Exodus (The Exodus Trilogy) (2 page)

Running for an hour every morning had been part of his daily routine for years, and it was one of those things he always tried to find time for even with his busy schedule. It was
getting chilly outside, even though DC in December could be a lot colder. He loved the freshness in the air that could only be found early, while most people were still sleeping soundly. Less than two weeks had passed since he’d been appointed national security advisor, and Trevor Hayes still felt a little overwhelmed by it all. He had almost completed his run when the cell phone rang. He looked at it, and saw it was President Andrews. What did the boss want this early? he thought.

“
Mr. President,” he said, breathing heavily.

“
Trevor, something has come up,” the president replied. “I need you in the Oval Office immediately. I’ll have a car for you in two minutes, just stay where you are.”

Of course
, Hayes thought.
We’re all being tracked and monitored these days. No reason for me to be exempt.
So he stretched for a couple of minutes before the black car with tinted windows drove up beside him. A secret service agent stepped out and opened the rear door for him. The agent said nothing as he entered, and they took him to the White House, driving a little too fast through the near empty streets.

Still wearing his
running clothes, Trevor Hayes entered the Oval Office, where the president sat with an ashen face, staring at nothing. Beside him sat his chief of staff and the defense secretary, while the secretary of the interior, the secretary of the treasury, and the national science advisor stood. Another man Hayes hadn’t seen before stood a little off to the back, fiddling with his papers. The president looked up at Trevor, and stood slowly.

“
Come on in, Trevor. Why don’t we just start, Charles?” The man at the back nodded, and flipped on a small projector device, and a second later an image of space appeared on the wall. He briefly introduced himself as Dr. Charles Quentin before he pointed at the image.

“
This is an object that was discovered about a week ago, passing Jupiter at great speed. We weren’t sure what it was until four days ago, when we identified it as a rogue planet.” The defense secretary interrupted him and leaned forward.

“
Dr. Quentin, if I may ask, what is a rogue planet?”

“
A rogue planet is basically a planet without a star. The concept has always been controversial, although ESA confirmed their existence years ago. They are hard to find out there, but there may be as many as twice the number of stars. Now, rogue planets can be divided into two classes, although I’m not sure it’s a very valuable distinction. First, we have those that were formed just like stars, kind of like brown dwarves. Then there are planets that were ejected from their star systems, due to some cataclysmic event, like a star going supernova or twin stars colliding.” He clicked to another image. “This was taken yesterday. It’s an image of Mars.” Another click, and this time the image showed some sort of cloud, with a bigger dot near the middle of the cloud. “This image was taken just a few hours ago. This cloud is all that is left of Mars, and the object you can see as that dot right here …” He pointed at the dot in the middle. “This is the remains of the rogue planet.” Silence filled the room as they took in the image of what had been Mars just yesterday. An entire planet gone. Hayes felt stunned.

“
The rogue planet did that? There’s nothing left of Mars, for Christ’s sake.” the president exclaimed. Dr. Quentin just nodded, and clicked again, and an enhanced image of the same scene appeared.

“
The rogue planet crashed directly into Mars about twelve hours ago. Mars was completely destroyed by the impact, and the rogue planet lost most of its mass, except this large rock, about a hundred kilometers in diameter. Some of the debris will fall back onto the remains of the rogue, while some of it will remain as a cloud surrounding it for years. Some of it will escape the rogue’s gravitational field and spread out.”

“
What if that had been Earth?” the secretary of the interior said quietly in a thin voice. Hayes instinctively knew the answer to that, and Dr. Quentin addressed the secretary’s question.

“
Even though Earth is larger than Mars, the result would have been the same. Total destruction. It’s not just the size of the object, but also the velocity. The speed of that thing must have been enormous.” He advanced to another image, but Hayes couldn’t see that it was any different from the previous one. “This last image was taken just two hours ago. It tells us that the remains of the rogue have entered into a solar orbit, and it seems it’s not far from the former orbit of Mars. We do expect it to differ some though, because when objects crash like this, the larger object will push more than the smaller one. And, like I said, there is the issue of velocity. So its new orbit may turn out to be a bit closer to Earth than the one Mars followed. It’s too early to tell, really.”

