Michael McCollum - Maker 1 - Lifeprobe

LIFE PROBE

A Novel By

Michael McCollum

Sci Fi - Arizona, Inc.

Third Millennium Publishing

An Online Cooperative of Writers and Resources

PROLOGUE

The Makers had never heard ofHomo sapiens Terra , nor would they have been particularly impressed

if they had. By their standards, mankind had little to brag about. The Makers’ cities were old when

Australopithecus first ventured out onto the plains of Africa. By the timeHomo erectus was lord of the

Earth, they had touched each of the twelve planets that circled their KO sun.

Individually, Makers were long lived, industrious, and generally content. Their population was stabilized

at an easily supported fifty billion and war was an ancient nightmare not discussed in polite company. So,

when the Makers came to the limits of their stellar system, it was with a sense of adventure that they

prepared to venture out into the great blackness beyond.

The first ships to leave the Maker sun were ‘slowboats’, huge vessels that took a lifetime to visit the

nearer stars. After three dozen such ventures, the Makers found they had made two important

discoveries. The first was that life is pervasive throughout the universe. Nearly every stellar system

studied had a planet in the temperate zone where water is liquid. Such worlds were found to be teeming

with life. More exciting to the Maker scientists, on twelve percent of the worlds visited, evolutionary

pressures had led to the development of intelligence. Two were the homes of civilizations nearly as

advanced as the Makers’ own.

The second great intellectual discovery was the realization that the Galaxy is a very large place, much too

large to be explored by slowboat. In a spirit of curiosity more than anything else, the Makers set out to

circumvent the one thing that retarded their progress. They began searching for a means to exceed the

speed of light A million years of scientific endeavor had taught them that the first step in any new project

is to develop a rational theory of the phenomenon to be studied. The Makers, being who they were, did

not stop when they had one theory of how faster-than-light might be achieved.

They developed two.

Each was supported by an impressive body of experimental evidence and astronomical observation.

Each should have resulted in the development of an FTL drive. Yet, every effort for a hundred thousand

years ended in failure.

There is a limit to the quantity of resources any civilization can divert to satisfy an itch of its curiosity

bump. The FTL program had long since passed the point of economic viability. Yet, the effort continued

apace. For while the Makers were mounting their assault on the light barrier, they found a more

compelling reason than mere curiosity to break free of their prison.

Their stellar system was beginning to run lowon the raw materials Maker civilization needed to sustain

itself.

The first signs were barely noticeable, even to the economists who kept careful watch over such things.

Eventually curves could be projected far enough into the future to foretell a time when civilization must

inevitably collapse of resource starvation. To avert catastrophe the Makers would have to obtain an

infusion of new resources, either by importing raw materials from nearby stars or else transplanting their

civilization to virgin territory.

Unfortunately, both options required a working faster-than-light drive.

The frustrated scientists redoubled their efforts. It was not until another hundred millennia had passed that

a Maker philosopher began to wonder if they were asking the right questions. The Great Thinker had

dedicated his life to the study of the years immediately following the slowboats’ return from the stars. He

noted that Maker science had taken great intuitive leaps in those years. The old records told of many

cases where the combined knowledge of two races had led to discoveries unsuspected by either.

His questions were as fundamental as they were simple: “Could it be that our concepts of how FTL may

be achieved are wrong? Is the failure to break the light barrier simply a matter of having missed the

obvious? If so, might not some other civilization have avoided our error and found the true path to FTL?”

Once the questions were asked, they could not be ignored. A program was immediately begun to

provide an answer. At first, it was a minor adjunct to the FTL research project. But as answers kept

coming up negative, as each promising avenue of approach turned out to be a dead end, the program to

PROBE the knowledge of alien civilizations grew.

By the time humanity discovered agriculture, it was all the program there was.

PART I: MUTUAL DISCOVERY

CHAPTER 1

“It is unfortunate that events leading up to the truly important milestones in the History of Man

are often so veiled by the passage of time as to be forever lost. Happily, this is not the case with

thePathfinderMission. In retrospect, we are able to pinpoint the initiating event with considerable

exactitude. Therefore, let it be recorded that 15 January 2065 was possibly the most important

day the human race has ever known. Of course, it was quite some time before any human being

became aware of that fact.”

--Excerpt from“Prelude to Pathfinder: An Official History,” Pathfinder Memorial Edition, Aurelius

Publications, New York and Luna, September 2096. By permission of the Publishers.

#

PROBE woke … in quick stages … of jumbled impressions … and stray memories.

