“SETI” The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence-Chapter 23 & 24
23
The magenta satellite had not changed position. It had remained silent. Nothing was being transmitted. It was still hovering over the Moon, motionless.
Then the numerous protuberances quivered and began to flatten against the irregular, sharp-angled spacecraft surface. A low hum sounded deep inside the craft. The craft slowly rotated on its axis in a complete circle, then made another 360-degree rotation. Then it stopped.
Suddenly, an even larger spacecraft appeared, stopping twenty-five feet from the satellite. It was ten times the size of the smaller craft. Its hum was louder than the smaller ship’s. Sound does not travel in a vacuum, but the smaller craft was buffeted by a force peculiar to the propulsion system of both spacecraft.
Steadily the large craft moved in, then finally joined with the smaller craft. A slow mutation began to take place. The forms of both became rounded. and then the lines straightened. Finally, an equilateral triangle was formed. Gone was any hint of the protuberances; gone were the concentric grooves and markings.
The interior mechanical-biological structure was intricate and seemingly endless. The formations were more in the realm of the surgeon than of the engineer. The craft was an amalgam of the best that nature and thinking creatures could fashion through evolution, construction, and manipulation of natural resources. The best designs were employed to create this space transport system.
It rotated. It was no longer a triangle. Now it was a pyramid of perfect proportions, and it was about ready to move closer to Earth.
It moved. The distance from the Moon to 1,000 miles above the Earth’s surface was covered in a matter of seconds. The shape did not change with the rapid acceleration and deceleration. The craft stopped above the Western Hemisphere, above the West Coast of the United States, and above the southern portion of the state of California. The blunt end was pointed toward the Earth’s surface.
The magenta coloring of the spacecraft darkened. Deep within the confines of the ship, the low hum began, accompanied by the raspy white noise and the buried warbling tone. Another signal was again being directed toward Earth.
The spacecraft was in perfect alignment with the Tau Ceti planetary system behind it. The spacecraft was between 6607 Mountain View Road, Escondido, California, United States of America, planet Earth — and Tau Ceti. The shaft of transmission was even narrower now because of the proximity of the spacecraft to Earth. But the signal spillover still reached within 225 miles of the primary focus point . . . Sam Alexander, K6ZDQ.
That night, Sam would be unable to receive the transmission. One thousand miles below the spacecraft, Sam was busy soldering, occasionally distracted by a continuing tropical thunderstorm.
24
Anaktuvuk Ridge Radar Site, Alaska
The large radar dome was clearly visible from the tiny outpost of Anaktuvuk Pass, just south of the dominating Brooks Range in northern Alaska. The lonely hilltop U.S. government installation was one of several such sites in remote, hard-to-reach Alaskan locations. Tours of duty were generally short because of the ever-present boredom factor. Military personnel might as well have been posted on the far side of the Moon; they had no other human contact, and no access to local civilization and entertainment. But that aided the twofold purpose of protecting secrecy and keeping personnel down on the farm, concentrating on their duties, and away from distractions.
The small control room could have been mistaken for the NASA Manned Mission Control Center in Houston. Rows of terminals, and men and women wearing lightweight Plantronics headsets, filled the facility. Large status boards towered over the front rows of terminals, detailing current Soviet military activity near each radar site. The Anaktuvuk site was much larger than most of the other sites in Alaska because of the additional search radar units on that bleak, snow-packed ridge. One of those radar units had the capability to look up as well as out.
Air Force Lieutenant Carolton gazed blankly at his round twelve-inch radarscope. His mind tended to drift more and more lately. He was nearing the end of his tour at Anaktuvuk, and he was eager to get back home to Florida. He often wondered how in God’s name he had managed to survive his tour of duty in the frigid Brooks Range foothills. The rugged wilderness and the never-ending views fascinated him. But what he wouldn’t give for just a few hours on the fine white sands of Daytona Beach, especially in spring, with all the college girls in their tight, small bikinis, with those tight . . . Carolton blinked. He saw something on the SSR, the Sky Scanning Radar. The sweep passed again, and again. It was still there.
He sat up in his chair and adjusted his headset. His months and months of training began to dominate his thoughts and actions. He pressed several commands and control buttons to manipulate the radar pulse and change the view. He rolled his chair several inches to his right and rested his hands on a computer keyboard. In a few quick strokes, he inserted an entry to correlate the screen data with the memory data, determining whether they matched. They didn’t.
Carolton turned to see whether the colonel was seated in the on-watch command position. He wasn’t. Carolton turned back to the screen. The large triangular blip held its position. The lineal readout on frame right determined that the object was approximately one thousand miles over California. Triangulation calculation determined that it was above Southern California.
Underneath the string of data, a warning pulsated:
“NONCONFIRMED OBJECT.”
Carolton could feel his blood pressure rising. He took a deep breath to calm himself and to steady his voice, which in a few moments might sound the alarm. He said softly to himself, “No false alarms this time. Be cool, Carolton. Be very cool.”
