by Peter Damon
“Why don’t you take the opportunity to shower and have some breakfast?” Gail asked.
“Is that a polite way of saying I stink?” Heather asked.
“And that the baby needs some nourishment,” Gail nodded.
When Heather returned about an hour later, it was to see Samuel slowly stand, nod his head and turn towards the door.
“Is he alright?” Heather asked the large man as he slowly closed the door behind him.
“Michael? He’s fine. He’ll probably need to sleep for a while. I can have that effect on people,” he grinned.
Heather glanced in to see Michael on his back sleeping peacefully, his face still, devoid of expression.
“He’s asleep already,” Heather confirmed.
“No, he’s not,” Gail told her, looking at her screen and the readings she was receiving from her patient.
“No,” Samuel agreed. “He’s praying,” he explained, and smiled one more time before leaving.
“Michael praying? Now, that has to be a first,” Heather murmured, watching him through the screen.
++++++++++++
Samuel entered the control-room and nodded at Allan, seated comfortably at the main control board, a thick book to one side of him as he attempted to study. He smiled, struck by the incongruous nature of the tome in this edifice of leading-edge technology, yet delighted to find it still had a place there.
“We think ROSCOSMO are going to try and launch a manned mission with us as their destination,” he explained to the mathematician. “Is there anything we can do to stop them without risking the wrath of the United Nations?” he asked.
“Quite a lot really,” Allan told him. “Their technology doesn’t allow them to carry a lot of fuel. That’s why the regular trips to the ISS took so long to dock. To do it any quicker would have meant expending fuel to accelerate and decelerate; fuel they don’t have.
“We’re already higher than the ISS, probably right at their upper limit for manned crafts. All we need do is alter our orbit slightly. Changing speed would really upset their fuel calculations,” he grinned.
“And we can wait until after the launch to do that?”
“That would be best,” Allan agreed. “Control-rooms really don’t like having surprises during a space mission,” he chuckled.
++++++++++++
Robert Fuller entered the ARC’s control-room to smile a greeting at Oliver, still seated at his ‘desk’. He gave the older man a cup of tea and sat on a nearby chair to ask how it was coming along.
“Slowly,” Oliver confessed to his apprentice. “I’ve got to keep up thinking of new angles, otherwise the media will see that it’s old and ignore it,” he explained. “What about you?” he asked the nodding young man.
“Nearly there, it still runs to over an hour though,” he explained, referring to the documentary he was putting together. His working title was ‘The Rise and Fall of the Rolle College’. It was perhaps an over-used title, but more apt than many other uses of the title’s opening words.
“Got to get it down to fifty minutes,” Oliver stressed.
“I know, I know,” Robert agreed. “I’ll get it done today,” he promised.
“If you’re sure, I’ll begin touting it to the TV companies,” Oliver offered.
Robert looked suddenly unsure. “You don’t want to edit it first or anything?” he asked.
“No. I’m sure it will be fine,” Oliver told him with a paternal smile. “Well?”
Robert licked his lips, took a breath and nodded. “Go for it!” he agreed, and all but ran from the room in his haste to make sure he did the best job possible on it.
++++++++++++
“That gives us the centre of gravity, near about,” Matt was saying as the team examined the three dimensional map that Peter had generated from the laser mapping from the previous day.
He touched his tablet and three red lines appeared on the screen display in the control-room, dissecting the oddly shaped piece of rock and meeting somewhere off-centre.
“So where do we put the HYPORT?” Frankie asked.
“We’re going to use five ‘tugs’; big blocks of HYPORT. Allan will help us ‘tune’ their output into a complete propulsion unit so we only have to tell the app the direction and speed, and the programme will control power to each tug.”
“And the power source?” Frankie asked.
“We can’t rely on fixed solar panel, so we’re going to use those flat 2 kilowatt batteries we use in the SUVs,” Matt explained. They were thin, like a quilted bed-sheet, and could be folded or placed on top of each other if need be. “They’ll need to be replaced with fresh batteries every four hours.”
“Doesn’t seem like a lot of battery power to me,” Brendon admitted.
“Well, it’s not going to wiz the 1 billion tonne asteroid back to earth in five minutes,” Matt admitted. “In fact, it’s going to take close to 20 days.”
“20 days,” Frankie asked, rising an eyebrow.
“HYPORT is not as magical as some people would like to believe,” Matt explained. “It still obeys the laws of physics. The asteroid has mass and a velocity. Changing that is going to take real energy.
“We’ve got around 1 billion tonnes of asteroid moving in one direction, and we not only want to change that to have it head towards earth, but catch up with earth too. So we’re going to have to accelerate to over 4 times its current velocity,” he pointed out.
“But doable,” Brendon asked.
“Sure, but it will take us 20 days to do it,” Matt agreed.
++++++++++++
Don Graves, the elderly professor from Harvard University, poked his head around Michael’s door and tried a smile.
