Kalath grunted slightly. Who died and made Smoke lead? She tensed up as the smell got stronger, reaching back for her spear.

"Hm. This could be what the station was designed for. A storm may be coming." She thumbs through the tablet while following, examining the contents to get more clues.

"Yeah, maybe they just retreated to a reinforced part of the building." Stanley says. "But they did send out a distress call."

Trav finds that the tablet seems to be registered to a Specialist Naomi Hirano, a meteorology expert.  Scanning through the local storage on the tablet, Trav sees that a lot of it is devoted to records of weather patterns and analyses comparing them to computer models incorporating the moon's atmospheric composition and both the gravitational effect of the gas giant it orbits, and the interaction between the moon's atmosphere and the outer layers of the gas giant proper.

But there are also personal log entries recorded.  As Trav goes into these, she finds that people have been going missing for several weeks, as of the time of the last entry.  Most of this is alluded to or described second-hand, but it seems as if it was first ascribed to people skipping shifts and missing check-ins.  Further entries mention new security protocols being put into place, outlying buildings on the base being shut down and abandoned, and the expedition commander instituting rules for people to work and move only in groups.

Hirano's entries don't disclose any conclusions about what was behind the disappearances.

As the group comes to a corridor branching inward toward the center of the corridor's arc, the hairs on the back of Kalath's neck go up.  Then she realizes that rather more than that is being affected - the ends of Smoke Alarm's hair are starting to stand out away from each other.  The side corridor goes down to end in a hatchway about fifteen meters away, and in the last third of that length, the ceiling lights and access panels to the doorways are dark and deactivated.

The legend on the hatchway and the end of the corridor reads Operations Center.

'Stopsign playing with my hairs!' Smoke Alarm squawked, thinking Kalath was pranking her. She jerked her head away from whatever and batted at her blue hair, only to find it sticky to her fingers. 'Ah! I've outgone all staticky! There's something electricky 'round here.'

Trav decides that in honor of this fellow, that this shall be her new tablet, since she left her old IPad on Khestartes Delta - presuming that they don't find whoever this belongs to.

The weather and gravitic data gets copied into her phone. She then has Chibi begin to upgrade the tablet while maintaining it's old OS and data in a separate space.

She takes a moment to check if the local wireless is up. She's expecting not.

Stanley and Smoke may notice that Trav is deeply engrossed, giving the tablet laser-like attention, and taking her time - something she never did when she was blonde.

"Oh, one more thing." Using her sonic to actually sketch out a map, she wants to use this data to predict local weather pattens for the next 72 hours. It appears as a holo projected by the tablet.

OOC: Ingenuity+Science?
09:03, Today: The Traveller rolled 25 using 2d6+14 with rolls of 5,6.  Map The Weather - 2d6+Ingenuity 8+Science 6.

This message was last edited by the player at 13:04, Wed 10 Oct 2018.

Trav pauses from her calculations and adjusts her glasses, looking at the local electromagnetic spectra. "Let me take a look." She adjusts her glasses, as they turn from shades to spectacles.

OOC: Perception+Science+Glasses?
09:03, Today: The Traveller rolled 17 using 2d6+11 with rolls of 4,2.  Check out the static - Awareness 3+Science 6+Glasses 2.
This message was last edited by the player at 13:04, Wed 10 Oct 2018.

Trav's analysis of the current weather patterns indicate that a heavy thunderstorm is due to start within the next few hours. The storm strength should stay below levels conducive to tornadoes, and given what she knows about the construction of structures like this one, she doubts that the station's integrity is at risk.  However, the storm is likely to last between twelve and eighteen hours, and moving between this building and other parts of the outpost is likely to be difficult.

When she checks the station's wireless network, she finds that it is functioning, but has poor signal integrity.  One of the reasons for this becomes apparent when she scans the end of the radial hallway.  Someone has rigged up a set of electromagnetic projectors, possibly medium-range signal repeaters, that is generating an interference field -- it's hard for her to be sure without measuring it from a variety of angles, but it seems like they've made an attempt to encircle or encapsulate the center of the building.

