Space Eater (30 page)

The woman said, “We gave strict orders that the Center should only monitor in case of unauthorized New African research.”

“I heard that once from Lowenstein—and the other thing he said was how you made waves in, in whatever MT makes waves in—every day—calibrate the monitors—oh bloody hell.”

“I don’t quite understand,” the older man said, rubbing the bald top of his head. “The calibration bursts are perfectly safe and involve no new frontiers at all. Or so the scientists insist—is Winkel still here?

Surely it was dangerous
original
research you’re supposed to have warned us about?”

A feeling of frozen horror. “Yes, but...”

Rossa said, “The computer up there cannot tell the difference, I’m afraid.”

“Look at the next one,” said the woman.

Urgent message extremely repeat extremely intense A/P burst monitored 15:55 on instrumental
monitors here stop more unique than any previous disturbances almost stop query action if any to
be implemented stop detailed computations follow stop colonel (sci) blair end.

“Illiterate oaf,” the woman murmured with a sort of objectless anger. “’More unique’...”

I let her finish and said: “Did you
feel
it? A kind of twitch in the air? You remember, I saw you blink, and the clock was 15:55 or something like that—“

“What does this mean?” said the younger man, looking ready for bad news.

“It means,” Rossa said slowly, “...it means they have set an MT weapon against—this whole planet, perhaps. I’m only surprised we’re still alive here and talking.”

The third memo...

Preliminary results priority satellite observation stop something there all right stop rad and
forward mass detector triangulation gives rough distance 2e6 km rough mass 4e12 kg stop
apparently small hot source emission peak in gamma stop no detectable proper motion wrt pallas
stop investigation continues stop overlord ends.

“Maybe we ought to get that Winkel fellow back,” I said, more to give me thinking time than anything else. “He’d understand this science jargon.”

The woman said coldly: “_I_ understand this science jargon, thank you. There is an unknown object two million kilometers distant, weighing four million million kilos—four thousand million tons. Roughly.”

I mentioned how I’d read somewhere that the Great Pyramid, quite a hefty bit of work, weighs in at around five million tons. Eight hundred of them would make a fair pile. Rossa looked startled as I said this; the StraProgCom woman carried on.

“The lack of proper motion with respect to Pallas—that’s motion perpendicular to the line between Pallas and this object—indicates that if it’s moving at all it’s either moving directly away, or—“ She looked at me hard.

“If anyone thinks it’s moving away I’ll take the bet all right,” I said. “It could be a mite hard for me to collect, though.”

A present from Earth was coming. But how the hell had they done it?

Twenty-Seven

It was a fast walk to the War Room, with the StraProgCom folk in a hurry but too formal to run; we strained like people trying to hit top speed in a walking race without breaking the rules. Half my mind picked up introductions as the woman decided that with all our Utter Top Secret insights, a few names more or less wouldn’t hurt: she was Fusco, the balding man was Smith, the young fellow who smiled was Ronder. The other half of me was crossing off ideas on an imaginary notepad ... it wasn’t a jammer because communications were fine, it wasn’t a nullbomb or a peephole into the sun because it
stayed
there and it was
heavy
. Only: if it massed in the thousands of millions of tons it wouldn’t, it couldn’t really be standing still in space. It would be falling.

Guards trailed us down the corridor, not looking sure whether we still had to be guarded. They acted like a London dog pack wondering if it’s safe to attack. By my side Rossa said, “I used to know my way around in physics ... Assuming this planet were the same as Earth, which I suppose approximately it is, couldn’t one make a guess at how hard the thing would hit? Half the mass times escape velocity...”

Fusco looked over her shoulder without breaking step. “Approximately is the word, and personally I wouldn’t trust mass detector readings at this range. The figure you want is about 2.5 times 10^20 joules.”

She cut off the conversation by swiveling her head forward again.

“Impact energy,” I muttered, trying to turn the figure into a scale I could understand. “Say sixty thousand megatons. Wouldn’t want to stand underneath.”

“Ken, there is something peculiar about this. That’s not a patch on that dreadful nullbomb explosion.

Don’t you see?”

