A Thief in the Night

By Dennis Michael Whelan

In Australia, an elderly couple with an interest in astronomy spots an unexpected comet, soon dubbed Henwood 1. Theres a bit of panic but not much as the comet is expected to miss Earth. Instead, it smashes into the moon and vaporizes. But when it dissolves, it emits a pathogen that travels to Earth and infects the population.

Den is a Viet Nam veteran, changed by what he saw as a sniper and helicopter pilot in the war. As people begin to die around him, he struggles to surviveat any cost. The Australian Parliamentary tries to ensure that a democratic system endures as a Justice Enforcement group secures all available weapons, but theirs is a losing battle as humanity dissolves.

Following the death of his wife, Den searches for his son and remaining family amidst the chaos. Hes an old dog, but he does learn new tricks and, unfortunately, remembers how to kill. Soon, a fanatical vicar steps forward and encourages murder among his acolytes. Who will survive this new world order, or is the Earth and all its inhabitants doomed to extinction?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press AU
• Release date: Jun 7, 2016
• ISBN: 9781504302586

Dennis Michael Whelan

Dennis Michael Whelan is a former member of the Royal Air Force and a private pilot. In his writing, he combines his love of flying with his interest in astronomy and all things military. He utilizes his imagination to create realistic action stories and depict humanity’s response to disaster

Book preview

PROLOGUE

S INCE RECORDED HISTORY people have predicted the End of Days, all religions Christian, Islam, Jewish, Hindu and Buddhism and numerous other faiths and tribes have some idea of an end of days.

As a nominal Christian I’m not the best person to pontificate on the prophecies contained therein, but many believe they are a record of the end of days for the peoples living here on earth; these quotes are some of a number from our Christian Bible but there are many such similar prophecies contained in the written accounts in the various religions that are worshipped on this Earth of ours.

They do vary in degrees and such but they have one key element, the world known to those who live under these creeds will pass away and the world, if it returns, will not return in its present form.

This then is my account of the events that have occurred since the world I’d known from boy hood changed for ever.

The St James Bible says:-

But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up- Peter 3;9-10

And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth the distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring; Men’s hearts failing them for, and for the looking after those things which are coming from on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken-Luke21;25-26

And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nations shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes in divers places. And these are the beginnings of sorrows

And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come

When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place,(who so readeth, let him understand)-Matthew 24;3-15

No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father"

Matthew’s Gospel, Chapter 24, Verse 36, which Christ is quoted as saying.

How do the beasts groan? The herds of cattle are perplexed, because they have no pasture; yea, the flocks of sheep are made desolate. O Lord to thee will I cry: for the fire hath devoured the pastures of the wilderness, and the flame hath burned all the trees of the field. The beasts of the field cry also unto thee: for the rivers of waters are dried up, and the fire hath devoured the pastures of the wilderness- Joel 1; 18-20

CHAPTER 1

I ’M WRITING THIS book as my account of the happenings of the past several years events as I suspect not many are thinking about the long term future, or even if there will really be a future, or if the illness will return and finish the human chapter on Earth once and for all.

So for the generations to come, this then is an account by a survivor.

The end of world’s civilisations and peoples came as, Peter would have it, As a thief in the night" and it was sudden and quick and had nothing at all to do with mankind. Or perhaps, using the careful gender description we would have used such a short time ago, people kind.

But that is long past and those of us who survive think now only of the present day.

I guess it was only a coincidence that the Rev Warlington included the reference to Peter 3,9-10 in his sermon that Good Friday before the world changed so drastically; and I wonder now looking back whether he had some mystical insight.

I’m not a regular church goer but I do have some sort of feeling, but hardly a conviction, just a sort of deep down hope in an afterlife and a world or time when we see the face of our creator and are welcomed into a world of complete understanding and love.

As a Catholic, how funny to say that as I’m no more a Catholic than my dogs if keeping the believes and saying the prayers are concerned because I do none of that, I’m more a pagan in reality So I wonder if it’s more to do with the training or indoctrination we received as young people, but I’ll probably return to that from time to time as this is also something of a mini account of my life before the world changed as much an account of the last years.

Maureen, my wife, is, rather was, a Protestant, but again her faith was nominal as she could as well be a Catholic or follower of Judaism or Islam as the names meant little to her as her belief in a God of love and compassion was very real. Whether such an entity exists is neither here or there to her now that she no longer lives, but I hope there is a someone or something looking after her now as she was a fine and beautiful person and I miss her every day. Strange how she was such a regular church but had so little believe in a power beyond this world we inhabit, yet me such a laisse faire Christian has a conviction of an eternity filled with something of which I have no knowledge at all.

So because I cared little about where we went to church I tagged along with her and had our son brought up in her faith, but he was so unlike me that he had even less time for it than I and no sense of a Creator.

