“Okay, cut the power,” said Ben, his breath puffing around him in the cold night air.
Eddie did so, and felt full weight return to his body. The prototype mass dampener was gently smoking in the headlights of the transit van, but no worse than it had the first time, in Martinique, despite having had a thousand times more energy fed into it. Frank was right, he now knew. No matter how much energy you fed into it, most of it just went elsewhere.
“Twenty metres!” called out Stuart, grinning with excitement as he came running back across the grassy field behind the main building of Wilson's Defence Contractors. “We've extended its area of effect nearly tenfold, and still exactly a seventy six percent reduction in mass.”
The machine and the truck containing the largest portable generator they could find had been set up beside a football field. The football field itself was muddy with slushy, half melted snow and heavily churned up by the studded football boots that ran across it every Thursday and Saturday as the staff tried to keep fit despite having jobs that mainly involved sitting down. The ground around the edge of the pitch was fairly solid, but Eddie had still worried that the van might get bogged down in the waterlogged ground. When he'd voiced his concerns, though, Ben had just laughed and said that, if that happened, they'd reduce the van’s mass by three quarters and just lift it out. Eddie had glanced around at the others. None of them had seemed worried. They must have driven the van across the field many times before and knew it was solid enough to take it.
Behind them, the four storey building had a great many large, plate glass windows. Many of them were still occupied despite the late hour and contained faces looking curiously out at them. Ben had said that most of them knew nothing about the alien spaceship or what the top scientists were really working on. What were they thinking about the small group of people standing in the middle of a field in the middle of the night? Could they possibly deduce what they were doing just by watching them? None of the others seemed to think so, and so he'd shrugged and put it out of his mind.
They had had to keep moving the pair of scales with its five kilo weight further and further away from the van’s headlights to find the edge of the mass dampener’s new area of effect every time they upped the power, until they were finally giving it every watt the generator was capable of producing. “The radius increases in proportion with the cube of the power input,” said James. “Pretty much what he expected. If we could feed even more power into it, would the area just keep growing?”
“The transformers would blow...” began Ben, wrapping his arms around his body against the cold. He hadn't brought a coat, because it wasn't that cold and there wasn't any wind. The cold had gradually seeped in, though, and now he was wishing he’d wrapped up like the others.
“Yes, I know,” snapped James impatiently. “But if you put in larger transformers, replaced all the cabling to carry a heavier current...”
“Then I’m guessing yes,” replied the older man. “There doesn’t seem to be a limit to the area of effect.”
“I still can’t believe this is actually possible,” said Eddie, though. “There has to be something in the laws of nature to forbid it, right? I mean, the mass dampener could be used to generate limitless free energy, and you just can’t do that.” He looked around at the others as if daring them to contradict him. “You reduce the mass of an object, lift it up into the air, then allow it to return to full mass. You can extract energy from it as it falls again. Where does that energy come from? If you use some of that energy to power the mass dampener and lift another mass-dampened object, you've got a perpetual motion machine!” in physics, the discovery that a theory allowed a perpetual motion machine to be built was taken as absolute proof that the theory was false. Nature never gave away free lunches.
“We've wrangled with that thought ourselves,” admitted Ben. “We decided in the end that the energy has to come from somewhere, we just don't know where. Most of the energy we’ve been feeding into that thing just disappears without trace. We've been assuming it goes somewhere. Some higher dimension perhaps. The energy your perpetual motion machine generates presumably comes from the same place.” As Eddie stared doubtfully at him he pushed on. “Look, the machine works! You've seen it! To take Galileo slightly out of context, eppur si muove.”
Eddie nodded, still unhappy but unable to deny it. “So when we’ve finished with the moon, we’ve got a device that can generate free energy in unlimited quantities. No pollution, no radioactive waste. They'll call it a hoax.”
“Until they see it for themselves, like you did.”
“This one device can give us the galaxy and keep the environmentalists happy,” said Stuart, grinning with delight.
“When we’ve finished with the moon,” said Alice with a smile.
“Well, yes. We can do it. We can push the moon back into its original orbit. We need to work out a few details, of course.”
“Like the fact that, to encompass the whole moon, we'll need a generator that can put out...” She did some quick mental arithmetic. “About twenty thousand terawatts of power. And even then, we can only reduce the moon's mass by seventy six percent.”
