The Orthogonal Galaxy (29 page)

“
You realize, Carlton that
this is highly unorthodox. We rely on a fairly complicated
relationship with the press and their interaction in
Washington.”

“
They’ll forgive us if we
have anything juicy to share with them, and if not, they won’t care
anyway.”

Gilroy turned towards the
exit as the door slowly swung shut behind Stan. “Good luck,
Carlton. We really need to solve this mystery for the sake of the
entire space program.”

“
We’ll do our best,
Vurim.”

…

Three red dots came to
rest at the end of curved lines indicating their trajectories on
the map. They flanked the yellow line, indicating their position to
descend into the territory from which six prior dots never
emerged.

The setting felt very
familiar to Joram, as he sat in the same seat of the observation
room monitoring the yellow images being transmitted back from the
paddles. But there were a few differences. Now there were only
three images now instead of six, the observation room was vacated
of the presence of the media, and several new control team members
occupied seats on the control room floor—the others having been
dismissed sometime before 11:50 PM, when the CalTech team reentered
the control room.

In the pre-mission
activity, Joram kept a close eye on Zimmer, who was wandering from
station to station, communicating with the NETWORK, GUIDANCE, and
FLIGHT team members. Joram also noticed the absence of the PAO, who
was dismissed since the media was not invited to this second round
of mission activity. The grad students all knew that this meant
there would be no play-by-play commentary in the observation room.
Instead, they would have to take fastidious notes on visual clues
only and draw their own conclusions as to how the mission was
proceeding.

“
GUIDO, please continue
with synchronization of acceleration at 00:15 hours local time,”
Professor Zimmer spoke into his headset after sitting in his chair
at the FLIGHT station. A digitally projected clock in the upper
left-hand corner of the mission display wall currently showed the
time as 12:12 AM central time. A similar display nearby read 1 day,
14 hours, 59 minutes, and 7 seconds indicating the start of the
Flashlight Mission as indicated by the separation of the Unmanned
Space Lab from the rescue vehicle the day before.

GUIDO, the commonly
applied name for the guidance officer responded to the command.
“Roger that FLIGHT command. GUIDANCE is confirming a unified
start-up pattern at 00:15 hours with paddles seven, eight, and nine
ramping up to 30 km/h for 12 minutes, at which time all three units
will uniformly decelerate to 18 km/h as they penetrate beam
boundary. Paddles are already rotated for parallel immersion into
beam in order to minimize impact of particles as previously
discussed.”

Satisfied with the
response from GUIDANCE, Zimmer checked in on the other teams as
well. “NETWORK, please commence impact and radiation detection and
assessment in T minus 5 minutes,”

“
Roger that,
Professor!”

“
Now we cross our fingers
and wait,” Zimmer breathed to his companion at the FLIGHT station
after switching off his headset. The quiet of the room induced a
tension that the graduate students were already growing accustomed
to. Kath twirled her long hair. Reyd took deep breaths and tried to
relax with his hands locked behind his head. Joram’s hand was
trembling as it waved over his note tablet.

After fifteen minutes of
anticipation, the red dots were slowing down, when particle impact
began. The paddles penetrated into the beam and data rushed across
the monitors. Deeper into the beam they went. Zimmer heaved a sigh
as the paddles were observed communicating even as they passed the
point of no return for the first six paddles. Joram, Kath, and Reyd
gave each other knowing glances and slight nods of the heads to
indicate that Zimmer was dead-on in his suggestions to rotate the
paddles away from the beam’s direction of travel and to penetrate
more slowly than before.

“
CONTROL observing
rotational acceleration in paddle number nine, currently at 0.65
degrees out of intended plane of descent. Paddles seven and eight
holding at zero degrees. Attempting counter-active maneuvers to
restore paddle nine to a zero degree rotation.”

Zimmer responded quickly,
“CONTROL, we’re gonna have a very difficult time maintaining
location of these paddles if we have to control them with a
twenty-minute lag of communication. Please program all three
paddles for coordinated automatic calibration.”

After a brief pause, “Um…
FLIGHT, we don’t see automatic calibration as a feature on the
paddles.”

Zimmer flipped rapidly
through a binder on his desk as he responded, “It’s in the
requirements document, CONTROL… section 4.23.3.”

It was CONTROL’s turn to
flip through a binder at their station. “FLIGHT, we are
cross-referencing section 4.23.3. Please confirm.”

“
4.23.3
confirmed.”

“
FLIGHT, requirement
4.23.3 was opted out of the retrofit of the paddles according to
our docs.”

“
What?” Zimmer stood up
and glared at the CONTROL station behind him. “Are you sure that
4.23.3 was not implemented?”

“
Yes, sir. It says here in
section 4.23.3, ‘Requirement denied. Budget overrun.’ Command has
been sent to back-thrust on roll which is now at 0.83 degrees.
CONTROL is also noticing additional yaw of the paddle in the
down-stream direction of the beam. Command has been sent to correct
for yaw once roll is… Um… acceleration of paddle nine down-stream
is greater than anticipated… rotational acceleration increasing
roll to 1.77 degrees… make that 2.16…”

Zimmer put his head in his
hand as he saw the writing on the wall. At the speed of light,
control signals from Houston, Texas would take ten minutes to reach
the paddle. By that time, the paddle would be erratically out of
control, and its yaw, roll—and perhaps pitch—would be grossly out
of the reach of the CONTROL officer to correct. Paddle nine had
effectively completed its service already.

“
CONTROL reports a rapidly
degrading roll and acceleration on the yaw… paddle nine now
traveling at 85 km/h down-range… 113 km/h. FLIGHT, CONTROL requests
to abort paddle nine from the flow of the beam in order to regain
control. Particle impact at 27.5 degree roll is now accelerating
the paddle rapidly down-range.”