Maureen said That was one hell of sermon. You don’t expect something like that at a time of a feast day celebrating the Resurrection and a new beginning for all who believe.

We were standing outside our church, aptly named, I now think, Holy Trinity as most of those who once lived are now, hopefully, part of it. The church was built in the 1950’s and a pretty imposing place with its tall angular red brick exterior and never fully completed interior. Built at the end of the church building era and constantly in debt or just breaking even and populated, in the main, by the elderly. The various vicars coming and going with the stays getting shorter and shorter as divorce, death and the constant sniping and back biting of the mainly female congregation drove the vicars away. Only really coming alive at the main Christian feast days such as Christmas and Easter and New Year.

Strangely the old and young survivors still celebrate Christmas, but the rest of it has long gone.

We were greeting the various parishioners, all known by Maureen and she unfailing kind and generous chatting away, and me bored shitless putting on a good pleasant face and desperately trying to remember the names. They all seemed to know mine, I hardly able to put a name to the many familiar faces.

I answered as we got in to the car, He’s a strange person to be a priest, being Catholic I could never get the hang of vicar, so austere and removed from the world of his bloody church. Why in God’s name, I was after all the son of an Irish man and had all his sayings burnt into my being, is he so aloof and unconnected with his parish?

I started the car and we drove home and had some hot cross buns and later in the afternoon put on the video of Jesus Christ Super Star and watched it for the umpteenth time as we had done for so many Easter times. The music and the story always strangely moving.

Now looking back I think about that sermon as perhaps he knew something that even he, the sometime prophet, did not know at that time. Perhaps the Creator had given him a message or had a special purpose for him as he and his wife became survivors.

But even then our destinies were joined.

CHAPTER 2

I NOW KNOW THE comet, that was called prosaically enough Henwood 1, was not very large as comets go, in fact a bit of a tiddler really and had never been seen before, at least in the short time we on Earth had been aware of comets and their orbits.

There were a lot of reports in the media about a possible impact with the Earth but some quick calculations by NASA and the US military soon concluded that its orbit would miss the Earth by about 400,000 kilometres, or in the old system about 250,000 miles. So apart from a general interest story rating about a ten line entry in the newspapers, that was about it. One paper ran an article about comets and a thumbnail sketch of the women who had discovered this one.

Because I knew bugger all, or very little, about comets until the actual event I’ll come back to the subject of comets shortly.

Jessie King lived at Gaffney’s Creek about 100 k’s from Melbourne and in a lovely wooded part of Victoria, close to the Eildon Dam. This very old gold mining town had a romantic history, or it was looking back at it, but I bet bloody difficult for those who made the original history. The old original A1 gold mine had been brought back to life and revamped in the modern era about twenty years previously and was still producing gold.

Jessie’s family connection was strong in the area as grandfather and grandmother had been pioneer gold miners. Jessie recounted the story in the newspaper of her mother, as a little girl, coming over the Black Spur hills, close to Healesville in a coach and four at the end of the 19th Century. She married a Henwood in the mid 1920’s.

They had originally had a silver mine lease out at Ravenswood about 40 k’s from Townsville in Queensland but when the silver petered out they had come down for the gold mining in Victoria and originally settled there as the Ballarat gold fields had finished long before. They had always been from mining stock with ancestors from the Cornish tin mines in England. In time she would have two daughters to her husband Frederick Henwood, and in one of those strange turns of fate her daughter’s name, would become part of the history of the world, should the peoples of the world flourish and grow. But time alone would tell.

My wife Maureen had a connection to the family through the King side of the family so the Henwood story was deeply embedded within her and to an extent, as her husband, me. So it was not strange that on a holiday to northern Queensland Maureen felt a desire to explore the now long abandoned old mine and settlement which was now a much diminished small township, but alive with its history.

It was one of those cloudless and blue Queensland days. Just an odd little cloud and no wind and a dry deep centred heat and we had had our lunch in a two story hotel that had seen the best days of Ravenswood, sitting on the veranda and, chatting to other Aussies also having lunch and from a bus tour for senior citizens, I wonder what became of them? We wandered up to the little Museum and the volunteer curator was helpful in looking up documents, so we found the details of the Kings and eventually found the fenced off hole in the ground with old rusting machinery and a sign saying Kings Mine.

Standing in the cemetery, we were always drawn to old cemetery’s, looking at the old memorials we both had a sense of peace and love, the old glass covered white plaster flowers, all colour long drained from them after130 years of Queensland heat and the memorials which spoke of love and loss, young and old. The Muslim grave of a long dead Afghan camel driver or miner, no name just the strange bare and unremarkable grave; what had brought him to this distant place and what was his story, his aspirations.

