2084 The End of Days (6 page)

“Right, Jill, what the Israeli scientist captured was a shot of an area in the solar system known as the Kuiper Belt, the co-ordinates identifying its location are printed on the bottom left of the photo.”

“Okay, I see that, Ewan.”

“What I have done to the photos is effectively black out any objects further
away than the Kuiper belt, i.e., I have removed all distant stars and galaxies. Right, well, look just above the co-ordinates. Can you see anything of any significance?”

Jill peered at the almost totally black photograph with some difficulty.

“All I can see is a little white speck.”

“Good, Jill. Well that little white speck is actually Pluto. It used to be classed as a planet in the solar system when it was first discovered, but we really just class it as one of the larger asteroids or dwarf planets in the Kuiper Belt. Other dwarf planets there include Haumea and Makemake, although they are not within this photo’s range. The Kuiper Belt, otherwise known as the Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt is basically a ring of debris, mainly hundreds of thousands of orbiting ice particles, which forms the outer ring of our own solar system. Close inspection of the photos show some of these ice particles.”

Jill screwed her eyes tightly and squinted at the photographs.

“Hmmm. Maybe to your eyes but I can hardly make out anything. Anyway, so the photos show Pluto in the Kuiper Belt. So what? That’s hardly earth-shattering…”

Ewan drew an imaginary circle with his finger over the photo.

“Look again, Jill. Look at the top right. See anything there?”

Jill looked hard for a few seconds and then it dawned on her.

“Oh, yeah - looks like a little white dash. Is that it?”

Gary blurted out in excitement.

“My God, she’s got it Ewan.”

Jill looked at Ewan as she struggled to see the significance. She was beginning to get a little agitated as she felt that this was all developing a
little sluggishly as the sort of global exclusive Ewan had made it out to be on the phone. She caught a quick glance at the time on her laptop. 09:15. Jill was due to meet Ruthie down at Tilbury Docks at 10:30. They had an important interview with a notorious East End gangster, Alfie ‘Dinky’ Budge, who was willing to spill the beans on his crime-lord boss, Nesto Petrianni. Alfie, well-known in the underworld as a hit man got his nom-de-plum for his preference to, as he called it, ‘dink’ his targets with his old .357 Magnum fitted with an ultra-modern silencer. That interview was beginning to look much more important than her current one and time was now starting to run out for Jill.

“Ewan, look I know this must be important to you, but I’ve got another vital meeting to get to and my time is running out.”

Ewan showed more urgency in his pace of speech.

“Okay, Jill, I’ll make this fast. That little white dash, as you called it, is actually a brand new comet. As far as I can tell its composition is rock and ice. For some unknown reason it has just recently been sucked into the solar system from who knows where. It is currently passing its way through the Kuiper Belt.”

Jill was now showing a bit more interest.

“Mmm, now that is more like it. So not only did your Israeli muck up his co-ordinates but in doing so he actually stumbled onto something new and he doesn’t even know it?”

“You’ve got it in one, Jill.”

“So what have you called this new heavenly body - the Sinclair-Mackintosh Comet?”

Before he had stopped to think Ewan replied.

“No - Schenkler’s Comet –“

Gary dug Ewan painfully in the ribs.

“Too much info, Ewan –“

As Ewan rubbed his sore spot Jill came back at them.

“Look, guys, if there is a story in this, which I am now happier that there is, then I need to know everything. Okay? So who is Schenkler? Let me guess – he is your Israeli friend…?”

“Well, Jill, Gary and I thought – well, in a way Schenkler was the first to discover the comet. We thought we would give him his place. Look I know you’re pressed for time, but there’s more to it. Have you got a couple more
minutes?”

“Go on, Ewan, you’ve got me hooked now.”

“Okay, so we have definitely found a new comet. Using Schenkler’s limited piece of footage I have been able to construct a computer simulation model of the comet and its trajectory. As I’ve said its core is composed mainly of rock and ice. The core is roughly one and half times the size of Pluto – 1.515 actually, so it is quite sizeable. It has a tail of ice particles extending in towards the Sun’s gravitational pull, something in the order of one and a half to two million kilometres from its core. Here’s the thing – using the model, which as I’ve said is
only based on Schenkler’s limited photographic data, I have computed this comet is going to pass Earth spectacularly closely in late May 2084. It will shine even brighter than the Moon in the night sky!”

