Impact

by Douglas Preston

She made a course for the lee end of Shark Island, going slow. It wouldn’t take long to explore. It was basically a treeless hump in the middle of the ocean, with a gradual slope at one end and a steep bluff at the other, which, from a distance, gave it the appearance of a shark fin. She had never been on the island and didn’t know anyone who had. The fog was so thick Abbey could barely see the bow rail.

  “Damn, Abbey, you really think we’ll find that meteorite?”

  Abbey shrugged.

  “When in doubt,” said Jackie, “smoke some reefer.”

  “No thanks.”

  She went to roll one.

  “We have work to do,” Abbey said in irritation. “Can’t you wait?”

  “All work and no play makes Jackie a dull girl.”

  Abbey sighed while Jackie scratched away at the lighter, which refused to operate in the damp air. “I’m going below.”

  They were now about half a mile from Shark. Abbey throttled down, keeping her eye on the chartplotter and sonar. There were reefs and ledges all around the island and, with a falling tide, Abbey didn’t want to risk getting too close. She throttled into neutral.

  “Jackie, drop anchor.”

  Jackie came up, joint in hand, and looked around. “Thickafog, as my grandfather would say.” She stuffed the roach into her pot tin, went forward, and pulled the anchor pin. “Ready?”

  “Let ’er go.”

  Jackie shoved the anchor over and let it run out to the bottom. Abbey reversed the boat while Jackie played out the rode, set the anchor, and cleated it off.

  Jackie came back. “So where’s the island?”

  “Due south about two hundred yards. I didn’t dare go in closer.”

  “Two hundred yards? I ain’t rowing.”

  “I’ll row.”

  Abbey tossed into the dinghy a pick, shovel, bucket, coil of rope, a backpack with sandwiches and Cokes, as well as the usual matches, Mace, flashlights, and a canteen of water.

  “What’s with the pick and shovel?” asked Jackie.

  “Because the meteorite’s got to be here.” She tried to put some conviction into her voice. Who was she fooling? This was the story of her life, one dumb-ass idea after another.

  Balancing on the gunwale, Abbey scrambled into the dinghy and set the oars in the oarlocks, while Jackie settled herself in the stern. “You hold the compass and point,” Abbey said.

  Jackie cast off and Abbey began to row. The Marea vanished in the mist. Pretty soon they passed a rock sticking above the water like a black tooth, ringed with seaweed. Another rock and another. The sea rose and fell in an oily swell. There wasn’t a breath of wind. Abbey could feel the wetness of the fog collecting in her hair, on her face, running down into her clothes.

  “I can see why you didn’t want to bring the boat in here,” Jackie said, peering around at the rocks looming out of the fog, some standing six feet high, looking almost like human figures rising from the water. “Creepy.”

  Abbey pulled.

  “We could be the first people to land on Shark Island ever,” said Jackie. “We should plant a flag.”

  Abbey kept pulling. Her heart was sinking. It was pretty much over. There wasn’t going to be any meteorite.

  “Hey, Abbey, I’m sorry I bitched at you back there. Even if we don’t find a meteorite, we had an adventure.”

  Abbey shook her head. “I just keep thinking about what you said, how I’ve fucked up my life, dropping out of college. My father saved up for years to pay my tuition. Here I am, twenty years old, living at home and waitressing in Damariscotta. Loser.”

  “Cut it out, Abbey.”

  “I owe eight thousand dollars, and my father still has to pay.”

  “Eight thousand? Wow. I didn’t know that.”

  “My father gets up at three thirty to set his traps, works like a dog. He raised me himself after Mom died. And here I am, stealing his boat. Why am I such a despicable daughter?”

  “Parents are supposed to work their fingers to the bone for their kids. That’s their job.” Jackie tried to laugh. “Whoops, here we are.”

  Abbey looked over her shoulder. The dark shape of the island rose up behind them. There was no beach, just seaweed-covered rocks in the mist.

  “Prepare to get wet,” said Abbey.

  The boat bumped into the closest flat rock and Abbey maneuvered it around sideways, got out, and held the painter. The swell swirled up around her legs and fell while she braced herself. Jackie tossed out the pick, shovel, and backpack and climbed out. They pulled the boat up and looked around.

