Susan was sitting on the curb waiting on him as he pulled up to the small bungalow that she shared with three other girls that were also studying biology at Cal Tech. Even before he glanced at his watch, he knew from her expression that he was late again. She climbed in his old beat up Toyota Tacoma and leaned over to give him a kiss. “I am going to buy you a new alarm clock,” she said. “It is awfully funny you can calculate the orbits of planets and stuff down to the second, but you can never pick me up on time.”
Peter pulled out into the flow of traffic and just beamed a radiant smile at her. “That might not be a problem much longer baby. You will not have to compete for time while I work on my research paper any longer. I just got off the phone with your uncle and he thinks that I will be able to use my data after all. He patted the stack of papers beside him. This is my rough draft and he wants to review it. This time three months from now you may be dating Doctor Peter Rockwell.
“Oh Peter,” she said, “I am so happy for you. This is what you have been working so hard for.” After congratulating him she sat back and grew quiet, deep in thought.
Peter merged onto the freeway and they headed for the beach at El Matador. He looked over at her and slyly said, “Oh by the way, we are also having burgers and dogs over at your uncles to celebrate my ordeal coming to a close.” Peter turned on the stereo and found some beach music. Cranking up the volume, he sang alone quite out of tune the rest of the way to El Matador Beach.
Susan remained quiet for the rest of the drive. She did have to smile to herself as Peter did his best to harmonize with some old Beach Boys songs. It is a good thing that he did not study music, she thought to herself. They pulled into the sand and gravel parking lot and distributed the cooler, beach chairs, and towels between themselves before heading down the cliff trail to the beach. The beach was quite crowded, it being a Sunday, but they found a little recess at the base of the rocks where there was a smaller risk of getting hit in the head by a Frisbee or errant football. After setting up their chairs, they sat back and Susan pulled them both a bottle of cold beer from the cooler.
Peter looked over at her. “You have not said a word since we left your house,” he accused.
“Yes I have,” she said with a hurt look.
“No,” he countered. “You went all quiet and serious like on me. Do you want to tell me what is wrong? This is supposed to be a fun and happy day.”
“I am happy, Peter. I am especially happy for you! I was just admiring your musical talent on the way here.”
He just looked at her. “That’s not likely. What is really bothering you, did I say or do something wrong?”
She sighed and looked him in the eyes. “Peter, we just met a little over seven weeks ago. I agreed to go out with you only a little over a month ago and now it seems like I have been with you for years. My time with you has been a very happy time for me, and I hope for you too. I think I, uh, I think I have grown very fond of your perpetual tardiness and silly singing.”
Peter looked confused. “Then what is wrong?”
She shook her head and looked down. When she looked back up she had the smallest hint of tears in her eyes. “Peter, you do not like to teach. Your dream is to do research. You want to do big time research and to do that you will have probably have to go somewhere else than here for a job. You are going to have to look for a real job. I realize that means you will be moving away and it will be hard to maintain a close relationship that we have only had a month to build upon. I am very happy for you, but also very sad that I may lose you just when I am beginning to have some serious feelings for you. I will be right back. I need to cool off.” She jumped up and walked down the beach toward the surf.
Peter watched her cross the beach in her yellow bikini. She is quite the looker, he thought to himself. He also noticed that quite a few of the guys in their vicinity were looking at her with probably the same appraisal that he had. She had waded in to about her waist in the surf and just stood there looking out to sea. He thought about what she had said and saw the truth of it. In a perfect world he would be offered an understudy or apprentice position across campus at JPL and work on a space project that was being planned and developed for the near future. He realized that with the current economy and the federal budget cuts that he could probably forget about that. His best bet was getting an internship at one of the big new observatories down in South America. It seemed everyone had decided that high up in the Andes Mountains was the ideal place to build observatories that were not affected by bothersome things like the weather.
He had not really thought about how his completion of his doctorate might affect his evolving relationship with Susan. He realized that he was actually becoming quite fond of her. She had a way of opening up his eyes to things in the world that had not really mattered to him in the past. He could see that she cared for him. He understood her fear their relationship might not survive the distance and separation that his taking a job might bring about. The only real option that he could think of was if he took a local teaching position, if he could find one. He knew that he would not be happy doing that. He would probably end up hating her for taking his dream away from him. He forgot all his worries in an instant when he caught a cup of cold sea water right on his bare chest.
Susan stood there grinning at him. “Come on and walk in the surf with me, Mr. Serious. This is supposed to be a happy day. Let’s go for a walk and then get some sun before we go eat with Uncle Eric.”
Later that afternoon Peter and Susan pulled up in front of her uncle’s house as they had been invited on the way home from the beach. As they walked up the sidewalk from the street it was obvious that Dr. Eric Casselman had not waited until they arrived to light the grill. The smell of burning mesquite charcoal was wafting over the house, so they skipped the front door and went around in back of their house to the patio. Peter elbowed Susan in the ribs as they stopped and stared at their host. Dr. Casselman was happily flipping burgers. Dressed in a very bright flowered Hawaiian shirt, orange swim trunks, and flip flops, he could have fit in with any aging crowd of Jimmy Buffet Parrotheads. This was not the Dr. Eric Casselman that Peter had come to know at Cal Tech that all the students were terrified of.
