Analog SFF, July-August 2007

by Dell Magazine Authors

  “Thank you, I've read my Whipple,” I told her with a smile. “They move into different orbits and run into things."

  Emma nodded. “The debris population goes up by orders of magnitude. A lot of the stuff farther out gets perturbed into Loki's sphere of influence, and not a small amount of that stuff has been flung into the inner system in retrograde orbits. It's just now arriving at relative velocities of forty to sixty kilometers per second."

  “Kersplat,” Dagger said.

  Emma smiled. “Also, we only use about ten percent of the mass we mine; the rest goes into orbiting slag piles, and they get hit, too, creating even more debris."

  “Yeah,” Dagger said. “We're doing something about that now. We've got all the mass from the next load in one slag pile, so the amount of exposed surface is way down. And we're gonna dump that right into Epsilon Eridani so we don't have to keep defending the array from impacts."

  Davra nodded. “I've got enough robots on the job that some can be spared to seek out and consolidate potential impactors, even if we're not mining them. We'll dump them in the star, too."

  Emma cleared her throat. “I can see the increase in metallicity in the star's atmosphere from what we've done already."

  Something in the back of my mind started wondering if that was entirely a good thing. I put it out of my mind. A star is not conscious, I thought, and so could not resent garbage being dumped on it, could it? Well, I was still uneasy, so, without telling a soul, I resolved to do a little checking of the history of the system since we started interfering with it.

  * * * *

  The Admiral and I fashioned a plaid and pleated skirt with a bit of mantle for my costume. I chose a traditional plaid from the Isle of Skye. In this I had the assistance of Kiri-Jean Stewart, a recently defrosted science anthropologist whose business was to study scientists as they studied the Universe. A big, cheerful, redheaded lass, she was actually from Christchurch, New Zealand, but she took her heritage seriously.

  The bagpipe took a bit more work to assemble. Kiri-Jean said I fussed over the reeds for the pipe and drones a bit too much. Now I may have thought, Och, but does the lassie know! But I was very polite about everything as there was a bit of chemistry between us for our common interest.

  Finally the day arrived.

  The pseudo-lamb dinner had been served. Davra and Weaver passed around a selection of synthesized single malt whisky, and everyone settled back for my performance. I had Dagger sit just behind me for the last bit.

  As luck would have it, Asgard had developed some of its own weather and greeted the evening with a dark cloud between us and the axis, from which a sprinkle of cold rain fell. Well, the plants had to drink, too, so we crowded into our small theater.

  I played a rendition of “Scotland the Brave,” the one everyone thinks of when you hear a bagpipe band in a parade. Everyone clapped. Aye, I thought, and they'll clap for “Highland Laddie” as well. The test would come later.

  Still, after three of the lesser airs, the audience applauded and asked for more. So I played two more energetic tunes, then threw off my pipes in the general direction of Dagger to symbolize the music was of my soul and not from the pipes themselves.

  I bowed to a wonderful round of applause and invited them all to “drink up!” I was feeling entirely too good and pleased with myself and had completely forgotten that the second shoe had not dropped, so to speak, from the escapade Dagger and I had in the unfinished habitat. Ironically, I was probably not ten meters from where that ill-fated conversation had been held, on the other side of Asgard's shell.

  As I sat down, Weaver stopped by.

  “A good rendition, Bruce. Thank you."

  “My pleasure, sir!"

  I could tell, though, that he had something more on his mind than the bagpipes.

  No more had I reached down to pick up my drink when I discovered it gone. Looking up, I saw serving robots disappearing with all the glasses, many like mine still with a wee bit of whisky in them. I was about to register a protest when more bagpipe music wafted into the theater. It was a slow piece, “The Lament of Children,” and it was played in the style of the old MacCrimmon family from Skye. I gripped the table to hold myself steady, remembering the legend, suddenly being transported back to Skye, to the pubs, to the college that was a dozen light-years from here. Tears welled up, I kept them back. Get a grip, man, I told myself.

