23: Translated

The room was bathed in a dark red glow, as it had been since Yellowstone, but after so many days of it Sergei didn’t even notice anymore. He sat in the living room, where the sheer white drapes allowed in the full redness of the ashy sky, and felt listless. He had been listening to the news reports all evening, and he now felt simply drained. Even now, the reports continued to drone on, but he had long since tuned them out.

“We still do not have confirmation from any source that debris from Verdant, or the satellite itself, has been sighted entering the atmosphere… but we also cannot get confirmation that it is still in orbit. All com signals from the satellite have simply stopped transmitting, according to officials, and no optical equipment has managed to locate the satellite anywhere. Already, we’re receiving word from overseas news agencies that the United States is being accused of using some experimental weapon on Verdant, and has in fact destroyed the satellite. The High House publicly denies these allegations… however they state they are also in the dark regarding the status of Verdant. Denver has also not yet recalled the fighters and troop carriers sent into orbit to stabilize Verdant and Tranquil, citing the threat posed by both satellites, and the allegations that Verdant has developed a secret weapon of its own, has yet to be answered to the government’s satisfaction. It is presently estimated that at least 250 American citizens were aboard Verdant when it went dark…”

A noise at the front door roused him. He heard a click, and the telltale sound of the door opening, and slowly, he levered himself out of the sofa. He trudged towards the entry, which was hidden from the living room by a privacy wall, but it didn’t matter. Only one person would be coming in.

A moment later, the door closed, and Anise Lenz stepped around the corner. She saw Sergei approaching her, and she hurried over to him, and folded herself into his arms. They had been living together for the better part of the year, and weren’t that far from committing to their first marriage contract.

Sergei spoke first. “I’m glad you made it home. I know the trains are running slow with all this ash…”

“I didn’t think I’d get here until tomorrow!” Anise said, and kissed him warmly. Sergei barely seemed to be able to muster up any energy for her, which drew her up short. “Are you okay?”

Sergei’s shoulders sagged. “Been listening to the news,” he said simply.

“So have I… what I can get, anyway,” Anise agreed. “They say Verdant threatened to drop bombs on the U.S., and we attacked. The last I heard, they said Verdant is destroyed.”

Sergei shook his head, but it wasn’t really a no. “There was no sign of an explosion. There’s debris reported worldwide, but so far nothing is confirmed… they’ve all been labeled as hoaxes or hysterical claims. There’s no sign of anything de-orbiting or crashing. It didn’t just blow up.”

“Then… what happened to it?” Anise looked up at the ceiling as if she could look through it, all the way to orbit. “What happened to my daddy?”

“I don’t know.”

~

“We still don’t know, Ma’am. Every sensory instrument we have is pointed up there, and no one can locate Verdant. We’ve even flown fighters directly through its original coordinates. It’s just not there.”

The man speaking was wearing a general’s multiforces uniform, and he stood at-ease with his hat tucked under his armpit, yet he still gave the impression of being at attention before the Vice President. Lena Carruthers frowned at him, but it wasn’t so much in anger, as much as it was in confusion. “How can it possibly not be there? Those things can’t go anywhere… and even if they could, they sure can’t go anywhere fast!”

“We’re trying to ascertain if something else happened to the satellite,” the General explained.

“Like what? That they blew themselves up? Or that they just turned out the lights and drew all the shades?”

The man in the corner of the room threw a glance at Carruthers, but said nothing. Brandon Kang, her Chief of Staff, had accompanied the General into the executive office, after similarly exhausting every avenue to ascertain what had happened to Verdant. Carruthers’ sarcastic response to the General did not bode well for the mood in the building, and he knew it. But there wasn’t much he could do about it.

In the meantime, Carruthers was telling the General, “So help me, if this is the result of some super-secret weapon your people deployed on that satellite without my knowledge, I’ll have you all loaded onto the next waste rocket scheduled for the Sun! If I find out you people have killed the President, there’ll be no hole on this planet deep enough for you to hide from me! Find that satellite! Dismissed!”

The General gave the barest nod of his head, turned, and strode wordlessly out of the room. The stiffness in his back was evident, but Carruthers gave no indication that she was sorry for her response. Once the door closed behind the General, she turned to Kang.

“Brandon, you’d know if this was some sort of weapon,” she said, almost voicing it as a question. “We’d know. We’d know!”

