"Jesus, son. I'm glad you are on our side," the President said.
"Thank you, Mr. President. I have no sympathy for a people that will let their government kill millions of people in an unprovoked attack. They should get what they deserve." I grinded my teeth a bit and I guess I should've tried to hide my anger better.
"Okay, what if they have one of these things ready to go now?" he asked.
"Can't we just shoot it down? I mean rockets blow up all the time," Jim interjected.
"Good idea, Jim. Wouldn't the National Missile Defense System be able to shoot down something as slow and big as a manned rocket?" I asked.
"Of course it could. We simply need to modify some trajectory calculations and adjust the Kalman filtering sequence," Tabitha assured us. "Mr. President. We need resources and we need people. And until we know exactly what is going on I think you're in danger."
"Son," he pointed at me, "you started this mess. You better by God get us through it. We're counting on you. General Ames," he smiled as he emphasized "General," "you have whatever you need."
"Yes sir. Thank you Mr. President." Tabitha squirmed a bit uncharacteristically.
Jim and I nodded and then were asked to leave. So we did.
A few hours later the President was on television issuing a statement to the public. "Hello America. I speak to you tonight with a grave heart. We have experienced the greatest disaster in human history," he began. "Scientists have assured me that indeed Colorado was struck by a meteor of a scale only slightly smaller than the one that destroyed the dinosaurs. It is likely our national and maybe even global weather patterns will be erratic and cooler than normal in the near future. Unlike the dinosaurs however, we're intelligent and will overcome this obstacle.
"As of now, we have no way of discerning the total amount of damage that has occurred, but we will not stop until we have combed all of Colorado for survivors. We're keeping a vigil watch on the climate surrounding the impact. As soon as the strong weather patterns and the firestorms have subsided, we will begin rescue effort deployment. FEMA and other volunteer emergency professionals are standing by until that time.
"There have been questions as to the possibility of further meteor strikes. I have asked both NASA and the remaining Strategic Space Command officials to concert all efforts on searching the skies for further possible impact meteors. I have also implemented an executive order to enable development of some sort of protection system from events of this type.
"Please, do not panic. Astronomers assure us that these impacts are very rare. It is likely that the impact in Florida weeks ago was a fragment of this very meteor. Hopefully, this is the end of these meteor impacts. I ask that you go about your normal lives as well as you can. And finally, pray for our fellow citizens in Colorado and for better weather. God bless America. Goodnight."
Five days later, there were more than two hundred people in our corridors at the bottom of wherever we were (I still didn't know exactly where we were hiding). Tabitha assured me that there were even more at other locations attempting to reproduce our efforts. They would be given designs and instructions and told to manufacture equipment without ever knowing that equipment's final application. The floor above us had been completely converted to a Mini ECC manufacturing facility. 'Becca and Sara were overseeing that operation while Jim and I had our floor turned into a copy of the warp coil development lab we had back in Huntsville, but again with newer and more expensive equipment. Al and Tabitha (General Ames to you) took the preliminary sketches of a Mini Warp Missile (MWM) and were designing it up via computer simulation and analysis design software. A lot of models have to be conducted on any new system and they were trying to get us ready to cut metal by the time the Mini ECCs were ready. Al is a wizard at finite element analysis and engineering design, so we expected his part to be ready long before the manufacturing facility was running full speed.
Jim and I had completed our warp system detector. We tested it against a small prototype set of coils that we had rigged on the fly and it worked great. In fact it worked so great, that the first time we tested it we detected four other systems being tested. I can't tell you where they were being tested—that's classified. This meant that they had at least four missiles getting close to launch ready! I immediately ran down the hall and found Tabitha.
"Where are they?" she asked.
"Here. I wrote down the GPS coordinates for you. They're in four separate locations. Smart. That means it would take four missiles to take them out. Let's hope they can't find us like we can find them."
A few minutes later, she brought satellite photos of the area and pointed out the buildings that were the entrances to the Chinese warp missile manufacturing centers.
"Measures are being taken," is all that she said.
"What does that mean?" I asked.
"Just meet me down the hall in about three hours," she said as she turned and walked away. Everybody was busy and she had taken on the role as boss. I guess that made her even busier.
A bit later Tabitha returned and asked, "When you said I hope they can't find us, were you serious? Do you think they can detect us this far under ground?"
"Ground doesn't have that much to do with it. The gravity waves, for the most part, will only be attenuated by Beer's Law due to the ground. Distance helps on a much greater scale."
"Well, how far then? I mean, how far away do you need to be to hide from your detector?"
"Uh . . . haven't really thought of that. Give me a bit to turn the old crank on that one." It was a good question. I needed a whiteboard. After a few hours at the whiteboard, I had figured out that the Dark Side of the Moon was not only a good album but it was the place we needed to hide. Well, Farside, anyway.
Al found me staring at the whiteboard in the makeshift lab conference area. "Doc, you all right? You seem a bit upset."
"I was just trying to figure out where we could safely hide from the bad guys. We're in trouble I guess. We would have to hide—at the minimum—on the far side of the moon. I guess we'll just have to work in fear and from a defensive posture."
I was a bit frustrated, not to mention tired and sore. I hadn't had a good night's sleep in five weeks. Although my wounds were mostly healed up, I still had occasional aches with them. Tabitha was in the same boat. Her ribs still hurt her some.
"The far side of the moon, huh?" Al looked thoughtful. "What about—nah skip it. The general sent me to get you. You're supposed to meet her in ten minutes."
"I've been in here for three hours?" I must have completely zoned out on this problem. I do that sometimes. Most engineers do. I remember hearing a story about when Wernher von Braun first got to Huntsville. One day some cops found him at a stop light in what seemed to be a trance. He had apparently come up with an idea and just stopped where he was driving and started working out the concept in his head. It was after that incident that he was given a driver to chauffer him anywhere he went.
Al laughed. "Well almost three hours. Hey Doc, I'm through with the missile design. Is it all right if I think about this moon thing for a little while?"
"Hell, Al, take a break or something. You've been working hard."