Beyond The Wave

Chapter Eight - A Shocking Blow

It was about eleven o'clock on a Friday morning when Tristram suddenly called us all together for an unscheduled meeting. He was completely white - as if he had just seen a ghost.

His message was short and sweet. "I'm getting serious reports that a large asteroid - what is known in the trade as a 'Dinosaur Killer - is about to strike in the Atlantic Ocean. In about eight hours we're going to have force nine and ten earthquakes and a hour later we're going to be scrubbed off the face of the earth by a Tsunami."

'More of his paranoid stuff,' I decided straight away. 'I've got stuff to do. Can't we just get back to work!' But I managed to avoid saying anything out loud. I still needed that job.

"But we're forty miles from the coast," Janet observed.

I was relieved that she, at least, was seeing things the same way as me.

But, meanwhile, Ashley had whipped his phone out of his pocket and made a call. I was familiar enough with the guys to realise that this was an unthinkable breach of their meeting etiquette. He'd even turned the phone's speaker on.

"Radio Astronomy Group, Cambridge University, Dougie McPherson speaking." The voice had a pronounced Scottish accent and was quite hard to understand.

"Ash here. We've been getting reports..."

"We've received instructions that we are not to say anything about asteroids under pain of... you know what. I can't think of a single thing they might usefully threaten us with." That accent wasn't just strong - it was slurred.

"Are you drunk?" Ashley asked incredulously.

"I'm about quarter way through a bottle of fifty year old scotch, so I hope so. I have no intention of being conscious in eight hours time... I suppose they might threaten to take away my whisky."

"You've not got any plans, then?"

"I'm in Cambridge. You know how flat it is round here, don't you?" he slurred. "My plans, to paraphrase the good book," he had to have a couple of tries at paraphrase, "are to think how good life has been to you so far... or, if life has not been good to you so far, think how fortunate you are that it will not be troubling you much longer... trapped under a rock... How apposite!" He needed a couple of goes at apposite, too.

"I'll try and speak to you later," Ashley promised. "Slainte Mhath."

He rang off and looked at us. His face had gone white, too. "It's happening," he said flatly.

Tristram shook hands with Ashley and Janet then the two hurried on their way to collect Bonnie. Then he asked me to come into his office and sat on the edge of his desk as I stood in front of him. "Do you have any plans?" he asked me.

"Tristram, I've got stuff to do. I just don't have time for your paranoid rubbish. The Martians aren't coming and no asteroids are going to hit us on the head. It's not my place to say it but you really need help."

"You're wrong, Terrie, and I have to insist that you come with me."

"You can't make me," I said as I turned towards the door.

"You're wrong again," he said simply. "I'm sorry but I have to do this."

"What?"

But he didn't answer. Instead he stepped towards me and smoothly and efficiently spun me round. Before I knew it, I was face down on the comfy sofa and my hands and feet were being tied up with some sort of sticky tape.

I started to shout incoherent abuse at him but he turned me around so that I was sitting. I was, for a moment, shocked into silence and he looked down at me with a terrifying calm. "I have no time for this," he said. He was frighteningly cold and calculating. "If you don't behave, I will have to gag you."