Dark Star Rising Second Edition (Pebbles in The Sky)

by Bagley, Jeffery

  The Interdictor Class Ship was similar in size to the Inter-Lunar Cargo Tugs that Mike and Hank had first flown a few years ago. It was only powered by one slightly larger fission reactor however, as it used an advanced VASIMR propulsion system instead of the Hydrogen Moderated Nuclear Thermal System that the ships closer to Earth used. It could not accelerate anywhere near as fast as the tugs, but the Xenon fuel they used lasted much longer and they could basically accelerate or decelerate continuously. For longer trips, this made this type of propulsion much more effective. The ship was also the first class of ship to carry an electromagnetic shield, or force field, as the civvies called it. This protected the crew from cosmic radiation and errant solar flares when it was far from Earth’s protective magnetic field. With a deep space time capability of about three months, it was limited really by the amount of food, water, and oxygen they could carry for the four man crew. On this particular test run however, they were only carrying a crew of three.

  “Interdictor one, go ahead and state your status,” finally the answer came from Space Station Alpha.

  “We are beaming you direct video now,” said Mike. “This piece of rock you picked out for us to practice on is really tumbling. I am not sure that the computer guidance system for the alignment thruster probes can compensate. Your engineering type specialist here advises that we try manually anchoring them. I agree with his assessment but we wanted concurrence from you before we do an EVA to try that.” Mike released his radio button to await the response.

  “If they give the ok for Jerry to go out, I will suit up and standby as a backup in case he gets in trouble,” said Hank.

  Mike nodded his head. “I guess now we see why they did not think that we could launch robotic probes from Earth and do this. It is going to take someone with a good eye and probably lots of practice to get good at this.”

  “Interdictor one, this is Alpha control. We are not real keen on an EVA for manual probe placement. As mission commander on site, we will let you make call. If you wish to abort then we will understand. We do agree with your assessment that the computer guidance system will not be successful for probe implants due to the high rate of tumbling the asteroid has.”

  Mike switched to internal coms. “Hey Jerry, Alpha says it is our call. Do you think you can do it manually? You will probably have to implant at least four Modules for us to get this thing steadied out. If you want to try it, Hank will suit up and standby in the airlock in case you get in trouble. I am letting you make the call.”

  “Hell Colonel, we did not come seven million miles just to turn back without even trying. Let me give it a shot,” Jerry called back.

  “Ok Jerry, your call. Hank, you guys can suit up. I will let Alpha control know we are going to try doing manual implants. Alpha control, we are going to give it a shot, I will keep beaming live video and telemetry for you. Cross your fingers for us.” Mike used his maneuvering thrusters to close with the asteroid until the ship was about two hundred meters away.

  About ten minutes later Mike saw his inner airlock indicator go red as Jerry and Hank entered the airlock. The inner door indicated shut and the airlock indicator showed it was cycling and outer door was opening. “You guys be careful out there, especially you Jerry. That is going to be a rough ride.”

  “Piece of cake,” Jerry called back. “Ok, Colonel, you can go ahead and release probe one.”

  Mike flipped a switch that released the clamps on the first alignment thruster probe. He could see Jerry take the manual controls on the probe. Jerry used its maneuvering thrusters to move it away from the ship and closer to the asteroid.

  The probes were about seven meters across. They looked like a large round storage tank that had been squashed down. On the bottom, or the side that would settle on the asteroid, were four recesses that contained large explosively fired anchoring pitons. As the module touched down on the asteroid’s surface, the four pitons would fire and imbed themselves deep into the surface. The pitons could theoretically penetrate up to two meters in solid granite. On the top was a maneuvering pack that was designed to be operated by a computer that would time the asteroids spin and then drive the module down on the surface and hold it there until the pitons fired and the module was winched down tight. On each of the four sides of the module was a maneuvering thruster. The rest of the module was nothing but a big fuel tank. The idea was that four of these could be implanted on the asteroid. By linking them with a computer they could be fired in a proper sequence to stop an asteroid from spinning and tumbling. Then, a larger main thruster probe would be implanted as close to the center of mass of the asteroid as possible. By firing the main thruster probe and controlling the yaw and spin of the asteroid with the smaller thruster probes, the asteroid could be moved or its trajectory changed. It could be directed away from Earth, or if possible, it could be put into orbit around the moon and mined for valuable metals and other resources.

