Meteor (novel)

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Meteor is the German title of a December 2003 thriller by Dan Brown (original: "Deception Point" , 2001). In 2005 the title was also published as an audio book by LübbeAudio, read by Anne Moll .

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Presidential elections are coming up in the USA. The most promising candidate is Senator Sedgewick Sexton, who bases his campaign very much on "trust" and "privatize money-wasting NASA". The current president, Zach Herney, is a strong advocate of state NASA.

Sexton's daughter Rachel works in the NGO as a data processor and thus indirectly for the president. Accordingly, there is a strong tension between father and daughter, Sexton tries, among other things, to persuade his daughter to change her job, because one could use her work for a government agency to attack him during an election campaign.

The plot begins with the murder of geologist Charles Brophy by being thrown from a helicopter and his dog sled.

A hectic day begins for Rachel Sexton in Washington: During an argument with her father about her employer, she receives a pager call that she should come to the NGO headquarters to see Director William Pickering. From there she is sent almost without comment by helicopter to an airport, where Air Force One with President Herney is already waiting for her. Without really knowing much or being given a choice, she is put in a fighter jet and flown as quickly as possible to the Milne ice shelf on Ellesmere Island in the Arctic. There is a secret NASA research dome there and she learns that a fragment of a meteorite was found in the ice, which apparently contains fossil inclusions of extraterrestrial origin. The meteorite was allegedly discovered by a satellite of the NASA Earth Observing System , which was supposed to carry out density measurements in the Arctic ice and found an anomaly. For NASA, the discovery that extraterrestrial life exists and that it can come to earth with meteoroids ( panspermia theory ) would be a welcome justification for its existence after the ALH-84001 bankruptcy. In addition, Senator Sexton's anti-NASA campaign would collapse.

In addition to Rachel Sexton, the civil scientists Michael Tolland, Corky Marlinson, Norah Mangor and Wailee Ming are in the dome, who confirm the authenticity of the meteorite.

The meteorite is rescued from the ice by being heated up by a laser and thus melting a shaft free. The recovery is secretly observed by a Delta Force team using an airworthy miniature robot. When the meteorite is recovered, everyone is gathered to celebrate and preparing for the scheduled publication of the discovery at 8:00 p.m., Dr. Ming an anomaly in the water of the recovery shaft. The discovery of the anomaly does not fit into the plan of the Delta Force client, so that the leader of the Delta Force team guides the flying robot into its eye at the moment the scientist tries to take a water sample. Ming falls into the salvage shaft and drowns.

Nobody notices the doctor's disappearance, but Tolland also discovers the anomaly in the shaft. He calls Rachel, Corky, and Norah over, and they discover that it is glowing plankton that only occurs in salt water. A water sample actually shows a 3% salt concentration in the meltwater, which contradicts the fact that glacier ice should consist of fresh water and that the glacier is free of cracks. In order to clarify whether there is a crack or salt water inclusions, Norah Mangor suggests examining the shaft area using a radar image. Because she has to leave the dome and have to go 200 meters into the stormy glacier wind, she is forced by NASA director Ekstrom to take Corky, Tolland and Rachel with her to safety.

On the radar image, they discover the corpse of Dr. Mings and a continuation of the recovery shaft to the bottom of the ice shelf, which explains the salt water and, above all, proves that the meteorite was artificially brought into place. The Delta Force responds with an assassination attempt that killed Norah Mangor and from which Rachel, Tolland and Corky escape using a tarpaulin as sails. They are blown onto an iceberg that has just calved from the ice shelf and from there rescued at the last moment by the USS Charlotte . Rachel's attempt to reach the president before 8 p.m. and prevent the press conference fails.

Meanwhile, Gabrielle Ashe, an employee of Senator Sexton, meets with Marjorie Tench, a close associate of the President, in Washington. She provides Gabrielle with documents proving Senator Sexton is in financial straits and receiving illegal donations from commercial space companies. In return, Sexton wants to privatize NASA as president. Since the president does not want to lead a scandalous election campaign, she demands of Gabrielle to publicly admit an affair with her that Sexton had previously denied and thus to make it impossible in a comparatively harmless way. Gabrielle refuses, but her loyalty to Sexton is severely shaken by the evidence.

President Herney will give a press conference at 8:00 p.m. and educate the world about the meteor. Rachel Sexton's call was intercepted by Marjorie Tench at the last moment.

