The Citadel and the Wolves (4 page)

“How?”

“The impact of the comet will throw up vast amounts of material from the surface of the planet into outer space. In fact, it’s already happening out there. It could help us to understand Jupiter a little better.”

“What Jupiter is made of?”

He nodded.

I was pleased.

“We already know a considerable amount about Jupiter’s outer atmosphere, which consists mainly of ammonia and methane,” enthused daddy, “but opinion is divided regarding the interior of the giant. Some believe that a thick atmosphere of hydrogen, nitrogen and methane covers a layer of ice equal to almost forty percent of Jupiter’s radius in thickness, and below this ice is a solid core of metals and rock. Others, however, believe that Jupiter consists almost entirely of hydrogen and helium in the outer regions and changing to a metallic state near the centre due to the enormous pressures.”

When I yawned at this point, daddy’s eyes narrowed.

“I’m not boring you, am I, Jade?” asked daddy sternly.

I giggled nervously. “Oh no, Daddy, I’m just a little tired, that’s all.”

His eyes softened. “It has been a long day for all of us, sweetheart.”

I murmured. I tried not to think about Doctor David Newton and the International Space Platform.

Daddy switched off the computer. “By the way, Jade, what did you come up here for?”

I’d almost forgotten. “The area of a triangle, Daddy?”

Doctor David Newton looked amused. “Space walks? No, we leave that sort of thing to the real professionals up here.”

“Professionals?” I queried.

“The space engineers,” elucidated the doctor.

I was soaking in a deep, hot bath as I let my mind wander to other places that I’d never visited before. They were dreams of faraway lands, and I found myself swimming naked in a warm sea. It felt so good. I wanted to stay here forever. Don’t let this dream end yet, I thought from another place faraway from here, my little piece of paradise. I felt safe here. When I looked back for the first time, I could no longer see the shoreline. It had vanished. I was alone. I began to feel a little uneasy in my paradise. After awhile, I looked up at the red sun in a milky blue sky. The red sun puzzled me, for it somehow seemed out of place here. It didn’t belong. Where was I? I’d travelled far. Then I realised what it was; I was swimming in an alien sea upon an alien world, for I was no longer on earth. I’d been here before, and I suddenly felt very, very cold.

Doctor Newton looked surprised. “Your father is an astronomer?”

“Yes,” I replied proudly.

As I turned up the stairs in my plain dressing gown and satin pyjamas with a hot, bedtime drink in my hand, I paused on the landing. The bedroom door was ajar. The other was taking chances, or perhaps she didn’t know. A light, evening breeze ruffled the curtains, which hadn’t yet been drawn. Wendy stood by the open window in her pyjamas on this warm, summer’s night with a cigarette in her hand. I was standing in the door watching her amused. She looked around startled after a moment when she caught me.

Her eyebrows knitted into a frown. “Jade Robinson, don’t you ever knock before you enter my room?”

I smiled sweetly. “I’m your sister, Wendy. Do I need to knock?” I sat on the bed sipping my hot, bedtime drink.

She flicked the cigarette out of the open window imperiously. “You might have been mum, Jade.”

“I had a strange dream while I was soaking in the bath earlier,” I revealed. “I was swimming in a warm sea.”

She looked puzzled. “That’s not very strange, Jade.”

I added, “When I looked up at the sky, the sun was red.”

“Was it sunset?” asked Wendy curiously.

“I think it was midday.”

“Then it was a strange dream.”

She took my bedtime drink, sipping a little before she returned it to me.

“I think I was swimming naked in a warm sea on an alien world,” I said.

“Naked?” quizzed Wendy.

“Yes.”

She chuckled. “Now, that is strange for you, Jade.”

Yes, it’s true. I am a little bit modest when it comes to flashing my flesh around in public.

Wendy sat in front of her dressing table. I watched her out of the corner of my eye amused. I glanced at her hair brush that lay on her dressing table beside her. She chewed her nails nervously. She was waiting for me, but she didn’t like to ask me because it made her sound like a little girl asking a parent for something that she longed for. I put down my bedtime drink and crossed to her. I noticed the dark look in her eyes in the mirror as I picked up her hair brush. The darkness in her eyes vanished as I began to brush the long strands of silky gold. She wore a sleepy look in her eyes. Although there is sibling rivalry between us, in moments like this, it disappears. We become one. I caught myself. I didn’t want to become too sentimental. I’d not forgotten the International Space Platform and Doctor David Newton.

“Comets are little more than clumps of dirty ice orbiting our sun, Jade,” said Doctor Newton.

