THE ARK

Day 1074

Several weeks before anyone outside the Sleeper Team knew of the unfortunate fate of Rhonda Miller, and over a thousand miles away, the Hubble Space Telescope was just completing a study of a distant comet. The Hubble and several land-based radio telescopes had been assigned this task after a West Coast University had requested the government to confirm the results of studies that they had recently completed. The results of those studies had been so shocking and unbelievable that they wanted confirmation from agencies with more elaborate resources available.

The data was collected over time and complex computer algorithms were applied.

After years of testing, these methods have proven the ability to accurately chart the path and determine many attributes of any object that was moving through space.

Thomas Williams was the current Administrator of NASA. In fact, he had been the Administrator for the last six years. Holding this position was something that had given him real pride. Having come from an unstable family background, Thomas Williams was not only the first person in his family to graduate college but even the first to graduate high school.

No one was sure who his father was. The best answer he ever got from his mother was that he was gone.

His mother worked as a waitress in a dark and dingy bar for many years. When Thomas was a freshman in high school, she met Darryl. Darryl was a drummer in a small band. Not long after meeting him she went on the road with the band. She had never returned.

Thomas was fortunate to have grown up to be friends with Andrew King. Mr. and Mrs. King had lots of money and had always tried to help Thomas out.

When they found out that he had been abandoned the King Family took Thomas in, with only one rule. He was to excel in school and break the chain of failure that bound his family history.

With only the briefest of hesitations, Thomas agreed and seven years later graduated with honors from the University of Michigan.

Now married and with three children of his own, who had all done very well in school and gone on to graduate from college, he knew he had kept his promise to the late Mr. and Mrs. King and had in fact broken the chain of failure.

Williams was a little confused this morning. It was unusual for a deputy director to request an urgent meeting with him and even more unusual that anyone other than his wife would insist that he cancel something as important as his lunch meeting with the two senators from New Mexico.

These two Senators had scheduled this appointment with him weeks before and were expecting to be given the royal treatment. He was sure he would be asked the same questions that every up and coming junior congressman asks, and with any luck, they would go back to Congress very proud of themselves for keeping up on what was going on at NASA.

Ditching the lunch meeting was not the problem, he had been trying to think of a way out of having to deal with them since he found out they were on his schedule. The problem was that there was almost never anything so urgent that he would be expected to change his plans.

After all, the next major launch was five weeks out. There were no problems reported on the International Space Station and the Orion project was on track. Of course, there was the possibility of an alien spacecraft suddenly entering orbit. But even though personally believed that there was some form of life out in space, he did not believe for a moment that they would decide to stop for their first real visit just a half hour before his lunch meeting.

“Stan, what can be so urgent that you insist I rearrange MY schedule for this meeting?” asked the overweight Administrator as he stomped into the office.

Stanley Waldorf was the deputy director in charge of the Department of Space Science at NASA.

Administrator Williams had never cared much for Waldorf.

Waldorf did his job and did it fairly well. However, he had no concept of how to follow protocol and his manner of dress left much to be desired. He reeked of an “I don’t care what you think” attitude.

Williams on the other hand, while being overweight, was always dressed perfectly. He knew who to talk to and what to say. He had gotten this far by playing the game and had come to dislike those who did not want to follow the rules.

“You remember that request we got to confirm that data from the University of Washington?” asked Stanley Waldorf.

“Yeah, if I remember you said we were going to have to check it out but that it was probably just a bunch of over eager university types who got their calculations all screwed up,” replied Williams.

“Well that isn’t exactly how I said it, but that’s what I thought. I was sure it was a huge waste of time and resources. In fact, I considered trying to find a way to ignore the request. The only reason I didn’t, was the fact that the people making the request were the same ones who controlled next year’s budget. I mean these weren’t the young pups you’re supposed to be dining with now if you know what I mean,” explained Waldorf.

“Ok, ok, so what’s new?” said Williams, with his irritation starting to show.

“Well it seems that those university types didn’t screw up their calculations, in fact, they were right on. Their readings were exactly the same as the ones we got. Their discovery was accidental and we probably would never have noticed unless we were intentionally looking for that type of radiation, which we would have had no reason to do,” said Waldorf.

“Has this been confirmed?” questioned Administrator Williams.

“Yes, Tony Jackson and I are working on the details. But there is no doubt that the comet we’ve been tracking is emitting hard radiation, and it’ll pass way too close,” said Waldorf.

“How is this possible? Comets are never radioactive,” asked the Administrator

There was definite fear in his voice as he asked this.

“Don’t know, we’ve never seen anything like this before, but the radiation is clearly present and detectable, even at this range. As of now it still looks like it will pass between the Earth and the moon.”

“I want this kept quiet. There have been many false reports like this over the years and the last thing I need is one that can be traced back to this office,” instructed the Administrator.

“How long are we going to keep this quiet? This needs to be reported. Also, there may be others who might just happen to figure it out. The Europeans and Japanese, as well as a half dozen other nations, will eventually detect this and then word will be out fast,” said Waldorf, with concern in his voice,

“I want it quiet until we have all the details. Remember, those University of Washington kids found this by accident. It was a fluke that they even detected it, and it took us over two weeks to verify it. We have some time. When I take this up the ladder I want to have all the answers ready. We’ll let them release it as they see fit,” explained Williams.

As his deputy left, Williams’ eyes were drawn to the picture of his twin granddaughters. They were dressed in the uniforms of their community soccer program. Neither was old enough to understand what a comet was. Williams knew all about comets, and he knew where this one was heading and the danger it posed. As he held the picture a single tear formed at the corner of his left eye.