Charlie didn't press his own thoughts, that if things went that far it wouldn't much matter. Relocation Station, Bismarck, North Dakota. 5:11 A.M. Central Daylight Time (6:11 A.M. EDT).
Marilyn heard distant voices, commotion, the sound of trucks. It was cold in the army tent they shared with twenty others. Some were refugees from Louise's party, though Louise herself was gone, swallowed in the vast hordes arriving hourly by bus and plane from around the nation.
People were on their feet in the tent, dazed, frightened, discovering how much they missed the daily amenities of private shower and breakfast at leisure. There was no privacy, of course. She'd come to realize that was a civilized luxury.
"Let's go, everybody," said a shrill voice. Marilyn needed a moment to locate the speaker-a small, white-haired woman dressed in frumpy brown with a red and green arm patch identifying her as a Civil Emergency Corps volunteer. "We're moving out. Buses will be here in twenty minutes."
Larry rolled over on his cot and looked up at her. The early-morning air was cold and damp. "What's going on?" he asked. "Are we going someplace else again?"
An elderly man sat, trying to pull on his trousers while shielding himself with his blanket. "We're too close to Kansas," he said. "I heard somebody say we're going to Saskatoon."
Larry's eyes rolled. "Where the hell's Saskatoon?"
"Canada somewhere."
Somebody pulled a tent flap aside and a cold wind blew in. "North," Marilyn said. "We're headed north again." AstroLab. 7:17 A.M.
The Possum was composed primarily of crystals: plagioclase, pyroxene, ilmenite, olivine, and other minerals. Their size and arrangement suggested they'd crystallized as fluid lavas. Of course, considering the circumstances, that could hardly be news. But the terrain should be firm enough, Feinberg thought, to hold the anchors. He passed his conclusions, with recommended specifications for the equipment, along to the Johnson Space Center. Johnson relayed the specs to the primary contractor, and to LTA at Hartsfield. The contractor responded that they'd already shipped two dozen units of each of the potentially applicable models, so the pitons were already at the Atlanta airport awaiting installation.
This news was passed back to Feinberg, who was at that moment landing at Hartsfield.
He'd been keeping abreast of the varying fortunes regarding the SSTOs. Last night, when one of the planes had been destroyed trying to return from Skyport, he'd been informed that they were down to six, and that he'd have to find a way to make do. When he'd explained to Orly Carpenter at NASA that it simply wasn't possible, they'd found another one someplace.
Damned bureaucrats. Playing their games even when the life of the world was at stake.
Carpenter was waiting for him when he landed. The imaging data from Lowell had arrived and they retreated to a virtual tank to begin picking landing sites. Feinberg stared at the Possum, tumbling, rotating around its long axis once every fifty-three minutes and eleven seconds.
He was, in a way, gratified. His life had been devoted to the quiet collection of knowledge that should have had no practical value. Yet here he was, able to engage his specialty to save the United States of America, for God's sake, and maybe civilization itself. Not bad for an astrophysicist. It would be a rousing climax to a life lived, despite his awards, in relative obscurity. Knowledge was its own justification, of course. To discern how the solar engine worked, why galaxies formed, how long a given star could be expected to live. These kinds of issues were the proper pursuit of humanity. No matter that they might not provide a blueprint for how to build a better house or make the economy behave. (The issue of practical applications had driven him to fury last year when yet another effort to fund the supercollider had failed. The Congress had asked what benefit could be derived from understanding how creation had happened; and the physicists, to their eternal discredit, had no answer.)
Still, it felt good to apply his knowledge. To know that, because the astronomers had been here, this civilization would live.
"Here," he said, illuminating a point toward the rear, high in the Back Country. "And here." Toward the front of the Plain. "The real problem is that a lot of the ground's just too rough. They wouldn't be able to get close enough to lock the planes down. And in some places, the lava base is too weak. But we can make do." Eventually they agreed on the seven sites.
TRANSGLOBAL SPECIAL REPORT. 7:20 A.M.
"This is Shannon Gardner in downtown St. Louis. I'm only a few miles from where it all started, in Valley Park, one week ago today when a young woman spotted a comet during a solar eclipse. Since that momentous afternoon, countless people have died, the nations of the world have been ravaged, there are trillions of dollars in property damage, and the worst threat of all still hangs over our heads. In the background, you can see looters. There are few police left here now to stop them. With less than twenty-four hours to go before the Possum is scheduled to impact in Kansas, everyone who can get out of the city has done so, and the only ones left are those who have no money, or no hope.
"The buses that were brought in by the city, and by various civic organizations, are gone now. The highways around this abandoned metropolis are locked tight with dead vehicles. The only way in or out is by air. Or on foot. We'll be abandoning our sound truck when we go to the airport. Maybe, if we're lucky, and the president's task force of space planes does what they're saying it can do, we'll be able to come back and get our truck. Maybe-
"Hey, what are you doing-?"
(Harsh voice off-camera.) "Up yours, bitch-"
(The camera image leaps skyward, but viewers hear sounds of struggle, screams from reporter.)
(Cut to Bruce Kendrick.) "We seem to have developed technical problems with our mobile unit in St. Louis. We'll be going back there as soon as we reestablish contact. Meantime, let's switch over to Jay Hardin, who's standing by at ground zero, in Chase County, Kansas."
2.
Hartsfield SSTO Maintenance Facility. 8:14 A.M.
There were now five SSTOs at Hartsfield. The shipment of pitons lay gleaming in their crates while teams of technicians proceeded with installation.
In an adjoining building, the flight crews were receiving instructions on their new equipment from Orly Carpenter. Carpenter was tall and angular, with a full head of silvery hair that in his astronaut days was such a fiery color it had earned him the nickname "Red." His usual high-energy delivery was subdued that evening, probably because of the nature of the mission, possibly because he was still trying to put the loss of Copenhagen and his niece Wendy's death out of his mind.
They sat in a crowded conference room around a long table designed for half the actual number of attendees. "Ladies and gentlemen," he said, speaking from a lectern in front of a video screen, "welcome to Operation Rainbow." He saw the smiles, some skeptical, some in the best can-do military tradition. "The media have been saying we're going to attempt to lift the Possum into a higher orbit. That's true as far as it goes. We will change its course somewhat. More important, we are going to accelerate it. We are going to speed it up and we are going to move it across Earth's orbit before Earth arrives.
"After your planes have been equipped, we'll take them to Skyport, refuel, and rendezvous with the Possum. We estimate that all seven vehicles will be in position on the rock between three-thirty and four A.M. Since this thing is due to come down at four minutes to five, we won't be much ahead of the curve.