Read Online Energized by Edward M. Lerner - Free Book Online Page B

steel track. “As opposed to our big scope. This whole structure can rotate up to forty degrees a minute, versus one-fourth degree per minute needed to keep pace with Earth’s rotation. The dish can tip up and down at as much as twenty degrees per minute. That instrument turret at the end of the arm holds up to eight independent instrument modules, each—”
    â€œBack up,” Marcus said. “Those tipping and turning rates. You’re telling me that the GBT can track planets, asteroids, even close-orbiting satellites. Stars and galaxies only move with the Earth’s rotation.” She must have looked surprised because he added, “Remember who I work for?”
    â€œRight. And sorry.”
    â€œExcept asteroids and most planets don’t emit radio waves. In the middle of the quiet zone, where my cell phone has no service and NRAO won’t even permit digital cameras up close, I can’t believe the observatory is pumping out radar pulses so you can read the echoes.”
    He was quick, which was promising, and he seemed engaged in what she’d had to show him. But around the eyes she saw a touch of … something. Suspicion? Was she that transparent, or was it something else?
    â€œYou’re correct,” she said. “Arecibo transmits and Green Bank reads the faint echoes. We could transmit ourselves”—she pointed up at the instrumentation arm—“by replacing one of the receiver modules with a transmitter, but that would hardly be radio quiet. My work involves radar mapping of Titan, and we partner with Arecibo to do it.”
    â€œTitan? Just how sensitive is this scope?”
    â€œIf there were a cell phone on Titan, with the GBT”—and lots of post-processing—“I could listen to the call.” Barring other complications, and that topic was coming. “We need to move along, Marcus. The weekly science lunch is not to be missed.”
    Especially because you are on deck.
    *   *   *
    Patrick Burkhalter toted his cafeteria tray to the residence hall’s second floor, where he found the social lounge half filled. Many of his colleagues were already seated and eating. Others surrounded Valerie Clayburn and her guest, meal trays in hand, intercepted before they could find a table. With maybe eight thousand people in the entire county, everyone welcomed new faces. But visitors and outsiders comprised very different categories, and after eight years here Patrick remained an outsider.
    â€œHey,” he offered as he took an empty seat. Tamara Miller glanced his way, nodded, and went back to her conversation with Liam Harris. Something about intergalactic dust.
    Patrick went to work on his country-fried steak, mashed potatoes, and gravy. His choices would do nothing for his waistline or his cholesterol, but who did he have to impress?
    Or to live for? That was a thought depressing enough to make him set down his fork.
    Their guest got perhaps two minutes with his lunch before Valerie began tapping her water glass with a butter knife. “Hi, everyone. We have a visitor, as you may have noticed.”
    Not to mention that she had put out the word to make sure the tech staff all came today. Would she get the outcome for which she so obviously schemed? In Patrick’s experience, manipulating scientists and engineers worked about as well as herding cats.
    â€œHello,” the chorus rang out raggedly, from around the collection of short, narrow tables arrayed in a U.
    Valerie said, “Our visitor, Marcus Judson, works at NASA Goddard on the demonstration powersat project. I’m hoping he’ll tell us about it.”
    Patrick refocused on his lunch while others murmured their encouragement.
    Judson kept his response short, and Patrick approved. You didn’t know you were today’s featured attraction, did you?
    â€œSo what do you think, folks?” Valerie prompted. “How will powersats