  It was a wild scene of desolation. A massive jumble of split granite boulders rose up before them, jammed with shattered tree trunks, wrecked fishing gear, broken buoys, and frayed rope. The rocks were white with seagull guano and above them, invisible birds wheeled and cried in angry protest.

  Abbey shouldered the pack. They scrambled over the fringing scree of flotsam and climbed up the sloping rocks, finally reaching the edge of a saw grass meadow. The island angled upward toward the tip of the bluff, capped by a giant wedge of broken granite like a dolmen, deposited by the glaciers. The saw grass gave way to gooseberry bushes and wind-screwed bayberry. They reached the granite slab and walked past it, toward the bluff end of the island.

  On the far side of the slab, Abbey halted, staring. “Oh my God.”

  In front of her was a fresh crater, five feet in diameter.

  28

  Ford followed the soldiers down the trail and found the mining camp a scene of chaos, the dust rising, soldiers fleeing and miners milling about, shocked and confused, unable to comprehend what was happening. Others, including entire families, were running, hobbling, or limping away into the forest, some carrying or helping along their sick.

  Looking about for Khon, he finally spied the familiar round figure jogging down from the edge of the forest, carrying a pack. He caught up to Ford, heaving, his face coated with sweat. “Mr. Mandrake! Greetings.”

  “Nice work, Khon.” Ford unzipped the pack, pulled out a handheld RadMeter. He switched it on, took a reading. “Forty millirems per hour. Not bad.”

  Khon looked at the bloodstains on Ford’s shirt. “What’d they do to you?”

  “You were a little late with the fireworks, my friend. Almost too late.”

  “I had a bit of trouble stealing the dynamite from the shed. I only had time to reach the closest hill.”

  “How’d you handle the soldier who came to inspect?”

  “I figured they might do that. I divided the charge and set a second one as a booby trap. Poor fellow.”

  “Clever.” Ford pulled a digital camera and GPS out of the pack. He tossed the GPS to Khon. “You mark waypoints. I’m taking pictures.”

  “Right, boss.”

  Ford approached the mouth of the mine shaft, holding out the RadMeter. It was a clearly an impact crater, layers of ejecta sprayed out in a radial pattern, all brecciated rock and shatter cones.

  “Eighty millirems,” Ford said. “It’s still fairly low up here. We can stand an hour of this at least before we have to worry.”

  He cautiously peered into the pit. The crater sloped inward ever steeper, turning into a vertical shaft of about ten feet in diameter with walls of fused glasslike material. Lights were strung on wires attached to the sides of the shaft, with two sets of bamboo ladders going down to what appeared to be a gem-bearing layer. The generator powering the electricity was still running in a nearby shed. A massive scaffolding of bamboo above the pit supported a winch and cargo net for raising and lowering equipment.

  Ford stared into the hole, increasingly mystified. It was an incredibly deep crater—bottomless, it seemed—as if the impactor had just kept right on going. He took some pictures of the shaft, then finished up with a panoramic set of pictures all around, three hundred and sixty degrees. He took a set of readings from the RadMeter at fixed distances.

  Khon soon returned with the GPS. “All done.”

  The camp was now almost comple
tely deserted, except dead bodies scattered about.

  “Let’s blow up this pop stand before our friends realize they’ve been conned,” said Ford. “Because if we don’t, they’ll be back. And this will start over again.” He felt sick with anger looking at the dead bodies strewn about. Some were not even dead, trying to crawl away.

  Ford and Khon busted open the doors of the dynamite shed and loaded crates of dynamite onto the abandoned mule cart, along with detonators, timers, and wire. They hauled the dynamite to the mine and stacked the crates onto the cargo net, spread on the ground. Ford plugged each crate with a detonator and wired them all to a timer and a backup.

  Ford set the timer. “Thirty minutes.”

  Working the electric winch, they lifted the net, swung it out over the mouth of the pit, and lowered it down about a hundred feet, playing out the detonator wires as it went. They rested the improvised bomb on the bamboo platform. Ford disabled the motorized winch by knocking off the terminal with a metal bar and ripping out some wires.

