Sidney's Comet Read online

  “The Council is here, sir,” Birdbright said. “Shall I send them in?”

  Ogg nodded.

  As the council ministers moto-filed in, Ogg tapped impatiently on his desk with one finger. General Munoz led, followed by Dr. Hudson, who moved along behind the tiny Mexican-American general like an oversized shadow.

  Can’t trust those two, Ogg thought Something disturbing about their alliance . . . and Hudson made moves on my sister . . . until I appointed her mayor of that therapy orbiter.

  Munoz and Hudson were followed by all the ministers of the various governmental super-bureaus. Each wore a hoodless white ministerial robe with a gold braid sash and a gold cross and chain which dangled from the neck. Munoz carried his military cap in one hand.

  Cassius Murphy, the Jovial Minister of Bu-Bu, followed, then Bu-Free’s tall and angular Jack Ramsey. Both are neutral, Ogg thought. He glanced at Bu-Health’s Salim Bumbry and at the reddish-skinned American Indian Jim McConnel of Bu-Med, who entered eighth and tenth. So are they.

  As the ministers took seats silently in comfortable red nauga suspensor chairs which formed a half circle in front of Ogg’s desk, Ogg singled out Kevin Osaka, the small oriental minister of Bu-Construct. Still not sure of him, Ogg thought Osaka noticed the President staring at him and looked away nervously.

  “Good afternoon, gentlemen,” President Ogg said, scanning the faces in what he hoped was a somber manner. He nodded to Ezrah Sims of Bu-Cops and to Bu-Industry’s Marc Trudeau, men he considered loyal, then looked at his lifelong friend, Pete Dimmitt of Bu-Labor and said, “Nice to see you, Pete. Feeling better?”

  “Yes, Mr. President The leg’s doing fine.” Dimmitt touched a star-shaped Purple Badge on his left lapel proudly. This was the nation’s highest mark of valor, evidence for all to see of Dimmitt’s “conspicuous bravery” in the face of a disintegrating product: his moto-shoes.

  General Munoz placed his cap on the lap of his robe as he sat down crisply. Why in the hell has he called us in? Munoz wondered. Probably another foolish Job-Support idea to waste my time. . . .

  Munoz studied President Ogg closely, noted anger as the big black man crushed out his tintette in an ashtray. Ogg’s penetrating, blue-green eyes flashed at Munoz for a second. Then Ogg looked away and mentoed a “coffee” button on his desk panel. “Gentlemen,” he said, “in a few minutes you will see something extremely important.”

  That procession of coffee secretaries again, Munoz thought, reading the President’s thoughts with the brain-implanted transceiver given him secretly by Dr. Hudson. Munoz flicked a piece of confetti off his robe angrily. How many times is he going to show that to us?

  As Ogg watched, Dr. Hudson cleared his throat and squirmed into a chair next to the thin and mysterious General Munoz. The pupils of Munoz’s eyes were almost pure black, and he stared back at the President in cool disdain.

  Something about his eyes, Ogg thought. He almost seems to be laughing at me.

  I am laughing at you, Munoz thought, reading the President’s mind again.

  Ogg saw Munoz sneak a glance and a smile in Hudson’s direction.

  Only Munoz, Hudson and ten trusted conspirators had received the mind-reading units. Munoz recalled his doubts when Hudson installed the transceiver. . . .

  “ . . . Will I really be able to read minds with this?”

  “You’ll see for yourself in a few minutes,” Hudson had said.

  Munoz remembered his response: “Now I will see who is loyal to me and who is not!”

  “This transceiver will operate electronic gadgets like any consumer-issued unit,” Hudson had explained as he worked, “but it has a nice additional feature—”

  Munoz returned to the present, watched President Ogg clasp his hands on the cluttered desktop and glare around the room. Unaware of Munoz’s prying, Ogg said, “I have called this emergency session because the Alafin of Afrikari is due to arrive in my office at seven-thirty tomorrow morning.”

  Munoz read the President’s thoughts and cursed under his breath.

  Ogg rubbed a finger on the edge of his desk as the ministers whispered in surprise. “I should say a projecto-image of him will be here,” Ogg explained. ‘The old fool is still afraid to fly.”

  “He has demanded an audience?” Bu-Cops’ craggy-faced Minister Sims asked.

