Lucifer's Hammer

by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle

  “I know most of them,” Sharps admitted.

  “Well?”

  “What can I say, Art?” Sharps was quiet for a moment. “Our best projected orbit puts that comet right on top of us—”

  “Jesus,” Senator Jellison said.

  “But there’s several thousand miles’ error in those projections. And a miss by a thousand miles is still a miss. It can’t reach out and grab us.”

  “But it could hit.”

  “Well…this isn’t for publication, Art.”

  “Didn’t ask for it for publication.”

  “All right. Yes. It could hit us. But the odds are against it.”

  “What kind of odds?”

  “Thousands to one.”

  “I recall you said billions to one—”

  “So the odds have narrowed,” Sharps said.

  “Enough so we ought to be doing something about it?”

  “How could you? I’ve spoken with the President,” Sharps said.

  “So have I.”

  “And he doesn’t want to panic anybody. I agree. It’s still thousands to one against anything happening at all,” Sharps insisted. “And a complete certainty that a lot of people will get killed if we start making preparations. We’re already getting crazy things. Rape artists. Nut groups. People who see the end of the world as an opportunity—”

  “Tell me about it,” Jellison said dryly. “I told you, I saw the President too, and he’s got your opinion. Or you’ve got his. I’m not talking about warning the public, Charlie, I’m talking about me. Where will this thing hit, if it does?”

  There was another pause.

  “You’ve studied it, haven’t you?” Jellison demanded. “Or that crazy genius you keep around, uh, Forrester, he’s studied it. Right?”

  “Yes.” The reluctance was plain in Sharps’ voice. “The Hammer has calved. If it does hit, it’s likely to be in a series of strikes. Unless the central head whams us. If that happens, don’t worry about preparations. There aren’t any.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah,” Sharps said. “That bad.”

  “But if only part hits—”

  “Atlantic Ocean for sure,” Sharps said.

  “Which means Washington…” Jellison let his voice trail off.

  “Washington will be underwater. The entire East Coast up to the mountains,” Sharps said. “Tidal waves. But it’s long odds, Art. Very long. Best guess is still that we get a spectacular light show and nothing more.”

  “Sure. Sure. Okay, Charlie, I’ll let you get back to work. By the way, where’ll you be on That Day?”

  “At JPL.”

  “Elevation?”

  “About a thousand feet, Senator. About a thousand feet. Goodbye.”

  The connection went before Jellison could switch off the phone. Jellison and Hardy looked at the dead instrument for a moment. “Al, I think we want to be at the ranch. Good place to watch comets from,” Jellison said.

  “Yes, sir—”

  “But we want to be careful. No panic. If this gets a big play the whole country could go up in flames. I expect Congress will find a good reason for a recess that week; we won’t have to do anything about that, but I want my family out at the ranch, too. I’ll take care of Maureen. You see that Jack and Charlotte get there.”

  Al Hardy winced. Senator Jellison had no use for his son-in-law. Neither did Al. It wouldn’t be pleasant, persuading Jack Turner to take his wife and children out to the Jellison ranch in California.

  “May as well be hung for a sheep,” Jellison said. “You’re coming out with us, of course. We’ll need equipment. End-of-the-world equipment. Couple of four-wheel-drive vehicles—”

  “Land Rovers,” Al said.

  “Hell no, not Land Rovers,” Jellison said. He poured another two-finger drink. “Buy American, dammit. That comet probably won’t hit, and we sure as hell don’t want to be owning foreign cars after it goes by. Jeeps, maybe, or something from GMC.”

  “I’ll look into it,” Al said.

  “And the rest of it. Camping gear. Batteries. Razor blades. Pocket computers. Rifles. Sleeping bags. All the crap you can’t buy if—”

  “It’s going to be expensive, Senator.”

  “So what? I’m not broke. Get it wholesale, but be quiet about it. Anybody asks, you’re…what? You’re going along on a junket to Africa. There must be some National Science Foundation project in Africa—”

  “Yes, sir—”

  “Good. That’s what all this is for, if anybody asks. You can let Rasmussen in on the plot. Nobody else on the staff. Got a girl you want to take along?”

