When in Rome

“Hey Karen” said Lisa “The tachyon pulse unit on Outer Marker D9 is working again.”

“That’s good to hear.” said Karen “Carolyn let’s get updated view of what’s out there.”

“Will do” said Carolyn

It took about 30 seconds for the Dillingham’s computer to process the data coming in from D9.

“It’s done.” said Carolyn “Output on screen #2”

“Donna, Kathy make sure we don’t run into anything” said Karen “the rest of you to screen #2.” which included Valentina, Carolyn, Lisa and Lori.

The image showed the planet Saturn on the middle top, on the middle far right was a blue triangle marked ‘Cougar 1’, the lower left was a whole bunch of red squares around a blue circle, all of the captions were overlapping one another that made reading them impossible.

“And this is what D9 sees?” asked Karen

“It is” replied Carolyn

“Can you expand on that?” asked Karen while pointing to the mass of red squares.

“Will do.” replied Carolyn. She took her control pad and stylus, drew a circle with stylus on the pad, clicked on a few things and the screen #2 displayed a close up view of the targets. On the middle right side of the screen it showed a blue circle labeled ‘D9’, flashing back and forth was a red square labeled ‘T1’, .

Following it was a group of red squares neatly arranged in three rows and ten columns, followed by another red square labeled ‘T40’. The middle row seemed thicker than the two outer rows. The labels on the middle row had overlapping captions. It took around three minutes for the five officers to resolve the issue of 40 targets and 32 red squares. Carolyn had to expand the screen a few times to resolve the resolution of the middle row that showed two red squares on that middle row.

“That is kind of strange?” asked Lori while pointing toward that middle row of squares.

“Not really” replied Valentina “it would seem that one ship is either towing another ship or carrying it.”

“Or D9 is thinking one ship could be two ships” said Lisa.

“We still do not know what kind of ships or who they belong too?” asked Karen

“No” said Carolyn

“Switch to D9 and expand on it, lets see how far away D9 is from that ship” said Karen

“Will do.” said Carolyn. A couple of clicks on the control pad had the screen refreshed such that blue circle labeled ‘D1’ was inside the red square ‘T1’.

“Expand on that.” said Karen

“Will do.” said Carolyn. Again she did a couple of clicks on the control pad and the refreshed screen still showed the same thing.

“Damm, how close is D9 to that ship?” asked Karen

“Hang on. I need to go to my station to find that out” said Carolyn. She left the group to go to her station. She typed a good amount of keys on the keyboard and then she said “Zero kilometers.”

“You think you can resolve it down to a much finer resolution?” asked Karen

“You want millimeters or nanometers?” joked Carolyn

“Plain old meters would be fine.” smiled Karen.

“Hang on.” said Carolyn. “Forty meters”

“That’s pretty close to the ship.” said Karen

“No, it is forty meters inside that ship.” said Carolyn

“Are you sure?” asked Karen

“I can try again.” said Carolyn.

“Doesn’t these outer markers have cameras on them?” asked Valentina

“Let me check.” replied Carolyn who then typed more characters on the keyboard, her display station brought up diagrams of the outer markers. “According to the computer the outer markers on the D ring do have external cameras.”

“Put a video feed to screen #2 and see what else features this type of outer markers have.” said Karen

“Which camera should I use?” asked Carolyn

“Start from number 1” said Karen

Posted by Helen at November 12, 2002 8:43 PM