In the city of Kennedy, Peter entered the office of one Dr. Kevin Bernard. The office was one room in the elaborate, cliffside Venus branch of the ISP headquarters. The furniture and architecture of the building had a much more contemporary feel than the Earth branch. It was easier to build new furniture than to transport it from Earth. He saw out of the window that Dr. Bernard had a view of the East Venutian Ocean. The ocean was every bit as active as the Atlantic on Earth. Peter saw the waves of the ocean crashing against the cliff below.
A few minutes after Peter entered the office, Dr. Bernard and several other members of the Antares committee entered, and Peter turned away from the window when he heard the door behind him.
"Hi, Dr. Bowman," Dr. Bernard said. "Please, have a seat."
Peter sat, and Dr. Bernard sat behind his desk. The rest of the committee either sat in what chairs were available or stood. Without any pretense of sociability, Dr. Bernard immediately launched into the agenda of the meeting.
"Tell me, Dr. Bowman, what you know of the Antares Project."
After a month of weightless travel and about a year of little sleep, Peter had little energy for tact.
"Assignment to the Antares Project is ISP's booby-prize. It's located on the Jupiter station, crowding the New Voyager team. It's supposed to be investigating anomalies seen on Antares by one of the Voyager probes, but after something like fifteen years, it's produced no results. ISP only sends their most incompetent astrophysical engineers to the Jupiter station to work on it, because no one really cares about a star thats over 150 parsecs away."
Dr. Bernard laughed slightly at this comment. "I'm not surprised that you think that. Actually, though--"
"Look, I know that Carlton and I haven't exactly been on good terms lately, and I know that you can take Dyson away from me, but you can't stop me from resigning, if that's what it takes. I'm not going to Jupiter."
"Dr. Ashworth actually knows little-to-nothing about the Antares Project, and he doesn't have the authority to assign anybody to it. But listen to what I have to say before you say 'no'."
Peter relaxed and slumped into his chair. "Fine. Go ahead."
"The Antares Project hasn't published any results, but it actually has produced results. The results are proprietary information. The project began after the loss of the deep-space probe Voyager 27."
"Which collided with a rogue planet. I remember that. Was it the first to detect anomalies on Antares?"
"No, it actually never sent any images of Antares. It wasn't designed to gather information about objects so far away. And it wasn't a rogue planet that it collided with, either."
"Then what happened to it?"
Dr. Bernard turned his computer monitor in Peter's direction, showing him a probe's photograph of an prolate spheroidal object.
"This is the object that Voyager 27 collided with."
Another member of the committee spoke up.
"This picture was sent back to Jupiter by the probe before it was destroyed. We estimate that it's about the size of a house, but interpretations of the data collected by the Light-Son and 3SG are unheard of."
"What do you mean?" Peter said.
Dr. Bernard responded, "The 3SG was maxed out."
"Maxed out? It'd have to have a mass more than ten times Jupiter's to do that. It couldn't possibly maintain that small volume with that much gravity. It'd be collecting all kinds of debris."
"Yes, that's only one of the mysteries that hasn't been solved yet. At least, not entirely. After the collision, we pointed Voyager 26's telescope in its direction. It was still close enough for us to get a very grainy image of the collision, but it took about six months for for the light to reach it."
"After the collision," one of the committee members said, "the object just seemed to force the remains of the probe away from it. Like it just threw the debris off of itself and kept going."
Dr. Bernard continued.
"This object is on a collision course with Earth, and we think will also collide with Venus afterward. It should reach Earth in about seventy three years."
Peter stared at Dr. Bernard, unable to find any words to respond.
"I'm afraid there's more," Dr. Bernard said. "This isn't the only image sent back from Voyager 27."
Dr. Bernard pressed a button on his keyboard, and the image on the screen changed. This image was taken much closer to the object, and in the light of the probe, coordinates written in Hindu-Arabic numerals could be seen carved into the side.
"This is clearly not a natural phenomenon."
