Dark Star Rising Second Edition (Pebbles in The Sky) (23 page)

“Sorry babe, we had a little development today and I had to stay and get things squared away.  What is for supper, cubed steak, biscuits and gravy?” he asked hopefully.

“Nope,” she replied.  “We are going out to celebrate.”  Peter’s mind worked furiously; it was not the anniversary of their engagement, only five months there.  It was not her birthday.  “What the hell did I forget?” he asked himself. He was stumped. “Ok, what are we celebrating dear?”

Her face broke into a wide grin. “Well one, I was accepted into the doctorate of biology program at Southern Cal.”

He gave her a big hug.  “That’s great, only across town,” he exclaimed.

“It gets better,” she said.  “USC is an active participant in the DNA Ark project, so I will be directly involved with efforts here on the west coast collecting and cataloging specimen DNA for the project.”

“Sounds like a lot of field work, collecting nasty slimy worms and stuff, just to save copies of their DNA,” he said as he wrinkled up his nose.

“Not just worms, Peter
. They are sampling all the fish, mammals, insects, and other creatures and plants indigenous to this area.  This is very important.  Many of these creatures may become extinct after E-day.”

“Studying stars is so much cleaner,” he joked. She playfully tried to slap him but he evaded her half-hearted attempt.

“So, Mr. Peter Rockwell, if you want me to be the future Mrs. Rockwell, you better take me out to dinner.”

             
After a dinner at a local Italian Bistro just off the Cal Tech Campus, they stopped at the Greenhouse, the little pub where Peter had met Susan when she was working there and he was a grad student.  They did not recognize of the staff anymore as it was constantly changing with the graduation and arrival of new students who frequently worked in such places while in school.  Peter ordered them both a beer and they sat back to relax before they went home.

“So, what happened at work that required you to work late?” she asked.

“It’s a secret. I would have to kill you if I told you,” Peter said.

“Oh poo, what happened that was important enough to keep you away from your sweet, lovely, waiting fiancée?”

“Not much, we just found out that Peter’s…damn...the Brown Dwarf has a planet orbiting around it.”

She looked at him worriedly “It isn’t going to hit us is it?”

“No, no,” said Peter.  “Its orbit is very eccentric and almost perpendicular to the orbit of our planet.  We figure it will just pass through our solar system or if it gets too close to the sun it may be slung off into space by itself.”

             
Susan took a couple of sips of her beer and wondered out loud.  “Wow, a planet that was formed outside our solar system.  I wonder if it could have life on it.”

“Not likely,” Peter said.  “This planet has been out in interstellar space for thousands if not hundreds of thousands of years.  Even the atmosphere on it, if it ever had one, is frozen.  No way life could have evolved or survived in that cold with no sun, no warmth, or any source of energy.  It is cold and dark.  Even the faint glow from the dwarf would amount to nothing.”

She looked at him seriously. “You promise it will not hit us?”

He leaned over and kissed her.  “No, my love, it will not hit us, I will not let it.”

Susan watched the server bring a double mocha with lots of whipped cream on top of it to the table beside them.  The young coed there took great pleasure in slowly licking the whip cream off the top in a most suggestive way to the delight of her boyfriend sitting across from her.  Susan chugged the rest of her beer.  Excitedly, she said, “Come, on.  Let’s go home and celebrate some more.  We need to make a stop at the grocery store for something on the way home though.”

Peter tried to gulp down the last of his beer as she tugged him up from the table.  “Now what the heck came over her?” he wondered as she rushed him to the car.  Much to his delight, he found out later at home.

Chapter 24

May 12, 2021

Macon, Georgia

Jessica got off the plane with her daughter Brianna at the small Macon Regional Airport.  They had landed at Atlanta Hartsfield International Airport a couple of hours earlier and then taken a commuter hop down to Macon, Georgia.  Brianna would be three years old in a week.  Today had been her first plane ride and after the excitement of the takeoff she had gone back to drawing on her coloring pad.  Crayons and coloring books were a thing of the past.  Now, it was a tablet computer and a nice fat stylus that a child could hold that was a substitute to stimulate their imagination.  No more lost or broken crayons.  The child could just touch the color on the palette bar and draw and color away.  There was an infinite amount of patterns or pictures that could be downloaded so they never had to do the same one twice.

