The following short story was published in Babel Magazine in 2001. As soon as it was published, it became apparent to me that I had struck a raw nerve somewhere. My computer received debilitating hits from sources armed with the technology to bypass a military level firewall. It didn’t stop there, as readers familiar with my work may well know.

The story, “After Blue Star” was written superficially to entertain. Discerning readers got the real message. There actually was an incoming comet; the Hopi did predict the coming of the Blue Star; the media would blackout all information until the last.

So, why am I resurrecting an old story? I’ll tell you why. I want you to read this story again, and then consider the following additional facts.

Firstly, the are three comets currently visible to the naked eye from the Southern hemisphere. They are Comet 2001 Q4 NEAT, Comet 2002 T7 LINEAR and Comet Bradfield. Comets NEAT and LINEAR can both bee seen in the same quadrant of sky shortly after sunset. I saw them last night (19 May, 2004) from my location in the mid-north of South Australia.

The media has said absolutely nothing about this spectacular sight. In years gone by, the arrival of even a single comet brought weeks of publicity in the daily newspapers. Travel providers and telescope suppliers had a circus. Now we have not one, but two comets, clearly visible, once you have escaped from the pollution of city lights. Most of Outback Australia can see these comets on a clear night. But it’s nearly Winter, the evenings are icy cold and who’s going to be out there looking at the sky when they can be warm inside? Especially when they don’t know it’s there. Especially when there is so much else to worry about.

Secondly, there is an extraordinary amount of activity going on in Antarctica, the caves of Mexico and beneath Basra in Iraq. (Not to be confused with the war)

The other fact I want you to consider is this. Comet LINEAR doesn’t look like a regular comet. To the naked eye it looks a bit like a blur. Your eyes just can’t quite focus on it. Then you look at it through a pair of 7 X 50 binoculars. When I saw it last night, everything fell into place.

For the past year I have been trying to make sense of the seemingly senseless. The Iraq fiasco, the economic roller coasters, SARS, terrorism, sex scandals. None of it made any sense, unless you view this confusion as a diversionary construct. Simply, it was all designed to distract us from something else.

Last night I saw with my own eyes Comet LINEAR. It appears to have no tail, but is more like a fuzzy bright ball. A bright BLUE ball. Last night, I saw the Blue Star.

Please take the time to read the following story.

AFTER BLUE STAR

Kelly had never known that heat could be so hot. Summers were never like this before. At least, they never felt like this. Taking shelter from the midday sun beneath the canopy of a ghost gum, the thought occurred to Kelly, as it had so many times lately, that she might not survive. Even lasting this long had been due to luck, rather than skill. Luck that she had chosen that fifteen-day “Outback Odyssey” tour instead of jetting off to Thailand with Narelle. Poor Narelle. Was it only seven months ago?

Seemed like forever but Kelly remembered each moment with the frightening clarity of the nightmare it was to become. The tour coach had left Spear Creek shortly after breakfast on that freezing morning. Well, not exactly freezing, but to a Sydney girl on her first trip away from the big cities, camping out lacked not only the glamour of the travel brochures, but the comforts of home. The allure of discovering the real Australia had faded when she found that her mobile phone didn’t work beyond Port Augusta. However, as the bus passed beyond Quorn the majestic beauty of the Flinders Ranges began to cast its spell. By the time they had enjoyed a bush tucker lunch and arrived for the night at Rawnsley Park on the outer rim of Wilpena Pound, Kelly had fallen in love. “I wish I could stay here forever,” she dreamed, totally unaware that her wish had already come true.

The spectacular meteor shower in the far northern skies drew everyone out into the cold night air. Hundreds of light-trails crossed the sky until they merged into a luminous cloud on the horizon. Like a celestial fireworks display, it enthralled the spectators for two hours. To the unfamiliar tourists, this was yet another surprise of the Outback.

“I’d heard that the skies are so much clearer,” Kelly gushed to the couple who owned the old Land Cruiser and caravan in the next row, “but I never dreamed it would be like this.”

“It isn’t.” Replied the man as he powered up his long range radio.

That was the day that never ended for the northern hemisphere. For, as the planet rotated away from the Sun it was greeted by even brighter lights. The rogue comet had been fragmented by multiple impacts as it had crossed the Asteroid belt. Scattering asteroids like billiard balls, the comet, now in thousands of pieces continued largely unimpeded towards Earth. It was just as strong, just as deadly, only invisible until the last. Like shotgun pellets, it rained on the Earth for twenty four devastating hours.

Tokyo was the first to go, along with the rest of Japan. Its nuclear power plant took a direct hit. The destruction followed along its unstoppable path through Asia, the Middle East, Europe and the United States. No major city remained intact. Fires raged unchecked and dense clouds of smoke and airborne earth blocked the sun for weeks.

The Southern Hemisphere got off relatively lightly with few direct strikes, mainly from stray meteors drawn along with the comet. The problems for the south came with the clouds, laden with radioactive dust from damaged reactors. Coastal areas were the hardest hit by fallout due to the prevailing winds, particularly the west coast of Africa and eastern Australia. At Rawnsley Park they were luckier still, sheltering beside the ring of mountains that form a natural amphitheatre.

