Odyssey

chapter 11

The term congressional hearing is an oxymoron. No congressional hearing is ever called to gather information. Rather, it is an exercise designed strictly for posturing, by people who have already made up their minds, looking for ammunition to support their positions.

— Gregory MacAllister, “I’ve Got Mine”

It was never possible to determine who first saw the asteroid. The guy in the restaurant had been first to report it to the operations center. But he said a young boy pointed it out to him. Two technicians working on a solar observatory in high Earth orbit at about the same time called their supervisor when they noticed a star moving through the sky. A group participating in an outdoor prayer service in Lisbon claimed to have seen the object and watched it for two minutes before it disappeared over the horizon.

Several calls were made to the Central Observation Group, and within seconds tracking devices in orbit and telescopes in northern Spain and the Caucasus broke off their current schedules and swung toward the object.

Word flashed around the world. The ultimate near miss. Close enough, in the words of the director of the Anglo-Australian Observatory at Epping, “to leave a few singed tail feathers.”

By the end of the day, scientists were being interviewed on all the talk shows. While they disagreed on the level of risk posed by Earth-crossers, they were unanimous in predicting that eventually one of the rocks would hit. There was a lot of talk about dinosaurs. The headline on The Guardian summed it up:

IT’S JUST A MATTER OF TIME

Experts explained that there was really no need to be concerned about such objects because we had the capability to divert or destroy them. “But somebody,” said the CEO of Quality Systems, Inc., “needs to let us know it’s coming.”

“So why didn’t we see it?” Tor asked Hutch that evening, as they sat in their living room while Maureen played with a toy train.

“The Newhouse administration eliminated funding for the Skywatch program almost twenty years ago,” she said. “Attempts to revive it keep getting scuttled, most recently with help from our good friend Senator Taylor. We’ve had a tracking program, off and on, using volunteers and private funding. But we need a more substantive effort. The odds against getting hit in any one president’s administration are so astronomical” — she said it with a straight face — “that nobody takes it seriously. It’s frustrating. All they have to do is pay a few people to watch the damned things. It would cost pocket change. But they can’t be bothered.”

Tor was a big guy, even-tempered, quiet, easygoing. When Hutch got frustrated and came home in a rage — as she periodically did — because of bureaucratic shortsightedness and mismanagement, he was always there, suggesting they head out to di

The frustration came with the territory, she told herself. She’d accepted the directorate and all that went with it. Still, when someone like Harry Everett came in and told her she was betraying her old comrades, the people who made the Academy work, it hurt. She hadn’t told Tor about that conversation. Wasn’t sure why. It might have been there was some truth to the charges.

“So what are you going to do?” he asked.

An image of the asteroid floated in the center of the room. It was part of a newscast, but they’d turned the sound down. “Maybe we got a piece of luck,” she said.

He followed her gaze. “The asteroid?”

“It should remind people why they have to have an off-Earth capability. There are other big rocks out there.”

“Maybe you should get Samuels to call a press conference Monday. Talk about it a little bit.” Maureen pulled her train through the room and out onto the porch. It was supposed to be a glide train, but it only rose off the ground when you put it on the magnetic track. That was too much trouble.

SHE SPENT SUNDAY with Maureen and Tor, but had a hard time thinking about anything other than the asteroid. Monday morning, as she flew toward the Academy in her taxi, she looked down at the Virginia forests and thought of the vast distances she had traveled and how sterile the universe was. So few places could function as home to a tree. Humans took vegetation, and the biosystem as a whole, for granted. A forest seemed like the most natural thing in the world. Provide a patch of earth, some sunlight and water, and voilà, you got trees. But you needed other things that weren’t so readily apparent. A regular orbit. A stable sun. Lots of distance between you and other celestial objects. It was not the sort of thing that would occur to you if you didn’t get much beyond Virginia.

But anyone who’d gone out on the superluminals had a different mind-set. Robert Heinlein, back in the twentieth century, had gotten it right: the cool, green hills of Earth. What a treasure they are. Once you got off-world, the nearest forest was on Terranova, orbiting 36 Ophiuchi. Nineteen light-years away. How long would it take her taxi, cruising lazily through the gray early-morning mist, to cover nineteen light-years?

