Impact

70

Driving south on Interstate 295, near Freeport, Ford noticed the sudden light in the night sky. He peered out the windscreen at the Moon and, with a sudden feeling of dread, pulled off the highway to get a better look. He stepped outside in the summer night and stared, aghast, at the jet of light rising from the Moon's surface. As he watched, more cars began pulling off the highway, people getting out to stare and take pictures.

A long trail of glowing material seemed to be shooting away from the Moon's surface, elongating across the night sky, blazing yellow. And on the opposite side was a similar puff of debris, more bulbous, material ejected as if from an impact.

It looked exactly like the Moon had been shot through by something that entered on the right and exited on the left.

Another shot from the thing on Deimos?

No question about it. And this time a much larger projectile of strange matter must have been used, big enough to create a spectacular display on Earth. Perhaps even designed to create a display. The last one had largely gone unnoticed; this one wouldn't. Even as he watched, the tail of debris kept extending itself, gradually elongating into a broad curve by the Moon's gravity.

This was striking confirmation that Abbey was right: that the alien artifact on Deimos was a weapon and had fired again, this time at the Moon. But why? As a demonstration of power?

There was no sense gaping by the side of the road, thought Ford. He had a plane to catch. He slipped back into his car and switched on the radio, tuning it to the local NPR station. The thunderous sounds of Bach's Passacaglia and Fugue in C Minor came out the speakers, but almost immediately a newscaster broke in, interrupting the program with a special announcement about the "extraordinary phenomenon occurring to the Moon."

"We reached Elaine Dahlquist," the announcer said, "an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Dr. Dahlquist, can you tell us what we're seeing up there?"

"My initial guess, Joe, would be that the Moon was struck by a major asteroid, perhaps two fragments at once, striking simultaneously on either side."

"Why didn't anyone see it coming?"

"Good question. Evidently we're dealing with an asteroid that escaped the attention of Spacewatch and other near-Earth asteroid search programs. Here at Harvard-Smithsonian we've turned our telescopes on the Moon, and I understand the Keck Observatory and the Hubble Space Telescope are also looking at it--as well as thousands of other telescopes, amateur and professional."

"Is there any danger to us on Earth?" the announcer asked.

"There are reports of an electromagnetic pulse or a shower of charged particles causing scattered power failures and computer network problems. Other than that, I'd say we're safe here on Earth. The Moon is two hundred and forty thousand miles away."

Ford turned off the radio. As he drove down the interstate, the light in the sky continued to increase, slowly but steadily, as the debris cloud extended out. It was yellowish in color, grading off to reddish hues at the edges--hot, condensing debris from the strike. But the show would soon be curtained; the intermittent clouds that had earlier covered the sky had given way to a squall line of black weather, looming on the horizon, flickering with internal lightning.

He glanced at the clock: he was half an hour from the Portland airport; he'd catch the midnight flight to D.C. and be there by two or three A.M.

But first, he had to set up a little sting.