  He really doesn’t know, Al thought. He really doesn’t know how I feel about Maureen. “No, sir.”

  “Okay. I’ll leave it to you, then. You realize this is damn foolishness and we’re goin’ to feel awful silly when that thing has passed by.”

  “Yes, sir.” I hope we are. Sharps called it the Hammer!

  ■

  “There is absolutely no danger. The asteroid Apollo came within two million miles, very close as cosmic distances go, back in 1932. No damage. Adonis passed within a million miles in 1936. So what? Remember the panic in 1968? People, especially in California, took to the hills. Everyone forgot about it a day later—that is, everyone who hadn’t gone broke buying survival equipment that wasn’t needed.

  “Hamner-Brown Comet is a marvelous opportunity to study a new kind of extraterrestrial body at comparatively—and I emphasize comparatively—close range, and that’s all it is.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Treece. You have heard an interview with Dr. Henry Treece of the United States Geological Survey. Now back to our regularly scheduled program.”

  ■

  The road ran north through groves of oranges and almond trees, skirting the eastern edge of the San Joaquin Valley. Sometimes it climbed over low hills or wound among them, but for most of the way the view to the left was of a vast flatland, dotted with farm buildings and croplands, crossed by canals, and stretching all the way to the horizon. The only large buildings visible were the uncompleted San Joaquin Nuclear Plant.

  Harvey Randall turned right at Porterville and wound eastward up into the foothills. Once the road turned sharply and for a moment he had a view of the magnificent High Sierra to the east, the mountaintops still covered with snow. Eventually he found the turnoff onto the side road, and further down that was the unmarked gate. A U.S. Mail truck had already gone through, and the driver was coming back to close the gate. He was long-haired and elegantly bearded.

  “Lost?” the mailman asked.

  “Don’t think so. This Senator Jellison’s ranch?” Harvey asked.

  The mailman shrugged. “They say so. I’ve never seen him. You’ll close the gate?”

  “Sure.”

  “See you.” The mailman went back to his truck. Harvey drove through the gate, got out and closed it, then followed the truck up the dusty path to the top of the hill. There was a white frame house there. The drive forked, the right-hand branch leading down toward a barn and a chain of connected small lakes. Granite cliffs reared high above the lakes. There were several orange groves, and lots of empty pastureland. Pieces of the cliff, weathered boulders larger than a California suburban house, had tumbled down into the pastures.

  An ample woman came out of the house. She waved to the mailman. “Coffee’s hot, Harry!”

  “Thanks. Happy Trash Day.”

  “Oh, that again? So soon? All right, you know where to put it.” She advanced on the TravelAll. “Can I help you?”

  “I’m looking for Senator Jellison. Harvey Randall, NBS.”

  Mrs. Cox nodded. “They’re expecting you, up to the big house.” She pointed down the left-hand branch of the drive. “Mind where you park, and look out for the cats.”

  “What’s Trash Day?” Harvey asked.

  Mrs. Cox’s face already wore a suspicious look. Now it changed to deadpan. “Nothing important,” she said. She went back onto the porch.
The mailman had already vanished inside the house.

  Harvey shrugged and started the TravelAll. The drive ran between barbed-wire fences, orange groves to the right, more pasture to the left. He rounded a bend and saw the house. It was large, stone walls and slate roof, a rambling, massive place that didn’t look very appropriate for this remote area. It was framed against more cliffs, and had a view through a canyon to the High Sierra miles beyond.

  He parked near the back door. As he started around to the big front porch, the kitchen door opened. “Hi,” Maureen Jellison called. “Save some walking and come in this way.”

  “Right. Thanks.” She was as lovely as Harvey had remembered her. She wore tan slacks, not very highly tailored, and high-top shoes, not real trail shoes but good for walking. “Waffle-stompers,” Mark Czescu would have called them. Her red hair looked recently brushed. It hung down just to her shoulders, in waves with slight curls at the ends. The sun glinted off in pleasing highlights.

  “Did you have an easy drive?” she asked.

