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Moonfall

Page 22

by Jack McDevitt


  Outside, the comet was rising, a great orange spume against the black sky. He looked at it and thought about the vice president. Charlie Haskell was going to die out there, and Rick wished he could prevent it. He knew there was a lesson to be learned here, but he hadn’t quite sorted out in his own mind precisely what it was.

  Charlie was genuinely likable. But the poor son of a bitch had been booby-trapped by events. Rick knew that when the time came to publish his memoirs, the loss of Charlie Haskell would be one of the more compelling chapters.

  His own political career was now in dire jeopardy as well. None of the other candidates was likely to take him on. He’d had to burn a few bridges and he was now Haskell’s guy. Some would even be inclined to believe Charlie’s “turn out the lights” remark had been Rick’s idea.

  Rick wouldn’t object to going to work for the other party if someone were to make the right offer. It was a pity really. You don’t get many shots at the White House. And it was all gone. Blown out of the water just like that.

  And Haskell’s sacrifice was probably unnecessary. The voters have a short memory, Charlie. He wondered whether the vice president had even stopped to consider how much damage he was doing to his friends. Still, the road to the presidency seemed to run right through Moonbase. Right through the heart of that goddam comet.

  More hatches closed somewhere in the bowels of the plane.

  Rick pulled down the shade.

  PACIFIC NEWS NETWORK BULLETIN. 3:56 P.M.

  Distributed to participating networks via Pool Agreement.

  “This is Tashi Yomiuri coming to you live from lunar orbit. I’m in one of the space planes, the SSTO Rome, and we’re taking our last passengers on board now before we start back for Earth. The comet is about eight million miles away, coming toward us at almost a million miles an hour.

  “We’ve been orbiting the Moon three times a day at a height of about three thousand kilometers. Which means we see the comet rise and set every eight hours. We’ve been able to watch it grow.

  “The mood on the spacecraft is somber. People are frightened, and they’ll be very glad to be on their way.”

  WALL STREET JOURNAL, ELECTRONIC EDITION

  Excerpt of Commentary by Melinda Bright.

  “People speculate about how far the comet has come, how old it is, why it’s traveling so fast. We’ve heard astronomers suggest that it might have been blown out of a supernova, and that if it was, the supernova must have happened millions, or perhaps billions, of years ago.

  “If that’s true, this thing has had the Moon’s number for a long time. I remember as a little girl sitting in our backyard in Kentucky, watching the Moon from my swing, and thinking how long it had been in the sky, and how it would be there forever. Now we know that’s not so. The comet’s been on its way possibly since the first humans climbed down out of the trees, and this day was marked on some cosmic calendar with all the inevitability of a quadratic equation. We’ve been congratulating ourselves that the comet’s going to hit the Moon and not the Earth. And I agree that’s reason to feel fortunate.

  “But it isn’t reason to feel glad. The Moon is an old friend, far older than the species. It’s an integral part of who we are, and the way we live. It softens us. We associate it with our most tender feelings. We have made it a goddess, and we have written songs and poems about it. We have pledged our love to each other in its silver light. Maybe only when we see it no more, when this visiting monstrosity has put out its light for all generations to come, will we understand what we have lost.”

  SSTO Rome Flight Deck. 4:04 P.M.

  John Verrano eased onto his new heading, watched the clock run down to zero, and felt the engines kick in. The force they generated pressed him back into his seat as the spacecraft rose out of orbit.

  3.

  Moonbase, Main Plaza. 6:01 P.M.

  The news that an effort would be made to get the last group out had fired Chaplain Pinnacle’s soul. He’d tried to maintain a stoic attitude throughout his ordeal. Into Thy hands, O Lord…. But life was priceless, and God knew that Mark did not want to part with it.

  He sat at a table beside a cluster of palms outside the Victor Hugo sidewalk café. No one walked now among the trees, the lights were out in the offices, and the artificially generated breeze, sharp with mint, blew through the parks. In all the vast wooded expanse of Main Plaza, he saw only a young couple, strolling quietly, making their way gradually toward the tram station.