The interference field isn't dangerous to humans, unless they were to live in it from years on end, and it seems to be modulated to an irregular or random pattern, rather than any sort of repeating signal or standing wave.

Still cat-curiously playing with her floating blue hair, Smoke Alarm asked Traveller 'What is it, Trav? Is it someone patting up cats?'

"I usually like to pet cats. Someone has set up some kind of standining interference wave. Why, I don't know. An interference wave implies someone is trying to interfere with something. Lets keep moving and try to find whoever sent this signal. Our answer is probably at the center of this building. Someone may be trying to protect themselves from something."

As they move, Trav tries to figure out why someone would set up such a wave. Anti-Transmat? Making invisible monsters visible? It wasn't like she hasn't been at this rodeo before.

OOC: Ingenuity+Science?
This message was last edited by the player at 19:19, Sat 20 Oct 2018.

What is most puzzling about the interference field is that it is remarkable neither for the nature of the energy - garden variety radio waves, effectively, despite skipping all around the spectrum -- nor its strength.  This suggests to the Travaller that what's important about it is the shifting pattern: either someone is trying to generate quantum interference effects, or possibly even messing around with block transfer manipulation, although if it's the latter they are using a clumsy or accidental means of going about it.

Quantum interference might indeed be intended as a defense against a remote transmat pickup.  Block transfer countermeasures, of course, could be intended to counter almost anything at all, and would imply both that it was implemented by someone very smart or very lucky, and that the force they're up against is similarly sophisticated.

14:48, Today: The Guardian, on behalf of The Traveller, rolled 24 using 2d6+14 with rolls of 5,5.  Ingenuity(8) + Science(6).

Trav thinks that it may have something to do with the transversal gateway, above. Maybe something was coming through and the folks here were trying to stop it? And block transfer manipulation via radio - that was clever. Trav definitely wanted to talk to whoever was behind this.

"Come on, slowpokes. Hurry up!" Trav goes into a trot as they head to the center of the station.

'You're name-calling me a slowpoke?' Smoke Alarm said laughfully, footed fastly past Traveller. 'Catch me if you can!'

Scouting ahead, she soon eyespied the sign on the door at the end of the carrydoor. 'Opper-rations Centre.' she read out loud. 'Sounds like a brainquarters. Mayhaps we'll find the people in there.'

Down at the hatch to the Operation Center, the prickly sensation and the smell that Kalath has been tracing are both at their strongest. The doorway's automatic systems are disabled, but there's a manual release.

When this is engaged, the hallway continues on for a short distance and then opens into a spacious circular room.  Consoles are arranged in the room in a concentric pattern beneath a vast, transparent overhead dome, which just at the moment is affording a spectacular view of the gas giant.  Smaller anterooms with transparent walls ring the circumference of the chanber, all with their own consoles and instrumentation.  The lighting is on, but some of the consoles and displays are dark.  Seemingly out of place, there are also a number of folding cots arranged around the room, along with a number of stacks of shipping crates.

The center of the room is occupied by a large swiveling chair with its own attached control terminal, and it's occupied -- by a haggard-looking, pale young man who gives a start when he sees the travellers open the hatch.  Two other figures also scramble and stumble to their feet, an older dark-skinned woman, and a heavy-set, bearded man of about Stanley's age.  They're all wearing similar uniforms, but the young man's has red shoulder pips whereas the others are plain.  His uniform bears a sewn name tag that reads Murcheson; the woman is Makoro, and the other man is Sokolov

"You're here!  You came!" gasps Murcheson.  He glances at his console, seemingly confused.  "But--"

"Shut the hatch!" rasps Sokolov.  "We are in danger every moment it stays open!"

OOC: I took Trav's "head to the center of the station" as not letting the door stop her.

Smoke Alarm had already footed in and around the puters and picture-spouts. 'Why?! What's the fire-hazard?' she squawked at the one called Sokolov, outlooking back to whoever was last through the door.

"Explaining can wait!  Do you want to be gone?  Inside, inside!"

