for protocol, or anything remotely like formality for that matter. The Global Aerospace Foundation drove him batty with that stuff, and everyone knew it. “Back to your stations, people. We’re three weeks ahead of schedule, but there’s still work to do.”
He pushed off and drifted out into the middle of the room, and stopped by gently colliding with his own station. Rao trailed a meter behind him. “Jansen, bring the generators up to full output and start cycling the capacitors,” Marcus said.
“Already on it, sir.”
“Park, bring the array about. You know where I want to look.”
“Aye, sir.”
“We only get one chance at this. Let’s make it count.”
Rao patted him on the shoulder. “You’re a liar, Marc. The only reason you’re up here is to tilt at this little windmill of yours.”
Marcus cracked a smile. “One man’s windmill is another man’s giant. Ms. Park, are we ready?”
“Coordinates locked and ready to scan, sir.”
Rao put on a gambler’s smile. “Bet you fifty credits we only come up with rocks and empty space this time.”
“Make it a hundred and you’re on.”
They shook hands, and Marcus turned, saying, “Commence scanning, full spectrum at eighty-five percent intensity.”
With that, the Copernicus Observatory was momentarily filled with an ear-splitting whine as its massive capacitors discharged, followed by the deep electronic hum of its multi-megawatt scanning array. No one spoke for minutes as they awaited the first results.
Ms. Park finally called out, “We’re receiving data, sir. Should I pipe it over to the main viewer?”
“Yeah. Let’s see what we’ve got.”
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.