Impact wf-3

by Douglas Preston

  "It was very small and moving fast. It converted some matter, but that matter accreted onto it and all of it exited the Earth on the way out. That's why there wasn't a huge explosion of ejecta, magma, and so forth when it emerged. No shock wave developed. It was like a hot knife through butter, essentially. Our geologists tell us the vacuumed-out hole sealed up behind it. The Moon, on the other hand, was a much bigger chunk. It was too fast to convert the Moon, but it was big enough to generate a huge shock wave that rang the Moon like a bell and ejected a stream of debris."

  "So all this alien artifact has to do," the DIA said, "is lob another strangelet at the Earth and we're dead."

  "That's right. The key is speed. If it's tossed at us at a slow enough speed to be trapped inside the Earth, we're finished."

  A long silence settled in the room. "Any other questions?"

  No one spoke. Finally the president said, "Why? Why is it attacking us?"

  "We don't know. We don't even know if this is an attack. Maybe it's a mistake. Bad programming. It's been suggested . . ." he paused, "that the Deimos Machine might have been monitoring our planet for some time, picking up radio and television broadcasts and analyzing them. Perhaps it concluded we were a dangerous species that needed to be eliminated. Or it may have been placed there by a hyper-aggressive alien species which wanted to eliminate any intelligent life that might develop in our solar system, nip a challenge in the bud so to speak. It might also have just been woken up. The first shot on April fourteenth occurred only three weeks after Deimos was illuminated with radar from the Mars Mapping Orbiter."

  The president paced in front of the screen showing the Deimos Machine. "Any idea what these globes are, this tube?"

  "We can't begin to analyze it."

  Another round of pacing. "All right, what's the recommendation of the OSTP? What the hell are we going to do?"

  "Mr. President, we have no recommendation."

  A short, shocked silence. "That's not what I asked you to do," said the president, exasperation in his voice. "I asked for actionable advice."

  Lockwood cleared his throat. "Some problems are so far beyond our experience, so intractable, that it would be irresponsible to 'recommend' anything. This is one of those problems."

  "Surely you could come up with a plan to attack it--nuke it, whatever. General Mickelson?"

  "Mr. President, I'm a military man. My instincts are to fight. I started off arguing for a military solution. But I've been persuaded by Dr. Lockwood that any aggressive move would be dangerous. Even the discussion of aggression might provoke another attack. The Deimos Machine might somehow be able to monitor our communications."

  "I don't accept that."

  "That machine could destroy us in a heartbeat. We're sitting ducks. Powerless. Any military response would take years to plan and launch and would be obvious, even if conducted under the tightest secrecy. Eventually we would have to loft something into space and it would take nine months to get to Mars. We can't imagine that machine just sitting there waiting to be hit."

  The president looked at the director of NASA. "Nine months? Is that right?"

  "At least. And the next window of opportunity for a major Mars launch is nearly two years off."

  "Sweet Jesus."

  "All we can do," said Mickelson, "is gather more information about the artifact in a careful, nonaggressive fashion."

  "We don't have time," the president said. "You said it might fire again in three days. That thing's like the sword of Damocles hanging over our damn heads!"

  Mickelson spread his hands.

  The president swore loudly, his cool blown. "Anyone else got a bright idea?"

  Ford rose.

  "Who are you?"

  "Wyman Ford, ex-CIA. I was sent undercover to Cambodia to investigate the impact crater--or rather the exit hole."

  "Right. You're the guy who blew up the mine."

  "Mr. President, this isn't a problem just for the United States. The whole world has to confront it. We've got to put aside our differences. We need a massive mobilization of the world's technological resources, the best and the brightest minds, a full court press. And in order to do this, everyone must know what we face here. The world must know."

  There was an immediate hubbub of protest. The president waved them all silent. "So, you think people aren't panicked enough, is that it? Haven't you been watching the television?"

  "Yes."

  "A massive electromagnetic pulse from that strike is causing much of the world's power grids and computer networks to crash. We're receiving reports of suicide bombings across the Middle East and a massacre of Christians in Indonesia. We've got some people right in this country gathering in churches, waiting for the Rapture. And you want to panic them more?"