Zimmer spoke calmly, “How
do you propose to gain control before the paddle is out of range of
comm with the USL, CONTROL? You would first have to successfully
control the yaw in order to point the paddle away from the beam and
then accelerate away from its center.”

Without responding to the
original question, the voice from the other headset continued,
“Down-range acceleration at… at… four… no… six…” The voice trailed
off as the image and associated data for paddle nine went
black.

“
Did you see that red
dot?” exclaimed Kath inside the observation room. “It seems like
all of the paddles so far are making a rapid 90 degree turn
downstream just before they disappear. What could be going
on?”

Reyd was the first to
offer a response. “It looks like they lost control of it and it
went haywire.”

“
Why are they losing
control to begin with? The math indicates that the particle impact
is just not sufficient to knock these things off course” Kath said
incredulously.

“
I don’t know,” offered
Reyd weakly, “What do you think, Joram? Joram?”

Reyd and Kath turned to
notice that Joram was so absorbed in thought that he didn’t even
hear his name being called. Kath walked over to where he was
standing against the Plexiglas wall of the observation room.
Placing a hand on his shoulder, she whispered, “Joram?”

Joram turned with a
confused expression on his face.

“
What are you thinking
about?” Kath asked now that she had his attention.

“
Well, I don’t know what
to make of it. It took no longer than a minute for the paddle to
completely disappear. It must have a very weak signal strength to
lose contact with the USL that quickly. They probably need all of
the power for propulsion and stabilization, huh?”

“
But, did you see how the
red always does a rapid 90 degree turn just before going blank?”
Reyd asked.

“
Yeah, I did see the red
dot, but we’ll have to review the data to see its actual
acceleration.”

All three graduate
students turned back to the display. A couple of mission
specialists, including Zimmer, were now standing, but a flurry of
activity began when the students noticed a brief image on the
paddle nine display.

“
Wait!” said Reyd, maybe
it still has a heartbeat after all. But, as quickly as it appeared,
it disappeared.

“
NETWORK?” called out
Zimmer firmly.

“
Yes,
Professor?”

“
Please get me the data
which we just received from paddle nine. I want its exact location
and speed. Everything, NETWORK… just get me all of the data,
please.”

“
We’ll do, FLIGHT. Give us
just a couple of minutes to translate the raw data.”

Zimmer realized that in
the fight to regain number nine that paddles seven and eight had
been mostly ignored. “CONTROL, it looks like there is movement on
seven and eight. Please confirm.”

“
FLIGHT, we are seeing
very slight down-flow acceleration, but we are noticing significant
deviation in cross-sectional location.”

“
NETWORK, any abnormal
data collection from seven and eight?”

“
Plenty of minute particle
impact mostly occurring on the under-side of both
paddles.”

Zimmer gave a brief
exclamation, “CONTROL, try not to lose these… keep them under
control!” Then he threw his headset to the desk and raced towards
the back of the room.

Bursting into the
observation room, the wide-eyed students stood riveted. “Do you see
it?” Zimmer announced almost breathless. “Look at the trajectory of
the remaining two dots!”

The students did indeed
see ‘it’.

“
Why they’re moving inside
the beam… in a corkscrew fashion!” Kath announced.

Zimmer blurted out “That
is the flow of our beam. The particles are swirling around in the
beam as they travel down-stream.”

“
What could cause that,
Professor?” asked Joram.

“
I think we are indeed
seeing the tail of a fast spinning comet that is spewing off some
highly radioactive material. I must get back, but please continue
to observe closely, and discuss among yourselves what you make of
all of this. We will continue to monitor the trajectory of paddles
seven and eight and collect as much impact and radiation data as
possible. We’re going to solve this puzzle, Team!”

In a flash, the aging—yet
nimble—astronomer, raced back to his position, and placed the
headset back on.

The control officer was
already speaking, “should be able to control the rate of
acceleration, since the direction of seven and eight is much more
stable. Signal sent to counter-balance the rapidly increasing rates
of cross-sectional rotation.”

Zimmer shook his head as
he spoke in dismay, “Are we losing these as well,
CONTROL?”

“
We are doing our best,
Professor, but the comm signal will still require several minutes
to arrive.”

Zimmer leaned far back in
his seat, closed his eyes, and listened as CONTROL managed to let
two more paddles slip away all too quickly. He knew, however that
he couldn’t blame his teammates on the control floor. The lack of
automatic control calibration that he placed as a requirement on
the paddles was denied by some bean counter in Washington D.C., who
knew everything there was to know about budgets, and absolutely
nothing about what was needed to make a mission succeed. Here,
millions had been spent on preparing the mission, and at least one
required retrofit on the experiment paddles was expended. Zimmer
was confident that with this feature, the paddles would still be
collecting data and providing valuable information that would be
needed to solve the mystery.

…

The clock on the small
conference room wall read 01:25. The smell of steaming coffee
permeated throughout as well, as all four individuals sat around a
rectangular table, sipping the elixir that they needed to keep them
going for the third—and final—round of the mission.

Professor Zimmer heaved a
weary sigh and rubbed his blurry eyes. “Ok, so we still have three
paddles, Team. As you have no doubt noticed, we have had great
difficulty in controlling the first nine as they entered the beam.
Because of an oversight in paddle construction, I have no hope that
we will keep the final three paddles for any significant amount of
time either. How do we best utilize them to understand the beam? I
need every thought and idea that you can come up with to help us
maximize our learning.”

Reyd offered the first
suggestion, “If we aren’t going to have them for much time, then I
suggest we ram the beam with one at full speed.”

“
What do you think we
might learn from this, Mr. Eastman?” Zimmer inquired.