  A handful of people came off one of the up-ramps, hurried across the center of the mall, and joined them. The chaplain glanced at his watch. There would only be four more flights out, three to the single plane that remained orbiting. And finally his flight, whose destination was in God’s hands.

  He was nervous about the dinner, afraid his fear would show. He’d tried prayer, had begged for courage, but still his hand shook and his voice played tricks on him.

  One of his parishioners, a young woman, had come to the chapel when she’d heard he was staying and offered him a narcotic. Something to quiet his nerves. Get him through the ordeal. The stuff they called “silver.” It was illegal, and he’d been startled when she’d produced the packet. He’d said no, he wouldn’t need it, thank you very much, but she’d held it out and in the end he concluded it was his duty to take it from her. Remove the temptation. She’d kissed his cheek, wished him luck, and hurried away. He’d actually considered using it. But he did not know whether he had a tolerance for such things, and in the end he’d dropped it into a trash receptacle.

  His cell phone beeped.

  “Chaplain Pinnacle,” he said.

  “Chaplain, this is Evelyn.”

  “Yes.” He was thrown off a bit by her familiarity. “What is it, Dr. Hampton?”

  “I just wanted to remind you that we’ll be serving dinner in a few minutes.”

  “No, I hadn’t forgotten.”

  “Good.” She paused. “You are okay?”

  “Oh, yes,” he said. “I’m fine.”

  “The vice president will be there.” As if he needed enticement.

  “Yes, I—I was just on my way.”

  The tram glided into the station. Its doors opened and everybody got on. Then the doors closed with an audible click and the vehicle slid out into the trees. He watched until it disappeared into heavy woodland on the far side of Main Plaza.

  San Francisco. 3:17 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time (6:17 P.M. EDT).

  Jerry Kapchik left work as soon as he decently could and went looking for a telescope. Wal-Mart had sold out. So had Sears. There was a specialty shop on Ocean Avenue, Galileo’s. They’d been cleaned out, too, except for a 90mm Grazier reflector. The Grazier cost five thousand dollars. “Worth every penny,” the salesman urged. It came complete with an optical shield that permitted the viewer to look directly at the Sun; and it had a programmable system with over seventeen thousand celestial objects in storage. “Just look up the code in the Grazier manual for whatever you want to see,” said the salesman, “lock onto the North Star, and punch the code into the keyboard. The telescope will automatically find the object, focus, and track until you tell it to do something else. Or, of course, until the object sets.”

  “Of course.”

  “With this,” he added, “you’ll want your own observatory.”

  Jerry tried to talk him down, but the salesman explained he wasn’t sure he even wanted to sell it to Jerry because he’d had a call ten minutes before. Somebody was on his way, hoping to buy one. “You’re lucky,” he said. “Day like this, I had to tell him we can’t hold anything.” He looked at his watch, as if the prospective buyer was even now rushing up the street.

  It was more than Jerry had intended to spend, and he wasn’t sure how he was going to explain it to Marisa. But something had come over him. Maybe it had to do with taking advantage of his son’s sudden interest in astronomy. Maybe years from now Jimmy would remember the Grazier as the turning point in his life. Anyway, this was going to be
a special evening and they should have the right kind of equipment to follow the event.

  It was packed in two cases, but the clerk assured him that assembly was really very easy. Jerry picked up a spare battery, hauled the cases outside, and loaded them into a taxi. The taxi carried him to the parking lot just off Skyline Boulevard, where Jerry left his car every day to catch the monorail into center city.

  He stopped en route to call Marisa and get it over with. She was initially unhappy and urged him to return it, but by the time he got home she’d decided the investment might be worthwhile. “As long as it gets used,” she told him. “But if it just sits in the attic, you are a dead man.”

  Marisa had been an emergency medical technician with the Pacifica rescue unit for several years. Now she taught emergency techniques at the San Francisco campus of the University of California. “The rescue unit has been put on alert,” she told him.

  “The comet?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “People are nervous. I’d call an alert, too, if I were running things.”

  After dinner they took out the telescope. The clerk had been right: It was easy to assemble. They snapped the tube assembly into the cradle and locked the cradle onto the tripod. They tightened a couple of clamps, attached the computer, inserted the battery, punched a button to initiate a series of self-tests, and they were ready to go.

