"Mummy! The telly's not working!"

Samantha Kumiko was concentrating on listening to what her guest was saying, and so tuned out her daughter's complaint. The six year old girl had to cry out twice more before her mother finally turned to see what was wrong. "Quiet, please, Lily! Mummy's talking!"

"But the telly's not working!"

"Well, play with your tablet instead." She turned back to her guest.

"But I want to see the cartoons! The cartoons are on!"

"You can see the cartoons later. Play with your tablet. Mummy's trying to talk."

Her guest was looking at the television, though. The screen had turned blue and there were some small words in the upper corner. She put down the small, china teacup and got up from her chair to get a better look. "It's not getting a satellite signal," she said. "Probably clouds in the sky or something."

Samantha looked out the window. It was heavily overcast, but it usually took heavy rain to block the satellite signal. Maybe it was raining to the south. The satellite would be low on the horizon from this latitude. "Yes, probably," she said. She picked up the remote control and switched to the terrestrial channels, then handed it to the child. "Here, find some cartoons." The girl took it and switched between channels, a pouty look on her face.

"They're delightful at that age!" said Connie, her guest, watching with a wistful smile on her face.

"Are you still trying?" asked Samantha.

"Still trying. Still no luck. Tim keeps talking about trying IVF, but..." She looked out the window again.

"You've never liked hospitals, have you?"

"They're so... Cold. I don't mean cold in the temperature sense. I mean..."

"Antiseptic," said Samantha helpfully. "Clinical. Impersonal."

Connie nodded. "That's no place to create a child! Children are made with love, not with syringes and test tubes! The thought of our lovely child being created in a place like that..."

"Lots of people use IVF these days," pointed out her host. "It's not as awful as it used to be. My cousin had her son by IVF. She wasn't overjoyed by the process, but she has a son now, a son she wouldn't have had otherwise."

"I know, and we will do it if that's what it takes, but I'm not ready to give up on the natural way yet." She smiled. "I remember my mother taking me to Kenlinton once. She took me to a house in this small back street, pointed up to a window on the first floor and told me that that was where I was conceived. That was where I began. I want to be able to do the same for my child one day. What am I supposed to do, show him a test tube and tell him that he began in there?"

"You could show him the place where you and Tim first met. That would be where he first began, in a very real sense."

"That would be the end of a pier in Southend. The pier doesn't exist any more. The sea rose and swallowed it up."

Samantha nodded. So many places lost to rising sea levels. "Sometimes it just takes time. Jin and I were trying for three years before we were blessed with Lily. Maybe if you just keep trying..."

"And trying is certainly fun!" Both women laughed their agreement. "Do you still see Jin at all?"

"No. He's got a new life in Japan now. He doesn't seem to miss anything here." She glanced over at her daughter, still flicking through channels in search of something worth watching. "Not even me and Lily."

"He must still keep in touch with Lily, surely. No matter what differences the two of you had."

Samantha shook her head. "It's been over three years since he last saw her."

"But how can he not want to be a part of her life? She's so beautiful!"

"He doesn't think she's his. No matter how many times I deny it he still thinks I cheated on him. It's true Jerry made a pass at me once, but I turned him down. We were just work colleagues, and now he's not even that."

"You could have gotten one of those DNA tests..."

"If he needs a DNA test before he'll acknowledge his daughter then I want nothing to do with him. Even if I had cheated on him, she'd still be my daughter. If he loved me, that would be enough." She got up and walked across the room. "He married again, you know. Some traditional Japanese woman from an old family, not a westernized half breed like me."

"Surely you can't think that was a factor! He must have loved you once. He knew your background when he married you."

"Oh yes, I've got no doubt that he loved me then. Then Jerry happened, though. Jin was so jealous, so suspicious! Looking back, maybe I did spend too much time with him..."

"He was your work colleague, you had that big project you were working on together. And even if you hadn't, you're allowed to have friends."

"But you remember what Jerry was like. He was so... touchy! He'd be talking to someone and he'd reach out to touch their hand or their arm. Not just me, everyone he was talking to, but he was me whose hand jin saw him touching. I never thought anything of it at the time..."

"Why would it? Some people are like that. There's nothing wrong with it."

"I know, but looking back, I can see how it must have looked to Jin."

