by Peter Damon
Michael smiled and stood. “We need to get our priorities right, here,” he told them. “Will it stop Wendy-Claire from being sick all over me?” he asked.
May 7th.
James was deeply engrossed in an archive of the gravitational abnormally that Freedom One had created immediately before the most recent asteroid had started moving towards them. He replayed it again, a finger extended, dropping it as the numbers shifted. He was relatively certain that this was the signature of a ’push’ on the back of the asteroid, the cause of its sudden motion towards the earth. Now, all he had to do was find a way to prove it.
He was still deep in thought when he suddenly realised that the room had fallen quiet. He looked up and around him, and saw everyone had stood. At the door, just inside it, stood Joanna Bradworth, the President’s Chief of Staff.
“Sorry,” he gasped, quickly standing.
She waved the discourtesy away with a wave of her hand and a smile, and came forward to look at his monitor. “What are you studying?” she asked, leaving two armed service personnel at the closed door.
He explained, playing back the sequence for her, slowing it just before the change to help her ‘see’ the moment that the distortion to space-time had occurred.
She shook her head. It wasn’t one of her skills, though she little doubted that James could see it.
“Do you really believe they are trying to help us?” she asked.
“Well, I wouldn’t go so far as to say help,” he qualified. “But I don’t believe they’re out to destroy us, or put our technology back 100 years,” he told her. “Frankly, if they wanted to do that, then just one asteroid, carefully aimed, and pushed with enough force, would do it.”
She nodded. She agreed. But they were betting with the lives of millions of people. She needed more, and told him so. “You have to find me proof. Something I can take to president, something that will stop us wasting all this time, energy and money and allow us to concentrate on what’s important,” she expressed.
James nodded. “Yes Ma’am,” he agreed, and took her hand when she offered it.
“I hope to hear from you soon,” she told him, passing him her card with her private number on it.
+++++++++++++
The crew of Freedom One were hard at work, continuing to take detailed samples from the larger asteroids around them, when the alert signal was sent out.
In some cases it was heard through speakers in rooms, in others, the signal was fed directly to the ear through embedded electronics, but everyone heard it, and stopped what they were doing to look towards the small and distant sun.
The ARC was being consumed. It had reached a point where the heat of the sun would reduce it to liquid, a brief point before the increasing heat would make the liquid boil away into a gas.
“Farewell,” said a voice over the open channel, quickly followed by others.
Slowly, one by one, they returned to their work.
Michael, lifting himself from another assessment of their situation, saw David and Thomas enter the lounge and straightened to wave them over. Something had been niggling him for a while now, and the twins were just the right people to solve it for him.
They greeted him, one speaking, both holding up a hand in greeting, and sat down to sip their tea in complete unison.
“Oliver was telling me; earth has a way of seeing us, following us wherever we go,” he told them.
They nodded. “They do, but we think only the United States is using it,” they told him.
“Really?”
The twins glanced towards one another, as if communicating silently. “The ability to see pockets of gravity has been known and possible for some time. The theory is as old as Einstein. The application is far more recent, but the first facility was built with the aim of looking back, towards the centre of the universe, to gain a better understanding of how it was born.
“Somebody at the University of Arizona used it to look for us and, hey presto, we’re there!” they grinned.
“So they ‘see’ gravity,” Michael said, trying to imagine that.
“They see what gravity produces,” they clarified for him. “Gravity bends particles towards it; even sub-atomic particles. The GAIS telescope can detect and measure this bending and determine not only the size of it, but its location in space-time.”
“And we’re not worried about this?” Michael asked.
“No,” they shrugged. “It’s physics,” was their initial answer.
“More interestingly, it helps us understand HYPORT that little bit better. When HYPORT emulates gravity, it has the same effects one would see from gravity. It distorts the surface of space-time, proves the mathematics, and helps us measure the energy output.”
“That measure is important, because if we know the Newton value of what is being affected, and the energy being used, we can look at the difference and say; that’s what we have yet to understand,” they told him, smiling in complete affinity with each other.
+++++++++++++
General Pat Mears was in Cape Canaveral, finishing his tour of the NASA assembly area and nodding his satisfaction with their progress. The long and tall building he now stood atop of, looking down into the massive space within, could prepare up to five of their new Space Launch System rockets, and was already preparing the first.
In addition to using the large RS25 engines for primary lift into outer-space, the second stage rocket had the newly modified J2X engines, powerful enough to take 10 metric tonnes and fling it away from the sun and beyond, into outer-space.
“I hear the Russians are developing a rocket to lift double this,” General Mears said.
“The Angara A7,” David Brookes nodded. “You’ll also know that their new engines haven’t had a successful firing yet, and it has no second stage ability. When the problems with their engines are fixed, it will put big things into LEO, but little beyond that,” he pointed out.
“And Europe? Their Ariane rocket?” the general asked.
