"Is the Queen safe?" Jasper asked in concern. "And these others who followed us?"
"Out here, aye." It was Johan Stotz who answered for his
apprentice. He and the Cargo-Master had just come out of the ship to join them. "Van and I've been running a series of possibility scenarios on the computer. We're well away from triple the blast we could expect even if two or more freighters went up, and shrapnel definitely won't reach us, which was our biggest danger at the spaceport."
"That's over four miles from the coast, closer to five, in fact!" exclaimed Weeks.
"Not an impossible distance for a big explosion," Kamil said tensely. "It wouldn't take much. All you'd need is for a single piece of red-hot metal to pierce the liquid fuel reservoirs and none of us would have anything more to worry about, provided we'd led virtuous lives." He turned to his chief. "A fire storm could travel this far. So could gas."
"That's why Jellico insisted that we go south as well as inland. We're not in easy line with the city, and the winds're blowing toward it, not us. They're also augmented by the thermal breeze as long as the daylight and heat hold."
Thorson looked eastward again, then back to his shipmates as an idea came to him. "Could we try to focus the near-space viewer on the town?"
"Probably!" Tang agreed eagerly. "Devices designed for use in space don't work perfectly in an atmosphere, and we'll have to play with the magnification, but we should be able to get something. It'll be better than nothing, at any rate."
The Solar Queen's bridge was even smaller than her mess, but none of them grumbled about the lack of space as they gathered around the big screen while their Com-Tech adjusted one after the other of the controls directing its operation.
Gradually, fhe image of Canuche Town appeared before them, at first hazy to the point of uselessness, then as clear as if they were spying on it through impossibly powerful but otherwise standard distance lenses. Deftly, Ya depressed the focus until it rested right on the eastern horizon.
"We can't see the docks," Karl Kosti said, voicing the disappointment of all.
"Hardly," Tang told him. "The whole seaport area is on a significantly lower level than the rest of the city. The viewer can't penetrate solid rock or bend around it. We'll know it if that ship explodes, but we won't be able to observe the blast itself or its effects on its immediate, environs. — Sands of Mars! Look at all those people! There are thousands of them, and they all seem to be heading this way."
"Macgregory's staff and their families probably," Van Rycke deduced. "He's ordered evacuations before. The Captain or Rael will have warned him, too."
"I could check, see if there's something coming over the civilian waves or if the Patrol's broadcasting anything on the public channels ... "
Ya shook his head even as he finished speaking. It would not be well to have any auditory equipment actively receiving if a major explosion occurred. As an added precaution, he increased light and radiation screening on the visual receptors.
For a few minutes, he kept the lines of moving people on the screen, confirming that they were indeed making for the hardpan, then switched back to scanning the serene infinity of roof-fringed sky on the horizon.
More minutes went by. The tranquility of the unchanging scene began to draw some of the tension out of the spacers.
A burst of light ruptured the field of blue. A vast sound followed it, loud and sharp even at this remove.
As the first great flash of brilliance faded, a column of brown smoke clawed its way some six hundred feet into the air. Several dark specks seemed to balance for a moment on it, then fell back into it and plummeted to the concealed ground.
"Her hatches," Dane heard someone, Shannon maybe, say.
Soon, in nearly the same instant, more debris shot into view, some of it dark, a lot glowing red. Much of what they saw was clearly discernible, stark proof of the sizes involved. Thorson gaped at it. That stuff was not just big. It was enormous, great pieces of what had moments before been the Regina Marts.
One sight, rather pretty in itself, puzzled him, as it did most of his comrades. Burning spheres accompanied by equally brilliant sparks and streamers filled one portion of the sky, held there a fraction second, and dispersed as would a burst of demoniac fireworks.
The Cargo-Master again supplied the explanation.
"Rope. The Man's was shipping a load of it. The balls are aflame and are casting off fragments as they burn. — The Spirit of Space help the places where they land. They'll be more than hot enough to torch anything flammable that they touch."
Van Rycke's grim prediction was not long in finding fulfillment as explosion after explosion followed that first mighty detonation. They did not have to actually see the stricken area to know what was happening, not with computer-generated possibility and probability scenarios to augment their own knowledge and imagination.
Many buildings collapsing under the awesome force of the blast wave took fire directly from the explosion's heat as particularly volatile contents ignited or detonated. Others began to burn when flaming or blazing-hot shrapnel slammed into the rubble that was all that remained of many or through roof, walls, or splintered windows of those still partly standing, starting smaller fires that soon reached vulnerable materials. The exposed fuel tanks were almost immediate casualties, breaking and falling at once when the blast's fist slammed into them or crumbling and exploding when struck by flying material that made them out as accurately as would missiles shot by a sentient foe. Escaping chemicals, alone or in bastard combinations, released deadly gases. Others created corrosive pools or added still more fuel to the hellish caldron the seaport area had become.
The topography of the region magnified the effects of the already awesome disaster. In dooming its own, however, it to a great extent shielded the rest of Canuche Town as the high, sharp slopes deflected much of the force of the explosion back down on the already shattered communities below and caught the bulk of the debris it had set in deadly flight.
Pieces thrown high enough did get through, bringing fire, destruction, and terror wherever they came to ground. Jan, who was senior officer in Jellico's absence, at last turned his back to the screen, unconsciously straightening his powerful shoulders as he did so. "There may be some new fires or an odd blast or two, but I'd say the worst's over. Those people need all the help they can get and need it fast if a lot more aren't going to die who should make it.
— Steen, Johan, Tang, stay with the Queen. Keep her ready to lift fast again if you must, though I doubt that'll be necessary now, and hold the transceiver open. The rest of us'll see if we can't make ourselves useful."
The Canuchean refugees had set up their camp, a small city in itself, a good half mile north of the starship's emergency berth.
The spacers found little confusion there, and Dane Thor- son had not been long within its bounds before he felt a fierce pride in these people.
He was seeing the spirit that had carried Terra's offspring to the stars and won them their place there, on planet after planet where survival itself should have been inconceivable. The refugees had a headstart in that everything was well ordered thanks to Adroo Macgregory's preparations, the training he had insisted upon giving his people, who, with their households, made up the vast majority of those currently assembled here. Those who had actually endured the blast itself had not yet begun to arrive in number. There was grief and fear, but the Canucheans were responding with the determination to fight, not permitting themselves to sink into despair. The very young and those otherwise unable to give aid were gathered together in the keeping of appointed caregivers. The rest were already heading back to their stricken city and seaport.