Impact!

by Laurence Dahners

  Syrdian was out on the ledge in front of the cave when the sun suddenly rose in the west! It looked like it was below rather than shining through the ever present clouds! To hies astonishment, not only did it rise in the west, but it was many times brighter than the sun normally appeared. Syrdian had to look away and close hies eyes because the light was so bright. Even looking away hie could feel heat on hies fur and skin.

  An extremely loud shrieking sound came from Dex’s meteorite, then it began speaking loudly! It spoke much better now than it had when it had originally begun talking to them. Then it sounded like Dex on some words and Syrdian on others. Still, its tone was weird. It didn’t sound excited at all, despite what had just happened. It did however speak at a surprisingly loud volume even though its tone didn’t sound like it was shouting. It said, “Get out of the cave and off the ledge. Rocks may fall.” The shrieking sound resumed, then it repeated its words from before. This kept happening.

  Dex came out onto the ledge with all four of their children just as the meteorite shot up into the air with its loud hissing noise and began shouting, “Fly up into the air like this. Leave the cave and fly up into the air like this.”

  The meteorite kept repeating itself. Dex grabbed little Galen and Mata, lifting off with a few beats of hies wings. Apparently, hie trusted the meteorite, because hie began shouting to the other dalins to lift off as well. Syrdian flew up with Dex as did the two older children. Many of the other dalins had lifted into the air as well but Syrdian saw hies parents standing just outside the cave mouth. Hie could tell from their expressions that they thought that this was much ado about nothing.

  A rumble violently shook the ground.

  Rocks broke free from the cliff over the cave and poured down onto the ledge. Syrdian watched in horror as one large rock crushed her parent Ercole and knocked her other parent, Tanif, aside. Syrdian stooped towards Ercole, but banked violently aside when another rock tumbled towards himr.

  With a quiver, the ground seemed to stop shaking. A few rocks continued to fall, but no more seemed to come loose. Dex’s meteorite dropped down and landed to one side of the mouth of the cave. It had stopped shouting for people to fly into the air, now it began telling them to go back inside the cave. “In one eighth of a dek dirt and rocks will begin to fall like rain! In three eighths of a dek, a great wind will come and blow down trees. It will not be safe to be outside! In one eighth of a dek dirt will begin…” The meteorite continued on to repeat itself over and over as it had before.

  Syrdian had landed beside Ercole’s body and now began trying to roll the boulder off of himr. Tanif was also helping and a couple of other dalins grabbed hold as well. Dex sent the children into the cave, the older ones guiding Galen and Mata, then Dex turned and also pushed on the boulder. It finally rolled aside, showing them an Ercole who had been crushed beyond recognition.

  Dex said, “We’ve got to get inside!”

  Syrdian stared at hies parent, “No, we must take Ercole.”

  With a tone of exasperation, Dex said, “I love Ercole too, but hies spirit is gone! We must save ourselves!”

  Syrdian now stared at Dex. “You can sew himr up like you do everyone else! We’ve got to take himr into the cave and safety!”

  Dex’s head went up and back and hies wings rose involuntarily. Hie turned hies head so that hies good eyes could glance at the baleful hot new sun on the horizon. Suddenly hie turned, bent, and scooped Ercole’s crushed body up in hies arms. At a run hie headed back into the cave.

  They were almost the last ones into the cave. With the squealing sound it made while flying, Dex’s meteorite lifted into the air a few inches and scooted along behind them. It kept shouting, “Go deep in the cave. Go deep in the cave.”

  The farther back they went into the cave the darker it became. A few dalins had taken burning torches from the fires, but there were too few torches to easily see where they were going. This was causing a problem because a number of stalactites had fallen from the roof of the cavern and littered the floor. Dalins were stubbing their feet and tripping over them in the poor lighting.

  Suddenly the watery clear spots on the meteorite began emitting a brilliant white light. The dalins around it involuntarily lifted their wings and moved away, but then realized it was just trying to help. Although in the past the meteorite’s help had seemed to be limited mostly to giving advice, it didn’t seem an impossible leap to its providing light.

