Wavelength Excerpt

Arecibo Observatory, Commonwealth of Puerto Rico
October 12, 1992

“Gentlemen and ladies, what you are looking at is the archeology of the future. Five hundred years ago, Christopher Columbus left a stagnating Europe and discovered a new world. Because of his bold venture, the political, religious, and scientific world was changed forever. Today marks the beginning of another such adventure.

“From the moment the first human raised his eyes above the ground out of which he sprang, he has sought physical and spiritual guidance in the stars. Today instead of looking at the stars, we will listen to them. We do this to answer mankind’s greatest question: ‘Are we alone?’ The enthusiastic cooperation of dozens of nations is evidence that humanity is united as never before by this quest.

“No one can predict when or if we will hear anything, but the quest stands as its own reward. Who knows? Perhaps we will happen across a broadcast relic -- or better yet -- receive a message meant especially for us.”



Downrange, Cape Canaveral, USA
March 21, 2030

“Everything looks good, Colonel,” the co-pilot of the Achilles announced. His faceplate pointed downward as he focused on the dozens of readouts that made up the control panel.

“Agreed,” a woman’s voice responded. Her faceplate was turned upward. Even though the ship’s computer brain steered the Achilles during takeoff far more accurately than any human pilot, the age-old admonition to “keep your eyes on the road” was a compulsion that few pilots had been able to resist since Kitty Hawk. Besides that, the baby blue Florida sky was giving way to the sparkling cobalt of space as the Space Plane climbed out of the atmosphere.

Colonel Samantha Jacobs removed her helmet and the motion drew her auburn hair to the top of her head where it floated in the absence of gravity as if she were underwater. Its length was just beyond regulation, but the way her co-pilot looked at her told her that he didn’t mind at all. Sam had gotten used to attracting attention from men over the years. A rare few of them had been dangerous and the rest were merely boorish. Paul was a mostly enjoyable flirt. After all, if he had really been interested in something more intimate, he would have made a move during the two years they had practically lived together in the flight school that served the United Space Agency.

She smiled knowingly. “If you don’t keep your mind on your work, you’ll end up sticking this thing where it doesn’t belong.” She stroked her hair down into place. “This is your maiden voyage after all.”

“Yes, Commander. And as you know, it is most exciting the first time,” his mock sheepishness sounded thick in his Russian accent.

Ten minutes earlier, at 12:14 PM, a signal from Mission Control raced at nearly the speed of light through the DNA-laced circuits that formed the Achilles’s nervous system, and its engines roared to life in a pulse of chemical ecstasy. Unlike its predecessor, the Space Shuttle, the Space Plane launched toward the stars horizontally down a five-mile runway. Also unlike the shuttle, this next generation of manned orbital vehicle would make its return to the Kennedy Space Center in one piece. Named the “Black Horse,” it had quickly become the primary transport vehicle between the surface and the International Space Station, “Freedom.” It hadn’t taken Runway #3 long to become as familiar to space enthusiasts of the 21stcentury as Launch Pad 39A had been during the moon race of the 1960s.

Sam glanced into a mirror at the dark-mustachioed passenger who sat in the seat normally reserved for the mission specialist. Hachiro Monda was already turning green as he sank deeper into his seat as the Achilles reached the end of the runway, pulled three Gs, and clawed its way into orbit. It was the first trip off earth for the Japanese engineer.

Although there had been instances of cooperation between the major space-faring nations, it took until the year 2020 for the United States, the Russian Federation, and Japan to grasp that unless they consolidated their resources, none would enjoy a profitable future.

“I apologize for my temporary distraction,” Zimrovich continued. “You are right that I am new to this vehicle. But you are forgetting my experience in the Russian space program. Say what you want -- back then we truly had to fly ourselves in and out of space. Today’s ships run themselves.”

The computer shut down the engine at the precise moment required. The resulting loss of g-forces propelled all three astronauts upward against their restraints and then bounced them back into their seats.

The Japanese passenger spoke in a weak voice, “What do you do if you think you’re going to throw up?”

“Right now you have only two options,” Sam responded. “The first is to hold it down. I would advise taking the first option, because you don’t want to experience the second.”

“Okay.” The engineer made a gulping sound.

“Thirty seconds from orbital insertion,” Sam announced into the microphone that connected her to the co-pilot and to ground control. “Prepare for burn.” When the appropriate thrusters fired, the ship turned its belly toward the sun so that the heat shield could provide protection against solar radiation. “Control, we have achieved our initial orbital path,” she reported to those who were monitoring from earth.”

A voice with a west Texas accent sounded in her earpiece. “Roger that, Achilles. We show you on path for cargo deployment in T-minus three hours, 16 minutes. Mark.”

“Affirmative, control. Will check in as scheduled. Out.”

“That was one smooth ride you gave me, Colonel,” co-pilot Major Paul Zimrovich said. He pulled his own helmet off and turned toward her.

Sam hooked her helmet into its niche and unbuckled her harness. She gave a slight push off the seat and began floating toward the ceiling. “Just keep your fingers off the wrong buttons.” She grabbed a support ring and turned herself around to face aft. “Are you alright, Hachiro?”

