A Rock of Offense

F OFFENSE

  Ken Beers

  Copyright 2014 by Ken Beers

  The Earth is doomed…

  the man who caused it is the only one who knows…

  and he’s the only one who can stop it.

  My name is Bill Franks, and I’ve been riding this asteroid for nearly a year now. I live inside a dome the size of a big bedroom on the trailing side. This is the last thing I’ll ever write, but there’s no big hurry for me to get the story down.

  I go outside sometimes and walk on the surface of the asteroid. I have to wear a suit for that, because there’s no atmosphere, just a few heavy gasses that managed to come along for the ride. There’s no reason to go outside the dome, except for repairs. Space is boring, after that initial shock of seeing more stars than you ever imagined existed. I can spend only so much time sitting around looking at pretty things. But then again, statements like that caused Delia to leave me.

  The Agency gave me a CSP – Computer-Simulated Personality – for interaction. His nickname is “Cecil”. He’s a speaker fitted flush against a panel. They said he would keep me from going crazy. I don’t think that plan is working.

  "Cecil, how are you doing? Holding up alright?" I was talking aloud into the room, vigorously rubbing the last moisture from my hair with a towel. I try to keep a morning routine as part of my sanity regimen. Cecil's presence helps differentiate between when I think something and when I speak aloud. Responsiveness is one of the best things about him. If not for him, I'd be living in my thoughts, and my thoughts generally aren't good.

  “Fine sir. It seems like a good day.” As usual, Cecil had no trace of computer or artificial in his voice. He might have been human, and although I knew he wasn’t, I had long ago stopped reminding myself. The Agency designed him to develop on the fly, through interaction, and he had never known anyone but me. The Agency said Cecil picks up behavioral cues from the people around him. Since he only interacts with me, he can be a selfish asshole. Sometimes I think they put him here just to annoy me, and that makes sense. Being annoyed is external-focused behavior, and the Agency was all about getting your attention off yourself. For all that, I viewed Cecil as a good friend, if that makes any sense. I tried not to think about my dependence on him.

  “Good day? How you figure that?” I asked. A good day in space makes no sense. You have to have bad to have good. You need change. And nothing ever changed up here. The distances keep the stars fixed in one place. Even when you are moving fast, screaming along, the stars stand still like they were nailed there. With no rotation to move them and the vast expanse of space making the viewing angle narrow, they follow you like the moon followed your car at night when you were a kid.

  “Well, we’ve traveled quite a distance,” Cecil said perkily. “We passed the halfway point last night. That’s distance over the whole trip, not time.”

  I stopped rubbing the towel on my hair. “Really? Are you sure? That was weeks away.”

  “I checked several times last night. While you were sleeping.”

  I sat my naked ass on the leather chair and powered up the orientation screen. There was a graphic view of our course, with our location superimposed on top. Yep. We passed halfway last night.

  “Well, I’ll be. Halfway home. That does make it a good day after all. We may just have to celebrate.”

  “Beer’s on me,” said Cecil.

  “It’s a bit early yet, I just woke up.” I went over to the fridge, pulled out a package and attached it to a nozzle. When I pushed another button, steam whooshed into the package. Breakfast.

  “Hey-mmm,” I mumbled as I squeezed eggs into my mouth. “Cecil, what about the trajectory. Are we still on the beam? I’m a little surprised we got this far this fast. Isn’t that going to mess things up? You know, our target and all?”

  “Well, we got a boost from that gravity sling we added; I’m glad you listened to me. It has us almost half-again as fast.”

  “Yeah, fast, that’s great. I asked about the trajectory.” The eggs were finished and I threw the pack down the incinerator.

  “Well, I’d meant to mention that. It’s Dialunar, sir.”

  I finished eating my eggs and set to the puzzle. Cecil was being cagy. He sometimes used big words to show off he was smarter than me. Part of that great personality of his. I didn’t like to ask him what he meant unless absolutely necessary. “Let’s see… lunar – as in, the moon.”

  “Yes sir.” Cecil’s voice was never emotionless, but the grating tone sounded flat and cold in my ears. Something suddenly caused me to feel nervous.

