Moonfall

by Jack McDevitt

  The Moon-cluster was passing out of sight, below the window. “Good. When can I start?”

  “Why don’t you come over and talk to Windy Cross? He’s my boss. I can’t make any promises, but who knows?”

  Camp David. 6:28 P.M.

  Stratemeyer glared down from the screen. “Let me try it again, Al. Feinberg thinks there are ten planes. But one’s in maintenance and can’t be made ready in time to participate. We lost another coming back from the Moon. Or doesn’t anybody remember? And we’ve got another one at Skyport that’s too damaged to get home. So we’re down to seven. That’s what you’re going to have to settle for.”

  “The president wanted eight or nine, minimum.”

  “They don’t exist, Al.”

  TRANSGLOBAL SPECIAL REPORT 7:02 P.M.

  “This is Peggy Bitmauer at LTA headquarters in Indianapolis. A fleet of space planes will blast off from Atlanta tomorrow morning in an effort to head off the Possum, a large chunk of moonrock which scientists expect to fall in Kansas Tuesday morning. Lunar Transport Authority Commissioner Harold Stratemeyer, a few moments ago, said that the LTA’s entire fleet of Single-Stage-To-Orbit spacecraft have been placed at the disposal of the Government….”

  Atlanta. 7:09 P.M.

  Pete Telliard and his wife were celebrating their twenty-second anniversary at Horatio’s, where no prices were printed on the menu and the meals were a hundred sixty per. Reservations were usually required weeks in advance; but tonight, like the city it served, Horatio’s was three-quarters empty.

  Pete squirmed in his jacket, uncomfortable with the formality of the waiters, trying to look as if he ate in establishments like this all the time. His wife smiled at him. “Next year,” she said, “we’ll go to the Steak and Ale.”

  His phone beeped. He pressed the face of the device and watched the antenna rise. “Telliard,” he said.

  “Pete,” His boss’s voice. From the shop. “We need you. Right away.”

  He stared at the instrument. “I can’t make it,” he said. “I’m with my wife. At Horatio’s. Anniversary.”

  “I’m sorry, Pete. I really am. But we have to have you. They’re bringing in the SSTOs for some refitting. It has to be done yesterday and there’s no wriggle room.”

  Skyport, Flight Control 8:17 P.M.

  George Culver gazed at a close-up of the ruined tail assembly. The hull was battered and scorched, most of his sensors were gone, the port wing was jammed shut.

  “We just don’t have the facilities to do the kind of repairs it needs, George.” The speaker was Skyport’s maintenance chief, a quiet, intense man in his fifties. “I can’t certify it. It wouldn’t hold together if you tried to take it down,”

  “So what happens now?”

  He shrugged. “Not my department. But if they ask me, I’ll recommend they salvage the parts and junk the rest.”

  “You might not have a choice about certification,” George said. “They need all the SSTOs.”

  The eyes narrowed. “They already tried to pressure me, George. Look, if you try to take that thing down, odds are you’re not going to make it. I told that to management and I told it to NASA. If my boss wants to override me and sign the paper, he’s free to do so. I won’t do it. And if I were you and they do certify the plane, I’d refuse to fly it. Quote me if you want.”

  Skyport, Copenhagen Flight Deck. 8:36 P.M.

  The engines were running.

  Nora Ehrlich was an accomplished woman. Aside from flying the big space plane, she played a competent organ, had twice served on her school board, and had published two books of humorous aphorisms. She knew an event when she saw one, and she was taking notes for a third book, which would be an account of the rescue at Moonbase, followed by the pursuit of the Possum. The thing couldn’t miss, and she already had the title: Blindside. She’d considered The Doomsday Rock and Moonwreck. But Blindside had a nice ring to it. Her first two volumes, Nude in the Fast Lane and Scatter My Ashes at Lord & Taylor, had been written under a pseudonym and had been modestly successful; Blindside would appear with her own name on the jacket. And she expected to make the best-seller lists.

  Nora was a Londoner. She was tall, model-attractive, redheaded, a widow. She’d never lacked for dates, had married a wealthy Dane, moved to Copenhagen, had two daughters, and been successful at everything she touched. In the fall, her older daughter would be starting at the University of Zurich. Her husband had died three years earlier in a plane crash. She missed him, and had formed the unfortunate habit of contrasting everyone else against him. They all came up short.

