He signed in to a guest account and pulled up a browser. His fingers strummed with impatience as each webpage loaded slowly until the woman cleared her throat in annoyance. Jack searched “conspiracy UD3” and skimmed the reader comments sections beneath online articles. One user posted:
Fake news! Photo made with CGI!
Jack scrolled up to the image accompanying the article and saw a caption beneath it that read, Artist rendering of a comet in space.
The only plausible conspiracy theory was that the comet was invented by NASA after its Asteroid Redirect Mission was defunded back in March. Jack finally logged off and looked to the woman sitting by the wall. If he could have a real conversation about the comet and exorcise that topic from his head, then he might be able to sleep.
The woman didn’t hear him approach but remained mesmerized by the white-blue glow of her screen, which washed out her skin and reflected in the lenses of her glasses. Jack apologized for startling her but couldn’t help glancing at her screen at the negative image of stars. The largest black splotch was circled in red and labeled UD3.
“Doesn’t look too intimidating,” he admitted. “But isn’t it weird that NASA hasn’t released any details?”
She sighed and turned her body toward him. Block letters on the front of her sweatshirt spelled out BERKELEY.
“I don’t know,” she admitted with the shrug of one shoulder.
“But you’re worried?”
“I wouldn’t be sitting here instead of sleeping if I wasn’t worried.”
She wasn’t trying to be rude, just stating a plain fact. The woman added that there had been quite a few scientists reading into the night but they left one by one to try to sleep before sunrise. Jack wished her goodnight and let her be.
He left the science lounge and wandered farther down Healy’s corridors. The crew lounge was delightfully noisy. Jack ducked in for a peek and blinked at the harsh fluorescents. A few computer workstations lined the walls, and several laptops rested on long tables, but none of the Coasties were using them. The mood was lighter and friendlier as a dozen graveyard-shifters enjoyed downtime.
Two men stood in front of a large flat screen, swinging their arms as they watched their Mario Tennis Aces avatars on Nintendo Switch. More lounged on couches in their socks or played cards at a table. Three women gathered in a corner knitting and chatting about work in a good-natured stitch ’n’ bitch. The crew already had the company of friends and familiars. Jack wished he could just walk in, sit at the table, and ask the dealer for a hand of cards.
Back in his stateroom, Jack tried to be as quiet as possible as he returned to his bunk. In the silence before sleep, he heard muffled sobbing from the man lying parallel less than five feet above him.
THREE
Arrival
Kourou, French Guiana
August 2
AMY MADE THE BEST of a jet-lagged, early morning. She had just finished ironing her best silk blouse when there was a knock on the door of her hotel room. Amy peeked through the door’s fisheye lens and saw Ben’s colleague Chuck Maes. He had accompanied them on the flight from Los Angeles to French Guiana and now stood yawning in the hallway, wearing rumpled khaki shorts, thong flip-flops, and a T-shirt. Ben emerged from their foggy bathroom moments after she opened the door. Like Chuck, he dressed in the same anti-style of someone who didn’t need to give a shit about appearances. In less than five minutes, Amy changed into a denim skirt, sandals, and one of Ben’s science conference T-shirts knotted at her slender waist. When in Rome, do as Caesar does.
The three of them piled into a courtesy shuttle before dawn, armed with their laptop bags and paper cups of coffee. Their hotel was on the edge of the town of Kourou, less than five minutes’ drive from the Guiana Space Centre. Chuck asked Ben if he had received any updates.
“Nothing,” Ben said, reflexively checking his phone again. “I assume the Professor wants to debrief me in person.”
There was a nervous silence before Ben launched into their continued discussion of the plan. Amy opened her laptop and put on her tortoiseshell cat-eye reading glasses. She listened to Ben and googled terminology, organizations, and especially people until motion sickness forced her to look out the shuttle’s windows at the moving landscape.
