Impact! Page 9

  Ell had Allan increase the duty cycle on the water port until the view from the rocket showed a fog blowing out into the big cavern where most of the teecees were. It became evident that Goldie was having a hard time holding the fan as it pumped out the dense TC3 air at a high velocity. They turned down the fan speed.

  Ell asked Goldie to sweep the fan back and forth around the cave. It swung to the side and the TC team cheered and began to clap when they saw that the mist of tiny water droplets had swept the dust particles out of the air in the region of the cave where Goldie had been pointing it.

  Roger pumped a fist and said, “Okay, it seems to work. We need to make some more of them, but we need to find a way to mount them. Even if they didn’t blow so hard, the teecees can’t spend all their time standing around holding them.”

  Ell turned to Kira and said, “While the rest of us are starting to get ready to make more dust suppressors, can you watch them a while longer to be sure the teecees really are breathing easier?”

  The linguist nodded. She’d been beside herself when she’d heard about the disaster which had struck the teecees, many of whom she thought of as her friends. After all, she’d spent years communicating with them now.

  ***

  Dex felt hies wings ripple with excitement as the basket hie held in hies hands began to blow a veritable storm of air out away from himr. The howling sound it made reminded himr somewhat of the hissing that came from hies meteorite when it was flying. It pushed very hard against himr, then slowed a little. Hie wondered if this was a bigger version of whatever it was that lifted the meteorite. And why had the new meteorite given this thing to him? It just seemed to be swirling the dust around in the cave, why would the meteorite want to do that?

  Then the wind blowing from the basket gradually turned into a fog. At first, because it was blowing away from himr, hie feared that what hie saw was smoke. Shortly however, hie saw the mood of the dalins near the fog lift. One of them shouted, “It’s like flying through a cloud!”

  Dex still didn’t really understand until the meteorite told himr to wave the basket back and forth and hie realized that the fog had condensed the dust out of the air where it had been blowing. Hie quickly turned it to blow over hies own family. Once hie had cleared the air there, hie began walking around the cavern trying to clear the dust from the entire space.

  It was wonderful seeing the joy come over the other dalins as the air slowly cleared and they were able to breathe more easily.

  When hie passed near the meteorite, it suggested to himr that hie carry the fog basket out the cave passage towards the entrance. Hie immediately understood that, if it fogged the air out near the cave entrance, dust wouldn’t get back into the deeper caverns in the first place.

  Chapter Four

  “Roger, Emma, Wilson” Ell called to her friends. They turned away from where they’d been discussing the project to build more dust suppression units. Everyone from quantum research was here now, working on the teecee disaster. Ell had mercilessly raided people from the ET Resources group and a few of the Portal Tech people also. As Roger and Emma approached, Ell said “I’m hoping we can head to the little conference room and do some planning?”

  Emma said, “That’s what we were doing! We’ve still got a lot of other things to work out if we’re going to deliver very many of the foggers.”

  Ell blinked at her for a moment, then said, “We’ve got plenty of people that can make foggers Emma. Sheila’s hiring temporary workers too.”

  Roger had turned and begun walking towards the conference room, but now he frowned, “How many foggers are you thinking we’re going to make?!”

  “Not many more than we’ve already planned for, but dust suppression for the teecees cave only addresses one small part of the catastrophe that’s going to hit them you know?”

  They had entered the conference room and Ell asked Allan to put up the view from the rocket down south of the impact site. The screen was dark, so she asked him to switch on the rocket’s lights. The screen turned gray, but the dust was so thick they still weren’t able to see anything.

  Ell told Allan to launch the rocket, “Take it up until we’re above the dust clouds and can see what’s going on.” Then she took a few moments to explain to the others why the screen had been gray.

  Wilson mused, “I was afraid of that. The dust we saw inside the cave with the teecees was only what drifted in on air currents. It’s much worse outside, right?”