It dropped her at the rooftop terminal, and she strolled down to her office on the main floor, happy that the world was still intact, sobered by the thought of what might have happened. The Heffernan passengers were safe, the asteroid had missed, and all was well.

Or so it seemed until Marla wished her good morning in the voice she reserved to indicate something was happening.

“What?” asked Hutch.

“The commissioner wants you to keep your schedule clear this morning. He’s going to want to see you.”

“Did he say when?”

“No. ‘Later.’”

“Did he say what about?”

“No, ma’am.”

A smarter executive than Asquith would be summoning her to bestow congratulations on the recovery of the Heffernan, well done, join me later for lunch, I’m buying. But generally you only heard from Michael when there was a problem.

She poured herself a cup of coffee and switched on the newsnets. There were Abdul and his partners being welcomed at Union, handshakes and smiles all around. There, in the middle of her office, was the Heffernan, gray and black, its eagle markings illuminated by its rescuer’s navigation lights. It was a satisfying moment. There was more heat to come, of course, but she could tolerate that. What she wouldn’t have been able to handle was the knowledge someone had died because she hadn’t stood her ground.

“It’s hard to believe, Gordon,” said a female voice-over, “that the Heffernan was right here in the solar system and they never realized it.”

The solar system is a big place, lady.

“I suspect,” said Gordon, “there are some red faces over at the Academy. Which brings us to the near miss we had yesterday. How could they not notice a rock that big? Four kilometers long.” The asteroid appeared to Gordon’s right, rotating slowly. It was nickel-iron, he reported, a relic from the formation of the solar system. Billions of years old.

“Nickel-iron,” said the woman, “means it would have made a bigger splash when it hit than simply a rock asteroid.”

She switched over to Worldwide, which had climatologist Joachim Miller talking about the Antarctic ice pack. “It’s melting fast, and it could slide into the sea at any time,” he said. “If it does, look for the ocean levels around the world to rise a hundred-seventy feet.”

“A hundred-seventy feet?” asked the show’s moderator, visibly shocked. Hutch wondered whether they’d rehearsed. “That much?”

“If we’re lucky.”

“Over the next few centuries?”

“If it happened today, I’d say by Wednesday.”

IT WAS A pretty good argument for moving to Mars. Or establishing a colony somewhere. There was a lot of talk about doing just that, and in fact two colonies had been founded, one by political malcontents, the other by religious fanatics. Both were now on life support. It was just as well. The last thing the species needed was to provide a pristine world for lunatics, of whatever stripe. Do that, she suspected, and it would eventually come back to haunt us.

Even off-world habitats had not prospered. There were plans to construct two in the Earth-moon region, but the contractors had run short of funds, and promised subsidies had never materialized.

The asteroid had been named, prosaically, RM411. The Black Cat had tried to tag it the Armageddon Special, but their own consultants laughed at them, so they dropped the attempt after the first feeble efforts. “Legislative bodies around the world,” Detroit News Online was saying, “are promising investigations of how it could have happened. An u

Science & Technology predicted that “somebody’s head will roll. Why are we giving the Academy all that money?”

It’s not our job, you idiot. Just because something is off-Earth doesn’t automatically make it our responsibility.

She switched over to Capitol News, which was interviewing Hiram Taylor. Live from the Senate building. He looked angry and righteous, and his black hair kept falling into his eyes. They were by heaven going to straighten things out. The American people deserved better than this. “It’s only by the grace of God that it missed us. No thanks to the people in place who are supposed to protect us from these things.” He didn’t name the Academy, presumably because he knew better. But he left it out there, knowing full well the conclusions his audience would draw.

Hutch wondered what the going rate was for a hit man. The Senate’s Science Advisory Committee, to which Taylor belonged, did not, of course, control funding for the Academy, but the House panel that decided such things would listen closely to what they said.

She called the commissioner. Not in yet. She went to Eric. “They’re blaming us,” she said.

“I know.” Eric threw up his hands. “I have a press conference scheduled later this morning. We’ve put out statements, I sent Ernie down to do an interview, and I’m taking a couple of the media guys out to lunch.” Ernie was Eric’s staff assistant.