  Jimmy and Erin delivered a gratifying display of enthusiasm. The only problem was that the telescope was clearly designed to be put in one place and left there. Jerry recalled the salesman’s remark that he’d want his own observatory.

  Nevertheless, they dragged it out onto the side deck and pointed it toward the comet, which now overwhelmed the eastern sky. The Moon was just visible, a child’s ball floating beyond a red-lit thundercloud. It was early evening, the Sun still a couple of hours from setting. The wind was cool and crisp off the sea.

  Jerry set the scope to manual operation. “Keep it simple,” he told Marisa. He used the viewfinder to sight the instrument while Erin placed a stool on the ground. Then he looked into the lens. He saw only a dark circle, and touched one of the knobs. The Moon jumped into the image, slipped out to the left, and finally settled in place. He turned it over to the kids.

  While her brother fidgeted, Erin climbed onto her stool, looked, and aaaahed. “I can see craters,” she said.

  Jerry stood back and studied the sky. The comet was very large, and streamers reached out and caught the Moon in a gauzy embrace. It chilled him.

  While the kids looked and made noises about how wonderful it was, he caught Marisa’s eye. “I was wrong,” he said.

  “About what?”

  “Let’s pack up and get out of here. Just for the night.”

  Her eyes went wide. “Jerry, the TV says there aren’t any motels left out there. And we can’t just drop in on Helen without warning.”

  “We’ll get our camping gear,” he said. “But let’s do it.”

  They owned two vehicles, a Mazda Superhawk and a Chrysler wagon. Marisa, despite her protests, had foreseen the event and prepared for a quick getaway. Both cars were already half-loaded. They added food, water, and clothes. Marisa found her emergency aid kit and put it in the Mazda. They also packed the computer and some rare books that Jerry had been collecting, and Marisa’s jewelry and the silverware. And their bank books and passports and U.S. bonds. And the kids’ favorite toys. And the Grazier telescope.

  TRANSGLOBAL NEWS REPORT. 6:18 P.M.

  “This is Keith Morley reporting live with the vice presidential party at Moonbase. It is now just over four hours until the Tomiko Comet arrives. As you’re probably aware, there’ll be a spacecraft racing it to try to get us out. The vehicle’s a moonbus, but it’s smaller than the regular moonbuses, so it’s known locally as the Micro. Its pilot is Tony Casaway, who’s from San Francisco; and the copilot is Alisa Rolnikaya. Alisa is a Russian, although she was born in Florence, Italy. They call her ‘Saber.’ I expect to be talking to them a little later on in the evening, live and by remote, from the cockpit of the Micro.

  “With me now is Chaplain Mark Pinnacle, who’s one of the six who’ve agreed to stay behind when everyone else was evacuated. At the time you volunteered, Chaplain, did you know that a last-minute rescue would be attempted?”

  “No, Keith. We had no idea anyone was actually going to try to get us out. I must say I was delighted to hear the news. I hope we can do it.”

  “Are you confident?”

  “I’d like to think God isn’t finished with me yet.”

  “Chaplain, I wonder if you’d tell us why you elected to stay behind?”

  “I suppose I could turn that around, Keith. Why are you still here?”

  (Hesitates.) “I suppose because it’s my job.”

  “Me too.”

  “Chaplain, I wonder if you’d tell us which faith you represent?”

  “Well, I’m Church of England, of course. But on the Moon I represent all faiths. And not only Christian, I might add.”

  “I’m sure our viewers wonder how that can be, Chaplain.”

  “I’m not sure I understand it, Keith. People just seem to accept it. Accept me. If you know what I mean.”

  Moonbase, Main Plaza. 6:28 P.M.

  Chaplain Pinnacle was drenched with sweat. He was glad the interview was over, but he wasn’t pleased with his performance. He’d had a heaven-sent opportunity to explain to the world how it really was out here, how the great faiths came together and the theological disagreements tended to fade away. There were no heretics on the Moon.

  Out here, the universe looks pretty big.

  Theologians had been describing the creator as infinite right from the beginning. And for the first time, people were beginning to understand what that might mean. Maybe there’s room for all faiths. They seem to coexist quite nicely once they get off-world.

