Casindra Lost

by Marti Ward

  Al had logged a message with EMP-NE, for relay to MD14, that they might pose a danger to the gate they were building at PTL4 – but that they could have a positive benefit and provide a spare asteroid to use in the same way they’d used 243 Ida as a protective base for the mirror at SJL4.

  Al had also noted that there was a small chance that some far-flung members of this PTL345 asteroid cluster would eventually impact New Eden or Ardesco as significant meteors, although this was much less likely with the hypothesized 3:2 resonance than the alternate 1:1 model. Such an occurrence was most likely when they were aligned with PTL3, as Ardesco was at the moment – although it would probably be many thousands of years before the right asteroid was in the right place at precisely the right time!

  Most likely, even if New Eden provided the gravitational tug to pull an asteroid from its Lissajous orbit around the cluster foci, the planet itself would be well out of the way by the time the rock reached New Eden’s orbit. If the alignment was just right, it could pose a threat to Ardesco – but this would be very unlikely. Even less likely was the opposite scenario, that Ardesco with its more distal orbit provided enough of a tug – and New Eden just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Except that eventually, whether in two years or twenty thousand years, something like this was almost certain to happen.

  It would take a supercomputer to predict – and while Al, his friendly neighborhood supercomputer, had agreed to start this as an idling task using as many processors and nanocycles as it took, the starting point was full of unknowns and limited precision estimates. And the complexity would get worse with every time step of the simulation, although the data would be accumulating and the accuracy of their model would improve as they continued to track the asteroids.

  The next approach of PTL3 and New Eden would be in just over 690 days, and Al was doing his best to collect cluster data and system data of the highest possible accuracy to predict any interactions in this time frame. Initially he was trying to understand the cluster, separating out the hundreds of meteor-sized masses using a combination of optical and gravitational analysis. There were fast orbiting clusters within clusters, just to make life interesting – a chaotic microcosm at a Lagrange point characterized by instability.

  Sideris didn’t know whether he should try to investigate… Should he attempt a fly past with the Casindra? There was no way he could career through like a half-crazed bootlegger in a sci-fi vid! And even the attempted flyby would be risking myriad not-so-micro-meteor type impacts.

  What he could do was slow down into a more distant orbit around Paradisi, to pick up more detailed sensor data as he passed the asteroid cluster. But this would mean missing the window on his forthcoming transfer to Ardesco.

  He could send an EmProbe... EMP-A could leave its two Volcans in orbit around Ardesco with their collected samples – or it could take them along for the ride, and perhaps have them execute some of the tight maneuvers they were designed for, to fly by specific asteroids. Ardesco was really a bit too hot for human survivability and probably the least important objective, despite its unexpectedly high potential for heavy metal mining. Plus he already had months of ongoing Volcan data, and should have some samples one way or the other. But there was still the risk of losing a probe or a drone. But against that he had to balance the unknown risks the asteroids posed.

  This raised a question that had been lurking in the back of his mind for a few days now: Was it worth taking Casindra to Ardesco? Or should I send EMP-T after all?

  New Eden was the proposed planet for settlement, while Tenebra was the intended base for fuel and ore dumps, refineries and construction operations – and he’d basically completed those parts of the mission. The mission was to have a manned survey of all three Goldilocks planets, and he’d already annoyed Solar Command by skipping Tenebra. Could he justify skipping Ardesco too? Were the putative Hildian asteroids sufficient reason?

  Now that he’d demonstrated that it was possible for people and a whole variety of flora and fauna to pass safely through the wormhole, the much larger precolonization missions planned at four-year intervals would be able to do the survey of Ardesco, and by then the self-sustaining self-propagating robotic miners he’d sent to Petra should be providing all the resources they needed.

  Hopefully, he would get a prompt acknowledgement from Solar Command regarding the asteroids, and they would take on board the task of computing their chaotic trajectories and scheduling meteor diversion or capture missions as needed. And this would in turn feed into his considerations about abandoning the visit to Ardesco. But if he was going to skip Ardesco then he should have diverted EMP-T to Ardesco as Al had proposed – it was still possible, even though the optimum point to transition between elliptics had passed.

  For now, Sideris had the comfort of his daily visits with Simba – although not Samba and the kits. It was all somewhat more complex now with the atmospheric test groups, and the problems of environmental suit toiletry…

  Simba

  10 May 2077 07:00

  This morning was different with Simba in her white suit, the captain, white’n’gold today, helping her with her morning dining and toiletries – but the door to Samba and the kits room stayed maddeningly closed. The captain explained why – she gathered that it was for their own good but didn’t really understand the sense she was getting about dangerous things in the air.

  The captain did go to the room with the windows to the stars, and the half-moon world below. He did talk with cold’n’senseless as usual – it sounded quite friendly today, but also as if he was keen to get away from there.

