Chapter 14: View to a Kill

Ten days later.

Time: February 4, 9570 2:10 PM

"Basel! What in the world are you doing?!"

Basel looked up from his optics bench in the photonics lab. A large array of lasers and cross-linked holo-scanners were laid out on a precision optics board before him, and Eliana thought the tangle of connecting fiber-wires looked so complicated they reminded her of a bowl of spaghetti.

Basel gave her a beaming smile. "Hi dearest! When you get a chance, you might want to bow down and worship me!"

Eliana shook her head in disbelief, and then forced herself to try to match Basel's playfulness. "Now don't you blaspheme Basel! This is a trained Priestess you're talking to!" She stared again at the disassembled scanner. "What are you doing? We were supposed to have this ready for the test flight tomorrow."

"Oh, I know." The grin was still huge.

"Uh, didn't someone promise me about ten days ago that this would be done in five?"

For the first time, Basel looked a little sheepish. "Uh, well, yeah, I guess I might have said something like that. But there's one thing you have to understand about research Eli."

"Oh yeah? What's that?"

"All good researchers are optimists! Besides, you know we were letting our schedule slip. We've been spending our evenings getting to know each other."

She shook her head dismissively. "I know. Still! Basel, you told me yesterday the scanner would be installed today. Look at this thing!" she cried, waving her hand at the myriad of tiny parts before her.

Basel went back to smiling, barely able to contain his excitement. "But that was yesterday! Today I have discovered the PATH of righteousness!"

Eliana found herself smiling back. "Now don't you blaspheme Basel!" She stared for a long moment at his optical bench, trying to make sense out of what she was seeing. "What is this thing?"

Basel waved his hands over the complex optics before him and looked at her sweetly. "We've been discussing my research ideas. You know my methods. Can you figure it out yourself?"

Never one to refuse a challenge, Eliana stared long and hard at his work. She finally muttered, "It looks like some kind of..."

"No, wait," she thought to herself. "Look how the holo-scanners are cross-connected. Don't the optics manuals tell you never to do this? Why isn't this thing blowing up in his face?" She started tracing the wiring in her mind, trying to develop a mathematical schematic for the optics before her. She dimly realized that Basel had cleverly cross-wired the holo-scanners in such a way that none of their collectors ever made the critical mistake of allowing a loop oscillation. Was that possible? And what was the purpose for all this madness? She finally shook her head in bewilderment and utter confusion.

"No, I give up. I'm staring at this thing, and I don't know what I'm looking at."

"This is huge Eli! I'm going to be famous, Baalbek's photonic researcher of the year! Heck, the century! You are looking at the world's very first example of Phased Aperture Topical Holography!"

Eliana couldn't help but grin at Basel's enthusiasm and new acronym. "The PATH of righteousness, huh?"

"Yep!"

"So what will it do, and when will it do it?"

"I think I can have this installed in the CAT ready to go in two or three days."

"Really? Give me a completely realistic estimate Basel."

He paused for a moment and considered. "Realistically, plan for a test flight on the morning of the 9th, unless something really unexpected comes up."

"A four day delay?"

Basel nodded. "I looked up the difference on the solar charts. The delay will get us another forty minutes of daylight, from 3:13 AM to 9:08 AM, plus another full degree of altitude on the sun, up to 5.2 degrees at local solar noon."

"Okay. I hate missing four days of scanning though."

"Eli, I haven't told you about the capabilities yet! We'll be able to fly over ten times as high, over 200 meters, and do the scanning a hundred times faster. Instead of covering a hectare in five to ten minutes, we should be able to cover a full square kilometer."

Eliana's eyes lit up as she realized what he was saying. "Wow, great work Basel!"

Time: February 9, 9570 3:52 AM UCT

Eliana idly checked the sun's position on her instruments as Basel worked on his experimental scanner, marking it at 1.9 degrees altitude and its azimuth at 147. They were hovering 200 meters above the local landscape, five kilometers north of their station.

Basel looked up from his display. "It could use a little tuning. For now, you'll have to stay within 210 meters of the ground."

Eliana nodded. "I'll make a run at 200 meters. This is so much nicer than 20 meters. I'd constantly be ducking around the trees."

"Two hundred meters will be fine. We'll be scanning in a sixty-degree cone. Try flying straight ahead at ten meters per second."

Eliana typed for a moment on her auto-pilot module, and then said, "Bearing 180, wing five by five, minimal forward thrusters to the helm." The CAT began to glide southward at 36 kph.

"It seems to be working," said Basel after a moment. "In one minute, we will have scanned a strip 600 meters long by 280 meters wide."

Eliana nodded approvingly. "So, a square kilometer every six minutes. This is very good." She paused for a moment. "Are you seeing the detail you expected?"

"Just judging from the sharpness of the echoes, I think so. At the rate we're recording, I can't process the data in real time. We'll be downloading the data into the station library for the image processing."

They settled down into a quiet routine. Eliana would methodically fly south for a thousand seconds, scanning a 280 meter-wide strip ten kilometers long, and then make a U-turn and repeat the process north. As they neared the end of their seventh pass, they had scanned a rectangle ten kilometers long and almost two kilometers wide.

Basel spoke up. "Eli, I have this thing seriously de-tuned. We would have a much easier job at this if I made some adjustments."