Rachel, Tolland and Corky are now doubting the authenticity of the meteorite. They manage to reach William Pickering and be transported back to the USA. In order to be able to confirm their doubts, they make a stopover on Tolland's research vessel Goya, which is anchored above a huge vortex caused by submarine volcanism. There they discover that all the features that made the meteorite so special are fake. The crust was created by the heat of a hydrogen-powered rocket engine, for the chondrules , previously regarded as typical of meteorites, it was discovered that their chemical composition is incorrect and that they must have formed in a deep-sea subduction zone , and the fossils are deep-sea giant isopods, whose existence so far was unpublished.

The Delta Force team is also brought back and given the task of killing the surviving scientists. After a phone call between Pickering and Tench, in which the forgery becomes clear and in which the two agree to meet at the Washington Monument , the Delta Force order is expanded to include killing a person at this monument. This interim assignment gives the scientists the time it takes to analyze them, but before they can post their results, the Delta Force team attacks the Goya. A jammer initially prevents the analysis from being transmitted and a Hellfire missile destroys your helicopter. During this attack, Corky escapes in a motorboat. The Delta Force helicopter drops two people and pursues Corky. The two can be put out of action by Rachel and Tolland until the helicopter returns. Finally the Delta Force helicopter lands on the Goya and the client of the Delta Force unit gets out. Up to this point it seemed obvious that Marjorie Tench is the client and in this way wants to ensure the election victory of Zach Herney. Instead, it turns out that William Pickering is the mastermind behind the bogus and now out of control meteorite find. He wanted to ensure that NASA is not privatized. Rachel refuses to be persuaded by him to hand over the analysis results and bluffs that they have already left the ship and will be published shortly. Pickering has the jammer switched off briefly in order to be able to make a phone call with the presumed recipient of the sensitive information. During this time window, the fax machine Rachel programmed transmits the analysis results to her father's office. In the final battle, the Delta Force helicopter and its pilot and some Hellfire missiles fall into the sea, as does Rachel and Tolland together with the Goya submersible. The helicopter's rockets blow up the underwater volcano, the Goya sinks into the vortex of the eruption and Pickering with it. At the last moment, Tolland and Rachel are taken on board by a rescue helicopter and are finally given the opportunity to indulge their affection for each other in the guest wing of the White House.

During these events it turns out that the geologist murdered in the prologue was only used to send a bogus report about the discovery of the meteorite, which was received by NASA. The NASA satellite was faulty and could not detect it at all. The geologist had to die to maintain the deception of a functioning satellite system and to keep the direction of events in the hands of NASA. Ekstrom only knew that the meteorite was discovered differently than claimed. The forgery of the meteorite itself was Pickering's secret.

Zach Herney confesses to the world that the meteorite was a fake and that he and NASA did not know about it. It seems that Sexton will win. But Sexton wants too much. He has received the analysis results from the satellite that his daughter sent him from the Goya because she was hoping for help from him. But the Senator wants to use them for his presidential candidacy and distribute them in a press conference. He fails because of Gabrielle Ashe, who at the last moment exchanges the prepared press kits for similar files containing the sex photos of her and Sexton. Sexton is terribly embarrassed when he hands out the portfolios in good faith at a press conference.

At the end of the thriller, Ekstrom, director of NASA, throws the fake meteorite from a cargo plane back into the ocean.

background

NGO

As mentioned in the introduction, the National Reconnaissance Office (NGO) actually exists.

ALH 84001

The ALH 84001 meteorite , mentioned in the introduction, really does exist and was believed to be evidence of extraterrestrial life.

Ellesmere Island

The Ellesmere Island is Canadian territory, which is why the existence of a NASA base and the implementation of a US military operation would be there very unlikely.

Giant lobsters

Giant ropes of up to 45 cm in length and 1.7 kg in weight are really extremely deep.

Improvised ammunition

Weapons that are loaded with so-called "improvised ammunition" (IM), for example snow or sand, are designed to give the armed forces full freedom of action in terms of ammunition consumption in cases in which replenishment deliveries are not possible or too costly leave, as ammunition can always be fetched from the surrounding area (sand in the desert, snow, water etc. in snowy areas). At the beginning of the novel, the author assures that all the mentioned technology is already in use today. In history, IM weapons are currently in secret testing, with only the US special unit Delta Force owning these weapons. The guns supposedly work like this:

IM weapons convert various substances found in nature, such as sand or snow, into usable ammunition using various chemical and physical processes. For example, part of the snow that is loaded as a load into the compartment provided for this in the butt of an IM weapon is briefly warmed up when the trigger is pulled, and then cooled down again to form a solid ice bullet and shot. At the same time, when a weapon is loaded with sand, the required part of the sand is melted into a glass ball and then fired.

literature