Twin Earth

Back on campus, in the much colder and wetter climate that was Swindon on a Thursday afternoon, I avoided Robert and the others and immediately made my way down to see James in the lab. I was exhausted, but the adrenalin was keeping me going.

“Pizza?” James grinned eyeing my dishevelled appearance in the doorway and throwing a cardboard pizza box at me.

“Ugh, what time is it?” I asked rubbing my face and collapsing into my old chair. I was surprised to see that my desk, in the windowless dungeon as we called it, hadn’t been cleared and as if spying my surprise James remarked, “We knew you’d be back.”

“Really? I think Robert had made his feelings quite clear that day.”

“It wasn’t your fault Tom. He had no right to blame you.”

“It was my fault. I never passed on that message.”

“Look, you can’t keep doing this to yourself. It was just one of those things. You shouldn’t have been on that night. Everyone knew how much you were going through with your divorce and Robert shouldn’t have forced you to come in. He knew you’d been drinking. He probably did it deliberately.”

“Still…” I paused as I relived my guilt yet again.

“We even kept your crappy plant alive,” James grinned as he wheeled his office chair over to mine.

“Now I am surprised,” I laughed.

“So what d’ya find? I’ve been analysing the data that the ESA sent over and so far I think I’ve found another five pieces of the asteroid still out there. None are on a collision course with Earth though. The ESA guys said the meteorite was much smaller than expected?”

“Yes. Whatever it hit must have caused it to break apart, but the shape of it is weird.”

“How so?”

“Okay, think of how slate breaks apart, like in sheets that are wafer thin. Like that, but the surface is so void of any indentations or signs of impact, no markings of any kind. Rather than the anomaly smashing it to pieces, it would be more accurate to describe it as being cut or sliced like butter.”

“Wow.”

“I know. I mean this thing is a thick lump of iron. Imagine what kind of energy it would take to slice a perfect piece of iron into slithers.”

“I also heard there was no signs of entry on the object as well?”

“Nothing. No crusting, no heating, and the crater was so shallow there was barely any rock debris and zero shock melting, even with all the sand.”

“That is pretty weird,” James whispered. “You brought any photos?”

“Yeah Rachel took some.”

I left James looking through the photos of the object and made my way back to the door to pick up my case of samples. It was heavy, but I was determined not to disturb it as much as I could. I really hoped to see the sand acting as it had back in Morocco, but a part of me doubted it would be.

“This however, is what I am more interested in,” I wheezed taking the vacuumed box over to the lab counter.

“You got some samples with you. Brilliant,” James exclaimed excitedly, standing up and joining me. “I was worried you wouldn’t have had time and we would have to rely on third party sampling.”

“Yeah, hooray for your laser tape,” I laughed. “I managed to take a couple of samples near to the front of the meteorite, where it landed. There is something I am hoping to show you.”

I opened the case, and putting on gloves I carefully lifted out the two tubular lumps of meteorite I had managed to bring back with me and placed them in a tray of organic solvent, but sadly my worst fears had come true and the sand was no longer acting strangely, instead it fell perfectly normally as I disturbed the meteorite samples.

“Damn it,” I muttered as I tried once again to make the sand dance.

“What are you looking for?” James asked confused.

“It must be the deionised water. When we were in Morocco, I noticed that the sand wouldn’t fall when I scattered it over the object. Instead it would dance, as if caught in tiny tornadoes before eventually settling in the exact same position.”

“Really? Like a kind of magnetic force?”

“Yeah sort of, but sand isn’t magnetic. Rachel hypothesised it could be some form of gravitational fluctuation, causing a difference in air pressure.”

“Is that even possible? It’s iron you said?”

“And some nickel and cobalt and probably some other trace elements, but even so, I agree, that wouldn’t make any difference. The mass is way too small. I was hoping to repeat the phenomena here, but it’s not doing it. I feared this would happen as when we were in Morocco, Fiona from the European space agency was complaining of gusts of wind. It was making all the sand get into the equipment, but the weather report was for fine clear weather. These gusts though I noticed were acting in a similar way. You wouldn’t notice it unless you had been looking for it, but they slowly became more and more infrequent. Damn it.”

“Maybe the meteorite itself isn’t generating your phenomenon. Otherwise you would be able to repeat the experiment here surely. Was there anything else unusual in and around the crater?”

“No, nothing I could see. I’m going to run these samples through the WD-XRF spectroscopy. Is it switched on?”

“It is yes. You need some epoxy to cut some in half?”

“We can try that too, but I don’t think it will look much different to what is on the surface. It is so smooth already. I think this is the inside of it. I’ll try scanning it as it is first. I don’t want to disturb the samples any more than I already have.”

I placed the slightly smaller lump of iron into the scanner and switched on the x-ray fluorescence instrument. The equipment was old and a lot slower than my portable electron microscope, but it was the best for scanning deep into meteorite fragments to get more accurate results.

“Hey,” a voice called from the doorway.

“Dad,” I smiled looking up. “You made it.”

“I am avoiding Robert,” my Dad replied, laughing softly.

“Well, you’re in the right place. He never comes down here. Isn’t that right Tom,” James grinned.

“Yeah, he says it makes him feel uncomfortable. Too dark and full of quiet people,” I mouthed sarcastically. “James this is my father.”

