“Roger that, Watchdog reset. I’m showing no contact with Percival. I repeat… no contact with Percival. Has anybody got anything on their monitors?”
“Low bandwidth telemetry shows that multiple Watchdog software and hard resets were triggered. No further telemetry from the LGA is being received,” the C DH console operator said.
Roger waited patiently for reports from all consoles, but he was not at all happy with what he was hearing.
“Nothing from the low-gain antennas?”
“Negative, Roger.”
The final assessment was that contact with the probe had been lost.
“Okay, let’s start up the reconnect protocols and follow the procedures.”
Tom Powell sat back in his chair and made a Jetsons space car noise, blowing air through his pursed lips as he looked at something on his monitor. He muted his mike and turned toward Roger, Alan, and Ronny.
“You know, when I came up with the idea for that ‘Nuke Mars Now’ bumpersticker when all those probes started disappearing, I meant it then, and I reiterate the sentiment now. Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action: NUKE MARS NOW! I knew everybody should have listened to me!”
“Why?” Alan asked.
“Well, I’ve already compiled the alert signals — there weren’t that many of them — and the last one was of massive spacecraft bus structural integrity loss. The first alerts were from the exterior boxes, then they moved structurally inward to that final alert. All this took place in about a second or so. It looks to me like the spacecraft was dismantled from the outside inward. Fast. Something took it apart at a relative velocity of about 15 km/s to the planet. I mean, something flew up to it, matched velocity with it, then ripped it apart.”
“Tom, don’t jump to conclusions,” Alan said with a shrug. “Even if it flew apart, couldn’t they — whoever ‘they’ are — have just shot it down — not that that’s any better mind you — or couldn’t the spacecraft just’ve failed. I mean it could have just hit a micrometeorite or something.”
Roger looked at the big mission clock on the overhead screen. The mission time display told him that the telemetry commands sent back to the Mars probe should be getting there in about eight more minutes. Be patient, he thought to himself.
“Sure,” Tom argued. “But I don’t think that’s what happened. The data doesn’t support it. Nuke Mars Now!”
“Tom,” Roger said quietly.
“Yeah?” the rocket scientist replied angrily.
“It’s on the table. Now shut up.”
The eight minutes passed, then another ten, then another thirty and no response came back from Percival. More command signals were sent out — still no response.
After hours of searching for signals from the probe, the team finally decided that the spacecraft was lost. Most certainly the folks at the DSN would continue listening for the spacecraft for days, but as it stood at the moment, reestablishing contact seemed unlikely.
Roger and Dr. Guerrero had continued to check systems, talk to team members and just plain wait. The two of them had been holed up in the HOSC support room for more than twenty-two hours and it was time one of them said what they both had been afraid to. Roger rubbed his eyes, then yawned. He turned to the DDNRO who was adding another packet of sweetener to his coffee cup.
“Well, Ronny, it looks like somebody didn’t want us getting any closer to Mars.”
Chapter 8
“Mr. President, Joint Chiefs, advisors.” Ronny Guerrero began the debriefing of the top advisors and leaders of the United States of America. The briefing was held in the secure room just down the hall from the Oval Office and was at the highest security protocols. Ronny had completed the mission that he had been asked to do and had done it well. The mission was as successful as it could have been. Success, however, was a bit moot at this point. Ronny had to tell the President of the United States what they had discovered and that the discovery might mean the end of the human civilization. The Mars mission was an easier task.
“Although we lost all contact with the Mars ISR probe, we can report that the mission was a success to some degree. We were able to piece together the timeline of events and the details of the mission and data collected are shown in the classified final report you have in front of you.” Ronny held up a copy of the Neighborhood Watch final report.
“Analysis of the alert messages in the telemetry data from the probe suggests that at 1 minute and 4 seconds after reaching its closest approach altitude of about 54 kilometers at a Mars-relative velocity of about 15 kilometers per second the spacecraft was completely destroyed. All systems were functioning properly and no unusual loads were being created by any of the spacecraft systems. Then within a period of less than a second the spacecraft was lost. This at first appears to suggest that the spacecraft was, for want of a better term, ‘shot down,’ that is, destroyed in an act of immediate and catastrophic destruction. The spacecraft was well above the atmosphere and a micrometeor impact would not have been as catastrophic. An analysis of the sequence of alerts suggests that the spacecraft was pulled apart from the outer periphery equipment inward to the spacecraft structure. In other words, something dismantled it in about a second.” Ronny flipped through the report in front of him to the data section.
“If you’ll turn to the data section, you’ll find there is more startling information. We were able to capture a complete image with 60 meters per pixel resolution and a partial image of 20 meters per pixel resolution before contact was lost with the spacecraft. The imagery was obtained by the spacecraft and downloaded just before its destruction and it shows the change in the surface of Mars.”
Ronny flicked his laser pointer at the reconnaissance image on the screen.
“There are vast grids and infrastructure like textures and structures on scales of tens and hundreds of kilometers. There are several single structures many times larger than the Great Pyramids of Giza. Impact craters as large as cities have been excavated and built upon and their specular content has dramatically increased, suggesting refined materials.
“The general reflectance of the region in the imagery shows that the region is much more specular than Mars should be. The large specular regions suggest shiny, most likely metallic, structures, consisting of synthetic, smoothed minerals or concrete, or glass-covered structures.
“Also, a fractal analysis of the imagery has been conducted and the fractal dimension of these images is that of an artificial landscape.
“In summary, it’s very little doubt that the changes in Mars are due to intelligent design. There are, in fact, now canals, as well as roads and buildings, on Mars.
“Alarmingly, the structures are much larger than human standards and even in Martian gravity must require advanced knowledge of manufacturing principles. Also, these structures must have been constructed in a period of no more than about two years as no changes in Mars were detectable before then. This suggests rapid construction on a planet-wide scale, which is far beyond human capabilities.
“Finally, the Neighborhood Watch team has discussed at great length the data and implications of this occurrence. We have gathered a team of scientists, engineers, mathematicians, exobiologists, cosmologists, and others, and after much debate, it’s our opinion that our new ‘neighbors’ can only be considered as hostile; they first destroyed all of our probes that were already there; second, moved in on a massive scale without contacting us although they knew we were somewhere in the neighborhood due to our probes; and third, they destroyed our ISR probe while they must have been able to realize from its trajectory that it would fly by Mars causing it no harm.