Intulo: The Lost World

by JE Gurley

  “You okay?” Joe asked.

  The look of concern on his friend’s face brought a smile to Gate’s lips. He exhaled slowly, nodded, and said, “It just hit me hard for a second. I’ll be okay.”

  In truth, he wasn’t sure he would ever be okay again. As a catastrophist working for NASA, he had always expected an event such as this, but the reality was difficult to grasp. He sighed with relief several times over the past few years as Near Earth Orbiting masses had come disturbingly close to striking the planet, any of which could have killed thousands of people. Even then, his numbers had been certain, his faith in them true. His faith in the current numbers was just as true, and they predicted disaster.

  “I suppose I had better inform the Director.”

  Joe glanced at his watch. “It’s two-thirty. You’ve been working eighteen hours straight. You must be exhausted. Besides, I’m sure the Director’s pretty busy right now. Between monitoring the Lunar One mission and keeping track of Girra and Nusku, he has his hands full.”

  Gate stretched his neck and yawned. Had it been so long? “I guess it will wait until morning. There’s nothing we can do about Girra anyway.”

  “Who came up with the names? They sound like Japanese monsters.”

  Gate shrugged. “Ishom, Girra, and Nusku were Babylonian gods of heavenly fire. Someone thought it appropriate.” He paused. “They didn’t realize just how appropriate.” He looked at Joe and noticed the dark circles under his friend’s eyes. “You’ve been here as long as I have. It’s time we both got some sleep.”

  Joe rubbed his eyes. “Yeah, I guess so. Melissa must be worried.”

  Gate smiled. Melissa, Joe’s wife, never worried about her husband. He was as devoted as husbands come. He had been a guest in Joe’s house many times and considered Melissa one of the finest women he had ever met. His smile faded when he remembered that her family lived in southern Indiana, not a hundred miles from Joe’s folks. Even if he determined that Indiana was the target of the meteor strike, he couldn’t warn her. In every disaster, public panic exacerbated the problem. Blind, uncontrolled evacuation from a potential disaster proved almost as deadly as the event itself.

  The secrecy surrounding his current project was astronomical, the potential for panic enormous. The first object, Ishom, had eluded the orbiting telescopes, sneaking in unobserved. Almost before the tremors had stopped in San Francisco, astronomers were searching for any companions. They found two. If the data was correct, the two objects approaching the planet were each over three-hundred meters in diameter. Each would strike the planet at fourteen kilometers per second, leaving an impact crater seven kilometers wide and half a kilometer deep. He shook his head to clear it. He would never be able to sleep if his mind insisted on dwelling on facts and figures. To Gate, more puzzling than the lower-than-expected mass, was the fact that the three objects were spaced almost exactly twenty-four hours apart. That seemed to defy the odds.

  As he and Joe left the building, he noticed lights on in several offices. Others were burning the midnight oil tracking Girra hoping for a few degrees alteration in its course that would send it sailing harmlessly past Earth and into the sun. He didn’t hold out much hope. The numbers didn’t lie, and they all seemed to be against them. The objects had entered the solar system from north of the ecliptic plane, so it was unlikely it had originated in the Oort Cloud. They had avoided the enormous gravity well of Jupiter that gobbled up many of the system’s stray asteroids and missed Mars by a hundred thousand kilometers, passing just near enough to bend its path directly toward Earth. Girra would pass by the moon close enough to cast a shadow but would not strike it. It had been a Perfect Storm of chance. If he believed in a vengeful God, he would call it divine providence. He was sure many would, once news of Girra and Nusku became public. He thanked the stars that he wasn’t the one that had to reveal its presence.

  He glanced up at the night sky above Houston. A few wispy clouds streaked the waning crescent moon. He placed his thumb over the dark disk, and peered at the area just to the right and above the moon, but saw nothing. Unlike a comet with a highly visible tail, Girra was too dark and still too far away to be discernible to the naked eye, but soon an amateur astronomer would spot it, and the secret would be out. All their secrecy would mean nothing then.

  “See you in the morning.”

  Gate dropped his hand to his side and looked at Joe, as he climbed into his Mini Cooper. He had tried to ride in Joe’s car once. That’s all it took. Half an hour of sitting scrunched into the tiny vehicle had been enough. “Yeah, I’ll be here at six. I have to watch Girra come down. There’s something strange about it.”

