Moonfall

3.

Moonbase, Main Plaza. 6:01 P.M.

The news that an effort would be made to get the last group out had fired Chaplain Pinnacle's soul. He'd tried to maintain a stoic attitude throughout his ordeal. Into Thy hands, 0 Lord… But life was priceless, and God knew that Mark did not want to part with it.

He sat at a table beside a cluster of palms outside the Victor Hugo sidewalk cafe. No one walked now among the trees, the lights were out in the offices, and the artificially generated breeze, sharp with mint, blew through the parks. In all the vast wooded expanse of Main Plaza, he saw only a young couple, strolling quietly, making their way gradually toward the tram station.

A handful of people came off one of the up-ramps, hurried across the center of the mall, and joined them. The chaplain glanced at his watch. There would only be four more flights out, three to the single plane that remained orbiting. And finally his flight, whose destination was in God's hands.

He was nervous about the dinner, afraid his fear would show. He'd tried prayer, had begged for courage, but still his hand shook and his voice played tricks on him.

One of his parishioners, a young woman, had come to the chapel when she'd heard he was staying and offered him a narcotic. Something to quiet his nerves. Get him through the ordeal. The stuff they called "silver." It was illegal, and he'd been startled when she'd produced the packet. He'd said no, he wouldn't need it, thank you very much, but she'd held it out and in the end he concluded it was his duty to take it from her. Remove the temptation. She'd kissed his cheek, wished him luck, and hurried away. He'd actually considered using it. But he did not know whether he had a tolerance for such things, and in the end he'd dropped it into a trash receptacle.

His cell phone beeped.

"Chaplain Pinnacle," he said.

"Chaplain, this is Evelyn."

"Yes." He was thrown off a bit by her familiarity. "What is it, Dr. Hampton?"

"I just wanted to remind you that we'll be serving dinner in a few minutes."

"No, I hadn't forgotten."

"Good." She paused. "You are okay?"

"Oh, yes," he said. "I'm fine."

"The vice president will be there." As if he needed enticement.

"Yes, I-I was just on my way."

The tram glided into the station. Its doors opened and everybody got on. Then the doors closed with an audible click and the vehicle slid out into the trees. He watched until it disappeared into heavy woodland on the far side of Main Plaza. San Francisco. 3:17 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time (6:17 P.M. EDT).

Jerry Kapchik left work as soon as he decently could and went looking for a telescope. Wal-Mart had sold out. So had Sears. There was a specialty shop on Ocean Avenue, Galileo's. They'd been cleaned out, too, except for a 90mm Grazier reflector. The Grazier cost five thousand dollars. "Worth every penny," the salesman urged. It came complete with an optical shield that permitted the viewer to look directly at the Sun; and it had a programmable system with over seventeen thousand celestial objects in storage. "Just look up the code in the Grazier manual for whatever you want to see," said the salesman, "lock onto the North Star, and punch the code into the keyboard. The telescope will automatically find the object, focus, and track until you tell it to do something else. Or, of course, until the object sets."

"Of course."

"With this," he added, "you'll want your own observatory."

Jerry tried to talk him down, but the salesman explained he wasn't sure he even wanted to sell it to Jerry because he'd had a call ten minutes before. Somebody was on his way, hoping to buy one. "You're lucky," he said. "Day like this, I had to tell him we can't hold anything." He looked at his watch, as if the prospective buyer was even now rushing up the street.

It was more than Jerry had intended to spend, and he wasn't sure how he was going to explain it to Marisa. But something had come over him. Maybe it had to do with taking advantage of his son's sudden interest in astronomy. Maybe years from now Jimmy would remember the Grazier as the turning point in his life. Anyway, this was going to be a special evening and they should have the right kind of equipment to follow the event.

It was packed in two cases, but the clerk assured him that assembly was really very easy. Jerry picked up a spare battery, hauled the cases outside, and loaded them into a taxi. The taxi carried him to the parking lot just off Skyline Boulevard, where Jerry left his car every day to catch the monorail into center city.

He stopped en route to call Marisa and get it over with. She was initially unhappy and urged him to return it, but by the time he got home she'd decided the investment might be worthwhile. "As long as it gets used," she told him. "But if it just sits in the attic, you are a dead man."

Marisa had been an emergency medical technician with the Pacifica rescue unit for several years. Now she taught emergency techniques at the San Francisco campus of the University of California. "The rescue unit has been put on alert," she told him.

"The comet?" he asked.

She shrugged. "People are nervous. I'd call an alert, too, if I were running things."

After dinner they took out the telescope. The clerk had been right: It was easy to assemble. They snapped the tube assembly into the cradle and locked the cradle onto the tripod. They tightened a couple of clamps, attached the computer, inserted the battery, punched a button to initiate a series of self-tests, and they were ready to go.

Jimmy and Erin delivered a gratifying display of enthusiasm. The only problem was that the telescope was clearly designed to be put in one place and left there. Jerry recalled the salesman's remark that he'd want his own observatory.

Nevertheless, they dragged it out onto the side deck and pointed it toward the comet, which now overwhelmed the eastern sky. The Moon was just visible, a child's ball floating beyond a red-lit thundercloud. It was early evening, the Sun still a couple of hours from setting. The wind was cool and crisp off the sea.

Jerry set the scope to manual operation. "Keep it simple," he told Marisa. He used the viewfinder to sight the instrument while Erin placed a stool on the ground. Then he looked into the lens. He saw only a dark circle, and touched one of the knobs. The Moon jumped into the image, slipped out to the left, and finally settled in place. He turned it over to the kids.

While her brother fidgeted, Erin climbed onto her stool, looked, and aaaahed. "I can see craters," she said.

Jerry stood back and studied the sky. The comet was very large, and streamers reached out and caught the Moon in a gauzy embrace. It chilled him.

While the kids looked and made noises about how wonderful it was, he caught Marisa's eye. "I was wrong," he said.

"About what?"

"Let's pack up and get out of here. Just for the night."

Her eyes went wide. "Jerry, the TV says there aren't any motels left out there. And we can't just drop in on Helen without warning."

"We'll get our camping gear," he said. "But let's do it."

They owned two vehicles, a Mazda Superhawk and a Chrysler wagon. Marisa, despite her protests, had foreseen the event and prepared for a quick getaway. Both cars were already half-loaded. They added food, water, and clothes. Marisa found her emergency aid kit and put it in the Mazda. They also packed the computer and some rare books that Jerry had been collecting, and Marisa's jewelry and the silverware. And their bank books and passports and U.S. bonds. And the kids' favorite toys. And the Grazier telescope.