Comet!

by Laurence Dahners

  Ephraim chuckled, “I know what you mean. Something about being here is making me nervous too.” He reached in his pocket for an antacid.

  Shelton suddenly said, “I can’t drink this.” He turned to the young lady who’d just appeared at his elbow, “Take this away please, honey,” he said holding the flute of champagne to her.

  She said, “Certainly sir,” and whisked it away.

  Shelton thought to himself, These Swedish girls are astonishingly pretty aren’t they? And they all seem to speak English. That one really didn’t even seem to have an accent. Even wearing a tuxedo, she managed to look feminine. And somehow familiar. Probably looks like some movie star. He noticed Goldwasser staring at him in horror. “What?”

  “The young lady you gave your glass to…”

  “Yes?” he said turning to look after her again.

  That was Donsaii, the Prize winner in Physics.

  “Oh my God,” he exclaimed in horror. “Of course!” He recognized her now, how could he not? His wife and friends always accused him of being socially inept.

  Shelton didn’t have an opportunity to apologize until after the girl had given her astonishing lecture on trans-dimensional quantum effects, making him wonder how he deserved to be on the same stage. He had heard of the paper that won her the Nobel, but hadn’t realized that the paper was the basis of the new PGR communication chips. He didn’t seem to be the only one who didn’t realize that the paper was also the basis for “trans-dimensional” ports that enabled her company to rescue the International Space Station a few months ago. Like many others apparently, he’d thought they did it with small rockets. Which, he guessed, was partly true…

  “Ms. Donsaii?”

  She turned to him, short strawberry blond hair flaring out momentarily. “Yes, Dr. Shelton?”

  “I’d just like to apologize for handing you my glass earlier, I just… just didn’t recognize…”

  “Oh, don’t worry,” she flashed him a stunning smile, “I’m used to it. I’m trying to enjoy looking ‘too young.’ I know it won’t last forever…”

  ***

  Kitt’s Peak, Arizona—The spokesman for the observatory says that no one has so far been able to explain the cause of the enormous “tail” of Comet Hearth-Daster. “It is breaking all records. The comet itself is relatively small as comets go but the volume of material which has been expulsed by the comet is much greater than that of any other recorded comet.” In addition, observers at the many thousands of telescopes which have been trained on it have commented that the outgassing seems to come in huge pulses at semi regular intervals of about two per day like a geyser here on earth. Because of the tremendous interest that has been generated, many of those observers have re-calculated its orbit to see how close it will pass by the Earth after it rounds the sun. Although consensus projections now show it missing the Earth by about 170,000 kilometers, some observers have commented that the huge outgassings are very fortunate for us. This is because its orbit actually had a fairly high likelihood of intersecting Earth’s prior to the alteration of its trajectory by the huge jets of material. In any case, those of you already enjoying the chance to observe this comet are in for a real treat when a comet with such an enormous tail passes very close to us in February!

  Voight stepped into Epaulding’s office, “Well, we seem to have successfully sold the ‘geyser theory’ to the public, but I don’t know what we’re going to do when someone really thinks this through.”

  Epaulding said, “Let me make sure I understand our ‘line’ in case I’m asked about it. The concept is that the comet has a huge cavity inside it that is squirting material through an orifice as the comet heats up. These squirting episodes form the intermittent jets of material that have produced the huge tail and pushed it off of its original trajectory?”

  “Yep.”

  “And some bright boy is gonna ask me how there comes to be so much heat deep in the comet to boil a geyser?”

  “Yep.”

  Epaulding grimaced, “And I’m going to say we don’t know, then remind him that it doesn’t take much heat to boil frozen gasses, hoping to distract them from the fact that the surface is what’s being heated by the Sun.”

  “Yep.”

  “Jeez, that’s weak.”

  “Just hope none of them ask you if the comet’s rotating, and if so how come the geyser only erupts when it’s turned one direction. Or how a geyser could generate that much energy. Or…”

  Epaulding put his hands over his ears in horror, “What the hell is happening then?!”

