‘What would you do, Rupert?’ said Liz, ‘if the worst came to the worst. If you knew that, say, in six months time, the asteroid would crash into the Earth. That it was an absolute certainty and there was nothing we could do. What would you do? Would you carry on as normal, doing the same things you’d always done, or would you abandon your current lifestyle – work, commuting, going to the pub, going to watch rugby union – and spend all your remaining time with your loved ones? Your family. Your girlfriend. Or would you embark on a bucket list, cramming everything you’d always planned to do in your lifetime into those final few months? Exotic holidays, sky diving, climbing the Himalayas, bungee jumping, flying a plane… Or even a wild hedonistic fling, gorging yourself on fine food and wine, and having sex with as many beautiful women as possible? What would you do, Rupert?’
‘All of them, Liz,’ smiled Rupert. ‘All of those – if I had the time.’
‘Come on, be serious,’ said Liz. ‘You must have thought about it.’
For a while, Rupert said nothing. Then, what he did say shocked Liz to the core. ‘I’d like to spend all my time with you.’
Liz was speechless. Her shocked expression amused Rupert, bringing a smile to his face. ‘I said be serious,’ she uttered, regaining a little of her composure.
‘I am being serious, Liz. I’m being deadly serious. I’d like to spend my last months on Earth with you.’
Liz had pondered the same question herself. And come up with a definitive answer. She’d spend most of her time with her little sister, Baby Blu, and her niece, Charlotte – both her parents were dead – and her long time boyfriend, Gregg. Steady, safe Gregg who loved football and sex – in that order. Gregg, who was rarely passionate or exciting, but reliable and caring. Gregg, who wanted a career but didn’t know if he wanted children. She’d spend some time with him but she’d spend most of her time with Baby Blu and Charlotte. But this bombshell had come out of the blue. Blindsided her. A man she’d hated, no, not hated, loathed, for years and years had just professed his dying wish was to spend his remaining time on Earth with her. With Liz Conway. It had certainly thrown a spanner in the works.
With Rupert it had been hate at first sight. During the five years she’d known him they’d never got on, but the discovery of the alien meteorites changed all that. It brought out a new person. A person she never thought existed. An emotional, enthusiastic, passionate person who respected her. A person she really liked. A person she could, maybe, fall in love with.
After the initial shock and furore regarding the asteroid had quietened down, the recriminations began. The politicians were furious. Furious with the scientific community. With all the billions spent on the latest sophisticated detection equipment, why hadn’t such a huge asteroid been detected earlier? They stopped short of accusing them of incompetence, but secretly, that’s what many of them thought.
It was a question the scientists had asked themselves. How could an asteroid 400 miles wide get to within 3.5 billion miles of Earth before being detected? Get past Pluto before being spotted? It shouldn’t have happened, not with all the equipment at their disposal. But it had. The question was how?
One reason it had been difficult to detect the asteroid was its shape. Somehow, its surface scattered electromagnetic radiation in a similar way that a Stealth bomber scatters radar, making it almost invisible. As a result, it only became ‘visible’ when it got fairly close to Earth. Also, it was right at the edge of a large star cluster, another factor that made detection difficult. But the bigger question was how it had appeared so suddenly, apparently out of nowhere. On this point there was much speculation. Every possibility was examined, from the plausible to the metaphysical.
‘Could it have appeared out of hyperspace?’ said Liz mischievously.
‘And what exactly is hyperspace, Liz?’ asked Frank.
‘You know, the space that Starship Enterprise enters when it goes into warp drive.’
‘I won’t dignify that with an answer,’ said Frank. ‘Star Trek is science fiction.’
‘What about a wormhole?’ asked Rupert. ‘I know we’ve discussed that before but what if there are natural wormholes where the distortion of spacetime isn’t so obvious?’
‘It’s a possibility, but it’s highly unlikely,’ replied Frank.
‘Could it have been travelling close to the speed of light,’ said Liz. ‘186,000 miles per second, and then suddenly decelerated? That would explain its sudden appearance out of nowhere. And,’ she added, ‘objects travelling close to the speed of light shrink in size, making them more difficult to detect.’
