of Sweden as he received the Nobel Prize for his work in measuring the rate of universal expansion. In the world of astrophysics Dr Kinderman was the closest thing you could get to a rock star and Shepherd was finding it very hard to think of him as a suspect.
He felt something soft and cold press against the back of his hand and looked down to discover a pair of fresh gloves held low so Franklin wouldn’t see them. He smiled his thanks at the PST who had come to his rescue and quickly pulled them on just as Franklin finished his silent appraisal of the room and looked up. ‘OK boys,’ he said, ‘get to work.’
The two techs swooped into the room, one shaking open various-sized evidence bags, the other scoping every surface with a high-end camera that took both stills and video. Franklin joined Shepherd and Pierce back in the corridor. ‘Looks like someone left in a hell of a hurry.’
Pierce nodded. ‘When I first saw it I thought it was a break-in.’
‘You still think so?’
He shook his head. ‘Not when I saw that.’ He pointed to a small book lying open next to the terminal keyboard. It was photographed and handed out to Franklin. It was a standard appointments diary, a double page to a week, every blank space crammed with small, precise handwriting. ‘I was trying to find out where Dr Kinderman might be, but as you can see it wasn’t much help.’
Franklin flicked through the pages until he arrived at the current week where the writing just stopped. The last entry was in today’s date:
T
end of days
The rest of the diary was blank, as if nothing was going to happen ever again.
Franklin looked up. ‘You said no one has been in this room apart from you and the person who found it like this.’
‘That’s right, just me and Merriweather.’
Franklin handed the diary over to one of the techs for processing. ‘Why don’t we go and say hello to Merriweather.’
11
The Space Telescope Operations Control Centre was roughly half the size of a tennis court and smelt of warm circuitry and ozone. There were no windows in the room and therefore no daylight. The only illumination came from the occasional desk lamp and the combined glow of a few dozen flat-screen monitors facing a larger central screen. All of them were displaying the same message:
MANKIND MUST LOOK NO FURTHER
A man stood as they entered, his clothes and horn-rimmed glasses making him look like he had beamed in from the fifties.
‘Merriweather, these are Special Agents Franklin and Shepherd from the FBI.’
They shook hands. Franklin nodded at the big screen. ‘That the same message you found on Kinderman’s computer?’
‘Yes, sir –’ He cleared his throat and stared up at the screen rather than anyone in particular. ‘Well, I mean it was part of the program that did it – I think. Or rather – this message was the last thing that uploaded and now it’s everywhere and we can’t take it down. The whole system’s locked.’
‘Any idea what it might refer to?’
Merriweather blew out a breath and raised his eyebrows. ‘Hubble’s a telescope, all it does is look at stuff – it could refer to anything.’
‘It’s not looking at anything any more though is it?’
Merriweather shook his head and Shepherd felt for him. He knew how attached people got to the projects they were working on, how they often became the most meaningful relationships you had. Hubble had just been attacked, possibly put out of action for months, and Franklin was talking about it like someone had dented a car.
‘Talk us through the sequence,’ Shepherd said, trying to steer the conversation back to the investigation. ‘What was the first physical manifestation of the virus?’
‘It hit the guidance system first. That was when I knew it was serious and went looking for Dr Kinderman. I found his office in a mess and this message on the screen. Actually no, first there was a command box with what looked like a decaying googolplex in it, then the message popped up.’
‘Tell me about the googolplex.’
‘Wait a second,’ Franklin jumped in, ‘would you mind translating for those of us who flunked Physics.’
‘A googolplex is a mathematical term for a particularly long number,’ Shepherd said, his eyes staying on Merriweather. ‘It’s where we get the word “Google” from. All those zeros you get when a search comes back refer to the googolplex. And the fact that it was decaying simply means it was getting