# 9 The Plush Red Silk Rug - The Associates, #9

"Mac, your idea is similar to chasing a ghost in a snowstorm. At best all you have are the footprints. But these are parsecs away and on top of that you have them in an error window. You are looking for a ripple when you have no water. About the only people you will find to look for disturbed asteroid paths are hungry graduate students looking for the next meal."

He pauses, "Even then you will have problems trying to get some good scope time to look deep and still be able to give you the detail you will need."

Mac is all smiles, "That is the great advantage, I will have no one crazy enough to go looking. We will have the entire field to search with no one else even thinking about looking."

Mac's friend and fellow colleague just shakes his head, "You will find no one is going to spend a dime on your search. You better find some students that can live on beans.

Mac says to a pair of graduate students, "You have their paths plus their error windows. We are looking for those outside that window and any news ones that might have moved. When you reach 10 or so hits, I will move to one of the space telescopes for a more detailed and current view.

"I want to go over those sectors that may send us some visitors in two or three years. I am not interested in an object that will cross our orbit while we are on the other side of the sun and six months away!"

"Fifty fly-bye are not equal to a possible impact to the earth."

Time passes and everyone moves on to other work. Years before this in deep space a 12,000-year old comet has already started its long journey toward our solar system. This may be its last flight and no one is looking.

The Madam finds it first and labels it a fly bye, if it will last that long. But what of all the asteroids its has disturbed? Will they be fly-byes? Why has a Chinese commander chosen to set up his command center at the exact spot of an impact crater that is only days old? What could this have to do with a plush red silk rug?