We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

Book 2: Chapter 36: Asteroid Movers

Book 2: Chapter 36: Asteroid Movers

Bill

March 2187

Epsilon Eridani

“I’m feeling pretty smug right now.” I grinned at Garfield. He tried for maybe a millisecond to look unimpressed, but no one was fooled.

Right there in front of us, the asteroid mover was altering the approach vector of one of our icebergs. The difference in this case was that no part of the mover was touching the berg. The mover segments were spaced evenly around the center of gravity of the asteroid, held in place by individual SURGE drives. And the assembly as a whole generated another SURGE field that affected the entire asteroid.

The interactions were complex, and we’d had a few experimental failures. But this one had passed all tests, and today was the first live field trial. Everything was well within specs, and the changing path of the berg was right in the groove.

Finally, Garfield said, “And, done. Shutdown.”

“Excellent. Wait sixty seconds to make sure there’s no drift, then collect the drive segments.”

Garfield nodded to me. A minute later, twenty individual saucer-shaped drive segments left their self-imposed positions around the berg, linked up like a stack of plates, and went to station-keeping relative to Gar and myself.

In the video window, the berg fell neatly into an approach that would skim the atmosphere of Ragnarök. At the proper moment, a series of explosions would convert it to ice cubes, which would all melt and fall as rain over the next few weeks. Textbook.

I looked down at the large crater on Ragnarök which served as a permanent reminder of the iceberg that I’d missed. Yep. A lot of energy stored up in a chunk of matter coming in at orbital speeds, and being ice instead of rock hadn’t helped as much as you’d expect. A new sea was slowly forming in the crater, which I had named Bullseye. ??Nò???