"He was needy and insecure. That's on him, not you. You know what you need to do, right?"

"What?"

"Get back out there. Find someone else."

Samantha laughed. "Because the world is full of handsome young men looking for a forty year old woman with a six year old daughter."

"You said Jerry made a pass at you."

"He just wanted a one night stand, not a commitment."

"Sammy! Take a look in a mirror for Pete's sake! You're still good looking. You're great looking!" She gestured at her figure. Slender but sticking out in all the right places. "Your Japanese eyes make you look exotic. I'm five years younger than you and I would sacrifice a goat to a pagan God to look as good as you! You put yourself out there and they're going to be lining up round the block to take you out."

"Oh I'm sure I could get a few dates. We'd get on, have fun, have some great sex, and then would come that wonderful day when he finds out I have a daughter."

"You make her sound like some kind of horrible disease!" Lily looked around at them and Connie realised she'd been speaking too loud. "How you doing, sweetie?" she said. The girl smiled back, then returned her attention to the television.

"You know what I mean," said Sam. "Some men won't devote time and energy to raising another man's child. Others see them as nothing more than an impediment to our sex life, and there's always the worry that those guys who say they aren't bothered by her might, actually, be more interested in her than me."

"I think you're just looking for excuses to hide away at home. You'd rather stay here and feel sorry for yourself than go out and have fun. Look, forget about looking for a new partner for the time being. Just have fun. Have a few one night stands. Who knows? One of them might turn out to be the one!" She smiled at her, and Sam couldn't help but smile back. "If I were still single, I'd take you to a club myself to pick up a couple of guys. There's this girl I know at work, though. Lost her husband a couple of years ago. You could go with her. Shall I give her a call?"

"Mummy!" called out Lily to Samantha's relief. "They've got the moon wrong!"

The strange comment made the two women look up curiously. She'd found a cartoon that seemed to involve cute looking puppies fighting evil to save the world. Occasionally the view shifted to show the moon in the sky. A crude, cartoon moon that looked nothing like the real moon. "It's just a cartoon, sweetie!" Samantha called back. "It's not meant to be accurate!" She turned back to Connie. "Talking puppies and flying lizards that shoot fire from their mouths and it's the moon she finds unrealistic."

"Well, that's what comes from being the daughter of a moon expert," replied her guest with a smile. "I've seen her bedroom, remember. A moon desk lamp, moon bedsheets, a moon map poster... whatever happened to fairies and princesses?"

"She's just not interested. I try not to bring my work home with me, but..." Her eyes flicked guilty to the stack of space telescope photos she'd left lying on the spare armchair. She got up, strode over and gathered them up, opening a desk drawer to tuck them away out of sight. "I keep trying to get her interested in normal girl things. She finds them childish." She sighed with disbelief. "Six years old and she finds them childish!"

"Well, I guess we know what she's going to be when she grows up." Connie glanced over at the girl again, then sat up straight in her chair in surprise. She got up and walked over to her. "May I?" she asked, holding her hand out for the remote control. Lily stared at her, then handed it across."

"What is it?" asked Sam.

"She was on a news channel just now. There was a headline. Dammit, what channel is the news on? I'm used to the satellite channels."

"Just try the BBC. Channel 101."

Connie pressed the numbers on the keypad and the screen changed to show a man in a television studio. There was a big headline at the bottom of the screen. BREAKING NEWS. SATELLITE CHAOS. "...still unknown," the reporter was saying, "but all satellite services seem to have been affected. Satellite television channels all over the world are off the air. Weather forecasting services have been crippled and the GPS service is unavailable, leading to ships and aircraft going off course all over the world. An Air India Boeing Dreamjet was forced to ditch in the South Atlantic when it lost its way to Singapore and ran out of fuel, and two members of the US navy's Pacific carrier group, the USS Fitzgerald and the USS Oklahoma, ran aground near the Solomon islands. Ships of the Chinese navy are assisting with the recovery operation. The failure of the GPS network has also affected the world's economy as financial transactions, which rely on timing signals to avoid fraud and insider trading, failed, and power grids are also affected, resulting in blackouts in many areas..."

"What the hell?" said Connie, staring as the commentator continued with his list of incidents and disasters. "What the hell happened?"