“Don’t. Your smile is far too worrying to someone who’s not seen it very often,” Michael told him, putting aside his book of crossword puzzles.
He was sitting up in his bed, a man who appeared calm and tranquil, so much so that Don wondered what tranquilisers they had given him.
“Your other two-thirds has warned me that I’m not to upset you,” Don said, cautiously stepping into the room and easing himself around the lone visitor’s chair.
“Two impossibilities in one day,” Michael told him. “No wonder I’m sick,” he jested.
“Yes, well, I’m sorry, but needs must, and all that.”
“What’s wrong Don?” Michael asked, tired with fooling around.
“Harvard has been in touch, and told me that the deal is off and I’m to come home as soon as possible, if not before,” Don explained.
Michael remembered Samuel’s advice and took a deep breath, concentrating on it for a moment, just long enough to let the irritation he felt dissipate. That such a simple remedy actually worked surprised him. He berated himself for not having learnt the technique years earlier and thought of all the years spent seeking calm through regular shots of alcohol.
“I see,” Michael nodded.
“No, you don’t,” Don told him sharply, reverting to his true nature. “Whatever our backgrounds, our arguments and disagreements, Pavel, Chas and I are a team, and what we’ve done here is only the beginning. We’ve barely scratched the surface of not only the potential of the chemical, but of what it can teach us about particle physics, and more importantly, gravity,” he explained.
“Isn’t that what Harvard want?” Michael asked. “For you to explain it to them? Hasn’t their investment in you been for this moment?” he pressed.
“Quite possibly, but it won’t happen that way. What will actually happen, is that our respective universities will grill us for every little thing that has occurred up here. They will want to learn anything and everything that might help them duplicate HYPORT. Only when they’ve exhausted us will they free us from our close confinement, but only to a slightly larger cage, one in which we can write up everything we’ve done to date, and talk about it to everyone and anyone who will listen. It will be at least five years, possibly as many as ten before they allow us to b
egin fresh experiments, if at all. They may well consider us a risk, because we’ve failed to provide them with enough information to obtain their goal. They may never allow the three of us to meet again,” he explained.
Michael nodded. “And so?” he asked.
Don became evasive, clearing his throat and looking about him.
“Come on Don,” Michael pressed.
“I understand the Prime Minister has made David and Thomas a promise, a new laboratory, a big team, unlimited research funding.”
“And you want to go with them?” Michael asked with incredulity.
“You must be joking!” The professor cried. “If it exists at all, which I doubt, then it will be an old aerodrome somewhere in middle England, prefab buildings inside a perimeter road with a high perimeter fence. It’s a secure prison. A maze for the lab rat.”
Michael didn’t like the analogy and counted his breaths while clinically reviewing what Don had told him.
“You want to stay here,” he concluded, and watched the older man nod.
“You want me to defy the United Nations, the United States, Great Britain and Russia and provide a home for wayward scientists in the slim chance that, before we run out of some indispensible consumables only obtainable on earth, you find the breakthrough that, to an even greater degree than that of the original chemical, requires us to keep it from every commercial and military authority on earth,” he murmured. “Would that be a fair assessment?” he asked dryly.
Don shrugged while also looking a tad guilty. “Someone has to step up to the mark, Michael. What’s the alternative?”
“How about having some friends still alive at the end of it all?” Michael asked, and took a studied breath.
Don cocked his head, eyebrows lowered in reflection. “Do you really want to risk one of us knowing a little too much about HYPORT and its manufacture?” he asked.
“No, I don’t. Get out. Go study, or something,” Michael responded, and gazed up at the ceiling, half of his mind counting his deep breaths, the other concentrating on the dilemma Don had brought him.
++++++++++++
If nothing else, Pierre Moulier was persistent, Samuel reflected as he chose to ignore another of the man’s attempts to reach him. Accompanying those calls were others, most notably from Stan Charway, no doubt with exactly the same question; what were they up to?
Allan had also alerted him to the growing number of requests for information that the UNSA offices were beginning to send them. Most, if not all, were for petty things, things of such little consequence as to seem worth supplying the answer, if only to stop the multitude of chase requests they were receiving.
Samuel studied the problem with his usual calm approach, and then contacted Allan. “We want a standard response, automated as much as possible, to the effect we’re busy closing down the Annex, and all further enquiries should be made in writing to some appropriate dot com,” he explained. “Can that be simply done?”
“No problem,” Allan assured him.
Samuel nodded. At best they were playing for time, but beyond that, he had absolutely no idea what they could do, other than comply.
++++++++++++
“On three,” Samuel said from the control-room of the ARC, intent on the monitors on the far wall, each displaying a key location to the testing operation required by the Howard boys.
“Three!” he called.
In the stark white laboratory that the twins used for testing and development, the first set of students entered the bar-code of the five samples selected for testing, and the five were carried from the storage laboratory to the docking bay where a second team of students awaited them.
There were five special containers sitting in the docking bay. Each container had been converted into a remote test laboratory, the life support and equipment inside designed to support a specific range of tests that were to be carried out on the new version of the HYPORT chemical.
