The long summer evening was drawing to a close. After saying goodbye to the others, after dinner and doing the dishes — without the help of nanomachines — Tim and Norman sat on the veranda watching black clouds form in the hills on the southern horizon. There was a flash of lightning. Norman began counting, ‘... twenty-two ... twenty-three ... twenty-four ...’ then they heard the thunder, a distant rumbling roar.
‘Eight kilometres away,’ he said.
‘How do you know that?’
‘It’s the difference between the speed of sound and the speed of light. Sound’s much slower, so you count off the seconds then divide by three to get the distance.’
There was another rumble. Louder. Tim shuddered. The sound reminded him of the explosion. He thought of Alkemy and Ludokrus back at the caravan and wondered how they’d react.
‘Weird storm though,’ Norman added. ‘It came in really quickly. The sky over there was clear five minutes ago.’
Coral appeared from the kitchen. ‘It’s nearly nine o’clock. You did set the video, didn’t you?’
‘Yes,’ Tim said wearily. It was the third time she’d asked.
Em, Frank and Alice were already in the lounge when they took their places on the sofa. ‘Are you sure it’s recording?’ Coral squinted at the unit below the TV.
‘Yes!’
‘And it’s on the right channel?’
‘There’s only two choices.’
‘Well I don’t want to save some cooking show.’
‘Nine News at nine,’ a booming voice-over proclaimed as dramatic music swelled and surged. ‘All the news you need to know.’
A series of images flashed across the screen as the announcer said, ‘In the news tonight: Can the Minister of Finance really count? ... Will Bubbles the giraffe finally get a hip replacement? ... And could a tiny South Island town be the staging point for an alien invasion?’ A clip showed Coral in close-up saying, ‘We wouldn’t have had a chance. We’d have been blown to smithereens.’ The music swelled again, more graphics tumbled about the screen, and the picture finally settled on the two presenters.
‘Oh my god! Was that me?’
‘Wow, third item.’
‘Have you told your mum and dad this is on?’
‘Do I really sound like that?’
Their item started six minutes later, beginning with a view from the air. The camera tracked sedately over farm land and bush until it suddenly came to rest at a sunburst-like scar in the landscape. Torn earth, raw and fresh, streams of debris radiating from its centre. It looked like they’d suddenly entered a war zone.
‘The meteor came down in a remote area of native bush about forty kilometres south of Haast,’ the newsreader said. ‘Our news team has been on the scene since first light this morning.’
The picture switched to a twilight view of Crystal standing in Rata’s main street as the words Live and Exclusive scrolled along the bottom.
‘Hey, there’s RAGS!’
‘Call your mum. Tell her to go out and wave.’
‘Ssshh!’
‘... and earlier today I spoke to some of the lucky survivors,’ Crystal said as the picture switched to the interview with Tim and Coral.
‘What about me?’ Frank said. ‘I put on tie and everything.’
‘Ssshh!’
Tim looked uncomfortable describing the streaking light he’d seen in the sky in the seconds before impact, but Coral had no such qualms. She cut him off before he could even finish.
‘We were coming down this road here,’ she said, pointing, ‘and suddenly there was this flash of light. Then about a second later: boom. Man, I thought the world had ended.’
‘Were you frightened?’
‘Not really. Just stunned.’
‘What happened then?’
‘This sort of mushroom cloud rose up. Like a mini atom bomb or something. Then it started snowing dust and stuff. From the explosion, I guess. It was pretty weird.’
‘What if you’d been a bit closer?’
‘We wouldn’t have had a chance. We’d have been blown to smithereens. I mean, look at the crater and all the trees around it.’
The picture changed to a shot of the three of them looking down into the crater.
The boys laughed and nudged each other. Coral squealed and buried her face in a cushion, half-afraid to look and half-afraid not to.