Was the Icarus 9 Comet really little more than a clump of dirty ice?

It was later. The curtains were drawn in her room. The door was closed. Wendy and I wrestled playfully on her bed in our pyjamas. We grunted like two, playful bear cubs. When I nearly fell off, she pulled me back. Then she rolled me over easily. She kept physically fit playing netball and other sports including volleyball. I’m not the sporty type as you’ve probably gathered by now. I’m a bit of a bookworm. I found myself lying beneath her. My limbs had become entwined with hers. I couldn’t move. She held me in a vice-like grip. We must have resembled some kind of eight-limbed, alien creature that lay dormant on the bed. I was exhausted, and I submitted to her superior physical strength. My delicate nostrils filled with the smell of soap and water and a perfume that reminded me of wild woodland flowers. I knew that mischievous look in her eyes behind her long strands of untidy gold. I shivered despite myself when she delicately stroked my neck with her fingertips. I wanted to reach up and touch her beautiful face. I couldn’t. My hands were pinned beneath me. Then, she gave me one of her butterfly kisses.

When I returned to my room later, I found a ‘million’ vid messages waiting for me on my mobile including one from a cute guy in New Jersey. I groaned inwardly. Who were all these people? They had seen my call to the International Space Platform earlier, and they all wanted to marry me or something like that. I needed this. I deleted them all including the cute guy from New Jersey.

As I sat on my bed with my mobile in my hand, I played back my earlier vid call to the International Space Platform. I listened to Doctor Newton again.

“Comets are little more than clumps of dirty ice

orbiting our sun, Jade.”

I touched the
freeze
control on my mobile.

Clumps of dirty ice? Maybe many comets were, but I’d seen the giant bright spots on the thick clouds of Jupiter, and
I was convinced more than ever that the Icarus 9 Comet hadn’t been a clump of dirty ice.

Something woke me.

It was late, perhaps past midnight, and the house was still, yet I had heard something. Or did I dream it? I turned on my bedside light and looked at my watch, which was a Christmas gift from Wendy. It was more than past midnight. It was almost two o’clock in the morning. I listened to the stillness of the house. The hairs on the back of my neck crept up to the top of my head when I heard the sound again. I hadn’t dreamt it. Cat burglars or worse, I thought, as I hid under the covers. I strained my ears, listening intently. The faint sound that crept through the walls was suddenly familiar to me. I’d heard it before. I realised what it was now. I smiled beneath the blankets. It wasn’t a cat burglar or worse.

I put on my dressing gown as I silently crossed to the door. I hesitated. The doubt still lingered in my mind. Biting my lip, I cautiously opened my bedroom door just a fraction. I peered through the gap. I wasn’t confronted by a mad axe man outside my bedroom door needless to say.

I stepped out onto the landing. When I looked up, I saw a light coming from the attic. I smiled suddenly. Someone was working late. I was puzzled. I decided to investigate.

I found daddy hunched over his computer screen.

“Cocoa?” I asked.

He murmured without looking up.

I returned a few minutes later with daddy’s hot cocoa made the Jade Robinson way. I normally boil over the milk first. But isn’t that the way everybody makes cocoa? I gave it to him.

“Thanks, sweetheart.”

“You’re welcome.”

He sipped it gratefully.

“You’re working very late, Daddy?” I stated the obvious. I was intrigued too. “Something very important?”

He murmured.

I pouted, folding my arms.

He noticed. “Jade, what is it?”

“I know I’m a little dense when it comes to astronomy, Daddy, but…”

Daddy chuckled.

He was suddenly very serious. “Like many others throughout the world, I’ve been observing the progress of the Icarus 9 Comet for the past few months now before it had made breakfast television. I’ve kept a close eye on the number of fragments that have actually impacted with Jupiter. Then I noticed some days ago something that puzzled me. One of the fragments from the comet was missing. At first, I thought that it had disintegrated before it had reached Jupiter’s upper atmosphere.”

“It hadn’t?”

He shook his head. “No, it was too big, perhaps one to three kilometres in radius, for that to happen, so I began sweeping the night sky, searching for it through the telescope, and earlier this evening I found the missing part of the comet.”

“Where is it now?” I asked inquisitively.

His eyes darkened. “Something very odd happened, Jade. A large fragment of the Icarus 9 Comet was tossed out into deep space by Jupiter’s huge velocity. It shouldn’t have happened, but it did.”

“Daddy?”

“It’s on a direct collision course with earth!”

