Memories: The Investigation
Jack turned his attention to the more mundane aspects of piloting Magellan—they would have to reduce their orbital period, taking the big ship closer to the Anomaly so its full suite of instruments could be brought to bear. If this was what he thought it was, it demanded a thorough investigation. It was the least he could do for all the eggheads back on Earth who were about to have their livelihoods upended.
“I want a closer look at this thing,” he finally said. “Shouldn’t need more than a four-meters-per-second burn to shorten our radius enough.”
“There is enough propellant in the orbital maneuvering system to rendezvous with the MSEV.”
“I’m with you. No sense firing up the main drive for a short burn like that. For starters, let’s make the MSEV’s orbit our minimum safe distance. It’ll take us three days to reach it using the OMS. I want you to keep a sharp eye on the Anomaly”—he still had trouble calling it anything else—“during our transit. If it does anything weird as we get closer, we’ll wave off.”
Daisy’s reply was unusually curt. “Define ‘weird.’”
“If only . . .” he said. How to establish what might constitute unexpected behavior from something so completely unexpected? “I’m open to suggestions. My first thought is any spikes in EM radiation coming from the Anomaly, or DMO-1 itself.”
“We can also compare the MSEV’s onboard clock against our master chronometer. Any detected time dilation would indicate local frame-dragging.”
Jack definitely did not want their frame to be dragged anywhere they didn’t intend. “Good idea. Might be our only indicator of an event horizon.”
“Current theory suggests an event horizon to be an impossibility. If anything, they are thought to be non-traversable.”
“The models all predict wormholes collapse if anything enters them,” he agreed, “unless they’re made stable by exotic matter—whatever that is.” He looked out into the void, vainly searching for any visible sign of the mass concentration at the Anomaly’s center. “Invisible mass seems mighty ‘exotic’ to me.”
“Dark matter could indeed support that hypothesis. I have compiled the available academic papers on the subject for your perusal, but our onboard library is limited.”
“I’m not surprised. Nobody thought we’d stumble into one of these things in our own solar system.”
“I can ask HOPE Control to transmit more information.”
Jack hesitated. Information bandwidth had become more limited over their extreme distance, and a request like that would be certain to get some heads scratching. “Let me see what you have first,” he decided. “Asking them is only going to generate a lot of questions we’re not ready to answer.” Not to mention the strong possibility of Owen saying “no” to his plan.
“You are concerned about the mission team’s reaction.”
“You really have learned to read my mind, haven’t you?” Though there were practical reasons, he had to admit his reaction was mostly personal. He didn’t want the crew back on Earth thinking he’d gone off the deep end.