“I made a discovery shortly after our feeds were stopped, with the help of Jacqueline from Networks.”
“Jacqueline Thomas?” Larue asked, his eyebrow raised.
“Yes, Monsieur. She helped me to analyse the information being sent to us by NASA. There is a lot of information, I needed some help interpreting it, and her programming skills are far higher than my own.”
Larue smiled. “I did not ask you to justify yourself, Martin, I was merely surprised you would go so far to get help, we have very skilled programmers in this department, too.”
Martín shifted his feet uneasily. “She was available at the time, Monsieur.”
Larue looked up at the young man. He was standing in front of his desk like a schoolboy in front of a headmaster. “Sit down, Martin, make yourself more comfortable,” he gestured to a chair opposite him. Martín sat down thankfully and put his hands on his knees. “So, you were saying that you had analysed the feeds from NASA at the time that they stopped relaying direct to ESA. What happened next?”
“We noticed something very strange. So far, we think that we are the first to have noticed it, it certainly hasn’t been raised publicly by either the Chinese, Japanese or Russian agencies. A little over a day before Lieutenant Shi Su Ning, the Chinese astronaut, was found dead in her sleeping quarters, we believe that NASA placed a delay of one hour and fifteen minutes in the feed between themselves and ESA. They also placed the same delay in their feed to the other agencies.”
Larue stared at him in silence for several seconds. “Comment?” he said, eventually.
“NASA have implemented a time delay in the data feed from Mars which allows them to screen everything for over one hour before it is released to any of the other agencies. The other agencies are not aware of this, and as far as we can tell they believe that they are still watching direct feeds.” He paused and looked at Larue. Larue’s smile had disappeared; his hands were laid flat on his desk, fingers splayed. “To help achieve this, they have also added seventy-five minutes to all of the Clarke’s on board clocks and timers. This means that the Clarke’s time in the delayed feed on Earth looks correct.”
“But,” Larue was visibly shocked, “surely it would be easy for everyone to find this out simply by trying to talk to the crew? There would be a huge delay!”
“The change coincided with NASA cutting off our direct feed, which would have sorted us out. As for the others, a serious malfunction of the nanostations caused NASA to stop using them, which forced a policy change on communications. On top of that, the Clarke was already so far away by then that we weren’t having direct conversations with the crew anymore, it just wasn’t practical.”
“So how did you find out?”
“Jacqueline hacked into the direct feed for a short period, and before she was cut off by NASA, we managed to view the real footage alongside what the other agencies were being sent. The time delay is real, but they’ve upped their security since, and we haven’t been able to get back in.”
Larue was taken aback. He looked out of the window and thought carefully about the situation; none of his counterparts at the other agencies had communicated anything to him directly. On top of that, NASA had certainly not lodged a complaint with ESA for the low level hacking of the data feeds. He would leave that issue for another day. For the time being he would concentrate on the facts. “Can we prove this?”
“Unfortunately, we cannot,” Martín admitted. “I recorded the nanostation feeds that show the time difference, but since then the live footage has also been transmitted normally, so it proves nothing.”
“And you haven’t been able to access the live feeds since then?”
“No. Whatever encryption they’re using, it’s impossible to crack.” He looked at Larue, who was now staring at the backs of his hands on the desk. “We’ve tried several times,” he added helpfully.
Larue looked up from his desk and met Martín’s eyes, which contrary to his smile had lost none of the joy that they had shown when he had first entered the room several minutes before. “And you said that no one else knows this?”
“As far as we can tell, we are the only ones to have seen this.”
Larue looked out of the window again. “How about the Chinese? Their relationship with NASA is very strenuous at the moment, is it possible that they know too?”
“It’s very possible, Monsieur.”
Larue looked across and raised his eyebrow quizzically. “There’s something you haven’t told me, isn’t there?”
Martín hadn’t intended to tell Larue any of this, at least not until Beagle 4 was in place. He had agreed with Jacqueline that it was best to present him with good news rather than speculation. His good mood had certainly helped to break his silence, but he was now finding it a relief to tell his manager everything. “We know of one other person who found out about the time change.”
“Yes?”
“We believe that shortly before her death, Su Ning became aware of the difference. Somehow, she must have calculated the time on Earth. This alone wouldn’t have helped her, and we’ve been trawling video footage to find any clues, but the best guess we have is that she must have had access to a watch that showed Earth time with which to verify her calculations,” Martín said. He had started the sentence slowly, carefully, but as he had gone on he had found the words pouring out of their own accord. He stopped himself from saying more, and tried to gauge Larue’s response.
Larue sat silently for over a minute, before standing up and walking to the window. He looked down at the traffic below, congested behind a bin lorry collecting recyclables from the side of the road. A motorbike weaved its way through the lines of cars, narrowly avoiding a pedestrian reading a newspaper. He looked over at the UNESCO building. The familiar tops of the trees beckoned to him; he would definitely go for a walk today.
Turning round, he looked at Martín and frowned. “You should have told me all of this much sooner, Martin,” he said. He walked over to his desk and opened the top drawer again. Beside the small wooden box was a large plastic tub. He pulled it out and popped the lid, carefully pouring one pill into the palm of his hand. He clenched his fist around the pill and replaced the tub in the drawer before picking up a glass of water on his desk. He looked at Martín out of the corner of his eyes and titled his head back, taking the pill and water in one gulp.
He sat down at his desk once more, leaning back slowly and closing his eyes, his arms placed carefully on the armrests.
Martín waited for at least two minutes before speaking. “Monsieur,” he began, “I am sorry that I didn’t tell you this sooner; we wanted to be certain that –”
“I am not concerned with that, Martin,” Larue snapped. He did not move from his chair, his eyes remained closed. Of course, he was enraged that his employee had left him in the dark, but now he had to concentrate on what was happening on Mars. If it played out in his favour, this whole situation could be his saving grace. “You did well to find out what you did.”
“Then what is wrong?” To Martín, it was simple. The Americans were hiding information from their closest technological allies, and had probably caused Su Ning’s death to keep the fact secret. It was more of a conspiracy than even his boss could have hoped for.
Larue half opened his eyes and looked over at Martín. “If I understand you correctly, and you are right in what you say, which I have no doubt you are, then this is more than a simple rivalry between competing space agencies.” He paused, shifting his body up in the chair. “NASA would not simply carry out deception on such a scale for the fun of it. Placing this time difference between Clarke and Earth suggests that this is bigger than that.”