“It’s funny all right,” I said. Somewhere at the back of my head, half an idea was wriggling...

The War Room looked like an ants’ nest five seconds after you’ve put your boot through it. I spotted a familiar head, red hair receding and fading to pink: Winkel had arrived before us and came scurrying with the latest bad news. The big screen showed a star pattern with an overlaid red arrow aiming at one light-point more or less centered, and in small letters across the base it said SIMULATION. I wondered what good that did anyone.

“Corrected mass estimate 2.1 times 10^13 kilograms,” said the neuter voice from over the screen.

“Corrected distance estimate—“

“It’s falling,” Winkel said happily. “This is absolutely fascinating. I don’t think the mass figure is decisive yet, it’s been fluctuating all over the place—“

Still, I thought, let’s call it thirty thousand megatons, plus.

“Corrected distance estimate,” said the only voice in the room that didn’t sound excited. “1.98 times 10^9 meters. Trend of corrections suggests a slowly but steadily decreasing distance. Please stand by.”

Winkel was rustling a dozen sheets of printout. “—tell you I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s hot,
damned
hot—this is a blackbody spectrum peaking up in the
gamma
for God’s sake, Lydia, still a point source as far as any of the instruments can tell, I mean it simply defies
logic
...” He started punching buttons on a tiny calculator.

“Corrected mass estimate—“

“Jacklin, Corman, come here again,” said Lydia Fusco. “I take it that whatever’s happening out there is the final measure of your appalling government. The immediate question is, is it a final warning or simply final?”

“You’re on the record, if I remember rightly, with some mention of a minimum-loss-of-life strategy—unquote,” said Ronder.

I felt annoyed with Fusco for having slipped halfway to the idea I’d caught squirming in my own head a few minutes back. “You mean they could just be letting you know what they can do? I’d thought of that.

It makes sense—whatever it is, I’d reckon you’ve got a chance to deal with it before it gets here.”

More people with that look of authority were coming our way across the room.

Smith said: “Might the thing—call it UFO, unidentified falling object—might it not be manned? We hardly dare attack it if that’s the case.”

Winkel snorted. “Not likely—sir. Look at this.” He waved the calculator; its display area had a lot of numbers showing. “Surface temperature something times 10^9 kelvins. If there’s anyone alive on the UFO, they’re dead.” He threw out a smile to make sure everyone knew this was a joke; the smile went rigid and fell apart before it had got far. Fusco stared at him with a kind of friendly exasperation. “G-type stars average 6000 degreesK surface temperature, that’s all. I wonder why we aren’t dead as well? It can’t be very big...” A back-to-the-drawing-board glaze went over his eyes and he poked again at the little calculator.

“Corrected motion estimate: to a first approximation it appears that object is accelerating toward a point further along Pallas orbit. No evidence of powered course alteration. Acceleration wholly gravitational, probability 85 percent. First estimate of time of nearest approach 800 hours plus or minus 50 percent.

First estimate of direct collision probability 60 percent plus. Please stand by.”

The important-looking men and women had got here now; the crowd was breaking around our group as though it was a rock, such a dangerous rock you sailed well clear ... In the lead there was a small, wrinkled woman who looked very tired and had more fancy ribbons aboard than anyone I’d seen except Lowenstein.

“General Skene, acting StraProgCom chairman,” Smith told us quickly.

Skene said, “I think we have a quorum here. May I ask you for a swift decision on whether or not to take immediate action against this UFO? We have a special weapon reserve after all ... I personally favor this course of action.”

There was a quick murmur of “Aye ... Aye...” from the others, though not Winkel. He whispered something that might have been: “Lydia ... no...”

“Very well. We have at least 400 hours. Please direct that the ‘nullbombs’ be demounted from the emergency missile flight—“

Ronder looked embarrassed suddenly, and shuffled nearer to me and Rossa. “Afraid Lowenstein insisted on doing that as, um, a final strike capability. Assure you I voted against the proposal...”

“Corrected thermal characteristics report: object is apparently emitting blackbody radiation peaking in gamma radiation band, power level on the order of 5 times 10^8 watt steady output. Optical sighting report:
Overlord
satellite observatory visual scan cannot resolve body, which appears a point source at all magnifications. Visible emission intense blue-white.”

