The Moonfall

by Jack McDevitt

  They were all thinking about it, running the names of friends and colleagues, trying to recall who had been scheduled on which flight.

  One hundred four people. It was minuscule compared to the vast numbers who had died on the ground. But it personalized the losses. Rick and Sam and God knew who else and a million others.

  It was the darkest night in human memory. Manhattan. 4:01 A.M.

  Larry stood by Marilyn's side, peering out over the rooftops and down at the new sea. Manhattan had become a cluster of concrete islands. The city was dark. The shattered Moon had long since set. "Goddam government," he said. "They told us there was nothing to worry about."

  Someone pointed a flashlight over the side of the roof. Its beam bobbed up and down in the water. There were bodies.

  Marilyn turned away. She'd been unable to sleep, and had eventually rejoined the quiet group gathered around a battery-powered radio.

  The terrace doors were open and the curtains moved in a soft breeze. Approximately thirty people were still present. A few, who had drunk too much early in the evening, were asleep. The others looked listless and frightened.

  Marilyn had relatives in Boston and friends on the Outer Banks. She'd tried to call them, but got only busy signals and recordings ("The number you dialed is currently receiving maintenance…") until about three. Now the phone was completely dead.

  The rooms were lighted by candles. "I wonder what our place looks like," she asked Larry. Their apartment was on the third floor, a high third floor, and should have been above water. But it was an effort to care. "We should try to get home," she said.

  "How do you suggest we do that, love?"

  She was surprised at the sense of disconnectedness that had come over her. She almost didn't care about anything. But she knew there were things to be said, pretenses to be made.

  Louise was in the kitchen. There was no running water, of course. Louise had broken open a bottle of spring water and was pouring out a small portion for one of accountants. "Make it last, Bill," she said.

  "Is that the entire supply?" asked Marilyn.

  Louise looked at the container. About a gallon remained.

  "This is it," she said. "We need to start thinking how we're going to manage if help doesn't come."

  "Help'll come," said the accountant.

  "I think," said Marilyn, "Louise is right."

  Louise looked as if she hadn't slept all night. She's been worrying about how she'll feed everybody, Marilyn realized.

  Larry came in behind her. "Maybe we should start by figuring out how we'll manage breakfast," he said. "Is there a grocery in the neighborhood?"

  Louise nodded. Her customary energy had evaporated. "One block over toward Broadway. Across the street. It's called Barney's. But I'd think it's underwater at the moment."

  "Listen," said the accountant, "the whole world knows we're caught here. Let's not go running off half-cocked. All we need to do is be patient."

  "No." Marvin stepped into the candlelight. His voice sounded an octave deeper than usual. "I don't think we should just wait here to see what happens to us." He looked at Marilyn, and turned to Louise: "Is there anything in the building we can use for a raft?"

  9.

  White House, Oval Office. 4:07 A.M.

  Nonessential personnel had been packed off and whisked away. Henry, who'd been on the phone with the Brazilian president, had watched them go with a sense of being on a sinking ship. The agents had refused to leave, and they now manned the front gate. All other entrances had been sealed. Save for the president, several of his top aides, the Secret Service, and the half-dozen officers staffing the situation room, the White House was empty. As a precaution, Kerr had brought in three Marine helicopters, which waited on the lawn, rotors slowly turning.

  The president's phone rang. "General Wilson on the line, sir," said the army captain who'd replaced his secretary.

  "Yes, Bob?" said the president.

  "Mr. President, we're retargeting the birds, as you requested. We'll be ready to launch as soon as it passes."

  "Good." Thank God. At least something was going right. "You have authorization to fire, Bob. But not until it's on the way out."

  "Yes, sir. That's exactly how we'll handle it."

  "Don't want any radioactive pieces falling on China."

  "No, sir."

