Part 2 (1/2)
Chapter 3.
Someone banged on the door, rattling the frosted gla.s.s in the frame. The door swung inward to reveal Bradley. ”Nia, you need to see this.” He bounced excitedly from one foot to the other.
”Gotta go, Callie. Let me know when he contacts you. And would you mind alerting the rest of the girls? Find out if they've seen a bird.” Nia dropped the phone back onto the cradle. When her fingers brushed the surface of the electronic device, a tiny sting of charged current traveled from her hand to her shoulder.
”d.a.m.n!” She shook her hand, like the motion would ease the sting. Similar to the electric jolt she'd gotten from shaking Thomas Wilde's hand, but not nearly as pleasurable. ”What gives?”
”Just had a coronal burst. It measured off the charts.” His voice squeaked and quaked.
She pushed past him to leave her office. ”Have you checked the playback yet?”
The inst.i.tute had a solar array at the rear of the park-like property. The complex set of dishes and telescopes would have been automatically triggered to record any type of flare or burst on the sun's surface.
Bradley chased after her down the hall. ”I left Barry working on it and ran to get you.”
Nia broke into a jog. Her sandals slapped against the marble flooring. Normally, she'd enjoy the beauty of the rounded ceilings and celestial maps painted on the walls. But now, the need to get to the observatory trumped every other thought.
Two techs working in the observatory chattered excitedly as they rushed from one workstation to another. Print-outs crinkled between their clutched fingers while they checked data and reports. Noise bounced off the copper dome. The oversized portal in the ceiling clanged, increasing the confused commotion as it slid open. Like a flock of birds they moved to the central control console.
A path cleared for Nia as she joined the cl.u.s.ter around a ma.s.sive monitor. The computer specialist, Barry, was seated at the com terminal, mumbling incoherently as he pounded on a keyboard. He'd enter a string of data, then backs.p.a.ce over it. His breath came fast and furious, and sweat trickled from his hairline down the side of his face.
”Dammit!” He jabbed the delete key and erased his latest entry, then tried again. ”f.u.c.k!”
Huffing out a deep breath, he flexed his fingers and rapidly retyped exactly the same command he'd just deleted. Nia edged around the other techs and laid her hand Barry's arm, funneling calming prods through the point of contact. His shoulders rose, then fell as he took a deep breath. The tension left his arm and he resumed typing, slowly and deliberately. The blank screen over his head suddenly blazed bright cerulean. The spinning wheel appeared, indicating the feedback was loading.
Everyone held their breath as individual sections of the display began to populate with images the solar array had captured. The same image of the sun appeared in six different windows, each one colored differently. The images were captured using their ground-breaking solar dynamics technology. The top dogs at NASA had been so impressed with the technology, they'd paid an obscene amount of money to license it from Helios.
”Get ready for it, folks,” Barry cautioned. Glee pushed the normal tenor of his voice at least an octave higher. Nia studied the faces around her, and each person wore a look of antic.i.p.ation, as though it were Christmas morning.
Biting her lip to contain her smile, Nia recognized the bubbly sensation building in her chest as a kindred eagerness. Even though she'd seen hundreds of solar flares in her lifetimes, this one was the first of the magnitude she suspected they were about to witness.
She trained her gaze back on the monitors as the playback commenced. On the side of the sun's surface, gases churned in a circular pattern, similar to a hurricane, but circling back toward the surface, instead of swirling upward. A sudden, violent burst of energy erupted, ejecting plasma and ionized gas into the atmosphere.
”Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” Bradley blurted from behind her. ”Look at it go.”
”Measurement?” Nia demanded.
No one questioned what she wanted to know.
Barry zoomed the controls out on one of the images. ”Twenty-five, no, twenty-nine hundred miles above the surface.”
G.o.ddess, it had reached record-breaking height. Nia clamped a hand on top of her head. This magnitude of coronal ejection would certainly wreak havoc on Earth. A burst like this would definitely disrupt magnetic fields and electronic devices. ”Are you tracking radio waves?”
