On to the Asteroid

by Travis S. Taylor

“Bill, are you okay?” Gary hesitated. “I, well, I’ve never seen you like this.”

  “He messed with my family, Gary,” Bill said. “You don’t mess with my family.”

  “We’ll see to it that he doesn’t mess with anyone ever again,” Gary assured him. “I’m glad to get real closure on this.”

  “Closure?” Bill could hear the sirens from the police cars. “I guess.”

  “Well, we at least don’t have to second guess that he is somewhere looking at us through the scope of a rifle.”

  “Uh, yeah right. Agreed. We really need to go.” Bill turned and started toward the Dreamscape. “You coming, copilot?”

  “You gonna let me touch anything?”

  “Yeah. The radio button.”

  “Great. I’m right behind you.”

  CHAPTER 60

  “Three hours twenty-six minutes and counting,” Paul told his crew as they cycled through the airlock. “Let’s get your gear off and get you strapped in. We need to hustle. I want to fire this thing up within the next twenty minutes,” Paul said.

  “Paul,” Rykov said with heavy breath, “do not wait on us. We will hold on if we are not strapped in yet. But we should go now.”

  “I agree, Paul,” Hui said. “Go now.”

  “Okay then. Hold on when I tell you to. I’ll give you a ten-second countdown over the intercom.”

  “Roger that. Go, Paul.” Rykov pushed him forward. “Go.”

  Paul grabbed a handhold and pulled himself through the aft hatch of the habitat section and then kicked off with his legs. He pulled his way into the Command Capsule and into his captain’s chair. He quickly strapped himself in and then took a deep breath.

  “Alright, let’s see how we’re doing,” he said to himself and tapped at icons on the touchscreen in front of him.

  He pulled the magnetic shield system menu to the top level and then loaded the algorithm he’d been working on. The superconductor field coils were brought online with a very low current to start with. He didn’t want to shock them with full strength and risk ripping them apart. But once he toggled the current ramp up program the field strength would jump to maximum via a steady climbing ramp function that would take about ten seconds to reach peak value. Simulations of the system suggested the coils could handle that quick of a field buildup. He hoped the mooring booms could take that type of stress as well. Again, the simulations said they would, but simulations were never exactly right. There was always some unknown unknown that got left out of every model. But none of that mattered as long as they reached eighteen and a half meters per second of relative delta-vee between the rocks before the eight-day mark ticked by.

  “Field coils are coming online and will be ready for implementation in about thirty seconds.” Paul watched patiently as the current flowing through the superconductor coils slowly increased to about two percent of maximum allowed. It was a long slow thirty seconds. He looked at the countdown clock and there were still over eight days and three hours left before the asteroids hit the Earth.

  “External cameras are online. Doppler radar is online.” Paul waited until the warming sequence for the coils was completed and then it was go time.

  “Hui, Mikhail, hang on back there. Here we go in ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, engaging!” Paul tapped the icon that started the system algorithm. The current flow rose quickly from two percent of maximum to one hundred percent in ten seconds. Then once the fields reached one hundred percent and held, a clock started. Paul could feel about a half of a gee push his body forward against the seat restraints. They were accelerating.

  “We’re moving!” Paul shouted over the intercom. “Doppler relative velocity at four point six meters per second.”

  The clock showed ten seconds had passed.

  “Come on, baby!” Paul shouted. “Relative velocity at seven point three meters per second. Twenty-one seconds and counting.”

  “Twelve meters per second!” Paul kept one eye on the radar readout, one eye on the clock and scanned as best he could the magnetic system health status. “Field coils still at one hundred percent.”

  Looking out the window of the Command Capsule Paul could see the gap between the two asteroids spreading significantly. There was no noise throughout the ship as with a rocket engine. And there was no debris or signs of action other than the fact that the distance between Sutter’s Mill A and B was increasing steadily.

  “Fourteen point eight meters per second! Clock is at thirty-three seconds.” They had reached a point that Paul had seen in the simulations where the velocity increases would start dropping off nonlinearly as the two rocks were pushed further apart from one another and the magnetic field strength between them dropped off.

