Mike Dundas, technician
Ted Dundas, retired police officer
Ruth Clark, neighbour of Ted Dundas
Hamish Macrae, aka Bran, cult leader
Billy Macrae, brother of Hamish
Alan Macrae, father of Hamish
Dan McDiarmid, geologist, Edinburgh University
Marge Case, geologist, Edinburgh University
Constable Morag Decker, police officer
Blue Ishiguro, geologist, USGS
William MacEwen, police superintendent
Paula Romano, Chief Constable
Archie Ferguson, Emergency Planning Officer
Janice Docherty, hospital patient
Siobhan Reader, Musselburgh Rest Centre manager
OTHER:
Bob Farnes, Prime Minister
Dave Holland, Environment Secretary
Indira Bhide, Home Secretary
Debbie Sturrock, firefighter, Dunbar
William Calder, Jackie Brown, rig workers
Jenny Calder, wife to William
UNITED STATES
NASA:
Jays Malone, Apollo astronaut
Tom Barber, Apollo astronaut
Tracy Malone, daughter to Jays
Harry Maddicott, JSC director
Sixt Guth, Space Station astronaut
Bonnie Jones, Space Station astronaut
Frank Turtle, engineer, JSC Solar System Exploration Division
OTHER:
Monica Beus, physicist
Alfred Synge, astronomer
Scott Coplon, geologist, US Geological Survey
Joely Stern, e-zine journalist
Cecilia Stanley, e-zine editor
David Petit, chemist, Nobel Prize Winner
Admiral Joan Bromwich, Vice Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff
Garry Beus, son of Monica, USAF pilot
Jake Parrish, USAF pilot
JAPAN
Declan Hague, monk
LUNAR FEDERAL REPUBLIC:
Nadezhda Pour-El Meacher Dundas, astronaut
I BIG WHACK (#ulink_f4219bc0-4ff7-50bf-ab3a-12f39e0e8f56)
It began in a moment of unimaginable violence, five billion years before humans walked the Earth.
There was a cloud, of gas and dust, slowly spinning. Much of it was the hydrogen and helium which had emerged from the Big Bang itself, but it was tainted by crystals of ice – ammonia, water and methane – and dust motes rich in iron, magnesium and silica, even some grains of pure metal. These were flotsam from older stars, stars already dead.
… And now another star died, a giant, in the conclusive spasm of supernova. A flood of energy and matter hammered into the cloud.
The cloud lost its stability, and began to collapse, to a spinning disc. The central mass shone cherry red, then gradually brightened to white, until – after a hundred million years – it burst into fusion life.