Comet! (an Ell Donsaii story #5 ) (38 page)

“Yes Ma’am.”

“And you’re the young lady that helped my grandson save the Space Station?”

Keeping a straight face Ell nodded.

Grandmother Emmerit
laughed
, “Come on,
this
Christmas I’m just
pretending
to be clueless. I knew you were coming
,
so I read up on you. Very impressive
,
I must say.

“Thank you Ma’am. I’ve been very lucky.”

“Well, they say luck favors the well prepared.”

“I like to think so Ma’am.”

“Maybe it favors genius too?”

Ell shrugged.

Grandmother Emmerit grinned, “Hard to
get a rise out of you, ain’t it?
”

With a shy grin Ell shrugged again.

Ms. Emmer
it guffawed, “You gonna make an honest man out of my grandson?”

“
Oh, h
e’s already very honest,
nothing
for me to do there.”

She laughed again, “OK, OK, I’ll take my nose out of your business.
I did happen to see some video of you dancing at a concert though?
”

Ell blushed, “Um, yeah.”

“I must say, you’re pretty good at that as well.”

“Grams!” said little blond
Denise
, sitting
on the other side of Ms. Emmerit, “She’s the
best
in the world!
At gymnastics I mean, and
I
think at dancing too!”

Ell blushed, “Thank you. Do you do gymnastics?” The small blond head nodded emphatically. “Do you want to show me after dinner?”

“Yeah! Can you teach me
some
of your special moves?”

“Well… we can try, but I think you’ll need to be a little older.”

“Special moves?” Grandmother Emmerit asked bemusedly.

“Yeah Grams!
The moves she can do that no one else can.”

Ms. Emmerit looked fondly down at her great granddaughter, “You mean that ‘no one else can do as well.’”

With all the disdain of a child for an ignorant adult, the blond girl said, “No Grams! No one else can do them
at
all
!”

“Grams” turned slowly to take in the staring eyes around her, then at a blushing Ell, whose eyes were
downcast. “Dang, I guess I’m
still
clueless!” Then she laughed
heartily
at herself again.

Everyone got up to choose their desserts and Ell was heading for a slice of Roger’s pecan pie when Allan spoke in her ear. “Comet Hearth-Daster has broken apart at perihelion.”

Ell’s heart sank. She stopped in mid step and closed her eyes, mind racing.
What a Christmas present! Crap!
Someone bumped into her from behind. There were a million questions she wanted to ask
Allan
but couldn’t in a room full of people.
Time probably isn’t critical so I
could
stay and have dessert. But if time does turn out to have been critical the entire human race could pay for that
slice of
pie.
She opened her eyes and saw Denise standing wide eyed just in front of her.

The little girl said, “Are you OK? Your face is really white.”

Ell nodded. “I just got some bad news and I’m going to have to leave, OK? I’ll watch you do gymnastics another time?”

Denise nodded.

“Tell your grandparents I’m sorry but I had to go?”

Denise nodded again and Ell turned to bolt out the door. As soon as she was out the door she said to Allan, “Tell Roger about Hearth-Daster. How many fragments has the comet broken up into?”

Allan said, “So far it has broken into two main fragments and many small fragments. I
could
give you a count but
thus far
they are all
under one meter in diameter and unlikely to do any harm after passing through Earth’s atmosphere.”

“Do the two main fragments appear to be stable?”

“No, there is a great deal of shifting of the nuclei of the two fragments. It appears very likely that those fragments will break
apart
further.”

“Damn!” Ell’s car came around the corner and she trotted to it. “Tell Steve and whoever’s lead
for
the security team tonight that I’m heading back to D5R. Tell Emma and Wilson about the comet
disrupting
.” Ell
dropped into
the seat of the car and leaned back. As the car accelerated she looked up at her HUD, “Show me current video of the comet…”

***

“So it broke into two major fragments, one of which stayed in one piece and is now
much
farther from an Earth intersecting trajectory. The other, unfortunately, has fragmented further and those fragments are scattering i
nto a spray that does intersect us.
”

“Holy
Jeez
, Ell!” Ben burst out.
“
And you’re
just
now telling us?!”

Ell winced, then her eyes swept over the
assembled
group which included the
original
comet team of Roger, Emma,
Wilson
and Manuel but now also Fred, Vivian and Brian from
“Portal Technology” and Ben and Rob from “ET Resources.
Sheila was there too.
Ell thought she might be
come
the most important member of the team.

Hotly Roger said, “Ben! She moved
the
whole thing
off an intersecting path
—
without your help! Ease up!”

“It’s back to intersecting though isn’t it?!”

Wilson Daster almost moaned, “I was worried this might happen, I should have said something.”

