Zero Limit

by Jeremy K. Brown

  “Yeah,” said Shaw. “Speaking of that. Don’t forget, in eighteen days or so, this asteroid is going to complete its rotation. When it does, there’s going to be nothing between us and the Sun, and we’re all going to get pan-seared.”

  “Good point,” Caitlin said. “All the more reason to be thinking of an escape plan. With that in mind, we should get back on board and see what our fuel situation is like.”

  As they turned to go, Caitlin noticed that Shaw was still standing rooted to the surface of the asteroid, a worried look on his face.

  “What’s the holdup?” she asked.

  “There’s one more thing,” he said. “I’ve been doing some calculations about our orientation, looking at our position based on the stars, and . . .”

  “And?” Caitlin asked, not liking where the line of conversation was headed.

  “We’re off course,” Shaw said. “The fire, the thrust from the Tamarisk, the force of the launching of the escape lander, whatever it was, something pushed us off of our original trajectory.”

  “How bad is it?” asked Caitlin.

  Shaw looked into space, and Caitlin’s gaze followed his. At once, they both saw Earth rising over the asteroid’s horizon. With a horrible sinking sensation, Caitlin suddenly realized what Shaw was trying to tell her.

  “It’s pretty bad,” he said.

  Almost as one, Caitlin, Shaw, and Diaz stumbled back onto the Alley Oop, unlatching helmets and shedding suits. Vee swiveled around to look at them and give them the rundown of what she’d uncovered during her scan of the ship.

  “Fuel situation’s not great,” she told them. “We depleted most of it getting to the surface. The good news is the low gravity means that we won’t need a ton of propellant to make escape velocity. So, chances are good that we’d be able to take off, but getting all the way back to the Moon or Earth might be a challenge. Unfortunately, that’s the least of our problems. The ignition system’s offline. Not sure if it’s electrical or what, but I can’t get it working at the moment . . .

  “What is it?” she asked, her eyes traveling from one person to the next. Caitlin could tell by the hesitation in her voice that she had read their collective expressions.

  “Can you get comms working?” asked Caitlin.

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  “Do it,” Caitlin said. “Broadcast a distress signal on ICC channel 24.”

  “Channel 24?” asked Vee. “That channel’s reserved for emergencies.”

  “Yeah, well, I’ve got something that will definitely apply.”

  “What’s going on?” Vee asked.

  “Let’s just say that we might be getting back to Earth a little sooner than Ross or anyone else would have planned,” Caitlin told her. “Only problem is, no one’s going to be all that happy to see us.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Halfway back to Georgetown, Sara instructed the driver to turn around and take her back to the PDCO offices at NASA headquarters. A lot of her memories of the years she spent with Alex Sutter had sunk way beneath the silt of her mind, and seeing him tonight had stirred them up. She knew her last words to him tonight were harsh. Probably a little too harsh, she told herself. After all, she had been just as much to blame for how things ended as he had been. But what did he expect? He had wanted to get married right after graduation and . . . what? Have her play the dutiful housewife while he went on to conquer the world? No thank you. She knew her mother had gone from her childhood home to a dorm room to the house she had lived in ever since. And although her mother would never admit it, Sara occasionally caught glimpses of the longing in her mother’s eyes, as though she were scanning some distant horizon for the life that had left her behind. Sara had long ago promised herself that that same longing would never enter her own eyes.

  And so Alex had gone off to his career, first at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and then at FEMA, taking on a position that had brought him back into his old love’s orbit. When he had first e-mailed Sara letting her know about the job that involved combating asteroid threats, she knew soon their paths would cross, but she hadn’t imagined how it would feel when the moment came. And so she did the thing she always did when she didn’t want the vagaries of everyday life encroaching on her psyche. She worked.

  It was late when she arrived at the PDCO, and she imagined there would be little to do, but Sara didn’t mind. A few hours of mindless distraction would be enough to keep her occupied before she had to see Alex again the next morning.

