by Stuart Atkinson

We are delighted to present for the first time an excerpt from a novel that is being created by Stuart. He has offered us this month the preface and the first chapter. We hope that it will be soon completed and available in print for us all to purchase and enjoy.

Preface

The rock was already old when the Earth was born. Now, after hundreds of millions of lonely years spent tumbling through the frozen void, it fell gratefully towards the blue and white planet.

Gratefully, because it was weary.

Weary, and ready to die.

Had it been alive, the rock - in truth, it was more of a pebble than a rock: a grape-sized stone the colour of cold ash - might have reflected on its long, lonely life. Its own birth, almost six billion years before, had been slow and ponderous: while the infant Sun throbbed in the centre of its nebular womb, a glowing orange ember surrounded by smoke, some of the billions of grains and particles of dust circling around it had started to bump and clump together, growing a fraction of a millimeter every millennia, until eventually the brash young Sun lay at the centre of a swirling storm of hissing gravel.

The Galaxy turned; thousands of centuries passed; as the gravel bumped and clumped together solid stones slowly began to appear out of the chaos, tumbling through the darkness. They in turn collected together, relentlessly growing larger and larger...

Finally, after an Age of Ages, the Sun reached adulthood, and with a howling gust of fiery starbreath blew the remains of its veil of choking dust out into space, revealing a system of nine newborn worlds. Some were small and solid, their hard surfaces scarred by craters and etched with deep valleys. Others were immense globes of gas, with thick atmospheres painted with monstrous storms and beautiful rings around their waists. Almost all had their own attending moons - some so many they were like miniature solar systems in their own right.

But, in the darkness between those worlds, countless stones and rocks tumbled on in silence. These sad leftovers of the Solar System, rejected by the proud, vain planets, were doomed to an eternity of loneliness, endlessly orbiting the Sun - unless they strayed too close to one of its offspring worlds. Then, captured by its gravity, their fates were sealed.

Now the starstone began to gather speed, falling faster towards the staggeringly-beautiful blue and white world, doomed to a fiery death but grateful for it after its tortuously long life. It had roamed the Solar System for what had felt like an eternity, gliding through the cold vacuum between the planets in silence, tumbling end over end over end against a never-changing backdrop of stars. It had seen comets pass by, and envied them for their glorious misty tails; it had sailed proudly above Jupiter’s whirling storms, passed beneath Saturn’s butterscotch-coloured south pole and cut through Uranus’ dusty ring arcs.

But enough was enough. There was nothing new to see. Time to go.

Now, for the first time in a billion years the stone felt warmth; as it kissed the top of Earth’s atmosphere the friction of air molecules rubbing against its space-chilled body began to heat it up, sending waves of warmth rippling down to its frozen core. Just gently at first, but soon the stone began to glow with the heat, and as the Earth swelled in front of it, blocking out everything else, the starstone let out a sigh of relief and release. And it felt joy, too: now it had a tail of its own, a glowing trail of colour brighter than any vain comet could ever posess!

The Earth was rushing up towards it now, faster and faster, and the starstone as it screamed through the air the starstone glowed white hot, shining brighter than any of the distant stars -

 Had the rock been alive, its; last, fleeting thought might have been of wonder and awe, admiration for the overwhelming beauty of the planet beneath it: the Earth was blue and white and green, an oasis of colour and life in the vast emptiness of the night -

 A final furious flash, a flurry of sparks, and the starstone whispered out of existence.

 It was Over.

But its kamikaze dive had not gone un-noticed on the world turning slowly below...

Chapter 1: Campfire Tales

Fiona felt her breath catch in her throat as the shooting star skipped across the unfamiliar southern sky. It flared once, twice, then sputtered out of existence in a shower of emerald-coloured sparks, leaving behind a star-spattered sky. Not black, as she had expected; the sky out in the Australian desert was so dark it went beyond black to purple. She’d never known anything like it. It was breathtaking.

The shooting star was the tenth she’d seen since that night, and like all of them it had made her feel sad. Such fleeting beauty, such short-lived elegance, it didn’t seem fair. But then again, she thought, poking the campfire with a charred stick until it sent up a flurry of hot, golden sparks, that was just the way the Universe worked. Everything in it - meteors, stars, the galaxies themselves, even people - enjoyed a brief life and then met An End. Nothing lived forever. Nothing lasted forever. You had to treasure whatever beauty you found, not waste it or take it for granted, because you never knew what tomorrow would bring.

“You see any more yet, Fee?” a voice called from the beaten-up camper van parked off to her left.

