Comet! (an Ell Donsaii story #5 ) (28 page)

***

Daster’s AI said, “You have a call from Ell Donsaii.”

“Put her on please.”

“
Wilson
,
” Donsaii’s voice said,
“
I reached NASA Director Epaulding.”

“And?”

“And he says there’s no problem.”

Daster was torn between his desire to be relieved and his paranoia
that
he was being brushed off again. “Do you believe him?”

“No.”

Now Daster was torn between relief that she believed him and a sinking feeling that he was
about
to see the end of the human race. “What can we do? Should we try to get this out on the web?”

Donsaii leaned back in her chair, staring at him and rubbing her lip. “No, I think they know there’s a problem. I think they aren’t telling us because they fear worldwide panic and disaster if the public finds out. That would be a certainty, whereas
our chance of getting hit is
probably
only about
10-
20%
. We shouldn’t create such a panic either.”

“But don’t you think someone should be trying to do something about it?”

Donsaii nodded, “I have reason to believe that NASA
is
trying to do something about it?”

“How do you know that?”

“
You live in
Arizona
?”

Mystified
by
the non sequitur Daster blinked a moment. “
Yesss?
”

“Would you and your wife be willing to move to
North Carolina
?”

Daster’s eyes widened, “Why?!”

“
We
’d like to offer you a job.
We estimate
your current
salary is $85,000 per year. W
e
’d be prepared to pay you $120,000.”

“Why?!”

She grinned at him. “
We
need a forensic accountant.
And
an expert in astronomy. You seem to
fill
both categories
.”

He blinked, “What do you need a forensic accountant for?” He hesitated, “You
do
understand I’m
just
an enthusiastic amateur astronomer
,
don’t you?”

“D5R and its offshoots spend a lot of money. It would be good to be sure none of those funds are being misappropriated.
And w
e aren’t talking about the kind of astronomy that most professionals have a lot of experience with.”

“
Uhhh
,
OK
, maybe. S
hould I be talking to your ‘Human Resources’ people? Or who
ever
would
actually offer me the job?”

“I would.” Seeing doubt in his eyes Ell said, “
I’m authorized, believe it or not.”

Mind racing Daster said, “Uhhh, I’ll have to talk to my wife.”

“OK, get back to me ASAP.”

Daster wandered downstairs
in somewhat of a daze
, “Emily?”

Ell walked down to the machine shop. “Manuel, I need a rush job.”

“What do you
want
?”

“I’d like you to modify one of the rockets you’ve been building for us. The
2.4 centimeter
ones that have
4 axis cameras and the 7.5 centimeter pop out nitinol ports. I’d like to put a laser
rangefinder on it.”

Manuel looked down as he
thought
. “Shouldn’t be a problem. The ET Resources guys have some
amazing
rangefinders
in stock. I can drill and mount one in about an hour.”

“Thanks!” Ell said.
A
s she turned back to her office
she said
,
“Allan, contact Emma for me.”

When Emma responded Ell said, “
I want
to shoot a mission through the single ended port tonight.
Can
you help me?
”

Chapter
Nine

As they carried the scope and port energizer out to the parking lot Emma said, “You know, I’ve been thinking about it.
W
e could send a mission to Alpha Centauri
after all. I mean, wi
thout going to
Australia
which, I must say, would
be
an awesome
way to do it
.”

Distractedly Ell said, “We could?”

“Yeah, I’ll bet once you line your scope up on a couple
of
known Northern Hemisphere stars you could tell its AI to point it at Alpha Centauri even though the earth’s in the way.”

Ell paused, focused far away, “Oh, then we just open up
a port
about three light years
out
and see if we can see
‘
Alpha
C’
in the port
?
Adjust the direction based on that?
”

“
Yep. I don’t know what you have in mind for tonight, but could we send a port that way first?
”

“We’d want to send two ports.”

“Two?”

“Alpha Centauri is a binary star. Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B. Both of them are fairly similar to the sun and the planetary searches have shown evidence of planets
around both of them. T
he
planets’
orbits probably aren’t terribly stable in a binary system
though
.” Ell paused, “Well, maybe one port would be enough. From one port we could check both stars for
habitable zone
planets. Then send a mission to whichever
planets
looked
interesting.”

“OK, let’s do it!”

“First we’ve got to do a little comet hunting.”

“Comet? I thought the ET Resources guys were ex
ploring our solar system?
” She drew herself up and put a hand on her chest, “
We’
re
exploring
stars
.”

