“Then there are the ice ball comets that come in two types. There are the short-period comets that originated from the Kuiper belt and have elliptical or elongated, rather than circular, orbits, but which lie near the plane of the ecliptic. The most well-known short-period comet is Halley’s Comet, which completes an orbit of the Sun every seventy-six years or so and becomes very visible for a few weeks at its closest approach to the Sun and the Earth. Halley’s Comet is due to return next in 2061.
“Then there are the long-period comets, those which take more than 200 years, and possibly millions of years, to complete one orbit around the Sun and which originate from the Oort cloud. The long-period comets have highly elliptical orbits in any and every possible plane, as depicted in that last diagram. Comet Hale-Bopp, which passed by in 1995, is a long-period comet. It was visible to the naked eye for nineteen months due to its unusually large size — twenty-five miles in diameter. However, we won’t see Hale-Bopp again for two thousand four hundred years.”
“Okay Eli,” the president interjected, “I think I am going to have to live in suspense for a while. As you said, I have a good understanding now of the playing field and the types of solar objects that could come crashing down on us. You did say, I think, that no major collisions appear imminent, and I am going to have to leave it at that for now. However, maybe we can fit in another meeting in the next couple of weeks so you can complete this briefing before I forget all the background, and perhaps you could give me an update on your fresh water project at that time.”
“Yes, Mr. President, that is fine. It’s not my fresh water project, but I will be ready to update you at your convenience. And you are correct. I did say that no major collisions appear probable in the near term, though Apophis gave us some concern recently, which I’ll tell you about at our next meeting. So, a surprise is still possible.”
Chapter 9
October 13, 2027
Sonoma County, near Cloverdale, California
John exhaled quickly as he bobbed to the surface, sucked in a breath and scanned ahead where he could see a raging tumult of white water roaring down a steep incline studded with jagged rocks like a monstrous shark’s teeth. It looked unsurvivable, and John felt his adrenaline spike to yet a new high as he was swept across the short pool beneath the fifteen-foot drop he had just plummeted over. He knew though, that with the right skill and execution he could survive, having just scouted the quarter-mile section from the bank above and picked a target route. It was all about the adrenaline spike.
Earlier that day, John and his friend Carlos had driven up to Cloverdale from the house they shared in Santa Rosa. They drove in along River Road to where it crossed Big Sulphur Creek, about a mile above where the creek emptied into the Russian River. This is where they planned to end their creek run. They off-loaded John’s Kawasaki 250 dirt bike from the back of Carlos’s half-ton truck and chained it to a small tree just out of sight of the road. From there it was about a nine-mile drive in along the north end of Geysers Road, which closely paralleled the creek, to their launch spot at Iron Bridge just upstream of where Squaw Creek reinforced the flow of Big Sulphur Creek.
This was a challenging stretch of white water, rated class IV–V by the organization American Whitewater, being at the upper end of difficulty. This early in the rainy season it would be at relatively low flow and therefore highly technical, requiring rapid course adjustments to avoid collisions with numerous unforgiving obstacles. The flow would not be enough to provide an easy open path, flowing around bigger rocks and helping to push the buoyant light-weight creeking kayaks away into clearer channels. It would often be essential to hit the entry to a chute in the perfect spot, not always dead center, and with the perfect directional alignment of the kayak, not necessarily straight downstream. Otherwise you risked clipping a rock, perhaps just enough to unbalance the craft and cause an upset, or landing at the bottom of the chute upright but pointed at the wrong angle to avoid the next obstacle. The durable little polypropylene kayaks could absorb a lot of bangs, scrapes and scuffs, but there would certainly be enough flow to make a full-on collision a painful experience at the least. Worse still, an upset in these waters would likely mean direct contact with the creek bottom, with no kayak intervening to absorb the shock. Even with the necessary protective helmet, this would very likely result in serious injury.
