“Would you?” Brian replied.
“You can set up in here,” the Marine said, “If you need anything at all, I am right outside the door. The others won’t be here for forty-five minutes.”
Brian got his handouts, power point presentations, and thoughts together. He wanted to make sure he didn’t stumble at some point.
“It will be fine,” Abby said as she was getting her material ready. The others really didn’t have much of a role but Abby wanted to impress that this was a team, not just one person’s opinion.
The forty-five minutes evaporated like a drop of water on a hot car hood. It seemed that they had just taken a deep breath when the first few started to show up. Abby realized that she didn’t recognize a single person in the room except for her people. A few minutes later, Dan walked in and came over to her. He shook her hand, giving it a little squeeze at the end.
“Welcome to Washington. Good to see you all,” he said and they all acknowledged him. They felt rather comfortable with him.
“Look, this place is going to be pretty full. I don’t know how many handouts you have but don’t worry about it. As long as the President has one the rest can scramble,” Dan told her.
“I brought twenty. Is that enough?”
“Probably not but like I said. Don’t worry about it. We will have someone run off more and get them distributed. It’s really no big deal.”
“Are you staying?”
“Are you kidding me? You bet. I wouldn’t miss this for the world.”
“Good.”
He leaned in and whispered, “It really is great to see you. I wish… well, it’s good to see you.”
“Yeah, I wish too,” she said.
“I had better go before the rumors start,” Dan said.
He said goodbye to the team and went and sat down. The room was almost full. Brian did a quick head count and came up with thirty-one people.
The conference door was opened by a Marine as he announced, “The President of the United States.”
Everyone stood as the Chief Executive Officer entered the room.
“Oh sit down for goodness sake,” he said and several people laughed as they all took their seats. Most of those present knew that President Strong was actually embarrassed by everyone jumping to their feet.
A man in an impeccable suit stood up and said, “We are here to listen to the latest information from the source that discovered the asteroid now known as 2015 KA5, Doctor Abigail Montgomery and her team of experts from the University of Arizona. She was asked to come so that we can hopefully clear up some of the wild rumors that have been circulating. Some are by certifiable nut cases and others are more genuine. President Strong decided going to the source would give us a better insight to what was actually happening. Doctor Montgomery, we are all yours.”
Abby felt naked as ever eye in the room turned to look at her. She walked to the front of the room and turned to face them.
“Mr. President and distinguished guests, I won’t bore you with a lot of patting ourselves on the back but you do need to know just a little of the background. My team was attempting to either verify or put to rest the tenth planet theory that has been argued for many years. It was during this time that one of my team members, James Erwin, brought to my attention an object that seemed to appear then disappears. James, stand up please.”
James slowly got to his feet and everyone looked back at him. He was glad when she started speaking again.
“I then proceeded to verify his sighting. To my surprise, what he had spotted was there. Later we found that another of my team members, Ruth Billings. Ruth stand please.”
She got up quickly and did a half wave before setting back down.
“Ruth said that she had seen it as well but thought it just was her eyes getting tired. We were on twelve hour shifts at the time. Once we ran the initial data we were pretty shocked at what we were finding. How could something so large go unnoticed? We asked two other observatories to verify our results. The NNT near Santiago, Chili and the Isla de La Palma Observatory in the Canary Islands. They are two of the most modern and advanced observatories in the world. Within a few days, we got back the confirmation of our data. Once we were certain that we were actually seeing what we thought we were seeing, we notified the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Again, a few days later they also confirmed our data.”
Abby was pacing back and forth just like she did in the classroom, making eye contact with various people. Reading expressions. So far only one or two were difficult to read.
“You know from the papers and electronic media we are talking about a near planet sized asteroid. It is traveling at 35 kilometers per second. That equates to around 80,000 plus miles per hour. That’s almost two million miles every twenty-four hours. Okay, enough of that. We have some handouts that present our data. We have twenty copies,” she said, handing one to the President.
A couple of people smiled.
“What? You think I don’t know who to take care of first?” she said and got a good round of laughter.
“I like this woman,” the President quipped and more laughter filled the room.
“So the big question now is what does all this mean to we mortals here on Earth?”
Abby was getting on a roll just like when she got wound up in the class room. A teacher knows when he has his audience paying attention. From the front of the class room you can see much more than any student ever realizes and Abby was a master at it.
“As you have figured out already, the Earth itself is safe from a direct hit. Not only that, but while it will be a spectacular sight, it will initially only cause minor problems. This is what we see happening,” Abby said, picking up the marker and wrote.
1 A shift in tides — higher than normal for an extended amount of time.
2 Interruption of navigational abilities of certain animals
3 Disruption of communications
4 Possible disruptions of the Earth's tectonic plates in some areas
5 Civilian panic leading to mob violence
6 Economic panic leading to stock market instability and a run on banks
“And that is the good news,” Abby said as a murmur ran through the room.
“Unfortunately our calculations show far greater potential damage. Brian’s calculations show KA5 may actually impact the moon,” Abby told them and the volume took a noticeable jump.
She stood there just waiting. You could see the tension on the face of the President. It was obvious he wanted her to keep going so she finally held up her hands.
“Please. We have a great deal more to share. It is not a definite at this point but it is certainly a very real possibility. It may just slide by, graze it or actually impact one section. The problem is that KA5 has started to show an unsteady path due to the various gravitational pulls within our solar system. It has actually started to wobble and that concerns us. At this point all we can do is use the data we have and project models based on the range of trajectory. We have taken three different approaches,” Abby said, turning to write on the white board.
1 Near miss
2 Graze
3 Hit
“If it is a near miss, the results would be much the same as when it passes the Earth. It could influence the orbit of the moon to some extent but it would be nothing drastic and would probably be hardly noticeable to the average citizen. If it would actually graze the moon, it gets infinitely more complex. Think of the moon as a giant billiard ball and KA5 a queue ball. When they touch it will cause both of the objects to move in opposite directions. Depending on the angle and amount of contact, the paths will be different. How far, and in what final direction, is actually impossible to predict. A side effect of that is it would change the shape of the moon to some extent but more importantly, its ability to maintain a stable rotation. Again, how unstable would depend on how much is taken off of the moon’s surface,” Abby told them.