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“What just happened?” Hallstrom asked. “Were they communicating?”

“No, that wouldn’t make sense,” McGraw said. “It doesn’t take much energy to talk back and forth, and besides, they wouldn’t have to be close to one another to do that. Especially since we think that DJ1, at least, has the capability for FTL communication. So that suggests—”

“They are fighting.” Charli stared into the distance.

McGraw nodded. “Something like that, yes. I think that’s it. Seems logical. If so, I’d guess …”

“What?” Charli said.

“Well, if you held a gun to my head, I’d say that DJ1 came out on top. It kept transmitting, but Cronkite seemed to go dead for while. But it’s hard to guess about these things because there’s such a mismatch between our technologies. Take someone from the 1850s to a modern street, and he or she would probably guess that we’d been attacked by millions of small creatures that forced us to frequently take them out of our pockets and massage them with our thumbs.”

* * *

June 8, 2018

Alex Carter slid the trigger peg into the rail assembly of the fish-catching machine and glanced over at Rebecca Reed, sitting against a pine tree. She wore cutoff jeans and a bathing suit top and had obviously developed faster than other girls her age. When Martin glanced at her, too, Alex clenched his teeth and hit his brother in the shoulder. “Watch what you’re doing.”
Whoa! This is different.
Usually, nothing distracted him when building a device.

The Carter twins were on a technology-free canoe trip in the Boundary Waters Wilderness area between Minnesota and Canada. No cell phones or tablet computers allowed.

Rebecca put on a puzzled face, tapping her chin with her finger. “Gee, I wonder whether it would be more fun to catch fish the old-fashioned way, with, like, a rod and reel? Hmm, could be a lot less work, too.” Another conscript in the week-long “get the prodigies out of their shells” trip, her talent was music. She had twice recorded with the Cleveland Orchestra, playing the French horn.

Alex set the ratchet tension and looked at his brother.
Done
. The boys walked up the bank to sit cross-legged on the ground in front of Rebecca.

“You guys have a word for “geek” in that secret language of yours?” she asked.

“Sure do,” said Martin, “And it’s got a variant—”

“—that you might find useful.” Alex finished his twin’s sentence. Talking with them was like watching a tennis match.

“A variant?” Rebecca squinted.

“Band geek,” the boys said together.

She smiled and nodded once and then shook her head. “Sorry, fellas,
no comprende
. By the way, I heard the government keeps an eye on you guys.”

“Yeah, apparently machine design is something they are interested in—” said Alex.

“French horns, not so much.” She leaned forward. “That’s what you were going to say next, right, Martin?”

Martin shrugged.

Alex looked directly at Rebecca. “Also, the government wants us to reproduce. ASAP.”

“In your dreams, guys.”

Martin snapped his fingers. “Hey, maybe that’s why they sent us out into the wilderness …”

“Don’t even go there.” Rebecca rolled her eyes. “Changing the subject, and quickly, what about these plans for devices that Cronkite uploaded? That should be right up your alley.”

“The government clamped down on WikiLeaks even before Cronkite’s speech was done, but it was too late. The plans are out in the wild. We’ve seen some of them,” said Martin.

“We figure there are some weapons plans in there.” said Alex.

Martin made a mock-serious face. “Of course there could be plans for a high-tech music stand.”

“Or not,” the twins said together.

Their conversation was interrupted by a snap from the fish-catching device. They all turned to watch as a descending log attached to the pulley system reeled in a ten-inch lake trout and slid it up a ramp into a holding tank.

The twins high-fived and turned toward Rebecca.

She looked back at them. “Dumb fish.”

* * *

June 8, 2018

In Portland’s Longfellow Medical Center, Marie Keller stopped in to visit her former colleague, radiologist Moulik Sachar. She’d never liked him much, since he always seemed annoyed about something or other. He was dictating x-ray findings, and his office was lit only by his two wide-screen monitors. She was glad she wasn’t working with him any longer.

“Marie, look at this.” He pointed to the x-ray on his screen. “More of these damn artifacts.” He threw his microphone onto the desk and charged down the hall. She took a quick glance at the monitor then scrambled after Sachar and caught up with him in X-Ray Room Two.

“Bob, you sent me another x-ray with the artifacts in it. Didn’t I tell you to stop using that machine?” A vein pulsed in Sachar’s neck.

“I’m sorry, Dr. Sachar, but I did stop. Look.” Bob pointed to the machine that was not only shut down but was being examined by two technicians.

“Well, the Reston film has the artifacts.”

Bob stepped over to the desk and brought up the x-ray schedule on his screen. “Look here.” He pointed to a line on the screen. “Reston’s x-ray was done in room four.”

Sachar stared at the screen for a few seconds then motioned for Marie to follow him and left without a word. Marie winked at Bob, an old friend, before leaving. Sachar walked the length of the hospital to the chief radiologist’s office. They entered to find his boss on the phone and three other radiologists in the room.

“You seeing the lines too, Moulik?”

Before he could answer, Dr. Harrington hung up and turned around. “Well, gentlemen—oh, Marie. How are you? What are you doing here?”

Marie waved her hand dismissively. “Just getting a routine scan. Moulik showed me the lines. Please don’t let me interrupt.” Marie had worked at the center as an x-ray technician for twenty years in one of her “former lives,” as she called them. She was in for a follow-up breast x-ray.

“Well, it’s good to see you. You know everyone except for Dr. Tong, here. He’s an MD-PhD postdoc on loan from MIT.”

He turned to the others. “Folks, we’re not the only ones seeing these lines. I just spoke with the chief at County General, and they’ve got the same thing. Dr. Thomas called the CDC, and this thing is widespread. There’s nothing wrong with our machines.”

