Chester promptly returned to the observatory after he made a quick trip to a local pizza joint for dinner. Chester spent most of his evenings here, looking through the telescope and making notes of anything unusual. He had received a message from Jax, one of his fellow operatives at Firewall. Fortunately, his pizza was ready when he received the message on his communicator and he was able to get back to his post in time.
The door buzzer sounded and Chester opened the door.
"Hi, I'm Jax and this is Shell," said Jax. "We need your help finding something around Lunar orbit."
"Yes, I see," replied Chester. "Nice to m... Shell? Hey! I didn't know you worked with Firewall!"
Shell laughed. "Well, on occasion," she replied to Chester. "I guess I never did ask you what you did for a living..."
"Well, we've never really had a chance to talk, despite being neighbors," said Chester. "Anyway, come on in."
The three of them walked through the entrance area, past some soda machines and a small kitchen. Chester led them up the stairs to the third floor, where a large, circular room housed the enormous telescope.
"It's funny," said Chester, "It's a small world. Observing the skies every night reminds me of how small we are, but I guess it's a small world in the social context after all..."
The dome of the observatory opened over the telescope and Chester turned on the video monitors. He pivoted the telescope, which rotated the entire room with it.
"Alright, we're looking out just past the Moon, right," commented Chester, as he continued to adjust the telescope's focus. "No kidding, I get just as much work observing space stations, spy satellites, and spacecraft as I do actually doing astronomy," he said.
Jax took a look at one of the monitors. "That makes sense," said Jax. "Espionage probably pays a lot better than donation-funded astronomy does."
Chester nodded. "You'd be surprised, Jax. Aside from my work with Firewall, I've had a lot of wealthy private donors wanting me to watch distant galaxies. Still, most of my more interesting requests have been through Firewall and various governments. Watching the skies for threats takes priority, you know," said Chester.
Chester noticed something interesting on the screen. Right next to the moon, perhaps a few thousand miles beyond its disc, Chester noticed that some stars were disappearing. He zoomed in.
"Have a look at this," said Chester. "Something's blocking the stars out there."
Jax and Shell studied the monitor image. Chester pointed to the black spot, where stars and galaxies were vanishing behind it.
"We've got an object out there, alright. Something that isn't emitting or reflecting any light at all," he said.
Chester zoomed in on the object even more closely. As the object slowly moved along its orbit, the vanishing stars hinted at its size and shape. Chester ran a program on the telescope system's computer to analyze the images, putting together a vague outline of the object.
"We've got something interesting out there. It's some kind of synthetic object about a mile long and a half mile wide. Could be a huge piece of space junk or an abandoned spacecraft," said Chester.
"Any abandoned spacecraft would have registration data," said Jax. "Almost all space junk over a few meters in diameter is tracked and monitored by Firewall. We have to do that to avoid collisions."
"Right," replied Chester. "Anything this large would be well-known."
"Nothing's in the registry that fits that size, orbit, or position," said Shell. "I just checked all space debris records, including Firewall's. Nothing at all should be where that thing is currently."
Chester walked over to a small table where he had left the pizza he brought back minutes ago. "I hope you'll excuse me while I eat my dinner," he told Jax and Shell. "I don't mean to be rude but I don't want this to get cold."
Chester looked at them while he ate a slice. "Shell, you're welcome to have some. Jax, I know you can't eat," he told them.
Shell walked over and sat across the table from Chester. Jax continued to study the images on the telescope's monitor.