  As she walked through the halls to her office, Sara found herself once again wondering how many people in America even knew the PDCO existed. Even though it was not a common topic of discussion, planetary defense had a history that went all the way back to the 1960s, when a group of twenty-one MIT seniors and graduate students came together to devise a plan to stop an asteroid, 1566 Icarus, from colliding with Earth in June of 1968. According to the data the students received, Icarus would be traveling at a speed of eighteen miles per second and strike the planet with a force equivalent to more than a half-million megatons of TNT. The impact would effectively wash Florida off the map and create two-hundred-foot waves and be felt as far away as Africa.

  During the study, the students proposed launching six Saturn V boosters, each carrying a 44,000-pound nuclear warhead with a yield of 100 megatons. The hope was that the first rocket would break Icarus apart and the remaining five would pulverize the fragments, turning one potentially destructive asteroid into a harmless meteor shower.

  Of course, 1566 Icarus did not collide with Earth, and the danger was entirely hypothetical. However, it did pass within four million miles of the planet, becoming the first asteroid detected by Earth-based radar. The students themselves published the study in 1968, bringing the threat of an asteroid impact to the public’s attention for the first time.

  Since then, various groups had come forward to champion the cause of both asteroid detection and deflection. Even Apollo 9 astronaut Rusty Schweickart was an outspoken advocate for planetary defense, helping to found the B612 Foundation in 2002, comprised of scientists, former astronauts, and engineers working toward the goal of maximizing Earth’s preparedness for a PHO impact. In 2016, NASA joined the cause by forming the PDCO.

  Unfortunately, as the years had gone on, and the hysteria surrounding incoming asteroids had waned, the PDCO’s budget had been slashed repeatedly. Then with the Second Cold War and Last Campaign diverting both government funding and public interest away from watching the stars, the organization’s funding had been further reduced until the amount of sky they were able to successfully search was minimal, the equivalent of peering at the Grand Canyon through a keyhole. As such, most of the PDCO’s days were spent scanning for distant threats, ones that may put future generations in jeopardy. These potentially hazardous asteroids, or PHAs, were what kept Sara busy most days and nights. However, the absence of any really distressing news meant that Sara could expect a night of relative quiet distraction with which to dispel all thoughts of her past life and the roads not taken.

  “Sara!” came a voice from behind, approaching fast. She turned to see Ned Peterson streaking her way, his belly bouncing urgently with every footfall. He ran up the stairs to her station and stood there, slightly hunched, as though he was trying to will the wind to reenter his body. Sara watched him piteously a moment and held up a freshly poured cup of coffee.

  “Ned,” she said, “what am I holding?”

  He looked at the cup as though it were a particularly vexing puzzle to be solved. Eventually, Ned came up with the answer, although his tone suggested uncertainty.

  “Coffee?”

  “Mmmm-hmmm,” said Sara with the air of a pleased parent. “And what is the rule about disturbing me while my coffee is still hot? Especially during the night shift.”

  “I know,” he said between desperate huffs of air. “I know, but you’re really, really going to want to hear this. We picked up a distress call.”

  “A distress ca
ll?” Sara asked. She set her coffee down on the desk. Now Ned had her attention. “Was it coded?”

  “Yes,” said Ned, finally composing himself. “But the code wasn’t in any of the registries.”

  “All right,” she said. “Let me hear it.”

  “Channel 24,” Ned said.

  Sara punched up the channel and listened to the message. As she did, her face went white. She looked back at Ned.

  “You said their code wasn’t registered anywhere? You sure about that?”

  “Yeah, that’s right,” said Ned. “And I’m sure. I ran it twice.”

  “What about the asteroid?” Sara asked. “Are you on that?”

  “Yeah,” Ned said. “I’ve reached out to Kelly at the Minor Planet Center. They’re tracking this thing too.”

  The fact that the Minor Planet Center was now involved was of definite interest to Sara. Located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the organization was charged with collecting data on comets, asteroids, and any other object in space deemed to be a “minor planet.” They tended to receive more than fifty thousand sighting reports a day. If they were tracking this one, Sara knew it had to be significant.