  “I assume so,” Ell said, “this rocket’s much farther from the impact site than the teecees cave. If the dust is too thick to see even a meter or so here, it’s probably even worse where the teecees live.”

  The rocket had been ascending rapidly as they spoke. Now the screens in the conference room swirled and gradually cleared. The four screens arrayed horizontally mostly showed clouds stretching away toward the horizon beneath the rocket. The one facing north, however, showed a huge, sullen red glow beneath an enormous column of smoke rising high, then spreading out.

  “It looks like the mushroom cloud of an atomic bomb!” Emma said.

  “Yeah,” Wilson Daster said, “though enormously larger. My AI estimates an energy release equivalent to 200,000 megatons of TNT. Hiroshima was only sixteen kilotons.”

  “Holy crap!” Roger breathed.

  Wilson said, “The initial explosion is what produced all the dust. It also sent out a lot of ejecta. Fragments big enough to do a great deal of damage have all landed by now, but some were big enough to lift large quantities of dust upon their own impacts. A lot of them were hot enough to start fires. The huge red glow is the heat from the impact and that heat is creating a huge column of rising air. As that air rises, the surrounding air flows in and it’s heated in its turn. When the hot air rises up into the upper reaches of the atmosphere it cools and is blown out to the sides by more rising air coming up from below. That’s going to carry more dust and smoke out and away from the impact site.” He sighed, “It will block sunlight over an enormous area and result in global cooling.”

  Emma said, “Off to the right there you can see that huge mountain that Goldie and Silver’s cave is on. It looks like funny clouds are forming over it.”

  “They’re probably coming from low altitude air that’s being sucked towards the impact site. When it flows up over the mountain, it cools and condenses to form the clouds. It’s probably raining underneath there too.” Wilson said.

  “Oh, that could be good for our teecees, right? The rain will settle a lot of the dust, won’t it?”

  “Yeah, but the rain is going to fall as the air rises up on the far side of the mountain. By the time the air gets to the side where their cave is, the water will have condensed out of it already.”

  Ell turned to Wilson who they all recognized was much more knowledgeable about astronomical impacts than they were. “Are you saying this is really a global catastrophe then? I’d been thinking that maybe we could help our teecees move to somewhere further away, but if it’s going to cool the entire globe I don’t think we can fix that.”

  Wilson frowned, “Well there is no doubt that all that dust and smoke is going to block a lot of sunlight and result in some cooling of the entire planet. Some ecosystems will probably collapse, especially because this will also produce a lot of acid rain. However the effects are going to be much worse close to the impact and our guys are only 300 kilometers away. Where they are, the blast effect is going to knock down a lot of the trees and there will be a lot of sand sized ejecta. The vegetation’s going to get really sick and with the plants sick, the animals these guys hunt are going to die out too. If they were 1000 kilometers away, they would’ve barely felt the seismic effects of the impact, the ejecta would be more dust size and the air blast won’t have blown any trees away.”

  “Hey,” Emma said, “these guys migrate close to 2000 kilometers every summer. Maybe they can just head east?”

  Wilson’s eyebrows went up, “That’s a good idea.”


  Ell frowned, “Flying that far could be pretty tough with all the dust in the air. Besides, what if they get there and some other teecees already live where they go?”

  “We could send a rocket over there to check it out and, if it looks good, make them some breathing filters for the flight.”

  Roger said, “We should ask Norris and Wheat. Norris has had rockets out exploring the rest of the supercontinent and Wheat has been keeping up with the flora and fauna they find.”

  “Good idea. We also better drop some rockets into orbit around TC3 to act as GPS satellites. We’ll need them to fly the rockets accurately in the dust. The rockets aren’t going to be able to see where they’re going for quite a while.”

  Emma said, “Their cameras are capable of seeing into the infrared. Infrared gives you a lot better vision in dusty environments so that will help somewhat.” She paused for a second thinking, then said, “Oh yeah, and Rob had me build him one rocket with a small radar unit in it. Radar is lower frequency than infrared so it should be able to see even better…”

  ***

  Los Angeles, California—At 0615 EST a comet estimated at one kilometer in diameter struck TC3. Millions of people who regularly follow Goldie and Silver’s tribe of teecees on video are understandably distressed. The impact site is only about 185 miles west of the tribe’s cave.

