Impact

31

The fog turned to a drizzle as Abbey feverishly cleared rocks from the crater, prying them out with a pick and tossing them over the rim. The meteorite had punched through about a foot of soil into the bedrock below, spewing out dirt and leaving behind a fractured mass of stones and mud. She was surprised at how small the crater was, only about three feet deep and five feet wide. The rain was now drizzling steadily and the bottom of the crater was turning into a churned-up mess, a pool of muck mingled with broken rocks.

Abbey pried out a particularly large fragment and rolled it up to the crater's rim, Jackie grabbing it and dragging it out.

"There are a lot of damn rocks in here," said Jackie. "How're we going to know which is the meteorite?"

"Believe me, you'll know. It's made of metal--nickel iron."

"What if it's too heavy to lift?"

Abbey pried another rock out of the bottom, hefted it, dumped it over the rim. "We'll figure out something. The paper said it was a hundred pounds."

"The paper said that it might be as small as a hundred pounds."

"The bigger the better." Abbey cleared some smaller rocks and tossed out a few shovelfuls of viscous mud. As they worked, the drizzle became a steady rain. Even with her slicker she was soon soaked. Cold mud kept slopping over the tops of her boots until her feet were slushing and sucking with every movement.

"Get the bucket and rope out of the dinghy."

Jackie disappeared in the mist, returning five minutes later. Abbey tied the rope to the bucket handle and scooped up mud, which Jackie hauled out and dumped, handing it back for another load.

Abbey grunted as she hoisted up another bucket of mud. She took the shovel and began probing down into the muck with it, the tip clinking on rock. "That's bedrock, right there." More probing. "The meteorite's got to be down there, right among those busted-up rocks."

"So how big is it?"

Abbey thought for a moment, did a mental calculation. What was the specific gravity of iron? Seven and change. "A hundred-pound meteorite," she said, "would be about ten, twelve inches in diameter."

"That all?"

"That's plenty big enough." Abbey inserted the tip of the pick between two broken rocks and pried them apart with a sucking sound of mud, and wrestled them up the slope. She was getting coated with mud and the rain was trickling down her neck, but she didn't care. She was about to make the discovery of a lifetime.

Randy Worth screwed the Marea's engine panel back on and wiped off his greasy fingerprints. He shifted position and shined the light down into the engine compartment--everything looked normal, no sign of his work. He set the hatch back in place and dogged it down tight, again wiping it clean of greasy marks.

The tools went back into the backpack, which he zipped up and slung over his shoulder. He stood up and looked around, his eye traveling over every surface, seeking any inadvertent sign of his presence. All clean. He checked the engine settings, circuit breakers, and battery dial to make sure they were all in the position he had found them.

He ducked out of the pilothouse and listened toward the island. The rain was now drumming on the roof and pecking the surrounding ocean, but he could still hear the sounds of digging, the ring of iron against rock, the babble of excited conversation. It sounded like they'd be at it for a while yet.

He moved to the stern, untied his dinghy, and climbed in. His skin itched, his scalp crawled, and something funny was going on behind his eyeballs. Crank was what he needed, and fast. He'd worked hard--he'd earned it. He pulled hard with the oars, so hard that one jumped out of its oarlock. With a curse, his hands trembling, he refitted it and rowed on. Soon the Marea had disappeared in the mist and a few minutes later his own scow loomed up, streaked with rust and oil.

He climbed into his boat and retreated into the cuddy, where he fumbled around for the stash and pipe. He took out a rock with trembling fingers, tried to put it in the bowl, dropped it, swore, hunted it down, managed to get it in, and fired it up.

Oh motherfuck, that was good. He lay back with a groan, feeling his cock go hard with the rush, his thoughts turning to what he would do to those bitches when he got them.

Abbey continued shoveling mud into the bucket and prying out rocks, gradually clearing out the bottom of the crater where the bedrock had fractured. The rain continued, getting harder, and she could begin to hear surf on the invisible rocks below. A swell was making--they had better finish soon.

She pried out an exceptionally big rock and Jackie climbed down to help her manhandle it out of the hole. She probed some more with the shovel, then got on her hands and knees and felt about in the chilly muck with her hands. "It really busted things up down here. But I think we're getting close."

"You look a fright," said Jackie, with a laugh.

"You don't look like a debutante at the cotillion either."

More rocks, more mud came out of the hole. She stopped to feel around the muck with her hands.

"Abbey, we're not finding any meteorite."

"It's here. It's got to be."

She got on her knees and scooped mud off the granite bedrock below. The rain began washing the bedrock clean. Abbey could see, with mounting excitement, a radiative pattern of cracks in the bedrock, but the mud kept flowing in. "It's got to be right here," she said loudly, as if to make it so. She scooped more mud and rocks into the bucket.

"It wasn't one of the rocks we tossed out, was it?" Jackie asked.

"I told you, it's nickel iron!"

"Whoa, just asking."

Exasperated, her heart sinking, Abbey felt all over the bottom of the depression. Perhaps the meteorite was wedged so firmly it felt like part of the bedrock. She scooped as much of the mud and gravel up with her hands as she could, filling the bucket a few more times.

"Jackie, fill that bucket with seawater and we'll wash this clean."

Jackie disappeared down the hill with the bucket, and returned a few minutes later. Abbey dashed it over the muddy, broken layer of bedrock.

There was a gurgling sound and the water ran down a hole in the bedrock, just like going down the drain of a sink.

"What the fuck?" She stuck her fingers in the hole.

"I'll get some more water."

Jackie jogged back up the hill with the bucket slopping water over the side. Abbey snatched the bucket and poured it into the pit. Once again the water disappeared, as if down a drain, this time exposing a perfectly round hole in the bedrock, about four inches in diameter, going straight down into the Earth. A web of cracks radiated from it.

Abbey removed her glove and stuck her hand in the hole, feeling down as far as she could. The sides were as smooth as glass, a cylindrical hole so perfect it could have been drilled.

She seized a pebble and dropped it into the center of the hole. After a moment, she heard a faint splash from below.

Abbey stared up at Jackie. "It's not here. The meteorite isn't here."

"Where is it?"

"It just kept going." And, despite all her efforts to stifle it, she began to sob.