The Japanese scientist had removed his helmet. He looked toward Sam but kept his head still, as if afraid that any sudden motion might increase his nausea. “I will be fine.” He turned toward Paul and offered a weak smile. “I agree with you. She handled the launch very well.” He unfastened his harness. The action caused an equal and opposite reaction. He floated upward from his chair. His face flushed and his eyes widened.

Zimrovich opened a cabinet and pulled out a plastic bag. “I think you are going to need this,” he said just before the scientist’s cheeks swelled. The engineer took the bag and bent to the task while Sam and Paul turned their attention to other matters.

Three hours later, Sam studied their cargo through a six-inch diameter window in the airlock door. The satellite sat small and nondescript in the middle of the payload bay, temporarily fastened to the floor by clamps that would release during its disposition. Its owner, an obscure firm located in rural south Florida, had agreed to the United Space Agency’s significant surcharge for adding it to the mission at late notice. Satellite deployments were a rare assignment for manned spacecraft. Most companies employed what had come to be called “orbital launch firms.” Deregulation and the cheapening of formerly high-priced technology had resulted in the proliferation of many such companies. Poorer nations such as Somalia and Paraguay had found the industry to be an uncomplicated way to generate much-needed revenue.

“You know this is my last trip,” Sam said to Zimrovich over her shoulder.

“Da,” Paul answered. “You haven’t changed your mind, I see.”

She turned around. “I guess I’ve seen enough of things up here.” Her focus moved past him to the huge blue planet that drifted in space beyond the front shield window. North America spun slowly past two hundred miles below. She pointed toward the sphere. “My place is right there.”

Zimrovich turned to look. “Where exactly? It is a big planet.”

“Western South Dakota. The summer my older brother left for college, our family spent a week vacationing there. We spent Independence Day on Mount Rushmore. Then we took the road through Spearfish Canyon on our way to Devil’s Tower.”

“And this Spearfish Canyon was a special place to you?”

She nodded. “It is one the most beautiful places I have ever seen. I guess I was like a lot of other kids at that time, their eyes locked onto video screens. But when I saw that mountain stream and those tall pines, I knew I would come back. Last month I bought a forty acre place – of course thirty of those acres are straight up.”

“You bought the side of a mountain?”

“Yeah.” Sam turned toward the sound of tapping keys and saw Monda hunched over a laptop computer working an equation. The barf bag was nowhere in sight. “A few hours more and Japan will appear over the horizon. But we don’t have the time to wait. Suit up,” she ordered.

“That includes you, Monda. We have a satellite to launch.” At her signal, her co-pilot pressed a switch and opened the cargo bay doors. Reflected light from the earth bathed the inside of the bay. She preceded Zimrovich into the cargo bay while Monda stayed in the cockpit and observed them through the airlock’s window.

She drifted toward the satellite while he remained at a small console. The plan was simple. Press one switch and the clamps would release. Press another and the satellite would ascend on a blast of high-pressure air. When it reached a safe distance, small rockets would ignite and send it on a trajectory that would conclude in a geo-synchronous orbit over somewhere that Sam and Paul were not privy to.

“Achilles, this is command,” a voice spoke from hundreds of miles beneath the shuttle. “We show one minute to satellite insertion.”

“Roger that,” Paul answered. “Our boards are green.”

Sam gave him a thumbs-up signal. Sixty seconds later, Paul pressed a button and the securing clamps rotated back silently in the vacuum.

“Board remains green,” he reported.

“Command, we are ready to deploy payload,” Sam announced.

“Proceed, commander. Our telemetry remains good.”

“Deploying,” Paul said and pressed another button. The satellite rose out of the bay on a stream of compressed air. Particles of dust swirled around in the light as the satellite cleared the Achilles and shrank to little more than a speck against the greenish brown of the American plains. Sam turned her attention to the work of locking down the now empty bay and closing the doors. She looked at where the satellite had been and paused.

Something didn’t look right.

“Do you see anything out of the ordinary?” she asked Zimrovich.

He gave a cursory glance around the bay and shrugged. “Looks like an empty cargo bay to me.”

“Is your board still green?”

He looked down. “Da. No problems here.”

She shrugged and started toward the exterior door of the airlock. Her fingers closed around the handle of the airlock door as her mind put the pieces together and realized what was wrong. She spun slowly around and saw a gray block of metal on the floor of the cargo bay where the satellite had left it.

Five hundred yards above the Achilles, a countdown inside the satellite reached zero and a beam of invisible light raced back toward the Space Plane.

“What is that?” Sam pointed.

Her co-pilot turned to see what his commander was concerned about. “What . . .?”

The small but powerful device hidden within the metal block detonated and blew a hole in the side of the ship, rupturing the fuel and oxygen lines that ran along the wall. The mixture erupted into a ball of fire that carried Samantha Jacobs and Paul Zimrovich into space. A second explosion blew the airlock door apart and separated the command cabin from the rest of the ship. Hachiro Monda might have survived a while longer had he followed his commander’s order and secured his helmet to his space suit. The vacuum of space sucked his final scream out of his ruptured lungs.

