Zero Limit

by Jeremy K. Brown

  Oh no.

  “Dammit!” she said. “Diaz, the RCS on your suit is failing.”

  “What?” Diaz asked. “What’s failing? What’s happening?”

  Caitlin heard the terror in Diaz’s voice and she felt for him, but there was no time to discuss the situation. With no RCS jets to hold him in place, Diaz would float off the asteroid before it even dawned on him what was happening. Quickly she toggled the jets on her own suit, stopping and starting them so that she could hop quickly over the surface and get to Diaz before something terrible happened. She could see him panicking as she leaped toward him.

  “I can’t hold on, Cutter!” Diaz was screaming. “I’m starting to drift!”

  “Just hold on!” Caitlin called out. “I’m coming to get you!”

  On Diaz’s suit, the jets began to sputter and die like an old combustion engine that had given out. Horrified, Caitlin could see his feet beginning to hover above the asteroid. She was losing him.

  “Cutter!” Diaz called out. “Caitlin!”

  Screw it.

  Caitlin disengaged the RCS jets and pushed off hard, floating in space with her arms outstretched. The terror in Diaz’s eyes was plainly visible as Caitlin drew closer.

  “Hang on!” she yelled.

  They crashed together and Caitlin engaged her own RCS, forcing them both back down to the surface, locked in an embrace. They looked at each other a moment, both breathing heavily.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Caitlin asked, finally allowing herself to smile.

  “Can we get out of here before something worse happens?” asked Diaz.

  Before Caitlin could even think of formulating an answer, they were both blasted apart by something that rocketed up from underneath them. Diaz was suddenly and forcibly ripped from Caitlin’s arms. She reached for him, but his fingers just missed her own, and he was sent into space, tumbling end over end as he left the asteroid’s surface. She could see the look on his face as he was suddenly carried away, a look she knew would be the stuff of her nightmares.

  Instinct took over, and she fired her jets and was pushed back to the surface. Safe on the ground, all she could do was watch. As she lay there, she saw something enter her field of vision, turning gently over and over before floating upward and away. A shard of ice went through Caitlin’s heart as she realized what it was. A tiny acorn.

  “Diaz!” she screamed.

  But he was already gone.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “Caitlin?”

  Back in the PDCO office, Sara continued trying to hail the Alley Oop, hoping to hear something back from the team, something that would assuage her growing fear. She and Alex had been listening as the event unfolded, sitting helplessly as they listened to the panicked cries of Caitlin and Diaz. Sara had been trying to reach Caitlin ever since, but all she had been getting in reply was static. Then finally, Caitlin’s voice, thin and reedy, came over the airwaves and confirmed the worst.

  “He’s gone.”

  The line went dead, and Sara was left to process the news on her own. She hurled down her headset and put her face in her hands. Then, as quickly as the rage and frustration came, it was gone, replaced by steely resolve.

  It can’t end like this.

  She looked over at Alex, who was busy scanning the numbers on the asteroid’s trajectory, trying to discern whether Diaz’s efforts had made any difference. He looked back at her, and his face wore an expression that matched her own. He was upset and saddened as well, but he also knew that there was much more that needed to be done, that the story couldn’t end here for any of them.

  “What the hell happened up there?” Sara asked.

  “I don’t know,” Alex said.

  “Gas pocket,” said Ned, coming into the room and walking over to them. “Water ice on the surface of the asteroid sublimated as it drew in the Sun’s heat. It created a gas jet. Without anything to hold them down, there was nothing to keep them on the ground. It all comes down to basic physics.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Patricia said, tossing a pencil onto the table and leaning back, her hand over her eyes. “What was water ice doing on the surface of an asteroid? Aren’t they usually found on comets?”

  “We’ve been seeing it more and more,” said Sara. “The sheets aren’t usually thick, less than a micron in most cases. But they’re out there.”

  “But we didn’t lose them both, right?” said Alex. “Diaz and Taggart?”

