Having set the torch to the Hiver’s reduction mills, all that stands before a world going to blazes is Aldo’s plan...
* * *
The element called Magnim doesn’t burn. It reacts. The complexity of its composition would suggest its reaction should be impure and relatively cool.
This is not true. Magnim is the final element. Its immense heat is the last breath
of all the combined energies of matter. Of all hazards created by Magnim fire there is a very real possibility that, with the right amount of fuel mixed with an ideal mix of atmospheric gases, an entire planet will be blackened to a cinder. Aldo’s calculations revealed such an outcome if the super hot fires were allowed to spread.
His plan to extinguish the blazes required timing and perfect technology. Only a Fifthian would have faith in the latter.
As soon as the Hivers split the scene, Aldo uplinked to their illegal pulse station. TGMS clearance gave him the ability to override control and - according to his attitude sequence - redirect the Hiver’s shortcut off-side the Curve Continuum. Literally, he would cause the Curve to collide at two points inside the planet’s atmosphere. The trick was to merge two powerful counterpoints of energy, Magnim fire and the galactic suck of the great energy highway.
Ted and Pop zoom off in a Starbird to an observation point beyond the edge of the planet’s atmosphere. They will be Aldo’s visual link. TGMS probes will crunch the numbers relaying the true position of the Curve.
The white hot star blaze of the Magnim fires are clearly visible from orbit. It’s enough to confirm the meltdown of the mills.
“Now!” Ted commands A over the com link.
Their Starbird rockets away to get clear of the Curve’s dissent.
Pop struggles to contain any of his usual comments. He’s feeling stress. He might loose all the dreams of this beautiful world and the cabin.
The physics of this whole event are uncertain. This little offramp of the Curve still packs the energy to undo polar alignment, possibly vex the weather, maybe affect the orbit. Neither matter or anti matter, the movement of a pulsating energy path creates its own unique kind of volume which by nature is unstable. Moving it is altogether hard. You’re literally firing particles to randomly hit and move other particles surging at compound multiples of light speed. You have to steer by feel. That’s not an easy thing since “feel” is created by evolving reflex from key-coding three-dimensional coordinates that the mind sees backwards.
Sis sits beside Aldo reading off changing numeric sequences that he must instantly key-correct. There is no room for error.
Slowly Aldo’s feel comes along. The Curve moves in.
Before the fires race out of control, he must be able to bend and recurve the Curve as no one has done before.
It must touch the outer edge of this massive sphere at two points. Each so far from the other that they cannot be viewed together even from as far off as Pop’s Starbird. Aldo must double his ability to function perfectly - in the dark.
His deep mind tells him everything upside down.
His instincts urge him to respond.
His courage compels him to leap from the precipice.
Fires at the heat of corona will not forgive error or a moment’s judgment.
Sis rapidly ticks out loud the shifting coordinates.
The Curve bends.
Close to the outer atmosphere, Aldo shuts down the particle blast for a blink then restarts in a on-off jerk.
The Curve reacts, but not enough.
“Slower,” Sis says then jumps back to the numbers.
Off. On.
Again the Curve reacts, but not enough.
Aldo is dizzied by overwhelming mental responses.
He thoughts are on fire.
Fire.
He thinks out loud, “Wait for the Curve to enter the atmosphere.”
Which it does at that instant.
Off.
The Curve sparks and bends.
It snakelike ripple weakens.
On.
Particles smack it back towards the globe.
Back on shifting coordinates, Aldo keys.
Two bends in the Curve lock over the fires.
Aldo throttles the juice.
Suddenly two powerful bodies of opposing energy rock and roll.
The pulse station locks up.
Whatever higher power is entwined in this event, Aldo prays will make its move, now.
The Curve groans to free itself.
The fires are sucked into the recoil where heat disperses trapped by irresistible pull. The last of its radiance submits to the cold vacuum of space and time.
* * *
Aldo and Sis embrace.
They feel the rush of their success, to the higher purpose they have served and shared.
Pop and Ted veer outward racing the Starbird within range of the illegal pulse station. Pop joyfully fires a long burst smashing the station into metallic grains of sand.
All the misinformation they have fed to the Hivers and the rest of the galaxy can now be confirmed...
