Chapter Text
To: (Eva Stratt, LL.M) [email protected]
From: (Irina Petrova, PhD) [email protected]
Subject: Dinner
Ms. Stratt,
I hope you are well. A colleague informed me that you are now working with the ESA. I will be visiting the Paris headquarters to host a discovery panel at the end of this month. I would like to meet, preferably in the evening. My calendar is attached.
Kind Regards,
Irina
It’s fifteen minutes past their agreed upon meeting time when Irina Petrova finally steps into the small café located just down the street from the ESA headquarters in Paris’s 15th arrondissement. Eva looks up from her phone, where she had been scrolling through her meticulously organized e-mails to pass the time, and catches Irina’s eye. The scientist gives her a curt nod before ducking her head and weaving her way through the dinner crowd toward the table Eva sits at.
“Ms. Stratt,” Irina says, holding out a hand in polite greeting. “I apologize for being late, discussion at my last meeting lasted longer than anticipated.”
Eva shakes her hand. It's been ten years since she last saw Irina Petrova and she can’t help but catalogue the subtle differences the passage of time has had on the woman — brown hair now streaked with grey and cut short instead of braided down her back, a few more wrinkles at the corners of her dark eyes. Her mouth still curves down slightly in a perpetual frown, an expression she once joked was a result of growing up in Soviet Russia.
“It’s nice to see you, Dr. Petrova. Are you enjoying Paris?” Eva asks as Irina settles in her seat, the heavy bag on her shoulder dropped unceremoniously to the ground with a quiet thud.
“Paris is overrated,” she replies in that blunt, unimpressed way of hers. “Too many people. And the trees make me sneeze.”
“What brings you here? You mentioned a discovery panel.”
Her frown deepens. “Yes. I am presenting some rather disturbing anomalies I have discovered within our solar system.”
A waiter stops at the table for their drink orders. Eva orders a glass of merlot while Irina makes a request for vodka, neat.
“Anomalies?” Eva questions as the waiter walks away.
Irina leans down, reaching into her bag. After rifling through its contents, she sets a legal pad and pen on the table. She flips through pages of looping cyrillic script until she finds a blank page and draws two circles.
“This,” she says, tapping the bigger circle, “is the sun. And this—“ she taps the smaller circle “—is Venus.” She draws an arched line connecting the two. “And this is my finding.”
“A…line?” Eva asks, raising a brow. “I’m not following.”
Irina huffs. “Infrared emissions. Barely detectable. Between the sun and Venus.”
The waiter returns with their drinks and sets the glasses on the table. Irina takes a large sip and scrunches her nose as she swallows. They place their orders for food and the waiter disappears once more.
“This vodka is awful,” she says. “Like water.”
“That vodka is normal. What you drink is closer to kerosene than liquor.”
Irina waves a hand dismissively. “Back to what I was saying. IR bands are not uncommon but this one is…misbehaving,” she continues to explain, her brow furrowed and her gaze fixed on her drawing.
Eva huffs a laugh that earns her a pointed glare. “Misbehaving how?” She asks.
“The shape of the arc…I cannot explain it. I thought, perhaps, it could be magnetic fields but Venus has none. I emailed my findings to a whole list of other scientists and two researchers from the ESA responded,” Irina tells her, leaning forward in her seat. “They work with the solar lab, tracking things like sun spots and flares. They have noted an uncharacteristic and sustained dip in the temperature output located near the sun’s North Pole, right at the origin of the IR band.”
“What does that mean?”
Irina taps the circle that represents the sun.
“It means the sun is dying,” she says. “And whatever is causing this band of IR light might have something to do with it.”
“Ms. Stratt, thank you for joining us today.”
Eva nods, folding her hands together and resting them on top of her case file. Across the table sits an older gentleman with grey hair and flushed cheeks. Dr. van Mullen, the Dean of the Leiden Institute of Physics.
Beside him is a woman who slumps low in the chair, arms crossed over her chest and her lips tugged down in a frown. Strands of dark hair have escaped the braid that rests on her shoulder, giving her a more frazzled appearance. This, Eva assumes, must be Dr. Irina Petrova.
“I don’t want to take up too much of your time—“
“Good. I would like to get back to the lab,” Dr. Petrova interrupts. Eva lifts an eyebrow at her. Dr. van Mullen shifts uncomfortably in his seat, the chair creaking ominously with his movements.
