A three-dimensional holograph blinked into existence in the center of the room, at first indistinct like a roiling cloud of smoke. Park worked furiously at her station and the image became more crisp, but it remained speckled with noise that frustrated any attempt to make sense of it.
Marcus pushed away from his station and toward the projection. “That’s no good. Raise the background radiation filter’s threshold another twelve percent.”
“Aye, sir.”
It came into focus with crystal clarity. “I’ll be damned,” Rao said near whisper. “I’m out another hundred bucks.”
“Hello again, Zebra-One,” Marcus said to the image, greeting it like an old friend. He watched the display’s clock tick away, and when it reached thirty-five seconds, the object vanished from sight. He wasn’t at all surprised. “You’re getting slower, you little tease.”
“Should we continue scanning, sir?”
“No point,” he said. “That’s all we’ll ever get with this equipment. Switch over to the deep space survey program. Mr. Shen, inform Bangalore the array is on-line. Tell ‘em we’re prepared to hand-off control to the ground.”
Marcus Donovan pulled his datapad out of its holster and dialed back the recording to the thirtieth second, and there floating in front of him was the anomaly he’d personally discovered seven years earlier. He was stationed aboard the Brahe Array at the time, an orbital telescope like Copernicus but older and mustier, tasked with routine scans of the asteroid belt. That’s when he stumbled upon her, a dozen kilometers long, oddly striped and density all wrong to be an asteroid. Then, before he could get a decent look, she was gone just as suddenly as he’d found her. That first peek was only five seconds long, but it changed his entire life.
During the months that followed, Marcus used every spare minute aboard Brahe to re-scan the belt, but he only found rocks and more rocks behind them. He personally oversaw diagnostics and checked each piece of hardware by hand, and he went over his data with a fine-toothed comb, but he always arrived at the same answers: there was no malfunction, he had seen something, and now he could not.
Marcus named the anomaly Zebra-One for the strange stripes along her length, as well as her talent for disappearing into the grass.
His secret obsession transformed him. He grew from an undistinguished junior researcher into one of the single most dedicated, knowledgeable and experienced minds in deep space study, and it wasn’t long before the Foundation took notice. Offers poured in from more prestigious stations, and with nothing left for him aboard Brahe, he left.
The next few years, he toured through every station that would have him, and picked up a reputation as a true-blue problem solver. He became the Foundation’s patch kit, their answer to projects that were over-budget or behind schedule. All the while, he continued hunting for his zebra, and at each stop he enjoyed another brief glimpse of her before she vanished from sight. With each look he grew more obsessed.
His reputation spread and he attracted some of the best, brightest and most eccentric minds in astrophysics, like Dr. Vijay Rao. Before he knew it, Marcus was in charge of a thirty-man team of problem solvers, who came to be called the Gypsies because they never stayed anywhere for long. They moved onto a station, dragged a troubled project back on track, and then departed for the next.
When the Foundation finalized plans for the Copernicus Observatory, the Gypsies were offered first crack at bringing the newest and most expensive deep space sensor array on-line. Marcus jumped at the offer without a second thought.
Now, six months later and more than three weeks ahead of schedule, Dr. Marcus Donovan was staring at the clearest freeze-frame yet produced of the object of his obsession. She floated there among the asteroids, half blanketed in a layer of sediment, but revealing patches of glistening hull here and there. She was some kind of vessel, of that much Marcus was sure.
He keyed his pad and the holograph rotated slowly. It was now clear that she had two separate hulls, one more than thirteen kilometers long, and the other about two-thirds that length.
Rao floated up beside him, staring in disbelief. “I’ve been riding you all this time, but… I can’t say it… I think you’re right, Marc.”
“Of course I’m right, ye of little faith.” Marcus was still staring intently at the holograph, soaking in every fresh detail. “Not to be an ass, but last month, I seem to recall you betting fifty credits that my theory was, and I quote, ‘wrong wrong one hundred percent wrong.’”
“When will I stop gambling? Hey, take a look at that,” Rao said, changing the subject. “The stripes aren’t visible.”
Marcus dragged his finger across the datapad’s screen, and the display cycled through different EM bandwidths. He stopped when it showed the object in dark blue streaked with glowing red-orange stripes. The amount of fine detail was startling.
“Ho-leee cow,” Rao said. “Those stripes are internal. If I didn’t know better, I’d say the patterns look… biological?”
When the words registered in Marcus’ head, the structures took on a whole new shape. Rao was right. They weren’t stripes at all; they were branching veins connected to some central organ. “Ummm…”
Marcus fumbled at the keypad and rewound ten seconds then started advancing frame by frame. Little by little, the veins grew brighter, then dimmed and grew brighter again. He rewound and watched it again, and one more time. The veins were pulsating. It… she was alive.
“You’re a genius, Jay.”
“No shit.”
Marcus’ mind was racing a little over 299 million meters per second. Alive. Zebra-One wasn’t a vessel at all, but a living creature that had been lying dormant in the asteroid belt for at least the past seven years. Judging by the accumulation of minerals, she might have been there much, much longer. How long? What did it mean? He couldn’t even begin to imagine the ramifications of his discovery.
Then he made a decision that was too long in coming. “I need to see her,” he said quietly.
Rao said, “Come again?”
Marcus blinked and then shook his head as if waking from a daydream. “I have to go see her, Jay. By hook or by crook, any damn way I can.”
“Sure thing. Let me call the Appropriations Committee. I’ll just tell ‘em we’ve found an enormous space serpent, and that we need a ship so we can take her out for lunch. That’ll be rubber stamped without a second thought, y’know, what with their stance on extraterrestrial life.”
Marcus watched the recording loop several more times. “Sarcasm duly noted,” he said, and started to chew on his lower lip. Then his eyes lit up. “Didn’t you write a long-winded paper about exotic materials?”
“My graduate thesis? Theoretical Conditions for the Formation of Metallic Hydrogen in Deep Space.”
Marcus smirked. “Lovely title. You’ve lost your naming rights.”
“Okay… Zebra-One?”
“You make a fair point. Dr. Rao, what would you say if I asked you to help me falsify months worth of sensor readings?”
Rao scratched his head while dozens of emotions momentarily bubbled to the surface and disappeared. When the bubbling stopped, he said, “Tell you what… knock fifty credits off my debt, and I’ll forget about the pesky ethics course I took as an undergrad.”
“You’re a scoundrel and a scholar, Jay. You should’ve asked for the whole debt.”
“Really?”
“Too late. We’ve work to do.”
Chapter 2:
First Response
Jack Hernandez was rechecking his equipment when the ride began to buck and shake. The metal cabin dipped and shuddered violently, but the U-shaped metal restraint over his shoulders kept him planted firmly in his
