Moonfall

TRANSGLOBAL SPECIAL REPORT. 2:31 P.M.

Distributed to participating networks via Pool Agreement.

"This is Keith Morley reporting live from Moonbase, where Comet Tomiko is now very large in the eastern sky, and where the vice president of the United States has announced that he is holding fast to his intention to "lock the door and turn out the lights." Drama is building as the comet approaches. It's due here in a few hours. According to Jack Chandler, the director of Moonbase, the last scheduled flight will depart at six-thirty P.M., leaving behind the vice president and several others, who will try to return to Skyport by microbus.

"But the bus that will carry Haskell and six other people will barely be off the surface before the comet hits. Operations people here are not confident the vehicle can survive the blast that is expected at impact. Bruce, I'll be staying with this story, and we'll just have to see how it plays out.

"This is Keith Morley at Moonbase." SSTO Rome Passenger Cabin. 2:33 P.M.

They were about an hour and a half from departure out of lunar orbit. Rick Hailey had been watching Earth set while a moonbus approached. He bit into a tuna sandwich and turned his attention to the bus as it drew alongside. It cruised in tandem for a few minutes, a large black sphere with the pilot's blister at the top. The buses looked clumsy on the ground, but in flight they had their own special grace.

Light spilled out of the windows and he could see people moving inside. It drifted gradually closer, passing beyond his window's angle of view. Then the pilot announced that docking was imminent. "Please remain in your seat," he asked, "until we get the incoming passengers settled."

Rick felt the shudder that marked the moment of contact, heard hatches open, heard voices, and watched the new arrivals begin to file into the cabin, coming through the main airlock.

There were no flight attendants to help. Instead, at the captain's request, a dozen or so passengers had volunteered to act in that capacity and had been issued white armbands and given a crash course by the flight engineer in kitchen capabilities and whatnot. Now this group squired the newcomers to the bloc of seats reserved for them.

They were quiet, subdued, obviously happy to be at last on the plane. Slade Elliott was among them. Elliott, whose career, like Charlie's, depended on image, also knew enough not to take the first stage out of town. He'd hung on until near the end. But you didn't see him getting caught up in the general crash. He was Rick's kind of guy. And with the action hero on board, the man who'd escaped a thousand dangers, Rick felt safer.

Outside, the comet was rising, a great orange spume against the black sky. He looked at it and thought about the vice president. Charlie Haskell was going to die out there, and Rick wished he could prevent it. He knew there was a lesson to be learned here, but he hadn't quite sorted out in his own mind precisely what it was.

Charlie was genuinely likable. But the poor son of a bitch had been booby-trapped by events. Rick knew that when the time came to publish his memoirs, the loss of Charlie Haskell would be one of the more compelling chapters.

His own political career was now in dire jeopardy as well. None of the other candidates was likely to take him on. He'd had to burn a few bridges and he was now Haskell's guy. Some would even be inclined to believe Charlie's "turn out the lights" remark had been Rick's idea.

Rick wouldn't object to going to work for the other party if someone were to make the right offer. It was a pity really. You don't get many shots at the White House. And it was all gone. Blown out of the water just like that.

And Haskell's sacrifice was probably unnecessary. The voters have a short memory, Charlie. He wondered whether the vice president had even stopped to consider how much damage he was doing to his friends. Still, the road to the presidency seemed to run right through Moonbase. Right through the heart of that goddam comet.

More hatches closed somewhere in the bowels of the plane.

Rick pulled down the shade.