Dr. Stephen Hoshino was a brilliant astrophysicist whom the President had commanded to work on a plan to counteract Zimbardo’s chief weapon—the radar bender. He was a slight man of Japanese ancestry who, in spite of his compactness, exuded power. Even his smallest movements were made with precision. Although he was only in his middle thirties, from his late teens he had been granted virtual carte blanche in his research. Even at that young age, his genius had become known throughout the inhabited Solar System. His voice was calm and mellifluous.
“Thank you, Mr. President. My team and I have been working around the clock for eight days to develop a system for detecting an object which is invisible to radar. We have succeeded. The theory was not difficult to develop, but the method provided somewhat of a challenge. We have now designed a technique for locating a body as small as, very roughly, two-thirds the size of the average spacecraft, by detecting its gravitational field.”
As he spoke, many of those listening to him felt the level of their anxiety diminishing slightly. Robert Nolan lifted his head. Though his expression was drawn, he was paying attention.
“We must manufacture millions of tiny probes and release these into space in a systematic fashion over many millions of cubic miles. Their design is quite simple. The laboratories and manufacturing centers of organizations like Starlight Enterprise, Nolan Mining Enterprise, and other companies can create these probes in vast quantities very quickly, using robotic techniques. Each probe will have gravity instrumentation. Using the microwaves naturally occurring in space, they will be connected by a vast neural network and thus act as a single instrument, with all data being fed back to various information centers.
“With the data from these probes we should be able to detect any massive objects in places where they shouldn’t be. Certainly a large asteroid cannot be hidden. The very size of the asteroid with which Zimbardo threatens our planet will work in our favor, since detecting such a large object can be achieved easier and sooner than if he sent, for example, a number of small asteroids such as those that struck Mars.”
“Where will the probes be deployed, Dr. Hoshino?” asked Richard. “Our time is short, very short indeed, if we have to manufacture, launch, and deploy the probes in time to locate and then destroy the asteroid. Even if we produce millions of probes, as you have said, we have millions of cubic miles of space to search through. In the time available, even trillions of the little probes can’t help much. Theoretically, the asteroid can be anywhere. There are asteroids inside the orbit of Mercury and outside the orbit of Jupiter. But I suspect that you already have an idea where we are to search.”
The President answered. “When Zimbardo sent his first message to Mars, evidence of his tampering with the Martian communication system was discovered. This allowed us to trace how his tampering was done and therefore where the signal came from—at least in a general direction. After he sent his second message, the one to Earth yesterday evening, the signal was traced again. We have learned that his base is moving toward Earth and we have an idea of the speed his base is moving and its direction. The information the Starmen provided confirms what we had learned through our investigations.
“Of course, our figures are somewhat imprecise, and we still have a lot of searching to do, but we have an excellent chance of locating him. It is highly logical that the asteroid he harnessed is from a place in the Belt close to his own asteroid. From what the Starmen reported, he just didn’t have time to locate an asteroid as large as he claims to have launched toward Earth from any place too distant from his own base. The probes will therefore be cast in a net in the space between Earth and the area of the Asteroid Belt in which the pirates’ asteroid was found.”
Richard Starlight, Robert Nolan, and others had a number of technical questions for Dr. Hoshino regarding the manufacture and deployment of the probes and the time schedule necessary to achieve their goal. At the end of the discussion it was agreed that the two companies, with others, would begin to manufacture the probes according to Stephen Hoshino’s design. Launch was planned for five days later, with deployment six to seven days after that.
“O344 coming up on the screen, Zip,” announced Mark.