  “Twenty-five minutes,” Ford said, checking his watch. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  They jogged toward the wall of jungle and kept going, soon picking up the old trail they had come in on. As they ran, they passed ragged groups of slow-moving villagers. Nobody paid any attention to them. The soldiers had vanished.

  “It’s close,” said Ford, feeling an almost unbearable knot in his stomach. He had never in his life experienced a more hellish scene of human misery, cruelty, and exploitation. What was it in the Cambodian national character that allowed a genuinely kind, gentle, and considerate people, of strong Buddhist faith, to descend to these depths?

  They paused, resting on a boulder in the dry streambed. The explosion came right on schedule.

  29

  Randall Worth cut the engine and drifted in the fog, staring at his radar. The bright blob on the screen, a few hundred yards due south, must be the Marea. Beyond it a smear of green represented Shark Island.

  Shark Island. Eight miles out to sea, no harbor, surrounded by reefs, impossible to land on except in a dead calm. A perfect treasure island. Why hadn’t he thought of it himself?

  He dropped anchor, taking care not to rattle the chain. When it was set, he began loading up his backpack. In went a small portable toolbox, wire cutters, baling wire, duct tape, a knife, the RG .44 Mag, and a box of Winchester hollow-points.

  He settled back to wait, listening into the fog. The island was about four hundred yards off and the fog dampened any sound. He could hear nothing. He felt his heart pounding and he tried to ignore that crawling sensation under the surface of his skin, the crank bugs. Not yet, not now. He had to keep his head clear.

  Then he heard something: a faint shout. He leaned forward. The shout was followed by a faint but distinct series of whoops, then cheering. Cheering.

  He sat up, his heart pounding. Those were the sounds of triumph. They’d found it. Unfuckingbelievable. He grabbed the backpack, tossed it in the dinghy, leapt in after it, pushed off, and began rowing like hell for the Marea. There was almost no sea and the fog was a lucky break.

  After a few minutes, the outline of the Marea loomed up. He raised his oars and listened intently. Closer to the island, he could now hear their disembodied voices more distinctly, excited talk, the unmistakable sounds of digging, the clank of a shovel and the ring of a pick on stone. He pulled up to the stern of the Marea, tied off the dinghy, hauled in his pack, and hopped aboard.

  Standing in the wheel house, Worth made an effort to get his breathing under control, stop the trembling of his hands. That meth was really fucking him up, making him jumpy. After this he’d be set for life and then he’d quit. He wouldn’t need it anymore. He could hear his heart banging away, feel the blood rushing through his ears. A bottle of Jim Beam stood on the console in the wheel house, and he seized it, taking a good swig, then another. Slowly he came down.

  Keeping his mind focused, he checked the battery switch and made sure it was off. Pulling the portable toolbox out of his pack, he took out a screwdriver and unscrewed the electrical panel, setting it aside. A mass of wires greeted his eyes, all neatly color coded and bundled.

  He knew exactly what he had to do.

  30

  By three o’clock that afternoon, Mark Corso was starting to breathe easier. When he’d arrived in his office that morning, the day after the disastrous staff meeting, he was relieved to find no pink slip on his desk. All day he had worked like crazy on the SHARAD data and now it was done. And very well done, he had to say so himself: the charts and everything neatly organized, bound, pouched, and slipcased, the images crisp and clear, cleaned of noise, and digitally processed.

  There had been no nasty visit from Derkweiler, no warning memo or call. He hadn’t even seen the man. He had made a mistake with the periodicity but he was sure he’d made no mistake with the gamma ray data. It was real, he knew it was real, and just maybe Chaudry would think about it and realize it was worth investigating.

  Mark Corso tucked the package under his arm, swallowed hard, and set off down the hall toward Derkweiler’s office. A quick knock, a “come in,” and he eased open the door with trepidation. There was Derkweiler, sitting behind his desk, incipient sweat moons under his arms. “So it’s you, Corso.”

  “I’ve got the SHARAD data,” Corso said, with as much cool dignity as he could muster. He patted the folder under his arm and swallowed hard, speaking the lines he’d rehearsed to himself earlier. “I want to apologize for yesterday’s presentation. I got carried away by the gamma ray data. I can assure you it won’t happen again.”

