The Dark Freeze

by Peter Gregory

  Liz had mentioned her encounter with the meteorite to her boss just before the meeting, then forgotten about it. Dismissed it from her mind. His comments brought the whole experience flooding back.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she replied. ‘It was scary yet exciting too,’ she continued. ‘And I’ve got a meteorite as a souvenir. But thanks for asking.’

  ‘Okay,’ said her boss, ‘but take a few days off if you want.’

  ‘Thanks, but no thanks,’ said Liz. ‘I’d rather be at work.’

  ‘Fine. Then I’ll see you tomorrow,’ said Professor Cecil Vivian Shawcross, striding out of the room. On reaching the door, he paused, turned around and said, ‘Liz, if it’s any comfort I think there’s extraterrestrial life too. I know we haven’t found any yet, but I think we will in the next couple of decades. If this is the only place, even in our galaxy, where there’s not just life, but life that’s fairly clever, that makes us a miracle and after looking at 500 years of astronomical history, I’m disinclined to believe in miracles.’

  ‘Thanks for that,’ said Liz. ‘I’m glad that someone else believes in extraterrestrial life.’

  Liz respected her 49-year-old boss. The six foot five inches tall lanky Lancastrian with square-framed spectacles and an infectious chuckle. Professor Cecil Vivian Shawcross came from a modest, middle-class family in Blackley, North Manchester. He began his studies at a local comprehensive school and achieved such outstanding grades in his GCE ‘O’ levels that he was awarded a scholarship at the prestigious Manchester Grammar School. After obtaining excellent grades in his GCE ‘A’ levels, he went on to study astronomy at Manchester University, graduating with a first class honours degree. Being something of a home bird, he stayed at the same university to get a PhD in astrophysics, followed by a job at the Jodrell Bank Observatory. His curious, inquisitive mind, allied with his pragmatism, served him well, enabling him to rise to his current position as leader of the NEO team. He was a good, well-liked leader. A leader who always listened to everyone’s views before making a decision.

  Professor Cecil Vivian Shawcross loved his parents but hated the names they’d lumbered him with. Cecil and Vivian. He thought such old-fashioned names had disappeared with the Ark. But they were the names of his two grandads, his dearly beloved grandads, and that’s why his parents had chosen them. He wasn’t particularly fond of either name, especially Cecil, and considered having them changed, but decided against it. It would upset his parents. Over time, he got used to Viv. Viv wasn’t too bad. As a cricket lover, his favourite batsman was Viv Richards, one of the finest batsmen the West Indies had ever produced. So he’d left well enough alone and let people call him Viv.

  Alone in the meeting room, Liz wondered why the majority of the meteorites had landed on the coldest, most inhospitable parts of the planet. And, just for an instant, she wondered if the meteorite that had hit her house the previous night had been deliberately sent to kill her.

  5

  Shock Wave

  They waited in silence for the shock wave to strike. The shock wave that would almost certainly destroy them all.

  As astronomers, they knew the devastation an asteroid impact caused. They knew the one that gouged out the massive Meteor Crater in Arizona was just a mere 50 yards across. And they knew that if it hit today, the Meteor Crater asteroid would destroy an entire city. As it approached at eight miles per second, heat from the ball of fire would sear the surface, vaporising any organic life unfortunate enough to be in the vicinity, but most damage would occur after impact. The asteroid would be obliterated, blasting rocks and debris into the air for miles around, rocks and debris that would demolish buildings and homes. The mighty shock wave from the impact would generate winds six times more powerful than the fiercest hurricane. Yet the Meteor Crater asteroid was small – there are millions of much larger asteroids that would destroy not just cities, but entire countries, even whole worlds.

  The asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs and 70 per cent of all life on Earth 65 million years ago was much bigger than the Meteor Crater asteroid. Some seven miles across, it crashed into the Earth with a force equivalent to five billion Hiroshima atomic bombs. But even that was just a piece of galactic dust compared to the 500 mile wide monster that had just vaporised America and, very soon, would destroy the entire planet.