  “Dia-, being used by you as a suffix?”

  “It’s a prefix.”

  “Yeah, yeah, prefix-suffix, whatever. Dia-… does that mean through?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Cecil, you’re telling me we’re going through the moon?”

  “Our course is.”

  “That can’t be.”

  “It is. I checked it numerous times last night. While you were sleeping.”

  “Couldn’t you have mentioned that earlier?” I went over to my orientation screen again. After punching a few more buttons up came the new trajectory, laid out from here to there. Us. Space. Moon. Blam.

  “Cecil, what were you thinking? Surely you know what this means? The moon is essential for life on Earth, and we could pulverize it, especially at this speed.” Early on I had realized that the obvious was sometimes lost on my companion. “Aren’t I right? When does it happen? What’s between us and the moon? Anything we can use to shift our course, or slow us down?”

  “That’s quite a few questions. Yes, we will have a catastrophic effect on the moon, and consequently on Earth. It happens in a few months. There’s nothing notable between us and the moon; nothing that could affect our course. We’re on track for the moon. It can’t be changed. It’s a straight shot.”

  “What do you mean, ‘It’s a straight shot’,” I protested. “We can’t hit the moon. It’s, um, well…it won’t be good. No sir…” I said walking over to our only window. Outside the thick glass my massive asteroid stretched out before me. A large metal stalagmite stuck up like a gun-sight from the ground, and right there in my crosshairs, right on the horizon, was a bright disc. Sol, my sun. Somewhere dead ahead, were several billion people who, if things didn’t change, I was going to kill.

  “…this is not good at all.”

  “I’m sure you’ll fix it sir,” came Cecil’s voice. He sounded almost chipper.

  The Agency had a great plan, and every politician agreed. Earth had solved her energy problem, but was running out of essential metals, and the asteroid belt was full of them. So all you needed was a person who was desperate enough to go get an asteroid and bring the thing back to Earth. The propulsion was ionic at first, to get you moving. Slow, continuous acceleration. After a while, when you’re sure the course is right, you switch to nuclear explosions. Workers carved a massive parabolic dish into the metal on the back of the asteroid. In the center of this dish was an exit. Out a structure like a torpedo tube, small bombs, activated during transit by a powerful magnetic field, fly out to explode a short distance away. The result? Massive, instant acceleration, like a speeding truck hit you from behind.

  Once back to Earth we use gravity to decelerate. A little tweaking with the ionic drive and we pull into a stable “parking spot.” There are a few of them around the Earth-Moon gravity complex, called “Lagrange Points.” They make wonderful, stable storage depots, particularly L4 and L5. Put something massive there and it stays there; an asteroid in L4 is as stable as a marble in a bowl, safely away from doing harm.

  Great plan, unless you come crashing into the moon instead.

  “Cecil, I need you to think. We have to come up
with something.”

  “Sure. I’ve been doing that, of course…considering our resources. We have the Ionic Drive system. We have the Nuclear Blast system. Both useless.”

  “Come on, we can steer, can’t we?”

  “Nope. This system was designed to get a vastly massive object moving at a fairly good rate of speed. Not designed for maneuverability. We have more in common with an arrow than an airplane. Actually, more like a cannonball to a missile; that’s a better comparison.”

  I knew there were no variables that Cecil hadn’t considered. But talking helps me think. “Can’t we just use the ionic drive to steer? We did it before, when we lined up for that boost.”

  “We were moving slower then, and we had months. The ionic drive is a low-force system. It is constant, and persistent, but at this speed, in the time we have, almost completely without effect. It would be like a tugboat pushing on a moving battleship. If we’re motionless, it can push us around. Once we’re moving there’s too much inertia. We’re simply too massive, and we’re going too fast.”

  “Okay, the nuclear drive then.”

  “Not possible. The system is like a dragster – all engine, no steering. Real good at the straightaway. No cornering.”

  “Well, what am I here for then, huh? Why put me on this thing?”

  “Mostly for the beginning and the end, sir,” Cecil said matter-of-factly.

  “Cecil, how come we’re heading for the moon? You calculated