PROLOGUE
Royal Greenwich Observatory, June 4, 1890
CFM-detection-swarm-meteorite-continuous-STOP-visible-SA-NA-EU-JA-STOP-studio-phenomenon-STOP-ask-INFO-K
...
United States Naval Observatory, June 4, 1890
The telegram had arrived at the U.S. naval observatory at 6:49 p.m. local time. It was sent by the Royal Greenwich Observatory and, given the urgency, it must have been something interesting. The members of the Greenwich observatory would not have bothered for nothing. Stimson J. Brown looked up from the floor plans of the Clock House, which he had been studying for months more intensively than he did with the sky. After the discovery of the Moons of Mars, nothing particularly interesting had been registered, so he decided to take advantage of it and to equip the Observatory with new instruments, so that it could rival the great European observatories of Greenwich, Paris and Berlin, supported and supplied by their respective governments. And now from Greenwich, where it was 11:49 p.m., communication was coming to point the telescopes at the sky.
Brown scratched his dark moustache thoughtfully. He had spent the previous night pointing his instruments towards the European skies and had noticed a few more meteors than usual, but nothing out of the ordinary. Now they came to tell him about an unidentified meteor shower and therefore, likely, about a comet or an asteroid running near the Earth's orbit. It was a nonsense. It had to be. The meteor showers did not appear suddenly but followed precise laws. Some of them had been known since ancient times. Above all, it was impossible for it to be visible simultaneously from every point on the globe. And it was impossible that, in case, he had not noticed.
However, he decided to wait a few hours, without placing too much hope on what he would find. He took a nap, ate a light dinner, got ready to go to work.
He looked out. The sun was already down, the Milky Way emerged from the dark in all its splendour. The stars were incalculable. One fell.
Stimson J. Brown smiled, took a cloth to clean the lens of one of the telescopes.
It was going to be a quiet night.
This was his thought.
The light came suddenly, intermittently, a greenish flash that illuminated the room like it was daylight.
Brown ran out, heedless of the telescope, heedless of telegrams and plans.
The sky was falling.
The stars came down, impossible to count, impossible to describe.
He knew they weren't stars.
They were meteors with a green trail, meteors that burned and went out before they hit the ground.
But they were countless and so bright that for a moment Brown still felt like a child, as when he had looked up at the night sky the first time. "Rain of stars" was an unsuitable title for a scientist but, after all, it was suitable for such a show.
Then he remembered the telegram. If what it reported was true, the show had been happening hour by hour for at least a day and a half. Not with the same intensity, perhaps, but it was repeated.
He went back inside and ran to send a telegram.
...
Madras Observatory, June 6, 1890
They carried the fragment carefully.
Less than a day had passed since the unexpected phenomenon of the meteor shower had died down, and the time for hypotheses had come.
The swarm, in fact, had left presents behind.
One of them had rained on a rural village in northern India and had set fire to several barracks.
That was how they realized that, well, it wasn't a normal meteorite. To begin with, it was more like steel than a rock, and then it was pigmented with bright red. If they had not found it still steaming inside a crater and had it not presented clear signs of atmospheric ablation, Norman Pogson would have doubted having something fallen from the sky in front of him.
Furthermore, astronomers from all over the world were in turmoil, and that was enough.
He had given orders to have the fragment sent immediately to the observatory.
If others had fallen, he had no idea, but he didn't feel like excluding it.
It was not steel, he understood this at first glance, and he also understood that it was an infinitely more resistant material. The atmosphere had corroded, burned and smoothed it, but it hadn't even managed to make the pigment disappear completely.
He tried to touch it with a finger. It was cold. It was worked metal.
In other circumstances he would have said that it was a fake, a rip-off, a colossal misunderstanding. But there were no craftsmen who could produce something so sophisticated in a rural village in Northern India. There was not even such a material in Northern India. Perhaps there was no such thing on the whole planet. And if he had not seen with his own eyes, only a few days before, the image of a gigantic human being dressed like an ancient Egyptian who stood out sharply against the sky, he would have called it suitable stuff for a science fiction novel.
Whoever had been the author of the joke that had partially destroyed Paris, that fragment had something to do with it. Norman was ready to bet on it. Ah, he would have had time to learn more. The world was not over, the apparent threat had disappeared, and the fragment would have been there the next day too.
Even when the rest of the world forgot about it.
Which, he was ready to bet on that too, would happen very soon.
...
Suruga bay, Shizuoka prefecture, June 3, 1890
"A shooting star!"
Marie pointed to the sky. Icolina smiled at her.
"What wish did you make?"
"I asked Sanson and everyone else to come back soon! And you?"
The nurse looked up at the starry vault. His companions and grandfather were up there, somewhere, and God knew how much she would have liked to be with them. She could only hope that everything was fine, to see them come back safely from one moment to the next. That waiting was more exhausting than any battle she had ever experienced.
"The same thing. And I also asked that none of us should live such an experience anymore. "
That too she hoped with all her heart. That Gargoyle was defeated and there were no more lives and families broken because of his wickedness. She wished once more that the world was truly safe, and smiled again. She was a strong girl and had deep confidence in the crew of the New Nautilus. They would come back.
"I hope so too."
Marie was beside her, quiet.
Icolina envied her. She was a child who had known death but had not yet fully understood it. She prayed for her to remain for long like this, that she would lose that innocence as late as possible.
The lights of the city of Shizuoka, down on the coast beyond the promontory where they stand, seemed to give reason to their thoughts. The air was warm and quiet, it seemed impossible that a war was being fought elsewhere.
They still prayed the long starry night.
Bring them back.
A star fell.