The Orthogonal Galaxy (9 page)

Staneck Rodgers and Physon
Edwards had worked this station together for years. They were
intimately familiar with the operations and mission of the
astronauts on Camp Mars.

“
Hey, now that Ayman’s up
in space, it looks like everything is stable here,” announced
Rodgers. “I’m going to go use the rest room. Be back in a few
minutes.”

“
Sure, no problem,”
Edwards agreed. “I’ll stand watch. It should be pretty boring for a
couple of days, while Boronov shows O’Ryan the ropes.”

As the door shut behind
Staneck, Physon received a communication from Mars: “Boronov to
Mission Control. The Nevada has successfully taken off and we are
heading to fuel tank number one for pressure gauge malfunction
assessment and repair.”

Physon leaned back in his
chair and cradled his hands behind his head. “Yep... it’s gonna get
boring around here until mission operations resume next
week.”

After a few minutes of
idle daydreaming and casual monitoring of the data, Physon’s life
got less boring very quickly, as he heard a pulsing beep coincide
with an alarm light on control panel in front of him. He leaned
forward to examine the alarm.

“
Odd,” he said to himself.
“I’ve never seen that alarm malfunction before.”

The alarm read “Satellite
Two Communication Failure.”

Within moments, another
pulsating sound: “Satellite Three Communication Failure.” With this
alarm the main screen showing the video image of the Camp Mars
crater went blank.

With the blackness of the
screen ahead of him, Physon leaned forward in his seat, his mind
reeling at this puzzling chain of events. He considered the events.
“That’s not good… what could cause two satellite link failures
within moments…”

Physon was trained to not
panic in these situations. False alarms were part of the business
of inter-galactic communications. Solar events, asteroid eclipses,
even the Earth’s own magnetic field would occasionally interrupt
the otherwise weak signals emanating from the Mars
satellites.

Quickly, however, Physon
was required to enter a state of panic, because a litany of alarms
went off simultaneously, and all of the monitors on the wall went
dark. “Satellite One Communication Failure,” “Astronaut One
Vitals,” “Astronaut Two Vitals,” “Satellite Array Failure,” “Audio
Comm Failure,” “Shuttle Comm Failure.”

The room was awash with
flashing lights and beeps and buzzes of various volumes. Physon
quickly muted all of the alarm sounds and reached for his two-way
radio.

“
Stan, do you copy?”
Physon voiced eagerly into the radio.

“
Yeah, Physon. What’s
up?”

“
Where are you at? I need
you to come quickly.”

“
I’m on my way back right
now. I just stopped at the break room for a cup of coffee. What’s
wrong, buddy?”

“
We have a massive
communication failure with Camp Mars right now. I’ve never seen a
comm interruption of this caliber.”

“
Be right there.” Physon’s
voice and sprinting footsteps echoed with anticipation, as he
returned his radio to his holster and raced back to the control
room. Within moments, he threw open the door and found Staneck
quickly pacing the length of the control panel to assess the
situation.

“
What have we got, Stan?”
Physon asked eagerly for a briefing of the situation.

“
Three satellite failure
alarms, and a complete link loss to the surface array.”

“
So, we are still
receiving signals from one of the satellites?” queried Physon as he
rubbed his forehead with his hand.

“
Yeah. Sat Four is still
online, but we’re only receiving heartbeats, since it’s not in
range of the camp.”

“
What’s its orbital ETA to
line of sight?”

Physon raced to the other
end of the panel, assessed the current orbit of Satellite Four,
looked at his watch for the current time, punched a few numbers
into the computer, and returned the results. “Sixteen hours,
thirty-three minutes.” Physon looked up at his colleague with
concern.

Stan sighed deeply and
shook his head yet maintained a calm voice. “You mean the only
satellite we got yapping right now is on the opposite side of the
planet?”

“
Pretty much,” confessed
Physon bleakly.

