* * * * *
Lilith studied her handiwork and nodded to herself. “That should do it,” she said. Then her suit beeped, and she nearly jumped into space. If it weren’t for the tether.…
“Okay,” she said, “O2 levels dropping to minimum. Time to go inside.”
Once inside, she went to the console and checked the time. “Thirty two minutes,” she said. “Plenty of time for Phase Two.” She sat down and began the arduous task of overriding the navigation computer’s preset programming. Several minutes later, her finger poised above the final confirmation and she pressed it. “Well, there’s no going back, now.”
She entered a short sequence of commands into the navigation computer to be triggered precisely one minute after the scheduled departure time. The commands would fire the engines in a short burst, rotate the ship, pause for five minutes, then fire the engines a second time to return The Junket to orbit around the asteroid. It was a simple maneuver, but it was much riskier than she would have liked. Even a short distance in the asteroid belt could be hazardous without proper guidance.
She held her breath as the first engine burst flared to life, but when the ship didn’t explode, she let it out slowly. Then she turned the sensor display toward the asteroid and watched. “Now for the response,” she said, watching the countdown as it dwindled form 30 seconds to zero.
The display changed dramatically at that point, as a series of explosions on the asteroid surface followed each other in quick succession. They were carefully timed to explode when the asteroid rotated to face the general direction of Ceres. With luck, they would be large enough to be seen by Ceres’ telescope array – if they were watching. If they weren’t.…