Jill, ever the optimistic journalist, hit back with the 64,000 dollar question.

“Is there any chance this thing could hit Earth?”

“I would certainly need a lot more data than 2 minutes. But on my computer model the parameters of proximity of the comet’s core to Earth in 2084 are going to be between 3.8 million kilometres away and 1.5 million kilometres as a closest approximation. So it does not look like it will collide with Earth – but it will be spectacularly close. There is also a more than good probability that the planet will suffer some pretty extensive collateral damage as we are going to be pretty close to the tip of the comet’s tail. Earth’s gravity is likely to attract some pretty hefty meteor showers probably starting around mid-February 2084.”

Jill picked up the photos, her ice-blue eyes now sparkling with excitement. She was already dreaming up the banner headlines – SCOTS ASTROLOGER DISCOVERS NEW COMET – NEAR MISS WITH PLANET EARTH IN 2084!

“Well, why didn’t you tell me that in the first place? I think we really do have a story now, don’t we? Look, I really need to go. But I’ll put this past my boss – and, yes, Gary – I will talk money with him. In the meantime you guys put everything you’ve got together and I’ll be in touch by mobile – no later than the day after tomorrow. One last question though? How did you come by all this info? Was it a reliable source within the field of space science that passed this data on to you?”

Ewan and Gary looked at each other, then Gary slowly raised his hand as if asking Jill for permission to speak.

“I, eh, guess that’s where ah come in, Jill...”

Jill’s journalistic nose informed her immediately to the situation.

“Oh, don’t tell me – not hacking?”

“Ah’m afraid so.”

“Who have you hacked, Gary?”

“NASA…”

Jill jumped up angrily.

“Sorry guys! I can’t touch it. My boss would crucify me –“

Gary stood up and placed calming hands on Jill’s shoulder to make her sit down again.

“Just listen for one sec. We have a plan, Jill. We know you can’t go straight to press with a hacked story - especially one from NASA. What we do is give you all the stuff as an exclusive to your online Bloid. You have the presses ready to roll, so to speak. When you are ready we release the info to three or four of the political leak websites. You know, like WikiLeaks, WWWLeaks, GoogLeaks and so on. When they put Schenkler’s stuff online you hit the iTabs the same day with breaking news. You get the fuckin’ scoop before the
rest of the Bloids. Do we have
a plan, Jill?”

“It could work. Okay, let’s run with it. But seriously, I really have got to shoot –“

Jill hurriedly packed up her things and made to rush off out the iCafé. She managed a parting shot to Gary.

“I thought that NASA’s systems had been made impregnable since the hacking incursions decades ago?”

“Jill, nothin’s fuckin’ impregnable!”

Chapter 5

Earthdate: 20:12 Thursday February 6, 2081 CST

J
ack Crossan lay uncomfortably on his bunk in his cabin reading a trashy well-thumbed sci-fi novel from the ship’s library that had certainly done the rounds with the numerous crews on Oceanus. The vessel had made its departure launch 26 hours ago from MGal3 without a hitch. Mars was now just a small red ball in the vast blackness of space and Earth remained a tiny flickering blue dot way ahead of her. Science fiction was not really his bag and the book was failing to hold Jack’s attention. He yawned widely and laid his head back on the bolster behind him. He succumbed to the creeping tiredness and grab some shut-eye as his shift as Watch Commander was not due to start for another two hours. None of the returning astronauts who had been working on the stations on or above Mars were exempt from duty on the Oceanus. Basically they were all replenishing the crew from Oceanus who were now detailed to work on or above the Red Planet. Jack had his planned rotas scheduled all the way back to Alpha Base, the main space station orbiting planet Earth. The ‘good ole 3R’, thought Jack. The only passengers going home on Oceanus were the ice-miners and the engineering and maintenance staff from the various Mars bases. Mars, mainly due to its hostile environment, as yet was still some way off being truly colonised by humans just for the sake of living and working there. In some ways the astronauts had it easier because the four month journey between Mars and Earth was slow time. At least the astronauts had work to perform to help make time pass quicker. The miners, engineers and maintenance staff tended to spend their time boozing, gambling and invariably fighting. Some astronauts were detailed to act part-time as space marshals to ensure that civil order was maintained on board, although Jack was glad that was not part of his rota.

