Asteroid Crisis

by Kevin J. Anderson

  “The Kylarn certainly sent that asteroid reeling,” JJ said. “Its orbit is pretty warped.”

  “It’s called ‘eccentric,’” Dr. Kloor corrected.

  “I have an uncle who’s eccentric,” Tony quipped. JJ smiled at the pun. She was glad she was with Tony.

  “Even the planetary orbits aren’t perfect circles,” Fox explained. “They’re called ellipses. For a long time people believed that the Earth was the center of the universe, but as astronomers gathered more and more data, it became clear that the pieces didn’t fit.”

  “I read about that,” JJ said. “An astronomer named Copernicus solved the problem by suggesting that all of the observations made better sense if the Earth and all the planets went around the Sun instead.”

  “That caused quite a shakeup, I’ll bet,” Tony said. “People don’t like to admit that their basic understanding of the universe is wrong.”

  “Even though the sun-centered model made sense of the planetary observations, it still wasn’t exactly right,” Kloor said, “until Johannes Kepler suggested the orbits weren’t perfect circles, but ellipses.” The physicist glanced over at Tony and said, “People didn’t like that either—the suggestion that anything about the universe might not be perfect.”

  Fox nudged the side of the module wall and drifted away from the screen. “Our current estimates are that one to two million asteroids are orbiting in the belt, but right now we’re only concerned with this one. The other two asteroid missions are on schedule. We’ve got to get to this rock and make a little course correction.”

  “The problems seem so complex,” JJ said. “How do we know this is going to work?”

  “There are many variables,” Kloor said. “We don’t even know the precise shape and geological composition of our target. We only know its size and mass. In order for the Kylarn to make these three asteroids strike Earth, they had to have pinpoint accuracy. Fortunately, we don’t need to be too fancy—all we have to do is make the asteroid miss.”

  “Like playing basketball,” Tony said. “Getting the ball into the hoop takes careful aim, but missing the hoop is easy.”

  JJ looked out the window, squinting to see details on the distant asteroid growing against the field of stars—a giant cratered cannonball heading toward Earth. “If we keep people from dying and mess up the squidbutts’ plans, that’s fancy enough for me,” she said.

  ***

  Fifteen

  The second crewmember of Asteroid Mission 2 was amazed when Dyl and Song-Ye appeared, but he accepted the situation quickly enough. Ansari was in charge of the second mission, having left Pi as Deputy Stationmaster aboard the ISSC. Dyl could tell that Ansari would not have missed this hands-on mission for anything.

  The Stationmaster gave them a quick report. “We received a communication from Colonel Fox. Cadet JJ Wren and Cadet Vasquez joined Asteroid Mission 1 a few hours ago, and their team is already putting warheads in place on the first asteroid.”

  Dyl knew Ansari pretty well, of course, but wasn’t familiar with the other crewman, Sergeant Jose Alvarez, though he’d seen Alvarez on the station. Alvarez was a military astronaut trained in spacewalks and construction activities.

  “Song-Ye and I brought everything we need,” Dyl said. “We even came prepared with snacks.”

  The Korean girl removed her helmet and sniffed the air, wrinkling her nose at the collected smells of long-term, cramped living. “We’re ready to help you on the asteroid surface whenever you’re ready.”

  “You’ll get your chance, cadets.” Ansari looked at Sergeant Alvarez. “I’ve mentioned this before, but let me repeat: don’t underestimate these young people. They’ll offer valuable assistance.”

  “Acknowledged, Ma’am,” said Sergeant Alvarez with military gruffness. “So long as they follow instructions. It’s a complex mission and we’re handling nuclear warheads, not toys.”

  “As in, be super careful? We will,” Song-Ye said. “Consider us members of your team.”

  Dyl nodded. “Not a problem. We don’t want any explosions before it’s time.”

  Ansari adjusted the spacedrive controls as the module circled over their destination asteroid. Still wearing their suits, Dyl and Song-Ye eagerly gazed down at the squashed oblong rock that slowly rotated beneath them. “It looks like a giant potato,” Song-Ye said.

