by Tom Grace
Instead of barring the door, Kilkenny and Grin welcomed the men and, when the acoustic daylighting system was up and running, employed their eyes in the search for the three submarines that Virginia was hunting.
“What is that?” Imran, a torpedoman’s mate, asked, eyeing the smudge as it flickered back into view.
Kilkenny moved to the young sailor’s side of the chamber. “Where?”
“That little cloud-thingy there.”
Kilkenny studied the smudge for a moment. As with a wisp of smoke, there just wasn’t enough substance to discern a form. Kilkenny looked at the center of the chamber; Virginia looked solid, though barely a quarter-inch long.
“Grin, what’s our resolution?”
“’Bout twelve miles. Why, you got something?”
“Maybe, though it could just be a burp in the system. It’s pretty indistinct.”
“We are grinding a lot of data. Where’s your burp at?”
“Six miles astern.”
Grin turned and arched an eyebrow at Kilkenny. “I don’t speak navy, man. Gimme some numbers.”
Kilkenny eyed the directional rings encircling the holographic submarine. “We’re currently heading two-seven-zero. Look between zero-eight-zero and one-zero-five degrees.”
As Grin typed, the wisp continued to hover near the edge of the chamber, moving perpendicular to the Virginia.
“Definitely something out there, though the return data’s pretty funky. Is it close to a thermocline?”
As he asked the question, Grin keyed in a command. Several undulating, hexagonal grids appeared inside the chamber, dividing the holographic ocean into layers of warm and cold water.
“It’s hovering right below the boundary of the layer we’re in. But that shouldn’t matter—we’re getting a good solid image of the sea floor, and that’s a couple layers down.”
“Maybe it’s a school of fish,” a fire control technician named Billig offered.
“I’ll zoom in on it,” Grin said, “and see what we get.”
Grin projected a three-dimensional grid into the chamber, dividing the holographic image into discrete cubes of space. The cube containing the Virginia was highlighted. Working back from the submarine through the lattice, he quickly selected the cube containing the cloudy gray smudge. The cube then slid to the center of the chamber and expanded to fill the space.
“I don’t think it’s fish,” Kilkenny said. “The shape isn’t fluttering or making sharp changes in direction. This looks more like a blob of something.”
“Maybe it’s in our baffles,” Imran said.
“Baffles?” Kilkenny and Grin asked in unison.
“Yeah,” the twenty-year-old replied. “The spherical sonar array on our bow is isolated from the rest of the boat by a wall of acoustic blanking plates called baffles. These baffles keep all the noise on our side of the wall from overpowering the sensitivity of the sonar. They also create a cone-shaped blind spot for the array directly aft of the boat. If a sub really gets moving, then the noise from a cavitating screw can bleed out and widen the blind spot even more.”
“But we’re only making five knots,” the fire control Technician protested. “Our baffles shouldn’t be that wide.”
“What do you think, Nolan?” Grin asked.
Kilkenny caught sight of the dolphins pinned over the left breast of Imran’s coveralls—a sign the young man was qualified in submarines and likely knew what he was talking about. “The E-three may be onto something.”
Imran grinned.
“All our previous work was done with surface ships or small submersibles,” Kilkenny explained to the crewmen. “We don’t have any experience with screws the size of what’s on the back of Virginia. Since we’re getting the same raw sensor data as the control room, it stands to reason that whatever baffles them might baffle us.”
Most of the crewmen laughed at Kilkenny’s pun. Billig did not.
“Well, Torpedoman’s Mate Imran, how do you propose we test your theory?”
“Clear the baffles, sir. That’s what we’d do if we thought someone was trying to come up on our stern.”
Kilkenny looked at the cloudy shape once more. Though vague, the form didn’t look natural.
“Seaman, would you accompany me up to the control room? I need to have a word with the captain.
Johnston returned to the torpedo room with Kilkenny and Imran, the young seaman still beaming from the good word Kilkenny had put in for him with the captain.
