The World Game (17 page)

If I may present an analogous example to explain where I am heading with this. Imagine you have two glass spheres identical in all external physical aspects, and you have two powerful, identical water pistols. The two spheres are rolled towards you and it is your job to slow or stop them by squirting water against them. You squirt equally at both spheres. One just keeps rolling and barely slows, the other slows down perceptibly at each water impact. What does that tell us about the spheres?” He didn’t wait for an answer. There was no grandstanding here.

“It tells us that one sphere is probably solid glass and has great momentum, and the other that slows down, is probably hollow inside.” This time he stopped to make sure everyone understood where he was leading.

“Councillors, by my even most inaccurate calculations, we should not be sitting here right now talking. We should have been molecules of anti-matter or vapor drifting in space. Our little bomb should have had little or no effect on this fragment. So that tells me that this fragment has much less mass that a solid of its shape should rightly have. This fragment is very hollow, and whatever process made it hollow, well, that is what saved us.”

“Thank you for you insight Mr Shaw. That is a brilliant piece of detective work. Discussion please?” Janine opened the meeting to show of hand comment, signalling Fuller to continue.

“Mr Shaw, does this mean intuitively that the less mass we have to deal with the easier the stabilization will be?”

“I am not expert in these things sir. I just did the math, but logic says it will take much less energy to counter the unwanted spin. The downside is that there is a lot less reaction mass than we counted on for the run to Alpha Centauri. We may need to consider capturing more material from a safe source before we make the attempt.”

Janine gestured to the President. “Councillors, I am humbled in your presence. I would have lost the Presidential race to any one of you.” Said with a grin, the others laughed, the light hearted moment bringing a touch of relief to the constant stress they were all under. “I do have a question that we need to answer. If Mr Shaw is correct and we have an apparently man made tunnel penetrating the fragment, then it is probable that this is a man made cavity or tunnel system. So who made it? Is it ours or a foreign power? And a much bigger issue, is there anyone still alive in there?”

“Mr President,” Janine hung onto her words for a moment. “Better yet, Councillor Tom. Yes, Councillor Tom. You have raised a very important question that with some time and hopefully a lot of good data, we will be able to calculate where the fragment originated by back tracking the recorded trajectories to the known celestial positions of all the planets of the solar system. We know where on Earth everything was at the point of disintegration. We should be able to do it.”

Tom added “I think this needs to be a priority. We need to know if we are sitting on a friend or an enemy.”

“I will take care of that immediately after this meeting Councillor Tom.” replied Janine. “Time to figure out how we are going to stop this tumbling first.”

Fuller signalled that he wanted to speak. “Yes Col. Fuller.” Janine waved him on.

“I had a look at our cargo manifest and we appear to be most fortunate in the supplies that were brought aboard for the Dinkshif engine trials. We are carrying a quantity of demolition charges for deep space use as there was intention to attach the drives to an asteroid and run them up to maximum thrust. The charges were meant for leveling the asteroid on a balanced explosive force basis. I believe we could use these charges for stabilizing the fragment. We know the kinetic energy of each charge and now that Councillor Shaw,” he paused and smiled at Shaw. who grinned right back, “... has worked out the mass of the fragment, we can isolate principal spin vectors of the fragment and nullify them with controlled counter blasts.”

“Felicity?” Janine pointed.

“Councillor Fuller, how many of these charges do we have? We are looking at a very large mass of rock, even if it is partially hollow. It seems to me that the charges would be futile against this monster.”

“Technically you are correct Councillor Hannaford, however we intend to calculate the exact force required to nullify at least two of the tumbling effect vectors. This will leave us with a major spin around one axis with probably some wobble left, but not enough to matter and something we can deal with in the long term.

The two major explosions will be augmented by placing reaction mass in the plane of the explosion. This mass will be rock debris that we will mine from the fragment in a place that is most beneficial towards our stabilizing efforts. We will collect this mass in cargo nets and place it over the charges. The effect will be like the difference between shooting an ancient projectile weapon with a bullet or with a blank cartridge. Our recoil is the force we are looking for to push back the spin. Councillor Shaw will do the calculations and Councillor Carver will verify them before we proceed.” Fuller stopped talking and looked expectantly at the faces around him. “Any more questions? None? Let’s get to it.”

CHAPTER 47

Inside the fragment.

Zardooz awoke strapped into a control room chair. He felt stiff and disoriented by the erratic movement of the fragment. His balance was completely thrown and he felt as if he were drunk, a feeling that he knew well from the numerous times he had defied the prophet Mohammed’s teachings. He slowly extracted himself from the webbing and worked his way over to the tiny galley area that serviced control room personnel. He pulled open the mini fridge and found a Turkish coffee self heat cup. Thirty seconds later he was inhaling the delicious aroma of the coffee and allowing the thick, sweet brew to spread its warmth through his whole body. The caffeine hit was rapid and began to counter the constant dizziness from the tumble dryer effect of the motion.

His head clearing, he started to think how he was going to get a view outside to see where he was and how much of Iran had come with him. His secondary issue was to stop the sickening motion somehow. He could not last long under such conditions. At the back of his mind was the violent action that had started the tumble and injured Arjmand. What had caused it?

