Angry Moon

Chapter 14b

     "I'll need to arrange a babysitter for my daughter," said Samantha. "That might take some time, I'm afraid..."

     "Bring her with you," the black suited man said. "Someone will look after her while you're in the meeting."

     Samantha felt a little hand slip into hers and looked down to see Lily standing beside her, looking nervously up into her face. "She's tired, it's her bedtime. And I don't want to leave her among strangers right now. She's frightened. She needs me to be with her."

     "Don't worry, Miss, she'll be fine. We often have people bringing their kids with them. She'll probably have a great time, and she'll have one hell of a story to tell when she's older."

    "I'm afraid we have to insist, Miss," said the other man. "Can't keep the Prime Minister waiting."

     Samantha saw that he was serious. They would probably carry her off by force if she refused. Best to make the best of it, then. "Very well," she said. "I just have to turn some things off and lock up. I won't be a minute."

     She took Lily back inside and the two men followed her, perhaps thinking she might try to escape out the back door. They watched her intently as she brought the telescope inside and locked the door, but then they saw the television, still showing the pictures being sent back by the space telescope. "Bloody hell!" the first one said. Samantha saw that he was genuinely shocked.

     The image was in shades of grey, as the telescope used wavelengths of light able to penetrate the clouds that now completely covered the moon. The magma geyser had doubled in size and had been joined by a number of others, standing in a small cluster in the middle of a lake of molten rock that filled the image. Its size was made evident by the slowness with which fiery globs of rock were thrown upwards, darkening as they cooled, and then the lazy, viscous splashes they made as they fell back to the surface. Part of the slowness was due to the moon's low gravity, of course, but it was still clear that what they were seeing was a seismic event on a colossal scale.

     As if that wasn't dramatic enough, the roiling clouds above the geysers were lit with continuous lightning discharges, each one many times larger than anything that had been seen on Earth in human history. After countless aeons of slumber, the moon was now alive with apocalyptic activity on a scale to stun even the most jaded, cynical or philosophical man. Samantha didn't doubt that the two government men had seen their share of violence and had probably thought they were beyond being awed by any purely natural spectacle, but now they were staring at the television screen like children, their eyes staring as they struggled to process what they were seeing.

     "Thank God that's all happening a quarter of a million miles away," said the first man, tearing his attention away with an effort. "That can't hurt us down here, can it?"

     "Then why's the PM want to see her?" asked the other. "The emergency committee! COBR only meets when something big's going down." He turned to Samantha. "What's it mean?" he demanded. "What's it mean for us?"

     Samantha turned off the television and unplugged it. "I'll tell you in the car," she said. "I'm finished here. Let's go."

☆☆☆

     By the time they arrived at the airport, fifteen minutes later, the two men were looking genuinely scared. "We live down by the coast," the first one said. "We've been thinking of moving inland for a long time, because of the rising sea levels. You say we've only got a couple of weeks before... Before what you said?"

     "Thirteen days before it's at its worst. It'll probably be bad enough a day or two before and after that as well."

     The man began to curse, stopped himself when he remembered there was a six year old girl in the car with them. "My sister lives in Swindon, we might go move in with her. Will that be high enough, do you think?"