Trav hustles everyone else inside, and sees to it that the hatch is shut tight.

"I'm The Traveller. This is Kalath, Smoke Alarm and Doctor Stanley Newton. We received a distress signal - what is the situation?"

Now that the hatch has been closed and things calm down a bit, Stanley notices that the man from the emergency message, Dr. Alston, isn't here in the operations room. There should have been sixteen people here. "Just for the record, I didn't see anything dangerous on our way here."

"That's because the quantum interference wave that I saw is probably protecting this area from something, right? Very nice by the way, very sophisticated, like something I would do." She smiles.

'Gone? We just came in!' Smoke Alarm had retorted.

She said a quick 'How you do!' when Traveller introduced her; the situation was too hazardous for the full ritual. As Stanley and Traveller did the talking, Smoke Alarm did the stalking, footing between the puters and around the brainquarters and outlooking for hazards, fire-escapes, hide-ins, and even unseen outways.

'We just eyespied a lot of lost-and-found.' she chipped in from the other side of the brainquarters, outlooking inside one of the anterooms.

The three station crewmembers relax visibly when the hatchway shuts.  Sokolov starts to speak, and Murcheson starts to babble over him at high, hands waving in agitation, until Makoro holds up a hand to Sokolov, and puts a steadying hand on Murcheson's shoulder.  At which both of them go silent.  "Go ahead and tell the lady, son," Makoro says to Murcheson, "slowly."

He takes a deep breath.  "I'm ExCorps Ops Lieutenant, Walter Murcheson," he says, "these are Dr. Nalah Makoro, Associate Director for planetary science, and Dr. Viktor Sokolov, astrophysics.  As far as we're aware, we're the only people left on Hecate Base.  All the rest, they're--"  He pauses to collect himself again.  "Like Viktor said, they're... gone.  Dozens of people.  If you got Dr. Alston's signal, well, we don't know what's happened to them all.  We'd thought there was something stalking the base, picking off people one by one.  But if there's anything like that, the security cams aren't seeing it."

Sokolov snorts.  "Sophisticated?  It's a lash-up, and I don't even know why it works.  I only figured it by chance.  Commander Henson had put me to seeing if I could induce a phase shift in the station's comm beacon, get a stronger signal out through Three's magnetosphere.  I was running the test rig in the laboratory, when my colleague, Dr. Schofield, she was... Taken?  Vanished?  Not five meters from where I was sitting."

He grimaces.  "We got to work trying to create a safe zone then.  By then, we were down to six.  By the time we had Central isolated, just us three."

Murcheson shakes his head.  "We've been trying to raise the other domes and outbuilding ever since then, to try to get anyone left together, or to tell them how to set up their own screens at least.  But, no answer."

In reply to The Guardian (msg # 41):

"Well, we're here to help. I'm the Traveller. These good folk are my travelling companions - Doctor Stanley Newton, Smoke Alarm and Kalath.  We picked up a distress signal from one Dr Nathaniel Alston."

"If your people disappeared, perhaps we can get them to re-appear. I'm a scientist, and perhaps we can find a solution. If nothing else, we will get you safely out, I promise."

"Now, please, I know it is hard, having lost your comrades, but you've been very brave so far. Please tell me as much as you know about this phenomenon."

Smoke Alarm footed back to the others, hearing keening at their story, and rememorising. It was way too much like the Kangs and Rezzies and Caretakers just being gone in Paradise Towers, though then they'd all had an unbrave knowhow of the whyfor and the whereto. 'Gone? Unseen? No eyespies?' she quizzed Murcheson and Sokolov.

She had an idea. 'Who liked the spag-bowl?' she asked them suddenly, from way out in left-field. She dashed to their camp, snatching up a tray with a bowl of some kind of curry. Smoke Alarm held it level with only her fingertips. 'This high?' Releasing her fingers, she dropped the tray, straight down, then eyespied the results. 'Outlook! Straight down, no splats back. Same as the puterbook. No ball-games, no fly-pasts – no person! Gone!

Then she looked bepuzzled. 'But then why'd their clothes go with them?'