Authors: Jack McDevitt
It was a cool night, and he was glad he’d worn his woolen sweater. He pushed his hands into his pockets and looked out over the trees. Where the Moon had been, there was now a blood-red cloud, lit by inner fires. It was expanding and it cast a ruddy glow across the forest.
The facility had filled up and overflowed with people from coastal areas and with some locals who sensed it was the right place to be on this night. Feinberg had talked with several. None admitted to believing there was serious danger to the world; yet here they were, well inland.
Better safe than sorry
, they told him. The American motto:
Safety first
.
He could see flashlights in the parking lot. People were herding together, watching the event, ooohing and aaahing. Cries of “Look at that,” and “It’s beautiful” filled the night air. Campfires burned in the surrounding hills and back on the picnic grounds. There were occasional flashes as people tried to take pictures of the event.
SSTO
Rome
Passenger Cabin, 143,000 kilometers from Luna. 10:38
P.M.
Tashi Yomiuri had thought about trying the stunt that Keith Morley had pulled, but in the end, prudence had held sway. Now, watching the eruption on her monitor, she knew she’d made the right choice to put a decent amount of distance between herself and that inferno. Morley’s broadcast had just been cut off at the source, and while Bruce Kendrick talked as if contact would be restored momentarily, Tashi believed that her colleague was gone. Posthumous Nobel? Maybe. Probably. But it wasn’t the price
she
was prepared to pay.
There’d been a Pool arrangement, and all networks had
been carrying the Morley report. But her producer back in New York had alerted her to be ready to go, now that Morley would no longer be a factor. “We’ll want a blow-by-blow of what’s happening,” he’d said. “You’re as close as anybody.” He sounded exhilarated. “What can you see? What are the reactions of the passengers? Anybody breaking down?”
She didn’t really know what was happening. The only view she had of events was what the networks were providing. A few minutes earlier she’d seen a flash outside her window, like summer lightning, but now there was nothing except a glow on her raised tray. Earlier, she’d interviewed Rick Hailey, the vice president’s press advisor, who was up in the front of the plane. But it had been relatively tame. Hailey was too old a hand to say anything out of the way. The government would respond appropriately, he assured her, the nation was fortunate to have strong leadership at this critical juncture. That sort of thing.
She’d gotten a far better interview from Slade Elliott. He’d surprised her by admitting that, sure, he was scared, wasn’t everybody, but he’d talked to the pilot, John Verrano, and Verrano seemed both competent and confident.
Would he like to have
Shadow
along this time?
Shadow
was the self-aware TV starship in which Captain Pierce and his oddball crew roamed the galaxy. “Sure,” he grinned. “This kind of flight would be small potatoes for
Shadow
.”
Tashi also recognized two of Charlie Haskell’s Secret Service detail, the big one they called Sam, and an attractive young woman who looked like innocence personified.
There’d been some empty seats on the plane, so Yomiuri had been able to keep access to the aisle. She had a camera, and if the spacecraft started to rock, she’d get some good coverage and maybe come out of this pretty well after all.
Within minutes after Morley’s signal had been lost, they
brought her up live on the Pacific News Network. She described the mood in the plane, making much of it up because there was no unified mood. Some people were merrily oblivious to the danger, others were terrified. But Tashi painted a picture of passengers hanging tough because it made good press, and because it wasn’t that far from the truth anyhow, if you could draw a line more or less down the middle.
She was interrupted by the PA: “This is the captain. Ladies and gentlemen, we’ll probably be doing some maneuvering during the next few minutes. It might get a little rough; we expect it’ll be something like running through a storm. I want to assure you, however, that you’re in a very well built plane, and we’ll come out of this in good shape. Meanwhile, I’d like you to secure any loose articles so they don’t injure you or anyone else. Please be sure your tray is up, and everything not fastened down is in an overhead bin. We’ll let you know when we’ve gotten through this.”
Yomiuri took a deep breath and went back to her play-by-play. Her earphones pinged and her producer spoke to her: “Tashi, we’re going to switch over to the Pool.”
She would be going global. “Okay,” she said.
“In one minute. Clyde Sommer’s your anchor. FYI, as far as we can determine, nobody’s reestablished contact with the Micro or with the other plane.”
