The World Game

by Allen Charles

  At thirty seconds before lift off, the three pilots activated emergency alarm sirens in their transports, loudly wailing klaxon warnings. Enough to make everyone freeze in their tracks and look for the source of the danger. In that instant the pilots closed the doors automatically, over-riding the safety switching that prevented bodies, limbs or objects from being crushed or severed in the doorway. Screams came from two of the transports as people struggling to get in were caught in the doorways. Arms and torsos were severed and dropped inside the air lock as the former arm owners writhed in agony and bled out on the gangway rolling in the bloody pools of guts and legs of those maybe more fortunate to have been killed outright. The crowd withdrew in horror at the shock of the violence and the abrupt end of life before their eyes.

  After a few seconds of silence within the strident alarms, the collective anger of the mob grew, suppressing their individual will to survive, and as one they fell on the outer hull of the transport, hitting it with bare fists or anything at hand. The bloody smears and impacts did nothing to a metal skin designed to withstand meteorite impact.

  The pilots saw that there was no way to push back the angry mob, so they engaged drive and started launch with seconds to spare. The grasping hands slid away as those closest to the first transport were dragged by friction against the gangway safety fence, then the transports were free and the crowds fell forward off the gangways onto the rails. Those fallen on the rails at the first and second gangways were crushed by the second and third transport as they passed. Blood flowed like water between the rails as the remaining people looked on in horror as the red streaked transports, with their only hope of survival, drew away and vanished up the Skyhook.

  An engineer in the crowd, his face contorted in raw, animal anger, screamed out “Why should they get away? Look what they did! They need to pay! They need to come back and get us all or they should die!” The crowd turned to him. A single voice called out “Come back or die! Come back or die!” The engineer screamed “Follow me! I can turn off the power to the Skyhook. We can make them come back!”

  The crowd parted allowing the engineer to lead the way and then surged after him, oblivious to the fact that their existence was limited to the minutes until the shock wave struck. They started chanting “Come back or die!” as they ran behind the engineer who was heading for the master control room.

  The pilots of the first three transports that had left had no idea of what had occurred. They had reached the minimum separation point and from then on every second on the Skyhook was a bonus. They were monitoring the approach of the shock wave and decided that five more minutes was as much as they could consider. They had calculated to be at least ten thousand miles from the Skyhook when the shock wave would hit.

  The pilots of the second group did not have that luxury of decision. They were working on separation seconds before the shock wave hit, at the very minimum thirty minute separation point.

  The pilot of the second transport in this group was reporting an air lock error due to an object jammed in the doorway. He decided to put the transport on auto pilot and to go and clear the blockage. He was not looking forward to what he was likely going to find, but he activated his youniform and buddy for vacuum activity and left the flight deck. As he passed through the passenger cabin he saw the expressionless, stunned look on every face. There was no talk.

  He cycled the inner lock only to find that it was deactivated due to vacuum in the air lock. The outer door was not sealed at all. The only way he could fix the problem was to open the inner lock manually and allow the cabin pressure to drop as the air was sucked out in the time it took for him to move into the air lock and close the inner door again. He clicked on his internal intercom mike and spoke to his charges. “Ladies and gentlemen, we have an emergency. We will be experiencing a drop in cabin pressure momentarily. To ensure the fastest recovery to normal pressure, please look around you and secure any loose objects of paper that may be drawn into the vacuum and prevent door closure. Do this now. RIGHT NOW!” he screamed the last to shock the passengers into action. When was satisfied that loose items and debris were secured, he turned to the inner door manual opening sequence. Peering through the small view port he could just see a lighter slit where the outer door should have been closed. The slit was interrupted towards the lower half by an object blocking the light. He hated to think what that object might be. In any case his view was obscured by the fine mist of gore that had deposited all over the air lock.

  The problem he faced was simple. Either he could clear the blockage and close the outer door, taking the risk that the mechanism was damaged and all the atmosphere in the craft would vent, or leave it alone and take the chance that the inner door would hold. The inner door was not designed to withstand the forces that the outer door would routinely encounter. It was simply an emergency second defense and air lock mechanism rated for six hours of continuous vacuum. Space City was more than six hours away. Much more.

  CHAPTER 23

  Skyhook Control, Goddard.

  The engineer had reached the control center at Goddard and along with three others who had come forward professing knowledge of the power system, were looking at the grid schematics presented in 3-D before them. The engineer had found the VR gloves that made the virtual reality concrete. He had them on and was working through the grid turning off every switch he could find. Gradually the green conduit lines represented were all turning red, until finally he narrowed down the Skyhook feed to three possibilities. Without any hesitation he shut down all three – and the lights went out. There was screaming and howls of fear from the blinded mob, the darkness total and almost tangible. Then even the sounds of terror were smothered by an increasing rushing sound, like a train coming out of a subway, hundreds of trains. The shock wave had arrived!

  CHAPTER 24

  Aboard Carver’s Space Transport.

