The Secret of Ghost Moon Bay

The Secret of Ghost Moon Bay

Sue Gray and Jennifer Little

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2009 S Gray and J Little

First published by Kotuku Media 2009 Kotuku Media, Box 54-235, Mana, Welllington, New Zealand

ISBN 0-908967-07-1

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Cover by Natalie Gray

Ebook formatting by www.ebooklaunch.com

Dedicated to our children: Gaby, Claudia, Jesse, Jamie, Kate and Amelia.

Table of Contents

Chapter One - Out of the sky

Chapter Two - Carla's juggling act

Chapter Three - Inside the House of Turrets

Chapter Four - Under the staircase

Chapter Five - The strangest of visitors

Chapter Six - Sightings and suspicions

Chapter Seven - A corpse most curious

Chapter Eight - Cousins, Clions and the future of Clio

Chapter Nine - Late nights and a puzzled professor

Chapter Ten - All eyes on Ghost Moon Bay

Chapter Eleven - Living with Leroy

Chapter Twelve - Return to the skies

Chapter Thirteen - Rounded moon, rising tensions

Chapter Fourteen - Death star and diamond light

Chapter Fifteen - Leroy faces madness and medics

Chapter Sixteen - The children - where are the children?

Chapter Seventeen - Journey to Clio

Chapter Eighteen - From a distance

Chapter One

Out of the sky

Jake Jellicoe, not a terribly sporty boy in his waking hours, twists and twitches like a wild animal in a tangle of blankets as he sleeps. In his dream he is gripping the throttle of an out-of-control spacecraft, hurtling blindly through orange and red dust clouds as he prepares to crash-land on planet Jupiter.

A ginger cat is snoozing beside him. Sheba, the plump family feline, is dreaming too. She is leaping - in slow motion, oh so gracefully like a furry four-legged ballerina - through the air and about to crash-land on a blackbird. Until she is awoken by the restless boy and pounces on his jerking feet instead.

YEEOOOW!

Jake kicks the cat away and springs from his bed, knocking over a half-drunk mug of Milo on his bedside table. He wrenches back space rocket-motif curtains, rubs his eyes to instant alert and scans the predawn sky.

Nothing. Still nothing. No spark or fizzle of light blazing across the inky darkness. Not yet, but soon. The thing would fall from the sky in the next 24 hours. The professor had said so, in a voice of certainty and authority that sounded believable. Jake so desperately wants to believe it is true, and is willing his eyes to see something they have never seen before, and may never see again.

The 'thing' in question is a Russian space satellite. Jake had never heard of the Skrov until a week ago, even though he is what you might call a 'secret astronomy nerd', meaning that while other boys are playing Sonic, or Virtual Tennis or Need for Speed on their Playstations, or swapping Super 14 rugby player cards, he is checking the Hubble telescope website for the latest images of deep space, or reading up on the discovery of dark matter in the Universe.

When he first heard about the Russian satellite, Jake was over the moon (an expression he hoped he really would live up to one day). The Skrov had been navigating the solar system for five years, photographing the Earth and its eight neighbouring planets with its powerful telescopic camera, capturing distant new star formations and dying stars light years beyond this solar system and transmitting them back to Earth. Now, its mission was over, the lifespan of its technology exhausted. Guided by astronautical engineers in Moscow, it would soon plunge through the Earth's atmosphere, disintegrating in a spectacular explosion as it fell.

Jake learned that fragments of the thing might land - not in Siberia, Outer Mongolia or off the coast of Nova Scotia as the Russians had first calculated - but in the sea near his home in the sleepy maritime suburb of Ghost Moon Bay, just acros the harbour from bustling Auckland city.

Tonight. Must be tonight. His body stiffened with excitement. He stepped over the cocoa puddle, wondering how he'd find the patience to endure another whole day at school before the Skrov appeared.

Jake might have found out more about the return of the Skrov, seen images of its gleaming metal hulk, if he'd been able to flick to the nightly news bulletin during the week.