The attack of integration vertigo lasted a dozen nanoseconds while its brain assembled itself into a

functioning whole. Finally, the fuzziness was gone and it was once more awake and aware.

The next step in the preprogrammed “wake up” sequence was a complete sensor scan of the heavens.

As expected, PROBE found itself in interstellar space.The stars were cold, hard points of radiance

etched against the fathomless black of the cosmos. All save one.

PROBE checked its elapsed time chronometer and found that it had been ten thousand years since the

Makers first launched it outbound on its quest. It had been a long journey -- as Jurul had warned that it

might.

The thought of Jurul brought a sudden flood of long dormant memories to PROBE’s main processing

units. Jurul had been the Maker in charge of constructing Life Probe Model CXI, Mark III, Hull Number

53935.

Jurul’s voice was the last thing PROBE had listened to before launch.

PROBE remembered that day vividly. A smallish planet of dark blues and purples slid by in silence

below while a full dozen of its brethren in various stages of construction trailed it in orbit. The scene in the

external sensors was calm, almost serene. However, the external views showed nothing of the frantic

activity inside PROBE as the Makers completed their final systems checkouts.

Then the poking and prodding of the ground controllers had fallen off and Jurul’s voice had ridden the

laser beam that tied PROBE to its creators.

JURUL: “Final status check, Nine-three-five.”

PROBE: “Status is go, Jurul. Ready for launch.”

JURUL: “Pre-launch sequence has begun. Repeat your mission objectives, Nine-three-five.”

PROBE: “I am to seek out a technologically advanced civilization among the stars and make contact. I

will learn all I am able of their scientific knowledge and obtain their help to return home and report.”

JURUL: “And if you should happen to discover a civilization that has developed a means of traveling

faster-than-light?”

PROBE: “I will conceal all evidence of my origins until I have confirmed that such beings can be trusted.

When I am sure that it is safe to do so, I will direct them here to the home world to bargain for their

secret.”

JURUL: “Very good. How long to initial boost?”

PROBE: “Coming up on eight-to-the-second-power seconds.”

JURUL: “Good luck and good hunting, Nine-three-five”

PROBE: “Luck to you as well, Jurul.”

PROBE had remained in communication with the Makers for nearly a full year following launch, but the

contact had consisted solely of exchanges of engineering data with the ground computers. Never again

had Jurul’s voice -- or that of any other Maker -- ridden the laser beam. Shortly after PROBE reached

cruising velocity, even that tenuous link with home was broken, and with it, all hope of ever speaking to

Jurul again.

For when PROBE returned to point of launch (if it returned), Jurul would be ancient dust and it would fall

to one of his descendants to take the report.

However, to report, PROBE must first return home. That was proving no easy task. It had accepted the

same gamble every life probe took when it boosted into the unknown, a bet five of six eventually lost. It

was beginning to look as though PROBE might become another grim statistic.

Life probes, the direct descendants of the ancient slowboats, were the ultimate of the Makers’ many

creations. Powered by gravitational singularities, they climbed to nearly one-tenth the speed of light

before shutting down their boosters. Thus, PROBE was destined to spend most of its life in transit,

plodding slowly outbound toward the galactic rim, with the eternity between stars its greatest danger. No

intelligent construct, whether organic or machine, could maintain its sanity on such a journey. Its memory

banks would overflow with data long before the first waypoint sun if nothing were done to protect them.

It was for this reason that the Makers had created CARETAKER and the long sleep.

CARETAKER was PROBE’s alter ego. Its brain shared the same basic circuitry as PROBE’s. The

difference came in the way those circuits were connected. PROBE was truly sentient, with a firm grasp of

the meaning of the pronounI . CARETAKER, however, was merely a computer, an idiot savant -- very

good at performing its function, but lacking any single iota of imagination. It was CARETAKER’s

function to watch the sky during the long flights between suns, to remain ever vigilant for that one stray bit

of energy that betrayed its creators as intelligent beings.

When it found one, it signaled PROBE awake. It had done so four times now.

The first sighting had come less than two hundred years into the mission, when PROBE was barely within

its search area. Excitement welled up in its circuits like a nova sun. The excitement grew as it scanned the

star in question, noting unmistakable signs of an advanced civilization. However, a quick check of the

star’s position showed it to be outside the narrow cone of space that marked PROBE’s ability to

maneuver.

That was PROBE’s first great disappointment.

The next two contacts were no better. One was with a race on its way back to savagery, no longer able

to repair the few machines that still operated. The other was sketchy and far out of range.