  Derkweiler was looking at him. Not exactly staring, but looking steadily, his eyes rimmed in red. He looked like he’d been up all night.

  “Mr. Corso. . . . Well, I’m sorry to have to say this to you.” Derkweiler sighed, placed his hands on the desk. “Yesterday, I did the paperwork to . . . terminate your employment here. I’m very sorry.”

  Thunderstruck, Corso could find no response.

  “We’re a quasi-government bureaucracy and it takes a while for a termination to work its way through the system. I regret you’ve had to wait. But I think we both know this isn’t going to work out.” His gaze remained on Corso, steady and cool.

  “But Dr. Chaudry . . .?”

  “Dr. Chaudry and I are in full agreement on this.”

  Again, Corso tried to swallow. Physically, he couldn’t seem to get himself going. He was like the tin woodsman, all frozen up.

  “Well,” said Derkweiler, giving the table a final pat. “That’s all. You’ve got until the end of the day. I’m terribly sorry but I think it’ll be for the best.”

  “But . . . do you still want the SHARAD data?” Corso said, before realizing just how inane he sounded.

  A look of irritation crossed Derkweiler’s features as he reached out and took the folder. “I guess you didn’t hear what I said at the meeting: that I’d prepare the SHARAD data myself. I was up all night doing it.” He extended his arm over the wastebasket and dropped the folder in. “I don’t need it or want it now.”

  Corso felt himself flushing deeply at the gratuitous gesture. Derkweiler continued staring at him. “Is there something else, or are we done here?”

  Corso turned stiffly and walked out.

  “Please shut the door behind you.”

  Corso shut the door and stood in the hall, trembling. His shock and disbelief turned to a feeling of physical sickness, and then to anger. This was wrong. This was unjust. Throwing his work in the wastebasket . . . That was unwarranted. He couldn’t let this happen.

  He turned back and opened the door—and caught Derkweiler in the act of bending over the wastebasket, fishing his packet out of the trash.

  That did it. Corso found his mouth opening, words coming up almost as if someone else were saying them. “You . . . you fat-ass piece of shit.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You heard me.” Who was speaking here? What was he ev
en saying? Corso had never been so angry in his life.

  Derkweiler reddened and let the folder drop back into the trash, and then he leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head, exposing the full extent of his underarm wetness. “Going out with a bang, I see. Anything else you want to add?”

  “In fact, there is. I’m amazed to find you here at NPF at all, let alone in a supervisory position. You are mediocrity incarnate. You and Chaudry both. I handed you evidence that something dangerous, possibly catastrophic, might be occurring on or near Mars. It’s staring you in the face and you don’t see it. You’re no different from the Inquisition that convicted Galileo.”

  “Ah, so now you’re Galileo?” A cold hard smile creased Derkweiler’s face, suddenly disappearing. “Well, Corso, now that you’ve vented, please go straight to your office and remain there. You’ve got fifteen minutes to clear out your desk. At that time, security will escort you from the premises. Understood?”

  He swiveled his chair around and turned his fat back to Corso and began typing on his computer keyboard.

  Fifteen minutes later Corso was heading out the front lobby of NPF, escorted by two security guards. He carried a small cardboard box of his meager possessions: his framed diplomas from Brown and MIT, a geode paperweight, and a picture of his mother.

  As he stepped into the hot sunlight, walking into a sea of shining cars in the gigantic parking lot, Mark Corso had a revelation. He halted, almost dropping his box. He recalled a small, seemingly insignificant fact: Deimos, one of the tiny moons of Mars, orbited the planet every thirty hours. That explained the periodicity anomaly.

  The gamma ray source was not on Mars—it was on Deimos.

  31

  The fog turned to a drizzle as Abbey feverishly cleared rocks from the crater, prying them out with a pick and tossing them over the rim. The meteorite had punched through about a foot of soil into the bedrock below, spewing out dirt and leaving behind a fractured mass of stones and mud. She was surprised at how small the crater was, only about three feet deep and five feet wide. The rain was now drizzling steadily and the bottom of the crater was turning into a churned-up mess, a pool of muck mingled with broken rocks.