The Asteroid Read online

  The Asteroid

  M R Cates

  The Asteroid: Copyright © 2012 M R Cates

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. All people, places, and events are either fictional or used in a fictional manner. Any similarity to real events or people is unintentional and coincidental.

  dedicated to Linda, whom I love,

  another strong woman

  who has to be reckoned with

  Chapter 1

  Sandra Hughes opened her unlocked office door at six forty-eight, twelve minutes earlier than usual. No one else seemed to be in the building. She tapped at her computer to bring it to life. The system mainframe was located under her desk, with only the keyboard, mouse, and the four monitors visible. The computer was actually sixty-four separate processors, all functioning in parallel. The images from the pair of telescopes were coordinated in time with nanosecond precision, taken with digital cameras that were cooled by liquid nitrogen to maintain very low electronic noise. The two images were correlated, then corrected by the atmospheric return signal of projected laser beams, producing images of unparalleled excellence. The twin Kecks were, for visible wavelengths of light, the most sensitive and accurate astronomical instruments in human history, measurably better, after a number of major technical improvements, than the second generation space telescope that had replaced the first generation Hubble in low earth orbit.

  This was her first close-in study with the Kecks. Fifteen asteroids with orbits that sometimes brought them relatively close to earth had been her targets. These bodies, all between one and twenty miles in diameter, had well-known elliptical orbits, taking them out to large distances from the sun at apogee and only tens of millions of miles distant at perigee. She had known the exact orbital coordinates of all these asteroids. The idea was to see them with what degree of resolution. At those distances – even though relatively close in the astronomical sense – an object only a few miles in diameter is very small indeed.

  An hour and forty-five minutes into her day, Sandra looked at her watch. She put her computer into a rest mode and took a break. It was time for a second cup of coffee. She switched her cell phone on before standing up. It indicated she had one missed call. That was one more than usual. She recognized the number. It was Carl Von Drath.

  Sandra hit redial and waited through five rings for Carl to answer.

  “Dr. Hughes,” he said, in a voice that was surprisingly strong for a man of his age, “how are you this morning?”

  “Fine, Dr. Von Drath” she said.

  “Sorry, Sandra,” he said. “Did I disturb something?”

  “No,” she answered honestly. “I keep my phone off until I take breaks. But you already knew that.”

  “Yes. I meant, well, I knew you were about to start on something new. And ...”

  “Oh, in that way? Yes, as a matter of fact, you did disturb something. I'm looking for one lost asteroid.”

  The old man said, “Ah, a lost asteroid. How dramatic.” His voice still carried a distinctive German accent, arising from his formative years in Austria.

  “Ha. You know better. Actually I think I see it.” Sandra sat back down and reactivated her computer. Displayed on all four monitors was a star image. On the left monitor it had an odd appearance because all but five or six bright spots had been removed by the software that cancelled the known star field. Using a crossed pair of cursors, Sandra located the exact image position of one of the remaining spots. Then she hit a key that transferred the coordinates into the computer code she had running in the background. A smaller window display in the upper right hand corner of the screen indicated a degree of correlation with the coordinates calculated from the orbital data. “Well, that's not it,” she said. “Somehow I missed it. Oh, well. But you called for some reason, Carl. What is it?”

  He said, “I'm hoping you are not so busy now, on this new project.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because,” he continued, as if her voice hadn't intervened, “I thought you would enjoy hearing a lecture down at Mauna Kea Resort tomorrow.”

  “A lecture? Maybe, if it's about pineapple wine or something interesting. I'm burned out on lectures about galaxy clusters or multi-dimensional universes.”

  “It's an invited address at the Solar Energy meeting there.” He coughed, then continued. “Here's the title.” There was a shuffle of papers, as he riffled through a program. “Yes, it's 'Mars orbit mirror project.' Did I get your attention?”

  Sandra's face brightened for a moment almost into a smile. “Really? At a solar energy meeting?” Then she nodded to herself. “Oh, sure. Guess it is. That ship is almost there, if I remember right.”

  “You do indeed. It will slow into Mars orbit next week. The mirror will be deployed next month.”

  “Sure I'd like to go. When is it?”

  “Nine in the morning. But there's a breakfast that starts at eight.”

  “Let me come pick you up,” she suggested. “I'll tell you about my asteroids on the way. May even have a couple of interesting images to show you.”

  “I would appreciate that.”

  “Will they let us crash the meeting, without paying?”

  “Leave that to me, Sandra. There are some advantages to being an old man.”

  “Don't give me that.”

  “Maybe I overstated my case,” he said, the smile evident in his tone.

  “I'd say you did. But pull some strings. If they tell me to pay I'll skip it.”

  “Aren't you a frugal one?”

  “A poor one,” she corrected. “You don't think I get a salary for this job, do you?”

  “I suppose you are the only astronomer I know who would work for free.”

  “Damn, wouldn't you, Carl? I pinch myself every morning to see if I'm real. Those Kecks are God.”

  “Listen, if you want me to meet you in Waimea, it'll save you the trouble of coming to my house.”

  “I can deal with it. Let's say, uh, seven forty-five. Okay?”

