After: The Echo (AFTER post-apocalyptic series, Book 2) (25 page)

“And it will pass right over us. That’s why we have an atmosphere, so we’re not exposed to constant radiation. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be around to have this conversation.”

Katherine, apparently satisfied with her prognosis, resumed typing. Chien watched the image on the screen for another minute, as sauce leaked from the edge of the pizza’s crust and bulged out into space in huge, curling ribbons.

Maybe I’m no different than Newton, a sensationalistic glory hound. But he died a virgin, so I’ve got him beat there
.

Chien went through the rote recording of data that occupied much of his duties, but his mind wandered to Summer Hanratty, the woman he’d been dating for the last six months. He couldn’t escape the irony of her first name, and its connotation with sunny weather had fueled their initial conversation at a colleague’s party. Maybe they were getting serious.

Heating up, huh? Well, even Dr. Doom needs a little comfort in the night.

Katherine’s clipped voice interrupted his reverie. “Did you see that?”

“See what?” Chien had flipped away from the satellite imagery to tables of temperature, X-rays, and magnetic energy.

“Check the Magnetogram,” she said, referring to the telescopic image that mapped the magnetic energy along the sun’s surface.

Chien summoned the proper screen, which now showed the solar pizza as a mossy tennis ball pocked with violent orange and cobalt-blue acne. The area near AR1654 showed a brilliant plume erupting from the surface.

“It will loop,” Chien said, referring to the sun’s habit of bending much of its escaped energy back into the thermonuclear maw. As turbulent as the imagery made the sun appear, most of the activity took place deep inside, where hydrogen and helium burned away at astonishing temperatures. It took light 200,000 years to emerge from the center of the sun to the surface, and from there a mere eight minutes to reach the Earth.

Chien thought he would share that little factoid with Summer when he dropped by her apartment tonight. It was the kind of romantic
bon mot
that would wash down well with a glass of Chablis.

“Even with a loop, it will likely shoot some electrons our way,” Katherine said.

“Should we log a report?”

One of the center’s responsibilities was to warn of potential interference with satellites and telecommunications equipment, which helped justify the $18 billion NASA budget. A caricature of a notoriously penurious Republican senator was pinned to the bulletin board near the restrooms, with a handwritten admonition: “A phone call a day keeps the hatchets away.” Providing a practical public benefit was essential to the long-term survival of the center.

“The usual,” Katherine said. “Possible disruption of regular signal transmission but no need for extraordinary measures.”

“A little static on the cell phone,” Chien said. “A little snow for the TV viewers with a dish. No Doomsday on the radar.”

“Don’t sound so disappointed.”

“I’m thrilled. An apocalypse would be terribly inconvenient. I’ve got a hot date tonight.”

Katherine managed a rueful smile. “Wish I could say the same. Take my advice and never get married.”

Chien didn’t want to tiptoe through those conversational landmines, so he shifted back to business. The bulging projectile of the solar flare clung to the sun’s surface like a drop of water on the lip of a leaky faucet. Usually, the flare would collapse again, the charged particles of helium and hydrogen reeled back by the intense gravity. But this one kept swelling, a ragged dragon’s breath of plasma leaping into space.

Chien flipped through the suite of instruments, observing the flare at different wavelengths. “Are you seeing this, Katherine?”

“Let me get this bulletin out first.”

“I’d hold off on it for a moment. We might be upgrading.”

“We can’t upgrade. This is M-1 already.”

Chien’s mouth went dry and his heart hammered. The solar flare’s footprint grew both on the surface and in its bulge in the heliosphere. “Looking like an X.”

“Daniel, that’s serious. It means rerouting high-altitude aircraft and damage to satellites. If we send out a red alert, we’d better be right.”

“The sun doesn’t care who’s right or wrong,” he said, watching the ragged hole on the sun’s surface widen further and the plume take an immense leap.

X-class solar flares dispensed radiation that could threaten airline passengers with exposure if they were not adequately shielded by the Earth’s atmosphere. Such flares were rarely recorded, but Chien was well aware that human measurement of such phenomena was but the blink of an eye against the ancient history of the sun. No doubt thousands—perhaps millions—of massive flares had swept across the Earth in ages past, scouring the planet with radiation and scrambling its geomagnetic fields. Chien was alternately excited and frightened that he might be witness to one of them.

But Katherine was right. Issuing an X-class bulletin would set a whole range of actions in motion, affecting the telecommunications industry, defense, and air transportation. Rerouting flights alone would cost millions of dollars, not to mention throwing off flight schedules that could disrupt international travel for weeks. Any shutdown of telecommunications and satellite service could quickly run to costs in the billions as well. This was a panic button that, once pressed, could not be easily dismissed.

“You know what happens if we cry wolf,” Katherine said.

As project director, Katherine would be the scapegoat for any political fallout, but Chien would likely be drummed out as well. Sure, he could always return to university life, where notoriety was little more than a mildly eccentric selling point. But he’d likely be done in the field of government-funded research, and there wasn’t a whole lot of private-industry opportunity.

But data was data, and the numbers were screaming X all the way.

“Okay, I will give a warning of ‘possible disruption, monitoring closely,’” Katherine said. “That should keep us covered until we can analyze all the data.”

She issued the alert to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Federal Communications Commission, and the departments of Defense and Homeland Security. She rated the threat a G3, a strong geomagnetic storm as measured on a scale of one to five. She logged the data and noted the time, saying to Chien, “Your shift is up. You better go play Romeo.”

“No way,” he said. “The solar cycle doesn’t peak again for 11 years, and I’m not getting any younger.”

“Your call. But take my word for it. When you get to be my age, you wish you’d had more dates with people and fewer with computers.”

The solar plume on the screen had grown to epic proportions, so much so that Chien had to zoom out on the imagery just to fit it on the screen. Even for a trained scientist, it was difficult to equate what looked like a bit of Hollywood illusion with billions of tons of solar material hurting toward the Earth at two million miles an hour. Even if the plume proved truly dangerous, the solar wind and its charged particles wouldn’t reach Earth for at least a day, maybe two.

“Something’s got me worried,” Chien said. “The SDO has only been operating for two years, and in that time we’ve had no major solar storms.”

“So?” Katherine had apparently already swallowed her own downplaying of the threat and accepted mild space disturbance as
fait accompli
.

“The SDO is itself a satellite. With a vicious enough solar wind, we’d lose uplinks and downlinks, as well as orientation. Worst-case scenario, we won’t be able to track the effect.”

“Well, let’s just pray it’s not a worst case, then,” Katherine said, with a wry smile. Religious references were rare in the space center.

Chien, a Taoist, was not amused, nor was he comforted.

Look for After: Milepost 291 in early autumn! Thanks for your reviews and support.

Table of Contents

After

About Scott Nicholson

Scott’s Kindle books

Bonus chapter: Prequel

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

After

About Scott Nicholson

Scott’s Kindle books

Bonus chapter: Prequel