Why now I wondered, when we once had so much dealing with and respect of and for Afghan’s and their part in opening up our country, were they so reviled in the press of our times.

So Maureen and I stood hand in hand in the absolute quiet and stillness on the hill looking down at the town and the old houses and machinery in the warmth and the light, surrounded by the spirits of all those buried there who bore us only love and peace, and we were at peace and in love too with those long dead people and each other.

Margaret Jessie Henwood, Jessie’s daughter had through winning a number of scholarships entered university in the days when it was a male dominated scene and became a science teacher in one of Melbourne’s prestigious private girls school, where the yearly fees would feed several thousand Afghans, and taught maths and science. She had never married but I sensed when we first met and even now looking at her picture on the wall, and the conversations we had, it was not that she was never asked but more she wanted to be her own person, do her own thing and pursue her own career which involved science and all things celestial. A very attractive person and probably in her mid-50’s she had taken an early retirement, collected an equally interested and bearded and well-heeled male widower called Gordon, purchased a small property at Gaffney’s Creek where they had built a state of the art laboratory complete with astrodome and two large telescopes with electric motors and such, and surrounded by, dogs, cats, sheep and many other animals entered into a very rewarding form of retirement. They felt no need to marry at that late stage in their lives.

Jessie had found one comet but it was very small and unremarkable and as there was some controversy over who had actually seen it first, and as it had a taken her a week to report it, someone else had claimed naming rights and she didn’t pursue it. Just went out most nights for a few hours and checked the digital camera exposure plates, did some star gazing and such and wrote up her notes. It was a comfortable spot air conditioned and well appointed with the two telescopes electric drives keeping them on the designated point and compensating for the earth’s rotation, the sprung hydraulic mounts keeping it completely without bounce. The observatory had cost well over the price for a decent suburban home and worked very well. Gordon had paid for it as a form of very expensive wedding gift, except neither wanted to marry, and by now had a shared interest in all things celestial.

The comet when she first saw it was something out of left field and as she had learnt her lesson from the first one, had reported it after double checking, within a couple of hours. It gave her more pleasure than she had imagined it would have to have Gordon say, Let’s call it Henwood 1, and she in turn promised Gordon the next one and if there were a next one call it Gordon 1.

Comets are, perhaps I should say were, discovered routinely and were named after the person making the discovery and after all the checking has been done to verify it was indeed a comet or asteroid it took the name of the finder. Probably the most famous in recent times being the Shoemaker –Levy 9 comet which had eventually impacted Jupiter in July 1994, the first time an object had been detected by an amateur astronomer that had actually impacted a planet.

Initially the only people interested in the Henwood 1 comet were astronomers being as that comet was quite insignificant and small and not a bit like the regular big ones such as Halley’s comet which come round predictably every 76 years. But about 6 weeks after the discovery the press and media got very interested and involved when NASA accurately predicted Henwood 1’s course and calculated its impact point, then the world got interested big time.

Gordon was in the nicely appointed kitchen making one of his impressive dinner dishes, Gordon did all the cooking, said It was a creative thing to do and he did it very well indeed.

Gordon’s wife had died of a fast moving cancer four years before and whilst it had not been the happiest of marriages it had certainly not been the worst and he had found the depths of his loss more than he could have ever imagined. He immersed himself in his academic world which centred around Australian literature and early aboriginal art and Jessie had come in contact with him during a time when he was giving a lecture on art at her school.

They gravitated together, a bit like the comets I guess gravitate toward the Sun and it had moved on from there. Initially a sharing of common interests and mutual need for companionship had developed into warmth and affection and the decision to live together, take early retirement, travel and then the move to the bush. Well hardly the bush close as it was to the Gaffney Creek township with connected water and power, but a nice place to live and far enough from Melbourne to avoid the urban sprawl but close enough to get to the city in a couple of hours. Being situated in a hollow they had no problems with any of even Gaffney Creeks modest street light glare when carrying out their shared interest in astronomy.

Jessie had picked up the direct telephone line that connected the observatory with the house and dialled. Gordon saw the red light flash and the phone rang. Gordon come on down I think I’ve found something. He picked up on the suppressed excitement, Be right with you. Switching on the big heavy duty flash light with the red lens cover hoping his night vision would be improving by the time he’d covered the 250 metres and walked swiftly along the path with its white edging, everything calculated to make it easier to travel with little light.

Jessie had attached the camera and recorder unit to the telescope and had started recording, the computer generating time and date information direct to the CD unit.

Come and have a look, check the computer screen first, you can have a look through the telescope when you see what you’re looking for. They went to the computer bay carefully screened to ensure the light didn’t upset the night vision and put on the red lensed goggles. They looked at the first screen which was showing the real time heavily magnified image and she moved the cursor arrow to a star. Now just look to the left of the star, and he saw that the star was two stars in reality but the main one appearing to have a slight bulge of light to one side, just a touch, and as stars go a pretty insignificant one, but the magnified image was quite clear.

