The Seed

                                                                            
                                                                     The Seed

"You must have been really tired." Michael mentioned to her on their way up to their rooms. "I was totally out" she answered. "I was so deep into this strange dream that I thought I was in another room,  all white and green and gray and no windows and doors. I heard knocking from about a light year away! It was so odd till I finally woke up."  She looked at Michael. He seemed distant. "What is it?" she asked. "Nothing", he paused and added,  "It was probably the fish we ate at the cafe, or maybe all this Spanish." Michael smiled. "We were both very tired from the trip. Let's get some good rest. Good night." Good night Michael."  What he didn't tell her was that he vaguely recalled a feeling of being trapped in a room without windows while napping.

The morning was cool and the coffee sweet. Michael and Laura skipped breakfast and grabbed some coffee cakes and headed out to the "Rover", a Jeep Cherokee they used to shuttle the astronomers and crew up from the residence to the observatory platform. The driver smiled and spoke English with some sort of European accent. "I'm Jan, a graduate student assisting Dr. Schechter. Good Morning". He introduced himself and several landmarks on the way up. He was tall and thin and had reddish blond hair. He couldn't have been more than thirty, if that. He had not shaved for a week or so and he grinned broadly when he spoke. Laura took an immediate liking to him and his casual, modest,  and informed way. "So that's the seacoast?" She followed his words. "Yes, you came here from Antofagasta, just over there - see?"  "This place would make a great observatory", she joked.

They all laughed. "Indeed, and the richest view on this earth of the Milky Way at night. It's breathtaking."

The observatory included four huge large telescopes, each with hexagonal cell mirrors adding up to an 8.2 meter diameter. The platform also included several auxiliary telescopes. The large telescopes were housed in huge rectangular large box-like domes with metallic sheathing. The four of them together presented something like an advanced, space-age apartment complex appearance. All sat on an extremely large field, much like an airfield tarmac, perhaps more like a "spaceport". The platform stood close to 8000 feet above sea level and afforded extremely wide views of the desert, and, of course, the sky above.

The "Rover" party arrived at UT1, or "Antu" it's Chilean Indian name and entered the building through a lower side door. Up a set of steps to the main floor, they found Dr. Schechter by the instrumentation with a rolling cart and a single lap top connected to a high resolution visible and near-UV spectrograph. "Good morning Michael. Good morning Laura. We're just now setting up for tonight's measurements. Let me show you what we have so far."  Orange peaks surrounded by dotted lines that represented probable errors appeared on his computer screen. "Here's the 13.2 billion light year object, Fuzz ball we call it, and here's the sun behind it. Both are for hydrogen." Michael took a look at the two peaks, one superimposed on the other. "OK, he said. What about closer in?" Schechter showed him the next pair and Michael looked at him. "Well?"  "They're both just

where they should be. Sorry!" Schechter was matter of fact. "You mean all that work at Keck was just instrumentation errors?" Michael asked. "Possibly atmosphere or any number of subjective errors." He looked disappointed as well. "Well there goes that paper" Michael was visibly upset. Like so many scientists before him, he was looking at a null result. For every glowing radium experiment, there were thousands that just sat there and did nothing at all. One of the most famous null results was the Michelson-Morley Ether experiment which ultimately disproved the existence of a cosmic "ether" and yet opened the way to an entirely new set of theories about light and its propagation. This was on Michael's mind as Schechter interjected. "Not at all. We have good data and like all good little scientists, we'll complete the program and report our results. It's our job." "Yeah, another UFO story disproven. I don't like being classed as a "little green men" astronomer" Michael said sarcastically.  Schechter added, "Neither do I". They looked at each other for a long moment and then both of them started to laugh. This lightened the tension and soon Jan and Laura started laughing too. "We'll just do the job. After all, that's why we're here. Might as well enjoy it." Laura had a way of summarizing realities.