“Are these decibel readings accurate, Lisa?” Rock asked, looking even more confused at the data he was currently viewing.
“The main housing array on board the Orca is confirming it, sir,” Lisa said, referring to their ELINT spy trawler near the Chinese coast, just within international waters.
“That would mean the RF signals currently being broadcast would be in the gigawatt range, would it not?” Rock asked.
“It would, sir,” Lisa said.
“Could the Chinese probe produce something that strong? Is it even possible?” Rock ventured, standing again to look across the cavernous floor of his control center.
“Impossible,” Marge said. “The maximum voltage from the probe, or even the main Chinese orbiter, couldn’t exceed a megawatt, even if the entire orbiter had nothing but energy capacitors on it.
“Explanation?” Rock asked Marge, looking at her intently while she pulled up data from Lisa’s console. As the second in command of the mission, Marge had access to every work station, including the unmanned ones that automatically gathered and recorded various data from the Chinese lunar activities.
“None,” Marge said, continuing to look at her data stream from Lisa’s console.
“Damn it, Marge, guess then,” Rock ordered.
Marge did look at Rock then, not accustomed to his outburst and definitely not used to him asking her to guess. He knew her well enough to never ask that question. She was a professional, and she didn’t guess. Marge pulled a stray strand of sandy brown hair from in front of her eye, tucking it behind her ear before she answered. “The RF signals are from a secondary source.”
“What are you inferring?” Jack said now that everyone was standing. Even Tom, the mechanical engineer, stood from his desk, looking at Marge, and Tom never got excited. He was too old for that.
“I’m not inferring anything, Jack,” Marge answered rather shortly. “These signals are coming from a different source near the probe, but definitely not the probe nor its orbiter.”
“Lisa, run a diagnostic on the receivers. Make sure they are both functional and accurate. Do it now,” Rock said, looking at each of his analysts in turn.
“Running diagnostics now. Should be two minutes,” Lisa replied, her focus back on her monitor.
“Ruskies?” Tom asked, a tone of hesitation in his voice.
“Oh, please,” Marge exclaimed, impertinence in her voice.
“What? Why not? They have the equipment for it,” Tom said, piping up now. Tom was definitely old school. He seldom talked, but when he did, it usually was about the glory days of the Apollo program and the lunar landings back in the sixties. He was known to have a thing against them Ruskies, as he always put it.
“That would be a hell of a way to start a war,” Jack said. “Nothing like the Chinese and Russians duking it out in space.”
“You going to let this continue?” Marge asked Rock, giving him that look that she got when she was listening to someone less intelligent trying to explain a simple concept and failing miserably at it.
“Well, unless them spooks didn’t tell us there was Russian equipment at the Chinese landing site, then I’d rule them out,” Rock said.
“Spooks are them CIA folks. NSA are geeks, Rock,” Tom replied matter-of-factly.
“I thought we were the geeks,” Jack said.
“We are—good geeks here and bad geeks there,” Tom said, sitting back down and rubbing his back as he usually did after standing. His hair was pure white, and his face wrinkled except when he smiled. He had to be pushing seventy, if not older. Still, he was brought out of retirement specifically due to the nature of this operation, and the fact that it consisted of foreign operations on the dark side of the moon. He was one of the few living people that had actual experience with lunar operations. Screw the low orbit programs, this was a quarter of a million miles from earth, not a few mere dozen, and Tom knew his stuff well.
“I’m sure the NSA—” Rock started, but was interrupted by Lisa who stood straight up.
“Diagnostics confirmed, everything is five by five. The signal strength is rated in the one-point-two-gigawatt range, sir,” Lisa said, smiling as if she had just won an argument.
“So what the hell is going on up there?” Jack asked, his face revealing an unusually confused look across it.
Rock never got a chance to respond. He was about to grab the direct phone line that had been installed months earlier when it rang first. It could only be one person. Rock looked at his team noticing that no one was monitoring their consoles anymore. They all had their eyes on him.
Rock picked up the receiver. “Yeah, go ahead, Mr. Smith.” Rock knew the liaison officer between NASA and the NSA wasn’t really named Mr. Smith, but that was how the man was introduced to Rock’s team.
“Are you receiving any unusual readings down there?” Smith asked. Rock could hear something of a commotion occurring in the background where Mr. Smith was at in Maryland.
“Should we be?” Rock responded.
“I’m serious, Crandon. What do you have?”
Rock thought about it for a moment and then decided to roll the die. He’d had enough of Mr. Smith’s semi-abusive mannerisms and lack of information sharing. As a professional, he put science in front of politics and felt the government, his government, would do better if they operated the same way. Oh, he understood the need for national security, but he knew way too many things were cloaked under that broad umbrella and hidden from public scrutiny. He knew he was close to retirement and, while most common American taxpayers didn’t know it, most every federal employee was represented by a union including managers and directors, so he had a modicum of protection if necessary.
“Tell me what’s going on first so we can make sense of the data,” Rock said over the phone.
It was hard to gauge the man’s reaction from over a thousand miles away, especially when there were no body language clues to inform the speaker how the listener was accepting his words.
“Now is not the time, Crandon,” Smith said.
“You heard me, Smith, what’s happening on your end?” Rock asked, louder this time.
Smith must have been in a hurry as his response was quick and desperate. “They lost both their lander and orbiter. Now what’s going on there?”
Rock knew the NSA covered HUMINT or human intelligence and they had the linguists to do the job. If he said the Chinese lost their entire mission equipment, then this was being confirmed by HUMINT or actual personnel involved in the lunar operation, not just speculation or a wild hunch.
“Their telemetry stopped at oh three forty-seven hours. It appears to confirm what you said,” Rock responded.
“You’re sure it’s a full equipment failure?” Smith asked, his tone rising a bit, perhaps a touch of anxiety displayed within it.
“No, I said their telemetry ceased. There were no updates to the data stream. We have no way of knowing the status of their equipment,” Rock said, trying hard to keep his tone level. He didn’t like the man putting words in his mouth.
Smith breathed heavily for a second and then said something muffled to someone else in the room where he was before uncovering the mouthpiece. “All right, then you’re not receiving any electrical signals.”
Rock looked at his team and was glad they weren’t hearing this conversation. He knew it would frustrate them more than it was himself, and he was getting impatient with the good Mr. Smith. “Not from the Chinese probe or its orbiter. We are, however, receiving RF signals from a secondary source.” Rock knew this was going to get complicated.