Forecast (12 page)

“I’ve seen better,” Matthews joked.

“Wish I’d brought my Kodak,” Sutcliffe added.

“
There are people down here who’d pay through the nose to experience the kind of view you lot are looking at so enjoy it while it lasts
.”

“Are the crowds still there?” asked Faraday.

“
I don’t think I’ve seen one person leave. You put on a great show
.”

“Born entertainers,” she replied.

“
Absolutely. Hey, I just had that idiot, Thorndike, on the phone. He’s watching live from Houston. He wanted to know what was taking so long and why there were no images of Fable
-
1 or the Akroid balloon yet
.”

“What did you say?” asked Hennessey.

“
As soon as he asked me, the communication and tracking system came back on and the image of Fable
-
1 appeared on our screen. I just told him to look at his monitor
.”

“Good. Akroid is nearby. I’ll get Claris to put the camera on it.”

“
You do that. It’ll make NASA very happy. Out
.”

Faraday put the solar
-
wing into a nose
-
dive and trained the eye of the camera on the Akroid balloon, watching on her own screen for the images being transmitted back to F1 Mission Control Base and indeed the entire watching world.

The breathtaking heights they’d reached gave Sutcliffe an astonishing sense of physical and mental weightlessness. Overcome with overwhelming sovereignty, he could see, smell, touch, feel and hear the magical empire of space. On either side of the balloon, he observed the extreme intensity of the planet contrasting with the extreme black of space, while the extreme cold of the stratosphere surrounded them. No words could describe how he felt at that moment. He was not a religious man and his worldly perspectives originated from his understanding of science, but he suddenly felt a strange connection with God. The creation of the world plagued him with a series of unanswerable questions which, until now, had never crossed his mind. Was the universe a scientific design or something far greater? At that exact moment, he caught sight of a bright flare far off in the distance.

Hennessey had seen it too and she detected Sutcliffe’s wonder. “Meteoroids can be large pieces of space debris or the size of a pebble, but are quite often the size of a grain of sand. They travel at speeds of approximately forty five miles per second. I hope you made a wish?”

Sutcliffe smiled, the first time since setting off from St. Ives, though no one saw it. “I think my wish has already come true.”

Matthews was listening to their conversation. “I hope none of those meteoroids hit the balloon.”

With the experiments in motion, the Fable
-
1 crew relaxed. From their viewpoint, the world appeared silent and peaceful, motionless and uninhabited. The sun
-
lit terrain of Europe was spread out like an enlarged map, France the easiest to distinguish from the familiar contours of its northern coastline. They stared reflectively at the curvature of the Earth and the breathtaking view of the planet; the most beautiful sight any of them had ever seen.

Stacks of paperwork, files and post
-
it
-
notes were cluttering Mike Townsend’s desk in his small office. The long morning was evident in the collection of coffee cups, full ashtrays and takeaway breakfast wrappers laden on his desk.

The day had been problem after problem, one after another. The Fable
-
1’s GPS tracking device had failed. Communication with the crew had ceased for a nerve
-
racking forty five minutes. Then the men’s toilets had flooded. But at least the solar
-
wing camera was projecting immaculate images of the Fable
-
1 balloon and the crew was safe.

Putting down his pen, he reached his hands behind his head and leaned back in his chair to stretch. Tiredness welled up to vent itself and he let out a loud yawn, his eyes filling with water. Shaking his head to wake himself up, he looked at the framed photograph of his wife Camilla on the wall. He thought about her early that morning when he had left her laying there, her shoulders unveiled, her long wavy hair against the satin pillows. In the photograph, her body was nicely tanned, burned in patches and at some point during the holiday her skin had peeled, he recalled. The photograph revealed a background of old architecture and narrow streets. It had been a day of sangria and slapping mosquitoes and had finished off in style when a Moroccan waiter had serenaded them at their table in a restaurant, much to her embarrassment. Morocco had been their last holiday before the birth. Having a daughter in the family had changed their marriage and their lives. Camilla was proving to be a great mother and he had every confidence in his own fathering abilities. In fact, he couldn’t wait to get home to his family that evening. Which reminded him? Where was that wally, Trev Gable? Over the past few years, Gable had been getting into all sorts of mischief involving scams and poor decision
-
making. Reluctantly, he had given his brother
-
in
-
law a job in the Flight Control Room under the plead of Camilla and had lied to Sutcliffe when he’d told him Trev Gable was a diligent, reliable man who’d be a great asset to the Ground Control team. So where was he? Townsend hadn’t seen him in over an hour. The rascal had neglected his duties and…

Something happened.

Something was happening outside.

Screaming, shouting, car horns blaring, the patter of running feet. Townsend’s heart pounded. It crossed his mind that Gable was out there upsetting the crowd, but he thought again, concluding that they were not the screams of aggravation or pain; they were the screams of panic. He went to the window and stood in disbelief, shocked by what he was seeing. People were scurrying this way and that, incessantly yelling and howling. Mothers and fathers were scooping up their children and abandoning their belongings. Others were falling over each other in the mass exodus of moving bodies. What had spooked them? His eyes passed across the cliff half
-
expecting to see a madman with a machine gun, or a dangerous animal roaming about. Or was it a tsunami? Could it be that Fable
-
1 was falling out of the sky? He felt his stomach drop as he ran to the Flight Control Room and looked up at the large TV screen on the wall. No, Fable
-
1 was still buoyant in the stratosphere, the crew still waving to the solar
-
wing camera.

