by Homer Hickam
It hadn’t occurred to the Colonel to tell his son about the one good thing he’d done with his life. “Surely he knew my opinion about that,” he rationalized, then called up the fuser’s puter. “How much longer until we catch CC2241?”
Two hours, seven minutes.
The sheriff shook his head. “I never thought I’d help save the world.”
“We haven’t saved it yet, Sheriff.”
“But we will. This is in the bag, Colonel.”
The Colonel was quiet, then said, “I’ve enjoyed your company over the years, Sheriff, and your loyalty.”
The sheriff chuckled. “Nobody else would have me. In fact, most of the people on that world ahead would love to put me back in prison or hang me. You gave me a chance to start over. I appreciate that, Colonel.”
“What I did was use you. I took your penchant for violence and put it to work for me.”
“Well, it wasn’t like I didn’t know that.”
The Colonel and the sheriff sat companionably until the puter announced, Deceleration in thirty seconds. Please strap yourself in and brace until stabilization occurs.
The sheriff gave an extra tug on his seat belt, then felt embarrassed. No seat belt was going to save him from being aboard a fuser rushing through space that was loaded with nuclear missiles.
The Earth in the viewport seemed to be moving, although it was actually the Jan Davis flipping over so that its engine could be restarted to decelerate the fuser as it caught up with the asteroid. When it was within five miles of it, the fuser would turn again, this time catching up with CC2241 and matching its speed.
Of course, that all depended on whether Crater and Petro had properly programmed the fuser’s puter. Reflecting on the trust he had for Crater’s abilities, the Colonel said, “I’ve always treated Crater unfairly. I regret that.”
“I don’t see why,” the sheriff replied. “He was always a lot of trouble. How are you going to like him as a grandson-in-law? That’s what I gathered from Maria and him, all that lovey-dovey talk.”
The Colonel was fairly certain he’d never be around to find out the answer. Although the sheriff didn’t seem to know it, the Colonel thought the odds of them surviving this mission were slim. He shrugged and said, “I think Maria and Crater will be fine. After a lot of trouble, of course. It’s in her nature and his.”
The fuser completed its flip and its three engines thundered. The artificial gravity produced by the deceleration was severe at first, then subsided to one Earth gravity. When the puter announced it was safe to move around, the sheriff released his seat belt and made a run for the waste collection system, there to rid himself of the fluid buildup that had occurred during the short period of weightlessness. The Colonel was next in line. Afterward, with gravity running along the z-axis of the fuser, they had to climb up a steep ladder to the cockpit. “I’m getting too old for this,” the sheriff joked, and then thought how stupid he must sound to the Colonel, forty years his senior.
During the deceleration, the nose of the fuser was aimed toward space. The Colonel moved the camera in the tail until it was focused on the asteroid. He zoomed in on it and, just as expected, saw it was massive and gray but it also had an unusual consistency.
The sheriff peered at the viewscreen. “It’s spongy looking,” he said.
“Because it’s a collection of boulders,” the Colonel growled, “not a slab of basalt like we thought. The only thing holding its mass together is gravity.”
“What happens if we blast it with nukes?”
“It won’t get shoved the way Crater thought,” the Colonel said. “It’ll just get blown apart.”
“Isn’t that good?”
The Colonel studied the asteroid, but it was the study of ignorance. He didn’t know what would happen. Would scattering the rocks do the job or would they simply come back together and keep on going? The Colonel thought about going to the taxi and using its communications to call Crater but then decided against it. Everything was set, and all the Colonel could do was carry on and hope and pray for the best.
The Colonel was not a praying man, but he now silently began to toss prayers up to heaven, and as he did he began to feel something warm inside him. Everything was going to be all right. He was sure of it. The Colonel sat with the sheriff in the cockpit and watched the asteroid get closer and closer.
“I wonder what they’re doing on Earth,” the sheriff said.