  Voight shrugged, “Someone’s bombing it to push its orbit.”

  “Who?! The Chinese?”

  “We don’t think any of the usual players have the capability.”

  “Who the hell does?!”

  Voight rolled his eyes and chuckled, “Who has all kinds of capabilities that we don’t understand?”

  Epaulding’s eyes widened, “You think Donsaii’s doing this?!”

  Voight shrugged again, “Chinese, Japanese, Europe, Russia, all launch with chemical rockets producing such low impulse that they’d have had to have known about this comet years ago to get something out there to match orbits with it.”

  “But, but, Donsaii’s rockets can only go 22kps. They couldn’t get there any more than we can. Besides, about a month ago she called me to ask if it was a danger to us and I told her it wasn’t.”

  “Bossman…” Voight raised an eyebrow. “That girl’s smart. She already knew it was gonna hit us, she was just checkin’ to see if we’d figured it out yet.”

  Epaulding’s eyes widened, “Crap! And I told her a bald faced lie…”

  “Yep.”

  Epaulding’s eyes narrowed, “But wait a minute, you haven’t explained how she got a mission out there to the comet when she’s limited to 22 kps just like we are.”

  “Bossman…” Voight said patiently, then shook his head. “You lied to her about the comet’s trajectory. You really think she’s shown you all her cards?”

  Epaulding buried his head in his hands, “Oh, Jeez.”

  ***

  Roger invited Ell to the Emmerit Christmas dinner again. She felt conflicted. Going seemed unfaithful to Emma, who had told Ell that Roger seemed to be responding to her somewhat. Ell and Roger hadn’t been going out. Maybe that could be attributed to the comet crisis, but there had been some opportunity when they were down to a routine of shooting two impactors a day. And she’d really had fun at their big crazy Christmas dinner last year. After dithering a bit she’d accepted.

  To her amazement, Ell again found herself seated next to Grandmother Emmerit. Since the seats at the huge table were drawn by lot it seemed an alarming coincidence. Once again Roger was seated across the table and down a ways. Grandmother Emmerit turned to her and said, “Ell Donsaii if I remember right?”

  “Yes Ma’am.”

  “And you’re the young lady that helped my grandson save the Space Station?”

  Keeping a straight face Ell nodded.

  Grandmother Emmerit laughed, “Come on, this Christmas I’m just pretending to be clueless. I knew you were coming, so I read up on you. Very impressive, I must say.

  “Thank you Ma’am. I’ve been very lucky.”

  “Well, they say luck favors the well prepared.”

  “I like to think so Ma’am.”

  “Maybe it favors genius too?”

  Ell shrugged.

  Grandmother Emmerit grinned, “Hard to get a rise out of you, ain’t it?”

  With a shy grin Ell shrugged again.

  Ms. Emmerit guffawed, “You gonna make an honest man out of my grandson?”

  “Oh, he’s already very honest, nothing for me to do there.”

  She laughed again, “OK, OK, I’ll take my nose out of your business. I did happen to see some video of you dancing at a concert though?”

  Ell blushed, “Um, yeah.”

  “I must say, you’re pretty good at that as well.”


  “Grams!” said little blond Denise, sitting on the other side of Ms. Emmerit, “She’s the best in the world! At gymnastics I mean, and I think at dancing too!”

  Ell blushed, “Thank you. Do you do gymnastics?” The small blond head nodded emphatically. “Do you want to show me after dinner?”

  “Yeah! Can you teach me some of your special moves?”

  “Well… we can try, but I think you’ll need to be a little older.”

  “Special moves?” Grandmother Emmerit asked bemusedly.

  “Yeah Grams! The moves she can do that no one else can.”

  Ms. Emmerit looked fondly down at her great granddaughter, “You mean that ‘no one else can do as well.’”

  With all the disdain of a child for an ignorant adult, the blond girl said, “No Grams! No one else can do them at all!”

