Dark Star Rising Second Edition (Pebbles in The Sky) (5 page)

Eric nodded, “Thanks Mike, I will speak to Peter.”

Mike gestured toward the USB drive sticking in the side of the laptop. “I assume you have all this data on the thumb drive, can I borrow it?”

“Sure,” said Eric, “Peter and I both have other copies.”

“I will be in contact as soon as I know something, Eric.”  Mike turned and quickly walked out to his car, pulling up contacts on his cell phone as he went.

Mike made his way to his blue government issued sedan and started back to his office at the JPL complex.  Fumbling with his cell phone while driving was not something he was very good at but he gave it his best attempt as he had several phone calls to make.  He dialed his first number and reached Mattie, the secretary he shared with several other researchers at JPL.  “Mattie, this is Dr. Banscott, I need you to do two things for me ASAP.  Get hold of Dr. David Honstein’s secretary in Washington, find out his itinerary for the next couple of days, then get me a plane flight to wherever that is and reserve me a car and lodging nearby. Tell his secretary to inform Dr. Honstein that I am coming and need to meet with him urgently.  Damn it.” Mike dropped his phone as he had to take the steering wheel with both hands to dodge some crazy old granny driving about twenty five mph on the highway in a fifty five mph zone.  He grabbed the phone again after getting back in his own lane.  “Mattie, you still there, did you get all of that?  Yes, I know it is Friday afternoon Mattie, and you have plans this weekend.  Yes, Mattie, this is very urgent.  Please do this for me and I will arrange for you to have enough comp time to take all of next Friday off, is that fair enough?  Ok, thanks Mattie, you’re an angel!  I should be back at the office within fifteen minutes or so.”

Having set that wheel in motion, Mike dialed the next contact he needed, his wife Patricia.  “Hey honey, I am on my way back to the office on some urgent business.  I wanted to let you know not to make any dinner plans for us tonight.  I just found out I have to go out of town on urgent business to meet with Dr. Honstein from NASA.  I hope to be back home in a couple of days.  Yes, I know this is sort of short notice, but it cannot be helped.  We have had a problem come up and I have to go talk to some people to get it resolved quickly.  I need you to do me a favor honey. Will you please throw me some clothes together for say, three days, and put them in my travel bag?  I will swing by to pick them up before I go to the airport. I am sorry honey, I love you too.” Mike broke the connection just as he was pulling into the parking lot at JPL. 

After parking, Mike sat in his car and went over his mental to do list.  “One more phone call to make, this will be the tough one,” he thought to himself.  He hit the contact number for Dr. Mary Beth Davis, director of Hubble Space Telescope operations at JPL. “Hey Mary Beth, this is Mike Banscott. Yep, just getting ready to bug out for the
weekend, but I have to go to Washington to try and meet with David Holstein at NASA.  No, I know that does not sound like a fun weekend. No, Patricia is not going with me.  Yes, it is related to funding issues.  But listen, that is not the reason I called.  I need a really, really big favor.  Mary Beth, we have known each other a long time or I would not ask this of you.  I need you to arrange me some priority time on the Hubble.  Yes, I know that is asking the impossible.  No, Mary Beth, I have not filled out the study requests, but if you insist I will get them submitted as soon as I can.  No Mary Beth, this definitely cannot wait about four to five months for a time slot.  I need you to do a priority override and get these studies by Monday.”

David held the phone away from his ear.  He had not realized that Mary Beth was even capable of the language she was using.  After her tirade had ended he spoke up. “Mary Beth, I told you it was a big favor.  I would not ask you to do it unless it was very, very important.  What am I looking for?  I am looking for a Brown Dwarf.  Yes, I understand that Hubble is not the ideal instrument for that, but this one is not that far away, I think.  I understand Mary, but unless I am mistaken, Hubble might be able to see this one if we are lucky.  How close...well within one light year I would think.  Yes, you heard me right.  I really need this study done Mary, and I need the results and reason for the search kept under wraps until I can talk to David Holstein.  I understand Mary. Just see what you can do.  I am going to email you the coordinates and if you can do a narrow field search around those it should suffice.  Sure, sure, looking for a suspected new comet would be a good excuse…or say a gyroscope is acting up. Just make something up.  I will be in Washington, call me on my cell phone.  Thanks Mary Beth, I owe you a big one!”  Mike grabbed his keys and headed toward his office.  “It is going to be a long weekend,” he told himself.

