The Skies of Pern (21 page)

That display gave him another frisson of apprehension. When had that clock started ticking down? He’d come as fast as he could without timing it. But then, he hadn’t anticipated that this could be a real crisis.

He inched carefully along the wall, moving people who were almost unaware of being manipulated, so intent were they upon the monitor’s reports. He recognized several as off-duty technicians. Being tall, he eased into a spot in the corner and still had a clear view of the monitor. In front of him, Stinar, the duty officer, was standing with the barrel-chested man of medium height, dark-haired, with a handsome hooked nose, whom F’lessan recognized as Erragon, Wansor’s assistant. Shouldn’t he have been in the conference room? F’lessan chided himself. Lytol and D’ram could explain adequately to Wansor but Erragon was needed in here, interpreting the
Yoko
’s telemetry. When this was over, he’d undoubtedly report to Master Wansor the more technical details of this unusual occurrence. The two were intent on the visual transmitted to Landing by
Yoko
.

At maximum magnification,
Yoko
showed a small image of the nucleus, embedded in clouds of dust.
Yoko
added another window, attempting to trace it back to its original orbit. Details came up as:

But F’lessan, knowing all these figures would be available later, concentrated on the comet, now resolving jets and debris. Yes, it must be a comet. That would explain its slowing with respect to the stars. Outgassing can push a comet about, making an estimate of its orbit even harder. Furthermore, with the long axis running from the northwest to the southeast, who could tell? It may skid across our atmosphere and disappear south, thought F’lessan hopefully.

Yet another working window opened, labeled Searching. Images
of what F’lessan knew to be Pernese space flashed past, the streaking orbits of some of the minor planets against the background of northern hemisphere stars.

“What’s all that about?” Stinar asked Erragon who was blinking at the rapidly altering display.

“I’d hazard the guess that it’s searching for any old images of the comet. It is possible, you know,” Erragon went on, frowning at the speed of the search pattern, “that the comet originated in the Oort cloud.” His grin was forced. “It might even have been seen by our Ancestors.”

“Really?”

Erragon sighed, flicking his attention to some of the other sidebars. “We have a lot of material to review, you know. Just for our home system. Ah, yes,” and he pointed back to the search. “The material we’re seeing was released from the comet two to three weeks ago. Here we go,” he added, intent on the newest sidebar readings.

At that point, Erragon visibly tensed, leaning slightly forward on the balls of his feet in an attitude that confirmed F’lessan’s bad feelings about the alteration in probability of impact. He wasn’t certain that the error ellipse of impact was reassuring. Unless the comet suddenly pulled itself up in an escape parabola. Estimate to Perigee decreasing: 1500 seconds, or 25 minutes, F’lessan told himself. He also didn’t like standing around, watching, in a room full of people who didn’t seem to realize what could happen. The tension was palpable but everyone was so focused on the screen,
too scared to ask questions or to break into the concentration of Stinar or Erragon.

New figures at 1200 seconds, from the
Yoko
’s synchronic orbit over Pern, gave coordinates of Range 71377km,
Yoko
latitude 45.IN,
Yoko
longitude 118.4m. The magnitude was –5, which was bright enough and getting brighter and the fireball was suddenly moving a degree every minute. He stepped right beside Stinar and Erragon.

“Where will it impact?” F’lessan murmured for their ears only.

“We still don’t know that it will,” Stinar said softly, restlessly shifting his feet, turning his head sideways so that his words just reached F’lessan.

“There’s a three-hundred-kilometer range error,” Erragon said as if that was significant.

“Where?” Stinar demanded.

“Right now, the range extends along the farther Eastern Island Ring.”

“On the islands themselves, or in the sea?”

Stinar took the hand-control unit from his pocket and punched in a command. The monitor opened a small window in the right corner, while the Probability Impact percentage rose steadily into the 50’s and the error ellipse—that narrow band along the far islands to which the Fireball was inexorably aimed—got smaller. The new window showed the Eastern Sea as it must be seen from
Yoko
, and the scattered islands of both Eastern Rings. A wide band was superimposed over the upper islands.

“Looks more like the islands,” Stinar said with a little shrug.

F’lessan knew that the islands were uninhabited, too far out in the Eastern Ring Sea to be attractive for anyone, even Toric, to hold; except whichever island currently housed the Abominator exiles—and no one but N’ton knew where that was.

“I don’t like that,” Erragon said, stiffening.

“Why?”

“Those islands are all volcanic. An impact on them might trigger eruptions all along that chain,” he said, pointing.

“Then we’ll just hope it falls in the sea,” Stinar said with a slightly nervous laugh.

“That will produce other hazards,” Erragon said solemnly.

F’lessan caught his breath. He’d seen volcanoes erupt; the one Piemur had discovered off the westernmost tip of Southern Hold blew up periodically, sending clouds of gray ash to blot the sun and stifle even the rich tropical vegetation. The one in the near Eastern Ring, which the ancients had called Young Mountain, liked to send immense boulders skyward and great lava flows down its side, spinning burning chunks onto its neighbors. The islands that the comet was heading for were much larger and he shuddered at the thought of all of them becoming active. They would cause tidal waves, which could have a disastrous effect on coastal areas—like Monaco.

“It could
still
just graze,” Erragon murmured to Stinar, in a tone that gave F’lessan no confidence in that possibility at all.

He glanced up at the legend, numbers whirring into new configurations all the time, as
Yoko
telemetry updated them.

“It’s only got a few minutes to change course,” F’lessan said.

Erragon glanced at him, blinking, as if he’d forgotten the bronze rider’s presence. “Did you know your Weyrleaders are in the conference room with Master Wansor?”