  “Grams” turned slowly to take in the staring eyes around her, then at a blushing Ell, whose eyes were downcast. “Dang, I guess I’m still clueless!” Then she laughed heartily at herself again.

  Everyone got up to choose their desserts and Ell was heading for a slice of Roger’s pecan pie when Allan spoke in her ear. “Comet Hearth-Daster has broken apart at perihelion.”

  Ell’s heart sank. She stopped in mid step and closed her eyes, mind racing. What a Christmas present! Crap! Someone bumped into her from behind. There were a million questions she wanted to ask Allan but couldn’t in a room full of people. Time probably isn’t critical so I could stay and have dessert. But if time does turn out to have been critical the entire human race could pay for that slice of pie. She opened her eyes and saw Denise standing wide eyed just in front of her.

  The little girl said, “Are you OK? Your face is really white.”

  Ell nodded. “I just got some bad news and I’m going to have to leave, OK? I’ll watch you do gymnastics another time?”

  Denise nodded.

  “Tell your grandparents I’m sorry but I had to go?”

  Denise nodded again and Ell turned to bolt out the door. As soon as she was out the door she said to Allan, “Tell Roger about Hearth-Daster. How many fragments has the comet broken up into?”

  Allan said, “So far it has broken into two main fragments and many small fragments. I could give you a count but thus far they are all under one meter in diameter and unlikely to do any harm after passing through Earth’s atmosphere.”

  “Do the two main fragments appear to be stable?”

  “No, there is a great deal of shifting of the nuclei of the two fragments. It appears very likely that those fragments will break apart further.”

  “Damn!” Ell’s car came around the corner and she trotted to it. “Tell Steve and whoever’s lead for the security team tonight that I’m heading back to D5R. Tell Emma and Wilson about the comet disrupting.” Ell dropped into the seat of the car and leaned back. As the car accelerated she looked up at her HUD, “Show me current video of the comet…”

  ***

  “So it broke into two major fragments, one of which stayed in one piece and is now much farther from an Earth intersecting trajectory. The other, unfortunately, has fragmented further and those fragments are scattering into a spray that does intersect us.”

  “Holy Jeez, Ell!” Ben burst out. “And you’re just now telling us?!”

  Ell winced, then her eyes swept over the assembled group which included the original comet team of Roger, Emma, Wilson and Manuel but now also Fred, Vivian and Brian from “Portal Technology” and Ben and Rob from “ET Resources. Sheila was there too. Ell thought she might become the most important member of the team.

  Hotly Roger said, “Ben! She moved the whole thing off an intersecting path—without your help! Ease up!”

  “It’s back to intersecting though isn’t it?!”

  Wilson Daster almost moaned, “I was worried this might happen, I should have said something.”

  “We were all worried that something like this might happen, that doesn’t mean what we did was wrong.”

  “But I can’t believe you just hared off, shooting bombs at the greatest threat to mankind we’ve ever seen without even consulting…”

  “The more people that knew, the bigger the chance that it’d get out and a panic would…”

  “Shut it!” Ell barked. She had been standing eyes closed while the storm of argument rolled over her, but the discussion had degenerated to a squabble with no sign of turning into a productive session. She hadn’t used a “command voice” since her Academy years, but it still had its effect. The room fell dead silent as wide eyes turned to her. “We have a crisis people, the likes of which has never faced the human race before. Neither bitching, nor assigning blame will solve this crisis. Fortunately, we do have the capability to at least mitigate this disaster. But, that will not happen if you continue to bicker instead of stepping up!”

  The group stared in shock at the transformation that had come over their mild mannered leader. Her green eyes, icy and flashing. Her stance, feet separated a little more than shoulder width with arms akimbo made her an intimidating presence instead of the friendly young girl they were used to.

  Intently sweeping the group with her eyes again, Ell said, “I am going to finish bringing you up to date on our current situation. Then I will entertain questions. Then we will discuss strategies. If you feel the need to complain or assign blame, you will wait until after the crisis, or leave us now, understood?”