On the flight, Ben told Amy that an equatorial launch at the European Space Agency’s spaceport would leverage the rotational velocity of the Earth and provide extra speed. There wasn’t much knowledge of world geography between the three Americans, however. Amy stared at her laptop keyboard a bit before giving up and typing “Where the hell is French Guiana?” into a search engine.
The French region was on the northern coast of South America, bordered by Suriname to the west and Brazil to the south and southeast. The elevation was low, and most of the thick vegetation had been cleared, leaving only scraggly palm trees, grass, and clumps of bushes along the road. Everything was remarkably green compared to California’s rain-starved terrain. The tropical temperature was already 88°F, but the interior of the shuttle felt like an icebox. Amy considered asking their driver to turn down the air-conditioning, but Chuck was heavyset and Ben was a nervous ball of energy; both were sweating at the temples.
Amy rubbed the goose bumps of her pale blush skin and massaged a biceps still sore from vaccination. She caught Chuck staring and gave a friendly smile. He was a sarcastic sweetie who tried to be discreet and never openly leered, like a handful of other NASA trolls. Chuck smiled sheepishly and turned to Ben, who was using him as a sounding board for a roster of engineers and physicists. Amy tried to keep tabs on the names dropped in between technical speak.
“Who is Ariane?” Amy interjected.
“Not who,” Ben clarified, “but what. Ariane is a brand of rocket, like Dr Pepper is a brand of a soda.”
Ben explained that a carrier rocket was needed to launch a spacecraft past Earth’s gravitational field.
“The Ariane rocket at this spaceport is the first part of our plan,” Ben said, already arranging props for his full explanation.
Amy was the one student Ben lived to teach, and he took great care not to talk down to her smarts or over her head. It was a bit of a tightrope, but it was one he was willing to walk. Ben pulled two green bills out of his wallet and crumpled them in his left fist, which he called the “spacecraft” for the purposes of demonstration. Next, he waved his empty right hand and called it the “Ariane rocket carrier.” In one motion, Ben grabbed hold of his left fist with his right hand and made like he was throwing it up like a fly ball.
“At a sufficient altitude, the Ariane rocket carrier jettisons our spacecraft,” he said.
Chuck watched the demonstration in stupefied silence, no doubt shocked by Ben’s sudden show of patience as he held up his left fist and pulled out one of the paper bills.
“This is the leader impactor,” Ben said, giving the single dollar bill to Amy. “Our spacecraft is gonna shoot this at the comet and blow a crater into its surface. Then the spacecraft will ram into that crater and detonate a nuclear explosive for optimal disruption.”
Ben held out his left fist and opened his palm, revealing a twenty-dollar bill. Amy pocketed the bill before asking how Ben knew that this was the right plan when they knew so little about the comet. Ben started to shake his head and winced. Over the last forty-eight hours of vigorous planning and no sleep, Ben mentioned headaches. His habit of shaking his head was made all the worse by these heightened stakes. I feel my brain bruising, he joked. In the final hours before landing in South America, he gripped a fistful of his thick, dark waves and held his head still with one hand while the other gave Chuck’s ideas a gladiatorial thumb up or down.
“The worst-case scenario is that we have a high probability of impact with less than ten years to deflect it,” Ben said in rapid staccato. “A nuclear impactor would be the only viable option for a comet this large and fast. Modeling has shown that an existing nuclear weapon could deflect a one-kilometer near-Earth object. I m
ean, with all the impact scenarios…”
Amy knew about the 122 impact scenarios, some played out in person at the biannual Planetary Defense Conference and some played out virtually within an online forum. The scenarios helped prove what would fail—in theory—with computer simulations, probability, and human role-playing. Ben had already experienced the majority of all imaginable actions, reactions, and outcomes. Of course, the scenarios weren’t real, nor were they current enough to account for the world’s newer leaders and administrations.
“It’s the right plan,” Ben insisted.
But he looked suddenly ill and full of doubt. And who could blame him? If there was a high probability of impact, not even Amy would want to voice the question, What if you’re wrong? The answer was obvious anyway: Ben might fail to prevent an extinction event, that’s what.
