The End Is Nigh

Jack McDevitt — ENJOY THE MOMENT

The party on my thirtieth birthday more or less opened the door to the end of the world. It was supposed to be a surprise, but my husband Warren, and a few other family members took to smirking and grinning during the preceding days. I was maybe two steps into the living room when the lights came on. They were all there. Uncle Harry and Aunt May with Liz, our eight-year-old daughter. Jack Camden and his wife, whose name I couldn’t remember, and probably twenty other relatives, colleagues, and friends. They burst into a rendition of “Happy Birthday,” and applauded. My sister Ellen brought me a lime daiquiri, my favorite, and when the singing stopped I was led to the coffee table, which was piled high with presents.

We were essentially party people, always looking for something to celebrate. Tom Akins, the physics department chairman and my mentor, played his accordion, accompanied by Freeman and my brother Bill on guitars. They filled the house with music and everybody danced. We passed out drinks, ate through three and a half cakes, played some games and talked about how good life was.

Tom was a cosmologist who was devoting his life to trying to solve the riddle of cosmic inflation, the incredible, and incomprehensible, rate of expansion that occurred at the very beginning of the Big Bang. He’d won some awards, and had been a good guide for me when I was coming up through the program. Toward the end of the evening, he took me aside to pass on some news. “Maryam,” he said, “I’ve told you about Dan Martin? He’s been doing some groundbreaking work on space-time curvature. He’ll be receiving the Carnegie Award this year.”

Martin had gotten his doctorate only three years earlier. “Beautiful,” I said, trying not to sound jealous. “When did you find out?”

“He called me this morning.” He laughed. “He says some of his friends are making references to Martin’s Theorem.”

“Well, I’m glad to hear it.”

He must have picked up something in my tone. “Don’t worry, Maryam. Your time will come.”

It was a happy night. But I guess some part of Dan Martin lingered. When it was over, and everyone was saying goodbye and retrieving their cars from around the neighborhood, my husband hesitated as we left the house and started down the walkway. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

“What do you mean? Why do you say that?”

“Something’s bothering you. It’s been there for most of the evening.”

I took a deep breath and faced it. “I’m thirty.”

His eyebrows rose the way they usually did when politicians were talking. “Maryam, you still look great. I don’t think you’ll have anything to worry about for a long time.”

“That’s not what I mean, love. You know what they say about physicists and thirty?”

“No. What do they say?”

“That if you’re going to leave a mark, you have to get moving early. After you hit thirty your brain begins to freeze.” I tried to turn it into a joke, but he didn’t smile.

“Come on. You don’t believe that.”

I’m not sure whether I did. But it ended there. We got into the car and went home.

Despite the alcohol, I didn’t sleep well that night. There’s not a physicist on the planet who doesn’t want to leave his or her name in the history of the field. To do something that grants immortality. Predict the Higgs Boson. Devise the Pauli Exclusion Principle.

Schwarzschild pinned his name to a radius. Heisenberg to uncertainty. Doppler has a shift, and Hawking has radiation. Schrodinger scored with a cat. And what, in the end, would Maryam Gibson have?

I’d been working on dark energy since the beginning of my career. My thesis had been an attempt to account for it. Get to the heart of dark energy and you can explain why the universe continues to expand at an increasing rate. If I could succeed, make some sort of progress, it was easy to imagine, that at some future date, people would be talking about the Gibson Hypothesis. Or maybe Gibson Energy. I especially liked that one.

At one time it hadn’t seemed too much to ask. Dark energy constituted 68% of the total mass-energy of the universe. Seventeen times the amount of ordinary matter. I’d been convinced that I could figure it out. It was just waiting there for someone to explain it.

But that night, with the partying done, I lay in the fading moonlight that came through the curtains, and I knew it wouldn’t be me.

I needed a different track, but my career demanded I stay with the hunt for dark energy. There was no way I could leave that. But maybe, I thought, I could use my spare time to accomplish something that didn’t require an Einstein. Mark Twain had commented once that he’d come in on Halley’s Comet, and that he expected to go out with it as well. Which he did.

Find one of the things and you got to name it. Gibson’s Comet wasn’t exactly what I’d hoped for. But I could live with it. And it might be obtainable.

Warren and I spent a couple of hours most evenings watching TV. I enjoyed being with him, and had always arranged things to ensure we got some time together. But I was going to have to give that up for a while. “I’m going comet-hunting,” I said.

“Whatever you like, babe,” he said. “But you’re not going to give up on the dark energy thing, are you?”

“No. This would just be something I’d be looking at in my spare time.”

“Okay.” He sounded disappointed. “Will we still get to watch Big Bang Theory?”

“Sure. And one more thing—”

“All right.”

“Don’t mention this to anyone, okay?”

“Why not?”

“I’d just as soon nobody knows until I actually find one.”