Susan giggled and whispered. “Someone has kidnapped my uncle and left an imposter living in his house.”
Dr. Casselman looked up, and seeing his guests had arrived, he waved his hand at the wicker chairs around his patio table indicating they should take a seat. He saw that they were looking at his leisure time garb and he gave them a grin. “What are you guys staring at, can’t a guy relax on the weekend? This is southern California you know.”
Peter tried his best to reply in a serious tone. “I am not sure how this would affect your reputation as the Bear back on campus Dr. Casselman. If any of the undergrads saw you like this, it would be the death of your God-like status.”
Dr. Casselman grinned and said, “They won’t. Only my close friends, family, and professional colleagues see me in my true form. Tomorrow, I will undergo a metamorphosis back to the alter ego that all my students know. On that subject, I am promoting you two to my close knit group of qualified people who are fit to see me and call me Eric here off campus.” He winked at Susan. “You may call me Uncle Eric if you prefer my dear. As for you Peter, very shortly you will be able to fit the professional colleague criteria, so it is Eric to you.” He set a plate of burgers and hotdogs on the table and said, “grab’em while they are hot.”
The three of them chit-chatted about the weather, how crowded the beach had been, traffic, and other small talk until they had all eaten their fill. Then, Eric pushed his plate back and leaned back in his chair. “Peter, my boy, I hope you did not forget that draft of your paper. I would like to look it over, and then you can have someone with good typing skills polish it up for you.”
Peter leaned forward and spoke. “Dr. Casselman, excuse me, uh, Eric. I need to know what you found out about the abnormality on the Spitzer Ima
ges. I will have to incorporate that and explain it before I will be able to use those images to support my theory.”
Eric pondered his response for a moment. He finally spoke to Susan. “My dear niece, how come you are going out with someone who is so obviously intelligent, but has tunnel vision so bad he can’t see the forest because of the trees?”
“Why Uncle Eric,” she replied, “That is exactly how we met. He was so locked in on watching the TV over the bar that he ran me down without ever seeing me.”
Peter started to turn red at the discussion of how he had met Susan by his lack of attention that night in the bar. “Let’s change the subject, shall we?” he intoned. How about those dead whales that washed up on the beach a couple of days ago?”
“Not so fast, my boy,” said Eric. “We were discussing your paper and it looks like I am going to have to pull some teeth here.” He glanced at Susan. “Hopefully, this will not be too painful, so here goes.” Using his best lecture voice, he started in. “Peter, what sources of energy would Spitzer have seen while looking out into the universe?”
“Well,” said Peter, “It was designed to use the infrared spectrum. Specifically, it would have picked up sources of heat, such as from stars or groups of stars in distant galaxies. It could also have picked up an object close to a star that was receiving and radiating heat that it had absorbed from that star, such as a planet.”
“Correct,” Eric nodded. “Now, what else out in space, away from the energy source of a star, would radiate heat or light into the infrared spectrum that Spitzer could pick up?”
“Well, it would have to be something with an internal energy source, either from radioactive decay, chemical reactions, or some type of combustion,” Peter replied.
Eric nodded and led him on. “Ok, for the sake of argument, let us say that ET is not coming to pay a visit in some huge fusion powered starship that is dumping waste heat into space. What else does that leave?”
Peter contemplated for a moment and replied. “Well, that would still leave the possibility of a very large rogue planet that was still cooling off or a Brown Dwarf.”
Eric sat back with contentment and an expression of success, as a wave of comprehension washed across Peter’s face.
Peter was speechless for almost a minute then spoke. “If the source of the infrared artifact was a Brown Dwarf, it would have to be pretty large one, probably almost as big as an M class star. It would be very far off, unless, unless it was a very small one and it was very close. If it was a Y class, that would mean it would have to be very, very close to be seen, and...” Peter stopped speaking and looked at Eric. He then spoke slowly. “The infrared output was growing stronger, and there was no noticeable bearing shift at all. It was barely detectable by the first Spitzer images but grew stronger over the four year span of those studies. With the positive Doppler shift that means…” Peter grew silent.
Susan looked back and forth between the two of them and Peter’s look of concentration. “What?” she said. “Would one of you please explain what your guys are talking about? You have lost me.”
“I’ll be damned,” said Peter. “I think I have found a Brown Dwarf heading almost right at us.”
“You finally connected the dots, even if it did take a little pushing and prodding from me,” exclaimed Eric.
“I don’t understand,” said Susan. “I am only a biology major, but I do know a little bit about astronomy. Isn’t a Brown Dwarf a baby star?”
“Not exactly,” said Peter. “It is more like a star that never quite made the cut to join the other stars. It never gathered enough mass to start a nuclear fusion process. It is sort of like a giant planet, only much denser. They can give off some heat and infrared light as they slowly cool, but they will never be a fully-fledged hydrogen fusing star like our sun. Damn, this is going to be an opportunity of a lifetime. Depending on how close it passes the solar system, we can study it and put to rest a lot of theories about the evolution and formation of the stars and galaxies.”