  Emma stepped through the companionway with a tray of small port glasses filled with a dark fluid. Something strange was going on here. The tunic she wore was the genuine mustard-colored linen with the bellowing sleeves and had no belt.

  Of course. They'd wanted a Scot in a kilt and I'd not thought any further about it, nor had Kiri-Jean. So I'd ordered up what they were used to seeing.

  But I had a sinking feeling this was much more authentic. Over the tunic, she had draped what was labeled a ‘leine,’ a mantle such as might have been worn by a twelfth-century warrior, held over her shoulder with a brooch that was no doubt an accurate relic of the time. Her beautiful legs were covered in the traditional garter socks; that much I recognized.

  I felt chagrined. The Isle of Skye's honor had been duly served, but not by me. Emma set the tray down, picked up a glass, and gave it to me while taking one for herself.

  “To Skye,” she said, and the toast echoed through the hall.

  The liquid poured down my throat and a smile spread across my lips. It was no whisky, but Bonny Prince Charlie's Drambuie, and it melted its way down my gullet and into my stomach.

  I turned to Kiri-Jean. “Well, it appears I've been upped."

  Her eyes twinkled and she couldn't keep her face straight.

  “Oh, no, lass, you're in on it?"

  She laughed.

  Well, it appeared that I indeed had been had, and I'd best be a good sport about it.

  I thrashed the glass to the table, stood and swept up Emma in my arms, carried her to the stage, and set her down beside me. She took this all with characteristic aplomb, I should add.

  “Well, now,” I told the audience. “I stand here upstaged in my own culture by this charming young English woman. What you are drinking is a recipe of Drambuie given to my fellow Isle of Skye islanders by the Bonnie Prince Charlie as we rescued him from the redcoats. And, ladies and gentlemen, before you, on Emma, is a kilt from the twelfth century, Scotland, far older than the one that I wear."

  She laughed and spun around so they could see the whole thing.

  “What Dr. Macready is wearing,” she said, “was a version created in the seventeenth century so Scots workmen would safely work in a forge. It was, in fact, designed by an Englishman."

  I looked down, mouth open. “Ye dinna say,” I said weakly.

  The Admiral confirmed it, as laughter cascaded through the audience.

  Someone who sounded a lot like Dagger yelled from the back, “Time to kiss and make up.” So I took Emma's hand and did so.

  “Even?” I asked.

  “Perhaps,” she said with a smile, turned, and headed off the stage.

  Well, the rest of the party went on very well. Kiri-Jean, another couple who were actually from Glasgow, and I helped get everyone dancing some simple jigs—inhibitions and muscles being well lubricated with the ersatz whisky and Drambuie. Weaver, of all people, actually managed it quite well.

  After cleanup, we early birds plus Kiri-Jean went off to Weaver's ranch. He had a half dozen colts and fillies on some clear land about four kilometers from the central lake.

  “I know how it was done,” I said, “but I'm still amazed at how big a horse can get only six months from an artificial womb and bottle feeding."

  Weaver smiled with the pride of a parent. “I started saddle training a couple weeks ago. No riding yet, but just to get them used to something on their backs."

  “They are beautiful,” Kiri-Jean said. “My family has horses back in New Zealand."

  Everyone went to the corral fence to be near the horses except Emma,
who held back, apparently lost in thought. But even she was soon petting the colt with a white star on its forehead, who seemed to want all the attention for himself, snorting at any of his siblings that dared come close to us three humans.

  It was too good a moment to end, but it did. I heard rapid footsteps come up behind us. It was Emma.

  “Everyone, we have a problem. A major planetesimal headed for the array."

  * * * *

  Emma had the Admiral circle one of a thousand comets displayed in the dome. Its statistics appeared beside it. “That one,” she said, “is the threat."

  It didn't look any more threatening to me than all the others. Hardly any tail at all.

  “Oh, crap!” Davra said.

  Emma raised an eyebrow. “Indeed. Here's the projection.” A graphic of the system appeared on the dome, replacing a big square of star field. The array was visible as a tiny train of thin blue squares gliding slowly around the star about a thumb's width away from it, from my perspective. The comet was shown as a blinking white dot, an arm's length away, trailing fainter dots as it rushed along its path.