We both had offices at home. A couple of nights after the party, when I had some free time, I went into mine, sat down, and started digging through the online sky surveys. Even though I’d devoted my entire career to cosmology, I was probably uniquely qualified to look for comets because I had exactly the right tools. I’d developed software that could analyze for mass, gravitation, dark matter distribution, distance, velocities, and so on. Normally, my research consisted of recording a set of results from the digital archives, moving forward a given number of years, analyzing how the situation had changed, and comparing the results with what I’d anticipated.

The same approach should work in the hunt for comets. Comets originate in the outer solar system, either in the Kuiper Belt—which consists of small bodies of ice, rock, and metal orbiting beyond Neptune and extending for an additional two billion miles—or in the Oort Cloud, which lies at a range of about a light-year. The Kuiper Belt offered a much better chance of success. So I locked in on it.

Warren never quite understood why I was so hung up on gaining visibility in the field. He was a realtor, but he knew there was more to life than making money. He enjoyed being able to see his clients settle happily into homes, or to assist them when they were moving elsewhere. He thought those were the only two things that really counted in one’s profession: making a contribution, and collecting a decent income. “Nobody other than my clients and family, and a few friends,” he’d told me once, “will ever know my name. But what does that matter?”

Why did I want to put myself out front with a theorem that would never matter to anyone? Or probably even be understood by anybody except a few specialists? He’d tried reading Quantum Theory for Dummies, and realized that even physicists didn’t really grasp the reality of some of the more arcane mathematics.

I sat quietly through the night, looking at patches of sky, discarding stars, picking up glimmers that were too faint to amount to anything. Eventually my eyes got heavy and I resigned myself to the fact that I would not amount to anything… at least not tonight.

Two nights later I repeated the process with the same result. But I stayed with it, whenever I had time. Warren thought it was a waste of effort but he didn’t say so directly. He did mention that real estate was booming, and that he could use another agent. He guaranteed I’d earn a lot more than I was making as a college professor. He mentioned an article about how people who keep irregular hours damage their brains. And he left a magazine open on the table with a story about how marriages work better when the partners spend time together.

Then, one night about six months after I’d started, the numbers coalesced and I realized I’d found what I was looking for. An object on the inner edge of the Kuiper Belt had dropped out of its orbit, probably influenced by the passage of Neptune, and was moving toward the sun. The spectroscopic analysis indicated it was 3.1 billion miles away.

Beautiful.

Warren was watching a hockey game and Liz was in the kitchen when I came out of my office. “Are you quitting for the night?” he asked. “It’s early.”

I looked casually at my watch. “I guess it is a bit early.”

He froze the picture. “Why the smug smile? Did you find something?” I didn’t have to say a word. “Congratulations. How big is it?”

“The diameter’s about twenty-five kilometers.”

“That sounds good. When will we see it?”

“Warren, I don’t know how much visibility it will have. And I haven’t really run the numbers yet, but I’d guess it’ll be in the vicinity of Earth in about twenty years.”

“So we’ll be in our fifties.”

“Hard to believe, isn’t it?”

He broke into a grin. “I certainly married a woman with vision.”

When the news broke about the comet, I became a local celebrity and the university got a nice PR boost as a result. Reporters descended, and I appeared on several TV shows and on The Science Channel. It was a gloriously happy time.

The data were made available to the world, and confirmed by everyone. Tom called me into his office. “I was surprised that you’ve gotten involved with comets.”

“It became something of a hobby.”

“I hope it hasn’t been affecting your research?”

“No, Tom. I wouldn’t let that happen. I was just taking an occasional break.”

“Okay. Nothing wrong with that.” He glanced up at the dictum that, he claimed, ruled his life: Enjoy the moment. We don’t have forever. It was framed and hung on the wall beside a picture of him and the governor. The reality was that I’d never known anyone more committed to the task at hand, and less likely to take time off. “You know you have naming rights?”

“I had no idea.” I tried not to smile.

“Well, you might want to give it some thought.”

I knew what I wanted to call it, of course. But I had no wish to sound like an egomaniac. I’d gotten to know him pretty well over the years, so I decided to give him a chance to open a door for me. “Tom,” I said, “if you’d discovered one of these things, what would you call it?”

“The tradition is that it should become Gibson’s Comet.”

“I could live with that.”

I don’t know that anyone became prouder of Gibson’s Comet than Liz. But she was disappointed that the image on her computer screen was barely visible. “I thought comets were bright,” she said. “Where’s its tail?”

“It won’t have one until it gets closer to the sun.”

“When will that happen?” she asked.

“It’ll be a while,” I said.

Warren was happy for me, and gradually over the next few weeks, everything went back to normal. One evening while we were watching a Seinfeld rerun, I got a call from a woman who identified herself as an astronomer working at the Mauna Kea observatory in Hawaii. “Maryam,” she said, “something odd’s happening.”

