Michael McCollum - Thunderstrike

THUNDERSTRIKE!

A Novel By

Michael McCollum

Sci Fi - Arizona, Inc.

Third Millennium Publishing

A Cooperative of Online Writers and Resources

PART 1: VISITOR FROM THE DEEP BLACK

CHAPTER 1

For millions of years, the sun had merely been the brightest point of light in the sky, a cold beacon little

different from the thousands of others visible in the ebon firmament. Now it was growing perceptibly

larger month by month, year by year. The change was not without precedent. A billion years earlier, the

planetoid had collided with a bit of orbiting debris out beyond Pluto. The force of the impact had altered

its orbit forever. One hundred eleven times the planetoid had plunged deep into the fires of the inner

Solar system, whirled quickly around the sun, and then retreated once more into the cold black. The

ordeal had been presaged each time by a brightening of the distant yellow star.

About the time the sun began to show a visible disk, the ice plains and cliffs began to stir with

ethereal winds as hydrogen and oxygen frost turned slowly to vapor. Initially these winds were as

insubstantial as wraiths, little more than individual molecules escaping the planetoid’s weak

gravitation. Later, when the sun had grown still larger in the sky, the snowy surface began to

emit gentle puffs of gas, dust, and vapor. Weak though it was, the planetoid’s gravity was

sufficient to wrap it with a wisp of vacuum-thin fog. By the time the flying mountain crossed the

orbit of Uranus, the fog had grown thick enough to obscure it from anyone who might pick it out

among the background stars.

#

Amber Hastings sat at her desk and wistfully watched Farside Observatory’s big

hundred-meter-effective compound telescope swing ponderously into position. Her vantage point was

almost directly up-sun from the giant instrument. As she watched, lengthening black shadows stretched

across the floor of Mendeleev Crater. The view was from one of the pylon cameras situated to provide

a panoramic view of the Solar System’s largest astronomical instrument. In the background, the

grey-brown wall of the crater’s western rim thrust above the curved horizon in stark relief unsoftened by

atmosphere.

The telescope appeared to be a species of giant metal flower springing forth from Luna’s airless, sterile

soil. The flower’s hexagonal leaves reflected their surroundings with the distortion of parabolic mirrors.

At three places around the instrument’s periphery, flat mirrors were lifted skyward on cherry picker

booms in semblance of weirdly jointed stamens. The likeness to an alien plant was heightened by the

telescope’s dust dome, whose eight sections lay folded back like the petals of a rose.

Amber watched as the giant instrument finished pivoting toward a section of sky near

Galactic-South. Starlight was reflected from the telescope’s five-meter-diameter mirrors into the Number

3 concentrator, which sent the highly focused image to the beam director. From there, the photons were

directed into the instrument room of the observatory fifty meters below the crater floor. There the light

was sampled by an array of sophisticated devices in the hope that it could be made to yield its secrets.

Amber Elizabeth Hastings was a typical Lunarian - tall by Earth standards (180 centimeters) and tending

toward lankiness. The shorts, singlet, and slippers, which were normal attire for Luna’s air-conditioned

cities, did little to hide a full, if large boned figure. Amber was a Nordic blonde with blue eyes. In

contravention of the short hairstyles preferred by most Lunarian women, she wore her hair at shoulder

length.

Amber had been born twenty-five years earlier in the small community of Miner’s Luck, located near

Darwin Crater in the Nearside Highlands. At age eighteen, she had entered the University of Luna with

the intention of becoming an Environmental Engineer. She had quickly decided that a life spent in the

bowels of Luna’s cities held no attraction for her, and had begun to search for a new profession.

Attending a university is supposed to prepare one for later life. In Amber’s case, it had only emphasized

her antipathy to the usual courses of study. The only class she enjoyed during her freshman year was

Introduction to Astronomy.

Like most Lunarians, Amber had never paid much attention to the sky. Luna’s underground cities gave

few opportunities to stargaze. Since Amber had been raised on Nearside, whenever she did have

occasion to study the sky, the view overhead had always been dominated by the Earth. Compared to

the Mother of Men, the tiny pinpricks of light that were the stars seemed pale and insignificant.

Introduction to Astronomyhad opened her eyes to the universe beyond Luna. She had marveled at the

spiral sweep of the Andromeda Galaxy, been awed by the blazing blue-white glory of the Pleiades, and

had sighed over the muted multispectral beauty of the Horsehead Nebula. Each new revelation had

caused her to want to learn more. Therefore, at the end of her first year, Amber had switched her major

to astronomy, intending the change to be a stopgap until she could find something permanent.

