Odyssey

“I’ve missed you, too, Bill.” The girls were looking through the viewports. All they saw, of course, were spotlights, cables, docks, and bulkheads. “I wish I could take you out,” she told them. “You’d like riding with Bill.” She could have arranged a virtual ride, but they’d know. Amy would, anyhow. And it wouldn’t be the same.

Hutch looked at Maureen, wondering what she would see during her lifetime. Maybe, if Amy’s father had his way, she’d watch the government shut down the interstellar effort. He was right, of course, to worry about the home world. But it didn’t have to be a choice between staving off the greenhouse or continuing deep-space expansion.

FTL was not pork. Maybe it was time for the Academy to adopt a new motto.

“Bathroom, Mommy,” said Maureen.

LATER THEY TOURED the station’s maintenance section and looked at engines. But Amy wasn’t all that interested, so they went back up to the main concourse while the senator’s daughter talked about where she’d go if she had command of the Peifer. “Out to Betelgeuse,” she said. “And to a black hole.” She gri

“There aren’t any close enough to reach,” said Hutch, wondering if you really could see a black hole. That was a flight she’d like to make herself.

“And I’d love to see some of the monuments.”

At first Hutch didn’t put it together. Then she realized Amy was talking about the enigmatic creations left scattered around the local stars thousands of years ago by the inhabitants of Beta Pac III. The Monument-Makers. “There’s one on Iapetus,” she said.

Amy was holding Maureen’s hand. “I know.”

Maureen’s attention had gone elsewhere. “Over there, Mommy,” she said, pointing at Big Bang Burgers.

Hutch looked at Amy. “Hungry?”

“I could eat,” she said.

They started across, but had to give way while a pair of preoccupied middle-aged types, a man and a woman, hurried past. They were shaking their heads, both talking at once. Hutch tried to listen, but the only phrase she caught was “ — How this could happen — ”

They disappeared around the curve of the mall. She took the girls into the Big Bang and both ordered more than they could eat. Shortly after the food arrived, hamburgers, salads, and french fries, Hutch saw John Carter hurry past. Carter had gone through life listening to jokes about his name. At the moment, he was carrying on an animated conversation with his commlink, and he looked tense. Carter worked with the station operations group, which was responsible for scheduling departures and arrivals. They were not co

“What’s wrong, Hutch?” asked Amy. There was a tremor in her voice.

“Nothing, Amy,” she said. “Why do you ask?”

“You look worried.”

The tables in Big Bang Burgers were almost filled. Through one of the viewports, the Milky Way was visible, far brighter than it ever appeared from the ground. Hutch’s mother claimed never to have seen it. Too much glare. Hutch herself rarely noticed it in the sky over Washington.

Somebody else charged past. Two of them. Going the other way. What was happening? She opened her link to Mission Ops. One of the watch officers, a woman, replied. “Mason.”

“This is Hutchins,” she said. “What’s going on?”

Mason sounded relieved. “If you’d called a couple minutes ago, ma’am, I’d have told you maybe the end of the world.”

THE ACADEMY’S OPERATIONS center was located down one level from the main concourse. Peter Arnold was on duty. Three or four technicians were grouped around him. They were staring at one another. Nobody was saying anything. “How big was the asteroid?” Hutch asked.

Peter looked simultaneously relieved, embarrassed, grateful. Like a man who’d just walked out of a building and seen it explode behind him. “I do think,” he said, “somebody’s looking out for us.”

“Big,” said one of the technicians.

“Where?”

“Just passed us. Came within two thousand klicks.”

Maureen didn’t understand what he was saying, of course, but she caught the tone and squeezed against her mother. “Are you serious, Peter?”

“Do I look as if I’m kidding?”

“We never saw it coming?”

“Somebody in McCusker’s looked out and saw it as it passed.” McCusker’s was one of the dining areas. Peter took a deep breath. “I heard you were here.” Then he noticed Maureen and Amy and managed a smile. “Yours?”

“The little one.”

He said hello, and Amy asked whether they had any pictures of the asteroid.

“Let me play it for you.” He spoke to the AI and one of the monitors came on. The asteroid was a flattened, potato-shaped object, tumbling slowly, end over end. The long blue arc of the Earth merged into the picture.

“How big?” Hutch asked.

“Four kilometers. Over four. They’re telling us it would have been lights out for everybody. If it had gone down.” The object was growing smaller. The Earth dropped gradually away. “That’s taken from one of the imagers here, on the station.”