The Colonel gave it some thought, then said, “Maria called the company in Armstrong City who was supposed to call the Medaris family on Earth. The ranking member of the family on Earth is Rudy, my second son. Rudy’s a levelheaded sort and will most likely contact the governments friendly to our business, leaving it up to them on how they’ll tell their citizens or other governments if they tell them at all.”
The Colonel’s expression turned grim. “They’re in the worst possible situation right now for a disaster. The countries of the old UCW are fighting civil wars, the other countries are trying to get on their feet economically after their war with the UCW. Their space assets are depleted, their fleets of warpods mostly grounded. If they know we’re trying to stop this thing, all they can do is crawl into their holes and hope we do it.”
The sheriff rubbed his face. “How did we ever get in this mess?”
“I am culpable,” the Colonel said. “I financed the labs that made the crowhoppers, although, quite honestly, that wasn’t my intention. I was just trying to see if we could make a better human. We got better humans all right, better killers at any rate. Then I came up with the idea of asteroid bombardment out of L5. It’s astonishing to me now how clearly both ideas were crazy.” He shook his head. “At the time they seemed perfectly correct avenues of thought and no one dared correct me. They knew I wouldn’t listen anyway.”
“You’re still a great man, Colonel,” the sheriff said.
“I did some good things,” the Colonel agreed. “I’m willing to give myself credit for that, but I also recognize now how conceited and pompous I became, how unwilling I was to listen to anyone else but whatever random thoughts might be stirring through my mind at the time. I became corrupt, Sheriff, not the money-grubbing kind of corrupt, but the kind that’s worse, the kind that gets into a man’s head and makes him think that if he does anything, it’s automatically the right thing.”
“You know where I grew up, Colonel?” the sheriff asked. “I bet you don’t, because I never put the same thing twice on any of my background documents. I grew up in a little town in Honduras. My father was a fisherman, a lobster diver, actually. He died pretty young and my mother ran off with a Norte’ Americano, leaving me, two brothers, and three sisters on the streets of La Ceiba. I took care of them as best I could. I learned to steal, and then when I was caught, I learned how to kill the policeman that caught me. Some rough men recruited me after that, and since I’d already killed, they made me into their killer for hire. I was only thirteen. Who would expect a teenaged hit man? I kind of thought of it as being a soldier, only not for a country but for my patron. When his enemies came for him, they not only killed him but nearly everyone in his family and employ. By then my brothers and sisters were working for him and they were gunned down. I was the only one to escape. After that I wandered the Earth, selling myself and my special skills to anyone who’d pay for them. I ended up in prison many times, but I was always able to bust out. I became a man who thought killing was so much a part of life that when I had a wife and wanted to be rid of her, I simply strangled her with my bare hands. When I ran away to the moon, I figured only to lie low for a while, then get back into the killing trade. Then when I came to Moontown, you made me your sheriff. It was most unexpected.”
“I saw a man who’d spent a lot of time in prison and on the other side of the law,” the Colonel said. “I figured I could teach you my law, whatever I thought it was each day, and you’d enforce it.”
“And I did, as best I could. You were my patron. But then I found Carl
a, as sweet a wife as any lout like me ever had. And then we had Maria. Isn’t it funny that we have a daughter with the same name as your granddaughter, Colonel? It was Carla’s mother’s name—that’s how we picked it. Anyway, after a while, I started to see everything differently. I wanted to put my sins in a box and drop them into the deepest crater on the moon and turn myself into a good man. I never did it. I guess I was too far gone, but I wanted to. Do you think that counts for something, Colonel?”
“You are the only one who can answer that,” the Colonel said. “You and your god.”
“Yeah, I had a lot of talks to the preacher about that. I tried praying, but I don’t know if I got through or not.”
The Colonel met his eyes and put one hand on his shoulder. “Well, you just got through to me, so maybe you did.”
The fuser engine stopped and the gravity slid back to zero. There were puffs from the directional jets, and the nose swung over. The asteroid filled the viewscreen.