John Kirk and Carlos Campo were both highly skilled and experienced white-water kayaking enthusiasts, though Mother Nature can occasionally surprise even the best. They were also both extremely fit. Their jobs, as members of the Santa Rosa police force’s small tactical team, demanded a high level of fitness, but the two young men had taken it well beyond the level required to pass their semiannual requalification tests. That extended to the hand-to-hand combat aspects of their jobs as well. Neither were very big men. John was a little over six feet and about two hundred pounds. Carlos was a little shorter but nearly the same weight. Yet both were consistent winners at the black belt level of the local karate tournaments they enjoyed. They were risk-takers craving the excitement of overcoming a difficult and dangerous situation whether on the job or in the white water, with apparently no fear of the possible consequences.
John and Carlos were not careless risk-takers though. They had carefully assessed this creek against their own abilities and had decided that they could handle it. They planned on four hours for the nine-mile descent, even though the actual running time on the water would be little more than an hour. This allowed for plenty of route-scouting from the shoreline for the more challenging sections, which they had carefully marked on their laminated topographical maps. As they had sealed their neoprene sprayskirts and pushed off from the Iron Bridge earlier that day, they were excited to be challenging Big Sulphur Creek and confident that they could master it.
John took advantage of the momentary calm, relatively speaking, of the pool below the steep drop to set himself up for the next series of gates he had to thread. He was glad that the pool had proved deep enough that he hadn’t struck his stubby bow on the rocky bottom. He and Carlos had guessed it to be about six to eight feet deep from their survey from above. A fifteen-foot drop wasn’t much in the white-water kayaking world. Drops of over a hundred feet were fairly common on big rivers with big waterfalls, but you had to have a deep pool to land in. A tall waterfall creates a frothy layer of air mixed with water as it strikes the plunge pool below, extending several feet below the surface of the pool and cushioning the impact with the water itself. Creeks like the Big Sulphur didn’t usually produce deep enough plunge pools to absorb a drop of much more than twenty feet.
John successfully navigated another hundred yards of the cataract and was able to pull over to the right into a back eddy in a hollowed-out crescent of the creek side, which he and Carlos had identified as a safety stop. He turned upstream to watch his friend make the drop, work his way deftly through the rock maze and slide into the back eddy. They confirmed with hand signals that both were good to go; it was too noisy for speech. They had previously agreed that if either one was hurt or getting tired, they would both extract at the first opportunity, cut cross country to Geysers Road, which was rarely more than a hundred yards from the creek, and walk back to the truck or the bike.
Carlos edged back into the flow. John watched him fight has way down the rest of the cataract before pulling out himself. Disaster struck almost immediately. It was just one of those random events. As John maneuvered to take his line into the next chute, his paddle struck a shallow rock lurking just below the surface and he missed the power stroke required to push the agile craft into a straight-on descent. He still made it down the chute but at a significant angle to the flow and to the preplanned line of descent. He made a split-second decision to abandon the ideal path and take an alternative narrower cut through the barrier of broken rock obstructing the creek bed. It was the wrong decision, but there had been little choice.
As John swept toward the cut he had chosen, he realized i
t was going to be a tight squeeze. The cut was the entry to a small chute tight against a rock wall to his left, with the base of the wall undercut so that it leaned out into the chute. On the right a large shelf of rock flanked the chute, sloping down into the water at about a thirty-degree angle. There was a very narrow gap between the wall on the left and the shelf on the right, barely wide enough for the kayak, but water pounded through the gap, accelerated by the choke point. John hit the top of the chute dead center but a lot closer to the overhanging wall than he wanted to be. Halfway down, the kayak heeled sharply to the left as its right side mounted a little too far up the slope of the rock shelf. With the kayak canted to the left, John’s head struck the sidewall a glancing blow before he could reach the bottom of the narrow chute.