David shook his head once more. “All rocket development for the last two decades has focused on deployment to GEO, and deliveries to the International Space Station. Just look at our stock of Atlas and Delta rockets,” the man from NASA pointed out. They too had limited use beyond low earth orbits.
“Hence this Space Launch System was so delayed,” General Mears nodded.
“Frankly General, the mathematics is inconclusive. We may not be able to lift enough megatons of force to reduce the incoming asteroids enough to protect us,” David pointed out.
“You think Russia is holding back?”
“I think the United Nations doesn’t know,” David pointed out. “The Russians know nothing more than we do, and my colleagues over in Europe are just as worried. We just don’t know if we have enough launch capability to get enough force up there, early enough, to destroy or deter those rocks from hitting us.”
The general mulled over what was being said and nodded. “I’ll go talk to a few people,” he promised.
May 24th.
Sir James Walker, the British Permanent Representative to the United Nations, entered his office and closed the door, sighing with relief as he left the rest of the British delegation out in the outer-office, still discussing, no, arguing about the Outer-Space agreement and the repercussions of the latest vote.
He poured himself a gin and tonic, judiciously mostly tonic, and pressed the blue button on his phone to connect him with the Prime Minister’s office. He sipped as it rang and swallowed as the receptionist for 10 Downing Street responded.
“Hello Sir James. How did it go?” the Prime Minister asked as soon as he was put through.
“The United Nations Space Authority has agreed to act to protect the earth by destroying these in-coming asteroids. However, the discussions grew somewhat heated as the UNSA requested details of each country’s stock of atomic warheads to be put at its disposal. A compromise was finally reached, with each country ‘donating’ missiles witho
ut having to stipulate their overall stockpile. Even then, the vote wasn’t unanimous,” Sir James said.
“Really? Who’s out of sorts with the rest then?” the Prime Minister wanted to know.
“China, Sir,” Sir James told him. China was once again upsetting the apple-cart. “Their rocket is not stable enough to have an armed ballistic warhead as a payload, nor will they surrender their warheads to a third party for launching on another vehicle.”
“They appreciate the severity of the situation though, don’t they?” the Prime Minister asked.
“Oh, they’re not in denial,” Sir James shook his head. In his view, the Chinese knew exactly what they were doing, and had judged that the other nations could deal with the problem.
“So, the UN will coordinate our efforts,” the Prime Minister concluded.
Sir James nodded, his face somewhat sour. The United Nations would attempt to coordinate huge democracies, all of whom had their own agendas and would put them above the common good.
Even it if were able to overcome the nationalistic endeavours of their members, they had their own staff to contend with.
It would be nice to think of the UN as an independent body that worked for the benefit of all mankind. Unfortunately, the UN was manned by people from many different nationalities, many striving to further the cause of their own countries. While those at the big table were comfortable with nodding through an overall project, those beneath them, those whose task it was to implement the project, would try to promote their own roles, and discredit, even sabotage, those of another.
“Do I need to do anything over the next couple of days?” the Prime Minister was asking him.
Hope and pray, was what Sir James wanted to say. Instead he shook his head.
+++++++++++++
There was an electric feel in the air and a sense of purpose and confidence that had not been seen in the NASA command centre for some years. There were new desks in the control room, courtesy of a bunch of ex-Cambridge students who had told them they were doing it all wrong, and the huge wall that faced them was now a large array of liquid crystal screens on which any number of digital feeds could be displayed.
“We are green for launch in one minute and counting,” the Launch Controller announced from his chair while glancing at his large oval display. His table was an overview of the dozen tables arranged in front of him, each manned by a technician with a focus on a critical aspect of the vehicle sitting on the launch pad, 2 kilometres away. They touched on a visual representation of the systems on board to drill deeper into its details, and swept information from the side of the screen, into the centre for more detailed analysis.
In another facsimile of the ARC, a Media Control table stood to one side, feeding video and dialogue to the media and internet, answering queries from schools and media bodies while also feeding YouTube and other social media outlets.
David Brookes, Project Manager for the whole Phoenix project, breathed deeply. The old days were returning.
“Ten seconds,” was called.
David stopped thinking of the glory days in order to concentrate on the information being reported on the screen, above a video feed from the launch pad where the first of their new breed of rocket stood.
“Engine ignition.”
There was an astounding roar and a feel of power through his feet. Support masts on the rocket gantry swivelled back and the mightiest rocket on earth rose from its supports to begin the long climb into outer-space.
“All boards are in the green,” came the calm voice of the Launch Controller.
David wiped at his eyes and nodded. There was another launch scheduled for the next day, and the day after that, then a day’s break before the first manned launch, as astronauts were sent into outer-space to begin assembling the core structure of their new, all American, space station.
June 22nd.
Robert Fuller grinned as he saw his article had made the front page of the tabloid. The newspaper was receiving a record number of hits on the web following the break in his story. Emails were beginning to roll in as friends and colleagues sent congratulations and invitations to drinks at various nearby watering holes.