Townsend hurried outside and saw that many people were gazing up at the huge TV monitors amid the chaos. Not wanting to open the gate, fearing for his safety, he tried to observe the screen. What were they watching? Why weren’t they running like everyone else? Why was everyone else running? Bright sunlight obscured the picture on the screen, but his gut feeling told him it had something to do with whatever was being broadcasted. Townsend spotted Fraser in the crowd staring up at the monitor. Now he was on his way back, skipping in and out of the charging people, his face white.

“Turn on the television,” he said, shutting the gate.

Wordlessly, Townsend followed Fraser to the Flight Control Room and picked up the TV controller. “What channel?”

Fraser looked pale and worried. “All of them.”

A lump formed in Townsend’s throat, as though he had dry
-
swallowed a powdery pill that had lodged in his airway.

Flicking off the Fable
-
1 crew, he tuned the channel into BBC1: “…
at this stage it is not yet known what triggered the attack. What is known is that a few minutes ago the North Korean People’s Army released several nuclear war
-
heads targeted at various cities across the American continent
.”

He flicked to BBC2: “…
confirm that more than thirty nuclear warheads have been launched from the northern provinces of Pyongyang Namdo, Yanggang Do, Chagang Do and Pyongyang Bukto in North Korea, just under twenty minutes ago. Sources say the unprovoked attack was not
…”

ITV: “…
just in. North Korea has released several warheads against the West. The targets in America have not yet been confirmed, but…just a moment…we have just been informed that several more missiles are heading towards countries in Europe. I can now confirm that Europe has been targeted. At this stage, we are unable to say where exactly. What we can tell you is that more than two dozen confirmed missiles are bound for Europe as we speak. This is quite unbelievable
…”

Channel 4: “…
ask the question what kind of response will the US and its allies take and, more importantly, is there enough time to stop these bombs from detonating. Let’s go across to Sally Davies outside Number Ten in London. Sally, has there been any word from the Prime Minister?”

“Not yet. I assume he has only just heard the news himself and is speaking with his security advisors. What is being discussed is anyone’s guess. They could be going over protocols to destroy the nuclear warheads in midair to prevent them detonating in populated areas. At the moment, we don’t even know if the missiles are heading for Great Britain. As for retaliation, well, I think we would have to assume that retaliation is something that would come later when the outcome of this is clearer
…”

Townsend switched the news back to the Fable
-
1 transmission, the crew relaxed and oblivious in the stratosphere. The phones had started to ring. There were six phones within the building. They were all ringing. Too shocked to answer any of them, Townsend put his hands to his temples. I can’t believe this, he thought. His mobile vibrated in his pocket. It made him jump. He took it out. Camilla was the one calling him. He couldn’t speak to her right now. He dropped the phone on the table and then looked about the room. “Where’s my brother
-
in
-
law?”

He turned to Fraser, also starched with terror, and grabbed him firmly by the forearm. “Where’s Trev?” he barked.

“I haven’t seen him for over an hour.”

Townsend thundered out of the Flight Control Room to look for him. Ten minutes later, he came back, without Gable. His mobile phone was vibrating across the table displaying several missed calls on the face. He answered it. “Camilla.”

“
Have you heard the news
?”

“Yes, I have.”

“
Are you coming home
?”

He looked at the image of Fable
-
1 as the solar
-
wing camera continued to circle their balloon. The crew had no idea what was going on and now their lives were in great danger. He had to warn them. “I can’t. Not yet. I have responsibilities here.”

She was sobbing. “
They’re saying that many of the nuclear bombs are heading for Britain.
”

Townsend bowed his head and closed his eyes. “I’ll be right there.”

On the other side of the Pacific, the US President’s security advisors were in disarray as several nuclear warheads sped towards cities across the American continent. The entire Cabinet Room in the West Wing of the White House was like an all
-
in dispute on a football field, uncontrolled tempers flying from one side of the table to the other. The decade
-
long feud between the North Koreans and the superpower nations had always been a temperamental issue. Closed off North Korea had developed short and medium
-
range missiles and chemical weapons. Suspicion over the creation of biological weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles, however, raised alarm in countries all over the world that still bore the wrath of North Korea’s hatred, countries such as the US, South Korea, Japan and China. The year before, US satellite imagery had detected signs that North Korea could be preparing to conduct yet another nuclear test, although the location for the test was unknown. North Korea sought self
-
reliance and having acquired immense prestige around the world, the Koreans had avowed not to yield to western pressure. Was the nuclear attack a testament to their military power?

One of the security advisors charged into the Cabinet Room and interrupted the dispute. “The Koreans have fired a dozen more missiles,” he yelled. “Intelligence confirmed that the missiles are heading for Israel and India. They’re trying to destroy the fucking world!”

The GPS receiver and navigational computer, the radio transmitter, the wireless networking technologies, and all the other sensors collecting temperature and pressure information fizzled out, leaving Fable
-
1 in the dark.

It alarmed Burch. “What was that?”

Sutcliffe tilted his head back in frustration. “Not the duplexer again?”

Tapping the monitor with his palm, Burch shook his head. “No, this is different. We’ve completely lost all power systems. I just can’t understand.”

“What’s that over there?” Faraday was pointing to the horizon.

Something was appearing over France. A large column of dark mass reaching into the sky. Dark cloud curled outwardly from the top of the column and a large head began to materialise.

“What…?” said Sutcliffe.