The Shot Launched Around the World

by Geoffrey Hart

Previously published as: Hart, G. 2020. The Shot Launched Around the World. p. 45-50 In: Oren Litwin (ed.) Asteroids: Stories of Space Adventure. LaGrange Books.

So we’re on the surface of some asteroid too small to have a name—just some number only an astronomer could love. We’re there to watch an ex-Olympian who never medaled, but who clearly became a gold medalist in self-promotion. Her name’s Shere-something-African. Ruth, my pet journalist, knows; I’m just the cameraman, and after a time, the names and faces all blur and all you care about are (a) the lighting and (b) the inevitable photobombers, though I’m not expecting many this time. We’re here to watch Shere launch a javelin (an event in which she placed 30th in the world) at just the right angle so it perfectly orbits this tiny airless world and returns to its starting point. As spectacle, it makes no sense, but it’s part of a Red Bull commercial, so who expects sense?

Ruth presses her helmet’s faceplate against mine. “Aren’t you excited?”

I was excited when I was her age and she wasn’t even a hungry gleam in her Mummy’s eyes yet. “What’s to be excited about?”

“This is history in the making.”

“My first use of a zero-gee toilet was history in the making. It didn’t make the news either.”

She snorts. “But you’re not an Olympian, and you’re not a tradition.”

“There’s a tradition?”

“Yes. It dates back to the early 1970s. One of the Apollo missions.” She pauses to consult her augments. “Yes: 1971, Apollo 14. There was this NASA astronaut, Edgar Mitchell, who just about died. He was supposed to be on the Apollo 13 mission, the one that was a complete near-disaster. But they bumped him to the next mission.”

Complete near-disaster? “So two events makes a tradition these days?”

“I guess. Anyway, he was a competent astronaut—back then, even NASA didn’t hire incompetents—but a bit of a whack job. Mister we are stardust, we are golden, they called him. The point is, he has the record for being the guy who launched the first ‘javelin’ on the moon—actually, the first javelin outside Earth’s atmosphere, which is probably more impressive since nobody’s ever bothered trying to launch a javelin anywhere but Earth since then.”

“So you’re telling me NASA spent a gazillion taxpayer dollars to put a javelin on the moon? That must have been popular.”

“No, they weren’t that frivolous. It was actually a tool handle of some sort. It just looked like a javelin. In any event, Alan Shepard trumped him by smuggling a golf club aboard the lander and becoming the first golfer on the moon. Nobody remembers the javelin anymore.”

“I see. Golf clubs. At least that isn’t frivolous.”

“Hush. Here she comes!”

Shere whatsername has emerged from the bus that brought us all here, and she’s waving and pressing the flesh. Well, pressing the vacuum insulation, leastwise. You’d never know she’s anyone special; all space suits look the same. But she does move with a certain lithe confidence the rest of us lack, so that’s something; it looks great on the monitor. I’ve been recording automatically all along, but now I toggle my personal camera to manual. This will be the video without the network logo at the bottom right of the screen and without the advertising feeds at the top and bottom; this one I’ll release on the darknet. Daddy’s got expensive habits, and network journalism only pays for so much.

Which would be fine if the guys who loaned Daddy the money to pay for those habits were a bit more patient about repayment schedules. But they’re not what you’d call patient, and that’s why I’m here for this dumbass non-event. Dumbass or not, it pays well and there’s a chance it will pay better if something goes wrong and I can capture it.

They’ve removed the surveyor’s transit the scientists used to calculate the elevation and trajectory of the release, and I’ve captured Shere’s gopher using a can of compressed air to remove all signs that it was ever there, erasing a billion years worth of dust accumulation to reveal the pockmarked surface that it concealed for a billion years. The crust is non-reflective space-black, and a bitch to light properly against a space-black background; thank God for shadows and specular reflection and modern smartlights.