  "Without panic nothing will get done."

  "We could be looking at nuclear war."

  "It's a risk we've got to take."

  "That's not a risk I'm prepared to take," the president said, his voice clipped. "Going public is not an option."

  "It's not only an option," said Ford, "it will soon be a fact. And all of you in this room need to be ready."

  And he began to explain what he had done with the real hard drive.

  95

  Fuller rose slowly from his chair, staring at the gun, his face a mask of confusion and shock. "What the hell--?"

  "Easy now," Straw said. "Nobody's going to get hurt. Please raise your hands and stand up. No heroics."

  The guard raised his hands.

  "Abbey, take his weapon."

  Abbey tried to control her hammering heart. This was even more frightening than being on the boat in the storm. She reached around the guard, unsnapped a keeper, and removed a revolver from a holster around his waist. Then she removed a nightstick from the belt and what seemed to be a can of Mace.

  "What in hell do you think you're doing?" Fuller asked, his voice low.

  "I'm really sorry, but it'll all be clear in a moment." Straw remained seated, his hand resting on the pistol. "Right now, you do what we say, nice and easy. It's for a good cause. Believe it or not, we're nice people."

  The guard scowled, looking around at the three of them in turn. "Nice? You people are fucking nuts."

  "Now please open the door and introduce us to Dr. Simic. From now on, Fuller, I won't be repeating myself, so listen carefully and hop to."

  Abbey was taken aback. She had never seen her father like this: so calm, determined--and scary.

  "Right." The guard turned, punched a code into a set of buttons on a panel, and opened the door. They stepped into a cinder block corridor that ended in a vast, hangar-like space under the dome. In the middle stood a giant parabolic dish on a rusty scaffolding of iron struts. The drumming of the rain and the buffeting of the wind filled the space with a muffled moaning noise that sounded eerie, like they were in the belly of some great beast.

  A woman was sitting on a rolling chair before a bank of old-fashioned-looking consoles, dials, knobs, and oscilloscopes. She wasn't paying attention to them; instead, she was playing a computer game on an iMac sitting to one side.

  "Jordan!" she said, rising in astonishment "What's this? Visitors?" Simic was a slender, surprisingly young woman with a cascade of brown hair, no makeup, and a pair of deep gray eyes. She wore tight black jeans and a striped cotton shirt, which somehow gave her the look of a college student.

  "Uh, Sarah? He's got a gun," said Fuller.

  "A what?"

  Her father wagged the revolver. "A gun."

  "What the hell?" Simic jumped back.

  "Take it easy," said Straw. "You're Dr. Simic, the station manager?"

  "Yes, yes I am," she stammered.

  "You know how to operate this dish?"

  "Yes."

  "I apologize for the intrusion, but it can't be helped." He turned to Abbey. "Tell Dr. Simic what you would like her to do."

  96

  Simic stared at Abbey, her gray eyes settling down into a steady gaze.
"Is this some kind of joke?"

  "We're quite serious," said Abbey. "I need you to reposition this dish."

  After a moment, Simic said, "All right."

  "You're going to point it at Deimos. You know Deimos, one of the moons of Mars? You can do that, right?"

  Simic recrossed her arms. The look of surprise on her face ebbed away, replaced by hostility. "Maybe."

  "Yes or no? I imagine you can get the coordinates of Deimos's current position off the Internet."

  "Maybe if you tell me what's going on--"

  Straw raised the gun, pointing it up. "Dr. Simic? Please answer her questions and do exactly what she says. Understood?"

  "Yes." Simic's face remained steady, unintimidated. "I can point the dish at Deimos. If you could just tell me what it is you want, it would help me help you."

  Abbey considered this. It was at least worth a try.

  "You saw what happened to the Moon tonight?"

  "The asteroid strike?"

  "That was not an asteroid strike. It wasn't natural at all. It was a warning shot. A demonstration of power."

  "But . . . of whose power?"