There were two stars close together. Gordon knew that with the untold billions of stars in the universe some were inevitably going to appear close together but they could be separated by hundreds if not thousands of light years, the magnitude and size of the stars skewing the observation to make it appear they were as one. He knew Jessie knew something he didn’t so he held his tongue; he could tell she was just about ready to burst with excitement. Now come to the time lapse computer screen. She typed in the coordinates then ran it back a couple of days and the hit Fast Forward Run, and there it was a small half circle of light that appeared from behind the right of the star and gradually merged then appeared as a bulge of light on the left.

He looked at her, her eyes reflecting the light, put his arms round her and gently kissed her. Congratulations Jessie, you’ve found your comet. There could be no doubt about it, the small moving light against the fixed star was moving through space. He knew she would have already checked all the known comets and asteroid orbits so this was her very own Henwood 1 comet. The size, speed and orbit were beyond their ability to calculate at that time, but NASA and all the main stream observatory’s around the world would include it in the list of new and old known objects that continually move around our universe. Whilst it was significant to Jessie and Gordon, to the rest of the world it was no big deal, in time they would get around to checking its orbit and try to ascertain its size but it would have to wait until someone had the time to carry out the calculations.

Of course when they did eventually get around to it, it was a very big deal in deed.

CHAPTER 3

A S HENWOOD 1 moved closer to the Sun the high powered Hubble telescope was brought to bear and this with Earth based radar confirmed it was shaped a bit like a peanut about 8 kilometres long with a diameter of 3 kilometres and covered with small impact craters and it weighed in at around ten billion Imperial tons.

Unlike popular mythology it was coloured an overall black and as it neared our sun its surface started to change as the nucleus frozen to the hardness of steel by the – 200C coldness of space was heated by the warmth of the sun and some of the heated ice turned to a gas and jetted into space taking with it some of the surface dust.

Comets are remnants from the formation of our solar system over 4.6 billion years ago and probably the least changed objects in space and there are untold thousands of them in all sizes located in the Kuiper Belt and trillions in the Oort Cloud.

Each comet has a solid centre called a nucleus and this is comprised of ice, rock and frozen gases and various elements and the theory being that all the water on earth originated from impacts with comets during our formation. Henwood 1 probably consisted of 9 billion tons of water ice, 800 million tons of carbon dioxide (dry ice), 140 million tons of carbonaceous particles, 50 million tons of ammonia ice, 9 million tons of silicate sand and various other materials organic, sodium, potassium, calcium, iron, copper, trace elements and the thing that probably helped kill most of us, apart from the virus, if virus it was, being iridium

As it heats with each pass around the Sun it loses some of this material until finally all that is left is the small metallic centre and then I guess it becomes an asteroid.

Henwood 1 was on its first orbit around our Sun for the first time and the first time seen in living memory for those on Earth. It may well have passed many times before but being small the coma may not have been very visible to those on Earth and of course the orbit could have been highly individualistic and irregular and passing so far away that it was invisible but we will never know.

Comets gather in two main areas but there may be others and the thinking being, when people had the time and inclination to think, that they were the building blocks of all life that developed in our oceans. I read every thing I could find on them, wanting to know the how and the why of the comet that had so changed the world I had known and that had taken so much from me.

There are two main types of comets; those with parabolic orbits and those with periodic orbits which take the form of an eccentric ellipse and they probably originate from either the Kuiper Belt or Oort Cloud.

Why I wonder do I have this need to record, to explain, to put it all on paper, who will read it and will there be anyone able to read it, but record I must just as once I did in the first days I kept my diaries when young and in England. How long did that period last, I guess it wasn’t long and perhaps they were destroyed by my father or brother when I left for Australia.

Probably Dad, as I recall it wasn’t too complimentary about him, or then my brother John could have taken it, he kept all my stuff, hoarded it all away with all the old school reports, newspapers and mouldering old cars, and never giving anything back. But I did find him when I eventually got back to England. Just after the thaw that allowed access to the southern and so cold England. I drove down past Staines and onto the M4 and found the house, roof collapsed the contents rotten and water logged and his remains in his bed like countless millions of others. I buried him alongside Mum and Dad’s grave in Christchurch Cemetery.

Then there were those other diaries I kept in the 80’s, more detailed, and more mundane but again a need to record just about everything I did and they’re close by as I write but never read, why never read. I just have to take one out of the plastic bag and start, but I know it will seem unreal just like the celebration of the turn of the century when we left the 20th Cent and entered the 21st and I prepared the Time Capsule, seems like forever but only some twenty five years ago.