Jessica looked down at her daughter with love.  Brett and her had not really discussed having children and it had come as a shock when she had found out she was pregnant. She had been on the pill, but accidents do happen.  As much as they loved Brianna, there would be no more children for them as Jessica had taken the birth control vaccine when Brianna was six months old.  It was irresponsible to bring more children into the world when the world in just two decades would only be able to support about a third of the population that presently existed.  E-day or Encounter Day was when the Brown Dwarf would make its closest approach to Earth.  Right now, it was projected to be sometime on June 23rd, 2043.  For about seven to eight weeks before and after that encounter, their world was going to be at risk. Afterwards, the ice age would come.

Jessica and Brianna headed for the ground transportation exit.  It was a small airport and they only had a single carryon bag since most of their clothes had been sent with the movers several weeks before.  Brett had come down two months ago to help with the final setup of the lab equipment.  Macon, Georgia had been chosen as the chief data repository for the DNA Ark Project due to it being in a very geologically stable area and above any expected flooding from the encounter.  Brett and she had perfected their techniques on cataloging and storing DNA at the lab In Bethesda that Benjamin Greco had provided for them. 
Their work on vaccines had then been turned over to the NIH and several of the larger Pharmaceutical companies.

After receiving joint Noble Peace Prizes for their work in Molecular Biology and Genetics they had taken on their most ambitious project yet.  With the impending environmental catastrophe that was going to arrive with Peter’s Star, they had been placed in charge of an effort to catalogue and store the DNA data for as many of the
Earth’s life forms as they possibly could.  Teams to collect specimen DNA had been formed at regional universities around the world.  The samples would be sent to them here for analysis, cataloging and storing in the large computer databank that had been built.  They had been given the use of one of the fastest super computers in the world to facilitate the process.  Once the data was stored, it would be sent and kept in additional repositories in Armadillo, Texas, India, and Australia to ensure that loss of a particular site would not result in a total loss of all the data.

Brett met them at the passenger pickup area.  Brianna gave a squeal of delight and went running and jumped into Brett’s arms as he stood by the car waiting for them.  Jessica just watched them with a smile.  She was definitely a daddy’s girl.  Brett stood up holding Brianna and gave Jessica a big hug with Brianna squirming between them.  Brianna thought it was grand when they had their three-way kisses and hugs.  “How was your flight baby?” he asked Jessica.

“It was not bad.  We colored, read, and colored again all the way down. I am about mommy’ed out and need some quality husband time with you.”

“I already have the perfect baby sitter arranged for Saturday night and we have tickets to a concert at the coliseum after dinner that night.”

“Brett dear, I don’t know if Brianna will like staying with a complete stranger after we have only just got here.”

“No worries, dear.  Allison is one of the techs in the lab and she loves kids.  She has taken the birth control vaccination so she will never have any of her own, but she was tickled when I asked her to baby sit Brianna.  She has a pet Rhesus monkey she rescued from a research lab that is funny as hell.  Brianna will go nuts over it.  Trust me, one look at the monkey and Brianna will forget we exist.”

All right,” said Jessica.  “I am going to trust you on this.  Now, let’s go see our new house.  The pictures just are not the same as seeing it in person.”

             
Brett buckled Brianna in the car and they headed out of town.  Brianna spent the whole twenty minute trip asking when she was going to see the funny monkey.  Brett looked over and grinned at Jessica who just rolled her eyes.  After arriving at the lovely white country home that Brett had purchased for them, Jessica was quite pleased as she looked it over.  It was in a quaint, quiet little neighborhood.  The back yard was fenced in and had a swing set that Brianna tried out immediately with some helpful pushes from her dad.  Supper was waiting in the form of a pizza that had just been delivered when Brianna got tired of the swing.  It was after eight pm when they finished eating and Brianna had collapsed asleep on the floor in front of the TV.  Brett carried her up to her room, and came back down and slid onto the sofa beside Jessica.