Stan ran to the control
panel, quickly scanned the situation and immediately picked up a
phone and dialed a four-digit extension.

“
Vurim, Edwards here. We
have a serious communication failure. You better get in here
ASAP.”

Staneck hung up the phone
and looked up at Physon, who appeared sullen. With eyes wide open
and perspiration forming around his temples, he raised his eyebrows
at his colleague questioningly.

“
I know, buddy,” Physon’s
voice trailed off with a hint of concern. “You know, these things
rarely implicate something catastrophic, but darn it all, if it
doesn’t get your heart racing, and turn your hair gray…”

Physon was distracted as
his eyes scanned the control room panels. “Stan, come take a look
at this.”

Stan started when he
turned his head and saw Physon grow pale, a horror-stricken stare
flaring from his wide-open eyes. Stan was at Physon’s side in just
a couple of steps and looked at the panel that Physon had motioned
towards—the panel labeled O’Ryan.

“
Had you noticed O’Ryan’s
vitals just before the comm failure?” Physon asked his
partner.

“
No, I… I hadn’t,” he
confessed. “It shows that his heart and breathing rates increased
rather abruptly about… oh… 30 seconds before the comm failure. But
there’s nothing unusual about Boronov’s vitals.”

“
Look closely,” Physon
rebutted, pointing to the ECG waveforms. “Right here, it looks like
Boronov skipped a beat. No racing like O’Ryan, but it looks like
there is a synchronized event… perhaps something that startled the
pair.”

“
What do you make of it?”
asked the junior engineer.

Physon could do little
more than shake his head slowly and shrug his shoulders in
dismay.

After a brief pause, Stan
asked his more experienced partner, “Weren’t you in the control
room when mission 79 had to be aborted?”

“
Yeah,” said Physon
breaking into a forced smile. “That was a grueling three-day event
that taught me to keep a level head and a stock of Tums on
hand.”

“
But those guys were only
a hundred thousand miles from Earth?” pointed out Stan. Our boys
are millions of miles away right now, cut off from all
communication, perhaps for quite a few hours.”

“
Indeed.” Physon pointed
out and reached inside a drawer. Then with a slight smile, he gave
one last word to his younger partner. “Tums?” he reached his hand
out to his companion with a tube of the antacid in a subdued, yet
calming voice, hoping to alleviate some of the tension. He didn’t
like the symptoms he was seeing at all, but he also knew that it
was premature to jump to any conclusions, and also that there was
nothing he could do about it at present.

…

With lengthened stride,
Scoville rushed down the corridor leading away from the planetarium
and back to his office.

“
What is it, Ballard?”
asked Zimmer who was lagging the dean by a couple of
steps.

“
I’ve got NASA on
hold.”

At this, Professor Zimmer
stopped dead in his tracks. Noticing that the sound of the extra
pair of footsteps had ceased, Scoville turned back and looked at
Zimmer.

“
Are they cutting off the
funding, Ballard?”

Ballard lowered his head
and took a couple of steps back towards Zimmer. “No, no… it’s… it’s
something… worse.” With the last word, his voice trailed off. He
turned again, and restored to his former swift gait. “You’ll be
briefed presently.”

They rushed into
Scoville’s office and quickly took seats opposite of each other at
a round conference table. A telephone with a blinking red light
informed Zimmer of the urgent party waiting on the other
end.

Taking the phone off of
mute, Scoville announced their return. “Vurim, I’m back. I have
Professor Zimmer with me. I believe that you two have
met.”

“
Yes, we have met,”
answered Vurim affirmatively. “Dr. Zimmer, this is Vurim Gilroy.
I’m the director of the Mars Mission here at Johnson Space
Center.”

“
Ah, yes. Dr. Gilroy. We
met a few years ago at the International Conference on Modern
Astrophysics, didn’t we? As I recall, you presented some results
and conclusions from your first subterranean drilling explorations
of Mars, right?”

“
That is
correct.”