No chance. His Dad, Russell, was the only one in the house allowed to touch the remote on this particular week. Cricket. Day after boring day of it. And much of the night too. But even that was never enough for his cricket-mad Dad, who had shelves crammed with video cassettes of famous test matches he'd recorded over the years.

Now that the cricket world cup was in full swing, Jake and his Mum and two sisters kept well clear of the lounge, which had turned into a temple devoted to worshipping the young gods of world cricket in their crisp white trousers and shirts. If you weren't a believer, there was no point going anywhere near the room. The NOISE! Televised roars from the crowd could be heard all the way from - where was it today - Pakistan? Johannesburg? London? Wherever, that's where Russell was.

Dad, just two minutes at the end of the news, please. I'll get you another beer. DAD! Just ONE minute then. Just want to see the Skrov before it breaks up, Dad.

Wait son, wait - oh no! That's never LBW - it was going down leg; and it was too high anyway ... It's those dark glasses ... can't see a thing in 'em!

Showers of elephants, cheeseburgers or gold-plated cricket balls could have fallen out of the sky right outside their window. No matter. Jake knew his father would not take his eyes off Sky Sport for a nano-second once a cricket match was on.

Never mind. It had been an amazing week for a boy born without the cricket gene. An unusual visitor to school had made a big impression on Jake. His name was Raymond Loveday, a whippet-lean and gangly chap aged in his late 60s who moved lightly through the air as if bouncing on the moon, or like a puppet controlled by invisible strings. A retired physics professor and astronomer, Raymond Loveday had been the director of the local observatory over the harbour bridge on Wind Cliff Hill since he'd retired from teaching at a university in England three years ago.

He was utterly in his element, spending days and nights thinking, reading and telling people about the stars and planets he could at least see more clearly now that he was back in the Southern Hemisphere.

Nothing gave him more pleasure than to stand in front of a group of children, with their gaping mouths and eyes full of wonder as they listened to him reveal fabulous, unheard of galactic characters - quasars, black holes, supernovas, dwarf stars, red stars. None of them listened more eagerly than Jake. At last, he thought. Another human being who knows what I want to know.

Space! The very word had a magical effect on Jake. Ever since he was a little dumpling in a cot he had been space invaded, spaced out. He couldn't actually recall staring up from his fluffy baby blanket at the shiny star and moon mobile his mum had made out of cardboard and covered with tin foil to dangle over his cot. But those songs she had sung to soothe him to sleep were firmly stuck in his head...oh, would you like to swing on a star ... and carry moonbeams home in a jar ... or the perky fly me to the moon and let me play among the stars... and her favourite, stars shining high above you, night breezes seem to whisper ...

By the time he was five, he'd started climbing out of bed after his mother had turned out the light to sit by his window, looking for the Moon - a fingernail slither, a half circle, a round, fat disc. Or if he was lucky, a shooting star. The chance of spotting a rare split-second streak of silver against the darkness and the fixed stars was a thrill like no other. He always made the same wish when he did see a shooting star.

Please let me be a space man when I'm big. Please can I meet the Man in the Moon one day ...

Only then would he return to bed. Often he'd fall asleep before any shooting stars - unpredictable and irregular as they are - crossed the patch of night sky he could see. When he learned to read, it was books on space exploration, discovering the Universe, diary of an astronaut and the like, that he wanted the most. Jake, you could say, walked on the Earth but thought more about what was beyond it, whirling, cavorting, exploding and shrinking in the sky above him, albeit millions of light years away.

In the presence of Professor Loveday, Jake felt he'd at last found someone like him. But older. Meeting Professsor Loveday brought Jake out of his shell. Usually one of the quieter students who rarely raised his hand to answer or ask a question in class, he gushed with a torrent of questions.

So how do scientists know when the Earth was made? he pestered.

