Comet! (an Ell Donsaii story #5 ) (41 page)

“It altered it by 93 kilometers per hour
,
which will result in a 94,000 kilometer displacement by the time it reaches Earth’s orbit.”

Ell raised her voice to the room in general, “NASA did it! It’ll miss us!”

A cheer went up around the room with some pumped fists.

To Allan she said, “Can you track the cometary fragments with the needed precision using just three cameras on the observation rockets?”

“Yes.”

“Please connect me with Mike Voight.”

“Yes Ms. Donsaii?”

“Congratulations, our data says you
will have
moved the big fragment nearly 100,000 kilometers
by the time it intersects
Earth
’s
orbit.”

“Dang, not as much as we
should
have achieved. We
must have put it a little far away. We
were afraid to aim too close for fear of impacting before it went off.”

“
Yes,
well, actually
our tracking showed
the weapon
going off
microseconds
late. Perhaps a slightly longer time
from triggering
to detonation than your AI anticipated.
Still should be plenty
of deflection
to prevent an impact
with Earth
.”

“Yes Ma’am.”

“We have a request?”

“Yes?”

“We need to know exactly when your other weapons will go off. That one burned out the cameras facing it. We need to turn our cameras away
during
the detonations.”

“Oh, OK…”

***

White House, Washington DC.
—
President Flood has credited NASA with the deflection of the largest of the fragments of Comet Hearth-Daster. Using a three megaton nuclear weapon launched under the direction of former President Teller and detonated under the direction of President Flood the largest, seventy-nine million metric ton, fragment has been deflected sufficiently that it will now miss the Earth. Further nuclear weapons are apparently in transit and will be detonated in the next week or so…

Critics note
that even if nuclear weapons successfully deflect the four large fragments, that “there are literally hundreds of smaller fragments,
”
some weighing as much as 30,000 metric tons. They note that the
Tunguska
event in
Siberia
, which knocked down trees over an 830 square mile
area,
has been attributed to the explosion of such an object in the atmosphere…

At D5R they settled down to a steady rate
of
dispatching impactors. Initially five kilo impactors to displace large comet fragments, then as they worked their way down to smaller
pieces of the comet
,
the
fragments
began
exploding when the impactors hit. The team started
using smaller impactors
so that they wouldn’t have to consume so much LOX and LNG
to accelerate
the
smaller
impactors
to 150kps. The small impactors
were still sufficient to
demolish
smaller cometary fragments.

The world at large
had initially
surged into full panic mode
now
. M
illions of people
were
fleeing to higher altitudes in fear of tsunamis generated by ocean impacts.
Severe shortages of various goods
commenced
.
Industrial
output collapsed as employees stopped
report
ing
to work
. Thankfully
,
farmers generally
had
personality types that continued working.

Then
NASA
claimed that its
nuclear weapons had successfully deflected the
other
major fragments.
Though there were many doubters
,
the talking heads
began to say that
though millions would likely die
,
civilization would survive the impact of the smaller fragments.

Gordon sat
in
the
van with the other members of Velos. The venue they’d played last night was almost empty and their keyboard player hadn’t shown up. His family had a cabin up near
Asheville
and the
band
figured that he’d headed for the hills. “I’m sure he didn’t tell us because his family is afraid of being swamped with ‘friends.’”
Gordon ventured.

Wayne, their drummer, exploded,
“Man, this sucks! I don’t wanna be here and neither do our fans! We should bail on this tour until we find out if we’re even going to be alive next week.”

Gordon looked wearily at
Wayne
. “I don’t want to just sit somewhere waiting to find out if I’m dead or alive. I’d rather keep playing, even if I die
doing it
.”

“Yeah, so would I, if there were anyone to play for.”

Gordon’s AI said, “You have a call from Emma Kenner.”

Despite his depression, Gordon’s interest spiked at the thought that it might have something to do with Donsaii. “Put her on. Hi, Emma. What’s up?”

“Hey Gordon.” Emma said, sounding surprisingly chipper, “We’re wondering if you have a gig for the night of March 1st?”

“The night the world ends?!” Everyone knew that March 1st was the night the comet would impact, or not, depending on
whom
you talked to. Since it was supposed to hit the Pacific side of the Earth it would be
evening
on the Eastern seaboard.

“That’s the night. But it isn’t going to
end anything. Just a lot of fireworks.”

“And who have you been listening to?”

“You know I work at D5R don’t you?”

“Uh, sure.”

“It’s a space research company
,
right
?
You know they’re the ones that saved the Space Station?”

“Yeah.”