  “Fifteen point two! Come on. Hui, Mikhail, are you all right back there?”

  “We are fine, comrade!” Rykov replied. “Everything looks good from back here.”

  “Fifteen point nine. Clock is at thirty-nine seconds.” Paul held his breath unconsciously. Finally, he let out a deep exhale. “Sixteen point six. Forty-five seconds.”

  The models had shown that somewhere between fifty and sixty seconds was the sweet spot. The magnetic system seemed to be working fine. There were no systems outside of the green.

  “Seventeen point two meters per second. Clock is at fifty seconds.”

  Clang, clang, clang. Something hit the side of the Tamaroa making it ring like a bell. Then it stopped with a final metal on metal clang.

  “What was that?” Paul shouted.

  “Paul. One of the mooring cables has come loose. I can see it through the aft port side window. It looks like from back here that the cable’s hasp has stuck to one of the magnets,” Hui explained.

  “Nothing we can do about it now. Seventeen point nine!” Then one of the field coil icons turned red and the magnetometer showed a one sixth reduction in field strength.

  “Shit! We’ve lost coil number four. Eighteen point one. Come on baby! Come on!” Paul checked the clock. “Sixty seconds.”

  “So close. Keep climbing, baby, keep climbing.” Paul watched the graph of their relative velocity as it approached the demarcation line they had to cross. They had to reach eighteen point five meters per second. The line was barely moving now but at the same time it was flirting closely with that line.

  “Eighteen point two. Come on!” Paul sat glued to the touchscreen. The curve of their relative velocity was leveling off right about eighteen point two five or so. It wasn’t quite eighteen point three and it damned sure wasn’t eighteen point five. Losing coil number four might have been all the difference.

  “We’ve leveled off at eighteen point two five or so. We’re done. I’m going to bring the system down as it seems to be having no further impact on our delta-vee,” Paul announced. “Shit.”

  “That may be enough Paul. We are three hours ahead of schedule and there was error margin. I think we have done it,” Hui said.

  “We’ll see. If it worked, it worked. If it didn’t, then, well, it didn’t. For now, the two of you did an outstanding job. Mikhail, you’re off duty until further notice. Hui, I need you to take me out in the CTV to send a signal to NASA. Then we’ll sleep as long as we want.”

  CHAPTER 61

  “…the FBI has him in a high security holding cell. He’s going nowhere for now. State Department isn’t quite sure if the Chinese government wishes to extradite him or not. But the best part about this is that Zhi Feng is incarcerated indefinitely and all of you are safe from him now.”

  “Roger that, Houston Control.” Bill smiled and he could tell by the look on Gary’s face that he was quite happy with the end of the someone-trying-to-kill-him ordeal. “What’s the word on the Tamaroa?”

  “You’ll also be happy to know that it looks like the magnetic push concept that Paul Gesling came up with has appeared to do the job. While all the models do show the smaller piece of the asteroid will pass as low as fifty kilometers through the atmosphere, it does look li
ke it is going to miss the Earth. That does assume that it doesn’t break up or explode against the friction of the atmosphere.”

  “Roger that, Houston.” Bill muted the radio and turned to Gary. “He’s a glass half empty guy, ain’t he?”

  Gary chuckled at Bill’s comment. But only briefly as he had to grab his barf bag. The microgravity was a bit rough on Gary and the Japanese businessman, but the woman oil baroness and the philanthropist seemed to be taking it just fine. Nobody could ever know how their body would handle microgravity until they were in it. Bill knew that it was very common for astronauts to spend their first day or two sick as a dog and acclimating their body and, in particularly their inner ear, to the weightless feel.

  “It’ll pass in a day or so Gary,” Bill assured his friend. “It’ll pass.”

  “God, I hope it doesn’t take an entire day of feeling like this,” Gary said around heaves into his bag. Bill did his best not to laugh. He knew that while it might seem funny, a health issue in space could be a nightmare. He toggled the switch back on the radio.

