by Tom Clancy
And that was that. They were gone in a flash.
Nimec watched them climb aboard the balloon-tired vehicle. He didn’t know what he’d expected from Annie. But being left to feel inconsequential wasn’t it.
Confused, he waited as the second chopper made its descent, its skids gently alighting on the plowed, tamped snowfield.
Moments later the pilot jumped from his cockpit and crossed the landing area to where Megan, Wertz, and Palmer were about to start for the shuttle. Megan briefly freed herself from the DVs and led him toward Nimec.
“Pete, this is our friend Russ Granger from MacTown,” she told him. Then she turned to the pilot. “Come on, let’s scoot you out of the cold. Pete’s anxious to discuss a few things about our current search plans. We’re hoping you can fly him into the Valleys as soon as possible.”
Granger smiled and tapped Nimec’s shoulder with a gloved hand. At least he seemed interested in talking to him.
“Whatever I can do to help,” Granger said.
New York City
Of all the types of on-air interviews Rick Woods had to conduct, the scientific stuff was his biggest pain. And these geniuses from NASA, Ketchum and Frye, whom he was guessing might be a little fruity, and whom he knew were duller than Sunday morning sermons, talking about solar flames in endless multisyllabic strings…
Flares, Woods thought. The correct term was solar flares. As his twit of a director, Todd Bennett, had already reminded him a dozen times from his seat back in the control room…
These space brains on the remote feed from Goddard were making him work his balls off trying to keep things from tanking. The only bigger duds Woods could recall having as guests were the mathematicians who’d come on to discuss chaos theory; their incomprehensible rambling had gotten him dizzy. A flying ant gets gulped by a toad in Guangdong, China, and somehow that causes a gondola with two lovers in it to capsize in Venice, which eventually leads to a fucking earthquake in San Francisco. And then the quarks, leptons, muons, and gluons enter the picture, zipping around in ways that make it impossible to predict whether New Year’s Day would follow Christmas next year. Ridiculous.
“Ketchum’s losing us with the jargon, Rick.” Bennett’s voice was in his earpiece again. “Get him to explain what he means by an X-class flare.”
Woods cleared his throat. Maybe adding some humor to their discussion would pick up the pace.
“Uh, Doctor,” he said. “For average minds like myself, would you explain the difference between X-class and business-class?”
Ketchum nodded from the Maryland sister station’s newsroom, seeming to miss the pun.
“The X classification system measures a flare’s power, and aids our ability to forecast how it will impact on our planet,” he said. “We use a simple numerical table based on X-ray emissions from the region of the sun where the flare occurs.”
Simple my ass, Woods thought. “And this latest one you’ve detected, can you help us understand why we should be concerned about it?”
“Yes,” Ketchum said. “I should first emphasize that we haven’t actually observed a flare, but unusual sunspots and other indicators on the far side of the sun that are distinctive signs of impending flare activity. It would roughly correspond to tracking tropical hurricane seedlings on radar… ”
Woods tried to keep his mind from wandering. Even school shootings were easier than this. Distraught as the interviewees might be, you came to know which questions to ask by rote. Can you recall Timmy displaying hostile or antisocial behavior before the tragedy? Resentment toward his classmates? An ethnic group? Is it true none of your school’s teachers or guidance counselors ever asked him about that swastika tattoo on his forehead? And what about reports that he had a habit of firing an illegal M- 16 at neighborhood dogs and cats from his front porch?
Woods suddenly felt indecent, but things got to him. It wasn’t that he didn’t appreciate his good luck. This was major-market cable TV, twenty-four-hour news, and he co-anchored the afternoon weekday slot. He would be the first guy to say there weren’t many more enviable gigs in the business. Before landing it, he’d hosted a live entertainment segment for the network, thirty minutes daily right before prime time. Some of that was fun. Meeting famous actors, actresses, and film directors. The Oscars and Grammys. Those awards presentations always gave him a kick. But six years at it was much too long. No one took Hollywood beat reporters seriously. Hard-news people considered you one step above a gossip monger, a paparazzi. The glamor wore thin after a while. The beautiful people started looking uglier and uglier. And when boob-job-and-baby-fat teenaged pop singers treated you like a microphone sock, it could be the absolute pits.
