Read Asteroid Crisis: Star Challengers Book 3 Online
Authors: Rebecca Moesta,Kevin J. Anderson,June Scobee Rodgers
Asteroid Crisis: Star Challengers Book 3 (3 page)
“More than ever,” JJ said.
***
Four
Zota ushered the Star Challengers from his office to the private briefing room where they got instructions for their missions. The ceiling sparkled with artificial stars.
Considering the threat they had learned about at the end of their mission to the space station, JJ was not surprised when Commander Zota announced he would send the team forward on a mission to the asteroids. According to the astronomy studies King had done for Drs. Wu and d’Almeida, three of those cosmic rocks had been knocked out of their orbits and sent hurtling toward Earth.
“In the future you’re going to this time,” Zota said, “the International Collaborative Space Agency will have run detailed calculations to map out their mission. I’m very curious to see how they plan to solve this crisis—and I’m sure you will help them to succeed. Let me give you some background to prepare you.”
He seemed more subdued and grimmer than ever since recounting the horrors of the alien invasion and his own family’s death. Looking at the scar on his face, JJ could only guess at the terrible things the Kylarn had done to him—things even Zota wasn’t willing to talk about.
“Before that, however, we need to continue your skill training,” Zota said.
He spent an hour drilling the friends on simple Kylarn words and symbols before announcing that he had one more exercise for them. Though she knew that taking time to practice wouldn’t actually delay the mission—Zota’s time machine would send them to the correct time and place regardless of when they left
here
—JJ was impatient to get into the future.
“Because space is such a hazardous environment, I want you to be familiar with remote controls and robotic assistance in order to complete operations.”
“We used spacesuits on the Moon, and we trained for extravehicular activities at the space station. We can learn hands-on when we get there,” JJ suggested.
“That isn’t always the best solution,” Zota said. “Not only are the risks greater to a person in a spacesuit outside the protection of a habitat, it often takes significant time and effort to put on a suit and exit an airlock. Robotic arms have been used for many work activities in space, ever since the ‘Canadarm,’ or the Shuttle Remote Manipulator System, flew as part of the second space-shuttle flight.”
“You mean we get to play with the waldos?” Tony asked, referring to the nickname for the remote-control grasping arms. “Major Rodgers trained me to use a robotic arm on the ISSC to launch the Eye in the Sky satellite. I’m not too bad at stuff like that, if I do say so myself.” JJ hadn’t gotten to use the waldos on their school field trip to the Challenger Center and looked forward to it now. It would be fun to play with the joystick controls, moving the metal gadget on its three axes.
The commander frowned at Tony. “Do you not wish to improve? To practice?”
Tony flushed. “No, I didn’t mean that.”
“Come on, you can be my partner,” JJ offered, smiling. “Since you’re so good at it, show me how it’s done.”
Zota cleared his throat. Tony, JJ, and the other Star Challengers returned their attention to him.
On the main screen on the front wall, the commander projected a diagram of the solar system. “I’m sure you’re all very familiar with the planets orbiting our Sun?”
Tony spoke up. “My Very Elegant Mother Just Served Us Noodles. That’s the mnemonic I use to remember the names of the planets—Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune.”
“Poor Pluto,” Dyl said, “it used to be considered a planet, but it got demoted. Now it’s called a ‘dwarf planet’—probably just a huge chunk of rock and ice in a long-term orbit.”
Zota pointed to a large gap that separated the inner four rocky planets from the outer four gas giants. “What we’re most interested in at the moment are the asteroids, right here between Mars and Jupiter.” He touched a keyboard on the controlling computer, and all the planets in the solar system diagram began circling the Sun. The inner ones moved faster, while the outer planets crawled along. The asteroids, a flurry of tiny pinpoints, looked like a swarm of fireflies.
“Unlike the major planets, asteroids cannot be seen with the naked eye. It wasn’t until 1801 that the first asteroid was discovered by the Italian astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi. At first he thought it was a new comet, but it moved more like a planet. He named it
Ceres,
after the Roman goddess of agriculture.” Zota indicated the blur of dots. “Amateurs, astronomers, and space telescopes have identified several hundred thousand now, many of them in stable orbits. Some asteroids, however, are erratic and the majority aren’t well cataloged.” The commander shook his head. “In your time, people don’t consider it a very high priority.”
“I do,” King said. “That’s why I spent so much time scanning star charts with Dr. Wu on the Moon, and Dr. d’Almeida aboard the space station, sir. We detected three that had moved out of their known orbits. Asteroids are hard to find because they’re so small.”
“Yes,” Zota said. “The large ones are usually fifty to a hundred miles in diameter, and perhaps thirty of them are larger than that. But the vast majority are only a mile or two across—barely a dust speck in the solar system. If we could gather all known asteroids together into a single lump, the total mass would still be smaller than the Earth’s Moon.”
“If they’re so small, why are we worried about them?” Dyl had taken out his perennial note cards and was busily scribbling down the data Commander Zota recited.
