Comet! (an Ell Donsaii story #5 ) (22 page)

Emma cocked an eyebrow, “You know, you really should ask me,” she pointed at herself with both thumbs, “your
‘
resident equipment genius,
’
how to do this stuff before you go haring off on your own.”

“Yes Ma’am.” Ell said abashedly.
“I will in the future Ma’am. Anything you say Ma’am.”

“Oh shut up.
Are we going to send a rocket through it?
”

Ell tilted her head, considering, “I don’t think so, we don’t really have a need to send a rocket to Mars right now.
After all,
Collins, the rocket that Ben sent to Mars
a while ago
is already there. I
feel
like we’v
e
just
been
using Mars to test the principles of the
single ended transfer ports
.
Do you know of a reason we should actually send a rocket to Mars?”

“No. What
are
we going to do
with this port
then?”

“
Leave that
2.5 centimeter
port
near Mars
. T
omorrow we’ll
put a
rolled
five centimeter
nitinol
port through it. Then tell Ben and Rob that they can use
the five centimeter port
to transfer rockets to ‘near Mars’ orbits so they’ll be ready to send devices there without waiting for the rocket to make the
50 day
trip to Mars.
I
think that i
deally they’ll send a rocket through th
e
five cen
timeter port that has
a 7.5
centimeter nitinol port attached to it. Then
they put
that
rocket into a stable orbit around Mars
so they can
put other rockets
through into Mars orbit
whenever they
want to
. Once
we’re sure
that
that
system
works we can
pop out some
‘transfer’
port
s
for
each of the planets and
Ceres and Pluto
so
that
they can reach
them
quickly too.
”

***

Epaulding leaned back in his chair.
He thought
Candela looked a
pretty
frayed around the edges
,
“How are things going Ed?”

A muscle worked in Candela’s jaw, “OK. I’m having to deal with a lot of petty ass rivalries and children
who
won’t talk to one another. My dream that we’d all ‘pull together’ to save the human race has been
crushed under
the
sharp
rocks of human nature. But, I’m kicking ass, taking names and beating them into
shape.

“Tell me what the plan is?”

“The plan was, to build two
vehicles
,
each
to carry
a nuclear weapon. They would then fly to meet the comet using constant acceleration trajectories, fueling through those ‘ports’ from D5R. Constant acceleration and deceleration would allow us to get there in less than a week. Once there
the first one
would land on the comet on the opposite side of where we wanted to push it and set off the weapon.
If it didn’t work, we’d have plenty of time
to use the second one. If that didn’t work we’d still have time
for plan
C
.

“
First big snag is that the ports don’t work if the rocket is going faster than
22 kilometers per second
relative to Earth
. Now that’s pretty fast but we’re still talking hundreds of days to get to where the comet is now.

“So…
our
current plan
. By the time we get out there at this slower speed, the comet will be a lot closer so it won’t take us so long. However it will be harder to deflect
the comet
because we’ll need a bigger impulse to move it far enough. Nonetheless, a nuclear weapon should have plenty of punch to deflect it even if it’s a lot closer than it will be at our worst estimates. If it isn’t enough, we’ll just use the second weapon.”

“So, I can tell the President we’ve got it
under
control?”

Candela grimaced, “Yeah.
At least I think we do.
”

***

Ell got an e-mail from “Vic
Galtieri” and had to have Allan remind her that he was the Vic of the brawl at Gordon’s party and the sound engineering for Gordon’s show at the Lincoln Theater.

“Dear Belle, I am hoping that your aunt will consider partnering financially with me on the following enterprise…”

He’d actually laid out a fairly interesting
idea
. It involved taking over the lease on a bar in Carrboro
. The bar occupied one part of a bigger building and
had an adjoining large room which had been for rent for some time. He hoped to remodel the large adjoining room with extensive acoustic absorption
material
so that there would be little natural echo-reverberation. Then the sound engineer could add reverb
to this “dead” room
as desired
using electronic reverberation and
an extensive speaker system. Thus the engineer could produce anything from a very clean, non reverberant sound to a lush heavy reverberation that didn’t clash with the room’s
natural reverb to become “muddy
.
”
Much of the financing would be for remodeling the big room with seating, a stage, the acoustic dampening materials and the speakers. The wall between the
big room and the
existing bar would be
mostly removed
,
and
the original bar
would function only as a place to get drinks
. Well and to serve as a location where patrons could
be in a somewhat quieter area.
He hoped
to
not only charge patrons for
drinks and admission to
the shows but
to
charge bands for “live recordings” of their shows
in his improved acoustics
.

