Stormhaven Rising (Atlas and the Winds Book 1) (5 page)

“Why?” he asked.

“We need to be ready in a few weeks,” Cole said, shrugging and looking over his shoulder to where Sophie was gliding up to the railing on a work sled.

Daryl blinked a few times, trying to figure out if he’d understood what Colton had said. “Excuse me?” he managed around his disbelief. “Weeks?”

“What’s up?” Sophie said, hopping over the railing and joining them. Dr. Sophia Warner was an applied physicist and head of inertial studies at Stormhaven. She would have been stunning except for the smear of something dark and gooey on her forehead. Her smile evaporated when she saw the expression on Daryl’s face.

“Cole’s having a delusional moment,” he said, shaking his head.

“I wish,” Cole said, turning to face the woman and switching on a grin. “I was just asking Daryl if he thought we could cut corners somewhere and be ready in a few weeks.”

Now it was Sophie’s turn to blink in shock. “Excuse me?” she said. “Weeks?”

“That’s what I said,” Daryl agreed. “He’s having a meltdown.”

“No. I’m serious,” Cole insisted. “If it were an emergency, how soon could we be ready?”

“We’re building something that’s never been built before,” Sophie said. “It’s based on science that’s never been tested like this either. There are hundreds of things that could stop us dead.”

“Not the least of which is the legal crap you’re going to face when you try to get this off the ground,” Daryl added.

“When the time comes, we’ll leave that to the experts,” Cole said, waving his hand to dismiss his objection. “I just need to know if you can do it.”

“Impossible,” they both said in unison.

“You can’t honestly think we’ll be ready that soon,” Daryl said.

“That’s what I expected you’d say,” Cole said, ducking around Daryl to leave. He paused to look back at the two of them. They were both staring at the space where he’d been standing like a ghost of him remained.

“Just think about what it’ll take to make it happen,” he said, disappearing before they could make another comment.

***

Washington:

She was taller than he’d expected, Carter noticed, as he was ushered into the Oval Office by Dr. Stanley. President Hutton was staring out the window at the falling snow. The evening sun had managed to find a hole in the overcast, and the light of sunset had turned the snowflakes fiery orange.
Disturbing how much that looks like falling ash
, Carter thought.

She turned as they entered. “Dr. Anthony,” she said, offering her hand. “I understand congratulations are in order for your recent discovery.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” Carter choked out in surprise. Under the circumstances, no one had remembered that an astronomical discovery was usually a matter of celebration. “Though I’m not sure if condolences aren’t more appropriate,” he added.

“Perhaps,” she said, gesturing toward the chairs in an invitation to sit. “It’s my hope that after we’ve seen this through, you’ll be remembered in a positive light for the discovery."

“I certainly hope so,” the astronomer said, waiting for the President to sit before he took a seat. He perched on the edge of the chair, unsure about what came next.

“If you don’t mind, Dr. Anthony,” she said. “I’d like you to educate me.”

“Yes ma’am,” Carter said, sliding back and trying to look comfortable. “I’ll do what I can, but I’m sure you’ve got access to all the expertise you need.”

“I have a few people who can help me,” she said, smiling, “but you’ve got no personal agenda. Al tells me you’re well ahead of the curve and that we don’t have time to bring someone else up to speed.”

“Time certainly is the one thing we don’t have in abundance,” Carter agreed.

“So let’s not waste any of it,” she said. “Al tells me that when you briefed his staff after you arrived, you advised against just nuking the rock out of the sky and being done with it?"

“That’s true,” Carter said. “This asteroid is too big to be destroyed with a nuclear blast.”

“Why?” she asked. “We’ve got some monstrous warheads in the arsenal.”

“Even so, it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible to do,” he said.

“We’ve got weapons that can take out entire cities. This asteroid’s not that big is it?” she asked.

“It’s not the size,” the astronomer said, “It’s the fact that it’s moving very fast, and that there’s no medium to transfer the energy to the asteroid."

The President stared at him.

“Let me back up a bit,” he said. “When you set off a nuclear bomb, what happens?”

“Light, heat, radiation,” she said. “Then things fall down and die."

Carter stifled a smile. “But what causes them to
fall down
?"

“I don’t know,” she said, shrugging.

“It’s the atmosphere,” Al answered. “When the warhead explodes, it expands very rapidly and pushes against the atmosphere.”

“Exactly,” Carter said.

“That’s why an air blast is more effective against surface targets like cities,” Al said. “The damage from the pressure wave knocks buildings down for miles further than the explosion itself.”

“If there’s no atmosphere?” Carter asked, leading her to the conclusion.

“Then there’s nothing to push against?” the President said.

“No matter how big the warhead is, in the vacuum of space, most of the energy would be pushing against nothing at all. Only a small part of the blast would affect the target,” he said. “And that would be mostly as light and heat.”

“We’ve got warheads that explode on impact or even after they’ve sliced deep into the ground,” she said.

“True,” Carter said. “But this is where velocity matters. It’s not like hitting the ground, where a missile is traveling at two or three miles per second, and the ground is sitting pretty much still. We’re talking about closing speeds of thirty to forty miles a second. A miscalculation of even a millisecond could make the difference between blowing up thousands of feet above the target, or plowing into its surface.”

“I think I understand,” she said, frowning. “Wouldn’t it be possible to build it to stand up to that kind of impact?"

“Possibly,” Al said. “Although it’s not likely that even if the shell survived, the electronics inside would do so well."

“It’s also important to remember that the missile will be operating far enough from Earth that it will have to be autonomous,” Carter said. “The electronics would have to be sophisticated enough to make independent decisions about its approach and impact placement.

