Panspermia Deorum (8 page)

Julien’s eyes
widened as he realised where this was going.

“No, no, no,
Volker, we can’t respond to this, surely it’s a bluff.”

“You may be
correct, Julien, but I won’t take the chance of Kolorov being
wrong, or working as a double agent. You’re constantly pressing me
for more expertise, so how would you like Ivan to join your launch
team? I was going to recruit him anyway because his Intel has
always been reliable, and I have to get him out of there; such an
offer and his response would tell me if he is indeed a double
agent. We now have to look at 2031 for our launch. It is the next
year in which the two planets are in reasonable alignment.”

“It can’t be
done, you heard the man say himself that safety will be compromised
if Soyuz accept their new deadline. Anyway, Soyuz only make the
spacecraft and train the crew, there must be some other
organisation involved in bankrolling the mission itself.”

“Naturally. It
doesn’t take a genius to see it’s not the Russians, it is NERO.
I’ve known for some time that Waverly was funding this surprise
from ‘under the counter’. But you unknowingly blew a hole in his
illusionist strategy by spilling the beans on Chocolate Orange
becoming an impact event. He was then going to be pressed into
spending two fortunes rather than one, just as we are. But his
chicanery would have eventually been caught out by the bean
counters in NERO, because he hadn’t budgeted for anything but
watching the asteroid glide past Earth. Then, in his mind, two
fortunes could be combined into one fund, and Soyuz would assure
his glory by leap-frogging us to Mars. He hadn’t accounted for you
letting the genie out of the bottle, even though you didn’t know it
was in there.”

“All very
interesting, but it doesn’t change anything. We can’t launch in
2031, the planets are relatively close then, but it will be
impossible for us to be ready in a year from now.”

“In normal
circumstances, yes. These are not normal times, Julien. With
Kolorov’s help we can do it. This change in plan must be kept
absolutely to the very minimum of personnel. Create another ‘dummy’
unmanned mission, for a craft which is supposedly intended to sit
out there, relaying data about Chocolate Orange from space. By the
time we are ready, we will announce that it is crucial for this to
be combined with our revised manned mission launch date in 2031.
This deception is necessary, Julien. I won’t be beaten by these
bastards. Just tell people for now that we’ve decided to exhume the
option of monitoring the asteroid from out in the cosmos. It does
come at significant extra cost, but we are the only ones dedicating
resource, transparency, and responsibility to the people on this
planet. We can only do this because we are fractionally ahead of
schedule on the Mars launch programme. It is belt and braces,
Julien, the public will buy that. And before you tell me the
astronauts’ safety will be compromised, please note that I’ll be
one of them. By the time the truth gets out, we’ll be looking at
Soyuz accepting defeat. So, even if they could hit their new target
date, it will be too late; their cooperation with NERO will have
lost all credibility, and then they’ll be plagued with internal
wrangling. The two partners will know they’ve been screwed, and
with a bit of luck, blame each other. Now, I can also provide proof
of Waverly’s misappropriation of tax payers’ funds, which I will
only do when we decide to join the clique. And that will only
happen when the whole world knows that none of its space research
member companies trust each other. This will possibly produce a
clamour for us to lead the asteroid deflection programme instead of
being perceived as a bit part player. Julien, we have a
responsibility to get the entire species to come to terms with
reality, someone has to. The other organisations with ‘World Body’
status are complicit with NERO, simply by condoning the
drip-feeding of known bad news to the public. That’s what you
always get from politically controlled organisations. Go away and
think about this, my friend. Come back and see me when you’ve
factored
everything
into the choices ahead, including your
family.”

*

As Julien
wandered back to his office, he reflected on the changes over the
last two years. Sophie was in great shape. She’d taken to the way
of life in Guiana, the societal primitiveness, the natural scope
for her art, and the true friends she’d made. Julien saw her once
or twice a week, and that was her idea. Elise had been convinced
that her daughter had come through the hell she suffered in Lyon,
and returned to live with Geraldine. As hard as it was to leave
Sophie behind, she knew it had to be done, as she herself said she
couldn’t handle the climate. The pull of city life also played a
big part, creature comforts being high on the list. Eugene had come
and gone, but had landed a really good job in Boston. His remit was
right at the cutting edge of research into manipulation of DNA, not
the cloning of existing species, rather how natural mutations
occurred and how they could be corrected.

