Before 24 Billion and Counting

Chapter 3 Part 2 Preparing for the press. A premonition of peril.

Will sighed. "Very well - I can see that you are right but I wish you were not." 

Jacob was pleased. He had an agreed course to follow and had put a problem to rest. Satisfaction was in his voice as he said, "Good - Charles can you and Ellen arrange how to get a programme together and fill me in later this afternoon. I've got to sort out some problems with another 'scope, but I'll meet you here at three." 

Ellen and I struggled, with Kelly at my office on the 'phone, to sort out a series of meetings between the team at Hawai and myself and Gerry my best camera man, which would generate a programme which had a working title "Between the Planets." 

Ellen was good to work with. She was older than I had first thought. Working close to her you could see the signs of maturity in her hands, the fun lines in her face, and the odd greywhite hair in her head. The combined humour and maturity made her easy to argue out problems with, and there were many, in trying to reconcile a program of work between people whose mainstream activity was timetabled by the stars in one case, and competing contracts in the other. By two thirty we were reasonably happy that we could provide a saleable programme in six weeks time, and thought that we had done very well.

Ellen said, "Let me show you something."  

Intrigued I followed her briskly walking figure back to the lecture theatre down the narrow corridor. She bade me sit on one of the chairs, and went to the hologram console. The lights dimmed and building up in bars came misty outlines in the floor working upwards where white, green, blue, icy, colors and grey rock formed into a lumpy surfaced ovoid,the whole object was completed after a minute. The image of a comet filled my view with stars in the black space around it, and other stars showing dimly through the tails. 

"That's really beautiful." I said. 

I rose and walked across the thick carpet to the console, standing behind her and to one side. Seated on a swivel chair, her neat cared for hands still rattled across the keys with programme scrolling up the data screen in front of her. Her concentration was total. The comet body was now illuminated by the sun, and on the light side were revealed bubbling fountains producing spheres of liquid, jets of vapour and puffs of dust. 

Ellen swung towards me, or where she had assumed I was, and her warm knees collided with my legs, and she grabbed hold of my hands to steady herself. 

I didn't want her to let go but didn't know how to ask. She looked up at me in the light of the hologram. Her dark eyes regarded me, she let go one hand, took the other, enclosed it in her two, for a long ten seconds she concentrated on me. "Oops," she said almost in a whisper, and gave me my hand back very gently, and swung slightly away. 

"Sorry - I shouldn't have crept up on you." I said, with an unfamiliar set of forgotten feelings circulating in my mind and body. 

From the symbols on the screen, Ellen was using a language we had in the studio for hologram composition, and I knew the software very well. "Can I add something to that? Presumably it is filed." 

"Yes - do. Bring up the other stool." We sat side by side and I separated the image of the sun, the sunside animation, and the rock body, the halo and tails all into individual items. I put a slow tumble on the rock, and turned the whole lot the other way up so that the body of the comet was at the bottom and the tails streaked upward into the heavens. This time it was my concentration that became total until I felt a tickle from her strong hair on my left cheek, and smelt her faint perfume as she examined the screen, and put a hand to steady herself on my right shoulder. 

"I now know why Jacob likes you with him. You have a natural talent to turn science into beauty." 

"No. What you produced was beauty. This is just spectacle. It's the application of many years experience trying to make detergent commercials even vaguely interesting." 

She gave my shoulder a squeeze. "Pull the other one my man. This is now brilliant. We have the centrefold for the programme." 

Something from somewhere within made me say, "No. Not yet." Ellen looked at me puzzled. "Why? It's superb." 

"But it's not what's in my mind." 

I made four copies of the solid body image with their animations and randomised their basic shape and tumble axes, and then strung them out in perspective behind the leading item. 

Ellen clapped her hands, "Oh my God that's exquisite," and in enthusiasm she got up and walked towards the image. She turned back to me her hair haloed by the light. 

"Come," she said, holding out a hand, "it's wonderful from here." 

I took her hand and indeed it was wondrous. 

We stood close, holding hands looking at the display together, yet I was conscious of danger. Why? This was merely a hologram in a lecture theatre. Yet despite the mundane surroundings of the room, the image drew me in. Me and this strong minded woman were together in this peril, facing an imminent disaster, short of time, the seconds ticking away but with no clue as to what to do. Was this now, or a vision passed back to we two from the future that had led both of us to create this image?  

Jacob walked in banging the door with exasperation evident in every muscle movement. In some measure guiltily, Ellen and I separated from each other, Ellen primly folding her arms and then absently rubbing the side of her head with one hand. Jacob was blind to anything but his own concerns. Ellen moved to the console, saved the hologram and shut it down.

"How long before we can roll something in front of the media?" he asked without preamble. 

"It looks like six weeks," I said. 

"Not good enough." 

I was vehement when I said "Well I am sorry - it's not often you get the immediate attention of a publishing company and the undivided interest of a full team on a fringe programme of this kind. And all the leisure time of the better part of an International Observatory. To prepare a job commercially would double that time." 

Ellen intervened in what could become a bad argument. "Charles - I know you're right but the boss has a problem of his own. Maybe if he told us what it is we could help him." 

"Sorry - I threw it to you wrong but I'm really pissed off. NASA have picked up on Will's computer work and a junior astrophysicist wanted to make a name for himself and it's all over the TV headlined as 'Rogue comet in chaos orbit'. And I know why it has caught on. Governments are hyping it up and hoping to distract everyone from the ICBM explosion." 

Ellen said calmly, "Let's not panic. For the next few hours all the press's big names will go to NASA HQ in California. We could still tell our news the way we want to, even if we can't put together a whole programme." 

"Jacob - Ellen's absolutely right. Let's get the press that's available locally for an evening conference here, and re-run the presentation you gave this afternoon. Limit the numbers. We'll get my portable TV quality camcorder and flog copies to any who aren't able to attend. At least you'll get your facts up front." 

We arranged for Jean to bring the camcorder from Jacob's house, and I organised a satellite link to Auckland to get the copy into our network. The local TV station by then was on the 'phone, seeking audience and I gave their lead reporter the driving seat providing he kept everyone else in the right numbers and in order, and kept out all TV cameras. Jacob threw a number of research programs into confusion by creating an apparent failure in the guidance system of the observatory, necessitating a shut-down. 

I wrote a few notes to re-organise the presentation to include answers to the questions that we had raised during the morning, added a few more facts about the probability of any given orbit occurring, for Will to present, and got Ellen organised to do a piece on what the drilling had discovered about the composition of comet Rosetta. I set up the camera and Jacob did the modified presentation with Will and Ellen which was transmitted unedited to Auckland, and I mobilised an editing and distribution team to deal with it. 

We reorganised the lecture theatre seating so about twenty people could attend, and by six we were ready for the press. Keeping TV cameras out was a slightly hollow request as miniature ones could be concealed within a 35mm still camera body, but at least it kept the lights and hullaballoo associated with studio cameras away. So we were as ready as we could hope.