Woods had grown tired of it.
Getting offered the co-anchor post had been a break. A huge break. His predecessor had been old-school, started out his career in print journalism, spent almost twenty years as a political field correspondent. With their cable channel’s daytime numbers trailing CNN, Fox, and MSNBC by several percentage points, its programming executives had studied the audience comp and decided they wanted new blood, a face with youth appeal, someone more comfortable engaging in peppy cross talk with Marsie Randall, the female half of their anchor team. Woods was offered the spot on a trial basis, given an ironclad contractual guarantee that he could return to star-chasing if things didn’t work out. Shit, never mind huge, it was the break of a lifetime. He had jumped at it, relocated from the left to right coast. And at the request of his producers, he’d started wearing a pair of glasses with plain lenses over his 20/20 peepers for a brainier look. Now, six months later, ratings for the time period had almost doubled, and he’d re-upped for two more years with a substantial pay increase and built-in elevator clauses that would continue to boost his salary if the Nielsens kept improving.
Overall Rick Woods was pleased. He felt appreciated, gratified, financially stable. But nothing was ever perfect. On this network, one to five P.M. weekdays was early fringe. The demographic was mainly post-boomer housewives with at least a couple of years of college — the ones who stayed away from Mountain Dew and pink polyester stretch pants, and who wanted an alternative to the soaps, courtroom reality shows, and trailer-trash clown antics. They were a tricky audience. Moving targets. You had to strike just the right balance with content, give them something that was not quite a morning magazine format, and not quite Jim Lehrer. Give them infotainment. That meant filling the spaces between lead and breaking stories with background pieces, analysis, talk, a little fluffy human interest to round out the blend.
The science stuff worked its way into the lineup maybe once, twice a week. Woods found it endurable when the stories related to ordinary people’s lives. Child-development studies, medical breakthroughs, home computing, these things he understood. But he hated when his producers got too smart for their own good, booked guests who’d start running off at the mouth with complicated theories… or when they bought into one of the stunts NASA regularly pulled to grab attention and justify its existence to taxpayers, such as the big load of crap it was currently dishing out—
“Rick, pay attention!” Bennett yipped over their IFB line. “Ketchum’s got a bad case of eye bounce, makes him look evasive. Bring in the young one, try to nail him down on the flare’s severity. Ask what consequences it will have for earth.”
None, Woods felt like telling him. Nugatory, Todd. This segment’s not only pointless, it’s duller than dead air.
“Dr. Frye, let’s bring you into the conversation,” he said. “To use your colleague’s weather analogy, the solar storm system that’s brewing would be exactly how severe…?”
“I think Jonathan was trying to explain that we can’t be exact at this stage,” Frye said. “My belief is we’re going to experience a series of X-20’s or higher, which would be very energetic. Putting it in perspective, a flare that’s categorized below an X-9 generally has few noticeable implications for us. As its power climbs the scale, though, increasing geomagnetic distu
rbances may result… ”
“And can you please tell our viewers around the world how they should expect these, uh, X-20 solar flames—”
“Flares!” Bennett said.
“—solar flares to affect them?”
“Again, it’s tough to be certain. We can only look back at what’s happened in the past, and use that as the basis for informed guesses,” Frye said. “About thirty years back, a group of flares in the X-15 range interrupted satellite transmissions, and resulted in serious power-line voltage swings in at least two of our Western and Midwestern states. It also caused the explosion of a 230,000-volt transformer in British Columbia—”
“Well, thirty years is a long time,” Woods said, wanting to be quick with his follow-up. “I’d assume that with, ah, modern technologies we won’t have to worry too much about the lights going out nowadays.”