  But life without a steady man wasn’t as bad as she’d imagined, and she was reasonably content. And the Tomiko Event, which was a disaster for everyone else, was developing into a godsend for her. She was at the center of the action. She knew that Keith Morley was riding out to the Possum now, and she expected to persuade him to do an interview with her. She expected to become an overnight celebrity, and that wouldn’t hurt the book at all.

  “Copenhagen.” The voice was from Skyport flight control. “Ready to launch.”

  “Roger. On your count.”

  “Sixty seconds.”

  Her copilot, Johatin Blakeslee, nodded. Boards green. The flight engineer was Wendy Carpenter, a friend since college days, and a niece of Orly Carpenter, NASA’s director of operations at Houston.

  “We’re go,” said Wendy.

  Thirty seconds.

  Blakeslee was tall and blond. Chiseled chin, clear blue eyes, butter-wouldn’t-melt smile. He was one of the few really good-looking guys Nora had met who was worth a damn. “Did you hear they got some complaints?” he asked. “Some people are upset because we’re going back empty and they can’t get home. I understand they were raising hell with the scheduling desk.”

  “Nothing surprises me anymore, Blakes,” she said.

  They launched precisely on schedule. The standard flight plan to Atlanta called for the spacecraft to complete almost three-quarters of an orbit before starting its descent. But they were barely away from the station when they were overtaken without warning by a storm of pebbles and dust. It tore at the plane, broke off antennas, smashed the radome, and cracked a passenger window in the rear. The window blew out and air pressure plummeted. Nora cut the engines, but that was a mistake. The debris, moving faster than the SSTO and coming at it from almost directly behind, penetrated the rockets and coated fuel pumps and the combustion chamber, and all but blocked the exhaust ports. Warning lights for both engines glowed blood red.

  Rocks clattered against the hull. Klaxons sounded in the passenger compartment.

  Nora opened a channel to Skyport, “This is Copenhagen,” she said. “Mayday.”

  “I see it. Sit tight, Copenhagen. Wait one.”

  Abruptly the storm was gone.

  Skyport came back: “Stay with it for one orbit. Then we’ll abandon. Kordeshev will rendezvous.”

  “You can’t do that,” said Ehrlich. “They need the plane.”

  “Forget it.”

  “Yeah, I can save it,” she said: “I’m going to restart, and we’ll bring her back.”

  “Negative, Copenhagen. Restart is not authorized.”

  Blakeslees eyes had gone wide. “They’re right. You can’t take this kind of chance.”

  “We start one” she said. “We only need one.”

  Blakeslee shook his head. Not a good idea. Wendy caught Ehrlich’s eye and nodded. Do it.

  “Do not try to return,” said flight control. “Copenhagen, acknowledge.”

  Nora used the thrusters to adjust attitude. All she needed to do was get a little lift. A little acceleration. “You’re breaking up, Skyport,” she said. “We cannot hear you.” She glanced at Blakeslee. “Ready?”

  He nodded.

  The starboard engine misfired and ignited the fuel tank, which erupted: The blast broke the plane in half and set off a series of secondary explosions. A nearby satellite recorded the event.

  It was a
lmost a minute before the blinding light died.

  12.

  FOX MEDIA SPECIAL REPORT. 9:18 P.M.

  Excerpt of an interview with Physicist J. Robert Collins of Princeton by Harmon McMichael.

  Collins: …three hundred thousand megatons. It’s my opinion that, under these conditions, no one in North America would be safe.

  McMichael: Then we’d better hope they succeed in getting rid of the thing.

  Collins: Oh, yes. I don’t think there’s much question about that.

  McMichael: What do you think of their chances?

  Collins: You might say I’m cautiously optimistic.

  Skyport, Office of the Director of Operations. 9:32 P.M.

  Belle escorted him in from the outer office. “George, I’m glad you came by,” she said. She looked rumpled, worried, worn.

  George found his way to a chair. “You’re a plane short,” he said, coming right to the point.

  “Yes. That’s why we need you.”