“Yes. Obviously we'll need to use one of the original alien mass dampeners.”
“Do you think they’ll be willing to give them back?” asked Jessica.
“Both the Chinese and the Americans may already have had the same idea,” said Ben. “We gave them the blueprints for the prototype mass dampener, they've probably already built one of their own. They may have discovered the cubic size to power relationship by now. Either country might decide to take their alien device up to the moon on one of their own shuttles.”
“Along with a generator big enough to power it?”
“The original alien device required far less power. We think about five petawatts. If it’s capable of generating a field large enough to encompass the whole moon, we could power it with that generator right there.” He indicated the generator sitting in the back of the truck. “It can easily be carried up to the moon in a shuttle. One of them might be preparing a shuttle for launch right now.”
“If a device designed to take only five petawatts can survive having a thousand, million million times as much power pumped through it.”
“Most of the power goes elsewhere, remember? The power doesn't go through the device. It goes elsewhere.”
“But even so, it’s insane to think it’s possible! If someone tried, they’d very likely just vaporize an irreplaceable piece of genuine alien technology.” She glanced around at the others, her eyes going from face to face searching for someone who shared her concerns. “Wouldn't they?” she insisted.
“With the stakes as high as they are, I think someone has to try it,” said Eddie. Around him, some of the others were nodding soberly. “You all know what's going to happen if the moon's allowed to remain in its new orbit.” He looked at Jessica, silently beseeching her to understand. “You know what's going to happen,” he repeated. He held her with his eyes, and after a moment she also nodded. “We have the prototype,” said Eddie. “We may have no idea how it works, but we'll figure it out eventually. If we do vaporize the original devices, well, it would be a tragedy of course, but not a disaster. We’ve had them long enough to figure out how to create mass dampeners of our own. Over the years to come we'll improve on them. Make them better and smaller until we can make devices that can equal the performance of the original. What I’m saying is that we’ve probably learned all we can from the originals. We could study them for a thousand years and not learn anything more. We'll be losing nothing by putting them to practical use, even if they're destroyed in the attempt.”
Ben nodded. “He's right,” he said. “I think I need to start making some phone calls.”
☆☆☆
Lily fell asleep as the helicopter flew across the night time English countryside and Samantha changed seats to sit beside her so the little girl could lean against her shoulder. Below them, the street lights, shining brilliantly in the darkness, were growing denser as they approached the outskirts of London, and the moon was now about twenty degrees above the horizon, the highest it would get during an English winter. It had reappeared from behind the line of clouds, and she thought the disk of grey was slightly brighter on its eastern side than its western side, as if the clouds blanketing it were being lit from beneath by rapidly growing lakes of lava.
Captain Philby sat in silence on the other side of the passenger cabin as he digested what Samantha had just told him. He was looking scared, and Samantha guessed that he was making plans to get his family safely away from the coast before the rush for higher ground began. She was grateful for the silence, because it gave her a chance to rehearse in her mind what she was going to say to the Prime Minister and the other dignitaries she was on her way to meet. Having delivered the bad news to people three times now had been good practice, but she’d made mistakes. Told things in the wrong order and failed to make herself understood because she'd forgotten her audience didn't have the same scientific knowledge she had. When she briefed the COBRA committee, she would have to get it right.
Eventually the helicopter began to descend, and looking out the window she saw the lights of London City Airport growing ahead of them. A few minutes later they were setting down on the tarmac and Captain Philby roused himself to disembark. As the door opened, Samantha saw another black car standing few dozen metres away with another two black suited men standing beside it.
”Here we are,” he said as Samantha gently picked up her sleeping daughter, trying not to wake her. “These gentlemen will take you the rest of the way.”
“Thank you, Captain.”
The Captain climbed back aboard the helicopter, and as soon as Samantha and her daughter were far enough away it lifted back into there air with a blast of downdraught that tugged at her clothes and made Lily stir uneasily in her arms.
One of the black suited man came forward to meet her. “Mrs Kumiko?” She replied that that was indeed who she was. “My name is Simon Deneuve and this is my colleague Montgomery Garfield. We're here to take you to Downing Street.”
“Very good,” said Samantha, looking down at Lily’s face. She was still sound asleep, she was relieved to see. “Could you please speak softly? I don't want my daughter to wake up.”
