The Inner Circle (4 page)

"Next set of coordinates."

This continued for another hour and a half, as the clear weather allowed them more time than they'd expected. But when the clouds finally began to roll in though, Nick predicted they would have only a few more sets of coordinates before their view would be completely blocked.

When they were down to their last chance, Josh decided to see if he could trick Nick. Very quietly, he flipped through the next 20 pages or so in the notebook and read the first set of numbers he came across. Nick should have been able to tell the huge difference in the numbers, but he either lost his concentration or he did not mind trying something totally different with their last set of coordinates of the night. After he typed in the new numbers, the normal momentary whir of the telescope increased to a much longer sound, as the scope had to move to a completely different position. For once, Nick looked up from his computer at the moving telescope and he shot Josh a nasty look when he realized what was happening.

Across the room, a telephone began ringing, the sound barely audible over the noise of the moving telescope. Josh – who was glad for the distraction – had an opportunity to escape Nick's evil glare.

"I'll answer it."

He ran across the room and picked up the phone, not taking his eye off of Nick or the computer screen in front of his partner. Though when he heard the voice on the other end of the line, he quickly turned around and lowered his voice.

"Are you crazy for calling? Your brother is sitting right across the room. If he finds out I'm talking to you, he'll kill me."

"No," Sarah Rose said. "If he finds out you're
dating
me, he'll kill you."

Josh and Sarah had been dating for about six months without Nick ever discovering. Sarah was still a senior in high school and Nick was overly protective of her, taking the role of male authoritative figure in her life far too seriously for Sarah's liking. She knew he had the best intentions at heart, but he was going to have to realize very soon that she was no longer a little girl. If it were up to Sarah, she would've told Nick months ago about her relationship with Josh. But Josh, on the other hand, was more than happy to keep their relationship a secret for the time being.

"Well, thanks for making me feel better. Is there something you needed? We're kind of busy here."

"I just wanted to call and tell you to come over later tonight."

"Isn't Nick going to be around?"

"He will be, but he'll be going to sleep early. He has to go somewhere early tomorrow morning. Just walk your motorcycle up our street so he doesn't hear it and then hide it on the side of the house."

"I don't understand the big rush. Why can't we just wait to see each other when he isn't around?"

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Sarah Rose sat on her bed, talking into the phone. The telephone cord was wrapped around her entire hand, as she nervously twirled it more and more. Sarah was a beautiful 18-year-old with blond hair and blue eyes. The first time she met him, Josh could not believe Sarah was actually related to Nick. ‘You must have gotten all the looks in the family,’ he’d told her.

"Because I need to see you tonight. I have something really important I need to tell you in person. So stop being so afraid and just come over. Nick is going to have to find out about us eventually anyway."

She waited to hear Josh's reaction to this and she really hoped he didn’t want to know the specifics of her important news at this moment. Before Josh answered, she heard her brother yelling in the background and for a moment, she became afraid that Nick knew Josh was talking to her. But then her brain registered the actual words that he was yelling.

"We got something, we got something here. Get off the phone and come look at this," she heard him excitedly repeating.

"Look, I have to go."

             
"Promise me you'll come over later."

Josh sighed, but promised that he would come. He whispered that he loved her and quickly got off the phone, as he had to go play 'space' with Nick. Sarah untangled herself from the phone, hung up and flopped backwards onto her bed. It was late and although she was very tired, she was determined to stay awake to wait for Josh to arrive. Besides, she felt too nervous to sleep anyway, as she began to recite all the different ways she could tell Josh the big news.

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"Comet Rose-Clement. I think that sounds just about right."

"Get the hell out of here. That doesn't sound good at all. Comet Clement-Rose. Now that sounds more appropriate. It just flows better,
Clement-Rose, Clement-Rose.
Not Rose-Clement."

"Well, either way, we don't even know if we found anything yet. We still have to wait for confirmation before we start the celebration."

While Josh was on the phone with Sarah, Nick watched in amusement as the telescope focused on the random set of coordinates Josh read to him. The amusement quickly turned to amazement when something besides empty space actually appeared on the screen. A sizable dot appeared and Nick immediately figured Josh was playing a joke on him, giving him the coordinates of a comet that had already been discovered. But as Josh continued to chatter on the phone, Nick did a quick search of the comet database and found out that the comet on his computer screen had never been undiscovered. He couldn't hide his excitement as he yelled for his partner to get off the phone.

At the worst possible moment, the predicted forecast had finally caught up with them and the thick cloud cover gave the two only a few moments to watch the new comet. Once the view became too distorted, Nick acted quickly, going through the proper channels to verify the existence of the comet. He called the Perth Observatory in Australia and gave them the coordinates.

While Nick and Josh waited to receive official word about the comet, Josh became unexpectedly choked up about the possibility of their discovery.

"I never thought something like this could happen," he said. "I mean, to have your name attached to something like this, something that, in a small way, will immortalize you forever, that's really special. I know it's only a comet off in deep space and I know that nobody will stumble across the name of this one comet and think, 'Hey, the guy who discovered this was a genius.' But it's still cool that a small part of me will remain once I'm long gone."