We had the invitation from Gavin and Megan to be with them for the celebrations and drove down to Merrick’s on that warm and lovely day on the 30th December 1999, and pulled into the driveway of their country retreat and pulled up under the row of very old pines. I looked up at the trees probably 100 years old and battered and bruised by the wind that blew up from the bay, broken branches some places very thread bare other parts well covered in pine needles and cones, probably a dozen or so. I said to Maureen Wonder how long before this lot comes down and Maureen said Shush, you don’t want them to hear you.

But I persisted, The trees don’t fit the image.

Maureen gave me grin and we walked to the front door.

Gavin had never known anything but affluence; borne into a wealthy family and he had inherited, with his brother, all the hotels and the properties so money came easily to him. With the security that money gives and the best schooling money could buy he had greatly increased the company wealth and power and with the advent of the poker machines this had increased the wealth many times. He had the sense of complete assurance and infallibility such wealth imparts and I guess I envied his ability to travel, buy boats and cars and not give it a second thought.

I had played golf with him a couple of times but being a natural athlete, Captain of both his School and University football and Cricket teams in his final years and head prefect at the school I struggled to keep up. But he was kind when I did well on a hole, but really he couldn’t give a shit.

Megan had been both lucky and unlucky with Gavin. She was lucky that he was around when her marriage failed and lucky he was so wealthy but unlucky in that they weren’t really suited. Somehow she always seemed to find fault even though I could never see the problem and she had left her poor family behind a very long time ago.

Gavin had commanded and I had obeyed, Den, I think we should make a time capsule and you’re good with your hands, bring it down when you come down for the New Year party. I had agreed because not only did I like making things but I also knew I was the only one who could make a half decent capsule. Sure happy to do so but you’re all going to have to give me stuff to go in it, predictions for the future, potted histories of your lives, photos and such.

So the dozen or so people coming to the celebrations got stuff together and gave it to me or I picked it up a few days early and I built the capsule. The capsule consisted of a large Neverfail water bottle with the spout cut off and a plate substituted and when I had loaded it up with all the stuff, the newspapers, light bulb, Vegemite and wine amongst all the other items. I sealed it all up wrapped it in plastic and we buried it in front of the cottage on New Year’s Day, planted a pear tree over it and put the concrete plaque I had made in position and went home.

Gavin brought the capsule back to me about five years later. Sorry Den the builder hit it with his front end loader when we were demolishing the cottage and I think water got in. Turned out the country cottage bought because it was a country cottage didn’t suit so it was flattened and a lovely modern house was built, the pines came down and a new garden went in. I said that was OK, easily fixed and I took it home. Dried the contents made another capsule and put more stuff in that I had written and photographs of our home, fibre glassed the lot and kept it at my home.

Now why is that so important to me, but it is, and I keep it with me in the house and when I see it from time to time I feel the loss of them, my wife and family like a hard and bitter rock deep inside.

These flashbacks happen all the time and more frequently as time goes by. Yes I survived but I don’t think I escaped.

Getting back to the comet. Most of comets we see come from the Kuiper Belt which contains, it was suspected, hundreds of millions of comets in sizes from very small to those observed from earth up to 100 to 300 kilometres diameter in size. All circling the Sun within an ecliptic orbit at about 30 to 100 AU’s(Astronomical Unit) from the Sun, with an AU being roughly the distance from the Earth to the Sun or 93 million miles.

The Oort Cloud is suspected of containing trillions of comets and is 50,000 to 100,000 astronomical units away from the Sun.

Few of the comets coming from the Oort Cloud have short orbit periods with many in the tens of million years with most of the planets circling the Earth coming from the Kuiper Belt and having orbits around the Sun of between four years to hundreds of years.

Just like the old western movies when the cavalry first see’s the Indians up on the ridge line, and they outnumber the troopers ten to one, it had that kind of reaction when finally it came into view for the Earth bound astronomers coming as it did from behind the Sun.

It gave the appearance of being very close to the Sun and as most of its inbound path was hidden from direct observation from Earth due to the immense glare its first appearance was sudden and confronting.

Due to its very real closeness to the Sun the coma and tail was very large for such a small comet with the tail stretching away from the Sun and likely close to 100 million kilometres long. It may have had a very long orbital period which could have been from thousands to millions of years and may well have last passed the Earth before modern man’s long journey began.

It was very bright when Jessie first saw it and was moving very fast and this very speed combined to ensure that although it passed as close to the Sun it escaped being pulled in by the immense gravitation and yet far enough away to avoid disintegration. At its apogee or furthest distance from the Sun the Henwood 1’s orbital speed had dropped to perhaps as low as 1000km/hr but the acceleration had been slow and constant over the millenniums since last it had passed our way and now as it passed the Sun the speed was at its maximum of around 1.6 million km/hr.