“My apologies, ma'am,” the man replied, speaking in a softer voice. “Will you please climb into the car?”
The door opened for her as she approached and she laid her daughter carefully on the seat. Then she walked around to the other side of the car, got in and sat down beside her. Both doors closed by themselves. The two black suited men then got into the front seats and the car moved silently away towards the exit onto Hartmann Road.
☆☆☆
The COBRA committee was named after the room in which the meetings took place. Committee Office Briefing Room A. It was much smaller than Samantha had expected. Barely large enough for the large wooden table and the twenty chairs that stood around it. The walls were wood panelled, except for one of the small walls that was covered with eight large monitor screens.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
At the moment, all eight were showing telescope images of the moon. One showed the whole of the moon, now looking like Venus with its covering of dense clouds. Another showed a close up of the eastern hemisphere, and Samantha was fascinated to see the clouds roiling with convection cells as it was heated from beneath. A third screen showed a real time infra red image of the same part of the moon. It showed patches of heat. A large one right on the limb itself with smaller ones around it. Large lakes of lava heating the clouds above, joining up with each other as they grew. Even as she watched, a small island of cold blue shrank and disappeared as a piece of lunar crust was swallowed up by the molten rock that melted it from all sides.
A secretary had taken a still sleeping Lily from her arms as she entered the building. “We'll take good care of her,” she promised. “You're not the first person to bring a small child. We've got a room at the back outfitted as a nursery, with armed guards who all have children of their own and know how to look after her if she wakes up. She'll be waiting for you safe and sound when you’re ready to leave.” Samantha had thanked her, and then watched with some anxiety as the woman took her daughter through a door into another room. Then an aide had shown her through into the committee room.
The Prime Minister, Richard Garrison, was already there, waiting for her, along with a dozen other men and women. “Thank you for coming,” he said, standing. “I'm sorry we weren't able to give you enough notice to make proper arrangements for your daughter...”
“Not at all,” replied Samantha. “I'm pleased and relieved that you understand the urgency of the situation.”
Richard Garrison nodded, and then made introductions. In addition to himself, there were three other members of the cabinet present. David Lemmons, the Home Secretary, Thomas Chesterfield, the Secretary of State for Health and Social care, and Rebecca Bingley, the Secretary of State for the Environment and Rural Affairs. The Government’s Chief Scientific Advisor, Leonard Green, was also there, as was the President of the Royal Astronomical Society, Lewis Morgan. “I’m a big fan of your work,” he said, rising from his seat to offer his hand. She shook it with a grateful smile. She was feeling a bit intimidated, and a familiar face went a long way to making her feel better. “I read your paper on helium three. The plans to go up to the moon and mine it.”
“I'm pretty sure that plan's a dead duck now,” said Samantha ruefully. She quickly told them what Neil Arndale had told her on the helicopter.
Morgan nodded. "We got the same news just a few minutes ago," he said. "Incredible!"
"And as the moon melts, all that helium three the moon’s been collecting for billions of years is now being boiled off into space," Samantha added. "What a waste!"
“Could have been just the thing to finally get fusion off the ground” agreed the other astronomer.
The Prime Minister waited patiently for the exchange to end before introducing the other members of the council, all of whom were civil servants, senior police officers and high ranking army officers. The he directed her to the chair that had been set aside for her. “So,” he said. “These two science chappies have been filling my head with all kinds of doom and gloom disaster stories. Floods, earthquakes, that sort of thing.”
“I'm afraid they're quite correct, Sir,” Samantha replied. “The moon has been knocked into a new orbit, one that will bring it much closer to the Earth every twenty nine days. Tides will be much higher during the close approach, and there will indeed be an increase in the number and ferocity of earthquakes during that twenty four hour period, before the moon moves away again. Some of those earthquakes may very well be in the United Kingdom, and may reach magnitudes of seven or eight on the Richter scale.”
Everyone stared at her. “You can’t be serious!” said one of the civil servants.
Samantha looked at him. “I'm afraid I am. Britain does indeed contain fault lines, but since we’re located so far from the nearest region of tectonic activity they rarely have enough stress put on them to cause them to slip. That is soon about to change.”
“Where are these fault lines?” asked the Home Secretary.
“I can show you if any of those monitors are connected to the internet.”