“I can’t believe we never saw it coming,” said Amy. She looked at Hutch for an explanation.

Had it hit, Hutch knew, it would have thrown substantial amounts of debris into the atmosphere. Winter would have set in. Frigid, desperate, permanent. Unending. An infant born that day, and enduring for a normal span of years, would not have lived long enough to see the freeze end.

She opened a cha

“Wait one, Ms. Hutchins.”

She turned back to Peter. “Let the commissioner know.”

“Okay.”

She heard François’s voice. “Hutch. I assume you’re calling about the rock.”

“Yes. Any more out there? Sometimes these things travel in packs.”

“We’ve been looking. Don’t see anything.”

“Okay. François, how much warning did we have?”

“We didn’t see it until the last minute.” He sounded uncomfortable. “We didn’t know whether it was going to hit or not until it had passed. C’est embarrassant.”

“Could have been worse.”

“Priscilla, I must go. We are getting traffic.”

Peter was whispering into his link, watching her, and saying yes to somebody. Finally, he signaled her. “He wants to talk to you.”

She switched over. “Hello, Michael.”

“It’s getting a lot of play,” he said.

“I’m not surprised.”

“How come we didn’t know about it before time?”

She wanted to say he should ask his buddy Senator Taylor. “The old Skywatch program was shut down years ago.”

“Skywatch? What the hell’s that?”

“It was a few dozen independent astronomers who tracked Earth-crossers. But the Congress cut off their funds, so now they’re down to a handful of volunteers.”

“Hell, I don’t care about that. What about our operations people?”

“It’s not the Academy’s responsibility, Michael. It’s not what we do. Technically, it’s up to the station.”

“That’s not going to sound like a very good answer when the questions start coming. Which I’m waiting for now.”

“Michael, we don’t even have sensing equipment. We ride along on the gear that Union uses. And now that I think of it, it’s not their job either. They track flights. In and out. And that’s all they do.”

“Well,” he said, “there’s going to be hell to pay. Asquith out.”

She smiled at that last one. Asquith out. As if he’d ever been in.

AS ARRANGED, SENATOR Taylor, with two security types, was waiting for them at Reagan, in the reception area. He collected his daughter and asked whether she’d enjoyed herself.

“Yes, Dad,” she said. “We were on board the Peifer.”

“Good.” He looked at Hutch with an expression that suggested weariness. “You had an exciting day up there.”

“You mean with the asteroid?”

“Yes.”

“It was a near thing,” she said.

“It’s ridiculous, Hutch. All the money we spend and look what happens.”

“We need to spend it a little more intelligently, Senator. Fund the Earth-crosser program. It’s nickels and dimes.”

“We have telescopes all over the world. And satellites. You name it. And nobody sees this thing coming?”

“You need something specifically dedicated to the task. A lot of — ”

He put up a hand. “It’s okay. I hear you.” He told Maureen how pretty she looked. Looked at the child while he spoke to Hutch. “Thanks,” he said. “I appreciate your doing this.”

“You’re welcome. It was a pleasure to have Amy along.”

Amy looked from Hutch to her father. She seemed hesitant. “If you and Maureen go up again sometime,” she said, “I’d love to go with you.”

“You’re on,” said Hutch.

One of Taylor’s security people took Amy in tow, and they headed for the exit.

The world narrowly averted a cataclysm today when a giant asteroid passed within less than a thousand kilometers. It is the closest known approach in historic times. Those who are expert in such things tell us the result, had it crashed, would have been global catastrophe.

The aspect of this event that is most troubling is that, given a reasonable advance warning, turning it aside would have been quite simple. But for reasons that are as yet unclear, the people ma

How close did it come?

It skimmed across the atmosphere. It could not have been closer. It was rather like having a bullet part our hair.

So who’s responsible? You can bet there’ll be an investigation. And somebody needs very much to be hung out to dry. The only real question at the moment: Who?

— Moises Kawoila,

Los Angeles Keep, Saturday, February 21

The unprovoked attack on a local clergyman should be dealt with severely. Violent crime has been on the rise during recent years. It is time to get serious with these thugs. The Henry Beemer incident is particularly outrageous. Beemer doesn’t even have the justification that the assault occurred during a robbery. In this case, it was simply a mindless act, intended to inflict harm on an i

— Derby (North Carolina) Star