“Unfortunately, it’s just the opposite. In the nineteen-seventies power companies hadn’t really computerized their operations. Very few computers were used by private or government offices. The Internet didn’t exist. There were no PCs. No public wireless-telephone networks. But society’s become dependent on sophisticated electronics over the past three decades. It’s integral to our economy. Our national security. While some equipment’s been shielded against high-level discharges of cosmic radiation, we can find plenty of room for improvement. As a NASA employee I’m concerned about the sensitive equipment on our orbital platforms, and more fundamentally about the exposure of astronauts aboard the International Space Station to harmful dosages of radiation. I’ve also wondered about the vulnerability of satellite communications linking us to the more remote parts of the globe. Parts of the Far East, for example. Or the poles…”
Where the polar bears would have to make do without their fucking cell phones and downloadable porn, Woods thought. Christ Almighty. This guy was going to start a mass panic if he went on with his horseshit about cosmic rays.
“It sounds as if you’re scripting a Doomsday scenario, which of course isn’t the case,” he said. “We should pause to reassure everyone that there’s little risk of solar flames producing the whole range of disturbances you mention—”
“Flares!” The director yowled again. “They’re called flares!”
Woods was getting aggravated. If Bennett wanted to be such a goddamn stickler for terminology, he could come out of the control room and finish the interview himself.
“By the way,” Woods said. “Aren’t solar flares accompanied by flames?”
Frye looked a bit thrown by the seeming non sequitur. “Well, sure, they’d be associated with eruptions of flaming gases in the heliosphere—”
“Thanks for making that clear, Dr. Frye,” he said.
“And fuck you for being a spiteful prick, Mr. Woods,” Bennett said out of sight.
“Returning to the point I raised a moment ago,” Woods said. “Is it fair to state that you gentlemen don’t, foresee any, uh—”
He faltered, unable to think of the word. This happened to him sometimes. Mostly when he was doing the science stuff, which was another reason he despised it. The word just got stuck in traffic somewhere between his brain and mouth. Goddamn. Goddamn. Where was Bennett when you needed him, why was he letting him dangle here, what the hell was the word…?
“Catastrophes, you spiteful, unappreciative prick,” Bennett said.
Woods fought back a sigh of relief.
“Catastrophes over the horizon,” he resumed, “but are rather just sketching out the problems that should be addressed as our knowledge of flares increases? Giving us some, uh…”
“Cautionary advice,” Bennett said.
“Cautionary advice, that is?”
This time it was Ketchum who answered. “Yes and no. We’re certainly not trying to scare anyone watching your program. But it does look as if there’s an impressive event in store for us, and we should all do our best to prepare. That’s why we’ve come on your program to talk about it.”
“I see… and, uh, when did you say it’s going to happen?”
“Richard and I think we’re looking at a window of somewhere within the next two to three weeks, but we don’t have enough data to tell you precisely,” Ketchum replied. “That’s another area where my meteorological comparison might be useful. Storm systems stall or pick up speed, change course, collide with other building low-pressure centers… as complex as the variables can be when we’re trying to forecast movement in our own atmosphere, it’s important to remember much less is understood about the sun’s.”
Woods noticed his cue blinker. Thirty seconds until the commercial. Thank God. He was still recovering from his momentary bobble of the tongue. And had a sick feeling that Ketchum was about to start in about flying ants and Chinese toads.
“Okay,” Bennett said. “Ask them something personal, then cut to the break.”
Woods paused a tick. Did these flat tires even have personalities?
“Ah, gentlemen, our conversation’s been fascinating, and I’m sure we’ll be hearing much more from you in the days to come,” he said. “We’re running low on time, but in our last few moments, could you, uh, talk a little about how you earned your unusual nicknames at Goddard… Ketchup and Fries, is it?”
Both men nodded, smiling.
Ketchum said, “I’ll defer to Richard on that.”
Frye said, “I think somebody just cooked them up because we get along well as a team.”
Woods smiled back at them, wondered again if they were gay.
“Well, that’s it, fellows, thank you for coming together this afternoon,” he said.
