Davlo laughed bitterly. “Trying to kidnap me, perhaps kill me, a mere diversion for stealing my life’s work?”
“I don’t mean to sound harsh, son, but yes. Exactly that. I grant that you would have a different point of view—but for the rest of the world, right now, your life’s work is of far greater importance than your life. And you’re sure everything is gone? Irretrievably gone?”
“Everything. “
“I see.”
“Governor Kresh? Who did this? Was it the Settlers?”
“Probably,” said Kresh. “But it could have been anyone who wanted to keep the comet from coming down. Right now that doesn’t matter. Right now we have to deal with the situation, not worry about how the situation came to be.”
“That’s not going to be easy, sir. I’ll try.”
There was silence on the line for a moment. “All right, then. Your computer files containing your plans are gone. We have to set to work at once to get them back—or at least get the main part of them back. I’ve seen enough of what the twin control units can do to be sure they could start from the basics of your plan and reconstruct it—probably in greater detail than you had to start with.”
“How very kind of you to say so,” Davlo muttered.
“I meant no offense to your work,” Kresh said. “The control units are designed for this kind of job, and they have the capacity to oversee the climate of an entire planet. Of course they can do more detailed projections than one man working alone, no matter how gifted—especially when that man is working outside his field of expertise. And I might add that no robot or computer or control unit found that comet and saw what it might mean to this planet.”
Davlo sat down in the chair facing the comm unit, folded his arms over his chest, and stared down at the floor. “You’re flattering me,” he said. “Trying to soothe me, make me feel better.”
“Yes, I am,” Kresh agreed, his voice smooth and calm. “Because I need you, and I need you right now. As I was about to say, the control units can reconstruct and refine your plan for targeting the comet—but we need you in your field of expertise.”
“Sir? I don’t understand.”
“Son, we need you to look through your telescope again and relocate that comet. And fast.”
Davlo took a deep breath, shook his head, and kept his gaze fixed on the floor. “Sir, I never found the comet in the first place.”
“What! Are you saying this has all been some kind of hoax? Some kind of fraud?”
“No! No, sir. Nothing like that. I didn’t mean it that way. I meant that the computers found the comet. Automated telescopes found it while doing preprogrammed scans. I’ve never looked through a telescope myself in my life.”
Again, silence on the line, but this time Davlo spoke first. “All the data is gone, sir. Without my computer files, without my written notes, without the log files—there is simply no way at all I can find that comet again in time.”
“But the thing is kilometers across! It’s practically headed straight for the planet right now! How hard could it be to spot?”
Davlo Lentrall let out a tired sigh. The man was right. It shouldn’t be hard at all. How could he explain that it would be all but impossible? “It is extremely hard to spot, sir. It is coming straight for us, and that is part of the problem. Normally we track a comet by spotting its motion against the night sky. Comet Grieg appears to be all but stationary. Not quite motionless, but close. And while it’s a relatively large cometary body, even a big comet is rather small from tens of millions of kilometers away. It also happens to be a rather dark body—and at its present distance, it has a very low apparent magnitude.”
“You’re saying it’s too dim to see? But you saw it before—or at least the computers and the telescopes did.”
“It’s not impossible to see. But it’s very dim and small and far away and with a very small lateral motion. And it’s not just a question of seeing it once. We have to get repeated, accurate measures of its position and trajectory before we can reconstruct the orbit.”
“But what about when it gets closer? Won’t it develop a tail and all the rest of it? Surely that will make it easier to spot.”
“By which time it will be too late. Grieg is a dark-body comet. The comet will be too close, and if it has developed much of a tail, that will mean it is starting to melt. If it gets too warm and melts too much, it will be too fragile to hold together during the course correction. Part of the plan I hadn’t worked out yet was shielding from the sun. I was going to come up with some kind of parasol, a shield to keep the sunlight off.”
“But there’s a chance,” said Kresh. “At least there is some sort of chance we could reacquire the comet if we tried.” There was a brief moment of quiet again before the governor’s voice spoke again. “Here’s what we’re going to do,” he said. “We’re going to keep everything moving forward, based on the assumption that we do reacquire the comet, and that we will decide to go forward with the diversion and the impact. We need to move forward on as many fronts as possible, as fast as possible, and I need some work out of you, right now.
“First I want you to set down the closest approximations you can of the mass, size, position, and trajectory of Comet Grieg. Even rough figures will give us someplace to start in planning for the impact itself. Send that information at once to my data mailbox. Then you are going to get to work at once organizing a search to reacquire Comet Grieg. I will instruct your superiors to give you whatever resources and personnel you need for the job. Tell them as much as you can about the comet. But get that started—and let someone else run it. Because I want you to get to work trying to recover your computer files. Maybe they’re not as lost as we think. There must be something, somewhere—at least enough to give some leads to the team doing the telescope search. Is that clear?”
“Yes, sir. Sir—if I might ask a question?”
“Yes, of course, Dr. Lentrall.”
“I get the impression that you’ve become more convinced that the plan might work.”
“That I have, Dr. Lentrall. I’ve seen and heard quite a bit here about your plan. Enough to make me think we just can’t live without it. Was there anything else?”
“Not at the moment, sir. I’ll be in touch.”
“You certainly will,” the governor replied, with just the slightest hint of humor in his voice. “Kresh out.”
The line went dead.
That should have been his cue to swing into action, but instead, Davlo simply stared at the speaker, expressionless. After what seemed a very long time indeed, he finally stirred himself into action. He set down all he could recall of his comet data, as accurately as possible, knowing full well that the margin of error in most of his figures would render them close to useless. He sent a copy of it off to Kresh’s data mailbox, and another off to the head of the astronomy department, asking for whatever help he could get. Of course, Davlo knew perfectly well that the department head absolutely refused to accept any after-hours calls. She would not get the message until morning. But still, best to have it done.
Simple enough jobs, both of them, but they seemed to take an inordinately long time—and to take a great deal out of Davlo. After the day he had had, there was not really a great deal left to take. When he was at last done with the messages, he did not get up. Instead he sat there, unable to rouse himself. There was a lot more he ought to do, but Davlo Lentrall could not quite bring himself to move. Not quite yet.
It was that hour of the night when rational thought seems most unreasonable, when unreasoning fear seems utterly logical, and disasters seem most probable. Davlo thought of his nameless, faceless, enormously powerful enemies. They were mad enough at him already. He was not entirely sure he wanted to do anything else—like getting out of his chair—that might incur their wrath.