  “Then let’s make some mashed potatoes,” Dyl replied.

  The tumbling rock seemed to drift gracefully through the vacuum. He knew that small asteroids didn’t have enough gravity to pull them into a spherical shape, and many of them got fragmented during collisions over the billions of years of their existence.

  Below, a deep, glassy scar rotated into view, a crater that looked much newer than the others. Song-Ye pointed it out to him. “What’s that? A meteor impact?”

  Ansari knew exactly what they were seeing. She drifted close. “That must be the crater the Kylarn made when they altered the asteroid’s course.”

  Alvarez pointed out, “If it withstood a blast like that, the asteroid is probably geologically stable. That makes our calculations easier.”

  Dyl and Song-Ye were fascinated. “Will our nuclear bombs cause that much damage when we give it another shove?”

  Ansari considered. “Maybe, maybe not, but the blast should be strong enough to do what we need it to do—knock the asteroid off course.”

  “That’s a tough piece of rock! An asteroid on steroids!” Dyl said.

  “We’re carrying nukes with a three megaton explosive yield,” Alvarez said. “It’ll be like hitting that asteroid with a giant baseball bat.”

  “Or hitting a billiard ball with a cue stick,” Song-Ye said, reminding Dyl of their game of pool in King’s basement.

  “Yeah, I’m ready to smack that asteroid with a cue stick,” Dyl added.

  “Nuclear bombs are the only things we have with enough power to do the job,” Ansari explained. “Explosive power is measured in either kilotons—1000 tons of TNT—or megatons, a million tons of TNT. I hope we’ve brought more than enough, since we won’t get a second chance at this.”

  “So these nuclear warheads are going to protect Earth,” Song-Ye murmured. She thought of how the idea would have surprised her diplomat father.

  “I wonder if we can get extra credit for saving the world,” Dyl said.

  “Every minute brings that asteroid closer to Earth,” Jose Alvarez warned, sounding impatient. “I see you cadets are already suited up. Let’s get up close and personal with that asteroid, install the warheads, and prepare to detonate them.”

  Dyl held his helmet in his gloved hands. “We’re ready to go anytime.”

  The MMU packs on their spacesuits made Dyl feel like a real rocket man. They had trained with the sophisticated maneuvering jets on their first mission to the ISSC, when they had expected to cross space to retrieve and repair the sabotaged Eye in the Sky satellite. Now, Dyl finally got his chance to see what the packs could do.

  With his uncooperative legs, he had trouble moving around on Earth, so he loved the freedom of the weightless environment in space. Now, with the MMU, he felt like a superhero, flying along as he, Song-Ye, Ansari, and Sergeant Alvarez, exited the modules node room hatch. Sergeant Alvarez, who had carefully trained for the mission, detached the shielded casings of the warheads mounted to the space-station module. The three atomic bombs would have to be timed to go off simultaneously to act as a blasting rocket to deflect the lumpy asteroid.

  Leaving Alvarez to finish their preparations on the modules hull, Dyl, Song-Ye, and Ansari jetted down to the surface. When he touched one foot to the crumbly asteroid, leaving his footprint in the pristine dust—a footprint like Neil Armstrong’s, in a place where no human had ever stepped before—he felt almost no gravity at all!

  “That’s one small step for me.…” Dyl muttered under his breath. He loved being in low- or no-gravity environments. It always felt good.

  He could see the ridges and dimples of the uneven s
urface. Because the entire asteroid was only a few kilometers across, the horizon looked very close, like a cliff edge in every direction. He drifted and floated like a feather in the wind, nudging the surface with his feet. “A few giant leaps would take me all the way around the world! No prob—”

  “Or,” Ansari’s voice cut him off through the helmet radio, “you could launch yourself into space and become an orbiting object yourself. On a small body like this asteroid, with so little gravity, you could reach escape velocity with just a little push. Use your MMU to maneuver.”

  Dyl gave a little blast of his maneuvering jets. “Piece of cake.”

