Throwing Snowballs at Xanadu

by Bartholomew Thockmorton

  “A good kilometer, perhaps a bit more.”

  “That takes care of the little one,” said Sam. “What about the big one? It’s still way too large!”

  “Sammy…dear…you really must learn to think outside the box,” cooed Betty, patting his hand. “No one said we have to take it all in one bite!”

  ***

  With Betty at the lander’s controls, Sam moved the B.O.B. into position. The smaller comet lay directly astern, and Sam reduced their speed while the comet closed the gap.

  “How we doing there, Samalot?” asked Betty. In her lap, Marty lifted his head, and deciding the woman wasn’t talking to him, went back to dozing. “Just how close do we need to be, anyway?”

  “The warp-hole closes just after we enter, so at 17-kilometers-a-second, I figure we need to be at least within 500-meters. Charlie agrees. Once we complete the jump, I’ll peel away.”

  “Remember, we don’t have to go too far…just to the far side of the system.”

  “And don’t you forget we’ll have every bit of twelve hours before we can jump again,” he replied. “It takes that long for the matrix-capacitors to recharge. Blame warp physics if you must…but there’s not a thing I can do about it!”

  Betty again checked her board, making sure everything was ready; the last thing she wanted was giving Sam an excuse to blame her for mistakes. The lander’s warp generators were at full power and ready. Sam also scanned his controls and readings one last time. He expected this jump would go smoothly; it was the larger of the two comets that worried him.

  “Get ready, Betty! We’re in position…jump on five! One…two…”

  On the count, Sam engaged the warp drives with both ships projecting their fields forward. An immense hole in spacetime opened, and the B.O.B. slid outside normal space. Instantly, two billion kilometers distant, a warp-hole opened and the ship reentered the universe. A glance at his readings showed Sam the jump was successful—behind them, the comet remained intact. Sam adjusted the controls and the ship increased speed and changed course, leaving the comet behind.

  “Okay, Charlie…how did we do?” asked Sam.

  “Much better than expected. We generated a tear one and a quarter kilometers in diameter!”

  “Good deal!” whooped Betty. “See Sam…I knew we could do it!”

  “Don’t get too excited, kiddo…that was the easy one. We can warp four more times before impact, and we still don’t know what will happen when we try to cram a four-kilometer comet into a one-kilometer hole!”

  “Don’t go weak-kneed on me now! We’re going to do this, buster! I’m coming over so we can plan our victory celebration!”

  The next 12-hours passed quickly. The only orbital gymnastics involved slowing and changing direction of thrust to match the remaining comet’s trajectory. Sam did this with finesse, so as not to risk overloading the inertials. Now, after maneuvering in front of the comet, he again reduced the distance between them.

  “We’re almost in position, Betty,” said Sam. “I just hope we’ve picked the correct method to chew this thing up.”

  During their return, they had brainstormed concerning the best approach to disassemble the icy body: should they first remove the core, or start on one side and work inward? With time for only four jumps, the decision would most probably determine their ultimate success—or failure. The unknown factor was how the remaining portion of the comet would react to the removal of up to 20-percent of its mass. The problem concerned the dynamics surrounding the comet’s composition. Since it wasn’t a solid body, but a composite of rocks held together by frozen volatiles, the question was whether the remains would hold together, or begin to split apart due to rotational stresses. In the end, Charlie settled the matter with repeated simulations indicating the greatest danger lay in coring the body. Thus, Sam had positioned the B.O.B.’s course off-center from the comet.

  “Well, we might as well get into it,” said Betty. “If something goes wrong, we’ll just have to deal with it when we get back.”

  Again the piggybacked ships focused their energy, and they slid out of, and back into, normal spacetime, reappearing over two-billion-kilometers distant. Charlie was ready with sensors directed at the object behind them. There were no fireworks, no flashes, and no visible release of energy, just a large chunk of comet roughly a kilometer wide and three-kilometers long. Most odd was the area of the plug that had contacted the circumference of the warp-hole’s edge. For the object displayed that smooth curvature and resembled nothing found in nature.