Without a helmet John would likely have fractured his skull and almost certainly would have been knocked unconscious, which would have led to his death either from aspiration of water or additional severe impact injuries as he was swept down the remainder of the cataract, likely inverted most of the time and with no directional control. As it was, the blow was still hard enough that he grayed out momentarily, but fought back to alertness in time to reestablish control and regain his planned route. He navigated the rest of the way down without further incident, but his usual victory shout after completing a tough run was absent as he joined Carlos at their next safety stop.
Carlos could tell that John was shaken. “Are you okay buddy?” He asked searchingly.
John ducked in beside the creek bank and was able to grab the branches of a small bush overhanging the bank with one hand. With the other he removed his helmet, which he saw had a scuff mark but wasn’t cracked. He felt around his head but found no bumps or cuts, the helmet having absorbed the impact and distributed it over the side and top of his head while preventing any lacerations. “Yeah, I got off line and took a good shot to the head from the sidewall back there. I’m okay, just a little groggy maybe.”
Carlos responded, “Let’s take a break and have a snack. We don’t have much further to go, and there’s lots of time.”
Once they had pulled their kayaks up onto a nearby pebble beach and had some Gatorade and a power bar each, Carlos had a close look at John’s head. He could see no sign of either pupil being dilated, and John insisted that he felt well and had no dizziness or balance problems. They both had thorough first aid training and knew about concussions and what to look for. After a half-hour break all seemed well and they resumed their descent.
After reaching the outskirts of Cloverdale, pulling out of the creek and retrieving first the dirt bike and then Carlos’s truck, the two young men talked about what other challenges and adventures they might undertake as they drove home. They both enjoyed their work on the police force, but Santa Rosa was a fairly quiet city for the most part, with opportunities to exercise their firearms skills in a live situation fairly rare. They kept their arms skills honed on the police range, just as they did with their fitness and unarmed combat skills, but they were starting to feel like they were wasting the investment they’d made in developing their fighting skills.
Carlos was one of the team’s sniper experts, with a Remington 700 in .308 caliber as his assigned weapon. On duty he would carry a rifle that had been carefully tuned by the police armorer, but he kept an identical personal rifle in a small gun safe bolted to the floor in the back of the truck’s cab. He had placed in the top five several times at California SWAT Championships and felt he could get better with more shooting time. He wasn’t a military caliber sniper with reliable accuracy at a thousand yards or more, but he was well polished for typical police actions, which were usually at ranges of less than a hundred yards, though often under challenging conditions of low light with encroaching structures and nearby noncombatants.
John was part of the assault team and when called out would carry a standard AR-15 semiautomatic rifle with high velocity lightweight .223 caliber rounds in a high-capacity twenty-round magazine. All members of the Santa Rosa tactical team carried the Kimber 1911 .45 ACP automatic pistol as their sidearm, and with terrorism continuing to raise its head occasionally, they were encouraged to carry it even while off duty. Although for TAC team members, the sidearm was a secondary weapon, rarely used in shooting situations. John and Carlos spent nearly as much range time with their pistols as with their primary weapons. They both had customized shoulder holsters for off-duty time, to keep the guns close at hand if needed but unobtrusive when wearing a light jacket. The pistols had been left behind for their white-water run, securely locked in the gun safe in Carlos’s truck along with the Remington 700, but were back in their shoulder holsters for the drive home.
The talk, as usual, turned to the possibility of enlisting in one of the elite military forces, such as the SEALs, with their primary training installation on Coronado Island not far away in southern California. They knew that the admission and training process, lasting over a year, would be extremely arduous even though they could both easily pass the first hurdle, the Physical Screening Test. The opportunity for adventure, combat and service to country appealed to them. They had been drawn to the police force for many reasons, but high among them was an inherent instinct to serve and protect, which they found was only being partially satisfied in their current roles compared to what they felt they had to offer. They were attracted by what they knew from public information about the SEALs, operating in small covert groups, usually against targets with large heavily armed protective forces.
