On to the Asteroid

by Travis S. Taylor

  “Get here sooner if you can. We have much to do.”

  “On my way,” he said as he nodded approvingly toward Elena, acknowledging what she’d done to expedite his departure rather than her fully naked body. Maybe she’s worth keeping around after all, he thought.

  CHAPTER 24

  Paul Gesling was again alone in the spacecraft as both Hui and Mikhail exited the ship using their AMU’s. Hui was going to untangle the radiators from the tether holding them in place above Sutter’s Mill while Mikhail began replacing the faulty electronics in the asteroid divert system. As Gesling ran through the diagnostics and monitored both astronauts using the external cameras, he found his thoughts drifting toward home and his stricken wife. This was the first full day that they’d been out of contact with Earth and the first day he didn’t receive an update on her status in the morning brief. Not that he expected anything different that he’d received every other day since they’d left—a simple one line message from Bill Stetson saying that there was “no change.”

  Somehow, not receiving that simple two-word message was unsettling. Even though Gesling knew that today’s message would have likely been the same, not receiving it gnawed at him more than anything that had gone wrong so far on their trip. He felt…isolated.

  Paul, he thought to himself, there’s nothing you can do except what you’re here to do and save a few million lives in process. He found himself chuckling as that fleeting thought registered in his consciousness. There are millions of Carolyns back home that are counting on us and they must be terrified thinking that we’ve failed since they lost contact with us.

  In addition to feeling isolated, Paul now found himself engaged in second thinking the decisions they’d made so far—including the one to send him on the mission in the first place. Did I cause the thruster failure? Could I have done anything differently to keep it from happening? Get a grip, Paul.

  “Paul?”

  He’d barely finished that last thought when he realized that Hui was speaking to him on the short-range radio.

  “Paul, can you hear me? Paul, please respond,” Hui called.

  “I’m here. Is everything okay out there?” he asked.

  “I’m glad. I was starting to wonder. I’ve been trying to get your attention for at least a couple of minutes.”

  “Sorry about that. Everything’s okay. I was just a little distracted thinking about our predicament.”

  “You will have to tell me about your thoughts when I get back inside. In the meantime, you might want to reel in a little cable so the array doesn’t get tangled again.”

  Gesling looked at the monitor that showed both Hui’s spacesuit silhouetted against the darkness of deep space on her left and the stunning gray asteroid on her right. He touched the screen and the gimbals on the camera responded accordingly, tracking toward his right and her left toward the radiator. He immediately discerned that she’d been successful and freed the array from the errant cable. He also quickly scolded himself for letting his focus drift while he crew on an EVA. He was the right man for this job, but he had to get his head on straight. Hui was being very polite. Paul could only imagine how Melanie Ledford might have responded since he’d knocked her off the mission command spot and then she’d been cut from the mission altogether once their rides had been destroyed. Paul scolded himself again. Ledford would have been pissed at his performance. He would not let himself get so distracted again. He owed that to Ledford, his crew, himself, and the millions of lives at stake back on Earth. There was no internal chuckle this time as he thought about it.

  “Good job, Hui. I’ll pull it in a few meters so we don’t have any more snags.”

  Gesling’s challenge was to retrieve enough of the excess cable to prevent it from tangling again on the radiator array or some other external system but not allow it to come under significant tension, lest it again pull the spacecraft toward the asteroid and make him expend yet more attitude control propellant to get back on station. He touched the virtual button on the display screen and watched the camera as the slack tether was slowly rewound onto the reel inside the spacecraft. Just before it would have become taut, he stopped the motor and waited.

  The tether recoiled, slightly, as the reel stopped pulling it in, but otherwise there were no discernable effects from the maneuver. The ship and the asteroid each had enough inertia that the mass of the cable had little impact on their relative positions.

  “Hui, that’s it then. You can come inside and join me for a late lunch,” Gesling said.

  “Thanks, Paul. I look forward to it,” she replied.

  Paul watched Hui pause and then fire the minithrusters on her AMU, beginning her slow flight back to the ship and Gesling’s company.

  “Mikhail, how is it going with you?”

  “I thought you’d never ask. I’m ahead of schedule and might be able to get the electronics box completely replaced today. If so, then all I have to do tomorrow is run some diagnostics and restart the system.”

  “That’s good news. Keep me informed up here. I feel a little useless.”

  “Just keep that ship working so you can fly us home.”

  “That’s the one thing I can do.”

  “Paul, are you confident that the radar systems back home will be able to see the change in the asteroid’s velocity from the thruster going back on line? How quickly will they be able to tell, do you think?”

  “Mikhail, your guess is as a good as mine. You’re the electric propulsion expert. What’s the thrust on that thing? A newton? Two newtons? I could probably give that asteroid more of a push by kicking it than that thruster will in the first few hours its back up and running.”

  “A few days then,” Mikhail said, sounding himself somewhat distracted.

  “A few days, or even a week or so. The radars simply aren’t that accurate and that thruster will have to operate a long time to give this piece of rock enough of a nudge for them to know it’s working.”

  “That’s what I’m worried about.”

