ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Peter Donovan was born in the beautiful and historic City of Bath, England. After moving around the United Kingdom, he finally emigrated with his wife to Melbourne, Australia in 2005. 

Peter has always been interested in science, both fact and fiction. From an early age he remembers pulling things to pieces and trying to improve them; only later in life learning how things went back together again! Joanne, Peter’s wife of ten years, has listened to many weird and wonderful ideas from Peter that he thought would make a good story. Eventually her comment, “For Christ’s sake stop talking about it and write it!” gave Peter the nudge he needed to actualise his thoughts.  

Not knowing where to start, Peter embraced the challenge:

“Even writing a short biography at thirty-five isn’t easy, when you’ve just started living and there is so much of this world and others still to see.” 

Peter has worked in many areas from Aircraft Engineer to working in power stations. 

2012 Nibiru Rising is his first published book.

ONE 

October 2010

The road from Sydney to the Parkes Observatory was a long, straight, monotonous highway with few cars and even fewer towns en-route. The metropolis of the western Sydney suburbs was already one-hundred kilometres behind Rachael, who was bored. At least the road had a sealed surface, many of these roads were just dirt tracks that would have slowed her progress considerably, and with the light rain that had set in that morning, would have made driving a slippery and dirty affair. Either side of the highway stretched open plains, a patchwork of fields with colours ranging from light green through to burnt orange depending on the sun’s position behind the clouds.

She had hired a new hybrid four-wheel drive from Sydney Airport and had set off, hoping to stop for lunch along the way. But two hours in, she was between towns and getting hungry.

Rachael had found out two days before, that she had been given the opportunity to use the observatory and had been like a kid in a sweetshop ever since. The seven day secondment from Mount Pleasant Observatory, near Hobart, would be a fantastic opportunity for her and any chance to use Parkes sixty-four metre radio telescope was one that she would not pass up for the world.

The observatory had been made famous throughout the world when the Apollo 11 moon landing pictures were relayed via ‘the dish’, as it was affectionately known, back to NASA forty-one years before. It was certainly not the newest piece of equipment that Rachael could use to look at the heavens, but it was a historic piece, which made the trip worthwhile.

Rachael had been working in Tasmania for almost a year. A city girl, from Melbourne originally, she had become used to the green undulating landscape surrounding Hobart, a much more compact vision, trees and houses feeling close by, cosseted in valleys, with hedgerows, streams and small forests all visible with a turn of the head. Now as she drove, she had to strain her eyes to adjust to the vast scale, trying to focus on what looked like a barn in the distance, the only thing in her whole field of vision.

At twenty-six she was still very young in the field of astronomy, with most of her colleagues being many years older – and they would say – many years wiser, than Rachael. But she kept telling herself, they all started somewhere; they all had to learn from someone. She had studied hard and sacrificed her early twenties to education, which she felt was worthwhile and would give her the edge over other would-be astronomers of a similar age.

After stopping for a late lunch in Bathurst, she continued along the western highway. The sun had finally won the battle with the rain clouds and the bitumen surface was turning from black to grey as it dried. She searched her handbag, with her free hand, for her new sunglasses that she had bought at the airport. She had decided whilst trying them on that they made her look older, more business-like, and she hoped they would help make a better first impression on arrival.

She looked young for her age, which she considered a further drawback, in a field filled with knowledgeable old-timers, so she always wore a suit, nothing designer – she couldn’t afford such luxuries, but she thought it complemented her shoulder-length dark hair and flat soled shoes, which were at least, practical and comfortable.

Her mother had told her once she was not a pretty girl, but she could be described as ‘striking’ with very angular features and sharp light blue eyes.

She plugged her phone into the stereo dock of the car and scrolled through her music. Only another couple of hours of straight-line boredom until I arrive at Parkes, she thought, as the excitement returned and she focused on the horizon, impatient as usual.

At the Parkes Observatory, Daniel had been running tests all afternoon.

Daniel was getting annoyed. “It just won’t do what I tell it to do. It’s too bloody old!” Daniel said to Jack, the head researcher at Parkes.

“I understand that it’s old, but having a go at me won’t fix the mechanism, have you tried physically moving it?”

