Burnout: the mystery of Space Shuttle STS-281 (13 page)

* * * *

At the end of a long, hard day of driving, just before sunset, Crash pulled into Socorro at last. He'd been paralleling the Rio Grande since the other side of El Paso, and now he glanced toward the line of pale green willows and other scrubby trees that marked the river in the distance. He opened his cell phone and dialed the number Elaine Grisham had given him for the astronomy professor. Mike Anders had been the lead Principal Investigator for the Astro-4 astronomy mission aboard the Shuttle some years back, and aside from the dire circumstances, Crash looked forward to seeing his old friend once more.

"Identify yourself." The Australian voice that answered the phone was brusque almost to the point of rudeness.

"Mike? Mike Anders? That you?" Crash asked, startled by the uncharacteristically harsh tone.

"Identify yourself."

"Dr. Anders, this is Crash Murphy."

"Prove it."

Crash blinked in surprise. "Uh… okay. Um. Lessee. Oh, I know! How ‘bout the time you and I put the Tabasco in Dr. Carver's coffee? And he never realized it?"

There was an amused snort from the other end of the line, and Anders remarked, in a much more open, relaxed tone, "Carver always was an insensitive ass. That just proved it. And you just proved yourself to me, Crash. Good to hear from ya, mate. How's Texas?"

"Uh… not so good right now. I'm in Socorro, Mike, on Interstate 25. Outside the Stop N' Go, off Exit…" Crash glanced around, looking for a sign to jog his memory as to the exit number.

"I know it. Here? Why?"

"I need your help. I've been investigating
Atlantis
's crash, and--"

"Wait there. I'm on my way."

* * * *

"…So that's the story in a nutshell, Mike. Mitch is dead, Gayle is dead, my house has been burned down--they think I'm dead, in the house. Seven more dead in the shuttle crash, but they aren't the crew. Crew's missing. I made it out of the house with some evidence, but most of it got burned." The two men sat on the floral tapestry-covered sofa in Anders' relocated recreational vehicle over a cup of coffee. Outside, past the parked pickup in which Crash had arrived, ranged row upon row of huge dish antennas--the radio telescopes of the Very Large Array.

Anders nodded as Crash finished his synopsis. "Running for your life."

"I… guess so." Crash's shoulders slumped in dejection.

"Well, you should be safe here. And I can tell you the answer to your mystery." Anders looked satisfied.

Crash stared at the scientist in stunned amazement. "You wanna run that by me again?"

"I know who did it."

"Who?!"

"E.T.s." The professor's face was straight and serious.

Crash started to laugh. "Cute, Mike, real cute. Sucked me right in. Thanks, pal. I needed that about now."

"Needed what?" Anders asked without changing expression. Crash stopped laughing.

"You're really serious, aren't you?"

"As a flash flood in a canyon, mate."

"Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why do you think it's aliens?!"
Damn. Has he lost it?
Crash thought, alarmed.
Mike Anders is the sharpest, most intelligent man I know--or at least, he WAS. Now it sounds like he's tryin' to dog paddle in the deep end of the pool… and I'm depending on him…

"You think I'm crazy, don't you?" Anders said perceptively, watching his old friend closely. "What if I could prove to you what I'm saying? What if I told you I've seen the men you saw? The ones who burned your house?"

Crash considered, trying to be open minded. "I'd say… show me."

Chapter 11

"All right, Crash, how well do you remember the radio astronomy course I taught the flight controllers for Astro-4?" Anders quizzed the fugitive investigator while reconnecting his computer equipment in the RV.

"Mmm… fairly well, I think, considering how long it's been," Crash replied, searching his memory.

"Then you remember how we tell if a signal is near-Earth, or celestial, in origin?"

"Yeah," Crash responded. "It's really a matter of parallax, right? I mean, if it's very close, your big array out there'll see a difference in apparent position just from antennas on one side of the array to the other."

"Very good," Anders said, pleased. "So you'll understand when I say that I've detected signals of extraterrestrial origin, with parallaxes so large, that they must have come from LEO."

"Low Earth orbit?!" Crash exclaimed, shocked. "You gotta be kidding!" He stared at the astronomer. "How do you know they're extraterrestrial?"

"Look here." The professor leaned over the computer and brought up a program, opening his data files from within the software. "This is data of the last LGM event--"

"LGM?" Crash interrupted.

Anders permitted himself a slight grin. "Little Green Men," he explained with a chuckle. "Like the original pulsars were thought to be. The discoverers dubbed ‘em ‘LGMs' at first, and I thought I'd just follow tradition. Now look at this." He pointed to the frequency readout.

"Damn," Crash muttered, studying the display. "Low frequency. Real low."

"Right. And elliptically polarized. Nothing we use," Anders verified. "Now check this out." He hit a few more keys, and the display changed.

Crash stared, fascinated. "Amplitude modulation?"

