“The aft camera nailed it,” Nigel said.
“What? You found the trouble?” Lubkin got up with surprising agility and walked around his desk.
“No malfunction. Those echoes were real, the engineers pegged it right. We’ve got a Snark.”
Nigel tossed a shelf of fax sheets on the desk. They were shiny even in the muted office light, yellow squiggles on green stripping.
“Snark?”
“Mythical English creature.”
“Something’s really out there?”
“These are optical and spectroscopic analyses. Telemetry errors already corrected and numerically smoothed.” He pulled one sheet from the pile and pointed at several lines.
“What is it?”
“Our Snark gives off all the lines of a fusion torch burning pretty bright. Nearly a billion degrees.”
“Come on.” Lubkin gave him a skeptical look, eyes screwed up behind his pale glasses.
“I checked it with Knapp.”
“Damn,” Lubkin said. He shook his head. “Funny.” “J-Monitor got one clear look at it before Callisto came into the way again. Couldn’t avoid that, even with the new orbit we put it into.”
He slid a glossy optical photograph out of the stack. “Not much to see,” Lubkin said.
Near one corner was a tiny orange splotch against a dead black background. Lubkin shook his head again. “And this was through the small-angle telescope? Must be pretty far away.”
“It was. Almost all the way diagonally across the Callisto orbit. I don’t think we’ll be able to spot it again on the next pass.”
“Any radio contact?”
“None. No time. I tried when I first came in this morning, registered something—didn’t know what, right away—couldn’t get a good enough fix on it, with that photo. The narrow radio beam that Monitor’s main dish puts out needs a better fix.”
“Try again.”
“I did. Callisto got in the way, then Jupiter itself.” “Shit.”
Both men stood, hands on hips, staring down at the fax sheets. Their eyes traced through the matted patterns, noting details, neither of them moving.
“This is going to be pretty big news, Nigel.”
“I expect.”
“I think we ought to sit on it for a while. Until I get a chance to speak to the Director.”
“Ummm. Suppose so.”
Lubkin looked at him steadily.
“There’s not much question about what this thing is.” “Not one of ours,” Nigel said. “Dead on about that.” “Funny, you discovering it. You and McCauley are the only men who’ve ever seen anything alien.”
Nigel glanced up at Lubkin, surprised. “That’s why I stayed in the program. I thought you knew. I wanted to be where things were happening.”
“You guessed something would?” Lubkin seemed genuinely startled.
“No. I was gambling.”
“Some people are still pretty hot about Icarus, you know.”
“I’ve heard.”
“They might not like your being—”
“Up theirs.” Nigel’s face hardened. He had answered Lubkin’s questions about Icarus years before and saw no reason to reopen the past now.
“Well, I was only… I’ll be seeing the Director—”
“I found it. I want in on it. Remember that,” he finished savagely.
“The military is going to remember last time.” Lubkin spread his palms open in a conciliatory gesture.
“And?”
“Icarus was dangerous. Maybe this thing is, too.” Nigel scowled. Politics. Committees. Jesus.
“Bugger all,” he said. “Hadn’t we best figure where it’s going? Before fretting about what to do if it gets here?”
