Dark Star Rising Second Edition (Pebbles in The Sky)

by Bagley, Jeffery

  I would like to dedicate this, my first book, to my lovely wife Susan. Not only did she let me use her name as one of my main characters, but she stood behind me when I doubted myself and was not sure I had the resolve to finish this project. She is my wife, mate, critic, and most importantly, my best friend.

  Dark Star Rising

  Second Edition

  Chapter 1

  March 11th, 2016

  Pasadena, California

  Peter Rockwell rubbed his eyes, and tried to clear his vision. He had been studying images and spectroscopic data for over fifteen hours today. The coffee, energy drinks, and candy bars were no longer holding back his need for rest. He sighed and stood to stretch his stiff neck and back. Such was the life of a graduate student he thought to himself. Peter was a graduate student in Astrophysics at the California Institute of Technology, or Cal Tech as it was commonly known. He was in the midst of that angst that all graduate students must deal with, the gathering of data to support his thesis paper.

  He grimaced and shook his head as he read the title of his paper; “The Inconsistencies of Doppler Shift and Spectrographic Analysis on Distant Galaxy Infrared Observations Due To Interspersed Interstellar Dust Clouds.” What a mouth full that title was, and this is the bright idea I had for my research he thought to himself. He sighed as he slumped back into his chair and felt nothing but frustration as he looked at the pile of photographs and spectrographic data charts in front of him. He had studied the data and related images for so long he could see them with his eyes shut. As tired as he was, he knew that the completion of his research paper was why he was here attending college in Southern California so far from his childhood home of North Carolina.

  Peter let his mind wander back to memories of his childhood. Peter had grown up in the small community of Warne, North Carolina. It was a common joke where he was from that the small community of Warne was two hours from anywhere. The nearest cities to Warne were Asheville, Atlanta, Chattanooga, and Knoxville. All four of those cities were about two hours away. Needless to say, growing up in the southern Appalachian area during his youth meant spending a lot of time outdoors camping, fishing, hiking, and looking at the star filled skies that were unpolluted with the lights of the big cities.

  The stars had always had a special fascination for Peter. He had spent many hours as a boy looking at the moon, stars, and the solar system though an old set of binoculars while he was out camping. On his tenth birthday, he had received his most prized possession. His grandfather had bought him a one hundred and thirty millimeter Orion telescope. From that point onward, he was hooked, and studying the universe laid out in the night sky became his passion. When the weather permitted, he spent every possible moment out in a field behind his house with his telescope looking up at the sky. There were countless nights when his mother had to come outside and drag him in shivering and half frozen when he had lost track of time looking at distant celestial objects in the clear cold night skies of the North Carolina winter. For it was in that winter sky, clear of moisture and humidity, unpolluted with city lights, that he could really see the immensity of the universe above all around him.

  As Peter got older, he added reading to his passion of looking at the night sky. He read every book and article he could find on astronomy, science, and the space programs of all the nations of the world. He developed a habit of following the news on every space probe, satellite, and discovery that was made and published. Instead of posters of sports heroes, bands, or scantily clad female models, the walls of his room were covered with photographs of rockets, newspaper articles about satellites, and star charts.

  When Peter entered high school, he would probably have been categorized as a nerd by his school aged peers, but his early puberty and above average physical size protected him from much of the hazing and bullying that a smaller boy would have had to endure. It also presented somewhat of a quandary for him. His friends, neighbors, and especially the coaches at school, were constantly trying to recruit him for sports. Peter had no interest in any sport, so all his friends and acquaintances just ended up shaking their heads and trying to figure out why he did not use the physical gifts he was born with. “Why don’t you play football?” they would say to him, and “forget about all those books on stars and stuff.” The teenage girls at school were constantly vying for his attention. Most of them would do anything to be seen out on a date with the best looking boy in school, but he was oblivious to it all. Peter’s eyes were always drawn to the sky. The heavenly bodies that he was interested in did not reside on Earth.

  At the customary age of sixteen he obtained his driver’s license, but he did not use it to go out on dates with girls, socialize, and cruise around town in a car with his peers. Peter discovered that Young Harris College, only about ten miles away from his home, had a small observatory with a sixteen inch Schmidt Cassegrain telescope. While his friends were out partying, his weekends were spent prowling around the college begging every chance he could to use the telescope there. Since he all but haunted the observatory, he became good friends with several of the professors and student volunteers in the planetarium there on campus.

  Peter graduated from high school in 2008 with a three point nine four grade point average. He applied to attend college at California Technical Institute. Thanks to his grades and a letter of recommendation from the head of the Mathematics and Astronomy program at Young Harris College, who also happened to be an alumnus from Cal Tech, he received a scholarship offer and moved to the west coast to attend college at the school of his dreams. He could have attended many different colleges, but the exciting and determining factor for Peter’s choice, was the fact that Cal Tech was the home of the National Aeronautics and Space Agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratories. JPL was the Mecca of astronomy as far as he was concerned. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, or JPL as it was referred to, was where all the space telescopes, such as the Hubble and Spitzer, were controlled from. All the data was downloaded, analyzed and catalogued at JPL.