“That’s the first thing I tried, and you know what’s making it worse?” snapped Daniel, not waiting for Jack to reply. “You standing over me! Now piss off or it’ll take even longer.”

“Alright, I was only trying to help.” Jack turned on his heels and walked out of the cupboard where Daniel continued working.

Daniel was the technician responsible for making sure things worked at the Parkes Observatory. Recently there had been an overhaul of the computer system that controlled the dish’s movements and linked it to the targeting computer. The age of Parkes made implementing any new systems a nightmare, as everything had to have a box to translate the new computer code to the old computer code, enabling the two to talk to each other. At that moment, there was a lot getting lost in translation. The frustrating part for Daniel was that only that morning he had the whole system working, before he tried to load some software updates. Now he felt like he was back at square one.

Rachael could see the dish from several kilometres away, rising up from the flat landscape like a giant artificial sunflower twenty storeys high. One thing she had discovered from previous visits to other observatories was she never needed to ask for directions, and she hadn’t even bothered using the sat-nav on her phone.

The last few kilometres became trickier to drive as she spent more time looking at the approaching dish rather than concentrating on the road, and almost missed the turnoff for the complex completely. Luckily the road was devoid of other cars as Rachael slammed on the brakes, locking them up, before screeching to a halt just past the junction and leaving a tell-tale set of black tyre marks on the road.

Rachael checked the road was clear, before reversing the car back up the road slightly and swinging around onto the entry road to the complex. She carefully drove up to the main set of buildings and parked. Her heart was racing, maybe from the shock of braking so hard, or possibly from the excitement, she wasn’t sure. It was Jack who came out to meet her.

As Rachael watched Jack striding towards her, her first impression was that he was the archetypal scientist, late forties and not married, judging by his drab clothes, with a dated hairstyle and unkempt facial hair. She noticed that his shoes looked older than him.

“Hello, I’m Jack Detton, Facilities Manager and Chief Scientist of Parkes Observatory. It’s nice to meet you,” he said, in a well practiced manner.

“Rachael Marks. Thanks for inviting me.”

“Please follow me, Miss Marks. I’ll show you to the guest facilities we have here at Parkes. It’s not much, but the beds are comfortable, so I’ve been told. It’s this way.” He indicated towards a metal hut.

The whole facility looked temporary, with most of the buildings being prefabricated and set out around the base of the dish. For a place that had existed for so long, she had expected something else, but being so far from anywhere, the design shouldn’t have been surprising. The only brick structure was the round base of the dish itself, looking like the base of a lighthouse, with windows gazing out all around.

The interior of the outbuilding was small, with a common area and several small separate bedrooms leading off, all the furniture was in need of cleaning or replacing. Jack noticed the look on Rachael’s face.

“As I said, it’s not much, we use this all the time so it’s well worn, but we keep the visitor accommodation in a healthier condition.” He gestured towards a small neat room with a bed, wardrobe and desk. “Just enough room to swing a cat,” he said jokingly, trying to lighten the situation.

“It’ll be fine, thanks.” Rachael was used to small living spaces. Back in Hobart, the room that she rented next to the observatory was not much bigger. With all her books and charts in residence, fitting a cat in as well would have been a struggle.

“Would you like a tour of the facility?” Jack asked.

“I would love one,” replied Rachael, noticing the butterflies in her stomach.

Jack took Rachael on the standard tour, which didn’t take long. Apart from the dish and outbuildings, there wasn’t much else to see other than a few trees surrounding the complex.

They finally entered the control room, which really only consisted now of a row of computer terminals. Some of the original 1960’s switching panels and chart recorders were still situated on one wall, but looked alien next to the new flat-panel screens. There was a table in one corner, stained with coffee rings, and surrounded by well worn chairs. Most of the wall space was covered in charts, rosters and artificially coloured images that the dish had received over the years. The look of the room was one that had evolved over time, rather than being deliberately planned. Daniel could be heard behind the old panels swearing loudly at the uncooperative instruments.

Jack coughed loudly. “We have a guest, Daniel.”

