“All for drill,” Frank said. “But maybe the drill’s worth the effort.”
“Eh?” Joanna had the stove going now. It roared in the late afternoon.
“Nothing silly about being ready for the collapse of civilization,” Frank said. “Next time it won’t be the Hammer, it’ll be something else. But it’ll be something. Read your newspapers.”
That’s it, Joanna thought. He’s got me thinking that way. And that’s why… it sure made more sense to be teamed up with Frank Stoner than Mark Czescu if civilization was coming to an end.
And Frank had wanted to go to the Mojave. Only Mark talked him out of it. Mark couldn’t quite admit to Hammer Fever. It would look silly.
They ate earlier than they usually did. Frank insisted. When they finished, there was just enough light to boil out the cooking pots. Then they lay down on their sleeping bags in near darkness, watching the glow die out over the Pacific, until the night grew cool and they climbed in. Joanna had brought her own bag and hadn’t zipped it together with Mark’s, although they usually did on camp-outs.
The light died in the west. One by one the stars came out. At first there were only stars. Then the turning sky brought a luminous film up from the east. It blended with the glowing lights over Los Angeles, grew brighter, until by midnight it was brighter than L.A., as bright as a good northern aurora. Still it thickened and brightened until only a few stars showed through the Earth-enveloping tail of Hamner-Brown Comet.
To keep themselves awake, they talked. Crickets talked around them. They had slept that afternoon, though neither Frank nor Mark would tell that to the others. It would have been an admission that each was in his thirties and feeling it. Frank told stories about the ways the world might end. Mark kept interrupting to make points of his own, adding details, or anticipating what Frank would say and saying it first.
Joanna listened with increasing impatience. She fell silent, brooding. Mark always did that. It never bothered her before. Why was she getting pissed off at him now? Part of the same pattern. Wow, Joanna thought. Female instincts? Glom on to the strongest guy around? That didn’t make sense. It certainly wasn’t part of her philosophy. She was Joanna, fully liberated, her own person, in control of her life…
The conflict made her think of other things. She wasn’t yet thirty, but she was getting there, and what had she done? What was she doing? She couldn’t just go on, making a few bucks when Mark was out of work, bopping around the country on a motorcycle. That was a lot of fun, but dammit, she ought to do something serious, one permanent thing…
“I bet I can get the packs set so nobody can see the stove,” Mark was saying. “Jo, want to make coffee? Jo?”
Full dawn found Frank and Joanna asleep. Mark smiled as if he’d won a contest. He enjoyed watching dawn break. It didn’t happen often enough these days. Today’s dawn still carried an elfin light, sunlight faintly thinned and transmuted by gases and dust brought inward from interstellar space.
It occurred to Mark that if he started breakfast now, he could reach a telephone while Harv Randall could be expected to be still at home. Randall had invited him to join the news team on Hot Fudge Tuesdae, but Mark had dithered. He dithered now. He set up the stove and pans for breakfast, debated waking the others; then crawled back into his own bag.
Frying bacon woke him.
“Didn’t call Harv, huh?” Joanna said.
Mark stretched elaborately. “Decided I’d rather be watching the news than making it. Know where the best view in the world is right now? Right in front of a television set.”
Frank looked at him curiously. He turned his head to indicate the height of the Sun. When Mark didn’t get it, he said, “Look at your watch.”
It was nearly ten! Joanna laughed at Mark’s expression.
“Hell, we’ll miss it,” Mark complained.
“No point in racing anywhere now,” Frank chortled. “Don’t worry, they’ll be showing instant replays all day.”
“We could knock at one of the houses,” Mark suggested. But the others laughed at him! and Mark admitted he didn’t have the guts. They ate quickly, and Mark broke out a bottle of Strawberry Hill wine and passed it around. It tasted perfect, fruity flavor like morning juice, but with some authority.
“Best pack up and — ” Frank stopped in midsentence.
There was a bright light over the Pacific. Far away, and very high, and moving downward fast. A very bright light.
The men didn’t speak. They just stared. Joanna looked up in alarm when Frank fell silent. She had never seen him startled by anything, and she whirled around quickly, expecting to see Charles Manson running at them with a chain saw. She followed their stare.
A tiny blue-white dwarf sun sank rapidly in the South, setting far beyond the flat blue Pacific horizon. It left a burning trail behind it. In the moment after it was gone, something like a searchlight beam probed back along its path, rose higher, above the cloudless sky.
Then nothing for one, two, three heartbeats.
Mark said, “Hot—”
A white fireball peeked over the edge of the world.
“Fudge Tuesdae. It’s real. It’s all real.” The edge of a giggle was in Mark’s voice. “We’ve got to get moving—”
“Bullshit.” Frank used just enough volume to get their attention. “We don’t want to be moving when the quakes hit. Lie down. Get your sleeping bag around you. Stay out in the open. Joanna, lie down here. I’ll tie you in. Mark, get over there. Further.”
Then Frank ran to the bikes. He carefully laid the first one on its side, then rolled the next away from it and laid it down too. He moved quickly and decisively. He came back for the third bike and moved it away.
Three white points glared at them, then winked out, one, two… The third and brightest must have touched down, far to the southeast. Frank glanced at his watch, counting the ticking seconds. Joanna was safe. Mark was safe. Frank brought his own bag and lay near them. He took out dark glasses. So did the others. The bulky sleeping bag made Frank look very fat. The dark glasses made his face unreadable. He lay stretched out on his back with his thick forearms behind his head. “Great view.”
“Yeah. The Comet Wardens will love this,” Mark said. “I wonder where Harv went? I’m glad I decided not to get up and go join him. We ought to be safe here. If the mountains hold up.”
“Shut up,” Joanna said. “Shut up, shut up.” But she didn’t say it loud enough to hear. She whispered, and her whisper was drowned out by rumbling that rolled toward them, and then the mountains began to dance.
The communications center at JPL was jammed with people: newsmen with special passes; friends of the Director; and even some people, like Charles Sharps and Dan Forrester, who belonged there.
The TV screens were bright with pictures. Reception wasn’t as good as they’d have liked; the ionized tail of the comet roiled the upper atmosphere, and live TV pictures were apt to dissolve into wavy lines. No matter, Sharps thought. They’ll make onboard recordings in the Apollo, and we’ll recover them later. And there’ll be all those film pictures, taken through the telescope. We’ll learn more about comets in the next hour than we have learned in the last hundred thousand years.
That was a sobering thought, but Sharps was used to it. It was the same for the planets, for the whole solar system. Until men went — or sent probes — into space, they were guessing about their universe. Now they knew. And no other generation could ever discover so much, because the next generation would read it from textbooks, not from the universe itself. They would grow up knowing. Not like when I was growing up and we didn’t know anything, Sharps thought. God, what exciting times. I love it.