“It wasn’t one of ours,” Brandon assured her. “That much is certain. I doubt it would be someone else’s weapon that we wouldn’t know about… especially since it was only used on Verdant. But without remains to examine… I mean, you saw the video. One second it was there, and the next…”

“Yes,” Carruthers said, turning away and leaning heavily against the desk. The video from the troop carrier had already been sent to them, and they had watched it repeatedly, trying to make sense of the abrupt disruption of the video, a split-second pop-flash of static much like that caused by an electro-magnetic pulse, followed by… an empty space where Verdant, and some of the fighters in its vicinity, had been a moment before. There had been no inbound missiles from the fighters or carriers, no visual artifacts or shock-waves, and no other signs of violence directed at Verdant. “Nothing just… vanishes like that! But nothing explodes like that, either!” She looked over her shoulder at Kang. “What does that leave us with?”

“Questions,” Kang replied. “But we’ll find the answers.”

“They’d better be good ones. The world already thinks we did this. Bad enough that freighter disabled Tranquil right in front of our people. If we can’t prove we didn’t cause this, too…” Carruthers looked out of the camouflaged window at the grounds surrounding the High House. The night traffic was even more sparse than usual, due to the disruptions caused by the ash layer. The night had become a blessing in the last few days: The daytime sky was a now-perpetual red that was beginning to make her eyes hurt whenever she looked at it. But even at night, the lighter ash that blew through the air created a dark fog that limited visibility, and made everything seem as if it was trapped in a small bubble of reality, all alone and surrounded by nothing. Not that much different than being in space, she imagined.

Lena Carruthers looked at Kang sadly. “This is not the country I wanted to be running, Brandon.”

“Of course not,” Kang replied, thinking to himself: No one wanted you to run a country… any country. “But with the President gone, and we have to presume dead, the helm is yours now. We’d better figure out how to make the best of it.”

~

“I want all department heads to check in directly with CnC, full damage report checks! Do a level-two diagnostic check on all sensory equipment in here! I want to know what’s going on!”

Julian shouted and stalked angrily through a CnC that was in a state of pandemonium: Technicians struggled over workstations that had gone black, or were flashing and flickering with conflicting, nonsensical data; a few people had the top panels of their workstations open, looking for burned-out components; the main workstation in the center of the room was flashing like a frenetic Christmas display, readings that constantly changed, rotated, blanked out, then ran through the chaotic pattern again and again; the main display column was literally a tankful of static, mirroring the sound coming out of the room speakers; and even the GLIS had gone silent.

He stopped at one of the few workstations that was closed and operating, though probably not optimally. “Chet,” he asked of the technician seated there, “has our orbital status changed?”

“Sir, I just don’t know,” the technician replied. “None of my readings make sense, and everything keeps trying to reset itself over and over…” He shrugged helplessly. “I can’t get it to stop!”

“Keep working on it,” Julian advised quietly, and moved on.

The door to his office opened, and Reya charged out of it. “The display in your office is out, too,” she said, hooking a finger over her shoulder. “I’ve never seen anything like this!”

Julian cursed loudly. “I need to know what’s going on outside! Try again to get our fighters on the com!” Reya rushed over to one of the workstations, only to find it opened and a technician waist-deep inside it. With a frustrated growl, she searched desperately for a workstation that would give her an outside line.

There was an urgent rap on the glass doors sealing off CnC. Julian spun about to see Aaron Hardy on the outside, his fist poised over the glass. He pointed at the security guard. “Open us up!” The guard jumped to the door controls, and after a moment, the doors started to slide open. Thank God the power is still functioning, Julian thought, as Aaron slipped through the doors and rushed into the room.

“What’s going on! I thought maybe we were hit!—”

“Everything was hit,” Julian replied, “we just don’t know with what! I thought this facility was supposed to be hardened enough to handle an EMP.”

“It is! The electrics are still on, aren’t they?” Aaron looked about the room. “Whatever it was, it wasn’t an electro-magnetic pulse.”

“Then what—”

“Julian, we’re getting some coms back!” Reya dashed up to him, holding a handheld com unit. “It’s patched through to tactical. I have the fighters!”

Julian took the com from her. “This is Verdant CnC. Ranking Wasp outboard, report in!”

After a moment, there was a hiss from the com, then a voice. “This is Wasp four, Lt. Goldie Maina reporting.”

