“We are effectively inside the coma,” Leonilla was saying. “This is not especially evident. The chemical activity is long past. But we see the shadow of the Earth like a long tunnel leading through the tail.”
Rick caught that last phrase. Nice, he thought. If I get a chance to broadcast live to Earth, I’ll use it.
They all had work, which they did while they chattered into recorders. Rick had a hand-held camera, a Canon, which he worked like a madman, changing lenses and film as rapidly as he could. He hoped the automatic features were in good order, and forced himself to take a few frames with widely different speeds and apertures, just in case.
The status board inexorably ticked off seconds.
The long lens gave a good view through the observation port. Rick saw: half a dozen large masses, many more small ones and a myriad of tiny glinting points, all enmeshed in pearly fog. He heard Baker’s voice behind him. “Duck’s-eye view of a shotgun blast.”
“Good phrasing,” Rick said.
“Yeah. Hope it’s not too good.”
“I have lost all signal from the radar,” Pieter Jakov said.
“Roger. Give it up and make visuals,” Baker said. “Houston, Houston, are you getting anything from the inside TV?”
“…roger, Hammerlab… JPL… Sharps is in love, send more… higher-power transmission…”
“I’ll put on higher power when the Hammer’s closer,” Baker said. He didn’t know if they heard. “We’re saving the batteries.” He looked up at the status board. Ten minutes before the solid objects got to closest approach. Twenty minutes maybe for it all to pass. A half-hour. “I’ll increase transmitter power in five minutes; say again, increase to full power transmission in five minutes.”
CLANG!
“What the fuck was that?” Baker demanded.
“Pressure remains unchanged,” Jakov said. “Pressure holding in all three capsules.”
“Good,” Rick muttered. They’d closed the airlocks to Apollo and Soyuz; it seemed a reasonable precaution. Rick stood by with the meteor patches anyway. Hammerlab was by far the largest target.
And just how did the engineers estimate the size that a meteor patch ought to be? Rick wondered. From their size — about the maximum-size hole it would be worth repairing? Anything bigger would finish them anyway? To hell with it. He went back to his photographs. Through the Canon lens he looked into a galaxy of foamy ice, a tremendous, slow shotgun blast that was visibly coming toward them, spreading around Hammerlab rather than sliding sideways. “Jesus, Johnny, it’s coming close.”
“Rojj. Pieter, get the main telescope uncovered. I’m going to full power. We’ll send transmissions from here on in. Houston, Houston, visual indicates Earth is in the path of outer edges of nucleus; I say again, Earth is in the path of outer nucleus. Impossible to estimate size of objects that may strike Earth.”
“Make certain that message gets through,” Leonilla Malik said. “Pieter, see that Moscow knows as well.” There was urgency and fear in her voice.
“Eh?” Rick Delanty said.
“It is passing east of the Earth,” Leonilla said. “The United States will be more exposed, but there will be more objects close to the Soviet Union. The opportunities for deliberate misinterpretation are too great. Some fanatic—”
“Why do you say this?” Jakov demanded.
“You know it is true,” she shouted. “Fanatics. Like the madmen who had my father killed because Great Stalin was not immortal! Do not pretend they do not exist.”
“Ridiculous,” Jakov snorted, but he went to the communications console, and Rick Delanty thought he spoke urgently.
Hammerfalclass="underline" One
In 1968 the close approach of an asteroid called Icarus set off a small but very definite end-of-the-world scare. There had already been rumors that a series of world-wide cataclysms was going to begin in 1968. When news that Icarus was heading toward earth and was going to make its closest approach on June 15, 1968, got around, it somehow became combined with the other end-of-the-world rumors. In California groups of hippies headed for the mountains of Colorado saying that they wanted to be safe on high ground before the asteroid hit and caused California to sink into the sea.
“O my people! Hear the words of Matthew! Does he not say that the sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give off her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven? And does this not come to pass even in this very hour?
“Repent, my people! Repent, and watch, for the Lord cometh, the Hammer will fall upon this wicked Earth. Hear the words of the Prophet Micah: ‘For behold, the Lord cometh forth out of his place, and will come down, and tread upon the high places of the Earth. And the mountains shall be molten under him, and the valleys shall be cleft, as wax before the fire, and as the waters that are poured down a steep place.’
“For He cometh! For he cometh to judge the Earth, and with righteousness to judge the world, and the peoples with his truth!”
“You have heard the Reverend Henry Armitage on ‘The Coming Hour.’ This and all broadcasts of ‘The Coming Hour’ have been made possible by your donations, and we ask the Lord to bless those who have given so generously.
“No further donations will be needed. The hour comes and is now at hand.”
It was a bright, cloudless summer day. A brisk wind blew in from the sea, and the Los Angeles basin was clear and lovely.
Bloody good thing, Tim Hamner thought.
He’d been faced with a terrible problem. The spectacular night skies could best be seen from the mountains, and Tim had stayed at his Angeles Forest observatory for most of the week before; but the best view of Hamner-Brown’s closest approach would be from space. Since he couldn’t be in space, Tim wanted the next best thing: to watch all of it on color television. It hadn’t been hard to persuade Charlie Sharps to invite him out to JPL.
But he was supposed to be there by nine-thirty, and the clear skies with their bright velvet ribbons of light had kept him up until dawn. He’d stretched out on the couch, careful not to go to bed, but a few minutes’ rest wouldn’t hurt…
Of course he’d overslept. Now, muzzy-headed and wateryeyed, Tim aimed rather than drove his Grand Prix down the Ventura Freeway toward Pasadena. Despite his late start he expected to be on time. There wasn’t much traffic.
“Fools,” Tim muttered. Hammer Fever. Thousands of Angelenos taking to the hills. Harvey Randall had told him that freeway traffic would be light all week, and he’d been right. Light traffic for — in Mark Czescu’s brilliant phrasing — Hot Fudge Sundae (which fell on a Tuesdae this week).
There was a flare of red ahead, a ripple of red lights. Traffic slowed. Tim cursed. There was a truck just ahead of him, so he couldn’t see what was fouling things up. Automatically he cut over into the right-hand lane, acing out a sweet little old lady in a green Ford. She cursed horribly as Tim cut in front of her.
“Probably wears her tennis shoes to bed,” Tim muttered. Just what was happening ahead? The traffic seemed to have stopped entirely. He saw a parking lot that stretched away before him as far as he could see. All the way to the Golden State interchange, Tim thought. “Damn.” He glanced over his shoulder. No highway patrolmen in sight. He cut onto the shoulder and drove forward, passing stopped cars, until he came to an off-ramp.
To his right was Forest Lawn Cemetery. Not the original one, fabled in song and story, but the Hollywood Hills colony. The streets were thick with traffic too. Tim turned left and went under the freeway. His face was a grim mask of worry and hate. Bad enough not to be in his observatory on Hot Fudge Sundae Tuesdae, but this! He was in beautiful downtown Burbank, and his comet was approaching perigee. “It’s not fair!” Tim shouted. Pedestrians glanced at him, then looked away, but Tim didn’t care. “Not fair!”