The Citadel and the Wolves Read Online Free PDF Page A

downstairs study, I put my head around the sitting room door. Sis was watching a horror film on DVD. She’s a big fan of horror movies. She likes blood and gore. I sometimes think that my older sister is a little strange. I prefer romantic films to horror. Tommy, who should have been in bed because it was late for him, was annoying my sister, hitting her over the head with his plastic toy hammer. She threatened to brain him once or twice. Mum was in the kitchen, but I didn’t see dad.
    “Wendy, where’s dad?” I enquired.
    “Where do you think he is this time of the evening, Jade?”
    “Attic?”
    She murmured.
    As I vanished upstairs, I heard Tommy yell.
    I found daddy in the attic. A single bulb provided red light. I allowed my eyes to adjust to the low light. The aroma of his pipe tobacco filled the room. I grinned. He escaped from the rest of the world up here. In fact, this is my father’s world. Daddy, who was by the open skylight, didn’t notice me there, for he was peering through his telescope, which is quite powerful. He didn’t pick it up second-hand at the local flea market. He bought it new from a specialist shop. It had set him back almost 4000 euros. (Mummy thought daddy could’ve spent the money on better things, like a designer gown) I looked around curiously. I rarely ventured up here. There were charts, drawings and diagrams scattered about in a disorderly fashion on the desk by his computer that was switched on. The numbers on the screen reminded me of my maths homework; however, it was much more complicated than that. I suspected that he was working on something very important. But what did I come up here for now? Oh, yeah, the area of a triangle. I cleared my throat.
    He looked over his broad shoulder and smiled, noticing me for the first time. I was tempted to say: ‘I do love you, Daddy.’ I didn’t.
    “Daddy, I-”
    “Jade, I want you to take a look at something for me and tell me what you see,” said daddy.
    “Oh?”
    He put his large arm around me as I looked through his telescope, which was a new experience for me. It was like looking through a pair of very powerful binoculars, but it wasn’t. It was more than that. Although astronomy isn’t my strong point at school, I almost immediately recognised the planet that he had the telescope trained on. It was Jupiter. I was unsurprised.
    I turned to him. “Jupiter?”
    He chuckled, lighting his pipe, which had gone out again.
    “Yes, it’s Jupiter,” confirmed daddy, “the largest planet in our solar system, and at the moment, it’s being bombarded by fragments of the Icarus 9 Comet. This is probably the first time in history that man has witnessed such an event. This spectacular, celestial collision is being watched by millions around the globe.”
    And Doctor David Newton and his team on the International Space Platform, I thought.
    “The world has a ringside seat to the event of the new millennium. Although man has studied Jupiter for centuries, it remains a mystery, an enigma. It still refuses to give up all of its secrets. Perhaps it never will, yet the comet offers us a rare chance to learn more about one of our giant neighbours.”
    “How?”
    “The impact of the comet will throw up vast amounts of material from the surface of the planet into outer space. In fact, it’s already happening out there. It could help us to understand Jupiter a little better.”
    “What Jupiter is made of?”
    He nodded.
    I was pleased.
    “We already know a considerable amount about Jupiter’s outer atmosphere, which consists mainly of ammonia and methane,” enthused daddy, “but opinion is divided regarding the interior of the giant. Some believe that a thick atmosphere of hydrogen, nitrogen and methane covers a layer of ice equal to almost forty percent of Jupiter’s radius in thickness, and below this ice is a solid core of metals and rock. Others, however, believe that Jupiter consists almost entirely of hydrogen and helium in the