While the little blue Earth whirled on its circular orbit, the yellow spot representing the asteroid traced out an elongated ellipse; two trains, each on a different track. The tumbling digital calendar measured the progress of the Wellsian time machine as it hurtled back through the internal combustion era, the wars and revolutions, the fall and rise of kingdoms, backwards through the years in minutes. And as time passed, it became clear that the yellow ellipse was not fixed in space, but was slowly rotating as the asteroid sped round it. On several occasions it happened that, unknown to the creatures inhabiting the blue spot, the yellow one passed dangerously close overhead, and that the things which mattered so much to them — wars, treaties, revolutions, history — were within an ace of being swept aside in a single, incinerating half-hour. The yellow and blue spots approached more and more closely and then, finally, touched. The whirling spots stopped, fused together on a single pixel of the screen, and the calendar froze. On the twenty-eighth of November, 1613 AD.
“The same night Vincenzo saw the moving star,” Webb said. “I’ve also checked the background constellation and the angular rate, and they fit. It’s beyond coincidence.”
The Astronomer Royal expelled a great lungful of misty breath. He tossed his hat on the desk and wandered over to Webb’s bookcase, pretending to read the titles. Webb gave him time.
“We had a near miss then?” the AR finally said, flicking through the pages of Methods of Mathematical Physics.
“Yes, sir. It passed within seventy thousand kilometres of the Earth.”
“What?” Putting the book down. “That’s treetop level!”
“And easily seen in Vincenzo’s telescope, especially if it’s an old cometary sungrazer, maybe slightly outgassing a few centuries ago. The surprise is that others didn’t spot it.”
“Which asteroid is this?”
“Karibisha. Eccentricity point seven, orbital inclination just 2.5 degrees, which guarantees a succession of close encounters over the centuries. Semi-major axis just over 2.1 AU.”
“Is it hard to detect?” the AR asked.
“Practically impossible. By the way, ‘Karibisha’ is a Swahili word of welcome.”
“A word of welcome. How beautiful, even at four o’clock in the morning. With an eccentricity like that no wonder it’s hard to see.”
Webb nodded in agreement. “It’s coming at us out of the Sun. It will be invisible right up to the last few days or hours.”
Sir Bertrand put the book back and ran his hands through his white hair. He picked up a telephone. “The perfect weapon. We’re in the nick of time. If you’re wrong, Webb…”
“Unfortunately there’s a problem,” Webb said.
“Yes?” Tension suddenly edged into the Astronomer Royal’s voice. His fingers hovered over the telephone dial.
“That impossible hundred-day guideline which NASA are using for the rendezvous project.”
“What of it?” The AR steeled himself like a man waiting for a punch.
Webb delivered it. “Nemesis hits in forty.”
Part Three
MEXICAN CARNIVAL
carnival [<Fr. <It. < ML <carnem levare, to remove meat] 1. the period of feasting and revelry just before Lent. 2. a programme of contests, etc.
Cape Canaveral
Forty days.
Catch Karibisha a minimal five days from impact. To achieve this, spend ten days getting to it (the spacecraft’s speed is optimistically half that of the death asteroid; therefore ten days of travel by the spacecraft on the way out is covered in five by Karibisha on the way in).
Subtract those ten days of travel time from the forty to impact.
The balance is the time which remains to prepare and launch the spacecraft.
It’s simple: cut the one hundred days of spacecraft preparation to thirty, or die.
“Doctor Merryweather? I’m sorry to disturb you at this hour… my name is Rickman, Walt Rickman… no, we haven’t met, sir… Chairman of Rockwell Industries, the Aerospace Division… I have a problem… it’s pretty late here too — I’m calling from Downey, California.”
“Is that your sister, honey?”
Merryweather struggled up to a sitting position on his bed. “Okay, Mister Rickman, I guess I’m awake. What can I do for you?”
“I’m told you’re the best weather man in Texas.”
“Not at three in the morning.”
“That’s right, sweetie, tell her to take a taxi.” Merryweather waved his wife to silence with an annoyed gesture.
The Rockwell Chairman’s voice had a worried edge to it. “I’ve just been wakened by my engineers at Canaveral. You know the Venus probe we’re launching?”
“Of course.”
“They’re catching a launch window in six hours. They’ve broken out of the T minus six hour hold and have started on the tank chilldown and propellant loading.”
Merryweather scratched his head. “So what, Mister Rickman?”
“Something bizarre is going on out there. The MMT at Johnson are ignoring the Weather Launch Commit Criteria. My engineers think they’ve gone mad.”
“Who is the Flight Director at Johnson these days?”
“A guy called Farrell.”
Merryweather’s wife was poking his ribs. “Joe Farrell. He’s rock solid, Mister Rickman.”
“Doctor Merryweather, that’s a five-billion-dollar bird out there and they’re ignoring the wind criteria and my people tell me that if they attempt a launch the Shuttle will hit the gantry on the way up.”
“Mister Rickman. There are ten first-class meteorologists out at JSC and an equally good team at Canaveral. On Shuttle weather support they have about a hundred years of corporate experience between them. If they say it’s okay to launch, believe me, it’s okay to launch.”
“It’s the SMG who’ve asked for you. They want you at Johnson. You’re expected and authorized. I spoke to Senator Brown.”
The statement brought Merryweather up short. The chief of the Spaceflight Meteorology Group, after he himself had retired from the post, was Emerson, a young, slightly anxious but highly able man. If George Emerson was asking for his former boss, something bizarre was indeed going on. Merryweather had one last shot: “If FD is violating the launch commit criteria he’ll be overruled by his own MMT.”
“Except that it’s not working out that way. The Mission Management Team seem to be hypnotized or something. Look, my engineers are a hard-nosed bunch and they’re telling me something weird is going on out there.”
Merryweather said, “This is a joke, right?” There was a silence at the other end of the line. “Okay, maybe I should get on over.”
“A helicopter is on its way and should reach you in five minutes. You have no overhead wires or other impediments in your back garden? Restricted entry to the prime firing room begins in two hours but I’ve fixed you up with a badge. I’m grateful, Doctor.”
“Don’t be. I have no official standing now and I can’t influence events. I’m just curious.”
Cut an improbable one hundred days to an impossible thirty. How?
In an organization as open to public scrutiny as NASA, internally and externally, with an ethos of safety and careful, meticulous planning drummed into its soul following the Challenger and Columbia disasters, how?
First explain to your top managers and your celestial mechanicians and your flight design analysts that sleep is hazardous to their health. Then, with due authorization and swearings to secrecy, tell them why. Then step back; get out of their hair.