...an errant runaway piece of the Curve Continuum nearly collided with a recently cleared planet in Trisect 9. After sparking the outer edge of the planet’s atmosphere, the rogue path declined in energy and was sucked back without widespread destruction....
* * *
The Hivers never bothered to return.
Within a handful of years the scars of their destruction, the remains of their horrible equipment vanished beneath the greenery of the planet’s repair.
Generations of creatures thrived.
Together, Aldo and Sis discovered dozens of various feathered flyers. They remained on their journey living their days on this planet growing a family alongside Ted, his wife and children.
They built homes on the mainland at the right distance so that Pop’s cabin remained a wild outpost for them to yearn for.
Sis never saw Bigtooth again, yet she was able to connect to others of its kind.
Her life’s work became a cumulative data-atlas that would set galactic standards of planet clearance for eons. Aldo dutifully aided her work but mostly he worked on a compendium of theories about Curve science. He and Ted fished days never-ending. He thrilled at times when his son, Lee would visit and so forth - he had a family of his own to bring.
* * *
Pop never ran out of things to do. He loved his world, so pure and strong that it could embrace him back again and again. Theodus Redshaft saw seasons race by days filled with loafing, gathering food, cooking and drinking. This was all he ever needed. He had the time to teach these things to his grandchildren.
His cabin endured growing more beautiful with age.
It was Aldo and Ted who found his old boat slowly rocking across the open expanse of the cabin’s great lake. Pop never lost the predatory glint of his eyes.
Yet he was very old when they found him laying between crunched containers of bruski in the bottom of his boat.
It was Aldo who noticed his grip on the fishing pole, line played over the side of the boat. Sure enough a fish still jerked at the other end.
To Arrowsmith belief he was buried naked in the ground to reemerge by absorption into the soul of his beloved planet.
* * *
Within the annular communal minds of great and ancient creatures the vision of the rock foretold the end of everything. At first it was hard to discern, something large and dark quavering against the fold of their dreams of night.
Deep inherited thoughts eased the inevitability of their destruction as a memory of the same event that opened their time and place long ago. In time the vision grew larger meaning their end was coming. In communion they withdrew the fear from their young. And in finality the domination of their immensity, by surviving , evolving over a million generations they could feast on the notion that theirs’ was the most successful existence yet to be known in this world.
They will become the ancestors of living flight.
* * *
Sis and Aldo tracked the asteroid over many years, hoping for something that might dislodge its course. Nothing ever happened. In time they grew old. And now the end was at hand. It was time to pack and depart.
Of all the objects sent hurling at the primordial outback of the stellar system, two objects were left. The asteroid and its shadowing ball of ice. The pair was originally analyzed and projected to remain close clear through impact. For years Aldo worked over this scenario, recalculating, tracking, replaying potential outcomes based on impact locations , angles, seasons... Time after time the postulations revealed high percentages indicating life would likely go on.
As the objects moved closer, starlight raised the temperature of space by a minute fraction. And by a minute fraction the ice ball fell behind. Friction, albeit little, began to erode the ball’s surface. A contrail started to spin off pulling momentum from the comet.
Aldo’s impact scenario was beginning to spread out. The more the impacts spread apart, the more percentages went down. Aldo kicked himself for not seeing this before. He was too close to it all to see with a Fifthian’s normal perspective.
Despair grew as the impacts became separated by many days.
Universal Law would not allow interference.
Ted, Aldo and Sis - old, at the end of their journey - stood one last time before Pop’s cabin. This sad farewell extend beyond its walls out into the world and all things created.
Epilogue
Giggly like children, they sit close, unstrapped from the Starbird’s harness.
So seldom in the lives of the very old is choice a final option. They are elated. By choice they will truly serve the planet they love.
Ted’s ship is far ahead. Sis and Aldo com’d in a little message awhile back, saying they were going to take one last pass around the bright blue-green planet.
The comet’s tail has grown.
They can get to it by sight alone.
To add to the force of impact, Aldo throttles the engine to full speed.
A hastily-built particle splitter is tucked below the fuel reactor of Aldo’s Starbird. It has a trip-switch set to go off by percussion.
Alongside the feathered flyers another kind of intelligent creature will come forth.
They lucky ones will live to see the comet twice in a lifetime.
The end.
D.A. Krikorian would appreciate feedback. You can e-mail him at dave@m-linc.com
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