The Orion Plan (6 page)

The only logical explanation was that the rock was a visitor to our solar system. It must've come from somewhere else in the galaxy.

It would be an extraordinary discovery if Sarah could prove it. Several years ago a team of astronomers had claimed they'd detected a high-speed meteor that must've come from another star system, but their findings hadn't stood up to scrutiny. Skeptical researchers found fault with the observations and argued that the meteor wasn't as speedy as claimed. Although Sarah trusted the Sky Survey observations, she knew her results would be vulnerable to the same criticism. That's why she'd spent nine hundred dollars on a last-minute plane ticket to New York. She needed to find a piece of the object so she could analyze its chemical composition. If it turned out to be very different from the asteroids that are native to our solar system, she'd have some solid evidence. Then she could publish her results and announce the discovery of the first interstellar meteorite.

But she had to be careful. An astronomer could ruin her reputation by announcing a discovery too soon. Sarah had made that mistake twenty years ago when she first started working for NASA, and it had nearly ended her career. She was forced to retract her claims and abandon her research. It was the first great disappointment of her adult life, and she didn't handle it very well. She nose-dived into bitterness and depression. She alienated her friends and fought with her fiancé and broke off their engagement. Her life crashed so violently she lost almost everything. She finally took a leave of absence from NASA and checked into a mental-health treatment center in New Mexico.

The next six weeks were grim, but with the help of therapy and some powerful antidepressants, Sarah recovered. After another three months she rejoined NASA and started the Sky Survey project. Over time she became the space agency's leading expert on near-Earth asteroids and eventually regained the respect of her colleagues. And now the last thing she wanted to do was risk losing her reputation again. So she wasn't going to make any half-cocked claims. She was going to keep her mouth shut until she had her proof.

Sarah stood up and headed for the neighboring baseball field. She gazed at the Hudson again, the brown water sloshing against the riverbank, the Palisades looming over the New Jersey side. Then she glanced downstream and saw half a dozen Coast Guard boats under the George Washington Bridge. They were flashing their lights and speeding upriver.

She stopped in her tracks and stared. They were patrol boats, each at least eighty feet long, with bright orange Coast Guard stripes on their hulls. They cruised in a V-formation, carving furious wakes in the brown water. After a minute or so the formation split in two; three of the boats angled toward the New Jersey side of the river and the other three headed for Inwood Hill Park's marina, which was a few hundred feet south of the baseball fields. As the boats got closer Sarah noticed that their decks were crowded. Dozens of men stood behind the bow rails, all dressed in combat uniforms. They were also carrying assault rifles.

What the hell?

She watched them, curious and worried.
This can't be a coincidence,
she thought.
They must be here for the same reason I am.
But why was the Coast Guard suddenly interested in meteorites?

After another minute the patrol boats reached the marina and the soldiers jumped onto the long wooden pier. They fanned out along the riverbank and set up a checkpoint at the marina's entrance. The same thing was happening on the New Jersey side of the river. As the soldiers marched toward the baseball fields they stopped the joggers and dog walkers and cyclists they encountered on the pathways and escorted them out of the park. Sarah could hear snippets of their conversations.

“Sir, please come with us.”

“Why? What's going—”

“We're clearing the area, sir. Please step this way.”

The soldiers were polite but insistent. They were also big and burly and intimidating as hell. One of them headed straight for Sarah, taking long strides and cradling his rifle. Although she doubted she could convince him to let her stay in the park, she began rehearsing her arguments. She pulled her NASA identification badge out of her pocket, hoping that proof of her government employment would help her case. But before she could say a word, the soldier pointed at her. The letters
SGT NUNN
were stenciled on his uniform.

“Ma'am, are you Dr. Sarah Pooley?”

In his left hand Sergeant Nunn held a photograph of her, the same photo that appeared on her NASA badge. This surprised her so much she almost forgot to answer him. “Uh, yeah, that's me. Listen, I need—”

“Ma'am, would you please come with me? Our commander would like to speak with you.”

