Chapter 11 Chapter 8 "Sea Eagle" Naval Helicopter

Rachel suddenly felt a little sick from the acoustics of the anechoic chamber on the Charlotte.On the screen, William Pickering's worried eyes fell on Michael Tolland, "You didn't say anything, Mr. Tolland." real. Pickering hinted briefly that President Hurney might have been involved, but Rachel was firmly skeptical.Considering that Rachel and the others had been chased by special forces and various potential dangers, he decided to send them to a safe place. Rachel was taken aback, thinking that they were quite safe on the nuclear submarine.Pickering, however, argued, "It's not going to be a secret that you're on that sub for long. I'm going to take you out right now. Frankly, if the three of you were sitting in my office right now , I feel much more at ease."

Senator Sexton curled up on the couch feeling as alone as a refugee.His Westbrook apartment, which just an hour earlier was packed with new friends and supporters, now looks abandoned, with rubber bottle stoppers and business cards strewn about. It was discarded by those who had already rushed to the door like flying. Sexton was curled up alone in front of the TV, desperate to turn it off but unable to distract himself from the endless analysis of the news media. I was lied to, Sexton said, the damn White House set me up. Sexton thought of the CNN debate that afternoon and hung his head in disgust.The habit of thinking about NASA that he'd been carefully cultivating over the past few months had not only come to a screeching halt, but had become a shackle that gave him trouble.He looked like an idiot being played with brazenly by the White House.Immediately he dreaded all the satire in tomorrow's papers.His name will be the laughing stock of the nation.No doubt, the Space Frontier Foundation will no longer be surreptitiously raising money for the campaign.Everything has changed.Those who were in his apartment just now have seen their dreams go down the drain in the toilet.The issue of privatizing space has just hit an insurmountable hurdle.

Senator Sexton stood up, holding the Napoleon bottle, and Sexton strolled toward the sliding door on the balcony.He pulled the door aside and stepped out for a breath of cool air.He leaned over the railing, gazing at the illuminated facade of the White House on the far side of the city.Those lights seemed to flicker merrily in the breeze. Bitch, Sexton thought.For centuries, humans have searched the skies for signs of life.And now people find it in the year I'm running?It came out so ill-timed and so fucking insightful.In every apartment window as far as Sexton could see, there was a TV turned on in the window.Sexton had no idea where Gabrielle Ash was tonight.It was all her fault, Gabrielle feeding him the failures of NASA over and over again.

He lifted the bottle and took another swig. Damn Gabrielle...that's why I'm in trouble. Across the city, Gabrielle stood among the chaotic crowd in the ABC news studio, feeling transfixed.The president's unexpected announcement threw her into a somewhat tense state of confusion.She stood rooted in the center of the news studio, staring up at a TV screen, surrounded by noise. Yolanda led Gabrielle back to her office, comforted her, and went back to her own business.Alone now, Gabrielle took a sip of water, but the water felt awful.Everything sucks.It's all my fault, she thought, trying to clear her conscience by thinking back to NASA's frustrating press conferences over the past few years—failure on the space station, X— 33 The delayed launch of the space shuttle, the Mars probes that all failed, and the continuous emergency funds.Gabrielle didn't know what else she could have done.

Nothing can be done, she thought to herself, everything you do is right. It just had the opposite effect. The rumbling USS Sea Hawk helicopter was scrambled from Thule Air Force Base in northern Greenland on a covert operation.Facing the gusts of wind, the helicopter rushed to 70 nautical miles above the sea, and kept flying at a low altitude outside the radar monitoring range.The helicopter flew to the pre-determined coordinate position, dropped a rescue safety rope suitable for three people, pulled two men and a woman into the cabin, and then accelerated to fly south. The storm was approaching soon, and the three strange passengers had to be brought safely back to Thule Air Force Base and transferred to the jet.

