CHANG STARED AT the potato-shaped Defoe. It took a month of intensive training and two years flight to meet up with the asteroid. If they’d met it five years previously then flying a dense-ballasted vessel alongside would have provided enough gravitational force to deflect it from Earth, but there was not enough time. Instead, Chang and Wen had glued to it a Morph Energy field shifter–a kind of quasi mini black hole–powered by pocket fusion. Clean, limited, no fragmentation, and the asteroid had instantly deflected away from its path of turning the American Prairies into a crater.
The director had said, “Get this right and you will be heroes. Make a mistake and if instead of obliterating soy farms, you wipe out Shanghai, don’t bother coming home.”
Now, that mistake was happening. Chang’s stomach churned in disbelief. Sweat dripped between his shoulder blades. The asteroid, having been turned, was redirecting itself back on course. Now it was unlikely to hit empty farmland, but somewhere else. He glanced at Wen playing invisible piano with her console. She looked over, caught him spying.
She didn’t display annoyance. “Obviously, the ME has failed. I’ll go see what the problem is.”
Chang waved his own fingers at the screen. “Remotes don’t show a failure. All green.”
“How do you know your sensors aren’t faulty?”
“Wen, you know they were checked n times.”
“Perhaps the fault in the energy field is corrupting feedback. Disengage it. There’s clearly a problem.”
Chang knuckled his forehead as if that would alleviate a growing headache. “Human error, and you’ll say it’s mine.”
“Nice of you to agree.” She floated to the helmet locker.
Chang didn’t see why Wen had to go EVA. He toyed with the notion of sending out a drone to reset the Morph Energy device, but it might warp an energy field around Wen. She could have been squeezed into another dimension. He shouldn’t, but couldn’t help smiling.
They should inform Wutang mission control of the initial success, followed by the failure but it would take an hour for them to receive, two for a decision, then another for their reply. It would interfere with bedtime, and Wen might have fixed it by then. Even so, his ignoring of procedure niggled. What would Wen say?
We were chosen for this mission for our ability to make pragmatic, optimal decisions. Probably.
She returned.
Helmet stowed, Wen shook her black hair into submission. “Nothing serious. Some of the glue had broken away and blocked part of the ME array.”
Chang frowned at her. “Really? I don’t see how that—”
“That’s your problem, Chang, no imagination.”
“Let’s reactivate it and see if the beast will stay away this time.”
His fingers flitted over the activation sequence. Energy waves pulsed from the planted device pushing the rock off its collision course.
Wen grinned. ”Let’s celebrate. A cup of Choujiu?”
“All right, but pity it isn’t rice wine.”
“We aren’t allowed alcohol. If you want hallucinogenic experiences, Chang, stick your head out the window.”
“Put that Choujiu away, Wen,”
“Why should I?”
“Defoe is returning.”
“No!”
“See for yourself. This time, Wen, we’ll use the drone to remove that one, and use the back up.”
Wen deflated like a punctured tyre. “There’s no need to remove the first ME, just glue the back up next to it. A few centimetres won’t make any difference; it should clear Earth.”
Two hours later they both sat with faces longer than bee hoon noodles as Defoe moved away and then realigned itself to hit Earth.
Chang threw up his hands. “We’d better tell them. For one thing, they’d need to recalculate the target.”
“By the time our message gets to Wutang, they’ll have detected the changes. What are they going to tell us?”
“We’re sacked?” Chang thought of the shame he’d brought to his family.
“Idiot. They’ll tell us to go to plan B.”
He lowered his brows at her, wondering why he had the hots for her when she continually rubbished him. Did he find her a challenge, or does she use abuse as a cover? That would be it.
“Wen, plan B is a good one. Annihilate it. We have the munitions.”
“Trust you to chime in with the official line, but think of one rock becoming thousands.”
Chang bristled with the barb. He liked to think he had a measure of independence. “All right, let’s hear plan C, or shall we skip straight to a plan D?”
