Skywave

by K Patrick Donoghue

  Kiera’s thoughts were disrupted by the sound of cheering. As her mind began to clear, she found herself inside a circle of paddleboards. Her friends sat on their boards, whooping it up. Kiera looked to Lauren, who shouted out, “Way to go, Kiera! A new record!”

  “What?” she asked.

  “You’ve not fallen off once in over a half hour! I told you you’d get the hang of it!” Lauren said, raising her voice to overcome the sound of waves crashing on shore and the hoots of their other friends.

  Kiera raised her paddle like a champion’s sword and blurted out her own victory hoot…and then stumbled backward and crashed into the ocean.

  A3rospace Industries Command and Control Center

  Mayaguana Island, The Bahamas

  May 28, 2018

  The time on Kiera’s computer screen read 2:00 a.m. when she tuned the receiver to twenty megahertz and positioned her headphones over her ears. Closing her eyes, she began to make small adjustments to the tuner, hoping to zero in on the expected Jupiter magnetic storm.

  Over the previous two weeks, Kiera had listened to hundreds of past Jupiter storm recordings, most from Radio JOVE’s archives. Others she collected from university archives in Florida and Hawaii and from recordings posted by amateurs on radio-geek forums.

  From this crash course in Jupiter radio signals, Kiera had learned a great deal about the complexity of Jupiter radio activity and the difficulties associated with interpreting the signals. Her takeaway: there was a razor-thin possibility that Ajay’s theory of Callisto-generated radio signals was correct.

  Setting aside the many possible sources of signal interference, the larger issue had to do with Jupiter itself. A range of factors affect the quality of radio signals from the planet. First, to receive any reliable signal, Earth’s and Jupiter’s orbits have to be aligned on the same side of the Sun; otherwise, sunspot activity interferes with the signals. Given the different orbital paths of the two planets, there is a good stretch of time each year when the Sun is positioned between Earth and Jupiter.

  Second, Earth’s angle on the celestial horizon in relation to Jupiter — otherwise known as its declination — plays a vital role in signal quality. At three degrees above Jupiter’s equator, radio signals from the planet are the strongest. At three degrees below, radio signals are the weakest. Earth’s position on Jupiter’s horizon cycles between this peak and trough every eleven years. And, at the present time, the cycle is closer to the trough than it is the peak.

  Next, the strength of Jupiter’s radio signals is heavily influenced by the position of its closest major moon, Io, not Callisto. When Io’s orbit passes between Earth and Jupiter, the quality and strength of Jupiter’s signals are strongest. In fact, most recordings of Jupiter radio storms were made at points in time when Io was between the two planets. While it is possible to capture non-Io-dependent radio storms emanating from Jupiter, the quality and strength of the signals are poor in comparison.

  Finally, while Io and Callisto orbit Jupiter along the same plane, their relative distances to the planet mean they don’t line up between Earth and Jupiter at consistent intervals. Io orbits Jupiter every 1.77 days, while Callisto’s orbit is 16.7 days. This means that on days when Callisto is positioned at a center point between Earth and Jupiter, Io is rarely in perfect alignment.

  So, in order to receive the highest-quality radio signal from Callisto, one would need Earth and Jupiter on the same side of the Sun at a point in time when Earth’s declination was three degrees north of Jupiter’s equator, on a rare occasion when Io and Callisto were aligned in a perfectly straight line between Earth and Jupiter.

  This doesn’t mean that Callisto signals would be imperceptible when conditions weren’t perfect, but the signals would be of inferior quality. In fact, Kiera believed most of Ajay’s recordings fell into this category. The challenge in Kiera’s mind was to sift through all the recordings she’d gathered to find a subset that came closest to the ideal conditions.

  The sweet spot for the combination of factors fell in a subset of recordings between 2010 and 2014, when Earth’s declination was around its peak of the eleven-year cycle. In these recordings, she found none of Ajay’s clicks. Strike one.