  Comet Hearth-Daster, which nearly hit the earth seven years ago was approximately the same size as the object which impacted TC3. Before that disaster was averted, it had been anticipated that the ecological calamity resulting from the impact would cause the extinction of many large species of animals, perhaps including human beings.

  The extinction of the dinosaurs is widely accepted to have been caused by an asteroid impact. That asteroid is estimated to have been approximately ten kilometers in diameter. It would have had 1000 times greater volume and been approximately five times denser, so 5000 times more massive and destructive. Nonetheless, even the impact of a one kilometer object would melt or vaporize approximately five cubic kilometers of material at the impact site, throwing much of it high into the atmosphere. The attached photos show the enormous mushroom cloud rising from the impact site.

  Fiery hot “ejecta” would rain down over the landscape, starting fires and adding to the immense quantity of smoke and dust produced at the impact site. We would show you photographs of the landscape around the teecees cave, however any exterior video shots we have from that area show nothing at all because the enormous dust cloud has blocked all sunlight.

  For now the teecees we have been observing appear to be safe in their extensive cave system. However, experts believe that the thick clouds of dust will soon result in severe respiratory problems. In addition, even if the teecees successfully shelter in the cave and survive the dust themselves, the ecosystems on which the teecees depend for food will be destroyed.

  Francis Ementhal, erstwhile leader of the now defunct Committee for Extraterrestrial Affairs has released a statement claiming that, “In view of the enormous ‘debris disk’ present in the Tau Ceti system, such a disaster could easily have been predicted by any competent astrophysicist.” He asserts that if his committee had been properly supported by the government and if Ms. Donsaii did not so selfishly restrict the availability of her technology, this calamity could have been prevented. He maintains that the committee would have surveyed the Tau Ceti system for possible impactors, recognized this impending tragedy and averted it.

  Others point out that Ementhal’s rhetoric has always focused on the dangers of technologically advanced races and in the past never addressed the possibility of assisting primitive races. In fact, he has been quoted as saying, “We should not intervene with primitive races in any manner. Rather we should allow them to evolve in their own fashion. Assisting them with our advanced technology runs the risk of rendering them dependent upon us…”

  After a long day with Team Teecee brainstorming the disaster on TC3, Ell didn’t get home till about 10 o’clock in the evening. She had been planning to go directly up to her room. However, when she walked in she found Shan and Zage sitting in the living room watching the teecees on part of the screen and various forms of news coverage of the disaster on other windows. Zage’s head swiveled around to look at her when she entered. “Hey guys…” she began.

  Zage rolled off the couch and ran headlong toward her. He plowed into her, throwing his arms around her legs in the kind of intense hug only a child can give. Without even looking up he asked, “Did you talk to the people who might be able to help the teecees?”

  Ell bent to lift her surprisingly heavy child and hugged him back. Over Zage’s shoulder she looked questioningly at her husband. Shan shrugged and said, “He really wanted to stay up to talk to you.”

  Ell looked back at Zage, “Did you see vids of the fans that fogged the teecees caves to clear the dust and help them breathe?”

  Zage nodded, a serious look on his face. “The news said D5R that did that. Are those the people you know?”

  Ell nodded back, “Yes, I work there part-time. Did you know that?”

  Zage shook his head. “Have you met Ell Donsaii?”

  Ell nodded, wondering how long she’d be able to keep her secret.

  Zage said, “Is she as smart as everyone says?”

  Ell grinned at him and ruffled his hair, “Not any smarter than you are kiddo.”

  He rolled his eyes, “Mom,” he said exasperatedly, “they say she’s the smartest person in the whole world!”

  “Well I think she just got lucky a bunch of times.”