  “Well, I know you don’t want your family and friends back home worried about you out here. Neither do I. But they’ll not give up hope right away and once they see the rock changing course, they’ll figure out that we’re okay and coming home. And, by then we’ll have fixed the radios like you said.”

  “Paul, when I finish this repair, we need to talk. But I don’t want to be distracted any more right now. Let me finish what I’ve started so at least this part of the mission can be successful.”

  “Roger. Over and out.”

  * * *

  The liftoff was perfect. From the frozen steppes of Kazakhstan, the Russian rocket took flight from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on its way to space. Baikonur was the hub of Russian spaceflight and had been since the beginning of the space age with the launch of both Sputnik, the world’s first artificial satellite, and Vostok 1, which carried the first human into space. The primary difference between those payloads and the one on the rocket now making its way heavenward, was the payload. Sputnik carried a radio. Vostok carried Yuri Gagarin. This rocket carried a fifteen-megaton nuclear warhead and was bound for the asteroid Sutter’s Mill.

  CHAPTER 25

  “Gary, you’ve got to do something. Those maniacs have launched a nuclear weapon. They didn’t even wait to see if Paul and the rest of the crew had repaired the thrusters on the asteroid. Those trigger-happy bastards just decided to launch a nuke because they could.” Bill Stetson standing in his Houston driveway shouted into the weblink appended to his collar.

  To Stetson, it was surreal. He was standing in a tranquil Houston neighborhood on a beautiful sunny day that wasn’t either too hot or too humid, a rare event in Houston, talking to Gary Childers, who was currently over a thousand miles away, about events on the other side of the planet that would soon have implications for his friend who was currently several million miles into deep space.

  “Bill, I’ve got a call in to the administrator and one to my lobbyist who is tryin
g to get me on Alexa Faulkner’s calendar for later today. I’m as concerned as you are about Paul and the rest of that crew, but you saw the video and telemetry. The ship was spinning out of control and going straight down on a collision course with Sutter’s Mill when we lost their signal and we haven’t heard anything since then. There is a very real possibility that they all died in a crash and that Sutter’s Mill is on a collision course with Earth.”

  “But, you know as well as I do that…”

  “Bill, hold on and listen to me. I’m actually amazed that we didn’t launch our own nuke as soon as we lost contact.”

  “Gary, I know that. But shouldn’t they have waited to see if the asteroid started veering onto another trajectory before they made that call?”

  “That’s the case that Administrator Reese-Walker took to the president and that’s why a missile wasn’t launched out of Vandenberg,” Childers said.

  “Don’t the Russians care about Rykov? He’s one of theirs.”

  “Gary, the Russians have a history of sacrificing one of their own for the good of the many. Remember communism? Or Stalingrad? For them it was all a risk calculation and I must admit that I understand why they did what they did.”

  “Dammit, Gary, I do too. It’s just that, well, I don’t want to condemn my friend to die unless there’s a damn good reason and I don’t think we know enough yet to make that decision.”

  “I’ll do what I can do. But I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you.”

  “Shit.”

  “My sentiments exactly.”

  * * *

  Mikhail was back in the ship, out of his suit and again sipping tea provided by Paul. Hui was tending to something in one of the lockers on the other side of the inflated habitat that was their “home away from home.” Gesling, also sipping tea, was floating near the communications console and making adjustments that Mikhail couldn’t quite make out.

  “Paul, you and Hui should come over here. I need to tell you something,” said Mikhail, gesturing with his arms for both to come closer as if somebody else might hear what he was going to say. There was nobody else for millions of miles, but habits die hard.

  After the American and the Chinese astronauts joined their Russian counterpart, Mikhail cleared his throat and began speaking quietly and calmly.

  “I believe we are in great danger.”

  “Us? Out here a few million miles from home riding a killer asteroid on a collision course with Earth on a crippled ship that may not be able to steer us home; we’re in danger?” Gesling’s attempt at humor fell flat with the Russian.

  “Yes, we are in great danger. I believe my government will have launched a nuclear rocket to intercept this asteroid as soon as they lost contact with us.”

  “You’re kidding,” said Gesling.

  Mikhail looked at them and said nothing.

  “Paul, I don’t believe Mikhail is joking,” said Hui.

  “I’m not. That was their preferred method of dealing with this crisis from the beginning and it was only through strong intervention from both of your governments that they didn’t launch such a missile strike already.”

  “Holy shit,” Paul said almost completely under his breath.

  “Holy shit is right my friend,” Mikhail nodded in agreement.

  * * *

  Zhi Feng learned about the Russian missile launch while scanning the news feed on his CompUEye. The image of the rocket launch in Russia caught his attention as he sat in the lobby of the Tokyo Hilton where he was accessing the FreeNet via their “secure” guest access network. Hotels and other public places made it too easy for him to elude being tracked by offering access to the FreeNet to their guests—paying and otherwise. Their antiquated password protection protocols were pathetically outdated and he was able to access them with ease.

  He looked around the lobby at the mixed crowd of Japanese citizens and Westerners, who, from the sound of the conversation, were mostly American. He heard snippets of Chinese from around the room and briefly wondered how many Americans could tell the difference between someone from Japan and China.