It was January now, and Rawnsley Park was Kelly’s new home. Sydney had become feral as panic preceded the brown clouds. Those not afflicted by fallout had either died in the riots or starved as facilities ground to a halt. Only a few smart ones had escaped to the country.

“Time to move on, Kelly.” Tony handed her a flask of cold water.

“What? Where else is there to go?” She asked, surprised at the suggestion. “We’re doing okay here.”

“That’s not what I mean.” He replied, brushing an ant away as he sat beside Kelly. “The old world is gone, Lovey, there’s no going back.”

“I know that. I just…Oh, I don’t know… there are so many questions.” Her eyes pleaded with him to understand the questions she could not define. “I just can’t get my head around how this all happened.”

“A comet struck Earth, simple as that.” Tony shrugged “Just like lightning, only stronger.”

“Yeah, I know what they said on the radio but, why didn’t we know?” Kelly gripped the flask tightly as her anger grew. “Surely the scientists saw it coming. Why weren’t we warned?”

“We were warned.”

“Bull shit! I wasn’t warned.” Kelly stared at Tony as if he were mad. “No one was warned or billions of people wouldn’t have died.”

“Kelly, think about it. Nothing could have stopped the comet and nothing could have saved those people.”

“But if they knew…”

“Yeah? If you knew that half the planet was about to be destroyed what would you have done?”

“Gone somewhere safe, like here.”

“Kelly, this is one of only a handful of refuges left in the whole world.” Tony explained, “And we only know that from the few ham radio operators still living. Even if you could have relocated the entire populations of the northern hemisphere, we still couldn’t sustain them.”

“But you said we were warned?”

“That’s right. But very few listened.” Tony shook his head as he recalled his futile attempts to convince his friends to come with him. “There were plenty of clues for those who wanted to know.”

“Clues? Like what? I didn’t see any clues.”

“Well, I guess you were too wrapped up in your busy career and your hectic social scene, to notice.”

“Hey, boy, don’t try that on me!” Kelly snapped. “I kept myself informed. I read the Sydney Morning Herald every day and I can tell you, it said nothing about a comet!”

“Did the Sydney Morning Herald mention anything about the Hopi prophecies? Or the Soho servers going down in 1998? Or the Vatican telescope? Or the bunker on Antarctica?”

“What are you crapping on about?”

“Okay, firstly, the Hopi Natives of North America have a series of predictions that have proven to be extremely accurate.” Tony explained. “Hundreds of years ago they foresaw the coming of white man to America, railroads, oil spills, even telephone communications.”

“So?”

“They predicted that the end of the Hopi people would coincide with the arrival of a Blue Star falling from the sky.”

“I thought comets are red.” Kelly pouted.

“No, in fact when this one was first spotted, it appeared blue.”

“When was it first spotted?” Suddenly interested, she turned to look at Tony. “I thought they couldn’t see it.”

“It was first detected by SOHO in 1998. I got suspicious when they shut down their link just after spotting it out of Orion.”

“SOHO?”

“The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory. It was out there to detect sunspots, but picked up this comet. You could get the data off the Internet, but suddenly they shut it down. I mean, a billion dollar space observatory, and they said they had minor technical problems. Yeah right! Anyway,” Tony continued, “I had a mate in the military, something high-tech, and he had access to the data that was still being transmitted.”

“But it was shut down?”

“Only to the general public. To Goddard it was business as usual.”

“Are you saying that they knew back in 1998 about this?”

“They knew it was headed this way, but didn’t know how close it would get.”

“But, why not tell us?” Kelly asked, then answered her own question. “Panic.”

“That’s right.” Tony nodded. “Can you imagine three million people believing that the end is nigh? The only chance for any to survive was for none to know.”

“But when it got closer, surely others found out?”

“Yes you’re right and that’s when it got really interesting.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, back in January of last year it was detected independently by several astronomers. Now back then it appeared to be very insignificant, but by the end of March it had more than quadrupled its magnitude.”

“Because it was getting closer.” Kelly interjected, pleased to be able to contribute some scientific logic.

“Wrong, because it was growing.”

“Growing? Comets don’t grow, do they?”

“This one appeared to, but by May it had actually split into two comets.”

“Like two snakes travelling together?”

“More like one snake with two heads, and it was increasing its magnitude all the time. What’s more, they knew it was heading our way.”

“Shit!”

“Once it hit the asteroid belt, it fragmented the heads but still had enough momentum to stay on the same tragectory. That’s why it wasn’t visible to the naked eye.”

“But they knew it was coming.”

“That’s right, so they prepared bunkers at various places in the hope that some humans would survive.”

"Antarctica?”

“That’s right. It’s the one place that was least likely to get hit and where they had most chance of no-one else finding out.”

“No nosey neighbours!”

“Do you think they survived?”

“I hope so, after all, there’s not many of us left.” He smiled at her.

“Then, I guess we’d better move on.”