Escaping Yellowstone

by Larry LaVoie

  Lisa looked at him as if she were studying him. “My dad says you’re a nice guy. You promise to be on your best behavior?”

  Cody laughed and held up three fingers in a Boy Scout pledge. “On my honor as an Eagle Scout.”

  “You were an Eagle Scout, no way.”

  “Went to Washington DC for the Jamboree my senior year in high school,” Cody said. “I don’t mention it much, people think I’m enough of a dork being a geologist.” He picked up his suitcase.

  “You pack light,” Lisa said.

  “A computer, flip flops, swim trunks and shorts. If I recall from the last time I was on Hilo, you don’t need much clothing.”

  Lisa laughed. “Winter is coming. It may get down to 70 degrees.”

  “That’s July weather in Yellowstone. I think I can handle it.”

  Lisa showed him around her modest apartment. “I usually spend the weekdays here and the weekends in Honolulu. How long are you going to be here?”

  “That depends,” Cody said.

  “On what?”

  “Whether you get tired of me before the week is up.”

  Lisa opened a door to the spare room. “Put your things in here. Let’s stop and get dinner. Then we can head up the mountain, unless you’re too tired from the flight.”

  “Dinner. I could handle that,” Cody said, “but I’m paying. I don’t want my visit to be a burden.”

  Lisa grabbed his hand and led him to the door. “You just don’t want to be a kept man. You don’t see chivalry like that often.”

  “What can I say, my mother trained me well.”

  Lisa pulled up to a food-truck in a parking area near the ocean. “You’ll like this. It’s quick and has a Hawaiian flare. I’d take you somewhere fancy, but you’re on my turf and this is what I eat.”

  “No need to apologize. I’m game for anything, but you do know we call these things roach coaches on the mainland.”

  “Careful. Ailana could be offended by a remark like that.”

  “Lisa, I missed that big smile,” a dark-haired woman who must have weighed two hundred pounds said with a big grin.

  “Ailana, I want you to meet my friend Cody. He’s visiting from the mainland.

  “Nice to meet you Ailana.”

  “I bet you are hungry. After that airline food you need to get some good cooking,” Ailana said. “You came to the right place.”

  “You come highly recommended,” Cody said. He turned to Lisa. “You order for me, I’m not a picky eater.”

  “We’ll have Panko Prawns and Teriyaki Chicken for appetizers and a large Ahi Yellowfin Tuna for him and a medium for me.” She looked at Cody. “Or you can have Mahi, Ahi and Prawns.”

  “I told you whatever you order is fine.”

  “You two take a seat and I’ll have it right out. I have a good Hawaiian Rose’ if you like or─”

  “We’re headed up the mountain,” Lisa said. “Give us one of those pineapple drinks you make without the alcohol.”

  “You don’t mind, do you?” Lisa asked. “When you see the drive, you’ll understand why it’s best to do it sober.”

  “Am I keeping you from your work?”

  “No, I have the day off,” Lisa said. “I wanted to bring you to the mountain after dark so you can get a feel for what my world is like. Some of my students will be up there.”

  “What do you think?” Lisa asked, holding up her drink.

  “It tastes like Hawaii,” Cody said. He touched his paper cup to hers, “To a beautiful girl, on a beautiful island, on a beautiful day.”

  “Now you’re trying to make me blush,” Lisa said.

  He looked in her eyes. They were as blue as the Pacific.

  “You know when you called a few weeks ago I was feeling pretty sorry for myself. Right now, I feel great. I’m glad I came.”

  “Me, too,” she said, touching her drink to his again. “Here’s to a good visit.”

  Keck Observatory

  The sun was setting as Lisa pulled into her parking space at the top of Mauna Kea. They were above the clouds on a perfect moonless night. “I wanted to bring you up here tonight,” she said. “We’re going to have a great view of the heavens.”

  “Somehow I think any night looking at the stars with you would be perfect.”

  “Now you are just being corny,” Lisa said.

  “You must be important. You have your name on a parking space.”

