With the last of the leis bestowed on Kiera and Shilling, Morgan invited the crew into his tiki lounge. It had taken him two hours to decorate the bay, but he was proud of the results. He had strung party lights across one section, wrapped grass skirts around the two probe docking platforms underneath the lights, and set up a makeshift bar on the top of two drone-landers stored next to the docking platforms. The drinks, delivered in pineapple-shaped bottles with capped straws, were filled with mai tais concocted according to Morgan’s own recipe.
For the next hour, they chatted, danced and laughed. They shared stories about the pictures on their clothing and even had a gravity-assisted limbo contest. Ajay won. They ate freeze-dried pineapple and sampled vacuum-packed pupu platters. After yet another round of mai tais, the festivities devolved into tattoo reveals. Of course, Ajay displayed a smiling Elroy on his chest.
Carillo said teasingly to Morgan, “Word around NASA is you have lightsabers on your butt.”
Morgan stroked his white, Fu Manchu mustache and winked. “If you think I’m pulling down my drawers to disprove it, Major, you’ve got another thing coming!”
Ajay leaned all one-hundred-fifty-two pounds of his weight against Kiera. “These are the best mai tais I’ve ever had.”
To which Shilling quipped, “They’re the only mai tais you’ve ever had!”
Kiera was the first to laugh at Shilling’s joke. Mission accomplished. For sixty minutes, Morgan had made space, Callisto and their gamma troubles disappear.
As the laughing died down, Morgan said, “I have one more surprise.”
He returned to the area near the airlock, opened another box, and pulled out five virtual reality headsets. After handing them out, he tapped out a set of commands on the touchpad by the intercom and motioned the crew to gather around him.
“This is pretty crazy,” he said. “You might want to find a place to sit. I don’t know how Augie and Dante pulled this off, but we owe them a big-ass thank-you. Put on your headsets and enjoy.”
Before any pictures appeared on the screens inside their headsets, the sounds of laughter and conversation emanated from the intercom. At first the voices were indistinguishable, just random snippets of people having fun. Then the black vista began to lighten and a solitary voice rose above the others.
“Quiet, everybody!” the voice said. “It’s time to say hello.”
Kiera gasped. “Mom?”
On the five 3D displays, a scene came into focus. The extended families of the five crewmembers stood on a sandy beach wearing the same Hawaiian outfits their astronaut loved ones wore. Spouses, children, parents, siblings and close friends smiled and waved.
In the center was Kiera’s mother, Donna, and her father, Kyle. Though Morgan couldn’t see Kiera with his headset on, he heard her sniffle.
Donna Walsh, the duly elected spokesperson for the crew’s families, stepped forward. She wiped tears from her eyes and said, “Hello, our heroes! We miss you so much and pray you are happy and safe!”
Morgan slid off his headset and saw his shipmates reaching out as if trying to touch their family members. He heard the astronauts’ families and friends sharing expressions of love and well wishes. When he heard his own brother’s voice, he put his headset back on.
“Thinking of you, bro!” Jason Morgan said. “Next round at Bennie’s is on me, but you better not bring back any alien ick with you. My health insurance sucks!”
When the video ended, the crew implored Morgan to replay it — which of course he did.
Halfway through the second showing, an alarm began to wail.
Carillo slid off her headset and turned toward the airlock. “I got this. You guys keep going. I’ll be back in a few.”
“Are you sure?” Morgan asked.
“Yep. If I need help, I’ll call. It’s probably just the UMOs bumping the Shields again. I heard the thrusters just before the alarm.” To stay on course, every so often the auto-pilot guidance system fired thrusters to offset the pull of the Sun’s gravity on the fleet.
Carillo hurried to the flight deck, buckled in at her co-pilot station, and pressed the blinking light on the panel of overhead buttons and switches. The alarm silenced. Then she brought up the probe status data screen on the center display of her dashboard, and a frown crossed her face.
“Hmmm…that’s odd.”