  The shock wave arrived quicker than expected. The whole building shook and shuddered, creaked and groaned, as the shock wave hit, but it didn’t collapse. They were still alive! Suddenly, bright light flooded the room, harsh light from the overhead fluorescent tubes. The power had returned. A buzz of excited conversation filled the air, replacing the eerie silence, as if someone had flicked a switch.

  ‘Right, ladies and gentlemen,’ said Professor Cecil Vivian Shawcross, having to raise his voice to make himself heard above the noise, ‘that was pretty realistic, eh. I think we should congratulate the tech boys on a job well done.’ Polite applause spread around the room. ‘Time to get back to work,’ he continued, ‘and thanks for attending.’

  He didn’t know what to make of these simulations. They’d never had them when he was young but then again, they’d never had many other things either. They simply hadn’t been invented. Technology advanced so rapidly. He remembered his family being one of the few privileged enough to have a telephone. Now, they were virtually obsolete. Everyone had a mobile phone. Or an iPad. Or both.

  Set in a secret underground location in the North West of England, the hi-tech Simulation Chamber also doubled-up as a nuclear shelter. It was built after comet Shoemaker Levy smashed into Jupiter in July 1994, an event too close to home for comfort. Normally, the simulations were held once a year but, because of the recent, unprecedented meteor activity, the frequency had increased to three times a year. Meteor showers and asteroid activity were probably unconnected but they were taking no chances. The stakes were too high.

  The simulations were designed to see how their team would respond if a large, rogue asteroid was detected. To test the procedures they had in place should such an event actually occur. Procedures to calculate whether or not it would hit the Earth and, if it would, the procedures needed to deflect it. To knock it off course. In previous simulations, they’d successfully managed to deflect the asteroid. But not this time. Everything they’d tried had failed. The asteroid was just too big. So they’d had to watch the consequences of failure. To watch what would happen if ever a giant asteroid did hit the Earth. To watch the apocalypse. Watch the end of the world. The end of all life.

  In a way, it was similar to the simulation of a nuclear explosion at the Secret Bunker in Hack Green near Nantwich, Cheshire, a vast, underground blast-proof complex built to house the regional government in the event of a nuclear war. Similar, but much more technologically advanced. And realistic. It was a way to hone their skills. To keep them on their toes. To make them realise the catastrophic consequences of failure. To make the simulations more interesting, they competed with their counterparts in the USA, with Professor Carl Ryan’s NEO team at NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration), to see which team, if any, could deflect the asteroid. This time, both teams had failed miserably.

  Rather than working together in sweetness and harmony, the two teams had a history of discord and disagreement, a history that stretched back to their conflicting views on the trajectory of a rogue asteroid three years earlier. The US team, led by Carl, a strong-willed, self-opinionated individual who was never wrong and loved to be in the limelight, predicted the asteroid had a 50:50 chance of colliding with the Earth, a prediction that not only caused great anxiety but also ensured that he was the centre of media attention for weeks on end. Viv’s team predicted, correctly, that the asteroid would miss the Earth by at least 100,000 miles, a near miss in astronomical terms but safe enough. Viv often wondered if Carl’s team also knew that the asteroid would miss the Earth – after all, they had the same data and Carl was no fool – and t
hat he did it just to hog the limelight. He wouldn’t put it past him. Ever since, there had been an intense rivalry between the two teams, a fierce competition, with each team trying to outdo the other. It would have been unbearable for the losers if one team had succeeded in deflecting the asteroid.

  ‘It’s scary,’ said Liz, turning to the man beside her as they filed out of the top secret Simulation Chamber, ‘to think that something lurking in the vastness of deep space could destroy everything. Wipe out thousands of years of civilisation and seven billion people. In an instant. And, despite our best technologies, there’s nothing we can do to prevent it.’

  ‘You’re right,’ replied Frank. ‘Let’s hope it never happens.’

  ‘But it will,’ thought Liz. ‘It’s just a matter of time.’

