The Orthogonal Galaxy (28 page)

The map began to indicate
the movement of the six paddles towards each other as they closed
in on the beam. Joram fixed his focus on the six displays of the
paddle’s cameras, which were pointed directly toward the beam. Each
image simply contained a bright yellow light with very little form
or shape to it. There was a flickering of intensity and it appeared
that the light leapt all around, as though a million fireflies were
densely packed together in a glass jar placed in the blackness of
outer space.

Superimposed on the bottom
right of each image were two vertical bars with gradient shading
from blue at the top to red at the bottom. One labeled ‘light
intensity’ had about a third of the meter filled with red. The
other bar was labeled ‘particle density’. It had just a hint of red
for each of the paddles. On the bottom left, he saw a pair of
numbers indicate the speed of the paddle and its distance to the
center of the beam. He watched as the paddles accelerated from 20
to 30 to 40 and eventually to 58 km/h. He also saw the distance
decrease from 12,050 km… 12,010 km… 11,080 km.

As the distance decreased,
he noticed that the light intensity was increasing uniformly for
each paddle. He leaned forward and furiously scribbled notes on his
Digital Note Tablet, stopping mid-sentence as a cold shiver passed
through his spine. His head whipped up to look at Zimmer, only to
find an empty chair. Furiously, his eyes raced through the control
room to find his mentor, and spotted him standing on the right hand
side of the front row, scanning the paddle imagery and data. His
head slowly turned back to the observation room, where he could
just make out the wide-eyed stare of Joram Anders. Zimmer gave a
single and nearly imperceptible nod of recognition. Teacher and
pupil were in sync with the same discovery.

Kath noticed the exchange.
“What’s wrong?” she implored.

Joram looked behind him to
notice the throng of media and realized the need for discretion. He
raised a finger to indicate that he needed a moment and returned to
his tablet in order to finish his observation and conclusion. With
an exclamation mark, he handed his notes over for Kath and Reyd to
read.

“
1912 hours. Paddles reach
visible extent of beam at a distance of 12000 km from center of
beam. Light intensity is uniform at all six positions around the
beam, and yet paddle 2 is on the sunny side of beam, while paddle 5
is on opposite side of beam from sun. Conclusion: beam does not
reflect sunlight… it generates light from within!”

After reading Joram’s
notes and understanding the magnitude of this discovery, Kath and
Reyd looked back up to the displays and noticed that indeed, all of
the live camera images from each of the six paddles had the same
intensity of yellow flickering light. The predominant theory was
that the beam was just the tail of a comet reflecting a large
density of ice or rock chunks, but discovering the brightness of
the beam on its side opposite of the Sun proved that this clearly
could not be the case.

The thoughts of the
students were broken by an announcement from the public affairs
officer. “Paddles are communicating a slight radiation increase as
they begin to enter the visible extent of the beam. Some sensors
are detecting impacts of small quantities of highly-quantized
positively-charged particles. Mission specialists indicate that
extremely small masses indicate a very fine dust of atomic-sized
materials.”

Joram watched the paddles
and noticed that the ‘particle density’ bars were showing more red
now, and that the red was slowly beginning to fill the bars of each
paddle, at which he noticed the image of one of the paddles—paddle
three, to be precise—went black.

“
NETWORK indicates a
sudden communication failure with paddle three. They are seeking to
reengage the paddle via commands to the Unmanned Space
Lab.”

After a lengthy pause, the
commentary continued, “NETWORK is currently studying whether a
radiation spike inside of the beam may have caused the failure,
but… we have… yes… NETWORK confirms outage in paddles one and four.
A significant and unanticipated communication breach has occurred
now with three… four paddles, as paddle two has also lost comm with
the USL. Paddles five and six are now spiking heavily with impact
sensory data, as they receive as much as 12000 fine-particle
impacts per second. CONTROL is beginning to rotate direction of
paddles five and six to reduce the amount of direct impact density
in case significant and irreparable damage has been
incurred…”

The voice trailed off
shortly after the remaining two images went black. Joram noticed
that all six red dots that had submerged into the beam had
disappeared completely from the map. By all indicators, the beam
had simply eaten up all six paddles.

Reyd placed his head in
his hands, while Kath’s trembling right hand was covering her mouth
firmly. Joram looked to the control room floor, where Zimmer was
observed relaying orders into his headset while fixing his stare on
the monitor at his station. He stood up, dropped his headset down
onto the station, and paced to the back of the control room, where
he attempted to gain a better big picture of what little data
remained on the wall in front of him.

“
Mission control confirms
the loss of communication with all six paddles. NETWORK is
attempting to reestablish comm, but the team assumes a total loss
of paddles to an unknown failure.”

…

“
Communication scrambling,
perhaps?”

“
Please elaborate, Mr.
Eastman.”

“
Well, Professor, I was
just thinking that perhaps once the paddles penetrated the outer
sheath of the beam that the radiation emission of the beam
superimposed on the communication signal would cause the signal to
scramble sufficiently to lose complete comm.”

“
Hmmm… I’m not sure, Mr.
Eastman. Recall that we sent paddles four and five to the opposite
side of the beam from where the USL was, and the communication
signal apparently was able to arrive unimpeded even though those
signals had to go directly through the beam.”

“
I suspect radiation
damage,” Kath announced. “The paddle detected radiation, but could
not identify it—similar to what happened here on Earth at Time
Zero, right?”

“
Could be, Miss Mirabelle.
While the paddles are radiation-hardened, we are unable to test its
ability to reject radiation that we have not
identified.”

Turning to Joram, Zimmer
continued. “Mr. Anders, you’ve been quiet. What do you
think?”