  “It's on an orbit tangent to the array orbit, same inclination, same periapsis. In eight months, it will plow into the trailing half of the array right here."

  A broken red line appeared in front of the comet and joined the array before heading back out to our Kuiper belt. My eyes flipped back to first image, and looked at the numbers again. It looked like all the rest because it was farther away.

  Weaver looked concerned. “How are we going to divert that? It's as big as Pluto."

  “We have a Norse naming convention in this system,” Emma said. “I've called it Skrymir. He was an ice giant."

  “What I want to know is where did it come from?” Dagger asked. “Why is it a surprise?” He frowned and ran his hand through his hair.

  Emma looked uncomfortable. “It was not on that orbit a week ago. It got hit by another smaller comet, one of thousands whose orbit had changed due to increased outgassing, due to the current anomalously high stellar activity. It passes near the giant planet Loki in three weeks, and Loki's gravity greatly magnifies the small change produced by the comet impact. The odds against this happening precisely this way were, well, astronomically high."

  “If it's too big to move, maybe we can move the array,” Davra said. "Admiral?"

  “This would put us behind schedule again, but not impossibly so."

  “Hey,” Dagger said. “If a comet strike put it in this orbit, could another take it out?"

  “Yes,” the Admiral answered, “assuming Skrymir stays on its present course.” The Admiral circled a tiny dot on the dome. “This new comet will pass within about a billion kilometers of Skrymir, in three months. A velocity change of about 1.2 meters per second on this newer comet would cause it to strike Skrymir essentially head on. The comet should hit with enough energy to cause Skrymir to miss the trailing end of the array. Probably enough to make it hit the star itself so it won't be a problem on the other side of its orbit. Like this.” Dotted lines on the diagram changed to show Skrymir being hit and falling into Epsilon Eridani.

  “That appears to take care of the problem for now,” Weaver said, nodding. “Make it so."

  * * * *

  It so happened that Skrymir would strike Epsilon Eridani near the upper left of the star's disk as seen from Asgard; a potentially spectacular sight. But a problem with living on the inside of a rotating habitat is that the lights in the sky at night are not stars, but the lights in the other houses above you. To see what's going on with one's own eyes, one must go outside.

  Thus, the entire population of our tiny colony gathered in spacesuits on the sunward edge of the north pole despun platform. Our robots had temporarily repositioned the colony's main light-collecting mirror between us and Epsilon Eridani, creating the effect of a total eclipse.

  The corona of the star was awesome, streamers going out several times the diameter of the disk. The array, a line of collectors nearly forty million kilometers long at this point, was foreshortened to a brilliant dot from our point of view. It looked somewhat like an elongated version of the planet Venus as seen from Earth. One could still see the gas from Skrymir streaming away from the star and toward the array.

  “They've collided,” Emma announced. “We should see the effects as the light reaches us—in about six minutes. Watch the tail of Skrymir."

  It seemed like a long wait. Then, an incredible brilliant white wave began to race up the comet's tail away from the star. A collective “Oh!” came from our helmet speakers.

  “It isn't often one gets the chance to actually see the speed of light,” Emma commented, her voice filled with awe.

  Meanwhile, a brilliant dome began to peek above the edge of our artificial moon, casting sharp shadows surrounded initially by light that was nearly blue white. Its growth was like watching the Sun rise over a distant hill on a clear day back on Skye.

  “Did that do anything to the star?” someone asked.

  “Not that we know of,” Emma replied. “What you see is an extremely thin plasma of star and planetesimal material that fluoresces and glows in the starlight. The amount of mass and energy involved are insignificant by stellar standards."

  I was watching the band around my shadow change colors when I saw a second, fainter shadow appear. I looked back to the sky.

  The array, bathed in the light of the impact, had become noticeably more brilliant, maybe two or three magnitudes brighter than Venus from Earth, I estimated.

