The Moonfall

by Jack McDevitt

  Others were less certain. The Chinese had already announced their intention to register a complaint that their American allies were waiting until after it passed before using their missiles. They hinted darkly that the Americans secretly hoped it would fall on China. The secretary of state, in a predawn press conference, commented that he wasn't concerned, that if the Possum merely put on a fireworks display and continued on its way, as expected, the Chinese would have nothing to complain about; and that if it did hit China, and the scientists were correct that it was big enough to end civilization, then there'd be nobody around to listen to the complaint. He smiled at his remark.

  A timer was keeping track: Two minutes to atmospheric contact. Three minutes to closest approach.

  The station klaxons had stopped wailing. A voice over the intercom informed Tory that sections of D deck, the main promenade, had lost pressure and were temporarily closed.

  A news bulletin appeared on the screen: the Americans were canceling the missile strike. No explanation given. Press conference at ten o'clock.

  One minute.

  The Possum was by no means the only big object out there. At last count, sixty-two others had been designated and tagged. But none constituted an immediate threat. The biggest, POSIM-55, was a true extinction rock. It was four times the size of the Possum. Enough to finish everyone except maybe the cockroaches. Fortunately, it was going into a relatively stable orbit. In fact, she thought, despite the terrible losses, we've been lucky. It could have been far worse. And the rain of ejecta had noticeably eased during the last couple of hours.

  "There's still a lot of debris out there," said Windy. "When this is over we should recommend the airlines stay on the ground a few more days."

  Ten seconds.

  It was moving in quickly now, skimming across the face of the planet, the Pacific far below, the Asian mainland coming up fast. The virtual imager tracked it into the blue-black haze of the ionosphere. As she watched, the Possum began to redden, pieces fell away, and wisps of smoke formed contrails.

  The screens dedicated to the Flying Observatory had not yet picked it up. Two of the displays showed enhanced telescopic images; the third was a naked-eye view. She watched intently and then saw it, a sharp white line drawn through the shimmering blue haze. Its closest approach to the surface would be at two hundred kilometers.

  Other imagers on the ground tracked it. A CNN reporter, standing with a camera team on a hillside near Hainan, caught it as it burst into flame. People standing with him gaped and sighed. The long fireball streaked across their sky. Then the roar of its passage broke on them, deep and guttural. It took the witnesses by surprise and they covered their heads. A few shrieked and threw themselves to the ground.

  It rumbled among the constellations, a celestial locomotive with the boiler ripped open and its fiery insides exposed. And then it disappeared in the west, toward Wuhan.

  "Looks good so far," said Windy, his voice tense.

  Mobile stations at Chengtu and in the Himalayas caught it as it began to dwindle. At Lahore, it became quieter, more sedate, and seemed smaller. The roar was gone. The Afghans saw only a long pink line in the sky, and somewhere over the land of the Mullah, it winked out.

  Tory had a link open to the AstroLab and she heard their applause. "Bye-bye, baby," said a delighted female voice. AstroLab. 8:58 A.M.

  Feinberg was constitutionally unable to celebrate. He was by nature reticent, reserved, reclusive. For him, the local Wal-Mart was more remote than Cygnus X-l. Years before, Feinberg had had the good fortune to be at Palomar when Supernova 2017A exploded in the Lagoon Nebula, NGC6523. The Lagoon is in Sagittarius, less than five thousand light-years away. It had been so far the astrophysical event of the century. But while his colleagues celebrated, Feinberg had been forced to pretend. He understood his own personality well enough; he knew that he'd never learned to enjoy himself. Even this morning, when (at least in his own mind) he'd intervened to save the president from a potentially disastrous decision, it would not have been his nature to take several of his colleagues out for a round of eggs and pancakes, and relish the moment.

  Instead, when the dust settled, he simply went home.

  He'd been up for the better part of five consecutive days, and he was exhausted. The sky was finally growing clear, and he didn't see that he could do any more. Cynthia Murray, his number two, would track the Possum, and when she knew what it was going to do, she'd call him.