“Your commander?”

The sergeant stepped forward and grasped her arm, just above the elbow. His grip was firm and unfriendly. “This way, ma'am. General Hanson is waiting.”

*   *   *

The soldiers had already commandeered a site for their headquarters, inside a waterfront restaurant next to the pier. As Sergeant Nunn escorted Sarah into the dining room, she saw a dozen uniformed men rearranging the tables and shooing the customers out the door. A pair of soldiers spread a map across a square table, and several higher-ranking officers bent over to examine it. Sarah recognized one of the officers by his coal black crew cut and the stars on the shoulders of his Air Force uniform. General Hanson was marking the map with a pencil and giving orders to the other men.

The sergeant stopped a couple of yards from the table and let go of Sarah's arm. For a second she considered bolting out of the restaurant, but she knew she wouldn't get far. Instead, she peered at Hanson's map, which showed Upper Manhattan and the Hudson River and a skinny ellipse marked in red pencil. The elliptical shape meant it was an impact zone. Hanson was organizing the hunt for the asteroid fragments, assigning a search area to each of his officers.

After Hanson finished giving orders, the other officers saluted him and left the dining room. The general studied the map for several more seconds. Then he lifted his head and grinned at Sarah. “Thanks for joining us, Dr. Pooley. Did you have a nice flight?”

She frowned. The guy's arrogance was unbelievable. “How did you know I was here?”

“My contacts at NASA said you'd called in sick. Then I made a guess and checked the passenger lists on the flights out of Los Angeles.”

“You can do that? Poke around in civilian records?”

“Under ordinary circumstances, no. But as you can see from our deployment here, the present circumstances are far from ordinary.” No longer grinning, he turned to Sergeant Nunn. “Could you give us a moment, Sergeant? Please wait by the door.”

Nunn saluted and marched off. Then Hanson turned back to Sarah. “This is a matter of national security, Dr. Pooley, so please forgive the invasion of your privacy. I wouldn't have taken these steps unless they were absolutely necessary.”

She certainly wasn't going to forgive him, but her curiosity was stronger than her distaste for the man. “I don't understand. How did this meteor become a national security crisis? Did it hit something important?”

The general shook his head. “No, nothing like that. But before I can share any information, I need some assurances from you.”

“Assurances?”

“Sometimes the Air Force will request the assistance of a civilian adviser from outside the Defense Department, usually because the civilian has some expertise we can't get from our own staff. That's the kind of arrangement I want to make with you, Dr. Pooley. I need your help.”

“Help with what?”

“The problem is, I can't tell you until we come to an agreement.” He picked up a briefcase from the floor. It was black and decorated with the Air Force seal. “The information I'd like to share with you is highly classified. You've already passed our background checks, but you need to sign a contract promising your cooperation and confidentiality.” He laid the briefcase on the table, snapped it open, and pulled out a stapled sheaf of papers. “We'll provide you with appropriate compensation, of course. The assignment will be temporary, and when it's over you can return to your duties at NASA.”

He handed her the contract. Dumbfounded, Sarah leafed through it. The gist was plain: the Air Force would pay her a thousand dollars a day for her services, and in return she had to promise to keep everything secret. If she broke her promise, she'd spend the next ten to twenty years in federal prison.

She stepped toward Hanson, holding the contract at arm's length. “You can take it back. I'm a scientist, remember? I want to publish my results, not hide them.”

The general didn't take the papers from her. “You'll still be able to publish your findings. You'll just have to let us vet your research articles before publication to make sure they don't include any classified information.”

“Vet my articles? You mean censor them, right?”

“No, that—”

“Look, it won't work. We have different priorities.” She thrust the contract at Hanson, anxious to get rid of the thing. “I don't know why you've called in the Marines, but it doesn't matter. One way or another, I'm gonna find out where that meteor came from.”

“It wasn't a meteor.” Hanson's voice was low, almost a whisper. “It was man-made.”