She’d expected to see one or more sensor fault error messages associated with the Shields, but the sensor faults blinking on the screen were coming from one of the Recons. Hours ago, they had sent the six Recons ahead at full engine power without an escort of UMOs. It had been a tricky maneuver to pull off, requiring three attempts and two more fleet management software patches over two days to drop the Recons out of the fleet without attracting the attention of the UMOs. But they’d ultimately been successful, and Rorschach then fired forward thrusters, slowing the ship, along with its four Cargo probes and six Shields, to a crawl of fifty thousand kilometers per hour. The Recons were zooming ahead at three times that speed, and by now they were nearly three hundred thousand kilometers ahead of the rest of the fleet.
Carillo toggled through the data feeds available at her station and pulled up the instrumentation feed to review spectrometer data from the Recons. Was it possible they had been hit by a gamma-ray burst? Had they found a magnetar beam already? No…the gamma spectrometer for all six showed nominal readings.
“What the hell is going on?” The alarm began to squawk again. Carillo clicked it off and grumbled, “Shut up, you hunk of junk.”
Another scan of the probe data screen showed LOS error messages for two of the Recons. Loss-of-signal meant one of three things. There could be interference blocking the Recons’ ability to communicate with Rorschach; something might have hit the probes — an asteroid or some other physical object — and damaged the probes’ ability to communicate; or, the probes had been destroyed.
“That is damn peculiar,” Carillo murmured.
The six Recons were deployed in a diamond formation. One probe at the tip, two more on each side of the leader, fanned out at angles to form an upside-down V, and the last probe in the slot behind the lead probe. The distance between adjacent probes in the formation was set at two hundred meters. So it was surprising to see that the LOS messages were coming from Recon-1, the lead probe, and Recon-4, the second of the two probes on the left side of the formation.
If interference had been the source of the alerts, Carillo would have expected it to affect all of the probes, or at least two probes close together. And if an object had destroyed or knocked out comms to Recon-1, then Recon-6, traveling in the slot behind Recon-1, would have been more likely to be hit by the debris than Recon-4.
Carillo pulled up the camera-feeds menu and selected the feed from Recon-6. The probe carried two video cameras, one on top, the other on the bottom. The standard configuration had the top camera, Cam-1, aimed forward of the probe. Cam-2 was positioned to provide a rear view.
There was a short delay in securing the feed, given the distance between the probe and Rorschach and the amount of video data being transmitted. When the first images arrived, Carillo’s frown deepened. Recon-1 wasn’t visible in Recon-6’s Cam-1 feed. Nor was there any visible debris.
She turned Cam-2 to the left to see if Recon-2 and Recon-4 were visible.
While she was waiting for the video images, a third alarm sounded. Another Recon was now showing LOS: Recon-5, the one on the far right. Carillo grumbled and shut off the annoying sound.
Morgan’s voice came over the intercom. “What’s going on, Julia? You need help?”
“We have a situation with the Recons. Three have gone LOS. Still trying to sort out why.”
“Roger that. We’re on our way.”
Morgan and the others filed out of the airlock into Rorschach’s central corridor and plodded forward toward the flight deck. Their gaits were awkward, not because of the mai tais, but because of quirks with the ship’s magnetic gravity forcefield, GEFF, pr
onounced “Jeff.” The forcefield, designed by Dante Fulton, made it so that as long as crewmembers were wearing their magnetized flight suits and boots, they could walk, stand and sit as if they were on Earth. The forcefield also allowed other magnetized objects to stay where placed.
But Morgan and the others weren’t wearing their black-and-gold flight suits, and the magnet sensors embedded in their Hawaiian gear were not as powerful as the sensors in their suits. Complicating matters, the forcefield wasn’t perfect. Simultaneous use by multiple people in close proximity created unbalanced magnetic loads in the adaptive forcefield. At times, it led to intermittent floating, boots that stuck to the magnetized flooring and choppy strides. That was exactly what was happening now.
Ajay, the last to leave the airlock, watched his comrades stagger down the hallway toward the flight deck and narrated their progress. “And they’re off! Skywalker takes the early lead, but wait! Here comes Walsh on the outside, churning hard along the rail while Shilling slows to a standstill on the straightaway—”
His narration came to an abrupt halt when one of his boots stuck to the floor and his foot pulled right out of it, causing his now-weightless leg to dangle in the air. “Ugh!”
