Chapter 16: New Echoes

Time: February 12, 9570 3:00:00 AM UCT

"And go," said Eliana. They were at a precise coordinate 10 km south and 10 km west of their station, at an elevation 1940 meters above sea-level and 1120 meters above the local terrain. They were entering their first run of the day, traveling due west at 72 kph. The sun was just breaking on the surface below, though at their height they had been enjoying the golden light for several minutes.

Eliana idly recorded the sun's azimuth at 135 degrees into her log and then turned to her companion. "This is perfect Basel. The auto-pilot will keep us at a constant height of 1120 meters above the local terrain, and even with the highest peaks in the area, we still have nice buffer of several hundred meters below our 3000 meter ceiling from the governors. Your latest improvements are letting us use our full capability."

Basel nodded his head at the compliment as he studied his display. "Data collection seems to be running fine. All we have to do is sit back and enjoy the scenery." Below them the PATH scanner was mapping the terrain with snow-penetrating photonics in a 300-meter wide sweep. Their planned mission for the day was to make twenty-two 20-km east-west passes and scan the southern third of a 400 sq km grid centered at their station.

Each pass would take 1024 seconds, 1000 seconds for the 20 km run at 20 m/s, and 24 seconds to complete a half-circle turn of radius 150 meters and position themselves on the next return track. Estimated time for today's scanning was six hours and fifteen minutes. With sunset at 9:23 AM, they were using all their available daylight.

A half-day later...

Time: February 12, 9570 3:45 PM UCT

"Eliana," Basel called out. "You might want to come up here and see this."

It was shortly before bedtime, and Eliana was curled up in a lounge chair and engrossed in some recreational reading. She glanced at the time and realized Basel must have finished the image processing. "Coming!" she called in reply, and joined Basel in the Level-2 control center a moment later. "Tell me you found the impact location."

He shook his head no. "Something just as interesting though. Take a look at this. These are from our fifth and sixth tracks this morning. We were so lucky! We just barely managed to catch this. Look! This is time-index 987 seconds into the fifth track. See the anomaly right here, at 4:24:43 AM?"

Eliana stared for a moment. "Well, the squiggles certainly look different. What does it mean?"

"These are those weird extra echoes I've recorded before."

"Ah. What will you bet if we go back again, they won't be there?"

"Yeah. We probably should retest, but no bet. And it gets even better. We completed track-5 and then scanned during our 24-second half circle. Nothing interesting there. But then we started the next track. Look at the track-6 data, at time-index 21 seconds."

"Hell Basel, we flew right over it!"

"Uh huh. I did a contour analysis between the two observation points. The shortest distance along the surface is just over 400 meters, with a time interval of 58 seconds."

Eliana paused for a moment. "Seven meters per second?"

"Yeah, just about 25 kph."

"Hmm. A little slower than our last observation." She looked at him closely and smiled. "I must say, I'm very pleased how completely you've come over to my position that this creature exists."

Basel smiled back. "I haven't shown you the last data point." He typed on the controls and zoomed out of the view. The display drew a line across the map, showing the extension of the two data points pointing to a third point in the center of the map.

Eliana sucked in a sharp intake of breath. "The Holy! It was heading right for our station!"

"Yeah. It seems the creature is interested in us just as much as we are interested in it. If it kept its course and speed, it got here around 5 AM this morning."

"To do what?"

"No idea."

Eliana frowned. "Didn't the station sensors pick up anything?"

"I've checked. No."

She sighed. "Basel, can we turn your scanner into a creature detector?"

"I've been thinking about that. PATH is not well suited to the task of giving a quick alert. The scanner has to transmit the raw data into the station library, and there's a two-minute processing delay once the data is in the library." He paused for a moment. "And it takes at least that long for the pre-processing and to transmit the data here from a remote location. In the field, we'll get a warning five minutes late." He shrugged. "All this is assuming the scanner can always detect the creature."

Eliana nodded. "That's true. And it's an important thing to remember. We don't understand how the detection process works. We thus have no idea of its limitations."

"Eli, I have one last thought about this. I don't know if the creature can sense our scanner. Maybe it can. But I don't think it realizes our scanner can sense it. The creature made no effort to avoid being directly under the scanner on our second observation, nor did it make any attempt to change course and hide the fact it was coming here."

Eliana nodded thoughtfully. "Yes, very good reasoning. Basel?"

"Yeah?"

"You've done fabulous work. I couldn't be more proud of you."

"Ah, some days you get lucky."

Eliana grinned. "Some nights too. Ready for bed?"

Basel returned her playful smile. "I do believe I am."

He was soon lying down in his bedroom getting another wonderful backrub. Since his first night with sleeping with Eliana, he had followed her lead and dressed in pajamas before lying with her. They both felt intensely attracted to each other, but were still exercising some discipline and patience and had not yet become sexually active.

Eliana's massage lasted more than an hour, neck, shoulders, arms, back, butt, legs... Basel felt like a pile of melted butter after a while, and the pleasure of Eliana's loving hands was so deep, it kept him from falling asleep. He just lay there and sighed in contentment.

As 5:30 PM approached, Eliana dimmed the lights even further and cuddled next to him. Her arm lay on top of him, and her hand caressed his lower back and butt. Eventually her hand settled on his rump, and her finger wiggled in and began caressing his anus through his pajamas. Basel wiggled in appreciation and sighed again.