In low Earth polar orbit, Solar System
Dana Durning was smiling widely
when she reported back to Tina after
double-checking the data collected by the
ship’s sensors and passive surveillance
devices.
‘’Our date of arrival in this century is
now confirmed to be on Wednesday, August
Fifth, 1959. It is now one fifty in the morning, Universal Time, as indicated by the radio time beacon from the Greenwich Astronomical Observatory in England. Our temporal jump was spot-on, with us arriving within 24 hours of our targeted date. I would say that we are getting quite good at this business of temporal jumping, Tina.’
‘’When it comes to go towards the future and while making jumps of a few centuries at the time, yes. As for making much shorter jumps, says of a few years or decades towards the future, that is still to be demonstrated. As for jumping back towards the past, I wouldn’t be too hot to try that again.’
‘’True!’ recognized Dana. ‘’By the way, we are not the only artificial object in Earth orbit at this time: the American satellite EXPLORER 1 is still up in its medium Earth orbit, although it is now silent, its batteries depleted. It was the first ever satellite orbited by the U.S.A. on February 1 of 1958.’
‘’And how much was its mass, Dana?’
‘’A whopping 13.97 kilos at launch. Two Soviet satellites, SPUTNIK 1 and SPUTNIK 2, preceded it in orbit and were launched in 1957.’
‘’Wow! I suppose that the Space experts of this time would lose their minds if they managed to detect us in orbit.’
133
‘’Good luck to them about that, Tina: with our mate black, radar-absorbing paint covering our hull, it would take them an incredible piece of luck to detect us, either visually or via radar. I would say that we are quite safe where we are now. Uh, we are supposed to initiate Operation Noah’s Ark in only a month and a half, Tina. What do you want us to do in the meantime?’
‘’We prepare for it while giving plenty of time for our historians to study the situation on Earth. With the World living through what was called ‘The Cold War’, they should have plenty of interesting things to look at. I will now retire to my day cabin for a couple of hours. You have the bridge, Dana.’
With her having already briefed in detail her command staff about the preparations needed to launch their next operation, Tina kept it at that and left the bridge to go to her day cabin.
08:56 (Universal Time)
Sunday, September 18, 1959
Bridge of the A.M.S. NOSTROMO