Kiera turned back and laughed. “Karma, Elroy.”
Unwilling to waste time retrieving the boot, Ajay pressed the GEFF icon on his smartwatch to deactivate his remaining boot and drifted up. While the others teased him, he propelled down the corridor behind them by pulling on handholds.
Ajay had nearly caught up with the group when the ship jerked upward. Ajay bounced off the floor as the others reached for handholds to steady themselves. The ship continued upward and began to spin. Morgan, Kiera and Shilling were pressed against the wall as GEFF fought to balance the gravity in the spinning corridor. Rorschach trembled and creaked as the forces of the new momentum took control. The auto-pilot for the reaction control system fired thrusters to fight back and reorient the ship.
Above the clamor, Morgan shouted toward the flight deck, “Turn off RCS! Quickly!”
“Roger that,” came Carillo’s swift reply over the corridor intercom.
Before Morgan could issue another command, something hit Rorschach aport, a violent jolt that sent Ajay crashing face first into the wall, then ricocheting across the corridor into the opposing wall. Like a pinball caught between bumpers, the weightless Ajay rebounded from floor to ceiling to wall.
“Ajay! Turn on your GEFF!” Kiera shouted.
But he was out cold. His body continued to bounce around as the ship careened further off course. Sizzling crackles echoed throughout the corridor as bolts of electricity leapt between metallic surfaces.
“Holy shit!” Kiera said. She craned her neck to face Shilling. “It’s the UMOs!”
He nodded and called out to Carillo. “Major, are the UMOs spinning? Can you see them spinning?”
On the flight deck, Carillo’s eyes darted from her dashboard computer displays to the cockpit’s windows. Streaks of blue light swirled with orange, colliding here and there into brilliant flashes of white. Instrument gauges spiked with furious intensity, and multiple alarms pealed. The fleet management display showed flashing LOS emblems for multiple Shields.
Morgan shouted above the sounds of rending metal, “What’s going on up there, Julia?”
“UMOs. They’ve gone nuts,” she said. “We’ve lost three Shields…there goes a Cargo.”
“Turn the engines on!” Kiera said. “Full power.”
“Belay that.” Morgan wheeled to face Kiera as more lightning arced across the corridor. “Are you nuts? We’ll rip apart.”
“Not Rorschach’s engines — the Cargos!” Kiera said. “One of them. All of them. Just do it! Now!”
Over the pops and sizzles of lightning, Morgan looked to Shilling. “Will it work?”
“I don’t know. I don’t have a better idea.”
“Okay. Julia, light the Cargos. All of them,” Morgan yelled.
“Roger that.”
Within seconds, the lightning ceased. As the ship continued to spin like a football in flight, Carillo announced, “The UMOs are leaving…black sky.”
“Copy,” Morgan said. “Turn on RCS again. Stop the spin.”
The sound of the thruster jets firing in rapid succession could be heard throughout the ship, and soon Rorschach leveled out.
“Helm in control,” Carillo said over the speakers.
“Roger that. All stop,” said Morgan. He corralled Ajay’s limp, bobbing body and then turned to Kiera and Shilling. “Get up front and help Julia figure out what the hell just happened. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
CHAPTER 3: INQUISITION
Augustus Amato’s residence
Winter Park, Florida
September 1, 2019
Augustus Amato dipped into his suit pocket for a tin of antacid tablets. He had hoped the pills wouldn’t be necessary tonight, but he hadn’t expected the symposium to be such a disaster. In a whisper, he said, “Am I that naïve?”
The mumbled words caught the attention of Dennis Pritchard, who set down his fork and knife and patted his friend on the back. “Don’t beat yourself up, Augie. It was the right thing to do. They’ll come around.”