“So it would be hard, but that’s not the same thing as impossible,” she said.

“Theoretically,” Al said. “Though theory often doesn’t vaguely resemble reality.”

“Even if we assume we could build a missile that would survive the journey, and the collision with the asteroid, and could operate without human control, we’d still have another problem,” Carter said.

“What’s that?” the President asked.

“All we’d succeed in doing would be to make the impact worse,” he said. “The orbital energy of the asteroid would carry much of the debris along the same trajectory as the original object. We’d end up with many fragments coming at us like a shotgun blast."

“The damage would be more widespread and devastating than if we did nothing,” Al added, shifting in his chair. He’d heard this a few hours earlier.

“Wouldn’t our atmosphere protect us?” she asked.

“Actually it would make it worse,” Dr. Stanley said. “The energy transfer to the atmosphere would be far greater from several smaller fragments, with each creating its own blast wave."

“Have you ever seen Barringer Crater in northern Arizona?” the astronomer asked.

“Meteor Crater?” the President nodded. “From above, when I’ve flown to San Francisco. It’s just south of I-40, isn’t it?"

“Exactly.” Carter said. “That crater’s almost a mile across and was caused by a meteor less than 150 feet in diameter. How many chunks that size do you think you’d get out of twelve cubic miles of asteroid?”

“Thousands,” Al said. “For every one of those craters, we’d be looking at thousands of square miles of blast damage. The size of the crater is relatively small in comparison to the area of destruction."

“If one of those came down over a major city–” the President said, the image disturbing her sense of calm.

“It’s not a matter of
if
,” Carter said, “it’s a matter of
how few cities would be spared
. With as many fragments as we’d create, it would be a certainty that most of the planet would be hit."

“So if we don’t blow it up, what do we do?” she asked, getting up and walking to the cabinet to get a drink. She returned with a cut-crystal bottle and three glasses. She filled them and settled back to sip hers while she listened.

“We need to deflect it and make sure that it remains intact while we do it,” Dr. Anthony said.

“This is where we run into trouble,” Al said, picking up his glass. “Most of the viable ideas to do that are based on having a decade or more from discovery to impact.”

“But we’ve got less than two years,” she sighed.

“Fortunately, we only need to change its arrival a little to get it to miss us,” Carter said. “Something like four minutes is all.”

“Four minutes?” she said, confused.

“At the speed the Earth travels in orbit around the sun, it takes about eight minutes to get out of its own shadow,” he said. “If we could get the asteroid to arrive four minutes late, it would miss us entirely."

“So you’re talking about slowing it down?” the President asked.

“Actually it would be simpler to speed it up a bit and have it cross in front of us,” he said.

“Why?” she asked.

“Because of how its orbit works. It passes Earth once before it comes back around to get us. If we could launch while it’s close, we could sneak up behind it so to speak. The difference in velocity at that point is only a few miles per second. But if we can’t get it done until after it’s out to where it turns around and is coming back at us, it’s going to get a lot more complex because of the difference in relative velocity.”

“So how much time do we have?” she asked.

“We’ve got eight months until it’s at its closest approach to the Earth” the astronomer said. “Depending on the available warheads, we’ll probably have to launch a mission in about four or five months. I don’t know what we have for hardware so that’s only a guess.”

“Warheads?” the President asked. “I thought you said, blowing it up was out of the question.

“By using a series of timed warhead pairs, we could nudge the asteroid off its course incrementally. We’d need to create a sequential string of detonations that would provide adequate cumulative impulse on the asteroid without causing it to shatter."

“Right,” she said, shaking her head.

“Actually,” Al explained, “what he’s suggesting is setting off one explosion to vaporize a small portion of the asteroid’s surface, and then while the vaporized material was hanging above it, we’d detonate another one to create a thrust.”

“I’m still not understanding.” she said.

“The first explosion creates an
atmosphere
of boiled asteroid dust, and the second one pushes against that to connect to the asteroid.”

“Essentially that’s what I’m suggesting,” Carter said. “We’d need several small warheads alternating with much larger ones. The smaller detonations would create the
atmosphere
, without shattering the target, and then the larger explosions would push against that
atmosphere
to nudge the asteroid off-course in gradual steps.”

“Can we do that?” she asked. “In time?”

“Possibly,” Al said. “I think we have the warheads in our inventory. The problem is that we don’t have missile systems capable of reaching the target. Military boosters aren’t designed for it.”

“NASA launches interplanetary missions all the time,” the President said.

“True, but it takes them years to design and launch one,” Al pointed out, “and most of them are tiny and very specifically designed. Big nukes are heavy."

“We’re probably looking at dozens of warheads too,” Carter said.

“In four to six months?” Al said, blinking in surprise. “The only launcher NASA’s got that could boost that kind of payload from the surface to escape velocity is the SLS. Right now they’d be lucky to make four launches a year, and maybe another eight with the Shuttle II fleet.”

“Damn,” she said, downing the rest of her drink and pouring herself another.

***

Washington:

Secretary Anderson was a small man, with enormous power. Power he was well aware he possessed, yet seldom chose to show. His office could have been a formal affair, like the other Cabinet Members occupied, but instead he opted for practicality. It suited him, and he was comfortable with its sparse décor.

People that came into his office, on the other hand, were seldom comfortable, regardless of their reason. Yet Douglas Shapiro revealed no sign of discomfort as he sat studying the office. It was pointless to study Secretary Anderson, because the man sitting behind the desk was as inscrutable as stone.