  Others besides Feinberg had become aware of the threat offered by POSIM-38, and the story had seeped into the media. The Rocky Mountain News, in its electronic edition, noted that the object looked vaguely like a tombstone. Several editorial cartoons using the object had already turned up, including one that showed Henry contemplating his own gravesite, marked by a stone that resembled the Possum.

  Well, they were right about that. Whatever happened now, Henry's obituary had been written and published.

  Lightning crackled on the roof. It was as bad a storm as any Henry could remember in all his years in the District. The experts thought it was another storm spawned by moon-rock.

  Kerr's familiar rap sounded at the door.

  "Come," said the president.

  The door opened cautiously and the chief of staff looked into the office. "Are you all right, Henry?" he asked.

  "I'm fine." Kerr was standing awkwardly. The way he did when there was a problem. "What's wrong, Al?"

  "More waves coming," he said. "Three to four hours. West Coast this time."

  • • • County Route 6, southwest of San Francisco. 1:19 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time (4:19 A.M. EDT).

  The reports of the assorted disasters coming in from around the country, contrasted with the quiet wilderness in which the Kapchik family rested, lent the telecasts an air of unreality. It was as if they were watching an end-of-the-world television drama, running simultaneously on all channels. The glimmering mist that had replaced the Moon had itself gone behind a bank of clouds. A gentle wind blew out of the west, and the night was cool and pleasant. The mountainside on which they'd camped had filled up with people who traded food, coffee, and alcohol, and generally clustered together with the kind of community spirit that only shared risk could bring. They watched the images with dismay and pity, and they did not speak of the curious secret joy they felt for having escaped the disaster that had overtaken so many. After a while Marisa turned the set off.

  She'd given up trying to sleep, and sat propped against a tree, wearing an extra woolen shirt. Her eyes drifted shut. She could smell campfires and coffee. A lot of people were still awake, talking to one another in subdued voices. Jerry had crawled into a sleeping bag with the kids, and now snored softly. Cars and trucks continued to roll east.

  There'd been reports of waves approaching California, but they didn't specifically mention San Francisco. She thought of her home in Pacifica and prayed that it would still be there when they went back.

  Abruptly the whispers turned to gasps. A fireball soared across the sky and exploded directly overhead. Fragments rained down. The hills brightened, and after a few moments she heard a crackle, like distant firecrackers. Then the world went dark again.

  Jerry never stirred.

  Somebody closed a car door.

  Jerry wanted to go home tomorrow if nothing happened, but she thought caution was called for. In the morning, she would suggest they stay out one more night until they were sure.

  The area in which the Kapchiks had parked was filled to capacity. Other vehicles lined the shoulder of the road. A police cruiser crouched in a patch of trees across the highway. It provided a sense of security, a kind of guarantee that the world would go on.

  Marisa became aware of activity around her. The whispers turned to obscenities, and people leaned toward their TVs.

  She pulled her earphones back over her head and switched on her own unit in time to hear an excited reporter describing an effort to evacuate Los Angeles. Hundreds of buses, organized by relief agencies and the military, were trying to get three million people to higher ground. Clouds of planes and helicopters were flying
into private fields and small municipal airports to help. Three million.

  A second report from a local news helicopter described conditions on the highways. Traffic was at a crawl.

  God help them.

  Then she realized they weren't talking only about Los Angeles. Emergency conditions prevailed the length of the West Coast, from Astoria on the north to Baja California on the south. Everywhere, panicked populations were trying to find higher ground, heading for mountaintops, breaking into skyscrapers, doing whatever they could.

  It must be chaos.

  In some areas, people were reported to be blowing up bridges and blocking highways to stop the flood of refugees. Lisa Monroe of CBS interviewed a man who claimed to speak for an entire municipality when he assumed the right to defend town land against the "hordes coming out of San Francisco."

  "They'll overrun us," he said. "Look around you. They're all going to want to sit on this mountain. Where are we supposed to put everybody? There's just not enough room. Not enough food. Not enough water." He spoke with an actor's precise articulation. A professional of one sort or another, she realized. "So, yes, we dropped a tractor-trailer on the road down there. And when they move that, we'll drop another one. I don't like it, but we've got our own to think about."

