Amy rubbed the goose bumps of her pale blush skin and massaged a biceps still sore from vaccination. She caught Chuck staring and gave a friendly smile. He was a sarcastic sweetie who tried to be discreet and never openly leered, like a handful of other NASA trolls. Chuck smiled sheepishly and turned to Ben, who was using him as a sounding board for a roster of engineers and physicists. Amy tried to keep tabs on the names dropped in between technical speak.
“Who is Ariane?” Amy interjected.
“Not who,” Ben clarified, “but what. Ariane is a brand of rocket, like Dr Pepper is a brand of a soda.”
Ben explained that a carrier rocket was needed to launch a spacecraft past Earth’s gravitational field.
“The Ariane rocket at this spaceport is the first part of our plan,” Ben said, already arranging props for his full explanation.
Amy was the one student Ben lived to teach, and he took great care not to talk down to her smarts or over her head. It was a bit of a tightrope, but it was one he was willing to walk. Ben pulled two green bills out of his wallet and crumpled them in his left fist, which he called the “spacecraft” for the purposes of demonstration. Next, he waved his empty right hand and called it the “Ariane rocket carrier.” In one motion, Ben grabbed hold of his left fist with his right hand and made like he was throwing it up like a fly ball.
“At a sufficient altitude, the Ariane rocket carrier jettisons our spacecraft,” he said.
Chuck watched the demonstration in stupefied silence, no doubt shocked by Ben’s sudden show of patience as he held up his left fist and pulled out one of the paper bills.
“This is the leader impactor,” Ben said, giving the single dollar bill to Amy. “Our spacecraft is gonna shoot this at the comet and blow a crater into its surface. Then the spacecraft will ram into that crater and detonate a nuclear explosive for optimal disruption.”
Ben held out his left fist and opened his palm, revealing a twenty-dollar bill. Amy pocketed the bill before asking how Ben knew that this was the right plan when they knew so little about the comet. Ben started to shake his head and winced. Over the last forty-eight hours of vigorous planning and no sleep, Ben mentioned headaches. His habit of shaking his head was made all the worse by these heightened stakes. I feel my brain bruising, he joked. In the final hours before landing in South America, he gripped a fistful of his thick, dark waves and held his head still with one hand while the other gave Chuck’s ideas a gladiatorial thumb up or down.
“The worst-case scenario is that we have a high probability of impact with less than ten years to deflect it,” Ben said in rapid staccato. “A nuclear impactor would be the only viable option for a comet this large and fast. Modeling has shown that an existing nuclear weapon could deflect a one-kilometer near-Earth object. I mean, with all the impact scenarios…”
Amy knew about the 122 impact scenarios, some played out in person at the biannual Planetary Defense Conference and some played out virtually within an online forum. The scenarios helped prove what would fail—in theory—with computer simulations, probability, and human role-playing. Ben had already experienced the majority of all imaginable actions, reactions, and outcomes. Of course, the scenarios weren’t real, nor were they current enough to account for the world’s newer leaders and administrations.
“It’s the right plan,” Ben insisted.
But he looked suddenly ill and full of doubt. And who could blame him? If there was a high probability of impact, not even Amy would want to voice the question, What if you’re wrong? The answer was obvious anyway: Ben might fail to prevent an extinction event, that’s what.
“We’re here,” Chuck nearly whispered.
The three-mile drive was over before they even finished their coffees. The shuttle driver turned onto a European roundabout with colorful flags and a large WELCOME TO THE GUIANA SPACE CENTRE sign in French and English. He drove past the tourism entrance on the right and continued parallel to a long security fence topped with barbed wire. Amy had read online that the spaceport facilities stretched across an area nearly the size of New York City.
Through the windshield, she saw a checkpoint ahead with five armed guards in dark uniforms. Ben had had to throw a fit over the phone with UN headquarters to get Amy on the flight out of Los Angeles. Gaining security clearance on premises would likely be more difficult. They had strategized together on the plane until Amy grew frustrated: You can tell that Professor Och-Ochsss—. The name didn’t exactly roll off the tongue. Ben quickly interjected with the right pronunciation. Him! Amy picked back up: You tell him that one of our presidents got his daughter and son-in-law security clearance to the frickin’ White House. Take a lesson: the big man calls the shots—and right now, that’s you, Ben.
The checkpoint’s metal gate slid open as guards waved them forward several yards and then held their palms out flat, motioning them to stop. A guard spoke to their driver in French and had him exit the vehicle so that he could step up and take the wheel. The shuttle’s side door opened, exposing them to bright sunlight and hot air. Amy saw a woman in professional dress approaching, her high heels rapping the asphalt.
“Welcome,” the woman said, leaning into the interior. “I’m Marielena Acosta with the United Nations. I understand there is an extra passenger?”
Her dark eyes focused on Amy.
“Perhaps she would like to wait inside with me at Security?”
Amy opened her mouth, but Ben was quicker to respond.
“This is Amy Kowalski,” he said calmly. “I asked your headquarters to distribute her resume ahead of our arrival. Ms. Kowalski has her own corner office in Modis Burbank because she’s one of the best tech recruiters on the West Coast—and the only one I trust. The Professor said I could pick my team. Well, here’s my HR director, and she takes her coffee black.”
The woman nodded, considering.
“You selected Ms. Kowalski,” she clarified.
“Every day,” Ben replied with utmost confidence.
She nodded again and then waved to the guards. Amy clasped Ben’s hand as their shuttle accelerated past a one-story building labeled SÉCURITÉ and entered an administration complex of tall buildings labeled with names of celestial bodies. A lone woman was waiting by the entrance of a building named Janus. She was very tall with a broad forehead and short, ash-colored hair. The woman barely paused for an introduction before ushering Amy, Ben, and Chuck indoors.
“Director Durand and Professor Ochsenfeld are expecting you in the Janus meeting room,” she said, overtaking them with wide strides on square-heeled pumps.
It had been three days since the Spacewatch discovery of UD3. Several sober-faced staffers stared at the three newcomers like rubberneckers passing a traffic accident in the hallway. These men and women certainly knew something.
“Dr. Schwartz!” one of the staffers whispered, and rushed out to intercept the group. “We’ve met,” he told Ben in a thick German accent. “I worked for NASA on a visa. I was there when you led the Mars orbiters duck-and-cover maneuver for comet Siding Spring!”
Their tall guide gave sharp looks of disapproval as she reminded everyone that they were expected to report directly, but Ben stopped her.
“I’m sorry, I don’t remember all of my colleagues,” he said, shaking the man’s hand. “That flyby was nuts, and I didn’t get a lot of sleep.”