Now it was time to turn to Contact Number Four.

#

A single bright star loomed directly ahead on PROBE’s predicted orbit. It was a yellow dwarf (GO

spectral type) and close. In fact, too close. The star actually showed a visible disc in the multi-spectral

telescopes.

The realization of the star’s proximity sent PROBE’s damage control circuits surging. To come so close

and not wake until the last instant suggested a serious component failure. When the damage control

report came back negative, PROBE resolved to look elsewhere.

The problem was quickly located in the memory banks where ten thousand years of systematic

observations of the heavens were stored. A hundred years earlier, while still ten light-years closer to the

galactic core, CARETAKER had detected a pattern of sinusoidal electromagnetic radiation emanating

from the vicinity of the yellow dwarf.

CARETAKER had taken a disgracefully long thousand nanoseconds to recognize the incoming signal for

what it was. Then the analysis had taken more precious time. The signal was taken apart and its various

parts were studied singly and in groups: amplitude modulated . . . midcommunications band . . . a raster

pattern of parallel lines . . . high and low intensities that formed a two dimensional array when arranged in

proper sequence . . .

Clearly, CARETAKER had intercepted a primitive televid signal.

Such an event should have brought PROBE to wakefulness in short order. However, the very capabilities

that rendered CARETAKER immune to the senility that strikes between the stars also made it a bit too

literal in its interpretation of orders. The quality of the contact had been disappointingly bad. From the

nature of the intercepted signal, it wasobvious that the originating civilization was far below mission

parameters of acceptability.

PROBE slept on.

The star continued to grow larger. Soon after contact, the telescopes were able to detect two of the

system’s planets, gas giants to judge by the interference lobes they cast on the star’s diffraction pattern.

The signals grew vastly stronger with time. Much of the apparent increase was due to the lessened

distance to the source. But not all. Some was due to an exponential increase in transmitter power level. It

was a hopeful sign, but still insufficient reason for CARETAKER to wake PROBE.

Then the creatures that created the signals had burst out into space. AsCARETAKER closed the

distance to five light-years, the system of the yellow-dwarf came alive with primitive ships. By now,

CARETAKER could see the outer gas giants directly and could infer the existence of at least four other

worlds closer in. The third out from the star was the primary source of the signals and the planet of major

interest.

Finally, when the projected upward curve of the creatures’ progress showed they would reach minimum

acceptable standards within a few decades;CARETAKER judged the time to be ripe.

PROBEstirred from its slumber.

PROBEpondered these facts for nearly a second before deciding how to handle the new contact. True,

the observed civilization was still a relatively crude one, but the speed with which it had moved into space

was encouraging. The final decision to make rendezvous or not could be postponed for two-thirds of a

year -- not much time in which to gain an understanding of an alien civilization. Still, should the decision

be a positive one, it would be better to be in the proper position for a minimum energy rendezvous orbit.

PROBEcalculated the fuel required to perform the necessary midcourse correction. The drain on its

precious reserves was minuscule, but increasing with every second it delayed.PROBE swiveled its body

to point its booster at the yellow sun and slid protective shields over all exposed sensors.

There was a brief delay whilePROBE double-checked its internal status. Everything continued to report

“ready for acceleration.” Then, for only the second time in ten thousand years, a tiny, powerful sun burst

forth fromPROBE ’s innards.

#

Independent Prospector ShipLiar’s Luck fell through space near the edge of the asteroid belt as the

strains of the Gilbert and Sullivan’sMikado Overture echoed through the control bubble. Breon

Gallagher hummed in time with the music as she busied herself with the usual end-of-watch duties.

Brea was a tall woman of about thirty, with black hair sufficiently long to accent her femininity, but short

enough to preclude its interfering with the neck seal of a vacsuit in an emergency. Her green eyes scanned

the status screens, while long, thin fingers danced across the computer terminal built into her acceleration

couch. On Earth, she would merely have been pleasant looking, pretty if you stretched the point.

However, in the male dominated society of the Asteroid Belt, Brea was considered beautiful.

Her attire consisted solely of shorts and halter. She stretched her supple form against the restraining

harness and reached around to scratch at an itch in the small of her back where the plastic covering made

her sweat. Afterwards, she continued the check ofLiar ’s major subsystems, calling up engineering

displays for environmental control, fuel state, and power pod status. She noted that the carbon dioxide

level in the living quarters was on the high side of tolerance and entered instructions into the ship’s

computer to reduce it.