“
Why didn’t we see this coming?” the president asked.

“
Well, sir, these things are hard to detect. And its speed was like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Of course, it does make you think, doesn’t it?” That last remark was one the scientist would regret, Hayes thought. He knew how all space-related activity had been severely handicapped by the aftermath of the Mars incident years earlier, and the subsequent disbanding of NASA and several other entities involved. In the U.S. there were barely any astronomers left, and those few worked on meager budgets with poor equipment and very little of the prestige the discipline once commanded. The U.S. got practically all their information from ESA these days. And most people paid no attention to space anyhow. People were simply not interested.

“
How soon will we know what the object’s orbit will look like?” the national science advisor asked.

“
Well, that may take some time. In a few days we can have an estimate, but it may take a while before its orbit is stable. There is a chance that the new object may not be able to enter a stable orbit. In that case it will most likely be pulled in by the sun’s gravity.”

“
It will hit the sun, is that what you are saying?” the secretary of defense asked, obviously disturbed by the possibility.

“
Yes, but don’t worry. The object wouldn’t affect the sun, not even slightly. Compared to the sun, this is a speck of sand.” Hayes thought about the object slowly being swallowed up by the sun, and suddenly got an unpleasant idea. He had to ask.

“
Is there any chance that, if the object doesn’t enter a stable orbit, it may hit Earth?” The others obviously hadn’t thought of the possibility, and quite a few heads turned toward him. The scientist merely chuckled and shook his head.

“
Highly unlikely, sir. I’d say the chances of that thing coming anywhere near us are one in a million. Less, probably. I wouldn’t worry about it.” Hayes nodded slowly. He was probably right. But what had the chances been that it would hit Mars?

Maria and Elle were sitting in the high school cafeteria. Maria was picking absently at her food, while Elle was eyeing the boys at a table nearby. A history assignment Maria had been working on the night before had made her think of her grandfather, and she had thought about him even as she lay in bed, far too late for a Tuesday, while sleep evaded her. The memory still lingered in the back of her mind.

“Did you complete the essay on the first Mars Expedition, Elle?” she asked her friend sitting next to her. They had been given the task of writing an essay on the first manned expedition to Mars, and to her surprise, she had found reading up on it to be exciting. She’d never been much into space in general, and she wasn’t alone. Society had no interest in space exploration anymore. But, reading about it reminded her of her grandfather’s stories and his dreams of space exploration. The failed Mars colony had shown that man belonged on Earth; at least that’s what everybody said. But the story of humans in space had its place in the history books, and as Mr. Allred always said: we study history to learn from our mistakes. She did like history, particularly modern history, so maybe it was the historical angle—and the memory of her grandfather—that attracted her to the story of how John Scott was the first human ever to set foot on Mars, back in 2038.

“
Yuck, I tried, but it’s just so boring! I don’t understand why we have to learn all that Mars stuff. We all know how that ended up, so let’s leave it at that.” Obviously satisfied with her own statement, Elle nodded to herself and looked over at the table where Charlie and Bill, both on the football team, were sitting. “You know, Maria, it’s just a month and a half to go. I sure hope Bill gets off his butt and asks me soon. He should, you know; I have options.” She was talking about the New Year’s dance again. Elle was a popular girl, and had already been asked by three guys, but she still waited for Bill, the quarterback, to ask her. “What about you? Has anybody asked you yet?” Maria just shook her head. “Maria, I swear, I don’t understand boys. I don’t think any of the boys here really know you. Or maybe they think they won’t be able to talk to you, or something.” Maria felt her cheeks flushing; she wished Elle didn’t have to be so loud.

“
Elle … I don’t know … Let’s just finish our lunch and go. I need to deliver a note from my parents to the dean’s office. I’m supposed to go with them to New York next Friday. Dad’s going to his quarterly meeting with his business associates, but Mom’s not attending. I guess that means she and I will go Christmas shopping.” She smiled, thinking that her mother would definitely take advantage of the opportunity to get away from her normally hectic pace at the office. Isabella Solis always had a role in the major business decisions for the company, even though Maria’s father, Ramon, was the CEO. So Ramon going to a big quarterly meeting with other corporate leaders without her was something out of the ordinary.

