Comet! (an Ell Donsaii story #5 ) (32 page)

Bayless pulled his head back up, widened his eyes and said, “What just happened?”

“I think you passed out. You want me to call 911?”

“No,
no, I’ll be fine
.” He sat back up and frowned, “What were we talking about?”

“The comet.”

Bayless eyes widened and he blanched again.
Jeez,
Epaulding wondered,
is he going to go down again?

Bayless sat up and shook his head a little. “Holy crap!
It’s going to hit us?”

Epaulding nodded. “Pretty good chance.”

Bayless threw his head back, “Oh Jeez. And what did you want from me?”

“I need you to back off of D5R so they can give us the ports we need.”

Bayless frowned, “Why do you need ports?” he asked querulously.

“We need ports to fly a bomb out there to the comet.”

“Oh! You’re going to blow it up?”

“Knock it aside.”

“Yeah, yeah. OK. I’ll find a way to approve your ports. Holy crap! I’ve got to call some people!”

Epaulding rolled his eyes, “It sounds like you don’t remember signing the ‘Secrets’ document?” He tapped the paper where it still lay on Bayless’ desk.

Bayless’ eyes widened again as he glanced at the paper and it came back to him. “But, I’ve got to…”

“Jim, you breathe a word of this
, even
to your cat and you’ll be going to prison. Understand? If word gets out
,
the panic it’ll create will be a disaster all of its own.”

“You can’t…”

“We can, and we will. You authorize the ports for
ILX
and you keep your mouth shut. Understand?”

Bayless sat up a little straighter, shook hi
mself again, cleared his throat, then
said
sullenly
, “Yeah, I got it.”

***

By the time
Wilson Daster arrived at
RDU airport in
Raleigh
and got his rental car it was
8PM
. He put through a call to Donsaii, unsure whether he was just supposed to take a room at any hotel or whether they might have booked one already. “Ms. Donsaii?”

“I thought you were going to call me Ell?”

“Uh, yes, sorry, Ell, I’ve just now got my car and I’m not sure where I should stay.”

“Great! If you’re up to it come on by D5R. We’re still working on your comet and should have something to show you about the time you get here. It’s only
6PM
Arizona
time right? I’ll have my AI make you a hotel reservation while you’re driving over.”

Daster’s eyebrows climbed,
hard working group!
“Uh, sure, I’m on my way.”

“The guard will know to let you in.”
 

The guard at the shack out front directed
Daster
to the
entrance. The door
opened when he approached. Ell met him at the door and said, “Quick, or you’ll miss it.”

She hurried off down a hall in front of him. She
was wearing
new jeans and an
XKCD.com
t-shirt.
He frowned,
You’d think that she’d
look plain
in
those clothes
,
but
she
look
s
stunning.
He thought
,
she must be wearing heels
,
but
then
he heard the soft pad of athletic shoes and caught glimpses of them beneath
her
gently
bell
ed
jeans.
The jeans weren’t tight but were snug enough to
be sexy, even though he suspected she didn’t think they were
. She didn’t roll her hips in a sexy manner as she walked but still, the way she walked drew his eyes like
moths
to a
flame
.
The place seemed
like a big
,
empt
y
,
and dark
barn
,
but she led him to a
well
lit
area where two other people were facing a big screen.
Daster’s eyes widened as he realized that the
lumpy
object
o
n the screen must be his eponymous comet.

Expecting to be introduced he tore his eyes off the comet and looked at the two people. One was a tall slender man with a wild shock of dark hair. The other was a small cute woman with curly
brown
hair
. “Hello…” he began.

But then the three let out a shout
. The
man stood
so suddenly that his chair
flipped
over behind him.
Ell and
the curly haired girl
were pumping their fists.
Then the three threw their arms around each other.
Daster stared at the screen where
on
the right side of the comet
an area
had
blossomed outward in
to
a huge puff
ball
. “What the
hell
just happened?”
he asked querulously.
Was that actually
my
comet?

“Yesss!” Ell said, turning to him. “Let me introduce…” her eyes darted back to the screen, then came back to him, “Let me introduce Emma Kenner, and Roger Emmerit.” She turned to them, “Guys,
this is Wilson Daster,
one of
the fellow
s
the
comet is named after.”

Emma and Roger turned to shake
Daster’s
hand but kept
darting glances
back to watch the screen as the
“puffball” continued expanding.
Daster said, “That’s an amazing image. What kind of telescope are you using?”