“Yes, just now,” she called out to her dad, staring into the heart of the fire, “bright one, too.” No echo came back; the vast, open desert of the Nullarbor plain swallowed up her words completely, just as it swallowed up the light from her campfire. She looked up, away from the dancing flames, and felt a shiver run through her; out there, beyond the edge of fire’s circle of flickering orange light, there was just absolute blackness. She’d never been afraid of the dark, but to stare into such emptiness was... disturbing. She would be happy when dawn came, and the light returned.

“You make a wish?” her father enquired. She laughed, shaking her head. He always asked that, even though he knew she’d stopped making wishes on shooting stars years ago. There was no point: her warring parents had shown her that wishes could never come true anyway. “You should make a wish,” he called out in the darkness, as if able to read her mind, “if you don’t it’s wasted.”

 “Okay, okay,” she surrendered, staring up at the sky. That disturbed her, too. Even after a week in Australia that sky still felt alien, wrong. The constellations drawn in stars up above her were alien. There was no Plough, no Northern Cross (and the famous “Southern Cross” was tiny in comparison to the huge crucifix of Cygnus, she’d been disappointed to discover). Rubbing salt into the wound, the meager handful of constellations that were familiar were upside down.

Fiona sighed. She missed the bright stars Arcturus, Deneb, Capella, all her other faithful northern friends. Alpha Centauri, the closest star to the Earth, was a bright gold spark high above, and was beautiful, true. But it wasn’t ‘hers’ in the same way that Arcturus was.

There were some compensations, though. Their camp was so far away from civilization and its intrusive lights that the sky was gloriously dark, and that meant everything in it was spectacularly clear and bright. The planets Jupiter and Saturn shone like lanterns, and the Milky Way was so obvious it looked like a mottled vapour trail cutting the sky in half. Beautiful, so beautiful...

 Fee closed her eyes, imagining she was onboard the shuttle Endeavour with the astronauts heading for the half-completed space station. She knew that from 400 miles high the Nullabor plain, their desert hunting ground, would be just a gaping black hole near the southern edge of the Australian continent, a slab of Nothing, devoid of light. Cities and towns would glitter and shine on its edges, sparkling like fireflies in the darkness, but the desert plain itself would be a black and empty void. Her campfire would be invisible, irrelevant, insignificant.

Opening her eyes again she looked up, saw strange stars in all directions, and smiled, letting her imagination run free. Sitting there on her rock it was easy to pretend she was an explorer stranded on another world, a world far across the Galaxy, surrounded by unnamed, unknown stars -

 “So, what is it?”

 Her father, again. “What’s what?” she mumbled, wondering what he was talking about. She’d been lost amongst the stars. Again.

 “Your wish - what’s your wish?” her father repeated, with a hint of a chuckle.

Fee sighed with resignation, knowing there was no escape. “Oh, alright... I wish...” she began, looking up at the starry sky arching above her, watching a satellite drift lazily though a constellation completely unknown to her, “I wish that we’ll find something tomorrow,” she said with an ironic laugh.

“Nice one, I like it!” her father called back approvingly. Then, more tenderly, “we will, Fee, I’m sure of it.”

 That made her smile too. He’d been “sure of it” that morning, and the morning before, and the morning before that, but so far they hadn’t found a single meteorite, not one. -Trust me-, he’d said as they rolled off the smooth highway and bumped onto the empty plain, -this place is covered in meteorites, we’ll be rich within an hour!-. Of course, she’d agreed with him she always did, it was easier to reflect his enthusiasm and optimism than it was to be realistic.

 And, to be fair, this time his optimism had some justification. Many meteorites had been discovered in the Nullarbor, including the bizarrely-named “Camel Donga” meteorite and the two huge Mundrabilla irons which were found in the Eucla Basin in 1967. She doubted they’d find anything their size - one was eight tons, the other 11! - but over the years other hunters had found many smaller specimens scattered across the desert. Surely they couldn’t all have been found?

But a week had passed and they had found nothing, not a single starstone. And if they didn’t find something in the next two days they would be heading back to Scotland empty-handed, the whole trip would have been a complete waste of time and money -

No, that wasn’t true, she scolded herself, not true at all. Even if they didn’t find any of the rare starstones in the Australian desert, they would still have seen and done so many wonderful things together there that it couldn’t possibly be considered a failure. Any time they shared was precious to her. She knew that even if they went back with their specimen cases empty she’d still have wonderful memories: snap-shot mental images of sitting beside him, head resting on his shoulder as they watched a glorious desert sunsets... walking hand in hand beneath the vast blue sky... laughing and joking amidst the tan- and sandstone-coloured wastelands of the Nullarbor.

Father and daughter quality time couldn’t be sold, or bought. It was a priceless gift from the Universe.

But still, she thought, giving the dying fire a last, optimistic poke, smiling as the sudden blast of heat warmed her face, it would be nice to find something...