  In looking at recordings since 2015, Kiera found the first of Ajay’s clicks occurred in January 2016. It happened to be an Io-dependent recording, an Io type-B storm — the strongest type of Io storm — so that was a plus. The clicks were of moderate strength. As Ajay had stated, they were spaced approximately three minutes apart. To Kiera, the clicks were reminiscent of the sounds produced by a child’s handheld clicker toy: a down tone followed by an up tone, click-CLICK, a gap of a few seconds, and then an up tone followed by a down tone, CLICK-click.

  When she first heard the sounds, she could understand why Ajay had argued against typical interference sounds. Lightning strikes on Earth, the most common form of radio interference, were random, varied in intensity and had a static-like sound. Ionosondes, or radio signals bouncing around in the Earth’s ionosphere, sound like chirps, not clicks. Power lines or appliance-related interference generates buzzing or popping sounds, depending on whether the interference comes from a steady-state source versus one turning on and off.

  As she examined recordings in the following months of 2016 and into the early part of 2017, Kiera discovered only a handful more credible instances of Ajay’s clicks on Io-B recordings. Yet, to his credit, the few recordings did take place on combinations of seventeen-day gaps. Some recordings demonstrated louder clicks, while others produced softer clicks. Ajay had argued this was due to Callisto’s tidal lock as it passed between Jupiter and Earth, but Kiera had suspected it had more to do with where Io was in relation to Callisto.

  She was able to plot the two moons’ relative positions for the days of the six recordings and prove the louder clicks occurred on days when Callisto and Io were closer together; the softer clicks occurred when they were farther apart.

  This seemed to suggest a definite correlation between the presence of Callisto between Earth and Jupiter and the instances of the clicks. Yet, six total recordings over a fifteen-month stretch was, in Kiera’s opinion, not enough to declare the signal was coming from Callisto. The clicks might just as likely be some weird magnetic interaction that occurred each time the two moons passed in front of Jupiter. Nevertheless, the consistent and rhythmic pattern was hard to explain as a natural phenomenon. Magnetic interactions are generally random, behaving like lightning discharges — no two lightning strikes look or sound the same.

  Kiera was left, then, with scant evidence to back Ajay’s theory, but enough evidence to be intrigued to keep investigating. Of course, she had to do it on her own time, as Mr. Amato was paying her to solve less esoteric riddles. Hence, her early a.m. headphone vigil.

  If her calculations were correct, Kiera would hear a live rendition of Ajay’s clicks once she zeroed in on the right frequency. Radio JOVE predicted an Io-B storm on this date, and Callisto would be in proximity to Io during the magnetic-storm window. She adjusted the tuner once more, this time slightly below twenty megahertz, and picked up the telltale sound of ocean waves. She activated a computer program to record the sounds and closed her eyes to listen for the clicks.

  2: WISH UPON A STAR

  A3rospace Industries Headquarters

  Orlando, Florida

  June 14, 2018

  On a normal Thursday, the courtyard gardens of A3rospace Industries headquarters complex were populated by a mix of Augustus Arturo Amato’s employees. Some used the maze of walkways between the sculpted shrubbery as shortcuts to get from one building to another. Others occupied shaded benches to enjoy an outdoor lunch or sat by the reflecting pool to soak in the sunshine. At times, small groups would even gather on the steps leading down to the sunken courtyard to hold impromptu meetings.

  Amato could usually tell when a new employee was strolling through the courtyard for the first time, as they tended to examine the garden displays with a sense of a
we. The same kind of awe that graced the faces of tour groups that visited the campus to stroll the gardens and see the famous Rorschach Explorer exhibit in the museum annex.

  While most visitors came to see the famous Rorschach Explorer and other exhibits in Amato’s space memorabilia museum, the gardens received their fair share of attention, even from schoolchildren. And that pleased Amato to no end.