“Lieutenant, CnC is blind at the moment,” Julian stated. “Until we get our systems back up, you’re our eyes. What’s going on out there?”

“Sir, we’re as confused out here as you are in there,” Goldie reported. “One second, we’re dogfighting fifty Raptors… the next, the Raptors are gone, the carriers are gone, and… I know how this is going to sound, sir, but… Earth moved. And it looks different.”

Julian looked at Reya and Aaron, who returned his confused looks. “Back up, Lieutenant. The fighters and carriers: Were they destroyed by something? Did they de-orbit?”

“Neither, sir. They just… vanished. There are now three Raptors out here with us, and they’ve broken off their attacks… they’re maintaining station a kilometer away. But the rest of them… it’s like they were never here.”

Julian shook his head in confusion. “What about Earth? What do you mean, it moved?”

“As in, it was in one position in the sky, relative to Verdant,” Goldie replied, “and now it’s in a different position. Or maybe I should say, it’s like Verdant, and us fighters, changed our orientation with regard to Earth. But if we did, we all did it at the same time, instantaneously, with no sense of motion involved. I can’t say for sure, because my positioning sensors have crashed.”

Julian turned to look at Chet, who returned his look with one of utter confusion. “How does Earth look different?” Julian asked.

“Well, we seem to be higher in orbit, because it appears smaller from here. And I think Yellowstone may have erupted again, because the sky is redder than before. I can’t make out any land masses, the ash cloud seems to be covering everything.”

As Julian listened, technicians came to Reya and spoke to her in low voices. When Goldie seemed to be done, Reya put a hand on Julian’s arm. “Some systems are coming back,” she said, “but not all of them make sense.”

After a moment, Julian nodded, and handed the com back to Reya. “Have two Wasps maintain station outside for visual info. Try to coordinate getting the others back inside.” Reya nodded and began speaking through the com, as Julian moved to a workstation that a technician had just closed back up. It was a communications station that normally monitored com traffic from the Global Weather Service. “Is it back up?”

“Sir, the board’s working,” the technician replied. “But it’s just not getting anything from the GWS. They’re off the air.”

“That’s…” Julian looked around to the other stations. “Is anyone else getting com traffic from the ground?” No one responded. “What about the other satellites? Or the lunar beacon? Is anyone getting anything at all?”

“Sir,” one technician called out, “Wendy and I are both getting this one signal from the ground.” Julian approached the tech, and looked from him to the girl at the adjoining station. “We’ve both confirmed the signal is from the ground. We just can’t figure out what it is… it’s nothing I’ve ever heard, and it’s not coming up in our databases.”

“Voice?”

“Data. But I don’t know what language or code it’s in.”

Julian looked around the room. “Does anyone get voice?” A few heads shook, but mostly everyone stood or sat stock still. A sound emanated from the speakers of the GLIS, as if it was trying to respond to the question, but the sound was cut off immediately, and the GLIS was silent again. Julian stared at the nearest monitor for a moment, before turning away and searching CnC again.

As his eyes roved the room, he saw Aaron throwing a hard stare across the room. He followed his gaze, and saw he was fixed upon Kris Fawkes. Julian could tell some silent exchange was happening between them, a mutual animosity… or distrust. At that moment, Kris seemed to realize Julian was looking at her, and her eyes turned in his direction. He locked eyes with her, and after a moment, strode over to her.

He moved close to her, and in a low voice, said, “Miss Fawkes, if you know that this was some kind of weapon that was used against us, now would be a good time to speak up.”

Kris looked at Julian with a sick expression. “I swear to you, this is nothing I’ve ever seen or heard of.”

Julian regarded her closely. “Do you think this is an American weapon?”

Kris looked about the room. “No, but…” her voice trailed off, and she shrugged helplessly. Julian studied her face a few seconds more. Then he moved off, satisfied she was not lying to him. She was as confused as the rest of them.

“I have external camera feeds,” a technician promptly announced.

Julian turned in that direction. “Let’s see what you’ve got.” By the time he reached the workstation, the technician had an image on his screen. What appeared to be Earth, but redder and more distant, filled about half of the screen. Julian peered at the image, trying to make sense of it. “Is it a distortion? Why does it look smaller? Are we in a higher orbit?”

“I don’t know, sir,” the technician admitted. “None of my positioning data make sense.”

Julian glanced at the main workstation. “Can you transfer that to the main column?”

