Blood Contact by David Sherman; Dan Cragg

Author:David Sherman; Dan Cragg
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Science Fiction - Adventure, Fiction - Science Fiction, Science Fiction, Science Fiction - Military, Space Opera, Science Fiction - Series, Fiction, Science fiction, American, Adventure, Life on other planets, Military, Marines, General
ISBN: 9780345425270
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Published: 1999-12-07T10:32:30.929000+00:00

CHAPTER 17

"There it is again," Surface Radar Analyst Third Class, Hummfree muttered. His soft voice was lost in the pings of equipment and the susurration of carefully controlled air that wafted through the comm shack, the analysis center of the Fairfax County. None of the other analysts and techs working at other stations looked up at his words. They were as thoroughly immersed in their jobs as Hummfree was in the data that flowed from the string-of-pearls into the monitors he watched. He watched visuals that ranged from infrared to ultraviolet. His monitors showed X ray and radar and could display gamma if he wanted. Graphs--bar, line, scatter, hi-lo, more--jiggled and jaggled before his eyes. But at the moment he was only interested in one thing that appeared in the array of monitors he watched and listened to. An intermittent dot that showed up in the infrared in one small space in the mountains. His fingers danced over his keyboard, caressed the balls and dials of his controls. His objective was to merge the visual and infrared signals in that space. If he succeeded, he might have a good idea what was generating the intermittent signal in the infrared. Theoretically, what he was attempting was possible. Few navy analysts were willing even to attempt it, though; it was simply too difficult. SRA3 Hummfree wasn't only willing, he was convinced he could do it. It didn't matter that he'd spent Page 100

many hours of his own time on that problem over the three days the Fairfax County had been in orbit. And it didn't matter that he didn't seem any closer to a resolution. Hummfree had solved problems before in situations where nobody else thought there was a solution, so he was confident of his abilities. Now that Ensign Muhoorn had ordered him to investigate the mountains full-time, he was spending nearly all of his waking hours on the problem, interrupting his work only when the communications chief made him stop for meals or to take a shower. If--no, make that when--he resolved the target, it just might get him that promotion to second class. Hummfree needed a meritorious promotion because he spent too much of his own time working on special projects and too little on studying for the promotion exam. The red dot showed up again in the infrared. Visual had just a small blur. Quickly, Hummfree zoomed the focus on it. Simultaneously he began to converge the visual and infrared signals on the same spot. For a second they didn't quite merge; theoretically, at geosynchronous orbit distance, the string-of-pearls'

infrared sensors couldn't resolve anything much smaller than a one-meter radius, and the visual couldn't see details smaller than fifteen centimeters, even when seeing conditions were optimal. But Hummfree had reprogrammed the string-of-pearls software to allow him to use long baseline interferometry from four satellites. By having the computer average the best of the scans in the visual and infrared, then overlapping them, he gave form to what he tried to focus on.

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