Comet! (an Ell Donsaii story #5 ) (15 page)

Ell’s eyes dropped down from her HUD, unfocused
and
star
ing
off into infinity for a moment. She shook herself and said, “Let’s try having Manuel cut out the 10mm disk and coat the outer edge with
polyethylene
then insert it back in the main plate or in a new plate so it’s a good fit.
We want the polyethylene to be about 10
-20
microns thick
.
That should create some
capacitance
to
boost our voltage. Then spray it with buckyballs and
let’s
try it again.” Ell’s eyes unfocused a moment again then she picked up an e-slate and said, “And look at this circuit…”

***

In Ell’s ear
Allan said, “You have a call from your mother.”

Ell said, “Put her on! Hi Mom!”

Kristen’s voice said, “Is this the daughter who promised to keep me better informed about her life?”

“Oh!” Ell’s voice took on an embarrassed tone. “
You
heard about the Nobel?”

“
What!
No! I
was
upset because Phil mentioned that you’d visited him in
Houston
!
What do you mean
Nobel?!”

“Um,” Ell found her shoulders rising in an
self-conscious
shrug that her mother wouldn’t be able to see, “They’re giving me the
prize
for Physics.”

“What!? And you didn’t tell me?!”

“I’ve been meaning to call. I just got distracted.”
Ell almost squeaked. “Sorry?”

Kristen sighed long and hard. “Gram and I were gonna drive up to visit you for your birthday tomorrow night. But now there’s
no
way I’ll be able to think of a present that’ll impress you. Maybe I’d better stay home?”

Ell laughed, “You know that merely gracing my life with your presences will
far
outshine
any
Nobel Prize! You’d
better
come up.”

Kristen giggled, “We were
going
to surprise you but Phil also told us about
how he had to wait
four hours for you to leave work
when
he
tried to
surprise
you
.
We’re
not that patient.”

“Can I invite Roger and Emma?”

“You’re still dating Phil
and
Roger?”

Ell laughed, “Mom, I’m not even twenty yet! I’m not ‘dating’ either one in the sense you’re giving the word,
as if it were
a lifelong commitment. I do ‘
go out with’
one or the other
of them sometimes. I’m kinda hoping I’ll get to date
someone
else before I settle down for life!”

“You’re gonna be twenty tomorrow.” Kristen said ominously.

Ell giggled, then sniffed, “I know, and I’m so sad to
give
up my teenage years. I think I’m just going to keep telling everyone I’m
only
nineteen.”

Kristen laughed, “OK, my wild child. I’ll call Roger and invite him. I don’t know Emma, you’ll have to invite her
yourself.
We’
ll
made reservations at
6:30
at Bin 54
.
”

“Ooh! I hear they have the best steaks!”

***

President Teller stared at Epaulding. “
How
likely is it that this thing will hit us?”

Epaulding shrugged, “About 15% is what we’re projecting, but we really don’t know that m
uch about projecting the
likelihood
of something this size hitting
us
. It hasn’t happened
since the dinosaurs.

“
We’re guessing 15% for a direct strike, but if it comes close, gravitational stress is likely to pull it apart and
so there’s a pretty high likelihood that
some
fragments
will hit
us
even if the main body misses
.
It also is going to pass pretty close to the sun and that might pull it apart too.
”

Teller shut his eyes tightly. “Which side of the earth will it hit?”

“Sir?”

“If it hits.” Teller said
with irritated patience
, “You know what day and time it will hit, right? Is the
United States
going to be on the side it hits or is it goin
g to hit the eastern hemisphere?
”

“Uh, sir, the Pacific will be turned that way but it could hit to either side.
And,
sir, if it hits
anywhere
, it will destroy civilization.”

“Is the human race going to be extinct?”

“I think so, sir. If
the entire thing
hits
us
, the likelihood of
large animals like
humans
surviving is
pretty
small.”

Teller leaned his chair back, staring at the ceiling. “What are we doing about it?”

Epaulding had seen the President’s eyes shining, now he saw a tear trickle down his cheek. Was the President going to decompensate? “Sir, to some extent that depends on you.”

“On me?”

“Yes sir. If we start mobilizing resources
we’ll start a panic. The panic will likely kill thousands
to millions
of people. Then if the comet misses us…”

“Yeah,
yeah,
I get it. But if we don’t do anything and it hits and there
was
something we could have done…” He sat up, “I need to know what’s possible. What can we do?”

