Comet! (an Ell Donsaii story #5 ) (36 page)

Ell grinned, “Tau Ceti.”

“Holy crap!
You did it this morning?”

“No, a few weeks ago, back before the election.”

“And you’re just telling me
now
?!”

“Yeah, well a lot of stuff happened right about then that kinda distracted us.”

“So, what were you cheering about this morning?”

Ell suddenly rose saying “Oops, I’ve got a call from my Mom.” She looked at Emma, “You tell him, I’ve got to deal with a
family
issue.” She winked at Emma with the eye Roger couldn’t see and left at a rapid walk despite protests from both Roger and Emma.

***

“Have you seen it?”

USA Gymnastics head coach Natya Kolmenya looked away from her screen and raised her eyebrows, “What?”

Vanessa rolled her eyes, “Don’t you ever watch the news? A video of Donsaii dancing is all over the news!”

Natya rolled her eyes in turn, “I don’t care about dancing. Even the dancing of an ex-Olympic champion.”

“Well you should. The girl is twenty now, five foot eight, doesn’t work out at a gym and look at this!” Vanessa popped the video up on the big screen
on the far wall of Natya’s
office.

Natya watched the girl swirling in a very pretty dance
to a nice slow guitar song. She turned to Vanessa, “
This is
nice but I don’t have…”

Vanessa was pointing at the screen
where
the tempo had suddenly doubled as an entire band came in on the music. Natya slowly slumped back in her chair as she watched Donsaii recreate many of the impossible flips that she’d performed
in
her last Olympics floor routine, perfectly on the heavy beat
so that they looked like dance moves
.
The space she was doing them in was
tiny
. She didn’t have room to run, just to do the flips!
Natya’s
shock that the girl could still do these
things
in such a space,
at age twenty
,
without a rigorous training program or a “spring floor” gave way to goosebumps when Donsaii concluded with
a twisting triple that
Natya
had to run back in slow motion to analyze. It was
another
acrobatic element that she
hadn’t
used in the last Olympics
!
When Donsaii landed, Natya leaned forward and put her chin in her hands
,
staggered by what she’d just seen.
F
our years ago
,
at the
previous
Olympics
,
this girl had
—
without her coaches even being aware that she could do them
—
trotted out
nine, count ‘em, nine never before performed
acrobatic gymnastic
elements, now known as “Donsaiis.”
Three of them had been on the floor exercise.
Despite intense efforts all around the world by countless elite gymnasts
since then
,
only one of those nine Donsaiis had been replicated
by another gymnast
without a fall
. That one had been
done
by a man
and the landing had been wide based and flailing
.
Now Donsaii had just shown the world
she could
still
do them
four years later. And she’
d added
another
element
that other gymnasts could aspire to but never achieve! “My God!” she said sadly.

Vanessa said, “We’ve
got
to recruit her!”

Natya shook her head despondently, “I’ve tried and I’ve tried. She says that gymnastics are in the past for her.”

“They are not! Did you watch that?! Not only can she
still
do all those moves, she can do
another one
she’s never even shown the world!”

“You
know she’ll be
24
at the
next
Olympics right?”

“I’ll bet she’ll still be the best in the world!”

Natya tilted her head querulously, “
Yeah, you’re probably right
. Do you
want to call her?”

Vanessa’s eyebrows rose, “Sure!”

“OK. I’ve got a suggestion.”

Vanessa shrugged.

“Don’t try to talk her into coming to training camp. Just offer to give her a spot on the team.
No practices, no time out of her normal routine. Just show up at the Olympics and do your thing.”

“What!” Vanessa said, “The other gymnasts… they wouldn’t stand for it!”

“Do you want her
,
or not?”

“Well
…
yes.”

“Do you think she’ll still be able to win
every gold medal
at the
next
Olympics
even if she doesn’t come
to camp
?
”

“Uh
hh
…” She shrugged, “You’re right, she
’s just proved she
could have won them all at this past summer’s Olympics. I imagine she’ll still
by far
be the best in the
world
at the next one
.”

“I think she just doesn’t want to commit any time to it. Maybe, just maybe, if you offer her the opportunity to just show up at the Olympics and perform
…
maybe she’d do it?
”

***

The next morning Roger stopped Ell, “Holy crap Ms. Donsaii!” His eyebrows were high and a
huge
smile split his face. “A mission to Tau Ceti in spaceship Heinlein? Your first star shot and it finds an oxygen planet?! You’re on a
roll
!” He put his palm up for a “high five.”

Ell slapped his hand and said, “
We’re
on a roll Dr. Emmerit!
I j
ust hope our
own
planet’s around long enough for us to see what
Heinlein
finds
at Tau Ceti
.”

“Oh, a pessimist today are we? I’m not worried,
you’re
on a
roll
!”

