At the same time, he had to admit it was fascinating. Yeah, most of the ideas he’d had pitched, thrown and hurled at him since joining the DARPA Special Technologies Office had been pie-in-the-sky where they weren’t downright scary in a “if it’s stupid and it gets you killed, it’s stupid” way. But a few of the ideas, like the synthetic gecko stuff and the third generation tac-net he was examining, were pretty damned hot. The faster they got in the hands of the troops, the better, although he was still thinking about the uses for that gecko skin. The problem was settling on just one. He’d figured out a way to use it for sealing troop doors on personnel carriers.
“I hate these things,” Captain Sparling said, waving at his computer. “Sure, they increase productivity. Sure, they make communication easier. But that’s a two-edged sword.”
“Yes, sir?” Shane said, frowning and carefully not looking at the captain’s computer. He’d learned that was a bit of a no-no. The team, given the way that data was compartmentalized, really should have had separate offices. Instead, they just tried not to read over each other’s shoulders. They had been trying to get moved over to the main office in Arlington where there was more room available, but the political nature of this program required them to be stationed at the Pentagon.
“You’re on TDY,” Captain Sparling said, sighing. “Dump everything you’re working on and get packed. You’re going to Huntsville, Alabama. Redstone Arsenal. God knows who’ll be handling what you’re doing now.”
“What’s there now?” Shane asked. He’d been to Huntsville a couple of times in the course of his duties looking at projects. Not in the last month, though; the town had virtually shut down from his perspective.
“Something called ‘Asymmetric Soldier’, ” Sparling replied. “The name is classified Secret and the purpose is Top Secret, Compartmented. And I don’t even have the compartment name. But you are detailed to it ‘for a minimum of ninety days.’ ”
“Crap,” Shane said, sighing. “Well, I guess ours is not to question why… When do I leave?”
Ret Balclass="underline" Aha! Megiddo my friend, where have you been? Did you hear Hiowa Lend’s report last Sunday?
Caller: Yes Ret, I did. And she was absolutely correct.
Ret Balclass="underline" How so?
Caller: There is no denying it now. Mars has changed. It has been terraformed by aliens. It’s no longer the Mars we used to know.
Ret Balclass="underline" I see.
Caller: It’s only a matter of time before more happens.
Ret Balclass="underline" Such as?
Caller: Have you noticed that the Space Telescope Science Institute is no longer posting new images from the Hubble of Mars?
Ret Balclass="underline" They aren’t?
Caller: No. In fact it has been nearly a year and a half since any new Martian images have been posted. That is somewhat unusual.
Ret Balclass="underline" Really?
Caller: Yes it is. I’m telling you that the CIA has commandeered the Space Telescope Science Institute and corrupted them.
Ret Balclass="underline" To what ends, Megiddo?
Caller: I’m not certain, Ret. I just don’t know But I suspect… to communicate with their alien masters. The Roswell landing was not a crash, Ret. It was a controller, sent to make contact with our government and begin the conquest…
“Holy crap,” Roger said, quietly, as the image from the Hubble filled the oversized monitor.
The Hubble Space Telescope had been for all intents and purposes commandeered by Neighborhood Watch. Multiple observation cycles were implemented on the outer planets and the data gathered there was not very promising. Albedo shifts had already been measured on Callisto, while the returns from Rhea and Hyperion at Saturn were less conclusive. Titan looked iffy, but the standing hypothesis was that it was a function of that planet-sized moon’s dense atmosphere.
The returns from Io and Europa couldn’t have been more conclusive. Among other things, Europa and Io both now had noticeable atmospheres; the halos were distinct in the image.
“You’re going to owe me a year’s salary,” Traci said, chortling quietly at the scientist’s disbelief. The current Io image was sharp enough that major features of the distant moon could be distinguished and it was apparent that the entire face had been radically altered. In fact, it looked as if one section had been deep strip-mined. For the change to be visible at this distance, even with the resolution of the Hubble, the structure had to be at a minimum four hundred kilometers across. The way things were going, the probes might just eat the moon.
“I think we should run a sharpening filter on the—” Roger said, reaching for the mouse on the image analysis computer.
“My job,” Traci said, slapping his hand aside. “You rocket scientists and telescope builders can’t do planetary measurements worth a flip. I’m not so sure the image can be any sharper. The aliasing seems to me to be due to being at the limit of the sensor’s resolution.”
“Traci dear, I’ve been analyzing IMINT imagery for more years than you’ve been in school,” he said.
“You’re not that old. And what’s mint imagery?”
“IMINT — it stands for ‘image intelligence.’ Astrophysicists.” Roger shook his head.
“Well, all I know is that the astronomical imagery data from the Hubble looked better before you ran that filter again.” She pointed at the now blotchy image on the monitor. Traci hit the undo button in the software menu to restore the image.
Traci had proven to be well worth her weight in gold. She had gotten in touch with the right people at the Space Telescope Science Institute and was trained on the Hubble-cycling protocols in just a few short days. She had gotten a lot of help from a fellow named Hamilton there. Jack Hamilton had been the first person to really detect the change in the Martian albedo and had been aware of the problem from the beginning. The STScI had been gagged by the President to keep the space telescope data quiet, so Jack and his professors had been briefed into the Neighborhood Watch from early on.
Traci had a command station set up in the HOSC at Huntsville and had it connected and encrypted through the program’s protocols. So between the folks at the STScI and the command station in Huntsville, the Hubble Space Telescope was being tasked one hundred percent by the Neighborhood Watch and Traci was doing the driving — with a little input from Jack and, of course, Roger.
She knew, more or less, what was going on at Saturn and its moons. Traci wasn’t quite sure what to make of the Titan data.
The moons of Uranus had similar changes. Ariel in particular had a surface albedo much greater than ever before measured. Likewise were the moons of Neptune. Triton specifically had obvious changes.
The albedos of the Kuiper Belt Objects including the Pluto-Charon system were harder to determine changes since there was less highly accurate albedo data available. However, some preliminary investigation suggested that Pluto was slightly brighter.
These experiments took the better part of the month following the Neighborhood Watch final report briefing to the White House. At the same time they’d gotten to work on Asymmetric Soldier.