He reached for a telephone touch-tone pad, threw a switch next to the pad, and began punching in digits. He waited several seconds for the call to beam up to a synchronous-orbit military satellite 23,500 miles above Earth, then down to Cheyenne Mountain, NORAD’s headquarters in Colorado. The connection with the control center was made.
“Cheyenne, this is Anaktuvuk Ridge. Can you verify the anomaly on the field I’m sending now?”
Carolton punched a few switches next to the radar monitor. The five seconds it took for the transmission to reach Colorado seemed interminably long. There was no noise on the telephone line, none of the pops, cracks, and hisses, associated with the civilian long-distance lines. The connection was direct, with no intervening stations to add noise or to interfere with or steal the transmission — or so it was believed.
Cheyenne replied, “I have no idea. Is this Mark?”
“Yeah. Is that you, Jeff? What the hell is that?”
Jeff Capler replied, “Hey, man, I have no idea. Lemme get the OIC on this. Standby one.”
At fourteen thousand feet above sea level, the Mauna Kea Observatory was thought to occupy the best astronomical observation location in the world. The extinct volcano rose high above the tropical maritime air of the big island of Hawaii. Civilization was sparse, so light pollution did not present a problem. Scientists from around the world tended to their studies in all sections of the electromagnetic spectrum, observing objects as close as the Sun and as distant as galaxies tens of thousands of light-years away. Mauna Kea was a viewing platform from which one could almost reach out and touch the heavens.
Astronomers working at Mauna Kea had to make a slow adjustment to the altitude; the air there held 60 percent fewer oxygen molecules than it did at sea level, less than three miles below. But bearing the hardships — the altitude, the cold, and the sometimes-scary drive to the top of “the White Mountain” — was worth it. The “seeing” couldn’t be better, and the camaraderie with the scores of fellow enthusiasts about the universe created a bond.
The scientists had to battle for time on any of the numerous instruments on the peak, so they could waste little time on frivolous searches. Every moment using the facilities, from the 120-inch Infrared Telescope or the new Keck telescope, was to be cherished. Each moment of telescope time was scheduled carefully.
Surprises? There were few. But one night came the biggest surprise of all.
That night, Lee Keeling, a graduate student at the University of California, sat at the control panel, setting the parameters for the night’s study. The eighty-eight-inch Ritchey-Chretien Cassegrain-focus reflecting telescope was badly out of tune, and it took Lee extra minutes to set it up. She checked to make sure that the charge-couple device detector was up and running and that the magnetic tape recorder was ready to store the target images.
Both the telescope chamber and the control room were bathed in dim reddish light. Lee Keeling had already spent thirty minutes in the near-dark setting and tweaking knobs and switches.
She looked out the control room’s large window at the towering telescope. Through the slip opening of the dome, she saw a small swath of twinkling stars. She glanced at them for a moment and considered how much she loved her work.
Pulling her chair to the nearby computer keyboard, she turned down the image intensity on her monitor. She ran through a string of commands. She typed in a set of aiming instructions. The entire building began to rotate into position with grinding and creaking that had scared her the first time she heard it. But after many solo nights, she was used to the sound.
The building stopped moving. After another computer instruction, the large telescope began to tilt down with a light sound of meshing gears.
Lee reached into her purse and pulled out an oatmeal granola bar. As she busily tried to bite open the package, she halted and didn’t move for ten seconds. She squinted at the monitor. She put down the granola bar and leaned over to the monitor.
“What in the hell is that?” she whispered.
She stood quickly and walked over to the large viewing window. Looking up, craning her neck, she viewed the top of the scope. Sitting down again quickly, she stared at the monitor, extended her index finger, and touched an intensely bright magenta blur covering one-quarter of the viewing field.
She was perplexed and excited. “What the shit is this?”
Lee engaged the intercom button. “Professor Warshaw, could I see you for a moment? It’s an emergency.”
She heard grumbling in the background. She shook it off.
A short, balding professor walked into the room. He leaned over Lee’s shoulder and stared at the screen.
“What’s so damn important that I should stop my work, Lee? What is this you have here? What is this?”
He looked over the control panel and studied the setting as quickly as possible. He looked down at Lee again. “What’s dangling in front of the aperture?”
Lee continued to stare at the screen. “Nothing.”
“Well, what is that? Refocus.”
She initiated several commands and threw a series of switches. The focus became marginally clearer and a rough triangular shape emerged. The magenta coloring was deep and exceptionally bright. The Earth's position of the observatory, three thousand miles from California, made the viewing more angular. The Mauna Kea site looked at the object from the side, so its true shape was evident.
“What were you going to go tonight?” Warshaw asked.
“I was going to do some close-in work. Jupiter.”
The professor shook his head. “I don’t get it. Have you checked the catalog to see if it’s ours or the Russians’? Maybe it’s some newly launched piece of gear that’s not listed.”
He straightened up and put his hands on his hips. “Have you seen this before?”
Lee looked up at her beloved mentor. “Professor, it wasn’t here last night, and I dunno what this is.”
“Damn strange. The rape from this is going to have to give us some answers, because I can’t explain this. What the hell is it?”