Liar’s Luck, like all ships of her class, was a modified dumbbell shape. Crew quarters and control

spaces were housed in a ten-meter diameter sphere at the forward end of a thirty-meter long I-beam

thrust member. Clustered around the thrust beam were cylindrical fuel tanks, each heavily insulated to

hold the cryogenic hydrogen that fueledLiar at -270 degrees C. At the rear of the ship was the power

pod, a ten-meter hemisphere that housed the ship’s mass converter.

As Brea punched up the display for power pod status, her gaze was automatically drawn to the scarlet

point of light and accompanying readouts that measured the health of the tiny I-mass. TheI-mass

singularity was second cousin to a Hawking Black Hole, the answer to two of the most perplexing

scientific mysteries of the twentieth century; and ultimately,Liar ’s primary source of power.

The singularity massed ten thousand kilograms and had a diameter of 10-13angstroms. It was held in

check by a strong magnetic field that had the secondary function of funneling charged hydrogen into the

tiny bottomless pit’s tidal region during periods of boost.

Brea studied the status graphs for thirty seconds before satisfying herself that all parameters were

nominal. The converter was almost foolproof, but it never paid to be slipshod when dealing with

something in which so many of the fundamental forces of nature were wrapped into such a tiny package.

She cleared the screen and turned her attention to the countdown clock. Still a few seconds to go yet.

She settled back into her couch, brushed a strand of jet black hair from her eyes, and whistled off key as

she watched the red digits blink down towards 00:00:00. In ten minutes, she would be off watch and it

would be Bailey’s turn to strap himself into the torture rack of the duty-couch while she headed for that

shower she had been dreaming about for the last couple of hours.

The timer buzzed briefly in her ear, signifying that it was time to start the search for asteroid ALF37416,

an undistinguished, unnamed hunk of rock that could (just possibly) make the two of them rich beyond

their wildest dreams.

The music had enteredThe Noble’s Chorus when Brea reached out to turn it off and unship the control

stick. A quick press of her thumb on the jet control toggle and a twist of the control stick itself caused a

number of things to happen in quick succession. She listened to the faint noise the attitude control jets

made as they fired -- the sound conducted into the control cabin through the metal of the hull. The stars

began to rotate left-front to right-rear around the control bubble as Brea was tugged forward by a

few-hundredths-of-a-gee acceleration.

Bailey’s kinky hairdo, worry lined visage appeared on the intercom screen before her. As usual, he was

in the galley. Of the two of them, he was the better cook by far.

“What’s up, Brea?”

Her green eyes turned briefly to his image and then back to the artificial horizon display. She watched the

imaginary plane of the ecliptic rotate past on the screen. She gave the control stick a backward twist and

thumbed the jet switch again. The quiet hiss of jets rumbled through the cabin and died away as the stars

ceased their lazy dance. The universe returned to the illusion of rock steadiness once more.

“Not to worry, Stinky. I’m just lining up for the visual search.”

“Kind of early yet, isn’t it?”

“Nonsense,” she said. “We should have been able to spot the rock two hours ago.”

“You know what I think?”

“No, but I imagine you’ll tell me anyway.”

“I think that old habits die hard and you just want to get your hands on a set of telescope controls again.”

She made the expected rude noise in answer to the not altogether unfounded accusation.Liar ’s little

scope did not hold a candle to the big “thousand meter effective” compound instrument at Ceres

observatory, but it too was a precision instrument -- of sorts.

“Care to make a small wager on your chances of success?” Bailey asked. She could almost see him

rubbing his hands together out of the screen’s field of view.

She hesitated. In the three years since Greg’s death, Brea had learned her lesson when it came to

wagering with Bailey. In many ways, he reminded her of her late husband. Greg had been something of a

gambler too . . .

“What are the conditions and the stakes?”

“If you spot it before end-of-watch, I’ll take your turn cleaning out the recycling system next week. If

not, you take mine in two weeks. Deal?”

“Deal!”

“It doesn’t count unless it’s old ‘Alfie-416’. How are you going to prove you won?”

“I’ll turn on the recorders and we’ll settle up when we get close enough for a naked eyeball ident. Fair

enough?”

“Fair enough. Your dinner will be ready in fifteen minutes and I’ll be up in ten.”

“Yeastburger again?”

He made a show of sniffing at the air. “Either that or the head’s backed up.”

