at the moment. We’d reduce that to 50 larger suites with the lounges being reduced to make more room for storage,” Thomas explained.
“Cost?” Asked Michael.
“Between 3 and 5 million US Dollars prior to conversion.”
“So, double that to complete the conversion,” Michael said, and saw the twins nod.
“Where will you get your crew?” Leanne asked.
“From here, of course. That’s what the ARC is all about; learning the skills we need to be able to live in space. We don’t need 30 Spacemen to catch garbage; we can take 10 without the ARC feeling the loss, but then the ARC can just recruit some more from the earth if it feels the need to do so.”
“You’ll need geologists,” Michael noted.
“Or have them at the end of a high spec communication link,” David answered.
“What’s the round time for radio waves, here to the Asteroid Belt and back?” Oliver asked with a frown.
“We won’t use radio waves. You’re right, they would take too long,” Leanne agreed. “We’d use laser as the carrier.”
“Hold on. Surely radio waves travel at the speed as light,” Michael pointed out. “How is laser going to be faster?”
“You’re also right. It is actually the capacity of radio waves that is the real limitation,” Leanne explained. “With the latest systems available on the market, you’re unlikely to get more than 700kb per second out of radio. However, with a laser system, especially the one I’ve been playing with, you can condense data into a small portion of light before sending it and get data transmission speeds in excess of 5gb per second.”
“That’s a huge gulf!” Oliver gasped. “Why aren’t laser based communication already in use?” he asked the room.
“Various reasons,” Gary answered. “The current solutions are very heavy, so weight of the equipment is one reason,” he explained. “It would be very expensive for earth to lift given their launch technology.
“More technologically challenging would be the positioning of the signal so that it was received. With the earth rotating and in obit about the sun, and the craft moving, you would need incredibly clever positioning systems in order to use laser communication. So far, earth has only tested it once, up to a distance of 30 million kilometres, and that was a relatively simple pulse-based test.”
“30 million kilometres is nothing, when you think that Mars can be anywhere between 55 and 401 million kilometres from us.” Leanne explained.
“Then there’s the question of ‘noise’,” Leanne added, and grinned at the perplexed expression she’d caused on Oliver’s face.
“Light is not ‘clean’, so when you insert information into it, the dirty light distorts the information making it unreadable at the other end. Developers of this technology call it Noise, for the want of a better term. You can always reduce the volume of data and add power to your light source, like shouting slowly to someone across an auditorium during a Sachet’s gig,” she told him, “and you’d have about as much luck. So you need to overcome that problem too.”
“And can we?” he asked, looking about the table.
Leanne grinned. “The laser communication system I aim to give us will be much, much better than anything earth has seen prior to it,” she told him. “About the same degree of difference as Morse to modern day wireless,” she suggested.
“And how long is this trip going to take?” Oliver asked.
The technically astute students smiled with pride. “With the size of the generator we plan to have available to us on this new spaceship, we can be in the same orbital plane as the main Asteroid Belt in around a day. However, once we’re in the vicinity, our speed will have to reduce. We can’t be moving at speeds of 10 million kilometres an hour; the risk of hitting something substantial is just too great.
“Then, of course, asteroids are not all that close together and there’s a huge area of space to examine. At a reduced and ca
utious speed, it could take us a further week or two to approach an asteroid before we can begin to investigate it.
“That’s one asteroid, and there are thousands. And in such a broad orbit that some can take as many as 6 years to go around the sun. That may mean us crossing to the other side of the sun from earth to examine it.
“All in all, while we’re probably never going to be further than 4 Astronomical Units from earth, or 270 million kilometres, or 27 hours travel at our top speed, you should consider us absent for about a year.”
“But there’s going to be a requirement for skill-sets that we don’t have enough of as it is,” Michael pointed out.
“Yes,” the twins agreed, their nods in unison with each other. “If this project is agreed, we’ll need to remedy that.”