  Because the top of the meteorite was not very high, the dalins around the meteorite blocked much of its light, but even so the reflections made it easier to see for quite a ways around it. Briefly Syrdian wondered, since it could fly, why it didn’t fly higher in the air to give better light like a torch held up. But then Dex bent over and grabbed it near the bottom, lifting it into the air and holding it up like a torch. The squealing sound that came from the bottom of the meteorite when it was flying immediately stopped, but the lighting was much better with it up high.

  “Go deep in the cave…” the meteorite continued to say monotonously. The dalins continued shuffling farther and farther back into the recesses, eventually coming to areas that some had never entered. The ground did not shake hard again, but they could feel many thumps transmitted to their feet—as if heavy things were falling to the ground outside.

  Syrdian estimated that it had indeed been about three eighths of a dek when, even deep in the cave, they heard a great roaring noise outside of it. The air in the cave seemed to squeeze hard on them for a centidek, then eased off. Somehow, Syrdian felt like the pressure was still higher than it had been after that first push, but with time the pressure seemed to gradually drop back towards normal.

  The meteorite stopped shouting at them to go deeper into the cave. A sudden silence fell, then disappeared as voices began to ask what had happened, what it meant, what they should do, and whether they could go back outside. Some sounded curious, others sounded panicked, a few called out for loved ones. Syrdian hoped no one had flown away from the cave earlier this morning.

  Syrdian turned to Dex, “Ask your meteorite if we can go back outside. I don’t like being deep in the cave.”

  Dex did not have to ask the meteorite the question, it answered Syrdian directly. “The ground shaking and the big winds should not come back, so it may be safe to go outside. But, I expect that there will be a lot of dirt in the air. This may make it difficult to see and breathe, irritating your eyes and lungs.”

  “Dirt in the air?!”

  “Like dust, but much worse. More like sand and fine dirt falling out of the air like rain. Occasionally big rocks will be falling also, the thumps you feel are stones striking the ground outside the cave. I think you should stay in the cave as long as you can.”

  Dex said, “What happened?!” Hie didn’t sound nearly as panicked as Syrdian was beginning to feel.

  The meteorite answered, “A huge meteor came down out of the sky to the west where you saw the very bright light.”

  “You mean where the sun rose back up out of the ground to the west?” Syrdian asked.

  “Well, the light was so bright that it did look like the sun. Even bigger and brighter than the sun normally looks, but it wasn’t the sun. It was an enormous fire made by the meteorite hitting the ground.”

  Little Mata asked, “Like the sparks from a flint?”

  Dex looked down at himr, “A little bit like that, yes. But when meteorites land, they are very hot and often start fires.”

  In its flat tones, the meteorite said, “Yes, but this meteorite was gigantic. Those dalins who have seen meteorites hit the ground know that they can dig a hole and throw the dirt up out of it when they strike, forming a crater. This one was so large that it has thrown an entire mountain of dirt up into the air.”

  A mountain? Syrdian thought, stunned. Can that be?

  ***

  Ell had breathed a sigh of relief when Allan had shut off the rocket as soon as Goldie started to lift it to shine its light around. She had
given the command to turn it off as soon as she realized what was happening, but it was already high in the air and she feared that its exhaust might have burned Dex. Ell was quick, but Allan could be nearly instantaneous, as long as he recognized a potential problem, so the engine had snapped off promptly before it did any harm.

  Goldie and Silver seemed stunned by the concept of an enormous meteorite doing the kind of damage Ell had tried to describe with the, “mountain of dirt up into the air” portrayal. She took advantage of the pause to say to Allan, “You must have another rocket that can see the impact site, since you were able to give me such a precise estimate of its distance from the cave?”

  “Yes. It is located 437 kilometers south by southeast of the impact site.”

  “Put a view of the impact site from that second rocket up on the big screen. Then give me the images from all four of the cameras on the one in the dalins cave in smaller sub-windows.”

