Saturn’s Sisters

By Karl Hemeyer

A critical description of our planet and its human species as viewed by interested galactic visitors over a lengthy period of time. The presentation of fantastical opportunities for our people.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Sep 23, 2015
• ISBN: 9781483427973

Book preview

HEMEYER

Copyright © 2015 Karl Hemeyer.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of both publisher and author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

ISBN: 978-1-4834-2798-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-2797-3 (e)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Lulu Publishing Services rev. date: 11/24/2015

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter One

Colorado is so beautiful in the Fall as the trees begin to burn with color and the temperatures drop to where I can watch my breath become snowflakes as I strain through the last mile of my sunrise run. After three miles in the dark, I finally turn right into the driveway of my rustic hillside home. Out of breath from that last two hundred yards of sprinting for a fine finish, I slow to a walk going up the incline to the garage. As the door starts up, I begin my entrance routine of throwing off shoes and shirt as I head for the kitchen. The coffee is hot, and my raw eggs are waiting to be downed in one big gulp. Patton, my Doberman, who joins me on many of my runs, decided to stay home this morning, and it was just as well, since I had startled a small herd of mule deer standing near the road in the early darkness. Patton would surely have been in hot pursuit of the young fawn running next to her mother into the trees. He likes to play with the small deer that periodically appear in our open back yard, but as a smart Doberman he has also learned to keep a sharp eye out for the occasional black bear that saunters by the open gate.

This striking log-cabin-style home had been in the foreclosure process when I arrived in Colorado Springs early last Summer. As an Air Force Major, I had been reassigned to the NORAD Combat Operations Center from my flying assignment as an F-15 pilot at Luke AFB in Phoenix. Since I’m still single and a real tight-wad with my money, I qualified to get the house, and at a great bargain price as well. Since I enjoy pounding nails and brandishing a saw, I was able to help a couple of good carpenters with a hammer and drywall tape bring the house back to life after only a few weeks of hard work. I also took my break times to become familiar with these new surroundings during my month of PCS leave. Colorado and The Springs had been part of my vocabulary earlier in life when I spent four years of it buried in books and intramural soccer at the Air Force Academy, just north of town. After my graduation, I had a special opportunity to attend graduate school at Cal Tech in Pasadena, California. My fascination with Physics combined with my hobby in computer science led me to a Masters in Astronautics, but only after eighteen months of additional grinding academics and labs. With five and a half years of studying and test taking behind me, I was expected to attend Air Force pilot training if still physically qualified. After being declared fit, the next thirteen months consisted of study, air sickness (at first), and g-forces, while reaching up to touch the face of God, and that led to my third graduation in four years. Now I was wearing silver wings, as a newly fledged USAF pilot, and silver first-lieutenant’s bars. My name is Nick Gentry, and this is my story as it unfolds in this new chapter of my life. To this point, I haven’t kept a daily journal, as my father had suggested I do, but in his honor, and because I am old enough now to look back and wonder how I spent each of those many days of my life so far, I am beginning with these few lines to record my noteworthy experiences going forward, and I will try to include some of my history as I recall it.

Having finished my usual delicious breakfast, I jumped into the shower, donned my uniform, and then backed my used F-150 down the driveway. Patton was watching from the front gate and sensed that he'd be home-alone again for the day. Between the squirrels to chase and the deer to play with, he was just fine on his estate. The back-road over to NORAD was rutted but passable, and about five miles shorter than the freeway route. Several shaded snowy patches were still visible on the hillsides from last week's early Fall sprit-zing. These days things were pretty quiet in the Combat Center for North American air defense. Though the wars overseas had been a tremendous drain on assets and personnel, it also meant that things had been more quiet than during the previous several decades, at least according to the older heads. It was a peaceful (of all things) place to work during the nation's current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Security was always tight, but I had established early-on a rapport with the sentry force…..a few muffins and an occasional round of hot coffees helped a lot. I learned from my parents how a little consideration can oil a lot of doors in your life as well as confirm your Christian roots. This very important defense facility is built right into Cheyenne mountain, just southwest of The Springs. The entrance to the cave is visible on the satellite photos of Google Earth. Once inside the huge entrance tunnel, and after passing several internal checkpoints, my office windows come into view. Just another Monday, I'm thinking, but then I’m surprised to note several of my associates sitting at my office work table with inquisitive looks on their faces. As I turned the corner into my little niche of this very big cavern and dropped my briefcase next to my desk, I asked: What's up? Pete was first to speak, after some hesitation, about a curious object that he had noticed on his new long range observation and tracking device. Pete was a civilian analyst for the DOD and had been at the Center for twelve years. He had two teenagers who admired his work (and the few stories he could share with them of his more interesting days). His reputation as insightful and imaginative was wide-spread. Next to jump-up and enthusiastically add her voice was Ruth whose career was as a mathematician, with a special emphasis on vector-analysis. She too had a teenage daughter but was having some difficulty keeping her on-the-ranch. She occasionally had to take a day to regain some control and do some sharing-time. But, like Pete, her history at the Center was very impressive. She had come out of MIT with a doctorate at age twenty-three and had been instrumental in avoiding several international disasters with her observations and analysis of missile tracks from nations outside of North America. Ruth, who was also a civil servant, was excited because she had not previously been invited to study such a distant object's trajectory as she had now been by Pete. His intuition and incite was moving Ruth to become suspicious of something slightly-off with this object's behavior. She appreciated the chance to liven-up her day with a little intellectual stretching even if it was beyond her normal expertise. The third man in the office was a young Staff Sergeant named Tim, but nicknamed (pun intended) E.T., because of his fascination with the Roswell UFO story in combination with his computer skills. He is the most gifted programmer in the Center and can write code faster than even his boss who has ten years seniority on him. ET walks with a slight limp because of a severe motorcycle accident that he had shortly after his basic training while still at Lackland AFB, in San Antonio. Fortunately for him, the best medical care in the entire military is available in that area. Initially they thought his head injury would leave him permanently disabled and medically retired, but several surgeons offered to provide him with an experimental surgical procedure that not only improved his overall condition (except for his left leg which wasn't even injured in the accident) but seemed to also enhance his awareness of his surroundings to a startling degree. His family is quite religious and found his improvement to be even beyond an answer to their prayers. Pete had established somewhat of a relationship with ET because of his own sons but soon realized that ET’s computer skills were abnormally powerful and so had invited him into my office this morning. Everyone working in the Combat Center is required to have a top secret clearance, so that hurdle didn't exist at this point in this foursome. ET was a little bewildered as to why he had been called in by Pete, but sat quietly listening to the discussion. For now, my role was also as a listener trying to absorb what Pete was sensing and suggesting. Since it was Monday and all of us were lucky enough on this month’s roster to be just starting our week, I suggested that we refill our coffee mugs and each take a deep breath. Little did I imagine where this week would lead us at the time. Cell phone reception in the Center was somewhat spotty with only special areas wired for reception and watched and recorded for security. During our ten minutes to get refills, I decided to check on my very close friend, Denise, who is a professor of Archeology at Arizona State University in Tempe. We had met at one of their basketball games and found each other interesting enough to continue our relationship. Over that next year of flying out of Luke, I found myself becoming very familiar with the I-10 across the south side of Phoenix. Patton also found Denise very attractive, and, more importantly, she loves dogs. My reassignment to NORAD has created an interesting dynamic in our lives. She was between classes already this morning and had spent a busy weekend with her ailing father in Mesa. Her support for him is essential and sometimes demanding.

