by Ken Beers
that gravity boost. You said it wouldn’t change our course. It was the gravity boost that screwed us up, wasn’t it?”
“Turns out, I got that wrong. Something unknown affected us. It could have been anything, a burst of radiation, even a small black hole drifting by. Bad luck at any rate.”
“Bad Luck? Cecil, destroying all humanity is not bad luck! How many of those bombs do we have? We’ll blow ourselves up if we have to!”
“We have three, enough to blow ourselves up, that’s for sure. If we could find a way to arm them without the magnetic field, and a way to bore into the center of this asteroid, then our asteroid would shatter and spread out until gravity pulled it all back together again. By the time we got to the moon we would be a collection of rubble, like a beanbag. The result wouldn’t be different. We would be just as destructive.”
I was aware of this too. Talking to Cecil was sometimes like thinking aloud. And I’ve always liked people like Cecil. Now however, he was getting on my nerves. He was always blunt, and kind of a smart ass. They could have programmed in a little more tact, a pause before speaking, some fake slow realization on his part, just to keep the pacing right. But I probably made him like that.
“Cecil, I’m tired of talking. I need to think for a while,” I told him as I sat in a chair and leaned my forehead down on the counter.
“Right sir. I’ll be here if you want to talk.”
And with that, the speaker went silent. I could always tell when Cecil was off. When I was a kid, I could tell if the television was on in another room. There was a subtle background noise when Cecil was active. That noise was gone now.
I wanted to shut down, wallow in misery, but my brain wouldn’t stop thinking about the bombs. There had to be a way to stop this, and they were my best chance! What did I know about them?
Well, they only worked when they exited the tube. Some kind of safety measure. There was a powerful magnetic field they passed through on the way out, and that armed them, and I was sure I couldn’t duplicate the activation myself. Cecil had said as much anyway. But then, he didn’t seem to be a wellspring of good information these days. I was kicking myself for listening to him.
I spent several days without an answer. The time pressure was there, I felt sure the sun was getting bigger, but I stayed listless, frozen with indecision and a lack of creativity. I left Cecil off the longest I ever had. Eventually, I got an idea. The concept was crazy. I let the notion stew a while.
At some point, the sun got big enough that I knew I had to do something.
So that’s how I found myself outside the dome, sticking to the mostly iron asteroid with magnetic boots. Taking tentative step after tentative step, I began the longest walk I’d ever attempted, or even heard of. A light on either side of my helmet lit my way like car headlights. The asteroid is just over eight miles long and I was walking the entire length, from the front to the back, where the dish was. I had the welding gear with me. The gear probably weighed a thousand pounds on Earth. I carried it with one hand. Carrying something huge, which had mass, but no weight, wasn’t exactly carrying but more like shoving things in slow motion. Imagine pushing a half-ton chunk of metal suspended by a cable, to get it swinging. At first, it’s hard to get moving, but once it’s swinging, there’s no strain at all, except when you try to change direction. But don’t get in the way, because that much weight’s a devil to stop. Very similar to the problem we had with this asteroid. I thought again of what was going to happen if we didn’t nudge the thing off course.
Back in the asteroid belt is Space Station Beta, and a few dozen men (and two women) who travel out to asteroids and prep them for the trip back to Earth. They essentially turn large metal mountains into spaceships. They had the process down. Science. A wonderful thing.
Me, I was wrestling a welder which was never meant to be moved eight miles across terrain which was never meant to be walked. With one hand, I guided the welder. A meter-long, curving, L-shaped piece of steel (sliced off a grounding strut from my dome with my welder) was in my other hand. I had a crude plan. An impossible, hands-in-the-air, cosmic dice-roll, swing for the fences plan. Anyway, that was all I could think of, and time was running out.
I took the better part of the day to get to the dish, and my muscles were aching from strain of navigating the rough ground while carrying the equipment. The ground had gone from pitted and rocky to smooth and glassy, evidence of the melting blast of the nuclear bombs. The parabolic dish lay vast before me like a volcano or a crater. I didn’t want to think about the radiation levels out here.