“There were a lot of vibrations during the flight,” the Colonel said. “Probably best if you went to the engine room and made certain all the connections to the warheads are secure.”
“OK, Colonel,” the sheriff said, “just don’t be pushing any buttons up here that might make that mess go off.”
“Don’t worry. The puter will handle the detonations. Just check the connections and get back up here double quick. After we’re positioned, we can get in the taxi and get away.”
“Will do.”
When the sheriff left, the Colonel remained in the cockpit with one hand on the cold reaction system in case the puter slid them in too close to the asteroid and he needed to correct their course. The puter, however, tweaked the Jan Davis in perfectly and then matched the a steroid’s velocity. When the reaction control system continued to send out bursts of nitrogen, the Colonel studied the graphic of the fuser and the asteroid as the astronavigational system imagined it. Everything seemed perfect, so why were the cold jets still firing? The amount of nitrogen in the tanks was dwindling too.
“Puter,” the Colonel said, “why is the reaction control system firing?”
To compensate for the drift to port, the puter answered.
“What is causing this drift?”
A nearby gravitational field.
The Colonel realized the error in the puter’s programming. “Crater forgot the asteroid’s gravitational force,” he muttered. “How could he forget that?”
The force exerted by the asteroid wasn’t much, but it was enough to require the fuser to keep working to maintain the correct distance between it and the CC2241. “Puter, switch to hot control jets,” the Colonel ordered because the hot jets still had plenty of fuel.
Switching to hot jets, the puter said.
The Colonel felt a series of hard thumps. The hot jets were igniting, then cutting off, only to ignite again. The fuser rattled and jerked as the system blasted on and off. “Puter, why are the hot jets turning on and off?” the Colonel asked.
The hot control system is not designed to maintain position. The cold system is for that purpose.
“Can they maintain our position?”
Negative. Two hot-fire jets have already failed due to cracks.
“Switch back to cold.”
Switching. Cold jet fuel down to three percent.
“Switch main puter control to taxi.”
Switching.
“Sheriff, meet me in the taxi,” the Colonel called and then left the cockpit and pulled himself along to the taxi airlock.
Before long, the sheriff arrived, wriggling through the access hatch of the taxi and goggling at the size and proximity of the asteroid. “All the connections are secure, Colonel. Time for us to make a run for it?”
“We have a little problem, Sheriff,” the Colonel said. “That big collection of rocks wants us to join it. We’re down to only a few pounds of nitrogen left to steer away from it.”
“How about the hot jets?”
“I suppose you felt that shaking a minute ago. That was them. They’re not designed for fine-tuning and are now out of commission.”
“Then we’d better get out of here before we get any closer.”
“We can’t go,” the Colonel said, looking levelly at the sheriff. “We’re going to have to use the taxi’s guidance jets to maintain this position.”
“But how will we—now, hold on, Colonel!”
“We had a good run, Sheriff.”
Cold jet system down to zero point five percent, the puter warned.
“Puter, switch to the control jets on the taxi and maintain distance from the target,” the Colonel said. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the sheriff had drawn his pistol and aimed it at the Colonel’s head. “Put that away, Sheriff,” he said.
The sheriff sighed, then lowered his pistol and tucked it back in its holster. “I guess I always wanted to go out in a blaze of glory anyway.”
“Your family will be well cared for,” the Colonel said. “Since I knew there might be some, er, repercussions toward you if I died first, I put you and your family in my will.”
“Thank you,” the sheriff said. “Shall we tell the warpod they won’t need to pick us up?”
“They’ll figure it out. No use making them go on about how heroic we are. We know the truth. Just a couple of old reprobates putting at least somewhat noble exclamation marks to our lives. Puter, start the timer for the special package. One-minute count should do.”
Timer for special package started. One minute and counting.
“No audible countdown required,” the Colonel said.
No audible countdown confirmed.