“Activate both Morph Energy shifters.”
Chang waved his hands apart. “But what if we destroy ourselves using two MEs? Sacred Worm, the asteroid might continue while we are vaporised. Unbearable shame.”
Wen shook her head at him. “Activate.”
FOR A WHILE IT WORKED. Sadly, the asteroid enjoyed flouting the rules. It wasn’t the sight of it moving back on its Earth-bound course at which Chang stared, but the red vector lines on the screen. A nagging feeling tugged, urging him to go EVA himself.
Wen objected. “There’s no need.”
Chang pointed at the wayward line. “There is need. Perhaps one of the MEs is malfunctioning and a simple manual toggle is all that’s needed.”
“No. The trick we’ve missed is in applied mechanics.”
“What?” Chang knew that Wen had firsts in astrophysics and mechanics, but he smelt more than noodles in the air.
Wen smiled her perfect teeth but they failed to comfort him. “Activating the MEs had given the asteroid initial impetus but its inertia and our mass drew it back. Give the wave pulses time to exert themselves. You’ve not slept for thirty hours, take a zedtab.”
“Nor have you. Ah, you can cope while I can’t.”
He stayed suited but for helmet, and after a swallow, reclined his seat. “Good night, Wen.”
ON THE DOT OF FOUR HOURS Chang woke with one thought. “First Contact!”
Wen looked up from her console. “The miracle of sleep.”
“But this is momentous. We’re well into the twenty-second century and have probed into the Goldilocks zone of a million systems with nothing coming back.”
Wen waved her hands. “So, here it is and they’re trying to smash Earth.”
“With just one pokey little asteroid?”
“Target practice.”
Chang shook his head. “I can believe that our first encounter with aliens might be their eagerness to purge us before we contaminate the rest of the universe, but...”
“A big bomb could be in that tiny package, or a deadly sting.”
“Consider this–it’s travelling at thirty-three Mach but now we know it is programmed or directed, so–”
“It might slow enough to land gently in Tiananmen Square and say ‘nín hǎo’? In your dreams.”
Chang wagged his finger and quoted, “Cowards have dreams, brave men have visions.”
She pointed a finger back at him. “Are you brave? Sufficient to fly alongside this beast all the way? What if it doesn’t slow down?”
Chang took a deep breath, reached for a raspberry chewbar–it tasted of boiled egg. “Tough call. I might be wrong. I want to go EVA and check it out myself this time.”
“Go ahead, but you won’t find a driver’s seat and steering wheel. You haven’t asked...”
More games. “Asked what? Oh, Wutang have discovered the ME failures from telemetry. What do they say?”
“Twenty hours. If we haven’t turned it by then, Chang, try and destroy it.”
He stood, grabbed his helmet, floated over to the airlock, chewed more, and wondered how, after all these years, they couldn’t get the flavours right.
Outside he was surprised that Defoe was so far away. There it was, the first alien artefact, looking like a pink potato against black velvet and its tray of diamonds. He kept forgetting to breathe.
“Chang, you lost? I can’t see you.”
“Taking in the view. On my way now. One second burst, like you said.”
“Make lateral adjustments. Don’t take too long, we might have a problem here.”
Hah, he’d bet there was no problem. She didn’t like the idea of him finding something she missed.
Close up, the pink was inescapable, surreal. It was pockmarked and striated. He drifted–a weird sensation when he knew he matched the asteroid’s 25,000 mph. Sensors said it was dense mineral chondrite. He looked around in case another asteroid lurked nearby, with perhaps an alien wave pulse machine. Nothing, unless it was made of dark matter, cloaked.
“Hey, Wen, scan the vicinity for anomalies. Not just visible. And we’ll scan again when we re-activate the MEs.”
“Come back, Chang. The console’s malfunctioning, I can’t be sure the MEs won’t kick in by error and you shouldn’t be nearby.”
Bluff again.