Jack’s mind’s eye drifted back to his Virginian dairy farm near Lexington. Peggy Sue would be getting Milner and Jack Junior settled for going to bed soon. Milner was ten and young Jack was almost seven. Jack would miss his youngest son’s birthday, which was a long-standing occupational hazard for any astronaut. Peggy Sue would also be in bed early tonight as she had to get up at 5.30am to organise the milking of their prize Jerseys. Jack looked forward to those more mundane farming duties ahead of him, but he was gratified that it would be a good deal warmer than Peggy Sue’s shift tomorrow. A great wave of emotion washed over Jack as he lay with his eyes closed. His love for his second wife Peggy Sue had become so deep-rooted lately, particularly on this last four months’ tour of duty on MGal3. It had not always been so.

Jack had been born John Alexander Crossan in one of the large ‘trailer trash’ parks just outside Lexington, Virginia in 2029 on what was deemed the wrong side of the tracks, although, in reality, there was no longer a railroad track in the immediate vicinity. Jack’s upbringing was fairly erratic. Both his parents squandered what little spare welfare they received on drugs and alcohol. They spent little quality time bringing up Jack, who in turn, spent a great deal of his formative years cleaning up his parents’ mess. In one vivid memory, five-year-old Jack was in his trailer bunk with a high fever and he lay there tossing and turning in sweat and pain. Suddenly, he woke up and there in front of him stood a shadowy figure with his arm outstretched. He jumped out of bed and rushed past the figure and straight into his parents’ bedroom crying in anguish.

“Mom - Mom! Pop! Come quick! There’s a man in ma room with a gun –“

His parents both lay sprawled on their bed shit-faced on crack coke. Only his father Andy could muster a muted response.

“Jo-ohn – muss be a bad dr-eam. Go back ta be-ed son…”

He looked down in helpless dismay at his parents for a few moments and then he very slowly crept back and peered cautiously into his room. The man with the gun had gone. Was he real or was he just a dream like Andy had stammered in his drug-fuelled stupor. Young Jack got back into bed and slept off the fever. Jack grew up fast despite his parents. He was extremely intelligent and a real battler, a thirsty fighter for knowledge and understanding. His ambition was to get into the US Air Force when he graduated from school. If Jack was truthful his real deep-seeded ambition was one day to become an astronaut on the NASA space program, but he was realistic enough to set his achievable goals on a more down to Earth target. Once an obnoxious teacher had spat in Jack’s face that ‘trailer-trash don’t get to go to Mars’ but he was gutsy enough to convince himself that ‘one day I’ll get jets’. Jack was always fascinated by space travel but his early burning desire to become an astronaut arose from a strange incident that occurred when Jack was aged six. Jack had been playing alone not far from the family trailer in a patch of allotments nicknamed ‘the Gardens of Gethsemane’, although it was colloquially corrupted to ‘Geth’s Gardens’. It was not unusual for Jack to be playing alone. The other kids tended to avoid playing with Jack, mainly because their parents called Jack’s parents ‘alkies’ and ‘druggies’. He was not bullied as such by the other kids as he was not afraid to beat the crap out of someone twice his age. Jack was happy as a loner and just as happy feeding his fertile imagination by himself. That day as usual Jack played happily just outside the green-painted picket fence of old Jimmy Reid’s tidy little garden lot. Jimmy, known as Uncle Jimmy to everyone, had been a railroad engineer before the tracks in Lexington had been all torn up and they pensioned off old Jimmy. At that particular moment old Jimmy had not been working in amongst his potatoes, tomatoes and pumpkin rows and Jack amused himself. He had been running wildly in circles burning off his youthful energy– a little spaceman orbiting some far distant planet light years from Earth. But he had to stop in front of the green picket fence to catch his breath. Puffing hard to replenish his oxygen tanks, Jack grabbed hold of the painted railing of the fence with both hands. He was now a rocket back on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral on the clear blue Florida coast. Jack prepared for lift-off and began the launch sequence countdown.