The sheriff raised his eyebrows and said, “I have a bottle of rum hidden away. Shall I get it?”
“If you think we have time.”
“I’ll do my best.”
The sheriff disappeared down the hatch. For just a moment, the Colonel wondered if perhaps the sheriff was headed for the engine bay, there to pull all the wires from the warheads. Within fifteen seconds, however, he had returned with a bottle of rum. “It ain’t easy to drink in zero-g,” the sheriff said, “but if you put it to your lips and kind of move your head, you’ll get a swig. Here, I’ll show you.”
The sheriff demonstrated, then handed the bottle to the Colonel. The Colonel followed the sheriff’s example and managed to get a mouthful of the flavorful liquid imported from the Earth’s Caribbean islands. “Good stuff,” he said. He was about to hand the bottle back to the sheriff when the warheads detonated.
FIFTY-SEVEN
There it goes,” Crater said. He didn’t have to see it on the pulsdar. Even though thousands of miles away, the explosion was great enough that it lit up the asteroid, which, though his eyes were probably deceiving him, seemed to shudder and then expand.
Petro was on the pulsdar console. “We’re getting an odd signal,” he said. “The asteroid seems to have come apart.”
Crater took a look. “It wasn’t solid,” he concluded. “It was a rubble pile. We calculated the explosion for a solid monolith.”
Captain Valence said, “Puter, has the course of the target changed?”
Affirmative.
“Will it still intersect with the Earth?”
Target is unstable. Presently unable to predict final course.
Captain Valence frowned. “What does it mean by that?”
“The asteroid was pushed apart by the explosion but is now trying to reform. Until it does, we won’t know its course.”
“What about the taxi?” Maria asked.
Petro studied the pulsdar screen. “I don’t see it.”
Captain Valence nodded to his communications officer. “Call the taxi,” he said.
The communications officer made the call. “Crater warpod to Davis taxi. Come in.” He made the call eight more times with no response.
Maria said, “If he thought he was in trouble, Grandfather would have called us.”
“Or he might have decided not to wo
rry you,” Crater said gently.
Maria shook her head. “He’s not dead.”
“We’ll keep looking,” Crater said, “but it was always going to be a close-run thing.”
“You think they’re dead, don’t you?”
Crater unflinchingly looked into her eyes. “I think they are, yes. When they got close, they could see what the asteroid really was. Also, I realize now I forgot to figure the asteroid’s gravitational force into my calculations. To maintain their position, they would have had to stay with it, using the fuser’s reaction control system. I think the Colonel stuck it out to the end. That’s what I think.”
“Have you ever considered softening your truth, Crater Trueblood?” Maria demanded. “I didn’t think so. I’m exactly the same, saying exactly what I mean all the time. If we get married, we’re going to have to learn to tell a little white lie now and again.”
“Are we getting married?”
“Of course we are.”
Maria found herself in Crater’s arms, but it didn’t feel romantic, just sad. Still, she clung to him as if he was the only thing floating on an impossibly deep sea and she would drown if she didn’t keep hanging on. She gave into her grief, her body racked with sobs.
“The asteroid’s reforming into two chunks,” Petro said. “I’m making them into two targets: 2241A and 2241B.”
“Puter, predict course of 2241 A and B,” Captain Valence said. “Inform as to intersection with Earth or near-intersection.”
Both targets have wobble. Prediction seventy percent certainty.
“Acceptable.”
Target 2241A will not intersect with Earth by a margin of eight thousand three hundred and eighty-two miles. Target 2241B will not intersect with Earth with a margin of ninety-three miles.
Cheers erupted from the warpod crew. “The Earth just dodged two bullets,” Petro said, then looked over at Crater. He was still holding Maria, but his face was drawn. “What’s wrong, brother?”
“Puter,” Crater said, “factor in the Earth’s atmosphere for target 2241B and check intersection with Earth.”
Atmospheric drag will cause it to intersect the Earth.