He examined Defoe more carefully for an inspection panel, but considering the technological advances on Earth since 2100, suppose the aliens reached quantum engineering a million years ago? He was thinking a control panel might pop open at a particular radio frequency, but the aliens would be far beyond such primitive tech. The asteroid is probably sentient, rewriting Robinson Crusoe.
He drifted around to the Morph Energy field shapers. On Earth it was considered the cleverest invention since sliced rice cake, but to the aliens it would be as a flint scraper. He edged closer. Something was wrong.
“Chang, look over to your right.”
His mind knew not to fall for it but his head rotated on auto. He saw nothing of immediate danger. One star must be a planet. Yes, it displayed bands of agate.
“Jupiter?” He turned back to the first ME. A frozen shard of glue had become lodged in a wave focus element.
“No, I needed you to see the speck of blue, ten degrees to the right of Jupiter. I did a vicinity scan. It might be a meteor, spaceship or...”
“It’s not visible, Wen, even with stochastic function enabled.” He ignored her reply and examined the backup ME. No green light. Dead. Perhaps the initial burst of energy shook a power unit out, but that would’ve been detected by Wen from the ship. It was obvious that this sentient potato had disabled Earth’s best efforts at sophistication. Even so, perhaps he could reactivate the MEs.
Wen’s voice became higher pitched and broke through his barrier. “Return now, Chang, life support going.”
Could be she wasn’t lying. He turned back. A couple of squirts set him on course for The Long Road, which–reflecting the weak sun and starlight–looked like a silver porcupine, frozen, lifeless. Not a single light could be seen. Good, otherwise it would mean an energy leak. While on his drift, he twisted round to look back at Defoe, to absorb something created who knows when, by who knows who, except they were alien. Yet, they were approaching Earth, to make friends, or to destroy?
Then the other, darker, option occurred to him. It had lurked in his psyche like a misfortune cookie waiting to be opened. Defoe wasn’t an alien artefact at all. Somehow, the MEs were malfunctioning. Perhaps a manufacturing defect–no time for it to have been field tested. Or, by chance, the asteroid contained natural elements that disrupted human engineering.
“Wen, I know. Just wait till I reach you.”
Lights blinded Chang when he came within thirty metres of the hatch. Ten minutes later he de-suited. When the inner hatch opened he was hit by a wall of heat.
Now he appreciated Wen’s life support problem, and joked, “I should have left the outside door open to cool us down.”
Wen had disrobed–down to her primrose yellow undergarments, already perspiration-damp.
He wiped his forehead with his hand and tried to dry it on his shorts. “What is it?”
“Forty Celsius. Do your thing with the Life Support System, and hurry before the computers overheat.”
He leaned over his console, frowned, and simply adjusted the temperature back to twenty. “We need to talk.”
She stepped back. “It’s not what you think.”
“Really?” How would she know he’d deduced the asteroid had disruptive properties?
She sank to her knees, head down. “They made me do it.”
“Do what?”
“You know–out there.” She looked up at him with wet brown eyes.
“What on the Emperor’s aunt are you talking about? That rock is natural and the MEs failed because... just a moment.” His thoughts roller-coasted. Yes, the rock might have unfamiliar properties but though the MEs could be knocked out, the asteroid had redirected itself to head for Earth both times–three times including before they reached here. Someone had to do that, alien he’d supposed, then rejected, so it was human. The only other human within seven hundred million kilometres, besides him, was confessing something, she’d assumed he knew, and he should’ve done.
“You tampered with the MEs, and redirected Defoe back to Earth. How did you do that? Use a tractor beam? It doesn’t matter–but WHY?” His stomach quivered, like when Mai-Li accused him of cheating on her. The tremor built up into an acid reflux and his face heated. “They’ll know by now though, at Wutang. The vid and telemetry links.”
Wen unfolded from the floor and stood next to her console. Her snarl and contorted smile reminded him of a Wicked Witch. “Wutang have no idea. The feeds have been down since we arrived.”