During their absence, Grin had kept track of the slow-moving object and worked at trying to further define its true shape. At the moment, it looked like an elongated lozenge.
“So that’s your possible contact?” Johnston said as he peered into the chamber. “Looks like a dust storm.”
“Yeah,” Grin agreed, “but one that’s held that shape for the last five minutes.”
Johnston looked at Billig, who nodded. He then punched the talk button on the intercom.
“Control, this is the captain.”
“Aye, sir,” the XO answered.
“I want you to execute a one-eight-zero degree starboard turn. Clear our baffles.”
“One-eight-zero starboard. Aye, sir.”
Johnston switched off the intercom. “Now maybe we’ll see what this contact of yours is.”
The vague form in the chamber rotated slowly in concert with Virginia’s starboard turn. As it emerged from the turbulence of the submarine’s baffles, the gray fragments coalesced into a hard curved surface.
“Holy shit!” Billig blurted out.
“I’ll be damned, Imran,” Johnston said, his eyes fixed on the distinctive shape of an Ohio Class nuclear submarine. “You’ve done tagged yourself a boomer.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
ISS
AUGUST 8
Kelsey pulled open the airlock hatch and leaned out into darkness. Two hundred twenty miles beneath the ISS, the Western Hemisphere was in shadow. Lightning flashed like strobes inside the swollen clouds of a storm front raging over the Central Plains, and Kelsey thought of the tornadoes that would likely be spawned in the leading edge of that violent display.
Nature’s presence on the planet below was evident at all times of day, visible in the interplay of land, sea, and air. Hurricanes, sandstorms, and wildfires were events of a magnitude easily viewed from orbit. The dust plume from a volcanic eruption on the island of Lopevi darkened the sky over an otherwise vividly blue expanse of the southwestern Pacific. Scientists had already predicted a slight dip in global temperatures as a result of the huge volume of ash billowing into the atmosphere.
Islands of light shone brightly on the darkened lands below. San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Mexico City—Kelsey named them off in her head as they passed beneath her. An urban legend boasted that the Great Wall of China was the only man-made object visible from space. Kelsey had seen with her own eyes the fallacy of that claim, but it was at night that the extent of human activity was most apparent.
“I’m heading out,” Kelsey announced.
“Watch out for that first step,” Valentina warned. The punch line was unnecessary.
Kelsey rotated until she was facing away from the Earth, then pulled herself straight through the open hatch and up on top of the airlock. Carefully, she continued her ascent until she stood on the upper beam of the station’s main truss. The large hexagonal framework extended straight out 175 feet to each side, ending in rotating segments that supported the port and starboard solar arrays. The entire assembly defined an area the size of two football fields placed side by side.
Running perpendicular to the main truss, six large modules formed the backbone of the ISS. Additional modules sprouted at right angles from connecting nodes in the backbone, providing the station with an impressive suite of research facilities and accommodations for up to seven residents. Russian-built modules composed the stern of the space station. The bow modules, mostly large cylinders, were built by the United States and the statio
n’s multinational partners.
Kelsey climbed down from the truss onto the U.S. Lab Module, then worked her way forward to Node 2. Research modules occupied three of the node’s attachment points. The fourth, on the node’s underside, was reserved for logistics modules, which the shuttle brought up to resupply the station.
Hand over hand, she pulled herself thirty feet up the side of the vertically oriented Centrifuge Accommodation Module (CAM). This final ascent represented the culmination of years of research and planning by the small but dedicated group of scientists who had conceived and built the Zwicky-Wolff Dark Matter Array.
Like Hubble and Chandra, Zwicky-Wolff bore the name of a famous astronomer—in this case the eccentric, Swiss-American Fritz Zwicky, who in 1933 theorized the existence of dark matter in the universe. The second name on the array belonged to theoretical physicist Johann Wolff, who was murdered in the late 1940s. The recent discovery of Wolff’s lost notebooks, along with his long missing body, provided the array’s scientists with tantalizing clues to the nature of Zwicky’s enigmatic dark matter. Invigorated by Wolff’s approach to the problem, they quickly secured several private grants and launched into a crash redesign of their orbital experiment. Liberty’s payload bay now held the result of that effort.
