“A golf course?” Noah echoed, glancing in the rear view mirror. “You’re kidding, right?”
Soter grimaced. “I wish I were. One would expect a better fate for the place that marks the first contact by an alien intelligence.”
Cort gave a sarcastic chuckle. “Maybe someday they’ll build a war memorial there.”
Nobody had a response to that.
57
The VLA dishes grew larger until they stretched across half the horizon like a picket line. A rough map on the tourist pamphlet revealed that the highway passed through the upper leg of the array. Just before they reached it, Noah turned off the main route and headed toward the cluster of administrative buildings near the junction of the three legs. He drove past the visitors center — the parking lot was empty — and continued to the control building, a two story concrete and stone structure.
Jenna was struck by the profound differences between the VLA facility and the Arecibo Observatory. The landscape was open and featureless, unlike the lushly forested limestone hills in Puerto Rico. The buildings reminded her more of the structures she’d glimpsed at the abandoned Aerojet facility in the Everglades — big, open and scattered across the landscape. The enormous dishes sprouted from the plain like surreal white mushrooms in a Lewis Carrroll story. Strangest of all was the profound quiet.
“Sure doesn’t look like anything is about to happen,” Cort remarked, taking out his cell phone and glancing at the display. “Less than half an hour to go. I’m guessing you don’t just walk into a place like this and say ‘I’d like to place a collect call to the Andromeda galaxy.’”
Soter shook his head. “Scientists have to schedule their research months, even years in advance. And this facility is primarily a receiving station.”
“You mean it can’t be used to call out?”
“It can. There’s no fundamental difference between a transmitter and a receiver in terms of hardware. A transmitter like the one at Arecibo, is built to sustain a high-power transmission over long periods. A transmission sent from here wouldn’t be very powerful at all, but the focusing ability of the array would compensate for that. However, making the changes would require some technical knowledge.”
“Do any of your clones have that knowledge?”
This wasn’t the first time the subject had been brought up, but Soter’s answer was the same. “To the best of my knowledge, no.”
“Well, we’re here. I guess we should go and make sure nobody snuck in the back door.”
As they headed in through the main entrance, Jenna hung back, allowing the three men to take the lead. The urge to make this journey, that she had first experienced in Puerto Rico, had not relented, but she felt no sense of familiarity or attunement with this place. No new implanted memories had been awakened in her. She couldn’t tell whether the door to those memories had been shut or there was simply nothing there in the first place.
Signs for the self-guided walking tour pointed the way to the control room. Like the Arecibo Observatory, the room looked more like an office than a portal for watching distant stars. More than a dozen computers and monitors, each one displaying a graph or lines of text, sat atop a long horse-shoe shaped desk wrapped around the room’s perimeter. Anyone hoping to see spectacular pictures of black holes or nebulae would have gone away disappointed.
Three men were working in the room, hunched over their workstations, busily entering data. One of them looked up and offered a friendly wave, then went back to his task. The others ignored them.
Cort cleared his throat. “I need to speak to whomever is in charge.”
All three men looked up, and Jenna heard one of them groan. She scanned the faces — all were middle-aged Caucasian men. None of them bore even a passing resemblance to her. The man who had waved rose from his seat and came over to speak with them. He eyed Cort’s crutches — Jenna could almost see him leaping to the conclusion that they were going to complain about the ‘walking’ part of the walking tour, but he kept his smile in place as he introduced himself.
“I’m Dr. Jon Miller. Is there something I can help you with?”
“Are you in charge?” Cort asked. Jenna noted that he was being aggressive to the point of rudeness, asserting his dominance to ensure cooperation. It was one of the techniques Noah had taught her, but not one that she had ever practiced. In her experience, subtlety produced better results.
The smile slipped a little but Miller remained diplomatic. “Well, I’m in charge of a few things. If you tell me your concerns, I’ll have a better idea where to direct you.”
“We’re federal officers, investigating a possible threat against this facility.”
The news hit Miller like a bomb. The other two men sat up straighter, appearing almost poised to flee. “A threat? I…uh, can’t imagine what kind of…uh…”
Cort allowed the tension to build a moment, then his demeanor changed completely. “It’s probably nothing, but I’d appreciate it if you could go over a couple of things with us. Just to be sure.”
Miller swallowed. “Sure.”
Soter stepped forward. “Would you please show us the scheduled activity for the next twenty-four hours?”
Miller nodded and gestured to a laptop computer that was already displaying a spreadsheet. Soter scanned the document, scrolling down, then looked back and shrugged.
Cort addressed Miller again. “How easy would it be to change the orientation of the array to send a transmission?”
Miller gave a surprised laugh, but then he became somber again when he realized Cort was not joking. “Not easy at all. In the first place, we’re a receiving station. And we don’t change the schedule for just anyone.”
“You’re not hearing me, doc.” A little of the earlier surliness was back. “If someone came in here, pointed a gun at your head and told you to do it, how tough would it be to make the changes?”
Miller went pale. “Uh…is that what you are—”
“No. Just answer the question.”
“We could do it from this room. It would take a few minutes.”
Cort turned away as if Miller no longer existed and addressed Noah and Jenna. “That’s it then. All we need to do is secure this room and there’s no way that signal is going out. Not from here at least.”
Jenna did not share Cort’s certitude, but before she could offer a rebuttal, she noticed Miller staring at her. She felt a sudden rush of apprehension and took a quick step forward. “Dr. Miller. You recognize me, don’t you?”
He shook his head, embarrassed at having been caught. “No. I’m sorry.”
“Dr. Miller, this is important. Do I look like someone that you know?”
He feigned ignorance a moment longer before admitting, “You could be her twin sister.”
Cort was quick to grasp the importance of this revelation. “Who? Someone that works here? One of the astronomers?”
“Sophie isn’t an astronomer. She’s with the track maintenance team.”
“Sophia Gallo?” Soter asked.
“I…ah, don’t know her last name.”
Soter turned to the others. “Sophia is from Generation Six, the same as Jarrod and Kelli.”
“Wonderful,” Cort growled. “Track maintenance. That explains how we missed her. We were looking for brainiacs. Is she here right now?”
Miller shrugged.
“We’re going to have to sweep the entire site,” Cort said, directing his words to Noah.