BigBug
Chapter V

Seamus knew they had no choice but to cut open the meteorite. He thought the information they had been given at the Dordrecht observatory while being odd, very odd, was nothing more than an elitist response, provoked by ignorance, from a pompous geologist. The man said the rock was a piece of waste material produced in a blast furnace during the manufacture of iron at the Hoogovens plant situated about twenty kilometres from Amsterdam. Expert and ego are intertwined. So, Seamus, ever wise to the ways of dodgy experts, who invariably pronounce in infallible declarations, went out to the slag processing plant at Hoogovens and met up with some of his old Ajax supporter friends who worked there. Nice people. Provided you supported Ajax. Seamus put Moon’s rock up on the table in their canteen. The workers took a look at it. Didn’t look like any slag they had ever seen. They walked him over to the slag analysis office and asked the analyst to take a look at the rock. He said at once it was not slag from the plant at Ijmuiden. He made few basic tests. The Specific density was 3.9. The rock was the wrong density for iron slag from Ijmuiden. The rock did not scratch glass; the rock did not leave a black or red coloured streak when scraped over the back of a common bathroom tile but the rock bit into the tile leaving a deep colourless scratch.

“Well,” said the slag analyst, “there doesn’t seem to be magnetite or hematite present so that rules out iron ore.” He scratched the rock with a file and took a look at it under his powerful microscope. He brought the image up on his computer screen. The rock was composed of thousands and thousands of tiny orbicules. “How very interesting,” he finally said, “these look like chondrules which are exclusive to meteorites but they are very tiny for chondrules. Minuscule. The microscope is at maximum. I’ve never seen anything like them. You need to get some thin slices made and have this rock professionally examined in a lab. Try the VU - Vrije Universiteit – the university here in Amsterdam,” he advised. The analyst gave Seamus several samples of slag; some going as far back as the introduction of the modern blast furnaces more than a century ago.

“Of course there are ancient slags - Roman/Greek etc. - but most of this material would be in universities or museums. You can,” said Willem the slag plant manager, “find out a great deal of historical information from slag.” He reflected, looking again at the rock and weighing it up. “The outside of this rock has been subjected to very high temperatures. It has been melted, only a millimetre or so and uniformly, yet the inside has not been burnt or discoloured. I think it’s fair to say this is a fusion crust. For what it’s worth, I think you have a meteorite there.”

Seamus dragged the Jute sack containing the slag samples and the meteorite across to the 300D. He hoisted the heavy sack into the boot. Out the corner of his eye Seamus saw the dark blue, nondescript Toyota parked discreetly on the road outside the entrance to the slag plant. It was parked in such a way that the middle-aged woman in the Toyota could monitor Seamus’s activities. Seamus had seen that car before. When he arrived at the steel plant earlier he was obliged to go to the security office where they issued him with a pass to visit the slag plant. The security guards manning the barriers would not let one in without one. Seamus knew this, and drove directly to the security office to get his pass, but anyone who didn’t, usually drove straight up to the barriers where the security guards would then direct them over to the security office.