Back in our seats around my cluttered desk, I asked Pete to start the discussion. His first remark struck a nerve somewhere deep inside my body. On Friday, just before leaving for the weekend, he had adjusted his scope to scan a very narrow beam of space, but also out to a much greater distance than was typical for NORAD's purposes. Aiming toward Saturn and its rings, he just wondered if any finer resolution of the rings would be possible. The equipment he is using is new and has special talents which we haven’t fully discovered, even with a three hundred page manual. He reported that the scope did provide some very impressive definition of the rings and their contents of ice and debris. This device uses a combination of radar returns and optical resolution to provide a dual return on what it is viewing. Though he hadn't noticed anything outstanding on his Friday foray, early this morning as he checked the scope again, still on its distant settings (Pete was the only specialists currently testing and learning this new machine), he made a few adjustments and took one more distant look before switching back to the Earth-range NORAD numbers. As he compared the composite view with the view he recorded on Friday, something seemed to stand-out as unique. That something hadn't moved relative to the planet's axis and horizon even as the planet itself had moved along in its orbit over the weekend, and the components of the rings had rotated around the planet. Perhaps it is just an anomaly associated with the new equipment, especially at this extended distance. Pete had brought both scope recordings into my office for our opinions. In a flash, Ruth was hovering over these films with her ever present magnifying glass. With her experience, she was able to pick-out the nearly imperceptible speck immediately. Thanks to her, I was finally able to see it as well. ET seemed more consumed with his own thoughts at this point. We were all literally beyond the scope (pun intended) of our expertise, and we knew it. So do we ignore something so remote and seemingly beyond our contractual threat range? After all Saturn is nine hundred million miles out there. It takes an hour and half at the speed of light just to get a signal from here to there. Assets are limited, and conjecture is usually not appreciated by the military-industrial complex. We agreed to keep the finding limited to our small group for a few days while each of us took some time to study the films and consider the alternatives.

As the team left my office, the potential impact of what we were seeing slowly started to overwhelm me. Yes, it was probably nothing, but I really wanted it to be something. I would have to keep my emotions in-check, just as I had on my F-15 adventures. Though less obvious about it than ET, I too was fascinated with the Roswell incident and had been since I was about twelve. This discussion is reminding me that I'm not in my present position by accident. I have worked very hard to put myself out on the point of this exciting spear. Is this the moment all of us have been waiting for? Time to come back down to Earth and consider the alternatives. My white-board was going to become very colorful very quickly.

Ruth was the first to return with an observation. With her vector analysis of the two positions of this target and the time frame involved, she recognized that very significant effort and energy had been required just to keep this object holding its very stationary position relative to Saturn while everything else in the solar system was moving in their many and various orbs. This is not the usual missile trajectory that Ruth was so used to spotting, but almost the exact opposite. This kind of station-keeping suggested something beyond natural behavior. An insightful start in our quest for answers.

Lunch for me usually involved some fruit and salad in the cafeteria with several officer friends whom I had either known at the academy or in pilot training. Bob and Sam were fellow health nuts and we occasionally did five or ten K runs for various charities. Both men were married, however, and so had more demands on their time. Their work at NORAD had more to do with strategy and weapons' analysis. So today they asked how my Denise is, and when I will be seeing her again, and then Bob surprised me with an invitation to dinner on Thursday. We didn’t discuss my morning.

When I got back to the office, Pete was waiting. With his time in the fields of optics and radar, he had several contacts around the world who might be helpful, and whom he felt could be trusted. With their access to the large telescopes in Hawaii they might obtain a better view of our target if they knew where to look. We added that option to my white-board but decided to discuss any outside contacts with the group before acting on them. In my case, I have a close friend who is currently working at the huge SETI reception antenna in Puerto Rico who may also become important. I’ve always remembered how surprised I was as a seventeen year old when I learned that the Earth’s leaders had