Free A Long Road Back: Final Dawn: Book 8 by Darrell Maloney Page B

he loses his draft.”
         “Yes…”
         “And eventually he’ll get so tired he’ll start to slow down. Slower and slower and slower. And what happens when a bicyclist slows down almost to the point of stopping?”
         The light came on in Bryan’s head.
         “He starts to wobble. He has to rock his handlebars back and forth to keep moving and keep from falling over.”
         “Exactly. The exact same thing can happen to a meteorite which breaks up in flight. The lead piece will play point for the smaller or slower pieces which break off, and they’ll draft behind it for a time. Sometimes forever. It usually depends on their physical makeup and how close together they are. If the broken pieces are pretty much symmetrical and close to the lead piece they can be travel partners for eons.
         “But a tumbler, like Cupid 23, will move slower and more erratically. It will eventually fall behind the lead piece and then tumble into its own track.”
         “Okay,” Mark said. “Enough of the cosmic mumbo jumbo. Just give it to me straight. Are we in danger of another collision or not? And if we are, how come it hasn’t happened yet?”
         “The straight answer is I just don’t know. There were probably people at NASA who continued to track Cupid 23, even while everybody was scrambling to do something about Saris 7. If I could get ahold of someone at NASA, I could find out what Cupid 23’s status is. Whether it ever broke free from Saris 7’s track and went its own way. Whether it’s still headed in our direction. Whether it wobbled clear of earth and sailed right past us.”
         “So call NASA.”
         “I’m going to start today. I wanted to consult with Sarah to see if she thought I was making a mountain out of a molehill. There were some scientists at NASA that said Cupid wasn’t worth worrying about because tumblers almost always break free of their mother’s track and go their own way. Scientists with a lot more experience than me. I think Sarah agreed with them. I wanted her to calm me down and convince me that this whole thing is nothing to worry about.
         “But now that’s impossible. I couldn’t talk to Sarah about it, so I had to settle for you.”
         “Well, thanks for that.”
         “Oh, honey, I didn’t mean that the way it sounds. This whole thing is just so confusing to me. And I’m a scientist by training, even though I haven’t done it for a very long time. Scientists look at data and facts and previous studies to make conclusions and predictions.
         “I don’t have any of that. All I have is a vague memory of Cupid 23, tumbling through space, following Saris 7 by a very wide margin, and headed our way.”
         Mark reached up and put a hand on Hannah’s cheek. It was still swollen and bruised, but his touch was tender. It comforted rather than hurt her.
         Mark wasn’t a logical person by nature. He’d told her many times in the past that logic was the devil’s plaything. “Don’t confuse me with logic,” he’d said more than once. “It gives me a headache.”
         But this time, for Hannah’s benefit, he tried his best to think things through.
         “Baby, listen to me. I’m not a scientist, but I know that scientists sometimes overthink things. True?”
         She nodded in agreement.
         “True…”
         “I think you’re overthinking this whole thing. I mean, if Cupid 43, or whatever the hell you call it…”
         “Cupid 23.”
         “Okay. If Cupid 23 was still out there, and was still a threat, then surely NASA would have sent out the alarm by now. I mean, yes, the world has gone to shit and most of the people have died. But there are still ham radios and police departments and FEMA and other government agencies. Don’t you think that they would have put a warning out by now if there was nothing to worry about?”