“Wonderful,” She said, switching off the intercom. Her face settled into a pensive expression as she

wondered if Bailey had sandbagged her again. Bailey had been a prospector since before she was born

-- a difference in age she kidded him about on the rare occasions when loneliness drove her to seek

companionship in his bunk -- and if he thought they were too far out to see the rock, he was probably

right. Still, cleaning the filters was the worst job aboard, and any possibility of getting out of it was well

worth jumping at.

She let her fingers dance over the computer keyboard and listened to the high-pitched whine of the main

scope being turned on its mounts. Within seconds, the image on the workscreen had steadied to show a

section of the Milky Way in the Constellation of Aquila . . . and little else.

There was no telltale, misshapen speck of light among the crowded star clouds.

Brea swore softly under her breath and called for magnification. The scene swelled, with various fixed

and charted stars moving out from the center and then falling completely off the screen. One point of light

was dimmer than any star and hovered at the right edge of the screen. She stopped the expansion and

coaxed the telescope a few seconds of arc to starboard. This was where things began to get tricky.

With no air to distort the image, a spaceborne telescope can theoretically operate at any level of

magnification. There are limits, of course. There arealways limits. In practice, the maximum resolution

possible was a function of both the mirror’s diameter and of how steady the telescope mount could be

held. It was the latter effect that usually predominated.

As Brea watched, the tiny blob of light slowly drifted across the screen. RotatingLiar had changed the

pattern of solar heating on the hull. The changing thermal stresses led to variations in the telescope mount

that made it hard to hold the scope on center.

Brea struggled to hold the suspect point of light in the scope’s field of view. When things had stabilized

out, she punched for auto/suppression mode. The main viewscreen showed no change. However, the

view on the small repeater screen beside her showed an immediate effect. The known and charted stars

began to disappear as the computer wiped out the fixed landmarks of space one by one. It was an old

Belter trick. Erasing the known stars from a visual made the rocks stand out that much starker.

She activated the video recorder and then zoomed the view once more. The tiny blob expanded into an

image of a misshapen asteroid half in light, half in dark. The image itself was barely the size of a half

decad piece, and reminded Brea of that classic first photograph of Deimos taken by one of the early

space probes. The sun was at a good angle and even though the image was small, it was detailed enough

to make future identification possible. Twice the image darted off the edge of the screen, quickly to be

recentered as Brea wrestled with the scope stabilization controls. She held the scope centered for nearly

half a minute before reaching over to snap off the recorder.

A spacer picks up careful habits if they live long enough. Where a groundhog would have left the record

for later, Brea always checked and double-checked everything.

She called for replay.

There was the quick expansion of the zoom, followed by the jerky recentering of the asteroid image,

followed by another quick zoom. Brea nodded in satisfaction. It was a good shot of the target.

She was about to reach up to turn the recorder off when a new star appeared on the screen. Apparently,

she had missed its original appearance when the star field had cluttered the main viewscreen. Now, with

only the asteroid image for competition, the newcomer stood out sharp and bright. She watched

dumbfounded as it brightened over a period of ten seconds, until its apparent magnitude was nearly 2.5.

Then, without warning, the star went out as quickly as it had been born.

Brea blinked, suddenly unwilling to believe what she had just seen.

“Well?” Bailey’s voice asked, emanating from the intercom speaker. “Did you get it?”

Brea swallowed hard.

“I think you’d better come up here, Stinky.”

“What’s the matter?”

“I want you to look at the record I just made.”

Bailey raised his eyebrows in a quizzical expression, but did not comment as he turned his back to the

screen pickup and launched himself out through the galley hatch. Five seconds later his two-meter long,

muscular body popped out of the hatch at her side. As usual, he wore a faded red jumpsuit unzipped to

the chest. She could see the forest of silky gray hair entwined in the Velcro and contrasting sharply with

the mahogany skin beneath it. He pulled himself into the other control couch and strapped down.

Brea finished resetting the recorder and pressed the playback control. She remained mute as Bailey

watched the whole sequence unfold again. Bailey said nothing, but reset the recorder after the scene had

played itself out. He viewed the record a second time before scratching at a. three-day growth of beard.

“What is it?” Brea asked.

“Don’t know,” he said. “It sure isn’t sunlight reflecting off a rock beyond ‘416. The color’s all wrong.”

“Besides, we’re practically out of the Belt now. There’s nothing big enough or shiny enough to catch the

sun like that out there.”

“Maybe two smaller rocks went crunch and vaporized each other.”

Brea hesitated, unsure of how to broach a taboo subject among prospectors. “Do you think it could have

been a ship?”