  Outside, the trees were full of birds and it was as if nothing had happened.

  MEET THE PRESS, SPECIAL EDITION. 9:00 A.M.

  In Atlanta with Judy Almayer, New York Times; Fred Chiles, Boston Globe; Karl Nishamura, Los Angeles Online; and moderator Pierce Benjamin, NBC News; with special guest Julian Moore, director of the Minority Alliance. NBC: Dr. Moore, your organization issued a demand an hour ago calling for the dissolution of the presidency and its replacement by a rotating executive council, subject to a parliamentary system providing quick recall. Moore: That's correct. And it isn't a position we've adopted lightly. NBC: What precisely do you propose? That we junk the Constitution? Moore: It's a rich man's constitution, Mr. Benjamin. Devised by the rich, for the rich. N. Y. Times: But wouldn't that be shooting yourself in the hot? After all, if you eliminate the Constitution, what's left to protect ordinary people? The people you claim to represent? Moore: The Constitution, I'm sorry to say, has always been an instrument of evasion. People who've been oppressed have to get on their feet and demand their rights. Boston Globe: But doesn't the Constitution provide the only real protection for those rights? To what other human document would you appeal? Moore: Maybe we need to write one. I'd remind you, Mr. Chiles, that the Constitution coexisted quite happily with slavery. Until the slaves just decided they weren't going to take it any more. L.A. Online: But the Constitution was the lever with which Lincoln worked. Moore: That's standard schoolboy history. The Union Army was the lever, and the spine of the Union Army, after 1863, was its black troops. NBC: Hold on a minute. Let's not wander off into a side street. Dr. Moore, if you abolished the present government, with what would you replace it? Moore: To begin with, we need an executive council that would be representative of all the people, not just the white majority. L.A. Online: But President Kolladner was an African-American. Surely- Moore: And he objected to the term. He didn't approve of hyphens, you remember. He claimed to be simply an American. The truth is, he was a lackey. I don't like to speak ill of the dead, but he was ashamed of his heritage. He was a classic Uncle Tom. N. Y. Times: Dr. Moore, the Minority Alliance has always been a reasonably conservative group in the past. You've been reasonably conservative. Tell us why the change in course. Moore: The poor people of this nation were left to die last night. When that happened, revolution became as inevitable as the sunrise. N. Y. Times: But there's no evidence it was deliberate. People of all socioeconomic groups died in large numbers last night. LA. Online: You're obviously dissatisfied with Kolladner. Who do you think could have done better? Moore: I can think of no one who could have done worse. Moreover, when white America goes looking for a scapegoat, they won't forget that Henry Kolladner was a black man. Look, God only knows how many people have died during the last twelve hours. Are still dying. Millions. Mr. Nishamura, you don't even have a city to go back to. LA Online: Nobody could have done anything to save the city. The waves killed LA. Period. Where would you have put the Los Angeles population with a few days' notice? Moore: I damned well wouldn't have left them at Gage Avenue and Avalon to be drowned. Listen: When we're finished counting our dead, we're going to discover there are upward of twenty million of them. Most will be people from the inner cities. Once again, the black man pays the bill for this country. Well, this is it. No more. NBC: You don't really expect the Congress to cave in to this demand, do you? Moore: They will if they want to save the nation. NBC: That sounds like an ultimatum. Moore: It's not, Mr. Pierce. It's a strong suggestion. The Alliance does not want to bring down the country. We really don't. But
the survival of this nation is essential to our finding a way to lead people, especially black people, out of poverty. What we are saying to the Congress, and to the new president, is this: The old system doesn't work for us. It's time for radical surgery. I hope they'll see the wisdom of our suggestion. If not, then I have no doubt blood will run in the streets. Boston Globe: Dr. Moore, you must realize you're inciting rebellion. Moore: No such thing. I'm hoping to head it off.

  6.

  Percival Lowell Flight Deck. 9:11 A.M.

  Rachel completed her final check and switched over to internal power. Cochran, at the navigation plot, gave her a thumbs-up. Exit protocols locked.