  “Ok guys, I am ready to give this a try,” said Jerry. “I am going to latch my lanyard to the control panel and ride it down.”

  “Jerry, I am not sure you should ride it down. The probe may or may not bounce if the pitons do not bite. If it rolls, you could be crushed,” Mike cautioned.

  “I need to keep control until it touches down,” said Jerry. “I think that is the only way we can get the thing into position. Here I go.”

  Mike started to say “no” but saw it was already too late. Jerry had fired the thrusters and the probe was approaching the asteroids surface. “Jerry, you are at thirty meters and doing about five meters a second. You better hold on tight.”

  Mike watched the probe hit the surface. Jerry bounced off the top of the probe and was swung out on his lanyard as the asteroid spun and Mike lost sight of the probe and Jerry. “Damn, Hank, you better standby, he was knocked off. I am not showing any telemetry from Jerry or the probe due to the asteroid’s mass blocking the signal.” The asteroid kept spinning and Jerry and the probe came back into view. Jerry had pulled himself back down his lanyard hand over hand and was holding on to the probe.

  “Damn that hurt,” said Jerry, “But we have a good insertion. The next spin around I am going to jump out and try to reach the ship, Hank may have to catch me using his EVA maneuvering pack.”

  “Standing by,” said Hank. On the next spin Jerry jumped. It looked like he was going to be close. As Jerry floated pass the airlock, Hank reached out, grabbed him, and hauled him into the airlock.

  “You guys hold there and let’s talk about this,” said Mike. “I do not think it is safe bouncing around in your suit like that. That is an EVA suit and not a Moon suit.

  “I think I can go in a little slower next time,” said Jerry. “It sort of got away from me that first time. I think I can also strap my legs down on the grab bar so I do not bounce. It really was not that bad. Without any gravity, I got bounced off since I was using both hands on the manual controls. Let’s try another one.”

  “Alright, Jerry, but please be careful. If you pop a seal or something on your suit we are not going to reach you in time before your suit decompresses,” Mike warned.

  The second, third, and fourth pods were implanted on opposite sides of the asteroid with no further excitement. As Hank and Jerry reentered the ship Mike called Alpha Control. “Alpha control, we hope you enjoyed the show back there. We have all four pods down and showing green lights across the board for all of them. We are backing away to one thousand meters and turning control of them over to you.”

  As Mike was moving the ship away from the asteroid, Alpha control radioed back. “Good job out there guys; we did get a little excited on that first one though. We are initiating computer stabilization program in five minutes.”

  After reaching a safe distance, Mike stopped the ship again relative to the asteroid. They could observe while staying well clear in case something went wrong. All of a sudden, several of the thrusters on the pods fired for about five seconds. After about a minute a different series of thrusters
fired. The process kept repeating itself in what appear to be a random process. Mike knew that the pod’s computers were constantly evaluating the asteroids tumble and talking to each other. It was going to take a while to slow the spin of something with that much mass though. Now would be a good time to get some sleep.

  After sixteen hours of total boredom broken up by lunch and another nap, Alpha control called them. “Interdictor one, we are showing that asteroid is stable with no spin or yaw. Can you please confirm?”

  Mike moved the ship back to about five hundred meters away from the asteroid. The crazy tumbling and spinning had stopped. The pods were quiet and the rock just hung there motionless. “Alpha Control this is Interdictor one. Rock is stable. We are going to release main thruster pod and let it deploy automatically. Standby.”

  Hank climbed back into the copilot seat and Jerry perched upside down between them as Mike released the last pod. It was about twice the size of the smaller thruster pods and instead of the sets of maneuvering thrusters on its sides it had one large thruster nozzle on the back. Mike turned the pods computer control on and the pod started probing the asteroid with radar. It slowly calculated the center of mass and aligned itself. It then boosted itself so that it slowly approached the asteroid. It moved slightly to one side to avoid a thruster pod and bumped the asteroid. The anchoring pitons fired and winched the pod down tight.

