Scott Nicholson - The Echo

“You know what happens if we cry wolf,” Katherine said.

As project director, Katherine would be the scapegoat for any political fallout, but Chien would likely be drummed out as well. Sure, he could always return to university life, where notoriety was little more than a mildly eccentric selling point. But he’d likely be done in the field of government-funded research, and there wasn’t a whole lot of private-industry opportunity.

But data was data, and the numbers were screaming X all the way.

“Okay, I will give a warning of ‘possible disruption, monitoring closely,’” Katherine said. “That should keep us covered until we can analyze all the data.”

She issued the alert to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Federal Communications Commission, and the departments of Defense and Homeland Security. She rated the threat a G3, a strong geomagnetic storm as measured on a scale of one to five. She logged the data and noted the time, saying to Chien, “Your shift is up. You better go play Romeo.”

“No way,” he said. “The solar cycle doesn’t peak again for 11 years, and I’m not getting any younger.”

“Your call. But take my word for it. When you get to be my age, you wish you’d had more dates with people and fewer with computers.”

The solar plume on the screen had grown to epic proportions, so much so that Chien had to zoom out on the imagery just to fit it on the screen. Even for a trained scientist, it was difficult to equate what looked like a bit of Hollywood illusion with billions of tons of solar material hurting toward the Earth at two million miles an hour. Even if the plume proved truly dangerous, the solar wind and its charged particles wouldn’t reach Earth for at least a day, maybe two.

“Something’s got me worried,” Chien said. “The SDO has only been operating for two years, and in that time we’ve had no major solar storms.”

“So?” Katherine had apparently already swallowed her own downplaying of the threat and accepted mild space disturbance as fait accompli .

“The SDO is itself a satellite. With a vicious enough solar wind, we’d lose uplinks and downlinks, as well as orientation. Worst-case scenario, we won’t be able to track the effect.”

“Well, let’s just pray it’s not a worst case, then,” Katherine said, with a wry smile. Religious references were rare in the space center.

Chien, a Taoist, was not amused, nor was he comforted.

Copyright ©2013 Scott Nicholson

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