Roger Allen - The Ring of Charon

The massive, heavily armored probe was in place on the launch cradle now, in the hands of the automatic launching system. For reasons that he would have found hard to explain, Vespasian decided not to watch the countdown clock on this one. Instead he stared fixedly at the probe itself. So much was riding on this—more than any of them were willing to admit. Larry Chao’s work seemed to prove that Earth had been moved, not destroyed. But Vespasian was not quite ready to believe that.

Yes, he wanted to believe Earth had survived. Maybe the Saint Anthony would give him the proof he needed.

Unless the probe was destroyed in the wormhole, or arrived on the other side to find no sign of Earth, or somehow failed to send back any data. None of those outcomes would settle the point. Even if the probe functioned perfectly but did not locate Earth, that would mean nothing. They were merely assuming that this worm-hole—if wormhole it was—was linked to a piece of space near Earth on the opposite end. Anthony might well arrive light-years away from Earth.

Unless it found a rubble cloud identifiable as Earth’s remains, it could not demonstrate irrefutably that Earth was dead. They might send probes out forever and never confirm that. Space was vast.

And the Anthony was probably their one shot. Surely whoever controlled the wormhole would spot the probe coming through and attempt to destroy it. Surely they would find ways to prevent any other probes from making the trip.

Suddenly the probe seemed to quiver on the launch cradle as the linear accelerator was brought up to power. The launch computer activated the system, and the Saint Anthony vanished in a flash of speed.

Vespasian shifted his gaze to the monitor displaying the on-board camera view. The body of the Anthony was visible at the bottom of the screen. On either side, the Lunar landscape was whipping past at incredible speed, a sharp-edged blur of grays and whites. Vespasian barely had time to spot the end of the launching rail on the horizon before the probe reached rail’s end and leapt from the launch cradle, arcing gracefully up into space.

“On the wings of Saint Anthony ride all our prayers,” Vespasian whispered.

If either of the other two men heard, they did not respond. Each was alone with his own thoughts.

They had come a hell of a long way just to look at a rock, Sondra thought. Out the forward viewport, Mars hung aloof and enormous, a battle-scarred globe of orange, red and brown. Spectacular though the view of Mars was, none of the passengers had eyes for anything but the asteroid that was rapidly approaching.

As if to emphasize that thought, Hiram McGillicutty quite abruptly shoved his way in front of both the women, so as to get a better view of the rock for himself. “Surely we should be able to see some detail by now,” he objected.

“Not just yet, Doctor. After all, it’s not very big ,” Sondra said, speaking politely and resisting the temptation to swat this little man out of her way. Sondra glanced over at Marcia, who seemed to be working hard to suppress a smile. Sondra had learned a few things on the sprint flight from the Moon to Mars. First, that Marcia MacDougal was capable of putting up with a lot. Second, that McGillicutty was a lot to put up with. And third, that she had had enough of rush spaceflights. Even without McGillicutty’s abrasive personality aboard, the endless vibration of the engines and the cramped quarters did not make for a pleasant trip.

Well, at least this flight was near its end. “Any idea which asteroid this is yet?” Sondra asked.

“No, and there won’t be, either,” Captain Mtombe said in an irritated voice. Clearly he was getting damn tired of the question. “It could be any of hundreds that moved out all at once. Tracking was not very accurate. We can pick up an Autocrat’s Beacon signal from it—but the beacon is encrypted, and the Autocrat has refused to provide us with the encryption key. We know the rock was registered at one point, but nothing else. Besides, what difference could it make? A rock is a rock.”

Captain Mtombe, a rather dour and poker-faced dark-complexioned man with a slight West African accent, checked his displays. He seemed to be making a point of ignoring the image of the asteroid and concentrating on his instruments. “We should have a velocity match with the asteroid in twenty minutes. The asteroid is behind us and moving at speed, coming up on us, but decelerating. I’ve set our course so that it will match our present velocity as it comes alongside.

“Once the rock is alongside, I will be firing our engines to match its deceleration. We should be able to stay alongside it for several hours at least.”

“How long precisely will we have to observe, if we stay alongside as long as possible?” McGillicutty asked.

Mtombe shrugged. “You tell me. If this damn rock does what the objects targeted for Venus and Mercury did, it’s going to soft-land on Mars. Somehow. No one’s seen how they do that yet. Magic, I guess. My ship isn’t rated for magical landings, just orbit-to-orbit constant-boost flight. You want to follow this rock all the way into atmosphere, then blip out at the last minute, boost to orbit? It might work. Unless maybe we crash a little bit, and get dead. Or else maybe we slide into orbit and keep alive after the flyby. Then we stay alive here, get a look at asteroid number two coming in eight hours behind, and the next coming four hours behind that, and the whole fleet coming down our throats next day. And we don’t even get killed, not one little bit. Which do you want?”

For once, McGillicutty knew when he was being needled and shut up.

“Too bad we can’t blow the damn things out of the sky,” Mtombe muttered. “I know we don’t have enough nuclear weapons, and that we don’t want to risk their revenge. I’ve heard you people talking. But wiping out invading aliens—what better use for nuclear weapons?”

Sondra shook her head. “It’s a tempting thought. But we might end up with nothing more than a bunch of very angry radioactive Charonians. Besides, there aren’t any nukes available. Not on Mars, anyway. I’m sure the Martians could build some out of reconfigured fusion engines, if nothing else. But we have to come up with a better tactic than blasting these things—and to get that we need more data.”

Sondra started working with the image-enhancement routines, peering into a smaller monitor. “Dammit, we’re practically down to a resolution of centimeters here,” she said. “If there was anything to see, we’d have seen it by now. There’s nothing to be seen, that’s all. That’s a rock, plain and simple. Nothing there.”

“Unless whatever it is we’re looking for is on the other side…” Marcia suggested.

Mtombe took the hint. “Hang on to something, then,” he said. He skewed the ship over to do a flyaround, moving in a slow, careful arc, staying at a respectful distance from the asteroid.

“There!” McGillicutty called out, and leaned forward, eager for his first glimpse at utterly alien technology.

A tiny, white, lozenge-shaped form hove into view over the rock’s short horizon. Sondra worked the enhancer and the image leapt upward in scale until the white shape filled the screen. McGillicutty giggled with nervous excitement, and immediately went to work, trying to identify what he saw. “That is obviously a fuel tank of some sort,” he said. “I would suggest that it contains at least some fraction of the propellant used to accelerate the asteroid. Note the smaller structures clustered around the tank. Perhaps those are associated with guidance of the asteroid. I note some sort of patterns on the tank. Could you perhaps boost the contrast a bit so we could get a look at that.”