Comet! (an Ell Donsaii story #5 ) (27 page)

Ben smile ruefully, “It
is
kind of embarrassing
,
but being heavily invested in our
own
success has made us care about the business part. We hired a business manager and told him he needed to teach us this stuff, not just do it for us.”

The
meeting broke up and Ell walked down the hall back to the Quantum Research group
. “Emma!”

Emma looked up curiously.

Ell stepped closer and in a low tone said, “Tau Ceti has a planet a little
smaller
than Mars at the outer edge of the habitable zone!”

Emma made a little fist pump.

Ell sat down, “We could just wait until the rocket gets there but I’m thinking we could use the port on the side of the rocket to
do a spectroscopic analysis
of the
atmosphere?”

“Oh yeah! Let’s do it!”

“We’ll
have to order a spectroscope. C
an you do that
,
o
’
magical equipment guru?”

Emma grinned, “I already know the model I want.”

Allan said in
Ell’s
ear, “You’ve go
t
a request
for a
call
back from
Wilson Daster.”

Ell’s eyes narrowed,
Another reporter?
Why is Allan letting this call through?
“Who?”

“Wilson Daster
,
the co-discoverer of comet Hearth Daster.”

“The one with the jokes about ‘Earth-Disaster’?”

“Yes.”

“OK, see if you can connect me.”

A minute or so later Ell heard, “Ms. Donsaii?”

“Yes, what can I do for you Mr. Daster? Or is it Dr. Daster?”

“‘Mr.’ I’m an amateur astronomer. But please call me Wilson?”

“OK, call me ‘Ell.’”

“Thank you. I’m contacting you because I’m getting more and more worried about the Hearth-Daster comet.”

Ell frowned, “Are you thinking all those ‘Earth-Disaster’ jokes may be correct?”

Somberly,
“Yes Ma’am.”

“Uh, what does NASA say
?
”

“They tell me they’re ‘looking into it.’”

“And you don’t believe them?”

“They’ve bee
n telling me that for
weeks
now.
They have state of the art equipment and top astronomers to call on. Either they
aren’t
looking into it, or they
ha
ve
looked into it and are stonewalling me on the answer, or…
I don’t know.
”

“And you’re contacting me because?”

Daster sighed, “Because… because
of what you did for the Space Station. It seems like
you’re someone who might be able to do something about it, if it
is
coming. What is tearing me up is the fear that… that our government bureaucracy has tied itself in knots
or
buried its head in the sand
. Admittedly the likelihood that
the comet’
ll hit us is small, but they may have decided to do nothing for fear of inciting a panic if they
do
actively try to do something.”

To this point Ell had been continuing to walk toward the Quantum group’s area.
She’d been slowing though
. N
ow she’d stopped.
S
he turned to walk back to her office. “You say the likelihood is low. How low?”

“Running the programs available on the web
,
my AI says 5-
2
0%.”

Ell slowed again, “That does sound pretty low.”

“Yes
,
but… this is a comet. That’s the figure for a direct hit but comets aren’t very solid so
gravitational stress might break it up
during
its perihelion with the sun. And,
if it comes close
to Earth it
might break up
then
and part of it might loop around and hit us anyway. And, if
the entire thing
does hit us, we’re talking 300 million
metric
tons. That would be a
global catastrophe and
borderline
extinction event. A
t the very least
it would be
the end of civilization
,
even if some people do survive.”

“Oh,” Ell started walking toward her office. “Why not threaten to call a reporter if NASA won’t tell you what’s going on?”

“I did one better. I got a reporter friend to call them and tell them he was writing a piece on it. Asked them to ‘confirm or deny.’ He was told that ‘crying fire in a crowded theater’ was
not
protected free speech. They told him that he’d go to prison if he even
tried
to put up a story to that effect. They seemed confident that they would be able to keep it from actually getting out on the net.”

Ell
felt the hair on the back of her neck stand up as she
remembered that NASA had
placed
urgent requests for ports with the Portal Technology group. She
took a deep breath to keep from going into the zone.
She sat down in her office,
“Allan, can
you give us a visual connection?
”

A slender man with wispy blond hair popped up on Ell’s screen. He lo
oked like a prototypical nerd. J
ust the kind of guy you
could
imagine
spending endless hours at
an astronomy hobby. “What’s your day job, Mr. Daster?”

Dast
er’s eyes
had
widened. He’d seen small images of Donsaii but now that she filled his screen he was taken aback
at the realization of
just
how
young
and
just
how attractive she was. T
hen
he sighed
at her question
,
thinking that she was about to discount him as an incompetent amateur, “I’m a forensic accountant.”

“Can you send me your figures for the comet?”

“Figures?”

“How you found it?”

“Oh, I found it on publicly available images from the SOHO II satellite.”

