Panspermia Deorum (5 page)

“Of all the
things I have achieved in my life, this signal achievement for
mankind to step on to another planet is proving to be the most
infuriating. We must decide, not procrastinate. It seems that
we
can’t, therefore
I
must.
The launch will go ahead in 2033, whether or not we can prevent
Chocolate Orange from destroying our world. We can’t be sure of
what we will find on Mars, so we must go there. One thing I’m
certain of, is that if we have to finally admit we cannot avoid an
impact of this monster with Earth, there will be no shortage of
volunteers to try their luck on the red planet. We can’t waste any
more time debating this conundrum. Now we must divide our expertise
to optimise the odds of succeeding with both tasks, instead of
acting like mice in a maze. Let’s do it.”

Julien was
immensely relieved, but this was only a wakeup call. Since he took
up responsibility for plotting the course of Chocolate Orange, and
altering its trajectory, or even destruction, he’d met with abuse
from other project leaders. They claimed that his arrival was
responsible for re-allocation of resource which made their
objectives for the Mars mission untenable. They also baited him
with having achieved nothing with those resources. Intervention was
inevitable. Unlike the unwieldy committee-style anchor of NERO,
Brandt was a decisive leader. Apart from his edict to leave the
launch date at 2033, he fired two of the most senior managers
involved in the programme. That responsibility immediately fell
into Julien’s lap. He now had no excuse for underachievement in
either project.

“I expect a
reaction from you and your new subordinates with respect to
progress. I want to hear more answers and consequently less
problems.”

All of a
sudden, Guiana seemed like a very lonely place. And the stakes were
raised when the news broke of Sir Ian Waverly’s resignation.
Apparently, the very same video conference minutes which were on
the memory stick Julien had delivered to Brandt, had been leaked to
the media. There was no suspicion directed to VB Aerospace; it was
considered ludicrous that Julien Delacroix would wait seventeen
months to fuel some previous vendetta. Suspicion centred on current
employees of NERO. Julien wondered about Henry Fellowes, and
welcomed the announcement, he felt it vindicated his awkward
departure from the Osaka conference, but he didn’t rule out the
possibility that NERO had actually found more bad news regarding
Chocolate Orange. He used this uncertainty to request all trusted
observatories to join with him and compare the very latest
data.

*

Eugene sailed
through his graduation and was now a section leader at a respected
microbiology company. He kept in touch with his father frequently;
at least they always seemed to look at things through the same end
of the telescope. They debated stuff rather than get into an
argument. At last Julien had a successful father/son relationship,
and Eugene had his own calling. Unlike his sister, he shared his
father’s temperament.

Sophie had
somehow allowed the impending cataclysm to dominate her life, and
her art took on a dark side which caused her reputation to suffer.
Changing her appearance to become ‘extreme gothic’ didn’t sit well
with those marketing her work or with influential art critics. She
was confident they would warm to her new persona and she couldn’t
have been more wrong. A subsequent spiral into drug addiction
required rehabilitation and enrolment in a therapy programme. This
put considerable strain on Elise, and indirectly to Julien. It was
absolutely the worst time for him to take a break. He sensed that
his relationship with his wife was breaking down. Sophie had never
really needed contact with her dad, most of the time he wasn’t
there and she’d lived through her teenage years as if she only had
one parent and a distant uncle. Her artistic talent had helped her
to rationalise this perception.

*

Two of the
seven observatories which were willing to pool information reported
an alteration in the axial spin and velocity of Chocolate Orange.
It was a very recent observation, and it generated pressure to
avoid making this public knowledge until it could be confirmed by
all tracking locations. Julien became nervous and immediately made
Brandt aware of the situation.

“I see, are we
sure about this? Couldn’t it be the other way around? That the new
data showing this change in behaviour of the rock is actually
contrived disinformation? It has come to light at the same time as
that prat Waverly has departed. I take it our reading of the
asteroid doesn’t agree with this claim.”

“That’s right,”
said Julien, “but these two locations reporting the aberration are
both in the southern hemisphere, one in Chile, the other in South
Africa. It can happen that values differ slightly from one
viewpoint to another, but these are minor and can normally be
harmonised by applying known algebraic variables. But these new
alterations in spin and speed are on the borderline between
feasible and preposterous. I’m going to travel to Chile to check
this with my own eyes. Here in Guiana, we are in closer
longitudinal alignment with the south of this continent. Depending
on what I find there, I can move on to South Africa.”

“Fine, but make
sure that we don’t allow this to break our stride with either of
your projects.”

“I’ve issued
orders to that end already. We press on as if this hadn’t come up,
until we verify or refute the claim. However, I must personally
review the various programmes of preventing the asteroid impact
once more. Because, if there is substance to imply a change in spin
and velocity, it could rule out some options, primarily that the
Earth could be in a different place when the asteroid arrives in
the near reaches of the solar system in 2039. We have to think
outside of the box on this one, Volker, because very small
differences in trajectory can make huge differences in the outcome.
From a direct impact to a glancing blow, which would imply
different consequences for humans. Another aspect I have to
consider is the difference between resource and expertise. In my
new remit, being responsible for both missions, I may well have to
bring in new people. They could be difficult to persuade, but we
have to recruit the best on the planet. I’d like to discuss this
when I return.”

*

On board the
flight to Chile, free from interruption, Julien began to look
through the original feasibility studies of the alternative means
to deal with Chocolate Orange.