NASA and the world were only a very short time behind Jessie in observing Henwood 1 and the computer calculations were fast and with an impact accuracy of plus or minus 400,000 kilometres which would vary slightly with the combined earth and moon gravitational effects as it approached.

The press and media were just a whisker behind them and it didn’t take long to work out that Henwood 1 was about 93 days away from a very fast flypast and that the moon was roughly 382500 kilometres from Earth at its closest point and 405000 at its furthest and would be at its half-moon phase so it would be a tossup between which of the two it impacted, the moon or us!

The world panicked and the stock market collapsed.

CHAPTER 4

I THINK OF THAT time and it seems so unreal, like a dream and sometimes I don’t know if the present is a dream or that previous world was the reality but I can distinctly remember the first time I heard about the comet.

Maureen had just checked her blood sugar levels and was writing the results in her book and I was cooking as I did most of the time, not that she was a bad cook, but I just enjoyed it and found it interesting. She’d been diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes about three years before and took it very personally as though she’d committed some form of crime.

I used to say Don’t take it so much to heart its well controlled and it’s not your fault, but it never helped. It was 6 PM and we’d turned on Channel 9, this being our usual pattern if we were in. Channel 9 until 6.30 then SBS until 7.00, followed by ABC 1 until 8 PM. Not always watching but a background noise and we’d have our meal on trays in front of the TV like most of the country’s population I would suspect.

The announcers said something about breaking news and pretty much the whole half hour was given over to the comet and we both felt fear as the implications were that there would be a catastrophic impact on our Earth with unimaginable consequences.

When Henwood 1 had first been discovered it transpired it had been about three months from passing the Sun and six months from Earth and getting close to its maximum speed had started to emit its distinctive coma and tail, but being so small, in relation to other comets, and with the tail pointing directly away from the sun it was not very pronounced. However the brightness did increase as it neared the Sun and became more visible, although initially you had to know where to look in night sky.

The comet was approaching Earth exactly in a parallel orbit to those of the planets so it tended to appear stationary over time and as its course toward the Sun was direct, and the Earth was moving around the Sun in an anticlockwise direction when observed from the Earth it appeared to be moving gradually toward the Sun until it finally disappeared from sight completely.

As the Earth moved in its regular 365 day orbit around the sun so did the moon continue its regular monthly clockwise orbit around the Earth and this was to have a major influence to the outcome.

When Henwood 1 reappeared it was still not possible to view as the Sun’s glare prevented this and it was far too small anyway but NASA was tracking it by radar and it appeared on time exactly as the computers had predicted and as the days passed, and the Earth continued its rotation, it gradually became more visible as the tail was now extending directly away from the Sun.

It was now at its maximum speed and had passed the Sun but because of its extremely close orbit it was never easy to see except with the sophisticated equipment of the various world organisation, the principle one being NASA, so any pronouncements and computer animations were of great interest to the world as a whole.

The computer calculations from all the various world bodies were finally in accord and the predictions were quite clear Henwood 1 was not going to hit the Earth though it would be extremely close, but would impact the moon, probably as close as anything had been in modern times and since such data had been available, but that was good enough and the world’s population gave a collective sigh of relief.

The plans for an attempt to hit the comet with a modified rocket carrying a nuclear payload in an attempt to deflect its path were shelved, and the stock market started to regain its losses.

Henwood 1 it was decided was probably on its last journey around the solar system and the next time it came around whether in a few hundred or thousands of years in the future it would impact the Sun where it would make no difference at all.

However on this pass it would either narrowly pass the Moon on its dark side, hit it, or narrowly pass between it and the Earth. It didn’t matter much which happened as the scientific establishments welcomed the chance to study a comet at such a close proximity.

Since the attempt by NASA in October 2009 to impact the Moon with the LCROSS (Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite) had not been the success they had expected the impact of a really large object would have generated a lot of interest. The Rosetta comet lander being something of a disappointment when it finally landed on the comet in 2014 due to its landing in a crater and loss of sunlight causing loss of radio contact.

After a month or so following its reappearance the various organisations had been evaluating Henwood 1’s orbit continually and the final assessment was a 95% probability of a lunar impact point and probably close to the division between the light and dark side and toward the bottom of the moon as viewed from Earth.

We heard the news on the radio as a news flash and then of course over the course of the day and weeks it was on all the media until it lost immediate interest but every day there were regular updates so it was never far from consciousness.

Maureen heard the news, said nothing and walked into the garden. I followed and found her sitting on the chair in the midst of our hydrangea garden, a small area that had once been a pond but with climate change and lack of water I’d filled it in so the plants stayed moist and they grew well even during the summer. She was crying softly with relief I just thought through all the last three months we would all die, and all our family and friends would die as well, it just doesn’t seem possible life will carry on as before.

