Peregrinus Orior

by Robertson, John

  President Rushton did not hesitate. He was glad that the gift of the fresh water systems to Libya was recognized by his Mexican counterpart as a multinational effort even if the United States played the largest part and that there were motivations for the gift that included but went beyond simple charity. He also knew that Mexico and its leader would be too proud to request or accept a similar gift and could in fact afford to pay their own way at a reasonable price. It was one of the reasons he had insisted on maintaining government control of the technology. He responded accordingly.

  “Luis, of course we would want to share the benefits of this technology with our friends and no we will not be extracting a profit from our friends on such a matter as fresh water, which every human needs to survive. The rights to the technology are fully under the control of our government for the time being. As for supplying you with the plants at our cost, we can do better than that. We will provide you with the technology blueprints at no cost, as well as the engineering and technical support for you to fabricate and install your own plants. You have the fabrication facilities that you will need, plus the technical capability after some initial transition, so I think you can probably make the plants cheaper, save on transportation and keep the jobs in Mexico. We will even loan you the inventor if you’ll promise to take good care of him. We will just require a sublicense agreement that prohibits export of the technology or plants without our prior consent.”

  “Jim, you astound me,” responded Luis Lopez, “I remember you as being a fair and pragmatic statesman from our earlier meetings. I see you have remained all of that and more as the new leader of your nation. I am very grateful personally and on behalf of Mexico. You are a true friend. Who shall I have my staff get in touch with to get this underway?”

  After they exchanged a few more details and pleasantries, they hung up, and James Rushton was left with a few moments for reflection before his next meeting. All in all, he was feeling pretty good.

  The U.S. economy was performing reasonably well despite the increased costs associated with the new carbon tax and credit system. People seemed to appreciate the associated income tax reductions and they didn’t greatly resent the higher prices on hydrocarbon-intensive products. In fact, many were adjusting their lifestyles to rely less on such products and were at the same place in terms of the money left in their pockets at month’s end, or even slightly ahead. Globally the efforts to cut back on greenhouse gas emissions were beginning to have a favorable effect even if not as rapidly as desirable, and the United States was doing, and was seen to be doing, its fair share. Lastly, for the moment at least, he seemed to have successfully fended off the Russian bear’s test of his resolve and gained for the United States widespread international respect for how it was done.

  Jim felt satisfied that he had done a reasonably good job of guiding the country for the nine months he had been at the job, though he knew he had been fortunate in not being confronted by any really difficult crises. However, he remained of the view that he wasn’t suited for the role on a long-term basis and had advised the leadership of the Democratic National Committee at the end of December of his final decision not to run for election to the presidency, despite their strong encouragement to do so. The New Hampshire primary was now imminent with no announcement yet of the president’s intentions so as to give the party leadership some time to encourage one or more other favored candidates to step into the ring. The president and the party leadership had agreed on an announcement now scheduled for the following day.

  Jim was looking forward to having his decision public, and thus irreversible. He certainly didn’t intend to loaf through the year remaining in his term. In fact, there was still more thought to be given to several files he had worked on but not finished to his satisfaction. He needed to make sure the new fresh water technology was fully exploited; consider the climate change file and if any further action, domestic or international, was needed to step up the pace of greenhouse gas emission curtailment. He also thought he would need to carefully consider the touchy subject of temporary geo-engineering to potentially buy a little more time for longer term emission curtailment programs to take full effect. No, Jim expected to remain as busy as he had been but with his motivation of acting in the long-run best interests of the country made clear. He had no political aspirations or limitations — he planned to make that plain in his announcement.

  Chief of Staff Will Templeton knocked and put his head in briefly to advise the president that Dr. Eli Wayman had requested a brief, unscheduled meeting as soon as practical. Eli had not indicated to Will what the subject of the meeting would be.

  “Mr. President, I could put him off if you wish,” the chief offered. “Or I could insist on him identifying what he wants to talk about and then we could decide. He has had more access to you since you took office than is usually the case for a science advisor.”

  “No, Will,” Jim responded. “You know it is my practice to find time to meet with any senior staffer or cabinet member who requests it, and Dr. Wayman certainly deserves great respect for his stature in the scientific community. Besides, he’s interesting and likable. Can you juggle my schedule to fit him in some time tomorrow after my live announcement? It will either be good news, or bad news, but it will be something important. Eli isn’t one to waste time on a whim.”

  Chapter 20

  Tuesday, January 18, 2028

  Washington, DC

  The President of the United States had just announced that, despite only having held that office for nine months, he did not plan to run for a full term in the fall presidential election. He had laid out the key priorities, which he was going to focus on for the remaining year of his mandate. They included climate change mitigation, extensive desalination to reclaim arid regions in the United States and abroad, global security and stability, and encouragement of advanced technology and associated jobs.