  “All right then, we’ve done everything we can do for now. Let’s answer this woman before someone else does,” Sara said. “And let’s start waking up the right people.”

  “Sure, sure,” said Ned. “Anyone in particular?”

  Sara put on her headphones, preparing to answer the distress call. She looked up at Ned.

  “Anyone who’ll listen.”

  Caitlin kept sending out the call, waiting for a response.

  “Mayday, Mayday, this is Caitlin Taggart of the Tamarisk. There has been an incident. Myself and my crew are stranded on asteroid 1222 Thresher. I repeat, there has been an incident on board our ship and we are stranded on asteroid 1222 Thresher . . . which is now on course for Earth. I say again . . .”

  Finally, the comm crackled and hissed and a woman’s voice filled Caitlin’s headset.

  “This is Sara Kent, from NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office, responding to the distress call. Is this Caitlin Taggart?”

  “Yes, this is Caitlin Taggart,” she said. “I was the captain of the mining vessel Tamarisk, now lost. As I said, we’ve touched down on asteroid 1222 Thresher and are on a collision course with Earth. Repeat we are on a collision course with Earth.”

  Silence followed as the message traveled across the void from the asteroid to Earth. The communication delay between Earth and the Moon was 1.3 seconds. On the asteroid, given that they were a little closer, the delay was slightly less, but to Caitlin, it felt like an eternity.

  “You don’t need to keep repeating that,” Sara Kent said at last. “Hearing it the first time was bad enough. OK, Caitlin, can I call you Caitlin?”

  “If you’ve got a way out of this, you can call me whatever you please.”

  “I’m working on it,” Sara said. “But I can tell you this: Whoever you were trying to call, I can promise you that the right people picked up. This is what we’ve been training for.”

  Sara was obviously trying to say the words with confidence, but Caitlin could tell when someone was bluffing. Being in the military and a mother, one tended to learn the tells. But if she wanted to bluff for the time being, Caitlin was more than happy to let her. Right now, given her current circumstances, even the pretense of confidence was welcome.

  “So what do you need us to do up here?” Caitlin asked.

  “Well,” said Sara, “what can you tell us about your crew? Are they all OK?”

  Caitlin looked at Vee and her eyes immediately shot downward, focusing on the control panel with laser-like intensity.

  “We lost one in the fire on the Tamarisk before we abandoned ship,” Caitlin said. “We’re down to four now, but, under the circumstances, we’re all holding up as well as can be expected.”

  “Good,” Sara replied. “That’s good to hear. Can I ask how in the hell you ended up in this mess?”

  “It’s kind of a long story,” Caitlin told her, “but let me ask you, do you have kids?”

  The silence that followed the question somehow seemed longer, even with the delay in communications. Caitlin couldn’t say for sure, but something told her that she might have struck a nerve.

  “No,” Sara said after a moment. “No I don’t.”

  “But you must have someone you care about,” Caitlin pressed on. “Someone who cares about you.”

  “Sure,” she said after another pause that felt glacial. “I have.”

  “And you would do anything for them, right? Anything to protect them, I mean?”

  “I suppose I would,” Sara said. “I suppose anyone would.”

  “Then there’s your answer.”

  “Fair enough for now,” Sara said. “The rest you can tell me over a beer when we get you home.”

  “You get us out of this,” said Caitlin, “and that beer is on me.”

  “All right,” said Sara. “Now you’ve done it. Now I have no choice but to help you. We’re all going to put our heads together down here and try and figure out what our options are. In the meantime, how are you holding up?”

  “Me?” Caitlin asked. “Oh, I’m straddling the line between throwing up and passing out cold, but otherwise, I’m doing just dandy, thanks.”

  “Just hang tight, Caitlin, we’ve got you,” said Sara. “I’ll call back when I’ve got something more to share, OK?”

  “You got it.” Caitlin nodded. “I’ll be right here.”

  Sara broke the connection, and Caitlin turned to see the worried faces of her crew.