  “Pleasant enough—”

  “I always like the drive up here from L.A.,” Maureen said. “But I expect you can use a drink right about now. What’ll you have?”

  “Scotch. And thanks.”

  “Sure.” She led him through a service porch into a very modern kitchen. There was a cabinet full of liquor, and she took out a bottle of Old Fedcal scotch, then fought with the ice tray. “It’s always all over-frosted when we first come up,” she said. “This is a working ranch, and the Coxes don’t have time to come up and fuss with the place much. Here, it will be nicer in the other room.”

  Again she led the way, going through a hall to the front room of the house. The wide veranda was just beyond it. A pleasant room, Harvey decided. It was paneled in light-colored wood, with ranch-style furniture, not really very appropriate for such a massive house as this; There were photographs of dogs and horses on most of the walls, and a case of ribbons and trophies, mostly for horses, but some for cattle. “Where is everybody?” Harvey asked.

  “I’m the only one here just now,” Maureen said.

  Harvey pushed the thought firmly down into his unconscious, and tried to laugh at himself.

  “The Senator got caught by a vote,” Maureen was saying. “He’ll catch the red-eye out of Washington tonight and get here in the morning. Dad says I’m to show you around. Want another drink?”

  “No, thank you. One’s enough.” He put the glass down, then picked it up again when he realized he’d set it on a highly polished wood lamp-table. He wiped the water ring off with his hand. “Good thing the crew didn’t come up with me. Actually they’ve got some work to finish up, and I’d hoped we could get the footage on Senator Jellison tomorrow morning, but if he couldn’t be available tomorrow I’ve got the gear in the car. I used to be a fair cameraman. They’ll be here in the morning, and I thought I would use the evening to get acquainted with the Senator, find out what he’d like to talk about for the camera.” And I’m chattering, Harvey thought. Which is stupid.

  “Care for the grand tour?” Maureen asked. She glanced at Harvey’s Roughrider trousers and walking shoes. “You won’t need to change. If you’re up to a tough walk, I’ll show you the best view in the valley.”

  “Sure. Let’s go.”

  They went out through the kitchen and cut across the orange groves. A stream bubbled off to their left.

  “That’s good swimming down there,” Maureen said. “Maybe we’ll have a dip if we get back early enough.”

  They went through a fence. She parted the barbed wire and climbed through effortlessly, then turned to watch Harvey. She grinned when he came through just behind her, obviously pleased at his competence.

  The other side of the fence was weeds and shrubs, never plowed or grazed. The way was steep here. There were small trails, made by rabbits or goats. They weren’t really suited for humans at all. They climbed several hundred feet until they got to the base of a great granite cliff. It rose sheer at least two hundred feet above them. “We have to go around to the left here,” Maureen said. “It gets tough from here on.”

  Much tougher and I won’t make it, Harvey thought. But I will be damned if I’ll have a Washington socialite show me up. I’m supposed to be an outdoorsman.

  He hadn’t been hiking with a girl since Maggie Thompkins blew herself up on a land mine in Vietnam. Maggie had been a go-get-’em reporter, always out looking for a story. She had no interest in sitting around in the Caravelle Bar and getting her material third- or fourth-hand. Harvey had gone with her to the front, and once they’d had to walk out from behind Cong lines together. If she hadn’t been killed…Harvey put that thought away, too. It was a long time ago.

  They scrambled up through a cleft in the rocks. “Do you come up here often?” Harvey asked. He tried to keep the strain out of his voice.

  “Only once before,” Maureen said. “Dad told me not to do it alone.”

  Eventually they reached the top. They were not, Harvey saw, on a peak at all. They were at one end of a ridge that stretched southeastward into the High Sierra. A narrow path led up into the rock cliff itself; they’d come all the way behind it, so that when they got to its top they faced the ranch.

  “You’re right,” Harvey said. “The view’s worth it.” He stood on a monolith several stories high, feeling the pleasant breeze blowing across the valley. Everywhere he looked there were more of the huge white rocks. A glacier must have passed through here and scattered the land with these monoliths.