  “One of the perks for working the graveyard shift.”

  “Come on, I’ll introduce you to my students.” She led Cody into the building. She stopped inside at the bottom of a staircase. “This is it,” she said. “The telescope weighs 300 tons and has a ten-meter lens, that’s about thirty-two and a half feet. Students come from around the world to work here. Right now, we are discovering, cataloging, and plotting the orbits of near-earth objects. We call them NEOs. This is where I discovered Dark Angel and this guy coming down the stairs is Ashlar Shari, a graduate student out of UC Berkley. He’s the one who came up with the name.”

  “Dr. Wilson,” Ashlar said, coming down the stairs, “I thought you were taking the night off.”

  “Ashlar, I would like you to meet a good friend of mine, Dr. Dakota Street. He’s a volcanologist stationed in Yellowstone National Park.”

  “It is good to make your acquaintance, Dr. Street.” Ashlar extended his hand.

  Cody shook his hand. “Everyone calls me Cody. Not even my students call me doctor.”

  “So, you are a geologist who specializes in the study of volcanos. We are nearly sitting on top of a volcano that has been erupting for my lifetime.” Ashlar said.

  “I spent some time at the Kilauea Observatory when I was still a student.”

  “Then you already know we have a volcano on the island.”

  “Yes, it was erupting when I was a student. I haven’t been back here in ten years. This time I’m avoiding volcanoes. Lisa promised to show me the stars.” He smiled at Lisa.

  “Did Dr. Wilson tell you she discovered an asteroid and let me name it?”

  “I think she mentioned it.”

  “Well, I have discovered an asteroid also.”

  “A perfect segue into why I brought Cody up here,” Lisa said. “Ashlar, why don’t you lead the way and you can explain what we do here.”

  “Follow me,” Ashlar said. He led them into an office. “This is where I do the computer simulations. It is not like the old days where you had to pick a spot in the sky and take a picture of it over several months and then overlay negatives to see if there is an object moving through space. Now it is all done with a computer. We still have to pick the spot and we can look up at the stars if we want, but the computer does the boring stuff. Let me show you.” He brought up a screen on his computer. “This is an image of Dark Angel taken two months ago.” He brought up another screen. This is Dark Angel today. We can overlay the images.” He typed a few keys. “And here we have a composite. You see how far Dark Angel has moved.” He brought up another screen. “This is Demon, an asteroid that is traveling with Dark Angel. You see it is much smaller and caught in the gravitational field of Dark Angel. We think it will converge about the same time it comes under the earth’s gravitational influence. They look like they are almost touching, but Demon is actually about twenty-five thousand miles from the larger body.”

  Cody watched the simulation play out. It showed the larger asteroid nearing earth. As it came closer the moon appeared and seemed to travel on a converging path with the asteroid. It seemed like they would collide, but the larger asteroid passed between the moon and the earth.

  “That was close,” Cody said.

  Lisa looked at Ashlar. “Show him the other one.”

  Ashlar hesitated. “Dr. Wilson…”

  “It’s okay. He needs to see it.”

  Ashlar brought up another simulation. “This is a worst-case scenario. It’s not good.”

  At first the simulation looked the same but as the larger asteroid a
pproached the earth’s moon the tiny moon traveling with Dark Angel collided with it and it in turn hit the moon in a bright flash.

  “What just happened?” Cody asked.

  “I’ll slow it down,” Ashlar said. “You see here the two asteroids are traveling together. This is Dark Angel and this is Demon. As they approach the moon the gravity of the earth is pulling at them and the gravity of the moon is also tugging at them. They are passing in a zone where both gravitational fields are trying to capture them. This simulation shows the earth’s gravity winning and Demon crashes into Dark Angel, but they are so close to the moon that they all collide right here.” He stopped the simulation. It showed the two asteroids skipping off the surface of the moon and then continue in a different trajectory.

  “Where is it headed?” Cody asked.

  “We haven’t gone that far,” Lisa said. “Show him, Ashlar.”