Barry blew through a few more keystrokes and a separate monitor flared to life. Rather than the typically gently rolling waves, the tracking lines were jagged, with a large spike about four seconds into the eruption. That would be the jolt that had disrupted her call with Callie.
Nia stared at the onscreen image, struggling for an interpretation that made sense. Something...anything, that was scientific in nature that would negate any supernatural influence and the presence of a magpie outside her window. She came up blank.
”Run that back,” Bradley ordered. When Barry compiled, Bradley whistled low. ”It's approaching the speed of light, Nia.”
”Someone call the National Ocean and Aeronautics Agency. NOAA needs to know they can expect s.h.i.+fts in tides and possible tsunami. Multiple tsunamis,” she corrected. A tech scrambled to do as Nia instructed. Sensation in her belly mimicked the radio waves on the screen, like some horrible roller coaster ride. She pressed a hand to her stomach, hoping to control the sickening lurch and roll. ”Someone else check the record books. If I'm not mistaken, we've just captured history being made.”
Shouts bounced off the dome as everyone cheered her decree.
The celebration was short lived, however. She held up her hands, calming the techs. ”That wave will hit within fifteen minutes, give or take. Shut down what you can, but get everything unplugged. We don't want to lose any data or equipment.” For a change, Nia was delighted she'd been too busy today to even switch on the elaborate system in her office. Fortunately, she'd insisted on super-charged surge protectors for all the systems. But still, better safe than sorry.
Better alert the media as well. It was convenient to have a sister who was an investigative reporter. Nia pulled her phone from her pocket and swiftly Facetimed Polly.
Her broadly smiling sister answered on the second chime. ”What's up, baby sis?”
”Polly, the sun just experienced a coronal ma.s.s ejection. I'm talking about history in the making.”
”Hold on.” The smile disappeared from Polly's mouth, replaced by a grim line as she reached past the screen range. She was back in an instant with a mini voice recorder. Even with access to all the latest electronic gadgets, her sister still clung to more old-school methods. She waggled the machine in front of the screen and depressed one of the side b.u.t.tons. ”I'm recording this. I'm speaking with Nia Thanos of the Helios Inst.i.tute. Tell me in layman's terms what this news means.”
”Basically, the sun just belched out a huge ma.s.s of plasma and gases. The ejection reached nearly three thousand miles above the surface.”
”How will this affect us on Earth?” Polly propped her phone on something outside the camera frame and grabbed a pen to scribble notes. Nia had a view of the top of Polly's head and ceiling tiles.
”The explosion disrupted the normal rhythm of radio waves that bombard the Earth all day long. The waves, which are moving at the sound of light, will reach our planet in roughly fifteen minutes. Satellite signals will be scrambled, probably in the next three minutes. Phones and data lines will be affected. People need to be warned to unplug whatever electronics are important. Can you get the message out?”
”On it.” Polly reached toward her phone as she yelled for her producer.
”Polly, hold on a second.” The tendons in Nia's neck stood out as tension mounted. She turned her back to the room and moved off to the side. ”Off the record?”
Polly nodded and switched off the recorder. ”Shoot.”
”It's started.” She didn't need to say anything else. Her message was loud and clear.
A grimace tightened the seam of Polly's lips. Her cheeks puffed out as she breathed heavily. ”Gotcha. Go take care of alerting everyone who'll be affected by this volley. I'll handle getting the word out to all media outlets. We'll talk later.”
Nia disconnected the call and dropped her chin to her chest, summoning the same level of calm she'd nudged Barry with only moments ago.
The buzz of activity reached fever pitch around her. The Inst.i.tute's techs were busy alerting everyone who needed a heads-up. Nia quickly dialed her NASA contact.
Ken Hillerman answered on the first ring. ”Did you capture it?” he asked without preamble.
”We did.”
”We'll want playback as soon as you can send it.”
”Sure. Ken, the wave is moving fast. It will be on us shortly. Has the NSA been notified?”
”The Deputy Director is on the phone with them now. The Director is on the phone with the president.”
Nia hoped the president understood the enormity of the situation. Science hadn't been his strong suit.