Eight months into his trip to Jupiter, Peter woke up from his usual nightmare once again. He had fallen asleep listening to music, and he woke up to Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters, still startled by the voice of the serpent.
To illustrate his last remark,
Jonah in the whale, Noah in
the ark,
What did they do
Just when everything looked so
dark?
Man, they said we better accentuate the positive,
Eliminate
the neg--
Peter stood, grabbed his teacup, and threw it across the room.
"Computer, stop playback!"
A chirp from the computer, and the music stopped. Peter folded his hands behind his neck and paced the concave floor. The transport from Venus to Jupiter was much larger than his transport to Venus, and had artificial gravity spin boosters equipped.
"Computer, start the playlist 'Classical' from Dr. Bowman's directory."
Another chirp, followed by the sound of the plucking of stringed instruments. A harp playing a single note twelve times, imitating ancient bells announcing that midnight has come. Peter recognized this as the beginning of Camille Saint-Saëns' "Danse Macabre." He continued to pace in his quarters, listening to the music. It had a much more calming effect on him than he had expected.
When the song was over, he cleaned up the tea and broken teacup, walked to his desk, and looked at a monitor, as the next song in the playlist began.
"Computer, display the design for the 3SG used on the Voyager 27 probe."
The screen lit up with the requested design. The 3SG, Three-Space Gravimeter, was used by the probe to measure the gravitational pull of nearby objects. A very dense spherical object was suspended in a cube by six springs-- One for each side of the cube, two for each spatial dimension. The tension of each spring was measured to determine the sphere's gravitational attraction to large nearby objects, which, for a Voyager probe, would typically be rogue planets that are not part of any star system.
The 3SG was used in conjunction with a system called a "Light Sonar" or "Light-Son," made up of flashing lights and a camera. A light would flash, and a camera would detect the reflection of the light off of an object. The amount of time between when the light was flashed and when the camera first detected the reflection was measured. This timespan was used to measure the distance from the object to the probe. The Light-Son was only useful in very low-light settings, which is the kind of situation in which the Voyager probes operated.
The data from both the 3SG and the Light-Son is sent back to the computers on the receiving station, in the case of the New Voyager project, on the space station orbiting Jupiter. There, the distance of the object to the probe and the gravitational attraction between the object and the probe, along with some corrections that needed to be made due to non-Newtonian physics, were used to make a rough estimate of the mass of the object in question. Extreme precision was absolutely necessary for the data to be meaningful.
The problem that Peter was facing was in the data sent back to the Jupiter station from Voyager 27's 3SG. According to it, the sphere inside the cube was slammed against the wall. The gravitational pull required to do that would almost need the mass of a star, and this from an object much smaller than an asteroid, and on a collision course with both Earth and Venus. On his trip to Jupiter, Peter often studied the design of the 3SG for flaws, hoping to explain what might cause the readings.
Far more concerning to Peter than the data from the 3SG, however, was the last image that he saw in Dr. Bernard's office. He tried to imagine how he could explain to himself that he dreamed that timer display before he had ever learned of the device headed for Earth. He continually fell back on the explanation that this was discovered by ISP fourteen years earlier, and he must have heard whisperings of it from colleagues which finally emerged from his memory in the dream. Though very plausible, this explanation was never satisfying to Peter, and he continued to experience the nightmare every night.
"If you don't mind the suggestion, sir," Peter heard the computer say, "you may enjoy something to help you to relax right now. Another cup of chamomile tea, for example, or a sleep aid. Then again, you may also enjoy a walk along one of the circular cross sections of the ship."
"Always lookin' out for me, aren't you, Mr. Computer?" Peter responded. "And I notice you already took the liberty of spraying a vanilla scent into the room."
"I did. I hope that you take no offense at my presumption."
"No, not at all. A walk sounds good, actually. When I get back, I expect you to have aggregated a good collection of knock-knock jokes."
"Understood."