I couldn’t imagine why she would be calling me. “What’s that?” I asked.

“We have two more comets coming in. From the same general location as yours. I’ll forward the data if you like.”

That was not good news. I wasn’t excited at getting competition. But when I saw Tom at the university next morning and mentioned it, he’d already heard.

“Something’s happening out there,” he said.

Our local TV station, WKLS, hit a slow news period and asked me to answer some on-camera questions. The show’s moderator was Judy Black, who specialized in doing inspirational, uplifting pieces. “Dr. Gibson,” she said, “have we ever had three comets in the sky at the same time before?”

“Well,” I said, “they’re all a long way off, so I wouldn’t exactly characterize them as ‘in the sky.’ But, yes, that’s certainly unusual.”

“Can you explain why it’s happening?”

“Judy, we think there’s been a gravitational change of some sort. We’re still looking for a reason.”

Her eyebrows rose. “What could cause such a change?”

“A lot of things, really. It can happen, for example, if one of the big planets gets a bit close to an object in the Kuiper Belt. That’s what pulls the comets out of the Belt and sends them in our direction.”

“Is that what’s happening now?”

“No. Nothing’s really close to the area.”

“Then what is it?”

“We’re still working on it, Judy.”

I was on my way to the university after the show when Tom called. “Can you come by my office?”

“Sure,” I said. “When?”

“When can you get here?”

“I have a class in forty minutes. I can come in after that.”

“Artie Thompson will cover for you. Come here now. As soon as you get back to the campus.”

When I arrived, he was at his desk talking with a thin white-haired man who was seated in one of the two armchairs. Tom said hello and gave me a pained smile. “Maryam,” he said, “this is Paul Crenshaw. He’s the director—”

“—of the Kitt Peak Observatory. Yes, of course! Hello, Professor Crenshaw. It’s an honor to meet you.”

“Call me ‘Paul,’” he said. His eyes were tired behind thick bifocals, and he nodded without any show of welcome. “You’re the young lady who discovered the first comet, I take it?”

I nodded. And managed maybe a flicker of a smile. “Yes, that’s correct, Profes—Paul. But what was so urgent?”

Tom pointed to the other chair, waited for me to sit, and took a deep breath. “First off, Maryam, if you get into any more conversations with reporters, we’d like you not to mention that there’s a problem.”

“I didn’t say anything about a problem.”

“Just don’t go into details about why we have three comets, okay?”

Crenshaw was nodding.

“All right,” I said. “Sure.”

Tom and Crenshaw exchanged glances without speaking. I was getting scared. Had I done something seriously stupid?

Tom pushed back in his chair. “Paul flew in this morning,” he said. “Kitt Peak has been looking into this.”

“Kitt Peak has? Why?”

“Along with a lot of other people.” His eyes locked on mine. “This conversation does not leave this room.”

“Okay.”

Crenshaw took over: “We know why there were three comets.”

“What do you mean were?”

“The trajectories are changing. If that continues, and we’re pretty sure it will, they won’t make it into the inner solar system.”

“Why? What’s going on?”

“There’s a brown dwarf nearby.” Brown dwarfs are failed stars. They lack the mass to power a fusion reaction in their cores. They’re big, they’re heavy, and you don’t want to get too close to one of them.

“Where is it?”

“About thirty million miles from the comets. Unfortunately, it’s coming in our direction.”

“My God.”

“We’re pretty sure it won’t hit us.”

“I’m relieved to hear that. But—?”

Tom picked up the thread: “It’s going to disrupt some orbits. Including ours.”

No way that could be good. We could expect either to get pitched into the sun, or dragged away from it altogether.

His framed dictum caught my eye. Enjoy the moment. “How bad’s it going to be?” My voice shook.

“We’re working on the details.”

Right. The details.

Brown dwarfs can be almost invisible. They put out very little heat, often not much more than you’d have in your kitchen. This one was about the size of Jupiter, but had about sixty times its mass.

“So how’d your day go?” asked Warren.

I’d given my word. “Okay,” I said. “How about yours?”

It wasn’t the first time I’d lied to him. I hadn’t told him the truth about his cooking, about whether I’d loved anyone before he came along, about how good looking I thought he was. But that was all minor league stuff. This was the first time I’d deceived him about anything important.

But he told me about a deal he was closing over on Shepperton Avenue. And I began recalibrating what mattered in life.

The following day I did another TV interview, in which I tried to brush aside the issue of the trajectory change. “Nothing of any significance,” I said.

Liar, liar.

Tom promised he’d let me know any further data that came in, so you can understand that every time the phone rang over the next few days, I stopped breathing.

And finally, while I was on my way to a morning class, it came. “When you’re finished with your lecture, Maryam, come down to my office.”

