by Stuart Atkinson

Editor's note: We are excited about offering this major work by author Stuart Akinson in Meteorite Times. We are very interested in getting some feed back about what you think of the story as it unfolds chapter by chapter. So please drop me a line and let me know what you think.      mailto:editorSee Home Page Fore Email Address

Chapter 3: Good Things Come...

Fee almost had to force herself to breathe. A new meteorite was there, at her feet, only the third one she'd found in her whole life. Maybe the wish she'd made on that shooting star the night before *had* come true after all..?

But then, if it had, why did she suddenly feel so empty, so uncomfortable?

It was disturbing. She should have been jumping with joy, shouting and waving her arms at her father to attract his attention and call him over to see what she had found. But those wise inner voices were telling her to delay the celebrations and think again. But why?

Something, instinct perhaps, made her reach down to her belt and unclip the binoculars hanging there. They were small, and light, but powerful - in other words perfect for carrying around a desert like the Nullabor - and raising them to her eyes she swept them across the far desert with practiced ease, searching for her father against the heat-haze blurred wasteland. Nothing... nothing...

Ah, there he was, a tiny figure kneeling down among the rocks and wilted grass tufts, metal detector discarded as he picked at an unseen something on the ground. Heart racing, she watched him stand up abruptly. Had he found one too? Oh, she hoped so, he deserved to discover one so much, so very much...

 It was so frustrating not to be able to see what he was doing! He was so far away from her that even the 10x50 binocs couldn't show him as anything more than a minute figure silhouetted against the sun-baked ground, but just by watching him shifting his weight she could tell that he was retrieving his own magnet from a pocket, and repeating her touch test. Go on, she whispered to herself, willing It to be a meteorite... go on... please... pl-

Her heart sank she watched him hurl the object away angrily, not even bothering to watch where it landed. Instead he started to kick at the stones around him in frustration, lashing out again and again, venting his anger and disappointment on the innocent desert rocks.

With a long sigh, Fee lowered the binocs and clipped them back onto her belt hook again. It wasn't fair, it just wasn't. He had worked so hard, for so long, always done the right thing, asking for nothing in return but adventure and peace and enough money to let them both "get by", and yet the Universe seemed determined to torment and humiliate him at every opportunity. She knew that if he could just find a meteorite while he was here, today, then he'd be able to go to bed happy, Maybe even come up out of the grey mood he'd been in since talking to her mother on the computer. Her words had stung him, wounded him, that was obvious. If he could just *find* something, something her could hold up to the camera and show her that he was a success too... well, it would make all the difference.

Intellectually she knew he was probably right about the Nullabor being a rich hunting ground; there probably *were* countless starstones strewn across the plain, millennias' worth of fallen space rockery. But she knew that the chances of finding another meteorite so close to hers were almost non-existent -

And that was it, wasn't it?

She knew what she had to do. There was nothing else for it. She had to let him find *her* meteorite.

It took her a few moments to figure out how to do it, but eventually it was plotted out in her head and, being careful not to dislodge the meteorite, she walked away from it, following an imaginary straight line drawn between it and her far-away father. She counted out her footsteps: ten paces, ten more, ten more than that, and then she stopped. Was that far enough? she wondered. Yes, any nearer and he might be suspicious. Any further away and the odds of him missing the meteorite increased dramatically. Yes, she nodded to herself, this would have to do.

Flipping open her mobile phone she tapped in her father's number on the speed-dial and waited for him to answer. "Yes," she told him when he asked if she had a Possible, "but I'm not sure..." So far, so good. "Yes, yes, if you wouldn't mind," she said gratefully when he offered to come and double-check it for her, "I'll wave my arms as soon as I ring off... okay, bye!" Slipping the phone back onto her belt she started to jump up and down, waving her arms. Here! Here!

Waiting for his arrival, Fee took a deep breath, trying not to think of what a huge gamble she was taking. The success of her plan depended upon her father living up to his reputation for being predictable; every time she'd called him under such circumstances in the past he had continued to sweep the ground with his detector as he walked towards her... if he did the same this time he'd have a good chance of finding the meteorite.