Amato had created the Gateway Symposium to assemble the various factions vying for inclusion in A3rospace Industries’ space exploration projects. Ever since his team’s discovery of Cetus Prime and the alien spaceport on Callisto, and their breaking of the fifty-year coverup shielding the existence of UMOs from the public, there had been a groundswell of interest in participating in Amato’s follow-on explorations. Among those interested were scientists eager to research the UMOs, archaeologists and anthropologists with dreams of excavating the Callisto spaceport, space agencies pressing for access to A3I’s breakthrough VLF engine, billionaire privateers seeking to commercialize the Rorschach Explorer and governments salivating about potential military applications of A3I’s new technologies.
Yet the collective excitement of these parties had eventually morphed into a quagmire of paranoia and self-interests — which was precisely why Amato had called for the symposium. His aim was to lessen tensions and begin a formal dialogue with all factions represented. But the event descended into a firestorm of accusations within the first ten minutes.
“Who are you to control access to these discoveries?” one scientist railed.
“You’re just lining your pockets,” charged another.
“It’s not fair. You are holding us all hostage!” shouted a foreign government official.
“I, for one, don’t trust your intentions!” said fellow billionaire Hawkeye Huggins, his voice trembling with anger. And this from one of Amato’s closest friends!
Pritchard, sharing the stage with Amato, had employed his considerable political skills to quell the animosity, but there was little he could do once a near-physical brawl erupted between rival scientists. The room soon turned into a virtual steel-caged death match between academics, bureaucrats and tycoons.
Shaking the vision of the melee from his mind, Amato said to Pritchard, “You have more faith than I do, my friend. Right now, I feel like I’m at the center of an inquisition.”
“It’s to be expected,” Pritchard said. “Discovering proof of alien humanoids on another world? Exposing the secret about UMOs? Explosive stuff, Augie.”
Dr. Antonio Wallace, technology magnate and Amato’s other dining companion for the evening, chimed in. “Don’t forget disruptive new tech that’s damn scary to think about in the hands of the wrong people.”
Chewing on the antacid, Amato nodded. “I know, I know. But I didn’t expect this much hostility.”
“Look, you’ve upset the balance of power in the world,” said Pritchard, returning his attention to his veal parmigiana. “All these people’s heads are swimming trying to figure out where they fit in — and if they fit in — in the new world. You’re holding all the cards, and they don’t like it. Honestly, I think the only thing prev
enting you from facing a true inquisition is the Callisto mission.”
Antonio twirled pasta around his fork. “I agree. Rorschach’s odyssey has captured the imagination of the whole world. Folks in every country, from every walk of life, are following them to Callisto. The average person gets what you’re about, what you’re trying to do. Sharing the experience with them, making the crew accessible, was a great move.”
“Right. It puts the people of the world on your side, even if their leaders aren’t,” Pritchard added.
“Well, I guess that’s something.” Amato checked his watch. It was almost time for Dante’s segment on XTC. He rose from his seat and retrieved two remotes from the mantel above the dormant fireplace. With the first, he retracted a panel above the mantel, revealing a flat-screen television. With the second, he powered on the TV and tuned it to WNN.
A commercial break was in progress, giving the three diners an opportunity to position themselves to face the screen.
Set of Expedition to Callisto
World Network News
New York, New York
When the program returned from break, Jenna Toffy and Dr. Dante Fulton were seated on opposite sofas on a cozy, living-room-style set. After a bit of casual banter, Toffy asked Dante, “So, everyone’s on pins and needles. Any new tricks from the UMOs to share tonight?”
The previous week’s episode had included a recorded video clip of an experiment Dr. Shilling had conducted several days before the program aired. Three of the Shield probes were lined up in a row, and as each engine was turned on and off in increments of thirty seconds — left, middle, right — the UMOs moved to the active engine to feed on their ion outputs. Dr. Shilling went through the cycle twice — left, middle, right, left, middle, right — and then stopped. But the UMOs didn’t stop. After they finished feeding on the ions from the far right engine, they moved back to the far left, expecting the engine to turn on. They’d anticipated the pattern. Shilling then altered the pattern and repeated the experiment. Again the UMOs learned the new pattern within two cycles, and again they anticipated the start of the next cycle.
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