MARTIAN TRIANGLE: PART 5

Tommy walked Truman over to the huge main screen. He leaned over to one of the techs, Luc with a 'C'.

"Go ahead," Tommy said, "Bring it up."

The large screen that filled the north side of the room blinked and digitized for a second, and then was filled with what looked like a pixel-ish close-up of the side of the USS Cyclops. Truman, along with the entire room, was staring at the screen. Without turning, he asked his first question.

"What color-enhancements are you running?" Truman asked.

"None," Luc with a 'C' answered. Truman turned and looked at him.

"None."

"None, sir," responded Luc with a 'C.'

"Then why the hell is it green?" asked Truman. "What the hell am I -" before he could finished his question, Luc with a 'C' had zoomed into the screed on a section of the ship that looked green. Truman was still staring at the screen when Tommy spoke.

"Those are leaves," he said. "Those.... are... leaves. Look!"

Truman was beside himself. "How close is the rover to this spot right now?"

"We're still almost seven hundred meters away from the Cyclops," Tommy responded.

"So we still have a good five or six hours before we can really see what that green-colored, leaf-shaped thing is... right?"

"Sir, I really think that it's a leaf, it's almost looks like a vine crawling up the side of the ship itself."

"I get what it looks like, Tom," Truman chose his words carefully, "But unless you have some sort of NCIS magical "enhance" that I don't know about, we need to be closer before we can properly describe what we're seeing. As scientists we need to rule things out instead of jumping to conclusions. You see a leaf, I see a potato quality feed of what could be copper corrosion, or any other number of things."

The room was silent as Truman gathered his thoughts. "Does ANYone have ANYthing else that I need to see or hear?" There was a long pause as Truman looked around the room. Then, very slowly, Cliff from communication's hand went up.

"Can... uh... can I ask a question, sir?"

Truman had plenty of questions himself, and he dreaded the idea of trying to answer something with "I don't know," but he knew that he had to keep a hold of leadership, and that meant saying yes.

"Of course, Cliff. What is it?"

"So... the feed... it hasn't been tampered with?" Truman took a deep breath.

"As far as we can tell, and by 'We' I mean both you and Aston at Industrial Light and Magic. As of right now, we're treated the feed as legit." A murmur went through the room. Truman raised his voice, "AS OF NOW. That means that even though we're treating the footage we're getting as the real thing, we're still looking for ANYTHING that could tell us that it isn't the case! Got it?!" Truman looked around the room as heads went up and down. He finally turned back to Luc with a 'C,' "If we head straight for what looks like green, what time will we be in range for a proper view?"

"Well, sir," Luc with a 'C' answered, "It's a pretty clear path, nothing in the way, so we should be at our minimal acute visual distance in five to five and a half hours."

Truman looked at his watch, that would put it a little past eight tonight. His long day getting even longer.

He took his voice up again. "I suspect that in five hours, we're going to have a whole-lot more questions and hopefully a few answers. I'll need you operating sharp. I'm going to go into my office and try to get a little rest between now and then. I suggest you grab some rest if you can. A lot of you have been here since last night already, but I need you on point when we can close enough to get proper pictures and use the laser, and everything else we have on board."

With that Truman gave a nod to the room, and turned back towards his office. He took his phone out of his pocket and scrolled his recent contacts down to "My Lovely Wife" and clicked "CALL."