  “Don’t get cocky, Junior,” Song-Ye said. “We have a mission to finish.” As they drifted along, the asteroid rotated, moving them away from the module that hovered overhead. They primarily maneuvered with their MMUs. Alvarez dropped down toward them, towing the large containers that held the warheads.

  As they came upon the fresh crater, Dyl looked down and saw that it was a deep, perfectly smooth bowl. “Compliments of the Kylarn?”

  “They must have blasted this area with a very powerful weapon.”

  Dyl could hear the concern in Ansari’s voice.

  “Then let’s blast this blasted asteroid,” Sergeant Alvarez said, as he used his MMU to jet down toward the cratered surface. Dyl looked away from the sun, out into the starry expanse, knowing that many of those tiny specks were also asteroids—and out there among them, the invading aliens had set up other bases in addition to their outpost on the far side of the Moon. Even if the asteroid mission did manage to deflect the incoming rocks, Dyl feared that the Kylarn would simply try something else. “Let’s get these nukes in place,” Alvarez said. “I’d like to end the day with a bang.”

  ***

  Sixteen

  The third asteroid posed problems.

  Once the crew of Asteroid Mission 3 had greeted King—Captain Bronsky slapping him on the back with enough force to send them drifting in opposite directions in the low-gravity—the mission team went back to analyzing the critical problem, studying images of the asteroid as the module hovered above.

  “It’s much more complex with multiple bodies,” said Lifchez, a scientist who had also been a member of the satellite team back on the ISSC. King was surprised to see that the asteroid was actually three large pieces, two giant ones orbiting closely, touching and grinding together, with a smaller fragment circling them both, all three components spinning around a common center of mass.

  “Some asteroids are made of stone,” Bronsky said. “Others have inclusions of ice and frozen gases.”

  “This one just seems to be … jumbled pieces.” King said.

  Lifchez seemed interested by the unexpected problem. “How do we move the pieces with an explosion, if the asteroid is already in three separate chunks?”

  “That asteroid probably fragmented when the Kylarn changed its course,” King said.

  “We could plant one warhead on each fragment. The separate explosions won’t have as much individual force, but each component is smaller. Like breaking a rack of billiard balls.”

  “An appropriate analogy,” Lifchez said, smiling. “Except in this game, the balls can fly in three dimensions.”

  Bronsky had suited up to install the explosives; Lifchez remained aboard while King accompanied the captain out the airlock.

  “We’ve already received a report from Asteroid Mission 1,” Bronsky told King, sounding happy as they used MMUs to navigate down to the broken asteroid. “The explosions have detonated successfully. As far as we can tell, the first asteroid has been safely diverted.”

  “Two more to go then,” King said.

  “The second explosion is due within the hour. Your comrades, Cadets Wren and Park, are assisting. The countdown has begun.”

  “Will we be able to see the flash of the explosion from here?” King looked out at the countless steadily shining stars.

  “If you know exactly where to look, but it would be like finding a needle in a hay nest.”

  “Haystack,” King corrected.

  “Is that easier to find?”

  “No.”

  Working together, they removed the three crated warheads from the module hull. Under his breath, King hummed the Indiana Jones theme, while he and Bronsky planted the first warhead on the smallest chunk of asteroid. They brought the next container down to the larger of the other two closely orbiting fragments, where they opened the shielded crate and anchored it to the rocky surface with aluminum spikes. Half an hour later, they installed warhead number three.

  “I can honestly say I’ve never tinkered with an atomic bomb before,” King said. “If my Scoutmaster could see me now.…”

  “Given the instability of this broken asteroid, it’s hard to predict what will happen when the bombs go off?’ Lifchez transmitted from the module.

  “The pieces should be pushed in the opposite direction of the blast,” Bronsky said.

  “For every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction,” King agreed. “But the asteroid chunks might break apart. And if those pieces hit each other, who knows which way they might fly.”

  “We will link the warheads to a synchronized timer, and I will not detonate them until we have returned to the module and moved to a safe distance,” Bronsky said.

  An excited-sounding Lifchez sent a message from the module overhead. “Signal from Asteroid Mission 2, gentlemen—they’re declaring success! The warheads went off as planned. The second asteroid has been diverted.”

