The messenger (2) Shift Change 2 (B - C)

Charlotte sat at the mess-room table scrolling through pages on her slate. From time to time she sipped restlessly at a glass of orange-juice sat in front of her. The door opened prompting her to look up at Beatrice as she walked in. Charlotte gestured at the seat opposite her and continues reading pages on her slate.

Beatrice sat down, picked up the mug of coffee from the table and took a long swig. The coffee was tepid and weak, not at all to her taste. She waited for Charlotte to look up again.

C: “Well. It looks like you’ve been having a busy time. Care to tell me about it?”

B: “Sure! Andy spotted a couple of anomalies which I’ve been looking into. Let’s get the standard hand-over out of the way first, and then I’ll show you the fun bits.”

C: “OK. Let’s go through the motions.” She yawns.

For the next 10 minutes or so, Beatrice swiped the pages on her slate, indicating things which were operating normally and pointing out a few parameters which were near the edge of the allowed values. From time to time Charlotte asked questions, but didn’t always seem to pay attention to the answers. Eventually Beatrice reached the end of the standard hand-over report, paused and then continued.

B: “As you know from the log, Andy spotted a couple of anomalies during his shift but you probably don’t know much more than that.”

Charlotte nodded and sipped her orange juice.

B: “You might describe one as external and the other as internal. Neither of them seemed particularly important, so he left them to me to handle.”

C: “Seemed?” and nodded again.

B: “Let’s start with the internal one. You can see that what Andy spotted were these periodic pulses of white noise in the sensor array. Actually he didn’t spot them, the monitoring systems did and drew them to his attention.”

C: “Did he suggest what was causing them?”

B: “No. He left me to find out. Andy noted the regularity of the pulses, but not much else. It’s not surprising that none of us noticed, because they have been at such a low level. He thought they first appeared 48 hours ago. He was mistaken, they’ve been happening for much longer. Look, you can see here.” She indicated something on her slate and Charlotte looked at hers. “The pulses have actually been there for more than a week. I can spot them now, because I have the period and I can tell the systems what to look for.”

C: “Could the pattern be just that, a pattern introduced by the pattern-matching algorithms? Could they be just an artefact of the signal processing which will disappear all-of-a-sudden?”

B: “I considered that possibility, but I don’t think so. Look at this.” She swiped to a new page on her slate. “Not only has the period remained the same, but the intensity of the pulses is increasing, and the width of the pulses is getting longer. The period of the pulses peak to peak has remained the same, but each one takes a longer time.”

C: “Even at the current low level that’s kind-of concerning. Have you developed any theory about what’s causing the pulses?”

B: “No idea what so-ever! The pulses are still too short to get any kind of ‘direction’ on them. They’re probably be internal, originating in the array or in our systems. That would suggest that something is failing. The thing is, neither the systems nor I have identified anything internal which runs at that particular frequency. Conceivably they could be real and be originating outside, but there’s no indication of what is causing them. What makes the situation slightly worse is that I’ve had the systems model the rate of increase. Look here. It’s possible that the rate of increase of both the intensity and the length of the pulses is increasing. That’s a second derivative effect. Not only are the pulses getting stronger, but they may be getting stronger more quickly. It least it should make the cause easier to identify.”

C: “That really would be worrying. Basically we could have an escalating problem which could affect communications and navigation and we don’t know what is causing it.”

B: “Basically that’s it. I’ve sketched out some possible further investigations here. It’s up to you what you do. They’re only suggestions and honestly I’m guessing anyway. At the moment I’ve put the whole thing down to signal processing, our old friend Jupiter or little-green-men. I would be much happier if I knew what the cause was. This combined with the external thing (which I’m coming to) was enough to make me put a short report into Head Office.”

C: “Do you think that was necessary?”

B: “Probably not but it’s what procedures said I was supposed to do. All I’ve sent is the most limited heads-up on both issues. You can look at the text in the message log. It shouldn’t make anyone at the other end panic. Meanwhile, let me show you what’s happening with the external event.” She swiped to a new page. Charlotte looked at a diagram on her slate.

Charlotte nodded again and took a sip from her orange juice.

Beatrice swiped to a new page on her slate and Charlotte looked intently at her’s.

B: “The navigational monitoring systems drew Andy’s attention to this incoming object. Here (she indicates an annotation on the screen) is where he first logged it. Here’s where he handed over to me. For all that time it was nothing more than a moving point and a vector. You can see it is coming it pretty fast. A good bit faster than the average comet anyway.

(Beatrice took a breath)

You can see our course and positions as well. Once we had identified the point it was relatively simple for the systems to project its track, forwards and backwards, on a Newtonian, ballistic basis. Plotted forwards the object presents no risk to anything sun-ward. Plotted backwards you can track it back outside the orbit of Pluto. Andy suggested it might be a dirty snowball which something-or-another had disturbed from way-out-there. With the limited information he had available that was certainly a plausible explanation but the high velocity is more suggestive of something from interstellar space. That would make it something of a rarity.

C: “You ‘that was plausible’ as if something has changed. Has something changed?”

B: “Yes. I was getting to that. We had a bit of luck. If you look here, “ she zoomed the image inwards on a point near the beginning of her shift. “You can see that the incoming object passed sufficiently close to one of the objects out beyond Saturn. There was enough interaction for the systems, mostly me really, to estimate its mass. You can see the estimate here. It’s not very precise but, within the stated limits I’m pretty confident of the value.”

C: ”So we have something pretty big coming it pretty fast but we don’t know what it is.”

B: “That’s about the size of it. Strictly speaking it’s heavy, rather than big. It’s too far out for the sensors to tell us anything about its size and shape, so we can’t have a density yet. Therefore I can’t even hazard a guess about what it’s made of. It could be a big dirty snowball, or a substantially smaller nickel-iron cannonball. Of course, it could be anything in between. There simply isn’t enough information to say anything more.”

C: “Well it’s something else interesting to look at. It will add a little spice to the humdrum of the next hours. Is there anything else?”

B: “Andy identified the point where we could make a course change to rendezvous with the object and, working back from that, where we would need to decide that was what we were going to do. I’ve updated the estimates and the points and times are indicated here and here. And there is one thing more: if you look here, you can see that the object’s path passes directly between us and Neptune. At that point it will still be beyond the range of the active sensors, but if you’re lucky and the sensor array plays nice, then you may be able to use the transit to estimate the overall size of the object, therefore its density and that might allow us to guess what it was made of and influence our decision about whether we want to intercept it.”

C: “That makes sense. It’s worth me making the effort to monitor the transit. If the results indicate that we are dealing with a rather large snowball, then I can make it a lower priority. If it seems to be something smaller and denser then maybe our luck is in. Good call!”

B: “OK. Thanks. That’s all. You have control.” She presses her thumb to her slate.

C: “I have control.” She presses her thumb to her slate and nods.

B: “I’m off for a shower. Have you got the wine for the pub night sorted?“

C: “Yup. Premier Grand Cru Synth for the red and a cheeky little Chardonnay for the white.”

B: “Could you rustle up some Prosciutto as well? I fancy some of that.”

C: “I’ll see what I can do.”

B: “See you there. Have a good one.” Beatrice leaves.