The messenger (3) Shift Change 3 (C - D)

Dave sat at the galley table sipping a mug of strong black coffee. He had placed a glass of orange juice in front of the seat opposite him. Between sips he looked intently at pages on his slate, sometimes scanning back to revisit earlier pages. He was surprised that Charlotte was late, that’s not like her at all, and he was puzzled by some of the notes she had added to the shift log.

The door opens and Charlotte rushed in. She is a little flushed and seems to have been hurrying.

C: “Sorry I’m late. Something has come up which I think you will want to look at.” She sips her orange juice.

D: “Is it urgent, as in ‘we do it ahead of the standard hand-over’?” said Dave looking at her intently. He’s a big man with a florid, craggy face.  His long hair is combed back into a ponytail.

C: “No. It’s not that urgent. But I think it is important. I may be wrong, but I think we may have to call the others in on this. Let’s do the standard hand-over and then talk about it.”

D: “What! Get them out of bed? Andy won’t be pleased about that. OK. Let’s do the hand-over.”

For the next 5 minutes Charlotte and Dave got through the report pages on the slates. Both were a little impatient and both wanted to get to the end of the standard hand-over so they could deal with the important issue that Charlotte is excited about. Eventually they got to the end.

C: “Now we get to the important points.”

Dave leant forward.

C: “You’ll be aware that nearly a day ago the systems drew Andy’s attention to two issues: an internal issue, that there was periodic interference on the main sensor array; and an external issue, that we had an incoming object which has a trajectory which will cross ours in a little over a day from now.”

D: Dave nodded and said: “Yes, I know about those. Something to keep us all occupied. I was a little disappointed that both things had come along a once.”

C: “You may not be disappointed for much longer. Andy worked out a plan for dealing with tackling the incoming object. Basically, if we were going to intercept it here” She indicated the appropriate point on the slate’s chart, ”then we would have to initiate the manoeuvre here, and that means that if we are going to make do everything by the book, then we would have to make the decision to intercept before here, which is during your watch”

D: Dave nodded: “I understand. So in a way, either the decision about the decision is down to me, or we all get involved.” He paused. “Is there any more information? More than is in the logs, I mean.”

C: “Just a little. Beatrice investigated the problem with the sensor array. She didn’t really establish much, except that the problem seems to be getting worse. That’s worrying. That alone justifies the message she’s sent to head office.” Dave nodded again.

C: “Regarding the incoming object, she also managed to estimate its mass, based on a deflection here. She put together a plan for getting some more data about it, even though it is still well beyond the range of our sensors.”

D: Dave nodded again. “That’s the transit of Neptune idea. Did it work?”

C: Charlotte took a deep breath. “Yes. And that’s the point. The incoming object has become significantly more interesting on three counts.”

D: “Three counts. What are they? You were only trying to estimate the density.”

C: “That’s true, but there are other things I had to find out at the same time. First of all, the density comes out as substantially higher than a snowball. The volume estimate is subject to a pretty big margin of error, because of the way it was calculated. The object is not solid nickel-iron, but it’s could be solid, and I mean solid, water-ice. That’s very unusual. Second,  I had sort-of assumed that the object would be spherical, or at least spheroidal. Look here, it’s very long and thin. The length to width ratio is more than 12. It’s very long and thin. And finally, three, there are indications, based on the way its silhouette changed as it passed in front of Neptune, that it is rotating around the long axis.”

D: Dave exhaled and scratched his chin. “It’s ticking a lot of boxes for alerting head office and investigating, isn’t it?‘’

C: “Afraid so. It’s just a couple of points short of ‘drop everything and investigate’ What do you think?”

D: ”Getting people out of bed or not, I think it’s time to call a meeting.”