  “No, we’ve still got Taggart,” Ned said. “But Diaz . . .”

  Before he could proceed, Alex looked up from the screen, wearing a lopsided, vaguely optimistic expression that Sara assumed was his attempt at being encouraging.

  “Good news?” she asked.

  “A little of both,” Alex said. “Which do you want first?”

  “Give me the bad news,” Sara said. “It’s that kind of day.”

  “There was more than one gas pocket,” he said. “The sail has been damaged. How badly I’m not sure, but it’s definitely going to affect its ability to push the asteroid out of the way.”

  Sara closed her eyes and sighed, placing her head in her arms.

  “The good news?” she asked, head down.

  “It’s too early to tell for sure,” he said, “but it looks like the sail may have made a slight difference. I don’t think we’re out of danger yet, but it might have helped, even just a little bit.”

  “Great,” said Sara, feeling the helplessness swell up inside her. “So we all might die on Saturday instead of Tuesday?”

  “Come on, Sara,” said Alex. “I’m grasping at straws here.”

  Sara composed herself. “I know,” she said. “I know, I just . . . I don’t like feeling so out of control like this.”

  “If feeling out of control upsets you,” said Alex, “you picked the wrong line of work. Half of what happens up there is out of our control.”

  Sara gave him a look warning him not to test her, and he backed off with his arms upraised.

  “OK, OK,” he said. “Why don’t we take a walk? Just a few minutes to clear your head. They’re going to be regrouping up there, so there’s not much more we can do down here at the moment. Come on. The fresh air will be good for you.”

  Sara looked intently at the computer monitor that showed the asteroid’s slow but relentless approach, then, after a deep breath, turned and stood up, preparing to walk outside with Alex. Before they exited the room, she pointed at him with a stern yet playful expression.

  “Just don’t try to hold my hand, OK?”

  “My own hands will remain squarely in my pockets,” he promised. “On my honor.”

  It was late when they stepped outside, and the traffic along East Street Southwest was light, with only a handful of cars gliding past. Their tires shushed as they made contact with the rain-washed streets. The air was a cool and welcoming contrast to the choked and stifling closeness of the PDCO offices, and Alex and Sara breathed it in gratefully.

  “Feels good, doesn’t it?” Alex asked, seeing the expression on Sara’s face.

  “I don’t know if good is the right word at a moment like this,” Sara said. “But will you settle for better than I was before?”

  “I’ll take it.” Alex reached for the inside pocket of his coat before closing his eyes and shaking his head.

  “Jeez,” he said. “Twenty-two years since I’ve quit and I’m still reaching for a smoke when I get stressed.”

  “I remember,” Sara said. “Not one of your more charming traits.”

  “Lucky I had so many more to balance it out.”

  “Hey, whatever helps you sleep at night,” she said.

  “I don’t sleep at night,” he said. “Why do you think I became an astronomer?”

  “Touché.”

  Alex looked up at the night sky. The rain had stopped, and the clouds were clearing away, allowing a thin sliver of stars to peek through.

  “‘Who knows whether, when a comet shall approach thi
s globe to destroy it, as it often has been and will be destroyed, men will not tear rocks from their foundations by means of steam, and hurl mountains, as the giants are said to have done, against the flaming mass?’”

  He turned his gaze away from the sky and looked over at Sara.

  “‘And then we shall have traditions of Titans again, and of wars with Heaven.’”

  “You’ve got me at a disadvantage here,” Sara said, looking slightly puzzled.

  Alex grinned slightly. “Lord Byron said that,” he said. “In 1822. He knew this day was coming and believed that, when it did, the world would have the means to fight back. And yet here we are, with the end of days right on top of us and we’re blindly stumbling our way through the dark.”

  He kicked at a pebble on the sidewalk and watched it skitter away before it came to rest in a puddle in the street.

  “Hey,” Sara said, “we’re still fighting. All of us are. Down here, up there. That’s all we can do. Fight like hell until we can’t fight anymore.”