 “Nearly time...” her father called out from the van. Fee checked her watch, illuminating the glo-face with a deft press of a fingernail: yes, he was right, 11.23. The computer would soon be -

 “Quickly Fee,” her father prompted, “and remember, just a short chat this time, the batteries are low...”

 She struggled to her feet, cast a last look up at the stars, and ran to the camper, almost falling inside in her rush.

A familiar, homely scene greeted her inside. Her father was seated at the computer, face painted by the light from its flickering screen as he slid the mouse over its grubby mat, opening and closing windows on the screen at high speed. On the top of the fingerprint-smudged monitor stood a tiny webcam, pointed straight at him. A microphone stood beside the monitor, bent like a streetlight. The desktop itself was scattered in papers and journals, photos and computer printouts. More charts and printouts were pinned or taped to the walls, and several lay on the floor too, dirtied with bootprints and coffee spill stains.

She scowled at how dark it was inside the van. It couldn’t be good for his eyes, to work in such gloom. The van had electric lighting, drawing power from a small generator mounted on its roof, but her father always ignored it, preferring to rely on the single oil lantern hanging from the ceiling of his beloved mobile home. Its bronze casing was battered and scuffed, and it looked like it should have been thrown out years ago, but she knew he would never part with it. The lantern had accompanied him on more hunting trips than she could remember.

More than she’d been on with him, she thought sadly.

 It gave off little light, but there was enough to allow her to pick out, in the far corner of the van, their collecting area - an optimistically high stack of office In and Out plastic trays, ready and waiting to display their Finds. All of them empty. Maybe tomorrow, she thought. Maybe that shooting star had been a sign..? Maybe, despite all her bitter personal experience, some wishes could actually come true..?

“What a relief,” her father said, turning towards her with a mischievous smile on his stubble-darkened face, “I thought the Ghost Walkers had got you..!”

“They wouldn’t dare try,” Fee scowled theatrically, gently placing a hand on her father’s neck, just by his shoulder. It felt very tense, knotted. But that was no surprise, considering what was to come. She felt a surge of sympathy for him. He tried so hard...

Looking over her father’s shoulder she saw the webcam’s tiny lens was still covered. “Better slide that out of the way,” she suggested, nodding towards it.

 “Yeah,” he growled, “don’t want to give her anything else to moan - “

 “Oh dad, please,” she whispered, resting her chin on his shoulder, “you promised...”

 “I know,” he sighed, leaning against her, “I know, I’m sorry. You’re right. As usual.” After patting her hand with his, he reached up and slid the lens cover away. “There, now she can see you.”

 “Us,” Fiona corrected pointedly, “she can see Us...” But her father said nothing. They both knew who she was wanting to see.

A tiny wind-up alarm clock on the desk started to ring tinnily, and at the same moment a large window opened up on the monitor screen. At first it showed nothing but a rectangle of dancing grey static, occasionally shot through with flickers or starbursts of light, but gradually it started to clear, and a vague shape appeared in its centre which slowly resolved itself into a human face. A familiar one.

“Hi mum!” Fee beamed, waving at the unblinking eye of the webcam. Beside her her father couldn’t disguise his discomfort; he stiffened in his chair, on alert for... whatever was about to happen. It was always a surprise.

 “Hello Fee,” her mother smiled back, waving back. Her hand was huge, hidden inside a thick, gauntlet-style thermal glove, and her face was framed by the heavy, gaudily-coloured hood of a padded jacket. Fee recognized the dark blue backdrop behind her mother as the inside of the inflatable shelter she used as her field base. It provided some protection from the howling wind and the snow flurries, but held little warmth, and when her mother spoke the camera caught silvery clouds of breath escaping from between her zinc-cream covered lips.

 Out of sight of the webcam Fee gave her father’s hand a reassuring “I love you” squeeze. He squeezed back gently, telling her he knew.

“How are things down there?” Fee asked brightly, deliberately talking more slowly than usual, all too aware of how she tended to trip up over her words when she was excited. While she waited for the reply she studied the image of her mother on the screen, wishing she could see her eyes, but they were hidden behind the dark, protective lenses of her goggles. The windows to her soul were shuttered. How she missed gazing into them -

 “Cold!” her mother laughed, faking a dramatic shiver to emphasize the point, adding: “... but only minus 21 today... beach weather..!”

 Fee laughed, amazed as always by her mother’s resilience. Many meteorite hunters - and other scientists - had been beaten by the sub-zero temperatures of Antarctica, and had fled home nursing frostbite, snow-blindness or worse. But her mother seemed to thrive in the inhuman environment, and always hated leaving when her tour was through. She loved the Antarctican cold as much as her father loved the desert heat. Just one of the differences between them.

“Dad’s here, he says hi!” Fee lied cheerily, ignoring the icy look he shot her in response. Her mother’s expression hardened, just momentarily, but Fee caught it just the same, and felt her high spirits sag; even half a world apart they still couldn’t -

“Don’t you think you should be in bed by now Fiona?” her mother said, ignoring her father’s presence completely, “it must be late there...” On the screen the image shook and staggered, breaking up for a moment into a chaotic jumble of overlapping part frames. It was a very fragile link between Australia and Antarctica.

 “I know, but I wanted to speak to you before I go to sleep,” Fee defended herself, feeling awkward. This wasn’t how she’d imagined the meeting would be -

“I’m glad you did,” her mother smiled back warmly, and just for a moment Fiona forgot everything that had happened. The fights, the break up, the divorce, they were all forgotten as Fiona thought how her mother still had the most beautiful smile she had ever seen, always guaranteed to melt her into a puddle on the floor.

 “Hey, we had a great day today” her mother gushed, pre-empting Fiona’s next question. “Look...” She ducked out of the camera’s view then, reaching down to pick something up off the floor. When she reappeared she was holding a dark, roughly-oval shaped object as big as a half melon. It looked very heavy.

 “Wow, look at that..!” Fee breathed in admiration as her mother held the object nearer to her own webcam. In better light the object was revealed to be a large stone, its dark surface covered with a layer of even darker, melted rock. Fee’s heart leapt at the sight of it, recognising it as ‘fusion crust’, a layer of melted rock showing how the object had encountered enormous heat at some time. And in Antarctica, a land free of volcanoes and fire, there was only one way a rock could acquire such a beautiful, glassy coat: by melting as it fell through the atmosphere. It was a meteorite, one of the biggest she’d ever seen in her mother’s hand.

 “That’s a beauty mum,” Fee said admiringly, “must weigh a couple of pounds..?”

“Four!” her mother beamed proudly, hefting the starstone in her hand to illustrate the point. “That makes ten in the past week..!”

Ten. In a week. Fee was pleased for her mother, delighted actually, but she knew what was coming next, and had been dreading it.

 “So, how many did -you- find yet?” her mother enquired, a hint of a smile on her lips, almost as if she already knew the answer.

 “Well, you know, we’ve only been here a couple of days mum,” she replied diplomatically, “we’ve been making camp and getting our bearings... won’t really start looking properly until tomorrow - “

“Ah,” her mother said simply. She didn’t need to say anything else, it was all in the tone of her voice. She knew. That was what “Ah” meant: I Know.

Fee was about to say something but never got the chance. Before she could speak her father had shuffled up against her to get on camera. “What do you mean, ‘ah’?” he said icily. “We’re working hard here - “

 “And hello to you too, Robert,” her mother smiled icily. Beside Fiona her father took in a deep breath. “I’m sorry,” her mother continued with obvious mock sympathy, “it appears you’ve had a wasted - “

 “It’s not been a wasted anything, Angela,” he growled, eyes flashing in the flickering lantern-light. “We’ve had a great time, Fee and I, haven’t we?” Fee nodded, feeling uncomfortable to be caught in the crossfire yet again. “You forget, we haven’t got your resources, or your clients’ precious money - “

 “Always an excuse, isn’t there Robert?” the woman sighed wearily. Fee reached for her father’s hand, found it was shaking as his anger climbed.

 “I don’t need any excuses,” he countered, “we’ll do just fine. Tomorrow we’ll - “

 “Ah, tomorrow,” the woman repeated, nodding slowly, “everything will always happen tomorrow, won’t it? When will you -

 “ Fee’s head dropped as her father fired another sharp reply down the line. It never changed, was never going to change. Both made faithful promises to behave like adults, to try and get along for her sake, but it took just a few minutes for the ceasefire to break down and for them to go right back to the beginning again. Once she would have told them to stop it, to grow up, to remember how they’d once hunted together as a team, been happy together. Now..? Now they lived in different worlds, and she flew between the two.

 With a weary sigh she turned her back on the screen and retreated back into the darkness once more, determined not to cry, heading for the sputtering remains of the campfire as the argument raged behind her.

Sitting down on her stone again she poked angrily at the fire with the blackened stick, but it was a lost cause; its heart had failed and there was no hope of reviving it. Oh well, she’d tried. Getting to her feet again she grabbed her favorite blanket off the top of the storage tent and wrapped it around herself as protection against the deepening cold. Her light mood had gone, punched away by the anger and bitterness in the van, and suddenly the stars above, which had previously seemed like the flames of tiny, distant campfires, seemed hard and cold, like chips of ice flashing down at her.

 Another shooting star dashed overhead, a streak of sapphire blue against the star-strewn purple, but this time she didn’t make a wish.

There was obviously no point.

© Stuart Atkinson 2002