  “Uh, Houston, we’re ready for those ISS rendezvous burn numbers whenever you are,” he said.

  “Roger that, Dreamscape. We’ll be uploading the navigation package within the next ten or so minutes. We’ll keep you posted. In the meantime, you are cruising just fine and your orbit looks good.”

  “Roger that, Houston. We’ll be waiting on that package. Dreamscape out.” Bill unbuckled himself and worked his way out of the pilot’s seat. “I’m going to check on the passengers. You need anything, Gary?”

  “I’m good,” Gary said around tightly clenched teeth.

  Bill floated into the passenger cabin and let out a sigh. While they were safe from Feng, most likely safe from the asteroids, and going to have the best seats in the house for the near miss, Bill couldn’t shake the thought of Paul having put in so much effort to save everyone back on Earth and now there was nothing that Earth could do for him. He felt helpless.

  “Everything going alright, Captain Stetson?” Maya Press asked him as he hovered between seats 1A and 1B.

  “Yes. All is good. The ship is purring like a kitten and all systems are green. I also thought I’d let you know that the crew of the Tamaroa has performed a miracle and it looks like they’ve managed to push the asteroids just enough that they will miss the Earth,” Bill said.

  “Asteroids? I thought there was just one of them,” Elliot Harbor replied.

  “Oh, I’m not sure what all has been said on the news or how much y’all have kept up with it. The asteroid Sutter’s Mill broke into two pieces a few days back and they are be called Sutter’s Mill A and B. B is going to come very, very close to the Earth but it should just miss us thanks to the brave crew of the Tamaroa. NASA tells us that there is still the slight possibility that Sutter’s Mill B can break up in Earth’s atmosphere and cause some problems, but let’s keep our fingers crossed that they are just being worry warts,” Bill explained.

  “I see.” Maya Press seemed impressed.

  “So, I wanted to let all of you know that we are at least an hour away from any flight corrections and that we’ll be floating along in our orbit for a while. Now would be a great time for you all to unbuckle and play around in the microgravity. You might wear your helmets for a few minutes until you get used to it. You don’t want to bump your heads.” Bill pushed himself back to the man in seat 4A.

  “Mr. Satou, how are you feeling?”

  “I’ve been better.” The way the man looked, Bill hoped he’d been better. His skin tone was pale and his jaw was clenched so tightly that Bill was afraid the man was going to break his rear molars.

  “Mr. Childers is having a similar time so don’t think this is unusual. Many people take a day or so to get used to the microgravity. We were all trained on this, but until it happens to you, it is difficult to really understand what it’s like. Hang in there.” Bill put a hand on the man’s shoulder for reassurance. “You’ll be fine in no time.”

  CHAPTER 62

  “…and Bill and Gary have picked up three astronauts from the space station and now have three days to wait out until the event. Bill says that Gary was very sick his first two days up there but now he is taking to it like a duck to water. Those are his words.”

  “Sounds like Bill,” Paul muttered. He was hanging on every word of the message, not because it was important information, but because it was his wife speaking. He hadn’t seen her in many months and hadn’t been able to speak with her even longer than that. Paul could see the sadness in her eyes and could hear her doing her level best to mask it from her voice. Carolyn was strong—way stronger than him.

  He was a total mess. In the five days since they might have saved the Earth, Paul had slept. Barely eaten. Slept some more. And sat at the touchscreen playing videos of his wife talking to him over and over. He recorded hours of himself talking to her but had only chosen to download a few minutes. Paul sat with tears balling up in the corners of his eyes so bad that he had to continuously wipe at them. Crying wasn’t designed for microgravity.

  “You should see Rebecca’s hand. It is almost completely healed. The pins and halo wires have been removed and she’s in a normal cast now. Once she gets that one off, the doctors are telling her she’ll have some months of physical therapy and possibly some skin grafts may be needed, but it is a fully functional hand. That is a miracle, Paul. I wish you could see it.”