Well, the commonly accepted theory, one that has yet to be disproved, is that everything - I mean everything - in the Universe arrived in a split second. BOOM! Just like that - the 'Big Bang'. Difficult though it is to imagine, children, but about 13 billion years ago, there was nothing, nothing at all, said the professor, gazing solemnly out of the window, his eyes narrowing as he thought about this stupendous number.

The truth is, he went on, it wasn't that there was nothing before the Big Bang. But it took the combination of the right chemical conditions and energy forces that - well - did the trick.

Professor Loveday sensed this rather abbreviated version of creation wouldn't be enough to satisfy the more curious among the class, but could be too much for others.

But what made the Big Bang happen in the first place? Simon Gatsby continued.

Ah - if we could only explain that...as I must emphasise, the Big Bang is the most plausible theory, that's all scientists can do ...

Aren't there heaps of aliens out there in space, Professor Loveday? muttered Sean Jones, in a solemn, worried voice. My uncle reckons he's seen ...

Oh yes ... I mean. No. I don't think...oh, I know about all those Hollywood movies - Star Trek, Doctor Who, Star Wars and so on ... they're quite fun I suppose, but really, we must trust science in these matters children. Until there is proof ... I'm not saying its impossible but ...

Do you think a comet will, like, hit us one day, and we'll all be killed? asked Luke Fairweather, whose latest X-Box game contained a range of digital laser guns said to be powerful enough to destroy any evil comets and alien invaders headed for Earth.

Or an asteroid! exclaimed Josh Watson.

I think there's rather too much mixing up of fact and fiction going on here. I am here to tell you about what we do know for sure, through proper scientific observation and careful study, he said emphatically. Anything else is sheer - well - make-believe. What we do know is already remarkable. No need to make things up to be amazed, he chortled. Let me tell you more tomorrow about the formation of galaxies - we live in one after all, and as you must know, it's called the Milky Way.

In light of their easily aroused hysteria at the mysteries of space, he'd decided he wouldn't touch on the theory of the Big Crunch (worryingly, although not an issue in Jake's lifetime, the manner in which the Universe was expected to collapse on itself after several million billion years - give or take a few million - of expansion).

The professor warned them that whatever they read in a book, magazine or on a website today could quickly become out of date as astronomers - not just experts at NASA space agency in America, but even amateurs with their own telescopes who gazed up at the night sky from their backyards - made amazing new discoveries practically every week. These days, new moons and planets were being spotted with the help of whizz-bang technology - unimaginably powerful telescopes, radar transmitters and satellite dishes. You never knew what was around the corner in space, said the professor.

Yes, there are corners, of sorts, in space, he chuckled cheekily. And not just wormholes, either.

The bell to end the class trilled before he had time to answer their dumbfounded stares and questions.

Wormholes? they gasped.

Like some of his classmates, Jake couldn't help wondering if he and six billion other earthlings were the only living beings in the Universe. It wasn't a question that the earnest Professor Loveday could give a straightforward 'yes' or 'no' answer to, however.

Is it possible that we weird, sometimes messed-up, sometimes stupid, sometimes brilliant, kind, funny humans are the only creatures in the whole, gynormous never-ending Universe, Jake pondered as he stood outside the dairy on his way home from school after the professor's first visit. We just can't be, Jake reckoned.

His orange Fru Ju iceblock was fast melting and dripping down his hands, an old woman shuffled by muttering to herself. A trio of his class mates flew past on their bikes, calling out: Jake, Jake eat some cake, you're so skinny you look like a rake. But Jake took no notice. He was hypnotised by the blueness of the sky, by the thought of what he knew was out there but couldn't see as his eyes tracked a jet plane's vapour trail.

By the time he got home, Jake felt abnormally fatigued. Must have been his restless night, the exhilaratingly vivid dream he awoke from before finding out what it was like on Jupiter, and sudden early waking, he figured. But as it was Professor Loveday's last visit to the school that afternoon, he had forced himself to look alert. Jake was disappointed the professor's lessons were over. He still had so many questions to ask him. But his intriguing last words made up for the disappointment.

"Now, just a reminder of what