Twin Earth

Chapter 2

I turned back to my computer and quickly scanned for any sign of the asteroid's change in direction from the various telescope imagery systems I was connected to, but just like my father had said, it looked suspiciously like it had vanished. Then, something caught my eye further down on one of the last photos taken of the asteroid. It was grainy, but it hadn't been there before.

"It hasn't disappeared, it's jumped," I whispered to myself confused. "But how?"

I scanned down and looked through the remaining few images and there it was. The asteroid had indeed jumped from its relatively stable trajectory to over 200,000 miles closer to the Earth. It had moved right past the moon and seemingly, as the news reader had kindly informed the general public, was now on course to hit our planet and all in a matter of seconds. Then my phone buzzed.

"Doctor Takahashi?" the man's voiced asked with a hint of impatience at the formality.

"Robert?"

"We need you to come in."

I recognised the voice immediately. It was the head of the UK space agency, the man who had fired me in not so many words only a few months ago.

"It's Spetrinas isn't it? I can see it on my screen now. It's jumped."

"We know, and we need your expertise to analyse why."

"My expertise? But I'm just as clueless as seemingly everyone else," I asked confused.

"That's not what concerns us. What concerns us is the data that your father's team has just now forwarded to us. It's he who wants you in."

"But why? What is it?"

"Just get down here okay," Robert replied with a sense of irritation in his voice.

"Yeah, sure. I'll be there in twenty."

Hearing him hang up I did the same. I could tell he didn't want to speak to me anymore than I wanted to hear from him, but I couldn't resist the grin slowly spreading across my face.

"Yes!" I whispered excitedly as I quickly printed out all the data I had just discovered and headed out the door. 'If this thing does hit, then yeah okay, it's going to do some damage, but what an opportunity,' I thought like an excited teenager. As a scientist I knew it wasn't going to be the end of the world thankfully, but I knew this thing was large enough that at least some of it was going to make it to Earth and avoid burning up on entry. That said, what was exciting me the most was knowing my father had discovered something interesting enough to send it directly to the UKSA instead of to me first because my father hated my old boss as much as I did so this had to be something good.