“I have reached my decision,” he said. But he did not speak the words yet. Could he trust Dee with the job? Perhaps he should take the control of the maneuver away from Dee and Dum, tell the comet diversion task force to perform the bum manually.
But no. Better to let Dee have the practice, make sure all of her control connections to the comet’s attitude control and thruster systems were working. They would have to use her either to control terminal descent or Last Ditch. Better to let her have a test drive, as it were. There was a nice long window for the comet diversion bum. By adjusting the thrust of the initial bum and the attitude of the comet, they could perform the bum any time in the next twelve hours. If some connection failed, if the bum was inaccurate, they would have time to fix it, or decide to abort and perform an emergency lateral bum to throw the comet well clear of the planet. Not so in the rapid-fire sequence of the terminal-phase breakup of the comet. Best to test as much of the system as possible now. This was the easy part. The hard stuff would come later.
And if he didn’t trust Dee, he shouldn’t let the comet diversion happen at all.
“I hereby order you to perform the planned diversion maneuver on Comet Grieg,” he said, and the room was deathly quiet.
“Verrry wellll, Governorrr,” said the unison voice. “Weee shalll commmmence the fffinall countdown in fourteen minutes, thirteen seconds. Tttthe burnnn willll commence one hourrr later.”
“Thank you, Dee. Thank you, Dum,” said Kresh. He took the headset off and sat down heavily in his console chair.
“By all the forgotten gods,” he said. “What have I done?”
FREDDA AND ALVAR went outside, and Alvar, at least, was very much surprised to discover that it was full night. How long had it been since he had last left the control room? Twelve hours? A day and a half? Three days? He felt sure that if he concentrated hard enough, he could work it out, remember the last time he had come out, the last time he had gone in.
But there was not much point to the exercise. It was over, and he was out, and that was all that really mattered.
Fredda took him by the hand and led him away from the cold sterility of the Terraforming Center, out away from the lifeless stresscrete of the parking lots, and out onto the cool green lawns that surrounded the Center. “Look,” she said, pointing up into the western sky. “There it is.”
Kresh looked up in surprise. “I’ll be damned,” he said. “So it is.” He had never seen Comet Grieg before. There it was, a fat, featureless golden dot hanging in the darkness. It had no tail, showed no features, but there it was. It seemed incredible that something that obvious should have been so hard to find. But he knew he was seeing the highly reflective sunshade parasol, and he knew the comet was moving fast, straight toward them. Considered as a question of logic, it made perfect sense that it would get closer, and appear larger and brighter as it did so. But still, somehow, it was a shock to see it up there.
He had seen its image endless times in the pictures beamed back from the diversion task force. He had seen it modeled, dissected, shown in false color detail, symbolized by a formless dot in an orbit simulation-but he had never seen the thing itself. There was something jarring, startling, in seeing the comet firsthand, in receiving direct, sensory, personal proof that it was real, that it was no simulation, no abstraction, but a flying mountain of ice and stone that he had ordered dropped onto this world.
Fredda led him out onto the cool, soft, grass and sat down. He sat down beside her and leaned back on his arms, and felt the dampness of the grass on his pants and arms. He could smell the clean, cold, earthy tang of the dirt, and a gentle breeze tickled the nape of his neck. “Let’s watch it from here,” said Alvar.
Fredda leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “Good idea,” she said, laughing gently. “Glad you thought of it.”
“So maybe once in a while we think alike, you and I,” said Alvar. “But right now I’m tired of thinking. Tired of deciding. At least that’s all over-for the moment, anyway.”
“For the moment,” Fredda agreed. “Rest now. Rest now, away from all of them, and in a while we’ll be able to see the comet shine.”
“Yes,” said Kresh, yawning mightily. He could feel all the tension, all the worry, draining out of him. It was done, for good or ill. “Rest. Rest awhile. And then I want to see them light the fuse under that comet.”
But when, at last, the fat star in the sky blazed into glory, Governor Alvar Kresh was sound asleep, snoring gently.
DAVLO LENTRALL SHOVED his way a little closer to the porthole, and promptly got shoved back out of the way. At last he gave it up. Too many people were trying too hard to get near the too-small piece of glass.
In the old days, he would have expected them to defer to him. He would have reminded them that none of them would be here, that none of this would be happening, if not for him. Who but he had a better right to be near the glass? But now it simply amazed him that he had ever been capable of thinking that way. What right had he to anything?
Besides, they all had a right to be at the window. All of them, Spacers and Settlers, technicians and engineers and spaceworkers, specialists of every possible sort, had all worked impossible shifts, taken on impossible tasks on unmeetable schedules-and succeeded.
Davlo gave up and made his way toward the equally crowded cargo bay. They had set up huge repeater screens there. And there was at least some hope he would be able to see better from there.
The hope was realized the moment he set foot in the cargo bay. The main viewer screen had a view of Comet Grieg. There it was, huge and misshapen, a gleaming ball of rock and ice, hanging in the velvet darkness, sheathed in the shining gold of the parasol that was now draped over its pockmarked surface.
Once he would have felt nothing but sheer, vain pride in what he had caused to happen. But now, to look on that enormous object, and know that he had changed its fate, that his actions and those of others had converted a vagrant thought in the back of his mind into the huge and stunning piece of reality floating in the darkness, simply terrified him. What hubris. How could humans imagine themselves to have the competency, the wisdom, the right to attempt anything so grandiose?
He glanced at the countdown clock, and saw that they were getting close. Only a few seconds left.
Could they truly do this thing? Could they, would they, truly bring this flying mountain down onto their world? It seemed impossible. It seemed madness, suicidal.
A wave of panic swept over Davlo, hemmed in by the swarm of bodies. Someone in the front of the crowd began to chant out the countdown. “Twenty. Nineteen. Eighteen. “Another voice joined in, and another, and another, until the entire room full of people who had made this thing happen were shouting out the numbers in unison. “Seventeen! Sixteen! Fifteen!” the voices cried out, calling a bit louder with every number.
All except Davlo. Suddenly he was gripped by fear, by shame, by guilt. It could not work. It couldn’t possibly. They were going to destroy the world. He had to stop them, stop this. It was a mistake, a horrible, terrifying mistake that could never be put right. Dropping a comet on a living world? No. No! He could not let them. He plunged forward, into the crowd, and tried to get to the front, call out a protest, a warning, but the crowd was too tight, the shouting voices too loud. He could not move forward, and he could not hear himself. “Ten!” they shouted. “Nine! Eight!”
But it could not be. It must not be. The dangers, the risks, were too great. The image of Kaelor, Kaelor at his death, Kaelor dying to prevent this thing flashed through his mind. “No!” he shouted out. “No! Stop!”