Atop CAM, Kelsey stood beside the slender mast installed during the previous shuttle mission. A series of alternating handholds ran up the length of the mast, and around its elevated base, a rigid framework anchored the slender structure to the end of the module. A thin bundle of cables ran out from the base of the mast to a connector port on CAM, providing a hard-wired power and data connection for the array.
“I’m in position,” Kelsey announced.
“How’s the view from the crow’s nest?” Lundy asked.
Looking down the side of the module, she saw the orbiter’s nose. Liberty’s commander waved at her through the flight-deck windows. She waved back.
Far below, the Earth still lay in darkness and the space beyond was filled with more stars than she’d ever seen. A faint glow illuminated the curved edge of the Earth and she slid her protective visor down. Soaring out of the planet’s shadow, Kelsey saw the first rays of the sun burst over the curved horizon. A thin line of brilliant light illuminated the edge, and the sun, still rising, flared like a diamond set in a golden ring.
“Oh my,” Kelsey said softly, awestruck.
In Liberty’s payload bay, Pete and Caroline removed the last of the restraints from Zwicky-Wolff.
“We’re ready to move the array,” Caroline announced.
Kelsey could feel her heart beating faster. From where she stood, only the upper portion of Zwicky-Wolff was visible. Lundy and Tosh were at Liberty’s aft station, controlling the orbiter’s robotic arm. Molly remotely directed a larger, more advanced version of the Canadian-built arm mounted to the station.
Lundy studied the clearance between Liberty and the station. “Tosh, it looks pretty damn tight out there. Try not to ding anything.”
Tosh laughed. “My father said the same thing when he was teaching me how to parallel park.”
“Did it help?”
“Nope. I popped the clutch and scratched the bumper on his RX-7.”
Tosh watched the monitors as he moved the arm into position, relying on Lundy to pass on any visual cues from the astronauts in the bay.
“Almost there,” Tosh said expectantly, the screen filled with the image of a grappling point on the array.
The end of the RMS soundlessly touched the grappling point.
“How’s it look out there?” Tosh asked.
Caroline looked critically at the robotic arm’s grip on the array. “No good, Tosh. The RMS only got a partial hold.”
Tosh released the array, pulled the robotic arm back a foot, and adjusted the alignment. The robotic arm then glided forward, slipped around the grappling point, and clamped on tightly.
“That get it?”
“Contact is solid,” Caroline replied. “I’m moving out of the way.”
Caroline floated to the empty rear of the cargo bay. During the grappling maneuver, Pete had positioned himself alongside the Japanese Experimentation Module (JEM) to observe the handoff between the two robotic arms. Both astronauts watched as Tosh lifted the spiny object out of its cradle. The mockup in Houston bore only the crudest resemblance to the real array. Even in its collapsed state, the precise engineering that went into fabricating the dynamic structure of Zwicky-Wolff was obvious.
Those with a view of the extraction held their collective breath as the array passed through the narrow gap between Liberty and JEM with just a foot to either side. Once clear of the payload bay doors, Tosh had ample room to maneuver the array for the exchange. He rotated the arm’s elbow and wrist joints and extended the entire assembly upward. Kelsey thought Zwicky-Wolff, fastened to the end of the reedy arm, resembled a silver-white chrysanthemum.
Tosh locked the RMS and pulled his hands away from the controls. “I’m in position, Molly. Ball’s in your court.”
“I’m moving in,” the ISS commander replied.
The station’s robotic arm unfolded from the main truss and reached out toward the array. With no clear observation point, Molly was operating by cameras and cues from the spacewalkers. Pete guided Molly to a grappling point opposite the one held by the shuttle’s arm, then inspected the connection.
“Clean lock on the array,” Pete announced.
“Roger, that,” Molly replied. “Liberty, we have Zwicky-Wolff and are ready for handoff.”