“As I was saying,” Eva continues, “You’ve received a cease and desist letter from the biotechnology firm LSO. They’ve indicated that they hold the patent for a specific technique used for detecting unusual infrared emissions in space data.”
Dr. Petrova scoffs. “That is just a long way of saying they have stolen my work.”
“Go on,” Eva says, clicking her pen and readying herself to take notes. “I’m listening.”
“I began developing what I like to call the Petrova Method about fourteen months ago. It is a computational and optical technique that modifies a high powered telescope to filter out the typical infrared noise and narrow in on anomalous IR absorption or emissions figures.”
“And you developed this technique here, at Leiden?”
“Yes. In my lab.”
“Do you have any research assistants or lab managers?” Eva asks. Dr. Petrova nods.
“Two graduate assistants and a lab manager who is working on her PhD in computational astrophysics.”
“How long have they been working on this project with you?”
Dr. Petrova shrugs. “I do not know. One day they were just there.”
“The Institute accepts applications and matches qualified persons to labs,” Dr. van Mullen explains.
“Right,” Eva says, scribbling the information down, her notes devolving into a form of shorthand only she understands. “And these students, they sign disclosure agreements before employment?”
He nods. “Of course.”
It wouldn’t be the first time Eva has seen someone breach a confidentiality agreement. She makes a note to ask for signed copies before she leaves.
“Have you presented this method at any conferences?” Eva asks, directing the question to Dr. Petrova. She nods. “When was that?”
“Eight months ago,” she says.
Eva pauses. “You’re certain?”
“Yes. The conference fell on my mother’s birthday and she was upset I would not be visiting home.”
Dr. Petrova presented her findings eight months ago, but the patent held by LNO was only obtained six months ago. Eva smiles.
“Tell me about this conference.”
The following day, Eva finds herself standing in a packed conference room squeezed between two men who are trying to take up more than their fair share of room. She jabs her elbow into the arm of one of them and gives him a look when he glances at her. Message received, he inches a little further away from her.
“This is statistically impossible,” someone in the audience says. At the podium, Irina laughs.
“This is space, Dr. Eggers. We do not get to dictate the impossible when we do not even understand the scope of possibility.”
“The sun can’t be dying, that would mean—“
“That we are looking down the barrel of a gun that looks suspiciously like an extinction event,” Irina interrupts. “Yes. I’ve said as much.”
“What are we supposed to do?”
Irina shrugs. “The same thing we always do. We investigate. We analyze. We find a solution.”
The overhead lights are turned on and the crowd of gathered scientists and administrators begins to leave. Eva remains in her spot until the room is mostly empty save for Irina, the two ESA scientists from the solar lab, and Director Massey.
“Ms. Stratt,” Irina says when she approaches. The other three turn to look at her. “I’m glad you were able to attend.”
Irina had made the request after dinner last night.
“I’m giving one last presentation tomorrow afternoon before I have to return to St. Petersburg. One last hail mary to get these stubborn scientists to see that the data does not lie,” she’d said, after spending the entirety of dinner explaining the issue to Eva between sips from her vodka and bites of her food. “You should come.”
“As interesting as this discussion has been, why would you want me there? I’m not a scientist,” Eva replied. Irina gave her a look she couldn’t decipher.
“Because you get shit done, Eva. The world needs more people like us.”
Director Massey shakes her hand. “Good to see you, Stratt,” he says. He gestures to the two scientists beside him, a tall woman with red hair and freckles that dot her face like constellations and a shorter man with tan skin and kind eyes that gives her a big smile. “Dr. Driskoll and Dr. Gutierrez, with our solar lab initiative.”
“Nice to meet you, Ms. Stratt,” Dr. Gutierrez says. “Dr. Petrova speaks highly of you.”
Eva glances at Irina but finds her studiously looking anywhere but at her.
“A pleasure to meet you as well,” Eva responds. Dr. Driskoll shakes her hand next but doesn’t offer more than a polite smile.
“I’ll leave the four of you to it,” Director Massey says. “Let me know how I can be of assistance.”
He walks off before Eva can ask what it is. She turns instead to Irina.
“What is he talking about?” She asks. Irina shuffles some papers together, tight lipped. Dr. Gutierrez speaks up first.
“Were the Petrova Task Force,” he says jovially.
Eva frowns.
“We’re the what?”