Andropov shrugged. “Find out when it’s over.”
An hour later, they went up the stairs to the cafeteria for sandwiches and cold drinks.
It’s comforting to see daylight again, Jake thought. He walked over to the window and looked around. No one was outside: no traffic, no people, no noise. It seemed strangely peaceful. Jake glanced at his watch to see what time it was, since all the wall clocks had stopped when the power was shut off at 4:16 that afternoon. He looked at the countdown watch: 16 days, 22 hours, 33 minutes and 4 seconds to go.
Almost seventeen days, Jake thought. Why does seventeen days sound so familiar? He looked at Honi and frowned. Dr. Spencer, he thought. What did he say about seventeen days? Honi looked over at him and started walking in his direction. The first solar storm was seventeen days before the aurora Honi saw.
“You look worried,” Honi said. “What’s wrong?”
“How many days ago did you see the aurora in the sky?” Jake asked.
“About two weeks ago, why?”
“Not about,” Jake replied. “I need to know exactly how many days ago it happened.”
Honi thought for a moment. “Seventeen days ago, why?”
Jake looked again at the strange watch. “The countdown watch has just short of seventeen days to go. We’re having a huge solar storm hit the planet right now. Seventeen days ago was another solar storm — weaker, but a direct hit on the planet. Seventeen days before that was another solar storm, a near miss. This isn’t random — it isn’t natural. The ‘Event’ Sylvia Cuthbert talked about happens in seventeen days. In seventeen days we all die.”
“What are you talking about?” Honi asked.
“The threat isn’t from the missing hydrogen bomb, it’s from the sun,” Jake said.
CHAPTER 14
“We have to talk to Dr. Spencer right away!” Jake said.
“We can’t,” Honi replied. “No phone service, no electricity. We don’t even know where he would be. Even if it were safe to go outside, which it isn’t, where would we go to find him?”
“I know where he lives,” Jake said.
“But the storm happened during the workday. He probably wouldn’t have been home. He would have gone to a shelter somewhere. We just don’t know where. As soon as the storm dies down, the cell towers will go back up and we can call him. Until then, there’s nothing we can do.”
Late that evening word of the brilliant aurora in the night sky spread through the NSA building. Technicians had gone outside with radiation sensors. Because the earth was turned away from the sun at night, it was safe to go outside. Jake and Honi joined the flood of people pouring out into the parking lot to look at the sky.
“Is this what it looked like seventeen days ago?” Jake asked.
“No,” Honi replied. “That was a mixture of reds, blues and greens. This is so much brighter and it’s almost all white in color. This is bright enough where it’s not even dark out. Look, you can read the signs on the reserved parking spaces, and it’s…” Honi checked her watch. “Jake, it’s midnight, and it’s not dark. It’s more like twilight.”
“This is amazing,” Jake said. “I’ve never even heard of anything like this happening before.”
“It has,” Andropov said as he walked over. “During the Carrington event, gold miners out in the mountains of California woke up in the middle of the night and started fixing breakfast — thinking daybreak was taking place. That’s where the term comes from, you know — Aurora, the Roman Goddess of dawn. People in the cities could read the newspaper by the light of the aurora.”
“This is so beautiful,” Jake said. “How often does something like this happen?”
“On this level?” Andropov asked. “Every hundred to two hundred years. We get extended auroras with some maximum sunspot cycles, so that’s not so unusual.”
“But we’re at a sunspot minimum,” Jake said. “We’re not supposed to have solar storms at all.”
“I know,” Andropov said, his head lowered. “I just hope and pray that the research I did wasn’t a part of this, but I suspect it was.”
“What makes you think that?” Jake asked.
“The growth of technology has been stunning, but I’m afraid humans haven’t grown anywhere near where they need to be to use the new science responsibly.”
“You think we’re going to blow ourselves up with nuclear weapons?” Jake asked.
“I did believe that at one point. But in recent years I’ve discovered we are not alone. We have friends, shall we say, in high places?”
“You mean…” Jake pointed up into the night sky with his index finger in front of him.
“Yes. The ancients called them ‘the watchers.’ I have seen evidence of an ancient nuclear war that took place where India is now. I think our friends up there are trying to avoid a recurrence of that dreadful event, but that’s just one man’s opinion.”
“I would like to believe that,” Jake said.
“I would too,” Honi added.
At ten the following morning the power came back on and people started reconnecting all of the cables, cords and phones in the NSA building. Jake tried using Honi’s cell phone.
“Cell towers are up,” he said. He dialed Dr. Spencer and arranged a time to meet. His bureau car in the parking lot started without a problem, but it didn’t take long to discover that the traffic lights weren’t working. What should have been a thirty minute trip turned into four hours of honking horns, screaming motorists, frazzled tempers and slowly creeping cars.
“I’m so sorry we’re late,” Jake said as he and Honi finally arrived at the Space Studies Board.
“Not to worry,” Dr. Spencer replied. “There are much bigger problems to attend to than being delayed in traffic, though I don’t know that traffic would be an appropriate term. Traffic implies vehicles in motion, does it not?”
“Well it was, and it wasn’t,” Jake said. “The solar storm — how bad is the damage?”
“Yes, yes,” Dr. Spencer replied. “It was bad. As you can see, we are still without electrical power. Just how bad the damage is will take several days to ascertain, I’m afraid.”
“What about the earth’s magnetic shield?” Jake asked urgently.
“The strength of the magnetosphere?” Dr. Spencer asked.
“Yes. Compared to ten years ago?”
“Magnetic flux varies from place to place, as you well know, but on average, we have dropped below thirty percent of normal strength. This is certainly a very disturbing development.”
“Where will it be in two weeks?” Jake asked.
“In two weeks? Oh, I don’t know. The flux field has been dropping so precipitously, it would be difficult to be precise.”
“Ball park,” Jake demanded.
Dr. Spencer looked at Jake, worry etched into his aging features.
“Best guess?” Jake asked more politely.
“Five to ten percent. Maybe a little less.”
“And if we were hit by another solar storm like this one?”
Dr. Spencer shook his head. “That would be bad.”
“How bad?”
“Well, not catastrophic,” Dr. Spencer said. “I mean many people would survive. Not all, certainly. Many would die from radiation exposure — primarily people without effective radiation shelters.”
“What would constitute an effective radiation shelter?”
“Anything underground — a cave.”
Dr. Spencer wandered away from Jake and Honi a little. He seemed very distracted.
“Something’s bothering you, Dr. Spencer. What is it?” Jake asked.