Comet! (an Ell Donsaii story #5 ) (34 page)

Ell shook her head and almost whispered, “He’s my ‘friendly boy.’ I’ve been explaining us that way for a long time,” she managed a weak grin. “
And
I’m sticking to my g
uns. You go get him girl, if this old
world comes to an end I want
my
two
good friends
to have
been happy
for
at least
a while
.”

The two friends hugged a moment longer then Emma borrowed a Kleenex and left Ell’s office. Ell closed the door again and s
at down to cry a little longer, sad even though she felt guilty for being jealous over a guy she didn’t really love.

Chapter
Eleven

Epaulding looked up as Mike Voight appeared in his doorway. “Tell me things are going better?”

“Yeah. I haven’t done much.” He grinned, “
The ass kicking you did before you turned them over to me worked pretty good. I’ve even heard
one
telling another
, ‘
You’re
letting down the human race.’ We should be ready to send the first
mission
up in D5R’s launch craft in a couple more days. They were really grudging about selling us our ports
,
but they came through.”

“Great, I’l
l feel so much better when the devices a
re on their way. Where will they be meeting it?”

“A little ways after it comes around the Sun. It’ll take us a couple of months to get to the sun at 22kps. We’ve got a problem that we didn’t think of before though.”

Epaulding closed his eyes wearily, “Yes?”

“At the rendezvous point
the comet will be going
more than
60kps.”

Epaulding shrugged and looked at Voight curiously.

“Our original plan was to match courses with the comet and set the weapon on it, then fire it at our leisure. But,
with the ports
we can only go 22kps which means we can’t match orbits. We’ll have to set off the bomb as the comet whizzes by at about a relative 40kps.”

“Oh my God!”

“Don’t get your underwear in a twist.
Microsecond timing is
simple
for an
AI
. We
should be able to set it off at the right moment without any trouble and the nukes we’re sending out are big enough that we don’t have to be perfect.
It’s t
he old saw about ‘horseshoes, hand grenades and nuclear weapon
s…’
close will be good enough.”

Epaulding sighed, “But if you miss, you
’ll
only have one more chance. Start building number three.”

“OK
…
”

***

Ell arranged to contract out the machining of the iron cylinders that provided mass for the impactors.
They had decided to stick with five kilogram impactors for fear of breaking up the nucleus
of the comet using
larger ones. These were
7.5
centimeters or
three
inches in diameter by about
14.5
cm or
6
inches
in length.
The pusher rocket consisted of a
7.1
cm port attached
to the rocket nozzle.
The large port was necessary to get enough fuel through
,
yet stay below the 22 meters per second restraint on flow
rates
through a port.
The natural gas and air would be mixed on earth just before going through the port into the nozzle. Above the port were its electronics and some attitude jets and video cameras for guidance as well as the motor that unscrewed the impactor
off the pusher
.
One more aiming camera was mounted on top of the impactor.
One of the local machine shops also agreed to machine
large numbers of
replacement
nozzles
for their rockets because when they looked at the first ones that they were
about
to reuse they saw that there had been quite a bit of
erosion of
the nozzles from the long burns
needed to accelerate the impactors up to 150 kps
. Emma
fabricated more circuits for the
150 kps ports to fuel the rockets. They obtaine
d the entangled discs for the ports from the Portal Technology group.
Nancy
hired some temporary employees for a few days to
help
assemble the components
including
the video camera
s
and
PGR
chip
s
of the guidance package to the
ir respective
ports and motors.

Ell
also
sent out another rocket with a
ten
centimeter pop out port and placed it on the opposite side of the comet from the direction the impactors would be coming. Thus,
after disengaging from the impactor just prior to  its impact,
instead of having to fly all the way back to where they had come from, the
7.5
centimeter pusher motors could just
turn, retrorocket to
slow themselves down and
then
go to that
10cm
port to be sent back to Earth for refurbishing
.  A
new rocket nozzle and
another steel impactor
and they would be good to go.

To their surprise, Ell found herself
back
attending her classes and Roger started working on the effects of porting on animals and even plants
again
. It seemed weird to be doing those things when their world might come to an end in a few months but
,
they had to await delivery
and assembly
of the components
for the impactor
rocket
s
anyway.

Ell stopped Emma, “Hey, Velos is playing in
Greensboro
tomorrow night…
Now that things have slowed down with the comet,
you want to go?”

“Go watch your triangle in action you mean?” Emma said with a twinkle. “Who are you going as?”

Ell blushed, “I… I don’t know. He called ‘Belle’
and asked her to ask you
to invite ‘Ell.’
” She put her hands on her hips and tilted her head,
“
How rude is that?”