"Something did something to the satellites," said Samantha, equally shocked. "All the satellites! Shit! The Copernicus!" She pulled her phone from her pocket and made a call. A message popped up on the screen. 'Satellite service unavailable. Attempting to connect using land lines. Please be patient.' She cursed and stared at the screen. "We've got a satellite orbiting the moon," she explained. "Doing science stuff. It's my whole career! If anything's happened to it..." The phone started ringing and she tapped her feet impatiently until it was answered. "John Paul! I just saw the news on the telly, about the satellites! Please tell me Copernicus is okay!" She stared vacantly at the wall while she listened to a voice on the other end of the phone. Then Connie saw her sagging in relief. "Thank God!" There was another long pause. "Thank God!" she said again. "What happened? Does anyone know?"

Connie watched the television while Samantha spoke to her work colleague. The commentator was talking to a science guy of some kind now, and the science guy was explaining all the things that satellites did these days and what it meant for the world when they all started going wrong. Some satellites were still working normally, it turned out. Satellites that had been in high orbits and that had been over the day side of the earth the previous day. He thought that some kind of space radiation might have been responsible, caused by the collision of two black holes perhaps, and that the satellites that had survived had been protected by the earth itself. He didn't sound convinced, though, and admitted that more time would be needed before they could figure out what had happened.

Sam finished her call and put the phone back in her pocket. "My satellite's okay," she said, visibly relieved. "The guys in the office didn't know anything had happened either until they turned on the telly. Copernicus is still circling the moon, doing its stuff, just like nothing happened,"

"So what did happen?"

"Nobody seems to know. I assume the guys at ESA are working on it, the Chinese too. Someone from the ESA has already asked for all our Copernicus data from yesterday. They think it might hold a clue of some kind."

Connie told her what the science guy on the television had just said, and Sam looked sceptical. Copernicus is in a polar lunar orbit," she said. "It and satellites over Earth's day side wouldn't have been protected from the same thing. They did have to make a very minor course correction, they said. Copernicus wasn't quite where it was supposed to be, They've got no idea why."

"But if your people operate a satellite, they'll be among the first people to be told when they find out, right?"

"Probably, yes. They may even know already." She turned on her phone again and called a different number, while Connie watched the television avidly. The commentator had reached the point where he was saying the same things over and over again, but there was always the chance that some new information might come in. She watched and listened, therefore, while Lily, forgotten by them both, picked up her tablet and began to play a game on it.

☆☆☆

Neil Arndale stared at the computer screen mounted on the wall, where a graphic was showing all the active satellites currently orbiting the earth. “Well, so far as we can tell, they're all still operating normally,” he said into the phone he was holding next to his ear. “They're all in the wrong place and pointing in the wrong directions, but they're all working normally. It's as if something scooped them up and scattered them all across the sky.”

“What could do that?” asked Samantha from her London apartment. “Could someone have hacked them and told them to fire their thrusters randomly? Could this be a terrorist attack?”

“Nina Doyle says they're working on it.” She was Assistant Director of Science at the European Space Agency and their go to person for anything relating to space based astronomy. “She says they're collaborating with the cyber security guys. They took all our Copernicus data...”

“Yes, John Paul told me. Have you seen the data? Did you see anything?”

“There was some signal degradation between eight and ten am yesterday, as if something was interfering with the signal.”

“Water in the atmosphere?”

“Possibly, but it varied in a strange way, not like a raincloud passing across the satellite dish. Charlie’s looking at it and scratching his head a lot. He says he's never seen anything like it. Look, as soon as we know anything, we’ll let you know. Okay?”

“Okay. Thanks, Neil. See you Monday.”

“Monday.” Neil cut the connection, then looked back at the computer screen. “What the hell happened?” he said to himself. It was as if space around Earth was a still pool of water in which tiny objects had been left floating in precisely calculated places, and then someone had stirred the water with a stick. What could do that? He went over to the window and stared out across the university grounds. Everything looked normal. Students in their black robes were chatting as they strolled along the pathways to their next lecture and, further away, the city of Bristol was bustling with traffic and pedestrians the way it always did. Nobody out there had any bigger worries than the loss of their satellite television. That would change, though, as the price of food began to go up.