“Hold on,” the technician said, and after a moment working on his board, the main workstation’s display column flickered to life, displaying a larger, more detailed view of the image on the tech’s workstation. Julian approached it, as well as Aaron and Kris, while Reya kept it in her vision as she continued to speak over the com.

After an extended period staring at the globe below, Julian finally proclaimed, “That just can’t be Earth.”

“No, it isn’t.”

The voice, which emanated from across CnC, brought Julian and the others about. Dr. Jacqueline Silver, Dr. Calvin Rios, and Dr. Valeria Epstein stood at the entrance to CnC, peering about at the slowly-recovering chaos around them. Then they walked in, Dr. Silver in the lead, heading directly towards Julian.

Julian could see from Dr. Silver’s expression that she seemed to know something… although he wasn’t so sure of that from the faces of Calvin and Valeria. “Dr. Silver, do you know what’s going on? What happened to Earth?”

“I do,” Silver replied confidently. “And for the record, nothing ‘happened to’ the Earth.”

Julian glanced at the image in the column. “Then just what, exactly, am I looking at, Doctor?”

While Calvin and Valeria exchanged nervous glances, Dr. Silver just smiled. “This will take some time to explain. Why don’t we move to the conference room?”

~

The conference room just around the corner from CnC seemed crowded with all three doctors, Julian, Reya, Aaron and Kris inside. Everyone sat, and Dr. Silver seated herself on the opposite side of Reya from Julian.

“To begin with, Ceo,” Dr. Silver started, “I need to apologize for keeping everyone in the dark as I have. Only my assistant, Mr. Chiu, was fully aware of what we were working on from the beginning, and I kept my staff’s knowledge limited only to details of what pieces they were working on. Even Coo Hardy was not aware of the real nature of this project.”

Julian glared at Hardy, who blinked under his gaze. “Julian, I swear, it was supposed to be… everything she showed me…”

“We’ll deal with that later,” Julian said, and turned back to Dr. Silver, leaving Aaron to shrink into his seat. “Now, Doctor, tell me what you’ve done.”

“Simply put,” Dr. Silver replied, “I’ve gotten Verdant out of harm’s way, at least for the moment. We’ve managed to develop a new technology that has allowed us to get Verdant out of Earth orbit and our imminent crisis.”

“Out of orbit?” Julian demanded. “Impossible! Verdant doesn’t have the propulsive power to fly anywhere!”

“Very true,” Silver nodded. “We didn’t ‘fly’ anywhere. Nevertheless, we are no longer in Earth orbit.”

Julian followed what she was suggesting… but simply didn’t believe it. After turning the options over in his head, he finally said, “Bull! That’s Earth! Something’s happened to us, to our orbit…” he stared at Silver, who returned his gaze impassively. “You can’t be serious!”

“Yes, I am,” Silver replied. “That planet below us is not the Earth. It happens to be Mars.”

“Bullshit,” Reya muttered, and reached for a control panel on the conference table. A moment later, a wall screen activated, and displayed the planet that was displayed in CnC’s main column. They all stared at the planet below… and slowly, what didn’t make visual sense to them before, could now be seen clearly under a new light… they realized they were not looking at a reddish ash cloud blanketing the surface, but the surface itself… layers became shadows, and shadows became geologic features…

“Oh… shit,” Reya whispered.

Julian realized that Calvin and Valeria were also staring at the image, slack-jawed. “You two didn’t know, either?”

Calvin turned to Julian and shook his head. “Ceo, I’m sorry, but I had no clue. I thought Dr. Silver was trying to further her freight experiment, when I saw the equations…”

“What equations?”

Valeria volunteered, “The ones she had me working on, sir. I mean, they were similar to the freight project, but—”

“In fact,” Silver cut her off, “I had nine departments working on the supposed freight project. It just so happened that the nature of the experiment seemed so well-suited to a freight handling system, that it provided a good smokescreen to labor under. No one would have had any idea that the cover story was anything more than a blind… not my own people… or even Coo Hardy. I had originally hoped to have everything ready to present to you in just a few weeks. Unfortunately, the Yellowstone Caldera forced me to accelerate our timetable.”

Reya’s eyes bulged suddenly. “Are you telling us, this thing you did… it was still experimental?”

Dr. Silver put out a hand to calm her. “I promise, we ran full simulated life tests, and there were no problems—”

“Shit!” Reya heaved up out of her chair, her arms wrapping about her torso. “You used some experimental process to move us to another planet!” She turned to Julian. “Can I kill her now, please, before my arms fall off?”

