Breakthrough(5)

Clay turned a corner and passed a number of offices. His aide, Jennifer, was clearly expecting him when he opened the door and walked through.

“Hi John.” She said hanging up the phone. “How were the Caymans?”

“You would have hated it,” he smiled and moved past her into his office, “No reality TV.”

She grinned and followed him with a folder of her own. “I’ll be sure to cross it off my list.” Jennifer laid the folder out and set aside his stack of messages which Clay eyed with dismay.

“All of these in just three days?”

“You’re a popular guy.” She flipped through the folder for his benefit. She pulled out a number of documents from the back. “And these need your signature.”

“What would I do without you?”

“Oh stop, you’re going to give her a big head.” They both looked up to see Steve Caesare in the doorway smiling. At six foot with matching dark hair and mustache he was one hundred percent Italian but without the ties to the mob, or so he said. Caesare and Clay had been friends since the beginning, meeting in the earliest days of their now twenty-two years of service and working through most of those years and several departments together.

Jennifer smiled and left the room, flicking him on the arm as she passed.

Steve entered and sat down in a chair across from John’s desk. “Our leaves are getting shorter and shorter, pretty soon they’ll be shorter than our lunches.”

Clay dropped Langford’s folder onto his desk and fell into his chair, turning it toward Caesare. “You’re lucky you didn’t come, the shorter it is, the more depressing the return.” He took a deep breath. “Tell me why we do this again, for love of country or something?”

“It’s the chicks.”

“Langford talk to you already about the Alabama?”

“Yeah, I gave him that same folder this morning.” Caesare stretched out his legs and leaned back. “It’s strange. I haven’t seen anything like it. Probably not earth-shattering but they want to put back out quickly before the crew gets lethargic. We’ve been working with their technicians, going through everything with a fine tooth comb.”

“Find anything?”

“Not yet. We’re about to start tracing out cables.”

Clay sighed and leaned forward, opening the Alabama’s folder. “Were there any other vessels nearby using the same satellites?”

Caesare shook his head. “No, the closest ship was only using four of the same birds, not enough for a true comparison-”. He was interrupted by his cell phone. He looked at the number before answering. “Hey, any news? Okay, be right there.” He ended the call and stood up. “Borger may have something.”





Will Borger was a true throwback from the hippy generation, though technically a few years too young to actually qualify. He wore his hair long in a ponytail, likely trying to make up for the top of his head which was losing ground. He routinely wore round glasses and loose fitting Hawaiian shirts. He was the epitome of the old computer geek and Clay and Caesare liked him immensely.

The two walked into the lab, filled with computer and satellite equipment, some so complex that it was almost unrecognizable even to them. Most of the shelves were a tangle of wires and cables, connecting dozens of monitors, computers, oscilloscopes, and amplifiers. Clay estimated that Borger had enough coax cable in his office to start a television company. A wooden desk sat in the corner under an old lamp with almost a dozen keyboards, some stacked on top of each other.

Borger stood nearby hunched over a table covered with a giant red and white map. He looked up with raised eyebrows. “Hey Clay, I didn’t know you were back.”

“Yeah, almost like it never happened.”

“Ah, you must have gotten called back for the Alabama, I hear they want to get this zipped up and back out to sea next week.”

Caesare glanced down at the map. “What’s this?”

“The Earth. At least part of it. I finished stress testing the sats and didn’t find anything so I decided to take a look at the coordinates using the new Jason-2 satellite.”

Clay was familiar with the Jason-2. Replacing its predecessor the Jason-1, which itself replaced the TOPEX/Poseidon, the first satellite designed to study the planet’s magnetic field. Those early missions had changed how satellite computer chips were designed and significantly increased their ability to withstand high doses of solar radiation, resulting in a boon for the satellite industry. Yet while the first two returned a wealth of information, the Jason-2 was the first craft sensitive enough to detect fields closer to the surface. He recalled the launch creating quite a bit of excitement among the scientific community.