That produced a chill. “I’m sorry to hear it.”
“It’s likely just the general turbulence. Maybe they’re okay, maybe not. We expect to lose you in a couple of minutes, too. Your signal, that is.”
Her heart skipped an extra beat. “Right,” she said.
“Twenty seconds.”
“Okay. I’m ready to go.”
She listened to the countdown in her earphones, imagined Clyde Sommer, the network anchor, seated at the prime
desk in New York. Just before she went on, she removed the right earphone and slid it up on her head so she could hear what was going on around her. “This is Tashi Yomiuri, on board a space plane approximately ninety thousand miles from what used to be the Moon. We are currently running at about fifteen thousand miles an hour before a hurricane of fire….”
1.
Micro Flight Deck. 10:40
P.M.
They’d survived the initial blast. Tony had run with the storm with consummate skill, reigniting the engine at the first opportunity and jinking the bus in ways that its designers would not have thought possible. Watching him, Saber had been grateful that she was riding that night with Tony Casaway.
The initial fury had subsided. They were still taking a lot of hits, but most were glancing shots that banged and clanged and did no serious damage. One tore into a storage compartment belowdecks, but the hatches held; another took out a power conduit and left the passenger cabin in darkness. Fortunately, the occasional boulders that leaped at them out of the dark, and the cascades of melted rock that slashed across the sky, did not have their exact coordinates, and so they lived.
It was as if a wave had passed. The void now was still filled with charging debris. But it was in quantities and at velocities that allowed the sensors to track major threats.
Morley asked whether the Micro had reestablished outside communications yet. The answer was no. “Damn,” he said, “this is great stuff.” But he added that he wouldn’t mind if the excitement died off a little.
Evelyn wondered whether the captain knew the passenger cabin had no lights.
“We know,” said Saber. “We’ll fix it later. But we’re a little preoccupied right now.” She was pointing out an incoming
fragment while she talked. Tony nodded and moved the Micro out of the way. The fragment was a long, thin sliver, maybe half the length of a football field, tumbling end over end. She heard the reaction in the cabin as it sliced past.
The short- and long-range sensors filled the screens with returns. Sometimes they were rock shards and storms of pebbles and dust; more often they were amoeba-forms that might have been belches of gas or plasma. The viewports revealed mountainous shadows and liquid fire. Occasionally the stars disappeared altogether, as if the Micro were passing down a red tunnel.
They continued to move steadily through the crowded sky at one g.
“Micro, this is Skyport.” The voice crackled in his earphones. “Do you read?”
“We copy, Skyport. We are still here.”
“What is your status?”
Tony relayed what he knew, fuel usage, damage report, passenger list. “No casualties.”
“Micro, we’re missing one name.”
“Jack Chandler. He didn’t make it.”
“What happened?”
“Heart attack, we think. Died just before they were scheduled to come on board. His body was left at Moonbase.”
The response broke up.
“Say again, Skyport. Do you read?” There was only interference.
Something hit the blister again and was gone too quickly to be seen. It left a crooked star, not unlike the type that a flying rock might put in a windshield.
“We okay?” asked Tony.
The danger was that the blister had to withstand 14.7 pounds per square inch of air pressure. The three decks, cargo, passenger, and flight, were sealed off from each other. So if the
worst happened, and the canopy blew out, at least the Micro would only lose its pilots.
Only the pilots.
Saber touched the star with her index finger. She pushed gently at it and traced the individual lines. “I think it’s okay,” she said.
Micro Cargo Deck. 10:41
P.M.
Like Saber, Bigfoot was still inside his pressure suit. As a precaution, he’d put his helmet back on, but he was having problems with vertigo and got it off again just before throwing up. He’d secured himself to the ladder with his belt; and although the accelerated liftoff wasn’t nearly as stressful as it would have been leaving Earth, it was nevertheless not comfortable, and left him with bruised ribs and an aching shoulder that he suspected had been dislocated.
C deck, the cargo deck, was a confined space: it possessed no viewports, and it rocked and fell and twisted until his head spun violently. He wished he’d moved more quickly and got to the passenger cabin.
But it could have been worse: since they were accelerating, the vomit had gone to the deck and wasn’t floating around. He grinned and felt a little better.