“Get in line,” Julian said menacingly, and came up out of his chair. Dr. Silver swiveled her chair to follow him, and leaned back in barely-concealed alarm when he moved in her direction… until she realized he was heading for the door. “Everyone stay here!” he barked. Then he walked out of the conference room and around the corner into CnC.

When the staff saw him enter, they looked to him eagerly, hoping to get some answers to their questions. Judging by the look on a few of their faces, Julian suspected some of them were already figuring some things out. No wonder, he thought, as he glanced at the image of what he now knew to be the planet Mars, displayed in the main column.

Instead of answering their questions, however, Julian approached the technician at the tactical workstation. “Order in all outboard Wasps, immediately. Then open a frequency to those three Raptors. Tell them that the fight is over, and they have no base to return to. Tell them that we are clearing them to land on Verdant. Tell them they will not be considered prisoners of war, nor are they under arrest. Just convince them to come in before their air runs out. Understood?”

“Yes, sir,” the technician nodded.

Julian returned the nod, then looked to the rest of CnC’s staff. “At the moment, we are all right,” he said clearly and deliberately. “Anyone calls and asks, tell them that we’re still trying to figure out what happened. As soon as things are clear to me, I’ll be passing that information on to you, and the rest of Verdant. Understood?” No one questioned him, and he nodded. “Carry on.”

He returned to the conference room to see Reya against the wall on the far side of the room, still looking angry and out-of-sorts. He went to Reya first. In a low voice, he asked, “Are you feeling all right?”

Reya glared at Dr. Silver as she spoke. “I want to strangle that puta! She says I’m fine, but…” She looked up at Julian. “I feel violated.”

Julian nodded. “On a lot of levels. I know. Try to relax. But if you feel ill, let me know immediately.” He started to lead her back to her chair, but she resisted, clearly wanting to remain where she was. After a moment, Julian relented, and returned to his chair.

“All right, Doctor,” he stated, “I think it’s time you explained to us how you managed to move us to another part of the solar system.”

“Well, strictly speaking, Verdant did not ‘move’,” Dr. Silver said. “‘Moving’ is a process of passing through physical space, from one location to another. In physical terms, we didn’t actually do that.”

After a moment, Julian said, “Congratulations, Doctor. You’ve lost me that fast.”

“I’m sorry,” Silver nodded, “but it’s a distinction that matters in terms of quantum mechanics, and the very reason we were able to do what we did. Our system is capable of manipulating the quantum translation of energy and matter.”

“Quantum… translation?” Julian repeated. “What is that?”

“It is the result of manipulating the quantum frequency and absolute orientation of an object,” Silver explained. “Doing so causes that object to translate its position in space to a different position.”

“Funny: It sure looks like we moved to me,” Reya grumbled from across the room.

Julian held up a hand in frustration, and turned to Calvin. “Dr. Rios, you’re supposed to be the expert at explaining complex science to laymen like us. I don’t suppose you’d care to give it a try?”

Calvin looked about the room balefully, and sighed. “Of course… though you understand that quantum mechanics isn’t my field of expertise, either.” He looked at Dr. Silver. “But I’ll explain what I can.”

“Please,” Julian urged.

Calvin nodded. “Well, to begin with: Quantum physics, or Quantum mechanics, is the science of what happens to the particles that make up atoms, their components, and things even smaller than that. Some of them are very familiar to us, like protons, neutrons and electrons. Other particles, like leptons, mesons and bosons, are largely inferred by experiment and theory. But that doesn’t prevent us from actually studying and manipulating them.

“In fact, our electronic and photonic systems are based on quantum effects that we have discovered through cause and effect, even though we can’t always see the actual particles in action. It’s a lot like not being able to physically see a train, but being able to infer its size, weight, movement and velocity based on data we collect along specific locations on the tracks. That’s how we delve into quantum mechanics.”

Julian nodded. “I follow. Go on.”

“Okay: It was discovered in the late-twentieth century that all matter and energy has a common quantum frequency, or vibration, known as alpha,” Calvin continued. “It’s theorized that the vibration is part of the process that binds matter and energy together, allowing us to exist as physical entities, and not just clouds of individual particles floating around everywhere. And it has been established that the quantum vibration exists everywhere in the known universe, essentially the glue making everything in our universe work.