Another option they discussed was applying to a police force in one of the larger urban centers, such as the Los Angeles Police Department. They were sure they could get a strong recommendation from their SWAT captain and the chief as long as they gave them some time to fill their positions and train their replacements. It would be a much less challenging process and a surer bet, but it would also involve less intense action. Neither of them was temperamentally inclined toward an easier choice just to avoid difficulty and hardship. In fact, they placed difficulty and hardship on the positive side of the scale. Yet neither one was quite ready for the step into a new location and lifestyle. They didn’t have serious romantic attachments to hold them back, but they both loved Santa Rosa and the Sonoma County area with its casual lifestyle, moderate climate and varied countryside. So, they set that discussion aside for now.
“Let’s talk about a serious white water vacation,” John said. “I’d like to head up north in the spring, maybe as far as Canada. I hear that the Canadian Rocky Mountains are spectacular and there is some serious white water to be had. It’s a different style of kayaking than the creeking we are used to around here – big rivers, much faster and wilder, though more open and less technical. I think it would be fun for a change. There’s a Kicking Horse River Kayak Festival in a place called Golden, British Columbia. I can show you some cool videos when we get home.”
Carlos was quick to buy in to the idea of a road trip with some camping, hiking and a healthy dollop of white water in new scenery. By unspoken agreement, they would stick with Santa Rosa for at least another half-year or so before taking on a change in lifestyle.
Chapter 10
October 26, 2027
Washington, DC
James Rushton had already started on his chicken Caesar salad as his executive secretary ushered Dr. Wayman into the private dining room adjacent to the Oval Office. “Have a seat, Eli. I hope that plate of fruit and vegetables is what you ordered for your lunch. Can you start with the water project please before we resume our Chicken Little discussion?”
“Thank you, sir,” said the science advisor, “the fruit and vegetables will do just fine. Mr. President, there’s not too much more to say on the subject of water. A young post-doctoral fellow at MIT has been working in the area of desalination technology. One of the subjects I had intended to raise with you at some point is the emerging global fresh water shortage, and this young man has been trying to do something about it. I have met him now, and he is quite an
idealist. I think you would like him.
“In any case, the technology, in fact several technologies, for separating salt out of salt water is well established and in use around the world; but it is relatively expensive because it takes a lot of electrical power, which, by the way, in many places means burning more fossil fuels. Larry — that’s his name — is not a theoretical scientist, he is an engineering and materials scientist. He appears to have come up with some modifications to the existing technology that greatly improve its efficiency, by nearly a factor of ten. So, it could potentially produce large volumes of fresh water at close to a tenth of what it would currently cost. That would make it feasible to produce fresh water not only for drinking, but also for agricultural irrigation, avoiding eventual wide-scale crop failures.”
“So, what’s the catch?” said President Rushton.
“Well, it is still pretty early days,” replied Eli. “My colleague, Larry’s supervisor, has overseen several trials and both he and Larry are confident that the formula works at the laboratory scale. In the normal course, the next step would be an academic paper to disseminate the results, and an MIT patent application. After verification by another group using the same formula but their own equipment, MIT would likely seek a commercial partner to construct a pilot plant and, assuming no flaws show up at a larger scale, MIT would license the commercial partner to produce and market full-scale units.”
“That sounds like it could take a fair bit of time,” the president mused. “It would also leave the technology at least partly under the control of a business corporation. Normally I would be more than happy with that. Our whole economic system depends on business corporations to make it work. However, in this case, it feels to me like enough is at stake that the government should play a role, at least to begin with until this thing takes off — or falls apart. Eli, can you get together with Secretary of Commerce, Bruce Cartwright, and Will Templeton to work out a plan to accelerate this? I want a full-scale model up and running yesterday. Skip the pilot plant, we will fund the full-scale plant and take the risk. Bring in private sector design engineers if Larry would like some help to scale up the design. Private sector fabrication subcontractors are also fine, but I want us to remain in control of the overall project. Could you also arrange for me to meet with the president of MIT? I want to ensure we have their understanding of the national importance of the project and their full support. Can you do all that for me, Eli?”
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