The sudden StraProgCom meeting had broken up into muffled conversations. Fusco was saying, “No.

There’s no point in giving detailed orders --
they’re
the experts in extraorbital work. Just shuttle the nullbombs up there and tell them to hit that bugger as soon as they possibly can.”

“Give them the tools and they’ll finish the job,” Rossa murmured. She’d been so quiet I’d almost forgotten she was there. “I rather suspect, Ken, this is more of a problem than our friends realize. There is something very, very wrong with the physics of this so-called UFO, don’t you think?”

“Christ,
I
wouldn’t know—what is it?”

Rossa smiled a little, though only on one side of her mouth. “I’ve no idea at all; but if one really wants to know one should ask a physicist.” And she pointed a finger at Winkel. Now I looked, I could see he was sweating, and gnawing on his lip as if it were chewing gum, punching harder and harder at his tiny keyboard. Every so often he’d shake his head furiously, glance at Fusco (who was watching him with a worried frown), and shut his eyes before starting all over again.

When the physicists get that bothered, maybe it’s time to head for the bunker.

Fusco: “I don’t suppose you two have anything to contribute? Still seem to be some, well, areas of uncertainty? Please?” She sounded ready to start shouting.

I said, “I’ve had a quick think about the MT gadgets I know—none of them seem to fill the bill at all.

Could be it’s something new altogether.”

“MT devices,” Rossa said slowly. “The 1.9-centimeter gate—Look, suppose the method were to connect two places with one of those gateways, with one place deep inside a blue-white sun. The power and radiation would come streaming through—“

“The sunbeam, yeah,” I said. “That won’t work, though, this thing’s bloody
massive
.”

“Well, isn’t a sun massive—yes, I know, much
more
massive. What I wanted to suggest was that perhaps when you look at a solar-sized mass through a small peephole, it seems relatively small because one only ‘sees’ a tiny, tiny part of it. Could that possibly work?”

“Hey, yes, maybe,” I said.

“That’s very ingenious,” Fusco said with something of a frown, thinking about it.

“But it won’t work, Lyd—Major Fusco,” said Winkel, who’d stopped his compulsive button-pushing to listen in. He sounded disappointed. “The temperature is
quite
incompatible with that. It’s whole orders of magnitude above any conceivable solar level.”

“One of the things I do know about AP/MT gadgetry is that it messes up the laws of physics,” I told him. “Maybe they don’t apply to that thing out there.”

He looked at me as though I was an interesting specimen of Neanderthal man.

“Corrected motion estimate: acceleration is wholly gravitational, probability 95 percent. Corrected estimate of time of nearest approach 550 hours plus or minus 15 percent. Corrected estimate of direct collision probability 75 percent. First estimate of probable collision zone: equatorial. Please stand by.”

The useless star map blinked off the screen and a display of about a hundred changing figures came on instead.

“Even if that notion couldn’t work, it was ingenious,” Fusco said. “Any more where it came from?”

All my memories of Tunnel, where the clues had to be if there were any clues, seemed to have jammed together and fused on the far side of that horrible gulf of pain. I hated thinking back that far. Instead:

“Remember DEVOURER,” I said. “The thing was set off from the orbital station, you caught the signal.

We found a program in the banks there—there were half a dozen with fancy names, locked against us.

One was DEVOURER, and I know the guy who set up a lot of this likes clever code names.”

“Cleverly meaningful names,” said Rossa.

“Hm,” said Winkel. He stuffed the calculator into his pocket and stood there rubbing the thumb and two fingers of his right hand, not looking at anything in particular. “Hm. But that’s ridiculous. No ... Could I have another look at the second interrogation transcripts, somebody? There was one item there—“

“I’ll see to it,” said Ronder, who’d been hanging around in an edgy sort of way, not looking sure of what to do. He went.

“This is what they called grasping at straws, I suppose,” Fusco said. “At least our counteroffensive should be inarguable—no matter
what
sort of anomaly is involved, a teraton-level explosion can’t help but knock out the apparatus.”