“Five – four – three – two – one - Houston Control - we have lift-off!”

Jack squeezed his hands tightly on the wooden rail of the picket fence and concentrated with all his might on the lift-off, imagining his feet to be the huge booster rockets of his ‘Santa Maria Super-shuttle’. Suddenly he felt his two feet start to rise off the ground, which at first startled him, but he continued to concentrate. Soon Jack was levitating, still holding on to the picket fence, his body floating completely level in the air above the grassy ground below his body. He cried out excitedly.

“Ah’m floatin’ - ah’m floatin’ in space!”

This immediately broke his concentration and his body came quickly back down to grassy Earth. Jack held on to the fence and tried to repeat the levitation but nothing happened. He was wondering if he had imagined what had just occurred or whether he had just been dreaming, when he heard footsteps behind him. Jack looked round to see the tiny frame of kindly old bald-headed Jimmy Reid striding down the path towards him. Jack and Jimmy got on famously and the boy often helped him in the small garden lot where he could talk easily with the old man. Jack ran up to his old gardener friend.

“Uncle Jimmy – did ya see me? Ah was floatin’ in space –“

“Whassat you said, Jacky boy?”

“Over there at your fence – ah was just floatin’ up in the air!”

“Ah dunno ‘bout that, Jack? Heard tell that long time ago there wez an ole canal came right through this area. Filled in hunners a’ years back - maybe ya wez jest floatin’ on the ghost of that there ole canal, ma little Jacko?”

The old man laughed and ruffled Jack’s dark mop of hair.

“But ah definitely was floatin’, Uncle Jimmy!”

“Okay, Jacky boy, but you an’ ah’s got tomatoes ta pick for Missus Reid’s dinner table. So we best get workin’ at that pickin’ –“

Jack’s excellent grades at Lexington High earned him a scholarship to Cal Tech where he studied for a degree in Aviation and Avionics. Of course, his parents both missed his graduation, even if they could have afforded the flight from Virginia to California. His father Andy had been arrested on a drugs misdemeanour and was being held in the County Jail for the umpteenth time. His mother Annabel was so out of her face on crack that she would not have been able to state where either of the two men in her life were at that particular time. In 2058, Jack got a place on the flight programme at Quantico back in Virginia and graduated top of his class. His father Andy, who by that time was doing better in a private rehabilitation programme in Lexington funded from Jack’s salary, made it to the flight school graduation. Sadly, Annabel had died of a drugs overdose the previous year. Andy looked about twenty years older than the mid-fifties that he actually was, but Jack felt that he showed a new spirit and resolution of character that the young Jack had never seen before. It struck Jack that his father, who had been miserably broken by his own parents in his youth, demonstrated some of the genetic traits that Jack had to muster as he grew up through his torrid adolescence. Jack could see where his fighting spirit came from now and he was pleased to recognise that. After the graduation and parade of the newly qualified pilots Andy came up to his son, sporting the new suit, badly ill-fitting, that Jack had paid for. Andy’s chest was just bursting with pride and the tears were welling up on the rims of his bloodshot eyes. He spoke chokingly to his son in his slow Virginian drawl.