  “Well, Charlie?” Betty asked impatiently. “What’s the verdict?”

  “It’s as the simulations predicted. Although the portion removed appears to display good cohesion, it is beginning to break up. It will shortly become apparent, but the rotation germane to the original body is producing sufficient torque to induce fragmentation.”

  “Good enough,” said Sam, changing course. “But what do you think the main body’s doing?”

  “I predict minor separation, increasing with time. But the pieces should be small enough to burn-up if atmospheric contact occurs.”

  “We’ll know soon enough,” said Betty. “Let’s hurry back and get ready for the next chunk!”

  ***

  Charlie’s simulations proved accurate. The remaining portion of the comet proved, for the most part, intact, and portions broken away had not drifted far. Sam positioned the B.O.B. so the next pass would remove adjacent material.

  The second warp for the larger comet went without complications—a significant portion was transported to the other side of the system, and the possible damage to Xanadu proportionally reduced. Upon their return, they could see the difference in both the size and separation induced by rotational stress. Also, out-gassing had increased tremendously due to the increased surface area of virgin comet material exposed to solar radiation. But the B.O.B.’s radar easily penetrated the obscuring cloud of gas and ice.

  By now, the third warp seemed routine: first, line up on the comet; second, reduce the distance; third, execute the warp; last, return and repeat. But although the warp maneuver itself went without complication, the end-warp held unpleasant surprises.

  Sam had left the majority of course calculations to Charlie while he and Betty concentrated on the fine-tuning maneuvers leading to the jump itself. But while they concerned themselves with possible problems on one side of the system, they had left themselves vulnerable to problems now greeting them on the other. Immediately upon exiting the warp-hole, the B.O.B.’s propulsion system began shunting downward in rugged spurts while the control rooms filled with the jarring blare of alarms.

  “What’s happening, Sam?” cried Betty. “What did you do?”

  Sam frantically worked the controls as an overwhelming flood of data poured through his cerebral-interface circuits. “Proximity alerts,” he yelled. “Multiple…dozens…no, thousands of contacts in every direction! We’re over-taking the ones in front… drive is shutting down…channeling power to the shields! We’ve got to—”

  He never finished. The ship lurched horrendously as vibrations more akin to the convulsions of an immense, stricken beast racked throughout the framework. The B.O.B.’s power circuits flickered off and on in an uncanny, strobe-like effect, accentuating the violent shuddering, finally tripping off-line and throwing everything into abysmal darkness. The hulls screamed under incalculable stress while the inertials failed catastrophically. Sam found himself flying through the air without being aware of leaving his control-chair. In the lander, Betty too launched across the control room, crashing to the floor after colliding with a wall.

  Chapter Five

  Following an expanse of time in which the universe could have been created ten-fold over, Betty regained consciousness in stages defined by which portions of her body hurt the most. Indescribable pangs of agony beginning in her legs crawled by degrees along her spine, splitting to shoot through her arms and head simultaneously. Mercifully, endorphins, adrenalin an
d dopamine hit her in an urgency mandated by an autonomic nervous system in shock-induced overdrive. When her senses cleared sufficiently, she heard her name called again and again, the sound competing with the sharp ringing in her ears and echoing throughout her body. All this, and an itchy burning emanating from her left cheek.

  After an age, she tried to open her eyes unsuccessfully. Something resisted her efforts, keeping the lids closed tightly. She now heard a nearby mewing of some pathetic, injured animal. She thought of Marty—how he must have been injured. However, in a realization of panic and horror, Betty realized the weak moaning came instead from her own throat—sounds issuing forth which hardly registered as human. She struggled to stifle the whimpering as she moved her left hand to her face, probing around her eyes and her pulsating cheek.