Ell grinned over at him. “That’s not a telescope, just a standard
SHD
video camera
Wilson
. It’s just that the camera is on a rocket that’s only
5
kilometers from the comet.”

“Wait, so you mean to tell me you’ve known about the comet and its risks for months?! And you just
pretended
that I was telling you something new?!”

“Oh, no. I’d never even considered the
possibility
that it might
actually
hit us until you called me.”

Daster tilted his head querulously,
then narrowed his eyes,
“Why did you have a rocket out there observing it then?”

“Ah.
” Ell grinned, “
We didn’t
. We sent it out after you called.”

“That was
yesterday
!!”
he burst out incredulously.

Ell smiled, “So it was. And I’ll explain
some crazy stuff
to you as soon as you sign
the
non disclosure agreement I’ve forwarded to your AI. You’re going to find us doing
even
more
weird
stuff
unless you decide to bail
.”

Daster reached out, found a chair and sat down a little unsteadily, his mind racing.
There’s no way this
is
possible, is there?
He looked up
at his HUD and started to read.
He
found himself reading
lines over
and over
again because he
couldn’t
concentrate.
Finally, having gotten the gist of the agreement well enough he said, “OK, I agree. What next?”

Roger leap
t
up
again
, knocking over his chair
a second time. He
shout
ed
“Yes!”

Wilson
looked at the screen where the puffball continued getting bigger but less dense. Some parts of it at the periphery seemed to be spreading over the surface of the comet as if they were falling back
on
to its surface a little. He couldn’t see what they were excited about but then
noticed
a line of text across the bottom of the screen saying, “Deflection,
2.0
kph.”

“Uh, what are you
so
happy about?” Daster asked uncertainly, “Is it the ‘deflection’?”

“Yes!” Emma said over her shoulder
, but keeping her eyes on the screen
. “We’d calculated
2.2
kph but that would be with perfect energy transfer. This is great!”

“Kph?”

Ell said, “We’ve deflected the comet from its orbit at a rate o
f 2
kilometers per hour.
Obviously that’s
not much
,
but still
,
in the
three and a half
months until impact it would deflect it
about
5100
kilometers,
close to half
the diameter of the earth. And we can just keep hitting it since it doesn’t seem like it’s going to break up…
Allan, any sign of instability of the nucleus?”

Donsaii’s AI responded through
everyone’s
AI
s
.
Daster
heard
it
simply
say
, “No.”

“Alright!” Ell exclaimed, washing her hands together. “Tomorrow we start building an entire series of impactors and
we’ll
hammer
that bad boy.”

Feeling bewildered,
Daster found himself checking into a Red Roof Inn, head still swimming
. He felt
hugely relieved that these people thought
something
could be done. Unable to sleep
,
he lay awake wondering if these twenty somethings could be play
ing a trick on him. If so, why?

After he’d approved the Non Disclosure Agreement, Donsaii had spent some time explaining how they’d gotten the rocket out to the comet to observe it
.
Her initial description of the ‘ports’ had seemed like wishful thinking or impossible fabrications. Then her description reminded him that these people had been involved in rescuing the Space Station when she had said
in an offhand way
, “using the same kind of ports that we provided oxygen to the Station with.”

Their plan to deal with the comet still had his head spinning
.
Could it really be possible to
hit
a three hundred million ton comet with small rockets weighing about 11 lbs and actually deflect it enough that it wouldn’t hit the earth?
In his mind
he’d pictured a mission to fly out to the comet in their spacecraft and do something
dramatic
, though he’d never been quite sure what.

***

Kitt’s Peak, Arizona
—
The observatory reports that the albedo of comet Hearth-Daster has increased. This appears to be due to
a surprisingly
large
degree of
outgassing. Though comets normally “
outgas
” volatile materials
,
usually
they
do this when they are quite a bit closer to the Sun than Hearth-Daster is at present. These volatile materials are what become the comet’s “tail” and lead
s
to their extraordinary appearance…

In the morning
,
Daster was introduced to the redoubtable Sheila and then to
Nancy
from HR. Once they’d made him comfortable about his move they took him down to meet the rest of the Quantum Research team. To his astonishment they provided him with an AI headband that was hooked up through some of the new
PGR
chips to a near supercomputer. Then he was given the plan that had been drafted for moving the comet and told to spend as much time as he needed to determine whether
he believed
it would succeed or fail
and whether he could suggest modifications
to their plan
. He had to admit that using such an advanced AI certainly made it easier to confirm their calculations.