  Moving up the ranks of students, Peter completed his undergraduate studies, then his Master’s degree, and then started work on his Doctorate. That had brought him to where he found himself tonight, sitting up at two thirty in the morning, staring with blurry vision at the images and data that had him stumped. Peter had been reviewing some old data from the now all but crippled Spitzer Space Telescope. This telescope, unlike the Hubble, specialized in thermal imaging. It was an infrared space observatory that had cost over a billion dollars when it was built. The telescope had performed its mission and had exhausted the last of its cryogenic coolant supply in May of 2009. From that point onward it was reduced to only being able to conduct some minor observations and could do no more thermal imaging. His thesis was centered on what he believed were inconsistencies in observations of distant galaxies that were formed soon after the “Big Bang” event that had formed the universe as it was known to man. Studies of these distant galaxies gave insight to the formation, history, and structure of the known universe. Unfortunately, it was now the year 2016, and it had been seven years since the Spitzer Space Telescope could take infrared images and that is where his problem lay.

  Peter had a set of twenty three observations of the same distant galaxy over a period of about five years taken by the Spitzer. The observations, spectrographic, and doppler shift data did not match up and correspond with each other as they should. The basis of his research was that galactic dust clouds could greatly affect the accuracy of these observations and he had to be able to rule out other interfering factors or influences on the data. The only other possible factors that could
affect the data and images he was using included infrared light or thermal interference from another source.

  Peter was convinced that he had chosen the correct data to provide support of his thesis except that there was a lingering issue of possible outside interference in every one of these studies that he wanted to use that had been made by the Spitzer. The distant galaxy observations that he was basing most of his work on was in an area of space where there were no known infrared sources that could cause the discrepancies. He had obtained deep field Hubble studies of the same area and there was just nothing there that should be causing the infrared interference he was seeing. The only conclusion he could come up with that made sense was that there had to have been something wrong with the Spitzer’s infrared imager when it took these shots. Peter had reviewed hundreds of other studies taken by the Spitzer, and not a single one of those studies showed the same problem with any infrared interference. So, why did only this series of studies that he wanted to use have this artifact and not the others he pondered?

  All twenty three studies that he had to reference his study on had a small area of thermal ...pollution, or interference, in the same exact area. Forty five degrees from the top of the study field he was using there was a small, faint, but repeated indication of a thermal source that should not be there. This could skew all his data and bring his whole thesis into doubt. He had ruled out all possible sources, such as another Earth orbiting satellite, a wandering near Earth meteor, planet, etc. etc. It was not a film defect, as the raw digital images transmitted by the Spitzer contained it also. The only possible explanation was that the Spitzer instrument was somehow receiving thermal interference from an external source, but why only on these studies?

  The most perplexing issue was that the infrared interference artifact became worse with each study over the five years that the studies had been made. On printed film, there was this faint thermal source that was getting stronger or brighter, but there was nothing there in space that could be causing the artifact. He was stumped. Something had to have been wrong with the Spitzer, and since it no longer was able to take infrared studies, it was not possible for him to inquire about having another study of this particular area performed.

  Peter sorted through his stack of documents and data printouts and pulled up studies from the WISE and IRAS infrared satellites. Studies by these telescopes in the same general area had discovered some previously unknown comets and asteroids but they did not have the sensitivity to show the detailed and accurate data that Spitzer had produced. Neither of those satellites had detected any thermal source in the area of question that the Spitzer had. Like the Spitzer, both of those satellites were also now decommissioned in space and of no further use. Peter picked up the data and images from the Wyoming infrared telescope that he had obtained. That data had too much interference from the Earth’s atmosphere for the accurate readings he needed. The SOFIA or airborne infrared telescope had the same issue as the Wyoming scope, too much interference from the Earth’s atmosphere.

  So here he was. Because his research was totally dependent on these Spitzer studies, it could be totally shot down because of this damned thermal artifact that was coming from somewhere. Peter shook his head trying to clear his vision. He was beyond just being tired and no longer able to think straight. He wandered off to his bedroom and collapsed exhausted on his bed and fell right to sleep.

  A few hours later Peter’s mind slowly extricated itself from the world of exhaustion, and dreams of stars, nebulas, and dust clouds back into the world of light and noise. “God, what is that awful noise?” was Peter’s first thought as his bloodshot eyes slowly opened. His alarm clock was bleeping madly. He could hear the couple upstairs arguing again, a baby was crying somewhere. Someone was also beating on his door. “What the hell?” he thought as he slammed his hand down to silence the alarm clock. The clock was showing it was eight am. “Who the hell is beating on my door at this time of morning?” he asked himself.

  Peter sat upright in bed. “Oh shit, I forgot about Susan,” he moaned. He was supposed to have met Susan at seven am for breakfast. Peter climbed from bed and stumbled to the door. Opening the door confirmed his fear; there stood a very annoyed Susan with several grocery bags.