“So this is a good thing, lots of people will be excited about this, right?” asked Susan.
Eric nodded, “Your right, my dear. Astronomers are going to go crazy over this and your boyfriend here is going to become somewhat of a celebrity when the word gets out.”
Susan stood, walked over to Peter, bent down, and hugged him. She stood back up and exclaimed, “That is the first time I have ever hugged a famous person, it feels rather nice!” Then, a sad expression came over her. “This means you will probably travel around and met all sorts of important people. There will be lots of pretty girls around and you will forget all about me.”
“I could never forget you, Susan. Nobody can wait tables with the grace that you can,” Peter grinned.
She grabbed both his ears and twisted them hard until he yelled, then she sat on his knee. “You better not forget about me, Peter Rockwell!”
Peter thought for a moment and then said, “You know, this could really help me in my job search. It will really get my name out there. What a resume. I could just write that I was the dude who discovered the Brown Dwarf and anybody that is somebody will probably know me. I could even do talk shows. I may have no trouble getting a job at all now,” he beamed.
Eric interrupted his day-dreaming. “Quit dreaming of Hollywood, Peter. You already have a job right here at Cal Tech.”
Peter frowned and said, “No offence Eric, but you know by now that teaching is not for me. I would not be happy being an instructor for the rest of my life. I want to be involved in some new project. I want something challenging and exciting.”
Eric just looked at him with amusement. “I am appalled that you do not think that teaching is an exciting challenge, but that is not the job I am talking about. Mike Banscott from JPL called me this morning. He is the one that I talked to about your discovery. He has talked to David Honstein, the chief administrator of NASA, regarding your findings. It seems like your little discovery has gotten some people in high places very excited. Mike has been placed in charge of forming a team to study this Brown Dwarf interloper as it gets closer. He informed me that you are now hired as his assistant, if you want the position, that is. You will be setting up shop right across campus at JPL. So, you may not going anywhere after all it seems. Susan will still be able to keep a very close eye on you.”
Susan gave a squeal of delight and hugged Peter so hard that his chair flipped over backwards spilling them both laughing onto the patio. Peter exclaimed, “JPL, I cannot believe it. That has been my dream since the day I was given my first telescope by my grandfather.”
“I am very happy for you Peter,” said Eric. “However, I am afraid I am going to have to dampen your celebration just a little bit. Mike said that David Honstein wants to keep this under wraps until a little more information can be gathered. He is afraid all the end of the world nuts and religious lunatics will whip everybody into a frenzy if word was to leak out before we have more updated data on the object. The President would have David’s ass for causing her problems with the press and the last thing NASA needs right now is negative publicity.
I believe that David and Mike are already working on getting some additional up to date data on your newly discovered visitor. Hopefully, within a week or so they, will be able to release the news to the press. I think that they will have to work fast though, because just as you accidently stumbled on this, it may not be long before someone else does the same. So, the condition of your employment is to keep mum for the time being on this. Since you will be working for Uncle Sam, they can sort of put a muzzle on you regarding things like that.”
He glanced down at Susan. “And you young lady, will have to keep this quiet also if you want Peter to have this job and stay close to you here.”
Susan looked at Peter and put a faked starry eyed expression on her face. “What girl would not want a famous astrophysicist as a boyfriend? All my friends will be so jealous.” She planted a big kiss on Peter’s lips.
&
nbsp; Eric looked at her fondly, and then said sadly, “There are some women who would not my dear. I knew one myself.”
Chapter 6
March 14th, 2016
Boston,Massachusetts
Monday afternoon found Jessica and Brett sitting across the table from Doctor Harold Berkshire, their grant coordinator from the National Institute of Health. Doctor Alec Souse, director of immunology studies at Merck Incorporated was also sitting across from them. They sat in silence as both the men across from them read through the synopsis of their findings to date. Both finished at about the same time. Dr. Berkshire rubbed his chin thoughtfully and spoke first. “If this plays out like you two propose, and your rather unorthodox research can be verified, and I do stress very un-orthodox,” he said while giving Brett a big frown, “then you may have just changed the future of mankind.
“The implications are much greater than what you two see,” continued Dr. Berkshire. “You were given a grant to find a way to rapidly identify, catalogue, and report the genome of new viral pathogens. I will agree that your data seems to support that you have more than accomplished that goal. Then, using your left over grant money, without authorization I might add, you took this a step further and did what no other major research lab has done with all the billions of dollars that have been poured into this area. I find this very hard to believe, but your data does seem to collaborate your findings. All of your work will have to be reviewed and verified independently I warn you, but frankly, I am utterly amazed, if still a little bit skeptical.”
Dr. Alec Souse leaned forward over the table and gazed at the two of them. “If your findings are substantiated, do you realize what you two have probably done?” he asked. Jessica started to speak but he held up his hand to silence her. He then continued. “If your research pans out, then you have probably cost me and thousands of other immunological researchers our jobs. In addition, there are going to be thousands of stock holders in the pharmaceutical companies that are going to lose their life time savings because of you two.”
Dark Star Rising Second Edition (Pebbles in The Sky) Page 5