TSJ #36, Chapter 7: The Doomsday Device

TOM FRANTICALLY contacted the Challenger over his suit radio. “Donnie – transport us off this rock and get us into space immediately!”

As the two teenagers raced across the pitted surface of the asteroid Bud glanced behind them. “It’s gaining on us!”

With adrenaline surging through their veins, the two made a mighty dash for the ship. As they neared the entrance they suddenly felt the Transmittaton grab them. A moment later they found themselves standing on the bridge of Tom’s spaceship.

Before Bud could even catch his breath Tom yanked off his helmet and was giving orders. “Activate the emergency liftoff procedure!” he commanded. “If those nanites touch us…!”

Donnie entered the final setting and slammed the final switch into place. Tom was almost knocked off his feet by the sudden blast of acceleration. The asteroid quickly disappeared from view as the ship rocketed into space.

Bud let out a long, slow sigh of relief. “Whew! That was a close one, Tom. For a minute there I thought you’d run your final experiment.”

“We’re not out of it yet,” Tom warned. “The nanites are still out of control. Donnie – bring us around so we can see the planetoid, but keep us at a safe distance.”

Donnie slowly brought the ship around until Chariklo was in view. Everyone gasped. “It’s being eaten,” someone said aloud. More than a quarter of the rock was already shrouded in complete darkness, and the black cloud was rapidly consuming the rest of the planetoid.

“That’s a pretty accurate description,” Tom said regretfully. “My stones are consuming it at an incredible rate.”

“Isn’t there some way we can stop it?” Bud asked. “Can’t you hit it with an electromagnetic pulse?”

Tom shook his head. “The pulse would never make it through the time barrier. It would have no effect.”

“What about missiles?” Bud asked. “Can we blow it up?”

Tom looked at him strangely. “This is the Challenger, flyboy! It doesn’t have missiles. None of our ships do.”

“I bet that Kranjovian crate in the shuttlecraft bay is armed,” Bud pointed out.

Tom nodded. “I’m sure you’re right. However, I doubt it would do much good. Even if we did manage to blow up a few nanites there are trillions more to take their place. We could never hit the entire asteroid at once.”

“So what do we do?” Bud asked.

“We wait. I’m afraid that’s all we can do. We just wait until the stones run out of minerals to consume. At that point the reaction will die and the time field will collapse. We can then hit Chariklo with that electromagnetic pulse you were talking about, just to make sure the time field never re-engages.” He shook his head. “Could you imagine what would have happened if we’d run this experiment on Earth? It would have destroyed the entire planet!”

Bud shivered. “Let’s just be glad we tried your doomsday device out here in space. Do you think you can fix the stones so they don’t do that again?”

Tom shook his head. “I’m not even going to try. My stones are incredibly dangerous. One false move and I could wipe out all life on Earth! I think it’s best if I moved on to something else. This is one invention that should never see the light of day.”

It took less than thirty minutes for the entire asteroid to be consumed in darkness. Five minutes later the darkness began collapsing, revealing a smooth, featureless blob of green goo. Tom looked at it and sighed. “I’m just glad no one lived there,” he commented. “We got lucky – really lucky.”

When the last bit of darkness disappeared Tom gave the command to emit the electromagnetic pulse. The Challenger spent the next several hours orbiting the devastated planetoid, bombarding the rock with electromagnetic energy. Tom went over the entire asteroid six times.

“I’ve got to make sure it’s completely inert,” Tom explained. “I know we’re not detecting any radiation but I don’t dare take any chances. This stuff is just too dangerous to fool around with.”

“So what do we do now?” Bud asked. “Just leave it here?”

“Oh no,” Tom said. “Definitely not! I think the only safe thing to do is push it into an orbit that will make it fall into the Sun. That way we can be sure that it’s destroyed. The nanites are sturdy but they can’t survive the intense heat of solar fusion.”