‘It’s a nice idea, Liz,’ said Frank, ‘but again, highly unlikely. To accelerate an object the size of an asteroid close to the speed of light would take an enormous amount of energy. It’s very unlikely, but not impossible.’
Although far from ideal, the best solution they came up with as to why the asteroid hadn’t been detected earlier was a combination of its unique, reflective surface and its proximity to the large star cluster.
As the months went by and more data became available, the calculations on the asteroid’s trajectory began to converge, to come closer together. To begin to show signs of agreement. And the results were terrifying. It was headed straight for a full-blown collision with Earth!
17
Black Deflection
The results were conclusive. Definite. Absolute. Scientists around the world came up with the same answer. In just eight months time, the asteroid would crash directly into the Earth.
The plan had been to inform the governments first and then for the governments to inform the people. But it didn’t happen like that. News of such monumental importance was impossible to contain; the public received the news at the same time as the governments. Not surprisingly, it caused a global panic. Governments around the world did their best to try and calm the situation, but to little effect. In the public’s mind, the end of the world was nigh and they were all going to die a horrible death.
A world summit was convened comprising top politicians and scientists from the world’s leading countries. The world’s best brains gathered together with a single aim: to formulate a plan to deflect the asteroid. To knock it off its collision course with Earth. It wouldn’t take much deflecting. A deflection of just a fraction of a degree would be sufficient to ensure it missed the Earth. But deflecting a 400 mile wide asteroid travelling at 199,000 miles per hour was easier said than done.
The world was in turmoil. The mass panic caused by the impending destruction of Earth brought the world to a standstill. People stopped going to work. Students stopped going to university. Children stopped going to school. What was the point if they were all going to die in eight months time? Public transport came to a grinding halt. No buses, no trains, no ships, no planes. Private transport followed quickly as the petrol stations ran dry. Shops and supermarkets were stripped bare as people scrambled to stock up on food and drink. Looting was rife. The social infrastructure had all but broken down. Law and order was hanging by a thread. As the shortages became acute, the killing started. Ordinary people killing fellow citizens just to provide food for their loved ones.
The government did its best, drafting in what remained of the armed forces to try and restore some semblance of law and order, and making frequent appeals for calm and restraint, saying that scientists were close to finding a way to deflect the asteroid, deflect it sufficiently to miss the Earth. It worked, up to a point. The lootings stopped, mainly because there was nothing of value left to loot, and the killings abated, partly because of the army’s shoot to kill policy of anyone breaking the curfews and partly because of the government’s reassurance that the asteroid would be deflected. In the total scheme of events, they were minuscule improvements, but at least they slowed the slide into outright anarchy.
Scientists around the world worked feverishly trying to decide the best course of ac
tion to deflect the asteroid. The NEO teams had trained for such an event for years. Trained using simulations. This time, however, it was for real.
It had been agreed at the summit that it was best if the NEO teams worked independently at the beginning, and than liaised to thrash out the final solution. But they didn’t have much time. The closer the asteroid got to Earth, the more they’d have to deflect it. It was a race against time. A race they couldn’t afford to lose.
A number of options were discussed. For the best chance of success, they all had one thing in common. Early detection. The early detection of an approaching asteroid offered the best chance of deflecting it because the further it was from Earth, the smaller the deviation needed to deflect it. According to NASA, it would take a couple of years to build a rocket powerful enough to deflect an asteroid and allow enough time for the deflection’s effect to alter its trajectory sufficiently for it to miss the Earth. But early detection was a luxury they didn’t have. The asteroid was less than eight months away. They’d have to find another way.