  “Okay. Go find that asteroid.”

  “Will. Have a good day, Carl.”

  “Thank you, Sandra. And you, too.”

  The young woman closed down her computer again, went down the hall for a cup of coffee and took it outside to drink at a picnic table on the side grounds of the Keck Observatory administration building. No one else was there. She was mulling over the lost asteroid. The best guess she had was that the orbital coordinates were slightly in error. One of those dots on an expanded image had to be the right one. She was pleased at the notion that, by finding the asteroid, she'd be able to correct the orbital data. A nice little side benefit. Sandra drained her coffee and went back inside.

  Chapter 2

  When Sandra pulled up at Carl’s house the next morning, he stood up from a seat on the porch, retrieved a cup of coffee in an insulated plastic mug, and presented it to her as she approached and he stepped carefully down the three steps to the ground. He knew Sandra loved good coffee and was terrible at brewing her own. The process of getting himself into the little Honda Civic was not a trivial or rapid one for Carl Von Drath. In his twenties he'd been six feet five, rail thin, and walked with long, rangy strides. At seventy-nine and counting he was still around six feet two, still thin, but seemed to move in jerky slow motion, especially when trying to bend his body appropriately to sit in a low car. Sandra was patient, however, got him started, came around to the driver’s side, then waited for the old astrophysicist to get himself settled.

  The relationship between young astronomer and old mentor had taken a full three years to develop. Sandra had met Carl Von Drath the first week on the job. She had been told he was a retired astrophysicist of significant reputation, but she, like many younger people, had
promptly consigned him to a level of near uselessness because he was old and not active in his field on a daily basis. Over time, however, she'd come to modify, then totally change her first impression. Von Drath was oddly youthful in mind, not the least set in his ways or suffering from the prejudice that older folks often had which led them to say that the “good old days” were somehow better. Physically, however, he was an old man. He required a cane to walk adequately. Sandra had come, gradually, to be something of a daughter or niece to him. Both friends had evolved a fairly direct manner of speaking with each other, sometimes – especially for Von Drath – verging on brusqueness.

  “Sorry to be so slow,” he said, as the door slammed shut. His accent seemed stronger that day. His word slow sounded like “zlow.” Sandra had noticed that the accent came and went, as if he sometimes tried to control it more than at other times.

  “Really not a problem, Carl,” she said, and meant it. Except when she was working Sandra Hughes had a relaxed sense of time. She had no real social schedule, was a member of no organized group away from work, had no hobbies that required concern for time – such as making a scheduled tee time or reserved court – and made it a personal policy not to set aside any specific times to exercise, grocery shop or fill her car with gasoline. Because of this external life of calm lack of hurry, she had the ability to relax off the job even though she couldn't completely leave her work at the office. That morning she was not working, and had no planned time when she would do so. The previous afternoon, before going into the Keck control area, she'd left word with her division secretary that she'd not be in her office until midday.

  The retired astrophysicist lived a couple of miles farther east than Sandra. He, therefore, lived in a wetter area of the Big Island of Hawaii. In the early years of his marriage Carl and his wife purchased a small ranch – about twelve acres – that he'd used to pursue his hobby of growing tropical trees. Carl had planted nine of those acres in a variety of species nearly fifty years earlier. After his wife and son died and he had retired, the old man had become a kind of gentleman farmer, devoting most of his time and energy to his little tropical forest. He had gained a level of fame from that patch of trees because he had fully mature growth of more than two hundred different species, from every tropical zone on earth. He had even managed to grow some dry-weather species by taking precautions for good drainage. Some of those trees, supposedly adapted to far less rainfall, actually thrived in his wetter conditions.

  They spoke briefly before pulling away to return through the town of Waimea toward the western coast about a dozen miles away. Sandra had dressed up a little for the lecture, having put on pale blue slacks and an off-white polished cotton short-sleeved blouse. She'd shed her sneakers for low-heeled pumps. Her hair, however, had been kept in its usual ponytail. It was as dressed up as Sandra Hughes ever got. Carl was in an old suit that she'd seen him in before.

  Carl maintained a tan, as did Sandra. Both were outdoors more than enough to avoid paleness, he because of his trees, she because of her exercise. Sandra was a hiker. On holidays Sandra would sometimes hike all the way to the northern coast, an arduous challenge that took her through some of the most isolated valleys and passes in all of Hawaii, or the United States, for that matter. With rare exceptions she hiked alone.

  As they drove past the Parker Ranch Motel, Sandra reached down beside her and pulled two copies of images from an unzipped plastic folder she used in lieu of a real briefcase. “Carl,” she said, with no preamble, “take a look. I'm mystified.”

  The old man took the images and looked at the one on top. It was a black field with a peculiar blurred white oval shape. The oval was dark in the center, looking something like a doughnut turned at an angle. “Is this your missing asteroid?” he asked.

  “I think so,” she nodded. “Look at the other image.” Her eyes were on the two-lane highway.

