The Orion Plan by Mark Alpert Page A

Hanson, anxious to get rid of the thing. “I don’t know why you’ve called in the Marines, but it doesn’t matter. One way or another, I’m gonna find out where that meteor came from.”
    â€œIt wasn’t a meteor.” Hanson’s voice was low, almost a whisper. “It was man-made.”
    Sarah let go of the contract, which fluttered to the floor. “ What? ”
    â€œIt was a space probe making a controlled reentry into the atmosphere. We saw the proof once we analyzed the readings from all our radar stations across the globe.” He reached into his briefcase again and pulled out another sheaf of papers. This document had the words TOP SECRET stamped on its front page. “It wasn’t an American probe. Not NASA, not Air Force. Not the European Space Agency either. But there are two other countries that could’ve launched it. I’m sure you can guess who they are.”
    â€œHow could it be man-made? It was moving too fast.”
    â€œYou’re right, that’s a problem. It’s one of many problems.” He held up the classified document so Sarah could see its title: ANALYSIS OF THE TRAJECTORY OF OBJECT 2016X . “We used the radar readings and the Sky Survey data to plot the object’s path during the final hours before reentry, but there are plenty of uncertainties. That’s why I need you. The experts on my staff are good at plotting missile trajectories, but this probe took a roundabout route to get here, going way off into interplanetary space. And according to my sources at NASA, you know more about interplanetary trajectories than anyone.”
    Sarah turned away from him, trying to think. It was possible to accelerate a spacecraft to speeds as high as 80,000 miles per hour. You’d have to launch it into a highly elliptical orbit around the sun and then execute a series of complex maneuvers, aiming it at Venus or Jupiter and using the planet’s powerful gravity to slingshot the probe across the solar system. But what was the point? Why propel a spacecraft to such an extraordinary velocity just to send it back to Earth?
    Her throat tightened. She turned back to Hanson. “Was it a weapon?”
    The general waited a few seconds before responding. His face was unreadable. “We won’t know for sure until we find the thing. Or at least a piece of it. Our patrol boats are going to drag the riverbed.”
    She shook her head. Jesus, this is serious. She stepped toward the table and took a closer look at Hanson’s map. His impact zone, she noticed, was smaller than the one she’d estimated. She pointed at the ellipse’s eastern boundary, which encompassed only the sliver of Inwood Hill Park that ran alongside the river. “You made a mistake. The zone should include more of the park.”
    â€œWe narrowed the search area based on our radar analysis.” Hanson held up the classified document again but kept it out of Sarah’s reach. “Remember when we were watching the object on radar last night and we thought it exploded in the atmosphere? That was actually a deceleration maneuver. The probe used a ten-foot-wide aeroshell to reduce its speed, just like the NASA spacecraft do when they land on Mars. At an altitude of twenty-one miles the probe ejected the aeroshell, which disintegrated. Then the probe continued toward its target. The analysis also explains why the spacecraft looked like it was more than a hundred feet wide in your telescope observations. It really was that big during the earliest stages of its approach. The object that your Sky Survey telescope spotted in deep space, hundreds of thousands of miles away, was several times larger than the one that dove into the atmosphere.”
    Sarah waited for him to say more, but he just stood there, looking at her. She felt the sting of frustration. She wanted to grab the classified analysis right out of his hands. “What are you saying? The