  Eventually the captain headed back to where the birds slept, to the big bird outside the window. He went inside the bird – taking for granted that she would come with him. There was a cage there now that was clearly for her – with her blanket suit and the levers for food and drink, and the toilet area. But the captain waved her forward to come and sit next to him – not with him on his chair. He patted a matching chair as being for her. She jumped up, sitting upright and looking out the window in front, looking out at the stars as they circled by - then somehow it seemed that the chair embraced her too, wrapping her safely as mother curls around her kits. She watched as he settled back in his seat, how the chair wrapped and embraced him too.

  Simba sat up tall in anticipation, looking alertly at all that was going on around her, her tail around her feet.

  White’n’gold was talking to the cold one, he kneaded a pad a few more times, touching one on his arm too, and she felt a sudden lightness, and there was a flash in the window, as the gigantic white bird started to carry them down towards the blue moon.

  The moon grew quickly, becoming fuller as it became bigger. She felt almost as if she were springing out of the chair, except that she was pulled back gently into its embrace. The world below continued to grow, turning gradually as the wings of the bird started to glow… first a hint of yellow, then orange and red. Eventually the red started to hint at mauve, changing through all the colors of a sunset while the moon became a dull shadow compared to the fiery aura of their bird.

  White’n’gold was talking to her and she started to realize what was happening. She understood that the bird was getting very hot as it raced down across the world below. This somehow made it change color and look brighter. On the other hand, the bird needed to protect its eyes, the eyes they were looking through, so they were somewhat darker and less vivid – but still displayed the world they were springing/flying down to. Simba couldn’t make out much detail, but the bird knew where it was going.

  Simba may have dozed a bit, as next thing she knew she was skimming over water just below the misty clouds, even through them at times. They were getting lower and lower, as the ocean raced up to them and they stroked its surface. The blue waters turned into yellow sands with the blue haze of a forest ahead of them. The bird turned to face along the beach, the forest on one side. A door opened towards the forest and a passageway ope
ned down towards the forest.

  White’n’gold stood to the side welcoming her. Was this her new home? What was happening? Was he going to stay, or go off and leave her here?

  Suddenly she realized that no, this was exploration – this was exploration like the captain had been doing for the last two moons while she had been concerned with the arrival of her kits. She moved towards the door but stopped as she felt the suit impeding her. She glanced down at the white suit and felt embarrassed – she could hardly blend in like this! She wouldn’t be able to stalk anything…

  She looked at white’n’gold, meowed and pawed at her suit. With a shrug, and open hands, he was at once apologetic and insistent. But he touched the pad on his arm and suddenly both she and the captain had changed to a dark yellow color, almost like Samba’s.

  Their colors in the sunrise blended with the colors of the sand as they walked down the ramp, side by side, into a new world.

  Sideris

  12 May 2077 17:30

  Gone!

  Sideris was seething as he took the direct door into his cabin and threw himself on the bed. The cats were so surprised, shocked even, that they didn’t even follow him through the slider, and Samba actually took a couple of steps back in alarm.

  He resented the need to send it now, but MD14 had finally been uploaded with the data and theories about the asteroids, as well as the latest reports and requests, and the inventories for EMP-NE’s drones, MD10 and MD11, as well as an inventory of their own stores and supply needs. And it had now been sent…

  Al had pointed out that it did need to go now, and it had gone on his own orders. Still, Al probably thought he was angry at him, but it wasn’t Al he was angry at.

  They were back to zero drones at the Gate. That isn’t Al’s fault.

  If it weren’t for the unknown possibilities the asteroids represented, positive and negative, he’d have held out against Al, and held on to that last drone for an emergency. Perhaps he should have held on until Al had a more precise idea of the orbits of the asteroids, and had managed to project out over at least the next full orbit of Tenebra. Tenebra’s year was 660 days… Al had projected it would take at least ten weeks to simulate that far ahead given the complexity of the asteroid group.

  Solar Command had the resources to simulate that in a fraction of the time, but it would take five weeks for the message drone to get through... and who knows if they give it the required priority! And really, the food situation was really starting to feel like an emergency, notwithstanding that he still had supplies for another year.

  Would Solar Command act in an emergency? I’m getting so low on food stores that it will be hard to get supplies through from the Gate in time anyway, even if some came through in the next few days.

  Figuring out how to survive using New Eden food is starting to become more than a science project. Basically, I have a choice – go home to Sol, or make New Eden my new home! The resupply option is really no longer an option. The Gate is a long way away whether I go there to return home, or I go there to pick up a food cache – and bringing EMP-G here with miraculously appearing food supplies would turn a year into two or three years I don’t have, and that would already be pushing its fuel reserves. A newly arrived EmProbe would change the equation for the better in relation to fuel and flight times, but still…

  What do they expect me to do?

  Should I head for the Gate, hoping food will come through en route? And proceed to Ardesco if it comes – extending the mission a good year beyond profile. And return to Sol if it doesn’t come – cutting short the mission by a year, and a second skipped planet.

  They should have long since sent through an EmProbe with supplies… I just know it’s Thorndike that’s responsible for this debacle…

  I never did trust that idiot Thorndike… But idiot that I am, I entrusted my life to him!

