For the first time since she was very young, Debra Hilds wept.  As far as she knew no one was going to save them.  Each of the UW science stations monitoring Argus’ work, and the science council itself in Geneva received the telemetry pictures of Argus’ demise.  The assembled and technicians and scientists had no doubt in any of their minds, they had witnessed a murder.  Since the day the Terra Twin had found the object a few researchers had trained their largest scopes on it and observed.  Now every scientist worth his pay was scanning constantly for the faintest changes.  Cooperating and combining all their data and observations they knew the sphere was now moving at a slow speed but accelerating toward Mars.  Mars in this age was the center of solar system commerce and transport.  Everything was routed through Mars because gravity was lower, the planet was centrally located, storage and launching sites abundant.  Like wise if anything were to happen to Mars Earth and Venus would be cut off from all their outward colonies and within range of close attack from Mars.  Recognizing that Mars must be defended the UW Security and Science Councils met immediately to plan their response.  Some argument was brought by some of the younger scientists that the sphere was provoked into vaporizing the Argus.  The head of the Science Council responded “If the sphere was disturbed by the two hoppers Argus sent into it, why did it permit them inside at all ?”


    “If you grant its ability to destroy a two hundred and fifty ton space cruiser, it could hardly have been afraid of two twenty five ton Landers.”  “So why destroy three ships two inside and one out if they were not provoked ?” asked the younger man.


    “Perhaps they are curious,” said the chairman, “Perhaps the two out craft are not destroyed, but hostage.”


    “But it was dead, inert, lifeless” said the advocate, “No energy emissions, no sound, no lights.”


    “However we do have the data referring to energy absorption to consider” the chairman continued “just because the alien does not waste all the energy into space we do, don’t believe he’s not at home.”  “And further, the more I look at the structure of the vessel, the more I believe it came from much, much further out in the galaxy than we first thought.”Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.


    “Why do you believe that?” asked the young man. “It wouldn’t jibe with the objects age.”


    “How do we measure age sir?” “I asked you to define the age of any material in space,” said the chairman.


    The young scientist searched his mind desperately for an answer then said “all meteors, asteroids and planets have been dated by their background radiation back to the core explosion which formed them.”  “What if you took material, say metal ores and smelted them together from say fifty different bodies?”


    “That would make dating an impossibility sir.” The advocate said.  “But why mix so many samples together to build one ship.”


    “Maybe they wish to remain anonymous.” Said the chairman, “our spectrographs and spectrometers could tell us where they came from if the materials were produced only around their home system.”  “Three of our best men in the quantum energy field were lost with Argus,” said the chair.  “But Dr. Hopewell and Professor Sackett have some theories they wish to trot out before you gentlemen.”  A thirty-foot square view screen at the end of the room lit as the room lights dimmed


    Dr. Ernst Hopewell began to narrate.  “Professor Sackett and myself have pored over the same data on the age and composition of the sphere as you all have.  Most of this comes from the two hundred core samples provided by the Terra Twin preliminary survey.  On a hologram projection the ages of each core we assigned a color to correspond with the relative age.  Displayed like this we can see that the areas of the sphere where these cores were taken were added to the object gradually as it approached our system.”


    On the hologram before them was a dim blue sphere with colored points of light indicating each core samples source and its age approximate to + one hundred years.  Around the dish structure and the tracks the material was one thousand to two thousand years older than in all other areas.  The picture changed to a single core sample of the nickle-iron alloy lying horizontally.  Each area of the core was tagged with the same colors used to mark the sites.


    “Several of these cores exhibit duel age readings on the spectroscope” said Hopewell, “but, all of them are newer at the outer surface and older on the inner surfaces.  We went over the energy absorption data, which to us was astounding in itself,” exclaimed Hopewell, “this craft picks up seventy percent of visible light and except for the tracks and dish structures one hundred percent of ultraviolet and infrared light.  I’m willing to bet if we had tested it we’d have found one hundred percent absorption of neutrinos and cosmic rays also.”  Several whistles and expressions of surprise came from all directions around the table.