He flurried sweaty fingers over his console bringing up comms. She was right. Many incoming but no feeds, no replies. Wutang would be able to detect their presence, and that Defoe remained more-or-less on course. It should be a simple matter to enable the comms link.
“Wen, I’m going to let them know we’re safe but that the asteroid can be deflected, or destroyed by us.”
“No!” She lunged at his hands.
He turned his back on her but didn’t hit the comms key–he needed time to think. His voice shook.
“Don’t be an idiot Wen. If they think we’re disabled, they’ll send up a rock buster.”
“That’s just it. DragonSlayers wasn’t given the contract. There are none that could do the job. Ironic isn’t it that twentieth century nuclear bombs would’ve been able to obliterate Defoe but the treaties have scrapped them all.”
“So, this is about giving Earth a black eye so the DragonSlayers have a future? You work for them?”
“Defoe was only going to crater unpopulated farmland.”
Chang boiled. “I’m telling them.”
“They’ll execute us.”
He turned to reach comms. “I’ll tell them there was a malfunction but we’re fixing it. Forget DragonSlayers.”
“No.”
Chang fell forward as something kicked into the back of his knees. He turned to face her as he floundered.
“I think it might be possible, hare-brained Chang, for you to have an EVA accident.”
His ears must be on slow-mo because he couldn’t believe them.
Upright again, he stamped with legs bent and apart, as in his speciality–Hung Gar, and opened his hand, whose fingers flexed with twice the strength of any practised strangler. Wen burst into a laugh and produced a slim knife. Weapons weren’t allowed on board, but no one could prevent unscrupulous ingenuity.
“You think this is a simple knife? Sorry to disappoint.” She lunged at him, but he was ready and leapt to his right, hitting at her hand as he flew past.
Wen didn’t drop the knife, twisted, and Chang’s bare shins burnt. He looked aghast at a reddening weal, with a whiff of cooking meat sending him into shock. It wasn’t a knife but a cauterizing tool. Unequal odds. This wasn’t wushu.
She’d gained confidence and held the tool out in front while crouching towards him.
Chang let his eyes perform a war inventory. Almost nothing could be used. He leapt away and into the galley, fighting to keep control in micro gravity. Through the hatchway he punched a command for coffee, then dived for the cutlery drawer. This was no ordinary kitchen. The three polymer knives, spoons and chopsticks were instantly cleaned after each use. They would bend and snap under pressure. There were no pans as such. Not even a long-handled noodle strainer in space. Only one item had barely changed over centuries.
As a sharp point burned his neck, he grabbed the fire extinguisher off the wall. Bludgeon or spray. He chose the latter–Halon gas jetted at Wen.
She was surprised, coughed, but remained unharmed. Chang brought the extinguisher down hard on her wrist making her drop the blade. He tried to kick it away but he stubbed his naked toe on a floor strut. She bent down but he pushed her over and while bear-hugging her, kicked against the wall sending them both flying back into the cockpit. She was much stronger than he expected, and oiled with perspiration, they revolved while wrestling. Neither tried to land blows because they struggled to hold on to each other. Conversation came in out-of-breath grunts. Chang’s head banged on the deck and the bolt-on furniture, as did hers. They sprang apart.
She hurled a plastic storage box at him. He ducked while wondering how she’d wrenched it off the wall. It crashed into his console. Not glass but it fractured and died. The cabin was being trashed. Much more and they’d have no controls to steer home. The fight tumbled into the galley again, and he grabbed the hot coffee and threw it at her. Missed. Coffee droplets continued their journey into the cockpit.
After a few minutes of hectic thrashing, hugging face to face on the floor, they slowed to a stop. Panting, with his chest heaving, fighting for breath, and adrenalin doing its best to enforce fight since flight was out of the question, he discovered something unexpected. There’s a fine line between anger and lustful passion. Her smile agreed although he had to keep thinking it could be a ploy, but one he could enjoy.