Daddy looked at me concerned as a scream filled my throat, and I fainted.

3. ‘ROBINSON’S COMET’

People talked. People laughed. People loved. The fiery comet drew closer to earth…

I was confused again, and I didn’t know why. I couldn’t think straight. What day was it now? I think it was Tuesday. No, it was another lazy Wednesday. I think it was Wednesday. It all seemed a little strange to me. Wendy and I sat on our school blazers on the common, sharing a takeaway in our school lunch hour. We were exhausted, for we had walked kilometres or so it seemed from the burger bar near the academy, and the fries were already cold. I hate eating cold fries. It didn’t bother Wendy. I glanced at the sky. There wasn’t a cloud in sight anywhere. It was another fine day in early summer, puzzling me briefly. There was something that I was trying to remember. What was it now? I frowned when Wendy pinched some of my fries. I laughed when she poked her tongue out. I looked around for the old man in the cloth cap with his dog. I didn’t see him. Was I disappointed? Then I noticed it for the first time in the corner of my eye. It was a small shadow that grew larger and larger in the sky until it had almost blocked out the sun. The whole land had suddenly turned very dark. It was almost like an eclipse of the sun, yet it wasn’t. It was something else much more terrifying. The giant comet fell out of the blue sky towards us. OH, GOD!

This was so unreal; it wasn’t happening. It couldn’t be happening. It couldn’t be! I slowly turned my head to look at Wendy. She slept soundly in her bed in her room, puzzling me. I wanted to be there, too. I rose on wobbly legs and walked into the bedroom that was there in solid form on the common, yet somewhere else in real time. I hid under Wendy’s blankets where I felt safe from the comet. It couldn’t touch me now. It couldn’t hurt me. Wendy woke.

“Bad dream?” she asked in the dark of her room.

“Yes,” I whispered, drawing closer to her.

The 2015 summer was almost unremarkable in its passing. The summer of that year was in fact a few hot days in July. Thousands, who took advantage of an unusually hot sun, rushed down to the seaside, stripped off on the beach, and got sunburn for their pains. We didn’t. During this fine but all too brief spell, I wore one of my little cropped tops to school and got sent home. I wasn’t bothered. The boys in my class didn’t seem to mind either, though mum did. I sweated through my 13+ exams at the end of term, doing very well in maths and science, which surprised me. Where did I go wrong? Joking apart, daddy was pleased. He suggested in a light-hearted way that some of his genius had finally rubbed off on me, although he’s normally a very modest man. Wendy sat her 15+ exams at the same time. Her pass grades disappointed mummy and daddy. I think she has got her mind on other things, boys and going out in the evenings mostly. The school summer holidays came and went. We spent two weeks in the South of France on a camping holiday. We go there almost every year. Wendy spent most of it flirting with the local village boys; however, I know my sister. She never lets it go further than flirting. She’s rather old-fashioned in many ways. She wants to fall in love with the right guy one day, get married and have kids. She’s like me, except I want a career too. Although it rained on the last day, the holiday was still fun. When we returned to England, the weather was grey and miserable. It reflected the way we felt. Then I was looking forward to the new term at St. Jude’s, even if Wendy wasn’t. I’d be in year 9. I’d also be fourteen in the autumn. I’d be fourteen. I like repeating it because I’d be almost an adult. What am I saying? I am an adult! I have adult thoughts, adult emotions and adult ideas. So, yes, I must be an adult.

After daddy had made his discovery about the Icarus 9 Comet, he wrote to space observatories in Europe and the United States. Some replied. Many didn’t. Those who did reply informed daddy that the chances of the comet actually hitting the earth were many millions to one. How can you argue with such odds, I ask you? But daddy did. He was worried about the one. He argued that it only took one comet to wipe out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, and we were due for another big hit soon. When no one would listen to daddy, he wrote to the papers. His story did appear in the London Post. It made a few lines opposite the funnies. I clipped it, pasting it in my scrapbook. Although daddy rarely shows his emotions, I think he was extremely bitter that no one would take him seriously enough. It was a very frustrating time for him. I felt for him. I believed him. I was scared too. Perhaps the comet would fall harmlessly into the ocean or something. Daddy laughed and said that I shouldn’t worry too much. It wouldn’t happen for hundreds of years; nevertheless, I was thinking of my descendants who might be living then. What future would they have? Perhaps the future generations would have found a way of diverting the comet from earth’s orbit or something like that, I thought brightly. Science would surely have moved on from the crude atom bomb to solve all of man’s problems.