“I still do that,” Isaiah had replied.

  “Then why do you look so tired? I can see black marks below your eyes, and you have a frown, which I never saw before.”

  “Do you see these piles of papers?” Isaiah had pointed at the several heaps of papers lying on his table.

  “Yes, that is also surprising. I’ve never seen so much of papers in your office.”

  “All this is related to the zero-gravity event.”

  “But why?” Gavin had asked. “I had heard that the event was in London.”

  “The debris will end up in Devon.”

  “So?”

  “Therefore, we have to have a Ground Control Station here. We have been working for days, but we are far from complete. And when we would have set up the station, we are at a loss on how to run it.”

  “You mean there is no one to do this work?”

  “There are four technical people, but we don’t have the fifth. This fifth person is also supposed to be the team leader.”

  “Then why don’t you get him?”

  “I’ve written to London to send one since I’ve not been able to find one here.”

  “Hire one,” Gavin had suggested.

  “Our coffers are empty, and we have not been given more budget till now despite my several requests.”

  “But you are dealing with a crisis.”

  “No one in the finance cares. We have to go through the entire rigmarole before we get the money.” Isaiah had then looked at Gavin with a glitter in his eyes.

  “What?” Gavin had asked.

  “We have found our savior. Gavin, you would have to be that man.”

  “I’m going back in a week.”

  “You have to postpone that for your native place and for me.”

  “But I don’t have any knowledge of this zero-gravity event.”

  “The Ground Control Station is not about zero-gravity. It’s about data analysis. And I know you are good at that. You’ll have to do it, Gavin. And you’ll have to do it for free.”

  Gavin had cancelled his program for the next fortnight and got on to the job. The situation had turned dramatically in four days. Gavin had set up the Ground Control Station by buying missing machinery at his own expense. He had visited DIMA for a day, and by the end of the first week, he knew more than he needed to.

  Within the first five minutes of the event, his computer was bombarded with data from the other four Stations. He thought he had reached the peak in five minutes. But more data started flowing. He had expected the graphs to be mostly green and orange. But they had already started turning red.

  Isaiah was moving from one Station to another. In between, he would go to his office to look at the messages on the computer and watch the progress on television. In his last round, he found that all the four technicians at the four Stations were completely silent. They were frantically working on their computers and oblivious of Isaiah’s presence or anything around them. Isaiah had a glance at their screens. He did not have a comfortable feeling. The screens felt overloaded.

  As he entered Gavin’s chamber, Gavin said, “Bloody hell!” and stomped his hands on the computer table.

  Isaiah’s heart started pumping faster. If Gavin was getting nervous, there was something of concern going on.

  “What happened?” Isaiah asked, getting closer to the computer.

  “There is so much of debris. I would have thought it would be much less.”

  “London is like that. They are never up to the mark.”

  “We are in the first fifteen minutes of the event, and already so many things have gone up.”

  “Are you sure that the computers are getting the correct data?”

  “There is no doubt about it. We have a lot of small debris.”

  “Then what is the issue?”

  “The way we have set up the software, it would have been better to have less number of large debris than many small ones.”

  “I would have thought otherwise.”

  “Too much information clutters the graphics.”

  The graphs started to turn orange and then green once again in the next five minutes.

  “You have brought some luck,” Gavin said to Isaiah. “Maybe many things went up quickly when the event started. The effect seems to be slowing down. It’s now getting to a trickle.”

  “The effect may be over in a few more minutes, and we would be able to process the data quickly.”

  “No, the event will not get over in the next few minutes. It will go on for at least fifteen more minutes. But looking at the inflow of data, I see a drastic reduction in number of objects. But let’s keep our fingers crossed.”

  Isaiah felt relieved and left for his office once again. He had hardly come out of Gavin’s chamber when he heard Gavin shout once again, “Oh my hell!”

  “What happened?” Isaiah said, running towards him.

  “The computer is now going crazy.”

  “Have more things gone up in the air from Westminster?”

  “The area has moved out of Westminster already.”

  “To where?”

  “To the River Thames.”

  “What?”

  “Yes. It has. It’s not debris from the ground but from the River Thames and Westminster Bridge that is now showing up on our computers. The first phase was a miniscule compared to what we are having now.”

  Gavin’s face had turned red. Isaiah, too, was nervous. He had many questions going on in his mind. Will the computers stall? Would the increase in debris mean that the impact area would not be Devon? He did not ask the questions to Gavin and let him work. He could see that the graphs were getting more cluttered, redder, and darker. He let Gavin do his work and quietly retreated to his room.

  DIMA had conveyed this message to all the five stations the instant the zero-gravity zone had touched the Thames. Besides, everyone had watched it happen live on their computer screens.

  “How much more?” Isaiah said curiously, leaning closer to the computer although he was not able to make any sense from the several monitors showing graphs, tables, and figures.

  “I would say, at least five times more than what I would have expected.”