Lessa and F’lar were also here? When—and why—had they arrived? Obscurely he was glad they had, especially the way this event was proceeding.

“No, but I’d rather be in here and know the worst,” F’lessan said, watching Erragon’s shoulders twitch in startled reaction to the last word. “Where will it hit us?”

“We don’t know yet,” but F’lessan saw Erragon’s eye flick to the Impact Probability, which flickered onto 60 percent.

All three men caught their breath as the percentage jumped in a matter of seconds to 100 percent.

“That’s still a consequence of the grazing impact,” Erragon said but F’lessan didn’t think he believed that. “The ellipse is shrinking. Can you adjust
Yoko
’s visuals?”

On the map in the right-hand corner, the figures flickered in latitude and longitude, following the last downward plunge of the comet. Filling that screen at maximum magnification, the tuberlike shape of the comet nucleus showed geysers and jets
blowing into space; chunks breaking off, floating slowly away. F’lessan was amazed since he knew the speed at which the comet was traveling and that eerie, almost dignified, breakup of its parts was like a Gather dance.

“It’s going to miss …” Stinar whispered, unconsciously pushing both hands in a deflecting motion.

“Just a few more degrees …” Erragon, too, was taut as if, by exerting sufficient willpower, he could shift the plummeting fireball south and east.

“It’s got to be far enough away …” F’lessan was adding his tension in an unconscious effort to affect a descent that no effort could now alter.

F’lessan found himself squinting at the sudden brightness of the picture—the brightness of sunlit sea or the comet. The magnitude of its dust trail now registered an eye-blinding intensity of –9!

A new message imposed itself prominently:
120 seconds to perigee—105 seconds to impact
.

The monitor altered abruptly, darkening, and F’lessan saw the line on the sidebar that indicated
Yoko
was displaying a constructed image, made up of the optical, infrared, microwave, and other print capabilities that Erragon had once tried to describe to F’lessan. The nucleus of the comet looked suddenly darker but the reduction of the glare relieved his eyes. Ominously the message now read
60 seconds to atmosphere
.

Another read
20 seconds to impact, Angle 12° : magnitude of dust trail
–9.

People splayed fingers in front of their eyes. The glare-reduced optical version saved them from the splintering whiteness that erupted, which the monitor hastily continued to reduce. A screen flicked to a new image—identified as “synthetic radar”—as
Yoko
attempted to see through the clouds.

Twenty seconds couldn’t have elapsed, F’lessan thought and then realized that
Yoko
was slightly behind in its reporting. Where had it impacted? The island chain or the sea?

No one spoke. All seemed to be holding their breath. The silence was broken by printers churning out reams of hard copy
that fell unnoticed into baskets or spilled to the floor. As the comet was spilling its substance onto the sea? Flaming molten debris down on the nearest Ring islands?

Even the image on the screen seemed to recoil from the incredible brightness. Squinting through his fingers, F’lessan saw the radar image showing the surface topography—and a series of rings on the ocean. Waves traveled outward from the impact point, immediately followed by a much higher fountain of water as the sea fell back into the impact crater. Then he had the distinct impression of a wall moving out with astonishing speed and saw a column of red-brown steam spreading down to the sea, with black bits whirling up and out, and then vast billows rushing out from it across the sea.

Still the silence in the Interface office was broken only by machines doing what they were programmed to do: disgorge columns of figures. The human observers struggled to absorb what they had just seen, were still witnessing as retinal afterimages: the creation of a storm of staggering proportions, blossoming up and outward. Steam, gas vapor, and whatever the head of the fireball had been composed of were part of the storm. The fireball had extinguished itself and then hit the sea, F’lessan repeated, making his mind believe what his eyes had seen: it made a hole that made a wave, which fell back, and sent up a fountain of water. Abruptly the data on the screen changed.

“It came down in the sea!” Stinar’s sigh of relief held a triumphant note.

Ramoth saw this, too
, Golanth told his rider in a muted tone. That’s when F’lessan recalled that Erragon had said that the Benden Weyrleaders and Wansor had been watching this on the conference room screen.

They weren’t all that lucky, after all, that the comet had missed the volcanic islands. A huge mass like that hitting open sea would cause a great deal of trouble. There’d be a shock wave, wouldn’t there? In how many more minutes? How much damage would that cause? Was Landing far enough away? Monaco Bay was at sea level. It’d be flooded to the hills and they were a long way up the sloping beachfront.

He tried to calm these thoughts, to resurrect the necessary information from lessons long past. He started to recall sentences, paragraphs, and irrelevant details.

A cold fear in his guts increasing with every second, F’lessan peered at the screen as the cloud boiled, red-brown, to occlude what was actually happening. They ought to
know
what was happening at sea level, the bronze rider thought; there was something—. Everyone in the office had now recovered their wits and their tongues. If everyone around him would only stop babbling excitedly about this spectacular event, he could think. Where was Tai? She might know. She should be here. So should T’gellan. The coast of the southern continent was not going to escape the effects of something so big dropping at that speed!

Suddenly the view on the screen altered, not only dropping the infrared screen but also presenting a new perspective, well back from the impact site. A discernible wave, a darkness of water, was moving outward, just faster than the flat-topped clouds boiling up and out. More data was being presented in margins. F’lessan blinked, unable to decipher the critical messages given.

F’lessan kept his eyes on the screen. The
Yoko
adjusted its viewpoint by pulling back at speed, back beyond the hump of one of the big rainforest islands just north of the impact point. It was burning! Burning? Oh, yes, memory informed F’lessan, the thermal flare of the comet would cause flash fires with the heat of its passing.