  She looked at the relatively light traffic on the county route and wondered if it too had been blocked somewhere west. She shook Jerry.

  "What's wrong?" he asked, looking dazed.

  She told him. "They're saying everything's going to get hit."

  "And we've got no flood insurance," he said. "Son of a bitch, Missy, we're going to lose everything."

  They were nosed in against a hillside. Headlights moved rhythmically across the gravel every ten seconds or so. And lightning broke across the mountains.

  But it wasn't lightning.

  It was fire.

  It came silently out of the sky and glided slowly across her field of vision. The highway and the mountain stood out white and stark. It seemed almost to float in, and then she could hear it, a succession of loud bangs and explosions. Pieces of it blasted away, and the thing itself passed out of sight behind the mountain. A roar shook the ground.

  Lights came on across the highway above the souvenir shop. The shaking went on, stopped, and started again. More violently. The highway broke apart. Brakes screeched and cars piled into one another. There were screams and people running and flashlight beams lancing through the night. The lights in the shopping center, the security lights, the signs at the charge station all went out.

  Engines were starting. A crevice opened near the foot of the cliff. A car slipped in and vanished.

  "Quake," said Jerry.

  Flashlight beams jerked up at the face of the mountain and faded into the dark.

  The screams continued. Marisa heard a rumble. Overhead.

  The cops were out of the cruiser, trying to wave people onto the road, away from the overhang.

  Cars and trucks were trying to get clear, careening against one another, spilling into the highway. Air horns blasted. A Buick hit one of the cops and kept going. Another dropped its wheels into a hole and rolled over. The wheels spun and the occupants fought to get out.

  "-out of here," Jerry was saying, scrambling for the front seat of the wagon.

  Marisa was an EMT. Her first instinct was to reach for the first aid kit. She wanted to help the injured cop, but she was torn, knowing she should get her family to safety. And anyway, nobody was stopping and she couldn't reach him. While she tried to make up her mind, the face of the mountain exploded.

  The kids had been sleeping in the back of the wagon. They woke now and screamed. The entire world was dissolving. Jerry rammed the tailgate shut while Marisa jumped in on the passenger side. Jerry dived in a moment later and climbed into the back to calm the kids. Rocks rattled off the hood and roof.

  There was nowhere to go. The station wagon shook under an impact, and something shattered one of the windows. The landslide went on and on, and she couldn't see what was happening through the cloud of dust that had been kicked up. Then it was over.

  "Everybody okay?" said Jerry.

  They were fine. But the sound of moving earth had been replaced by screams and frantic cries for help and the sour blat of a jammed automobile horn.

  "Take the kids," said Marisa. "Up that way, on the highway." She showed him where she wanted him to go. Away from overhangs.

  Jerry looked helplessly at the half-buried line of cars blocking him in. "How'm I supposed to get out?"

  "Walk," she said. "And make it quick. The rest of this thing might come down any time."

  "Where are you going? "

  She slid out the back, carrying a flashlight and the first aid kit. "To help," she said.

  She picked her way through the carnage, punching numbers into her cell phone, and looking for the cop. He was unconscious, hemorrhaging, and had several broken ribs.

  Nobody answered at 911. Skyport Orbital Lab. 4:54 A.M.

  POSIM-32 went down three hundred miles southeast of the Virginia coast. Tory relayed its coordinates to her waiting consumers, one of which was the U.S. Naval Satellite Tracking Service.

  EMERGENCY*** EMERGENCY*** EMERGENCY

  FROM: NAVSAT

  TO: ALLNAV

  DTG: 140956Z

  SUBJ: EARLY WARNING

  SEA WAVE INBOUND VIRGINIA-MARYLAND SHORE. RANGE SEVENTY-FIVE NAUTICAL MILES. SPEED TWO-NINE-ZERO KNOTS. White House Briefing Room. 5:00 A.M.