SSTO
Rome
Passenger Cabin, 145,000 kilometers from Luna. 10:42
P.M.
Rick controlled fear by the simple act of cutting off the cause. His technique in this case consisted of lowering his blind and concentrating on other issues. Specifically, on how well things had gone so far. The vice president had behaved well, and if they all came through it, there would be an appropriate reward. For Rick, that reward would consist not simply in winning the White House in the fall, but in running a campaign for a genuine hero. Charlie Haskell, a long shot in his own party a week ago, was going to be unbeatable.
Haskell was off the Moon, riding a
bus
, for God’s sake, and a little one at that. With any kind of luck, communications would be restored, Morley would continue to give Charlie a ton of play, and there’d be brass bands to greet the vice president when he got home.
Rick’s juices flowed at the prospect of writing appropriately modest remarks to be delivered to the news services. The phrases were already running through his head:
We were fortunate to be flying with What’s-his-name, who’s one hell of a pilot or we’d all be dead
. And,
We’ve taken a heavy loss at Moonbase, there’s no doubt of that. But no one’s been killed, and that’s what counts.
Or,
Yes, we’ve lost some people, and I’d like to ask you to join me in a moment of silence for these brave heroes who dared to reach for the future….
Charlie was good at this kind of stuff, had a natural flair for it. Probably because he believed it. It was the secret to his success. He was naïve, everybody knew it, even
he
knew it, but it didn’t matter. It was all part of his charm. It was what the voters
liked
.
For Rick, it was a clear demonstration of what the game was really about. The media often maintained that campaigns weren’t substantive. But the media didn’t understand about electioneering. When they complained that issues were seldom discussed, that the debate got too personal, that in the end a fog of obfuscation was thrown over everything, they were missing the point: An election is an art form. Its purpose is not to illuminate the issues of the day, but to box in an opponent. To watch him try to wriggle free of charges and innuendo. It was Charlie’s special gift that he could perform the surgery in a friendly, inoffensive, down-home manner. People liked that. They
didn’t
like vindictive politicians, or hard chargers.
Something smashed into the spacecraft, and the cabin tilted, first one way and then another. There were startled cries, and Rick white-knuckled the arms of his chair. But the plane
straightened out and the pilot came on the speaker: “Nothing to worry about, folks. Just a piece of junk bouncing off the hull. There’ll probably be more, but we’re doing fine.”
Rick forced himself to concentrate on the vice president’s arrival at Reagan. He pictured the scene, Charlie coming out of the plane, waving to the crowd, moving to a platform for his remarks.
Politics was a struggle for power, in its purest and simplest terms. If the voters were lucky, the winner would go on to improve their lot, because he would need their votes next time. Or because he enjoyed being popular. But issues were irrelevant. Always had been, probably. Once the age of mass communications arrived, presidents became entertainers, celebrities, if they were smart. FDR used his fireside chats; Kennedy had allowed spontaneous questions at press conferences, relying on wit and charm. Reagan knew from the films exactly how a president should behave, and he had exactly enough acting talent to bring it off. In that sense, he was the first modern president.
It had taken a while for the country to get the point. But it had. Neither Lincoln nor Washington would have had a chance of election during the age of mass communications. And maybe that was just as well. Rick knew that neither would have taken his advice.
SSTO
Arlington
Flight Deck, 23,000 kilometers from Luna. 10:43
P.M.
George would have traded his soul for his old A-77 Blackjack. The space plane simply hauled too much mass, was too sluggish and too big a target.
He’d also discovered a disconcerting illusion. As an essentially earthbound pilot, he was accustomed to a sense of motion in flight: clouds whispering past, Skyport drawing near, Reagan falling away. Out here the environment, even
the comet, had been frozen. Nothing ever moved.
Except for the explosive front that had ripped through and tried to tear the plane out of his hands. The tail assembly had been demolished and a rock had punched through one of the overhead compartments. He knew there was hull damage, but not how much. And there was still stuff coming at him. The pieces tended to be bigger than the dust storms and flying rocks in the first wave, but they weren’t moving quite as fast now, so he had a better chance of getting out of their way.
He got on the circuit and told his passengers he knew the ride had been rough, but he assured them they would be all right.
Micro Passenger Cabin. 10:44
P.M.
