Orbital Maneuvers by R Davison Read Free Book Online Page B

of them fading while the other two grew brighter, bigger and separated farther apart.  In a matter of seconds, the closest ball of fire again split and pushed a large bright chunk tumbling downward toward the sea.  These unfortunate people never had time to comprehend what they were seeing, never felt the impact of rock on the Earth. 
    The half-mile-long chunk of the Alpha fragment crashed into the Atlantic, fifty miles from shore, while the main piece continued over the shoreline.  The shockwave of super-heated, compressed air that preceded the asteroid leveled everything in a swath over fifty miles wide on either side of its path.  The main piece of Alpha impacted land several miles inland creating an oblong crater that stretched almost a hundred miles long and fifty miles wide.  The impact literally severed Florida, or what was left of it, from the mainland of North America: Florida would forever now be an island.  The debris from the impact was ejected with such force that millions of tons of rock reached into low orbit.  Most of it would rain down on the Earth thousands of miles away.  Other pieces would stay in orbit until the atmospheric drag slowed them down enough to fall back to Earth as shooting stars. The bulk of the debris was thrown westward into the Caribbean and toward southern part of Alabama.
    The portion of the Alpha fragment that landed in the Atlantic punched a hole in the ocean that was almost fifteen miles in diameter, creating tsunamis that flooded deep into the eastern coastline of the United States, and almost completely washed over central Florida.  The deadly waves continued far up the coast to the north hitting Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, obliterating towns and villages surrounding the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia and Placentia and Hermitage Bays in Newfoundland.  Vaporized water funneled up the corridor formed in the atmosphere by the asteroid’s fiery entry and was deposited high in the upper atmosphere.
    The Beta fragment continued further west, boosted by the impact blast from the Alpha fragment.  It finally crashed in Texas, between Houston and Austin.  This being the largest piece of the monster to land, it created the largest impact crater extending more than one hundred miles long by almost eighty miles wide.  It, like its brethren, hit at a shallow angle and sent the bulk of its ejecta on low trajectories westward into Mexico and New Mexico.
     
    Susan had made her way across the bay to the airlock.  Pushing aside some debris that was floating in front of the hatch, she entered the airlock but turned back to take one last look at the payload bay before she closed the hatch.  She looked at the shattered cargo bay and saw the damage but nothing really registered in her mind.  Susan blinked to clear her vision and reached to pull the hatch closed.  With quivering muscles she strained to close the hatch and then stared dumbly at the indicator panel, which showed that the hatch seal was not secure.  She pulled on her tether to make sure that it was not caught in the door seal but it was free and floating about her.  Susan pushed the hatch open and looked out in the cargo bay.  Her eyes caught some movement in the bay and as she focused on it, she realized that it was Jill’s tether still attached to its mount on the airlock.  With a tug, Susan pulled the tether into the airlock and closed the hatch.  As she waited for the airlock to pressurize, she held Jill’s tether, stroking it softly with the thick gloves of her space suit.  She could not feel it, yet she drew comfort just from holding the last physical connection they had to Jill.  She closed her eyes and could feel her strength returning. As Susan thought about the last few hours of her life, she found herself getting more and more angry that she had not followed her intuition.  She did not contemplate what she would have done differently, that was for another place and time, when she had time on her hands.