Ell worried a few moments over her lack of expertise to judge the merits of the business plan but then decided what the heck, she liked it and she could afford it. She crafted an acceptance to go out tomorrow so it would seem like she’d taken time to consult with her mysterious
“
Aunt.
”

There was a knock on the door and she looked up to see Emma who said, “You ready
‘
star
’
girl?”

Emma and Ell put on their coats, then Ell picked up the telescope and Emma the li
ttle cart with the power supply. T
hey opened the door and carried the
equipment
out
to the parking lot
.
Emma said, “Are you excited?”

“Oh yeah! This shivering I’m doing is only partly because of
it being
November! The clouds these last three nights
have
just
been
killing me.”

Ell set the telescope down and extended the legs of its tripod. Then she plugged in the power
for
Manuel’s mirrored port window.
She peered at it with a flashlight and depressed the switch
that
power
ed
the linear motor Manuel had installed to pull the mirror back from the port. With a “zip” sound it pulled the mirror back. Ell closed it again and
inserted a rolled up piece of paper in the chamber behind the port. She
nodded to Emma.
“Let’s power it up for a 1 light second distance.”

Emma nodded and adjusted the port energizer on the little rolling cart. “Ready.”

“Go ahead.” They both heard the “pop” as the port opened. It popped again in about three seconds and Ell pushed the button to move the mirror and open the port. They heard the “zip” sound followed by a “whoosh” as the port opened up into the vacuum of space. The little roll of paper vanished out the port into the reaches of space.

“OK,” Ell said. “Let’s try to line it up.
” She pressed the button on the telescope’s AI and said, “Tau Ceti.”

“Tau Ceti? Why not A
lpha Centauri? It’s the closest. Only
4.4 Light years.”

“Not really. Proxima Centauri is the closest at 4.2 light years
though
it’s
only
a little ‘M’ type star.
But anyway
,
the
Alpha
Centauri stars are
way down low
in the Southern Hemisphere
and we can’t see them from
North Carolina
. If we can’t see them with the telescope it’ll be pretty hard to be sure we’
ve aligned the port at them. So, Tau Ceti. It’s in the Southern Hemisphere too, but barely
,
so we
can
see
it from here
. Better yet,
” Ell winked,
“
it’s up at night in November.” The telescope had rotated around and chirped to indicate that it was aligned. Ell looked through the finder scope and saw
the constellation Cetus. She made some fine adjustments to center
it
on Tau Ceti then looked through the eyepiece for the big reflector scope. A couple more fine adjustments and she had
the high powered image
centered in the big scope.
She put a rolled
up
double ended port into the feed tube for the single ended port on the scope.

“How far is Tau Ceti?”

“11.9 light years.”

Emma bent to her
port energizer
,
adjusting until she was happy. “OK, shall I fire it up?”

Ell
put a hand up
, “Wait, could we be doing something stupid?”

They looked at each other for a moment, then
Ell suddenly sat down. “Holy crap!”

“What?”

“Well, the chances are pretty remote, but what if the other end of the port actually did open inside the star?”

Emma barked a laugh, “‘Pretty remote’ doesn’t even come close to describing it. If we miss by one angular degree at
this
distance of about 12 light years we’d miss by…
” she looked up musingly,
“a tenth of a light year
which is pretty close to
90
b
illion
kilometers
. That doesn’t even address the fact that our accuracy for distance opening a port
that far away
has only a 67% chance of opening within
5% of the correct distance or 0.6 light years. We have a
lot
better chance of getting hit by lightning on this clear cloudless night!”

“OK, you’re right. Still
…
let’s stand back from the scope. We don’t
need
to be right next to it.”

Emma snorted but pulled the little cart with her energizer back to the end of the cord that stretched to the port. Ell uncoiled the wire for the switch that moved the mirror and opened the port. She had Allan, her AI, display the images from the port on their HUDs. “OK, open the port.”

They both heard the “pop” as the port opened but only faint stars appeared on their HUDs. Another pop, still nothing. On the third pop a much brighter star appeared near the center of the image. Ell almost hit the button but then said, “Hold it. Allan, what was the angular diameter of Tau Ceti on that image? Belay that question. Instead
...
how far away was Tau Ceti, based on its angular diameter on that image?”

“One tenth of a light year.”

Ell quickly calculated how long one of her rockets would take to go a tenth of a light year at the
ir maximum velocity
of 150 kilometers per second. To her dismay it would take 20 years! “OK” she said, “let me know when it opens within
a hundred
light minutes of Tau Ceti.”

Ell nodded to Emma and she depressed her switch. They stood listening to the popping sound of the port opening over and over again. Half the openings didn’t show Tau Ceti because they opened on the far side. Fearing that it might open
very close to Tau Ceti
but that they wouldn’t see the star because it was off to one side
of the view
through the port
, Ell refined the angle of the telescope so that the star was centered
in the port when it opened
.