“Pleased to meet you Sir,” James replied standing up and shaking my father’s hand and bowing awkwardly at the same time.

“You can call me Kaito,” my father replied, laughing at the formality.

I had always had a close bond with my father, maybe more so than with my mother, especially now they were divorced. My mother, who’s Scottish, was never accepting of my interest in science and mathematics, mainly due to the fact that she had fought for years with my father over his workaholic attitude. He was typically Japanese in that sense. He spent a lot of time in Japan instead of at home with us and it’s one of the reasons why I have no siblings. My mother hated the fact that she had been constantly left alone for often months on end raising a child she hadn’t planned for. She was a dancer, a lover of the arts and had no time for complicated mathematic equations and physics. I had often wondered how they’d even met as they seemed complete opposites.

As a child I had craved to be around my father rather than her because he understood my passion. We could spend hours together just talking about the universe, having deep conversations about all manner of scientific theories and subjects. For a Japanese man he was unusually very open with me and had a wonderful sense of humour, but with my mother I would cringe at having to listen to her gossip about her friends or what dance routine and show she was currently working on. My father had often said I had inherited her creative side, but I would refuse to believe it in my early working career, as if it was some form of weakness, but since working at the UKSA I had started to realise that maybe he was right. My father had always been proud of my ability to think creatively, maybe even jealous a little as he said it opened the door to all manner of possibilities and theories in science.

“How was Morocco?” my father asked walking over. “I was hoping to be here much sooner, but there were some delays with my flight, birds apparently, incompetence more likely.”

“I’m just scanning some samples now of the meteorite.”

“Anything of interest?”

“Hmmm, there was, but I can’t seem to replicate it here in the lab.”

I explained to my father about the strange formations of the sand and hoped he would have some suggestions as to what was causing it, but sadly he looked just as bemused as we did.

“Have you discovered anything new about the anomaly?” I asked hopeful.

“Nothing, which is unusual in itself. We have discovered what seems to be some remnants of the collision drifting in space however…”

“Yes, I have too,” James interrupted.

“…but nothing about the anomaly itself. We know it’s there, but we just can’t see anything more than minor variations in the light surrounding it. We are not even one hundred percent sure that it is even an anomaly, but like you say, the object we have here on Earth looks like it has been sliced. It is most unusual.”

“To slice a solid lump of iron is difficult anyway, but this smooth, this clean? I don’t know,” I replied. “I am officially flummoxed.”

“Do not give up son. We are redirecting our probe, you know the one we originally sent up to land on the asteroid, to focus on where we believe the anomaly to be. It is not designed for such a mission, but we have adapted the systems as best we can to hopefully find something.”

“That’s a brilliant idea. How long until it intercepts?”

“Hopefully in the next few hours. I was hoping to take you and Miss Jenkins over to the Helix Particle Physics lab near here so we can link up with our probe and use their equipment.”

“Are you not needed back in Tokyo?” I asked.

“Are you going to travel back with me?” my father joked. “I want you on the team and at the moment you are the only one with a slice of this thing. NASA are being incredibly difficult.”

“You know they got to stay on in Morocco,” I moaned.

“I confess I am surprised Robert even managed to get you in the air!”

“Ah ha!” James exclaimed. “I knew you hated flying. I just thought it was a rocket thing.”

“Oh shut up, the pair of you, it’s vacuums I hate not air,” I grinned. “I’m starting to get some results from the scanner. You want to see?”

“Hmmm,” my father mused peering into my computer screen and analysing the data now coming through. “Iron and nickel as we expected, some trace elements like magnesium and iridium, platinum, gold and slightly elevated levels of cobalt.”

“Pretty much what my portable scanner predicted. None of these things would cause the sand to act this way.”

“Any signs of flow lines or markings on the smooth surface?” my father asked.

“Literally none on the surface, only on the underneath, but you can see that clearly by eye anyway with all the thumbnail indentations. Wait…” I paused.

“What is it?” James asked looking at me.

“When I put this thing in the scanner how much did it weigh James? Can you check my notes.”

“Err… you wrote about four and a half pounds?”

“These results,” I paused confused. “Did I measure that right?”

“What is it?” James asked as I walked around flicking through my notes.

“This specimen, it’s gained just over a pound in weight.”

“What?”

“Look.”

I showed my father and James the data on my screen and stood back confused.

“Are you sure you weighed it accurately beforehand?” my father asked.

“Yes, this thing has literally gotten heavier in the last hour or so.”

“And bigger by the looks,” James exclaimed as he pulled out the sample from the scanner.

“What the…”

I stared at the sample that James had now put in front of us and was amazed to see that its shape had distorted and grown in one direction.

“How can a meteorite… grow?” James asked stunned.

“I have no idea. There is no indication of organic matter.”

I check my notes and the results again a few times, but I still came to the same realisation that the sample I had taken and placed into the scanner had grown in size and weight albeit only slightly.

“What about the other sample,” James asked as he frantically opened my carry case. I walked over and peered in and gasped. The second sample had also grown, but more significantly so, this time by a few inches.

“What the hell is going on here?” I asked, dumbfounded.

“Bring those down to the Helix lab. They have a more powerful electron microscope there. Maybe it will show up something,” my father replied.