  He nodded. He couldn’t take his plane into the atmosphere, but there was no reason he couldn’t help chase down the Possum. “We’ll have to find a way to anchor it,” he said.

  “We’ve been thinking about that. We should be able to tie you down with cable. We’ve got plenty of it.” Her eyes were rimmed with worry. “George, you understand it’s going to be makeshift. We’ll get you secured as best we can, but there’s a risk. If it tears loose while you’re at full throttle….”

  He knew. “It shouldn’t be hard to make sure that doesn’t happen.” He knew damned well how optimistic that statement was. “Do we have some engineers on call?”

  “Not anybody who has experience with this kind of situation.” (Who, wondered George, might have that kind of experience.) “But we’ll get you some help.” She drummed her fingernails on the desk. “We’ll want you and your people in p-suits once the operation gets under way.”

  In case the plane cracks open. “Yeah,” said George. “I think that’s a good idea.”

  13.

  Stawnton Virginia 11:08 P.M.

  Jack Gallagher was in bed, thumbing through the current edition of The Patriot, when the phone rang. Ann glanced up from the CNN newscast, which was detailing movements of the space planes to Atlanta for refitting.

  His teenage son was away at school, so late-night calls were down to almost nothing. “Hello?”

  “Jack.” Steve’s voice. “Can you get over here?”

  Jack was a cook at his brother’s restaurant. It was a job he detested. No particular reason. Steve treated him well enough, it paid all right, and the hours weren’t bad. But it was a dead end, and he knew that thirty years from now he’d still be a cook. That was what he liked about the Legion: He was a major. People saluted him. Took him seriously. “What’s going on?” he asked. (He tried to avoid using Steve’s rank when Ann was in the room. She never said anything, never showed any disapproval. But it sounded ridiculous in her presence.)

  “Just come down, okay? We’ve got ducks on the pond.”

  The remark meant to come armed. It meant that the Legion was threatened. Or that it was going to take the offensive. But what the hell was it all about? Despite his inclination to join in on the general criticism of the government, Jack Gallagher never thought it would come to shots actually being fired. It was all just talk.

  “I’ll be waiting.” Steve paused. “No uniform.”

  Ann looked at him. “It’s late, Jack.”

  “Legion business, hon,” he said. “I’ll be back in an hour or so:”

  She was used to late-night exercises and she didn’t complain. “Try to get home at a decent hour,” she said.

  Ten minutes later, Jack backed out of the driveway that circled his mobile home, slipped onto Banner Street, and headed west on Route 250. Steve’s home was located a couple miles outside town on the Middle River, It was a ranch really, a nice place, spread out over eight acres.

  Jack saw Tad Wickett’s Chevy pickup parked in the driveway. He pulled in beside it, and the front door opened. The colonel stood silhouetted against the light. “Hello, Jack,” he said. “This looks like our night.”

  He was wearing a pair of dark, neatly pressed slacks and a pullover shirt with the manufacturer’s logo stenciled across the breast pocket.

  Tad was seated in the living room, fondling a cold can of Coke, his eyes expressionless. (He was a beer drinker. But Steve never allowed his people to combine alcohol with duty. They were clearly in an operational status.) His glance touched Jack and moved on to one of the colonel’s bowling trophies. Tad didn’t entirely approve of Jack Gallagher.

  Tad had spent five years with the Corps. He’d been cited for valor when the Marines went ashore to rescue Western hostages at Benghazi. He’d made sergeant first class, and been busted for fighting and insubordination, and court-martialed for assaulting a lieutenant. But he’d matured since then. He was an ideal officer now. Steve had been so impressed, he’d commissioned Tad after only three years.

  In civilian life Tad worked in a lumberyard. He was a solid, churchgoing man with a proclaimed passion for the United States, and a streak of cruelty wide enough to accommodate a tractor-trailer. He didn’t know where his family was. His wife had abandoned her duties and left him two years before, taking both their sons. Like so many others, he’d been watching with dismay the disintegration of civil society, the erosion of fights, the continuing encroachments by the federal government and its agents around the country, the gradual sellout to the United Nations and the inferior races. Getting worse all the time, he’d once told Jack. Today a free man can get away from oppression if he has to. He can go to Argentina, Sri Lanka, wherever. Soon, though, there’ll be a world government and there’ll be no escape anywhere.

