Ben picked up his cup and took a sip, resisting a strong urge to spill the beans. “Something big must be up.”
“What is it?”
“I don’t know.” Ben did his best to look mystified. “They invited all the senior exo-hunters, that’s all I know.”
“And they didn’t invite me?” A frown flitted across Roger’s face, but his smile returned and widened. He picked up his espresso. “Must be above my pay grade.”
“Must be,” Ben agreed grimly. This was above everyone’s pay grade. He finished off this third espresso, savoring the richness, and tapped his cell phone screen. Swearing under his breath, Ben stood and patted Roger on the shoulder. “And I’m late. Can you pay?” His brain was still recovering from an excess of wine and lack of sleep, all of that wrapped in a tight fist of anxiety.
Roger nodded and picked up the program schedule. “Sure, it’s your expense budget.”
“Thanks.” Ben squeezed Roger’s shoulder and strode off down the alleyway, turning the corner to the Grand Hotel.
A uniformed attendant nodded at him, saying, “Buon giorno, Professore Rollins,” and stepped back to pull open a large glass-and-brass door.
Air-conditioned coolness swept over Ben as he walked onto the thick carpet of the hotel’s entranceway. Glittering chandeliers hung beneath gilt frescoes. Hurrying up the expansive main staircase, past a menacing lion marble statue, Ben stared at an image of God painted on the ceiling. The Creator hurled bolts of fire down at mankind from the heavens.
Someone grabbed Ben by the shoulder, almost spinning him around. “Identification please.”
A large man in a dark suit held him gently but firmly in place. Ben produced his IAU all-access conference pass. The man nodded and held up some kind of scanner, and Ben tried to wave his pass in front of it.
The man grabbed his hand. “Sorry, I need a DNA scan, Dr. Rollins,” he said as he pressed Ben’s thumb against the device.
“Hey!” Ben tried to pull away, but the man held him firm until the machine pinged.
“Apologies, but I have orders.” The big man stared impassively at Ben. “Please step inside, sir.”
Ben saw complaining would be wasted, and the man was polite if firm. Shaking his head, Ben pushed through the doors to the main ballroom. Even more elaborate crystal chandeliers hung under dazzling sky-blue frescoes. Desks arranged in neat rows lined each side of the room. Ben decided to stand at the back.
Dr. Müller had already started his presentation. The lights dimmed and a projector displayed the blue-and-white NASA logo next to the bright red block letters of JPL—the famous Jet Propulsion Laboratories. The group of five astronomers from the previous evening had expanded to thirty. Many, Ben realized on a quick sweep, recommended by him.
“…everyone has heard of the Pioneer Anomaly?” Dr. Müller asked from the front of the room.
Everyone in the room nodded at Dr. Müller’s question, murmuring their familiarity. When the Pioneer spacecraft—the first probes launched into the outer solar system—reached the edges of interstellar space in the 1980s, they accelerated at rates that couldn’t be explained by the sun’s gravity alone. After two decades of guesswork, the commonly accepted solution was a slight acceleration from their internal heat radiating into the ultra-vacuum around them, but still many people weren’t convinced.
“As you know,” continued Dr. Müller on-stage, “we lost communications with Pioneer 10 at a distance of 12 billion km in 2003. We observed similar anomalies with the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft as they left the solar system and ventured into interstellar space, which we attributed to the same causes.”
Ben nodded along with everyone else. Common knowledge. Every space probe launched into the outer reaches experienced some form of the same thing, and so did some comets observed at great distances.
Dr. Müller stopped to clear his throat. He picked up a glass of water at the podium, pausing to take a drink. The image on the screen behind him changed from the NASA and JPL logos to a graphic detailing the spiraling paths of Pioneer 10 and 11, and Voyager 1 and 2 on their journeys out of the solar system.
He took a deep breath and put the glass down. “Several months ago, from a distance of over 20 billion km—five times the distance to the orbit of Neptune, our outermost planet—we began receiving unusual acceleration signals from Voyager 1…”
Ben had read about this in online journals, along with speculation about problems with radioisotope electrical systems, or gremlins in the ground communications.
“…but what has not been made public, yet,” Dr. Müller continued, “is a sudden spike in these signals four weeks ago. We initially attributed this to some kind of on-board system failure, but soon afterward, we had a similar spike in readings from Voyager 2.”