Destiny was drawing near for the Worldeater. The target world commanded by the Caller was close now, very close. The minor mysteries that had baffled it since awakening were now no longer even remotely important. The tiny, errant being or machine that had bored its way into its travel cyst and then run away; the small, odd asteroid that was following it.
None of that mattered. The time had come.
Slowly, carefully, it guided the monstrous shell of the asteroid down toward the waiting world below. But the Worldeater knew full well that the massive bulk of the asteroid was in large part an illusory protection. Asteroids were fragile things, accreted in the dark and the cold, unused to major strains. Even the mild gravity acceleration that had brought the Worldeater here had caused measurable stresses on the asteroid’s structural integrity.
It would have to move most slowly, most carefully.
Jansen Alter watched the dust-pink skies and waited. Twilight was coming, and the western sky was turning ruddy, darker. She shivered slightly, more in anticipation of the cold than from any actual discomfort. But she was glad of her heavy-duty pressure suit just the same. Even on the Martian equator, getting caught outside at night in a standard suit was no fun. The Martian tropics got just a tad cool at night. But she loved the chance to see the Martian night as it was, far away from the cities, uncloaked from the dome glare of Port Viking—that was in large part why she was still doing field geology.
Her partner, Mercer Chavez, crawled out of the pressure igloo’s low airlock and stood beside her. “This is turning into something besides a straight geology run,” Mercer said mischievously, her low voice trying to hide its excitement. “I just thought we were going to come out here and bang on rocks.”
“Oh, there’ll be some rocks banging together all right,” Jansen replied. “We’ll see it. If we live.”
Mercer shifted nervously, as if she were trying to see behind herself. She was in her early forties, still youthful and vigorous, but with the first shadows of middle age reminding her of her own mortality. Her dark brown skin was becoming more lined, her jet black hair betraying a few streaks of gray. “Is there any point in trying to get out of here?” she asked.
“None,” Jansen said, her voice crisp and cool. She was fifteen years younger, tall, willowy, blond, pale— with an edge of fierceness that unnerved most people. “All we know for sure is that we happen to be near one of the possible impact points. The asteroid is still maneuvering. It could end up here, or a hundred klicks away, or on the other side of the world, for all I know. I’ve got my helmet radio tuned to the watch frequency-nothing but chatter. No hard data at all.”
“If we run away from here, we stand just as good a chance of running right to where it’s coming in,” Mercer said. “Well, it’ll be exciting to be part of history. If we live to see the history.”
“Mercer, take a clue,” Jansen said. “There are thirty thousand of these damn things bearing down on the planets. The novelty of having one land on you is going to wear off pretty fast. Right now every human being is wondering if she or he is going to live through this—”
“Look!”
Jansen’s eye followed Mercer’s eager hand as it pointed toward the eastern sky. A tiny white dot gleamed in the fading daylight. “That’s just Phobos,” she protested.
“Phobos set half an hour ago and Deimos won’t rise for an hour,” Mercer replied. “That’s the asteroid.”
“My God, you’re right,” Jansen said. “And it’s getting bigger.” She pulled the lever that swung her helmet binoculars into place. The image of the asteroid leapt toward her, the gleaming dot transformed into a massive rock hanging in the sky. “Good God, what the hell is holding it up?”
“You’re not the first one to ask that question,” Mercer replied in grim amusement. “What are they saying on the watcher band?” She switched the channel in on her comm set.
“—firm that the intruder has entered the outer atmosphere.”
“Now he tells us,” Mercer muttered.
“Shhh, I want to hear this,” Jansen snapped.
“Now projecting impact or landing at or near zero degrees latitude, one hundred forty-five degrees longitude-”
“Right on top of us!” Mercer said. She felt a sudden urge to run, to get the hell out of there—and then just as suddenly she was determined to stay right where she was. She wanted to see this.
A skim jet screamed lazily over the horizon from the west, boosting up into the sky. Mercer watched it for a moment, a tiny thing sharing the sky with a monstrosity. Then she went back to the binoculars and stared at the impossible sight of a mountain hanging in the sky.
Down, down. The ground was approaching. Soon it would touch the ground, burst the bonds of the imprisoning asteroid, and begin its work.
It was the first to this world. It would be the beacon to urge the others on, bringing them to this spot as well.
But haste was to be avoided. Reentry at anything approaching conventional speeds could easily shatter the asteroid. With precise and powerful gravity control, there was no need to risk such velocities. Slowly, cautiously, it drifted down from space. The slightest of tremors shook the Worldeater as the high-altitude winds caught at the asteroid.
Sounds whistled past the hab shed.
Past it? Outside it?
Coyote came to herself a bit more.
The wind was howling outside. The wind. Coyote Westlake clung, wild-eyed, to a pair of handholds as the habitat shed bucked and twisted in the wind and the shifting gravity fields. At her best guess, she was now under a full third to one-half gee, with surges of more than twice that. The unaccustomed weight left her leaden with exhaustion.
But how the hell was there wind outside? Her sole external camera wasn’t working anymore. Probably it wasn’t there anymore. The hab shelter’s only portholes were in the midsection, and she had no desire to climb up the side of the shed in this gravity.
Mars. They had to be at Mars. Somehow, impossibly, her hab shelter hadn’t melted off during the reentry. Her skyrock was heading for a touchdown.
Perhaps even one gentle enough for her to survive.
A new thought, one she had dared not entertain before now, came to Coyote.
Maybe she was going to live through this.
Maybe. It was going to be a hell of a long shot. But damn it, she was a Vegas Girl herself, born and/or bred in the land of the long shot.
Time to do what she could to improve her odds. Moving as carefully as possible, she climbed toward the suit rack. God only knew how, in these conditions, but she would have to get her pressure suit on if she hoped for a stroll around Mars.
Mercer stomped down on the accelerator. The crawler spun out on its left tread and veered around to chase the asteroid once again. A whole fleet of skim jets was wheeling through the sky by now, one of the bolder ones actually approaching the monster for close flyarounds. No one knew what to make of the hab shelter bolted to the side of the damn thing.
Now they no longer needed binoculars to see the asteroid. The thing was huge, hanging close, blotting out half the sky, standing on end, a huge gray-and-black mass of solid rock framed boldly against the darkening pink Martian twilight. It just hung there, sliding slowly downward. Now and then a massive fragment of rock would break loose and fall to the ground, leaving a cloud of asteroid dust hanging in the sky, raising a cloud of Martian dust at impact.