  Climbing into his Acura, the heavy guitar riffs of Led Zeppelin’s Rock and Roll blasting from KLTE hit him like a hammer blow after the near silence of his office. He was in no mood for anything with energy that might interfere with the sleep he needed so badly. He punched the dial to KTSU, one of Houston’s jazz stations. The soothing strains of John Coltrane that the radio offered up were less of an assault to his overloaded senses. The mellow jazz was like a glass of warm milk. He only hoped he could make it home before he fell asleep. Luckily, he met few cars on the two-mile drive to his apartment. He expected most normal people were in bed at two-thirty a.m. on a Thursday morning. By the time he parked his car and opened the front door, his eyelids were drooping. Before he could undress, his cell phone rang. The opening strains of Holst’s The Planets Suite he had chosen as his ring tone weren’t as sweet at such an early hour. He knew it couldn’t be good news.

  “Gate, this is Director Caruthers. I need you back here ASAP. We’ve received disturbing data on Girra from the DRS.”

  He let the news soak in for several seconds before responding. “What kind of data?”

  “I’d rather not discuss it over the phone. We’re moving Hubble to get an optical image.” He paused a moment before adding, “I’ve already ordered Lunar One to investigate.”

  Changing the Orion spacecraft’s lunar orbit mission involved substantial risks. The Director was worried. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.” He hung up the phone before Caruthers could relay any more bad news.

  He glanced longingly at the coffee maker. A jolt of caffeine would help keep him awake, but he didn’t have the time. He hoped the coffee urn at Mission Control was full.

  * * * *

  Thursday, August 9 3:00 a.m. (CDT) Mission Control, Houston, TX –

  Security at Mission Control was tighter than Gate had ever seen it. He was forced to present his ID twice to Building 30-M security guards before being allowed in. Director Carl Caruthers stood amid a sea of shirt-sleeved technicians, an oak tree in a forest of saplings. His six-foot-two frame loomed over his subordinates, as he quickly scanned tablets and hand-scribbled notes presented him by department heads. He wore his glasses atop his balding head, squinting to sign his name to reports. When he needed to look at one of the screens on the wall, he flipped the glasses back down.

  Caruthers’ haggard appearance was atypical of him. He usually dressed in a suit and tie. Now, a two-day growth of beard darkened his jaw. His rumpled shirt, with sleeves rolled up, looked slept in. Gate suffered a momentary twinge of sympathy for the director, but then remembered that Caruthers had spoiled his chance for sleep as well. Caruthers saw him enter and he walked over to greet him. He lifted his headset microphone from his mouth.

  “I know I look like shit,” he said. “So do you.”

  “What’s the latest on Girra?”

  Caruthers pointed to one of the three main screens on the wall. The fuzzy image from Hubble was visible only by the occluded stars in the background. It took several moments for Gate to focus his sleep-deprived eyes on the hole of blackness. “As you can see, Girra is so dark as to be almost indiscernible.”

  Gate walked closer to the screen for a better look at the teardrop-shaped object. It could be a seed, he thought, seeds of destruction, if Ishom was any indication. “It’s damned near invisible. No w
onder no one saw Ishom.”

  “It has an albedo of .009.”

  “But that’s …”

  “Impossible? I would have thought so, but that’s what the readings indicate.” He paused. Gate studied the director’s face and realized that he was hiding something.

  “Why did you bring me back in? I submitted my report.”

  Caruthers nodded. “Yeah, I read it. Good job. Typical doomsday stuff. Shades of San Francisco. I sent for you because of our new data.”

  This roused Gate’s curiosity. “What new data?”

  “According to the DRS, Girra is massing much less than we originally estimated. Either it’s less dense than a normal meteor that size, or it’s hollow.”

  Gate was speechless for a moment, as he absorbed the Director’s almost unbelievable suggestion. His musings about the object’s composition had been just that – musings. Now the Director was putting truth to his words. He walked back across the room and took a seat at the empty Public Affairs desk, the only unoccupied console in the otherwise busy room. As yet, the public was still unaware of the doom headed their way.

  “Hollow, as in an alien spacecraft?”

  Caruthers shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. It still masses a hell of a lot more than a spacecraft that size would. You reported that Ishom caused less destruction than anticipated. Could this be the reason?”

  Gate sighed and stood to stretch his muscles. It was going to be a long night. “Yes, it would make sense. I’ll get on those new figures right away.” He picked up his laptop and pointed to the glass enclosed observation gallery where distinguished visitors sat to watch the missions. Now, it was empty. “I’ll work in there where it’s quieter.” He glanced again at the screens. One showed an interior view of Lunar One. Though they had just been ordered to abandon the mission for which they had trained for over a year, the crew was acting as if nothing world shattering was happening. He envied their poise, and then wondered if it was for the camera. No, he thought, those astronauts are trained for emergencies. They’re confident.

  He wished he had a little of their confidence. He could use it.

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