  The room was packed with reporters and cameras.

  Henry looked grimly into the TV lights. "My fellow Americans," he said, "this has been a terrible night for the American people, and for people around the globe. As you know, despite our best hopes, giant waves have hit us very hard. More are coming. I wish I could tell you otherwise; I wish I could tell you that this national nightmare is over. But I cannot.

  "In addition to the assorted calamities of the evening, we are also now threatened by a large object that we've come to call the Possum. Its real name is POSIM-38, and it's slightly over a mile long. POSIM-38 is a piece of moonrock that was blown clear during the collision, and it has the potential, should it fall to Earth, to do irreparable damage to the environment.

  "This object will make a close approach to Earth at eight forty-seven this morning. It will pass through the atmosphere, and it is then likely to go into an orbit that will decay, that will bring it back.

  "It will continue to present a major hazard unless we act. And the reality is that we'll never have a better opportunity to get rid of it than we have today. Therefore, I've ordered the air force to prepare a massive missile strike, which will be delivered after it leaves the area of the Earth.

  "In this way-"

  It was as far as he got.

  A bolt of lightning exploded directly over the White House, the lights went out, flickered on and off a couple of times, and finally died altogether.

  "We're off the air, Mr. President," said his producer.

  "Can you get us back on, Herman?"

  "In a few minutes. Maybe."

  The emergency lights came on.

  Henry glanced down at the crowd of reporters. "You can see how things have been." The remark drew a few tired smiles.

  While he waited, he talked with them, explaining informally what the consequences might be if they failed to act against the Possum. Had he consulted with China? Someone wanted to know. He hadn't; it wasn't a Chinese issue. CBS asked if the administration would now budget seriously for Skybolt.

  He began to explain that the administration had always supported the concept, and was about to fudge history when a young navy lieutenant stepped into the room from a side door and handed a piece of paper to Al Kerr. Kerr glanced at it, came forward immediately and handed it to the president. It read: TIDAL WAVE IMMINENT.

  "Ladies and gentlemen," Henry said, "we'd better continue the discussion elsewhere."

  No one needed an explanation. The journalists scrambled for their
cars. The president turned to an aide. "Get Emily," he said.

  10.

  AstroLab. 5:07 A.M.

  Feinberg had been talking with Windy Cross about POSIM-38, requesting adjustments in the imaging process when his power failed. A minute later, the phone lines went out.

  But Feinberg had become a very big player, bigger perhaps than he realized. Ten minutes after everything had gone down, an army helicopter descended onto the front lawn and a young captain introduced himself. His name was McMichael and he'd been assigned to provide whatever transportation or communication the professor might need. Then he asked confidentially whether the Possum was as dangerous as the president said.

  Feinberg assured him that the danger couldn't be overstated.

  Somehow, despite everything, Wes Feinberg had missed the human dimension of the catastrophe. He knew what was happening around the world, but his attention had been focused on orbital mechanics, and now, the dynamics of the Possum. He'd alerted the president as soon as he realized the danger. But he'd felt no real human involvement. Looking into McMichael's gray eyes, feeling the man's fear, he recognized his own detachment. He understood its derivation: his sense that there was nothing to be done about the rock, just as there had been nothing to do about the comet. His advice to the president that he act had been given despite the fact that Feinberg believed no action was feasible. That, lacking Skybolt, the world had no tool at hand with which to defend itself. The human race was caught in a game of cosmic billiards. It was probably going to lose, unless it got very lucky. And because he could only watch, he'd felt no emotional involvement other than his excitement at being here on this day.

  The Possum would pass Earth by the barest of margins, literally roaring through the ionosphere, close enough to see with the naked eye. But it had enough momentum to avoid being dragged down. For him, the interest lay in the trajectory and velocity with which it would emerge.

  "The president has made a public statement about the Possum?" he asked.