“
What can I do for you? I
understand you have a matter of some urgency you wish to discuss
with me?”

“
Unfortunately, yes we
do.” His voice was hushed, and an audibly deep breath ensued before
he began his briefing.

“
We are currently studying
a set of data regarding a series of disturbing events which
happened a few hours ago regarding our Mars mission. We hope you
may be of assistance in brainstorming possible astronomical
phenomena which might account for the singularities we have
witnessed.”

“
Ok,” said Zimmer
attentively. “I’ll do what I can to help.” Zimmer’s gaze was fixed
on Scoville, as if searching his expressing for clues. Scoville’s
shrugged his shoulders and shook his head to convey that he knew
next to nothing yet himself.

“
First of all,” stated
Gilroy hesitantly, “we’d like to request your presence here at
Johnson where we are convening a team of experts to examine the
data first-hand.”

Scoville looked up at
Zimmer, twisted his head, threw up his hands, and nodded slowly.
“Well, I just began a new term of courses and research here at the
university. Any leave would have to be approved of by Dean
Scoville.”

“
He has assured us full
cooperation in this matter,” announced Gilroy in a business-like
manner.

Zimmer looked at Scoville
in a puzzled manner and tapped the mute button.
“Ballard?”

“
Carlton, we’re treading
lightly on the funding for your research. We need to bend over
backwards for these guys. I’ll be sure to cover for your class and
research teams. It’ll only be for a few days.”

After taking the phone off
of mute, Zimmer continued. “Ok. When do you need me to
leave?”

“
I have a chartered plane
that will be landing in Burbank at 1:20 PM Pacific
Time.”

Zimmer looked at his
watch, which read 12:17 PM. “Why, that’s just an hour away. I’ll
need some time to pack and…”

“
No packing!” Gilroy
interrupted shortly. “We’ll get everything you need here. You can
communicate those needs from the airplane once you’re in the
air.”

“
Ok,” agreed Zimmer in an
overwhelmed manner. “Can I ask what the urgency is all
about?”

“
I’m afraid that’s not
possible. We are conversing over an unsecured communication
channel, and this is a matter that is currently classified as
secret… You do still have a security clearance,
Professor?”

“
Yes, yes. I’ll depart for
the airport immediately.”

“
Thank you for your
understanding and support. We’ll talk in a few hours.”

The phone went
dead.

“
Ballard, what is going
on?”

“
I don’t know anymore than
you, Carlton. But, my hunch tells me that something has gone wrong
on Mars. NASA doesn’t operate like this unless there is genuine
concern for the well-being of their astronauts.”

“
But, why me? I’m an
astrophysicist, not an aerospace engineer. If there’s a problem
millions of miles away, what possible help will I be?”

“
I don’t have answers for
you, Carlton. But, once you find out what is going on, I’d
appreciate hearing from you. I’ll need to know what arrangements
need to be made here in the department during your
absence.”

“
Will do, Ballard.” Zimmer
stood up and bid farewell to the dean. He disappeared through the
office door and rushed down the corridor for his rendezvous with
the jet that had been arranged to pick him up a couple of hours
before he himself knew of it. Like Scoville, Zimmer was beginning
to fear the worst. NASA was too eager, too quick, too quiet to not
cause these two CalTech astronomers significant concern.

…

Professor Zimmer landed in
Houston at 6:15 PM. Dr. Gilroy had a car waiting for him to quickly
usher him to Johnson Space Center. Gilroy was waiting on the curb
for the astronomer when he arrived. He opened the door for Zimmer
and shook his hand warmly and gratefully.

Zimmer noticed that he
showed signs of fatigue and stress. His complexion was pale, and
his eyes deeply red. As they shook hands, the professor could note
that Gilroy’s hand was tremulous and sweaty.

With a subdued voice, he
said, “Thank you for coming, professor. I will escort you through
security and into a conference room, where we have compiled a set
of data that we hope you can decipher for us.”