Seamus had seen the Toyota drive up to the security barrier from the window of the security office as he waited for his pass. The woman driving the car had turned back and parked near the office. She didn’t get out of the Toyota until Seamus had gone into the plant. He was sure of that. She would have then gone into the office, flashed her I.D at the manager, demanded to know where Seamus was going, make him or her, issue her a pass, and then threaten them with the sack and jail if they didn’t keep their mouths shut. They said it was routine, but it was not routine police procedure. This was Secret Service hocus-pocus. It was an invasive ruse to call this behaviour security procedure. He drove out from the slag plant and across to the barriers at the main gate. He handed in his pass and the barrier was raised. Seamus slowed right down on the highway. He saw the cars following him. They were good but not that good. The one in front was a grey Peugeot 304 and the one behind was a blue Ford Escort. One person in each car. Both cars, two doors each, were not more than two years old. Average looking. A car you would see parked next to yours at home. The government were snooping. The spooks were watching him. The two cars faded away. Two more would replace them. He was under level one surveillance. Why? Seamus was not doing anything illegal or engaged in any form of political activity that would bring him to the attention of the authorities. It could only be the meteorite. What kind of rock was it to warrant such attention? He pulled into a service station, parked and went to the toilet to take a dump. He didn’t fully close the door but left it open a tiny bit to watch. Sure enough a spook came in behind him. Seamus silently closed the door and sat down to take a dump. He could hear the spook outside, pretending to piss and then wash his hands. Why was the government interested in Seamus having a shit? It’s not like it was a state secret or some class of subversive excretion. No, Seamus lawfully dumped the residue of his excesses every day. As regular as clockwork. He wiped his ass, went and washed his hands. He walked back to the 300D. They would have someone in the toilet cubicle sniffing about, searching it. The Secret Shit Society. Big Brother was - Paranoid Pooh Policemen - ‘3P’. He opened the door of the 300D. The car would have a tracking device stuck onto it somewhere. He drove home ignoring the spooks. Better not tell Moon until he had some idea of what was going on. It was best not to let spooks know you were onto them. If they thought they were rumbled, they would put spook spooks onto you and you would have no chance of seeing them. Alright, ignore them as much as possible. What’s on the agenda? Need to rent a saw from Bo-rent with a diamond disc and cut a piece off the meteorite. Post it off to Actlabs Laboratory for analysis. Moon was not going to like that. It was dark as Seamus drove back to Amsterdam with a beautiful full moon hanging in a clear starry sky.

Bigbug was on the dark side of that moon hunting for DATA rocks when it got the call. “Really,” it answered DATA, “how interesting. Yes, this is very, very interesting.” It listened a while longer. “I am coming back. I am leaving now.” Bigbug was excited. DATA’s surveillance and eavesdropping programs had detected a new meteorite had been found in Amsterdam by an Irishman. The meteorite’s main mass, on preliminary examination, was found to be composed of many millions of circular orbicules, which the examiner thought might be some sort of tiny chondrules. The examiner doubted this because the orbicules were so small. The orbicules were not much bigger than microbes. Mini bugs? DATA activated the Dutch security services that now had the Irishmen under priority one 24 hr. surveillance. The Dutch didn’t know why. Need not to know basis. Bigbug imagined he was Elliot Ness. Bigbug would catch these fugitives, rescue the rock and bring it back safe and well to its grateful, adoring DATA and be awarded the ‘Congressional Medal of Granite’. Bigbug was back in Amsterdam before Seamus. Beneath the I the cylindrical stainless steel lock rose up out of the sediment. The lock gate opened. Bigbug steered Turtle1 inside. The submerged lock gates closed and the Turtle 1 descended down 30 meters into the pen by the side of the Metro Ship station below the Schip Museum. The water was pumped out and the bottom lock gate opened. Up above the lock retreated back into the sludge. Bigbug exited the bottom lock gate. The lock gate closed behind it. Bigbug’s I.D was checked by the M&M security guards and it boarded the adjacent Turtle train, started it up, and sped off to cut off station Metro Shell located about 1 kilometre away across the river Ij. Metro Shell was fifty meters below the Shell building. At this cut off station, after being inspected by the M&M, it travelled down a further ten kilometres along the tunnel to Metro Station Data. This was the centre of bug operations. This awesome alien facility, hidden away two kilometres down below the North Sea held the tabernacle of terror. DATA had its hive here. Bigbug was excited. It could not wait to be briefed by its creator.

Seamus found a space by his house in the Marnixstraat parked up the 300D. He went to the boot and as he did so he quietly looked up and down the street for spook spoor. He opened the boot took out his bag of slag and hauled it into his apartment. Seamus took Moon’s meteorite out from the sack. He put the meteorite back up on the shelf where it was usually stashed and rubbed the brass Buddha’s belly for a bit of good luck. They needed more than a wee bit of good luck. A lot more.

