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Authors: Jon H. Thompson

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BOOK: Class Fives: Origins
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“Ladies and gentlemen,” he began, feeling better to hear that his voice was not quavering, “I was told you are all aware of the existence of the Deep Look Inter-Stellar Observation System, but how many of you understand its function and purpose?”

There was a small pause before a large, heavy, balding man leaning back in his seat at the far end of the table raised his hand. Immediately almost every hand was lifted, some in front of expressions growing tight with the beginnings of annoyance.

Marvin was momentarily thrown before he realized he was addressing this mysterious group as if it was one of his first-year Astronomy classes.

“Okay,” he managed to mutter, “Well…”

He paused, attempting to collect his thoughts, and finally got a grip on himself and plunged ahead.

“To recap briefly, the Deep Look System was designed to utilize current generation computer processing capability to compile massive amounts of interstellar data, particularly observations of the motion of celestial bodies that might some day prove a threat to the planet. The system currently is tracking the movements of some seven hundred and fifty billion celestial objects out to distances just short of the Ort Cloud, the outer edge of our Solar System.

“The value of the Deep Look System, besides pure scientific observation, is provided by the software. This software is able to compile terabytes of data per second and project the expected movement of all those objects. It can also, based on Newton’s gravitational calculations, accurately predict future collision events between any of those objects and the resulting orbital distortions both objects will suffer as a result.

“Deep Look’s purpose,” he went on, now warmed to his subject, his initial nerves forgotten, “Is to warn of any potential extraterrestrial threat to the planet Earth in the form of massive objects approaching from deep space.”

He paused and glanced to where the officer was standing by the panel, and nodded. The officer turned and pressed a button on the panel and Marvin turned to see the large screen in front of which he stood suddenly flash with spots of light, and the image captured from the computer he had witnessed the night before filled it.

“As you can see from this recording of the final virtualization of the data, there are two specific objects, NC1107H here, and KL4440R, here. NC has roughly the mass of a hundred story skyscraper. We think it is composed of lighter rock. It’s essentially brittle, subject to fracture. KL is the size of Texas and is composed primarily of iron. It is extremely dense. In fifty seven days, NC1107H will make a glancing blow on KL4440R. The impact will disintegrate NC1107H and the energy of the impact will be transferred to KL4440R. This will bump it out of its current orbit and provide enough additional momentum that the combined gravitational field of the debris around it will not be able to draw it back into a stable orbit. It will assume a new trajectory that will carry it on an oblique course toward the inner solar system.”

He turned to regard them, his tone serious.

“In one hundred and ninety six days KL4440R will traverse the orbit of the Earth. It will pass within one hundred thousand miles of the moon.  The gravitational field of the moon will alter its trajectory and it will slingshot past the Earth at a distance of less than seventy five thousand miles.”

“How close is that in terms of effects on the Earth?” one of the men at the far end of the table said.

“Damn close,” Marvin replied, unable to suppress a twitching hint of a grin. “It will at least have some kind of effect on tidal flow, maybe some shifting of tectonic plates resulting in minor tremors. The fact that it is primarily iron will increase its gravitational effect, it's got a substantial mass.”

“Is there any danger of a collision?” another man asked.

“No,” Marvin replied quickly. “And that’s a very good thing, because if it were to hit us, the effect would be the equivalent of shooting a watermelon with a fifty caliber bullet.”

There was a long pause before a handsome middle-aged woman in a tasteful business suit finally spoke.

“So what you’re saying, Dr. Henry, is that while this asteroid will make a close pass by the Earth, there is no danger that it will impact.”

“No ma’am,” Marvin admitted.

“Then,” the woman continued, “I fail to see the urgency of this meeting. Or the issuance of a heightened alert condition. At the very least, it seems premature.”

Marvin’s face took on a tense expression and he shot a glance at where the bulldog-faced man sat, then directed his attention back at the woman.

“That isn’t the reason for this meeting. It’s something else. Something very disturbing.”