“
Did you use them
to determine the comet’s path
and presumed orbital trajectory?
”

“Well they give
most of the
data. I also tracked it with my own telescope and entered that data too.”

“Can you send that to me?”

“Uh sure,” he spoke to his AI, “
OK, I sent the file, do you have it?”

Ell glanced up at her HUD. “Yes.”

“
Do you want me to give you the website I’ve been using
to run
the calculations?”

“No thanks, I’ve got a
pretty
high end AI. He should be able to run the calculations. Allan?”

“Depending on
which of several
algorithms
are
used
,
the likelihood of direct impact on Earth is
somewhere
between 4% and 25%.
I’ve checked his SOHO II data and that portion of his file
can be confirmed to be
correct.
”

Allan had spoken, not just in Ell’s ear but into the connection so that Daster could hear as well.
Daster’s
eyes widened at the instantaneous response.
What kind of AI can find algorithms and do
that
kind of calculation instantaneously?

Ell
stared
musingly
at the man on her screen a moment. “Allan, can you calculate the orbital trajectory of the comet using only the SOHO II data, without relying on the measurements from
Wilson
?
”

Instantaneously
Allan said
,
“The likelihood of impact without using his data falls between 3% and 30%.”

Ell closed her eyes and tilted her head back, considering.
She sat back up,
“I’ll call NASA myself. I’ll let you know what I find out.”

“Thank you very much.”

“I sincerely hope we’re missing something here.
”

“I do too.”

After they were disconnected Ell said, “Allan, check Daster out. Make sure he’s who he says he is. Compile a resume on him off the web. Try to contact the director of NASA for me.”

Allan spoke in Ell’s ear, “Director Epaulding can speak to you now.”

“Hello, Director?”

“Yes, Ms. Donsaii.”

“I’ve got a concerned citizen contacting me about comet Hearth-Daster, concerned that it may
actually
impact the earth?”

Epaulding narrowed his eyes, wondering if he
should
talk to her about it. Candela seemed confident in the well controlled NASA missions. Donsaii’s company had agreed to provide the ports they needed for the missions to get to the comet in a reasonable period of time. DOD
was providing
nuclear weapons to be used to displace the comet. They were
building and
sending two
rockets
in order to have a backup
.
ILX
upper stage booster motors were being used, fueled with D5R ports.
Time and cost overruns were problematic as usual on a rush job like this
but Candela thought they could get it done in sufficient time
.
Epaulding
hesitated a moment
longer
then
decided they didn’t need
Donsaii
. The closer they held this to their vest the less chance of a world wide panic.
Only a few of the people at NASA actually working on the project actually knew what they were doing.
He sighed, “Ms. Donsaii, there are crackpots everywhere. I assure you we’ll be OK.”

Ell narrowed her eyes in turn. “You’re sure?”

“Yes.
Absolutely.
There isn’t a problem.” Epaulding hoped he sounded more confident than he felt. “We’ll contact you immediately if
it turns out we’ve miscalculated and
we
do
need
your
help.”

Ell thought,
He’s lying!
“Ok… Thank you Director.”

Epaulding’s AI said, “You have a call from
Mr. Colby Hammet of
Mr. Candela’s
comet team
.”

Epaulding frowned, “Not from Ed himself?”

“Mr. Candela
is believed to have
had a stroke.”

Epaulding
gasped, feeling
as if
someone had kicked him in the
solar plexus
, “Huh?” he muttered almost unintelligibly.

“Mr. Candela
is believed to have
had a stroke.”

“Oh
… oh
my God… OK, put the call through.”

“Hey, sorry about Ed, but you’ve got to put someone in charge of the comet project. It was a SNAFU that Ed was holding together through sheer force of will. It’s gonna come apart at the seams without him.”

Epaulding wondered who he was talking
to;
the name had promptly slipped his mind when he’d heard the news about Candela
. “Uh, who would you suggest?
”
He realized he desperately needed Candela’s advice on who to appoint.

“Well
Jordan
has seniority but he’s an idiot. Victoria Ullen is next most senior but she was with Ed when he went down and has kind of decompensated. Feels like it was her fault etc.
”

“
Who
would you suggest?”

“Well
,
me. I’m next in seniority.”

“
I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten your name
?”

Frostily, “Colby Hammet.”

Hammet
sounded like he couldn’t believe Epaulding didn’t know who he was. Unfortunately, Epaulding did. Only because Candela had
often called him an “idiot savant
,
”
A
savant about technology and an idiot with people
. Epaulding sighed,
Hammet was certainly
not the leader they needed.
“Call a meeting of the team
at
3PM
. I’ll meet with
everyone
then
and appoint a new leader.” He leaned back in his chair
and ran fingers through his hair
. He needed to find out Candela’s condition and call his wife. Was there anyone outside Candela’s shop that he could appoint to lead this mess? His
own
head started throbbing.