The Next Level

He moved all of the earth photos together in a group of one through ten, followed by a grouping of  open space, then ended up placing a grouping of photos of Jupiter and all the planets leading up to it from earth’s view and a group taken from a point of view on Sedna back towards Earth.  He asked them to look hard at each, then step back, look again, and tell him if they saw something that was common in the photos.  He told them that Hubble had managed to get this set of photos to access what space, earth, and the surrounding systems appeared like over the past three hundred thousand years and Beckwith had pulled those from the furthest time after he had studied each ‘period’ they had picked up on. 

Aragon and Tim moved up and down the table slowly, looking at each separately, then at several together, then moved from one photo to another further down and back again.  From time to time, they both made use of a magnifying lens to look at a particular picture, and then moved on.  This went on for a half-hour.  No one said anything.  Cramer just sat down and waited.  He knew that before he said any more, they would have to see and know for themselves what they thought they were seeing. 

All at once, Aragon swept her hand across several photos from the Jupiter area, open space, and earth.  She quickly moved some of the photos around.  She was astonished.  She looked at Tim and then over at Cramer.  She said excitedly, “Do you see it, Tim.  Look there - up by Jupiter.  I think that is one of their moons.  Oh what is it - ah, oh God, it’s…yes, it’s Europa, isn’t it?  See that light - it’s moving out, across and down - back toward earth.  Oh where is it?” she was asking as she rapidly looked at more of the earth photos, then said, “yes, there it is, there is where it is going.  Are you seeing this, Tim?”  He was.  He went back over the entire series again, the groupings as they had originally been set up, then those that Aragon had pointed out.  He got out the magnifying lens again, looked hard and long at the photos of Jupiter, especially focusing on Europa, and finally spoke, “Yes, I see a spot of light there that seems to be moving off Europa into open space and toward Earth.  It is moving off of Europa that is certain.”

Cramer knew they had seen what both he and Beckwith had seen and discussed.  He told them when Beckwith had first seen this, he thought there was something defective in the photos, but in analyzing all of the photos, he knew that thought was erroneous.  They had concluded, that indeed, some kind of ‘missile’ or ‘object’ of some kind had moved off of Europa in a specifically deigned course for Earth, landing somewhere in this region- the one Aragon had been looking for the photo of so frantically just a short while ago.  He asked Beckwith to maintain the discovery in utmost secrecy because of the presence of this object and what it could mean; Beckwith had no problem with this, but he asked Cramer to please advise him of the meaning of it when he knew and that was the agreement between them.

Aragon looked at Cramer and Tim with darkening eyes, saying, “Do you realize what this means?  Something did come here.  Further back, in fact, than we at first were looking for here.  That ‘cone’ at the dive site, I think we can all agree that is exactly what it is based on our research so far, must be it or at least, something connected with it.”

“Yes,” Tim responded excitedly, “I believe you are right.  Now what?  What do we do next?  What can we tell the rest of the team?  Do we tell them anything at all about this?”

She said she felt they still needed to do a lot more with what they knew - and didn’t, before they could even consider how to answer those questions.  There was too much left open to give the team any good, solid information.  She knew Hans would be getting impatient to know what they were coming up with, but she was unsure, just yet, in how to handle that part of the problem.  Cramer agreed with her and said, for now, he would try to handle Hans’s concerns, if he really had any yet.  He knew how long some of the research takes, so just keeping him on that track of thought