The plan
had been simple, send up the Odyssey satellite. As it crossed through the bow
shock, it would deploy a simple, square sail made from the same platinum and
cobalt metal as the mesh on the Hermes. After one hour, it would cut the sail
free, which the team expected would drop the Odyssey back to normal speeds.
All of the
telemetry showed the sail deployed as expected, but then, nothing. Odyssey didn’t
have the capacity for continuous transmissions because of the power necessary
and its size. It could only burst transmit once its capacitors charged.
The team
had been expecting a signal from Odyssey less than thirty days after it exited
the solar system. Iasa had waited, the Congress had waited, a large part of the
world had waited. No signal. At 45 days, the media had given up. At 60 days, Congress
was ready to scrap the larger Magellan project. At the same time, IASA pushed
the Odyssey control team to one of the smallest control centers, where Ed Carr
now took his shift. Where before the Odyssey team had swelled to over 50
people, now it was down to the people who had first discovered what happened to
the original Hermes Satellite.
Ed played a
game on his slate while the computer displayed ordinary background signals. The
particular frequency and protocol for Odyssey remained silent. Ed sighed, and
debated, for the third time, if he should order a pizza from the all-night
joint, when the signal display on the computer lit up. The glorious signal wave
was filled with noise, but Ed could filter it out, and the text type message
came through with amazing clarity: Odyssey 1 Phone Home.