But even then it her plan had only a "good chance" of succeeding, it wasn't guaranteed. What if he didn't find it? An unwelcome image appeared in her head - her father advancing towards her, metal detector slung lazily over his shoulder as he walked towards, over and then past the meteorite...! No! She didn't want to think about that - But she had to. If he missed it then she'd be faced with a no-win situation: either go back for it, and reveal her attempted deception, or walk away, leaving her father none the wiser and abandoning he meteorite where it lay. Going back would hurt him, no doubt about that. But would she be able to do the alternative? Would she be able to walk away and leave the thunderstone for someone else to find another day? That was a tough one.

Then she remembered the look on her father's face as he listened to her mother gloating, and replayed how he had kicked the rocks after finding yet another meteor-wrong, and knew she had no choice. No choice at all.

Time seemed to slow to a crawl as she waited for her father to appear, but eventually he emerged from the heat haze, shimmering like a mirage, and to her relief he was sweeping the metal detector over the ground ahead of him, not carrying it like a rifle. He swept the sensitive head first this way, then that, one hand pressed against the side of his head all the time as he listened for the tell-tale buzzing of the instrument's alarm in his ear.

He was only a few feet away from It now. She took a deep breath. Maybe her crazy plan was going to work after all -

And then he stopped, dead on target, as if he'd walked into a brick wall, or an invisible force shield. His hand pressed the earphone against his ear, and Fee knew he was listening to the high-pitched tone of a Detection Signal. Then he started sweeping more excitedly, passing his detector's round head over one spot on the ground again and again, gradually pinning down the source of the detector's signal. His movements became slower, less jerky, as the detector zeroed in on whatever It was -

Then it stopped moving altogether, and with obvious urgency he dropped down to crouch on the hot ground, flinging the metal detector aside in his haste to study a patch of desert floor. He leaned forward, apparently studying something at his feet. Slowly, so slowly, his hand stretched out...

She was close enough to actually hear his shout of celebration. She'd done it. It had worked. He had found the meteorite!

*Again*... a voice whispered sadly in her ear.

When he phoned with the good news, telling her to join him, she managed to sound so surprised she even amazed herself. It was an Oscar-winning performance, full of fake delight and excitement, apparently completely lost on him, and after closing the phone she jogged towards him, forcing herself to smile, to look happy and amazed for his benefit. But inside she was almost crying. It could have been hers. It *should* have been hers. But she told herself that didn't matter. Her father needed it more.

"It looks like a stony-iron," her father gushed as she reached the discovery site. He patted the ground to get her to kneel down with him in front of the meteorite. She did as he asked, and leaned forwards to examine "his" find, beaming dutifully at him as he confirmed its tell-tale metallic content with his own magnet. She amazed herself again, managing to avoid looking gutted - even though she felt it - when the meteorite and magnet refused to end their kiss, but all her selfish, sad thoughts were swept away when she saw the look of pure delight on her father's tanned face. There had been no fire burning inside him for a long time. But the flames were back again.

 "It's a beauty dad, it really is," she smiled, wrapping an arm around his shaking shoulders, and this time she wasn't embroidering; the meteorite really was a fine specimen. "You were right all along, you said you'd find something, and you did."

He shook his head. "No, Fee," he began, and she felt sick, wondering if he Knew. "I said *we'd* find something," he continued, correcting her, "and *we* did." Fee let out a relieved deep breath. He -didn't- know, she'd got away with it. Then he turned to look at her then, and she saw the pride shining in his eyes. "This is ours, not mine," he told her solemnly. Well you got that *almost* right, Fiona thought, watching in silence as he touched the magnet and starstone together again, laughing with delight for a second time at their reluctance to separate. It felt like the Universe was tipping desert salt into her wounds.

Then her father reached down to unclip the camera from his belt and a terrible realization struck her: she'd photographed it already!

 "It's okay!" she exclaimed, moving between him and the meteorite. In her haste she nudged him, almost sending him sprawling onto his backside in the dust. "Sorry!" she apologized, but made no move to help him up again, "but you should let me do the archiving. You need to catch your breath after all this excitement..!" He froze, looking puzzled, and she had to gently nudge him a little further out of the way to get close enough to be able to photograph the Find. That was too close, she scolded herself, you should have thought of that, you idiot!

As he watched, still a little baffled, she went through the whole photographic site survey procedure again, pretending to take photos from all the different angles required for full in-situ archiving. Top, one side, then the other, then top again, mirroring exactly the sequence of shots she'd taken not ten minutes earlier. Her finger hovered over it, but she only mimed pressing the shutter button, all the time cursing herself for not being more alert.

