Room 9 by Clifford Beck - HTML preview

Chapter 14

At Doctor Stewart's request, the group moved on, and entering the elevator were taken to the fifth floor. Again, the corridor appeared as all the others – sterile and pale. Led away from the elevator, they made their way around a corner and stopped in front of a large window. Beyond this was a large lab with a second adjacent to it. “Okay,” Doctor Stewart began. “Who’s our engineer?” John immediately raised his hand, knowing it was his turn to be up close to another technological miracle. “John, right?” Doctor Stewart asked. John nodded his head as the doctor motioned him toward a nearby door. Once inside, he was told that there would be no need for a clean suit and that only the construction lab required such precautions.

The lab was sparsely staffed, with the reasoning that these people were the planning team for this particular project. Scanning the area, John noticed a large black board covered with equations. As a promising engineering student, complex math was not only essential, but was also his specialty. The more complicated it was, the more he enjoyed working with it. He believed that mathematics was the language of the universe and that explanations for any phenomena could be gained through it. Perhaps the existence of God could someday be either proven or disproven through its use.

He asked the doctor if he could examine the equations more closely. The answer, of course, was yes, and as John moved up to the black board he recognized some of the variables as having to do with thrust – measured in Newtons. But the more he examined these equations, the more he realized that something was amiss. It was almost insignificant, but could make a huge difference if put into practice. Picking up a chalk erasure, he looked at one small piece of the numbers and letters that flowed across the board and began making what he believed to be a necessary change. But as the erasure touched the board, one of the scientists took a step forward as if to stop him. Doctor Stewart put out an arm, holding him back.

“Let him go,” he said. “I want to see where this is going.” Within moments, John had made a correction that would have a profound impact on the device being built and with the rest of the group watching through the glass, he looked over at them and grinned slightly. Stepping aside, the staff, including Doctor Stewart, approached the board and studied the change John had made. They stood in amazement as each of them realized its meaning. Now, Doctor Stewart motioned John aside. “Do you know what we’re doing here?”

John pointed to the room where construction on what appeared to be a spacecraft was underway. “Well,” John replied. “I’m pretty sure it has something to do with that satellite over there.”

“That’s right,” the doctor said. “C’mon, let me give you a closer look.”

Walking over to the window, John could see what was obviously a satellite.

“Now,” the doctor continued. “I’m sure you’ve heard of near earth objects, right?”

“Oh, of course,” John answered. “Those things fly by us all the time.”

“Right,” the doctor replied. “So we’re going to send this up and crash it into a relatively small asteroid and see if we can move it off course. The correction you made saved millions of dollars because had it not been for that correction, this satellite would have missed its target due to a thruster malfunction. What you did was brilliant.”

Moving in closer, the doctor spoke quietly.

“And I think I may have to have a little talk with the chief scientist about this.”

Breaking away from the conversation, John asked about the politics that might be associated with the project. “Are other countries working on projects like this?”

The doctor nodded.

“As a matter of fact, there are several countries working jointly with us. These are countries also participating in the planetary defense policy. I guess everyone is afraid of the same thing.”

John knew exactly what he meant and posed another question, one that caught the doctor off-guard.

“What if it doesn’t work? Even smaller asteroids move really fast.” The doctor's face took on a grim expression.

“Well, we do have a contingency plan to launch at least one of our nukes at it. The problem is that nukes work the way they do partially by spreading across the ground. In space, you’re not going to have that, so the detonation will take the form of a gigantic bubble. We just don’t know if that’s going to be enough, especially where the larger asteroids are concerned.”

John knew the consequences should the project fail, resulting in humankind being wiped from the planet. But he wondered if that would be such a bad thing. The problem with planet earth was not the planet. The problem was people, and without them the planet would have the chance to heal itself, as if humankind had never been there at all. “I hope it works,” John said. Doctor Stewart hesitated as he considered the odds of success. Nothing is one hundred percent, and the lab staff always tried to ignore the potential for the project's failure. Leaving the lab, John was met with the excitement of the group. Some of them knew the meaning of the change John made and congratulated him as if he had just saved the world. And in some small way, he may have done just that, but no one would be certain of its success until the mission was launched. Until then, fingers were crossed, and some lab staff resorted to prayer.