  “You’ve seen the reports?” the colonel asked, offering Jack a chair. “About the SSTOs?”

  He sat down and accepted a glass of apple juice. “Yes, Steve. I’ve seen them.”

  “What do you think?”

  “That’s a big rock coming down. I hope they can stop it.”

  Steve relaxed on the sofa and crossed one leg over the other. “Jack, you know they lost one of the planes earlier this evening.”

  “I heard.”

  “They’ve found a substitute somewhere. They’re saying they’ve still got enough to push the rock aside.”

  “I don’t think I understand where this is headed,” Jack said. He wished Tad were not there. The ex-Marine was somehow a defining presence. Tad was still young, barely thirty, trim, muscular, vaguely hostile. His eyes were hard and lines of cruelty had already formed at the corners of his mouth.

  Tad smiled, as if that was exactly what he’d expected Jack to say, as if Jack were reading from a script. Tad was emotionless, save when he was enjoying himself, as he seemed to be doing now. It seemed to Jack that he had no real connection to life outside the militia.

  Steve leaned forward, his gaze narrowing. “Think it through. What happens if the Possum hits?”

  “A lot of people die,” Jack said. “And the media are saying the country wouldn’t survive.”

  Tad raised his glass in silent approval. “The government wouldn’t survive,” he said. “The institutions would go under; that’s what they’re really saying. And the question we have to decide is, is that a bad thing?”

  “It’s a bad thing if it takes out the whole Midwest, and maybe the rest of us as well, which is what they’re saying it’ll do.”

  “Hell, Jack,” said the colonel. “Tad’s right. It’s the media who’re talking. When did you start believing them? They’re part of the establishment, too. You don’t think they want to save their asses?” He drew a window curtain aside and looked out. A distant streetlight illuminated the egress road. “Isn’t this what we’ve been looking for all along?”

  Jack’s stomach began to tighten. He’d been loyal to the Legion. Loyal to Steve. And he’d played his end of the game. Us against the government. One day we’ll show them. But the weap
ons had never been loaded. Never would be loaded. Not really. That was part of the unspoken understanding. “What do you intend to do?” he asked.

  “It’s simple. We’re going to Atlanta. You and Tad and I are going to take out one of the SSTOs. That’s all we have to do: take out one. If we do that, it’s over. The Possum hits, and the government will be gone within weeks. Maybe days.”

  “My God,” said Jack. “How many people would we kilt?”

  Steve nodded sadly, “Too many,” he said. “But the price of freedom is always high. Fortunately, it’s a price free men have been willing to pay.” He refilled his glass. His eyes gleamed in the light. “Jack, don’t you think I’d use another way if I could? But this is all we have. This is it. It’s a God-sent opportunity, and it’d be criminal not to take advantage of it just because we have weak stomachs.”

  “Weak stomachs? Steve—” The words wouldn’t come. Jack had always looked up to his brother, had never known him to be wrong about anything. Steve Gallagher was the soul of courage and integrity. That he’d lied about his Ranger status was of no significance because he’d needed that extra bit of prestige to ensure control over the Legion. Jack understood completely. But this was horribly wrong. It occurred to Jack that his brother had read too many manuals, had begun to believe all the things he said, all the things that gave him power.

  The colonel’s eyes slid shut. “I know,” he said soothingly. “I know everything you’re going to say. And I’ve thought about it. But won’t we be better off in the long run if we populate this country with a few thousand free men rather than three hundred million slaves? That’s what we’ve got now, Jack. You know that as well as I do.”

  Tad was watching Jack carefully.

  Steve leaned forward. “So what’s your answer, Jack?”

  “No.” Jack’s voice shook because he never said no to Steve. “I don’t want any part of it.”

  “Okay.” The colonel nodded. “I understand your feeling on this. And I respect it.”

  Thank God. “Then we’ll look for another way?”

  “We’ve looked for another way. We’ve been looking years for another way. Jack: Tad and I are going to complete the mission.” He looked over at Tad, and Tad’s eyes were amused. “But I understand you have a moral reservation that will not allow you to participate.”