“So?” asked Sachar.

“So, we’ve got to continue working and ignore the lines for now. But I want to know what’s causing them. Are you guys seeing them on every x-ray?”

“No.” Dr. Tong shook his head. “For some patients, the x-ray is clean. For patients with a series of x-rays, they’re either all clean or all … contaminated. But look at this …” He moved over to the viewer and brought up an x-ray that had been performed an hour earlier.

Sachar whistled when it came up on the screen. While most of the problem scans showed three to five thin white lines across them, this one was covered with over a hundred lines at all different angles.

Tong said, “I did a little experiment. I ran an exposure with this same patient, but I didn’t irradiate him. That is, I didn’t turn on the x-ray source, but I ran it as if I had. Here’s the result.” Tong switched to the next display, which showed a lot of the artifacts, as in the previous one but without the background of the normal x-ray image. “Instead of a chest x-ray with lines on it, what you see here is simply a dark field with lines on it.”

“Whoa,”Sachar said. “So that means—”

“The patient has an x-ray emitter in him. And in his case, he has twenty-seven emitters in his body.”

“Twenty-seven? How do you figure that?” asked Harrington.

Tong pointed to the screen. “Assuming that each set of parallel lines belongs to one emitter—”

“Wait, why do you assume that?” asked Sachar.

“Well, this is kooky, but I think each emitter is doing a scan around 360 degrees and then progressing downward, or upward, and doing another. Maybe in a spiral. Very fast. The parallel lines represent the different passes.”

“That’s pretty wild, Tong.” Harrington stared at the screen.

“You’re telling me. But anyway, in this patient I counted twenty-seven sets of parallel lines, suggesting there are that many different emitters in his body.”

“These emitters would have to be sending out focused beams, like a laser beam.”

“Right.” Tong nodded.

Sachar turned from the screen to Tong. “That’s a cute idea, but you’ve got a big problem: if the patient has twenty-seven laser beam x-ray emitters in him, why don’t we see them?”

“You’re not going to like the answer,” said Tong.

“Try me.”

“Each emitter is microscopic.”

All the other doctors laughed. Marie did not. She was glad that her x-ray didn’t have any lines on it.

CHAPTER EIGHT

June 8, 2018

In the Mexico City headquarters of Corby Solutions, Jake arrived at his office following his daily five a.m. workout in the gym. It felt good to get back into shape. His year of not trying had taken a toll on his body, but he was making good progress at reviving his former self. At least that was a positive.

The kidnapping case was going nowhere and Renata Perez was not holding up well. Jake had taken over her office, the same one he’d used when he had run the company.

They’d had contact from a mole in the kidnapper’s organization, and Jake had told him they’d give him one million dollars and a new identity if he provided any information that helped free Sophia. But they’d heard nothing from him.

The secretary came in. “Senor Corby, you are the big news today. On the front page.”

He frowned.
Me?
He walked to his desk, and there was a copy of
USA Now
. His name was in the banner headline and an older photograph of him accompanied the story. He dropped into the chair and started reading.

President Seeks Jake Corby, World’s Number One Problem-Solver

USA Now has learned that President Hallstrom and his staff are seeking former government troubleshooter Jake Corby, who disappeared two years ago.

Corby, if he is still alive, is forty-three years old. He joined the government as a clandestine operative and worked his way up the ranks. Mystery surrounds his career, but he seems to have been shared among our government’s most secret divisions.

Ten years ago, he left to form a private company, Corby Solutions, but continued to work under contract to the federal government, a lucrative arrangement for Corby.

A high-level source at the White House explained that Corby’s batting average when it came to solving unusual problems was ridiculously high. According to Charlotta Keller, President Hallstrom’s top adviser, “He always seemed to come up with a different way of looking at a problem. He could see through to the core of the difficulty.” Sources say Corby didn’t suffer fools gladly, causing friction, but that the president found him indispensable, and he was called in frequently.

The article went on to describe his disappearance, and ask for the public’s help in locating him.

World’s Number one problem-solver? Sheesh.
Jake finished reading and tossed the paper into the trash
. Well, if Hallstrom hadn’t already found me, that article certainly would have flushed me out.

* * *

June 8, 2018

In the Ruby Mountain conference room, Charli sat with McGraw, puzzling over one of the drawings from the device plans that Cronkite had uploaded. Some plans made immediate sense while others were as confusing as an abstract painting. She admired McGraw’s enthusiasm for solving these puzzles.

“And I have absolutely no idea what this device does,” McGraw said.

They both looked up as Maddix Young came in and sat across from them.

“Seth, I’m glad you’re here. This extraterrestrial stuff has caught me flat-footed. Can you bring me up to speed on SETI? Just a quick summary.”

Charli put her tablet down. “You’re wondering, now that we know ETs are out there, why we hadn’t detected them.”

“Yeah. Pretty much.”

“Ready for the quick and dirty answer?” asked McGraw.

“Ready,” said Young.

“Okay, there are a few ways that we might discover an alien civilization. First, they notice our TV and radio signals, which leak out into space. When they see we are here, they send us a tightly beamed message to say, ‘We see you. You are not alone.’”

“Is that likely?” Young asked.

McGraw shook his head. “No. Here’s why. Even though there are billions of stars in the galaxy, most are too far away. Think about this: Radio was first broadcast around 1910. Let’s say a planet with advanced beings is only seventy five light-years away, much closer than most. In the almost-impossible event that they did notice our first weak broadcasts, they wouldn’t have noticed until 1985.”

“I’m starting to see the problem,” said Young.