Sarah let go of the contract, which fluttered to the floor. “
What?
”

“It was a space probe making a controlled reentry into the atmosphere. We saw the proof once we analyzed the readings from all our radar stations across the globe.” He reached into his briefcase again and pulled out another sheaf of papers. This document had the words
TOP SECRET
stamped on its front page. “It wasn't an American probe. Not NASA, not Air Force. Not the European Space Agency either. But there are two other countries that could've launched it. I'm sure you can guess who they are.”

“How could it be man-made? It was moving too fast.”

“You're right, that's a problem. It's one of many problems.” He held up the classified document so Sarah could see its title:
ANALYSIS OF THE TRAJECTORY OF OBJECT 2016X
. “We used the radar readings and the Sky Survey data to plot the object's path during the final hours before reentry, but there are plenty of uncertainties. That's why I need you. The experts on my staff are good at plotting missile trajectories, but this probe took a roundabout route to get here, going way off into interplanetary space. And according to my sources at NASA, you know more about interplanetary trajectories than anyone.”

Sarah turned away from him, trying to think. It
was
possible to accelerate a spacecraft to speeds as high as 80,000 miles per hour. You'd have to launch it into a highly elliptical orbit around the sun and then execute a series of complex maneuvers, aiming it at Venus or Jupiter and using the planet's powerful gravity to slingshot the probe across the solar system. But what was the point? Why propel a spacecraft to such an extraordinary velocity just to send it back to Earth?

Her throat tightened. She turned back to Hanson. “Was it a weapon?”

The general waited a few seconds before responding. His face was unreadable. “We won't know for sure until we find the thing. Or at least a piece of it. Our patrol boats are going to drag the riverbed.”

She shook her head.
Jesus, this is serious.
She stepped toward the table and took a closer look at Hanson's map. His impact zone, she noticed, was smaller than the one she'd estimated. She pointed at the ellipse's eastern boundary, which encompassed only the sliver of Inwood Hill Park that ran alongside the river. “You made a mistake. The zone should include more of the park.”

“We narrowed the search area based on our radar analysis.” Hanson held up the classified document again but kept it out of Sarah's reach. “Remember when we were watching the object on radar last night and we thought it exploded in the atmosphere? That was actually a deceleration maneuver. The probe used a ten-foot-wide aeroshell to reduce its speed, just like the NASA spacecraft do when they land on Mars. At an altitude of twenty-one miles the probe ejected the aeroshell, which disintegrated. Then the probe continued toward its target. The analysis also explains why the spacecraft looked like it was more than a hundred feet wide in your telescope observations. It really
was
that big during the earliest stages of its approach. The object that your Sky Survey telescope spotted in deep space, hundreds of thousands of miles away, was several times larger than the one that dove into the atmosphere.”

Sarah waited for him to say more, but he just stood there, looking at her. She felt the sting of frustration. She wanted to grab the classified analysis right out of his hands. “What are you saying? The spacecraft
shrunk
before reentry?”

Instead of answering, he put the document back in his briefcase. “I'm sorry, Dr. Pooley, but we need to come to an agreement before I can discuss this any further.” He bent over and picked up the contract from the floor. Then he reached into the jacket of his uniform and pulled out a pen. “Will you work with us?”

She scowled at him. The bastard had planned this. He'd given her just enough information to sink his hooks into her. He'd probably done some research on her beforehand, talking to her bosses and colleagues at NASA. He knew she wouldn't be able to stand the uncertainty.

Sarah snatched the contract and pen from him. She flipped to the last page and signed it. Then she flung the papers at him and reached into his briefcase to grab the trajectory analysis.

Hanson smiled. “You can keep that copy. Just don't let it out of your sight.”

She didn't respond. She was too busy studying the data. There were pages and pages of radar readings showing the position of the object during the last few minutes of its flight. The analysis also included a diagram of the probe's trajectory before it reached the Earth. This plot, based on the Sky Survey observations, started at a point beyond the moon's orbit and made a graceful curve toward the planet.