  The big screen went dark, then four small windows popped up on it showing the crowded dalins surrounding Dex’s rocket in the cave.

  Ell waited a moment for a picture to come up in the main section of the big screen. When it didn’t happen, she said, “Allan, there’s no picture coming through of the impact site.”

  “No. Dust ejected by the impact has blocked almost all sunlight.” Suddenly the screen lit but showed only a swirling gray. “I have turned on the rocket’s lights, but as you can see there is so much dust that vision is limited to no more than a meter or so.”

  Ell’s heart sank.

  Then she heard Zage thumping rapidly down the stairs.

  “Mom?” Zage called, his voice high-pitched and sounding upset.

  She had a feeling she knew what was bothering him. “I’m in the living room,” she called out.

  His footsteps rapidly approached, “Something bad has happened to the teecees!” He burst into the room, moving much faster than Zage normally did. Seeming very upset, he barreled across the room to leap up on the couch and throw his arms around her. Burying his head into her, he said, “Do you know what happened?”

  Putting her arms around her son for a comforting hug, Ell wondered whether telling him what she knew would somehow reveal that she was more than just “Raquel” his mother. Having decided that knowing what was going on revealed nothing more than that she had checked it out through net searches, she began to wonder what she should tell him. “A… very large comet struck their planet. Do you know what comets and planets are?”

  Zage drew back and looked at her for a moment. “Well I know that Earth and TC3 are both planets.” He frowned a little, “I’m not so sure about comets.”

  Ell briefly explained planets, comets and asteroids to Zage. Remembering his interest in dinosaurs, she said, “The most commonly accepted theory for what killed off the dinosaurs was an asteroid hitting the earth. The ‘dinosaur killer’ asteroid probably massed about 5,000 times more than what just hit TC3.” She tilted her head, “A comet about the same size as the one that just hit TC3 almost hit the earth seven years ago.”

  Zage’s eyes widened apprehensively, “How often do these things hit?!”

  Allan fed Ell the answer and she passed it on, “The comet that nearly hit earth recently was about 1000 meters in diameter. We think the one that just hit TC3 was in the same size range. Objects that size are thought to hit earth about once every million years. But Tau Ceti has a lot more comets around it. We don’t know how often a big one hits there, but it must be much more often than they hit here. If you watch the night sky of TC3, meteors are coming down all the time there.”

  Zage seemed to ponder this for a moment or two, then turned his head to look at the big screen. “Oh, you have the teecees up on the screen there... Why is most of the screen gray?”

  “Because… ” Ell felt her voice about to break and had to pause a second. She continued, “The comet there has thrown a lot of dirt up into the air. That gray is just swirling dust in the lights of the camera.”

  “Oh… Won’t a lot of dust in the air make it hard to breathe?”

  “Yes,” Ell rasped.

  “Can’t we help?”

  Ell’s mind raced. She glanced down at her son and said, “Well, we can’t, but I know some people who might be able to. I’m going to go talk to them.” She stood, “Tell your dad he has to make you breakfast this morning.”

  Ell took the underground tunnel directly to the D5R, entering through the trapdoor in the floor of her office. In transit, she wiped off her skin bronzers and put on her Ell wig while also getting Allan to contact the members of Team Teecee to make sure they knew what had happened. She arrived at D5R in less than ten minutes and started looking for equipment.

  Emma and Roger were next to arrive. They set to work helping her sterilize another rocket to send to Tau Ceti. They found one of the models the ET resources folks had which had a manipulator arm sticking out of it. This one also had a big port that could unfurl from its side that they could use to deliver items. They had to drill some holes in it to allow the chlorine dioxide to get into it for sterilization.

  Once they had put the rocket through the port to the Tau Ceti system and had it on its way to TC3, they started working on other things to send through to the teecees. Those would need to be sterilized as well.