  Probably not many, he thought.

  The thought left his mind as he read the article scrolling across his field of view. To anyone looking at him, he would look like a hotel guest staring at the wall or studying the painting there. The more tech savvy might guess he was on the FreeNet, but that would be the end of their observational curiosity. This was just fine with him and what he counted on. He didn’t want to be noticed.

  Ah, the American bastard Gesling was killed in space! Feng thought gleefully. That’s one less person I’ll have to kill. It’s a pity about Hui Tian, though, he mulled. He liked Hui and even at times imagined that they would become a couple. If only she hadn’t been so afraid of him when he was in her room and warned her to stay away from Gesling and Childers. If only…

  He wasn’t alarmed, as most readers were, by the logical consequences of the crew’s failure and apparent death. He’d studied Russian rocketry extensively, and was even privy to some of their stolen design data from his days at the Chinese National Space Agency. That, and just about all the design information from every other country’s rocket programs. He smiled at the thought. We stole from the best.

  He knew that the Russians could build a rocket capable of carrying a nuclear warhead into deep space and having it do what it was designed to do—even if the original intent had been to blow Beijing or Washington to bits. The thought that the Russian missile would miss or that the explosion wouldn’t divert the asteroid was considered such a low probability to him that he simply ignored it. Unlike most other readers of that particular news feed.

  With Gesling gone, that left only Stetson and Childers to kill. Both had so far eluded his efforts and he considered that a personal affront. It was almost as if they were challenging him to try harder. And try harder he would. He knew he was smarter than they or any of their minions. He knew that he had to avenge China’s tarnished integrity so she could assume international preeminence in space. And he knew that job was his to accomplish. He just had to figure out the next steps toward achieving that goal.

  It was at that moment that Feng decided he must return to the USA in order to have a chance at killing them. Some time had passed since his last attempt and they might start to let their guard down since he’d been quiet for so long. Part of him hoped so; part of him didn’t. He liked a challenge and the challenge of killing an enemy who has been forewarned and scared appealed to him. He briefly toyed with the idea of sending the dog Childers a message, but decided against it. A warning would make it more of a challenge, he thought, but a surprise attack is far more likely to succeed. And their deaths were more important for him, and China, than any thrill he might feel knowing that they were running scared.

  He turned his attention back to the FreeNet and found airline schedules for flights leaving Narita airport bound for the USA. There were several to choose from. Now all he had to do was decide which person whose identity credentials he’d stolen he would impersonate for the trip. Feng could hack into the most secure computer systems of any commercial airline and become virtually anyone he wanted to become. The thought of impersonating a Japanese businessman caught his fancy and he began scrolling through the possibilities.

  CHAPTER 26

  “Mikhail, I’ve been thinking about that nuclear missile that you believe is headed toward us,” said Hui as she looked up from her tablet computer where she had been diligently working for at least the past hour.

  “All of us have been,” replied Rykov. While Hui was busy at her computer, Mikhail had been running diagnostics on the newly replaced thruster electronics which weren’t yet performing as they were designed. He’d been grunting and cursing to himself for the better part of that last hour as he tried to figure out why the new thrusters weren’t showing voltages in the desired performance ranges. Without high voltage, the ions which served as propellant for the small thrusters wouldn’t accelerate to the ri
ght exhaust velocity and therefore wouldn’t divert the asteroid as planned.

  “Remember the fissure we saw on the way in? It was pretty deep. Deep enough that whatever caused it nearly cut this big rock into two pieces. I’ve been running some simulations looking at what will happen when a multi-megaton nuclear weapon goes off at or near the surface of the asteroid and it doesn’t look good.”

  “How so?” Paul asked and was now giving his full attention to Hui instead of thinking, again, about his wife back home.

  “Remember that a nuclear bomb in space doesn’t produce the same effects as one detonated on Earth and in its atmosphere. First of all, there won’t be a mushroom cloud or blast wave. In the Earth’s atmosphere, the air is dense enough to mostly absorb the nuclear radiation, the neutrons and gamma rays, producing the blast wave and lots of thermal radiation. That’s how buildings are obliterated and people are burned to a crisp. Out here that won’t happen.”

  “I’ve seen the videos of the testing from the fifties and sixties. They were part of my training in the Air Force. I was qualified on planes that carried nukes we were going to drop on Moscow,” Gesling said, adding, “Sorry about that Mikhail. Nothing personal.”

  “No offense taken. I am sure we, too, have our pilots trained to drop similar bombs on New York and Los Angeles. Or whatever would be better planned military targets. I do not know, I’m an engineer, not war planner,” Mikhail said in broken English with added Russian thickness. Then he smiled a toothy grin at his comrades.

  “Out here, the effects will be quite different. Without the atmosphere to absorb all that radiation and in turn creating superheated and fast moving air, the radiation will only decrease with the square of the distance as it spreads out from the detonation. Any ship nearby will receive a lethal dose of gamma rays, neutrons, and other radioactives.”

  “So how does that deflect an asteroid?” asked Gesling. He knew. They had all read the alternative mission briefs months before they had left Earth.