  “Alpha Control, this is Interdictor One. Main pod is down and we are transferring control to you. We are backing away.” Mike moved the ship back to one thousand meters and stopped it there. “We are clear Alpha. Go ahead with main thrust when ready.”

  After about a minute, bright blue flame erupted out the back of the main thruster engine. After about twenty minutes of thrust, they could tell that the rock was starting to slowly move away from them. At thirty minutes, the main thruster automatically shut down. It had exhausted its fuel supply. The asteroid was moving away from the ship at about three meters a minute. The smaller thruster pods fired a few times and then all was quiet.

  “It does not look like it is moving very fast does it?” asked Jerry.

  “It does not have to be Jerry,” said Mike. “That one little nudge, if done soon enough, can change a rocks course from a direct hit on Earth, to falling into the sun or even into a lunar orbit if we have enough fuel available for it. If need be, the thruster pod could even be refueled and fired again and again until the desired trajectory is established,” Mike replied.

  “Alpha Control, this is Interdictor one. This rock is on its way to the sun. It looks like the pods work, at least on a smaller asteroid like this. We are going to wrap this one up and call it a success. Jerry has some ideas about a seat on the thruster pods for manually guiding them down if necessary you guys may want to work on. We are setting course for home and should be back with you guys in about three weeks.”

  Mike tapped his fingers as he waited for the reply to come back to them. “Affirmative Colonel, good job. We will have a hot shower waiting for you when you get back.”

  “Alright boys, let’s go home. Hank, set us up a course and let’s head home. You guys definitely need a good shower, you both stink,” Mike said with a grin.

  Hank looked at Jerry and winked. “Yea, we all know that a Colonel’s shit never stinks, right Jerry?”

  Jerry just laughed and said, “Get us out of here Major, I am home sick,” as he floated back to his seat to strap in.

  …

  David Honstein relaxed back at NASA/Space Force Control in Houston. They had been monitoring the test of the asteroid deflection thruster pods. General Seale, the Space Force Director, shook his hand. “Well Doctor, it looks like your equipment works. We have just got to train some of my boys to be cowboys and ride the things down.”

  “Hopefully,” replied David, “Most of them will not be tumbling so fast and the computers can guide the pods down. Then, we can send unmanned ships out to intercept any wayward asteroids, at least for the smaller ones. The bigger ones are what give me nightmares. If we cannot detect and deflect them far enough out, then we are going to have to play rough with them.”

  The General nodded. “At least that will give us a way to get rid of some excess nuclear warheads I guess. We will not be able to practice that until it is the real thing though. Let’s just hope we do not have to do it very often. Nuclear tipped missiles, even in deep space, do not make me all warm and fuzzy inside.”

  Chapter 33

  June 11th, 2029

  Macon, Georgia

  Doctor Jessica Driskall walked up and put her hands over her husband’s eyes from behind. “Guess who?” she asked.

  “Hmmm, you must be some hormone soaked third world female pissed at me because you want to have children and can’t. You snuck past the guards outside the lab and have come in to castrate me so I cannot have children either.”

  Jessica pinched his side and went around and collapsed into the chair in front of Brett’s work station. “That’s not even funny, but you’re on the right subject,” said Jessica. She handed him the e-mail she had just printed off the internet. “Read this, it is from Benjamin Greco.”

  Brett looked at her in amazement. “You have to be kidding me. No one has heard a peep from him for how many years now?”

  Brett started reading. “Dearest Jessica and Brett, I know you have not heard from me in about six years and I apologize for my absence. It was prudent for me to retreat to a safe locale and lay low after the mass immunization campaign we started ten years ago was finished. I know that the consequences of that campaign have taken their toll on you both and I want to apologize. Although not totally unexpected, it was an unfortunate result of the plan that my business associates and myself had set up. I could not warn you of our plan in advance because if it had become known what was going to happen it would have failed at the start. At this point, you probably do not think very highly of me, so let me explain our actions.

