The Cloud - 5. Chapter 5

Coolgardie, Western Australia

The network affiliate in Coolgardie met Kelly Simmons at the airport. Her remote crew consisted of a tall, skinny young man named Jack in a shiny red Range Rover. At first, she was put off by Jack. He looked and dressed like a kid that should be surfing, but he was polite and accommodating. After programming the GPS, she was quite pleased to let him drive the hour and a half out to their destination.

The Range Rover kicked up clouds of red dust as they drove down the long country roads in the dry, scrubby Western Australian grasslands. Jack explained that the area around the old mining town was called the Coolgardie grasslands. The land was grassy with low rolling hills and groves of eucalyptus trees. As they motored past, birds rose from the trees in protest of the temporary disturbance, Western Gray Kangaroos looked on with interest.

She thought about her last encounter with the Bill Chambers. He had been a complete surprise to her. The American ex-pat had built a technology company from the ground up, sold it and retired richer than Midas. What did he do? He bought a large tract of land North-West of Coolgardie, built a modest house, a multi-million dollar observatory on a ridge-top and spent his nights looking for comets and asteroids. When she had asked him why he had chosen to spend his retirement as a working astronomer, he had said that he had always been an astronomer. He had just never found anyone to pay him to do it.

She dozed off for a while until the deep, jarring ruts of the rising highlands woke her. Jack noticed that she had awakened and said, “We’re close, missus.”

Just over the next rise, they spotted the big white dome and satellite dishes of Chamber’s observatory. It took them another five minutes driving, but she spotted the estate over the next big ridgeline.

Chamber’s house was built on the slope of a ridge and stood over a small lake. It was a white two-story Victorian style house, but the area was really dominated by the observatory built on the crest of the ridge.

Jack drove the Range Rover down the hill and parked near a cluster of vehicles.

Kelly said, “I’m not certain if we’ll need you, Jack.”

He smiled and said, “No worries missus. I’m just going to do a little nature photography before it gets dark. Call me on my cell if you need me. I won’t be far.”

She walked up to the front porch of the house and Chamber’s opened the front door. “Kelly. You’re a sight for sore eyes. How are you?”

She said, “Bill, remember last year when you said that you owed me a favor?”

He grinned and said, “You are here to collect?”

She said, “That sums it up nicely.”

Chambers motioned to swing on the front porch and said, “Have a seat and tell me what you need.”

Kelly showed Chambers the email conversations between the great observatories in the Southern Hemisphere and told him about how they had suddenly gone quiet.

He looked at the coordinates and said, “The Keck in Hawaii is north of the equator. They can’t even see this part of the sky. I’m guessing that they were attempting to coordinate with observatories in the Southern Hemisphere- ESO, some here in Australia, others in South Africa and South America.”

Kelly asked, “What could get them so excited?”

Chambers looked carefully at the email transcripts and said, “I don’t know. One thing I can tell you- they were only talking to people with very powerful telescopes. Whatever they were looking for is dim- maybe it’s an asteroid in an odd orbit. I can look into this for you. Follow me.”

Chambers led Kelly out the back door of the house and up concrete steps to the observatory. On their way up a big friendly Australian Shepherd joined them on the stairs walking beside Kelly and giving her a friendly nudge.

Kelly said, “Looks like you’ve made a new friend since last summer.”

Chambers reached down and gave the big, handsome dog a friendly pat. “Scout was a gift from the Aborigines that live nearby, and I’m glad to have him. He warns me of snakes.”

Kelly had never been in an observatory and wasn’t sure what to expect. What she saw when they walked inside was definitely not it. The first floor of the observatory looked more like a crowded library than anything else, with big work tables and all sorts of computer equipment.

Chambers sat down at a computer terminal and began entering commands. A big plotter came to life and began to print out what looked like star charts on very thin paper.

He said, “The way we track new asteroids is to take high-resolution images of big patches of sky. Then we compare them and see what changes and eliminate known objects. I’m printing out negatives of the images that I took last week of the patch of sky that Willoby was interested in.”

She watched as the plotter printed out the big images and asked, “Why are you printing out negatives?”

He took the first print out and put it on a worktable for the ink to dry. “In a negative image, the colors are reversed. The black of space appears white and stars and other objects will appear in black. It’s much easier to work with than dark images.”

Once the images were printed out and dried, Chambers took one and put it on a glass topped light-table. He secured the images edges to the table-top with masking tape. He said, “This is a star map of the area in question. It will serve as a baseline.”

The second map he took and placed it over the top of the first and tacked down the corners with masking tape. Then he turned on lights and there it was: a long streak across the Southern Cross.

Chambers whistled and said, “I think that we’ve found what you were looking for, Kelly.”