Fossil Hunter by Robert J. Sawyer

Author:Robert J. Sawyer [Sawyer, Robert J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

*26*

Musings of The Watcher

My time sense is malleable. If I scatter myself widely, signals between parts of myself take longer to travel The delays are completely undetectable to me, of course. It simply seems as though the external universe has speeded up, since my senses are sampling it less frequently. Likewise, if I collapse myself into a smaller area, my thoughts are processed more quickly, and I see the external universe move by at a slower rate.

I extruded a portion of my presence into the outer periphery of the Crucible system’s cometary halo, about one-fifth of a Crucible light-year from its sun. Mustering my gravitational influence, I nudged a cometary nucleus. It began to fall toward the inner solar system.

The pace was indolent. It took 350,000 Crucible years for the comet to traverse the distance to the ninth planet’s orbit (that moon of the eighth planet had indeed broken free by now, as I’d thought it might). I spread myself thin, letting the years pass quickly.

A short time into that long span, a sad although not unpredictable thing happened. The Jijaki, my only companions in a vast and empty universe, discovered energy sources they’d never dreamed of before. A war broke out. I called to them, begging them to stop, but a crazed individual in the principal language group launched a massive attack against those speaking a less common tongue, and, despite my entreaties from the sky, in a very short time the Jijaki had destroyed themselves, leveling their home world and their colonies. I mourn them to this day.

From the orbit of the ninth planet, it would only take twenty-six years for the comet nucleus to reach the Crucible. By now, the comet was moving at a speed of about five kilometers per second. I contracted myself, slowing the apparent pace of time.

With only forty percent of a single year left until the impact, the comet — now whipping along at eighteen kilometers per second — passed through the system’s asteroid belt.

It crossed the orbit of the fourth planet, just nine percent of a year until impact. The reptiles and mammals on the Crucible doubtless saw it in the night sky, for its head now glowed and a diaphanous tail stretched behind it.

I contracted, partly to savor every detail, partly to concentrate my meager gravitational influence to effect the required course corrections. The comet passed the orbit of the Crucible’s moon. Its speed was now thirty kilometers per second. Time to impact: one-eighth of one day.

And then, and then, and then…

Traveling at sixty-seven kilometers per second, it drilled through the Crucible’s atmosphere in less than two seconds, leaving a vacuum hole behind it.

On impact, a lethal shock wave spread for twelve hundred kilometers from the crash site. The comet and much of the target material vaporized completely, electron shells stripped off to form a super-heated plasma. Much of it blew out the hole in the atmosphere, and, in a fraction of a day, enveloped the world above the stratosphere. The planet was plunged into darkness.

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