  “What’s the story?” asked Diaz.

  “The story is that there’s a real nice lady down there who works for the government and she wants nothing more than to help us,” Caitlin said. “Problem is, right now, I don’t think she can.”

  “So what does that mean?” asked Vee.

  “It means that this asteroid is going to hit Earth,” she said. She thought of Emily and fought hard to keep her voice level. “And right now, I don’t know if anyone can stop it.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The phone on Alex’s nightstand buzzed insistently, shaking him out of a deep sleep. For a moment, he thought he was back home in Pasadena, but when he sat up and looked out the window, he saw the Washington Monument glittering in the distance instead of his beloved San Gabriel Mountains. He looked down at his phone and saw that it was Sara calling. Before he could answer, the buzzing stopped.

  “Pocket dial,” he muttered to himself and flopped back against the pillows. He still had a few hours before their meeting at the PDCO. He closed his eyes and tried to will sleep to come back to him. As he was drifting off again, the phone went off a second time. Now fully awake, Alex sat up, tapped the display, and put the phone to his ear.

  “Hello?” he said.

  “Alex?” a breathless voice asked from the other end. “Are you awake?”

  “Sara?” he asked. “Is that you?”

  “Yeah it’s me,” she said. “Are you up?”

  “I am now,” he said somewhat irritably. “I was trying to get back to—”

  “There’s no time for sleep. Hurry up and get down to the PDCO,” she said.

  “Why?” he asked, sitting up and turning on the bedside lamp. “What’s going on?”

  “Are you familiar with an asteroid designated 1222 Thresher?”

  “Yeah,” he said, the fog in his brain beginning to lift. “I think so. It’s going to pass between the Moon and Earth at some point, but it’s not a threat. In fact, it should miss us by . . .”

  Before he could finish, his phone buzzed in his ear, signaling a text. Then it buzzed again and again until he had no choice but to pull it away from his ear and see who was trying to reach him so desperately. He read the texts, all from other NASA and FEMA colleagues, and his stomach did a perfect somersault inside his guts. He put the phone on speaker.

  “Sara?” he said. His voice
sounded small and timid.

  “Yeah, Alex?”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  Fifteen minutes later, a driver pulled up outside NASA headquarters. Alex quickly gathered up his briefcase and papers and pressed his thumb to the pay plate before getting out of the cab and racing inside. Sara met him at the entrance, waving him in vigorously.

  “Hurry up!” she said. “This isn’t time for a stroll!”

  Nice to know that some things haven’t changed, he thought. But he nevertheless obliged, quickening his steps as he made his way toward the building.

  “Is this for real?” he asked.

  “All of the discovery surveys verify,” Sara said. “This is as real as it gets.”

  There were four teams, all based on Earth and known as discovery surveys whose job it was to watch the sky for asteroids. Catalina Sky Survey and Spacewatch were in Arizona, Pan-STARRS was in Hawaii, and LINEAR watched the heavens from New Mexico. There used to be five discovery surveys, but funding for NEOWISE, the space-based robotic telescope, dried up sometime in the middle of the current century.

  “How did no one see it until it was right on top of us?” Alex asked.

  “Because it wasn’t right on top of us until a day ago,” Sara said. “It was going to pass between Earth and the Moon and miss us by several hundred thousand miles. No one was even tracking it.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Alex said. “What shifted its orbit?”

  “Turns out someone was trying to mine it,” Sara said. “It’s a platinum asteroid, apparently. Worth trillions to anyone savvy enough to land mining rights.”

  Alex whistled at the number, then gave Sara a look.

  “I thought asteroid mining was kind of . . . frowned upon.”

  “Yeah, well, booze was frowned upon in the 1920s,” Sara said. “Didn’t stop people from trying to make a profit off of the stuff.”

  “You had to go all the way back to Prohibition to make that point?” said Alex. “I can think of a lot of other dodgy mining operations just since the Moon was coloniz—”

  Sara’s stare silenced him, and he held up his hands.