  Chapter Eleven

  New Eden hunt’n’hide

  Al

  22 July 2077 02:24

  After weeks of intensive computation, he had a result, but Al wasn’t looking forward to giving the news to the Captain… He had rechecked the simulation on a different coreplex. Their worst fears seemed to have been confirmed: Ardesco would be the first of the nearby planets to align with PTL3, with New Eden close behind. The near syzygy simplified calculations – and made it just that more dangerous for New Eden. The full gravitational and spectral analysis had shown that three or four substantial asteroids, and a few small ones, were likely to impact on New Eden as meteors or meteorites. If it had been one, or even two, they might have been able to blow them up or push them away, perhaps recalling all the EmProbes to use for additional thrust.

  The Valiants didn’t have the same fuel capacity or endurance, and while they would put up a valiant resistance against two smaller meteors, they would have only a couple of percent the effect of an EmProbe. And whether even the combined force of four EmProbes and a LETO would be enough was highly doubtful – it would depend on applying the force at exactly the right point – in space-time-velocity terms, a singular point where the forces were almost perfectly balanced. The pulls that were already almost balanced at this L3 were for Paradisi and Tenebra, but there were hundreds of other significant forces at work.

  Perhaps the Captain’s strangely chaotic mind could think up a solution to this equally chaotic situation. They had almost two years before impact, and he might as well try to come up with his own impossible solution within the next few minutes. He would wait the 75 minutes till the Captain woke up to pass on the dire but incomplete report – indeed he scheduled an alert to get his immediate intention when he reviewed the logs at shift change. That was usually a better way of conveying the basic information than starting with dialogue. The conversation would come later as they started brainstorming together – that Al did find stimulating. He might even say that he enjoyed them… but it was strange that he felt he enjoyed some of their arguments but not others.

  And what was going to get the Captain upset was that they didn’t even have a message drone at the Gate to send back the report or request help – and he had no reasonable suggestions about that either.

  Al did not like unsolved problems. He didn’t like putting in a report admitting that there was something he couldn’t do, a problem he couldn’t solve. But he updated the log with a full report anyway.

  Sideris

  22 July 2077 05:30

  Captain Sideris was hanging helpless over the planet, watching as a tsunami washed across the North American continent, atomic explosions and mushroom clouds punctuating the destruction. He sent off the last of his pitiful M-drones in a futile attempt to divert or destroy the huge asteroid plunging towards Europe – it was big enough to obliterate the North Sea and it was heading straight for the Channel Islands… But they weren’t the Channel Islands of Europe, they were the Channel Islands of New Eden…

  The ship’s alarms went off, shrieking as another asteroid headed straight for Casindra. The ship was suddenly engulfed in fire and he smelled the burning flesh, his own flesh, Simba, the kits, …

  And then he was awake, blurrily cancelling the alarm…

  This was the third or fourth time now that he had slept through it until it got strident and insistent enough to break into his nightmare. His brain told him that what he could smell was hot coffee, and the bacon and eggs that accompanied it. But his stomach told him something different…

  Sideris started with some juice in an attempt to get the bad taste out of his mouth, turning to bring up Al’s overnight logs and handover report. And the blood drained from his face…

  It looked like the reality of his nightmares about Earth destroying itself was being matched by the reality of his nightmares about New Eden being destroyed by asteroids. He seemed to be pumped full of adrenaline already from his dreams, and now Al’s report seemed quite definite that New Eden was going to be destroyed by asteroids, two decades before Earth’s foreshadowed destruction by its own technological id
iocies.

  His fight or flight response was fully aroused, his stomach churning. In one motion, he pushed aside his food and thrust back his chair. In a normal environment, it would have tipped to the floor and gone skidding across the room, but in the protective cabin environment it moved away anticlimactically and unsatisfactorily – just enough to allow him to stand and start pacing.

  We should try to make the best possible gravitational and spectral analysis we can, predict as accurately as possible the course of those asteroids, and determine what interventions might be possible and what resources are required. At the very least that will give Solar Command a head start. Al seemed to have done a good job with both the tracking and projection of the path of the asteroids, and unfortunately the analysis of what would happen if they didn’t do anything - but there was nothing in Al’s simulations about plans or strategies for preventing the asteroid strike.

  He contemplated calling Al immediately, but concentrated on slowing his breathing – he didn’t want to face Al like this. He’d take a shower first.

  Al

  22 July 2077 06:00

  Al noticed that the Captain was late onto the bridge this morning, and a moment’s scan of his cabin showed that he had slept through his alarm, and showered without breakfast. This was unprecedented. The sleeping through the alarm couldn’t be blamed on his report, although the loss of appetite might be.

  The sliders whispered and before he was on deck, without the usual shift change formalities, the Captain was asking for a report and more. “What strategies have you explored? Can we divert or destroy the asteroids? What resources will be required to do that? Prepare me plans showing what can be achieved with available resources, and what we need from Solar Command to completely eliminate any risk.”