  PART 2

  STRANGE FINDS

  In the deepest sense, the

  search for extraterrestrial

  life is a search for ourselves

  Carl Sagan

  6

  Meteorite Hunters

  KARUMPH! The dull thud of the explosion penetrated the stillness of the Arctic night like a knife through butter. Kurt Andersson sprang up from his sleeping bag, grabbed his rifle, poked it through the flap of the tent and peered cautiously into the greyness of the night. At first, all he saw was the snow covered landscape and the dark Arctic sky. Then, as his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he saw it. The large white shape of a polar bear bounding away on all fours. A polar bear that had tripped the perimeter wire and set off the explosive charge, frightening it away. Its keen nose must have detected the smell of meat from their evening meal and, like any predator, it had followed the scent trail looking for an easy meal. The long Arctic winter was a lean time for hungry polar bears and they would take any food on offer, including humans.

  Satisfied that it was safe to venture outside, Kurt left the relative warmth of his tent to reset the perimeter wire. If one polar bear was sniffing around, there might be others. He discarded the spent charge and replaced it with a fresh one. He wasn’t taking any chances.

  As a former member of the Norwegian Special Forces, Kurt Andersson was a specialist in Arctic conditions. He knew the terrain, the weather and what it took to survive in this most inhospitable of places. He’d trained elite Special Forces teams, including the SAS, in cold weather survival techniques, and successfully led several missions to the North Pole on behalf of the Norwegian government.

  Born in Bergen, Norway’s second city, Kurt Andersson had always been a bit of a daredevil, a thrill seeker, a risk taker. It was in his blood. As a teenager, he’d spend all his school holidays alternating between the Norwegian fjords and Norway’s rugged, snow-capped mountains, climbing, skiing and abseiling with his best friend, Henrik Larsson. He too shared similar interests and it came as no surprise when, at the age of 18, both Kurt and Henrik joined the Norwegian army.

  As he turned to walk back towards the tent, the tent with a welcoming yellow glow from the solitary oil lamp, Henrik was standing at the entrance, scanning the snowy waste with night vision goggles. ‘What set it off, Kurt?’ he asked, continuing to scan the snow covered terrain for any signs of movement.

  ‘A polar bear. It must have caught the scent of our evening meal and came to investigate.’

  ‘I didn’t know there were polar bears so far from the sea ice,’ replied Henrik. ‘We’ll have to be more careful in future.’

  At the entrance to the other tent two women stood huddled together. Kurt and Henrik walked over to them.

  ‘What was that bang?’ asked Helga Hoffstadter, a 35-year-old German astrophysicist of some repute from the renowned Max Planck Institute. ‘It sounded like an explosion.’

  ‘It was an explosion,’ said Kurt. ‘A polar bear tripped the perimeter wire and set off the explosive charge. The resulting explosion scared it off.’

  ‘But I thought you said there weren’t any polar bears in this area,’ said Helga, failing to hide the concern and fear in her voice.

  ‘I did, and normally there aren’t. But it’s the Arctic winter and if food is scarce, they forage further afield.’

  ‘Are there likely to be any more?’ asked Helga, still sounding a little apprehensive.

  ‘There may be,’ replied Kurt, ‘but it’s unlikely. Polar bears are solitary animals. Anyway, I’ve reset the perimeter wire just in case.’

  ‘Out here, you can’t afford to be careless,’ interjected Henrik. ‘This year alone several people have been killed by hungry polar bears. Killed because they didn’t take the necessary precautions. Forgetting to arm, or even worse, not setting up a perimeter wire, can be fatal.’

  ‘It’s normally inexperienced foreigners who take chances,’ said Kurt. ‘School trips are the worst. The children, and sometimes the teachers too, think polar bears are harmless, cuddly creatures. They’re not! They’re cunning, calculating, vicious killers that aren’t averse to the taste of human flesh.’

  Kurt Andersson, Henrik Larsson, Helga Hoffstadter and Liz Conway made up the meteorite search team for the Arctic. Governments around the world had collaborated to send search teams to the areas with the most meteorite activity. A USA and Canadian team to Alaska; a Russian team to Siberia; a Chinese team to the Himalayas; an international team to the Antarctic and a European team to the Arctic. Each team comprised four people: a guide who knew the local area; a specialist in cold weather survival techniques – usually an ex-Special Forces soldier – and two scientists.

