Thousand+ Words a Day for Nov. 18, 2025

"Where the Hell did this Thing Come From, Anyway?" Norm Tooley Wondered Aloud as He....

“Where the hell did this thing come from, anyway?” Norm Tooley wondered aloud as he manipulated controls on Grant’s flight control panels.

“What’s that?” said the other pilot, from her own station in the other compartment. The door between the two compartments had been removed in order to reduce weight and allow for the installation of special equipment for this special mission.

“Nothing!” Norm fairly shouted back. “I’ve got full returns on the object now,” he said, closing contacts and locking Grant’s navigational systems on the radar signature of the object that was the source of all the fuss in the station over the last few days.

It had been found during an automated weather observation. Mimas is tidally locked to Saturn, and so observation satellites had been put into orbit so that the other side of the planet, the side not visible from Mimas, but in which the scooper ships would operate, could be observed. There were four of them, three in equatorial orbits and one in a polar orbit that took it over the top and bottom of the planet every seventeen hours. That satellite had to punch through the rings twice on each orbit, and so it was more elaborate than the others–it had a fuel reactor, eight small thrusters, and a Pressenton Dynacog-III navigation brain specially programmed to look for holes, navigate through them, and then return to its programmed orbit.

That satellite had found the object, receiving a radar signal from it. The Dynacog saw right away that something unusual was down there, and it immediately notified the on-duty meteorologist.

As a matter of fact, the satellite woke him up. Mike Greenburg had just settled into sleep when the Dynacog sounded the alert alarm in the small weather shack. Since the alarms were coded, he knew right away that this one was from the polar satellite–the smart one–and so by the time the third beep sounded, he was in the chair. He shut off the alarm with one smooth motion and brought up the Dynacog display screen, blinking away the blur of sleep and trying to make sense of what the Dynacog was telling him.

The screen presented a variety of information: the location of the Dynacog and the other satellites, the status of Saturn’s atmosphere and the four scooper ships that were presently working in it, data on the magnetic flux surrounding the system, and so forth. But of most interest to Mike at the moment was a graphic showing the radar feed from the Dynacog. It refreshed once every two or three seconds and there continued to be a return from something in the atmosphere. A large, solid, stable, hard return from something that big which simply could not be in the atmosphere. But there it was, returning the Dynacog’s radar pings.

Mike double-checked to be sure his screen was being recorded–it was–and he expanded the view so that the radar return filled the entire screen. He focused in on the object and used a variety of electronic filters to bring it into greater detail. It was impossible to see it clearly with a radar that was intended to evaluate weather phenomenon, not explore the details of individual objects, but Mike did what he could to get a picture of it.

The object was roughly globe-shaped and about a mile in diameter. The image was smudgy and indistinct, but it could be seen that there was a squarish object at the bottom of the globe, like the gondola of a hot-air balloon, only larger. Mike zoomed in on the gondola and thought he saw a series of projections emanating from it, jutting in irregular angles, but it was difficult to be sure. He pressed a button to activate his headset. “Com, this is Weather, are you awake?”

A beat, and then a professional female voice sounded in his headset. “Of course I’m awake, Doctor,” Maybelle Lewis responded. “What can I do for you?”

“I’m getting a funny radar return from the Dynacog, it’s showing a large object floating in the atmosphere.”

“A what?”

“It’s some sort of object,” he repeated. “Stable, multiple agreeing returns.”

“Can you pipe it up here?” she asked, moving to the screen in her panel on which Mike’s view could be transferred. “Give it to me on K51.”

“Roger.” He pressed a button. “There you go.”

There was a moment of silence as Lewis took in the information that the screen presented. “How old is this, Mike?”

“Nine minutes,” he responded. One thing about Maybelle Lewis, she didn’t spend a lot of time stalling when there was something to be done. She clicked her microphone over to the channel that Lyndon Johnson was on. “Johnson, Com,” she spoke precisely.

Davey Spilton pushed his push-to-talk and the noise of the collector pumps roared in Lewis’ ear; then his voice. “Com, this is Johnson, go ahead.”

“Davey, we’re getting a weird radar signal not too far from you, I’m feeding it to you now,” she said. “It’s about a thousand miles away and below you. You see it?”

“Yeah, I see it,” he said. “You got this from Weather?”

“That’s affirm, Johnson,” Lewis answered back. “How heavy are you?”

“Ah, we’re at 42 percent right now, Com,” he said. “We got plenty of gas, though. Shall I go have a look?”

Lewis calculated in her mind–diverting to investigate the object wouldn’t interfere with the scooping operation, but there was always the slingshot return maneuver to think about. “Say fuel status, Johnson ."

“Main three one thousand, reserve one one thousand, I say again, main three one thousand, reserve one one thousand,” Spilton answered back.

You call that plenty of gas? Lewis thought, but she said nothing. “Okay, a flyby of the object is authorized, proceed at discretion, your approach limit is two zero miles, readback, Johnson.”

“Discretion, two zero miles,” Spilton repeated.

“Thanks, Davey. Com out.” She moved the lever back to Mike’s channel. “Mike, I’ve got Lyndon Johnson going to check it out. He should be on your screen in a couple of hours. Keep an eye on him, will you?”

“Lyndon Johnson? That piece of shit’s out?” Mike said.

“Ah, yeah,” Lewis resonded. “Davey Spilton’s got it.”

“Holy crap. What’dya have to do to get Davey to go out in that ship?”

“We didn’t do anything, Doctor,” Lewis responded, annoyed. “Will you monitor Johnson, or shall I wake Ted up?” Ted was the Weather Shop supervisor, who—both Maybelle and Mike knew—was best left sleeping.

“Roger, will monitor,” Mike said. “Weather out.” The channel clicked closed and Mike leaned in close to the monitor again, staring at the object. What the hell are you? he thought, and another thought, a more disturbing one, was beginning to form around the edges of his perception. Something this big, and only thirty or so levels below where the scoopers operated, this should have been seen dozens of times–but it wasn’t. Something this big, if it had approached the planet and orbited it, it surely would have been seen by the weather radars.