“Good news or bad?” I said.

“Just come when you’re free.”

I kept walking, trying to keep cool. I went into my classroom. The class was Principles of Physics II: Electromagnetism and Radiation.

That I got through it at all remains one of my proudest achievements.

Tom was talking with a couple of visitors when I walked in. He excused himself immediately and explained we had important business. They left and I sat down. He closed the door and remained standing by it, his hand on the knob.

“What?” I said.

“It’s going to drag us out of orbit. Same as it did to the comet.”

I sat, not moving, not surprised, but with my life draining. “Do we have any chance at all?”

“I don’t see how.”

I sat staring at him. “When?”

“Well, that’s the good news, I guess. The thing’s moving slowly. The process won’t begin for nineteen years.”

I just sat there trying to breathe. Trying to take it all in.

“The embargo is still on, Maryam. Say nothing.”

That shocked me. “You can’t really keep something like this to yourself. People have a right to know.”

“Sure they do. And they have almost two decades left to live normal lives. Let them know what’s happening and you’ll take that from them.”

“It’s not your call.”

“You’re right. It’s not. They’re telling the president as we speak.”

I broke my promise three minutes after I got home. There was no way I could keep that kind of secret. Liz was up in her room, so I sat down and told Warren everything. As well as extracting his word that he would say nothing to anyone. And hoping he was better at it than I had been.

“End of the world?” he said.

“The data aren’t complete yet, but it doesn’t look as if there’s any way out.”

We were on the sofa. He leaned over and we embraced. “You okay?” he asked.

“What do you think?”

He shook his head. “Real estate values along the river are gonna crash.” I don’t know if I ever loved him more than I did at that moment. “Nineteen years is a long time,” he added. “But it’ll be hard on Liz.” He sat for a minute, eyes focused on a distance place. “I’m not sure where we go from here.”

“Tom’s worried about what will happen if the news gets out. He thinks there’ll be panic in the streets.”

“He’s probably right. But I won’t say anything.”

“Good.”

“How long before it’s visible to the naked eye?”

“It’s very dull. It’ll probably be ten years, at least.”

We collected Liz and went out for pizza that night. I got pepperoni on mine. Liz, as usual, ordered black olives. And Warren got his plain. I don’t ever recall an evening during which the details stood out so sharply. I can close my eyes now, and recall exactly what everyone was wearing, what we talked about, which server we had, and what the weather was like. Oddly, the brown dwarf had retreated into the darkness of my mind, and I was aware mostly of how fortunate I’d been over my lifetime, and how I appreciated having that night with my family.

I remember thinking how easy it was to forget that we live day to day under a shadow. A car accident. A crazy guy with a gun. A brain tumor. You never know. Enjoy the moment. And I did. If there’s an evening in my entire life that I could go back to and relive, that would be it. We were getting ready to leave the restaurant when we noticed that it had grown quiet around us. The Italian music which routinely played had been turned off. People at the other tables were whispering, shaking their heads, and looking anxiously at each other. We asked our server what was happening. “News report,” she said in a low voice. “They’re saying the end of the world is coming.”

When we got home, it was all over the TV. Every show had been interrupted. Sources were cited around the planet. It looked as if everybody connected with the investigation had broken whatever pledge had been made. There was even an unidentified White House source. Then we learned the President was about to speak.

Ten minutes later he was talking from Air Force One. “My fellow Americans,” he said, “we have reports that a giant collapsed star has entered the solar system and is expected to collide with the Earth in twenty years. The story comes from several reliable sources. Our best and brightest minds are looking into it as I speak. We should keep in mind that we are talking about an event two decades away. So we have time to consider our options. Rest assured, I will keep you informed…” He looked shaken. “They’re calling it the Maryam Object.”

Warren was staring past me, and I wondered if he was reliving my birthday party.

Three days later Hollywood star Jessie Wood was caught on camera suggesting the world would be a better place if women would stop trying to grab power and stay the hell in the kitchen. It was the sort of story that would ordinarily have dominated the news cycle for the better part of a week. On this occasion, hardly anyone noticed.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jack McDevitt has been described by Stephen King as “The logical heir to Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke.” He is the author of nineteen novels, eleven of which have been Nebula finalists. His novel Seeker won the award in 2007. In 2003, Omega received the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best science fiction novel. McDevitt’s most recent books are The Cassandra Project, a collaboration with Mike Resnick, and Starhawk, which follows the young Priscilla Hutchins as she seeks to qualify as an interstellar pilot. Both are from Ace. A Philadelphia native, McDevitt had a varied career before becoming a writer. He’s been a naval officer, an English teacher, a customs officer, and a taxi driver. He has also conducted leadership seminars. He is married to the former Maureen McAdams, and resides in Brunswick, Georgia, where he keeps a weather eye on hurricanes.