Star Struck
Page 20
A man leant close to the President and spoke. “A large piece of radioactive space junk is on a collision course with a heavily populated area.”
“Who’s responsible?”
The President’s quail trembled at the touch of his fork.
“Russia, Mr President.”
The quail stopped shaking and was stabbed by the fork in the President’s hand.
“They were launching a sixty-two-million-dollar rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, and it failed to break free of Earth’s orbit.”
The quail jerked and then skid, forced forward by the President’s fork across the plate.
“My God, it’s not coming to us?”
“No, Mr President. It’s on course for Australia.”
The President’s quail settled and was still.
“Get me a phone. Place a call to Australia. I need to inform their Prime Minister. What’s his name again? They keep changing them; I can never remember.”
“Mr Howard, Mr President. But he isn’t in Australia, and his secretary said he was busy.”
“What state event is he attending? I wasn’t advised about it.”
“The English Cricket.”
The President’s fork held the quail firm.
“Paying token allegiance to Britain again?”
The President’s knife severed the quail in half.
“Doesn’t he realise we are the ones with the defence base on his soil?”
“That’s supposed to be hush-hush, Mr President. Best not mention that. He might not know all that goes on at Pine Gap.”
“But he’s the Prime Minister.”
“Yes, but the Australian Senate committee on treaties hasn’t been informed of all we do, which means it’s best if he doesn’t know.”
“Oh, right. That makes sense then.”
“Your advisers suggest that you put through a call to the Prime Minister at Lord’s and tell him that there is an out-of-control satellite, which is basically going to re-enter over southern Queensland, and could cause very considerable damage.”
“What sort of damage?”
40
Postscript
This part is fact:
In 1996, Russia’s Mars 96 Orbiter satellite fuelled with 200g of plutonium failed on launch and fired back towards Earth. The US government tracked the probe’s re-entry and calculated that it was heading with its deadly load of plutonium for Brisbane, Australia, with a population of 1.6 million, and the Gold Coast, which was home to 376,000 permanent residents and an additional high-tourist population.
Impact in either of these centres would have had catastrophic results.
President Clinton notified Australia’s Prime Minister Howard, who informed Mr Borbridge, the then Premier of Queensland.
Mr Borbridge activated the state’s counter-disaster response system, which alerted emergency services and federal agencies to the impending danger. “It was a coordinated disaster plan, which involves everyone in the event of something going wrong,” he said.
“Just as we started to notify other agencies we were told that it wasn’t a problem any more. Fortunately, the Americans had made a serious miscalculation. The trajectory was correct, but the distance was calculated incorrectly, for it went over the top of Queensland.” In something of an understatement he added, “To be told that there’s a very large piece of space junk, which had big bits left in it after re-entry, on a path for southern Queensland—it sends a nasty feeling through you that you don’t expect.”
The US government tracked the re-entry and stated at the time that it had broken up and landed in the Pacific Ocean off South America. However, the public, not affiliated to any government source, witnessed debris in the sky falling to land in southern Chile and Bolivia. With much of the terrain of those countries consisting of steep-sided mountains and difficult to search, there has been no record of recovery of the debris or its dangerous nuclear fuel.
There are occasional press reports out of Chile of people found to be suffering radiation poisoning. These are usually explained away with official statements that suggest the cause of the sudden brief illness and death must have been due to contact with stolen radioactive isotopes. Statistically, such suicidal thefts appear to happen far more regularly in Chile than elsewhere in the world, and the reports I’ve read do not confirm that these stolen radioactive isotopes have been recovered. But, remember, up until the end of 2015, the official word remained: No one has ever been seriously injured by space junk.
In 2018, that verdict is being challenged.
The author of Star Struck is both artist and writer. If you have enjoyed the chapter heading illustrations and would love to learn to paint like Ryn, she has a free online art lesson video gift for you.
If you have enjoyed this ebook, please leave a review.
I had gathered many, mainly positive reader reviews, including one that I loved, from someone who thought that Australia was too small to get lost in.
When I changed my ebook distribution from one distributor to another, I lost all of my reviews, so, I am being from scratch once more, and will be incredibly grateful if you will take the time to review my work.
Thank you.
Cheers, Ryn.
Ryn Shell wrote seven novels of the Fife family, starting with the exciting story of horse and gold thief, Jane Mutta’s sometimes hilarious encounter with a rough early Australian settler, Douglas Fife. I hope, if you have enjoyed Star Struck, you will be kind enough to leave the author a friendly review to tell her that you have appreciated this work, and you will go on to read the Stolen Years, historical fiction series set in Australia from its beginning in 1858 in the novel GOLD by Ryn Shell.
Ryn Shell is an internationally acclaimed artist who has accessed the story lines for her novels from the oral histories of rural and outback families she met during decades of on location landscape painting tours around Australia.
For my Family
In writing of Australia, I would like to begin by paying respect to the first custodians of this land. I acknowledge the Aboriginal Australian and Torres Strait Islanders and the Palawa, Aboriginal Tasmanians. I would also like to pay my respects to the Elders, past and present.
I dedicate my novels to my husband Reg. Without my best friend and husband I could not have written with as much knowledge of love, resilience and Australia.
To our wonderful daughters Leanne and Carla, our grandchildren David, Christopher, Jenny and Hannah, I give you my life-inspired stories.
To my friends, from all cultures, those who have always known Australia as home and those who have made Australia their home, I dedicate my novel series to you and to all who seek to live in harmony in our culturally rich world.
“Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because
fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities;
truth isn’t.”
Mark Twain
While similar events have happened during Australia’s history, names, characters, organisations, places, details and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. The dates of the constructing of the iron ore pelletising plant in Dampier have been altered by two years to fit in with this novel.