“And that would be what, Dr.?” the woman said with a bit of a challenge.

Marvin nodded toward the officer who again pressed the button, beginning the second part of the presentation. Behind Marvin, on the large screen, the long lines that had been slowly extending toward one another reversed direction, now slowly separating. But Marvin kept his attention fixed on the woman, his expression now serious.

“The software has a secondary application. It not only predicts a forward trajectory, it can also use the direction, mass and velocity of many multiple objects and track backwards in time to the origin of the motion, and beyond. It can use the known mass, size and composition of the objects to extrapolate earlier, unobserved collisions and show the trajectory prior to that collision.”

“You’re losing me, Doctor,” a small, elderly man with a reedy voice seated toward the front of the table said quietly.

Marvin nodded, thought a moment.

“Think of a pool table. You make a break shot, and as all the balls are flying around the table you shoot a second of film of them moving around. The software can take that one second of film, run it backwards, and use what it knows of the weight, size, shape and speed of those balls on that specifically shaped table of that specific size in that one second of film, to show you the exact path each of those balls had taken, banging off each other and bouncing off the sides of the table, all the way back to the moment the cue ball shattered the rack.”

“All right,” the elderly man said, nodding slowly. “Go on.”

“I ran that subroutine on this data, and tracked back along the path of NC1107, the smaller object, to see where it came from.”

“Why?” the woman asked.

“Because the direction it is now moving in is not a natural orbit. If it had been following that trajectory normally, it would have already collided with some other object on a previous orbit. When I checked back on all our previously recorded data on its position and direction, the software came to one conclusion. Exactly thirty five years ago it made an eighty seven degree turn for no apparent reason.”

“I’m not sure I understand,” the elderly man said, slightly puzzled.

Marvin paused to order his thoughts, and continued.

“Isaac Newton’s Laws of Motion are pretty much immutable, at least in terms of the motion of solar objects. In order to make such a radical turn, an actual collision or some kind of extreme gravitational field would have had to act on it. But we know for a fact there was no collision thirty five years ago. Nothing touched it, nothing with any significant mass came anywhere near it. If it had, the porous nature of its composition would have shattered it to bits. And yet it turned, sharply.”

“So what does that mean?”, another man interjected.

Marvin raised a hand as if to emphasize the approach of a key point.

“I then had the software run a detailed check of other quadrants of the asteroid belt slightly offset from where NC made its turn, and it showed that NC was only one of a large number of objects that were knocked out of their trajectories at exactly the same moment. At that particular region, some force of substantial magnitude hit that section of the asteroid belt and knocked a large chuck of that debris out of its way. It was like they were leaves hit by the blast of a garden hose of pure energy.”

“What kind of energy?” said an officer seated just beyond the woman, sharply.

Marvin shook his head.

“I’m still working that out. But something big. Powerful.”

“Something related to the Star Wars program?” one of the other military men seated in a tight group on one side of the table asked, briskly.

“Negative, sir,” another responded. “We don’t have anything in the inventory that would have anywhere near that power.”

“Where exactly,” the spindly old man with the reedy voice cut in quietly, “Did this energy come from?”

Marvin turned to regard him, hesitating a moment.

“From the Earth, sir. Somewhere in Russia.”

 

John sat nervously in the small, plain room, his hands clasped before him on the table, his body leaning tensely forward in the hard wooden chair. Across from him the door remained ominously closed. He flicked a glance over to the large mirror on the side wall. One-way glass, he told himself. So they can watch the questioning. And there are probably microphones and even hidden cameras somewhere, too.

Maybe, he told himself, this wasn’t such a good idea after all. Maybe he should just jump and –

No, he chided himself sternly, don’t even think about it. You’re in a police station, for God’s sake. If you can’t explain how you knew a guy was going to stick-up a liquor store, how in Hell would you ever explain something like that? Besides, he’d already been waiting at least fifteen minutes, probably more, and that was well beyond his capabilities. If he did jump, he’d just pop back in exactly where he was seated and what good would that do?