  Mark had never felt closer to his God than he did at that moment. Yet this giant comet was coming to destroy the entire place. Why was that?

  Moonbase, Director’s Private Dining Room. 6:30 P.M.

  It might have been the most memorable dinner Charlie had attended during his entire political career. He’d gone in reluctantly, expecting a funereal atmosphere, with the participants exchanging doomed glances and peeking surreptitiously every few minutes at their watches. But it wasn’t like that at all.

  Jack Chandler and Evelyn seemed to be in high spirits. Keith Morley had been to the abandoned commcenter, where he’d opened a permanent channel to his producer. Then he’d sat down with the chaplain, set up his microcam, and done a program. “You were absolutely great,” he was telling a pleased Pinnacle when Charlie walked in the door. “Faith, courage, and humility. They were all there.”

  The chaplain thanked him. “A worldwide congregation,” he said. “I would never have believed it.”

  Only Bigfoot was missing. He’d promised to come if he could, but they had a message from him: Thanks for the invitation. Hate to miss the sausage. But if I eat now, we’ll sit later.

  Evelyn and Jack had cooked the meal. There was no sausage. But they did deliver Caesar salad, chicken fingers (real chicken), fried potatoes, mustard sauce, white wine, coffee, and, for dessert, the piéce de résistance, fudge nut brownie with ice cream. Not much maybe in Georgetown, but by Moonbase standards, it was a feast of major proportions.

  The chaplain bowed his head. Under other circumstances, his companions might have done little more than pause awkwardly. But this time they all joined him.

  Charlie had been reared as a Methodist by a skeptical father whose primary purpose in belonging to the Church seemed to be political. It was the power center for the movers and shakers, for those who wielded influence in his hometown. The vice president himself attended church on a fairly regular basis, Methodist or whatever else happened to be handy. Like his father, he did it out of political expediency. Voters expected pious presidents.

  Also like his father, he believed the universe a clockwork mechan
ism; and if there was a clockmaker, he’d hidden himself too well and had therefore no justifiable complaint with unbelievers. Charlie cringed at the long sermons, when he’d have preferred to play golf. Or sleep late. Churches had another downside: The preacher who found out he had a vice president in the pews often used his opportunity to attack the administration on behalf of his favorite moral issue. Charlie had been pelted from the pulpit over fetal tissue, Social Security cutbacks, voluntary life-termination, biosynthetic research, and the failure of the public schools to include God in the curriculum.

  “I’ve always envied people with faith,” Charlie told Mark Pinnacle. “It helps at a time like this.”

  The chaplain looked amused. “I wish I could tell you it makes me less nervous.”

  The table was set with gleaming silver, cloth napkins, fine china, and exquisite long-stemmed glasses. It was a startling change of pace to the spartan lifestyle at Luna. Evelyn poured the wine and they lifted their glasses. “To Moonbase,” she said.

  The laughter and good spirits defied all logic. There was a fair amount of graveyard humor, none of it funny in retrospect (“Here I am with the story of the century and somebody else is going to get to do the wrap-up”), but hilarious at the time.

  Charlie discovered how much he liked these people: Evelyn, black, beautiful, whiplash bright, wanting to look fearless, but concealing a trembling hand when she raised her wine glass.

  Jack Chandler, the perfect bureaucrat. Reserved tonight, conservative, a man who measured life by precedent and regulation. An hour ago, Charlie would have guessed that Chandler had never learned to enjoy himself. Now the director roared with laughter at every opportunity. And at one point he exchanged glances with Evelyn, and silently formed the words I love you.

  Keith Morley, TV journalist, professional cynic. Self-appointed defender of the public weal. A man who enjoyed sacrificing the reputations of political figures. But Morley offered a series of going-away wishes for the others: that Evelyn would avoid the bankruptcy that loomed over Moonbase International; that Chandler would land an even bigger bureaucracy to direct: the cleanup effort after Tomiko; that the chaplain would be transferred to a quiet parish on the banks of the Thames; and that Charlie would get the White House, but only if he still wanted it when he got home.

 

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