Julien snapped
out of his daydream and was able to see why Brandt wanted to
address the threat of a NERO/Soyuz claim to Mars. The stench of
corruption was bad enough on Earth. Wasn’t this why he’d joined VB
Aerospace in the first place? He hadn’t forgotten the duplicity of
NERO when they hung him out to dry. Perhaps with the assistance of
Ivan Kolorov he could meet the new deadline of 2031. At least he
now had no need to convince Brandt that they should monitor the
asteroid from Mars space, as he had already come to that decision
of his own volition.

*

Unknown to any
of the organisations which would make up the reconstituted clique,
Chocolate Orange was hurtling through the silent blackness of the
Cosmos bearing a scar. The altercation which shifted it to an
impact path with Earth involved an unregistered comet, from the
Kuiper belt. Julien had known of some collision for some time now,
but not precisely where it occurred, nor exactly which kind of
cosmic object it was. Its remains were embedded into the asteroid,
like a cuckoo in a happenchance nest.

*

Brandt’s
announcement of the decoy Mars listening post deception was allowed
to ferment before he offered Ivan Kolorov a key position in VB
Aerospace’s genuine mission to set foot on another planet. The
Russian was only too happy to consider joining Brandt, giving the
impression that Soyuz was about to conduct a thorough security
x-ray of their entire operation. Presumably this was required
before rolling out details of the changes needed to comply with
their altered launch plan.

Kolorov
accepted Brandt’s offer almost immediately, in fact, a little too
easily for the German’s liking, not asking for many of the usual
assurances for such a post. But in fairness, he had to concede that
it would be better to take the guy on before he would have to
spring VB’s new launch date in 2031 on the unsuspecting Russian.
Kolorov would have to accept such ‘insanity’ just as Julien
had.

Brandt hadn’t
yet ruled out that Kolorov’s haste may be explained by him being a
double agent, but he’d get an inkling of that when the reaction of
Soyuz was analysed. The stakes were so high that Brandt had to be a
willing participant in a poker game which was rigged by every
player.

His patience
paid off. Soyuz hit him with every legal challenge in the book. It
would take months to even get to an international court, which
meant Kolorov was unable to take up employment with VB Aerospace,
yet couldn’t continue to work for Soyuz either. The bigger loser
was Soyuz. Brandt had bought a fresh delay for the Russian launch
without having to pay anything upfront. He came over as being
devastated when he told Julien that his new recruit was on hold.
They had to move on and begin the search for other candidates.

Things got even
better when global polls showed VB Aerospace as the most trusted
outfit in tackling both the Mars project and preventing Armageddon.
This would go a long way to Brandt being officially asked to share
his vision with the world, and ultimately coordinating all
available resource to achieve it.

Julien began to
see that the corruption which had triggered his outburst in Osaka
had only been a symbolic event in a ruthless mosaic of diplomacy
and cunning. He began to wonder if he’d jumped from the frying pan
into the fire. It caused him to shift focus back to his family.

2031

T
he world media had assembled in the remote,
locked-down facility in Guiana. Ninety-nine percent of the circus
personnel had never been within a thousand miles of the location.
In the past, all press releases from VB Aerospace had been handled
by the company’s PR division. This was different. Volker Brandt’s
name was reasonably well known, but the man himself was quite a
mystery to most of the world population. Philanthropist or recluse?
Perhaps both?

He rose to his
position at the front of the gathering; there was to be no lectern
or prepared written notes for referral. He cleared his throat.

“Thank you all
for coming today. I wanted to address the entire world, as I have
updates for ongoing programmes and a crucial announcement regarding
one of them. I wanted to avoid any misunderstanding or room for
doubt about what is going to happen in the next few days.”

The murmurings
gave way to utter silence before he continued.