“Initiating handoff,” Tosh said. “Stand by.”
Liberty’s RMS released its hold on Zwicky-Wolff. The shuttle pilot then retracted the robotic arm, folding it at the elbow as he pulled it back into the payload bay.
Pete followed the arm’s retreat. “Liberty, RMS is clear.”
From where Kelsey stood, Zwicky-Wolff was less than twenty feet in front of her. Slowly, Molly rotated the station’s arm about its base, lifting the array in a semicircular arc upward. Kelsey scaled the mast, moving into position to secure the array. Repositioned, the robotic arm extended upward, lifting the array up over the mast.
“Molly, you need to rotate the RMS wrist about ten degrees counterclockwise,” Kelsey advised.
Molly studied the image from the camera mounted on Kelsey’s Primary Life Support System (PLSS) backpack. The array’s mounting strut was out of line with the mast. “I see it.”
The array began to slowly rotate above Kelsey.
“Good … good … and hold there. Now let’s bring it down.”
Kelsey was careful not to move during this maneuver, providing her crewmates with a clear view.
“A little more, and … hold there.”
The RMS stopped moving. Kelsey locked her foot restraints onto one of the mast handholds, then located the cable couplings and linked the array to the station.
“Are you getting a signal?” Kelsey asked.
“Yes,” Molly replied. “Connection is good.”
Using a thirty-six-volt pistol grip power tool, Kelsey then fastened the array’s mounting strut to the top of the mast. On Earth, setting these same six bolts would take less than five minutes, but wrapped inside nine layers of spacesuit while working in a microgravity environment turned the job into a thirty-five-minute test of patience. After setting the bolts, Kelsey checked the torque on each of the precision-engineered fasteners. She felt a trickle of sweat running down her back, the sun of her second orbit during this spacewalk bearing down on her.
“The array is secured to the mast,” Kelsey said.
“Retracting RMS,” Molly replied.
When the arm was clear, Kelsey released her foot restraints and, hand over hand, descended the mast. After resetting her restraints on the top of CAM, Kelsey opened the control panel inside the mast’s support framework. The two buttons inside were large, selected for use by someone with thickly gloved hands. Only one of the buttons was illuminated.
She depres
sed the first button. Slowly, the mast telescoped upward, raising the array high above the station. As each of the mast segments locked into place, a light on the panel display switched from red to green. When the fourth segment reached full extension, the second button lit up.
“Over seventy years ago,” Kelsey began, “Fritz Zwicky’s observations of how galaxies moved led him to theorize that as much as nine-tenths of what composes the universe is unknown to us. The bright, luminous matter we see in the heavens around us is only a small fraction of what must really be out there. The rest is dark and mysterious. This array, named in honor of two pioneers in the search for a theory of everything, was designed to allow us to see into the darkness and to learn more about this creation that we inhabit.”
Kelsey depressed the second button. High above her, dozens of tiny electric motors switched on in the joints of the array and the structure began to unfold. Based on Hoberman spheres, the collapsed form of the Zwicky-Wolff blossomed into a glittering orb nearly one hundred feet in diameter.
“It’s huge,” Pete blurted out, impressed with the array’s deployment.
“It has a nickname, you know,” Kelsey said.
“What?” several voices asked.
“Gifted as he was, Zwicky was not the easiest fellow to be around,” Kelsey explained. “He was fond of calling people spherical bastards because they were bastards every way he looked at them. During the design of the array, that name stuck.”
CHAPTER NINE
USS VIRGINIA
AUGUST 9
“We’re losing it again,” Kilkenny said.
Grin left the workstation and joined Kilkenny by the imaging chamber. Bit by bit, the hologram deteriorated until the cylinder was clear and empty. This had become an all-too-frequent condition during the past few days, one that was devouring every moment of their time in search of a solution.
“I thought we had it,” Grin said, frustrated.
“There’s simply too much raw data for our rig to handle.”
“I’m beginning to think you’re right.”