Three years later, and somewhat to her own surprise, Amber had found herself the recipient of a

Bachelor of Astronomical Science degree. With it had come an offer for a job on the staff of Farside

Observatory. She had accepted happily amid visions of quickly making a brilliant discovery. Reality had

turned out to be less glamorous.

As in so many other fields, the computer revolution had changed astronomy forever. Gone were the days

when a lone scientist bundled up against the cold air and spent the night in the observation cage of a giant

telescope. Gone too were the weeks and months spent poring over photographic plates with magnifiers,

or in tediously plotting the absorption lines of stellar spectrums.

A modern astronomer could sit in his easy chair anywhere in the Solar system, work out an observation

program, and transmit his request and charge number to his observatory of choice. In due course, he

would receive multispectral views and numerical data, all neatly annotated. In between request and

result, the process was virtually untouched by human hands.

In the last quarter of the twenty-first century, an observatory’s computers pointed its telescopes and

directed them to track the stars through the sky. The computers controlled viewing times and exposures,

recorded the data, and produced the reports. Sometimes while analyzing data, the computers chanced

upon discoveries unrelated to the objects under study. When this happened, they sought the attention of

the human staff.

Thus, it was that Amber Hastings was monitoring the big telescope when the observatory’s computer

signaled for her attention.

“What is it?” she asked, stifling a yawn.

“I have an asteroid/comet discovery report,” the machine said in its too perfect baritone. “Do you wish to

review it now?”

“Might as well,” she replied. “I don’t get off duty for four more hours.”

As the most junior of Farside Observatory’s staffers, Amber had been assigned as Intra-System

Specialist, which meant that she was in charge of confirming and recording new sightings of comets and

asteroids. In her three years with the observatory, she had checked out half-a-thousand sightings. The

excitement had long since worn off.

The screen in front of her lit to show a starfield. She recognized Open Cluster NGC 2301, which had

been the subject of a long observation program two weeks earlier. Surrounding the cluster was a thicket

of stars. Amber let her gaze sweep quickly across the screen. At first, she saw nothing out of the

ordinary. Then her eyes were drawn to the lower right hand corner of the screen. There she found a dim

smudge of light.

“That it?” she asked as she reached out to touch the image with her finger.

“Affirmative,” the computer responded. “This frame was taken ten days ago at 13:12:15 UT”

Amber read off the object’s position data, noting that it was nearly in the plane of the ecliptic and off in

the direction of Monoceros. “What makes you think it’s a comet? That area is near the Rosette Nebula

and that big patch in Orion.”

“The spectrum is that of a typical comet coma shining by reflected sunlight.”

“Dopplered?”

“Yes.”

“How far?”

“Sufficient to indicate a velocity of 10 km/sec inbound along the observation vector.”

“Interesting,” Amber mused. “Size estimate?”

“None.”

“Distance estimate?”

“None. This is the sole view of the object.”

Amber nodded. One of the great frustrations of astronomers was the lack of a method for determining

distance from a single photograph. To triangulate an object’s position, it was necessary to obtain two

views from widely separated points, or three views taken at different times from a single vantage point.

Amber noted the details of the original sighting, including the fact that only one-quarter of The Big Eye’s

400 mirrors had been active. It was not unusual for the telescope to be split into three independent

clusters, each of which would then study a different section of sky. Indeed, it was this ability to pursue

multiple observations that enabled Farside Observatory to keep up with demand. Even so, the waiting

list for the big telescope was a long one.

“When will The Big Eye be able to recheck this sighting?” Amber asked.

“Eight months, barring cancellations or unscheduled maintenance,” the computer responded.

Amber sighed. “Swing the 60 centimeter into position and get me a second view.”

“I am unable to execute your command. That section of sky is no longer visible. It set behind the western

rim three days ago.”

“How long before it rises again?”

“Two weeks.”

“Very well,” Amber replied. “Schedule a 60 centimeter observation as soon as possible following its

reappearance. If you do not find the object at its previous position, run a standard survey for three

fields-of-view around that point. Notify me when you have completed your task. Repeat.”

The computer repeated Amber’s orders, then returned the screen to its picture of the Big Eye. Amber

returned to her other work and forgot about whatever it was that the computer had discovered.