Bud nodded. “That makes sense. But how are you going to change the asteroid’s orbit? After all, that rock is 160 miles long! Even the Challenger can’t budge it. Our repelatrons aren’t that strong, no matter what our marketing department says.”

The young scientist grinned. “True, but I’ve got another plan. While this ship can’t change that asteroid’s orbit, we can make something that’ll do the trick. All we need are the right ingredients.”

Tom gave the order to deploy his space solatron. For the rest of the day the majority of the crew worked outside in the vacuum of space, deploying the enormous solar array that powered Tom’s matter-maker. By the end of the day the giant machine was in place.

“I don’t get it,” Bud remarked, after they were finally back on board. “I thought you told me there wasn’t enough sunlight out here to run your solartron.”

Tom nodded. “That’s true when we’re talking about making large quantities of matter. However, all I want to make are a few grams of antimatter. The solartron should be able to do that in a few hours, even way out here. By the time we get up in the morning I should have all the material I need.”

“A few grams?” Bud asked. “What could you possibly hope to do with that? That’s not even enough to sneeze at!”

Tom grinned. “Antimatter is pretty potent stuff, Bud. Whenever an atom of antimatter comes into contact with an atom of matter, the two annihilate themselves in a burst of gamma rays. Don’t you remember our experience with antimatter in the caves of nuclear fire? A thousand grams of antimatter can produce the same energy as 40 megatons of TNT.”

“I get it!” Bud exclaimed. “You’re going to build an antimatter bomb and use it to subtly nudge the giant blob of goo into a new course. The force of the explosion should shift its orbit.”

“Exactly. The only downside is that it will take years for the asteroid to reach the Sun. I haven’t crunched the numbers yet, but it doesn’t take a mathematician to figure out that a rock moving rather slowly about a billion miles from the Sun is going to take a long time to cover that distance.”

“But it should be safe,” Bud added. “I mean, it’s not like it can cause any further harm.”

“I hope not,” Tom replied sincerely. “Let’s hope we never find out.”

After configuring the solartron to produce antimatter Tom went to bed. The next morning he got up, took a shower, and rushed to the solartron. As he was poring over the results Bud walked into the room, carrying a plate of doughnuts.

“How’s it look?” Bud asked, as he munched on a chocolate-covered doughnut.

“It looks like the energy the solartron is gathering from the sun is even weaker than I thought,” Tom admitted. He took a cream-filled doughnut off the plate and began eating it. “I’d really hoped we would be able to produce antimatter at a much faster rate. It looks like I’m going to have to let it run for at least another day. On the bright side, that will give me time to run the calculations and figure out how to change its orbit. Orbital mechanics is–”

Tom’s train-of-thought was was interrupted when Donnie walked into the room. “I hate to bother you, skipper, but your dad just called. He said that he has a meeting with the Barclay Group in an hour and they want to talk to you about a few things.”

Tom sighed. “All right. I guess I can attend. Can you get the telejector conferencing set up in my lab?”

“Sure thing,” he promised.

When he left the room Bud looked at his quizzically. “What’s this about a telejector? Do we have one of those on board?”

Tom shook his head. “Not exactly. It was actually Dad’s idea – he’s the one that did all the development work on it. Basically, I’m going to sit in front of a 3D camera. The video feed will then be beamed back to Earth, and a telejector at Swift Enterprises will create a three-dimensional image of me in the conference room. It will look like I’m there, even though I won’t be.”

“Nice!” Bud remarked. “But how will you see the other people?”

“On a normal TV screen,” Tom explained. “I haven’t installed the viewing piece of the system on any of our spaceships just yet. I always seem to have more pressing things to worry about.”

“Like rogue centaurs,” Bud quipped.

Tom sighed. “Exactly.”

An hour later Tom sat down in his laboratory and activated the video broadcasting equipment. It took a few moments to establish the connection and receive the remote feed, but everything was finally set up.