“Well?” said Moon sucking on a spliff. He was watching and listening, on his laptop to old videos of the Sex Pistols, the Clash and Madness, that had been digitally re-mastered. “Well?” He repeated.

“The guy in the lab out at the slag plant says it is not slag –”

“We all know that. And what else did he say?”

“He says as far as he is concerned it is a meteorite.”

Moon jumped up and took the meteorite down. He hugged it, “I told you it was a meteorite.” He sat the meteorite on the sofa beside him and rubbed and stroked it like a pet. Murphy the cat spat at him and left the room. “Did he say what kind of a meteorite it is?”

“No. That takes professional analysis. It has to be done in a lab. We have to take it to a lab.” Seamus didn’t tell Moon they would have to cut a piece off it. Not yet.

“I was thinking we could bring it over to Trinity College, Dublin and get them to take a look at it. They have a great Geology Department there.”

“And where do we get the money to do that?”

“We can swallow some hash, a decent pollen, or a few nice temple balls, and bring it over. We can travel as The Celtic Caramelo brothers. I can sell the hash no problem. There is nothing decent to smoke over there. The paranoids have created another Irish famine.”

Seamus didn’t argue with Moon. He was not going to smuggle dope to Ireland. Seamus placated him by saying, “Maybe. Let’s see.” There were other matters on his mind. He was mindful anything they said would be listened into. The house would be bugged, if it weren’t already bugged, by the mass surveillance programs installed by the Dutch on many Irish places at the insistence of the UK Paranoids. UKP. He couldn’t tell Moon any of this. Moon would start digging holes in the wall looking for the bugs. He wouldn’t find any but that would not stop him discussing the matter with his eco warrior buddies from the EWAB over in Finnegan’s Pub. At great length and repeatedly when they were not swilling beer. Moon had placed the meteorite on a pillow. As he watched his old music videos, his hand was casually resting on the meteorite, much the way a parent keeps touch with their child in casual contact comfort.

“I’m going out for a pint,” said Seamus. “Are you coming?”

“No,” said Moon, “something to do.” He was trembling and petting the rock.

“Taking the meteorite out for a walk are you? Do not forget a doggy poop bag.”

“I don’t need a doggy poop bag for the meteorite.”

“It’s not for the rock. It’s for you in case you shit yourself with excitement.”

Seamus went out and walked across to the skateboard park. The moon was glorious. The stars sparkled on a canvas of brilliant diamonds. The wind whipping in down the big canal, the Kosterverlorenkade, was very cold. It blew bitterly cold and icy sharp. The canals would freeze soon. He pulled his woolly hat over his ears and huddled down into his parka. As he walked over the bridge he saw the two spooks. One behind him walking along the Nassaukade and the other one walking towards him up the Wittenkade from the direction of Finnegan’s. Fit people carrying rucksacks containing all their nosey nit picking knickknacks and they always wore expensive, good quality walking shoes. A small but significant identifying indication. They were always properly kitted out to snoop. Seamus hoped this surveillance was not his past catching up with him. He shuddered. He went into Finnegan’s and ordered a pint and a large Blackbush. Seamus knew everyone in Finnegan’s but not the couple sitting at a table sipping half pints of Guinness. They would not be getting drunk. Not on duty. When they wrote up their reports they also gave in their receipts for the half pints. They were only allowed two. What a way to earn a living. There wasn’t much Seamus didn’t know about spooks and their strange secretive ways. He downed the Blackbush, ordered another and asked Marjolien to play Dylan for him. He needed to think and Bob, who evoked memories of his carefree, festival filled youth, helped him to relax. Dylan began to sing Tambourine Man.

