Alison squinted at Chris with a look of indignation. “Not everything!”
“Ali you’re great,” he said. “But you’ve got to let some of this stuff go. I don’t like the military either, and you know what, maybe they end up screwing us again somehow, but I don’t want to go through life being pissed off all the time.” Chris looked back out on the water. “Look, I don’t know this guy Clay, but it seems like he genuinely appreciates our help with this. Okay, are they getting some PR out of it with the press, sure, but who cares? They can’t get some attention without us getting it too.”
Alison stared at him for a long time and finally exhaled. “Fine. I’ll give him a chance.”
“That a girl,” Chris said. He put his arm around her and gave her a quick squeeze. “Now let’s enjoy the view and try not to think about the fact that he’s probably going through your purse right now.”
Inside Lee looked up from his monitor again at Clay who was leaning against the wall to steady himself against the rolling of the ship, and watching the crew members at the helm.
“So John, what is it exactly that you do for the Navy, if you don’t mind my asking?”
Clay raised his eyebrows. “Not at all, I work for a department in the Navy called Special Investigations.”
“That isn’t one of those ‘I’d have to kill you’ type of groups is it?”
Clay laughed. “No. Our investigations are unique issues, usually outside of normal naval operations.”
“What kind of things do you investigate?” Lee was curious.
“Most of it is classified but it typically has to do with system malfunctions or communication problems. An example might be two systems using overlapping frequencies and causing problems. Pretty boring stuff.”
Lee smiled. “That sounds about as boring at a cocktail party as what I do.”
Clay laughed again. “Well if we run into each other at a party, I’ll listen to your stories if you listen to mine.”
“You’re on,” Lee said laughing along. “Well for what it’s worth, it nice to be around another tech head for a change. I think I bore the team a lot with my geek speak.”
“That’s understandable,” he nodded. “It’s a hell of a project you’re working on.”
“That it is,” agreed Lee. “Things have gotten really exciting since the translations started. We didn’t expect things to happen so quickly, but we’re certainly happy about it. We were afraid it would be just the opposite, especially Alison.”
Clay nodded and looked out the window at Chris and Alison talking to each other.
“Listen,” Lee continued. “About Alison, she’s a great girl. She’s just very protective over this whole thing especially Dirk and Sally. She had a bad experience with the Navy in the past, kinda got screwed career-wise, so she’s not too excited to go down that route again.”
“I can understand that.”
“She’s smart as a whip too,” Lee added with a wink. “So be careful.”
Clay smiled. “I’ll watch myself.”
Captain Emerson approached and looked at Clay. “We’re starting to see some chop.” He then looked down at Lee. “Any idea, son, on how long we might be waiting here?”
“No sir,” Lee replied. “That would probably be a question for Ali and Chris.”
Alison checked her watch and looked at Chris. “They are coming back right?”
“I sure as hell hope so,” he said squinting.
The door opened behind them and they both turned around to see Emerson and Clay step outside. Emerson glanced at the water again and approached Alison. “Ma’am any word from your dolphins?”
“Not yet.”
“Well it looks as though we’re seeing some chop building. If the swells increase too much, we won’t be able to stay here.”
She raised her eyebrows. “You mean leave?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“We can’t leave without them!”
“Ma’am I understand your dilemma, but if things get too rough I have no choice but to weigh anchor. I cannot risk the safety of the other passengers.”
“How much longer do we have?” she asked.
“It’s hard to say. If conditions continue as they are, I would estimate we have one, maybe two hours.”
Alison was clearly starting to worry. She nodded to the captain and turned back to the water looking for signs of Dirk and Sally.
As they stepped back into the bridge, Clay gave Emerson a curious look. “Have you noticed anything strange about the weather?”
“What do you mean?” Emerson asked peering back outside.
“Well the current is getting rougher, but there is no wind and not a cloud in the sky.”
16
Sitting on twenty-nine acres of land and housing over seventeen miles of corridor, the Pentagon was one of the world’s largest and most efficient office buildings. On the bottom floor, tucked away in a tiny lab sat Will Borger toiling over a program to try to remove some of the static from the Triton’s video. It started with a long call with one of the programmers at U.C. Berkeley who spent an hour sending over computer code and walking Borger through the logistics, including the mathematical algorithms necessary. Since Borger was not looking for planets he had to rewrite several large sections of the program.
Behind him Caesare walked back in with an extra-large pizza and two six packs of Jolt; his payment for commandeering the afternoon of the smartest guy in the building. Borger had been typing nonstop from the time Caesare left, and upon returning he was beginning to worry that this might take even longer, in which case he was on the hook for dinner as well.
“How are we looking?” Caesare asked sitting back down next to him.
Borger took a break and ran carefully through the syntax of the text he had just added. “Had a couple of bugs I’ve been trying to work out. I think we may have it.” He switched to another window and typed a command to compile all the pieces again. “Good, no errors this time.” He typed one last command and slapped the enter key. “Let’s give it a whirl.”
Borger turned around and popped open the top of the pizza box. He grabbed a big piece and a napkin and turned back to the monitor. The screen filled with the video footage and advanced the frames again in slow motion. Caesare bit into his own slice and leaned back watching.
The frames advanced quickly until the computer reached the point in which the first dots of interference became visible in the video. Suddenly the video slowed considerably and the computer could be seen scanning the frozen picture pixel by pixel and eliminating the extra dots before moving to the next. The two men watched silently as each picture became clearer and clearer. By the time the program finished, both Borger and Caesare were leaning forward trying to understand what they were looking at in the final frame. The Triton had changed direction as the object on the screen was no longer visible in the corner. It was now stretching across most of the window.
“What in the world is that?”
Borger shook his head. “No idea. It looks like…an arc of some kind.”
“Is that,” Caesare asked getting even closer, “on the bottom?”
“I think so. See some of this darker material around the outsides? That’s coral.” He thought a moment. “This reminds me of the bundles of fiber optic cable that the telecommunications companies lay underwater, but this is much bigger.”
Caesare frowned. “It’s not cable. The ocean is not that deep here but even with this depth we should not be able to see it. There’s not enough light that far down. And there is no way the Triton’s lights are strong enough.”
“True,” Borger agreed. “But that means that whatever it is, it’s emitting its own light.”