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* * * *
Celeste McConnell squinted her dark eyes, then blinked in surprise as
she recognized him. "Why, Dr. Parvu! You don't often call directly, and you
certainly don't use the secure line. What's up?" She turned and spoke to
someone else, a man by his voice, that she would be 'just a minute.'
Parvu composed himself and folded his hands in front of him. "I have
discovered something very disturbing to me," he said. "I thought you should be
informed."
She frowned. Her small face looked as if it had been chiseled from
marble. "Please, tell me."
"You may have wondered how the alien automata happened to travel such a
vast distance to land on our Moon, yet managed to miss Earth, which is a much
larger target?"
McConnell put two fingers in front of her lips. "That hadn't occurred
to me! Do you think the aliens targeted our moon specifically? Why would they
do that?"
"I have another explanation, though it is more troubling." he took a
deep breath. "I submit that the alien automata did not, after all, miss Earth.
I will provide you with fifteen data points from various cosmic-ray detection
experiments confirming that a shower of automata has indeed struck this
planet. They are already here."
McConnell looked startled and sat up, straight-backed, away from the
prime focus of the viewer.
Parvu spoke again before she could recover. "Now I have a request of
you, Director McConnell. I know and you know that every inch of this planet is
monitored by a Brilliant Eyes network. I also know that most of the pictures
the Eyes take are merely archived unless someone has a reason to suspect
something. Now, I suggest that you contact a team of spooks in the
government's analysis section and make them scour every scrap of land, looking
for something like the Daedalus construction here on Earth, okay?"
He drew in another deep breath and continued. "I doubt the automata
would build anything in the ocean, mostly because of the currents -- and that
eliminates three-quarters of the Earth. But there remain plenty of empty spots
on mountain ranges, in rain forests, deserts, even here in Antarctica, where
such a construction could go unnoticed for a long time."
McConnell nodded. She sounded shaken, but serious. "I agree, Dr. Parvu.
I'll get on it right away and let you know what we find."
She signed off abruptly. He knew he had rattled her. Good. The secure
link disconnected, displaying an archival code number on the bottom where a
recording of the conversation would be placed in the National Security
Archives. Parvu had no doubt she would give him an honest answer -- if they
were to find another construction, he would be the most likely one to study it
anyway.
* * * *
At 67, Parvu felt like a teenage girl constantly using the telephone.
He keyed in the proper coded sequence to contact the Mars simulation base in
Antarctica, using the numbers both Celeste McConnell and Kent Woodward had
given him. His own optical uplinks went to the designated satellite, overrode
the artificial transmission delay algorithm, and he immediately reached the
base.
The mission commander, Bingham Grace, was on monitor duty. He patched
Parvu to Kent Woodward's rover, which had been deployed for the day on a
routine geological survey mission.
"Hey, Doc Parvu!" Kent said upon recognizing him. His own expression
was barely visible behind the spacesuit helmet. He flipped up the faceplate to
talk better. Beside him, Gunther Mosby, intent on the simulation as ever, kept
his suit sealed.
"Kent, how would you like to gather some samples for me? If your duty
roster permits? I have spoken to your commander, and this work has Director
McConnell's approval."
Parvu already knew the answer. The Mars crew had many practice
missions, scenarios they had followed a dozen times for their 300+ days in
Antarctica. The primary goal of the mission was to make sure they could
survive with nothing but their limited equipment and their own skills for the
duration of the mission. They were allowed to conduct other useful scientific
research in Antarctica while they were stationed there, and the astronauts
generally loved the break from tedium.
"Sure!" Kent said, "What do you need and where do we get it?"
"I require random samples of the top layer of snowpack from as wide an
area as you can cover. Please provide at least thirty different specimens."
"Am I looking for anything in particular?"
Parvu pursed his lips. "If I tell you what I am seeking, I cannot be
assured of a random sample."
"Guess not."
It was a long shot, but the upper layers of the Antarctic snowpack had
been little disturbed in the past several months, though the storm season
would be coming soon.
"Doctor, I am concerned," Gunther Mosby broke in. "Are we trying to
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