Moonfall

9.

Micro Passenger Cabin. 10:34 P.M.

They were also watching the comet on board the Micro, where the images from the Farside observatory had expanded into pure light. Even in the cargo hold, where Bigfoot had spread out some cushions left there for him by Tony, a wallscreen was picking up the Transglobal feed. Keith Morley's picture was on-screen, with a voice-over running conversation between the journalist in space and Bruce Kendrick on the ground.

"Here in the Micro, Bruce, everyone's quiet. We're just waiting now to see what's going to happen."

"Can you see anything yet, Keith?"

"No. The horizon's bathed in light. In all directions. I wish 1 had a camera to show you. But nothing's changed out there as far as I can tell."

"How high are you?"

"1 don't know. High. Maybe six thousand meters."

They were closer to five thousand meters a moment later, when the light exploded.

Impact came at 10:35:17 EDT.

The world watched through its array of orbiting telescopes. What they saw resembled not a large meteor crash, but a lightning strike. Tomiko had filled the sky, filled the lenses, floating in the optical field until there was nothing but comet. And then it came silently down, not a giant piece of rock and ice, nor a falling star of immense proportions. Rather, it was a lightning bolt blasting the moonscape, melting the regolith and its underlying rock, crushing the mantle, vaporizing everything within hundreds of kilometers of ground zero.

The Moon spasmed.

The comet nucleus ripped deep into the ground before exploding in an enormous fireball that melted the mantle to a depth of more than six hundred kilometers, exposing the outer core. Shock waves rolled through the lunar interior at thousands of kilometers per hour. The fireball expanded over the fracturing surface, moving seemingly in slow motion, spreading around the Moon, cradling it, engulfing it.

Tony watched it come. From his perspective, it was a wall of fire racing in from the north. He sensed the sudden stillness in the passenger compartment, saw the moonscape break up beneath him, saw Alphonsus disappear into the ground. A curtain of dust rolled over the churning scene, and the darkened flight deck glowed red.

The Micro fled before the fire, crawling away at a constant one g.

The sensors exploded in a tornado of pings and bleeps. Debris rattled against the hull. The Micro rocked and dipped and swerved, a leaf caught in a vast wind. A tread came off and a warning lamp blinked on.

Fire filled the sky.

It seared his eyes and licked at the blister housing the flight deck.

Saber switched off the warning. "Rising external temperatures," she said.

Tony nodded and refrained from sarcasm.

Something hit from below, hurled them higher, snapped his neck back. Bulkheads and decks creaked.

"Water line," said Saber. "Cargo."

That meant Bigfoot was getting wet. "Shut her down," said Tony.

"Done."

The attitude jets were firing in frantic sequences, trying to maintain stability.

Tony was hurled against his harness and thrown back into his seat. The Micro rolled and fell and soared. The storm swept it along, a steel bubble in a sea of fire.

Morley's running account was broadcast from the Micro to a Comsat, relayed to his New York studio, where it was combined with the network signal and returned to Tony's console. But the signal, not surprisingly, had died. The monitor carrying the Transglobal telecast was a blizzard of interference. Tony thought about informing the journalist he was no longer getting through, that he might as well give it up, but decided to say nothing. It kept Morley occupied, and maybe served as a link to safety for the others.

"Engine overheating," said Saber.

"Roger." Let it overheat. They'd be lucky if that was the worst that happened.

Something inside let go with a bang.

"Passenger cabin," Saber told him. "CDS." That was the Coolant Delivery System. Nothing to worry about.

A tentacle of melted rock splashed across the blister. The glass began to bubble. Tony opened his channel to cargo. "Bigfoot, you okay?"

"Great ride, Tony."

"Doing what I can. We're almost out of it."

Saber glanced at him. The world outside was full of fire. "What makes you say that?"

"One way or another. We can't take much more of this."

"Engine's in the red," she said.

He couldn't shut down. The Micro needed two-point-four kps to avoid falling back to the surface. Acceleration was passing two-point-zero. He watched it climb, not knowing whether there was a surface to fall back to, suspecting he'd be carried along with the blast whatever he did.

Two-point-two.

The storm clattered and banged and raged against the hull.

He'd have to cut power once he reached escape velocity. Or risk losing the engine and possibly the ship.

"Tony, we're pushing it."

"Don't worry," he said. "There's always a certain amount of leeway built into these things."

Two-point-three.

Red lamps were blinking all across the status board.

Two-point-four. Tony gave it another minute and killed the engine.

Riding now in relative quiet, they listened to the storm beating against the hull, the squeals of the status board, and the electronic burble of the instruments.

Saber picked up the mike. "Everybody okay down there?"

Evelyn's voice responded: "Alive and well."

"Good. Stay with it. We know it's loud but we're doing okay." She explained why they'd shut the engine down. "But we're still moving. We'll relight in a few minutes and begin to accelerate again."

At that moment the flames fell away, and the Micro rose above great, dark, boiling clouds. A river of light exploded from one and arced gracefully across Tony's field of vision.

Then he was out among the stars. Earth, blue and serene, floated almost directly ahead.

Saber sighed happily.

"Too soon," he said.

To underscore the point, a slab of rock the size of a pickup spun out of a dark cloud and took off an auxiliary antenna. It would have done much worse, but Tony reacted quickly and rolled away.

• • • SSTO Arlington Flight Deck, 20,000 kilometers from Luna. 10:36 P.M.

The leading edge of the blast was expanding at almost three hundred kilometers per second. Two other spacecraft were in its path, Arlington, a little over an hour away; and Rome, which had gotten about a six-hour start.

There hadn't been much George Culver could do to protect his plane other than put as much distance as he could between himself and the Moon. The short, stubby wings that supported the SSTO in atmospheric flight had retracted, antennas were down, passengers had been warned of approaching turbulence.

In this case, the term was a mild understatement. Behind them, the entire universe seemed to have lit up.

Mary wiped her lips with the back of her hand. "I don't know," she said, watching it roll toward them.

They'd stayed too long. There hadn't been enough time to get everybody off, but no one had wanted to admit it. They should have left with Rome, just cut their losses and gone. But who was going to make that kind of decision?

"Hang on." It was all George could think of to say in the instant before the wave washed over them. Astrolab. 10:37 P.M.

The AstroLab was located in central Massachusetts, not far from the Quabbin Reservoir. It was housed in one of those garish ultramodern steel and glass abstract buildings, designed to demonstrate a kind of mathematical flow but which really only succeeded in marring the landscape. It would have looked good on Boston's Commercial Street. But among lakes and forest it was an abomination. It reminded Wes Feinberg of a swirl of lime Jell-O.

At the critical moment in the event, Feinberg did something that those who knew him well might have predicted: He left the turmoil of the Astrolab, where his colleagues were crowded breathlessly around the main display, watching raw data flow in through radio, infrared, and X-ray telescopes, from ACCD's CMM photon counting systems, and UV detectors. And he wandered out to the north walkway.

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…"