Chapter 4

March 19
th
, 2016

Washington, DC

Mike Banscott departed his plane at the Ronald Reagan National Airport in Washington at 7:40 am Saturday morning.  He had left LAX airport in Los Angeles almost five hours ago but due to a weather delay and the time difference it was morning here in Washington and he had been up all night without sleep.  The woman across the airplane aisle from him had fussed and messed with her two year old the entire flight.  They should just not allow children in first class he had decided.  It made it impossible to sleep.  He contemplated taking a taxi to the government vehicle lot to pick up his car, but he was so tired at the moment he just could not bear the thought of driving.  He chose instead to go straight to his hotel room.

  After checking in and going up to his room, he did not even bother to get undressed.  He just shed his shoes, pulled the blanket up and fell into a fitful sleep.  He awoke at three o’clock that afternoon. Damn he thought, I forgot to set the alarm on my phone.  Picking up his phone he attempted to check his messages. As soon as he turned his phone on it immediately went into battery saving mode and it started blinking to let him know that the phone had less than five percent of its battery life left. “Damn, damn, damn,” he said to himself.  His trip was not off to an auspicious start.  He dug his wall charger out of his luggage and plugged his phone in to charge while he shuffled into the bathroom for a shower and shave.

Feeling much more alert after his shower, he put on a pair of slacks, a shirt, and checked his phone again.  It indicated his battery was back up to twenty percent, so he could now check his messages.   His face broke into a big grin. He was going to have to get his secretary Mattie back at JPL a raise.  She had left a message for him that Dr. David Honstein had invited him over to dinner at his house at five o’clock today.  “Oh shit, five o’clock,” that was going to be cutting it close he realized.

He grabbed his laptop, satchel, keys, and ran out the door.  He was halfway down the hall when he turned and ran back to the room and grabbed the car charger for his phone.  “Thank God for navigation and map programs,” he thought, but they were worthless if his phone was dead.  He hailed a taxi at the lobby and headed for the Government car lot to pick up his car.  From the looks of the address and the route on his Google map application, he might just make it by five pm.  He was lucky it was a Saturday and not rush hour during a week day.

Mike pulled into the driveway of the suburban Washington home promptly at five o’clock.   He rang the doorbell and it was answered by a darling little girl with blonde hair who looked about five or six years old.  “Can I help you?” she asked. “We don’t want any today, and I am not supposed to talk to you anymore because you are a stranger.”  Then she shut the door in his face.  Eric just stood there a moment and checked his email to make sure he had the right address.  The door opened again, and this time he was greeted by a face he knew, Dr. David Honstein, Director of NASA.  “Come in Mike.  Come in, sorry about Sally, my granddaughter.  She can make it to the door before I can even get out of my chair.  Sally dear; run tell your granny that our company is here.  If you will come with me Eric, it is so pretty out this evening we are going to grill some steaks out on the patio.  We’ll stop and grab a beer from the kitchen on the way.”

On the way through the kitchen David said, “I have not seen you but once or twice since the Spitzer project ended.  I see your name on lots of budget requests from JPL though.  I usually have the uh, misfortune of disapproving a lot of your requests.  I do hope you do not hold that against me.  Right now though, let’s enjoy dinner and we will talk about what brought you out east after we stuff ourselves.”

