by Peter Damon
As the last of the returning SUV’s entered the spaceship and the outer doors were closed, Allan looked toward Michael, and Michael nodded. He reached for the ARC’s icon and, tapping it, gave instructions to the ARC to head into the sun. In moments all the remaining satellites bar one were joining it and a silence had fallen over the crew of the ferry. One single satellite remained, sitting in a high earth orbit above the North Pole with a conventional power source, dishes able to align themselves with the laser communication beam being transmitted from Freedom One. It would provide communication with earth and hopefully go unseen.
“It’s all yours,” Michael told Allan, shaking his hand before moving out to hug Heather to him.
Allan looked about him and nodded towards the many expectant eyes. “Warp six. Make it so,” he joked. Some laughed and some just smiled, but all watched him press the icon that had been waiting on the ferry ever since it had risen into space six weeks before.
Still at his desk, Matt filled the monitors with a feed from a forward facing camera. He didn’t bother with a view from the rear facing camera. They were used to that view. It was the front view that held their interest.
December 2nd.
The President of the United States seemed to be the only one sitting at ease as the others, arranged around the large table, commanded their various organisations to confirm that the ARC had truly been moved.
Monitors about the walls of the Situation Room in the basement of the White House provided images that graphically displayed the route of each of the departing satellites and craft while another showed outer-space. A dot, not so different from any of the stars on the screen, was in fact the Freedom One spacecraft as it headed out, towards the Asteroid Belt.
“Have they left anything behind?” she asked the room, her patience exhausted.
“No Ma’am,” someone ventured, a man from NASA, an earplug in one ear, a tablet similar to those used by the ARC students sitting in front of him.
Can we catch anything?” she asked.
The man shook his head, his expression reflecting his disappointment.
“Can anyone else catch anything?” the Chief of Staff asked, off to her right.
“No,” the NASA man told her. “All objects are still accelerating towards the sun. Even if we had something in space at the point they began their journey, it’s highly unlikely we could have caught them,” he admitted.
The president sighed and answered Joanna’s glance with a nod, then folded her arms to let her Chief of Staff run the meeting while she reflected on what could have been.
“They’re going to come back; they must do. When they do, I want to be up there and waiting for them,” Joanna told the delegates.
“The ARC has shown us the way.
“Let’s find the students that have returned and make them offers they can’t refuse. We want them in US universities, adding whatever knowledge they have to what we already know, or have guessed,” Joanna told them.
“There are others doing the same, Ma’am,” the Chief of Administration for Harvard University told her.
“Are you telling me they’re able to make better offers?” she asked pointedly. “Name me one Russian university in the top ten worldwide,” she asked, and listened to the silence as they glanced at each other.
“If we have anyone remotely able to challenge us for these students, then it’s the UK, and it’s the UK that has let them down. Do they think the UK is going to mount a project to try and match the ARC’s achievements? No. But we will, and the students in US universities will play a key role in helping us, and if anyone earns a place in outer-space, then it will be they,” she told the group.
“That’s the message you give these people. I want those students in US based universities,” she told them, stabbing the table.
“NASA is to spearhead a new project; to utilise the skills available within our best universities and research labs, and provide a launch platform that can launch big, high, and frequently.
“By the time that old ferry returns, we want to meet them in a new space station; larger, more comprehensive, and American. And we want it now!” Joanna told them.
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Pierre Moulier looked about him as he came through the arrivals gate at London’s Thatcher Airport and felt a wave of relief as he saw the young man holding up a board with his name on it. He had half-expected the arranged meeting to prove false; a joke at his expense. He was, after all, the most vilified man on the planet, the failure of the UNSA put firmly at his door. Re-seating the shoulder strap of his overnight bag, he walked over to weakly smile and extend his hand.
“Robert Fuller?” he asked.
Robert put the sign down to shake the Frenchman’s hand. “Good trip?” he asked.
“What can I say? The seats are getting smaller, the space in front of each diminishing each year,” he observed, walking along side the younger man.
Robert knew the truth of that and reflected momentarily on the life he’d left behind. “Come along; I have a car waiting,” he said, picking up the pace.
They said little while walking to the car park and retrieving the ticket from the payment machine.
“Sorry about that,” Robert told him, once they were in the car and out of the car park and heading onto the new M2 link road. “It’s unsafe to talk in public,” he explained, “especially in places like airports.”
“I understand,” Pierre murmured. How often had he accepted intelligence, knowing it must have been obtained from private conversations? He dreaded to think.
“Have you actually resigned as yet?” Robert asked out of interest.
“The letter is due to be delivered at the end of today,” he explained. “I am currently on leave to see an ailing but distant family member. My wife has taken the opportunity to go and visit her mother too. You are perhaps the only person in the media not to be camped outside our house,” he commented.
“Possibly,” Robert agreed and moved the car into the appropriate lane in order to move onto the west bound lanes of the M2 motorway and head towards London. The immediate necessity of concentrating on the road and the jockeying of cars killed any further conversation for a few moments.
