Lieutenant Brently Armstrong had always wanted to go into outer space. But he hadn't expected it to be his first assignment after graduating from the Space Force Academy. No doubt his double major in Astronautics and Physics not to mention his summer internships at the NASA Ames Research Center contributed to his selection.
The ride up had been a thrill. Chemical rockets might be old-fashioned compared with the Maglev system, which rail-gunned cargo into orbit, but wow, they were still a kick to ride. Arriving in geosynchronous orbit the spacecraft docked with the Space Defense Platform and Brently transferred down the short docking tube to be welcomed aboard.
After a quick orientation lecture, he was shown his quarters. The transition from the zero gravity of the docking section to the one-third gravity of the living quarters seemed natural to Brently as he traversed the ladder. Once he was in the wheel-shaped rotating section which was sandwiched between the equipment and station keeping booms, he simply turned his body one-hundred and eighty degrees and continued 'down' the ladder. The rotating section provided enough gravity for people to do most of their daily activities normally. Besides personnel quarters, also in this section was the exercise area, workrooms and the mess hall.
Brently was impressed with the number of robotic servers aboard. Most were about the size of a roll-about storage bin, some with drawers, some with doors. They would exit from a room and cross to the opposite wall and follow it to their destination. Brently later learned that they navigated by the colored strips and numbers painted on the floors and walls as well as a wireless hookup. They carried tools, food, clothes, anything that a station resident would need. They were all business, not stopping unless someone or something got in their way.
Stowing his personal effects he headed off to workroom seven to meet his immediate boss.
Brently buzzed the door and heard someone call, enter. Pressing the button again rotated the latch and opened the door to reveal his working quarters. The workroom was large enough to notice the station curvature. Seeing someone at the far end Brently snapped to attention and said, “Lieutenant Brently Armstrong reporting for duty sir.”
“At ease Armstrong,” came the reply. “In this workroom we are all equal. Outside this room you can salute me if you want.”
“Yes sir,” said Brently reflexively.
“My name is Eric Fermion, and yes I know that a fermion is a particle so you can leave the jokes outside if you don't mind.”
“Of course sir.”
“In here call me Eric please, we haven't enough personnel in our department to maintain the usual protocol.”
“Of course, Eric.”
“Now let me explain to you what needs to be done before we go live. Most of the installation work is finished. But we still need to calibrate our instruments. I'm going to ask you to work with the electromagnetics, which is the EM sensors. The electromagnetic fields up here are small but significant. They could provide us with advanced warning of a change in the space weather or even an attack. So we want the EM sensors calibrated to a fine degree and dependable.
“And let me introduce you to our robotic assistants. This is Test and this is Measurement, as I have named them. They may assist you in whatever way you need.”
The robots were similar except one was trimmed in red and the other in blue. Modeled on human anatomy they had stereoscopic vision, two powerful arms with end attachments that could be replaced as needed according to the job. They also had two wheels like the old self-balancing scooters upon which they moved. They stood about five feet but could extend their height to seven feet if needed.
“Pleased to meet you Brently,” said Test. “Please call me Tess.”
“Just call me Mess,” added Measurement.
“Good to meet you and call me Brently please.”
Dr. Fermion added, “They came up with the nicknames themselves.”
He continued, “Brently I picked you because of your experiences at Ames, I think you are uniquely qualified for this job.”
“Thank you Eric. I'll get right on it.”
“Slow down a minute. It's my dinner time. Would you like to join me in the mess hall.”
“Sure Eric.”
After dinner, Dr. Fermion excused himself to his quarters. Brently decided to get an early start in his duties and returned to the workroom.
The real trick with calibrating EM sensors isn't so much picking up the electromagnetic fields you want but not picking up the fields you don't want. It was difficult not to pick up EM fields with so much electrical and electronic equipment around. So the known fields had to be canceled in order that unknown EM fields could be detected.
Brently worked well into the night calibrating the sensors. He had identified and nulled out almost all the station EM sources except for a very small remainder.
Tess had been working with him. “I think that's all we can do tonight Tess. I'm getting too tired to continue.”
“Very well Brently, why don't you go ahead to your quarters and I will finish up before powering down.”
“Okay Tess, see you in the morning.”
The next morning Dr. Fermion was in the workroom before Brently. He was observing the EM sensors and talking to Tess when Brently came into the room.
“Good morning Brently,” said Eric.
“Good morning,” said Tess.
“Good morning Eric, Tess. I see you are inspecting my EM sensors.”
“Yes,” said Eric. “Tess told me you two worked pretty late to get them calibrated this far. I see a slight residual in the readings, you have a bit more to do?”
“Yeah, I tried to get them completely zeroed but that stubborn signal remains.”
“Well, you seem to have made an excellent start. If we can get these sensors online today the General will be very pleased.”
“I'm gonna try,” said Brently.
Brently continued his calibrations which went quicker this time as Tess was able to handle some of the work. By comparing readings in different sections of the station with external sensor readings and noting the correlations he was again able to reduce the remaining sensor reading to almost zero but not quite. Then just as he was about to let out a string of invectives not befitting a military officer the reading dropped to zero.
Brently stared at the readout. There was no way that it could be a coincidence he thought.
“Tess, that can't be a coincidence.”
“I agree, highly improbable.”
Measurement came over, “I have finished my assignment, I am free to help here if needed.”
“Thanks Mess,” said Brently. “Well let's get busy.”
They set about to again recalibrate all the sources, something that took them well into the afternoon. When finished the reading was as before, zero. Brently told Dr. Fermion about his experience.
“It just went away?” asked Eric.
“Yes. And I haven't seen it since. Maybe some machinery cycling on and off?”
“Possibly. Brently I want you to make a correlation between readings and the machinery causing those readings, then I want you to start logging the sensor outputs. Make it one-second intervals. Let's get a history of this signal. Maybe then we can correlate it to something onboard the station.”
“And if not?”
“Well, then we take it to the General.”
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