“We are all
facing difficult years ahead. I can confirm, despite what anyone
else may have you believe, that an asteroid will impact the Earth
in 2039. Our latest tracking data clearly and unequivocally
demonstrate its trajectory. It is a
fact
. What can be done
about this? Well, we have researched various methods of dealing
with the problem and now they are narrowed down to three feasible
approaches. Let me deal with the simplest one first. If the other
two were to fail, we have a last line of defence in the form of
nuclear warheads to destroy the asteroid. That brings with it
unpredictable consequences, one of which could cause fragmentation,
and thus change the threat from a single impact into multiple
impacts. We have therefore allocated most of our research resource
to safer options. The favoured one is to impact the asteroid itself
when it is far enough away to eliminate immediate collateral damage
to our planet. There are a number of ways we can do this, and we
are still researching the ones which can deliver the best
reliability. The trade-offs with this method are distance and
accuracy. The work in hand also has to be geared to the optimum
time. Seven years may seem like more than enough time to figure
this out, but we must not forget that the asteroid would not be on
an impact course if it hadn’t been struck by another cosmic body.
So, we need be aware that this could happen again. There are
several possibilities, and I apologise in advance for any confusion
which follows, but we must take into account all manner of events
which could nullify our efforts.

“If the
asteroid was bumped again as it heads for the Earth, we may not
have to do anything. But, we need to exercise caution here, because
we must be certain that it will not then collide with anything else
in the solar system which could put it back on impact trajectory
with our planet. Another scenario also has to be considered; if we
send our deflection force out into space too early only to find the
asteroid isn’t where it should have been, we still can’t rule out a
new collision which restores the threat. Therefore, a logical
conclusion would be to wait long enough to be sure that any
deflection attempt can be quantified in terms of altering the
asteroid’s course
and
that the new path is clear of further
possible incidents.

“This is where
the third option comes in. Many of you are aware of our intention
to have an advance monitoring station out in the solar system to
help in gathering data on the asteroid continuously. What you do
not know is that I have decided that it won’t be an
unmanned
listening post, as was initially intended. We will launch a manned
craft with all the necessary tools to accomplish extremely
comprehensive, more accurate monitoring of the threat than we have
on Earth. However, the second objective of the crew apart from
setting up such crucial scanning programmes for the asteroid from
Mars orbit, is to land on the planet. This manned mission to Mars
was initially scheduled for 2033, but after many months of debate I
took the difficult decision to bring it forward. Whatever we may do
in a dedicated attempt to preserve life on Earth, things can go
wrong, and as the stakes are so high, I felt we needed to create a
second chance for the species to survive. Now, this is where I
really do want to avoid any misunderstanding. Is it completely safe
to bring the Mars landing so far forward? The simple answer is a
resounding NO! However, that will still be true in 2033, missions
like this are never free of danger. If Earth was to fall prey to an
impact, even if it wasn’t an extinction event, it would probably
kill off any chance to supply those already on Mars. So, other
launches of essential life supplies will follow in 2033, 2035,
2037, and hopefully by then we will have good news on the
deflection programme. I insisted that the crew would have to be
volunteers, and I couldn’t ask something of others that I wasn’t
prepared to do myself. Therefore, I will also leave in a few days
from now. At my age, it is unlikely that I will ever return, or
even withstand the outward voyage during the months in space. Just
as well then that I have a very capable man to continue the
leadership of VB Aerospace. His name is Julien Delacroix. I
fervently hope that this dual strategy gives every last human the
best odds of surviving well beyond 2040. I try not to think too
much about it, but I’ve got to admit I’d dearly like to make that
return trip to a better world here on this planet. And in that
spirit, I want to turn to the sentiment which pushed me into this
course of action. A few years ago, you will remember newspaper
offices in Germany being invaded by sixty armed individuals. I
should stress that I could never condone the way they did this, but
they made no ransom demands, they killed no employees, and they
freed every one of them. It turned out that their planned suicide
was to remind all of us that society was breaking down in our
world. These sixty martyrs hoped to achieve a turning point in
anarchism, terrorism and corruption, a task in which no world
government have ever succeeded. Wherever my final resting place is
to be, I will remember the profound effect these sixty people had
on my life. Thank you for your patience in listening to this
monologue. Hopefully, you will have another speech to hear if
everything goes well and I can return home before 2039 to announce
the deflection programme was a success.”