The cabin was quiet. Morley’s earlier monosyllabic burble had irritated Charlie, but now he missed it. It had been their last link with the mundane. With the lights gone and the surreal outside world trying to break through the windows, the mundane would have looked pretty good.
Fear was endemic. The vehicle continued to lurch wildly, and the sounds of stress in the bulkheads were all too threatening. Charlie sensed that no one expected to come out of this alive, and there was almost a wish that it should end. Get it over with.
But gradually the motions of the Micro became less severe, and there were extended stretches of relatively unagitated flight.
“Maybe we’re through the worst of it,” said Morley, seated behind him. They were separated, one in each pair of seats.
To gain maximum balance
, Tony had said. Charlie understood now why he’d wanted every advantage he could get.
“I hope so,” Charlie said. Two emergency lamps were on, casting just enough of a pale glow to make out silhouettes. “You okay, Evelyn?”
“Fine.” Her voice sounded odd.
He couldn’t see her. She was behind him on the other side of the aisle.
The chaplain announced he was okay just as the Micro pitched forward and rolled. Charlie’s harness grabbed at his shoulder. His stomach squeezed down into a dark wet place as the craft kept turning, and he gripped the sides of the chair. A shadow fell across his window and he looked out, saw only darkness crosshatched by fire. Morley yelped, the first indication of fear the journalist had shown. Charlie was pleased to see he was human. It was annoying to be caught in a desperate situation with someone who seemed unbothered by the hazards.
With the microphone
, Charlie thought,
Morley somehow transcended events, looked in on them from outside. Now it’s gone, disconnected, and he’s just like the rest of us
.
“Did you see
that?
” Morley was staring out the window and his voice was pitched an octave higher than the rich baritone with which Transglobal viewers were familiar.
“Yeah,” said Charlie. He hadn’t, not really. But they were cruising again and that was all he cared about.
SSTO
Rome
Flight Deck, 146,000 kilometers from Luna.
10:45
P.M.
Verrano never saw the rock. It glided out of the random clutter on his screens and nailed the number two engine.
Rome
shuddered, the fuel line sealed off, and the engine shut down. The spacecraft went into a slow spin. Before he could get it under control, his copilot whispered a warning: “Big one coming.”
He went throttle up with everything he had.
The thing was behind them, barreling in, and he discovered that his rear opticals were gone, so he couldn’t see it. But he
felt
its presence, estimated its size from the radar returns at several hundred meters. A mountain.
The changing radar image suggested it was spinning.
In the passenger cabin, Rick Hailey’s heart was pounding furiously. He was pressed back hard in his seat, his eyes closed, listening to the crackle of debris raining off the hull, trying to think how he could put this experience into one of Haskell’s speeches. But he knew this was a critical moment, had heard the change in tone in the engines, had felt the sudden jerky turns, and knew the pilot was trying to evade
something
.
Several seats behind him, the TV correspondent was still talking into her microphone. Behind and on his left sat Sam Anderson and Isabel. Slade Elliott was back toward the rear of the spacecraft. Captain Pierce, skipper of the
Shadow
, survivor of a hundred desperate encounters.
But not this one.
The world broke open and a terrible cold seized Rick’s throat. He died wondering whether Charlie Haskell would be able to pay him an appropriate tribute.
Micro Flight Deck, 10:48
P.M.
“I think we’re okay.”
Saber cringed when he said it, knew instinctively that the remark would be unlucky. It sounded too much like an epitaph. And she was right.
The long-range scanners hadn’t been worth a damn. There was simply too much free-floating junk in their rear, all of it coming too fast. The radar had settled down, was pinging more or less steadily, and then immediately after Tony’s remark erupted into a cacophany of pings and bleeps.
“Son of a bitch,” said Tony.
It looked like a solid wall coming up from behind. “Range two k,” she said. “Closing at one-two-five.” Kilometers per hour.
They had about a minute.
The wall shut off everything; it was a dark sandstorm. She could see no end to it in any direction.
Tony, knowing he couldn’t outrun it, shut down the engine, rotated the clusters, and fired, changing the attitude of the bus. Then he relit, hoping to get above it, but Saber knew he wasn’t going to make it. She picked up the mike: “Brace yourselves.”