“Now, in the early-twenty-first century, an interesting fact about the quantum frequency was discovered: Scientists realized that the alpha frequency was different in different parts of the universe. Further experimentation revealed that the difference in alpha was relatively uniform, from being the smallest wavelength in roughly the known center of the universe—the location of what we call the Origin Point—radiating more-or-less evenly outward to the largest wavelength, at the edges of the known universe. That means that the alpha of objects closer to the Origin Point is smaller than the alpha of objects further away.

“Now, if you listen to sound coming out of a speaker, you know that the sound is louder up-close, and quieter further away. It’s possible to measure the difference in sound in different locations, and estimate the level of sound you should encounter at any specific distance from the speaker. In the same way, with a careful examination of the cosmic background radiation, you can determine what the alpha of a particular radius from the Origin Point should be.”

Calvin paused there. “How am I doing?”

“Okay so far,” Julian told him.

“Good. Now, in the late-twentieth and early-twenty-first centuries, scientists were trying to figure out how some of these quantum particles moved… because some of them didn’t seem to travel through space at all. Through experiments that generally used lasers to bombard these particles with excess energy, it was observed that these particles would seemingly disappear in one location, and reappear in another, but without actually moving through the physical space between.”

“Whoa,” Reya said. “If you don’t move through physical space… what was it, some kind of other dimension?”

“Some scientists theorized exactly that,” Calvin replied. “They thought the particles had entered and traveled through another type of space—they liked to call it ‘hyperspace,’ back then—”

“Brane-Boy stuff,” Reya moaned.

“—and they would come out of this ‘hyperspace’, back into our own space,” Calvin went on. “And in so doing, they had covered the distance between the two points faster than light could travel in real space, seemingly breaking the laws of relativity in the process, and sparking a brand new branch of theory that would be built on top of Einstein’s original Unified Theory… but, enough about that for now.”

Calvin took a deep breath, gauging his audience to make sure they were still with him. He glanced at Valeria and Dr. Silver, both of whom gave him encouraging looks.

“It took years of puzzling over how and why the particles seemed to jump from one point to the other,” Calvin continued. “Then it was discovered in the mid-twenty-first century that the particles had different quantum frequencies—alpha—before and after their jump. They determined that the energy from the lasers wasn’t, in fact, moving the particles at all; the lasers were actually altering the particle’s alpha, depending on their settings. Whenever that happened, the particle jumped.

“Now, since the particles weren’t actually moving through three-dimensional space, scientists didn’t like to refer to what they did as ‘movement’. For awhile they called the process ‘quantum tunneling’, even if they didn’t know what the particles were tunneling through. Eventually they determined that the change in alpha literally forced the particles to change their location to one that matched their new frequency. It didn’t actually move or travel there… it just was there, when it used to be here. These days, that is referred to as ‘quantum translation’.”

“Translation,” Julian echoed. “Is this where we come in?”

“Apparently so,” Calvin nodded. “Dr. Silver has used the principle of altering the alpha of all of Verdant... and its immediate surroundings, judging by the fact that the fighters are still with us. When she did that, we were translated from Earth orbit... to here.

“And, unfortunately,” Calvin concluded, “my expertise ends right here. I now know that Dr. Silver used a series of nine gigacapacitors to generate the frightening amount of power needed to operate her… translation system, and move an entire satellite. But how that system managed to affect every particle on Verdant at once, or put us conveniently in orbit of another planet, is way beyond me.”

Julian looked at Dr. Silver. “Did he describe the process accurately, Doctor?”

Dr. Silver looked at Calvin and smiled. “Accurately and eloquently. My complements. The last part, how the system affected everything at once, is essentially due to the tuned light emitters we used to alter the alpha being focused through a heavily-doped crystal that evenly disperses the alpha throughout Verdant. Naturally, there’s more to it than that, but that’s it in a nutshell.”

“I may understand it,” Reya pointed out, “but I still don’t like being put through this damned science experiment of yours, without warning. I’m probably sterile now—not that that’s a loss in the big scheme of things, I suppose. But there’s still one other little detail that must be discussed.” Reya finally pushed off from the far wall and approached the table, leaning on it with both hands and bending forward, so that she was as close as she could get across the table to Dr. Silver.

She paused for emphasis, making sure the room was silent and waiting for her next words.

Then she shrilled, “We’re not over Earth!”