Before 24 Billion and Counting

Chapter 2 Part 1 Charles meets the team. First encounter with the comet

Honolulu was chaos. Getting from the plane to the lounge took the usual half hour; that was airline business. Being processed through the remainder of the formalities to the public concourse took two hours, but at least it did not require bribery to get through customs and immigration as was the case in many parts of the world these days. 

The mix of Pacific island poverty and American free enterprise caused a host of taxi drivers to swarm around new arrivals like wasps at a jam pot, competing for the tourist business and suggesting hotels to go to, entertainment of every conceivable kind, and the purchase of a whole spectrum of drugs. The immediate ploy was for these free spirits to secure your luggage. The knowledgeable travelled light with the one case, so they could manage unaided. How someone inexperienced or unaccompanied would fare, I do not know, but I firmly stated that I knew my destination, needed no other comforts and took the next taxi from the rank. 

Fortunately the observatory complex atop Mauna Kea was off the usual tourist track, and apart from negotiating the outrageous fare which the forty kilometer trip provoked there was no problem. 

The diesel taxi needed its injectors replacing, the stink of fuel penetrated every crevice of the vehicle, and we trailed black smoke. The road was at first tarmacadam, but after we had passed the last village in a tropical fruit plantation it became a graded rock surface. The sagging springs and upholstery of the taxi did not do much to smooth the imperfections of the road, and as the way became steeper the worn transmission started to whine. I wondered how many kilometers the car had run, but forbore to ask as the speedometer either didn't work or had been disconnected, maybe to drive the charge meter. The ramshackle aspects of the vehicle seemed to echo some part of my conversation 

on the plane with Peter. Achieving excellence without a 

supporting organisation was extremely difficult. 

The observatory came into view just as the rapid nightfall withdrew the orange pinpoint reflections of the sun's afterglow from the hemi-spherical domes and made the starscape sharply visible in the purple sky. I asked the taxi driver to draw up at the largest and newest telescope where I knew Jacob would be setting up for the night's programme. I paid the man and the car ground away, the whining gears audible in the still air for several minutes, whilst I absorbed the view over the ocean, and the low evening cloudscape, and became accustomed to the thin air. 

I pushed open the door to the telescope housing. This led to the airlock, where the instruction was to remove footwear, put on moccasins provided, and press the bell push to gain entry. A camera lens surveyed me as I complied, and the scratchy intercom with a strangled version of Jacob's voice said, "Come on in, old friend, and welcome." - and the lock clicked. I pushed open the inner door against the slight pressure of air.  

The room I entered was a laboratory with a number of computer cabinets, office furniture organised for four, and an electrical test bench. Jacob was just entering through an opposite door and we met, and not being one for inhibition, I was engulfed in his usual affectionate bear hug. "It is good to see you again - you've left it too long." 

"Me too - you're looking as fit as ever." 

And he was - all of him - for Jacob was built on a big scale. He was a dark, hairy, caucasian man, with bright blue eyes in a bearded high coloured face, creased by humour and squinting for forty years into eyepieces and computer screens. I always felt that his physique fitted him well for a cosmologist, his big frame somehow reflected the enormity of the concepts in which he revelled. I remember once when he was talking of a supernova by his home fireside, his long thick arms spread apart and the large hands almost moulding the expanding sphere of nuclear annihilation he described, and the hardly conceivable object grew to reality in front of me in the glowing orange firelight. 

It was also fascinating to see those same huge hands with blunt thick fingers, nails cracked and stained by his current landscaping enthusiasm, wielding a tiny micro-soldering iron in the delicate inner complexity of some electronic device, extracting a failed component the size of a pin head, and replacing it without a tremor and with the soldering as neat as that achieved by the Sony robot that had originally made the circuit. 

It was this charisma that first led me to publish his written work, and with a little editing from me to take out the very few times he lapsed into jargon, this same vivid personality shone through. We made astronomy programmes for VR and holographic media together, but best of all I liked to use a flat screen take of him talking in full flow. It required some catching but it made riveting television. We made a good team, and over the ten years we had become close friends. He had detected in a business telephone call the desolation at the loss of my wife, and had dropped his work, flown to Auckland and dragged me to his home and family for a month of astronomy, heavy gardening, good food and drink, and sea fishing. Even through the pain it had been a memorable holiday. 

Whilst I rarely flew out of New Zealand without calling on the way, he had something to show me this time. But as was his habit hospitality came first, and he said, "Come into the scope - I'm nearly finished and then we'll go home." 

Inside was dull red internal illumination, the shutter was open to reveal the night sky as a black starry rectangle, and the barely visible superstructure of the 'scope outlined a forty metre long cylinder ten metres in diameter. The control panel on the floor had a screen showing the aiming point, and from the hum of the traverse motors and the moving images the target location was still being sought. 

Jacob introduced me and the woman at the control panel, "Charles - Ellen; Ellen - Charles; get acquainted and have a seat Charles and I'll be back." He then made his way to the observation level to complete tonight's set up. 

Ellen's dark eyes scrutinised me and she said in the low voice of the striking black woman that she was, "Jacob talks about you a lot, and I've seen the work you have done - I'm glad to meet you." 

"Look, I just organise cameras - Jacob is the show - or maybe the universe is the star - Jacob makes it interesting." 

"That's not the way he tells it!", she laughed warmly,"but have it your way - I'll find out perhaps when you do a show next." 

"Ellen stop flirting and pay attention," Jacob's voice came through the intercom and also directly echoing in the building - "Could you check the hydraulic pressures - there seems to be a slight flutter of the image." Having spent some time helping at this very panel I too looked at the hydraulic gauges which were rock steady, and then focused on the seismograph and said to Ellen, "We're having a little earth tremor." She spoke into the intercom, "It's not, the oil, boss, the Earth's moving for us." 

From above came the booming reply, "I thought I told you to stop flirting." The tremor ceased - only the supersensitive seismograph buried in the foundations, and the great magnification of the telescope would have picked it up, it certainly was not detectable to us sitting there. 

"Probably San Franciso settling itself comfortable for the next few days." I said. 

The image in the screen steadied and magnified revealing a hazy object some ten times longer than its width, with the concentrated head and fanning tail of a comet. 

I heard Jacob's heavy tread from the upper level, and turning asked, "Is this what you want to show me?" 

"Just a preview - it has some odd features - which we'll explore tomorrow - it's the orbit that you'll be most interested in." He blocked further enquiry with the palms of his meaty hands faced towards me, "Tomorrow - now we eat, drink and talk, Jean and the kids want you for the evening. Ellen, you know the programme - you take it for tonight. OK?" 

The musical voice quietly replied, "Sure boss. See you around Charles." 

We made our goodnights, and coming through the lab we met Jacob's number two, a reticent but highly gifted mathematician and observer approaching sixty, whom I had met previously. "Hi Will - are you keeping fit?" This was more than a casual enquiry for he was always on some exercise programme. 

"I am, and I'm sure you should do the same - although I admit you look reasonable for an idle man." 

"You make bluntness into an art form," I said as we shook hands, "It's nice to see you again." 

Impatient to keep to his own agenda Jacob fussed us onward, "We'll all meet tomorrow - promise - goodnight Will."