Skyfall

14

GET 01:38

“This is going to mean replating the front page and we're forty minutes late on the streets already,” the Mechanical Superintendent said as he looked at the new layout.

“I don't give a damn if it means feeding your mother through the presses,” the City Editor told him. “This story's breaking at the right time for us, and I'd do this on my own, but God had me on the phone and this is the way he wants it, too.”

When the owner of the newspaper spoke the employees simply nodded and did as they were told. The circulation of the Gazette-Times had been falling steadily and anything that might give it a shot in the arm would help. The Mechanical Superintendent opened the door of his walled-off glass cubicle in a corner of the composing room and went out into the hum and roar of a newspaper being put to bed. At their stones the compositors never looked up, light seared out on one side as an engraver exposed a plate. The Mechanical Superintendent had problems of his own and almost ran into the small man who bobbed up in front of him waving a sheet of paper.

“Out of the way, Cooper, or I'll run you down.”

“Listen, you must look at this. Imperative.” The Science Editor was a shaggy man with long hair that hung in his eyes more often than not, who had a tendency to chew, unknowingly, his ink-stained fingertips.

“Later. We're changing the whole damn paper around after a message from God so I got no time for your latest breakthrough on the deodorant front.”

“No, not that, you must listen. The rocket…”

“Move! I got a whole front page full of rocket. In twenty-four hours it's going to burn and those six nice people with it!”

“What's the shouting about?” the City Editor asked as he squeezed by them.

“This, sir, I tried to stop him. Change the front page, I have the story here.”

The City Editor halted and turned on his heel and looked down at the excited man. He had been too long in this business to ignore anything that might be news. “Sixty seconds, Cooper, and it had better be good.”

“It is, sir. Incredible. This rocket, sir, Prometheus, the one in the decaying orbit. There's a good chance it's going to hit the atmosphere and burn up in less than a day.”

“That's our front page story.”

“But there's more to it than that! Prometheus is the largest object ever to be put into space, it weighs two thousand tons and that's a lot of mass. When it hits the atmosphere and burns it will be a most spectacular sight….”

“Our leader writer produces better copy than that, Cooper. Leave the story on my desk.” He turned on his heel and started away and Cooper's words reached out desperately after him.

“But sir. Listen sir. Please. What if it doesn't burn up? What happens if it comes down in one lump?”

The City Editor stopped dead, rigid. Then slowly turned about and glared at Cooper. When he spoke his voice was cold as the Arctic.

“Tell me, please. What will happen if it hits in one big piece?”

“Well,” Cooper struggled frantically through the crumpled papers he carried. “I've taken the optimum, you understand. Speed, mass, angle, ideal situation all around. I mean ideal to get the highest speed at impact. Inertia, you understand, velocity times mass, small and fast, big and slow, both hit with the same impact. But what if something very big hits very fast? That is our Prometheus. I estimate its impact explosion will be the equivalent of ten kilotons of TNT.”

“Translation, please.”

Cooper was hopping from foot to foot and chewing his fingertips so hard his words were barely audible. “Well, simply, say it were to hit a populated area, a city, you know. It would explode with about the same force as the original atomic bomb that blasted Hiroshima. No radioactivity, of course, but it would explode….”

“Yes, it certainly would. Very well done, Cooper. Clean up your copy and get it to rewrite. Right now, scoot.” He pulled out a pack of cigarettes, extracted the last one, lit it and crumpled the pack and threw it to the floor. He looked at the Mechanical Superintendent. “You heard him. Get ready to replate the first page one more time and the hell with how long it takes. We have the story of the century here. Do you realize that flying bomb could take out a city, maybe this city right here….”

He stopped suddenly and looked up. They both looked up.