She gasped–genuinely out of breath, “Why not? A kind of concupiscence truce for ten minutes?”
He admitted to himself that lust had taken over logic but they only lived this life once. Rotating and coupling about more than one axis, they grappled again, but with more relief than anger.
After a few moments, both of sated, he asked, “Can we extend the truce, only there’s only a few seconds of it left?”
“Let’s have tea for a change. There’s Dragon Well in the galley. I’ll be back. Promise you won’t do anything?” She flicked her eyes at her console.
In the tiny dorm, he pulled off his rags and ionic-scrubbed. He pulled on new underwear and found a tunic for Wen. All the time he kept his ears and eyes on alert in case the mad woman found her berserkness again.
He sat heavily, as much as one could, on a fixed stool. What a fool he’d been, at every juncture, including the last lustful one, although it had stopped her attack. For now. He needed to appease her. At least he’d secreted her weapon. Locker 15c–Velcro assortments.
She was still in the galley, her naked back to him, tea brewed, almond cookies cooling. The way she tilted her hips brought on another stirring, but he used brains to quell it.
He placed the tunic over her shoulders and took the plastic cup, and a cookie.
“Poison by cyanide?” he said, then smiled.
“I’m certain we can work something else out.”
Chang wasn’t sure he wanted something worked out. He wanted a resolution to this asteroid problem then get back to his life. Sadly, he knew that wasn’t going to happen. Some events were life-changing and this was one.
He wished now that she’d do up her tunic. She glanced down following his gaze and grinned. “Why don’t you come into this with me? You’d be rich.”
“Just supposing I agreed, how would we explain–ah, I already have–the potato blighted our MEs. Our munitions would disintegrate it.”
“It might not work, and make matters worse. Anyway, Chang, it wouldn’t suit my employer for the asteroid not to hit.”
“I suppose not.”
Side by side they looked at Defoe on her screen. Wen broke the silence. “We could let them know we were still trying things and Defoe had jammed our radio until we found a way around it. We’d travel in parallel all the way to Earth.”
“Yes,” Chang said, “then as soon as it was close enough to please DragonSlayers, giving them certainty of future contracts, we get rid of it. Right?”
“Are you sure we can?”
“By using our fission munitions, feeble though they are, we can use both MEs, once repaired, to deflect the larger fragments.”
She smiled at his compliance. “Or use the MEs to aim the asteroid at an unpopulated spot.”
They were supposed to have an induced sleep for the two-year journey home, as they did en route–it saved resources and stopped them becoming psychotic but now they had to try and repair the sabotaged MEs.
After two months, he was confident one Morph Energy field shaper worked to forty percent optimal. Not enough to deflect Defoe as originally planned but it might push it away to be a near miss.
He tried a ruse. “Wen, how about us staggering our sleep.”
HIS RUDE AWAKENING shocked him. Reluctant ears heard his name yelled as a repeated echo. Sandy eyes creaked open to see wide eyes accusing him of having a lie in.
“Get up, Chang. There’s a month to impact. I’ve already given you a sunrise upper. You’ve to get the MEs to direct Defoe away from built up areas. I’ve plotted the most–”
“Any chance of breakfast first? And not that bamboo shoot slop you gave me last time. I’m not a panda.”
His ‘stimulated’ body awoke quickly and without a hangover, but it didn’t mean he was ready to speed-dial his brain to program the MEs.
Chang downloaded the data from Earth. By chance the asteroid’s new landing spot was Antarctica. No large populations, no oceans to create tsunamis, just a stony desert and a tiny ice cap. Chang didn’t need to do anything. If he tried to destroy or divert Defoe, it could result in catastrophe.
Chang couldn’t help smiling. What a result.
He reached for his tea and slurped up through the straw. “Wen, this is excellent.”
“Just breakfast green.”