  "A while ago, the Mars Mapping Orbiter satellite imaged a device on Mars's smallest moon, Deimos. A device that had been there a long time, maybe long before Homo sapiens appeared on Earth. Built by an alien race. This device appears to be a weapon, and it fired that shot at the Moon. It wasn't a normal asteroid--it was a chunk of strange matter, a strangelet. You saw what it looked like--the projectile passed right through the Moon and came out the other side."

  Simic looked at her and swallowed hard, her gray eyes full of skepticism.

  "Two months ago," Abbey went on, "the device on Deimos also fired a shot at the Earth. It passed right over here and struck Shark Island, went through the Earth, and emerged in Cambodia."

  "Where have you gotten all this . . . information?"

  "We have access to classified government data from the National Propulsion Facility."

  Simic blinked. "Frankly, this story of yours is crazy and absurd, and I have grave doubts about your sanity."

  "Be that as it may," said Abbey. "What you're going to do is point this dish at Deimos and I'm going to send a message to that alien device."

  Simic's mouth worked. "A message? As in a telephone call?"

  "More or less."

  "What message?"

  The moment of truth had arrived. A feeling of weary panic overwhelmed her. What would she say? The long, long night flashed before her mind, the attack on the island, the chase, the terrifying fight at Devil's Limb, the meat-smack of the bow striking the killer and sending him to his death in the roiling ocean.

  And suddenly she knew exactly what message to send. The answer lay in what had happened that night. So simple, so logical--so perfect. Or . . . perhaps disastrous.

  97

  Abbey stood behind Simic as she went online with her Mac and searched various databases, looking for real-time orbital data on Deimos.

  "Mars is in the sky and Deimos is in front of it," she said. "Ideal conditions to make the, ah, call." More typing, and then Simic scratched out some calculations by hand on a scrap of paper. She copied down the celestial coordinates and brought the piece of paper over to an old computer keyboard with a bulbous monitor.

  "What's the procedure?" Abbey asked.

  "It's simple. I just type in the celestial coordinates and the computer calculates the actual position in the sky and aims the dish at it." She rapped away on the keyboard with her long fingers; the screen called for a password, she typed it in. Finally she stood up, went over to a gray panel festooned with switches, and flicked several. For a moment, nothing happened. And then, with a screech of metal and a humming of electric motors, the huge dish began to turn on greased gears, tilting slowly upward, moving almost imperceptibly. The meshing gears and creaking metal sounds filled the interior of the dome, temporarily drowning out the sounds of the storm. Several minutes passed and, with a clunk, the dish stopped. Simic rapped on the keyboard, read off a string of numbers, and sat back.

  "All right. It's pointed."

  "So how do I send a message?"

  Simic thought for a moment. "We use a special frequency to communicate directly with commsats. Mostly for calibration purposes, although we did use it back when we were one of the Earth Stations in contact with the Saturn mission. I suppose we could use that channel."

  She paused. Abbey thought she detected perhaps a faint glimmer of sympathy, if not interest, among the skepticism stamped on the woman's face.

  "Do you want to send a voice message . . . or, ah, send it in written form?"

  "Written. If it responds, will you be able to capture it?"

  "If it responds . . ." She paused. "I would think that the 'alien artifact' would be smart enough to respond on the same frequency, using the same ASCII coding scheme. Assuming, of course, it can read and write English." She cleared her throat ostentatiously. "If you don't mind me asking . . . are you some kind of religious cult?"

  Abbey returned the look. "No, although I can see why you might think that."

  Simic shook her head. "Just asking."

  "Can you capture a reply?"

  "I'll set it up for duplex transmission. If a message comes back, it'll print on that printer there. We'll need paper." She turned to Fuller. "Hand me a stack from that cabinet over there, will you, Jordy?"

  "Right," said Fuller.

  "I'll get it," said Jackie, stepping past Fuller and opening the drawer. She pulled out a thick stack of paper, handing it to Simic.

  "That should be enough for an alien War and Peace," Simic said dryly, loading it into the tray.