“We’re here,” Chuck nearly whispered.
The three-mile drive was over before they even finished their coffees. The shuttle driver turned onto a European roundabout with colorful flags and a large WELCOME TO THE GUIANA SPACE CENTRE sign in French and English. He drove past the tourism entrance on the right and continued parallel to a long security fence topped with barbed wire. Amy had read online that the spaceport facilities stretched across an area nearly the size of New York City.
Through the windshield, she saw a checkpoint ahead with five armed guards in dark uniforms. Ben had had to throw a fit over the phone with UN headquarters to get Amy on the flight out of Los Angeles. Gaining security clearance on premises would likely be more difficult. They had strategized together on the plane until Amy grew frustrated: You can tell that Professor Och-Ochsss—. The name didn’t exactly roll off the tongue. Ben quickly interjected with the right pronunciation. Him! Amy picked back up: You tell him that one of our presidents got his daughter and son-in-law security clearance to the frickin’ White House. Take a lesson: the big man calls the shots—and right now, that’s you, Ben.
The checkpoint’s metal gate slid open as guards waved them forward several yards and then held their palms out flat, motioning them to stop. A guard spoke to their driver in French and had him exit the vehicle so that he could step up and take the wheel. The shuttle’s side door opened, exposing them to bright sunlight and hot air. Amy saw a woman in professional dress approaching, her high heels rapping the asphalt.
“Welcome,” the woman said, leaning into the interior. “I’m Marielena Acosta with the United Nations. I understand there is an extra passenger?”
Her dark eyes focused on Amy.
“Perhaps she would like to wait inside with me at Security?”
Amy opened her mouth, but Ben was quicker to respond.
“This is Amy Kowalski,” he said calmly. “I asked your headquarters to distribute her resume ahead of our arrival. Ms. Kowalski has her own corner office in Modis Burbank because she’s one of the best tech recruiters on the West Coast—and the only one I trust. The Professor said I could pick my team. Well, here’s my HR director, and she takes her coffee black.”
The woman nodded, considering.
“You selected Ms. Kowalski,” she clarified.
“Every day,” Ben replied with utmost confidence.
She nodded again and then waved to the guards. Amy clasped Ben’s hand as their shuttle accelerated past a one-story building labeled SÉCURITÉ and entered an administration complex of tall buildings labeled with names of celestial bodies. A lone woman was waiting by the entrance of a building named Janus. She was very tall with a broad forehead and short, ash-colored hair. The woman barely paused for an introduction before ushering Amy, Ben, and Chuck indoors.
“Director Durand and Professor Ochsenfeld are expecting you in the Janus meeting room,” she said, overtaking them with wide strides on square-heeled pumps.
It had been three days since the Spacewatch discovery of UD3. Several sober-faced staffers stared at the three newcomers like rubberneckers passing a traffic accident in the hallway. These men and women certainly knew something.
“Dr. Schwartz!” one of the staffers whispered, and rushed out to intercept the group. “We’ve met,” he told Ben in a thick German accent. “I worked for NASA on a visa. I was there when you led the Mars orbiters duck-and-cover maneuver for comet Siding Spring!”
Their tall guide gave sharp looks of disapproval as she reminded everyone that they were expected to report directly, but Ben stopped her.
“I’m sorry, I don’t remember all of my colleagues,” he said, shaking the man’s hand. “That flyby was nuts, and I didn’t get a lot of sleep.”
It was the truth, but it was also true that Ben was unobservant when it came to meeting new people. That was Amy’s strength.
“You were incredible,” the man said in awe.
Ben beamed with pride and then thanked the man for reaching out, but really it was for recalling a moment in time when Ben was exceptional. Nothing could take away or change that triumphant piece of the past. It was Ben’s forever. He seemed to breathe easier as they continued down the hallway to an elevator. Their guide used her security badge to gain clearance to the top floor. Amy was able to read “Assistant Director” before it retracted on its lanyard. The elevator doors shut behind the group, forcing them to stare at one another in awkward silence.