  At ground level, it was impossible to appreciate the full scope of the garden’s design, but from Amato’s perspective above, the displays were sights to behold. At the center of the garden was a massive tree whose limbs had been trimmed to form leaf cover in the shape of a perfect sphere. Around it were elliptical walkways lined with boxwoods. Each individual walkway represented the precise orbital path of the planets of the solar system. At various intervals, other spherical-foliated trees were planted. Each represented a planet, each in relative proportion to the Sun at the middle of the garden and set beside walkways representing their orbital paths. The tree that received the most attention was, of course, Saturn, for Amato’s arborist-sculptor extraordinaire had shaped the outermost limbs at its midsection to mirror the planet’s rings.

  Around the edges of the central solar-system garden were smaller gardens with shrubs shaped to form some of the more well-known constellations: Orion, Deneb and Sirius, to name a few. At the far end of the courtyard, just in front of the museum entrance, was the reflecting pool. Its walls were shaped to form the outline of Amato’s pride and joy, The Rorschach Explorer. His “spaceship of the future.” The rocket-shaped pool came complete with fountains at the ship’s tail to simulate its engines. They fired once each hour, precisely on the hour.

  As spectacular as Amato’s gardens were during the day, at night, when the lights strung in the planet trees and constellation shrubs were lit, the Living Universe was downright magical. For the lights of each planet-tree matched the colors of the planets themselves. Amato had even tasked his lighting-engineer extraordinaire to create bands of different color lights in Jupiter’s tree, punctuated by its enormous red spot. Adding to the nighttime celestial feel, Amato had commissioned a world-renowned impressionist artist to create a luminous mural of the Milky Way on the bottom of the reflecting pool that glowed after sunset.

  Many a wedding proposal had been made beneath the central garden’s glowing canopy, and many a wish had accompanied pennies into the sparkling reflecting pool. But, on this night, families, tourists and school groups were absent from the Living Universe.

  Instead, Amato looked down from his eighth-floor office balcony at a courtyard filled with revelers in glittering gowns and shiny tuxedos. In their hands, they held cocktails or hors d'oeuvres delivered by waiters moving along the elliptical paths like ants inside a colony. The din of his guests’ conversations and laughter mixed with soft melodies from a live jazz band, making for a festive atmosphere.

  Standing beside Amato, cigar in hand, was Dr. Dennis Pritchard, chief administrator for NASA. “Very impressive, Augie. As usual.”

  Amato turned and smiled. “Thank you, Dennis. I enjoy making a splash.”

  “That you do,” Pritchard said. He pointed the lit cigar at Amato. “Just don’t drone on too long during your speech. You don’t want someone dozing off and falling into the Rorschach Pool.”

  With a laugh, Amato said, “Don’t worry. I’ll be brief. I don’t want to stand in the way of their drinking. After all, the more they drink, the more money we raise!”

  “I’ll drink to that,” Pritchard said, picking up his champagne glass from the balcony ledge. After a small sip, he replaced the glass on the ledge and patted Amato on the shoulder. “Come on, we need to get down there. It’s nearly show time.”

  As Pritchard mounted the steps between the Rorschach Pool and the Gateway to the Stars museum, the pool fountains shot upward and fanned out, spraying the water’s still surface with thousands of droplets. Oohs and ahhs echoed from guests closest to the fountains, as the rippling mural beneath the water shimmered like diamonds.

  When the fountains abated, a gong sounded three times, signaling the partygoers to wrap up their conversations. Over loudspeakers, a baritone voice said, “Ladies and gentlemen, please direct your attention to the Gateway to the Stars museum. The ceremony is about to begin.”

  Guests spread throughout the gardens began to make their way toward the pool and museum behind it. When a critical mass had gathered, Pritchard approached the microphone stand on the landing in front of the museum. “Good evening,” he said. “Having fun I hope!”

  Cheers and applause rippled through the audience.

  “Excellent, excellent,” Pritchard said, clapping along with the guests. “We’re very pleased you’ve joined us here this evening! And very thankful for your support of the tenth annual Gateway to the Stars Gala!”

  Another flurry of polite audience adulation followed.

  “For those who don’t know me, I’m Dennis Pritchard, NASA’s chief administrator, and master of ceremonies for tonight’s event.”

  More applause.