We held each other for a long time.

About a month after the discovery that the comet was probably going to hit the moon I got a call from Canberra from my friend Jim.

The phone rang and I answered it. Den, its Jim. Well he didn’t have to tell me that I knew his English voice as well as I knew Maureen’s. How have you been? I’m down for an ADF conference and it would be nice to catch up, how’s Maureen’s health holding up?

I replied, Any time anywhere all ways good to be with you, and Maureen’s doing OK and she can tell you herself when we meet. So what’s the conference about?

Jim said Just routine nothing special, glad to hear Maureen’s well you never can tell at our age when things can strike you down, remember that apple in the eye that stuffed up my health for a while back when we were kids in UK?

Something inside me leapt, literally leapt, as he mentioned that incident as I had almost forgotten the sentence we had agreed long ago when we were just boys that would indicate in any conversation between us, any mention of that particular incident, the apple in the eye, would indicate that there was an imminent problem and that it would only ever be discussed in private and face to face. Only the two of us knew what this was all about.

He had decided to drive down by himself. As a Brigadier he could have had an ADF car and driver but this time he decided to use his own car and call into the army camp at Puckapunyal on the way to discuss security matters with the top brass. He’d claim for expenses of course and he’d give me a call when he arrived and following the conference and we’d catch up.

I guess I had better explain my connection to Jim.

Jim Alexander was my most trusted friend from the time we were school kids in England. We had met I guess at age around twelve or so when we had both bombed out of the Eleven Plus exam which all British kids attempted at the age of eleven and which gave the top small percentage a Grammar School education or the rest of us a Secondary Modern School education. I didn’t know what the pass mark for the better education had been but both of us missed out. At the time I had only a slight pang but I regretted it later. So we both ended up at Ashley Secondary Modern School, a comparatively new school by English standards down south in Hampshire and we both lived in the small coastal town of Highcliffe on Sea.

Jim was about six months younger than me and we spent most of our time together with our other mates doing all the things that boys do, a time that now seems so distant and unreal I sometimes wake wondering if I’m now in a dream.

Later perhaps I may refer back to those English days but right now I just want to get my main impressions down on paper as the things I used to take for granted, such as living a long life and computer discs lasting forever are clearly starting to fail.

After our school days we both started to work, no skills and no certificates, come fifteen and a half you were on your own and not the time to play and muck around as you did when kids.

Back in those, what appear to me now, halcyon days if you ignore poverty, lousy clothing and not a huge amount to eat, we used to go fishing a lot down to the Mudeford jetty and try for the mullet or bass that cruised up and down the groyne or poaching in the river Avon for perch or trout.

It was when coming home on our bikes the apple came out of the high bank on our right, thrown by some little bugger similar to ourselves and hit Jim in the eye and knocked him out momentarily. I tried to find the prick but he’d gone so I returned to Jim and got him on his bike and somehow got him home where I got the blame as his mother and father thought of me as a trouble maker, but this time it wasn’t my fault at all. But the sight of Jim looking at me with one blood red eye stays with me to this day, and that blood red eye eventually recovered but leaving Jim with some impairment that wrecked his dreams of going into the English armed forces.

My parents decided that Australia offered more opportunities and decided to migrate and that sounded great to me so the whole family got on the Sitmar Shipping Company ship Fairsky and we ended in Australia with not a lot of money but a determination to make a go of it. I was seventeen.

Jim came to Australia in the early 1960’s by himself and decided that he would pursue his ambition of joining the Army and applied for the Australian Army and with a little bit of luck and a fairly relaxed doctor at his medical examination and a good memory for the standard eye test got through the medical. He joined as a regular soldier and selected artillery as his main preference and as this was just before the Vietnam War and they were trying hard to recruit, and as he was a volunteer, they gave him what he wanted. He was a good creative soldier and moving around a lot so we lost contact to some extent. Being a very intelligent guy when he finished his basic training he applied to become an artillery officer and was commissioned around the mid-1963. Two years later the Vietnam War commenced and he never looked back.

Sent to Vietnam with the 103rd Medium Battery 1st Field Regiment equipped with the newly acquired 105mm howitzers he achieved fast promotion and at the end of the Vietnam War he came back to Australia with the rank of Captain and was invited to leave artillery and join intelligence which he did, and as he was intelligent and with a good analytical mind his rise was assured.

My time in the Australian Army was not by my choice but from the fact my number came out of the barrel and I became part of the Australian contingent to Vietnam. I’ll explain that part of my life later.

We agreed on the time and he came over. Maureen had arranged to cook a meal and as it was Friday he said he’d stay over until Sunday morning and then drive back to Sydney. Jim was a lousy golfer but he suggested a game which was again a bit odd as we rarely played together. Said we could talk whilst we played the round so I made sure my old sets were nice and clean and ready for next day.