“You look great, Son!” Mr. Swift commented. “This is working even better than I hoped. It’s not every day I get to have a meeting with someone in deep space! This opens up a whole new era in communication technology.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Tom replied. Tom could see his father on the video screen in his lab. “All the credit goes to you, though, Dad. This is your idea.”

Mr. Swift made the introductions. “I’m sure you remember the representatives from BG Industries,” he began.

“It’s good to see you again!” Ed Gamino boomed. “I’ve got to say we’re very pleased with the ship you designed for us – very pleased indeed! It’s everything we hoped for and more besides. I’m sure the Behemoth will have no trouble bringing the finest minds on Earth to Epsilon Eridani. No trouble at all!”

“I’m glad you are pleased with her,” Tom replied. “I take it the construction is still on-schedule?”

“Absolutely,” Ned Newton said. “It will be delivered on-time.”

“Oh, hi there,” Tom remarked. “I didn’t see you sitting there. How have things been?”

“No problems to report,” Ned replied.

“That’s remarkable!” Tom quipped. “That’s got to be a first.”

“What’s that?” Ed asked.

“Oh, nothing,” Tom said quickly. “Was there something in particular that you wanted to talk to me about?”

“What?” Ed asked. “Oh, yes! Right! Of course there is! I want to talk to you about your claytronic stones, my boy!” Ed eagerly rubbed his hands together. “The stones of destiny. Indeed, the stones of greatness! I must hear about them. I must have them! Have you perfected them? When can we see a demonstration? How soon can we get a shipment of them?”

“I’m afraid I’ve had to cancel that project,” Tom said regretfully.

“Cancel!” Ed exclaimed, astonished. “What’s this? I’ve never heard of such a thing! Did they not work?”

“Oh no. They worked. In fact, they worked all too well! I couldn’t make them stop working.”

“I don’t understand,” Ed replied. “What’s wrong with that?”

“Did something go wrong?” Mr. Swift asked.

Tom nodded. “Yesterday I ran a full-scale experiment of the stones. They worked, all right – in fact, they were able to replicate themselves with astonishing speed.”

“Then they’re a success!” Ed exclaimed.

“I’m afraid not,” Tom said. “The problem is that the stone did not stop replicating. They kept reproducing themselves until they consumed the entire asteroid I was experimenting with.”

“Oh my,” Mr. Swift gasped. “Tom, that’s terrible! Why, if you had tried that experiment here on Earth–”

Tom nodded. “Exactly. The stones are just far too dangerous. If I had tried my little test in Shopton we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now. The stones would have turned the entire surface of the planet into a sea of green nanites. Nothing would be left.”

“But surely it’s not that bad,” Ed commented. “You just need a better way to control them. I admit there are risks, but think of the enormous possibilities! Claytronics represents the greatest scientific advance that mankind has ever seen. I’m sure you could design a failsafe of some sort – some way to prevent them from spreading out-of-control.”

“It’s too risky,” Tom argued. “All it would take is a single mistake to wipe everything out. I don’t want to be the person that wiped out all mankind.”

“But what if we only used it on uninhabited worlds? That way no life would be endangered.”

“You would still have to transport the goo to those worlds,” Tom pointed out. “Besides, do we really want to destroy yet another piece of space real-estate? I’m sorry, but my answer is no and that’s final.”

Ed paused for a moment. He was clearly greatly disturbed. “I understand,” he said at last. “That’s responsible of you – very responsible indeed. I commend you for thinking of humanity. Perhaps we can revisit this later after the situation has changed.”

“Changed?” Tom asked. “In what way?”

“We’ll take care of it,” Ed replied evasively. “Don’t worry. We’ve got everything under control.”

“Dad?” Tom said.

“The project is going smoothly,” Mr. Swift confirmed. “Still, it would be nice to have you back. When do you think you can return to Shopton?”

Tom thought for a moment. “At top acceleration I think I could get home in nine days,” he said thoughtfully.

“We’ll be ready,” Ed promised.

As Tom closed the connection and left his laboratory he stopped to think. Ready? Ready for what?