179th Entry

April 5^th, 2037

1004

Dear Space Diary

“2.0 just messaged. The EMPs are set up around the city. If they do land, their craft aren’t going to be able to take off again. Of course, that will leave a bunch of angry secret evil organisation types trapped on the same planet as them. Which is not exactly ideal.”

Well they’ll have to fight them off if it comes to that.

“With what?”

There are a great many rocks. Really heavy rocks. And I’m sure the lightdogs can help. You know, with throwing really heavy rocks at things.

“They also have lasers that are capable of cutting heavy rocks and softer fleshier things in two.”

Yes but I prefer not to think about that. Because it’s disgusting.

“Point. But look, “Rocks” are not a fully comprehensive and acceptable Plan B. Plan Q maybe.”

It does rely on any ship approaching or landing on Marysvilletopia. Ideally we’d like to stop them even getting there.

“But how do we do that?” We’re travelling at lightspeed in a ship on autopilot. We can’t control where we’re going, let alone another ship.”

Can’t we… I don’t know, nudge it off course? With some kind of intergalactic barge pole?

“I’ll ignore the supreme idiocy of the term ‘intergalactic barge pole’ and instead point out that sadly it wouldn’t work. The autopilot is all about homing. Once you put in the target, it’ll home directly in on the destination. Thanks to your pod, they’ve got a nice clear signal.”

Could the Marys knock it out?

“They could. An EMP would fry the signal nicely. But even then, there’s a back up. All that data NASA had you collect has given them sample data to search for. So long as the planet is there, the tracker can find it.”

Unless we blow it up.

“We are not blowing up the planet.”

How about moving it?

“Come on! This is serious.”

So am I. What if we moved the planet? They couldn’t find it then.

“How are we going to move an entire planet?”

That’s the beauty of it. We don’t have to. Just bits of it.

“I don’t understand.”

How powerful are their scanners? Could they detect the planet, even if it was tiny?

“Even if it was a pebble.”

Perfect. Are their explosives on the planet?

“Easy enough to make. Why?”

Here’s my plan. We blow off a reasonable size chunk of the planet and launch it into space. That way, the ship heads there instead.

“…That’s rather clever.”

Thank you.

“I mean, it’s stupid to try and blow up half a planet. The amount of explosives needed would cause all kinds of problems.”

Less thank you.

“But misdirection is perfect. We could fool the scanner so easily. We could even launch your old pod into space. Both signals would be wrong.”

So we just need to get some of the planet into space. Let’s go! I’ll go call the Marys.

“I can do you one better.”