Ten kilometres away, two kilometres deep under the North Sea, inside the Metro Data facility, Bigbug listened to a pod of whales humming Bach as it sailed across the M&M clone spawn tanks on a cushion of compressed air. The clone factory facility rested on solid rock and could withstand any attack or natural disaster. It never failed to impress Bigbug the sight down below. The clone spawn facility was more than a kilometre square containing a thousand tanks, each tank could grow one hundred Misogynist Marines, ‘M&Ms’. They were cannibal soldiers, designed to eat women and girl children. Their job was to wage the extermination wars during the Great Cull campaign drawn up by DATA. The Earth was, once again, going to be a human free zone. HFZ. The humans were going to be culled and exterminated by killing and eating all their females. The M&Ms’ motto was NB/NB; ‘No Bitches/No Breed’. As each M&M crawled out from one of the tanks, fully formed dripping clone spawn, the service clones, the Cyclops, hosed off the clone spawn and placed the newly formed monster in one of the thousands of freezers. Stored away until Cull Time. The Cyclops called the clone spawn, ‘Devil Jelly’. Bigbug stepped off its Gondola of compressed air at the far end of the clone facility. It hurriedly walked through the big Oz gates and along the tunnel that led into the heart of the facility. The Tabernacle of Terror. DATA’s hive. The Holy of Horrors. The elite group of Cyclops that guarded DATA opened the door and let Bigbug in. It rushed over and sat across from DATA. A Cyclops gave Bigbug a glass of fresh bugjuice, which it drank with relish.

“Greetings Bigbug,” said DATA. “You have work to do. We have found a match.”

Bigbug was unable to reply. It was incapable of thought, so great were the emotions that ran through it. Emotions that should not be there or, at least, suppressed and under total control. Exhilarating excitement. Pulsating power. Above all, relief. They had located a DATA rock. After all this time. Bigbug managed to communicate with DATA by speech. Bigbug was trembling. It managed to croak out, “Where are our kind, Great One?”

Moon would not like cutting the meteorite at all. Not one wee bit. He had become even more attached to the rock since Seamus told him the analyst at the steel plant believed it to be a meteorite. Moon was emotionally attached to a fucking rock. He even gave the rock an animal name thereby implying, and not subconsciously, it was a living thing. Speaking of the sub-conscious and going directly to the unconscious, there lay our mighty Moon, sprawled out in his Ikea fold out futon bed. Moon baptized the rock and christened it the Albatross after his boat. Ok, magnets do not stick to rocks, but rocks cannot steam around the Dutch waterways and they most certainly cannot fly. Moon moved. Ah progress! It was alive. Put the kettle on. Seamus pulled his bag of slag pieces into the kitchen from the hallway where he had dumped them the night before. He took out the heavy slag pieces, they cannot be called rocks, and neatly arranged them on the table. He was going to make comparisons, but the meteorite was missing from the shelf above and to the left of the cooker. That was its perch. That’s where it lived. That’s where Moon determined it should roost.

“Moon! Wake up. Where’s the rock?”

“What do you want it for?” There is a muffled voice coming out from under his pillow.

“I have the slag pieces here. I want to compare them to the rock. You know this. I asked you to come with me last night.”

“Not me. Maybe someone who looks like me. You were duped by an impostor. A look alike Moon. Get on the blower to the Irish Feds.”

“Irish Feds?”

“Garda coming out of mass wearing tweed sports jackets, leather elbows, nasty ties and two big flat wicked porker feet always wearing brown brogues.”

“Where’s the meteorite?”

Moon stirred in the bed and rolled over. He opened his eyes. He looked at his erect penis.

“Good morning reality.”

“Where’s the meteorite?”

Moon stretched across and lifted up the other pillow. The rock was under there. Moon was sleeping with the rock. Well, it is all to their own, thought Seamus, who confesses he has slept with harder colder women.

Seamus lifted up the rock.

“Careful,” advised Moon in a concerned daddy-like voice, “don’t drop her.”

Seamus placed the rock on the table among the slag pieces. At first glance the rock, the meteorite, did not look like any of the slags.

“Coffee?” asked Seamus.

“Yeah thanks.”

Moon swung his legs off the bed. He was wearing his Foreign Legion camouflaged T-shirt and underpants and his Legion dog tags were dangling around his neck. “Laugh if you will,” he once told Seamus, “but the number of women I have pulled with these,” he said tapping his dog tags, “is unbelievable, truly unbelievable.”

