Comet! (an Ell Donsaii story #5 ) (40 page)

Chapter
Thirteen

President-Elect Flood found himself somewhat surprised to find that he actually
liked
the
outgoing President Teller. He’d railed against the man during the campaign because objecting to Teller and his policies equated to belittling the presumed continuation of those policies under his Vice President
—
if
Mansfield
were to have won the election.
But
Teller
himself turned out to be very
charismatic and
likeable.

Over the past weeks he’d had a number of briefings regarding problems facing the government that weren’t exactly for public consumption. He’d had a few moments, as he realized the nature and dimension of the problems, when he wondered if he
really
wanted this job after all. Recognizing the pressures Teller had been tolerating and the lack of excellent solutions to the myriad of problems
out there
had rendered
Flood more accepting of the man he would replace.

However, he’d just been told that, before he left Teller wanted him to sit in with him on a briefing from the director of NASA. “Tell him I have an appointment. I’m sure
whatever
issues NASA has,
they
can wait until I’m actually in office.”
He turned and began to walk away down the hall.

“Dave,” he hear
d
Teller
call out
from behind him. Flood turned and raised an eyebrow. Teller said, “You
really should
sit in on this, it’s important.”

Flood rolled his eyes and went back into the oval office. “Yes?”

“
Dave,
t
his is NASA Director James Epaulding.”

Flood
looked at the director, a pleasant appearing white haired man.
He didn’t offer his hand for a shake.
“I’m sure you’re aware that I campaigned on spending cuts.” He shook his head, “You won’t be able to change my mind about cutting funding to NASA.”

Epaulding stared at him pityingly, like you might gaze at someone with cancer. “I’m not here about funding…” he began.

Flood had not intended to sit, but a
few
moment
s
later he found himself stumbling
to grasp
the arm of
one of the
chair
s
.
He
levered himself into it.
Jesus! I
thought
I understood that this job would be tough!

***

“So, you’re not going to believe this,” George Tennet said to his wife and son at dinner. “I got a call put through to me yesterday from some psycho woman claiming to be from D5R, the company that rescued the Space Station, which I suppose is how she managed to get put through to the president of the company. She spins me a load of crap about how D5R wants to install some ‘ports’ she calls them, right on one of the big LOX tanks at Praxair… Now get this, she claims that this port will transfer LOX directly to their facility without any shipping. Says the LOX will disappear into the port and appear at D5R where she claims they need huge quantities and that
our
trucks
ca
n’t deliver it fast enough.
” He shook his head, “Back in the days before AIs these
kinds
of
psycho
crank calls would never have gotten through to me.”

George’s son stared wide eyed at him, “Dad!” he said in an exasperated tone. “That
is
how D5R saved the Space Station. They used ports that let oxygen go from Earth to the Station!”

Tennet’s brow knitted together, “You think that might have
re
ally
been a call from D5R? They
ha
ve
been great customers…” His AI chimed in his ear. “Yes?”

“You have a call from the President.”

“President of what?”
he asked in an exasperated tone.

“Of the
United States
.”

“Uh…
” he gulped,
“
put him on.”

After a long pause the recognizable voice of
outgoing
President
Teller
came in his ear, “
Mr. Tennet
, your country needs you
to
cooperate with D5R and let them
…”

***

Kitt’s Peak National Observatory, Arizona
—
The Observatory confirmed this morning that claims by numerous amateur astronomers are correct. Comet Hearth-Daster has in fact broken up into multiple fragments as it rounded
the Sun. They also confirmed that some of the fragments are now on a trajectory that may
well
intersect the Earth…

National Aeronautic and Space Administration,
Washington
D.C.
… NASA confirmed today that it had strategies in place to mitigate the risk that Comet Hearth-Daster will impact the Earth…

AP Wire Service
—

Grocery chains nationwide report shortages of canned and other preserved foods…

Home improvement stores report shortages of chainsaws, generators, lanterns…

Nationwide runs on firearms and ammunition…

All motorcycles sold
out
…

Panic buying…

Ell looked around the floor in the D5R building
,
gratified that th
ey hadn’t
lost
a lot of employees
to the national panic. When news stories first began to surface about the comet, Sheila had suggested a
recorded
mass call to their employees from Ell telling them that
the comet stories were
true and that she hoped they would continue to come to work because D5R
—
all three companies together
—
were trying to do something about
the comet
and
needed
everyone’s help. Ell had
made the call
and it seemed to have worked, only two people had failed to show up for work and one of them had come
back to work
again, somewhat sheepishly, a couple of days after his initial absence.  Most of them were working very long
hours;
Ell had promised
them
double time for overtime
,
and triple time after they reached 80 hours a week.