  “Me too…”

  “They’re telling us down here that Sutter’s Mill A is going to miss the planet by thousands of kilometers and is likely to even miss all the satellites. Sutter’s Mill B on the other hand, well, it’s gonna be close. They’re really worried about it blowing up in the atmosphere and they keep talking on the news about it destroying satellites and maybe even the space station. I hate that you are stuck on that thing. They did say on the news that it was your idea how to use the magnets to push the asteroid and how you and your crew have saved millions of lives. I’m so proud of you, Paul Gesling. I am so proud to be your wife.”

  Paul touched the screen and paused it for a second. He wasn’t so sure how much more of the martyred hero part he wanted to play. As the days ticked down they were no closer to having any hope of getting home than they had in months. Oh, they could likely get off the rock using either the Tamaroa or the CTV and go kilometers away from it, but they would still be on an Earth fly-by trajectory with a relative velocity of over fourteen or fifteen kilometers per second. It would be like falling in a broken elevator and jumping right before you hit the ground. You’d still be falling at the elevator speed minus your jumping speed. In other words, you’d still die.

  Every astronaut knew that the escape velocity of Earth was eleven point two kilometers per second. They’d have to slow down an extreme amount, almost four kilometers per second, and they just didn’t have the fuel to do it. The attitude control thrusters of the Tamaroa and the main propulsion of the CTV wasn’t even close to enough thrust to give them the delta-vee needed to slow down and attain an Earth orbit.

  “I get my lung drain tubes out next week. The doc says at that point I can start doing some very light exercise to build my lung capacity back up. I’ll start on the treadmill under supervision, but soon after I’ll be able to go for walks. Also, the doc tells me I need to move to a dry climate. We still have our place in Nevada. I’m thinking I’ll move back out there after all this is over. Gary says I don’t have to come to work ever again, but I’d like to.”

  “Gary is good people.” Paul spoke as if she could hear him.

  “Gary is good people. At least he has always been good to me. Oh hey, I found this here at Gary’s bunker. Well, ‘Gary’s Bunker’ is what we’re calling it although it is more like a fortress or an underground castle. Anyway look. Your favorite childhood book, Ender’s Game. I thought I’d read it just to see what you like so much about it. I like the bit about not knowing which way is up or down in space. Do you really do that? I bet you pick some
place that you call up and one down and one front and back and so on.”

  “Huh, how about that.” Paul almost smiled at the site of his wife holding up a copy of one of his favorite books. “Why would there be actual books there? I haven’t seen the actual book in decades.”

  “Well, dearest husband, I’m running up on my clock limit so I’ll let you go until tomorrow. I love you Paul. I miss you. Bye for now.” She blew a kiss at the camera. Paul sat frozen in his seat mortified by the video. He knew she wanted to tell him to come home, but she managed to keep herself from saying it. Carolyn was such a trouper.

  Paul hit replay on the video file and watched it again.

  * * *

  Hui and Rykov had taken their turns at recording video messages for home and had watched their own messages from loved ones over and over, but Hui could tell that Paul was having the hardest time with it. Hui had been close to death in space before. She had been stranded on the Moon and had fully expected to die there until she heard a voice trying to reach her. That voice had been Paul Gesling. Had Gesling not found them and discovered they were alive, she would most certainly be dead now. He had saved her. Well, it had taken Bill Stetson and a few others to save her, but she had been saved and it was all initiated by Paul. Somehow she felt responsible for him. She felt like she should help him if she could to move past his grief. She wasn’t sure how.

  “It is your move, comrade,” Mikhail told her in his parody of his own Russian accent that he had adopted over the past several months. “Check.”

  Hui looked up at the touchpad that Mikhail handed to her and realized that she had not been paying close enough attention. Rykov had her in a Fool’s Mate scenario, of all things. Most kids learned that as the first strategy in chess and most seasoned players spot the strategy quickly.

  “How did I not see that? You are too good for me today, comrade,” she said jokingly. Her attempt at the Russian accent was destroyed by her Chinese accent, which made it all the more hilarious when she said it. The two of them chuckled half-heartedly.