“They are indeed,” said the Prime Minister. “There are firewalls, of course, for security purposes, but... Winston, are you there?”
“Where else would I be?” said Winston Churchill's voice from the air all around them.
“Winston, please recognise Samantha Kumiko. Give her security access level three.”
“Very well.”
The Prime Minister then turned back to Samantha. “Please identify yourself to Winston.”
Samantha nodded. “My name is Samantha Kumiko. I’m head of lunar studies at Bristol University.”
“Your voice print has been analysed and stored successfully. Pleased make your enquiries.”
“Please display a map of The United Kingdom on one of those monitors showing all known tectonic fault lines. Also, display the epicentres of all earthquakes in the UK of magnitude four and above during the past hundred years.”
The map, when it appeared a moment later, filled the four middle screens and a collective gasp rose from around the table. “Shit!” said the Home Secretary. “They're everywhere!”
“One goes right through London!” said the Chief of Police.
“Most of those fault lines are minor and probably nothing to worry about,” said Samantha, “But some of them will almost certainly cause trouble during the moon's closest approach. Your science advisor can probably help you out there better than I can.”
“Unfortunately, I'm a chemist, not a geologist,” said Leonard Green. “However, I'm sure the government will have no trouble getting hold of a geologist.” The Prime Minister nodded.
“Most of the earthquakes are in Scotland and Wales,” said one of the army officers, looking splendid on his uniform and medals. He seemed pleased and relieved by the observation.
“The Scots and the Welsh are just as much UK citizens as the rest of us,” said the Home Secretary icily.
“Yes, of course,” said the General indignantly, “But if the home counties are relatively unaffected by the coming calamities, they'll be better able to offer help to the highland areas.”
“The home counties will be less affected by the earthquakes, it's true,” said Samantha, “but they'll be hit harder by the flooding.”
“Flooding?”
“As the moon comes closer, tides will be higher. Much higher. Huge coastal areas will be flooded.”
“Just how close will it come?” asked the Prime Minister.
“We're still waiting for the exact figures,” said Samantha, “but Neil Arndale, my director at the University of Bristol, gave me some preliminary figures earlier this evening that indicate that, at perigee, the moon will be only around a hundred and fifteen thousand kilometres from the Earth. That's about a third of the current distance...”
“Good God!” said Leonard Green. “That can’t be right!” He looked pale, as if he might be about to faint. Lewis Morgan also looked shocked, but the others, the ones lacking that level of scientific knowledge, merely looked confused.
“I'm afraid there’s no doubt that the figure will be somewhere in that neighbourhood.”
“So tides will be three times as high as they are now? said the General. “On top of the rise in sea levels caused by global warming...”
“Er, no, I'm afraid not,” said Leonard Green, making a visible effort to get himself back under control. He was doing some rapid calculations on his phone. “Gravitational attraction increases as the square of the distance, and the height of the tides increases as the cube."
“There are other factors to consider as well,” added Lewis Morgan. “Oceanic friction, the fact that it takes time for that much water to move. The seas may not have time to rise to their full height before the rotation of the Earth carries that part of the world out from under the moon.”
“The moon will be travelling fast at that part of its orbit,” pointed out Samantha, though. “Nearly as fast as the Earth’s rotation. At perigee itself, it will be travelling almost fast enough for it to appear to hover over that part of the Earth as the planet turns under it. The moon will stand still in the sky while the sun rises and sets behind it. That will be when the tides are highest. And there are other factors to consider. The effect of the winds, the topography of the sea floor, tidal bores...”
“Tidal bores could be huge!” said Leonard Green. “There could well be a tidal bore coming up the English channel, hundreds of times the size of the Severn Bore, causing even more flooding to the south coast.”
Several people tried to speak at once, and the Prime Minister raised his hands for silence. “Just how high could the tides reach?” he asked. “What's the worst case scenario?”
The two men glanced at each other. “What is the tidal range at present?” asked Leonard Green. “Half a metre? About that?”
“It varies all across the world,” replied Lewis Morgan. “There’s a place in Canada where the tidal range is over twenty metres.”
“That's because of the geography of the region. There are places where there're no tides at all. Sicily, other places around the Mediterranean...”
“I'm not worried about other parts of the world,” said the Prime Minister impatiently. “What about here? The British Isles?”