Ramon and Isabella were descendants of poor immigrants from Mexico. Their parents had all come illegally to the United States and were among the many who, in the great amnesty of 2030, became legal permanent residents, but without the citizenship.
It was this status that had kept Ramon’s father from being able to fulfill his dream of becoming an astronaut.

Since
Ramon and Isabella had been born in America, they were citizens of the United States, and worked hard to make their way in the business world. They had started a small online business from home, which turned out to be a huge success, and, within just a few years, it had grown into a large corporation. Now Cheevo was one of the largest corporations in America, with branches on all continents.

Once, when Maria was about five, she had asked what their company made
. Ramon had laughed fondly, and explained to her that they didn’t actually make anything. Cheevo was involved in a lot of different industries; they managed and leased copyrights for intellectual property, they financed other startup companies, and they now had several scientific research centers around the world. At the time, Maria didn’t understand any of it, of course, but she knew she had to learn some day. One day she would inherit the company. Her parents, though loving and gentle people, had great expectations of her and demanded that she work hard at school, so that when the day came, she’d be ready to take the reins.

“
I still think you should try to get Charlie to take you to the New Year’s dance!” Elle said, loudly enough for the whole cafeteria to hear, or so it felt. Maria nudged her hard with her elbow as they walked out the doors, both girls giggling.

It had been a week since
the rogue planet had annihilated Mars, and the world had been taken by surprise. During that week, it had been the biggest story on every news site. Everybody talked about it, and although people were shocked that something like this could actually happen, they were also relieved that it had been Mars, and not Earth, that had been hit. One of the issues that had made headlines was the fact that there had been virtually no warning. In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, the possibility of a meteor strike or an asteroid hitting Earth had been given a lot of attention, so although interest had been virtually zero for years now, the idea that something might fall out of the sky to wreak havoc on Earth was nothing new. The thing that made this such a frightening, sensational story worldwide, besides the scale of it all, was its late discovery. In the past, people had expected to have at least weeks, if not months of warning before an asteroid or meteor impact. The possibility that an object like the rogue planet could suddenly just appear out of nowhere and, within a week, destroy an entire planet had caused a lot of debate.

In the aftermath of the Mars incident back in the sixties, the American components of the Spaceguard Survey w
ere largely disbanded, and although some foreign institutions still conducted their own surveys, the number of Near Earth Objects discovered had decreased drastically. Although the media exercised a great deal of self-censorship these days, this latest development was one they couldn’t shy away from, and even government representatives were calling for a renewed effort to protect the world from possible impacts, such as this one. Although no one could imagine how to protect Earth from something as massive as a rogue planet, most agreed that some sort of renewed Spaceguard Survey should be considered.

The remaining slab of rock from the rogue planet was
treated as a new minor planet. There were discussions about whether it would stay in orbit or be pulled into the sun, and the one-in-a-million chance of an impact with Earth held very little interest, except as a curiosity. A small minority worried, but they were mostly loons and doomsday preachers; good for laughs, but nobody took them seriously. Mars had saved us all, it was said. And although the red planet on which man had once walked would be missed by some, most paid more attention to the rock that now remained. As soon as the story of the destruction of Mars spread, the rock had been given a name. But the scientists naming such an object obviously didn’t have a sense of communication, so
The Washington Post
held a twenty-four-hour naming contest. The name that got the most votes was less fanciful than several others, but it was easily recognizable and conveyed an important part of its recent history. It was quickly adopted by others, and when even the president mentioned it by its new name, the name stuck. The object’s name was Devastator.

Since the story broke
, there had been daily briefings in the Oval Office on the situation. As Trevor Hayes sat down for the daily briefing, he noticed that Dr. Quentin was absent. Another scientist, a younger Asian woman, had replaced him, and she had a look on her face that was difficult to interpret. The president himself was the last to enter, and as soon as he had greeted them all and sat down, the new scientist introduced herself as Dr. Linda Xiu.

