Salvador Mercer: Lunar Discovery

“…and the main presentation will be performed by National Security Director—” The chief of staff never got to finish his opening presentation.

“We understand that, Thomas,” the president said, never taking her eyes off of Rock. “Deputy Director Richard Crandon, correct?” she asked, looking him in the eye.

“Yes, Madam President.” Rock nodded his head, remembering to swallow and breathe.

“I’m more interested in hearing from NASA right now, if you don’t mind, Thomas. We can have the presentation shortly thereafter,” she said with a slight waving motion of her hand. Dismissing him or signaling him to silence? Rock didn’t know, wasn’t sure, and wasn’t about to ask.

“As you wish,” her chief of staff said too regally for most of those in the room. This was, after all, a republic, not a monarchy.

“I can brief you on the NASA operations, Madam President,” Mr. Smith chimed in, leaning forward, trying to make himself more visible to the president. For once, Mr. Smith and Rock were in agreement. Better if he performed the briefing since he was liaising between three key agencies and Rock felt he was more in the dark than in on the program.

“I appreciate your offer, Mr….” An aide leaned in close to the president. “Mr. Smith, but I’d prefer to hear about the actual discovery and its significance from Deputy Director Crandon,” she said, finally releasing Rock from her gaze just long enough to reward Mr. Smith with a perfunctory glance.

“You have the entire report, Madam President. I submitted it myself yesterday evening,” Mr. Smith said. Indeed, less than thirty hours had passed from the lunar discovery till this very meeting with several of those hours spent sleeping on a private government jet on the way from Houston to Washington D.C. In fact, Rock’s team members were still sequestered in the NASA control center, building two, and they weren’t happy about it either.

The president waved him off, not bothering to address him verbally this time. “I read the report, but I want to review how you and your team recognized what you were dealing with.”

“It wasn’t my discovery, actually, Madam President. Dr. Jones discovered the actual significance of the signals,” Rock said, referring to Marge’s neutrino discovery.

“I understand you being hesitant, but you represent the entire NASA ELINT team, so please, share with us your assessment,” the president said.

Rock felt easier after the initial anxiety that the president quickly put to ease. In fact, he had all but forgotten about Mr. Smith, who was fidgeting anxiously in the chair next to him. His boss, John Lui, sat quietly, unmoving and not indicating either way if he approved or not of the direct questioning by the executive branch.

“Well, initially my team noticed that the telemetry feeds had ceased updating,” Rock began, looking around the table, seeing many stone-hard faces concealing who knew what kind of feelings and emotions. “Almost immediately after the data feed loss, we encountered several strong signals across the RF band.”

Rock paused to see if anyone would interrupt. Apparently the Mr. Smith lesson was fresh in everyone’s minds as no one said a word. “Our first indication that something was amiss wasn’t the radio frequencies. Those exist even as background noise throughout the universe, rather it was the signal strength of those frequencies… They were literally off the chart in strength. They radiated in the gigawatt range of power output when the entire Chinese space mission wasn’t capable of summoning even a megawatt of power at the most.”

At this, the president did interject. “So you’re saying the radio signals were stronger than what the Chinese could produce?”

“Exactly,” Rock answered, pleasantly surprised that the president summarized his information so succinctly. “It was only after this revelation that Assistant Mission Leader Marge Jones noticed, and pulled, the feed from the neutrino detection tank at Los Alamos.”

The president flipped through a few pages stapled in front of her that she had pulled from one of three manila folders, and began reading. “When the tertiary scientific data stream was noticed, Analyst Jones declared the signal source as ‘extra-terrestrial.’ Is that correct, Deputy Director Crandon?”

“Ah, yes, that is how it occurred, Madam President,” Rock responded.

“What is tertiary referring to here?” her chief of staff asked, looking at his own set of papers.

“Oh, that is the non-critical science data that the operations control center is plugged into at all times,” Rock said. “Consoles twelve through twenty monitor various non-critical mission elements of all our mission profiles during the execution phase.”

“What kind of non-critical data are you referring to, Crandon?” her chief asked, never looking up from his briefing paper. “The discovery seems more than critical. How was it initially classified as non-critical?”

“Well,” Rock began, exhaling again and taking a deep breath since he knew this would take time with a civilian, “several systems aren’t really critical. They simply monitor various scientific data in order for NASA to execute or support a wider range of mission profiles. For example,” Rock continued, seeing some faces furrowing their brows, indicating confusion, “one station monitors our sun for the occurrence of plasma ejections or solar flares. Another station monitors tectonic activity, assessing the strength, location, and frequency of earthquakes.”

A few more of those looks and Rock hurried to explain. “Yes, I know plate tectonics isn’t exactly space related, but the correlation between the two is that we use orbital satellites to micro-measure the position of various key points on certain land masses thus enabling us to tell how far the upper plate moves during any certain magnitude quake. The program was funded several years ago, and through financial efficiencies and a cooperative funding program of the European Union, we’ve managed to keep the program operational several years past its end of funding date.”

“Could we focus on the neutrino project?” the president asked politely. This was followed by an annoying nudge of Mr. Smith’s knee to Rock’s leg, reminding the NASA mission leader that his handler was still there.

“Yes, of course, Madam President. Sorry for the digression. The neutrino monitoring program was one of several non-critical mission items that were being monitored automatically. Marge, uh… I mean, Dr. Jones, had the foresight to pull up the program’s data feed when we discovered a pattern in the radio signals. From that data, we were able to determine that the source was indeed extra-terrestrial,” Rock finished.

“Exactly how did you make that determination?” the president asked.

Rock was confused for a moment—the report spelled it all out—but since this was the president, he repeated what he thought was in the documents in front of her. “Madam President, if you look at your report you’ll see that the neutrino activity was approximately one-point-four million times the normal base and the activity was timed perfectly with the radio signals that we intercepted from the moon. Our conclusion is obvious, is it not?”

“It is from the report, but before I go to the legislative branch and ask for who knows how many billions of dollars in funding to retrieve this alien object, I want to make damn sure I understand what we’re getting ourselves into,” the president responded, looking at Rock once more.

Rock understood her ability to move from diplomat to strict governess in the proverbial blink of an eye, not to mention the use of a more common profane word. “Well, as you’ve read in the report, the neutrinos aren’t detected directly. We didn’t even know for sure that they existed until we discovered the traces they left behind—”