  "Lowell," said a voice in her earphones, "you are go for launch."

  "Launch" from Skyport meant that the magnetic couplings would release the ship, and four sets of piston clusters would ease her out of her bay and give her a gentle push away from the orbiter. At about the same time, Rachel would fire up the engine and adjust attitude. She'd move out to six kilometers, rotate to her heading, and begin to accelerate.

  It had not been an easy morning. Everyone at Skyport, it seemed, wanted to be on board Lowell when she made her rendezvous with the Micro. The phones had rung constantly. People identifying themselves as engineers and communications specialists and every sort of professional in the book thought it would be a good idea if they were present in case of one emergency or another. The truth was, of course, they wanted to meet the new president. There had even been a couple of station bureaucrats who tried to suggest that a high-ranking Skyport representative should be present.

  In fact, the only crew she needed was Lee Cochran. She was sorry, she explained patiently time and again, but anyone else would only be taking up space. And, more important, air. They would be at eight people for the return trip, which was already thirty-three percent over life-support design capacity. When some persisted, she simply explained it was against the rules. Even the most determined seemed to understand that.

  Belle sent a physician. Just in case. The head man had been on leave when the emergency broke out, so the assignment went to the station's assistant chief medical officer, Dr. Arthur Elkhart. He came from the shy end of the bureaucratic spectrum. He was clearly unnerved at the possibility of acquiring a presidential patient, and would have preferred to stay home. But his position didn't allow it. Still, when Belle was gone, he openly admitted his jitters to Rachel and thereby won her respect. He was middle-aged, prematurely gray, built low to the ground. "I hope they're all okay," he said.

  "This is Lowell" she told Control. "Ready to go."

  There was a mild shove as the pistons started the ship out of the bay. The long viewport that looked out from Control passed on her left. She hit the intercom. "Moving out, Doc. Buckle in."

  She got no answer and tried again: "Hit the yellow button to talk."

  A moment. And then a click: "Thanks," he said. "I'm all set."

  Twenty thousand miles below, the coastline of Ecuador and Peru emerged from cloud banks. The Pacific stretched away to the west, bright and calm in the midday sun. Like everyone else, she'd been dismayed at the reports of wholesale death and destruction coming in from around the globe. She'd been unable to reach her own family, who lived in Charleston. Looking down on the vast serenity, she thought about the tendency of people to transfer their troubles to the world around them. Whatever damage might be visited on homes, temples, and city halls around the Earth as a result of Tomiko, the planet itself would continue calmly on as though nothing had happened.

  She lit the engine.

  It came on-line quietly, a liquid rumble, utterly unlike the chemical power plants of the moonbuses and space planes, which roared furiously and shook bulkheads.

  "All go," said Cochran.

  She acknowledged, and gave the ship to the autopilot, which adjusted attitude and began to accelerate.

  Lowell would do a three-quarters orbit and come out on a course parallel to, but well ahead of, the Micro. From that point they'd boost speed gradually and allow the bus to overtake them.

  Rachel did not like going out into this sky. At first she'd thought it was because there were still too many rocks in it. But she gradually came to realize that she shared Doc Elkhart's nervousness about welcoming the president of the United States on board. She glanced over at Cochran, whose prime duty during the flight was to monitor internal power and life support. In other words, to stay awake in case of emergency. "Lee?"

  "Yo?"

  "How do you feel?"

  "Fine. Why do you ask?"

  She let it go. The astronauts were, with one or two exceptions, all former military air jocks. And the code of the brotherhood of combat pilots, admit no fear, was alive and well.

  Rachel had mastered whatever uncertainties she might have had the first time she'd sat on top of a rocket and touched a match to it. She'd done well and come through it better than some of her male counterparts. She'd never backed down in her life from anybody or anything. But today she could feel her hands shake.

  Below, the world turned green. They were eastbound, running above Brazil. Ahead, stars shone through portions of the pale cloud that had replaced the Moon.

  The lunar cloud was already growing thin, drifting apart. The ancient sphere, mathematically perfect, reassuring in its promise of universal harmony, was gone. Micro Passenger Cabin. 10:15 A.M.