  Gradually, things began to fade and people, with other things to do, began getting back to the locks and vanished into the habitat. I lingered a while, with Davra, as the impact dome dissipated and its light faded to deep orange.

  “We'll be moving the mirror back in a few minutes. Wouldn't do to get the habitat cold."

  “Aye. Davra, I have a sense of déjà-vu about this.” I would remember it in detail, of course, as soon as I recognized what it was that I was trying to remember.

  * * * *

  Chapter 5

  Asgard, Epsilon Eridani System,

  5 April 2274

  Next month, epsilon Eridani's magnetic weather went crazy again, and gave birth to a super flare. We called it “the Inconstant Moon flare,” after the Larry Niven story about the moon suddenly getting bright enough to make people think the Sun had somehow become a nova. We didn't have a moon, but the flare lit up the system's giant planet, Loki, so much that one could see by the reflected flare light. Indeed, we actually turned Asgard's mirror away from Epsilon Eridani and used Loki's light for a couple of days. It wasn't enough to provide heat or normal levels of photosynthesis, but it was easily enough to read by, and our star was putting out a wee bit too much light.

  Wonders aside, the array was in ruins and we were all in a black mood. The damage was so extensive, and so many robots had been damaged to so many varying degrees that it would be a week or two before we had a good handle on just how bad it was.

  When we did, Weaver called a meeting. The project management meeting center on Asgard was a large circle under a video dome. A round table sat in the middle, causing local wags to call the building “Camelot.” Depending on whom you asked, the table either had no head, or the head was wherever Weaver decided to sit. He waited until everyone else sat down before he entered. There were ten of us now, with two additional experts sharing in planetary astrophysics, robotics, and project engineering, working with Emma, Davra, and Dagger.

  There was a long silence. Finally, Dagger spoke up. “We have twenty months or so before we have to launch the impactor. There's no shortage of raw material anywhere in this system. If we didn't have to deal with debris attrition, how fast could we rebuild it, Admiral?"

  “Assuming enough material, without degradation, 728 days,” the AI said.

  “We are supposed to launch the impactor in 640 days,” one of the new experts said.

  “We all know that,” Weaver said, sounding very dejecte
d. Normally of erect posture, he sat slouched in his chair, frowning.

  There was a great silence then; the cacophony of a room full of furious thinking. Could it be that it was all over? I knew the political situation on Earth; it would be a long time indeed before another attempt could be made. Perhaps with four different stars? Or would it be made at all? Would humanity turn inside, as China had a thousand years earlier, content with limits that did not risk upsetting the basis of rule?

  Finally, Weaver turned to me, of all people. “Bruce, you're good at teasing ideas out of people. Think you can pull a miracle out of your brainstorming hat?"

  I frowned; an observer such as myself shouldn't be taking a main role in events—it raises issues of objectivity in the end. Nonetheless, my help was being asked. It was just another departmental meeting, I told myself, though with higher stakes.

  “I canna guarantee any results, but I'd be happy to give it a try. But first I think we might review some of the roads not taken in the last session."

  Dagger suggested building the array farther out, using reflectors.

  “Could we not do that, then angle the reflectors away if a big flare comes?"

  Emma shook her head. “There's not enough time to move the array to an orbit far enough out. The modules would need to coast for a year. Then we'd need to figure out a way to push them in to circularize..."

  “Why?” Dagger asked. “Why bother to circularize?"

  Weaver looked at him sharply, then his features relaxed. “Doesn't make much difference, I suppose. No good to anyone after we're gone."

  Emma frowned. “Even if we just let them go ... But maybe, if we really don't care..."

  We all looked at her.

  “There is a high inclination planetesimal inbound that we could use for raw materials,” she said, “or maybe an escaped moon. Loki throws one up there occasionally. Call it Skrymir II. It will eventually get within a couple hundredths of an astronomical unit of Epsilon Eridani and likely be vaporized. But not until about four years from now."

  “We have lots of robots now,” Davra said. “We can get them out there quickly with the surviving array modules. Without any interference, our doubling period could get down to maybe twenty days.” She held up a hand while she consulted the net. “Still not enough."