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“For God’s sake, Catriona, shut up,” Brigit snapped from the back of the BMW. “I’m trying to work.”
Catriona stopped singing Kieran Gamble’s latest song “Don’t worry my darling, My love will see you through,” and changed to humming it as she flicked her ginger hair out of her eyes and looked down at the Tribune de Geneve Sam had given her, the one with the picture of Kieran on the front, his dark smouldering eyes burning up at her off the page.
“Can you read any of it, Catty?” Sam said.
“I think it’s talking about the Eurovision Song Contest.”
“I thought it would be.”
She started humming “Don’t worry” again.
“It’s not a bad song, I suppose,” Sam said, driving passed the airport.
“Not bad? It’s fantastic! We’re bound to win this year.” She plugged in her earphones to play Kieran’s latest album. “The battery’s flat!” she sighed and looked out of the window. Sam was driving them up a long straight road out of Geneva. It had almost stopped raining and a froth of high spring cloud was gathering above the snow-capped peaks of some distant mountains that stretched right across the horizon ahead of them. She remembered what her best friend Aislyn had said when she told her she was coming to Geneva for the Easter holiday: “I suppose you’ll be going skiing,” as if skiing was some sort of punishment.
“Oh, by the way Sam,” Brigit said quietly. “I’ve cancelled your flight back.”
Catriona stopped humming, thinking perhaps she had misheard.
Sam leaned over to look at Brigit in the mirror. “Really? Cancelled the flight? Why’s that, my love?” he said calmly.
“I need you here. You were right, Sam. This job’s too much for me. You’re gonna have to stay and support me.”
There was a short silence. Catriona remembered how Sam had warned her Mother not to give up her job in Irish television to become the Irish Ambassador but she had been utterly confident she could cope on her own. Obviously in the past two months she’d found out he’d been right.
“I think Catriona should finish her school leaving cert first, don’t you, Bee? She’s due to start revising as soon as we get back. We’ll come back after the summer term ends, dearest.”
“No,” she snapped. “I need you here now, Sam.”
There was another embarrassed pause.
“I’d love to stay and help you, Bee,” he said, “but I don’t think my school would--”
“Your school?” Brigit’s tone was colder than the snow on the distant mountains. “Surely you’re not putting a class of eight-year-olds before the interests of Ireland are you, Samuel?”
“Of course not dearest, but--”
“Good because I called your school as well.”
There was an even longer pause.
“Did you dear?”
Catriona looked at him in bewilderment. How could he take it all so calmly?
“Yes. I said you’d broken both legs skiing and would have to stay here resting for the next three months at least. You can write to them later to hand in your resignation.”
Perhaps it was because Dr. Michael Riley had just had a good night’s sleep while Danny Kissov had been working on the ATLAS detector all night. Or perhaps Michael was luckier than Kissov. Or more prepared to accept the unexpected. Or brighter. In any case it was Michael Riley who saw the problem first.
It was obvious to Michael from the moment he walked into the long narrow ATLAS Control Room at six o’clock that Kissov was already exhausted. His eyes looked dull and large dark bags hung below them sagging over his sallow yellow cheeks. This was not surprising. For the past twelve hours he had been helping the scientists to bring up each of the sub-detectors one after another, difficult and intensive work, requiring enormous concentration under pressure. Dozens of visitors were crowded into the room peering over the shoulders of Kissov and the scientists.
Nobody greeted him as Michael walked beside the frosted window that stretched down one side of the room, passed the ten scientists permanently based in CERN. That was normal. He did not form friendships readily. Indeed he actively discouraged them. Even the visitors ignored him, as if he didn’t exist. He avoided eye contact as he walked passed them to his desk near the emergency exit at the far end of the room and prepared himself for the morning’s work.
Just before nine o’clock a message flashed up on Michael’s screen.
Message from dkissov
Are you ready to bring up the Muon Spectrometer now?
Michael clicked on Reply and typed Yes. All the other sub-systems were already live. They only had to activate Michael’s Spectrometer and ATLAS would be ready to start collecting data. He and Kissov worked together to bring the Spectrometer on-line, communicating electronically and without a spoken word passing between them. It was almost fully powered when, just after nine-thirty-four, Michael saw something odd happen. He was using a Trigger and Data Acquisition System window to monitor the flow of data when he noticed the rate of data production suddenly and dramatically increase. Instead of getting around 200 events per second the Spectrometer began generating over 12,000. This rate lasted only for a few milliseconds and might not have been very significant had the rate returned to normal, but it didn’t. It came down off the peak and settled out at around 2,000 events per second, ten times more than expected.
Michael stood up and looked over the top of the three large computer screens on his desk. Kissov was talking to the new Run Co-ordinator, Seline Soubise, who had just arrived to take over from him. He obviously hadn’t seen the problem. If he had there would have been pandemonium. Michael quickly sat down. He was intensely curious about this unusual and unexpected phenomenon and decided to investigate the cause without saying anything to Kissov, guided by some physical insight which warned him to act cautiously. He opened an Athena command window and began searching the transient data store for high energy events then used Mercator to visualise the particle tracks for each event. It took him only a few seconds to find what he was looking for. At 09:34:23.27.729 a thick black track had curved down across the inner parts of ATLAS, spawning secondary particles as it went, finally stopping inside the beam pipe near the intersection point. Michael stared at it, unable to believe his eyes, his mind racing.
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