“Are we agreed?” Michael asked.
Of course it was a done deal; there were too many students around the table for it to have been anything but the more exciting choice of going out to the Asteroid Belt.
“Ok, we’ll meet again in a week, during which time we each investigate the issues and look to find possible solutions to any problems,” Michael suggested. “In the meantime, go buy your ferry,” he told the twins.
August 6th.
Leanne was in her suite working on her thesis when her earpiece received the first alarm as communication with one of the satellites was lost. She checked her tablet to look for an error code, and swore silently to herself as she saw the code 9999 displayed; reason unknown.
“Control-room? I’ve got a problem with satellite ARC-A1,” she told the Duty Officer through her communications link as she hurried towards them.
“Are you able to bring it back to us?” Allan asked.
“No. It’s not responding, nor able to tell me why,” she explained worriedly, her eyes fixed on the display in the lift as it took her swiftly to the fifth floor and the entrance to the control-room.
“Our orbit will bring it into sight in a couple of minutes,” Allan responded after a moment’s scrutiny of his command table.
Leanne arrived in the control-room and looked at the satellite table, trying to work out what could have gone wrong while she waited for the ARC to come around the earth’s horizon to where it would be able to see the rogue satellite.
“Frankie is on standby to go collect it, soon as we confirm its position,” Allan told her from the main table.
Leanne looked towards the main screen, half hoping it would be something simple, something easily and quickly fixed, while the other half of her hoped it wouldn’t be anything stupid, but something extremely strange or unique, something no one, least of all she, could have predicted.
“Where is it?” Allan asked, looking for it and seeing nothing.
Leanne checked the coordinates and shook her head. “Can we use radar?” she asked.
Allan was already invoking radar and swore as he put the image onto the far screen.
“Fuck! It blew up!” Leanne cried, watching the acceleration of various pieces radiating outwards from the location of where the satellite had been positioned. “But how?” she cried, her eyes on the control panel while her mind reviewed every item inside the converted shipping container.
Allan worked on his screen for a few moments and nodded to himself. “Frankie; I’ve put a chase into your vehicle’s systems. It’s a chunk of satellite with a trajectory that’s fairly orbital, unlike the others that have either shot towards earth’s atmosphere, or out into space. Can you retrieve it please?” he asked.
“Won’t be long,” Frankie answered over the link, and an icon showed yellow on Allan’s board as the rear doors to the docking bay received a request to open.
The door to the control-room opened and the twins stepped in, closely followed by Michael, Heather, and shortly after, Oliver.
“I guess we didn’t see anything,” Heather asked.
Allan shook his head. “Totally out of line of sight,” he confirmed, bringing the ARC to a halt relative to earth so that they floated in a stationary orbit over the bulk of Australia. An alarm sounded as the ARC automatically warned staff in the working areas of the ship, that in coming to a halt, the risk of collision with space junk had just increased.
Cheryl ran in with Gary, her face both pale and worried. “Have we got something to put in its place?” she asked.
Leanne nodded and used her board to invoke the spare satellite and push it out into its allotted space.
“We don’t know what it is. This one may explode like the last,” Michael argued.
“Then it can explode in situ and not under our bellies,” Gary told him as he went across to watch Leanne finish waking up its systems.
“Another piece of sabotage?” Heather asked the twins.
The two of them shrugged while Allan looked sharply towards Heather. “Another?” he asked.
Michael sighed. “Someone on board has been causing little inconveniences,” he explained.
“The evacuation rehearsal?” Allan murmured, his sharp eyes watching Michael, Heather and the twins nod. “Who knew?”
“We were keeping it quiet while we chased down leads. Every new act gave us a better chance of catching this person; someone we thought was a hooligan rather than a real saboteur,” Michael explained. “Until this, that is.”
“If, in fact, this is sabotage,” one of the twins murmured. “Let’s wait for Frankie to bring the remains in, and then let’s see.”