  “Still the fount of wisdom, I see.”

  “The question is,” she asked, “are you going to listen this time?”

  “Maybe,” he said. “Maybe . . .”

  Alex glanced at Sara and again felt that strange sense of traveling through time. He saw her through different eyes and wondered how he could have ever let her go in the first place. In the space of that glance, Alex reflected on the various choices he’d made throughout his life, wondering how many had been the right ones.

  “You’re doing it again,” said Sara.

  “What?”

  “Looking at me like a weirdo peeping through a window. If you want to say something, say it.”

  “OK,” Alex said. “I wanted to say that what happened between us was—”

  Sara’s upraised hand stopped him cold.

  “Let me rephrase,” she said. “Say anything but that.”

  “Come on, Sara,” Alex said. “We should talk about it sometime.”

  “Why? We’ve gone fifteen years without talking about it. So why now?”

  “Because . . . who knows what’s going to happen in the next few days. And if I’m going to die, I don’t want to do it carrying regret around.”

  Sara gave him a long and contemplative look, and then laughed.

  “You’re lame,” she said, although there was no malice in her voice. Alex took that as progress.

  “Nice,” he said. “Nice. I’m opening up to you, and this is what I get. I’m going to go back inside now and find a big desk to hide under.”

  “All right,” said Sara. “I’ll be right behind you. I’m going to take another minute out here.”

  Alex turned to leave but looked over at her one last time before he did.

  “You OK?” he asked.

  “Maybe,” Sara said. “Do you have any more Lord Byron quotes?”

  “Uhhhh,” Alex said. “I don’t think so. How about Kansas? Dust in the wind, you know?”

  He started to sing, and Sara’s laughter drowned him out.

  “Please,” she said. “I’ve changed my mind. Let’s go back before someone calls the police.”

  Alex gave her a thumbs-up, and together they walked inside. As he headed up the stairs, his phone buzzed in his pocket. When he looked at the display, his face lit up.

  “What is it?” Sara asked.

  “Just got a message from Patricia,” he said. “Remember we wanted her to look into using a kinetic impactor, something to knock the asteroid out of the way?”

  “Yeah . . .”

  Alex grinned broadly. “We’ve got one.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The Chinese called it the T’ien Lung, after the mythical dragon charged with keeping the gods from falling out of the sky. It was originally built by Starfire, a private spaceflight and exploration company, sometime during the last century. In the early days of lunar travel, Starfire had done brisk business as a delivery service, ferrying people and parcels to and from the Moon. Looking to branch out into other areas, they saw an opportunity in the area of asteroid deflection and built the craft that they dubbed the Rocinante, Don Quixote’s horse. Unfortunately, sometime during the war, Starfire went bankrupt and their assets were acquired by another private company, Tai Shan Enterprises out of Beijing. However, aside from changing the name of the impactor, they had done little else with it, and for the last twenty-five years the vessel had sat unused in a hangar on the Moon. After Patricia reached out to NASA, someone searched the archives and found Starfire’s original plans and proposal. From there, the team at the PDCO were able to trace the craft to Tai Shan. After negotiations between NASA, the China National Space Administration, and Tai Shan Enterprises, the Chinese had agreed to launch the T’ien Lung from the Moon to intercept the asteroid. The last hurdle to clear was to get the president on board via a last-minute video conference to his Catalina Island vacation home. On the call were Sara, Alex, the president, and Xu Zhao, the president of Tai Shan Enterprises. All of them looked tired, except for the president, who was his usual blotchy shade of exasperated.

  “Take me through this one more time,” said the president, “like I’m a six-year-old.”

  “What we’re looking to do, Mr. President,” said Alex, rubbing his temples as though he could jump-start his already overstressed brain, “is hit the asteroid nose first.”

  “So, knock it out of the way?” he asked. “Like a billiard ball?”