“I can’t place your accent,” Amy said to fill the silence.
The woman’s eyebrows lifted and rippled her broad forehead. Amy had a voice like rusty knives that gave strangers pause. She had suffered from croup as an infant and screamed until she scarred her vocal cords. Then she smoked like a fiend from the age of thirteen until she moved to California and dropped the habit cold turkey.
“Dutch,” said the assistant director.
“Ah, I’m sure it’s a pretty language.”
“Not at all.”
The elevator slowed to a stop, but Amy wasn’t giving up.
“Speaking of language,” Amy added, “what does Janus mean?”
Ben was quick to blurt out that Janus was a moon of Saturn, but the assistant director added, “This is the first building in our headquarters facility. We bring heads of state to the meeting room.”
The elevator doors parted with her synchronized exit.
“Janus was the Roman god of gateways…Also of beginnings and endings, and duality. He was depicted with two faces, one young and one old.”
There were closed, double doors at the end of a short corridor. The assistant director opened the doors and nodded to the newcomers. Ben was the first to step into a large conference room with long tables forming a square studded with chairs around the sides, all facing center. Two of these chairs were occupied by men sitting side by side. Both rose, but only the man on the left was quick about it. The man on the right battled gravity as he fought to stand. Photos of him on the internet were all dated by several decades. Amy wasn’t prepared for Professor Ochsenfeld’s current state of steep decline.
“Sir,” Ben said. “I mean Professor. It’s such an honor…”
Ben blathered on. Amy had never seen him offer such respect to the living. The Professor had to be a true legend—not that he looked the part. The dapper cane with mother-of-pearl handle that supported his stooped weight was the only outward sign that he was an eminent Oxford don. Otherwise, his clothes were drab and dated.
“Professor, let me introduce you to Chuck Maes,” Ben said, motioning back to his friend. “Chuck is from my JPL crew.”
Chuck nodded with a nervous smile and fidgeted. Ben looked to Amy next. He had to fight for her inclusion.
“Amy Kowalski,” she said, walking over to the men.
Introductions were important; she always handled her own with a smile, direct eye contact, and a firm handshake—but not too tight. As Amy got close, the smell of sickness hit her nostrils. Some organ or internal process had gone foul, but Amy still took the Professor’s gnarled hand into her own. Old age and sickness were absent from the army bases where she spent the first eighteen years of her life. While t
hese mortal reminders were still strange and frightening, Amy would never let them get the better of her.
“It’s such an honor,” she repeated, following Ben’s lead just as he followed hers in the right situation.
Thick spectacles magnified red-veined eyes draped with lids like unfolded origami. The Professor’s face held no expression but moved with an occasional tremor. It was only his pause that spoke to his momentary surprise; no one would pick her out of a lineup to be Ben’s girlfriend.
The assistant director stood beside Director Durand after securely shutting the doors. Amy found him handsome for his age; sixties with a strong body, thick white hair, and startling blue eyes. It was only as she studied his expression very closely that she sensed danger.
“What’s wrong?” she asked immediately.
The director took a halting breath and introduced both himself and the assistant director as Marcel Durand and Anneke Janssen.
“But what’s wrong?” Amy demanded.
The Professor cleared his dry throat and announced, “The comet is accelerating even faster than expected.”
Ben was no longer smiling, no longer giving deference. He was back in crisis mode. He stood protectively by Amy and stared into the Professor’s unblinking eyes.
“How many years do we have, Professor?”
Ben could well have said decades, that was his hopeful estimation, but the Professor shook his head.
“What do you mean, ‘No’?” Ben asked, raising his voice.
They didn’t have years, the Professor explained. JPL’s Sentry impact monitoring system and the European Space Agency’s CLOMON system had calculated three very approximate, possible trajectories between them. The shortest of these estimated a potential impact as early as June.
The Effort Page 3