  “Will it then descend on an area larger than what we had thought earlier?”

  “Yes. But since most of the debris is water, it would come down as heavy downpour. And since you have vacated three times the area that was earlier expected, I think we should not have any issues.

  “Doesn’t happen like that, Gavin,” Isaiah said. “No big event is without surprises.”

  “Yes, you would know better,” Gavin said, looking at the graphs.

  Isaiah thought it better not to disturb Gavin any more. He moved to where his assistants were standing. “Mary,” he said, looking at Mary Daly, Head of his office. “Please tell the Stations to scan all the area that has been evacuated. In fact, a little more than that. Tell them to check if there is anything that has been left out in a radius twice of the danger area.”

  Mary left for another room. Isaiah and others went out.

  Gavin was intently looking at his computers. The debris was going at an expected speed. As the debris moved further, the water, it carried spread to a bigger area. This is a good development. The more it spreads, lesser would be the force with which water would fall on the ground, he thought. He looked around to report to Isaiah. Finding that all of them had left the room, he continued working.

  The red dots in the graphs were so close to each other that together they looked like a dark colored wave.

  Gavin’s phone rang. It was Al.

  “How is it going?” Al asked.

  “So far so good,” Gavin replied.

  “Has the debris reached its minimum height before the impact?”

  “It will in another five minutes.”

  “Really?” Al said. “I would have thought that it should have reached by now.”

  “Yes, that is what would have happened if the amount of debris was less.”

  “Right,” Al said. “What about the impact area?”

  “Thrice the original.”

  “It should be correct,” Al said. “I have got the same figure after doing my recalculations.”

  “Nice!” Gavin said.

  There was some commotion in the room. Isaiah and his team had returned.

  “Ok, Al,” Gavin said. “Talk to you later.”

  “Is that Al?” Isaiah said.

  “Yes, he is,” Gavin said.

  “Could I talk to him?”

  “Let me ask him,” Gavin said.

  Al had heard the conversation. “Gavin, that’s okay,” Al said. “Give the phone to Isaiah.”

  Isaiah came on the phone, “You are great,” he said. “You have saved our country.”

  “You don’t have to thank me again and again,” Al said. “Thank Gavin. He is a genius. The efficiency of your Control Stations would have been different if Gavin had not joined you.”

  “Isaiah, if all of you want to see the advent of the debris, now is the time to go out. After some time, it may not be safe,” Gavin said in a loud voice.

  “Will talk to you later,” Isaiah said, putting down the phone. He rushed out. Others followed. The sky had a dark hue. They looked towards the east and saw the debris in the distance. It looked huge although it was a large distance away.

  “Do you have any idea of the size of the debris?” Mary asked Isaiah.

  “I know that it was to be about three kilometers long, two kilometers wide and half a kilometer in height if the debris from the Thames had not gone up.”

  “I doubt if it’s of that size. The debris is about fifty kilometers away, and yet it looks huge.”

  Mary ran inside to where Gavin was sitting. “Sorry to disturb you, Gavin,” she said. “But can you tell us about the size of the debris?”

  “It’s seven by three by two.”

  Mary ran outside and said, “It is seven by three by two.”

  “Yes, that size looks more real.”

  In the two minutes that the team had been outside, the debris had grown considerably bigger. At times, the sun’s ray fell on it, and the debris would glitter in various points simultaneously.

  Isaiah said, “Those are the metallic pieces. Some of them are big. The biggest glitter may be from a car that the debris is holding. There are several bicycles and huge pieces of metal from the Westminster Bridge.”

  A bright piece detached from the cloud and fell.

  “Let us not risk standing here. Something may fall on us,” Mary said.

  “The cloud still seems a good twenty kilometers away. Besides, a maximum of two or three things may fall. All the rest would go down in the impact area,” Isaiah said.

  They went inside and stood near the door.

  “Folks,” Gavin said. “Time to keep down the phone. Action would begin in short order.”

  “Is the debris descending?” Isaiah asked.

  “It started fifteen minutes ago.”

  “Has water started pouring?”

  “Not yet. About fifteen more minutes to go.”

  “Let us know when we should have a look at your screen,” Isaiah said. “We would not want to disturb you now.”

  27

  Amy, Charles, and Corwin were at the DIMA Control Station in east Devon. They were scouring the six screens in the Station for any movements of people or vehicles in the impact area.

  “What a boring day!” Amy said. “We have been on this ever since the zero-gravity event began in London. And I’ve not seen even an ant move.”

  “Our DIMA has done a good job. We have removed every soul,” Charles said.

  Just as Charles had uttered these words, Corwin said, “Look here, what is that?”

  Everyone looked at the screen that Corwin was monitoring. Without a doubt, there was some movement.

  “Zoom down,” Amy said.

  “Looks like a vehicle,” Charles said.

  “Not one but two,” Corwin said.

  “Yes, they are vehicles,” Amy said. “What the hell are they doing at the center of the area?”