The students based in the docking bay loaded the five special containers with separate samples of the chemical, entering the code of the container into the database to record the history of each batch of chemical, and ensure it could be traced all the way through its test cycle.
With the containers loaded and sealed, the docking bay emptied of staff, another student activated the first app on their tablet and the containers sped off to take up their respective stations a safe distance from the ARC and outside of the orbit of all earth-owned satellites. If one or more exploded, their debris would not cause a problem to any other existing orbiting structure.
Each container would signal when it had reached its assigned position. Designated students would receive the signal, and, using remote equipment, initiate each of the tests required of the new chemical compound.
It took the shipping containers five minutes to reach their position, and another one to confirm the environment had reached the parameters required for the start of each test.
Students stood in prefabricated units that mirrored the shipping container’s contents; work surfaces and test equipment, the student facing large monitors that showed them the interior of the distant containers. Moving, they moved the robot in the shipping container. Reaching to their left, they extended a robotic arm towards the waiting chemical in the container. Picking up an empty glass vial, they picked up the real thing in the real laboratory, and moved it onto the first test.
“Recording weight and temperature,” they each murmured, adding their voices and anecdotal comments to the data being recorded from the shipping container.
Test results, data and video, were automatically stored on a server on the ARC, and the twins, together with the three professors, were on hand to conduct an initial review to see if any had exhibited the qualities they were looking for. Their conclusions would either require further testing, or for the container to return so that it could be loaded with another batch of chemical and begin the whole process again.
++++++++++++
Samuel entered the control-room to glance towards Sally and Allan before turning his attention to the far wall where a feed from one of their spy-satellites gave a good image of the ROSCOSMO rocket sitting on its launch-pad.
“What do we know?” he asked of the two of them, joining Sally behind Allan’s desk.
“Not much. They’re being very quiet or they’re using low-powered or closed-link communication system that we can’t access,” Allan said.
“But it’s a manned mission, and there’s no way they can board us?” Samuel asked.
“That’s right,” Allan agreed.
“It appears that China is preparing to launch too,” Sally told them.
Both men stopped to look at her, both clearly holding back questions they knew she wouldn’t know the answer to.
She nodded nonetheless. “A manned mission. Again, they’re not saying much, certainly nothing to say that their launches are connected.”
“Too much of a coincidence?” Samuel wondered aloud, returning his gaze to the image on the screen.
“But in harmony with each other, or in reaction to each other?” Allan mused.
There was no way of knowing. “What of the USA and Europe. Any activity?” Samuel asked.
“None that I can see,” Sally told them with a shake of her head. “At least, not from their civil launch facilities. They may well have mobile military facilities that I’m not aware of, and will certainly have submarines with launch facilities that I can’t trace,” she explained.
Samuel watched the launch as the main engines of the rocket bloomed and it began to rise, accelerating quickly as it left the gantry behind to begin its long climb from the ground.
“We have lift-off,” Sally breathed, reciting the iconic words first uttered by NASA back in 1950.
They continued to watch until Allan confirmed the trajectory would put them in an orbital apogee of 250 kilometres, well below that of the ARC.
“So they’re not coming to visit us?” Samuel asked.
&nb
sp; “I very much doubt they have enough fuel,” Allan explained. “They might have enough to push themselves towards us, but to then stop?” he asked, and answered with a shake of his head.
“Begs the question; just what are they up to? Keep monitoring them, Sally. Let us know of any change,” Samuel begged.
++++++++++++
The crew of Freedom One were growing tired and some chose a cup of strong coffee over their preference for tea, before taking seats in the control-room to wait for the important mission to begin.
Peter stepped back in, coffee in hand, and nodded to the others as he sat down and turned his attention to the monitors on the far wall.
“We’re ready,” Frankie announced.
“You’re green,” Allan confirmed from his position on the ARC.
Frankie touched the app and watched the screen, unsure as to whether he’d see anything.
Seconds slid by in silence, before Joyce suddenly squealed and jumped up and down.
“It’s accelerating, it’s accelerating!” she cried excitedly. “And turning too!” she told them, grinning brightly.
“Allan?” Frankie queried.
“It’s in the green,” he confirmed. “It will reach a high earth orbit on the 14th November,” he told them. “50,000 kilometres above the earth’s equator.”
“Christ Frankie, what are we going to be doing for the next month?” Brendon asked, his face a picture of shock.
“For me,” he answered, standing and reaching back to press his hands into the small of his back, “I’m going to catch up on some sleep,” he told them.
“Joyce, find us somewhere safe to park, then turn on the monitors and alarms and then the rest of you can get some sleep too,” he told her and them. He was already heading to the door.
“We’re on night-time,” he added as he reached the door. “So no loud noises, please,” he begged, and headed out.
Joyce grinned and found a suitable place for Ricky to move them to, then waited for him, too excited to even think of sleep.