  James Rushton had endorsed the moderate vision of the last elected president, Tim Mahally, and stated that he would support any candidate from either party who would take up that vision. There were inquiries from the media as to why he himself did not then carry that moderate vision into the election. The president had answered that he did not aspire to the presidency, was more suited to an administrative role than politics, and felt he could make the greatest contribution to the country by avoiding the political fray and focusing on the administrative priorities for the remainder of his appointment.

  Following the close of the media session, Jim retired to his private study adjacent to the Oval Office, where he enjoyed a light lunch and a rare luxury of a few quiet moments to himself. It was done. As recently as the evening before, he and his wife had agonized over where his duty to his country lay and had jointly reaffirmed the conclusion he had come to previously. She would have supported him fully if he felt he needed to carry on, but he knew she was relieved by his choice.

  He was scheduled next to meet with Dr. Wayman and find out what was on his mind. He had planned to use the more informal setting of the study, but a few minutes before the meeting was to begin, Will Templeton knocked and stuck his head in.

  “Sir, excuse me,” said the chief of staff, “I have to say that for someone who claims to have no aptitude for politics, you sure have a knack for coming across as a leader. Anyway, I know that’s behind us now. What I came in to say is that our learned scientist has an entourage, which he has asked be permitted to join him in his meeting with you, as well as two others he wishes to include by phone. He also wants to be able to tie a laptop computer into a large wall screen. Sir, unless you want to keep it to just the two of you, I think you will need to move into your dining room. You’ll have enough room there for the five of them, and I can get a technician to splice a laptop into your TV wall screen.”

  “Wow, the plot thickens,” said the president. “Why am I getting the feeling I am not going to like the story line? Let’s go ahead and move the meeting to the dining room, and why don’t you join us
Will?” A few minutes later the president entered his private dining room, and the four men and one woman rose to greet him, with Will remaining discretely to one side.

  “Mr. President, I am very sorry to barge in on you like this,” began Eli. “I am sorry today on several counts. I am sorry that you have decided not to run for election. You are the kind of leader this country badly needs, but I listened to your reasons and I respect them. I am sorry to be the bearer of some worrisome news, and I’m especially sorry that I have dragged my heels on this matter. I should have given you a heads-up several weeks ago.”

  James Rushton was a little taken aback by the torrent of words from the elderly scholar, who was usually a calm and deliberate communicator, but he kept his balance and avoided conveying concern. He interjected before the man went any further, “Eli, I am sure whatever it is, you had good reasons not to bring it to my attention sooner. Please introduce your team and then let’s sit down. We’ll have drinks brought in presently.”

  The science advisor introduced General Isaac Montgomery, the lead executive of the Planetary Defense Coordination Office; Dr. Neal Sampson, the director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory; Dr. Eleanor Appleton, the senior manager of the Near-Earth Object Collision Risk Assessment Department at the JPL; and Dr. Tony Galletsia, mathematician at the JPL. He also introduced the two individuals calling in from the LSST observatory, Senior Scientist Dr. George Rigby and Darya Ahmadi, PhD student of astrophysics. The refreshments arrived and everyone was seated at the table except Will Templeton, who remained standing. The president motioned the science advisor to begin.

  “Mr. President, thank you for seeing us on short notice,” said Eli. “I think what we have to tell you is significant enough to justify intruding on your schedule. I am going to ask Ms. Ahmadi and Dr. Galletsia to cover the details after I remind you of some of the context that we’ve discussed previously. The two of them have done all the work.

  “Mr. President, when I briefed you several months ago on the potential that an object big enough to do serious damage might strike the Earth, I left you with the impression that the risk of such an event in the next ten years is very low. I also discussed the Planetary Defense Coordination Office, which is currently led by General Montgomery, and the role it plays in keeping tabs on the solar system so as to warn us of any change in this outlook.

  “Mr. President, a little over two weeks ago, General Montgomery advised me that our LSST facility in Chile, which is overseen by Dr. Rigby, had identified a new object in the far reaches of our solar system, and our team at the JPL, who are with us here, had determined that this object is moving relatively quickly in our general direction. Sir, our JPL team was of the view that the likelihood of a collision between the Earth and this object is very low, and they still think so, though it was identified by Dr. Galletsia as a risk. Based on what we knew at that time, I elected not to advise you, sir, of this new development. That was my decision and mine alone, and I now believe it was the wrong decision. I didn’t want to bother you unnecessarily, but I allowed myself to be influenced in part by my desire not to appear to you or Mr. Templeton as an old fussbudget trying to claim even more of your time and attention than you have already generously granted me. I didn’t want to be the boy crying wolf when none arrives, but I should have at least advised you that one had been sighted.”

  “Okay Eli,” James Rushton said, “I am a little confused. You said our team still views the risk of a collision as low, so what has changed to cause you to second-guess your initial decision and to pull this group of experts into our usual one-on-one discussion?”

  “Yes, Mr. President, something has changed,” replied Eli. “We know a lot more about this object than we did even forty-eight hours ago. The risk of a collision remains low, but we won’t be able to rule it out for another month or so. That’s not the main thing that I am worried about. For that I am going to call on Ms. Ahmadi, who has been tracking this object at the LSST observatory. In fact, she is the one who first identified it. Darya, please go ahead.”