  “Yes. By telephone just an hour ago.” Ogg chewed his lower lip. “The Alafin says his astronomers have seen a comet which appears to be on a collision course with Earth.”

  “I thought that was just a rumor,” Sims said.

  The council ministers whispered to one another again.

  President Ogg fixed an icy gaze on Hudson. “What I want to know is this, Dr. Hudson. You have told me everything about this alleged comet? It is a bunch of garbage, isn’t it?”

  Hudson wiped his brow with a white kerchief, glanced at Munoz.

  Tell him, Munoz mentoed. Better to hear it from us.

  “Uh, no sir,” Hudson replied nervously. “I mean, yes sir. It is garbage.”

  “Dammit to Hooverville, Hudson!” President Ogg thundered. “IS IT GARBAGE OR ISN’T IT?” A bulky mechanical arm popped out of the desktop, smashed a clenched fist down with tremendous force on the desk. WHAM! Papers scattered in all directions. CRASH! A brass lamp rocked and fell to the floor. The arm flexed back into its compartment.

  Hudson shivered with fear, smoothed the fine muslaba robe he wore across his lap with one hand. He glanced at Munoz for support, then stammered, “S-sir, it’s d-difficult to ex—”

  “It’s a garbage comet, Mr. President,” Munoz said. “Our own damned trash is coming back!”

  President Ogg sat back in stunned disbelief, slack-jawed and mute.

  “The th-thing is huge, sir,” Hudson said, “and Earth is directly in its path!”

  Hardly able to speak, Ogg said, “I can’t believe. . . . ” His

  voice trailed off, and a pained silence fell over the room.

  Bu-Bu’s Cassius Murphy broke the silence. Looking at Hudson, he said, “You mean it stinks?”

  “Why yes,” Hudson replied. “I suppose it does.”

  “That’s interesting,” Murphy said with a wry smile. “If it kills every last one of us, will it still stink?”

  Hudson shook his head, rolled his eyes upward.

  “Those deep space shots we’ve been making for the past nine years,” Munoz explained, looking at Ogg. “A Bu-Tech computer miscalculated their trajectory.”

  “Now w-wait just a minute,” Dr. Hudson protested, staring through sweat-fogged glasses at the battle ribbons on General Munoz’s chest. “The electro-magnetic catapults are operated by Bu-Mil people. Your staff should have checked the figures before making the shots!” Hudson took a deep breath, realizing he was treading on dangerous ground in speaking to the General this way.

  “I don’t know about that, Dick,” Munoz said calmly. “There’s nothing in the procedures manual to that effect.”

  “It was only a tiny miscalculation,” Hudson said plaintively, looking at President Ogg. “Just one-nineteenth of a percentile!”

  “A tiny miscalculation!” Ogg half rose out of his chair. “It doesn’t seem so tiny to me!” He sat back, lit a tintette and blew an angry cloud of yellow smoke in Hudson’s direction.

  “Tiny in galactic terms,” Hudson insisted. He removed his horn-rimmed glasses with shaking hands, wiped the glasses on his robe and put them back. “And besides, my bureau didn’t manufacture the Comp six-oh-one computer. Bu-Industry did that, and they didn’t follow Bu-Tech’s specifications. The circuit board that failed and caused a one-nineteenth of one percent trajectory error was constructed to consumer quality instead of industrial quality.”

  “Hold it right there!” All eyes turned to Marc Trudeau, the Minister of Bu-Industry. Seated at the end of the semi-circle on the President’s right, Trudeau’s heavy brown face sported a bright pink mustache that had been dyed to match a new line of kitchen appliances. With his features contorte
d in indignation, he gripped the chair arms and said, “All circuit boards are manufactured in space . . . on therapy orbiters. How can we be expected to monitor quality with crips and retardos doing all the work?”

  The President’s gaze was bone-chilling as he asked: “Why did you entrust such a critical part to the therapy orbiters?”

  “It wasn’t our fault,” Trudeau said. “Some therapists from Bu-Med came into my office one day and asked to be given tours of our manufacturing and assembly lines. I didn’t see anything wrong with that, and a couple of days later they came back with a list of tasks they felt could be better performed by handicapped personnel. One of those tasks was the assembly of circuit boards.”