Another gopher scuttles out of the darkness bearing a bag of javelins, each gleaming white so we can see them more easily. Shere makes a big show of weighing them, arm moving smoothly back and forth as if she hasn’t already tested each one a hundred times to ensure it’s the same as all the others to the nearest microgram. She could be throwing a flagpole for all it matters; without an atmosphere, this isn’t rocket science.

“Bet you a piña colada she impales herself at the end of the orbit.” But I’m looking at all the amateurs clustered around the launch site, or at least within the permitted distance. Paparazzi.

“Hush.”

“Don’t be a worrywart, Ruth. They’ll fix it in post-production.”

“Hush!”

I bite my tongue. I’ve already staked out one of the two best positions for watching Shere catch the inbound javelin, and nobody’s moving me from this spot. It’ll all be over soon, and I can decompress back at the ship’s bar. Well, maybe decompress isn’t the most auspicious word. Anyway...

Shere takes her mark, makes a show of planting her feet, crouching. She’s already been out here twice, making sure she’s got exactly the right release height. There won’t be any run-up either; not enough gee, and it’s not really about distance. But this girl’s got camera sense, and she practices her movements in a way that’ll make all the highlight reels. (Whatever a “reel” is. Short for reality?)

When she’s ready, we hear her take a deep breath over the microphone; she pivots like she’s riding on magnetic bearings and launches the javelin. Everyone watches as it soars past the horizon, arcing gently downwards and out of sight. It would be lost to sight entirely were it not for the camera drones trailing it, spewing clouds of exhaust gases to keep themselves in tight orbit around this chunk of rock.

We wait, literally cooling our heels, and then there’s a collective intake of breath as the javelin tracker pings. Everyone faces the other direction, and sure enough, here comes the javelin. But she’s put too much into her throw, and it’s way overhead. No way she’s going to catch this one, though I see her bending her knees as if she’s thinking of jumping. Then she remembers where she is. Pity. Would have made a great shot watching her soaring off into the void and having to be rescued. Would have been great money in being persuaded to not broadcast that image.

The javelin disappears into the void, where it will undoubtedly endanger some future space mission, and she shrugs, waves at the cameras, and takes a second javelin from the gopher. Again, she preens for the camera, flexes, pivots, and launches the javelin. Again, it disappears below the horizon. We wait, the tracker pings, and we keep waiting. Nope. This time, not enough velocity; the javelin has buried itself in the dust several hundred meters away.

Shere shrugs, the gopher brings a third javelin, and again she goes through her routine. By now, I’m not optimistic, but this time it looks like she’s got it right. The tracker pings, Shere minutely adjusts her stance as the javelin comes into view, and she reaches out in preparation to snag it—and at that precise moment, the paparazzo who’s been waiting for the money shot steps into the frame.

His camera flashes, perfectly placed in case the star of the moment misses her catch. But he’s an amateur and has misjudged his position: the javelin is headed straight for him.

He doesn’t see it coming. The javelin is going to embed itself in his helmet or his vac suit, followed by a dramatic puff of air, pink-tinged in the glare of the camera lights, and he’ll fly spinning off into the void, propelled by the momentum of the impact and his own personal exhaust. Great imagery.

But good though the money would’ve been, there are some things I won’t do for money. I’m not a paparazzo, fer chrissake. So instead, I throw my backpack at him, catching him high enough in the chest to tip him backwards, out of frame—and more importantly, out of the javelin’s path. My camera’s been running ever since the toss, and neatly captures Shere-whatever catching the javelin, legs braced against a rock to absorb the momentum and keep her firmly grounded.

I wait for the nearly ex-photographer to finish his fall and bounce, then I turn off my personal camera and turn to my pet journalist.

“That’s a wrap. And Ruth? I owe you a piña colada.”

I can afford the drink. I’m thinking that even if the shots of the fall and bounce don’t pay back those loans, they will at least be a decent down-payment. And I hear Red Bull’s doing some kind of base-jumping event with guys in special suits diving into the atmosphere of a red giant star. That couldn’t possibly end badly, could it?

Author's note

Speaking of base jumps...

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