Where they were going, the pilot had no idea.All he knew was that his orders came from higher ups, and that he was delivering extremely precious cargo. At the last blizzard on the Milne Ice Shelf, hitting NASA's sojourner ball with all its might, the dome trembled violently, as if it was about to be pulled off the ice shelf and plunge into the sea.Nasa Administrator Lawrence Extron strode through the dome, exhausted.Extron felt a sense of relief at the thought that the alien myth of yesteryear was about to become a permanent reality. At this moment, he learned that a technician from NASA hurried across the ice shelf and came behind him, telling him that there was an emergency secure phone in the field safety communication system room looking for him.When the two were walking back, the technician asked him about the huge submarine stationed in that sea area. Unexpectedly, the director was completely unaware of it.Realizing the seriousness of the matter, the technician told the director that a submarine had just met an aircraft in that sea area.After rendezvous, the aircraft returned to Thule Air Force Base.

Extron said nothing as he continued toward the FSC room.After he entered the cramped dark room, the hoarse voice immediately let out a familiar hiss. "We've got a problem," Tench said, coughing. "It's Rachel Sexton." Senator Sexton wasn't sure how long he'd been staring up at the sky when he heard the bang.Realizing that the throbbing in his ears was not from alcohol but from someone knocking on the apartment door, he got up from the sofa, hid the bottle of Napoleon Cognac, and headed down the hall. "Who's there?" Sexton called, not at all eager to greet the visitor.

The guard's voice came in, revealing the identity of the guest Sexton hadn't expected.President of the Space Frontier Foundation.Sexton met him in a white Ford Windward minivan just this morning in a hotel garage. The old man walked into the study and sat on the sofa, staring at Sexton with his tired eyes. "Do you remember," he said, "that NASA had a lot of trouble installing the anomalous program system on the polar-orbiting density scanning satellite? Not long after that happened, NASA held a A press conference announcing that they've come up with a workaround -- patching that program."

Sexton didn't actually see the press conference, but heard it was short, tedious, and hardly newsworthy - the director of the Polar Orbital Density Scan program did a bland technical A description of how NASA overcame a glitch in the anomaly detection program on the Polar Density Scan Satellite and fixed everything to make it work.However, the president of the Space Frontier Foundation has been following its situation with interest since the polar-orbiting density-scanning satellite failed. He brought Sexton a videotape recreating the press conference.Chris Harper, director of the Polar Orbit Density Scanning Satellite Program, answered reporters' questions at the press conference with confidence and matter-of-factness like an expert.Harper's unusual behavior caught his attention.Then, in another press conference, Dr. Harper announced that NASA had been hit with a workaround to a procedural problem on the satellite.However, Harper seemed uneasy when he announced the good news.

"That night, NASA claimed that Dr. Harper was unwell," he added after a pause. "I think he's lying." lie?Sexton's eyes widened, too dazed to come up with any plausible explanation for why Harper should have lied about the procedure. "Perhaps you haven't realized it?" said the old man. "That little announcement you just heard from Chris Harper was the most important press conference in the history of NASA." He paused. "The handy procedural remedy he just described led to the discovery of the meteorite by the polar-orbiting density scanning satellite."