Methods for deflecting an asteroid fall into two categories; nuclear and non-nuclear. Although the nuclear option is the most common method some, like in the 1998 film Armageddon, where Bruce Willis lands on an asteroid and blows it up with a nuclear bomb, are pure science fiction. Even if such a feat could be accomplished and the bomb blasted the asteroid to smithereens, most of the fragments would still hit the Earth, causing untold damage and destruction. Even a fragment of rock one mile wide would produce catastrophic global events, including wiping out 25 per cent of the human race. Hundreds would wipe out the entire planet. Blowing up the asteroid was a non-starter.
‘The best of the nuclear options,’ said Frank, ‘is Black Deflection. Professor Alan Harris’s NEO Shield team in Berlin have done extensive research into asteroid deflection and concluded that detonating a powerful nuclear bomb close to one side of an asteroid is the best way to deflect it. The neutron radiation, or neutron wind if you like, from the nuclear explosion, would cause a slight deviation to its trajectory, enough, hopefully, for it to miss the Earth.’
‘Wouldn’t it have to explode very close to the asteroid to be effective?’ asked Viv.
‘That’s a very good question,’ replied Frank. ‘Yes, it would have to be close to maximise the effect of the explosion, but not so close that it fragments the asteroid.’
‘So what’s the optimum distance?’ asked Rupert.
‘Ah, that’s a matter of some debate,’ said Frank. ‘A stand off distance of approximately 20 yards is often mentioned to achieve maximum deflection, but no one knows for certain.’
‘Surely you’d need more than one hydrogen bomb to deflect an asteroid 400 miles wide,’ said Liz. ‘You’d need dozens, probably hundreds.’
‘At least,’ said Frank, ‘and then it’s by no means certain they’d deflect it sufficiently to miss the Earth, especially as it’s so close.’
‘Have we got so many rockets capable of carrying powerful nuclear warheads into space?’ asked Liz. ‘Didn’t the Russians and Americans destroy a lot of them after the Cold War ended?’
‘They were supposed to,’ said Viv, ‘but those rockets weren’t any good anyway. They were only designed to travel a few thousand miles, from one continent to another. That’s why they were called intercontinental ballistic missiles or ICBMs. They aren’t powerful enough to travel to outer space. For that, we need rockets even more powerful than the Saturn V rocket.’
‘And do those exist?’ asked Rupert.
‘I don’t know,’ said Viv, ‘but I suspect the Americans and Russians will have one or two stashed away.’
‘But it’ll take more than one or two nuclear bombs to deflect a 400 mile wide asteroid,’ reiterated Liz.
‘Yes, it will,’ replied Viv, ‘but we can only use what we’ve got.’
‘But shouldn’t such rockets be capable of carrying a multiple payload?’ asked Frank. ‘Five, maybe even ten, nuclear bombs. So, if the Americans and Russians can muster, say, five such rockets, that means 50 nuclear bombs could be exploded near the asteroid. It’s still not ideal but it gives us a fighting chance.’
‘Possibly,’ said Viv, ‘but aren’t we jumping the gun here. There’s the non-nuclear options too.’
‘You can rule out solar sails,’ said Frank. ‘It’s far too late for them.’
‘What about gravitational tractors?’ asked Rupert.
‘Or a direct impact?’ asked Liz.
‘A direct impact could work,’ said Frank, ‘if we had a massive spaceship to crash into the asteroid. But we haven’t. The rockets we’ve got would only work on asteroids up to 100 yards wide. So that’s a non-starter.’
‘By a gravitational tractor, do you mean where a spaceship, a rocket, lands on the surface of the asteroid, is tethered to it with a towline and then uses its engines to ‘‘push’’ on the asteroid, deflecting its path or slowing it down?’ queried Frank.
‘I do,’ replied Rupert.
‘Well, the thrust from conventional chemical rockets is far too weak, but it’s achievable using a 20 ton nuclear-electric rocket proposed by NASA. The problem is, no such rocket exists.’
‘I remember reading a study by researchers at the University of Glasgow that the best way to deflect an asteroid is the ‘‘Mirror Bees’’ method,’ said Liz.
‘Mirror Bees? What the hell’s that?’ said Rupert.
