Chapter 65

Bill contends with a critical failure during the delivery of a massive ice chunk to Ragnarök. An iceberg comes off course, forcing him to run his asteroid drive at maximum capacity and narrowly attempt to save the equipment before the ice enters the atmosphere. Two drive segments are lost when the iceberg fragments, and the next incoming chunk will impact uncontrolled, forcing Bill to pause and reassess his anchoring system design.

Bill monitors the approach of a large iceberg destined for Ragnarök in the Kuiper Belt operation. Guppy applies course corrections as Bill prepares drone scripts for equipment retrieval. With only 650 seconds before atmospheric entry, Bill orders the retrieval process to begin, but the timeline is too tight. When the iceberg hits the upper atmosphere, Bill detonates explosive devices to fragment it into smaller pieces that will melt during descent and fall as rain. Two drive segments and a collection of anchors are lost in the process. Bill communicates with Garfield, acknowledging the failure and explaining that the next ice chunk will impact uncontrolled. He requests Garfield send replacement drive segments urgently and proposes redesigning the anchoring system to eliminate ground contact, using orbital positioning of drive channels instead. Bill suggests this redesign would be faster and more reliable. He then briefly reviews his Android Project prototype, Bullwinkle, a quadruped android struggling with sensor integration, reflex timing, and communication bandwidth issues, before returning to work on the asteroid-mover project.