About an hour later Ell caught Emma off to one side. “How’d it go?” she asked in a low voice.

Emma shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t really know. Like you
suggested
, I
told him how much I admired him
. He seemed pretty surprised but then,” Emma rolled her eyes, “told me about how long he’d had a ‘thing’ for you. Even when you’re not there, you’re still
crushing
my love life
.”

Ell said, “Take it from me,” she grinned, “someone who should know because she has
never in her life
had a
single
serious boyfriend
—
I think you just need to let it percolate without pushing him. Keep being your friendly self and see if he doesn’t start to
treat you differently
.”

Emma snorted, “You’re right, I
must
be insane to be taking advice from you. You don’t have
any
experience. Gorgeous
as you are
,
you’ve probably never been turned down for anything
.
Y
ou don’t even know what it’s like to crash and burn
all broken hearted
.”

Ell hugged her, “It’s that crazy willingness to take bad advice that I love about you Em’.”

***

After
his planetary sciences lecture concluded Professor Norris turned to find the platinum blond girl with the bad skin waiting to ask him a question. Mentally he rolled his eyes, thinking that she seemed like the kind of bimbo that would try to bat her eyes at him hoping to get him to adjust her grade. “Yes, Ms.?”

“Donovan, sir. I just wanted to ask about oxygen atmospheres.
Is there
any other mechanism besides life that would cause a planet to have an oxygen atmosphere?”

His eyebrows rose, “Donovan” was the name of the student who was killing the curve
in this class
. She
virtually never got a
question wrong and right now had a mean grade of 99%
for
all the work in the class so far. The closest student to her was back at 94% and
her classmates
were
all
bitching about how hard his tests were. They weren’t impossible though
,
as Donovan had been proving week after week. He dragged his mind back on topic.
Not a bimbo, OK.
“Um, no. Oxygen
is tremendously reactive and without plants to constantly replenish it, it would quickly form oxides and disappear from the atmosphere. It might be possible to imagine a chemically based event that would temporarily create an oxygen atmosphere
,
but it would never last. Why do you ask?”

“Um, just wondering. Thank you.” She turned and walked away.
Hmmm, girl
could be cute. S
ad she’s got
sketchy skin and
a
big
butt.

Late
Wednesday
morning
when Ell got back from her class
es
,
Roger told her that the pusher motors
had just been
finished. A big load of five kilo
gram
iron
impactors had come in th
e day before
,
so they were ready to start
pushing
the comet. Roger already had an impactor screwed onto a pusher and had tested its thrust
er
, attitude jets and cameras in the test room. About ten minutes after Ell arrived they popped it through the port and Allan sent it streaking toward Hearth-Daster. They assembled another motor-impactor and tested it
, then sent it on its way toward the comet about four hours after the first one
.
They launched
two more
impactors on Thursday and
again
on Friday.

***

Kitt’s Peak, Arizona
—
Astronomers at the observatory tell us they are “astonished” by the enormous increase in the size of the “tail” of Comet Hearth-Daster. The tails of comets are made up of volatile outgassings of frozen material in the comet and this one is outgassing much larger quantities
,
much earlier in its approach to the sun than any other recorded comet. Larger telescopes are being turned…

Monday morning Ell said, “Well
,
we
had hoped for a deflection of
12
kilometers per hour
from those six impactors,
but after observing the comet over the weekend
,
Allan estimate
s
that the deflection was only
9
.5 kph. Still, that would move
the comet
24
,000 kilometers in the three and a half months remaining.
”
They were moving it
north as well as
farther ahead of
E
arth in
Earth’s orbit.
24
,000 kilometers was
enough
to make it miss the earth
, however they were very worried about inaccuracies in the projected course and changes that might result from outgassing events as the comet heated up passing the sun. “What do you guys think
we should do
now?”

Roger said, “I think we should keep hitting it. I want it to miss us
by
a
long
way. No close calls for this ol’ boy, no sirree.”

Emma grinned at him, “Me too.”

Wilson
raised his hand, “Me three.”

Ell grinned at them, “Me four… Well it’s back to slaving away over rockets then.”

Manuel refurbished the
pusher
motors, Emma mounted them on the impactors, Roger took them into the test room to run them through their paces and
Wilson
loaded them through the port and sent them on their way. Ell ran “recovery operations” as she called it, which meant that she stood by as Allan flew the pusher motors back through the 7.5 cm port and into the vacuum chamber they’d set up for it. The motors actually
barely
nudged their front ends through t
he port where gravity took over. T
hey
then
fell
o
nto a
large pad
at the bottom of a heavy glass cylinder. Once the port opened the
glass
cylinder was opened to the vacuum of space so
after
the port closed she had to vent air into the cylinder to
open it and
get the pusher rocket out of it.