A Desert Called Peace

III.

An assistant flight director, bored and contemplating a night with a couple of cold beers, a hot shower and a hotter woman suddenly saw something on his screen that ought not-no way in hell-be there. He fiddled. He even faddled. But there it remained.

When in doubt, delegate. When delegation is impossible, buck it up to higher.

"What the…? Skipper? Skipper, you've got to come see this!"

Impatiently, the 'Skipper'-a retired naval officer entitled mission director for the Saturn mission-made his way to the terminal. His face was old, weather-lined, and leathery, but he walked erect. A careful observer might have noticed a certain swaggering gait that told of a life at sea now confined to the land.

"Yes, what is it?" the skipper asked.

"The Cristobal Colon just sent us a distress signal, sir."

"That's not possible. The thing disappeared three and a half years ago and never a peep."

"Look for yourself," the assistant flight director insisted, indicating his monitor screen with a pointed finger.

The skipper fumbled in his shirtfront pocket for glasses-bifocals, dammit!-and, placing them low on his nose, craned his head to look at the screen.

"I'll be dipped in shit," the skipper muttered, then continued, a growing excitement in his voice, "Don't just sit there with your teeth in your mouth. Answer it!"

A little shamefaced, the assistant flight director began typing on his keyboard. A series of protocols appeared on the screen. He scrolled through them at practiced speed. But which is… ah, there. Selecting one, and hitting return, the assistant flight director sent a signal down the line. The signal reached a largish antenna somewhere in the Rockies and was promptly beamed into space. Then came the roughly one hundred and four thousand second wait- about thirty-one hours-while the signal went out to the Cristobal Colon, was received and returned.

From that point until the ship was recovered the Colon sent an almost continuous stream of the most absolutely, most amazingly impossible data Mission Control, Earth for that matter, had ever received.

There were those who came to wish that the ship, the data, and the program had or would disappear. They had their reasons, and some of those reasons were very good ones.