He slowly savored the coffee and looked around the control room. His mind empty by choice, he looked for inspiration in the dials, screens and devices. Nothing struck him as exceptional or possibly harboring some obscure duality of use. He looked again and then a third time. Nothing.

Rolling up to a computer console, he commanded the computer to open an inventory list.

“Supply room log.” he said.

A list appeared in front of him, text description and a small dimage next to the list. He scanned the column quickly, paying more attention to the dimages than the words. A dimage of a crate gained his attention and he rotated the dimage to see all four sides, then flipped it to reveal any hidden markings on the base. There were just three letters in English script stencilled on one side. He activated a check box next to the dimage.

“Show location.” he commanded the computer. A grid appeared locating the object in three dimensions. The dimage showed ghost shapes of other containers indicating that this box was two rows in and three high in the storage. He wondered if the impact shock had moved the stacked supplies.

“Retrieve selected dimage object.”

The computer confirmed its task. “Retrieving dimage object selected.”

While the computer did its work, he looked through the list once again, occasionally flipping or rotating the 3D images that had become to be know as dimages when holographic displays became the norm. The most recent development in dimage technology was a shape matching electric charge projection that gave the hologram image an illusion of tactile solidity and allowed the rotation to work. Zardooz smiled to himself as he recalled the prank he had played on his lab assistant before fragmentation.

He had upped the charge voltage on their lab computer so that every time she manipulated a dimage her hair would spread out and stand on end while she received the tingle of an electric shock. Seeing her not withdrawing from the electric discharge and the silent scream on her face, he thought he had gone too far and did an emergency shut down of the system.

His assistant, and also his not infrequent sexual interlude, screamed at him to turn it back on. He had just shut down the best orgasm she had ever had without a man around.

Zardooz reminisced with regret that he would never get the opportunity to exploit this phenomenon. He had already planned the erotic dimages that would be sold along with the high voltage systems, with half the population of the world potential consumers and the other half gift purchasers for the first half. How sad.

He looked back at the computer. The retrieval was still in progress.

“Computer, show me surveillance schematic and live feeds.”

A wire diagram came up showing the complex. There were the expected nodes showing for the inner section of the complex and the two active corridor segments. There was one odd node that appeared to be totally disconnected from the rest of the complex. It was blinking on and off, more off than on. This was very interesting. He touched the screen where the node was blinking and commanded the computer, “Isolate and expand.”

The screen zoomed and filled with the blinking dot. “Details.”

Two columns appeared, one with the node designation and position, the other showing technical details of the feed from that node. The designation was correct, but the position was a series of null dashes, because it depended upon non existent GPS satellites. This was an external node all right and the blinking was caused by ongoing attempts to locate the GPS signals.

Zardooz scrutinized the data before him. How could he circumvent the GPS feed? Was there some way of substituting? More importantly, could he make the node active and get a reading of the surface?

His thoughts were interrupted by the computer beeping that the retrieval was done. The box he wanted had been delivered to the receiving room which was two doors down the corridor. He slowly got out of his harness, refocused on the schematic. “Save page. Personal Zardooz.”

Making his way to the receiving room with extreme care, he was confronted by a wooden case, about a meter long and half a meter on the sides. The stencil on the side that had been unclear on the dimage was fuel cell powered device warning. There was a lot of raw hydrogen compressed inside the package. He commenced unclamping the steel band lock ties until he could fold back the lid. Inside lay a gleaming, polished Robotic Automated Boring Instrument. Known as a RABI, all he had to do was activate the fuel cell and the device would become active and fully self operational, even from getting out of the box on its own. After that, it was commanded through the computer system.

Zardooz reached into the box and lifted back the activation switch cover. He keyed in his personal ID code on the pad and immediately the RABI came alive. It said, “System check.” A few whistles and beeps sounded. “All systems working.”

“Stand by for instructions RABI.” Zardooz commanded the Borer. He left it and headed back for the control room, already planning the first task for the RABI. The device had rudimentary facilities for performing low level repairs once it reached its target. He planned to send it to the operational surface node and attempt to disable the GPS search. Once disabled, the node would go into local mode and become operational within its immediate area. Whether this worked or not, he would have the RABI deposit a hand carried communicator on the surface with a direct line down the bore hole. Not perfect, but some type of solution with two, better than zero, possibilities of success.

Back in the control room Zardooz examined the schematic of the nodes imposed over the layout of the complex. He was looking for a point that the RABI could start its journey through the rock. He needed a place that could be sealed off to prevent atmospheric loss when the RABI penetrated into space. He wasn’t overly concerned about proximity of the node to the starting point for the bore. The RABI had capacity for long distance tunneling which was not going to be tested.

He ran his finger over the schematic to focus on every detail, but after a few minutes he had exhausted all options and he sat back in his seat with a frown on his face. After a few more minutes of staring and thinking he began to nod and talk to himself. He tapped the screen on the access corridor where Arjmand had come to grief, the seed of a plan germinating in his mind. He had to try to jury rig some circuits in the dead part of the corridor for his plan to work, so he called up the electrical circuit schematics for that section.

A scream from the living quarters reminded him that Arjmand needed attention. He got up from the station and drifted in a wall bouncing path towards the cries of agony.