  The president, sensing he was about to receive a lengthy and important briefing spoke quickly to Will Templeton and asked him to clear his schedule for the rest of the day.

  The young astrophysicist was glad she was speaking over a communication system rather than being physically present in the president’s private dining room. Even so she was more than a little overawed to be addressing the most powerful leader in the world. Still, she was even more awestruck by what she now knew about object X/2027U3 and was about to explain to the president.

  “President Rushton,” she said, “this object was first spotted on November 6 of last year. At that time, we knew nothing about how far away it was, where it was heading, how fast or what size it was. We just knew that something was there that hadn’t been there before. Importantly, we couldn’t actually see the object at that time, or at least that is not how it was spotted. It was spotted by what we call the indirect method, when it moved in front of a distant star and blotted out the light from that star. And it was spotted entirely by accident. I was actually examining stars many, many times farther away than we now know this object to be. In any case, we learned more about this object over the following weeks and as of the night before last we now know quite a lot, and it is quite surprising.

  “Mr. President, from the beginning one thing we did know was that this object was coming from an unusual direction. I think a few pictures will help you understand, and so I’ve asked Dr. Galletsia to help out with some graphics, which I believe you will see on your wall screen. The first is one which I understand from Professor Wayman is similar to another that you have seen before. It depicts our solar system as if we were looking at it from one side and slightly above. It isn’t to scale with respect to distances, but it does illustrate visually that most of the objects in the solar system lie in approximately the same plane as the Earth as they all orbit around the Sun. In particular, the asteroid belt lies in this plane, which is called the plane of the ecliptic. This is where most of the objects that cross Earth’s path have come from.

  “Our new object is not moving in the plane of the ecliptic. In fact, its path is nearly perpendicular to the plane that most of the solar system occupies. It is coming toward us from the direction that we might tend to think of as below, given the usual spatial orientation that we visualize for the solar system. The next picture depicts this. For simplicity the path of the new object is shown as a single deterministic most likely path whereas in reality it spans a cone of possible paths, which we will come back to in a little while when Dr. Galletsia takes up his part of this presentation. I should say, however, that he is the one who has calculated the possible paths and has developed all of these graphics.

  “In any case, given that this new object rising up through our solar system is coming from such an unusual direction, I expected that we were dealing with a comet originating from the Oort cloud. The Oort cloud surrounds the solar system in a spherical shell at a great distance out and consists of icy bodies that can be disturbed and fall in toward the Sun from any direction, giving rise to a comet, as distinct from the rocky or metallic asteroids that stick to the plane of the ecliptic.

  “Mr. President, a comet is a relatively small object. A typical diameter might be six miles long. That’s big enough to cause some terrible consequences should one strike the Earth, but still small compared with the eight-thousand-mile diameter of the Earth itself.

  “Sir, X/2027U3 is not a comet; it is much, much larger than that. The night before last the LSST was able to see the object directly. In fact, with the benefit of hindsight and going back over the original pictures, a very faint disk was discernible even to begin with despite the low magnification I was using at that time. The LSST missed that because its detection program caught the object first by indirect observation of the loss of light from a star it had passed in front of before the direct observation detector was triggered. We missed it in our visual inspection because it w
as quite faint and we weren’t expecting it.

  “Back in November, when the object was first spotted through indirect observation, I wasn’t using anywhere near the maximum magnification the LSST is capable of because I was studying a large swath of a much more distant part of the galaxy, and high magnification narrows the telescope’s field of view too much at that distance. I was still using relatively low magnification for my search two nights ago as well, until the LSST found this object again, but this time through direct observation; that is, by recognizing an actual object in the night sky in a position where no such object is registered in its memory banks of known objects.

  “The next picture shows you on the right side what the LSST saw two nights ago when I adjusted it to maximum magnification. On the left side is another separate picture at the same magnification, which is of the planet Neptune, outermost of the eight planets in our solar system.

  “Neptune is at a distance of about thirty astronomical units from the Sun, versus the Earth, which is at one astronomical unit. It has a diameter of about thirty-two thousand miles, so even at that distance the LSST can easily resolve it into a definite disk. X/2027U3 is quite a bit further out, now at about forty-nine AU, but you can see it already appears to be much bigger than Neptune. If X/2027U3 was at the same thirty AU distance as Neptune, it would be clear that it is in fact much bigger than Neptune. X/2027U3 is not a comet at all. It is a planet. It is a large planet, not orbiting any sun but off on a romp through our Milky Way galaxy, and apparently paying our solar system a visit along the way. The picture analysis software we have here at the LSST observatory estimates the diameter of this planet at about a hundred and twenty-eight thousand miles across, nearly half again the size of Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system, which has a diameter of eighty-nine thousand miles. That is toward the larger end of the range of known planets in stellar systems within the Milky Way galaxy, though by no means the largest of them.”