             
“So Baby, have you missed me?” he asked as he put his arms around her.

She sighed in contentment.  “Your arms feel so much different than a three year olds,” she sighed.  “And yes, I have missed you terribly.  Closing up shop at the Bethesda lab was so bitter sweet.
I will miss some of the staff who did not want to move with us terribly.  We had some good memories there and accomplished so much.  Now, it seems we are starting over again.”

“Not really honey,” Brett replied.  “We are just picking up where we left off.  We are using the same techniques that we worked out for storing Benjamin Greco’s son’s DNA.  We are trying to preserve a lot of biological diversity and trying to prevent millions of years of evolution being totally lost in one big event.  Unless we are successful, the world will lose so much.  Speaking of Benjamin, how are he and the twins doing?  I have not seen nor heard from him since I saw him at the Nobel Awards ceremony.”

“Well, I got an email with some photographs of the twins about three months ago, but then he has sort of disappeared.  His non-profit vaccine program wrapped up about two months ago.  From what I understand, they have shut down their production facility for the combination vaccines, destroyed all expired or remaining stock, and paid all the workers a year’s salary and then laid them off.  All told, I think they distributed over two billion vaccinations though the group’s clinics in the third world countries.  Seems like I read they gave like four hundred million in India alone.  I am not sure if they ran out of cash or what happened, but they sure were giving out the vaccinations like candy until they closed up shop.  Now, Benjamin has just vanished.  Rumors have it that him and some other rich guys have bought a big ranch down in Bolivia and are building themselves new mansions there.  Just a rumor though.  Are we set up here in the new lab and ready to get started?”

             
“Just about,” Brett explained.  “We have the computer up and running synthetic testing, all the data banks have been checked and re-checked.  Everything we store here will be stored in triplicate banks of memory.  Then, that will be distributed weekly to the other sites for redundancy.  All the specimen teams are about trained at the universities and the zoos.  We should start receiving DNA samples next week. We have over two hundred technicians trained so far in the use of the break down tanks and electrophoresis separators.  The other Ark sites are doing the same.  Working around the clock at all sites we believe that we can catalogue an average of five hundred DNA samples a day at each site.  That is one hundred and eighty two thousand sets of DNA a year per site.”

“There is one other issue that we had not thought of since we developed this process for the purpose of saving individual species DNA.  To have a healthy viable gene pool for each species, the biologists suggest at least one thousand separate sets of DNA from each species to maximize diversity. We were originally thinking just one set of DNA for each species.  Trying to get that many specimens from that many individual sources is really going to slow us down.  We decided that if we shoot for five hundred per species we can still make a pretty good dent in the total biological diversity before E-day and can continue working until we have done all we can get.”

Jessica smiled.  “Look at it this way, this is job security and we will be saving thousands of species from permanent extinction. We are going to start with the most likely to be endangered and some of the most vital species first.  We have our work cut out for us honey.

“Now, no more shop talk tonight baby,” Peter said.  He leaned over to kiss her and found her sound asleep.  He gave a sigh.  So much for catching up on lost time tonight.  He did not think he could carry her upstairs and tuck her in like Brianna, so he got a blanket and covered her up on the sofa.  He guessed he could sleep alone one more night.

Chapter 25

September 12
th
, 2022

Low Earth Orbit

Lt. Colonel Mike Pierce leaned back in his seat as he continued going over his pre-flight checklist.  His copilot, Major Hank Jenkins, was floating behind their seats in the cockpit also doing pre-flight checks. Further back in the crew cabin, he knew that his two mission cargo specialists were also making sure all was in order for this, the first test of a nuclear powered space craft.  Actually, in the past there had been some unmanned probes that had used a
plutonium thermal/nuclear power source but this space craft actually had two nuclear reactors on board.  Mike knew that soon he and his crew would make history, hopefully with a successful test run to the moon.  If not, they would become a slowly expanding cloud of radioactive debris in Earth orbit.