THE ARK

Day 730

Senator Wilfred Cogshell sat in his first class seat on the Boeing 747. He was en route from Amsterdam to New York. So far the flight had been delayed, the take off quite rough, and the food only adequate. To make matters worse the guy in the seat next to him was snoring and reeked of stale cigarette smoke.

Senator Cogswell had spent the last two weeks meeting with representatives from five different European governments.

He was looking over the many pages of notes he had taken during the last two weeks.

As he paged through the notes he came across a notation that he had made while speaking to the Russian Foreign Minister. The Foreign Minister had officially requested that the United States government look into a matter for them. The administrator of the Russian Space Program had several reports that the comet approaching Earth had some traces of radiation present. They suspected that there would not be a major problem from it, but asked that the US government confirm their suspicions.

He entered a task in his IPad to remember to place a call to the Administrator of NASA in the morning. Cogshell met the Administrator several years before when he showed up at NASA and requested a personal tour. Cogshell could not remember the Administrator’s name off the top of his head. He remembered that he was a fat arrogant man, who acted all put out to have to provide the tour. In the morning, he would be sure to place a call to him.

Administrator Thomas Williams sat alone in his office. Other than the monthly reports he submitted to General Draper, he had no other contact with the man in over three months. The last time Williams had contacted the General, it had been to report the concern about his Deputy Director and another employee going public with the comet story. Less than a week later one of them was dead and the other missing. Even after all this time, there was still no trace of the Deputy Director Stanley Waldorf and Williams was sure that he was dead. He was also sure that the phone call that Williams himself had placed to General Draper was the cause of both deaths. Williams had to admit that as bothered as he was about what happened, he had not been completely surprised about how the matter was handled.

Now there was another possible problem. Some US Senator wanted NASA to look into a comet that was approaching Earth. Even worse, the request to look into this came directly from the Russian Government. As much as Thomas Williams did not want to call Draper, at least he knew the call would not get someone killed. While having a Senator whacked would be a small challenge, he would not put it past Draper. However, taking out the entire Russian Government might be a little too messy for the arrogant General.

Reluctantly Williams picked up the phone and dialed the special number. A voicemail system answered the call. Williams left his message. “This is Mr. Williams across town; I think we have another Code Omega. Please call me when you have time. Thanks.”

As in the past, the call was returned in just a few minutes.

“Williams here.”

“Mr. Williams, I hear we have another problem?”

“Yes, General. I was contacted by Senator Wilfred Cogshell from New Jersey. He’s just back from a trip to Russia. While there, he was asked to look into something for the Russians. Apparently, the Russians have been talking about our friend in space and have noticed its peculiar qualities. Their initial projections don’t yet predict the danger. They just want to confirm that we, too, see no danger. I already have an official response prepared for the Russians on the matter. It says that we’re tracking it and that all our projections show that it’ll miss colliding with Earth and that there has been some mild radiation detected but that we don’t see it as being a threat.”

“Have you sent that to them yet?” Draper asked

“No, I wanted to check with you first.”

“Good, I agree with your statement to them, but don’t send it yet, I want to discuss this with the President first. I’ll call you back,”

Williams started to answer but then realized that Draper was already gone.

Two hours later Williams was told to make the call. He left a message for the Senator stating that his people had been tracking it and they were convinced that any radiation associated with the comet was of insignificant levels.

In the next eight months Great Britain, Argentina, Australia, France and Canada also inquired about the comet’s radiation.

A month after that, the story made it to the public, first in a few newspapers and later on prime time news.

It took only a few weeks for everyone to begin talking about how this long awaited comet seemed to have a little radiation associated with it.