  Checking the area of her forehead aching the most, she felt loose flaps of skin hanging about her eyes. Further exploration revealed deep gashes crisscrossing her brow. In feeble swipes, Betty pawed at the sticky goop sealing her eyelids. When she managed to see again, the blurry image of coagulating blood covering her trembling fingers caused her to retch in revulsion. She tried sitting up, but the pressure on her right arm brought forth a scream of agony, and she fell back weakly. But stubbornly struggling with her left arm and legs, she managed to roll over and began to assess her condition. The room was bathed in the harsh glare of emergency lights and ringing with competing alarms. A glance at her right arm revealed a stark-white bone-sliver protruding from an oozing rip in the flesh where the limb bent in an unnatural angle. Despite the compound fracture and the severity of her injuries, Betty still managed a smile and sigh of relief when Marty appeared, carefully placing his paws on her shoulder, nuzzling her cheek and licking her face with his raspy tongue. Despite her pain, the contact and affection made her feel better. Suddenly, she had the macabre idea the tiny carnivore might be licking her blood, but he curled against her neck, cooing with concern, and she put aside her morbid thoughts.

  “Charlie, kill the alarms! Sam…Sam! Can you hear me?”

  “I’m sorry, Betty,” answered the computer. “Sam appears to be unconscious and badly injured.”

  She swore under her breath, struggling to a kneeling position. She winced in pain as gravity pulled on her twisted arm—fortunately, it seemed the only thing broken. With renewed determination, she slowly stood, leaning heavily upon the panel behind her for support.

  “Charlie…put some spider-bots into action…fetch a gurney and trauma kit from the infirmary…get Sam elevated where I can reach him! Send some over here to help me…”

  Giving instructions, Betty stumbled to the control room’s first-aid locker and yanked it open. While Marty scurried to the top of a panel to watch, she pawed through the locker, dumping items to the floor, looking for an emergency splint packet. She found one and also grabbed a syringe kit, then limped over to the command chair. Marty watched in fascination as Betty fiddled with the syringe controls, injecting herself with a massive dose of painkiller. She exhaled loudly as the drug hit her system, then after a moment’s consideration, injected herself again. She opened the splint package with her left hand and teeth, and placing the inflatable splint over her arm, leaned forward, grasping the control panel rail with her right hand, doing her best to ignore the searing pain. She looked at Marty and smiled weakly.

  “You know, Marty,” she hissed through clinched teeth. “This is really, really going to hurt…”

  Without faltering, she jerked backwards, pulling the jagged bone back into her arm, setting the break, while simultaneously activating the splint. She screamed despite the painkiller’s numbing effect, but retained her grip as the splint inflated, wrapping her arm in its firm embrace, a medicated bandage slapping down to cover the tear in her arm. For long moments afterward, she huffed out one loud groan after another, then again staggered to her feet, heading towards the inter-ship hatch. There, three spider-bots appeared from the other ship, quickly cradling her arms, steadying her as she moved.

  When Betty entered the B.O.B.’s control room, the other bots had Sam loaded on the gurney. They moved aside as she rushed to his side, studying the vitals registering on the headboard display. They weren’t good. Forgetting her own pain, she connected additional sensors and inserted several IV’s into Sam’s arms, as directed by the monitors.

  “Charlie, get the infirmary ready and run damage control diagnostics on both ships.” She talked while steering Sam out of the room and down the passageway with the bots’ assistance. “And while you’re at it, tell me what happened!”

  By the time she reached the infirmary, Charlie had her up to speed on their situation. When they completed the warp, the ship reentered space directly behind one of the chunks they moved earlier. With no time to enact evasive maneuvers, the B.O.B. plowed into the forward comet fragment while the one behind followed. Instantly they were smashed between the two massive bodies.

  “Fortunately, there wasn’t much difference in velocities,” Charlie told her. “If the comet had been stationary, we would have vaporized in an impressive shower of gamma radiation. As it is, we burrowed over seven-hundred meters into the fragment.”

  The graviton shield saved them. But the strain on the propulsion plant proved too great, and the inverters had blown apart—if Betty or Sam had been in engineering, they would have died instantly. A shield still surrounded the B.O.B., but that was all the back-up systems could manage.