  Over the helmet radio, King heard the members of Mission 2 cheering. King peered through the faceplate, wondering if he would be able to see the bright flash. Overhead, like a tiny moon, he saw the first asteroid fragment cruising along like a cratered battleship, only a few kilometers away. The mission module glinted in the distant sunlight, half in shadow.

  As he searched the starscape, King felt dizzy at the immensity of the universe around him. He saw one of the stars moving, a fast flickering light that reminded him of an airplane crossing the night sky. As the blip streaked across the blackness, he realized it was growing brighter, larger. He gave a low whistle.

  “Captain Bronsky?” He pointed with a gloved finger, sweeping to the left as he traced the trajectory of the bright light.

  “I see it, Cadet.” The Russian captain switched the channel in his suit. “Lifchez, are you seeing any activity in the vicinity?”

  “There’s an object coming toward us, and it’s no asteroid,” the man said, his voice cracking with tension.

  “What if the Kylarn detected the two nuclear explosions?” King asked. “They might be monitoring the asteroids they deflected.”

  “It’s coming in fast,” Bronsky said.

  The flickering fight grew brighter, dancing around with amazing maneuverability, until it came close enough that King could see the silver hull and pointed arms of a Kylarn starfish-ship. The vessel swooped around the broken asteroid, arced up past the mission module, then cruised back down again. Its rotation slowed—and white-hot weapons fire lanced out, blasting the asteroid not far from where King and Bronsky stood unprotected.

  Lifchez shouted alarms over the helmet radios.

  “We’re sitting ducks here,” King said. “They could blow us away. Either that squidbutt is a very poor marksman, or it’s not trying to hit us.”

  “If we don’t do what we came for, this asteroid will smash into Earth,” Bronsky said.

  “The warheads are planted, but what do we do now?” Lifchez asked.

  The Kylarn ship blasted two more times with its powerful weapons in an obvious show of force. Then a chillingly familiar voice came over their helmet radios, a transmission adjusted to the exact frequency used by the International Space Station Complex.

  “I’d rather not kill you if I don’t have to,” said Mira. “But I do need to stop you at all costs. Don’t press your luck.”

  ***

  Seventeen

  The alien st
arfish ship circled overhead, dashing to the other side of the broken asteroid. Mira had obviously located Lifchez as well. Just to intimidate them, she fired three threatening blasts, making fresh craters.

  “She means business,” Bronsky said in a grim voice.

  “I can’t believe she’d just murder us in cold blood—I thought we were friends.” King knew Mira was listening in on their conversation, so he chose his words carefully. “I worked side-by-side with her. I looked into her eyes.”

  “I don’t want to kill you, Cadet King—or anyone else, for that matter.” The whirling starfish ship came back overhead again. “But I’ve got to consider Earth’s future, and the very survival of the human race. Trust me, I’ll make the difficult decision if you force me to.”

  Lifchez’s panicked voice came from the mission module drifting silently above. “Captain Bronsky, what are your orders? I have no weapons.”

  The Russian captain said, “Cadet Mira, what precisely do you expect us to do?” His voice was hard. He and King waited, their boots barely touching the crumbly surface of the asteroid.

  “Simple enough. Abandon your warheads where they are, leave the asteroid, and return to your module. If you don’t cause trouble, you can leave here unharmed.”

  “We are under very critical timing, Cadet,” Bronsky said.

  King was close enough that the captain could see his eyes through the curved faceplate. “The clock is ticking, Mira—the timer is already set. The warheads are going to detonate automatically.”

  Bronsky’s eyebrows rose to hear King’s false statement. The nuclear explosions were supposed to be detonated simultaneously, and manually, using the controls inside the mission module. Thankfully, Lifchez didn’t correct him.

  “How much time is left?” Mira demanded.

  King made up a number. “Five hours and forty-three minutes. We planned the orbital mechanics very carefully. Don’t screw this up, Mira. Think of how many lives will be lost.”

  “I’m more interested in how many lives I’ll save.”