  The group found themselves nodding unthinkingly, some of them surprised to be “doing as they were told” after a lifetime of speaking their minds.

  “Now,” Ell continued, “As I was saying, the larger of the two main fragments has separated into six major fragments that appear to be on intersecting or near intersecting paths with the Earth. The largest of these masses 80 million metric tons. There are four massing between 18 and 30 million tons. The sixth masses seven million tons. There is a shower of smaller fragments, of which 253 mass more than one metric ton. None of them mass more than 30,000 tons.”

  A number of hands went up. Ell felt gratified, but surprised that they had not continued interjecting. She held up a hand palm out asking them to hold off, “I would point out that the risk of human extinction is much lower now, however this will be of little comfort to anyone near an impact point for one of these fragments. The six large fragments, should they strike the Earth, will release kinetic energies ranging from 3,000 to 34,000 megatons of TNT.

  “As I said at the beginning of this, I appreciate your coming in the day after Christmas, but I hope that you all agree that we will need every moment we have to deal with this.”

  Ell pointed to Fred, “Yes?”

  “I’m sure I speak for Vivian and Brian when I say that our Portal Tech group is ready to do what ever is needed to help out. I assume we’ll need a lot of ports to supply new rockets. We can adjust our manufacturing to produce whatever types of ports we need.”

  Ben, whose face had initially been white with dismay, then red with anger, now appeared to be blushing. When Ell called on him, he pointed to Fred, “Same as what he said.”

  “Thank you. Now, we need a plan. Suggestions?”

  Emma tilted her head, “More impactors, hammer the fragments. Move the big ones, blow apart the little ones.”

  “Problem,” Ell said, holding up a finger, “now there are a lot of fragments. They’ll be hard to track and determine their exact trajectories. Certainly, one observation rocket with a laser rangefinder like we used on the intact comet would not be effective in our current situation.

  Roger put up a hand and when Ell acknowledged him, said, “Seems to me like we need a set of at least three and possibly four observation rockets placed around the spray of cometary fragments. An AI, presumably your Allan, could then triangulate on each of the different fragments from the images provided by the different observation rockets. Once the AI has defined exactly which fragments are going to hit us, it will also be able to tell us which direction we want to push them. We’ll need anothe
r set of port rockets, farther out, through which to send the impactor rockets. They’ll need to be far enough away to let the impactors accelerate up to full speed. Ideally, we’d have at least four and preferably six port rockets to send impactors through so we can drive fragments in many different directions depending on which direction is the shortest to a trajectory that will ‘miss’ us here on Earth.”

  Braun said, “ET Resources has at least four rangefinder rockets that could be used for observation, and we’ve just finished about 20 ‘port’ rockets with 7.5 cm nitinol ports that we were going to station around the solar system to deliver rockets to points of interest. It would be no problem to provide six of those.”

  Ell turned to Sheila, “What progress do we have on getting LOX and LNG in large quantities?”

  “We ordered big tanks and the LOX tank has been delivered but the soonest they could get a LNG tank to us is January 2nd. And it will take some time to install and fill them.”

  “Damn! Offer them lots of money to get it done now. Or yesterday, preferably.”

  “Why aren’t we just putting ports in at the distributor?”

  “Well… we should. I’ll start talking to people about getting authorization, the President, if I have to. Can you three at Portal Tech take charge of trying to get us ports installed at the distributors that we’ll use illegally if we have to? The distributors probably aren’t aware that PHMSA says we aren’t allowed to do it…”

  “We’ll need to create a real assembly line for impactor construction…”

  “I’ll order more five kilo iron impactors…”

  By the time they broke up, everyone had something to do.

  ***

  Epaulding and his two grown sons leapt to their feet as one. Notre Dame’s quarterback had just launched a Hail Mary pass downfield that might… yes… would win the New Year’s Day bowl game. “Yes!” they shouted in unison and turned to clink their glasses together. In his ear his AI said, “Mike Voight is calling.”