Sexton was bewildered.Do you think he lied about it? "However, if Harper was lying, and the program on the PODS satellite didn't work at all, how on earth did NASA find the meteorite?" The old man smiled slightly and said, "This is the problem." Half an hour earlier, a G-4 had taken off from the Thule runway, headed ahead through the storm, and was roaring south across the Canadian night sky toward Washington.On the plane, Rachel Sexton, Michael Tolan and Corky Mallinson sat in an eight-seat cabin. Despite the roar of the Grumman engine, Corky Mallinson fell asleep in the back of the cabin.Tolan sat in the front cabin, staring at the sea outside the window with a tired face.Rachel stayed next to him, knowing she couldn't sleep despite being sedated.The mysterious meteorite and the recent conversation with Pickering in the anechoic chamber swirled in Rachel's mind.Before wrapping up the conversation, Rachel learns from Pickering that Marjorie Tench claims to have a videotape of Rachel's private testimony to White House officials.Furthermore, during an afternoon appearance on CNN, Tench cajoled Sexton into expressing his unabashed skepticism that humans would ever find aliens. Rachel stood up and paced up and down the aisle of the plane.She walked past Corky and gently took the meteorite specimen from Corky's hand.She picked up the meteorite specimen and examined the fossils carefully.Cancel all assumptions, she thought to herself, trying to regain clarity.Re-establish that chain of proof. Regather evidence. Does this rock prove the existence of alien life? She believes that evidence is a conclusion based on a bunch of facts, and a more definite assertion is drawn on this broad basis of received information. Remove all basic assumptions.Restart. What can we get? a rock. She pondered for a moment on the above question.A rock, a rock with living fossils.She walked back to the front of the plane and took a seat next to Michael Toland. "Mike, let's play a game." Tolan turned his head from the window with a dazed expression, obviously lost in thought, "Game?" Rachel handed him the meteorite specimen, "Let's assume you're seeing this fossilized meteorite for the first time. I haven't told you where or how the meteorite was found. Will you tell me what this is?" Tolland sighed sullenly: "You should ask something fun. I had a very weird idea just now..." Hundreds of miles behind Rachel and Tolland, an odd-looking plane kept flying southward over the deserted sea.On the plane, the Delta team members were silent.They had evacuated many places before, but never in this situation. The commander was furious. They learned from their commander that three of their four targets were alive and on their way to Washington.In the end, the commander's tone was filled with murderous intent: "Listen carefully, I will give you a new order. You must not miss this time." Senator Sexton felt a glimmer of hope as he accompanied the uninvited guest out of the room to the elevator.It turned out that the chairman of the Space Frontier Foundation did not come to punish Sexton severely, but to speak to him, cheer him up, and tell him that the battle is not over yet. There's an exploitable gap in NASA's defenses. The videotape of the bizarre NASA press conference had already convinced Sexton that the old man had a point—that Chris Harper, the director of the Polar Density Scanning Satellite Division, had lied.He wanted to find out the reason behind the lie, and the right person to investigate it was of course Gabrielle Ash. Sexton sent the president of the Space Frontier Foundation to the elevator, turned around and walked back.When he returned to the door of the apartment, he learned from the guard that when he was holding a secret meeting with the personnel of the Space Frontier Foundation, Gabrielle had entered the room and left without a word.She must have heard things she shouldn't have heard. Senator Sexton knew that above all he couldn't lose Gabrielle Ash's trust.When a woman feels cheated, she becomes vengeful and distracted.Sexton had to bring her back.Tonight, more than ever, he needed Gabrielle on his side. On the fourth floor of ABC's television studios, Gabrielle Ash sat alone in Yolanda's glass office, gazing at the frayed carpet.Just when she felt lonely and helpless, not sure what to do, her cell phone rang. Senator Sexton called to keep Gabrielle from blaming herself.He calmly admitted to a meeting with representatives of the private space industry that evening, and assured her that the donations he received were legitimate.After gaining Gabrielle's trust again, Sexton revealed the reason for the call: He wanted Gabrielle to get inside information from NASA. Gabrielle listened, realizing how wrongly she had been underestimating Senator Sedgwick Sexton of late.Since supporting his cause from the beginning, some of the bright spots in him have gradually faded.But just tonight, those bright spots appeared again.Faced with what appeared to be a fatal blow to his campaign, Sexton planned a counterattack.Although it was Gabrielle who led him down this troubled path, instead of punishing Gabrielle, he gave her a chance to make meritorious deeds. She is also willing to make meritorious atonement. No matter how difficult it is, she is willing. William Pickering stared at the row of headlights on the Leesburg Freeway outside his office window.Pickering thought of her often, standing here alone in a position of power. With so much power... I couldn't save her. Pickering's daughter Diana died in the Red Sea while being sent to pilot training on a small naval frigate.The root cause of such misfortune is the failure of the satellite launch of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.By this point, Pickering had developed a feud with NASA. "Sir?" Pickering's secretary's voice came from the intercom, startling him. "Marjorie Tench, number one." Pickering snapped out of his trance and looked at his phone.Call again?The number one line, which flickers brightly and then dimly, seems to be beating angrily and urgently.Pickering frowned and connected the phone. Tench was furious, and accused Pickering of not telling her that Rachel had called him.Knowing that he was unable to extract the flight purpose and arrival time of Rachel and the others from Pickering's mouth, but was picked up by Pickering, Tench decided to find an inconspicuous place to meet Pickering.They agreed to meet at the Roosevelt Memorial in an hour.