"Yep. With a modulation scale based on--"

"Let me guess," Crash interrupted with a grin. "I've watched enough science fiction movies: Pi."

"Nope. Right idea, wrong irrational number. The square root of two," Anders corrected, returning the grin. "And that argues for intelligence as a source."

"Roger that," Crash murmured, deep in thought.

"Now watch when I separate the signals by antenna," Anders said, sitting down at his PC and initiating another program. "Look--look right there," he said, pointing at the monitor. "See that waveform? Watch it propagate right down through the antennas…"

"Holy shit," Crash whispered, watching as the waveform in the signal at the top of the screen was echoed, with a slight delay, in successive signals beneath, marching its way steadily down the monitor as the signals propagated to the left.

"Now, when I ask the computer to calculate a parallax distance…" the professor entered a command, then leaned back.

Moments later, the cursor spat out a number:

0.0000000000297 LY

Anders hit two more keys, and the computer translated:

178 n. mi.

"One hundred seventy-eight nautical miles, Crash," Anders repeated. "Low earth orbit."

"Is it understandable?" Crash whispered, stunned. "The signal, I mean. Have you translated it?"

"Not yet," Anders admitted, rueful. "That's going to take some time, I'm afraid. The language doesn't seem to have any human analog that I've found as yet; not that I'm a linguist, but still. I've just gotten a beta test program from my colleague Carl up at Cornell, though, that might help. You know, the guy on the SETI program? He's been all over the talk shows and stuff."

"The Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence? How's that going to help?"

"Well, the program is based on an old military code breaking system that one of Carl's grad students from the Land of Oz worked on during his duty stint," the professor explained. "Carl was hoping to use it on his SETI work. The software should be able to look for similar wave shapes, and start breaking down the signal into a crude alphabet. That'll be a start, at least. I've had it cranking for the last two days. If we're lucky, the translation subroutine will eventually recognize something, and give us at least a partial message."

* * * *

"…But how the hell did you discover the signal?" Crash asked half an hour later, confused, as Anders popped a disk out of the CD drive and exchanged it for yet another, continuing his work. "And… how long have you known about this, Mike?"

Anders sat and stared at the former flight controller for several minutes, thinking.
Dammit.
I ought to tell him. Ought to tell him about the blokes in Sydney. But…
He considered for long moments
. Crash is--was--government once. He'd understand--I can't be sure I can trust him quite yet. I mean, I think I can, but… This is some nasty shit; I've gotta be careful.

Crash was staring expectantly at the scientist, who made his decision.
Make it look like I've known since the beginning, instead of only going back to look at my data after the Sydney meeting. Later, once I know what the hell's going on, maybe I can tell him the whole truth.

"Mmm… let's answer the second question first," Anders said, reaching for a notebook, "it's easier. Let me see…" thumbing through the notebook, "according to my observing records… ah, here it is. January 28, 8:42 Universal Time--uh, sorry, Crash, that'd be Greenwich Mean Time to you. That'd make it a little over six months ago."

"And?" Crash pressed. "How?"

"I was doing my standard calibrating run, surveying Cepheid variable stars in Seyfert galaxies, and comparing them to Cepheids in our own galaxy," Anders began to explain.

"Hold on--what's a Seyfert galaxy?" Murphy queried, trying to follow.

"Ah," Anders remarked, backing up and starting over. "A Seyfert is a spiral galaxy with an AGN--an active galactic nucleus," he explained. "No one's quite sure why, but they have some real similarities to quasars. The trick is, quasars are supposed to be at cosmological distances; they're currently believed to be the most distant objects in the universe. But Seyferts seem to be much closer. Yet, there are some systems where Seyferts and quasars appear to be physically connected," Anders continued. "So we need to know: Are they really connected, really close to each other in space, or are they just by coincidence along the same line of sight? If it turns out they're actually close to each other, even physically connected, then our whole concept of cosmology will have to change. Because then, quasars won't be as far away as we think they are, and we can no longer use redshifts to determine cosmological distance."

"Oh," Murphy began to grasp the puzzle. "So you're trying to find out where in space these things really are."

"Right. There's a big push on in the astronomical community to expand the database. That way, we can calculate distances with greater accuracy. A Cepheid's period of variability is directly related to its intrinsic brightness. If we know its period, it's a simple matter to calculate its absolute magnitude. Comparing that to its apparent magnitude gives us an approximate distance. The International Astronomical Union is coordinating efforts," Anders explained. "I was observing SW Cassiopeae. Nice, strong signal, without a single interesting feature, and all at once, it's gone. Sharp cutoff, no signal. Then--pop. It's back."

"Did you check for--" Crash frowned, thinking hard for alternative solutions to their puzzle.

"I always check for airplanes, Crash; that's just part of the game," Anders anticipated.

"And?"

"Negative; no aircraft in the vicinity," came the answer. "No satellites either."