“Pfft!
‘Small’ is a relative term, Junior,” Song-Ye said. “I certainly wouldn’t want a fifty-mile-wide boulder hitting me on the head.”
Tony gave a nervous laugh. “I wouldn’t even want a
one-mile
boulder hitting my head.”
“You saw the craters made by falling meteorites on the Moon,” Zota said. “And those were tiny pebbles compared to these. The Earth is moving in its orbit, the asteroids are moving; all the planets are constantly circling the Sun. Over the billions of years since the solar system formed, occasional accidents have happened, orbits cross. We know some asteroids come very close to Earth, but even when an asteroid crosses our planets orbit, we don’t have to worry about a collision unless the planet and asteroid are in exactly the same place at exactly the same time.”
“Right,” JJ said. “Just because two streets intersect, that doesn’t mean two random cars on those streets are going to smash into each other.”
King pondered the diagram. “It’s like a cosmic chess game. Those altered asteroid orbits aren’t an accident or coincidence. The Kylarn specifically aimed the asteroids.”
“And if no one was looking, it would be very easy for one of those rocks to slip through unnoticed,” JJ said. “We wouldn’t have any idea until it actually hit us.”
“Didn’t an asteroid impact cause the extinction of the dinosaurs?” Song-Ye asked.
“Yes, scientists believe that sixty-five million years ago an asteroid struck our planet, estimated to be only about ten kilometers, or six miles, across. A relatively small asteroid, and yet that one strike wiped out not only the dinosaurs, but three-quarters of all the species that were alive then. That should tell you how much energy is released even by a relatively small asteroid that strikes the Earth.”
King gave a low whistle. “When we were on the Moon, Dr. Wu joked that the dinosaurs didn’t have a space program. They had no way of knowing what was about to happen to them.”
“And the Kylarn want to do that to
us!
We’ll barely have a space program when they arrive,” Dyl said.
JJ felt both dismayed and determined. She thought again about the mysterious, irritating man in the grocery store, who had called the space program a silly waste of time. She told them all about her debate with the man.
“There are many people like that—in your time and in mine,” Zota said. “Sometimes it’s hard to look at the big picture, to set your sights on the future and invest money for long-range goals, rather than something with an immediate payoff. But now that you’ve been to the future, you’ve seen for yourself how important it is to prepare
now.
That will be just one of the challenges you’ll have to face throughout your lives. It may be gradual, but attitudes need to change.”
“Someone’s got to do it.” JJ stood up and looked around. “It might as well be the Star Challengers. We’re ready to go.”
***
Five
His discussion of the asteroids complete, Zota took the Star Challengers down a long hallway to another area of the center. There were two stations with a transparent window and a compartment that held a waldo along with several sample objects: rocks, calibrated weights, and a laboratory balance. Though she understood the simple physics and geology experiment, JJ discovered that
performing
the tasks was quite a challenge. Moving a waldo wasn’t as easy as operating the cockpit controls of the small aircraft her Uncle Buzz was training her to fly.
For practice, she and Tony were told to figure out each type of sample rock; their guidebook offered several straightforward experiments. Apart from the appearance, texture, and color of the rock samples, JJ and Tony needed to determine the density, because some rocks were intrinsically heavier per volume than others.
She operated the joystick and found it disorienting to separate her reflexes from the operation of the waldo. Instead of making a smooth motion in whatever direction she wanted to go, the robotic arm moved in three discrete directions: up-and-down, back and forth, or side-to-side. In order to position the grasping fingers where she wanted them, JJ had to do combinations of the steps.
“It’s kind of like those claw games at the arcade!” Tony said. JJ rolled her eyes. She was having a hard time grabbing the rocks with the claw, and didn’t need her efforts diminished by calling this a game.
Tony chuckled when she made some blunders, and she got frustrated.
“Be quiet!” JJ blurted. Catching herself, she forced herself to be calm, to concentrate. “Sorry, Tony,” she said, focusing on the rocks.
“No worries. It took me awhile to get it, too.”
When she finally adjusted the grasping claw over a rock sample, she double-checked the position of the metal fingers, then used a separate control to clamp the robotic grip. It took her two tries, but finally she held the rock sample in her waldo grasp. She set it on the tray of the laboratory balance, then meticulously lifted and placed counterweights to determine the exact mass of the rock. When she felt it was taking too long, she let out an exasperated breath. “I could do this all in a minute, if I could just use my own hands!”
“You’re doing fine,” Tony said. “Better than fine, actually. Really well!”
After she had determined the mass of the rock, JJ surrendered the controls to Tony for the second part of the experiment: placing a sample into a beaker filled with water in order to establish the volume of the rock. Simple arithmetic divided the measured mass by the volume to find out the density, the mass per volume. Armed with that piece of information, they looked up the density of specific rock types on a geologic table and found a number that matched, as well as a physical description that matched. They congratulated themselves on identifying the sample as granite. Figuring out an actual answer after so much work made JJ very happy indeed.