  Fuller and Carver were glued to the comms screen. They were aware of the six transports following them up the Skyhook, but they were watching the shock wave approach Goddard and the Skyhook base.

  “Time to release!” Carver stated decisively. “We need to be far enough away from the Skyhook to avoid whiplash effect, regardless if it is just energy wave transmission of a complete severance of the Skyhook from its ground anchors.”

  “What are the likely outcomes?” Fuller asked.

  “There are two principal disaster scenarios presented in flight study. What we are facing is orders of magnitude greater than anything ever anticipated.” Carver flicked a switch and spoke an override code into her youniform microphone. A noticeable force of acceleration pressed the cadets back into their seats as the reaction mass engines kicked in. The transport was now a free flight space craft. Watching out the window, Fuller saw the apple sized earth swinging away under the belly of the craft, the blue of the oceans and the dappled colors of continents now mostly a uniform silver, interrupted only by cloud banks.

  A further turn of a few degrees revealed the Skyhook behind them, dwindling away to an invisible point on the surface, attached to a small wedge of surface that was visibly being consumed by the silver cloud as it rolled forward. There were clearly only minutes to go before the shock wave met Skyhook.

  Fuller, still mesmerized by what he was seeing, whispered “What were the two outcomes?”

  Janine glanced at him, never having seen him so close to losing it. “Are you OK?”

  “Yes, I’m fine. Shocked, but fine. Please tell me.”

  “OK. Scenario one. Closest to an energy transfer. A transport or a meteor strikes the Skyhook. We only need to consider the low altitude strike now. The carbon mono filament shell will hold integrity up to an atomic explosion, but the energy transmission will cause a ripple to run along the Skyhook in both directions. The ground anchors will dissipate the downward force. The upward ripple will behave like the ripple of a skipping rope. If both ends are held firmly the ripple will be absorbed by the holding points and transmitted to an energy s
ink. It goes away. Our problem is that we do not have a fixed energy sink at the top of Skyhook. It is held in place by some clever Lagrange mathematics. When the ripple hits the top, it is going to flick like a bull whip tip. And toss off anything on the Hook as the ripple travels. That is the good news John.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Give it to me. The bad news.”

  “Scenario two. The Skyhook is severed at some point. In this case at the base. What happens when you have a bucket of water on the end of a rope being swung around horizontal to the ground, which negates gravity for our intent?” Janine paused, seeing that Fuller knew exactly what she was getting at. “The rope stays taut and the water remains in the bucket under centripetal forces just as long as the velocity of the swing is maintained at a certain minimum. You can swing faster and the tension on the rope becomes greater. Then you let the rope go. The bucket goes flying off and becomes subject to other forces that were negligible compared with the centripetal force. It takes off and the rope follows it, bucking and twisting as it is affected by localized forces around it.

  The Skyhook is a huge bucket on a string, with the bucket in vacuum and the string end in atmosphere. If it gets sliced it is going to take off at some extreme velocity with its directional vectors dictated by the tail. Kinda like the tail wagging the dog.” Fuller gave her a half hearted grin. “So it takes off? What’s the danger?”

  “The theoretical directional uncertainty from the Skyhook vertical position is a planar arc of around thirty degrees. Like a narrow fan. Space City is the bulls eye of the target. We have to hope that the tail wags the dog enough to miss Space city.”

  He looked at her. “We have nowhere to run. We can’t risk Space City until this is over.” He put his head in his hands. “Oh, God help us!” he murmured.

  CHAPTER 25

  Yellowstone National Park.

  The super volcano was belching magma and ash into the atmosphere in never before seen volumes while molten rock spewed into pyroclastic rivers that carved new pathways through what had once been lush nature reserves, now scorched landscapes with barely a tree stump smoldering. There was no living thing within a hundred miles of this boiling landscape. Multiple craters pocked the area as magma surfaced through cracks and melted new vents. The earth mantle was like a giant sponge oozing out liquid, but without the resilience of a sponge. As the magma pipes grew wider and more numerous, the infrastructure of the crust was being compromised to the point of total collapse into a super crater. Rivers which drained into the region boiled and vaporized their total flow, adding superheated steam to the miasma and forming mud-rain as it liquefied in the atmosphere.

  There was no one to see it, not even from space due to the ash cloud, as the center of the cataclysm simply sank into the surface. The dimple grew as the edges followed into the boiling lake of lava that was exposed. In the centre of the molten lake a new phenomenon appeared as the liquid lava drained downwards into the earth. A whirlpool appeared, only explained by the enormous number of vents that had allowed the internal magma pressure to drop to the point that reverse flow was possible. Unheard of in geological theory, but there it was. The earth was suffering a wound like a flesh eating bacteria on a body.

  The collapse raced outwards at the edges at sixty miles an hour and not appearing to be letting up and passed out from under the ash cloud, finally visible to those in space.