  “Thank you, thank you,” he said. “As you all know, the Gateway to the Stars Gala is the annual fundraising event for Augustus Amato’s Gateway Scholarship program. Each year, your donations, one hundred percent of them, are used to fund aerospace engineering scholarships at Embry Riddle Aeronautical University, here in Florida and at its Arizona campus.

  “These four-year, full-ride scholarships are awarded to exceptional high school students from across the country who demonstrate a passion for space exploration, yet lack the financial resources to pursue their dreams.

  “As both head of NASA and the former dean of the university, I have seen your generosity at work, academically and professionally. You’ve inspired some amazing young men and women to apply their intellects and imagination to push the boundaries of space exploration — some of whom have joined us tonight!”

  Pritchard paused to applaud a group of two dozen past and current scholarship fellows standing behind him. Among them was Kiera Walsh. The crowd offered rowdy praise as the recipients waved and bowed.

  “They are something! I’ll tell you that,” Pritchard said as the audience settled down. “Now, I know you are all anxious to go inside the museum and see Augie’s latest modifications to The Rorschach Explorer, so I’ll wrap things up in a moment. Before I do, though, I’d like to introduce the man responsible for tonight’s event, the scholarship fund and the wonderful collection of space memorabilia you’ll see inside the museum.

  “Many of you know him as a pioneer in the aerospace industry, a man responsible for many technology innovations, past, present and, dare I say, future. I know him as a friend. A man as generous as he is driven,” Pritchard said. He paused to draw emphasis to his next statement. “As you know, each year he matches the collective donations raised at this event, so make sure you really stick it to him this year!”

  The quasi-joke created a burst of laughter and applause.

  “Seriously, though, Augie’s a good man, a friend of NASA. A partner who challenges the status quo, pushes us to do better and reach higher. And when we don’t move fast enough, he’s not afraid to take matters into his own hands, à la The Rorschach Explorer. We don’t always see eye to eye, but that’s part of the beauty of collaboration and the clash of ideas,” Pritchard said. Turning to his right, he extended an arm. “Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the host of tonight’s event and the sponsor of the Gateway Scholarship program, Augustus Arturo Amato.”

  Amato appeared from the shadows behind the stage, a spotlight illuminating his walk to where Pritchard stood clapping. Amato received a boisterous welcome from his guests, a welcome that made him blush. When he reached Pritchard, they shook hands and Amato stepped to the microphone.

  After thanking his guests for the warm reception and Pritchard for the introduction, he said, “Dennis has made me promise to keep it short and sweet, and I like to keep my promises. Thank you all for coming tonight, and for your generous
support. We are humbled to have such friends, aren’t we, Gateway fellows?”

  The scholarship recipients broke into raucous applause of their own. Amato smiled and continued his comments. “Tonight, we have a special treat for you inside. Tonight, we unveil A3rospace Industries’ latest invention, and you will be the first to see it in action!

  “For decades, we have floated our way into the cosmos. Literally. The weightless environment of space has been both a blessing and a curse. It has made it easy for us to propel great distances with little resistance, yet it has made it cumbersome to work and live in space,” Amato said, pausing for effect. “Until now. We have cracked the code — well, to be more accurate, we have cracked the magnet — to create the first gravity-assisted spaceship environment. An environment that will be incorporated into The Rorschach Explorer for its maiden voyage, hopefully next year or the year after.”

  Excited chatter fanned through the crowd. Even Dennis Pritchard was stunned.

  “The breakthrough was made possible by this young man right here,” Amato said, reaching out to take hold of the man’s arm. “Dr. Dante Fulton, one of our Gateway graduates and one of my most valued engineers!”

  The thin, black, baby-faced aerospace engineer flashed a bashful smile and bowed. As the donors showered him with adulation, Amato said, “Now, enough talking! Time for your exclusive sneak peek at A3rospace Industries’ latest invention, the Gravity-Environment Forcefield, or GEFF.”

  As the throng headed for the museum doors, Amato slapped Dante on the back. “Congratulations, young man! You’re about to become very famous.”