"BERGMANN'S COMET", BK 3

Far Seer narrated what he saw from Searcher''s bridge as Comet 3 came inward silently; the comet was just barely visible as a tiny spark in the holoimage.  Far Seer used a lighted stylus to show the comet, the two Martian moons Deimos and Phobos and the Martian Northern highlands on his holomodel aboard Searcher. 

Searcher was on the side of Mars away from the impact zone, towards Earth, still on her track behind Comet 2.  This was considered a safe place for the starship to be in the unlikely event of material being completely ejected from the Martian surface.  In order to follow Comet 2, Searcher would have to leave the vicinity of Mars; this prevented her from dealing with Comet 1.  After much discussion, they had agreed this was the most certain way to permanently clear the board of Comet 2.  The joint Banderat/Human mission would deal with Comet 1; they had to leave Earth''s orbit and arrive along Comet 1''s path at an appropriate position beyond Mars, to redirect the last comet to miss the Earth-Moon double planet system. 

Comet 3 would actually disappear behind the Northern Polar region as it struck the planet''s far side, the Northern Lowlands.  The scene shifted to show Comet 2 receding ahead of Searcher and then shifted back to the view of Mars.  Far Seer could view the impact zone directly from Comet 3''s droneship camera, which his engineers were maneuvering into an orbit around Mars to analyze the material thrown up to form the new Martian atmosphere, as it occurred. 

The spark of Comet 3 moved out of sight behind the planet.  The view shifted to the droneship''s cameras: a bright flash winked on and then out as a dirty, brown-red mushroom-shaped cloud appeared like a dark growth on the Northern Lowlands.  A ring of dust rolled outward from the base of the billowing mushroom cloud, sweeping over the reddish desert.  The redish-gray pillar-cloud billowed up and up, turning darker as material filled the inside of the column.  Lightning could be seen playing around the cloud as charges formed and discharged from the tower of debris.  The droneship moved inward on a wide spiral, viewing the cloud from it''s spiral path; engineers and scientists watched the small display of elements shown in Banderat symbols across the bottom of the image.  Ro-Org and Far Batwing used a pointer to show Guy and Nita the symbols for water for oxygen that clearly grew in the scan as they watched. 

The cloud began to shear off at the top and be swept around the planet by upper level winds; the impact energy was intense but not of the order of magnitude to eject material out of the planet''s gravity-well.  Material began to fall back toward the surface in slow motion in the thin atmosphere.  The dust-ring had traveled out of sight around the planet on the droneship''s camera.  The view shifted back to Searcher''s bridge where the dust-ring could be seen billowing around shield volcanoes, slowly closing in on a point almost opposite the impact point.  The dust-ring slowly closed, like a drawstring on a bag, pushing up a small tower of dust into a dark fountain and then collapsed, obscuring the Martian terrain behind red-beige clouds. 

The view jumped back to the impact-side of the planet as seen from the droneship.  The mushroom cloud still fountained debris upwards but the shape was collapsing on the downwind side.  Material rained down in sheets from lower and lower in the cloud-tower until the bulging upper canopy shape was carried off around the planet by winds, which rose in displacement.  Surface details of the planet disappeared in the planetary wide dust storm.  The cloud collapsed lower and lower as the winds rose to sheer it away in bands of debris that hid the surface from view as the planet entered it''s cometary winter period. 

Guy stood transfixed; he hoped they understood enough planetary science to be sure the dust would settle as the white North Polar Cap was obscured by the red-brown clouds of dust above it.  Nita squeezed his hand in hers.  He looked away from the image to her, momentarily shocked by what he saw occurring.  Far Batwing used a pointer to highlight the water symbol which passed into double digits as the droneship descended and flew through the rising new atmosphere.  The image bucked and jumped as the droneship bounced from turbulent winds stirred up in the herculean storm.  The engineers used controls to bring the droneship up out of the turbulent dusty atmosphere so they could plunge back in some distance away.  Guy imagined being down there, watching the sky turn brown above him in an artificial winter. 

Far Batwing touched Guy''s arm as he pointed to the readout: "I''d be encouraged, Envoy!  We''re seeing numbers in the range of 12 percent of Earth''s moisture content in some places.  That''s a good omen so soon; we''ll watch the atmosphere closely for a long time, but I''d call that a very good predictor of success in terraforming!  This was a relatively small comet: it was about 4,200 meters across from our images.  It shed something like 3-5 percent of its mass between Jupiter''s orbit and impact on Mars from solar-induced sublimation.

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