“I think it was a black hole,” said Josh, one of the interns helping out in the astronomy department as part of his masters degree. “About ten to the sixteenth tons, left behind by the big bang. It passed by the earth, about thirty thousand kilometres out, and its gravity scattered all the satellites.” His eyes were wide with shock as he said it. Small asteroids, between armchair and house sized, passed by the earth now and then, and it was considered a close approach if they passed by closer than the moon. An object as massive as Josh suggested, passing that close, was a one in a billion year event, even if it had been an ordinary asteroid. If it had hit the earth, it was have totally sterilized it. The intern was visibly disturbed by the magnitude of what he was suggesting.

“It wasn't a black hole,” replied Neil. “It would have raised tides. They've got sensors in all the oceans of the world measuring sea levels, because of global warming, and they’ve said nothing.”

“Has anyone asked them? They probably store up the data and only look at it once a month or so. Maybe nobody's asked them. Or maybe someone has asked them and they're still looking at the data.”

“Something that big, passing by that close, you wouldn’t need ocean sensors,” said Sandra Willoughby, looking up from where she was kneeling in front of a computer the size of a chest of drawers. The resident computer expert had taken the front panel off and had her hands deep in the tangle of wires and circuit boards as she struggled to insert a new hundred teraflop processor. “If it came that close, the tides would have been as high as normal lunar tides. Someone would have noticed that the tide was in when it was supposed to be out.”

“Okay, maybe it didn't come that close. It wouldn’t have had to to affect satellites. And even if it did, it only happened yesterday. Maybe the tides were all over the place and it hasn't made the headlines yet.”

“The Severn estuary is just four miles away, that way,” said the young redhead, pointing. “Why don't you pop over there and ask people what the tide was doing yesterday?”

“A black hole doesn't fit,” said Neil. “If it had been a black hole, it would have passed by some of the satellites close enough to throw them clear out of the solar system. Look at the pattern.” He waved a hand at the wall mounted screen. “Every satellite on this side of the planet is out of position, but they're all still orbiting the Earth, and not very far from where they're supposed to be. They all have thrusters, to make course corrections and de-orbit them when they come to the end of their lives. It'll probably be possible to put them all back to where they're supposed to be. If it had been a black hole, some of them would be out past the moon by now.”

“Something more diffuse, then,” said Josh. “Not one object but a cluster of them...”

“It would have to have had a huge mass. A million million tons at least. More likely a million times greater still. It would have covered half the sky! Thousands of asteroid size objects passing by the earth, they'd have been seen.”

“Not if they were very dark. If they were covered with a layer of organic materials. Tres-2B reflects less than one percent of the light that falls on it.”

“They would still block out the light of objects behind them. Kepler-2 was looking that way, it would have seen dips in starlight, it was designed precisely to look for them.”

“The signal degradation! The degradation of the Copercicus data! Could that have been caused by... No. The signal would have been blocked intermittently, not just interfered with. You know, the signal degradation might just be a coincidence. A problem with the receiver. A bird sitting on the antenna or something. It might have nothing to do with the stray satellites.”

“A hell of a coincidence that it happens just at the same time. And if it was a bird it would be happening all the time.”

“I just used that as an example. Something terrestrial. Some amateur radio hack transmitting in the gigahertz range for some reason, maybe. And coincidences happen. It would be a lot stranger if they never happened. No, I think it was a swarm of dark objects, their collective gravity threw the satellites around. I think the proof might be in the Kepler data, like you said. Sitting on a hard drive somewhere, waiting for someone to analyse it. It takes months, even years, before it gets analysed. Some of the data from the first Kepler hasn't been looked at yet!”

Neil nodded. It was possible, he supposed. Recent advances in astronomy had revealed things bizarre beyond imagination. Planets spinning so fast they should have flown apart. Arcs of electricity jumping between a planet and its moons, even a planet the size of the earth that, if the data was to be believed, seemed to have a hole running all the way through it like a necklace bead. A cluster of dark asteroids was positively mundane in comparison.

“We have to wait for the data to come in,” he said. “You're right, the answer might be sitting on a hard drive somewhere. A week from now we might know more, or we might not. In the meantime we’ve got work to do. Have you completed the ring analysis yet?” Josh shook his head, leaving the room on his way back to his own rooms, and the others returned to their work.