"Asteroid occultation?" Crash followed up.

"Nope. Checked with Marsden; he even coordinated a search. Nothing turned up. No equipment problems, either," Anders anticipated, as Crash opened his mouth to speak.

"Okay, sharp eclipse; no planes, no asteroids, no malfunctions," Crash mused. "Go on."

"Exactly eight days later, to the minute, it happened again," Anders continued, compressing the span of time for the sake of his cover story. "Same scenario, same coordinates." He paused. "So I got ready. Dammit, I was determined to find out what was ruining my observations. I ran full radio spectrum scans, automated; I even set up my Dobsonian and took CCD images."

"And?"

"I got that." Anders pointed at the computer.

"But nothing else?"

"Not unless you count the two guys who showed up here a few days ago, nosing around my RV," Anders added. "Looked to be ex-military types, sunglasses, POW patches on their jackets, you know what I mean."

"Yeah," Crash said, subdued. "Yeah, I know what you mean. Did they… say anything?"

"Hell, yeah," Anders emphasized. "Let's just say, if they could have coaxed me out of the RV, I probably wouldn't be standing here talking to you now, mate."

"Shit," Crash worried. "That sounds familiar."

"Yeah. Every day or two, I move the RV now," Dr. Anders added, grim. "I don't know if those two were human or not, but I've gotten a lot of data since then, and I don't intend to lose it."

"Oh, they're human all right--well, one of ‘em is, anyway," Crash amended. "If he's who I think, that is. I'm not sure yet. But now the patch on one of their jackets is making a lot more sense."

"What patch?" Anders fixed his attention on his friend.

"Do the names ‘Groom Lake' or ‘Area 51' mean anything to you?" Crash asked frankly.

"Aw, shit," Anders responded, a bleak expression on his face. "Now you've gone and done it."

* * * *

"No, trust me, Crash, we need to move before they track you down," Mike Anders said without equivocation as he navigated the bulky RV down the narrow gravel road, in a more or less western direction, through near total darkness. "And interstates and main roads are not a very good idea right now. Are you sure you pulled the tags off the pickup truck?"

"Got ‘em right here," Crash replied, plopping the license plates down on the grey Formica bar in the little kitchenette. He glanced out the back window at the truck tagging along behind. "She's towing just fine."

"Good," Anders noted, then added, "Look, can you get the computer moved back into the bedroom area? I think it might be safer there. Less obvious, you know? Put it on the little dressing table."

"Sure thing," Crash said, glancing over the equipment, then unhooking a couple of cables before picking up the tower and carting it back. "Where are we headed?" he called forward.

"For now? Near as I can get to the backside of nowhere," Anders told him. "We need time--time for the computer to decode that signal, and time for us to match up all your data."

* * * *

Brown burst into Jones' office, almost slamming the door. "Got ‘em!" he exclaimed, whipping out his special little Blackberry and checking it before returning it to his pocket and nodding.

Jones shoved back from the computer, looking at his colleague with a gleam in his eyes. "On the move?"

"Affirmative."

"With Murphy?"

"With Murphy," Brown confirmed, grinning.

"I knew it," Jones deduced. "The crash IS tied into this."

"We both knew it," Brown shrugged.

"Do you have a fix on them?" Jones pressed. "Johnson will want to know."

Brown nodded a vigorous affirmative. "Triple encrypted, no less. Nobody but us will know where they head." He tapped his breast pocket, indicating the palm computer. "Live feed. Right here."

"Good man," Jones remarked with a grin, picking up the phone and punching an extension. "Johnson? Jones. Could you pop by my office for a moment? Brown is here, and he needs to pass on a tidbit…"

* * * *

Blake answered the urgent call at a run, not stopping until he arrived at the control room. The Officer of the Day glared at him.

"He's gone."

"What?" Blake panted, nonplused.

"Anders. He's gone. RV and all."

"So?" Blake shrugged, irritated.
They called me here for this? What idiots.
"Just use the orbital infrared."

"We did. No joy." The OD gave him another glare, as if to say,
We aren't idiots, you know.

Blake's eyebrows climbed in surprise. "Shit. Tell me what happened."

The Officer of the Day motioned him to the small private office, just off the control center.

* * * *

The office door was closed. The three men huddled over the desk on which lay Brown's little Blackberry, decoding the satellite feed from the tracer hidden in the bowels of Anders' RV. "Perfect," Jones purred, pleased. "He is following our plan to the letter."

"Very nice," Johnson commented. "It seems we have quite an excellent operative in the good doctor."

"Indeed," Brown agreed, gratified. "He was most cooperative once he understood the situation."

"Even better," Johnson said with a smile. "If he is willing to work closely with the two of you, then perhaps you can keep him safe, and out of trouble." He gave the pair a significant glance.

"That's our hope, too, boss," Jones murmured. His eyes were grim, serious.