Angry Moon

Chapter 9b

     “They want to borrow Copernicus!” said John Paul in outrage.

     Samantha looked up from her tablet. “What?” she said. She was sitting with the device on her lap, using the virtual keyboard to type the first draft of a paper she intended to send to the Space Science Reviews, a journal that had published several of her papers in the past. They had been waiting for her paper on the Hortensius volcano for months, but they were going to have to wait a little longer because there was data still to come in and she wanted to make the case as airtight as possible. Her excitement at the results she’d gotten so far was so great, though, that she had to get it out of her system and onto a page of text or she'd just explode! She saved what she'd written so far so she could give her colleague her full attention.

     “The Frenchman jabbed a finger at the email on his phone. “The government’s demanding Copernicus’s control codes! They want to take control away from us!”

     Samantha frowned and got up from her seat, going over to look over John Paul's shoulder. The Frenchman handed her his phone and she squinted down at the tiny text. “This can't be right!” she said. “Does Neil know about this?”

     “If he doesn't, he's about to. I can't hand over the control codes without his authorisation anyway. He'll never allow this. We're right in the middle of the Procellarum survey.” He took the phone back and called Neil's number. “What could they possibly want with Copernicus anyway? Do they want to spy on the Chinese lab or something?”

     “Maybe the Chinese left something up there. Something other than just remote operated scientific equipment. I've always wondered if they had some more sinister reason for going up there than...”

     John Paul was holding his hand up for silence, though. “Neil! Do you know anything about this? The President’s demanding we hand Copernicus’ control codes over to...” He paused while he listened. “Yes, she's right here,” he said, looking over at Samantha. “Right.” He then disconnected the call.

     “He wants to talk to both of us,” he said, rising from his seat to turn on the Bullpen’s main display monitor; a two hundred centimetre screen mounted on the wall opposite a row of comfy seats. Samantha sat in the chair she usually used, sitting upright, unable to relax with the tension that suddenly filled her body. John Paul called up the videophone function, entered Neil's number, and a moment later an image of their department head filled the screen, looking out at them. Behind him was a view of his living room with a large picture window looking out across a well maintained garden. A golden retriever was lying on the carpet in front of an electric heater disguised as a log fire. The dog looked around at its master curiously, then lowered its head back down onto the carpet and closed its eyes.

     “Sam, John Paul,” he said. “I’m sorry, I literally only heard about it just a few minutes ago. Nina called me. They need to borrow Copernicus for a little while, to check out a potential threat to the Earth.”

     “An asteroid?” said Samantha. “They’ve got the Earth Defence Network for that. Copernicus is a ground survey satellite.”

     “They need the ground camera. It makes a basic kind of telescope at full magnification, and that's all they need. It's its position, you see. Four hundred thousand klicks away. They need to make some parallax observations.”

     “Of what?”

     “There's something happening in the asteroid belt. A whole bunch of asteroids are out of position, as if something massive has perturbed them with its gravity. Whatever it is seems to be heading in our direction. They want to calculate its trajectory by observing the precise motions of all the asteroids it’s disturbed, and they can do that faster if they have observations in three dimensions. Time is of the essence, you see. Whatever it is has already passed through the asteroid belt, We’re seeing the after effects of its passage. It could be very close already.”