Asteroid Crisis: Star Challengers Book 3 (10 page)

Nineteen

From their perspective, the Star Challengers had left the asteroid mission modules less than an hour earlier, but more than six months had passed aboard the ISSC. When they arrived, the station personnel were abuzz with excitement, busy with so many duties that even the mysterious appearance of the five young people didn’t create much of a stir.

“I’m definitely getting used to this,” Dyl said, letting go of the handholds on the wall and doing a slow spin in zero gravity. “Whoever thought that traveling to a space station would start to feel normal?”

Dyl nearly smacked into JJ, who was floating nearby. “I might be getting used to it, but it’s not really normal for me, yet,” JJ said.

“Nothing about you is normal,” Dyl teased.

“It’s better than normal!” Tony used a heel to push himself from the wall, tumbling through the air in a series of somersaults that would have made any earth-bound gymnast envious.

King took the lead. “Come on! Let’s get an update on what’s been going on.” As they emerged from the node room into the next module, they recognized Lifchez who hovered in front of a monitor screen. When he looked up at them, his grin seemed almost distracted. “Look who’s back, just in time for the excitement.”

“Good excitement or bad excitement?” Dyl asked.

“That remains to be seen, but you’ll have a front-row seat to watch the second asteroid slip past Earth.”

“Second
asteroid?” Song-Ye asked, startled. “Did we miss the first one?”

“More accurately, the first one missed us.” Lifchez touched the screen and displayed time-lapse images. “Last week, Asteroid 1 crossed Earth’s orbit.” They watched a sparkling light moving against the backdrop of the frozen stars. The streak sailed along, brightening and then dimming as it moved farther away.

“Looks like it missed us by a mile,” JJ said.

“Oh, much more than a mile,” Lifchez said. “More than a million kilometers, in fact. Still a squeaker in astronomical terms, but once your team set off the nukes, it was a foregone conclusion. Asteroid 2 is expected to pass much closer. Earth is on high alert.”

“When will we know for sure?” Song-Ye asked. “How close will it come?”

Lifchez showed a projection of Asteroid 2. A green line described its original orbit in the asteroid belt; a red line showed the dangerous orbit after the Kylarn had sent it plunging toward Earth, and a blue line showed the new path that had changed since the nuclear warheads had nudged it. “The orbit still deviates slightly, so it’s impossible to make an exact prediction.”

“But once we deflected it, how could the orbit change again?” King asked. “Isn’t it just simple orbital mechanics from that point?”

“Normally, yes, but an asteroid has pockets of frozen ice and gases that evaporate as it approaches the sun. That violent evaporation is like popcorn popping, bumping the asteroid a little bit this way and that. Unfortunately, in our case, a little bit could make the difference between a catastrophic impact and a sigh of relief.”

“I vote for the sigh of relief,” Dyl said.

JJ elbowed her brother. “We’ll bear that in mind, whenever asteroids decide to become democracies.”

“Let’s go to Central,” King said. “I want to check in with Stationmaster Ansari. Did all three missions return safely?”

“Oh, yes,” Lifchez said. “You know the way to Central?”

“We’re familiar enough with it by now,” JJ said with a smile.

Song-Ye grabbed Dyl’s arm. “Come on, Junior.” They set off toward the Central Command Module.

Ansari and Fox were both there to greet them. “We hoped you would arrive in time to observe one of the close approaches.”

“Sorry we missed the first one,” JJ said. “I understand the second asteroid is going to come much closer.”

“A little too close for comfort,” Ansari said.

They learned that all three asteroid mission modules had limped back to the ISSC using the last of the fuel in their plasma spacedrives. Over the past few months, the modules had been reconnected to the ISSC, returning the station to its former capacity. During the previous half-year, Mira hadn’t harassed the modules with her starfish ship—in fact, she hadn’t shown herself at all.

“Five hours remaining before closest approach,” Ansari said. “Not long enough for you to relax and get settled in, I’m afraid.”

“Pfft.
We’re not here to relax,” Song-Ye said.

Dr. d’Almeida’s long-range telescopes in the observatory module were trained on the approaching asteroid. At the highest magnification, they could see a grainy, blurry blob, an oblong, cratered shape.

“I’d recognize that space potato anywhere,” Dyl said.

Colonel Fox contacted Earth for the latest update and spoke to Lt Colonel Rodgers. “Everything’s on standby, sir,” Rodgers said. “We’ve got ten nuclear missiles ready as a last resort, although this close, it would be hard to deflect that oncoming rock. A bomb could just as easily shatter it, and then Earth would be bombarded by multiple impacts.”

“It’s going to miss,” JJ said in a tight whisper—more wishful thinking than certainty.

For the next few hours, they watched the asteroid draw closer and closer as planet Earth continued along its orbit, seemingly unaware of the approaching danger. JJ couldn’t help thinking of how Dyl had been innocently riding his bike, not seeing the oncoming car that had smashed into him.…

Pi made new calculations every five minutes, although little changed. “It’s going to be very close.”

“We need to do something,” Dyl said.

“Easy, cadet,” Fox said quietly.

Everyone’s eyes were fixed on the monitor.

“What are you going to do?” Song-Ye asked, not bothering to hide her own nerves.

“Nothing yet,” Ansari whispered.

“Nuke it!” Tony blurted out. Everyone in central looked at him. His face turned red. “Sorry. I know the risks of doing that. Sorry,” he whispered.

The Star Challengers and the crewmembers in Central refocused on the asteroid. It was getting closer.

Closer.

