Before 24 Billion and Counting

Chapter 21 Part 2 surrender - to what?

"Right," said the general, "We'll leave you for an hour to consider your position. I'll get some coffee sent in." 

He rose and marched out followed by the rest of his team. 

"Christ," uttered Jacob after the door had closed, "That was some ultimatum." He shuddered. "I can hardly believe it." 

"I can," I said, "there's such a vast complex matter at stake. A telescope or two, a bunch of scientists and their support teams will be small beer by comparison. If Chris' story is anything like real, the cost of dealing with Rosetta would absorb the whole of the USA defence budget from now until the comet comes." 

The door was opened and one of Lopez's crew came in with a plastic tray, on which stood polystyrene cups, pre-packaged milk and sugar, and plastic stirring sticks. 

"Thank you," murmured Jacob. 

The door shut. 

Will still looked pale, and dread was on his face and suffused his voice, as he said."Do you think we're being listened to?" 

"Sure to be," I answered gently,"and videoed too. Besides I can't see there is much they don't know, and we're totally powerless. They have all our families and friends in their power." 

"Not yours in Australia and New Zealand, surely?" asked Jacob. 

We busied ourselves making our coffees. I took a sip of mine, grimaced at its machine tainted flavour and said, "Before we looked at your video in Ellen's home, I'd spent the best part of the time on my cell-phone trying to deal with an invasion by American security people at my office. I don't know the outcome, but I'm not optimistic. And Australia is closer to the USA as an ally than New Zealand, so I can imagine the CIA are on a pretty loose rein there. And anyway I took the threat of nuclear annihilation here very seriously. I can't think we should take the risk. Jacob your people don't deserve that, and what could we achieve?" 

He banged his meaty fist on the table, the tray jumped and my half finished coffee fell over in a pool of grey brown liquid. "Dammit, " he cried, "there must be something we can do. This is wrong. You can't solve earth shattering problems like this in total secrecy. We'll need all the world's best brains working on it." 

"I agree with Jacob," said Will. 

"Sure, to that one extent you're right. But what can we do. Publicise where we are? Has any one on this mountain got a way of telling those outside? Every mobile, iPhone whatever has to go through that one aerial tower on top of the mountain, and there'll be a computer monitoring every byte of traffic. Same with any land-line up here. There's probably only a strand of copper wires to the exchange. It'll be connected to a computer. And this lot of military includes security. Nothing, but nothing will get out of here. Unless someone walks out and talks, their security is absolute. And Ellen and I tried that, and we failed." 

The grief hit me again and I covered my face with my hands.  

I felt Jacob's heavy grasp on my shoulder as he said, "Sorry old boy. Bear up. We've got a ways to go yet." 

I wiped my eyes and shook my head, and said," You're both right. To solve this problem the best brains on earth will be needed. But to execute the project, money will be required on such a scale that no government will be able to raise it by conventional taxation." 

"But nobody can know that," exclaimed Will," nothing's been designed either in an engineering profile or even in a mission statement. None of these things can happen unless the orbit of the comet is given to an engineering team, and a large multi-disciplinary one at that. Sweet Jesus, a low level feasibility study would take a few years and cost several millions of dollars."