  Ashlar moved the simulation a few frames ahead. “What concerned us is the moon’s orbit around earth. It appears to have changed slightly.”

  “Slightly, what does that mean?” Cody asked.

  “You understand this is a simulation with only ninety-one percent probability. The first simulation has a ninety-nine percent probability, based on everything we know.”

  “Understood,” Cody said, “but that’s only an eight percent difference in probability. One appears to be no problem, the other could be catastrophic, am I right?”

  “I’m still working on what it means to shift the moon’s orbit. You are probably aware that each year the moon drifts farther from the earth. Simulations have shown that the moon was once a mere fourteen thousand miles from earth and now it’s about a quarter of a million miles away. The impact will not bring it back to where it was by any means. The asteroid just isn’t big enough to do that, but it could move it a mile closer. This would of course raise havoc on our shores because tides would be higher. Not much, but enough to put some areas underwater at high tide that previously were not.”

  “But that’s not going to happen,” Cody said.

  “I wouldn’t say not,” Ashlar said. He looked at Lisa for approval for what he was about to say. She nodded.

  “We are going to rerun the data, but the closer Dark Angel gets the numbers are shifting toward an impact with the moon. It’s like trying to hit a bullet with a bullet, but we can’t rule it out. There are three Government offices checking our calculations for accuracy. The final determination will come from NASA’s PDCO.”

  “PDCO?”

  “Planetary Defense Coordination Office,” Lisa said. “Once all the data is in and if there is a threat, the PDCO determines the severity of the threat and informs the public through FEMA and other Government agencies. We are just a small piece of the puzzle.”

  “The first piece,” Ashlar added proudly. “We have to find them before we know if they are a risk.”

  “So you’re moving toward probable impact with the moon?” Cody said cautiously.

  Ashlar nodded.

  “When?” Cody asked.

  “December 22,” Lisa said.

  “This year?” Cody asked incredulously.

  “This is why I can’t take time off right now,” Lisa said, “and why I wanted you to come here and see for yourself.”

  “I don’t understand. Why would I doubt you?” Cody said.

  “You’re a geologist,” Lisa said. “What do you think would happen if the moon shifted slightly in its orbit?”

  “I think it might cause havoc on land as well as sea,” Cody said. “I’ve been measuring the tidal effect in the Yellowstone Caldera. We see slight movement, but have never been able to connect increased activity with so-called land tides. The data isn’t accurate enough to tell whether the moon is causing the rise and fall of the land over the caldera.”

  “If there is a connection, and if the impact happens, and if the moon orbits closer to the earth the way the model shows, you’ll have a chance to find out,” Ashlar said. “This could be a life changing discovery.”

  “You have a lot of ifs in that assumption,” Cody said. “I’m not going to hold my breath.” Cody saw the disappointment on Ashlar’s face. “Still, I’ve read a few papers on the subject. We know major earthquakes can trigger other earthquakes thousands of miles away. We proved that back in 1964 when a powerful earthquake struck Alaska. A few hours later as the wave from the earthquake reached the United States, a swarm of earthquakes were recorded in Yellowstone. The USGS was able to prove they were a result of the earthquake in Alaska three thousand miles away. There has been speculation that earth tides could cause earthquake swarms, but I think it’s stretching the science. The only thing we know for certain is the gravitational tug on the earth by our moon causes the earth to bulge a few feet at the equator. That’s not much for a body the size of the earth and also doesn’t account for the centrifugal force from the earth’s rotation around its own axis. You can see where I’m going with this. Proving anything is nearly impossible.”

  Cody could talk for hours on the subject, and the simulation Ashlar had showed him, while interesting, was a simulation based heavily on assumptions.

  “Back in the eighties,” Cody continued, “some sensitive satellite equipment was installed on the Twin Towers in New York City. They showed the towers not only raised as the earth and moon rotated past each other, but swayed a few inches. This happened twice a day just like ocean tides. This is where the theory of earth tides gets any credibility at all.” He looked at Lisa. “The first time we spoke I was interested in the possible affect a close passing asteroid would have on the magma pool, but you convinced me it wouldn’t be large enough for a measurable impact. You convinced me there is nothing to worry about.”