#

Thomas Bronson Thorpe bounded into the black sky in a jump no Olympic athlete had ever dreamed

of. The sound of his own breathing was loud in his ears as he rose a dozen meters above the

pockmarked plain. The sun was below the horizon, but the crescent Earth, with a slightly fuller Luna

beyond it, was high in the sky. The blue-white radiance of Earthshine cast a twilight glow over The

Rock’s barren landscape. As he reached the top of his arc, Thorpe let his practiced gaze sweep across

the small world. Everywhere around him lay the clutter of heavy industry. To most, it would have

seemed a horizon-to-horizon junkyard. To Tom Thorpe, every empty gas cylinder and bit of used cable

was a testament to humanity’s triumph over an uncaring universe.

Contrary to its name, The Rock contained very little stony matter. In fact, it was nearly pure nickel-iron.

For billions of years, the asteroid had followed its elliptical path around the Sun, occasionally passing

close to the beautiful blue-white world that was Earth. Because of the asteroid’s small diameter (4

kilometers) and the ten-degree inclination of its orbit, The Rock had evaded notice for much of history.

Its anonymity had ended in 2037. In that year, it had approached to within two million kilometers of

Luna, The Rock’s closest passage in more than a century.

The asteroid might have escaped notice even then had its discovery been left to the optical

astronomers. They had their instruments focused far beyond cislunar space, indeed, outside the Solar

System altogether. Their interest lay in exploding galaxies and distant quasars. They left the mundane

business of adding yet another minor planet to the list of known Earth-approaching asteroids to others.

Luckily, the volume of space between Earth and Moon had long been saturated with traffic control

radars. As The Rock made its approach, one such radar suffered a breakdown in its ranging circuits.

Rather than report only those signals it had been designed to see, the radar began registering everything in

sight. When it announced a swiftly moving object two million kilometers beyond Luna, the traffic control

center at Luna City quickly took notice. The center tracked the rogue asteroid for more than an hour

before it drifted below their local horizon. The traffic controllers computed the path of the mystery

object. They reported the information to the System Astronomical Union, where it languished for two

decades.

There had been schemes to mine the mineral wealth of the asteroids as far back as the mid-twentieth

century, and actual attempts early in the twenty- first. All had failed. The time and distance involved in

travel to and from the Asteroid Belt had made the mines too expensive to operate.

In the year 2060, a graduate student by the name of Halver Smith chose asteroid mining for his doctoral

thesis in Business Economics. Smith concluded that there was nothing inherently uneconomical about

such operations. Indeed, a cubic kilometer of asteroidal metal delivered to Earth was worth more than

the combined gross domestic products of the three largest nations. The problem remained the delay

inherent in shipping supplies to the Asteroid Belt and returning product to Earth.

Smith suggested a solution to the problem. Instead of traveling to the Asteroid Belt, he reasoned, why not

move an asteroid into orbit about the Earth. This he dubbed the “Mountain to Mohammed Method.”

Such a plan would require the discovery of the proper asteroid in the proper orbit. To buttress his

arguments, Smith searched the Astronomical Union’s data banks for likely candidates. It was during this

search that he came across the report of the close approach of 2037.

Halver Smith was rewarded a Ph.D. in Business Economics. His proposal had not, however, been

thought very practical. After graduation, he used a small inheritance to invest in a new process for

extracting rare earths from low-grade ore. It had proven a once-in-a-lifetime investment. Halver Smith

had quickly earned a fortune. As his wealth grew, he began to seriously consider putting his thesis into

practice.

Tom Thorpe was a newly minted graduate of the Colorado School of Mines when he answered Halver

Smith’s advertisement for vacuum qualified mining engineers. The job, he soon learned, was the

exploration of an Earth-approaching asteroid. He and a dozen other young vacuum monkeys had

clustered around the viewports of the Prospecting ShipSierra Madre as it made its final approach. At

first sight of their destination, Perry Allen, the most vocal of the group, exclaimed: “It’s nothing but a

goddamned rock!” The name might as well have been applied with quick drying adhesive.

They spent the next month swarming all over the asteroid. They drilled deeply into its surface and

assayed the purity of their samples. They probed even deeper with powerful sonic beams. Their

analyses confirmed that The Rock was a treasure trove, a nearly pure chunk of nickel-iron seamed with

copper, silver, and gold. Ten months later, Thorpe had found himself back on The Rock, this time in the

company of a full crew of mining specialists and a shipload of heavy equipment.

“Better be careful with that jumping!” a woman’s voice said in his earphones. “I’d hate to see you break

anything.”