  As they worked, video of the teecees played on nearby screens. For a while, the teecees seemed to be protected from the dust in the atmosphere by their position deep in the cave. But then the cameras began to show some cloudiness in the air. The teecees began spending much more time grooming the air intakes at the bases of their necks. Harold Wheat had arrived and he watched their grooming with fascination. “They’re not only using their tongues to remove the dust trapped in that furry inlet, but they keep the fur moist so that it’s better at trapping the dust.”

  Despite the fact that the teecees had their own built-in dust filter and a process for cleaning it, it became obvious that the dust was causing them some respiratory difficulty. More and more frequently they could be heard blowing air violently through their lungs from the intake to the output. Presumably they were trying to clean their air passages similar to the way coughing works for Earth animals.

  ***

  Many deks had passed since the meteorite had blown up the mountain to the west. The dalins did not have a great deal of experience with dust in the atmosphere. Frequent rains kept the ground moist enough so that dust in large quantities was uncommon. They were getting experience now though. They had moved farther and farther back in the cave until they had come to narrow spots they could no longer pass through.

  Dex felt like hie was spending most of hies time with hies head down grooming hies intake. The little children were having more trouble with the dust than the adults, but even the adults were having significant difficulty. Syrdian asked Dex a question, but hie couldn’t answer for a few millideks as hie was seized by a spasm of air pouring through himr and out of hies exhaust. Hies exhaust opening was dripping disgusting muddy crud which hie wiped off with a finger. Hie turned to Syrdian, “What?” Hie hoped that Syrdian wasn’t going to resume badgering himr about doing something to bring Ercole back to life. That was obviously impossible, Ercole was cold and stiff.

  “Galen’s really sick,” Syrdian said with distress, “what can we do to help himr?”

  Dex’s head sagged, “I don’t know,” hie whispered disconsolately. Then hies head lifted and quested towards the entrance.

  Syrdian’s head turned the same direction as hie also heard the hissing-squealing sound that Dex’s meteorite normally made when it flew. The sound came from the direction of the entrance. Both of their heads turned briefly to look at Dex’s meteorite where it sat on the top of a broken off stalagmite, still lighting the big cavern where most of the dalins were huddled.

  They turned back towards the entrance.

  A centidek or so later they saw a light approaching from the entrance. Sure enough it was another meteorite, much like Dex’s. It was bigger ar
ound and had a large fin sticking off of it, but seemed to be much the same height. Scooting along just a few fingers off the floor of the cave, it passed among some of the dalins near the entrance and they drew away nervously. It came right up to Dex, then the hissing sighed to a stop and it dropped to the floor of the cave an arm’s length away from him. A circular area on the surface of the big fin changed color and an object fell right out of it!

  Dex moved hies head to one side to look at the edge of the fin. That fin is much too thin for something the size of a burrower to fall out of it!

  Hie got no time to wonder how something had come out of the fin because then the meteorite spoke to himr with the same flat voice hies own meteorite normally used. “This object should help with the dust,” it said. “Hold it up in the air.”

  Dex stared at it. It looked like it was made out of the same kind of metal that hies meteorite was made out of. It looked something like a metal pot with an extremely loosely woven basket on the top and bottom. There seemed to be fins inside of it. Hie bent down and picked it up. The fins started moving around in circles inside of it.

  The meteorite said, “Hold it away from yourself and grip it tightly, it’s going to blow air hard enough that it will push hard against you.”

  Dex held it out away from himrself at near arm’s-length. The fins started moving faster and faster until they disappeared in a vanishing blur. Hie could feel air being sucked toward it and it pushed back against hies arms.

  ***

  The TC team watched nervously as Goldie held the ducted fan up and they slowly increased its speed. They could see the dust in the cavern began to swirl. Ell said, “Okay Allan, on a low duty cycle, open the port from the lake to the fan.”

  The rocket had dropped one end of a port into the depths of a lake on its way to the teecee’s cave. The end of the port on the front of the fan now began spraying water out onto the counter-rotating fine mesh in front of the blades. The high velocity air from the fan atomized the water and blew it out into the cave.