They all held their breath. The asteroid passed Earth like a giant lumbering oil tanker drifting past an island. On the orbital diagrams, the two lines crossed with almost no room to spare, and Earth’s gravity pulled the asteroid enough to disturb its orbit even further, but the tumbling cratered rock sailed onward in its elongated path around the sun.

JJ let out a shuddering sigh of relief. Perspiration filmed her forehead. She didn’t know how long she’d been holding her breath. “It looks like we did it.”

“Never had a doubt,” Dyl said. “Didn’t break a sweat.”

“That was the largest of the three asteroids.” Ansari’s voice had a slight catch. “We still don’t know what will happen with Asteroid 3—it’s already fragmented, and its orbit is the most erratic.”

“We’ll know tomorrow afternoon,” Fox added. “That’s when it’s due to cross the Moon’s orbit.”

JJ tried to relax, “it can’t be soon enough for me.”

While they waited, the Star Challengers got a full briefing on the state of Earth’s preparations. So much of humanity’s efforts had been focused on the three asteroid missions that JJ hadn’t noticed all of the other cultural changes, the reawakening of Earth’s attention to progress.

In the three years since the first Kylarn attack on Moonbase Magellan, Earth had scrambled to catch up after having let their advancement slow down like a stove burner on the lowest flame. But given enough incentive—and a potential devastating alien invasion was certainly enough incentive!—innovators, engineers, private industry, and government space programs had been inspired.

Dozens more satellites had been launched, including missile defenses, along with cutting-edge systems developed by a new generation of scientists and engineers. Two more space-station modules were being prepared and would soon be lifted into orbit. Even better, plans were under way to establish a second international space station. Down on Earth, many more astronauts were being trained. Several nations built new launch complexes.

All steps in the right direction.

JJ and her friends spent a long time reviewing images of the alien outpost on the Moon, transmitted by the secret Eye in the Sky II spy satellite. By now, the Kylarn would know that their first two asteroids had missed Earth, and she wondered if the squidbutts were angry or defeated … or just making other plans. If Asteroid 3, with its dangerously unpredictable fragments, struck Earth, Mira would have succeeded in helping the Kylarn.

The three-part fractured asteroid tumbled toward Earth, closing in. Soon it would reach the Moon’s orbit. JJ and her friends watched the images from Central.

As it came in from the asteroid belt, much closer to the Sun than it had been since its creation, the increasing warmth heated up its internal structure. Some of the frozen gases and ice locked into the structure began to evaporate. With Dr. d’Almeida’s long-distance telescopes and the high-resolution images available from other observation satellites, faint wisps of steam were visible. A small but distinct explosion occurred on the largest of the distant asteroid chunks, a geyser spewing gas. It was quite a show.

“Asteroid 3 had more ice inclusions than the other two,” King said. “That’s one thing that made it so difficult to calculate what would happen to its orbit.”

Captain Bronsky raised his voice, though JJ couldn’t tell if he was excited or dismayed. “We could not have predicted that.”

After the gas eruption on the asteroid, the large chunk collided with the second one, while the third chunk continued to whirl around the center of mass. It was like a complicated cosmic ballet, JJ thought. The Earth circled the Sun, as the asteroid came in toward it. All the while, the Moon spun around and around the Earth.

“That eruption diverted its course slightly,” Pi said, displaying a chart.

JJ had a pretty good idea from watching the Eye in the Sky II satellite where the asteroid might be heading. “Look at the Kylarn base. It’s like a stirred-up ant’s nest!”

Tony said, “Boy, they do
not
look happy.”

The nuclear detonation had only changed the broken asteroid’s orbit by a little. The Kylarn had sent it to intersect exactly with the Earth’s orbit.… and now there was a slight problem—a problem for the Kylarn.

The Moon was in the way.

At their base, the aliens scrambled in what was clearly an emergency evacuation. The construction activities sputtered to a halt. Several starfish ships lifted off from their landing zones and whirled away.

“A dose of their own medicine,” Song-Ye said.

Everyone in Central gathered around the observation screens, and the people on Earth watched with bated breath. JJ realized that the Kylarn on the far side of the Moon were now feeling the same terror the inhabitants of Earth had experienced only a day earlier, when Asteroid 2 had barely missed. Now, the Kylarn were the ones in the danger zone.

From the astronomy module, Dr. d’Almeida transmitted over the stationwide intercom. She could not keep the excitement from her voice. “The three pieces of the asteroid are spreading out. They’re going to strike the far side of the Moon!”

“Sometimes you get what you deserve,” King said in a hard voice.

For billions of years, the asteroids had traveled in relatively stable orbits, placid and undisturbed until the Kylarn interfered and sent them tumbling toward Earth on a deadly trajectory. Now the Kylarn would be the victims of their own schemes.

The broken asteroid was traveling fast, and they watched the images from the Eye in the Sky satellite. The first of the three chunks came in like a gigantic cannonball, slamming into a region near the Moon’s equator. It struck the lunar surface with a flash of bright light and a spray of ejected debris.

The second asteroid fragment struck farther north, gouging out another large crater.

Dozens of Kylarn starfish ships flitted about, racing in all directions. They fired their powerful white beams at the third and smallest fragment, but their weapons could do little against a tumbling piece of rock a quarter of a mile wide.

The last piece smashed directly into the Kylarn base, impacting the fringe of extensive alien constructions. The Shockwave, vaporized lava, and ejected rubble swept widely. Though they could see little detail in the flare that blurred the Eye in the Sky images, JJ knew the alien outpost was completely obliterated.

“Bullseye!” she said.

***