  The appointment of the guide and the cold weather specialist was out of his hands, but Professor Cecil Vivian Shawcross had been the person charged with the unenviable task of selecting the British scientist for the Arctic team. Dozens had approached him but most were easy to reject: they didn’t have the relevant skills or qualifications. In the end, it came down to a straight choice between Liz Conway and Rupert Templeton-Smythe. His own protégé and Frank Rogers’ bright young star. Both were really keen to go – Liz had been on at him for weeks, imploring, pleading, begging to be chosen. He thought she had the edge, not because she was his protégé, but because an astrobiologist was better suited for the mission than an astrophysicist. Anyway, they already had one astrophysicist on the team. He saw no point in sending two. Before making his decision, Viv explained his reasoning to Rupert’s boss, Frank Rogers. He didn’t want to be accused of nepotism. ‘You’re absolutely right,’ said Frank. ‘Liz is the one who should go.’

  Orbiting satellites had monitored the meteor showers for weeks and pinpointed the areas where most meteorites had fallen. As per Sod’s Law, they weren’t in easy to reach locations, but in remote, impenetrable, hard to reach areas. Despite their difficult locations, these were the areas they’d search first.

  In the Arctic, the area with the highest density of meteorites was a treacherous, uneven region of rubble ice surrounded by a pressure ridge, a jagged ridge of ice caused by the collision of two ice sheets. In a way, it’s a miniature version of what happens when tectonic plates collide to form mountain ranges, like the Himalayas, only on a much smaller, and infinitely faster, scale. Although they only rise about 5 to 10 feet above the sea ice, their sharp, jagged, irregular shape makes pressure ridges extremely difficult to traverse. Many an explorer has suffered a broken leg crossing a pressure ridge. If crossing one alone is dangerous, crossing one hauling a heavily laden sled requires a feat of Herculean proportions. But it was an obstacle they’d have to overcome. Ideally, it would have been preferable if the helicopter had dropped them at the epicentre of the meteorite zone, but the uneven terrain and bad weather made that an impossibility. It was far too risky.

  The harsh Arctic weather didn’t help their search either. It was the beginning of the long polar winter, six months of continual darkness coupled with sub-zero temperatures and bitterly cold, icy winds. Blizzards were a frequent hazard, as were the whiteouts, snowfalls so dense that visibility was zero. The snowf
alls caused another problem too; they covered up the meteorites, making finding them by eye virtually impossible. Specialist detection equipment was needed, equipment to detect iridium.

  Iridium is the smoking gun for the detection of meteorites or meteorite impacts. It is one of the rarest elements on Earth – the Earth’s crust contains just one part per billion of iridium – yet meteorites contain over 500 times this amount. This dichotomy in its distribution makes iridium the DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) of astronomy. An ‘iridium spike’ is the unequivocal, tell-tale sign of a meteorite or meteorite impact. Indeed, it was the iridium-rich sedimentary layer around the crater at Chicxulub that provided compelling evidence for the impact of the massive asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs some 65 million years ago.

  Liz peered out of her tent bleary-eyed. She hadn’t slept well. The morning sky was no different to the night sky. It was just as black. Perhaps that’s why she wasn’t sleeping well. There was nothing to distinguish night from day. Nothing to tell her body clock when to sleep and when to wake. Kurt and Henrik had already loaded the supplies on to the two sleds and were busy making the final preparations to leave, fastening the harnesses from the sleds around their waist. After last night’s scare, both men had their rifles slung over their shoulders, just in case they encountered any more polar bears.

  ‘Right,’ shouted Kurt. ‘Is everyone ready?’ Three heads nodded simultaneously. Three heads completely covered except for the eyes, nose and mouth. Covered to protect them from the bitterly cold, Arctic temperature. And the biting, icy wind. They were ready to go.

  Dressed in colourful hi-tech clothing, they stood out like beacons in the night. Four brightly coloured, fluorescent figures in a world of white. Kurt in bright red, Henrik in blue, Liz in yellow and Helga in orange. Brightly coloured gear to make them easier to spot in the case of an emergency. ‘And,’ thought Liz, ‘easy for a polar bear to spot too.’