Von Neumann’s War

Ronny held his expression blank, but thought that the President should be more concerned about Earth’s survival than the economy. He’s not equipped to understand what we are facing. I’m not sure I am.

* * *

The Neighborhood Watch team leaders and data reduction staff gathered around their respective consoles at the Huntsville Operations Support Center at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center. There were others riding consoles at DSN locations around the world and at various relay satellite ground stations. Of course, only people who knew all about Neighborhood Watch were aware that any signal was being received from Mars. In fact, the stations being used were all “shut down for repairs.”

Roger Reynolds sat quietly at the HOSC trying to make heads or tails out of the previous image that had just completed downloading. The image was taken minus two hours from Percival’s closest approach to the planet’s surface. The telemetry data received to that point suggested that Percival should get as close as about fifty-four kilometers from the surface. At that altitude an image from the high resolution point camera would have a resolution of about ten centimeters — small enough to see a license plate but not read it. The probe was approaching Mars fast and would go from 50,000 km away, through the closest approach, and to 50,000 km past Mars in a period of less than two hours.

Data from spectral analysis taken at further distances from the planet had already been downloaded. There were gases and metals but no signs of organic substances such as methane or ammonia. As the spacecraft approached closer to the planet the high resolution camera took priority on the download list.

Mission timeline approached fifteen minutes from minimum distance as the latest image dinged complete. The image had been taken sixty minutes to closest approach and had taken about forty-five minutes to download. As soon as the image download was complete, download of the next image in the sequence began.

Roger pulled the approach-minus-sixty-minutes image up and ran the post-processing software. The image sharpened on the screen in front of him and on several monitors simultaneously throughout the HOSC.

“Holy shit,” he muttered under his breath. At minus sixty minutes from Mars the spacecraft was about 50,000 km from the planet and so the image resolution was about 60 m per image pixel. And at 60 m per pixel all Roger could say was… “Holy shit!”

“Roger, am I seeing what I think I’m seeing?” Dr. Guerrero asked, pointing at a section of long straight lines interlaced in a gridlike pattern. Years at the NRO had trained him to notice artificial features in space reconnaissance imagery and Ronny recognized what he was seeing. But he couldn’t believe it.

“Roads perhaps? Or maybe high-rise buildings? But, these things are a couple hundred meters wide! I don’t understand what I’m seeing yet. The scale is just too… large,” Roger replied.

The next image in the sequence had begun downloading and thus far the mission was going as according to plan. The currently downloading image was acquired at 13,000 km from Mars with a resolution of about 20 m per image pixel. Roger had the raw data displayed as it was downloaded. The first few rows of the image filled in across the screen as the mission timeline ticked by. With no post-processing it was hard to determine what they were seeing, but it appeared to be a cityscape or industrial center, but very, very large.

“How could objects this big be manufactured from Martian soil so quickly and across the entire planet?” Alan asked over Roger’s shoulder.

“Dunno?” Roger said, stumped. “Magic.”

“Any sufficiently advanced technology…” Alan replied.

“Yeah,” Roger muttered. “That kind of magic.”

“Maybe we’ll understand it better when the image is finished and we can clean it up some.” Ronny scratched his head and took a sip from the Styrofoam coffee cup in front of him. “But, it looks like a civilization. A big civilization. That just… sprang up.”

“How much longer do we have to wait to get the rest of this 20 meter resolution?” Alan asked.

“Well, it’s been downloading about fifteen minutes or so. It’ll take about another thirty. I’m gonna grab a Coke, I’ll be right back.”

Roger stretched and stood from his chair. He pulled the headset off and rolled his head left then right. Tense didn’t begin to cover it — his neck felt like a steel wire.

“Mission Command, Watchdog reset on HGA requested. I’ve got an extreme load on the high-gain dish gimbals.” The C DH console rider shouted over the mike, loud enough for Roger to hear it all the way across the control room.

“Mission Command, we’ve got an Attitude Determination and Control Systems Alert. The star trackers are giving rapid angular acceleration of the spacecraft.” Another console report came in. “Momentum wheels are spinning erratic and the ACS thrusters have fired.”