  “How could they reach there without our finding them?” Charles said.

  “Where exactly are they?”

  “Near George’s Hill,” Corwin said.

  “How much time do we have?”

  “Just over sixteen minutes.”

  Amy immediately called the DIMA air rescue team. In about eight minutes, Corwin saw a plane descending on the road on which the cars were moving. The two cars increased their speed.

  “These men are up to something,” the pilot said to his co-pilot.

  “Yes,” the co-pilot said.

  The co-pilot waved his hands to the commandos in the plane. A window opened on the top, and the first commando popped out his head with a loudspeaker. “All men in the car stop at once or we’ll have to shoot at you. You are in a no-activity zone,” he said.

  The cars went on as though they had not heard anything. The commando continued, “Your life is in danger. This is the last warning to stop.”

  The cars increased their speed further. The co-pilot opened the hood of the plane completely. Four commandos stood up with their guns in hand. All of them fired on the instant the first commando brought his loudspeaker down.

  The car which was behind was hit by several bullets at the same time. Both its rear tires went flat, and the car wavered to the side of the road and came to a halt. The other car soon wavered to the other side and turned over to its right side. The plane screeched to a halt.

  All six commandos got down, and three ran towards each car. The first car was still moving with flat tires. The first commando took aim and fired at one of the front tires. The car hit a tree.

  Two persons from the car got out and started running away from the commandos. One of them was holding a camera in his hand. The other had a camera on his forehead and another equipment in one of his hands.

  “Should we shoot on their legs?” the second commando said, taking aim at the two persons.

  “No, these are stupid young men. And look at their speed. They are carrying their cameras and some other equipment. We’ll catch them in a minute,” the first commando said.

  “Okay,” the third commando said. “Two of you are good enough to catch them. I’ll stay put here and give cover in case needed.”

  “Right,” the other two commandos said, increasing their speed.

  The young men ran up the low hill and entered the thick forest. They were invisible to the commandos for a moment. The two commandos went up the hill in half the time. The two young men were running in different directions. One was wearing a bright red jacket, and the other was in a yellow windcheater.

  The two commandos stopped for a few seconds. The first commando said, “We are not going to lose them with the bright colored clothes they are wearing. You go to the left. I’ll go right.”

  The young man on the right was carrying the camera, which he was finding difficult to maneuver through the trees and bushes. His belly swayed from side to side as he ran. His trousers would slowly slip down, and he would desperately pull them up on the side with one hand. Then transferring the camera to the other hand, he would pull up the trousers with the other hand. The first commando reached him in less than half a minute. “Caught you. You are lucky not to have been shot at. Let us go back to your car, where your other colleagues must be waiting,” he said.

  “I’m very tired. Can I have some rest?” the young man said.

  “If you wanted to rest, you should not have run in the first place.”

  “That was not my idea. My colleagues told me to run.”

  The first commando took pity on the man. “Okay, give me your camera and let’s go.”

  The second commando ten seconds more to catch hold of the other young man. The second young man had thrown both the equipment and the head camera to the ground. He was in a better physical position than the first one. He took a sudden turn and disappeared behind the bushes and then hid behind a large tree. The commando, who had seen hundreds of such tricks in his life, went around the tree and got hold of the man. It had started getting darker. “Caught you on time,” he said to the second young man. “If I had not caught you in the next two minutes, even your brightly colored jacket would not have helped.”

  The commandos brought the two of them to the plane.

  In the other direction, the other car had turned turtle, and the two occupants were desperately trying to slam the doors open by kicking them with their boots. The three commandos who had reached the second car decided that turning the car over could take time. The two of them broke the window screens on two sides in less than thirty seconds and pulled out the two young men from inside.

  The young men had minor bruises.

  “Let’s go to the plane,” one of the commandos told the young men.

  “We have our equipment inside,” the third young man replied.

  “There is no time to get the equipment. Don’t you see that the skies are already dark on the eastern side?”

  One of the commandos saw a bag hanging near the open window. He quickly took it out and gave it to the men.

  “Thank you. This is the most important thing that we need. The camera,” the fourth young man said.

  In exactly ten minutes the entire operation was over. Everyone was inside the plane, and it took off before the first drops of water hit the place.

  In the air, the first commando told the young men, “All of you are lucky several times over today. First, we found you. If you had stayed behind, you would surely have been injured, and the injuries could have been fatal. Secondly, we did not shoot at any of you. Under such emergency situations, we usually do. And finally, all of you are sitting here in the place like tourists on a free ride without any handcuffs.”

  The plane ascended fast and then headed south.

  “So, boys,” the second commando said. “What were you up to?”

  “We are amateur storm chasers,” the second young man said.

  “Storm chasers? What are you doing here? This is no storm.”

  “This would have been a life time opportunity.”

  “Yes, and you would not have survived to show the film to the world.”

  “It was worth taking the risk.”

 

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