“Well the McNamara commission studied it eight years ago. The popular notion that we could blow it apart with a nuclear bomb has the problem of turning it into a shotgun blast of smaller projectiles. Some would then be small enough to burn up in the atmosphere, but
probably
some would
still
hit us and
even
if they were
a lot smaller than the original comet, they could still
be
big
problems. If we break it into hundreds of pieces it will be pretty hard to track them all down.
A better strategy would be to
set of
f
a nuclear weapon
beside the comet in an effort to deflect it and m
ake it miss.
We have to worry that it will break up doing that too.”

“Why not just use a rocket to push it to one side?”

“Well, it’s almost certainly rotating, so first we’d have to attach a rocket to stop
the
rotation,
then
use a rocket to deflect it.
Otherwise the pusher rocket would just spin around with
the comet,
pushing
it
all different directions.
”

“So,
you’ve
been studying this. What
should
we do?”

Well ideally we want to
be
out there and start defle
cting it now. Since it’s
nearly
four
months away, if we deflected it to the side now at
just
four
kilometers
per
hour we could deflect it the diameter of the earth over those
four
months. Of course
, to be safe,
we’d like to deflect it
many
times the diameter of the earth, and we want to move it the right direction. We could move it
twelve
kilometers
per
hour for
a total of
three times the diameter of the earth with the energy in
two
hundred tons of
TNT
. I
f we did it now
..
.”

“But I assume we can’t do it now?”

“No sir. It’
ll
take us months to get there. If we got there in
two
months, which would be very hard since we’d be building the mission from scratch
, we’d need to deflect it
24
kilometers per hour. The closer it is to us the higher the rate that we need to deflect it and when it starts getting close to us we can only get those kinds of deflections with nuclear weapons.”

“OK.”

“OK?”

“Yes, OK. Start building missions to get out there and deflect it as early as you possibly can. Assume that you’re going to have to use nuclear weapons. Talk to Sec Def. Keep it secret so that we don’t incite a panic.”

“Yes sir.
” Epaulding said, getting up,
“
We’ll have to pretend that we’re developing some other kind of mission.”

“OK, do you think Donsaii could help?”

Epaulding paused
and narrowed his eyes
, “I think we should use D5R’s ‘ports’ to fuel the rockets… But I’d rather not get her company in
volved.
”

The President narrowed his eyes, “You heard the announcement that they’re going to award her the Nobel prize in Physics?”

Epaulding’s eyes widened. “No, but I think she d
eserves it.
However,
her company is… civilian.
I’m afraid they couldn’t keep this a secret.”

Teller stared at him for a moment, as if
he was going to say something
else
. But
, after a moment
he
just
nodded, “OK.”

***

Roger set
up
a meeting between
Fred and Brian from Portal Tech and Bynewicz and
Bynewicz’
friend
Dr. Jodi Mullis
the diabetes specialist. They
had an
interesting discussion
regarding
the problems of implanting a sterile port and keeping it that way while injecting insulin through it. The glucose sensor
should be easy to keep sterile but if the insulin arrived
contaminated
with bacteria
that
would be a big problem.
Another issue that Mullis had brought up was the potential problem of encapsulation of the implanted port with scar tissue.
Such
scar tissue might slow diffusion of glucose to the sensor and release of insulin from the port. Part of the reason that insulin infusion catheters
currently in use
had to be moved
from location to location
was because of encapsulation
of the needle tip
. Mullis had some ideas for dealing with this issue and had already applied for permission to begin some trials in diabetic mice.

The discussion had given Ell a lot to think about regarding implantation of a
PGR
audio transducer
below
her ear
like she’d be contemplating
. She hadn’t thought much about issues of sterility until
she’d had this
talk with Bynewicz and Mullis.

She saw Emma waiting at
her
door. “Hey Emma, any luck with the new single end
port
?”

“
Manuel and I
just finished putting it together and I thought you might like to be there when we
turn it on
?”

“Sure! Thanks
for asking
!
Let’s
go
fire it up
!
”

Ell looked at the new port. From the front
,
the
polyethylene
ring wasn’t visible because it had been covered by the spray of buckyballs. Looking at the back side of it the polyethylene was barely visible
, even with a hand loupe magnifier
. “Wow, Manuel, you do nice work!”

“I try.” He grinned, “Are you ready to try it? I’m dying to see if it works.”

They set it
on the table and plugged it in. Ell took a deep breath, held up her hand, elaborately crossed her fingers and finally nodded to Emma who touched the switch.