Susanna Gregory - The Sacred stone

For a year he had had mood swings and had thought of suicide, refusing to even talk to his old friends, most of whom he had known through his work. He could not bear to think of them able still to climb mountains and dig for evidence of meteorites. Finally, he had answered the persistent phone calls made by an old friend and colleague, June Piper. She had eventually convinced him that he could contribute to the research team she led, and which he had done fieldwork for. So he returned to impact crater hunting, and he did it without ever leaving his home. It was remarkable what could be done using Google Earth.

He picked up the phone. It was June on a very bad line. ‘Hi, Greg. What kept you?’

He felt annoyed that his Google search had been interrupted and showed his displeasure. ‘Nothing. Just a small case of T2 paraplegia. I had to drag my useless limbs across the floor. It took some time.’

He could hear June laughing down the phone. She was never embarrassed by his condition, as others were when they saw him in a wheelchair. He pictured her short, stocky frame topped by her round, ruddy face and cropped hair. Always dressed in a check shirt and jeans with sturdy walking boots on her feet, her appearance screamed ‘I’m a lesbian; deal with it’. And she didn’t cut Greg any slack about being a paraplegic, either. Where others sometimes treated him like a child, or, even worse, a brave little soldier, her attitude to him was ‘So, you’re in a wheelchair; deal with it’. His self-pity didn’t work on her, so he became all business.

‘I’ve got a new site for you. It’s just north of Narsarsuaq Airfield, so it shouldn’t be difficult to get to. Where are you now?’

The line crackled, rendering June’s reply inaudible.

‘Say again.’

‘Kulusuk. Would you believe the population here is about three hundred and they have an international airport? It’s not quite as big as Heathrow, mind.’

Greg twiddled his control and reversed the chair back towards his computer, still talking on the cordless phone. He moved the hand cursor on Google Earth and zoomed out to seven hundred kilometres. From there, he could see how far the two spots were apart. It didn’t seem a problem, especially with airstrips at both locations.

‘OK. If the search is not bearing fruit where you are, I suggest you skip down to Narsaq. It looks far more promising.’

‘Nothing bears fruit here, Greg. It’s ice, snow and more ice. But you have the big picture, so we’ll do as you suggest.’

He ignored her feeble joke and idly moved the hand-shaped cursor around the rim of his crater, caressing it. ‘It’s what I’m paid for.’

There was a moment’s silence from the other end of the line, and Greg thought he had lost the connection. Then he heard June’s voice again. ‘Oh, I nearly forgot the reason why I phoned you. There’s a meteorite for sale on eBay. Looks interesting. Its curious shape might appeal to you.’

‘Curious shape?’

‘Take a look.’

Annoyingly, she rang off before he could question her further, so he opened Google Chrome and went into eBay. He bought lots of items on the website, so his access was smooth and easy. He soon saw what June had meant about the meteorite on offer being a strange shape. From the picture, it looked like one of those stealth planes from the 1980s. Boomerang-shaped with a small tail, and smooth. Later stealth aircraft got all angular to prevent radar working on them. This was like an early prototype, all rounded and smooth. And to Greg it looked old. New meteorites had a fusion crust, making them dark and glossy. This was brownish, and the surface looked grainy. But when he zoomed in on the picture, he could just make out some markings on the surface, half hidden by its granular nature. He thought it might be a fake, but he was prepared to take the risk to get a good look at it. And to add it to his collection. The seller, a guy with the handle Tallman, claimed it was an iron meteorite, which made it quite rare. Less than six per cent of meteorites were iron. He looked at the auction bid and at the time left. It had already reached $2,000 with an hour left, so he put in a bid of $2,200. Within a few minutes someone bid $2,500. Greg added another $500, only to be topped again a few minutes later. He grinned, knowing the guy bidding against him was an amateur. With only an hour — less now — to go, he should have been holding off until the last minute. This was going to be Greg’s strategy before he pushed the bidding higher than it needed to go. He eased back in his wheelchair, rearranged his lifeless legs that had slipped awkwardly and poured himself a glass of Tall Horse. The South African Merlot washed down his throat with its characteristic smoothness as he relaxed and held his nerve. Leaving eBay open, he returned to Google Earth. He ran his electronic hand over the Greenland crater rim once more.

Fifty minutes later, he had won. The iron meteorite was his for a paltry $3,600. He quickly sorted out the payment and arranged delivery. It was very late, and he should have been going through the tedious ritual that got him into bed by now. But he couldn’t bear it, when he knew he had to do the whole thing in reverse in only a few hours’ time. Not for the first time since his accident, he carried on through the night searching for craters that might provide remains of extraterrestrial life. The one he had found was very promising, as the outline was hard and jagged. He really needed to find craters without an outline eroded by Ice Age glaciers and the millennia. A crater formed by a meteorite that had come down recently — in other words, no more than 100,000 years ago. Even better if it was one that had impacted within living memory. And in a cold place.

When he told people he worked for a research team who were looking for extraterrestrial life, he had to fend off the inevitable inane questions about ET, little grey men with big eyes and flying saucers. The research team, led by Dr June Piper, would be overjoyed if they found something as lowly as frozen bacteria. Which is why Greenland was a great place in which to hunt for impact craters. The only drawback was that most of it was covered with snow and ice. The possible crater north of Qassiarsuk was an excellent prospect, as it was on bare terrain but close to the ice sheet. He ploughed on through the night looking at all the smaller dots and hollows on Google Earth that might be part of the scatter from the original meteorite fall. He hardly noticed the creeping greyness that began to fill the room as dawn approached. Suddenly, his email service pinged, alerting him to an incoming email. He scrubbed his stubbly chin, and yawned, aware for the first time that he felt hugely exhausted. He opened his email box and clicked on the new item in the inbox. The message was so unexpected as to immediately wake him up. It was from someone signing himself V. A. Bassianus, who claimed to be a representative of the Sol Invictus Trust. He explained that he had been very interested in buying the iron meteorite and regretted losing out on the eBay auction. He invited Greg to name a price for selling it to the trust. Greg stared at the screen as though it might have the answers to a myriad questions that were buzzing in his brain. He gave in to a persistent habit, developed since his accident, of talking to himself.

‘How the hell did you know I had bought it, and how did you get my email address?’

Any information on eBay had to be confidential. If it wasn’t, and the site had given — or, even worse, sold — his details to this individual, he would sue them. He trusted the site, though, and quickly dismissed the notion. But he still couldn’t work out how V. A. Bassianus could have got his address. He typed a short reply, asking those very questions, and ended by saying the meteorite was not for sale. He sent the email on its way and put it out of his mind for the time being.