Mortally wounded, the Achilles began an unplanned descent that would deposit its remains in the Pacific Ocean seventy-five miles southwest of Samoa.

Fifteen minutes later, the satellite received a signal from a ground station and responded by opening a hatch in its side. Several panels of radar-absorbing material swung forth and wrapped around it, leaving only a small antenna exposed. A series of rocket burns moved it into a higher geo-synchronous orbit above the Aegean Sea where it powered down and awaited its next orders.


Arecibo, Puerto Rico, USA
October 8

Jim Talbot stood on a walkway and looked down at the Arecibo radio telescope. Thousands of highly polished aluminum panels reflected the sub-tropical sunshine back into his eyes. It was the oldest and still largest of its kind.

He leaned his almost two-hundred-pound, six-foot frame confidently against the sturdy railing and listened as an intern spoke to a group of visitors lined up along a lower catwalk.

“Gentlemen and ladies, thirty-eight years ago someone else stood in this very spot and referred to what you see as ‘the archeology of the future,’” the white-coated woman said. “It is an appropriate term. We are digging among the stars and what optical telescopes cannot see, we can hear.” The visiting members of the United World Council’s Committee on the Peaceful Use of Outer Space had heard all of this before. Nevertheless, they appeared impressed.

“The collapse of the large dish at Green Bank in 1988 set the International Search for Intelligence in Space back for a while, but through the determined efforts of the late Senator Robert Byrd, an even larger and more useful dish was built in its place. When Ames, California, and Jodwell, England, joined Green Bank and Arecibo, ISIS transformed a third of the Northern Hemisphere into one huge interferometer.” The observer team nodded in apparent awe.

Jim lingered behind as the intern led the group ahead to another observation point. He wasn’t really needed. These observers were little more than tourists -- feed them generic descriptions of the scope’s operations, let them snap a few harmless pictures, and on they would go to the souvenir shops, restaurants, and beaches.

Reporters were another matter. They could be difficult, especially those who worked for smaller papers. They didn’t consistently follow the rules of the media game and could ask simplistic and sometimes embarrassing questions. “How far away can the dish pick up signals? How were ‘cosmic static’ and intelligent signals differentiated? Even if a signal were received, how would it be translated? How was the fifty billion dollar annual price tag justified in the national budget in light of the recent global crash?” How seldom it was that Jim heard a question that addressed the deeper and truer issues of the project, even of life.

Jim arched his back, enjoying the warmth of the sun after having spent the last two weeks in his office buried deep in the hill that surrounded the dish. He reflected upon how ambition and happenstance had come together to bring him to this island at the eastern entrance of the Caribbean. When ISIS came calling, it was the culmination of his ambition. Let the media fixate upon project budgets and technical trivia. That’s not what had secured the commitment of his career and life.

Jim looked past the railing at rolling acreage surrounding the dish. Ninety-five percent of the Arecibo installation was underground. A ten-foot electrified fence marked the perimeter, its two gates watched by small guardhouses. All incoming vehicles were routed along a ribbon of asphalt that ended at a tunnel sealed by a steel door. ISIS had to keep a low profile in the fierce techno-war being fought by several corporations, non-profit groups, and national space agencies who vied to be the first to answer mankind’s oldest question, Are we alone in the universe? Several of these groups employed surveillance satellites as well as human agents in the hopes of stealing even a micron of information. Concerns far beyond the financial mandated such protection. The wrong people could misuse, alter to suit their purposes, or announce such information in an ill-timed manner. Its gathering, understanding, and distribution had to be carefully managed.

That was Jim’s job.

Those who criticized the Project just did not understand. Jim knew why they had to spend such large amounts of time and money listening into space, even when the needs of America’s urban battle zones screamed for funding. The end of the cold war had only served to expose man’s tendency to find hot wars to fight. The Pakistani-Indian Crisis of 2014 had nearly brought about the nuclear winter that most thought had been left behind in the successes of Reagan and Gorbachav. It was ironic that the Kashmir region over which the two countries had fought so bitterly would remain uninhabitable for at least another seventy years.

ISIS was needed because the answer to man’s problems was not in man. If it was, humans did not know how to access the key that would unlock their potential. Even if the human race did manage to avoid Armageddon, it seemed doomed to the misery of having to relearn the same lessons century after century. Science, philosophy, literature – each kept coming up empty. Even religion had proven itself impotent – nothing more than a distraction. Orthodox Jews longed for the worldwide acceptance of the Torah that would usher in a messianic age. Astrologers divined planetary alignments. Buddhists sought personal Nirvanas through the obliteration of desire. Christians identified signs of the imminent return of Jesus to earth. New Age self-help gurus were pronouncing that the Christ was already here.

Mankind had proven its inability to take the next step in its evolutionary process. This was the real driving purpose of ISIS. If it was true that Man was alone, then the universe was headed for a cosmic dead end. Jim rejected that. Certainly someone in the cosmos had found “The Answer.” Such an advanced society would not be stingy with such life-giving information.