Thorpe gazed down at the figure standing on the plain some thirty meters below him. The figure in the

red-orange vacuum suit was anonymous. Only in his mind’s eye could he see the short, slightly plump

figure of Nina Pavolev. Two years his junior, Nina was his executive assistant, and his sometimes lover.

“I’ve been doing this for ten years now,” he said over the general communications band, “and haven’t

broken my neck yet!”

“That’s what they all say just before they do!”

Thorpe settled slowly back toward the surface, grounding a full three minutes after the gentle push had

sent him skyward. He took the impact with flexed knees, absorbing just enough energy to keep from

rebounding into the sky.

“When I was a boy back on Earth, I always dreamed of flying like an Eagle. Now I can. It is

exhilarating. You ought to try it.”

“No thank you. Life is too short to take needless risks.”

“You don’t know what you’re missing,” he persisted.

“I’ll take your word for it. Shall we begin the tour, Boss?”

“Anytime you’re ready, oh conscience mine!”

Tom Thorpe had not remained a vacuum monkey. In the three years following his return to The Rock, he

had moved up to gang boss, then shift leader. Those had been the years they had spent turning The

Rock into the Solar System’s largest spaceship. The modifications had begun by blasting a thrust

chamber out of the heavy end of the asteroid, the end they had dubbed “The Acorn’s Cap.” While

Thorpe’s crew worked at excavating the chamber and its connecting tunnels, other crews installed giant

clusters of attitude control jets. These had begun the long process of lengthening the eight-hour day of

the asteroid. Shortly after the despinning process began, Perry Allen was killed in a freak accident. Tom

Thorpe found himself thrust suddenly into the position of Second Assistant Power Engineer.

One of his new duties had involved overseeing the operation of The Rock’s propulsion system. Like

most large spacecraft, the asteroid was powered by antimatter. Thousands of power packs had been

shipped from the big power satellites. These were simple toroidal pipes filled with hard vacuum and

surrounded by self-sustaining magnetic fields. Each contained enough antimatter to power a normal

spacecraft for a hundred round trips to the Moon. Yet, each fed The Rock’s massive ion engines for less

than a day before exhaustion.

It had taken four years of powered flight to move The Rock into an orbit that ranged from 800,000 to

1.2 million kilometers above the Earth. With the end of powered flight had come reassignment for all

personnel. Thorpe was promoted to the position of Supervisor, Surface Operations. Later he was

advanced to Assistant Manager of Operations, and finally, to Manager of Operations. Despite his rise to

the asteroid’s top job, he still made it a point to inspect The Rock’s various facilities once each week.

Thorpe and Nina Pavolev hooked up to one of the many guide cables that ran across the surface of the

asteroid. Soon they were making their way toward the horizon in a series of giant bounds. After a few

hundred meters, the large Mylar covered panels of the solar furnace began to rise above the horizon.

Thorpe shouted a warning to Nina to adjust her faceplate glare shields, and then did the same just as the

sun rose above the horizon. The two paused long enough to let their eyes adjust before moving on.

Off to their left, Thorpe could see the warning beacons that stretched in a line around The Acorn’s

Cap. That end of the asteroid was still “hot” from the nuclear cauldron that had operated there. The

annihilation reaction had boiled a million tons of The Rock’s substance into space. It would be a more

than a century before the area around the thrust chamber would be cool enough for mining. Even then, it

was doubtful that the metal would be needed.

Thorpe leaned back and gazed up at three large conical shapes that were taking shape overhead. These

ore bodies were The Rock’s delivery system for refined metal. Constructed of vacuum foamed iron,

each OB had a specific gravity less than one. When dropped into the Earth’s atmosphere, they quickly

slowed to a few hundred kilometers per hour. At the end of their long dive, they splashed down into an

ocean and then bobbed to the surface.

“The schedule says they’ll be hoisting a billet in a few minutes,” Nina’s voice said as it echoed in

Thorpe’s earphones. “Care to watch?”

“Sure. We’ll see how that new lift supervisor handles his crew.”

Thorpe led Nina along the guide cable for another quarter-kilometer. As they bounded along, a series of

three towers slowly rose above the horizon. They had the appearance of old-style launch gantries. As

they approached more closely, they could see a thick plate of grey metal lying on the ground at the center

of the triangle formed by the towers.

The towers were The Rock’s elevator cum launch pad. Cables ran up the outside of each gantry, looped

over the top, then back down to where they were attached to the corners of a hexagonal metal billet.