“Any time,” Ketchum said.
“Our pleasure,” Frye said.
I bet, Woods thought.
And that was finally a wrap.
Victoria Land, Antarctica
They had made camp in a saddle between two immense glaciers, pitching their dome tents against the eastern slope, camouflaging their snowmobiles with the drop taken from the storage depot.
Perched on a lower ledge, a group of skuas had watched them with black unblinking eyes.
Five hours later the birds still had not moved. The team leader glanced at them as he emerged from his tent, stepping through its door flap into the cold.
They merely stared back.
He zipped the flap shut and strode away from the ledge in his insulated boots, then stopped with his binoculars raised to the southwestern sky.
He did not like what he saw. A fleet of saucer-shaped lenticular clouds had appeared in the distance, climbing over the polar plateau on a turbulent wave of air. Their bases were shaded deep blue, their curved foaming tops a lighter grayish color.
He angled the glasses toward the ground. Far down the narrow cleft through which his men had ridden, the world was vague, without contrast, its outlines melting into hazy softness.
He rubbed the steam from his breath off their lenses, but nothing changed.
Soft, he thought. Too soft.
He didn’t like it at all. Before leaving his tent, he had checked the latest meteorological data on his rugged handheld field computer, accessing it over the terminal’s wireless Internet connection, comparing the information from several portal sites — base forecasts, infrared maps from orbiting hemispheric satellites, NOAA synoptic charts, scattered automatic weather stations. Updated at intervals of between ten and thirty minutes, the readings were consistently ominous. A severe gale was whipping toward the coast of Victoria Land, accreting momentum as it neared the Ross Sea and ice shelf. McMurdo had already assigned it a Condition II classification: winds in excess of 50 knots, a chill factor of at least minus-60F, visibility no better than a quarter of a mile, and perhaps as low as a hundred yards.
Affairs were about to pass largely out of his control, but he would press on with the mission regardless. It was his responsibility, no more, no less.
He lowered his binoculars and started back toward the tents. Though he’d raised his neck gaiter to the bridge
of his nose, the crescent birthmark on his cheek already burned from the extreme cold. It was a constant bother to him here, as it had been during his alpine training with the Stern unit of the Swiss Militärpolizei. For a man who had spent most of his life in places where warmth was scarce, this was an absurdity of sorts, a strange and uncommon jest that matched the rareness of his stigma. Yet he had long since come to abide it. In the Jura Mountain farming village of his boyhood, he had suffered merciless slashes of pain throughout the endless winter stretches. Only his shame over the freak blemish to his appearance had brought a harsher sting.
Kind des Mondes, his mother had called him as far back as he could remember. A child of the moon. It had not been a name kindly used. There had been precious little kindness in any of his mother’s words, but he had finally taught himself that didn’t matter. Emotions always betrayed. Better to steel the backbone and toughen the gut than be distracted by them.
At his orders now, the men were quick to break camp and stow their bedrolls and folded tents aboard their snowmobiles. The gathering of birds continued to study them from their perch, barely curious, simply watching because of their nearness. He looked at the creatures as he waited, lifted a chunk of ice off the ground, and suddenly snapped it at them with a hard overhand throw.
It struck the ledge with a crack, breaking to pieces. The birds jumped and fluttered in surprise, scolded him indignantly, but did not take flight.
He gave them a slight nod of appreciation.
“Eine gute Gesellschaft,” he said, turning from the ledge.
They had been good enough company in their way.
Minutes later he mounted his snowmobile, throttled up its engine, and went speeding on across the ice toward his goal, the rest of his band traveling close behind him.
Cold Corners Base, Antarctica
“What I need is to get down low into the pass,” Nimec was saying. Soon after returning to base from the helipad, he’d steered Russ Granger to a partitioned workstation where a downscaled, black-and-white version of Megan’s Dry Valley contour map was spread across the desk, circles drawn with colored pencils substituting for the pins she’d used to mark its key sites. “I want to see it with my own eyes.”