  The second image was of the same object, but larger in size and slightly sharper in focus. The oval shape and the center opening were more clearly displayed. Carl studied it a long moment, adjusting his bifocals by a slight upward tilt of his chin. Then he asked her, “What's this bright spot, Sandra?” Her name, coming from his mouth, sounded more like “Zahn-dra.” He pointed at a small brighter zone in the center of one of the long sides of the oval shape.

  Sandra laughed, though not in a display of humor. It was her way of expressing a certain kind of frustration. “That spot is weird enough. But the dark center. That's what really mystifies me.”

  Carl suggested, “Must be a radically different albedo there in the central zone, and a similar thing in reverse where the bright spot is.”

  “Well, it has to be,” she admitted, “but it's not.” She smiled again, this time a rare and genuine one. “I had to make sure. Here.” She reached down, got, and handed him a third image.

  Holding it for a moment as he tilted his head appropriately, Carl then shook it side to side. “You're sure?” was his simple question.

  “Absolutely,” she nodded.

  The third image was the same scale as the second, but with the background field of stars – dimmed by digitally-induced filtering – re-imposed on the image. The oval object's dark center clearly showed several dim star points.

  “How can an asteroid be open in the center?” Carl asked.

  She shrugged, again eyes on the road, “It can't.”

  “But it is.”

  She turned briefly to look at him. “It can't. Maybe I'm seeing two different pieces, close together probably. Pieces of the same asteroid. Or a broken-up comet that someone has thought to be an asteroid. I'll find out tonight.”

  “Because they will have drifted apart?”

  “At least moved a little with respect to each other. And I'll also use the Kecks a little differently. I'm going to double up on the atmospheric correction by doing both the real-time correction and interpolated correction, then find the best effect on the star field by a weighted superposition of the two. I may have taken it out too early last night.”

  Von Drath nodded. The earth's atmosphere caused slight distortions in the path of the light coming to the telescopes. When the correction, taken from laser signals, was applied, the light paths were restored to their proper directions. You could check your success by looking at the stars, which should resolve to very precise points on the image. The sharper the point the better the correction. He looked over at her. “That should do it. Pretty interesting for your first look inside this galaxy.”

  “I'll say.”

  Chapter 3

  Reginald Wyler was the Keck Observatory senior scientist and Director of Operations for the twin telescopes. He was a man of forty-two, divorced long ago from a marriage just out of college, with no children, and totally devoted to his work. Wyler's demeanor was quiet and direct. He was fair minded and had little respect for arrogance, his own or anyone else's. The lab director was of medium build, had brown hair that was graying, had a single bald spot on the top of his head, and facial features that might be described as sharp. At least fifty pounds overweight three years earlier, he had lost the excess through a diligent low-carbohydrate diet. This new-found Reginald Wyler had been a nice turn of fortune for the Keck team. The director was rarely in any scientist's hair, and kept reasonable hours. Life had seemed to relax a little and better work was being done. At nine thirty in the morning, the day after seeing the hollow asteroid for the first time, Sandra knocked at his office door.

  “Yes?”

  She peeked in. “May I have a few minutes of your time, Reg?”

  He nodded, a bit surprised to see her. “Come in, Sandra. It must be important – for you to come to my office.”

  “It is.” She entered, carrying a plastic folder and a cup of coffee, and sat down at the chair opposite him.

  Wyler's office had a window that faced Mauna Kea, the observatories at the top of which had just become visible through the dispersal of the usual low – lying night time clouds. The office itself
was not overly large – barely larger than Sandra's – and was crowded with bookshelves, filing cabinets and a cluttered desk. Somehow Wyler had managed to find places for three visitor's chairs, the center one of which Sandra had settled into.

  She was in jeans and short-sleeved shirt, as usual, and could easily have been taken for a student intern or even a member of the clerical staff. When Sandra spoke, however, her experience, confidence, and insight quickly shone forth. After a quick sip of coffee, she pulled out a stack of images from her folder and handed the top one to her boss. “Night before last,” she began, “I imaged this asteroid. It's about twenty-seven million miles away, in solar orbit, ten percent above ecliptic, approaching perigee. Pushed the Kecks hard and got good resolution, as you can see.”

  “This is from two days ago?” he asked for clarification, sensing she had more recent data.

  “Right.”

  “There's a hole through the center.” He shook his head. “Can't be.”

  “Is,” she corrected. “I hit it again last night.”

  “Can't be,” he repeated and took the second image handed across. He looked at it. An almost identical image. “How large is it?”

  “Fifteen miles across. The Kecks did us proud.” Her green eyes gave away excitement. As did the rare smile. “Nobody else anywhere can see it well enough to know what it looks like.”

  “Amazing,” he nodded. “But ... but well, it can't be.” He added an assuring look that let her know he wasn't accusing her of lying or a mistake.

  “I know it can't be. So, what is it?”

  Wyler shook his head. “Damned if I know. What do you think?”

  “I think it's a rough sphere that had its middle burned out,” she answered.

  The director had not expected a guess. “Why do you think that?”

  “Look, Reg,” she said, pointing to the blurred inner edge of the doughnut shape, the region around the inside opening. “It's a little rough, as well as the resolution will tell us. May be quite rough, even. The outside, however, is smooth, as if it were worn over a long time. Consistent with a sphere that got reamed out.”