During launch, the cables were reeled in by electric winches, causing the plate to accelerate skyward as it

rose up the towers. When it reached the top, the winches would be declutched. The plate would

continue upward at a speed well above local escape velocity. The billet would rise until it approached

the hovering reentry vehicles. Brakes would then be applied to slow the unreeling cables. If properly

done, the nickel-iron billet would come to a halt just as it reached the working level two kilometers

overhead.

As the two observers watched, the heavy nickel-iron plate began to levitate. It rapidly gained velocity. In

a matter of seconds, it was floating skyward, unimpeded by the trailing cables. Thorpe watched until it

had dwindled almost to invisibility. He was about to turn away when something happened. The plate,

which had maintained absolute stability during its long climb, suddenly began to tumble.

“What’s the matter?” Nina asked, her fear evident in her voice.

“One of the cables has snapped!” Thorpe yelled as he craned his neck to look skyward. He caught a

glimpse of a descending snake-like shape, shouted a warning, and turned to run. The next thing he felt

was a searing pain in his right leg. His scream dwindled to inaudibility in less than a second as his suit

was enveloped in a cloud of red fog.

CHAPTER 2

Amber Hastings sat in the Farside Observatory Staff Lounge and enjoyed a breakfast of waffles

smothered in strawberry syrup, hot buttered toast, and tea laced with levosugar. She watched the lounge

viewscreen as she ate. Normally it would have been tuned to the newscast from Luna City. Instead,

someone had patched into a view from one of the surface cameras. It showed a large wheeled,

articulated vehicle making its way along the rough track leading from Hadley’s Crossroads. The

undulating crater floor made the transport’s headlamps dance across the screen, leaving phantom trails of

activated phosphors in their wake.

The transport was a TransLuna Greyhound Lines rolligon. It made the 120-kilometer run twice each

month - once at the start of the long lunar night and again just before dawn. Hadley’s Crossroads was

the closest stop on the CircumLuna Monorail Line, and the point through which all of the observatory’s

supplies were shipped.

As she savored her breakfast, Amber considered (not for the first time) the paradox of siting one of

humanity’s most advanced scientific instruments in the wilderness. It was a paradox familiar to

astronomers of all eras. Astronomers on Earth had long fought a losing battle against the encroachment

of civilization. No matter how remote a mountain they chose for their instruments, eventually the sky

would begin to reflect the lights of a nearby city.

Light pollution was no problem for Farside Observatory, but oxygen pollution was. In the airless

environment of Luna, spacecraft exhausts sprayed monatomic oxygen over hundreds of square

kilometers. Monatomic oxygen poisoned the special optical coatings onThe Big Eye ’s mirrors, and any

appreciable amount of it would seriously degrade the telescope’s performance. To protect against such

damage, the director of the observatory had banned all spacecraft within seventy-five kilometers. Thus,

the only way in or out was overland. Amber would be due for leave in another couple of months. She

was looking forward to going home, but not the four-hour rolligon ride to reach the monorail.

“So there you are!” a voice said from behind her.

Amber looked up to discover Niels Grayson standing over her. Grayson was one of the senior

astronomers and Amber’s mentor. Rumor had it that he would be the next Director of the Observatory if

old Doctor Meinz ever decided to retire. She hoped the rumor was correct. The other candidate for the

job was Professor Dornier, who topped Amber’s list of the people she would rather not work for.

“Hello, Niels,” she said. “Looking for me?”

“That I am, my most beautiful assistant.”

“I’m youronly assistant.”

“Which only proves my point. Mind if I sit down?”

“Be my guest.”

Grayson sat on the aluminum bench across from Amber. He cradled a low gravity cup in his hands, and

sipped coffee from it. He gestured toward the screen. “I notice the roll-on’s coming in.”

“Right on time. I wonder if supply remembered to send that new interferometer this time.”

“They said they would. Still, with them that doesn’t always mean much.”

“If they’ve messed up this time, I’m going to ask permission to go to Luna City and rearrange some

skulls.”

“You’ll have to stand in line. Doing anything tonight?”

There was something in Grayson’s tone that caused Amber to regard her supervisor with suspicion. The

question had been almost too casual. “Not a thing. Why?”

“I thought you might want to come over to the apartment for dinner. Margaret was saying just the other

day that she hasn’t seen you in weeks.”

“We saw each other in the gym not two days ago.”

“That must have been after she made the comment.”

“Come on, Niels, I know you. You have an ulterior motive. Who else is going to be there?”