  The effort that we took to give your birth control vaccine to the women of the third world was not some sort of mass genocide plan or an attempt to remove certain human races from the world. Our effort and goal was to stop the mass starvation that was going to occur in fourteen years after the encounter with the Dwarf Star and our planet starts turning colder. Women in the more civilized countries had already been doing the right thing and reducing the birthrate down to more manageable levels. Left on their own, the people of Africa, India, and other Southeastern countries would never have done that voluntarily. We could not let them bring all those additional children into the world just to starve or die in massive resource wars. We did what we thought best to reduce human suffering in future generations. Watch the news this weekend, you will find it interesting. P.S. I attached a picture of the twins. They are growing like weeds. Luckily, they inherited their mother’s good looks. She would have been proud of them……..Benjamin.”

  “I’ll be damned,” said Brett. “So what is he up to now? What does he mean by watching the news this weekend?”

  “I have no idea,” said Jessica. “I have not turned on the news in so long. It is all bad news anyway. With all the fighting and the starving refugees over in Afghanistan and Cambodia, it is too hard to watch. Even though he was an asshole for what he did, Benjamin may have done them all a favor.”

  “I wonder what kind of plot he has concocted now,” asked Brett.

  Jessica just shook her head and shrugged.

  “How is it going with the artificial cell membrane?” asked Jessica, changing the subject.

  “Frustrating as hell right now,” sighed Brett. “We are literally up against the wall with one of the oldest questions in the world,” he replied. “What came first, the chicken or the egg? In our case we have the chicken so to speak. We now have over one hundred thousand unique sets of DNA stored digitally in the DNA Ark. The problem is, without an egg or cell from a very closely related organism, we cannot get that DNA back into a cell where it will start multiplying on its own. Even then, we s
till have the issue of how to grow it. How do we grow a mammal that normally has a placenta to nourish it without a womb? I am afraid we are still a long ways off before we have an artificial womb. Growing a bird or reptile that matures in an egg is much easier, if we can just solve the cell membrane issue. Mammals though, we have to have a surrogate that can accommodate and not reject the embryo.”

  “We just have to keep trying,” said Jessica. “We have come so far. Ten years, ago nobody would have dreamed of what we have an accomplished to date.”

  Chapter 34

  June 13th, 2029

  Macon, Georgia

  “Brett, come here quick, the news is on and they are doing an interview with Benjamin on CNN World News.” Jessica waved her hand in the air to turn the volume up on the display panel on their living room wall. Brett came in and sat down beside her just as the announcer on the live news show came on.

  “We take you now to Marla Albright somewhere in South America. The reclusive Billionaire Benjamin Greco has agreed to be interviewed by her nearly ten years after the massive vaccination program that left nearly two billion women in the world, most of them in third world countries, barren and unable to have children. Mr. Greco has been demonized by billions of people the world over as an egomaniac supremacist bent on perpetuating genocide. On the other hand, there are many others who have idolized him as saving billions of children from suffering and starving to death. Mr. Greco has agreed to a no holds barred interview with Marla Albright. We take you now to South America. Marla, you’re live there now.”

  “Good evening, everyone. This is Marla Albright reporting live with CNN World news in South America. For security purposes, I cannot tell you exactly where I am, but with me tonight is Mr. Benjamin Greco. Mr. Greco, as I am sure all of you already know, was the chairman of the philanthropic group that bankrolled the massive Immunization campaign back in 2019 and 2020. The campaign, totally financed by Mr. Greco and his associates vaccinated over two billion people, mostly from poor third world countries to protect them from such terrible diseases as HIV, Hepatitis, Malaria, Cholera, and many others. The vaccine was offered free of any expense to all these people. What the population who accepted the vaccines did not realize at the time that they were administered, was that the price they would pay for being protected from these ravaging diseases was that the women and girls receiving them would become unable to have children. This was because the marvelous birth control vaccine developed by the Nobel Prize winning Doctors Brett and Jessica Driskall, had been added in with the other disease vaccines in secrecy.”