“Son, ah don’t have the words really. What ah would like to say to you? Ah jest don’t quite know. Ah’m jest real proud of ya. Never thought ah’d see ma son in one a them swanky U-S-A-F duds. Ah only wished that your mom could see ya today, son…”

Andy’s voice finally cracked and the tears streamed down his face. Jack’s tears were flowing freely too and the father and son hugged each other like they had never hugged before. They were never quite as close again as they were that day on the parade ground at Quantico, but Andy never slipped back to the sordid addictive life-style that he had led since he was that wild teenager with the big chip on his shoulder. After Quantico Jack went to ‘get jets’ flying on the F-69 ultra-stealth fighter programme based at Andrews Air Force base in Maryland and again his intelligence and air prowess saw him rise to ‘Top Gun’ in the F-69 fighter squadron. He had tours with the squadron in the Persian Gulf, Japan and the South China Seas before returning to Maryland in the spring of 2063. It was that year at a club in the New Holiday Inn in Silver Springs, a few miles from Andrews, that he met Maria Conchita Gonzales. Maria was a gorgeous fiery-tempered flame-haired Tex-Mex, who also worked as an auxiliary on the base at Andrews, although they had never met each other before. They immediately became lovers and within months Jack had asked her to marry him. One day in the locker room at Andrews he told his best friend and wing man, Vance Mulcahey, a Princeton graduate, that he was marrying Maria. Vance was taken aback and implored Jack to rethink.

“Jeez, man, Maria’s a great lay, Jack. But, for Christ sake, she’s only a base cleaner. With your film star looks you could have any one of the rich debs up in DC if you wanted!”

Jack had to admit to himself that his looks had attracted scores of beauties into bed over the years, but this time it felt different. Vance was his most trusted wing man and the closest of friends but Jack, with a slam of his locker door, snapped back angrily.

“Ah love Maria, Vance! Don’t matter what she is or where she comes from. If you ever saw the trailer park ah came from, you might a thought twice about havin’
me
as a friend!”

“Sorry, Jack – I was totally out of order there. Congratulations, Big Bro’, hope I’m gonna be best man? You need a good wing man on your wedding day!”

After the wedding Jack and Maria bought a small neat bungalow in Silver Springs and both continued to work at their jobs on Andrews. They both talked about wanting to raise a big family and it was only a few months after their marriage when Maria fell pregnant. They were delighted but it turned out to be a nerve-wracking pregnancy. Maria had collapsed and she was diagnosed a month into her second trimester with a previously undetected small hole in her heart. The doctors at the base hospital determined that she would require an operation, but it was too risky to carry it out while Maria was carrying her unborn child. It was touch and go, but Maria gave birth to bouncing baby Isabella Annabel Maria Crossan on 26 May 2064 in the maternity suite at Andrews Air Force Medical Center. Nine months later she was back at the Center for her heart operation. Jack had left Isabella with her grandfather Andy, who had journeyed up from Lexington, and he spent three long nerve-jangling hours in the waiting room before the base chief surgeon came in head lowered and looking serious and drawn. Jack’s heart sank.

“Is she...?”

“Don’t worry, Mr Crossan, she’s fine, but, ah –“

“But – but what, doc?”

“Well, the keyhole surgery has revealed that Maria suffered additional damage to the small tear in her heart during her pregnancy and when giving birth. We have, however, been able to repair it quite successfully.”

“So she’s gonna be fine, Doctor?”

“Maria’s gonna be up and around in a week or so and she’ll go on to live a long happy life. But, one thing, Mr Crossan –“

“Call me Jack.”

“Jack – the thing is this. Maria’s heart is never gonna be 100 per cent again. The pregnancy has taken a lot out her and the heart has been severely weakened. I am going to advise her – and I’m telling
you
– it will be too risky for Maria to have another child.”

“But Doctor, she’s Catholic. She won’t take the pill –“

“Then, Jack, it’s up to you. From now on it’s either the male contraceptive or else –“

The surgeon indicated what he meant by motioning two fingers as snipping scissors towards Jack’s private parts. When Maria got home she looked so much healthier than she had been in a long time and Jack, Maria and baby Isabella knuckled down to enjoying family life. For a while things were going great. Jack went back to the F-69s and Maria gave up her job at Andrews to bring up Isabella. Maria would not hear of Jack going on the male pill and also that Jack was not going for any snip. Secretly, Jack was pleased about that part. It would have been a dent to his machismo and he did not fancy being a member of the “I Only Fire Blanks Club”. Maria stated adamantly, that as a Catholic, she would only be happy with the rhythm method of contraception.