Nick never thought of it like this before. He had always been more interested in the scientific aspect of astronomy and considering himself a true man of science, he rarely dwelled upon the personal aspect of making such a discovery. It would no doubt be nice to receive some sort of recognition from his fellow peers, but Nick still liked to believe that his reasons for studying astronomy were still purely scientific.

"Don't think you’re going to convince me to put your name first," Nick said with a smile, breaking the personal – yet uncomfortable – moment the two were sharing.

The phone rang and as Nick jumped up to answer it, Josh worried that it might be Sarah calling again. His worries were calmed, though, when he heard Nick take a purely professional tone of voice with whoever was on the other end.

"Congratulations, mate," the Australian said. "You've got yourself quite a little bugger of a comet there. From our initial reports, it appears to be a pretty big one, too. We’re thinking it might be two, maybe even two and a half kilometers big."

"Wow, that's a monster," Nick said, shocked at this bit of news.

"You’re bloody right it is. Don't know how it's avoided being spotted before, one that size. You never know what you'll find if you look in the right place."

The only thing left to do now was contact the Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where a small team at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory would make the announcement to the astronomical community. Nick was familiar with the process and knew he would be receiving forms in the mail within the next few days, as completing the appropriate paperwork would register the name and comet location.

"It's ours," Nick announced after he hung up the phone. It was something they both had been nearly certain about after originally finding that the comet was not in the database, but it felt much better to know for sure. Nick explained to Josh that once they filled out the paperwork, it would be about a month before the comet would be listed in the
International Astronomical Union Circulars
(IAUCs) and the entire astronomical community would know they'd made the discovery of the biggest comet in the past eight years.

"Like I always said," Josh explained with a huge smile on his face, "if you're going to discover a comet, you may as well discover a huge one. Nobody will want to mess with Comet Clement-Rose."

"You're wrong," Nick countered. "Nobody will want to mess with Comet Rose-Clement."

CHAPTER TWO

The night sky was beginning to lighten already, as the sunrise was only half an hour away. Josh slowed his motorcycle to a stop once he reached Sarah and Nick's street and pushed it the remaining quarter mile up the road to their house. He just left Nick at the observatory about an hour earlier, after what felt like an anti-climatic celebration to a two-year project. Josh wasn't sure what he’d expected to happen once they finally discovered a comet, though a marching band and a room full of balloons and confetti would have done just nicely. Actually, the feeling he had from the whole experience was more relief than anything else, like a man coming home after a long journey.

When he approached Nick and Sarah's house, Josh checked to make sure the light was not on in Nick's window and he quietly rolled his motorcycle to the side of the house. There were a dozen high bushes planted along the house that gave Josh plenty of places to hide his bike, though the chances of Nick wandering by were pretty small. Once he felt confident that the bike was safely out of sight, he carefully turned one of the trash cans upside down and used it as a ladder to get on top of the one-story garage. Nick's room was on the other side of the house, but Josh still walked as slowly as humanly possible, trying desperately to avoid making the tiniest squeak.

Josh climbed through Sarah's open bedroom window and saw his girlfriend sleeping peacefully in her bed. She looked so serene and beautiful that he couldn’t bring himself to interrupt her sleep. He stood there and watched her for what felt like very little time, but was probably closer to twenty minutes. Sunlight soon streamed through her window and shined directly on her eyes, which opened from the sudden change of light. When she looked up and saw Josh staring at her, she smiled.

"How long have you been here?" she asked groggily, her tired voice croaking like an old woman who’d smoked for far too long.

"Not long, I didn't want to wake you up."

She slid over in her bed and patted the empty space, signaling for Josh to join her. Josh seemed hesitant and looked over at her door, as if Nick was going to burst into the room with a shotgun at any moment.

"Don't worry, the door's locked."

"I thought you told me the lock was broken."

"I fixed it. Besides, when Nicky came home, he passed out right away. He has a doctor's appointment in a few hours so you can make your escape once he's gone."

This calmed Josh down enough for him to slide off his boots and crawl into bed next to her, pulling Sarah’s warm body tightly against him.

"Doctor's appointment? He didn't mention anything to me about it. What’s that all about?"

"Probably just his stomach ulcers acting up again. He's had them ever since my parents died, but they still give him problems sometimes."

Josh yawned and told Sarah that he had quite a night.

"Nick told me you guys finally found something, huh?" she asked.

"Yeah, it was unbelievable. We were going through your brother's long list of coordinates without finding a thing. We were down to the last set before bad weather and I totally just opened up to a random page and put my finger on a group of numbers. That's when you called, as he was typing them in and the comet just showed up on screen. It was an incredible feeling, I never thought-"

Josh was very excited by his story, but his fatigue was taking over his eyes.

"I'm sorry, baby," he said. "I forgot all about...," He couldn’t suppress a yawn. "...whatever it was you had to tell me."

She squeezed his hand tightly, her palms unusually sweaty as her inner tension built to a torrid level. Maybe now was not the best time to tell him.

"You're tired. Get some sleep and I'll tell you after we've slept for awhile."

"Okay," he said, squeezing her hand in return. "Whatever you say, baby."

That last word made her heart jump.

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Nick pulled up to his house around noon the next day, having just come from his doctor's appointment, which had proven to be very discouraging. He'd had to wait nearly an hour before he saw his doctor and when he finally did, he wished he he’d never come in the first place. Things were getting as bad as he feared they would.