  Jim McConnel, the portly Indian minister of Bu-Med, rose angrily and snapped: I’m not going to let this mess land in my lap! No one told us we were manufacturing critical components! And don’t forget that Bu-Construct pressured us to build more orbiters!”

  Immediately, all the other ministers leaped to their feet, clamoring for attention. They argued heatedly for several minutes, with the ones who had not yet been blamed choosing sides. Ogg let the melee continue awhile to see if he could make sense out of the alignments among those ministers of doubtful loyalty. But no clear patterns emerged, and as the alliances shifted back and forth, Ogg finally demanded: “STOP THIS FOOLISHNESS! TAKE YOUR SEATS IMMEDIATELY!”

  The ministers fell silent and resumed their seats.

  “Now I will show you what the President’s office can do,” Ogg said.

  Munoz knew what was coming.

  The office door swung open, admitting a procession of coffee secretaries. They rolled in single file, dressed in dark brown mini-dresses bearing the gold encircled lapel crest of a steaming cup of coffee. The first in line was a consumptively rotund redhead carrying a trivet. With a curt smile, she placed the trivet on the President’s desk, did a one hundred eighty degree spin on her moto-shoes and rolled out the door. The second girl carried a large coffee pot, which she placed on the trivet with equal fanfare. Next came eleven pudgy saucer bearers, and a saucer was placed in front of the President and on the little tables next to the ministers’ chairs. They were followed by eleven cup bearers and then by a pneumatic brunette who poured the coffee and returned the pot to the trivet.

  “Very impressive, Mr. President,” several ministers said as they watched buxom blond twins remove the coffee pot and trivet. “Very impressive, indeed.”

  I call that showing off, Munoz thought as he watched the women leave. Twenty-seven girls to serve coffee to eleven of us!

  “Thank you,” the President said as he mentoed the door closure. “Now let’s get back to the matter at hand.” Addressing Dr. Hudson, he said, “Just forty-eight hours ago you assured me that no comet was heading toward Earth.”

  “That’s true, sir. I replied so at the time because I did not believe it to be a comet.”

  “Why not?”

  “Many bodies of matter move through the heavens, sir, not all of which are comets. This particular object is of unique origin . . . and unlike any comet I have observed, it has an extremely dense mass. Most comets are a ‘bag of nothing,’ in that they consist of gas particles surrounding an ice nucleus. While their tails may stretch for millions of kilometers across space, they typically don’t have much mass.”

  “Tell him about the spectral analysis, Dick,” Munoz said.

  “It’s burning common garbage, meteorite chunks, nuclear matter and the like,” Hudson said. “I suppose it’s a comet, Mr. President. It’s closer to that than to any other phenomenon. But this baby’s unlike any other comet in the universe!” It’s also burning human bodies from our burial shots, Hudson thought. Such a nasty detail.

  Ogg took a sip of coffee, asked angrily, “Why didn’t you level with me in the first place? You knew something was heading toward us.”

  “You don’t like to be bothered with technical details, Mr. President. Besides, until now, we didn’t have enough photographs to plot the course.”

  “It’ll hit us? For sure?”

  “It is on a definite collision course with Earth. We were trying to save you a lot of trouble. . . . ” Hudson’s voice trailed off.

  President Ogg spun his chair around to stare out the window. He focused on an imposing grey General Oxygen factory in the distance, with seven tall stacks rising out of a domed base. Maybe we should turn this over to a committee, he thought. A lot of people could be kept busy. . . .

  After several minutes of pained silence, Salim Bumbry, Minister of Bu-Health, said, “Shouldn’t we make an evacuation plan, sir . . . to help people reach higher ground?”

  President Ogg did not turn around. He could imagine Bumbry sitting there—the youngest minister, precisely-trimmed brown hair, a neat beard and pale green eyes. Definite presidential stock. “No, Bumbry .We can’t do that now, don’t you see? I’ve told the world it isn’t coming.”

  “Announce new evidence.”

  “No. Too embarrassing . . . and I’m up for re-election Tuesday.”

  Munoz, monitoring the thoughts of the speakers, noted that the President was Worried about losing votes. Bumbry was genuinely concerned about human life. Always knew Bumbry was poor political stock, Munoz thought.

  “How much damage will it do?” Ogg asked, turning around to face Hudson. “And where will it hit?”