They had successfully launched their array of “
camera rockets” and Allan now had precise location data on all fragments larger than 500 kilograms. They had placed six “port rockets” surrounding the area of the comet fragments at distances of 70,000 kilometers. Thus
,
they could launch impactors on courses that would allow them to drive fragments away from intersection paths along
something close to the shortest possible
trajectories
. Th
e
ports
on the opposite side
could be used to return the pusher motors back to D5R.

Iron impactors
from five kilos down to 0.5 kilos
were being delivered in quantity and the D5R folks were constructing more and more pusher motors. Yesterday they had finally installed the LOX ports at Praxair and Atmospheric Distillers. The LNG ports had been functioning for three days now.

Ell picked up the first of their new impactor assemblies and dropped it into the cage over the port. Before she told Allan to open the port Manuel said, “Ma’am, is it OK if we say a prayer?”

Ell turned to see his earnestly beseeching eyes and saw a number of others in the big room who also looked as if they would be greatly comforted. “Sure, do you mind doing the honors?”

Manuel looked momentarily uncertain, then stood slightly taller
.
A
s silence fell
in the big room
,
he
intoned a brief but heartfelt prayer.

“Go Allan,” Ell said and with a “foomp” sound the rocket was sucked into the port and disappeared.
The people in the room gave a brief cheer and turned back to their tasks.

In her ear Allan said, “You have a call from a Mr. Voight at NASA.”

“Put him on. Hello?”

“Hello, Ms. Donsaii. I’m Mike Voight
,
leader of the NASA team trying to deal with the comet. Thank you for providing the new 150kps ports for our new vehicles, they will help a great deal.”

“You’re welcome sir. Can we help otherwise?

“Yes, well I’m trying to make sure we coordinate our efforts. It would seem to me that our nuclear weapons would be most effectively be used on the largest fragments while your impactors would be better for used for the smaller fragments, especially the large numbers of fragments under 30,000 tons?”

“Yes sir.”

Voight felt a little weird being addressed so respectfully by someone
who’d won
a Nobel prize.
Someone he felt he should be a
ddressing with respect himself.
“Especially
because
we are about to fire our first nuke at the 79 megaton fragment and it would be a shame if you had just moved it with one of your impactors.”

“Yes sir. We’ve just fired our first impactor but we are focusing on the seven megaton fragment first. We’re hoping that you will be successful in moving the three big ones with nuclear weapons so that we can focus
our efforts
on all the small ones. Um, our data shows that you would do best moving the 79 megaton fragment north?”

Voight grinned at her polite reminder that she had better data on the fragment locations
and trajectories
than he did. He
return
ed
the respect to her. “Yes Ma’am that’s how we’re planning to push it. Then the 20 megaton fragment goes south and
behind
Earth in its orbit. The 18 megaton fragment goes north and ahead.”

“Yes sir, that’s what we
’d
recommend as well. Thank you.
Good luck, when will you be setting
the
first one off?”

“In two hours.”

“Thank you sir, we’ll send you video and tracking data.”

After disconnecting from
Voight
,
Ell turned back to the people in the room. “OK folks, NASA’s going to nuke the big one in two hours
. M
eantime, let’s start shooting the little ones!”

A cheer rose and they started dropping impactor rockets into the
ir
six ports in
the
order requested by Allan
who was working from largest to smallest on the fragments
. They sent
four
impactors
at
the 7 megaton fragment
,
which Allan calculated would move it
52
,000 kilometers by the time it crossed Earth’s orbit.
Some had worried that they should move it farther
,
but
now that the fragments
had passed the Sun
their
orbital mechanics should be predictable
and 52,000 km should be
more than
sufficient
.

Shortly before the two hour mark they stopped to watch
NASA’s effort
. Allan was zooming in on the 79 megaton fragment when their screens flashed white, then black. Ell’s heart skipped a beat,
then she realized…
“Allan, did the nuke destroy our observation rockets?”

“No.”

“What happened to our picture?”

“The light from the nuclear weapon burned out the CCD chips of the video cameras.”

Ell snorted,
her
AI could be so
intuitive
some times, yet
obtusely literal
at others. “Are the other three cameras on the observation rockets OK?”

“Yes.”

“Please rotate the rockets to give us a view.” The screens
blinked to show
a starscape from the outwardly facing cameras
.
T
hen
the starscape pivoted
around to show the large comet fragment
mostly hidden by an enormous bloom of
the
material blasted away by the nuke. “Please calculate the displacement in the trajectory of the comet fragment produced by the nuclear weapon.”