  The Senator’s ranch was laid out below. The small valley carved by the stream ran for several miles to the west; then there were more hills, still dotted with bungalow-size white stones. Far beyond the hills, and far below the level of the ranch, was the broad expanse of the San Joaquin. It was hazy out there, but Harvey thought he could make out the dark shape of the Temblor Range on the western edge of California’s central valley.

  “Silver Valley,” Maureen announced. “That’s our place there, and beyond is George Christopher’s ranch. I almost married him, once—” She broke off, laughing.

  Now why do I feel a twinge of jealousy? Harvey wondered. “Why is it so funny?”

  “We were all of fourteen at the time he proposed,” Maureen said. “Almost sixteen years ago. Dad had just been elected, and we were going to Washington, and George and I schemed to find a way so I could stay.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “No. Sometimes I wish I had,” she said. “Especially when I’m standing here.” She waved expressively.

  Harvey turned, and there were more hills, rising higher and higher until they blended into the Sierra Nevada range. The big mountains looked untouched, never climbed by humans. Harvey knew that was an illusion. If you stooped to tie your bootlaces on the John Muir Trail, you were likely to be trampled by backpackers.

  The great rock they stood on was cloven toward the edge of the cliff. The cleft was no more than a yard wide, but deep, so deep that Harvey couldn’t see the bottom. The top of the rock slanted toward the cleft, and toward the edge beyond it, so that Harvey wasn’t even tempted to go near it.

  Maureen strolled over there, and without a thought stepped across the cleft. She stood on a narrow strip of rock two feet wide, a three-hundred-foot drop in front of her, the unknown depth of the cleft behind. She looked out in satisfaction, then turned.

  She saw Harvey Randall standing grimly, trying to move forward and not able to do it. She gave him a puzzled look; then her face showed concern. She stepped back onto the main rock. “I’m sorry. Do heights bother you?”

  “Some,” Harvey admitted.

  “I should never have done that—what were you thinking of, anyway?”

  “How I could get out there if something happened. If I could make myself crawl across that crack—”

  “That wasn’t nice of me at all,” she said. “Anyway, let me show you the ranch. You can see most of it from here.”

  Afterward, Harvey couldn’t re
member what they’d talked about. It was nothing important, but it had been a pleasant hour. He couldn’t remember a nicer one.

  “We ought to be getting back down,” Maureen said.

  “Yeah. Is there an easier way than the one we came up?”

  “Don’t know. We can look,” she said. She led the way off to their left, around the opposite side of the rock face. They picked their way through scrub brush and along narrow goat trails. There were piles of goat and sheep droppings. Deer too, Harvey thought, although he couldn’t be sure. The ground was too hard for tracks.

  “It’s like nobody was ever here before,” Harvey said, but he said it under his breath, and Maureen didn’t hear. They were in a narrow gully, nothing more than a gash in the side of the steep hill, and the ranch had vanished.

  There was a sound behind them. Harvey turned, startled. A horse was coming down the draw.

  Not just a horse. The rider was a little blonde girl, a child not more than twelve. She rode without a saddle, and she looked like a part of the huge animal, fitted so well onto him that it might have been an undergrown centaur. “Hi,” she called.

  “Hi yourself,” Maureen said. “Harvey, this is Alice Cox. The Coxes work the ranch. Alice, what are you doing up here?”

  “Saw you going up,” she said. Her voice was small and high-pitched, but well modulated, not shrill.

  Maureen caught up to Harvey and winked. He nodded, pleased. “And we thought we were the intrepid explorers,” Maureen said.

  “Yeah. I had enough trouble getting up by myself, without taking a damn big horse.” He looked ahead. The way was steep, and it was absolutely impossible for a horse to get down there. He turned to say so.

  Alice had dismounted and was calmly leading the horse down the draw. It slipped and scrambled, and she pointed out places for it to step. The horse seemed to understand her perfectly. “Senator coming soon?” she asked.

  “Yes, tomorrow morning,” Maureen said.

  “I sure like talkin’ to him,” Alice said. “All the kids at school want to meet him. He’s on TV a lot.”