“We were all worried that something like this might happen, that doesn’t mean what we did was wrong.”

“But I can’t believe you just hared off, shooting bombs at the greatest threat to mankind we’ve ever seen without even consulting…”

“The more people that knew, the bigger the chance that it’d get out and a panic would…”

“
Shut
it!
” Ell
barked.
She h
ad been standing eyes closed while the storm of argument rolled over her
,
but the discussion had degenerated to a squabble with no sign
of turning into a productive session. She hadn’t used a “command voice” since her Academy yea
rs, but it still had its effect. T
he room fell dead silent as wide eyes turned to her. “We have a
crisis
people
, the like
s
of which has neve
r faced the human race before. Neither bitching, nor a
ssigning blame will
solve
this crisis. Fortunately, we
do
have
the
capability to at least mitigate this disaster.
But
, that will not happen if you continue to bicker instead of stepping up!”

The group stared
in shock
at the transformation
that had come over
their mild mannered leader. Her green eyes
,
icy and
flash
ing
. H
er stance, feet separated a little more than shoulder width
with
arms akimbo
made
her an intimidating presence instead of the friendly young girl they were used to.

Intently sweeping the group with her eyes again, Ell said, “I
am
going to finish bringing you up to date on our current situation.
Then
I will entertain questions.
Then
we
will
discuss strategies. If you feel the need to
complain or
assign blame, you will wait until after the crisis
, or
leave us now
, understood?”

The group found themselves nodding unthinkingly, some of them surprised to be
“
doing as they were told
”
after a lifetime of speaking their minds.

“Now,” Ell continued, “As I was saying, the larger
of the two main
fragment
s
has separated into six major fragments that appear to be on intersecting or near intersecting paths
with the Earth
. The largest of these masses 80 million metric tons. There are four massing between
18 and 30 million tons. The sixth masses
seven
million tons. There is a shower of
smaller fragments,
of which
253
mass more than
one
metric ton. None of them mass more than
30,000 tons.”

A number of hands went up. Ell felt gratified
,
but surprised that they had not continued interjecting. She held up a hand
palm out
asking them to hold off, “
I would point out that the risk of human extinction is much lower now, however this will be of little comfort to anyone near an impact point for one of these fragments.
T
he six large fragments
, should they strike the Earth,
will release kinetic energies ranging from 3,000 to 34,000 megatons of
TNT
.

“As I said at the beginning of this, I appreciate your coming in the day after Christmas, but I hope that you all agree that we
will
need every moment we have to deal with this.”

Ell pointed to Fred, “Yes?”

“I’m sure I speak for Vivian and Brian when I say that our Portal Tech group is ready to do what ever
is needed
to help out. I assume we’ll need a lot of ports
to supply new rockets. W
e can adjust our manufacturing to produce whatever
types of ports
we need.
”

Ben, whose face had initially been
white with dismay
, then
red with anger,
now appeared to be blushing. When Ell called on him, he pointed to Fred, “Same as what he said.”

“Thank you. Now, we need a plan. Suggestions?”

Emma tilted her head, “More impactors, hammer the fragments. Move the big ones, blow apart the little ones.”

“Problem,” Ell said, holding up a finger, “now there are a lot of fragments. They’ll be hard to track and determine their exact trajectories. Certainly, one observation rocket with a laser rangefinder like we used on the intact comet would not be effective in our current situation.

Roger put up a hand and when Ell acknowledged him, said, “Seems to me like we need a set of at least three and possibly four observation rockets placed around the
spray of
cometary fragments. An AI, presumably your Allan, could then triangulate on each of the different fragments from the images provided by the different observation rockets. Once the AI has defined exactly which fragments are going to hit us
,
it will also be able to tell us which direction we want to push them. We’ll need another set of port rockets, farther out
,
through which to send the impactor rockets. They’ll need to be far enough away to let the impactors accelerate up to full speed. Ideally
,
we’d have at least four and preferably six port rockets to send impactors through so we can drive fragments in many
different
directions depending on which direction is the shortest to a trajectory that will ‘miss’ us here on Earth.”

Braun
said, “ET Resources has at least four rangefinder rockets that could be used for observation
,
and we’ve just finished about 20 ‘port’ rockets with 7.5 cm nitinol ports that we were going to station around the solar system
to deliver rockets to points of interest. I
t would be no problem to provide six of those.”

Ell turned to Sheila, “What progress do we have on getting LOX and LNG in large quantities?”

“We ordered big tanks and the LOX tank has been delivered
but the soonest the
y
could get a LNG tank to us is January 2nd
. And
it will take some time to install and fill them.”

“Damn! Offer them lots of money to get it done
now
. Or yesterday
,
preferably.”