“Not the tea. The asteroid will be destroyed on entry and impact, so your sabotage handiwork won’t be discovered. The world will think it’s all down to our efforts. We’ll be heroes, riches will be bestowed, not only do I not need to join your friends at DragonSlayers, but you can ignore them too.”
“No, I can’t. Nor can you.”
Chang’s eyebrows rocketed. “Come on, Wen. Ah, you have investments, but more... threats. Not to you–I can’t see that working–but to your family?”
She pointed a finger. “Not a word.”
“I don’t need to be part of this charade. I’m free of it, now Defoe has a safe bull’s-eye.”
He stretched, yawned and went back to sleep.
“CHANG, WAKE UP YOU DOLT.”
“I’ve had a nightmare.”
“Something bad has happened. Here’s some water.”
Icy water splashed in his face and a beaker of it was thrust into his hand. “Yes, I’ll get up, no more showers, please.”
His eyes widened when he watched the data scroll on the console.
Wen interpreted. “It’s accelerating and far in excess of what we should expect from Earth’s gravitational force.”
“About ten times faster. Already doing fifty Mach.”
“I know, Chang, I’ve had to make The Long Road match its acceleration.”
He used his handheld rather than lean across to use her console. “But we can’t keep up with it for much longer, or– ”
“I know. That’s why I woke you. Wutang are going ballistic.”
Chang scratched his head. The cabin vibrated. “Navigation will tell us when to adjust vectors for going into orbit.”
“Already interrogated it. Just one hour ten from now.”
“Good. We should make an effort to use the ME on the asteroid. I wonder about focussing in on itself might disintegrate Defoe from the inside. Also using our own ME to slow it.”
Wen shook her head while fluttering her fingers on the console. “Not thought of the first but no time. Already tried the tractor beam idea but it made no difference except to slow ourselves. You can guess why Wutang are upset, can’t you?”
Chang stopped scratching and walked–now they weren’t in freefall–to get an espresso, double. “Two reasons. The hit will be at a different, and currently unpredictable place. Even worse, the impact of a much faster hit will be much worse because an insignificant fraction will be abraded by atmospheric friction.”
“Upsetting fact number three is eluding you, Chang, isn’t it?”
His eyebrows knitted. He looked at the enlarged image of Defoe. He sucked in the lightly metallic air sharply as he saw the blue and white Earth. The cabin shook again–deceleration–but the rock rushed on. Only one reason why it could accelerate like that, unnaturally.
Chang turned to Wen. “I assume this isn’t another of your tricks?”
She shook her head in silence, for once.
He threw his arms wide. “Then the asteroid really is an alien artefact.”
Wen gave him a small, embarrassed, smile. “Or, it is an alien.”
ANOTHER HOUR AND WUTANG had a new best guess of the target.
Wen shouted at Chang, “It’s the Gobi Desert.”
“I bet your DragonSlayer pals are rubbing their hands–or are they in Gobi?”
“I’m just saying it could be much worse.”
He grudgingly had to admit that was true, and yet. “It could also have been much better if you’d not sabo–”
“Not that again, Chang. Uh oh, here we go. Look at that firework! Like a silver Jian sword stabbing through the night sky, but no, the atmosphere has a cherry glow spreading from the wound. Just look at the speed of that circular wave in the upper air. Can you see anything of the hit on the ground?”
He couldn’t. It was night and the air turbulence obscured everything. Wutang was transmitting. “...thought would be contained, but by a terrible coincidence Defoe struck where three tectonic plates meet. It hit at right angles and disappeared. Either vaporised or shot into the desert out of sight. Tremors in the local towns.
Ongoing strong quakes at the nearest big city, Urumqi. Reports coming in of quakes in Japan, New Guinea... just a minute... must confirm this... San Fransisco... Mexico City... Istanbul... too many to... this is awful. So sorry. We... we are having an earthquake.”
Chang looked at Wen, both in shock, as they orbited the Earth coming apart at the plate boundaries, lit by lava.
“No need for them to practise, Wen. First and last contact.”