  "When you send the message," said Abbey, "make sure it's at full power. Mars is a lot farther away than a commsat in geostationary orbit."

  "I understand," said Simic. Her fingers rattled over the keyboard, she checked the switches and knobs on the old metal console, adjusted a few dials, then sat back. "It's all set up."

  "Good." Abbey took a piece of paper and scribbled two words on it. "Here's the message."

  Simic picked it up and examined it for a long time. She raised her gray eyes and locked on Abbey's. "Are you sure this is wise? Assuming what you say is true, this strikes me as an exceedingly dangerous, or perhaps unfortunate, message to send."

  "I have my reasons," said Abbey.

  "All right." She swiveled around in her chair and poised her fingers over the keyboard, pausing. And then, with a nod, she typed the two-word message into the keyboard and hit return. Then she stood up, adjusted a few dials, examined an oscilloscope, and threw another switch.

  "Message sent." She leaned back in the chair.

  The seconds went by. The sound of the storm filled the room. "Well," said Fuller, his voice laden with sarcasm, "the phone's ringing at the other end but no one's answering."

  "Mars is ten light-minutes away," said Abbey. "It's going to take twenty minutes for a response."

  She found Simic looking at her curiously, and with a faint glimmer of respect.

  Abbey kept her eyes on an old clock ticking away above the console. Everyone stood unmoving: her father, Jackie, Fuller. The storm shook the old dome. If anything it sounded worse, like a monster pawing and batting the dome, trying to get in. As she watched the clock sweeping around the dial, doubts came crowding back. The message was all wrong, maybe even dangerous. God knows what it might trigger. And now they would be in trouble for what would surely be described as an armed takeover of a government facility. Her father's new boat was at the bottom of the ocean and he was going to be charged as the ringleader, the man carrying the weapon--a felony. She'd ruined her life, her friend's, and her father's. For a message that wouldn't work or might have some horrible, unintended effect.

  The second hand of the clock swept its way endlessly around the dial.

  Maybe Jackie was right. They should have let the government take care of the problem. Ford was in Washington, no doubt straightening eve
rything out. On top of that, the message was idiotic, the plan was too simple, it'd never work. This is some crazy-ass message, all right. What had she been thinking?

  "It's been twenty minutes," said Fuller, examining his watch. "And E.T. ain't phoning home."

  Just then the dusty old printer began to clatter away.

  98

  Ford explained everything, from start to finish--except where he'd sent the hard drive. "All of you here are treating this like a national-security emergency," he said. "It isn't. It's a planetary-security emergency. You need new thinking. That's why I sent the hard drive--the real one--to the press, as well as backup DVDs of the same information to a number of news outlets and organizations. You can't stop it. But you can prepare for it. I set it up so that you have about three days before the news breaks. You have seventy-two hours to prepare for it, to contact heads of state, figure out a coherent response. Yes, the world will panic. You're going to need that panic. Nothing big ever gets done except in crisis mode. Now you have your crisis: use it."

  The national security advisor, Manfred, rose, his face drawn, his eyes icy, his lips drawn back to expose small white teeth. "To clarify: you distributed this classified material to the press?"

  "Yes. And not just the press."

  Manfred made a sharp gesture to the two duty officers standing at the door. "Take this man into custody. I want you to find out from him who's got the information and I want its release prevented."

  Ford looked at the president but he wasn't going to stop it. As the duty officers stepped forward, Lockwood suddenly spoke. "I think we should discuss what Ford is saying. Don't dismiss it out of hand. We're in uncharted territory here."

  The NSA turned on him. In a cold, clipped voice, Manfred said: "Dr. Lockwood, you of all people should understand the meaning of the word 'classified.' " He emphasized it with a tug on the knot of his tie.

  The duty officers took Ford, one by each arm. "Come with us, sir."

  "You're falling into the old game," said Ford quietly. "Listen, people: the Earth is under attack. That weapon can destroy us in the blink of an eye. In three more days Deimos will be oriented to fire at us again--and this time it may be for keeps. Everyone dies. Extinction. Gone."