“I believe you,” said Seamus. “Moon what are you at, sleeping with the meteorite?”

He bristled. “I can sleep with whoever and whatever I want.”

“Better be careful, you will get the name of being a rockophile.”

“Fuck off. It helps with the headaches and the nightmares. The meteorite is blocking them out. I’m telling you.”

“Are you serious?”

“I slept like a baby. It’s the rock. There is something going on there. It’s taken to me.”

Moon suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress and also from a horrible, nasty form of Epilepsy. Both of these conditions were brought about from his experiences during the first Gulf war where he had been engaged in such delightful duties as decommissioning Scud missiles, mine clearance and collecting chemical weapons for disposal. For disciplinary reasons he was put on ‘Grave Detail’ and had to bury the many, many, dead Iraqis they came across. Or what was left of them. He often came across villages close to weapons storage facilities where everyone, for instance in a family hamlet, were lying dead. Bits and pieces of them just were rotting away in the blazing sun. Dead. All dead. Whole scale indiscriminate slaughter. Everyone and everything. Men, women, children, cats, dogs and camels. All dead, destroyed by our democratic devastating force. Moon was shocked and awed! He had never recovered. Not really. After living and working in Holland for a time he discovered he was all fucked up. He wasn’t able to work. He could not work. A bitter pill for Moon to swallow. If only one could get a legitimate pill in Holland? Plenty of party drugs but no anti–epilepsy medication unless you could pay for it. Expensive if you don’t have a medical card. The Dutch response to Moon’s application for social security and a medical card was to get the Foreign Police to deny him his ‘permission to live in Holland’ document. Without this, Verblijsvergunning, the Social Services would not pay him his allowances and, more importantly, he could not get a medical card. No one would give Moon a job because of the epilepsy. No employer could get insurance for him because of the epilepsy. Without the medical card, his epilepsy was getting progressively worse. Moon smoked grass to combat the epilepsy. Seamus was doing his best to care for him. It was the least he could do for Moon. This man, his crazy young friend, had opened for Seamus a magical pathway that led to another amazing dimension. He didn’t mind taking care of Moon at all but – there were easier jobs.

Seamus put Moon’s coffee up on the table. Moon poured a small tot of the finest French brandy into his coffee. This was an honourable Legion tradition. Well that’s what he told Seamus and who was he to disagree? Moon was staring at the meteorite and the slag pieces. He handled the slag.

“Nowhere near as heavy as the meteorite and they look nothing like her.”

“Her?”

“When you talk about a boat or a ship you refer to it as ‘she’. Well this is a ship that has travelled through space bringing knowledge and enlightenment with it. It’s a kind of magic. It is enchanted. Might ask me mate Bono to write a musical. The Enchanted Rock.”

“That sounds like the title of a magical porn movie.”

Moon was staring at the meteorite. He wiped the table near him and placed the meteorite there. “I don’t want her to be in direct physical contact with this shit,” he said pointing at the slag, “I don’t want her to be contaminated. I don’t want her to catch anything. Filthy slag.”

Seamus thought he was talking about a young lady, part-time crack head, whore friend of Moon’s, who, he claimed, had given him the clap, three times and who shall forever remain anonymous, God bless her. Moon explained this venereal misfortune was due to the average Irishman’s fear of condoms. ’Twas, a fear, a fear most terrible, terror-induced, fertile and fostered by the one true holy and apostolic church. It was the bogey man, Cathal O’Condom, sent by the Vatican to lurk in Irish bedrooms. It was such a taboo subject Moon believed for many years that a condom was a South American vulture. Seamus changed the subject. “There’s a delivery at Finnegan’s in two hours. We can go over and take care of that and then we can go to Bo-rent and hire out a stone cutting saw.”

Moons face darkened. “What do you want that for?”

“We are going to have to cut a full slice of the rock and send it off for professional analysis.”

“No way. You are not going to slice up the meteorite. No fucking way!”

