Dark Star Rising Second Edition (Pebbles in The Sky) (17 page)

The view shifted to the President of the United States sitting at her desk in the Oval Office. Even though some heavy makeup had been applied to her face, it could not hide the exhaustion made evident by the dark circles beneath her eyes.

“My fellow Americans, and the other citizens of our world,” she began.  I come before you to announce an amazing discovery.”

Jessica’s mind was racing. “Is she talking about us?” she asked Brett.

“Approximately four weeks ago a young astrophysics student in California made a momentous discovery.  This is a discovery that will ultimately change many of our lives, and one that will most definitely have an effect on the lives of our children and their children yet to come. Some of the specifics of this discovery are rather complicated and I will try to be simple in my explanation and let the specialists in these areas try and explain them in more detail.”

Jessica sagged with disappointment.  It was not their discovery.

“While doing research for his Doctorate
degree, this young man discovered a Brown Dwarf Star very near our solar system.  A Brown Dwarf is a very small star that did not quite become big enough to start burning like our own sun does.  Of major significance, he discovered that this Brown Dwarf is approaching our solar system.  At the time of his discovery, we had very little information to estimate how close it would pass us.  Using the Hubble Space Telescope and a couple of other very specialized satellites, we have accumulated a great deal more knowledge about this strange object.”

“I know it is going to alarm you when I say that we now know that this Brown Dwarf is going to pass very near our planet as it passes through our solar system.  I know you are all feeling the same way at this moment that I felt when I first learned of this.  I want to make something very clear.  This Brown Dwarf is not going to hit our planet.  As a matter of fact, it will never get much closer than about fifty million miles away.  That is hundreds of times farther than the moon.  So do not panic and do not despair.”

“I do have to tell you that we will have some unpleasant effects from this Brown Dwarf’s passage.  We will probably experience some very large ocean tides, some coastal flooding, and possibly even some large earth quakes as it passes us.  But again, please do not panic.  This will not happen for another twenty seven years and we will have plenty of time to prepare for these things.  There will be other things that will happen.  Due to the Brown Dwarf pulling on our planet as it passes it will change the orbit of our world around the sun somewhat.  Our winters will be quite a bit colder, and the summers cooler.  I can say that we probably will no longer have to concern ourselves greatly with global warming in the future.  This Brown Dwarf will also affect our night skies, as it will have major effects on at least two other planets in our solar system.  The information we have at hand now indicates that the planet Jupiter will be torn from our sun’s gravity and will fly off into space.  In addition to Jupiter leaving us, it is expected that the planet Saturn will either be destroyed or will merge with this Brown Dwarf as it passes by it.  Thus, we are going to lose two friends that have always been bright in our night skies.”

“There is another, more probable danger though, and I have been told that this is the one that threatens our safety here on Earth.  Luckily, this is also the one that we can do the most about in the twenty seven years we have to prepare.  As the Brown Dwarf passes though the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, and then as it passes through the outer asteroid belt, or the Oort cloud, it will disturb the orbits of the asteroids and comets that lie there. Many of those objects will be thrown toward the inner solar system and pose a danger to our planet.  There is also the possibility that many of Jupiter’s or Saturn’s moons
could be torn apart and those fragments could pose an additional risk to our planet as they orbit the sun.  Some of those pieces of moons could possibly collide with our planet.  Rest assured that starting immediately, this administration and the ones that follow mine will be working diligently to develop methods to deflect or destroy any of these space rocks that may come our way.”

“I will be meeting in the next few days with Congress to request substantially increased funding for our space program so that we can get started on these defenses for our planet.  In addition, a committee of all the top organizations in both our government and private industry will be formed to make plans on how to protect our population from the flooding and any earthquakes that may happen as this object passes us.  Our country has seen many troubled times. It has always persevered and we shall weather this storm also.  I want you all to go about your business and daily lives as normal.  This is not the end of the world.  I will keep you informed to the best of my ability as we obtain more facts and let you know of plans being made to get us through the event that we still have twenty seven years to prepare for.”

“To the citizens of other counties that may be watching this, be assured that we will be sending all of the information that we have obtained to the scientists and leaders of your countries.  We hope to work hand in hand with all of them as we make preparations for the arrival of this Brown Dwarf.  Thank you all for your time and attention.  God Bless you all.”

The three of them stood there as the regular program came back on.  “Now all the talking heads will be appearing,” Brett joked.  “That was interesting; I thought she was going to talk about our breakthrough.”

Benjamin just looked disgusted and said, “The sheep hear what they want to hear.”  He turned to them.  “I would like both of you to get back to your research as soon as you can.  Continue your basic research as we agreed.  I would also like you to work on my special request when you can, and Jessica…I have been thinking about what we discussed back in your old lab.  Remember about the bacteria with the tail.  I think that there might be a tremendous profit in a birth control vaccine.  If you could perfect that, there are several potential customers that would pay handsomely for it.  To make this investment more profitable, I would like you to devote some resources to that also.  Now, I must take my leave, I have some important phone calls to make.”

Benjamin looked at the TV as he turned to go.  “Never, ever trust a politician.  I have bribed too many of them in the past to believe every word they say.”  With that he turned and walked out collecting his ever present “assistant” at the door as he went.

Brett looked at Jessica and shrugged.  “You heard the man, back to work.”

