“But it still begs the question: After the Epiphany event, why did Schultzcorp consider receiving signals from space to be a first priority?”
“You must have been given some idea of what the purpose of the dish was, yeah?” Lamont urged. “A mission statement, a project plan.”
Clifford shook his head innocently. “Nothing like that. Just technical parameters.” He hesitated, glancing toward the door of the medical bay furtively. “But…”
Lamont raised his brows expectantly. “But what?”
Clifford lowered his voice and leaned in closer. “I was curious, so I did a little digging. I have an interest in history, you know.”
“I know,” Lamont encouraged him.
“One of the earliest big projects that Schultzcorp undertook, back in the ‘50s, had to do with building big radio dishes,” Clifford explained in a voice barely above a whisper. “At the time, the dust cloud that covered the Earth was a major technical barrier. After a few years, the project was apparently suspended and resources were diverted to clean up the sky and complete construction of Tomorrow. But it still begs the question: After the Epiphany event, why did Schultzcorp consider receiving signals from space to be a first priority?”
“And the infrastructures you were working on—” Lamont whispered, “—were part of the same project, nearly 50 years later?”
“I can’t be sure,” Clifford admitted. “I was never given a name for the project, and I couldn’t find any mentions of NOD after the mid 1950’s, and precious few of those at that.”
“What—what did you say?” Lamont nearly choked, startling the mousy engineer. “The acronym?”
“En-Oh-Dee,” Clifford stammered. “I never figured out what it stood for. And I didn’t dig too deeply because I didn’t want to endanger my job.”
Lamont fumbled in his pocket. He had moved the radioactive souvenir from Epiphany Rex to a hidden compartment in his cigarette case so that he always knew where it was while the ship was under repair. Should he show it to Clifford? Was there another person onboard who could share the burden of this strange and inexplicable connection between half-century old documents and a world colonized by Mars in a long-distant epoch? He reeled with the momentary temptation to tell Clifford everything he knew, and then, as usual, thought the better of it. He didn’t know Ashton that well. Besides, mere hours ago, the man had been babbling inane platitudes after being affected somehow by the tower. No, better to keep it to himself until he better understood what he was dealing with.
“It’s an…extraordinary connection,” Lamont ventured carefully.
The engineer shrugged. “An interesting comparison, maybe, but I don’t see a connection. After all, the Schultzcorp project was designed to receive signals from deep space. The tower is the opposite—it’s designed to transmit them.”
I'm not buying this "engineer" who sees no connection between a galactic transmitter and a deep space receiver project.