  Zage stared at her for a moment, as if wondering whether to believe what he’d read or what his mother said, then dismissed that question and went on in different tack entirely. “The teecees can breathe in their cave now, but what are they going to eat?”

  “They have some food saved up and stored there at the cave…”

  Zage interrupted, “But that will run out pretty soon! What’ll they do then?”

  Ell looked at her son, wondering what to tell him. Should she be truthful and tell him that his friends the teecees might die? Should she try to pretend that everything was going to turn out fine when she knew very well that it might not? There wasn’t anything in the child rearing books she’d read that addressed something like this. She supposed some book, somewhere, gave advice on how to help a child through the death of a loved one or a pet, but she hadn’t read it. Even if she had, she didn’t know that she would feel confident that its advice applied to her son. She settled for the truth, “We don’t know. We’re trying to think of ways to help, but we don’t know whether they’ll work yet.”

  Zage studied her intently, “Like what?”

  “Well, for one, a lot of the large animals they normally hunt have probably been killed. If they preserve the meat from some of those big animals it would help them for quite a while.”

  Zage dismissed this immediately, “That wouldn’t last long enough! It might be years before the weather gets back to normal. Besides, they’d probably get sick going out to get that meat because there’s so much dust in the air.”

  Realizing that he took this very seriously, Ell resisted the temptation to smile at Zage. “It sounds like you’ve thought a lot about this. Do you have any ideas?”

  “Couldn’t they wear moist cloths over their air intakes to keep the dust from getting into their lungs?”

  “That’s a good idea. Some people at work talked about that one, but they aren’t sure how to make it fit over the teecee’s air intakes so that dusty air wouldn’t leak in around the filter.” She shrugged, “They’re still planning to make some various kinds of filters and port them to the teecees to try. Hopefully they can find one the teecees will like.”

  Zage sighed, “Even if that works, it doesn’t solve the problem of the dust blocking the sunlight.”

  Ell was still holding Zage, so she started up the stairs towards his room. “You need to get some sleep my little man. It’s past your bedtime. We
can think of solutions again tomorrow, but I think we should wait and see how the teecees do for a while. One thing to remember is that it rains a lot more on TC3 than it does here on earth. Maybe all that rain will bring the dust down out of the atmosphere a lot faster than it would here?”

  Zage said, “TC3’s atmosphere is thicker than ours. Maybe it’ll hold the dust up longer than our atmosphere would?”

  Ell shrugged, “Could be. We’ll just have to see. We shouldn’t plan too many things we might do until we know more about exactly what the problems are going to be.” She put him down and started pulling off his T-shirt, “But your idea about the filters is a good one. I’ll bet that filters will really help them…”

  ***

  Jenny said, “What are you guys doing about the teecees?”

  Carter eyed his daughter, wondering which version of Jenny was sitting at the dinner table with them tonight. Just turned thirteen, sometimes she was sweet and lovable like she used to be, but other times she could be sullen and antagonistic. Like many parents of teenagers, he sometimes forlornly wished he could have the younger Jenny back. “I’m not sure what you’re asking?”

  “You do know that a comet hit TC3 don’t you?”

  Internally, Carter winced a little. It sounded like she was in one of her teenage “adults are stupid” moods. “Yes I do,” he said, trying to maintain a pleasant tone, “I just wasn’t sure what you thought we might or might not be doing?”

  “Well, you guys put farmers on Mars more than a year ago. As far as I know they haven’t done much there that they couldn’t have done here. On the other hand, it seems like a few waldoes on TC3 could really help the teecees.”

  “I looked into how difficult it would be to send a waldo to TC3 once. I don’t remember all the details, but I do remember that it takes more than 7 million watts of power to open a half meter port all the way to Tau Ceti. That’s how big the port would have to be to put a standard-size waldo through. I’m pretty sure that so far they haven’t opened a port that big over interstellar distances. Even a twenty centimeter port like you could put a mini waldo through would be over a million watts.”