“
As you know, we have been working round the clock trying to learn everything we can about Devastator. I’m not going to repeat the information already given to you by Dr. Quentin, as most of it is correct.” She paused for a second, and when the president urged her on, she still took her time about it. Then she dropped the bomb.

“
Devastator may hit us, after all.” She ignored the reactions and continued.

“
Like I said, Dr. Quentin was right about a lot of things. But to be absolutely clear, the chances of a direct impact by Devastator are not one in a million at all. It now seems that Devastator has settled into an orbit that will take it steadily closer to the sun, meaning also that it will come closer to Earth. We were calculating how the orbits of Earth and Devastator compared, when we found that at one of the points where the orbits cross each other, there will be an impact. There is a slight chance it will only be an extremely close encounter, meaning that it will enter Earth’s atmosphere, but escape Earth’s gravitational pull due to its speed. However, the likelihood of such an outcome is shrinking by the hour, as we gather more and more data.

“
It’s important that you get some idea of the scale we’re talking about. The diameter of the object that most likely wiped out the dinosaurs was, according to the latest theories, somewhere in the vicinity of ten kilometers in diameter. That doesn’t seem like a lot, considering the size of Earth, but that impact caused a brief heat wave that killed a lot of animals and plant life. It probably caused huge tsunamis and earthquakes worse than you can imagine as well, and there is evidence of increased volcanism that corresponds with the time of impact. But the real extinction event wasn’t the impact itself, but the long-term effects, when dust particles from the impact clouded the sky for years, decades maybe, and temperatures dropped rapidly. Winter for years, starvation … All that from an object of about ten kilometers in diameter.” She paused for a second to let it sink in.

“
Devastator is ten times that size.” The room was silent now. They had just been told that something ten times the size of what killed the dinosaurs would most likely hit Earth some time during the next few years. Hayes was the first to speak.

“
You said ‘one of the points where the orbits cross.’ What did you mean?” Dr. Xiu flicked on the projector and started an animation that showed the orbits of both Earth and Devastator, with a timer that showed the month and year of each position. They could see with their own eyes how Devastator’s orbit slowly spiraled inward, and after eight years, the orbits crossed each other, close but not an impact yet. This continued for another four years before the animation stopped, and the word “impact” labeled the point where the two converged. Dr Xiu explained it for them.

“
As you can see, in about eight years, the orbits will cross, and it will be quite close, so we might experience some effects even then, such as smaller objects, debris from the impact between the rogue and Mars, bombarding Earth, there may be strange weather phenomena, and so forth. We need to work a little more on that to give more accurate estimates. Four years later, sometime near the end of 2084, we expect a direct impact to take place.” The president, quite affected by the news, rose and shook Dr. Xiu’s hand.

“
Thank you, ma’am. Ah, we will talk more later, I think. Now, if you will excuse me, I need to speak to my advisors in private.” She nodded, picked up her notes, and left the room. As she closed the door behind her, President Andrews turned toward the others still sitting in their chairs. He looked pale and obviously shocked, just as everyone else, and seemed desperate to find his bearing again. Unsuccessfully, Hayes thought.

“
I want you all to keep this quiet. I mean that, not one word! That message will go out to the scientists too. If … if this information spreads, there will be panic and riots. Panic and riots, you understand, right? The perfect conditions for terrorists and other destructive elements. We must keep this a secret for as long as possible. That will give us some time to come up with a plan for how to deal with all this.” He sat, or rather slumped, down again, and Hayes noticed his knuckles, white as he held on to the table as if he would fall off his chair if he didn’t hold tightly enough.

“
We need to set up a meeting as soon as possible, I think.” The president didn’t look much like the authority figure he was known to be, and his voice had turned shaky and a note higher than usual. He nodded to himself, biting his lip.

“
I think … George Havelar … I’ll have someone call Havelar later today. He needs to attend the meeting. And the other loyal business leaders, too. Havelar will find a way, I know he will.”