Chapter 18: Playing Tag

Six days later...

Time: February 25, 9570 11:22 AM UCT

"The Holy!" whispered Eliana in awe. "Basel, I think we've found it!"

It was an hour after sunset, and the two were in the Level-2 control center, reviewing the vast arrays of processed scanning data from the day's run. They were focusing on a spot slightly more than 11 km north and slightly less than 4 km west of the station, at the northern tip of a highly elevated lake.

"I'm reading the distance from here at 11.8 kilometers," said Basel. "And the impact site is buried under more than ten meters of snow. No wonder it's not visible."

"Look at the terrain," said Eliana. "That peak 800 meters to the north and west is 1400 meters above sea-level. That means we have a drop of 470 meters over the 800 meter run. The impact must have started an avalanche, a big one. It buried everything."

"Yeah... 11.8 kilometers," said Basel again. They had completed their initial 400 sq km search grid several days ago and had found nothing. It was only today's effort in their expanded search area that had at last found the meteor site. "Sorry I wasn't more accurate with my original estimate. The meteor must have surfed the air more than I expected."

Eliana looked at him in puzzlement. "Basel, you quoted me a 70% chance of being within 10 kilometers of the station, and the real number was 11.8 kilometers. I think your estimate was fine."

"Thanks... Take a look at this!"

Eliana studied the display. "More echoes of the creature..."

"Yeah. This is the turnaround between tracks 1 and 2, and then again between tracks 3 and 4."

Eliana nodded. "Track 4 is where we discover the impact site. More decoys Basel. It was trying to distract us."

"Yeah. It didn't realize that we have a delay in processing the scanning data. It wasn't helping its cause at all. Say Eli, did you sense anything at the time?"

"From 1120 meters up?! Basel, I know my ability seems a little spooky to you, but there's no magic involved. I'm not a witch!"

Basel leaned over and gave her a playful kiss. "Sure you are! You've bewitched me with your feminine charms." His hand patted her rump.

Eliana kissed him back. "Hah! Back to reality Basel! Any recordings of the creature's speed?"

"Hmm..." They hugged for a while until Basel remembered the hanging question. "Oh yeah. Let me check." Ten minutes later, he answered, "The second observation gives several speed measurements. The fastest was about 19 kph."

"Five meters a second?"

"Yeah, maybe a bit more."

"Interesting Basel. Every time we observe the creature's speed, it's always a little slower than the previous observation."

"What to you think it means? Another deception?"

"Possible. I don't know. Basel, could we use the CAT's lasers to get at the bottom of the impact crater?"

"It does look as if there's something down there. It's quite a distance though. The entire crater is buried in ten meters of snow, with about another ten meters to the bottom of the pit. It'll take a month to carve out a hole big enough to fit the CAT through."

"How about for a person? No, scratch that idea. Too dangerous."

Basel considered. "We might be able to build a flexible probe and drill a hole for that."

"Ah, that sounds better. How long would it take?"

"Well, we have all the conduit we need. I'll have to thread some fiber to channel the laser power, and then add the sensors to the head. A few days maybe. We'd be ready for a test on February 30th if we're lucky. We could remove the PATH scanner and replace it with the probe assembly."

Eliana nodded. "Why don't we get started? Otherwise we'll be waiting for late spring for the lake to melt." A few minutes later they went to Level-A and started working.

Time: March 12, 9570 12:45 AM UCT

The CAT started to cycle through its airlock a few minutes before sunrise, and Eliana had an idle moment to reflect on the changes of the season. Daylight today would be over ten hours long, from 12:48 AM to 11:27 AM, and with more than an hour of twilight on each end. Daytime was finally having a normal feel to it. And after being cooped up in the station for the last seventeen days, Eliana was eager to be outdoors.

At 12:46 AM, she drove out of the garage and then lifted off a few hundred meters away. They met the dawn sunlight almost immediately as they rose. The CAT soon reached its cruising altitude of 2700 meters and began heading due west at slightly over 500 kph.

Basel admired the smoothness of the ride. "I see you're comfortable now flying the CAT close to Mach 0.5."

Eliana glanced down at her hands on the controls, and then flashed Basel a playful smile. "It's a lot like playing backgammon."

"Oh really?"

"Uh huh, all in the wrist."

Ten minutes later they began to decelerate and descend, landing at the bottom of a broad north-south valley 94 kilometers west of their station and 140 meters above sea-level. While Basel worked the remotes to remove the modified PATH scanner from their cargo bay, Eliana took a moment to break the CAT's seals and let in some of the outside air.

"Wow," said Basel. "Salty! It reminds me of the ocean."

"Yeah. There's a brisk northeasterly wind, and it's only another ten kilometers north of here to a large fjord connecting to the North Atlantic." Eliana surveyed the scenery. "Such a beautiful land."

"I'm surprised we came quite this far," said Basel.

"We still have more than a two kilometer buffer to the governor limit. I wanted to give us as much of a time buffer with the creature as possible."

"PATH scanner is deployed," said Basel a moment later. "It's running on full internal power, green-board on the diagnostics. Link confirmed with station processing."

"Disconnect telemetry and re-track feed."

"... Done."

Eliana drove west up a gentle slope for a hundred meters and then prepared for lift-off. "All navigation transponders are on manual override and disengaged. Lifting now." Flying manually 500 meters above the local terrain, Eliana flew due south and began a great circular loop around their station.

After cruising for a half hour, Eliana hovered for a while 200 meters above the landscape looking for her desired landing site. She finally landed the CAT on the western shore of a large lake. "I'm reading our position approximately 50 km south and 80 km east of the station," Eliana said as she parked the CAT over thick drifts of snow.

Basel admired the scenery as he surveyed the lake. "I'm surprised you picked a spot so close to our limit."

Eliana nodded. "I know. I don't want to test our horizontal limits while we're airborne, and I'm slightly within our two-kilometer safety buffer. A few hundred meters more and I would have rejected this. But this seems so ideal."

"It does indeed." Basel looked around and admired the scenery. "What country was this? Sweden?"

Eliana sighed and shook her head no. "It's sad to think that nothing's survived after 10,000 years, not even the roads."

"Well, the Conservation Guilds have been destroying those ever since the first millennium."

"I know. And to answer your question, we're in the center of a narrow strip of Finland. Fifteen kilometers to the northeast would be Norway, fifteen kilometers to the southwest would be Sweden."

They spent the next several hours testing the snakelike probe emerging from the underside of the CAT. It wasn't until midday before they were finished.

It was a few minutes after 6 AM UCT, the sun was due south at an altitude of 16.6 degrees. Basel was frowning for several reasons. "There are a number of changes I have to make, especially with the laser-tunneling mechanism."

Eliana nodded and sighed. "Surprising the problems didn't show up earlier. The prototype tested so well in the garage."

Basel grunted. "Yeah, well, nothing quite like a field test for shaking out the bugs..."

"So are we ready to leave? We're pushing our window for the first landing site."

"I know. And I agree, let's go."

Eliana powered up the turbines and drove a short distance onto the lake, then returned and hovered low near their test site, using the high wind from their turbines to blow snow over the surface of their experiment. Satisfied she did what she could to hide their activities, she lifted and began to retrace their journey.