“I have a hotel room booked for you in the name of Pierre Gustav,” Robert explained, passing Pierre a French identification card with his photograph and his new name. “And this is your payment,” he added, holding up a debit card, also in the name of Pierre Gustav. “750,000 US Dollars.”
“Your Telegraph newspaper pays very well,” Pierre told him, gratefully taking the card to look at its innocuous face.
“It’s not the paper that is paying you. Those funds come from the ARC,” Robert told him, settling down now that they were on the motorway and heading for London.
Pierre nodded, looking again at the card. Everyone in the United Nations knew the ARC had capital somewhere on earth, but no one had been able to find it. If it was held in China, as everyone suspected, then the Chinese weren’t telling.
Who would have thought it; Pierre Moulier whose whole professional life had been with the United Nations, now effectively employed by the ARC? He chuckled and shook his head at the irony of it all.
Robert pressed the On button at the side of his small digital recorder and settled down to hold the interview while he drove. “Why don’t you start right at the beginning, when you were selected as the United Nations Space Authority Assistant Secretary-General,” he suggested.
Pierre nodded and closed his eyes to help sort out his memories. If need be, there were papers he had brought with him.
December 22nd.
Allan slowed Freedom One to a relative crawl. They were not yet in the asteroid belt, but within an area crossed by some of the more eccentrically orbiting asteroids. The one he and Matt were looking for was 99942 Apophis, a relatively small asteroid that, because of its orbital eccentricity, had caused earth authorities some concern when first found in 2004. It had been immediately placed on t
he Torino Impact Hazard Scale as possibly striking earth in 2029.
Later calculations had removed the hazard warning, but for Freedom One, it made a perfect asteroid for some initial training, its diameter of 325 metres, speed, and slow tumbling motion, making it an awkward asteroid that best represented the worst that could be found.
The trouble was that the orbits of asteroids tended to change. Most, affected by the pull of Jupiter, had small variations in their orbit. However, if the change caused a collision with another asteroid, then the two could move quite dramatically.
The crew waited with varied degrees of tension. Gail prodded most of the spacemen to take the opportunity and make use of the gym, while some, like Frankie, chose instead to spend extra time with friends and partners.
It took Matt a few hours to find the small asteroid, and Allan all of 20 minutes to move to one kilometre from its surface. By which time the crew had gathered in the lounge to look more closely at the type of rock they were to work on.
Frankie stood and went over some of the things he had learnt from his experiences with the near-earth asteroid, and then the crew were allowed out in the SUVs for a closer look, and some training on how to steer around tumbling rocks, land and take off, all the while keeping their stomachs calm as, matching the rock’s motion, the rest of the universe spun and swerved about them.
Matt had the idea of landing a tug on it and using it to reduce the tumbling. He smashed one of the tugs on the surface before Allan called a halt to more practice, and he worked on an app that used radar to map the spin and turn of the asteroid, and provide SUV pilots with automated landing. It worked, up to a point. It sometimes took the app up to 20 minutes before it judged it knew the rotation of the asteroid well enough to steer the SUV to the surface.
December 25th.
Freedom One targeted asteroids in the 800 metre diameter region, reflection from radar giving them a degree of knowledge as to their density. They moved with calm precision from one asteroid to the next, dropping off single SUVs to each piece of rock before it moved into the geographical centre of the chosen group, where it could provide support to any of the teams should they need it.
The teams within each SUV conducted a survey of their allocated rock, landing with care to take a single core sample through the rough centre of each asteroid. The job complete,they waited to be picked up again by Freedom One, to be taken briskly to the next rock, and the next rock, a never ending process of survey and analysis that provided them with a database enriched by ever increasing amounts of data.
It sounded boring, and to all intents and purpose, it was, but for the views and exhilaration of being the first person ever to have set foot upon that piece of rock. No one who had done it could say they were not awestruck by having stood upon the bare surface of rock and ice and looked about them, humbled by the magnitude of outer-space.
Invariably, once the machinery was running, the team would turn to look for the earth, in many cases having to admit defeat and settle on being able to look towards the sun, and know it was the same one the earth was looking at. It gave them a sense of being at home.
Meanwhile, depending upon which area of the asteroid belt they chose to survey, Jupiter would loom, a huge ball of vivid swirling tones of red and browns that dominated the black sky, humbling those who stood on the bare rock, looking out at it. The largest planet in the solar system, it looked incredibly large and near, threatening even. The Romans had judged it well in identifying it as the god of sky and thunder.
Occasionally though, it was Saturn that was nearest, sometimes appearing three times as large as the moon when seen from earth, lighter than Jupiter, with its rings crying out for closer examination. Although further away than Jupiter, Saturn was nearly as big a planet, and similarly, looked incredibly close to the spacemen standing on a small piece of rock within the Asteroid Belt.
On this particular day, Michael and Heather visited every member of the crew to wish them each a merry Christmas. With them, they took their special gift; a punnet of strawberries, fruit that Heather had begun to cultivate long before they had left earth orbit.
