“Check the control panel,” the tech said. It was now visible, a series of minimalist controls on the top of the box with a small three-inch LCD next to them. “Look for a row of square buttons. The largest one is the power button.”
After turning it on, the Rayleigh tech helped her get the radar configured. She took a quick image using the lowest setting available, then switched the control panel to the image processing function. “I’m not seeing anything,” Parkowski told the tech, “at least not anything useful. It looks like a completely black screen, not like a radar image.”
“Huh,” she heard the tech say. “Give me a sec, I have one of the engineers here with me in the room.”
Parkowski stood up and stretched her legs. She was starting to get tired and hungry. That breakfast sandwich hadn’t been enough; she had underestimated how much walking with all of the VR gear on would tire her out.
She looked at the landscape around her. The graphics inside of the virtual environment were almost photorealistic, immersing her in the alien planet. She almost forgot that her body was still on Earth. The sky was a different color, sure, and the clouds more ominous, but it wasn’t completely out of place from hiking in Arizona or New Mexico. Except for the lack of vegetation. That got Parkowski every time. Unlike early science-fiction depictions of the planet, Venus was completely barren.
The technician came back online. “The radar doesn’t have the correct settings to operate on Venus,” he told Parkowski. “The magnetosphere is different from Earth’s and we need to compensate. We’re working on getting a correct list of parameters that you can feed into the system manually. Standby.”
“Got it,” she replied. Parkowski stretched her arms out, then sat down.
Five minutes passed before he spoke again. “Hey, Ms. Parkowski, sorry for the dela. We have the correct list of configuration settings for the radar. Please let us know when you’re ready to input them.”
Parkowski knelt next to the radar box. “I’m ready now,” she told the tech as she readied the ACHILLES robot over the control panel.
The tech walked her through the settings, page by page, until the radar was properly configured. “Try taking an image now."
Parkowski tried again. This time, the control panel showed a black image with white lines seemingly drawn indiscriminately across it. “What the hell is this?” Parkowski said to herself softly. “I have something, but I’m not sure if it’s what we’re looking for,” she said over the net.
This time, Dr. Pham responded. “It looks like you’ve got it,” he told Parkowski. “That’s what a radar image looks like before any processing. I think we have the right settings now.”
“Copy, thanks,” Parkowski said, looking incredulously at the control panel. There was no way that anyone would be able to glean something of substance from that, she thought, but that wasn’t her problem. “What do I need to do next?”
“The radar system can map the cave system below you automatically,” the technician broke in. “We’ve got a script here at the plant in Aurora that will do that so you can continue your mission while it does its job. I’m sending it over to you in El Segundo now.”
“Grace, we’ll take it from here,” one of the Aering technicians said. “We’ll upload the script through the comm pathway to your ACHILLES unit so you can transmit it directly.”
“Ok,” she said. “How long will that take?”
“Once we have it? About five minutes total,” Pham broke in. “Just hang tight. I know we’ve told you to do a lot of that today, but that’s part of the job. Don’t worry, we’re still on track to complete all of the objectives of your mission by the end of the shift.”
“Got it,” Parkowski responded. “Sitting tight until it’s uploaded.”
DePresti often talked about how in the military, especially when he was outside of his normal acquisition duties in a class or when he was in a training environment at the Air Force Academy, there was a lot of what he referred to as “hurry up and wait.”
Parkowski felt like this mission was full of that. She had spent half of her time waiting for other people to do things so that she could do her job.
“Uploaded to your ACHILLES unit,” the Aering tech said a few seconds after Parkowski was finished with her self-reflection. “Go ahead and transfer it to the radar unit.”
Parkowski pulled up her menu and turned the Wi-Fi setting of the ACHILLES unit on. The ubiquitous network protocol used in millions of households around the world was also used on Venus to transmit files between the two ACHILLES robots, their equipment, and their home base. She transferred the file, a tiny, 54 KB text file, and went back to the radar’s control panel. “I’m ready to run it.”
“Go ahead,” the tech said. “We’ll check the first couple of images and then you can leave and complete the rest of your mission.”