Bailey considered it for a moment before nodding. “Could have been. It is too violet to be a normal drive

flare. I’ve never heard of a mass converter blowing up, but I guess it would look something like that if it

did.”

“What do we do?”

“We report, of course. If it was a miner’s boat, the expanding cloud of monatomic H should stand out

like a sore thumb to a search scope. Besides the possibility of survivors, there is always the I-mass to

consider. Salvage of an already energized singularity will bring a lot of decads.”

“Can we line up on Ceres close enough to get a radio message through?”

“No need. Where is that PE cruiser that was in conjunction with us last week?”

“UNS Valiant?She should be a few million kilometers foreorbit and sunward from here.”

“Get her on the horn and transmit a copy of this record to them. When you get the cruiser, suggest that

they start a visual search and tell them we will do the same on the emergency frequencies. If anyone

survived, we should be able to pick up his or her emergency beacon. If not . . .” Bailey let his expansive

shrug complete the sentence. If there were no survivors, or if there were and their suit emergency

beacons had been damaged; then it really did not matter.

#

Sir Harry Gresham, Sky Watch Administrator, Overseer of space traffic throughout the solar system,

Protector of Planet Earth (at least insofar as the continuous watch for meteors large enough to cause

significant damage was concerned), drummed his fingers on his desktop and considered his future. After

thirty years of politicking his way up the ladder of success in the UN Bureaucracy, he had come to what

appeared to be an insurmountable obstacle. Sky Watch Administrator had seemed a good career

opportunity at the time he had taken the job. Now, however, he was not so sure.

For one thing, being four hundred thousand kilometers from UN Headquarters limited his access to the

men who held his fate in their hands. Like a provincial Baron of old, the mere fact of distance tended to

place him at a disadvantage in the never-ending struggle for promotion. Besides, Blanche did not like the

small town ambiance of life aboardGalileo Station . She was forever nagging him about obtaining a

position in New York. She claimed she would not even mind his taking a step down in such a transfer,

but he knew differently. Blanche enjoyed being “The Colonel’s Wife” and would never let him forget the

loss of status that would accompany demotion.

No, his only solution was promotion to the UN Policy Committee, the next step up for any ministry-level

bureaucrat. Unfortunately, the Promotions Board was top heavy with scientific types this year. A mere

civil servant had little or no chance of attracting their attention. Now, if Gresham had taken a technical

course of study at University rather than political organization, or if he had written a scientific paper of

note, it might have been a different story entirely. As it was, it looked like permanent exile for him.

He sighed and punched up the morning report. He scanned over the usual garbage, things like young

Esterhauser complaining that he needed more photo-interpreting equipment, or old Max Ravell

complaining that the backup computer had been down for ten minutes again on Thursday. Some things

were eternal in this universe. One such was that a department head was never satisfied with the resources

you provided him.

The maintenance report was one bright spot in the sea of complaints. Maintenance was Fusako Matsuo’s

bailiwick, and she had it running like a well-oiled machine. Preventative maintenance was nearly a week

ahead of schedule this quarter. He made a note to stroke Fusako’s ego by giving her another letter of

commendation for her personnel file.

Finally, he turned to the Anomaly Reports for the previous twenty-four hours. There were not more than

half a dozen. Most were the normal clutter that Sky Watch always picked up. Three involved Peace

Enforcer vessels on maneuvers; two were merchant ships that had deviated from flight plan without

reporting that fact. The latter would receive routine citations and fines.

His gaze fell on the final AR: “Unidentified Incident of Radiance at 1925 Right Ascension, -00.05

Declination.” On a hunch, he called up the report reference. The screen flashed through a rainbow of

colors -- indicative of a video recording about to start -- and then settled down to the absolute black of

space punctuated by a spectacular cloud of stars.

A new star suddenly appeared near the edge of the screen. Gresham would not have noticed it at all

except for the red rectangle the computer used to highlight it. The speck of light persisted for exactly 9.85

seconds and then winked out. Gresham frowned and punched for replay. Half an hour later, he was still

ignoring all theCALLS PENDING signals on his desk and watching the playback for the twentieth time.

He whistled while he watched.

If he played his cards right, “Unidentified Incidence of Radiance” just might be his ticket home!

CHAPTER 2

PROBE watched the burn from the vantage point of two heavily shielded cameras mounted on the

booster pod. As soon as the last of the sensor searing flame died away, it began calculating the new orbit

Michael McCollum - Maker 1 - Lifeprobe

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