  Now, Betty’s whole existence centered on the injured man. Despite the med-compu-assistant’s suggestions as to drugs or electro-stimulation, Sam’s vitals continued to drop. Marty jumped between shelves and tables, keeping Sam in sight each time the woman blocked his view. And as the man’s condition worsened, Betty’s movements took on even greater urgency as she tried in vain to stabilize his injuries. She labored desperately to stop the bleeding and keep his heart beating. Soon, tears flowed down her cheeks, even as she refused to acknowledge the obvious.

  Eventually, Betty had to concede the match. But only after the med-table refused to answer her quiet questions, and Sam’s heartbeat diminished to the merest blips on the monitor, did she at last back away, her hands to her face and horror growing in her eyes.

  Marty chose this unlikely moment to leap from his perch and clamor up the side of the med-table. Betty watched in confusion as the small animal sniffed several of the open wounds on Sam’s arms. Marty even examined the needles and hypodermics laying where Betty had dropped them, going so far as to gingerly touch them with the tip of his tongue, apparently tasting the fluids and medicines that passed through there.

  He finally paused beside Sam’s face, and leaning over, sniffed his faint exhalations. Then extended his tongue one last time…to taste the blood from a wound.

  Betty started forward, her shock and confusion replaced by some primal revulsion at Marty’s bizarre behavior. She had gone but a step when Marty turned to her full on, looking directly into her eyes, and standing upright upon hind legs, placed one paw on Sam’s cheek with the other, clinched like a fist, held to his chest.

  Stop…help…trust…

  “What the hell—“

  Betty froze, the whispers in her mind as powerful as physical blows. No mistaking the source of those words…or thoughts. She watched in fascination as Marty lowered his front paws and slowly opened his mouth wide. As she watched, two of his front fangs grew longer…doubling in length in an instant. When the teeth stopped extending, Marty turned and sank them deep into Sam’s cheek.

  “Eep…” was all she managed. Her paralysis broke and she leapt forward completely unsure of her intensions. Marty was faster though, scampering beyond her reach. Gaining the end of the table, he launched into the air, landing on a nearby shelf. There he again turned to Betty, catching her gaze with another intense look.

  Better…

  Betty turned back to Sam; color returned to his cheeks, and to her amazement, his chest rose as he inhaled deeply…then exhaled slowly in a hushed sign.
>
  While on the monitor, his heartbeat marched to a steady cadence.

  Chapter Six

  Sam awoke with a start. He looked about, puzzled as to why he was in the infirmary. Suddenly remembering the moments after the jump, he sat and swung he legs off the med-table. The IV’s, bandages and tools of medicine laying about spoke volumes. He looked for Betty, but when he couldn’t find her, he stood, steadying himself as he experienced a moment’s dizziness.

  “Sam, Betty’s in the Doodle,” said Charlie. “She was hoping you’d sleep a while longer.

  “Betty! What’s going on? What’s happening?” He was already in the corridor, on his way to the control room.

  “Welcome back, sleepyhead. It figures you’d wake up now. We’re in position and ready for the last warp…it’s going to be close! We lost quite a bit of time back there…I need you at the controls! Hurry!”

  “What do you mean? We can’t possibly be ready to warp…and why was I in sickbay?” Sam rubbed the back of his neck and flexed his shoulders. For some reason, he felt sore all over.

  “Too many questions, lover boy! Get to the controls…now!”

  Sam made it to the control room, hurried to the command chair, sat and buckled in, the shoulder, chest and waist stabilizers swinging into place. He looked over the controls, baffled as to why the entire flight board was dead. The main engines weren’t even on-line…and only the warp generators displayed activity.

  “What the hell,” he cried while trying to disengage his restraints. “Betty…the engines! Nothing’s running!”

  “Yeah…they were destroyed when we plowed into that comet…”

  “We hit a comet?”

  “Oh, yeah! Then the one behind us hit too. Luckily we had penetrated so far…that helped dampen the impact. Fried the engines though…you were bounced all over the control room! Long story there…”

  “How in the blazes did we get out?” Sam felt as though he was in the middle of a nightmare. Try as he might, he couldn’t work it all through.