The two men glanced at each other again. “High tides around twenty metres above sea level?” said Leonard Green.
“And low tides twenty metres below sea level,” agreed Lewis Morgan. “We’ll have to do some computer modelling. It might be more than that, less than that...”
Consternation had erupted around the table, though, as half the committee members declared their disbelief. The other half simply stared, as if they were simply incapable of visualising what was being described. “Coastal towns would be completely submerged!” said the Home Secretary. “The sea would literally be above their rooftops!”
“How much of London is twenty metres or less above sea level?” asked the Prime Minister.
The Home Secretary told Winston to bring up a map of the greater London area and to colour everything below twenty metres in blue. Samantha saw several of the faces around the table go white at what appeared on the screens. A strip of blue five kilometres wide ran through the heart of London as far west as Windsor, with a fat finger reaching north all the way to Waltham Cross. The Isle of Dogs, London's financial district, was completely submerged, along with Stratford, Ilford, West Ham. The Houses of Parliament were coloured blue, but they’d expected that since it was located right on the riverbank. All in all, nearly a quarter of the city would be under water at high tide, including most of the banks and the most important tourist sites. Heathrow airport and Hyde Park were outside the affected area, but only just. The twenty metre estimate would only have to be wrong by a few metres and they would be flooded as well. No-one needed to be told that the water would rise well above the new flood barrier that had just been built across the Thames at a cost of a hundred billion pounds.
The Prime Minister zoomed the image in to show the Westminster area. “Looks as though we might be able to protect Downing Street with sandbags,” he said. “I want to stay here if I possibly can. It’ll be good for morale. And other areas could also be protected. Areas on the edge of the blue zone would only have to face a couple of meters of water. We could put up flood barriers, perhaps, to defend them during the brief time the water will be that high.”
“May I remind you that the twenty metres figure is little more than a pure guess at present,” said Leonard Green. “The water only has to be one centimetre higher than the flood barrier for it to be completely useless.”
“How long before we know for certain?”
“Thirteen days from now, when the moon makes its closest approach.”
“That doesn't give us much time to relocate all government and financial work to higher ground,” said the Home Secretary. “We're going to be in chaos right from the moment we end this meeting and I start making phone calls.”
They scrolled the image around the British Isles. Scotland, Wales and the island of Ireland would hardly be affected, it seemed, but vast areas of eastern England would be under water. “That's our best farming land!” protested the Minister for Rural Affairs, as if he thought the people around the table would be responsible. “The breadbasket of Britain! All that land will be ruined! Tainted by salt! Nothing will grow on it!”
“We'll have to evacuate millions to higher ground,” said the Home Secretary. “Where will we put them? How will we feed them? The disruption’s going to be terrible. There'll be rioting, looting...”
“And every country in the world will be in exactly the same boat,” said one of the civil servants.
“All the ones with a coastline, anyway,” said another. “I suddenly envy the Swiss.”
“Okay,” said the Prime Minister to the three scientists. “So, I don't suppose there’s any way we can stop this, is there? Some way we can just stop this from happening?”
He looked desperately hopeful and resigned at the same time. He clearly already knew the answer to his question, but felt he’d had to ask anyway. Samantha stared at the other astronomer and the science advisor, hoping that one of them would answer for her, but they just averted their eyes awkwardly Thanks guys, she thought ruefully.
She took a deep breath. “I’m afraid there’s no stopping it, Sir,” she said. “This is going to happen. This is the new reality. Thirteen days from now the moon will make its first closest approach to the Earth. There will be earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, flooding of coastal areas, perhaps other consequences we haven't thought of yet. Twenty four hours of calamity. It's going to happen, and there’s nothing we can do about it.”
“But then the moon will move back to its present distance, correct?”
“Briefly, yes, but then, twenty nine days later, it will come back, make another close approach. And twenty nine days after that and twenty nine days after that. Forever. That is our new reality, Sir, and all we can do is learn how to adapt to it.”
The Prime Minister took a deep breath. “Okay,” he said. “So let's talk about what we’re going to do. First, we have to inform the public, but without causing a panic and a mass stampede for higher ground. What do you suggest, Tom?”
The Home Secretary looked thoughtful for a moment or two as he chose his words, and then he began to speak.