CHAPTER 13
Drago touched more buttons and watched the screen, still nothing.
“What’s wrong, Drago? Nothing is happening.”
“I don’t know. I thought I checked everything.”
“Well, we have to get this thing working NOW. Do something!” Jarvick yelled.
Drago left the bridge with his controller and climbed down to the cargo bay saying something about running some tests. Jarvick stayed at the controls making sure the ship remained within sight of the asteroid. His mind was racing trying to come up with a plan B and also thinking about the lasers Jim had mentioned. Sure, they could use the orbiting lasers to shoot it, but that would create thousands of little asteroids, causing a lot of damage when they hit, but it wouldn’t be as destructive as one HUGE impact that this one would cause. If this monster hit the Earth, the first thing that would happen after the hit would be the enormous shock wave and earthquakes it would cause. Half the surface of the planet would be instantly destroyed, killing every living thing in that hemisphere. Ten percent of the planet would be ejected into the atmosphere and the surrounding space, causing a suffocating cloud to encircle the Earth blocking all sunlight for years to come. The few remaining survivors wouldn’t have much of a chance due to the lack of breathable air and the oceans would be relocated because of the shifted land masses that will occur. If the planet didn’t split in half, its orbit and axial tilt would surely be affected, the Earth would become a dead planet, uninhabitable.
Drago returned to the bridge, looking grim. “I’m going to have to manually start it.”
Jarvick turned to him and asked “What does that mean?”
“I have to flip the switch on the master control, it’s located on the thruster control panel.”
“You mean you have to be there, on the thruster, to get it to light off?”
“Yes.”
Jarvick shook his head “No. You’ll die.”
“I know that, but it’s the only way. All of this is my fault; I started this so I am the one who has to finish it. You’re going to throw me in prison when all this is over, anyway. Let me go out on my own terms.”
Jarvick frowned, then said “Alright, then, do it. I’ll go back and drop you off.”
Jarvick closed the rear door of the cargo bay and lifted off and away from the asteroid. He had instructed Drago to wait at least twenty minutes to allow him to retreat to a safe distance before he set off his thruster. Cindy had said her goodbyes and was crying in the crew quarters, having known her brother for such a short time, getting to know him just before watching him die. Jarvick watched the front screen patiently for any sign that Drago was successful, then the screen turned bright white, blocking any view of the asteroid. Jarvick had started a recording log file in the computer for later analysis, to determine if the thruster had pushed the asteroid off its collision course with Earth. Drago told him the Ion Particle Beam Thruster should burn for at least twenty hours, and with 100 million pounds of thrust, the asteroid “should” miss Earth. Jarvick decided that the next best course of action would be to move the ship to a place near Earth so he could observe the near miss, and he wanted to be close enough to try and communicate with his brother. He hadn’t heard from Jim since he told him that some space agency’s had found the asteroid, and he wanted to let him know of their progress. No doubt that they had also seen his ship and the exhaust plume of the thruster, so no reason to hide behind their moon. He decided to place the ship in between the Earth and the moon, out of the path of the asteroid. Glancing at the graph that the computer was now generating, he could see that it was predicting impact in two days; but it was constantly changing the relative position of the asteroid as time progressed, and hopefully the graph will show that the two will not collide. The only thing he could do now was wait.
The next day Jarvick wanted to get his brother’s attention. Jim, we have attempted to redirect the asteroid.
Within a few minutes, Jim replied We need to establish radio communication. There are people here that want to talk with you. Jim then relayed to his brother the radio frequencies that he needed. Once Jarvick programmed these into his command console, he grasped the microphone and said “Jim, this is Jarvick. Can you hear me?”
“Yes, this is Jim, and I am with some people at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. These people work with our space program and they have some questions for you.”
“I guess they do. Have you told them about Gavilon and our connection?”
Jim replied “Yes, I have told them everything about us, and Gavilon, and how that asteroid was redirected by Drago, everything. They are very curious about you and your ship.”
“I will be glad to answer all their questions later, but for now let’s keep an eye on that asteroid. “
A different voice came on this time. “This is Terence Anderson. I am the project leader here at the JPL. We have been tracking the asteroid for the last two days and we have it on a path of a close flyby at about 10 P.M. tonight. How were you able to redirect it?”
Jarvick explained to him about Drago’s thruster, how it was refueled and reused.
The radio voice asked “Are you able to fire off the thruster again, or can you still use it?”
“No, it is out of fuel and the engineer who designed it is deceased.” Jarvick said.
After a pause the voice said “Well, we still have a big problem. It looks like the asteroid is going to miss Earth, but after it passes by, it’s going to hit our moon.”
Oh NO! Thought Jarvick. With the thruster out of commission, how are we going to stop it from hitting? If it hits their moon, it will be shattered into pieces!
After a few minutes of discussing their options, Jarvick said “I understand that you have some space based defensive weapons orbiting the Earth.”
“Yes we do, what do you have in mind?”
Jarvick said “I have an idea . . . “