When she was "done" she stepped back and cast a rueful look at the sky. "You owe me one," she told the Universe under her breath, "boy, do you owe me one..."

Fee said nothing as she watched her father cocoon the meteorite in a sheet of bubble-wrap, sealing it with brown tape before dropping it into his open rucksack. Part of her wanted to reach in there and grab it back, shout "No! Mine! Its mine!" like some petulant kid, or the villain from some ancient black and white silent movie. But the happy look on his face was worth more than a dozen meteorites.

And what the heck, she told herself as they walked away from the discovery site, hand in hand, there'd be other meteorites.

 Wouldn't there?

They had many hunting traditions, but the most important was The Talk.

After finding something in a strewn field they always took a moment to consider their next move and talk through their options. It was such a sacred tradition that not even the hellish heat of the Nullabor could make them break it, so after finding a relatively rock-free spot they sat down, unscrewed the tops of their canteens, and discussed what to do next.

Her father placed great importance on The Talk, always insisted it was a genuine debate, a democratic decision-making process, and that was usually true. She would play her role as The Voice of Reason, the 'responsible' one in the team. If they were okay for water and supplies, and weren't too tired, she'd agree to keep going. But if she thought they were too tired or too hot, or had been looking too long already, she'd say so. And, to be fair, he would listen to her and trust her honesty, and occasionally they had ended a hunt because of her concerns.

But today, even though she knew they were both too hot and too tired to do much more, and should be heading back, pleased with their find, she also knew there was no point asking him to turn back. Even though the Sun was high, burning holes in their backs and scorching their shadows onto the ground, he was on his biggest high for ages, like a puppy that had just discovered it could wag its tail.

There are others nearby, he told her confidently, grinning from ear to ear as he leaned forwards and kissed her on the forhead. He knew it, he could *smell* them, they just had to keep looking, that was all. Fee nodded dutifully, making a show of WIPing his kiss away with the back of her hand. Of course he was right, she agreed; of course there were others there; of course they should keep looking! What are we waiting for? Let's *go*!

Like she had a choice, she smiled to herself.

So they scrambled to their feet and strode on into the desert together, hand in hand, working as a "buddied up" team now, which was how she liked it best of all. While he checked the ground ahead of them, sweeping the metal detector to and fro, she looked off to the sides, scanning the surrounding desert floor for any out-of-place large objects which might just be out of the detector's range.

 It was a system which had worked well in the past. On the dry, dusty plains of Holbrook, Arizona, they'd buddied-up and found almost a dozen small and medium-sized stones in just half a day. And, two years later, after watching the amateur video footage of a dramatic daytime fireball blazing over Providence on its way out to sea, they'd buddied-up to search local parks and playing fields over several days. Their efforts had been rewarded with the discovery of three, fist sized fragments of the object which had gone on to splash-down in the Atlantic further east. Yes, it had worked well before.

But not this time. After three hours of intensive searching, neither had found anything, and Fee began to lose heart. A combination of the oppressive heat, and moving her head from right to left and back again like a demented tennis fan had given her a pounding headache, which she knew was only going to get worse. Soon after mid-day she had to stop, and as she gulped down a mouthful of warm, brackish water from her canteen she decided that was it, enough was enough. She was too hot and too sweaty and too tired. It was time for another Talk.

Casting a sideways glance at her father she saw he was still grinning cheerfully, but it looked forced. He was flagging, too, and as he returned her questioning stare, his eyes tired and dulled, she knew it was the same old story: both knew they were reaching the end of their tethers, but neither wanted to be the one to call a halt to the morning's hunt.

And because her father would never admit defeat, not in a million years, it was up to her to pull down the curtain.

Preparing to hoist the white flag with an "I'm sorry to let you down, but I can't go on..." confession she took a last look over to the south -

Was... was there something there..?

Squinting against the sunlight, she felt her heartbeat falter as she raised her binoculars to take a closer look -

And almost dropped them in shock. Years later she would reflect on the Universe's sense of melodrama, and admit that it was typical that it chose the exact *moment* of her surrender to repay her for her kind spirit and heart.

Letting go of her father's hand she bolted across the desert, running towards the mysterious dark object she had glimpsed through her trusty Nikons. She came to a halt next to it in a cloud of orange and white dust, with her father - yet again showing his total trust in her - following just a few paces behind.

"Whooaah, what have you - oh my..!" He let out a long, admiring breath, peering over her shoulder. "Fee... unless someone threw a huge treacle toffee out of a plane, you've just found a museum exhibit...

" Fee couldn't believe it. The meteorite lying on the ground a short distance away from her dust-covered boots was a big one, a melon-sized mass five, Maybe six times larger than the one she'd found a little way back. And it was so dark it looked like someone had spilled a bottle of brown ink over the light-colored bedrock of the Nullabor's parched and cracked floor.

Her heart began to race - that was only natural - but she held back her excitement; it ws her father's job to jump to conclusions prematurely, not hers. She needed to Know For Sure. Kneeling down slowly, almost reverently, she examined the object from close-up, and saw it was deeply pitted in several places; it looked like a ball of black putty that someone had pressed their thumbs into.

Now Fee felt her breath catch in her throat; only metal meteorites had such markings, 'regmaglypts', they showed where less dense rock had burned away during the object's fiery plummet through the atmosphere, leaving behind empty "eye socket" like holes. This... thing had regmaglypts deeper than any she'd ever seen before. Maybe, she thought, gently probing one of the pits with her finger, just Maybe...

But still her natural sense of caution warmed her to be sure, and she knew she wouldn't be happy until she'd carried out her Make Or Break test. She reached for her magnet, and started to move it forwards, but she never even got to touch it against the object's surface - it leapt to it from a distance of two, Maybe three inches, and stuck there, solid and fast!

She allowed herself a smile. Well, that just about clinched it. It was an iron 'something', in an area absolutely devoid of the stuff. There was only one way it could have got there - from out of the sky.

It was a meteorite, a classic. And it was hers.

"Oh Fee, I'm so proud of you," her father said, kneeling down beside her. "It's a beauty, your best ever..!"

"*Our* best ever," she said, repeating his earlier words, "we were working as a team, buddied-up, remember? This is a team find..." He smiled, feeling such pride in his daughter he feared he might actually burst. What had someone like him done to deserve someone as special as her for a daughter? he wondered, savoring the long, hard hug she gave him.

"It must have been here a long, long time," Fee pondered, squinting against the harsh sunlight. Her father shot her an intrigued look that said simply 'Why?'. "Well, there's no sign of a crater, she observed, "and something this big would definitely have formed one... so it must have been filled in by dust drifting on the wind, over a long time," she concluded confidently. Her father nodded his agreement - and approval, feeling his love for her soaring.

"Well, we should be getting this back to the camp," he said, looking at his watch. "Sun will be setting in a few hours, and I don't want to be caught out here after nightfall - "

"Why, you scared of the kangaroos?" she teased.

"No..." he drawled, sWIPing her precious hat off her head so he could ruffle her hair with his big, calloused hand. "But I'm not too fond of the Outback's giant nocturnal spiders or aborigine ghosts...

" Fee looked at him, eyes wide, not sure if he was joking or not. Ghostly natives she could handle... but spiders? That was a different matter entirely.

"You're right, let's get started..!" she gushed, scrambling back to her feet. And they set to work.

There were no short-cuts. It took almost half an hour just to photodocument the meteorite and make careful measurements of its position, orientation and surroundings, and another thirty minutes to excavate the area around it; if they didn't uncover some more of it, they would never be able to pull it out of the ground.

But as Fiona watched her father heave and tug and struggle, his face turning a deeper purple with each attempt, she knew it was no use, he couldn't pull it free alone. Taking up position behind him she wrapped her arms around his waist and they started to pull together - but after only a moment she burst into a volcanic fit of giggles!

"What's so funny?" her father demanded, as they collapsed into a heap on the ground, baffled as to why their failure had amused her so much.

"Oh... nothing..!" Fee lied, WIPing tears of laughter away from her eyes with the dirty sleeve of her tee-shirt.

"Come on, what *is* it?" he repeated, brushing the dust off his jeans with his filthy hands.

"It's just... it reminded me of..." she began to explain, but collapsed into giggles again. It was too much, really. "I'm sorry.." she said, sobbing now, "but I couldn't help thinking of that story you read me, when I was younger..."

"What..?" he asked, "which stor- aaaaahhh..!" It had taken him a moment to drag the memories up out of the darkness, but now he did he had to laugh too. "You're right," he chuckled, leaning back against her, "we're just like the farmer and his daughter..."

"... only we're pulling up a meteorite, and not an enormous turnip..!" Fee shrieked with laughter, finally losing control. They collapsed together again, abandoning themselves to the moment, recognizing how priceless such moments were. She held him close as they laughed together, sitting in the middle of the desert, dwarfed beneath the huge sky with its burning furnace of a Sun, and didn't want to let him go.

But eventually she had to, and they staggered back to their feet to try again. And again. And again. And finally, after too many attempts to count, they succeeded, and the Earth released the meteorite. They fell backwards as it landed on the ground with a heavy - and expensive-sounding - thud.

Neither cheered, they were both too tired to even speak, but they smiled as they got their first proper look at their hard-won prize.

Freed from its dusty prison after centuries - perhaps millennia - of captivity, the meteorite was revealed to be the size of a water melon, making it one of their largest finds ever. Well worth the pain. And they were both in a lot of pain; dropping down beside it with a weary groan, sweat dripping from their noses and chins, both felt exhausted, their bones and muscles turned to jelly, like they'd just run a marathon. But they'd done it.

Now all they had to do was get it back to the van. One spine-snapping attempt was enough to prove that it was too heavy for her father to lift on his own, so they shared the load. Carrying it together, each holding one end of the fallen starstone, they looked like pirates carrying a treasure chest. The walk back seemed to last forever, as if it was ten miles instead of one, and they had to stop several times, lowering the meteorite to the sun-baked ground as they rested and drank from their canteens. But eventually the van appeared out of the heat haze ahead of them, and they knew they were almost home.

Almost. The final few feet seemed to take an eternity to cross, but they eventually collapsed in front of the van with an exhausted sob, dropping their precious burden to the ground with such haste Fee only just managed to pull her foot out of the way in time to avoid it being crushed. They lay there for a while, side by side, gulping in air like survivors of a shipwreck washed up on a beach. Both were desperately tired, too tired even to grin now, even though they both felt elated by their success.

Fee recovered first. Hauling herself off the ground she made her way into the van, and returned with a pair of cold drinks cans retrieved from its well-stocked fridge. She found her father still panting for breath on the ground outside, like a fish that had jumped out of its tank. But as much as she wanted to lay down beside him and rest again - oh, she wanted that so much! - she knew there was no time for that, not just yet. Instead she knelt down beside him and pressed one of the blissfully-cold cans into his hand, told him to drink it, opening hers at the same time.

They drank in silence, savoring every thick, heavy, sugary gulp until the Coke had cooled and refreshed them just enough to get them back onto their feet. Then, buddying-up one last time, they pushed the meteorite up the van's ramp to its open door, feeling like ants pushing against the Moon.

One last heave pushed the meteorite over the threshold, and Fee sighed with relief as it landed on the van's chart-strewn floor with a heavy, thudding bump. Finally, with the thunderstone safely inside, she slid the door shut behind her and dropped to her knees. They'd done it.

With her last, lingering trace of energy she crawled over to her father's side. He was already sprawled out there beside the meteorite, on the edge of sleep, but she knew he had waited for her, and seeing her framed in the doorway he opened his arms weakly and beckoned her towards him. She snuggled up against his side, smiling as his arms enfolded her.

"Some day, huh, Fee..?" he whispered, and she laughed at his understatement. Yeah, she smiled, nodding weakly, some day... and with the sound of her father's laughter tinkling in the darkness she finally, blissfully, surrendered herself to sleep.

He woke several hours later, and found Fee's right arm draped over him protectively. In the half-light cast by the computer's red Standby light he could just see her long, slim fingers brushing against the meteorite's side. It was an oddly moving sight, and he lay there for a long time just looking at her outstretched hand, marveling at its simple, elegant beauty. His daughter's hand. What *had* he done to deserve her? He didn't know.

But he did know that he could never tell her that he knew *she* had found the first meteorite, and had sacrificed it for his sake.

It was so typical of her, sensing his greater need and deliberately steering him towards it, hoping he would think the discovery was his. She'd tried her best to fool him, bless her, but he'd seen her bootprints beside it, and noticed the lack of shutter noises as she pretended to snap away at it with her camera, too. But of course, he'd never tell her that.

"Thank you," he whispered to her in the darkness, touching his lips to her forehead. In reply she snuggled closer, her hand falling away from the meteorite to rest softly against his shoulder. "Thank you," he said again, but this time his words weren't for the girl molded against his side; they were for the Universe which had, for reasons he would never understand, chosen to give her to him.

© Stuart Atkinson 2002