He could try to jump forward, he thought, but quickly squashed the idea. No, don’t even consider that, he commanded himself. Jesus, what a mess that might be. He never, ever, jumped forward. Not since that one time when he’d tried, just to see if it was possible, and popped smack into existence in the middle of a crowd that hadn’t even hinted it would be there when he’d jumped.

However it worked, that little seeming safety feature had kicked in, thank God, so he’d simply appeared among them, startling the ones surrounding him but doing no essential harm. There was something about what he could do that never allowed him to jump back into a moment when the space he was occupying had something else in the way, but always delivered him before or after that point, when the space was clear to receive him.

Because he didn’t actually move, at least not in space. Wherever he was when he jumped, that’s where he would be when he landed.

Going backwards worked because there seemed to be some kind of something that helped anchor it somehow. Because everything had already happened, it was somehow defined in a way he couldn’t quite understand, but it was like jumping off a ledge onto a surface that was like a trampoline. It somehow bent, shaped itself to that pre-definition because in whatever perspective, it had already passed. Jumping ahead was more like landing on a totally unknown surface. It might be concrete and shatter your legs. It might be tissue paper, giving way completely and dropping you onto God knows what beneath.

So he never jumped forward. Ever.

Besides, there was never any reason to. If, for example he was running from someone and ducked into an alley and jumped forward, how could he know that his pursuers wouldn’t be there, standing, glancing around, wondering where he’d disappeared to, when he popped back in? In that case what good would the jump have been? At least if he ducked into the alley and jumped backwards he knew that wherever he had been at that exact instant in the past, it would be blocks away. He would simply disappear and at that same instant arrive at the alley, a place he wouldn’t have reached for several minutes.

He sighed, shaking his head, trying to brush away the thoughts. It didn’t do any good. He wasn’t a scientist and hadn’t a chance in Hell of understanding how it worked. All he knew was that it did, that was all. And that he had to make sure no one else ever discovered it, or they’d lock him up somewhere and study him like a weird kind of new lizard.

His gaze jerked up when he heard the quiet click of the knob being turned and the door swung open.

It was the same cop from the day before, the older one of the pair who’d come to his apartment. He moved through the door, looking down into an open folder spread on his hand.

“Mr. Kleinschmidt?” Dan said.

John nodded, swallowing nervously.

Dan turned to close the door gently, then moved to the desk and placed the folder onto it as he settled into the chair opposite John.

“I’m Sergeant Dan Sinski, LAPD. Do you know why we wanted to speak with you?”

John hesitated.

“No, sir, I don’t.”

Dan glanced up at him.

“Can I ask how you knew we were looking for you?”

“The super at the place where I live. Said you wanted to talk to me for some reason.”

Dan nodded and turned his gaze back to the folder.

“Mr. Kleinschmidt, is your vehicle license number two, Victor, X-Ray, David, six, one, four?”

John nodded.

“That’s right. 2VXD614.”

“And you drive a late model, dark green Toyota Camry?”

“Yes, sir.”

Dan dropped the folder, which flapped quietly to the table, and directed his full attention on John.

“John, can you tell me where you were at four thirty five in the afternoon on Tuesday?”

“Tuesday?” John asked.

“Yes. Tuesday.”

John hesitated, feeling a squirming, unpleasant something lacing its way up his spine. If he was going to tell the truth, or at least as much of it as he could get away with, he had to do it now.

“I was home,” he said quietly.

“Home.”

“Yeah. All day. I didn’t go out.”

Dan stared at him for a long moment before leaning forward in his seat and planting his elbows on the table, his gaze turning intense.

“You were home all day.”

“Yes sir.”

“Did anyone see you?”

“Not that I know of. I never left the apartment.”

“Not even a quick run out to the store? Nothing like that?”

“No. I was in all day.”

Dan stared at him, then sighed and leaned back.

BOOK: Class Fives: Origins
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