Christmas had come at a good time; three weeks since leaving earth. The excitement of departure had all but expired and the monotony of their new lives had begun to settle on them all. Christmas provided an opportunity to break the thrall of repeated activity, and sweet and fresh strawberries were a perfect present.
In return, Heather acquired hand knitted shawls and booties, perfumed oils produced in their very own laboratories and a new app to help monitor little Wendy-Claire in the last few weeks before her birth.
Late in the day, once all the SUVs were back on board and they had shared a meal together, Leanne coordinated a video meeting with everyone on earth and they laughed and cried for a few precious minutes, security measures requiring the calls be brought to a stop far quicker than anyone wanted. They toasted each other with apple juice and held a minutes silence for those no longer with them. The winter solace seemed very real to them, so far from the sun, and home.
February 15th.
The Spacewatch facility at Kitt Peak, Arizona was the central hub of a number of observatories that each spent a portion of the day seeking out and reporting on any asteroid over half a metre diameter that travelled within half an Astronomical Unit of earth. It had been running since the 1980s, but with the advent of the ARC and the recovery of an asteroid by those on board the spaceship, the facilities had been broadened, with additional observatories made available, and a central reporting hub added. Together with all the other research and development being spearheaded from NASA, there was now a real feeling within the US Astronomical world that the country planned to do something really major in outer-space, and soon.
James McMillan, a student of the University of Arizona, was seated at the main desk of the information hub. It was three hours into his shift and his feet were up on the desk, his chair laid back so that he could see the three monitors facing him while, on his lap, lay his tablet, the screen displaying an article published in the Astronomy Education Review about research into the identification of variations in gravity.
Sandy haired and blue eyed, an Honours College university student, he was overly slender and tall, sometimes clumsy when moving about the university campus. His savage wit made him enemies, but also a few close friends.
James though, knew his place in the scheme of things. Although a grade A student, there were at least a half a dozen students studying astrophysics and astronomy that were well ahead of him. He was two years into his degree, but no matter what he did, he was consistently overshadowed by the others.
Nonetheless, he pushed on with his studies. He was the son of a mid-west farmer, a man who never said die, no matter what was flung at him. James was cut from the same cloth, and having glanced again at his monitors, returned his attention to his tablet and the interesting article.
An alarm sounded, jarring his feet from the desk and his body upright with a grunt. His middle monitor had a red circle off to one side as the software accompanying the spectrograph from COSMO noted a change in movement that would, if unchallenged, result in the body moving within half of an Astronomical Unit of Earth.
Such things occurred occasionally; James knew and had seen it occur in the past. It was as likely to be the result of a collision as a new comet entering their solar system. He punched the coordinates into another of the monitors and was rewarded with a closer look at that area of outer-space.
Even with a 4m telescope, the cause of the alarm was little more than an oblique dot among a background of other light dots. He tracked it for a little longer, then pasted the information into the log. The rest of Spacewatch duly alerted to the new body, James returned his feet to the edge of the desk and continued with his article, too interested in the details regarding gravitational forces to consider the possible magnitude of his discovery.
February 16th.
Professor Gerald Lark, the head of Cavendish
Laboratory in Cambridge, England, looked up and smiled a welcome at his expected but unannounced visitor; the Vice Chancellor of Cambridge University.
“Is it what I think it is?” Sir Richard asked, once the door was closed, pleasantries exchanged and there was no likelihood of being overheard.
Professor Lark’s grin grew as he nodded. “An asteroid of fair size, around 1 billion tonnes is our best guess,” he agreed.
“Same size as that resting on a China coal mine then,” Sir Richard sought confirmation.
“Yes,” Professor Lark agreed. “Uncommonly similar, I’d suggest.”
“And its path?” the Vice Chancellor asked.
“It will come very close. Within 100,000 kilometres of earth I’d say.”
“How long?” the senior man asked.
“Nine months,” the professor told him.
“We’re relatively certain, then,” The Vice Chancellor asked.
“Oh yes. Given its original orbital speed, the speed required in order to meet earth, and the time between the two, I would say some external force of some magnitude has been introduced. Collision between two asteroids would not have caused this result,” he confirmed.
“Yes, I understand,” Sir Richard agreed. He nodded, thanked the professor and moved on, sustaining the fabricated explanation of his visit by visiting a number of other professors too.
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Joanna Bradworth listened to the presentation from NASA and looked at the graphic display they had brought with them. It showed a slow moving object crossing the orbit of Mars, moving towards the sun at an angle. The earth, moving in its own well-established orbit seemed to meet it head on, at which point the moving display stopped.
“It’s roughly the same size as the meteor that caused the Barringer Crater just east of Flagstaff, Arizona,” one of the NASA men was telling her. “In that scenario, about 50% of the meteor was vaporised before it hit the earth. That was largely Nickel-iron. The impact this will make will depend upon its composition and speed, both of which we’re still calculating.”