‘It entails sending a group of small satellites equipped with mirrors 30 to 100 feet wide into space to “swarm’’ round the asteroid and trail it. The mirrors would tilt to reflect sunlight on to the asteroid, vaporising one spot and releasing a stream of gases that slowly move it off course.’
‘I’ve read that paper too,’ said Frank, ‘and the operative word is slowly. It’s a plausible idea if the asteroid is far away but it’s too late for that now. And anyway, we don’t have the satellites.’
‘Couldn’t we combine the two?’ said Rupert. ‘The nuclear and non-nuclear options. For example, explode nuclear bombs to cause the main deflection and then use a gravitational tractor or direct impact to cause a further deflection?’
‘In theory, yes, in practice, no. The asteroid’s too close for that now.’
Liz voiced what they were all thinking. ‘Then our only option is Black Deflection. To explode as many nuclear bombs as possible, simultaneously, close to one side of the asteroid.’
‘I’m afraid so,’ said Frank. ‘Even then, I’m not sure it’ll work.’
In the end, every team in the world came to the same conclusion. Black Deflection was their only option. Their only hope.
Between them, America and Russia managed to muster five rockets. Five rockets each armed with ten of the world’s most powerful nuclear bombs. Scientists worked tirelessly programming the coordinates and synchronising the times. It was imperative that all five rockets reached the asteroid at precisely the same time, and that all the bombs detonated in unison. Six months before the asteroid would hit the Earth, the rockets were launched.
Two months later, 300 million miles from Earth in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, four of the five rockets – one had malfunctioned and drifted off into deep space – reached their target and detonated their deadly payloads. Forty of the world’s most powerful nuclear bombs exploded close to the asteroid. But not simultaneously and not 20 yards from the asteroid. For that to have happened after a 300 million mile voyage would have been a miracle, and miracles simply don’t happen. The explosions occurred over a period of a few minutes, the nearest 400 yards from the asteroid, the furthest one mile away. It wasn’t perfect, but it wasn’t too bad of an outcome. Anyway, it was the best they could do. Had it done the trick, or was it too little too late?
The world held its breath.
18
Illicit Love
While the scientists in America and Russia worked franti
cally against the tightest deadline they’d ever known to prepare the rockets for launch, NEO teams around the world tracked the asteroid, tracked its trajectory to the nearest inch to provide the most accurate data possible for them to feed into the rockets’ guidance systems. There was no room for error. All five rockets had to reach the asteroid at precisely the same time, otherwise the plan would fail.
During the same period, governments began implementing their contingency plans, moving people away from the coast, away from estuaries and away from low-lying areas. Once thriving coastal resorts became ghost towns as people moved inland to higher ground. Entire areas such as East Anglia were emptied of people. If the asteroid smashed directly into the Earth, it would all be a pointless waste of time but if, as everyone hoped, it was a near miss, countless lives would be saved. Either way, it kept people occupied. Helped take their minds off the approaching asteroid. Helped lessen the feeling of hopelessness.
Billions of people the world over had a decision to make: who to spend their final few months with? Seven billion people had to make that decision. For Liz, it was a no-brainer. She would spend her remaining time with the people she loved most. Her little sister, Baby Blu, and her three-year-old niece, Charlotte. And, of course, she’d spend some time with her boyfriend, Gregg.
As she watched her niece running around giggling and laughing with her mummy, she thought about the rank unfairness of it all, the cruel blow dealt by the hand of fate. Millions of innocent babies and children, children just like her little niece, would be wiped from the face of the Earth. Obliterated before their lives had barely begun. Where was God now? It was bad enough for everyone, but at least the elderly and people like herself had had a taste of life.
As the reality of the situation hit home, people began to accept their fate. Resign themselves to the fact that their world was coming to an end. A solemn determination replaced the hysteria. A determination to enjoy what little time was left with the people they loved. Their spouses, their children, their families, their friends. If they were going to die, they were determined to die happy. It was a sad yet uplifting time. A time which demonstrated the strength and dignity of the human spirit. It felt good to be a human being.
The Dark Freeze Page 12