Another asteroid was heading to earth, and his colleagues wanted him to go and have a drink over lunch with them. Robert shook his head and recalled stories Michael and Oliver had told him while they sat on the comfortable sofas in the lounge of the ARC at the end of the day, students banter and laughter in the background.
He pulled his thoughts from the past and sighed, nonetheless wishing he could have remained there, in outer-space. He looked out of the window and smiled. For all it was a lovely and pleasant June day, a perfect day for walking around the narrow streets that bordered the docks, he would give it all up to be moving in free-fall between an SUV and a spent piece of space-junk, the earth a huge sphere to one side of him.
A forth asteroid was heading towards earth, this one twice as far away and from a completely different location to the last, but with a speed that would see it arrive just a scant few weeks after the others.
There could be no doubt in anyone’s minds now; those asteroids had been aimed towards earth, each one thrown to arrive weeks apart, their points of origin hundreds of thousands of miles from one another.
Most of the media had focused on the worst-case scenario and had painted vivid pictures of the damage each of the inbound asteroids could do, were they to strike earth. The actions of the United Nations Space Authority had only strengthened this belief as the space-faring nations began to work together to prepare an arsenal of atomic warheads and missiles to blow up the asteroids before they reached earth.
His voice had been one of the few to dismiss such reporting as scaremongering, and suggest an alternative; that the earth’s wayward children were harvesting raw material for the people of earth, and prevent them from having to ravage their planet in search for these riches.
It had earned him three trips to the police station, and two thorough searches of his London and Cambridge apartments. He suspected he was being watched too, though he couldn’t be sure. Michael’s seldom spoke about his days working in Intelligence, but the small anecdotes he had shared had changed Robert’s view somewhat on the question of personal freedom. He believed there was far less than people thought.
“Robert!” Sam Briton called from his cubicle door. Sam was the only one to call it an office, but the title on the door was that of Assistant Editor, and that gave him power over all but the most senior of journalists.
Robert spun out of his chair to walk briskly to Sam Briton’s open door, smiling at the older man who had regained his large seat behind the desk. The desk dwarfed the room still further, monitors hanging over the long edge of it, some with feeds from the other media outlets, some with CCTV images of the print and distribution centre a few miles east, in Essex.
“You need to focus on a follow up to your story,” Sam told him.
Robert was nodding. “If I’m right, what are they going to do with all that rock up in outer-space? How are they going to sell it, or will they mine it themselves this time?”
Sam nodded and watched him with a suspicious eye. “You sure you’re not still in contact with your previous employers?” he asked.
Robert laughed and shook his head. “Like they have time to keep in touch with me while calculating the trajectory and energy needed to fling a billion tons of asteroid our way,” he suggested.
“Well, let me know if you need any help with details for your follow-up article,” Sam told him.
“Will do,” Robert nodded. The one person Robert wanted to speak to, Sam couldn’t help him with. Luckily, he thought he might just know the right man to help.
+++++++++++++
Maddy sat at the engineering console in the main garage of Freedom One, reviewing the work that had been completed, a small list, against the longer list of items that had yet to be completed.
The list of outstanding items was getting longer,
too many of the gypsies preferring to go out and work in space than remain behind and do the boring task of fixing the many small things that were failing on their SUVs.
“Well?” Bert asked, hands on his large hips. Bert had always been a big man, and despite Gail’s enforced diet and gym work, he was still a large man. Maddy doubted any of it was fat though.
“Red tag a couple of the SUVs that have damage caused by their crew,” she told him, looking through the log to identify possible culprits. “That type of damage can go to the bottom of the list to be repaired, but you get the crew as an additional work force,” she told him.
“That will reduce the number able to do the drilling,” Bert warned.
“Need to make omelettes,” she told him. And Frankie had always told her to get her priorities straight, and maintaining the vehicles to a good standard had to be equal in priority to getting the work done. If one was failing, then it needed fixing.
She closed the log with Bert still nodding in appreciation and stood to check on the other aspects of the garage.
Frankie had taught her that a clean and tidy workshop was as important as a good workforce. One could only be achieved with the other, and out in space, they needed to be at the top of their game.
Spacemen, and women, called out in greeting as she passed, and she waved back and smiled, her tablet in her hand as she looked about her for signs of tools left on workbenches, oil spills and over-full rubbish bins.
“Hey Maddy,” Brendon called, climbing down from a recently arrived SUV, condensation still on the metal of the vehicle. “When you coming out again?” he asked.
“Grounded until the bruises have gone,” she told him.
“Bad luck, that,” he commiserated, moving on with his crew mate towards the lounge while a crew from the garage moved forward to run a full check on the vehicle.
Maddy had thought that too, and then blushed brightly as her thoughts took her back to her new lover and the clever way she used her tongue to find out how far Maddy’s bruises had healed. Half of her hoped her bruises would last quite a while longer.