  “It isn’t a question of damage, sir. Nor does it particularly matter where on Earth it hits.” Hudson squirmed in his chair. His eyes flitted around nervously behind the glasses. “This comet is very large, and grows as it accumulates space debris. If that baby hits us, the entire planet is going to be garbage!”

  Ogg felt numb. He could not think of anything to say.

  Hudson tried to take a sip of coffee, but his hands shook so badly that he sloshed liquid on his white robe. He placed the cup on the sidetable, coughed. “Laser penetration readings and gamma ray cameras show this to be the heaviest mass ever to approach our system. We think our garbage shots ended up in the Fourth Columbarian Quadrant . . . near a black hole.”

  Hudson paused as he noticed President Ogg shaking his head from side to side in disbelief. Angry words seemed on the tip of Ogg’s tongue, but were not uttered.

  “Our garbage shots probably reactivated a dead sun,” Hudson said. His gaze darted away under the President’s intense scrutiny.

  “My Rosenbloom!” one of the ministers exclaimed.

  We can’t admit the truth, Hudson thought, feeling uncomfortable. No one has any idea why that stuff is coming back! “If put on the periodic scale,” Hudson said, “where the highest present density is one hundred eighty-six, this fused mass would have a reading of five thousand, three hundred eighteen. It would crack our planet like a wrecking ball hitting glass.”

  “We plugged the problem into Comp six-oh-two,” Munoz said. “That’s the computer which replaced the six-oh-one.”

  I’d like to get rid of all computers, Ogg thought. The tasks they steal from people—

  Munoz read this thought, then said, “We can deflect the damned comet, Mr. President.”

  Ogg brightened. “Ah!” He turned to Hudson. “For sure?”

  Hudson nodded. “The best plan has us changing the comet’s course by using an E-Cell powered mass driver. We’d push the comet as it passes the Leviathan planet of Kinshoto in the Bardo-Heather Group. Lots of nitrogen in that planet’s atmosphere.”

  “We’re reviewing military dossier files now,” Munoz said, “searching for the best man to head up the mission.” Munoz felt a numbness in his brain, heard echoing, far-off voices. “Forget the dossier files” a voice said. “Choose Sidney Malloy. He’s the only one. . . . ” Munoz shook his head, tapped at the rear of his skull above his implanted mento transceiver. Dammit, he thought. It’s acting up again.

  When Munoz’s head cleared, he heard Hudson speaking: “Kinshoto’s atmosphere is nearly seventy thousand kilometer’s deep and supports no known life forms. If we can lock onto the comet
with fire probes and guide it through that nitrogenous region, it may burn up.”

  “That planet is BI-I-IG!” Munoz said.

  “What’s the likelihood of this comet hitting Earth?” Bu-Med’s Minister McConnel asked.

  General Munoz reviewed the speaker’s thoughts, noted something new. An escape plan . . . bribe money paid to a shuttle commander . . . intended refuge on one of the orbiting solar power stations. How did he find out? Munoz wondered.

  Hudson, responding to McConnel, said: “Ninety-eight point nine-one percentile. We’ve been monitoring it from deep space tracking stations. It’s coming back along the identical course of our garbage . . . and burial . . . shots. We’ve since corrected the error, of course.”

  “Wonderful,” President Ogg said, his voice dripping sarcasm. Mumbling something about bodies coming back, he spun his chair again and watched a distant transport shuttle land at Robespierre Magne-Launch Base. “How much time do we have?” he asked.

  “Fourteen days,” Hudson said, trying not to betray uncertainty in his tone.

  As the ministers left the oval office single file, President Ogg singled out Hudson: “Dr. Hudson, I would have a word with you in private.”

  Surprised, Hudson turned back and resumed his seat. “What is it, Mr. President?” he asked, timidly.

  Ogg scanned the papers which had fallen to the floor, leaned down and retrieved a long, narrow piece of electronic billing paper. Looking at Hudson, he said stiffly, “This is the monthly microwave radio call log for the therapy orbiter of Saint Elba.”

  Hudson gulped.

  “It states that you called my sister six times this month, all on scramble code.” Ogg glared ferociously. “What did you discuss with her?”

  “N-nothing important, Mr. President.”

  “Then why was it necessary to use a scramble code?”

  “P-personal matters, sir.”