“Em?”

Emma turned to look at Ell, hearing stress in her voice, “Yeah Ell?”

“I got a call today from Wilson Daster, one of the discoverers of comet Hearth-Daster.”

“The one they were making jokes about? ‘Earth-Disaster’?”

“Yeah,” Ell said somberly, “According to his figures there’
s a 4 to
25% chance it
will
actually hit us
.”

Emma leaned on her rolling table a second, then
slowly sank to sit
on the ground. “Oh Christ,” she said, barely audible. She lay back
on the ground, “Shit!
I can’t feel my finger tips.” She wiggled her fingers.

“Slow deep breaths.”

“How big is it?”

“300 million metric tons.”

“Oh my God!
How much
kinetic
energy is that?”

“
129
,000 megatons of
TNT
.”

In a whisper, “Jesus!” Emma rolled to her side and curled up into a ball
, arms around her knees
.

Ell sat down beside her and
uncertainly
patted
Emma’s
shoulder. “Slow your breathing girl.” She lay down behind her and reached an arm over
and around
, hugging her friend, “Slow down… relax.”

They lay that way for a few minutes. Finally Emma shuddered, then turned her head a little. With a desperate little chuckle she said, “So we’re gonna launch a little rocket at it?”

Ell could see the unshed tears
gleaming
in her friend’s eyes. She shrugged, “Yeah,
well,
first
we’ve got
to get more information. We need to know its exact course, so it would help to have a rocket
with ports
tracking it. By tracking it we can refine its course
and watch for outgassing
events as it approaches the Sun.
O
utgassings
might change its course
. W
e’ll be able to
send
prospecting
rockets through the ports to
sample and
determine its composition
.
We could make some attempts to deflect it.”

Emma pushed up onto an elbow. “
OK,” she said sluggishly, “
Let me
call my folks
first
.”

“
Emma
! If you start telling people and word gets out
,
the panic alone could kill millions! Do
not
even
dream
of calling anyone! I wouldn’t have told
you
except that I can’t do this stuff alone.”

“
Just
my family!” Emma said doggedly.

“
Just no one!
Every person you tell will have
just a few
other people
they feel they have to tell! Don’
t
panic yourself. Help me figure out if there
is
anything
we can do to save the planet!
Don’t get selfish people
buying guns and
turning themselves into ‘survivalists.’
”

Emma shook Ell’s hand off her shoulder, “
Don’t
tell me…” She shuddered again and drew a deep breath.
She held it a while, then drew another. Quietly she said, “Sorry Ell
…
You’re right. Give me another minute and I’ll be ready to help.”

Ell patted her shoulder uncertainly,
wondering if she should sit with Emma a while longer. She decided that action was the best medicine for anxiety and so thumped Emma’s shoulder
with more confidence. “Good to hear. I’m going to get started. Let me know when you’re ready to help.
”

Before Ell had completely zeroed in on the comet Emma had gotten up and calibrated her energizer. In about twenty minutes they had popped out a port near the comet and were heading back in
side the building
to send a bigger port
. Once they’d done that, they sent Ell’s new
rocket with ports
and the laser rangefinder
through to
the comet
.

Once they had the comet up on their screens they could see the central nucleus slowly tumbling. The image was a little foggy
because of the
gasses streaming out of the comet
even though th
os
e gasses
weren’t visible yet through their ground based telescope.

“Allan, are you getting good signals from the video cameras and laser?”

“Yes.”

“Please
exactly
match course with the comet using the laser rangefinder, then begin plotting
its course
as accurately as possible
to
refin
e
its orbital trajectory and
recalculate
the likelihood that it will strike Earth.”

“Understood.”

Emma said, “
GPS
won’t work out there, how is your AI going to know where th
at
rocket is?”

“Take the video images from the forward and four peripheral cameras and identify known stars and their angular locations from
each of
the images.
Those kinds of calculations are hard for us but trivial for a supercomputer.”

Emma’s eyes lost focus a moment, “Oh yeah, I can see that now. When will we know more about the likelihood of
Earth
impact?”

“Allan?”

In Ell’s ear Allan said, “The longer the baseline the more accurate the projection. But we should be able to surpass the accuracy of Daster’s projection by morning.”

Ell turned to Emma, “Morning.”

***

When Ell got down to the kitchen in the morning she found Bridget
already
there
,
making omelet
s
. “Hi Bridget. How are you doing?”