“So they’re all over this comet thing. Our observations say we’ll only get hit by small fragments, pretty lights in the sky mostly. Probably some fragments will get through the atmosphere and do some damage, but it’ll be pretty minimal.”

“Really?” Gordon said dubiously.

“Really, so would you like to play an outdoor concert at D5R with the skies lit up by Comet Hearth Daster? You can sell the video as ‘the concert at the end of the world.’
”

“Really?”

“Yeah, the company wanted to do something and Ell Donsaii suggested your band. I’ve been designated to contact you. It’ll only be a couple hundred people but the pay’ll be good.”

“Let me call you back.”

***

Kitt’s Peak National Observatory, Arizona
—
The Observatory released a statement today that not only have the four major fragments of Comet Hearth-Daster been deflected from their original trajectories, but that hundreds of smaller fragments have also been deflected. Additionally, many of the smallest fragments have been destroyed. Professor Lundig-Smythe states that he now believes that someone has been able to drive the fragments aside with small explos
ion
s. “It would appear that the tremendous increase in albedo that the comet experienced prior to perihelion was likely
due to similar explosions. The ‘geyser’ explanation forwarded by some at the time was implausible in the extreme.” Unfortunately
,
we have no idea who is responsible
for this remarkable accomplishment or even how it might have been accomplished
…

Gordon wondered why he felt nervous.
Velos had
set up their equipment on the outdoor
rental stage
at D5R and done a sound check about
6 PM
. Then they’d gone out and
searched for
a restaurant to eat at. Finally they’d had to settle for eating some of the food they kept in the van because everyplace, even the grocery stores were closed. Then when they’d returned hungry to the parking lot in front of D5R they’d found a guy named Brian out front grilling hamburgers
!
He’d offered Velos some burgers and they were great!

Now Gordon and the band were hanging out behind the stage waiting for their appointed start time and he had serious butterflies. He wasn’t sure whether it was the possibility that these folks were wrong and the world might
actually
end
tonight
… Or whether it was because he might meet Ell Donsaii… Or maybe it was just plain old butterflies like even veteran stage performers were said to get sometimes?

He didn’t really feel worried about the end of the world anymore. Too many respected sources from NASA to Kitt’s Peak to the White House were saying that the big fragments had been deflected. NASA and the White House also
claimed
that most of the other fragments had been deflected
,
but Kitt’s Peak wasn’t so sure
about the little ones
. They said that, since the comet was coming out of the Sun it was hard to observe well and they weren’t sure how
anyone
could know for sure about the smaller pieces of the comet.
However, a lot of people had taken heart. E
ven
Wayne
, Velos’ keyboard player had shown up for this show, heartened by the news.

So
,
Gordon
reflected,
I believe that
the world
will
survive
,
however
Gordon Speight and the surrounding area could still get wiped out by a small fragment
if
said fragment
chose to land
where he stood
.

Suddenly
Wayne
stood and turned to Gordon, “Hey! The President just announced that the smaller fragments of the comet were taken out by D5R! He said they didn’t announce it earlier for fear that public response might make it difficult for D5R to keep
destroying
the smaller fragments.”

The hair on Gordon’s head had just finished prickling up when he heard Donsaii’s voice behind him, “Hey, you guys ready to start your show?”

Gordon whirled, “Is it true?”

“What?”

“That you guys are the ones that took out the comet fragments?”

“Uhhh,” she said,
putting up her hands and
starting to shake her head.

“The President just announced it.”

She
sighed and
shrugged, “Yeah. We were hoping to keep it a secret.
Wish he hadn’t done that.
”

“Oh my God! Why?! Thank you. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Our
hearts!
” Gordon threw his arms around her, marveling
,
despite
his
goosebumps and joy
,
at just how great she felt
in his arms
.

“You’re welcome,” she said quietly
over his shoulder
, “may I introduce you to the folks who
actually
did it?”

Velos found themselves being led out onto the stage in front of about 300 people, apparently not just employees but families and friends as well. Ell took a microphone and cleared her throat whereupon the crowd
immediately
fell silent.
A
stonished at the way they responded to her
,
Gordon
strapped on his guitar
.
S
he said, “Welcome to our ‘end of the world’ party. I took the liberty of hiring Velos,
my
favorite band for this show. As you know we’re pretty confident that all the cometary fragments that were dangerous have been deflected or broken up. Nonetheless, the thousands of smaller fragments should put on quite a show and we hope that the
‘
show in the sky
’
and the
‘
show on the stage
’
here combine to make this a night to remember.”