I was sweating from head to toe, and the overworked air scrubber on the leg of my suit was hot enough to burn me when I brushed against it. The scrubber had been running all day across the length of the asteroid, although designed for use only a few hours close to the dome. I was pushing everything too hard, and I hadn’t accomplished anything. Or at least, nothing useful. I guess I got here, that was something.
I hiked down into the dish with my welder and strut. The sides of the dish were so completely smooth they reflected light, and the angle was high, but that made no difference to me. With almost no gravity, I could have walked down the side of a metal skyscraper with my magnetic shoes. I came to the hole where the bombs came out. The hole was bigger than I thought, meaning the bombs were bigger too, and a sudden doubt came into my mind about the size of the piece I had cut from the strut. The piece was supposed to be a guiding rail. I held the scrap of metal up next to the hole. Although stubby, the strut could probably do the job, but this was going to have to be a very strong weld, and I am a terrible welder.
The asteroid was mostly pure iron, and the strut was steel. I welded the two together as firmly as anyone could. The strut ended up having a slope of fused metal at the bottom, looking like a candle melted into the ground. But the weld looked solid, and remained secure when I pushed and kicked the strut. Sticking up alone in the otherwise smooth landscape the strut looked like an odd little monument. The curved strut rose up next to the hole like a jai-alai cesta. The bomb was going to be my pelota. The dish was my fronton.
Everything was ready. I needed to get out of the way for the next step. The curved strut, which was now a guide to re-direct the bomb, pointed off in one direction, and I headed for the other. The uneven surface of the asteroid would normally provide a number of places for me to take cover, but the heat from the bombs melted everything down. Finding a place for the welding equipment was even more difficult. Eventually I found a raised area beyond the rim of the dish that was wide enough to protect the massive rig. I took my place behind my own protruding protection. The shape of my shelter reminded me of a large polar bear. I hoped my hiding place was strong enough but of course, it had to be if it was still standing here after hundreds of nuclear explosions.
I pressed the “com” button on the back of my glove. “Cecil?”
“Yes sir,” came the prompt reply as Cecil’s circuits fired up again.
“I need you to fire one of the nukes. Just one, and do it in two minutes.”
“Where are you sir?”
“I’m back here by the dish, but I’m fine. Just fire that nuke.”
I knew now that this moment was everything to me, and everyone else for that matter. The time had come. I had to be here to finish the job, so there was no leaving or complaining. My plan was to fire one nuke off-center to explode and push against the side of the dish, to get the asteroid turning – hopefully slowly. Then I would use the welder to cut off the strut, and fire a nuke when the hole was pointing to the side, deflecting our course.
The time passed so slowly I felt nervous that Cecil was having problems, but then I felt a rumbling in my boots and ducked behind my lumpy protection. I was facing away from the dish, hoping to survive the experience. The vibrations suddenly stopped, and then after a moment the entire area lit up with unimaginable light, as if God’s giant flashbulb had gone off. I shut my eyes, and there was a huge thump. I was suddenly adrift, the asteroid
pulling down away from my feet. I had forgotten that there would be a thrust. I grabbed fruitlessly at the smooth metallic lump I had been crouching behind but my hands found no grasping place and I rose past the refuge like a rocket leaving the launching pad. I felt a yank at my feet, my body paused a second…and then my boots pulled up off the ground. The magnets had disconnected and I was rising, floating free.
I have never thought that fast. I bent my knees quickly and re-connected the soles of my boots, this time with the sloping mass behind me. I planted them onto the side. They caught at a bad angle, one likely to pry me loose, but in a good flat spot. I felt an amazing exhilaration when my suit pulled tight at the bottom and my feet slid, but held. I ended up standing nearly on the top of the protuberance; my feet slid that far up. I watched as my welder receded in the distance. There had been nothing to keep it down but the feeble gravity of the asteroid itself, and the jolt of the blast had knocked it free.
My head was high enough that I could see the results of the explosion. All around me the iron twinkled with bright red sparks that gradually diminished in intensity. I panned my light down at my former hiding place and I could see the raw rockiness of the cooler area