“We will cut up the slag first and take a look at that and then we have to cut a piece of your rock to make comparisons. We have to send off a piece, a full slice of the main mass, to a laboratory for analysis. If we don’t, we will never find out what kind of meteorite it is, or its origin. You do want to know where it came from, right.”

Moon supped his coffee and brandy. He looked at the meteorite fondly and then glared at Seamus. He had him. He knew Moon was extremely curious, as curious as he was, as to where the rock originated.

“I do.”

“Ok, let’s take care of the delivery and then we will go off to Bo-rent and collect the saw.”

“Let me have me shower and spliff.”

“Why don’t you have a spliff a shower and then another spliff?”

“You are good man. We could use your strategic brain in the EWAB.” Moon began to roll two spliffs.

Moon didn’t argue so it was a silent tacit agreement. He stood up, paused, looked at the meteorite and left. Whatever he was thinking he changed his mind and went off to shower.

Seamus thought he was going to take the meteorite into the shower with him and maybe give it a bubble bath. Seamus went into his room intending to carry out some more research on Meteorites on the Web until Moon was dressed, stoned, and ready to go. He sat in his chair behind his desk and looked out the window staring out at the Lijnbaansgracht canal that ran all the way into Lidseplien. What would they find when they cut open the meteorite? This question enabled Seamus to cause a dramatic digression from the narrative. He went into his mind looking for the emerald green neon lettering that burnt above the door to the Mind Theatre.

I am not Seamus.

Cead Mile Failte, that generous, warm hearted, Irish welcome, beckons to me. I enter the theatre. I am onstage behind the veil of mystery.

Curtain up.

I am standing onstage beside a big old heavy safe. We are in my family’s garden shed and I have a jemmy bar in my hand. I am fourteen years old and my pal Tommy Cosgrave is there with me. Tommy is fifteen years old and an apprentice mechanic. Without him we could never have brought the safe to here. Tommy borrowed a mobile engine crane from his da’s garage lifted up the safe and put it down on a trolley. We wheeled the safe to the garden shed and there it was. Here it is. We could not force the door open.

“What we need,” says Tommy “is a safe cracker.”

“Where are we going to get a safe cracker?” I ask him.

“I don’t know. I thought of it. It’s up to you to get one.”

“It has to be cut open.”

“I might be able to sneak out the burning gear from the garage but

it’s very hard. The bottles are locked away and the da takes the burning torch home with him.”

“Maybe we could ask the IRA for a wee bit of dynamite – “

This is a hasty suggestion. The door opens and my da rushes in. He has been outside eavesdropping, listening in, alerted by the racket we have been making but he and my ma were not supposed to be here. There is no accounting for the fickle dithering of das and mas. Da grabs me by the neck.

“Dynamite? You have made enough noise to wake the dead and now do you want to add to the total of the faithful departed?” He pauses. He releases me and points at the safe. “What is that? Where did you get that safe?” His eyes are lit up with curiosity.

“We found it, da.”

“I’ll bust your head. Where did you find it? On the bus? In your school bag? In the letterbox? Who do you think you are talking to? Delaney’s Donkey? The RUC? You don’t find a safe. Where did you get it and don’t you lie to me, wee lad?”

“Honestly, Mr Price,” says Tommy in desperation,” we did find it. We were stripping copper and lead from that row of derelict shops and we were in the back of the old fish and chip shop and I was pulling out copper pipes, out the back where they used to cut up the chips, and I pulled out the old potato bin and a panel in the wall came away and there it was.”

The da relaxes a bit. “Did anyone see you bringing it here?”

“No da.”

“No, Mr Price. We wrapped it up in an old blanket and put the copper and lead on top.”

“That’s Fusco’s old shop. It’s been closed since the war. They interned him for being an Italian. Don’t know why. He made the best fish and chips in Belfast. He died in the internment camp and the place has been closed ever since.” Da touches the safe. He examines it closely. He taps the safe gently with the jemmy bar and listens.

“Of course we are not on the high seas lads but I do believe we can claim salvage.”

“I wonder what is inside.” I speculate. I dream. “We have to see what’s inside. We have to cut it open.”