“In which case, I want a SOCO team up here to do it right!” Heather told them, and pulled her tablet out of her thigh pocket to dial her old boss down on earth. The Cambridge Constabulary were going to be brought in as consultants.
“Make the request through Stanley,” Michael urged from her side. “He should be involved in this.” he pointed out softly.
Heather nodded and selected his number from her short-dial list.
++++++++++++++
Stanley saw the implications and wasted no time in getting the best he could find. Hence the SOCO team that arrived shortly after were far from being the usual crime scene investigators, those who diligently collected the evidence from a crime scene for later analysis. It comprised of two men and one woman, Jon Barrow, Kevin Law and Lisa Hart.
Jon Barrow was a Forensic Chemist with over 15 years experience of working with the Metropolitan Police force and British armed forces. Kevin Law was a Forensic Engineer, and probably the foremost forensic engineer in the country, while Lisa Hart was a leader in Forensic Intelligence, with over ten years experience of collating information from the various sciences to arrive at a hypothesis. They were all Professors of Forensic Science at Oxford University, and all three were long term consultants working with the Metropolitan Police.
Heather was waiting for them when they arrived and explained the situation as she led them forward, towards the laboratory chosen for the testing. The twins were already there, watching the large monitor as the cameras on Frankie’s vehicle showed him capturing a large piece of ragged metal and securing it to the SUV.
“Jesus, he’s in space and hardly wearing anything at all!” Kevin gasped.
“Can you make out any details on that recovered sheet?” Lisa asked.
Kevin focused on what he could see of it and nodded in thought. “I’ll need a closer look,” he told her, “but there’s clear evidence there,” he agreed.
“Need anything else, Jon?” she asked, turning to the chemist.
Jon laughed and shook his head. “You must be joking!” he chided. “This place is better equipped than my own!”
“You’ll use your own equipment where possible, yes?” she confirmed, and Jon nodded.
“Did you say you had a radar track of the container, post the explosion?” Lisa asked of Heather.
“Yes, why?” Heather confirmed.
“We can draw conclusions from a mathematical interpolation of the data,” Lisa explained. “If I could have that data, I can send it to our team of mathematicians at Oxford,” she explained, gl
ancing at her watch to check on the time.
“Of course, but we have a mathematician on board. We can probably get some initial queries done by him first,” Heather suggested.
With a wait of at least fifteen minutes until Frankie returned and the piece of metal was in the laboratory, Heather looked on her tablet to find where Allan was and warned him they were coming to see him.
He was in his suite, rising from his work table to shake hands with Lisa as Heather did the introductions. Heather noted details of door access on his monitor and smiled indulgently.
“I tried that,” she told him. “Looking to see who had been in key areas just before each occurrence. Couldn’t find anything,” she explained.
“I’m looking for the opposite,” he told her, a tap of his finger setting off another query.
“What; who wasn’t there?” Heather asked, looking at the display as the query ran.
“Sure. See, I know it couldn’t have been you, because you entered your suite ten minutes before, and didn’t come out again until just after,” he told her, pointing to her detail as it scrolled up with the names of others who it could not have been.
“Ah, I didn’t think of that,” she admitted.
“That’s what I’m here for,” he grinned.
“I understand you have a radar track of the explosion?” Lisa asked.
“Four minutes and twenty seconds after loss of contact,” he confirmed with a short nod, and cleared the monitor from his tablet to select the data source and show it instead.
“If I can have a copy, our people in Oxford can use it to interpolate the moment of impact,” she explained.
“And by that, where the explosion actually occurred,” he agreed, smiling as his fingers worked.
“Allan, it will be faster in Oxford,” Lisa began to explain, stopping to stare at the monitor as it began to show piece by piece returning to its original position as Allan worked through the larger items.
“You’re good,” she told him, impressed by his speed.
“Been working too long with extrapolating ballistics,” he explained, working on ever smaller pieces.