‘A family of tourists also had a near miss. Earlier this afternoon I tried to speak with them,’ Crystal’s voice-over continued, ‘but they were still pretty shaken by their ordeal.’ The screen showed pictures of the closed-up caravan and the scorched paint along the back.
Back in the studio, the newsreader said, ‘I understand this isn’t the first time this area’s been, shall we say, targeted, Crystal.’
‘Quite right, John. This is only the latest in a series of mysterious happenings in an area that some people are already calling Latitude 51 ...’
‘What people?’ Frank said.
‘... a clear reference to the mysterious Area 51 in the US where alien spaceships are supposed to have been captured and alien autopsies performed.’
Alice put a hand to her mouth.
‘And just three nights ago, a shooting star startled locals as it skimmed the tree tops before coming to rest in remote bush somewhere to the northwest ...’ she gestured vaguely.
‘That’s south,’ Frank said.
Norman gave Tim a quizzical look.
‘The killer robot’s ship,’ Tim whispered in his ear.
‘... the very same area where, twenty-five years ago, yet another meteorite came down. Late this afternoon, I spoke to someone who was there.’
The picture changed to a wiry, middle-aged man in a khaki apron.
‘Rambob!’
‘He’s not wearing a tie.’
‘Ssshh!’
‘Yes, I remember it well,’ Rambob said. ‘It came down near an old mining area called Gizzard Gully. We had to go in there about a week afterwards because there were a couple of trampers missing in the bush nearby. I was part of the search party. We actually saw where it had come down.’
‘Can you describe it?’
‘Just a long burnt streak in the ground. Must’ve come in at a shallow angle because it went on for quite a way.’
‘No crater then?’
He shook his head.
‘Any sign of what caused it?’
‘Whatever it was, it must’ve buried itself pretty deep.’
‘And the trampers?’
‘We found them a few hours later. They were out of food and a bit confused. Had some wild stories about lights in the sky and strange noises at night, but they were fine.’
Back Live and Exclusive on Main Street, Crystal stared intently at the camera. ‘So there you have it. Three mysterious impacts in the space of just twenty-five years. The experts tell us that the chances of that happening in the same area are more than a billion to one. So what is it about this remote town that’s drawing the attention of visitors from outer space? Is it, as some claim, pure coincidence? Or is there something darker and more mysterious going on here?’
Alice, staring wide-eyed at the screen, gave a low moan.
‘I’ll have more tomorrow, and an exclusive Nine News in-depth report on Monday.’
The image cut back to the studio. ‘That was Crystal Starbrite, live, from Southland.’
Frank snorted. ‘We’re West Coast, you chump!’
* * *
Norman unfurled his sleeping bag and climbed into bed. ‘So that first one, the one that Rambob and the search party saw, the one that dug itself in, that must’ve been the Sentinels themselves, right?’
‘Yeah,’ Tim said, turning out the light. It had been a long day.
‘Fancy Rambob coming across that. Who’d’ve guessed?’
‘Mmm.’
‘Oh, there’s something I want to check.’ Norman’s torch snapped on and he leaned across the camp stretcher to examine the bookshelf. He pulled out an atlas and thumbed through it till he found a map of New Zealand. ‘Hah! Thought so.’
‘Thought what?’ Tim muttered, barely able to keep his eyes open.
‘That reporter kept talking about Latitude 51, but that’s way down south by Campbell Island. We’re about latitude forty-four. She’s only six hundred kilometres out!’
Tim grunted.
‘If those sort of people can’t get their facts right, you don’t know what to believe.’ Norman put the book back and switched off his torch. ‘I wonder what Albert said about Smudge. It’s a real breakthrough, eh? Maybe he’s come up with another way to get a message to their mothership. How many escape pods does it have, d’you know? Maybe they could send for a couple and we could go with them and have a look at it. Imagine that, a real live interstellar spaceship. How cool would that be?’
A faint sigh was Tim’s only reply.
‘Tim?’
Norman flashed his torch around and saw his friend was sound asleep .