“Pfft.
How is this going to help us stop an alien invasion?” Song-Ye muttered from the adjacent lab station, where she and Dyl were completing a similar experiment, while King worked at a glove box, another sealed compartment with thick padded gloves that protruded inside.
“Before you can do more complicated experiments, I need to make sure you know the basic science,” Commander Zota said.
“We’re all impatient, Commander, because we know that the stakes are so high,” JJ said.
Zota gave them a smile. “I understand your urgency, cadets. Very well, follow me. Let me show you something.” He led them back to his office, where he stood before the mysterious locked steel door. He removed a set of keys from his pocket, sorted through them, then inserted a key in the lock and opened the door. His figure blocked the view for a moment until he stepped aside to let them see a separate small room. Inside the cramped space stood an exotic boxy piece of equipment adorned with glistening spiral tubes. A faint glow of internal circuitry was visible behind translucent panels. The controls were covered with symbols like the ones they had reviewed earlier, but more complex.
JJ caught her breath, amazed, immediately recognizing that this device had not been built by human engineers.
“Is that it?” Dyl blurted. “The Kylarn time machine?”
“It’s what transported me back from the future.” Zota turned to look at them, narrowing his eyes. “It’s how I escaped. And I find a certain irony in the fact that we’re using Kylarn technology to change history—for the better, I hope—so we can fight the invasion when it comes.”
“We’ve already changed some significant things in the future,” King pointed out. “Thanks to our missions, Earth got an early warning about the hidden Kylarn base on the Moon, and we kept the aliens from taking over the space station.”
“Our most important mission is here in this time,” Zota said, “but the future is also important. I know you’ve grown attached to the people there. At first, I intended these missions to serve an instructional purpose only, but I know you want to help the future you’ve visited as well. I have adjusted this machine so that its projection field—the volume that it grabs and transports to another time—is right here inside the Challenger Center’s transport room. When a class goes through that room, they pretend they’re aboard a spacecraft and we give them the illusion of an adventure in another place. For you cadets, though, it’s real.”
“It sure is,” JJ said.
Being analytical, King studied the controls on the Kylarn time machine. “When you escaped, how did you figure this out?”
“The time machine controls look complicated, but are actually fairly simple for someone who understands the Kylarn language,” Zota said. “Most of the tentacled drones that do the work are not actually very intelligent.”
“They’re definitely ugly,” Tony said.
“And also, because they use tentacles instead of hands, fingers, and thumbs, the mechanics are kept straightforward. We were prisoners in the research camp for such a long time that Toowun and I learned the basics. It is essential to press the right sequence of symbols to activate the main power source.” He pointed to a flat area that did not look at all like an on button, but had a series of Kylarn symbols. Dyl got out his index cards and began sketching the alien design.
Pointing to another cluster of symbols, Zota said, “This one changes the year, calibrated on the Kylarn calendar. The years on their home planet are longer than our years, and they use a different numbering system, but I figured out how to convert them.” He patiently explained other symbols, and Dyl made notes of them all.
“It’s like that Simon game my parents used to play when they were kids,” Tony said.
“Simon?” Zota asked.
“It’s nothing,” Tony said, embarrassed that he’d brought up an old game Zota would never have heard of.
“What’s more theoretical, though,” Zota continued, “is where to
go
in the future. Because you’ve changed the timeline, I can no longer calculate with certainty what’s going to happen. So I’ll need your help—and I’ll have to trust you.”
From a side compartment in the Kylarn time machine, he withdrew five small handheld devices, like bracelets, which he distributed to each of the Star Challengers.
JJ held hers up, saw the blinking light of its circuitry, and immediately recognized it. “Mira had one of these. She sealed herself in the node room and activated it then she was gone.”
“It’s a beacon, a locator,” Zota said. “If you activate it, the time machine can find you and bring you back. Now, since I know where the ISSC is, I’ll send you there first. Go and learn what’s happened since your last mission. I’ll transport you to two years beyond where you were previously.”
“The asteroids were going to strike Earth within three years,” King said. “We want to allow ourselves enough time.”
“The question is whether we have enough time at all,” Song-Ye said.
“That’s why we’re going to investigate,” JJ added. “So you’re saying there’ll be other parts to this mission, Commander?”
Zota nodded. “We need to find out how Earth has decided to deal with the asteroid impact. Even though it’s no longer my true future, I still feel for those people. I know what they’re going through, and I want you to do whatever you can to help them. But you must come back safely, so you can spend your lives preparing your own generation.”
“If we don’t do it right, can’t we just use the Kylarn time machine to return to the same point in the future and try it again?” Dyl suggested.
Zota frowned at him. “That is not the way the time machine works. No do-overs. That would create a new level of danger for you.”
“I’m ready to do whatever we need to do,” Dyl said. “Any day we can give those squidbutts a black eye is a good day to me.”
***