“
Well, I don’t know,
honestly, but since we’re brainstorming, I’ll throw another idea
out there. What about particle impact damage? I noticed that the
impact density was pegged at about 68000 per second. I calculated
that to be about 60 impacts per square inch per second.”

“
But none of the paddles
ever indicated anything larger than an atom.”

“
You see, that’s where I’m
confused. How can none of this matter coalesce into larger bodies?
What could possibly pulverize and energize this matter so
greatly?”

“
I don’t know, but this is
all good data, Joram,” reminded Zimmer. “The media right now is
having a field day over this. They’re transmitting articles to
their editors on the failed mission, but they are wrong. We have
some very great data that has yielded some new understanding that
we didn’t have before. The beam is actually emitting its own light,
and not reflecting sunlight as previously believed. We know that
the beam physically consists of highly-quantized atomic particles.
And… we still have six paddles to go.”

“
How is that going to help
us, Professor?” Kath asked sincerely. “The first six were gobbled
up by the beam. Won’t the next six meet a similar fate?”

“
Perhaps, but we now know
how to maximize our odds for utilizing the last six better. In case
we did experience radiation or particle damage, we will inject the
paddles in parallel to the direction of the beam, instead of
letting them approach in a perpendicular fashion.”

“
How will that help?” Kath
inquired.

“
It’s like when you were a
kid and stuck your hand out of the car as it was moving. When you
placed it perpendicular to the flow of the air, it met great
resistance, right? But when you turned your hand 90 degrees the
force of the wind subsided. We’re going to hope that we can avoid
the ‘wind’ of the beam by injecting the next three paddles in a
parallel fashion.”

“
Three paddles?” asked
Joram.

“
We started with twelve,
and now we’re down to just six. I don’t want to spend them all on
one remaining experiment. Instead of spreading six paddles out in
60 degree increments, we’ll place three of them in 120 degree slots
instead, and then if we need to we’ll have a third shot at data
collection with the final three paddles.

“
Also, we’re going to take
it much slower now as we penetrate the visible extent. We were
going faster than we knew we should when we hit the border at 60
kilometers per hour. So… by changing direction and slowing the
speed, we’ll keep our fingers crossed for some better
results.”

Zimmer scanned the faces
of his three graduate students, probing for visual clues as to
their thoughts. “Anything else you’d like to discuss before we go
back to the control room, Team?”

Kath shook her head and
Joram shrugged, but Reyd did have one more question to ask.
“Professor, so far you’ve been listening to a lot of our
hair-brained ideas, but you haven’t shared your thoughts on this.
What do you think we’re dealing with?”

Zimmer gave a deep sigh
and measured how he would answer the question. His answer was
uninspiring. “I think we’re looking at the tail of a
comet.”

“
But the tail is
potentially light years in length, and it gives off light even
weeks after the comet passed by,” Reyd rebutted.

“
Mr.
Eastman, you asked me what I thought. I gave you an answer. I
honestly believe that we are looking at the tail of a comet, but
an
exotic
one to
be sure.”

“
Exotic?” asked Joram,
seeking further clarification.

“
If I could describe it
with greater clarity, Mr. Anders, I would do so. We don’t have all
of the answers yet. We need the paddles to stay in the beam long
enough to transmit back to us the material makeup of the beam.
Then, we might be able to formulate sowme decent
theories.”

“
Professor, do you believe
the comet is responsible for the destruction on Mars?” asked Kath.
“The beam occurred a few days after the damage. Did we really miss
seeing it for that long?”

“
It could be that the tail
was there all along, but that for some reason, the matter didn’t
start illuminating until it reached a particular state. We know
that the light is starting to fade out… it may have also faded in.
I know that doesn’t adequately answer your question, but again, the
only word I have to describe it now is exotic. Any other
questions?”

The three looked at each
other and at Professor Zimmer, but they knew that for all of the
questions that could be asked, the answers just weren’t there yet.
Well understood—and yet
unspoken—was one
simple fact: if paddles number seven through twelve did not perform
adequately, those questions may never be answered.

As the quartet were left
to their thoughts and concerns, the door to the conference room
opened up. Dr. Gilroy stepped through with Stan Rodgers.

Gilroy bounded towards
Zimmer with an outstretched hand. “Dr. Zimmer, it’s great to see
you again.”

“
Thank you for opening up
your marvelous facility to my research team, Dr.
Gilroy.”

Gilroy nodded in
recognition of the trio of students who stood at attention across
the table. “I’m sorry that the mission didn’t go better,
Carlton.”

“
Actually, I think it went
very well, Vurim.”

“
But you lost the
paddles.”

“
We lost half of the
paddles, and we gained a few more pieces of the puzzle, and we have
confidence that we’ll get even more by a better-informed
application of the next paddles.”

“
So you have a plan of
attack for continuing the mission?”

“
Indeed.”

“
When would you like to
start back up, Professor?”

“
As soon as
possible.”

Gilroy turned to his
mission specialist. “Stan, can you please round up the Flashlight
team? It looks like we’re back in business.”

“
Shall we inform the press
as well, Doctor?”

Zimmer burst in. “No! I’d
prefer that the press were not involved in the next phase of the
mission. Besides, they got their story, and there is no need to
waste their time should that story not be enhanced. If there is
much to write home about after the show is over, we can hold a
press conference.”

Gilroy weighed this
request for several moments. All eyes rested on him. “Stan, gather
the team into the control room… but do not make an announcement to
the press.”

“
Thank you, Vurim,” Zimmer
spoke with relieved and gracious tones.