“What’s the reading again?” Frena asked, peering at her graph. She could barely make out the readings in the light from her headtorch.
“445,” Grenac replied, peering through the telescope, “that’s another 445 for the list.”
Frena peered at the graph, marking a small x where the 445 line was. The current trend was for a straight line, pointing towards the theory they had both been working on.
That the star Trenak was not in fact a star. It was a ship. An alien ship from another world.
“What do you think?” Frena said, drawing a line from the previous x to the new x. A straight line. It made her stomach turn.
“I think it shows we were right,” Grenac said.
“I know,” Frena replied, “and that’s what I’m worried about. If it is a ship, then what does that mean, who are they? What do they want with us?”
Grenac shrugged.
“That’s not our problem,” he said, “that’s for the Ministrea to work out. We’re just the scientists remember.”
Frena nodded, but she didn’t agree. One was never just a scientist. It was the scientists who would be hauled up in front of the committees to explain their blasphemy and explain their results.
Frena looked back at the results and reached for her eraser. No one would know if they tampered with the results, just a little.
Ignorance, sometimes, was much preferable to the truth.
Alex.J.Cobalt 