A delicious dinner of steak, grilled corn, and salad was served and was accompanied by the charming company of David’s wife and his granddaughter Sally.  Afterwards, Mike and David sat down and nursed a couple of more beers in lawn chairs on the patio.  Sally and her grandmother had left to go do some shopping for some springtime clothes so they had the house to themselves.  Your wife is just as attractive and charming as I remembered her and your granddaughter is adorable,” Mike complimented. “Does Sally live with you?”

“Oh no,” replied David.  She comes and stays for a couple weeks every spring and fall.  At least she has been the past few years.  She starts school this fall so that will probably and unfortunately change.  We will definitely miss the time she comes and spends with us.”

David cleared his throat and said, “I love the chit chat Mike, but I know that you did not have your secretary track me down
so you could fly all the way to Washington just to have a steak dinner with me.  What can I help you with that is so pressing?  I want to warn you it better not be a project budget request.  You know that NASA’s budget has been whacked and trimmed to the point where we are going to have to start staying home and watch the Chinese explore the universe while we sit here and buy all the things they make to sell us.”

Mike stood up to pace. “I will try and condense all of this down for you and get right to the point of my being here.  Have you heard of Doctor Eric Casselman?  He is a professor of astrophysics and astronomy at Cal Tech.”

“I seem to recall coming across him at a conference somewhere before,” said David.

  “Well,” said Mike.  “It appears that one of his grad students, and a very observant one at that, has discovered a previously un-noticed brown dwarf.  We are guessing it is a low to mid-range Y classification.”

  That is quite an accomplishment,” said David.  “Unless I am mistaken there has been maybe only one Y class dwarf confirmed and there was debate about whether it was a gas giant or a dwarf star.  How did he find it, by detecting orbital variations in a binary pair?”

“No,” replied Mike, he actually found it with direct observation from some old Spitzer Telescope studies.”

“So Mike, what do you want from me?  The discovery is interesting but not something that would drag you all the way out to Washington to inform me on a weekend. If you are asking me to give him a job then I probably cannot help you.  We are actually cutting staff and having to let some very good people go as it is.”

Mike stopped pacing and turned to David.  “No David, I am not here trying to be a job reference for the young man.  This Brown Dwarf he has found is close by, and we need some assets to study it in a more detail.”

David frowned at him. “So I was right, you are here asking for budget money.  That is what I suspected and the answer is no.”

Mike shook his head.  “David, you do not understand
. This dwarf is close by; probably well within a light year of us. And the kicker is that it is getting closer.”

David went from shaking his head negatively to
giving Mike his full attention.  “How much closer are you talking about?” David asked.

Mike answered slowly. “The data that we have leads us to believe that it is likely going to pass very close to our solar system.  That is why I am here.  I think some people need to start looking at this thing more closely.  We really need some more data to determine just how close it is and determine its trajectory. All we know now is that it is coming in from about twenty degrees above the ecliptic and that there
is almost no bearing change since initial observations. Those initial observations are over eight years old.”

  David shook his head in disbelief. “Mike, I find it hard to believe that a Brown Dwarf Star, even a very small one, could get that close to our solar system and no one has noticed it.  That is just incredulous.” 

“Not really,” said Mike.  “It is giving off very little heat and almost no light.  If our theories on Brown Dwarfs are correct, it is probably covered in dense clouds that would reflect what little heat and light there is back inward toward itself.  Nobody has been looking for a Brown Dwarf in our stellar neighborhood.  They are all searching for planets orbiting other stars light years away.  That is where the glory and accolades can be found now days.  All of our present Earth based telescopes are limited to near infrared bands, and most of them are wide aperture and could miss something this small, comparatively speaking.  We need some fresh observations and we need them now.  I only know of one asset that could possibly do that in the near future and I do not have control over it.”

“What might that be?” asked David.

“A RLARIRS satellite might be able to do it.” Mike said.

“That would probably take a presidential order to get the NSA to release one to us,” David replied.  “And, that is assuming that they even admit they have it.  That capability is considered a national security secret, and we would probably both be castrated and have our security clearances removed for discussing it here in my backyard. “I think we need another beer, I’ll be right back.”