  Aboard Air Force One, now in low earth orbit, the President and anyone who could be spared from immediate duty were glued to the windows, watching events unfold beneath them as their orbit took them over the volcanic region. Far over the horizon to the east they could not see the silver wave front as it approached Goddard and the Skyhook. The shock wave would reach Yellowstone in about 25 minutes when their orbital position would be down on the horizon to the west. The other side of the wave would soon be racing past them in the opposite direction as it totally engulfed the surface.

  “What is happening down there Chuck?” The President asked Hanes. “Have we got anyone on board who can explain this?”

  “We are in contact with Space City. There are geologists up there but they are not in viewing range now. We sent up the imagery and we are waiting for interpretation.”

  The President sighed and went back to looking out the window.

  A flight officer tapped on the cabin door and entered, handing a note to Hanes, who scanned it and sucked in his breath.

  “Tell me Chuck.”

  “Oh man, Tom. This is not good.” He looked up with a wry grimace, realizing the silliness of the comment. “The geologists are saying that the super volcanic region is collapsing in on itself. Because they cannot see the epicenter due to the ash cloud, they are theorizing that a lava lake is forming. One of them is of the opinion that crust collapse is imminent and the lava lake will implode and be sucked back into the earth. The other two discount this as a remote possibility. They all agree that the lava lake will expand until cooler geologic formations are encountered that will stop the melt.”

  “Do they say where it will go from there? What about the shock wave when it hits?”

  “None of them have any certainty of what happens next. The one who suggested the implosion does say that the shock wave could travel down into mantle and cause massive fragmentation as the energy of the wave is bottled up and concentrated. He says the earth itself could shatter.”

  The two looked at each other, the flight officer still standing by listening in shock. Chuck turned to the officer. “Not a word. There is nothing anyone can do. There is no point in starting a panic. Report back to your station.”

  “Yes Sir!” The officer turned smartly, composure regained, and left.

  Hanes looked at his watch. “Twenty minutes and we find out who was right.” They went back to staring out of the window.

  CHAPTER 26

  Aboard the Space Transports

  The strident scream of sirens punctuated by the shouted orders over the PA system “Strap in! Strap in or find a hand hold! Skyhook release is immediate. Power failure emergency!” The steady acceleration that had held everything in place had ceased and loose items floated about in the weightless environment. Bits of paper fluttered in the ventilator breeze while potato crisps ballooned into an out of control cloud. Bodies floated, arms and legs flailing for control. Without weightless training there was only panic.

  All six transports had separated successfully. Aboard the fifth transport with the jammed air lock, X5, the co pilot had handled the separation while the pilot had grabbed onto the air lock handle as the artificial gravity disappeared. His intention was to examine the air lock jam and then decide on a plan to fix it or leave it alone and rely on the inner door. That option was not to be. As he grabbed the handle the residual momentum of his body twist took the handle around or suffer a broken wrist.

  An ominous hissing sound started as the lock released and only the internal cabin pressure held the door closed. There should not have been any leakage.

  The pilot’s mind went into trained auto drive mode, analyzing the problem and deciding that some debris must also be trapped in the inner lock seal. The extra pressure of the lock itself had controlled the leakage until a moment ago. Now the craft was tumbling in free space out of control with the limited air slowly leaking out. His body was now flattened against the door pod due to the acceleration of the transport. He couldn’t open the door to clear the blockage because the outer door was unsealed. He doubted if he could open it against the cabin pressure on his own any way. His own youniform and buddy would keep him alive even if the atmosphere ran out completely, but his passengers were good as dead if he could not do something very quickly to stop the leakage.

  Could he turn the lock handle back and slow the leak or stop it? Without some purchase to push against he was helpless.

  He scrabbled his feet about, feeling for a projection or anything he could push against. His toes found a protrusion and he jammed his foot hard against it, hoping it was not just some weak
, plastic molding. He applied pressure gradually between the lock handle and his foot. Fortunately the direction to close the lock was away from his body, so he was pushing the handle. The projection at his foot held so he applied more pressure to the handle.

  Suddenly the hissing increased as the lock dogs failed to engage their holes in the frame and pushed the door gap wider. The air was now rushing out disastrously.

  CHAPTER 27

  Aboard the remaining five transports.

  Aboard the other five transports things were going smoothly. The first three were thousands of miles higher than the second and closer to their objective, space city. The last three were at a point that significant reaction mass would be needed to escape earth’s gravity well and reach the City.

  Air Force One was at low earth orbit waiting for a pick up shuttle from Space City.

  “Attention all stations! Attention all stations! This is Commander Janine Carver on Skyhook Transport Designated X7. Warning! Warning! Our calculations show that if the Skyhook is severed at the base by the anti-matter shock wave, the probability of the Skyhook terminus mass sling shooting into Space City with some level of significant impact, is in the range of 25% to 35% probability. Failing higher authority or executive direction, it is my recommendation that Space city be immediately evacuated until the danger has passed and that all Skyhook transports stand off out of range of whiplash effect of the Skyhook and do not approach Space City until danger is cleared. This message is now on automated loop repeat on guard channel.”

  Janine put the comms back to local. “What do we do now?”