Chapter 17

Thursday April 28
th
2016

California

Peter sat back in his seat and flipped up the tiny table surface on the back of the seat in front of him as the flight attendant gave him a soft drink.  Although he would have preferred a cold beer, he felt like he was still on the clock for Uncle Sam and JPL.  He was on a commercial flight back to the west coast after a whirlwind of briefings in Washington.  He was much too low on the NASA and JPL totem pole to qualify for a private government jet. It made it him dizzy thinking of all the behind the scenes jockeying and lobbying going on in Washington regarding the discovery of the Brown Dwarf.

There were specials on the television stations discussing the news of the approaching Brown Dwarf.  Anyone that thought they were someone in the know was being interviewed about what a Brown Dwarf was and what was going to happen when it arrived and what could be done to stop it etc. etc.  As expected, the end of the world fanatics were having a heyday with all of the attention they could now command.  There had been some minor rioting and looting in a few cities after the President’s speech, but that was mostly by inner city gangs who would take advantage of any situation to stir up a chance to rampage through the shopping districts, breaking windows and looting stores.  These had been handled very quickly by the local police and after about twenty four hours the streets were quite again.  Surprisingly, it was rather eerily calm, and for the most part people went about their daily business.  Most people were too busy just making ends meet to worry about something that was going to happen twenty seven years in the future.

Peter was looking forward to getting home, sleeping in his own bed, and just getting back to his office to do what he loved working on.  It also did not hurt that Susan was waiting on him.  He had called her to let her know his flight number and she was going to meet him at the airport.  The woman sitting beside him in first class had her laptop open
watching to the news on CNN.  There were several climatologists from somewhere talking about how in twenty seven years or so the best places to live would be central Africa, the northern half of South America and places like Central America.  Already, they were saying, speculators were buying up land left and right in those places.

Just as Peter was about to shut his eyes and try and get some sleep the newscast had shifted to a reporter trying to ask questions of a
middle aged man who was trying to hurry up the side walk to reach his house.  Peter sat back up wide awake and looked at the woman’s laptop screen.

“Excuse me Doctor Casselman,” the reporter said.  “Can you tell us anything about what type of student Peter Rockwell is? Just how did he discover this object that no one else had noticed?  Is it true that Peter Rockwell is dating your niece?  Did you help him discover his star?”

Through it all, Eric Casselman just kept saying, “No comment, no comment.”  He made it to his door, rushed through, and shut the door behind him.

  The reporter turned around to face the camera.  “Well, Renee,” he said as he addressed the newscaster back in the station anchor room, “It seems that Doctor Casselman does not want to speak to us.  “So I guess we will go back to you.”

The camera faded back to the newscaster. Superimposed on the screen behind her was a recent picture of Peter from Cal Techs graduation listing for the spring semester.  “So far, no one has seen Peter Rockwell since the President’s speech.  We are not sure if he is lying low or the government has him tied up in some meeting somewhere.  We promise though, that just as soon as we can locate him we will try to get an interview with him.”

Peter cringed and tried to sink down in his seat.  The woman beside him just turned and stared at him.  Peter just gave a sheepish grin and turned toward the window.  As he pretended to go to sleep he could hear her tapping away on her keyboard.  “Oh crap, he thought. This is not going to be good.” 

Peter’s plane landed and pulled up to the egress tube.  As he stood to get his luggage he noticed people were looking his way and whispering. The two female flight attendants were smiling and trying to catch his eye.  As he waited for the de-boarding to start, a little boy about eight years old that was traveling with his father in the seats in front of his stood up on his knees in the seat and asked Peter, “Are you really the guy that discovered Peter’s Star?”

Peter just shook his head and headed for the exit door as fast as he could.  Reaching the concourse his heart sank.  Susan was there waiting on him but she did not look very happy.  There were cameras flashing and reporters everywhere. “Mr. Rockwell, Peter Rockwell?” they were all yelling.  The concourse was a teeming mass of people.

At that moment a man with a JPL badge and four airport security police pushed their way through the crowd.  “Come with us Mr. Rockwell, we will try to avoid all this.”

“Wait,” said Peter. “Susan, my girlfriend…”

Half the reporters and cameras turned to Susan.  “Oh shit,” thought Peter.

One of the security guards grabbed Susan’s arm and pulled her from the sea of reporters.  They were led down a side door to the tarmac below where a Security SUV was waiting.  They were hustled inside and the SUV took off across the
tarmac area.  The JPL man turned around to them.  “I am sorry we did not get there sooner.  Someone on your flight must have recognized you and notified the news agencies.  I have orders to get you out of here and to a secure location until some of this hoopla dies down.”

“So much for sleeping in my own bed tonight,” Peter said.

Susan grinned and bent over to give him a kiss.  She whispered in his ear and nibbled it.  “Well, maybe my bed would have been lonely anyway,” he thought to himself.

After a ride across the entire airport they pulled into a plane hangar where a white minivan with a big Channel 5 TV sign across it side was sitting waiting for them.  “Damn,” said Peter “We’ve been duped!” 

“Relax,” said the JPL man. “What better place for you to hide from the press in than in a TV van?  No one would ever think to look for you there.”  One of the security men opened the side door of the van and they jumped out of the SUV and hurried into the van.  The van then drove out, onto the access road and joined the other traffic on the interstate near LAX.