“O no,” says da, “this is not the turret of a T34 or a Churchill or a Tiger tank. It’s not armour plate. It’s not even steel. It looks impressive but it’s made from cast iron. It is not a safe, it is a fireproof strongbox.” He goes over to his tool cabinet, unlocks it, and takes out a big sledge hammer. He raises the sledge hammer above his head and brings it down on the safe. Nothing happens. He hits it again and the top of the safe shatters. He hits it two or three more times and the door breaks off in pieces. Bundles of money fall onto the floor. The safe is stuffed full of money. Tommy and I think we are rich and dance around the place whooping and screaming. Da pulls all the money out from the safe and examines it. The bundles of notes are in a big heap on the floor. I pick a bundle up. The colourful money is musty. The notes are huge. Four or five time the size of a pound note.

“This,” says da disappointed, “is worthless. It isn’t even good to wipe your arse with. This is Italian war time money. El Duce duds. It has to be burnt. It is evidence against you. You,” he says to Tommy, “get rid of this cast iron. Clean up this mess. Dump it and make sure no one see you. You can still get in trouble for trespass.” He shovels the money into a wheelbarrow and we take it down the garden where he burns the notes in the oil drum brazier. I am crying. I thought we were rich. As this great pile of money is going up in smoke da turns to me. He puts his arm around me and hugs me.

“Don’t worry son. You won’t get in any trouble. All this is real but not really of any consequence to the latter. You cannot possess what does not belong to you.”

“But we found it. We didn’t steal it. My friend Moon found it. It’s ours.”

“I know son, but you don’t know what you have uncovered. This is an unknown. You must explore the unknown in life carefully, and remember, all that glitters is not good.”

“We have to cut it open.”

Moon stuck his head around the door. “Tripping again, are you? I’m ready.”

They walked across to Finnegan’s – the wellspring of Moon’s fine French brandy - opened the doors and it wasn’t long until the Heineken delivery truck pulled up outside. They checked the delivery, paid for it and put the beer away. They drove to Bo-rent. They rented a very powerful electric-powered, stone cutting saw with 25cm diamond blade. It was heavy and it took Seamus and Moon to lift it into the back of Seamus’s old Mercedes 300D. Back home they slipped on dust masks and filled up the reservoir on the saw with water. Seamus placed the rock on the cutting platform beside the diamond blade.

“I know now how the Aristocrats felt when they were standing on the guillotine,” said Moon.

“We have to cut it open.” They put on their dust masks.

“Let’s get it over with.”

Seamus switched on the power. The huge saw cut through the rock sending up a green spray. The cooling water running onto the saw blade and into the rock was dark emerald green.

“That’s alien blood,” shouted Moon. “You are slaughtering our first extra-terrestrial visitor!” He was a little bit excited that’s all.

The cut was complete. Seamus placed the large slice of the rock to one side. He then sliced up the slags. None of the slags turned green when cut and they were much easier to cut than the rock. It was obvious to Moon and Seamus that the meteorite was very different to the slags. Seamus and Moon cleaned off the slags and the slice and main mass of the meteorite. Seamus examined the slices of slags and the slice from the meteorite under his microscope. He passed the slice of the meteorite and the microscope across to Moon.

“Take a look at that.”

Moon peered wisely down the microscope.

“Do you see the small spherical shapes? They look like tiny hard boiled eggs that have been sliced through?”

“I do,” said Moon.” They are very clear. What are they?”

“They look to me like chondrules,” replied Seamus.

“What are they?”

“Chondrule is ancient Greek for grain. Chondrules form as molten or partially molten droplets in space. They are round grains and they are only found in meteorites. Here read it yourself on Wikipedia –”

Moon had a great smile on his face. “Only found in meteorites.”

“They may not be,” but he wasn’t listening.

“Only found in meteorites,” he repeated and he began patting the rock where he imagined its head to be, much the way one does to the cat. He was so ecstatic, Seamus thought he was going to put a collar on the meteorite and take it for a walk.

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