  She looked at him with contempt and aggravation. “Did you forget that we had a breakfast date this morning?” she accused. Peter could think of nothing to say. His expression said it all; “busted and guilty as charged.” He just sighed, slumped his shoulders, and stood aside as she pushed through the door to his apartment and dumped the bags down on his kitchen counter.

  “I drove past on my way home from work last night and saw your light still on at one thirty in the morning,” she said. Her expression softened with concern. “I figured you were up late working on your paper again and that there was probably no way you were going to make it to breakfast. So, I brought breakfast to you.” She pulled out some bacon, eggs, a box of Bisquik baking mix, and a half gallon of buttermilk from her grocery bags. “Go take your shower and I will make breakfast. You are going to have to eat and sleep sometime or you’re going to kill yourself,” she said. She turned the oven on and rolled up her sleeves to cook. Peter shut the apartment door and moved toward the kitchen as if to help but she held up a hand for him to stop and pointed toward his bathroom. Peter sighed, and like a scolded puppy, turned to obey.

  As Peter slowly turned his body under the steaming hot water of his shower he willed himself into full wakefulness. “Boy did I blow that,” he thought to himself as his thoughts turned to Susan. Susan Crawford had come crashing into his life in a most literal sense just seven short weeks ago. Peter had been at a small pub one night where Susan was working to support herself while she was attending college. Peter and Damian Summers, his best friend, had gone to the Greenhouse, a local pub and watering hole, for some late night beers and barbecued pork sandwiches the pub was well known for. Peter had been walking back from the bar with a pitcher of beer while at the same time trying to watch a news story about a meteor that had exploded the day before over South Africa. With his eyes on the TV and his momentum going the other direction, his two hundred pounds, and six foot two inch frame ran right over Susan who was delivering a platter of hot wings and drinks to a neighboring table. Somehow in the ensuing crash of bodies, tables turning over, flying hot wings and spilling beer, Susan ended up lying flat on top of him face to face with the instigator of the entire mess. She was spitting mad, dripping beer and hot sauce from her hair, and in Peter’s mind at that moment, the most beautiful girl he had ever met. In addition to her beauty, he had been extremely impressed with the expansive though quite vulgar vocabulary she had hurled at him at him as he attempted to help her up and clean up the mess.

  It had taken two weeks, many hung up phone calls, six dozen roses, and him moping around the Greenhouse Pub nightly before she finally acknowledged his existence and offered him a smile. After several dozen more apologies he finally enticed her to join him for dinner and they had spent the evening laughing about the incident of “Pigs on the Wing” as they started calling it.

  It had turned out that Susan was also from the southeast. She had grown up in Pendleton South Carolina, which was only a little over an hour or so from where Peter grew up. Since that first dinner together, they had dated several times a week and had made a habit of meeting every Tuesday and Friday for breakfast at Cook’s Restaurant. Cook’s was the only local eating place on the west coast that Peter had discovered that actually served the homemade biscuits, gravy, and salt cured country ham that he loved to eat for breakfast. Of course, today was Friday, and he had over slept and missed his breakfast date with Susan.

  Peter’s mind wandered as he fantasized about Susan. He and Susan had still not taken that next step in their relationship where they slept together, but he knew that if he could ever get the heavy weight of his research paper off his back they could finally get there and it would be so …so…

  Peter stuck his head out of
the shower and sniffed. “What is that wonderful smell?” he thought to himself. Peter jumped out of the shower and hurriedly dried off. After making sure the hallway was clear, he ran to his bedroom for shorts and a t-shirt. He then followed his nose back to the kitchen where Susan was just removing a pan of fresh, hot, homemade biscuits from the oven.

  Peter grabbed Susan in his arms and spun her around. “You can make biscuits!” he exclaimed.

  She just stared at him in amusement. “I am not some Valley Girl with bleached hair and fake boobs you know,” she said. She spun out of his embrace, turned on her southern dialect, and stated, “I am a bred and born Southern Belle. Now release me, sir. We need to eat our eggs before they get cold.”

  There was several minutes of silence while Peter ate some of the best biscuits that he had tasted since he had last had his mothers. After his second biscuit Peter spoke. “I don’t think I am going to meet you for breakfast out any more.”

  Susan looked at him with concern and questioning in her eyes. “Why not?”

  “Because,” he stated, “it would be cheaper, and the food much better if you just came over here and cooked our breakfast!”

  Susan leaned over the table, looked him in the eye and laid down the law, “It isn’t going to happen.”

  “But why?” exclaimed Peter, as he buttered another biscuit.

  “Because,” she said, “I don’t cook!” Peter opened his mouth to disagree, but Susan placed her hand over his mouth and whispered “Don’t even go there. That is why I moved way out here to attend school. Women in my little home town were expected to cook, do laundry, clean house, have babies, and in addition to all that, work a job to help support the family.” She leaned back in her chair and pressed her point. “I don’t cook, I hate cleaning house, I am not sure I ever want a baby, and I sure as hell am not going to support a man!” She stood and grabbed her backpack and headed to the door. “Now, be a good boy and clean up the kitchen. Meet me at the park in thirty minutes and I will let you walk me to class.” She blew him a kiss and went out the door.