It was well known that a
sufficiently large impact by an asteroid would cause,
depending on its impact location, massive 
tsunamis
, widespread 
firestorms and long term atmospheric
winter,
caused by the
sunlight-blocking effect of spewing large quantities of ‘atomised’
rock into the 
stratosphere
.

A collision between the Earth and an approximately
10-kilometre-wide object 66 million years ago, was thought to have
produced such conditions, which were responsible for the extinction
of the 
dinosaurs
. Although this incident actually brought forth the
opportunity for mammals to take their place in Earth’s pecking
order, many or all of these survivors were thought to be living
underground at the time. Today, humans, except for a chosen few,
could not use such an escape route. The physiology is different,
and even if there was still ten years to impact, it wouldn’t be
enough time to house the billions of individuals currently involved
in either state-sponsored corruption or epidemic
anarchy.

Deflection strategy enjoyed pole position in Julien’s
list, not least of all because of the ‘fourth dimension’. If time
itself was considered as that variable, then it required only a
miniscule change in velocity of the asteroid to ‘allow’ Earth to
either escape or not arrive. This then brought up the question of
whether it was less complex to slow or accelerate the object. Then
there was the subtle definition of trajectory, and confusing it
with course. It had to be kept in mind that the term course applied
to a ‘plotted path’ through space. Trajectory was to be viewed as
being at a specific point at a specific time. The remaining factors
Julien had to keep in mind with this review was the point in time
of launch of any intercept, and the point in time of its strike.
Together with this data, determination of axial spin and straight
line speed was key, simply because the wrong interaction could
produce the opposite effect to the one desired.

Detection from space was candidate number two. The
construction and launch of observational craft to cosmic way points
could offer more accurate tracking of the object while it is still
far away. Debate raged as to whether such expense should be
sanctioned without the capability of nudging the asteroid
immediately after sending back data.

Riding the harbinger of death was the third and most
controversial proposal. Opinion was seriously divided with respect
to attaching ‘steering’ influence to the rock, or to employ a
process of degradation. Many felt that even the minimum payload
needed for counter-vector trimming was unrealistic, whilst the
opposite camp believed that attempts to fragment the asteroid could
not offer reliable cleavage results and could actually deliver
multiple, smaller sized threats which would produce many more
impact targets to track.

All of these options had to consider the
sub-categories of the devices of influence to be applied. This
inevitably led to a last ditch
bailout of nuclear strikes, in case the primary chosen method
failed. There simply wasn’t the finance available for progressing
multiple, elegant, distant operations. If it came down to taking on
the monster with banks of nuclear fission force, it had to be at a
distance which sat between the requirements of accuracy and
unpredictable fallout damage.

Julien put away his dossier, yawned and fastened his
seat belt. He found it difficult to be unbiased in considering the
choices he faced. The stark reality was that he needed more
incoming information, but this report from Chile and South Africa
had certainly muddied the water. Waiting for more observational
values was frustrating; looking for close to infinitesimal changes
which took an i
nordinately
long time to appear was not what the population at large wanted to
hear. More than that, it would most likely help to ferment the
ongoing slide into the plurality of mafia-style culture.

He needed to speak to Elise as soon as possible. Her
messages in the last couple of weeks were hinting at divorce. She’d
stressed that they were already separated. He had to tell Volker
Brandt that extinction or no extinction, he needed to take a break
in France, as inconvenient as that may be. He couldn’t remember the
last time he’d had a decent night’s sleep. Julien Delacroix
wondered what it would be like to have a calling more like those of
his kids, passion without the pressure, then he thought of his time
with NERO. He’d brought this upon himself.

A
fter an intensive trawl of the aberrant trajectory
data in Chile, the stark conclusion for all mankind was that the
calibration software had been hacked. The capability required for
this could be divided into two components; expertise in cracking
firewalls and multiple-layered password protection, plus the more
sinister knowledge of how to embed believable deviation in
trajectory shift, as observed from the lower southern hemisphere.
Julien called Brandt.

“We have a
conspiracy of some kind in our midst. The values indicating a
change in trajectory of Chocolate Orange are false. That’s the end
of the good news. The sophistication of embedding such marginal
changes can only have been to cause division in our efforts and
foster the belief that there would be no impact in 2039. The
question is – who would be both capable and evil enough to do this?
Anyway, I don’t have to go to South Africa, they have cleaned up
their system on my recommendation. I’m going to detour to Lyon, as
I have some serious family issues to tackle. I’ll have to leave the
detective work to you and the security people, but it did occur to
me that you might want to check out our previously employed
dissenting personnel, all of whom you fired when you put me in
charge of both the Mars mission and the asteroid deflection
programme. I should also say that this has created one other
spin-off challenge. The bogus trajectory values forced me to focus
more intently on the interconnections of the two projects. You
decided to stick with the 2033 Mars launch date, and I now suggest
that we alter the planned back-up missions from colonisation
objectives to survival shuttles. If for some reason we fail to
deflect the asteroid, and the new Martians can no longer depend on
Earth assistance, we should ensure they have life necessities for
years ahead, not merely prescribed scientific objectives. They
deserve the opportunity to exercise creativity with regard to what
they find on Mars. It could be very different from what we think we
know. Also, this would allow me to narrow down the research
channels for the deflection programme. The sheer number of
permutations we are wrestling with at present cannot be sustained.
Perhaps if we hadn’t been confronted with these bogus values, I
wouldn’t have had to conduct such a fundamental root and branch
analysis so soon. I’ll work on the additional expertise we need to
reduce our effort from multiple to dual strategies for deflection
while I’m in France. Of course, we still have to build a nuclear
arsenal in case it all comes down to an Alamo situation.”