It had been several hours since they last heard from anyone. There was no word from Houston but odds ware they were too busy trying to save the planet to give a hoot about those who were off world. They were not the ones who were in imminent danger at the moment. They were getting closer to Earth thanks to burning most of their fuel and they were just ahead of the asteroid. That was their plan, which they hoped would give them enough time to take on the new passengers and get out of dodge before all hell broke loose. Captain Rogers was too busy flying and Morgan was using whatever instruments he had on board to analyze the asteroid from space. He was taking pictures with the blackberry and whatever cameras were on the ship and used instruments on board to scan the rock and see what it was made of. After looking at the data for a little under an hour, Morgan tossed what he had away and cursed out loud.
"What's going on Morgan?" Rogers asked.
"Over half of that piece of shit is lead and iron." Morgan said as he came back to his seat. "Even if they hit it with every missile on the planet, which is not possible to begin with... it will have little or no effect on its path or density."
"What do you mean it's not possible?" Rogers asked.
"Close to half of the missiles on Earth are not equipped to fly into space, only to cross the ocean." Morgan explained. "So even if they wanted to, they couldn't launch everything and they shouldn't anyway."
"Why not?" Rogers called back.
"It could just make things worse." Morgan added. "Even if this asteroid isn't big enough to wipe out all life on the planet, the last thing you want is to make it radio active before impact. That could poison the entire planet. Chances are they're only going to launch a few rockets, ten of them tops."
"I never really thought of that." Rogers said as he was impressed. "How the hell do you know all this?"
"I have some friends who work in that field and I talked to them about it all the time." Morgan said as he kept looking around. "They had been warning the government about this to get funding for more scopes to look for rocks that could hit us, funding for shelters to be built. I'm sure they would do anything to be wrong about what's about to happen."
"I bet they do," Rogers agreed. "Should we tell everyone down there about what you found out about how dense this rock is?"
"There's no point," Morgan replied. "It's like asking a boxer to walk into the middle of the ring and put his hands down. Let them go down fighting."
"There's always a chance you could be wrong." Rogers added.
"That's true." Morgan said, but he had little doubt. As far as he could tell, the Earth was doomed and there was nothing they could do about it.
"Check the cell phone." Rogers asked. "We're getting pretty close."
Morgan took the Blackberry out of his pocket and checked it. "Shit, we have three bars! We have a signal!"
"There you go," Rogers said. "Don't hog all my minutes."
"Alright, thanks." Morgan dialed a number into the keypad and hit the green button to initiate the call.
He waited as the phone rang and after a few rings, someone finally picked up the phone. "Hello?" a familiar voice answered. It was his sister-in-law.
"Marcy." Morgan said as he was even glad to hear her voice. "It's Morgan... I'm calling you from space!"
"Morgan!" The other side called back. "It's nice to hear from you."
YOU ARE READING
Lunar One
Science FictionDr. Morgan Taylor is living out his childhood dream. He's going to become an astronaut and spend six months on Earth's first lunar base. He's excited about the mission until he learns that things are not what they seem on Lunar One.