  "Al, we're going to nationalize everything. Airlines, trucks, the power companies, you name it. Get Tierney to head up the effort." Tierney was respected by the major CEOs. Having him on board would deflect a lot of resistance.

  "Okay, Charlie." They had by now gotten back to their old first-name basis. "Let me run it past counsel-"

  "Forget counsel. Just do it."

  "I'm not sure about the constitutionality-"

  "Al, we've declared a national emergency. By definition anything I do is constitutional. People are dying in large numbers out there. We will do what we have to." He spelled out a long list of precisely what he wanted, leaving the details to Kerr.

  "Something else, Charlie," Kerr said when he'd finished. "The Latin countries have been hit pretty hard. They're asking for help."

  "We've none to give. Tell them they're on their own. Pass our regrets, but point out to them we've taken substantial losses. Ask whether they can help us. Tell them we need whatever they can spare. Get it coordinated. We'll take help from anyone who offers it. Oh, and Harmon was making jokes last night about the Chinese protest." Harmon was the secretary of state. "I have to wonder about the diplomatic skills of a man who finds anything funny about this kind of disaster. He's fired. Tell him."

  "But Charlie-"

  "I'd tell him myself but I'm busy. If he insists on hearing it from me, I'll do it, but warn him it won't be pretty."

  Charlie had been on the phone all morning with Kerr, with cabinet members, with heads of state around the world, trying to coordinate a global response. But it wasn't enough. Talking to people here and there wasn't going to get the job done. They needed a global executive during the emergency. Ordinarily, the logical person for the choice would probably have been the U.S. president. But the U.S. was among the hardest-hit nations. That changed the chemical mix. Several candidates had already been put forward. One was the Belgian chief of state, whom Charlie knew to be able and honest. "Throw our weight behind him," he said.

  Good news was still coming in. Other Possums were on the loose, but none constituted an immediate threat. The frequency and intensity of meteor strikes had declined precipitously. The storm seemed to be passing, and within a few more hours it might be possible to reduce the state of alert.

  Everyone had been hit. But the Americas had suffered maximum damage. Offers of assistance had come from all major, and many minor, nations. Yes, Charlie had told them. We need food, clothing, medical supplies, transportation, and communication equipment. Whatever and whomever you can send. Multinational corporations were also mobilizing help. "Goddam selfish bastards," Kerr had said. "
They're only in it because they know they have to keep their customers alive."

  Charlie didn't care much about motivation.

  By late morning he was emotionally exhausted. There'd been a sea change in the way people thought about their lives and their world. They were, he thought, closer together than they'd ever been before during his lifetime. Maybe than they'd been since people started keeping records.

  Nevertheless, Charlie's position wasn't enviable. Virtually every political leader in the world was in difficulty, expected to head off further disaster. And no one more than he, who represented an administration that was widely held responsible for having failed even to warn its citizens.

  His cell phone chimed.

  "Pilot, Mr. President."

  "Yes, Saber?"

  "I just wanted to let you know. Lowell's on schedule. She'll be alongside in about five and a half hours."

  "Thanks." He looked over at Evelyn, who was reading. The chaplain was asleep, and Morley was writing, listlessly punching the keys on his notepad. Probably recording everything for a book. The cabin was undoubtedly the most public setting from which any president had ever conducted business. His runaway White House.

  Well, if he accomplished nothing else, he'd be a natural for future trivia questions.

  • • • Hilltop west of Staunton, Virginia. 11:47 A.M.

  Lieutenant Colonel Steven R. Gallagher lowered his field glasses. He didn't like working his troops Sunday morning, when they should be at church, but he knew that the critical moment was drawing close and he wanted to ensure that the Legion was ready.

  He was with the Blue Star Company, Third Freedom Battalion, Thomas Jefferson Legion. The exercise was in its fourth hour. He leaned his hefty frame against the Ford van that served as his command vehicle, and looked at his watch. "They're about out of time, Jack," he told his brother, who was wearing a major's oak leaves.