Emma put a hand over her mouth to stifle a snort. “So are you pissed because he
isn’t
hot for ‘Belle’ or excited ‘cause he
is
hot for ‘Ell?’ Or…”

Ell shook her head stifling her own giggle, “Or mad ‘cause he had the
gall
to ask me as ‘Belle’ to get
a
different
girl to go to an event with him? It’s pretty confusing but the answer is
…
‘yes.’”

Emma broke into a full scale laughing fit. When she came up for air she moaned, “And I think
my
love life is messed up… At least
I’m
only being ignored by one man.”

Ell frowned, “Do you think we should invite Roger?”

“Oh my God no! I’d be the third wheel on a date!”

“
How about if you invite
him
?
”

“I can’t do that! He’d think I was your
terrible
friend!”

Ell rolled her eyes, “OK, can we go without the love of your life?”

Emma grinned at her, “Oh! You’re
my
terrible
fr
iend, to make light of my grief-
stricken love life.”

Ell sighed
, “There’
s
no
making you happy!”

***

Gordon walked toward the break room behind the stage. Will Stancil, their manager stopped him with an excited look on his face, “Hey, Gordon, the gate is 5723 people! That’s capacity f
or this place! You’re killin’ ‘
em!”

Gordon pumped his fist, “Great! Hey do you know if Ell Donsaii picked up her comp tickets?” he asked hopefully.

Will shook his head, “I know you think she started you on your way man, but you’re doing fine without her.” He slapped Gordon on the
back of his
shoulder, “Don’t worry, be happy.”

Gordon didn’t want to admit just how badly he wanted to meet and speak to Ell in person. When he had first come face to face with her at the Cat’s Cradle
,
he’d been taken aback by her beauty. She’d always looked beautiful
i
n
the
vids of her at the Olympics and
in
photos after
,
but he’d assumed that she had been extensively made up for those. Actually face to face with her
,
he’d blinked to realize that she didn’t seem to have any makeup on and looked even better than she had in the pics and vids! He often found himself daydreaming about how his newfound fame would allow him to be introduced to her. In his imagination she was entranced by his celebrity
,
minor though
it was and… Well he wasn’t quite sure what would happen after they met and she was entranced
by him,
but it would be
something
good.
When
Gordon stepped into the dressing room he saw Joe Chan with Belle. His eyes darted about and found Emma. “Hey, Emma, is she coming?” He asked eagerly.

Emma shrugged, “She said maybe.”

Gordon’s shoulders drooped. “Dang, I was hoping.” His eyes swept over the three of them. “How are you guys?”

“Good,” they chorused.

Belle said, “You guys sound awesome!”

“Yeah, we really owe Vic big time. I thought all
we
had to do was play and the engineer would take care of the rest but Vic really opened my eyes.  He comes to most of our
North Carolina
shows and keeps teaching me things about acoustics.” He snorted, “The engineers hate me
now
because I have all these demands
,
but it’s working. Belle, I wanted to thank you for getting your Aunt to sponsor us and also for
getting her to front
Vic
opening
his bar.” He raised an eyebrow, “We’re gonna be his first act.”

Emma turned to stare at Belle. She snorted, “Your ‘crazy aunt’ is part owner of a bar now?!”

Belle shrugged, “She isn’t called my ‘crazy’ aunt for nothing. Vic’s place is gonna be a step down for you guys isn’t it? I saw the plan and it only holds
45
0 people.”

Gordon drew himself up and held out his pinky, “Ah yes, but you must help the little people.” He threw his arms around Belle, “Like you and your aunt helped
us
out.”

Belle hugged him back. He thought she seemed a little wistful. Her complexion seemed a little better, if only she hadn’t put on that weight over the summer he could really have gone for her. He turned to Emma, “Hey
,
if you could get a message to Ms. Donsaii, we’ve left a space open on the right side of our stage for her to dance.” He winked, “We’d like to keep building our reputation as the band that Ell Donsaii dances to.” He looked around at his bandmates, “Back out there guys?”

As the band headed back out to the stage
,
Emma turned to Ell and grinned, “Well, what are you going to do?”

Ell had been staring off into space. She pulled back
,
then grinned at Emma, “I think we should go out there and dance in the space they set aside.”

Emma lowered her voice, “Are you going to do it as ‘Ell?’”

Ell shook her head.

Emma’s eyes widened, “Really?!” she hissed as if horrified and excited at the same time.

Ell nodded, “We need a routine though.”

Emma gaped, “We don’t have time to work out and practice a routine!”

“It can be simple, here, do this.” To the muffled music from the stage Ell started dancing a simple routine based on the line dance they’d done together
. Emma
quickly
picked it up.

Joe said, “Why are you guys dancing back here? You can hear better out front.”