  “Not exactly,” Sara said. “What we’re hoping that it will do is slow the asteroid’s velocity down so that it arrives at Earth three and one-third seconds later. Earth moves at thirty kilometers per second in its orbit, so if the T’ien Lung is successful and slows the asteroid down by that much, then in theory, Earth should simply, in a manner of speaking, scoot out of the way.”

  This explanation was greeted with silence. The president stared at them from the video screen blankly. Alex whispered out the side of his mouth to Sara.

  “I think you lost him.”

  Sara nodded and looked back at the screen.

  “Like a billiard ball,” she said. “Just like a billiard ball.”

  The president nodded in return, smiling widely as though pleased with himself that he had been able to follow the scientific line of thinking.

  “Good,” he said. “That’s real good. But now let me ask you something.”

  Everyone tensed in anticipation.

  “If all we need is a big damn spaceship,” he said, “why not just evacuate the Global Space Station and hurl that thing at the asteroid?”

  “Well, there are a number of problems with that solution, Mr. President,” said Alex. “For starters, the time it would take to evacuate the station would be incredibly costly. Every minute we spend on something else is another minute the asteroid gets closer. Additionally, the GSS wasn’t designed for this type of mission, whereas the T’ien Lung was. Yes, it might make a slight difference, but not as significant as the Chinese ship would make. Additionally, even if we considered this option, by the time we could launch the GSS, its proximity to the asteroid means that it would never be able to generate the velocity needed to make a significant impact. And since energy increases as the square of the velocity—”

  “All right, all right,” the president said. “Don’t talk my damn ear off. I was just throwing it out there. And what about the Chinese? You people are willing to provide us with the vehicle?”

  “Yes, Mr. President,” said Xu Zhao. “On one condition.”

  “Jesus Christmas, is this really the time to be discussing conditions?” asked the president.

  “It is a simple one,” Xu said, “and I believe you will be amenable to it.”

  “Lay it on me,” the president said, leaning back in his chair.

  “We want mining rights to the asteroid.”

  “Are you serious?” said Alex.

  “Very serious, Dr. Sutter,” Xu said. “We believe that, although the T’ien Lung will deflect the asteroid f
rom its present course, we can recapture it and safely bring it into lunar orbit, which I believe was the miners’ original intention, was it not?”

  The room fell silent in the wake of Xu’s question. The fact that the asteroid had been set on a collision course with Earth due to a man-made accident caused by a failed mining attempt had not yet been made public knowledge. This made for a somewhat delicate situation when it came to formulating a response. Xu, looking as though he could feel the discomfort radiating from the other side of the screen, simply smiled.

  “We too have our means of uncovering secrets,” he said. “So, do you agree?”

  “To your own point, sir,” said Sara. “Attempting to mine the Thresher asteroid was what caused this disaster to begin with. Do you really want to court disaster by trying to mine it again?”

  “You will forgive me for saying so, Dr. Kent,” Xu said, “but I believe we are better equipped to handle the delicacies of asteroid mining than this particular group of rogues.”

  “They weren’t rogues,” said Sara, leaping to their defense. “They were . . .”

  “Yes, we are well aware of the circumstances surrounding their predicament,” said Xu. “And furthermore, we are aware that all of the miners involved were employees of the Guanghang Mining Company, a Chinese organization. Chinese employees, Earth citizens, lunar refugees. This is a very complicated matter. A simple agreement can uncomplicate it greatly.”

  “And what are we supposed to do if your people screw things up and send the damn thing falling back on our heads?” asked the president.

  “With all due respect, Mr. President,” said Xu, “I am not going to fence with you on this any longer. Those are our terms, both of Tai Shan Enterprises and the Chinese government. Do you accept?”

  “What choice do I have?” the president grumbled. “You people have got me and mine by the short and curlies here.”

  “A vulgar analogy,” said Xu, “but also an apt one.”

  “All right,” the president said. “You’ve got my consent. Now, what do you need?”