“We do have a VIP coming in on the rolligon,” he said, gesturing at the screen. “I thought I’d have him

over as well.”

“Who is he? University brass?”

“Worse.”

“Government!”

He nodded. “Auditor from the Office of Scientific Appropriations. He’s here to see that we aren’t

wasting the Republic’s money.”

“Surely they aren’t talking about cutting our budget again!”

“Could be.”

“But they can’t! We are operating shorthanded as it is. Next thing you know, we’ll have to go on double

shifts.”

“I don’t think it will gothat far,” Grayson replied. “Still, the director has asked me to entertain our guest.

Maybe it will soften his report if we treat him nice. How about being a fourth for a few games of

bridge?”

“I don’t know, Niels. The last time I played hostess for you, that astronomer from Australasia kept trying

to paw me all evening.”

“This won’t be like that. It is just a quiet dinner party with a few hands of bridge afterward. Director

Meinz has it straight from the chancellor that our visitor is a fanatic for the game. You’re the best player

on the staff, and we can’t very well play three handed.”

“Right. What time do you want me there?”

“My apartment, 20:00 hours. Dress casual. Margaret will have drinks waiting.”

#

Amber sat at her desk in the lower levels of the administrative section and powered up her terminal. The

screen instantly lit to display her day list. She let her eyes scan down the list with practiced efficiency.

There were the usual reports and summaries to get out, data to correlate, and at the bottom, a private

message from Director Meinz. She keyed for acceptance. It was an official invitation from the director

requesting her attendance at Niels Grayson’s apartment that evening. The message was dated late the

previous day. Its tone betrayed far more anxiety than had Niels’ invitation at breakfast. Amber dictated

a reply and wondered just how serious the fiscal problems of the observatory really were.

As soon as the computer beeped its acceptance, she returned to her review of the day’s activities. She

noted an item three levels up from the director’s message, frowned, and keyed to engage the computer’s

voice circuits.

“Yes, Miss Hastings?” the machine answered promptly.

“What’s this Item Nine on my day list?”

“That is the reference number for the observation you requested fifteen days ago.”

“Refresh my memory.”

“The matter of a comet sighting in Monoceros. You asked that an observation be made by the 60

centimeter instrument as soon as that portion of sky was once again visible.”

“Oh, yes. Put it up on the screen!”

Her workscreen changed to reveal a starfield. She had seen the same field two weeks earlier while

working graveyard shift. She glanced at the region where the comet had been. It was still there.

“Overlay the two images,” she ordered.

The screen seemed to blur for a moment, then refocused as the computer synchronized the two

views. The fixed stars were dimensionless points, but the target object now showed as a pair of tiny

diffuse clouds.”

“Engage blink comparator mode!”

For a moment, nothing happened. Then one image disappeared. It reappeared a second later just as its

twin vanished. Amber sat looking at the screen as the fuzzy dot jumped back and forth at the rate of one

jump each second.

“Is that enough to get an orbital fix?” she asked.

“It is,” the computer responded. “The object is some 1.2 billion kilometers from the sun. Its orbit is a

very long cometary with perihelion somewhere beyond Mars.”

“How long a cometary?” Amber asked.

“On the order of nine million years.”

Amber whistled softly under her breath. One of Sol’s errant children was making an infrequent visit to the

inner system. If the computer’s estimate of the orbital period was correct, this was only the five

hundredth time this particular object had approached the sun since the birth of the Solar System.

“Size estimate?”

“Not possible. The comet nucleus is obscured by the coma. Perhaps it would be visible in a larger

instrument.”

“That damned sixty!” Amber muttered. The telescope she was being forced to use was one of the

observatory’s lesser instruments. It was equipped solely for visible light work and had a photo array

system dating back twenty years. It was, in the words of more than one junior staffer, a piece of junk.

“Show me the orbital tolerance,” Amber ordered.

Again, her screen changed. This time it displayed a three dimensional chart of the Solar System. A series

of ellipses appeared on top of the concentric circles that represented the orbits of the planets. The

ellipses ranged from red to violet, with green representing the nominal orbital path. The red and violet

were the two possible extremes when all sources of observational error were taken into account. The

rainbow of colors intersected between Saturn and Jupiter, then diverged in both directions. The point

where all lines came together was the current estimated position of the object.

Amber let her gaze follow the object’s inbound path to where it crossed Jupiter’s orbit. “Show me a

speed up of the orbital motion along the nominal path.”

“Working.”

Michael McCollum - Thunderstrike

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: