Larry Niven - Footfall

“That’s still classified.”

“Are you out of your—”

“You had a fuck of a lot of radio equipment, and I’m not sure in my heart that we got it all, and the sheriff used his car radio to try to alert the populace! You almost died then, Mr… Tate Evans. I’ll tell you when I can. Really.”

“But what do we prepare for? How long will we be in there?”

“Hours, not days. Without us it would have been days,” Kennedy said. “We’ve got decontamination equipment parked outside ready.”

“Decontam—”

Up the stairs came a riot of noise. People were jammed in the stairwell, all the way to the thick iron trapdoor. “Something I think we’d better do,” Isadore said. “Pass out all the booze. I mean it Bill. You heard the commander, the Navy’ll pay for it. But that’s a supercooled riot in there, and something awful’s about to happen and we’ll want them tranquil.”

“Right. Medicine too,” George said. The living room held only Navy men and the legitimate owners. “Commander, get your men to carrying booze. I’ll get the medical kit. We’ll set up on the stairs. Force the rest of those carpetbaggers down to leave the stairs clear. And then I’ll offer you a drink.”

“Not for—” The Commander checked his watch. “We’ve got twenty minutes. And then I’m prepared to drink a toast.”

There were no windows on Michael. The control room was buried deep in Michael’s heart, between the water tanks, with the tower to shield it too. For Harry and the others there was nothing by TV screens.

Somewhere outside, there were still people to talk to Gillespie. “Nothing from the President. If anything comes, it’ll be a messenger. We’ve got a tight phone to the gate.”

Gillespie said, “If a digit ship changes course anywhere, I want to know it.”

And the tinny response: “We’re getting some action from the ships we attacked, but nothing aimed here.”

“How long?”

“Eight minutes.”

There were cameras everywhere, inside and outside Michael. One camera on the wall of the dome showed all of the great ship: the Shell, the placement guns protruding under the rim, six towers around the base; the Brick standing above them, its flat sides hung with smaller spacecraft, shadowed by the overhang of the nose. The dome that had swarmed with activity, day and night, for months, now looked deserted, silent, empty.

Gillespie turned toward the repair crew. “Five minutes. Close your faceplates now.” Then, by intercom, “Testing. Can you all hear me?”

They responded.

“All personnel outside Michael, get to the shelter. And thank you all.”

A dozen crash couches covered the floor. Harry and Rohrs and Gamble and the others were strapped down like mental patients; the only difference was that they could pull their arms free. An umbilical carried oxygen from the wall, and made a cold spot on Harry’s chest. Harry was feeling claustrophobic. And elated! Here’s Harry the Minstrel in a by-god space suit, waiting for launch!

Rohrs said, “It’ll be rough on the pilots, riding outside like that.”

“At least they’ve got windows,” Harry said.

Someone said, “Here we lie, waiting for an atom bomb to go off under our asses …”

“There has to be a more graceful way to say that,” Tiny Pelz said. Dr. Pelz was an atomjack, built heavy and strong. He looked strange with his bushy black beard shaved off to fit him into the pressure suit.

The desks and tables and phones and lines were all gone. The ready room was neat and clean. Padded handholds lined the walls and ceiling.

Harry remembered the men in Kansas who had gone forth to battle the enemy with tanks. They talked to keep their courage up. Harry didn’t know these men. Young, strong, healthy — if he told them about his back problem, what would they say? Pelz would understand, or Rohrs, or Gamble.

“One minute,” said a tinny voice, “and I’m going.”

They watched for bright light in their screens. The snout meteor could fall at any second. The silence grew thick, the tension stretched until Harry could stand it no longer. He bellowed, “Sancho! My armor!”

The youthful faces looked at him. Some were grinning. He heard Gillespie’s grunt of disgust and saw Gillespie’s elbow move. An atomic bomb went off under Harry Reddington’s ass.

Maintaining a civilization in here was going to be worse than Isadore had thought. He’d never seen human beings crowded close. Miranda and her deputy sheriff shared a bunk. All the bunks held two or three each, and if the supports collapsed the bunk would not fall. There was no room.

He heard, “Oh, God, it’s another meteor!” and wished he hadn’t. It could start an epidemic of fear; and it might be true. Bill Shalt was still fulminating at Commander Kennedy, who still hadn’t lost his temper, quite.

“Hey, Bill,” Isadore bellowed. Nothing less would be hear “We always prepare for the wrong disaster. You told us. Remember?”

Shakes turned. “Well, this idiot won’t tell me what disaster we are prepared for.”

“Reminds me,” Commander Kennedy shouted. “Just how did you go about constructing this place?”

“We built it good. Two layers of — why? You crammed two thousand Indians in here with no deodorant, and now you want to know it’s safe?”

“I do.”

“It’s safe. Two layers of concrete separated by—”

The sound of the end of the world slammed against the ceiling, For a moment that incredible crowd was totally silent. Then it came again: SLAM.

Commander Kennedy whooped. “They made it! They’re up! It’s—”

SLAM

“-first bomb fails you just start over.”

SLAM

“If the second bomb fails, you’re already—”

SLAM

“-already in the air. You’ll fall. They’re on their—”

SLAM

“-way, by God! You can give me that drink now.”

SLAM

God was knocking, and he wanted in bad.

WHAM

WHAM

WHAM

quiet

“The respite will be brief,” Gillespie bellowed. Harry barely heard him in the silence after the bombs. How many were there? Twenty? Thirty?

“Stay in harness and be ready for acceleration.”

Goddam! We made it! The screens showed little but clouds. Harry caught a glimpse of Vancouver Island and the Straits of Juan de Fuca. There would be nothing to see but the Pacific Ocean anyway. Presently Earth was a shallow arc, cloud-white, and beyond it a winking light, blip blip blip. “Digit ship under power, two o’clock high!”

“Roger, I see it,” Gillespie said.

“There’s another!” Ensign Franklin shouted into the mike, then lowered his voice and tried to sound like an astronaut. “Nine o’clock low, far away. Accelerating.”

“Roger. Stand by for acceleration. Fire.”

Harry was shoved back against his couch. In the moment before thrust resumed, the screens showed lines of spurt bombs leaving their rails on all sides. The spurt bombs looked like fasces, bundles of tubes around an axis made up of attitude jets and cameras and a computer. They moved in straight lines past the rim of the Shell, turning as they went …”

WHAM

Harry waited. Nothing. Then Gillespie’s voice in the intercom.

WHAM

WHAM

The nearer of the blinking lights had gone out. The view in one screen expanded once and again. Something showed dim against the stars. How far?

“Object in view, nine o’clock low.” Franklin had his voice under control now. He sounded like Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff. “Might be Big Mama.”