There was a thud from behind the panel, which Rachael thought sounded suspiciously like Daniel’s head hitting the underside of a cabinet, then he appeared at the doorway, covered in sweat and rubbing the top of his head.

The sight of Daniel was a shock to Rachael. In a place like this, most of the employees were old, fat, bald or a mixture of the three. Daniel was about thirty, well built, with blonde hair. But the first thing she noticed was his piercing blue eyes.

“Hi,” he said, wiping his hands on an old cloth. “I’m Daniel, and you are?”

“Oh,” she said, finding her voice again. “Rachael, pleased to meet you.”

As she said this, she could feel her face flushing. This is ridiculous, she thought. I’m acting like a schoolgirl – stop it!

Daniel had already started explaining to her about his job and she struggled to catch up with what he was saying.

“…so I’m afraid you won’t be able to use the telescope until I’ve at least run some more tests. It will probably be a few hours.”

As Rachael focussed, the butterflies started to dissolve – she was hoping to at least get a couple of hours in that day.

Jack was eager to get going. “Is it okay to leave you for a bit? I have a lot of work to complete.”

Rachael had almost forgotten he was still standing there. “Can I hang around here for a while?” she asked Jack.

“Of course. You don’t mind chaperoning our guest, do you?” he said to Daniel, sounding more like an order than a request.

“No worries,” replied Daniel.

They both watched Jack leave the room, before Daniel visibly relaxed slightly.

“What tests are you running?” Rachael asked Daniel, after a few seconds of silence.

“We’ve just upgraded our tracking system software, which links the Internet to our main system – so people can log in and watch what we see. The problem is, as with any new software, it wants to upgrade itself as soon as it’s finished loading the original program. But those upgrades stopped the dish motors working, for a reason I’m still unsure of.”

“But it’s working now?”

“Yes, but the whole system requires recalibrating again,” said Daniel. “We let the computer pick known stars and then it rotates the dish to that position, before matching the readings with our previous readings on file. If they are the same, the calibration usually only takes a few hours, if not I’ll be here half the night realigning things.”

Rachael knew all this already, but she let Daniel explain anyway.

Daniel sat down at one of the computer terminals and began the calibration program. A siren sounded outside the window, causing Rachael to jump, which was followed by a slow rumbling like distant thunder directly above her head, as the dish slowly started to move. The dish’s activity brought telemetry onto the screen in front of her, which until now had displayed a screensaver with the words ‘May the force be with you’ bouncing from one side to the other. The information was familiar to Rachael as background noise that was continually received from space by the telescope and was displayed as jagged lines on the computer screen like saw teeth. As the dish reached its first set of coordinates there was a spike on the screen, the siren stopped and the dish paused its slow rotation while the computer compared this data spike to its known values. A quiet ping was emitted from the computer and the dish began to slowly move once more, joined by its siren companion.

“It’s great to see all this working,” said Rachael.

“Yeh, keeping it working is the hard part,” replied Daniel. “I spend too much time working on the software and not enough time on the dish itself now. Anyway, while this does its thing, do you want to get something to eat? I’m starving.”

In all the excitement, Rachael had not realised how late it was, the sun had sunk low in the sky and was shining through the window casting dark shadows on the now orange wall behind them. They left the control room and headed to the accommodation block. Most of the staff had either gone for the night or were away on days off, leaving only Jack, Daniel, Rachael and a sleeping security guard on the complex.

“We have a selection of the finest quality frozen ready meals in the southern hemisphere. The local town makes a batch and drops them off once a week,” said Daniel.

“So, you live here then?” asked Rachael.

“Only when I’m on shift – one week on, one week off. Luckily for you I started yesterday, so you will have the pleasure of my company all week,” Daniel said, with a cheeky grin.

Halfway through their gourmet frozen lamb, the siren stopped for the third time. They had gotten used to the background noise and the stark contrast of the silence made them pause in their conversation to listen. Seconds passed and the silence continued.

“Does that mean it’s finished?” asked Rachael quietly.

“That wasn’t nearly enough time to complete the test. It means it’s probably gone wrong again, I’d better have a look.”

They quickly finished their food and went back to the control room where Jack was sitting in front of the screens waiting for them.

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