We made sure the flat was OK as it hadn’t been used for a while and Maureen cooked a nice meal of lasagne and salad and we made fairly general conversation, mainly about our families and kids, the comet and the present political situation but I could tell there was more to the visit and he’d tell me next day.

Jim had often given me information on the armed forces as his role in intelligence covered all the services but nothing that could be construed as breaching any of the requirements of the Official Secrecy Act which we had both signed when we first joined the army. But I knew a hell of a lot more than most people and as the surveillance systems improved Jim had kept me up to date on a lot of the modern methods. I guess a lot could have been deduced or probably knowledge acquired, but hearing just how pervasive the modern methods were caused me some uneasiness over the years.

We drove over to the RACV Country Club and paid for a round and left our clubs at the Pro Shop and went into the lounge area and sat in a pair of leather chairs close to the windows but below any line of sight from the ground to us and Jim did most of the talking.

I said What’s up Jim.

He gave me that kind of lop sided smile and I could see that slight scar over his right eye

I see the eye is looking good.

He replied I’m glad you remembered and then he started talking." Look I’m sorry for all the James Bond stuff but you really have no idea just how good modern interception techniques are, we can hear conversations from hundreds of metres and through glass and the bugging devices are just so small and sophisticated.

See my lapel badge, pointing to his RSL badge, I could have a bug mounted in that complete with video camera and you’d never know and it could be transmitting to Canberra from a transmitter in my car, or briefcase or the golf clubs. Forget about picking it up on a scanner as our systems pick any scan frequency up, copy it instantly and feed it back and it would indicate that you’re not bugged. So I don’t even know if I’m bugged, none of us know. It’s like Orwell’s 1984 only more so.

He paused Den, once I used to know who gets all the information, and to some extent that’s still holds good, but we are part of a very large bureaucratic system so each part probably spies on everybody else. I used to enjoy all that shit and having information but after a long time in the game you get to not want to know anything more. We’ve got files on every person in Australia, you, me the PM and the Defence Minister and anything that could be of interest gets recorded. Most people are never affected but if you’ve got information that might compromise someone in authority then that’s good ammunition if push comes to shove some day and a politician starts to get too nosey. Just a discreet leak and you’d be surprised how amenable people become.

We ordered sandwiches and a couple of beers and he started to explain the current situation which followed along these lines.

Evidently when NASA first got the data on the Henwood 1’s orbit it had not been that clear cut that the information they had then would hold good once the comet had moved past the sun and was outward bound again as it would then come very much under the influence of both the earth and moons gravitational pull and from a distance of 93 million miles it would take very little error to ensure it hit either objects.

There had been a very secret meeting of all the major scientific organisations to aggregate the data and come up with a likely scenario and even with all the information the best they could come up with was a 50/50 chance of it missing the earth. The various Governments then decided to allay fears in the short term by announcing in a collective communication that the comet would miss the earth, this would save a run on banks and sell off of on the stock market, food hoarding and an enormous world panic. This also would buy time to organise a world response in the event the worst happened.

At the same time all information was restricted and all media outlets were placed under Government orders to only print or transmit officially sanctioned information. Any persons not abiding by this requirement were dealt with by the various world security organisations.

And if any one transgressed they were dealt with ruthlessly.

Den I’m not going to mention names but you know there have been a number of media people who have died in accidents or disappeared here in Australia and elsewhere, well use your imagination.

Later most of the western world established protocols that covered rationing of fuel, water food and essential services and the use of armed forces to ensure law and order. The worlds cities would be sealed off so people could not leave in large numbers and essentially the world’s population would come under a arbitrary and military dictatorship until the full impact of the event could be analysed.

All of this occurring without the knowledge of the populations.

I found all of this news deeply disturbing but as Jim had sworn me to secrecy there was nothing I could do or say to any one and of course our school boy oath ensured my silence.

Jim had suggested to that I very discreetly stockpile food, fuel, water and buy some generators and medical supplies and anything else I might need as you could never tell what might happen.

The weekend passed and as he unlocked the car he went to the boot and took out wrapped box.

This is for you and with my thanks for a lovely meal and for looking after me so well, Den make sure you open it inside when I’m gone.

We shook hands Keep well Jim and I’ll see you next time.

He smiled and said I have the feeling I’m going to be bloody busy. I should have taken retirement when it became due.

I knew that he had been asked to extend his service past his retirement date as the two most likely people to replace him had both died one from a very nasty and aggressive cancer and the other in a helicopter crash somewhere overseas on a military trip.

He got in his car and drove off down our long drive and gave me a wave as he turned the corner.

I went into the garage and I knew by the weight of the box this could be interesting especially as we never exchanged gifts, we found it unnecessary, and took