Oli, A Very New Moon

by Carl Derham

CHAPTER 5

  Rock ‘n’ roll

  “Mr President Sir, this is Doctor Conway at GASP. I’m afraid that our calculations have been verified. The asteroid will strike the earth somewhere in the region of the West coast of Africa on the morning of February 14th. Destruction will be absolute.”

  Silence.

  “Mr President?”

  “And you’re absolutely certain?”

  “Yes Sir. Absolutely.”

  “Thank you, Doctor Conway.”

  The line went dead.

  “Well Robbie,” said Oli, hurtling through the vastness of space. “I suppose that we’d better tell them that we’ve got this one.”

  They’d been listening in on the President's secure line. They were four and a half days into the journey home. Robbie decided that rather than have a global panic, they would attempt to convince the President that an out of work musician in a space ship left on Earth twelve and a half thousand years ago was going to stop a 255 kilometre wide asteroid from hitting the earth.

  “D’you think he’ll buy it?” asked Oli.

  “Let’s call him and find out,” said Robbie.

  The sound of a ringing tone filled the control room.

  “Yes, this is the President.”

  “Ah, hi,” Oli said. “Look, this is going to sound a bit far fetched, but you have to trust me.”

  “Who is this?” barked the President.

  “I’m Oli and I’m in a spaceship bound for Earth. We have the ability to stop that rock from hitting the planet and I’ll be there in one day. You have to hold off telling the public for twenty four hours.”

  “How did you get this number? Who the hell are you?”

  Robbie cut the line.

  Doctor Conway and his assistant were among the select few who knew the truth. Following the meeting in Washington, he had been flown back to his observatory to keep track of the asteroid. The President decided that it would be a good call to wait one more day, not because of Oli’s phone call, but because the Yankees were playing the Redskins that evening and if he was going to die along with everyone else, he wanted to enjoy one more game.

  The two burly FBI agents outside Doctor Conway’s door were as silent as ever. They didn’t know why these people were being detained in their office. They were instructed to bring regular meals from the local five-star Player Palace and that was all the information that they required. Doctor Conway had tried to convince them that there was a rock the size of Florida on its way to spell the end for humanity, but that seemed to be a little out of the range of the average FBI agents imagination, so he’d resigned himself to the fact that they were all going to die. At least he would get to spend a few days with Catherine his wife, and their two adorable kids. He’d devoted his life to searching for the planet killer, the existence of which was inevitable. Four years at Cambridge, then another three years for his masters, and a PhD on placement at various observatories around the world. His PhD had been written on the construction of the solar system. It was while researching his doctorate that he was amazed to discover just how many pieces of rock were floating about in the asteroid belt, left over from the early days of formation. He began to map the largest of these asteroids, naming them and projecting their courses for the next one hundred years. He soon realised that the road on which he had set out, was going to become a lifetime's work. He discovered that the rocks were cruising through space, between the inner and outer planets and he came to the conclusion that on the whole, they would probably not alter their orbit to cross the path of the earth. But one day, he was sitting on his porch with a cold beer, watching his son Adam playing in the garden. He had made a circle out of string and placed some marbles in the centre and was trying to knock the marbles out with other marbles. Doctor Conway was proud of his boy’s ability to entertain himself and a smile appeared on his face. Then, as Adam managed to hit one of the marbles and it flew out of the ring, the smile suddenly disappeared.

  From that moment on, he had devoted his life to searching the skies for a rogue asteroid that had been knocked off its orbital course. It was difficult to get the funding because nobody in power took the threat seriously. It always astounded him that they would spend billions of dollars, developing new ways to kill each other, but could barely scrape together one million to detect something that could wipe out their entire species. But now that he’d succeeded in his work and had found the asteroid, he realised that he hadn’t given a moment's thought to the action he would take if he succeeded. He just sat there, dwelling on the image of his son playing marbles, hoping that he would actually get a chance to see his family before the end.