  “Only if the asteroid impacts the moon enough to change its orbit. This is highly speculative, but I thought you would be interested.”

  “You are just covering all your bases,” Cody said, kidding. “A true scientist always leaves room for the unexpected.”

  Lisa laughed. “Thank you, Ashlar. Good work.”

  “And I have a new respect for what astronomers do,” Cody said to Lisa. “Can I see the rest of the place?”

  “I thought you’d never ask,” Lisa said. She turned to Ashlar. “Forward the latest simulation to JPL and PDCO. I’ll talk to Martin Downing at NASA. We don’t want to panic anyone, just give them the data and see if they come up with the same possibilities we have.”

  “I’ll take care of it,” Ashlar said.

  Cody yawned and checked his watch. With the change in time zones he had been up nearly twenty-four hours. “Any chance we can continue this tomorrow,” Cody said to Lisa. “I’m not sure I’m going to be very attentive much longer.”

  “Jet lag,” Lisa said. “I’ll get you home so you can get some sleep.”

  As Lisa drove her Mini Cooper down the curvy road from the observatory they would be dropping in elevation over 9,000 feet. She slowed as she passed through a low cloud layer. By the time she reached the bottom of Observatory Road and turned on Saddle Road she could hear Cody softly snoring.

  Chapter 11

  Yellowstone Park Headquarters, September 30

  Doug Jennings didn’t like the distraction from his graduate work. Cody had called from Hawaii and asked him to pull some old records from the archives. Not all the records on the Yellowstone Caldera had been digitized and stored in the cloud, meaning the digging would take days, and should have been assigned to an undergraduate, but all of them had been cut and were back to school. He was the only one left to do Cody’s dirty work. Earth Tides, what a waste of time, he thought. For the better part of a day he had worked on everything except what his boss had requested. Finally, nearing the end of the day, he opened a filing cabinet and pulled out half a dozen overstuffed folders. “I haven’t got time for this shit,” Doug complained as he opened the first file.

  Cody had asked him to take the files to the Administration office and use their digital scanner to transfer the paper docu
ments into a digital file so Cody could access them from his computer in Hawaii. He loaded the files in a box and packed them down the hall. He set the box on the floor and grabbed the door handle. The door was locked. What the hell, I guess Cody will just have to wait until tomorrow.

  ***

  Hilo, Hawaii

  The mornings, after Lisa had worked all night, gave Cody time to catch up on his work. He considered working on his resumé, but he kept putting it off. From his laptop he had access to the YVO site and sat with a cup of coffee in Lisa’s apartment checking out recent earthquake activity in the caldera. There had been 514 quakes measured that week and 319 had been under Yellowstone Lake. None of the data was unusual. Earthquake swarms tended to happen at certain times every year and the location under the lake was one of several areas in the caldera where they had shown up this year. The strongest quake in the past week measured 3.7 on the Richter scale, a universal method for measuring the magnitude of an earthquake. The scale was logarithmic and each whole number increase on the scale equaled a tenfold increase over the lower number. For this reason, a 3.7 earthquake was minor and may not even be noticed by a human where a 4.7 would certainly be felt. There was absolutely nothing to be concerned about and that was always good news. He checked on the stations around the caldera until Lisa woke and finished dressing. Hearing her enter, he closed his computer. They were scheduled to spend the day at the beach.

  Lisa entered the kitchen, fixed a latte, and lifting the homemade latte to her lips, said, “Everything okay on the home front?”

  “Couldn’t be better,” Cody responded. “I’m done working until Doug pulls some data on earth tides in the caldera.”

  Lisa smiled and wiped a mustache of foam from her upper lip. “I haven’t figured out if being a scientist is a blessing or a curse. When I was a little girl my father told me my curiosity would kill the cat, so many times I can’t remember.”

  “It’s definitely a curse,” Cody said. “Can you imagine how comforting it would be to be oblivious to all the risks that threaten us every day.”