Jack McDevitt - The Moonfall

"Two minutes," said the voice from Mabry.

Lee Cochran was seated behind the president, trying to look relaxed. Keith Morley was in back somewhere. They were all wearing p-suits.

"Rachel, you okay?" asked Charlie.

That was an embarrassment. Here she was, sitting beside a politician, for God's sake, and he was cooler than she was. She wondered if he was aware what would happen if Jonathan's collection of pegs and wires didn't work. "Sure," she said.

He tugged at his harness, trying to get comfortable in the p-suit, which was simply too bulky. That he was a big man himself did not help conditions. "Answer a question for me," he said. "If this whole operation's being handled by computer from the ferry, why are we even here? The pilots, I mean?"

"We're backups," she said. "In case something goes wrong. Anyhow, I doubt they had time to write the programs for a completely automated operation. This is a little bit rushed."

"One minute."

"Okay," she said. "Get ready. Here we go." SSTO Arlington Flight Deck. 4:13 A.M.

The engines rumbled reassuringly.

A week ago George had been looking forward to an evening with Annie Blink, a bright, magnetic blond, a lady with an absurd name who said yes her name was a problem and she had every intention of changing it eventually but she was being careful because she didn't want to go through the rest of her life with another funny name and people trying to hold back grins when she introduced herself. And to tell the truth, George, Culver sounds suspect.

He'd broken through that evening and taken her to bed, the first time. The only time. The night had been full of laughter and passion and he'd decided Annie was the one for him. The future had looked pretty good last Tuesday.

"Thirty seconds."

He looked back at Mary and Curt. They were checking each other's suits.

He listened to his own breathing. Inside the helmet, he felt isolated, alone. Lights were moving above; it was one of the ferries; and there was another set of lights, on the surface, to starboard. That was the Russian-based unit. Moscow. A third spacecraft, Tokyo, was far forward on the Plain. Atlanta, London, Berlin, and the Lowell, were in the Back Country.

Mary, who wasn't much given to emotional displays, reached over unexpectedly and squeezed his wrist. He could barely feel the gesture through the suit. He glanced at her and saw that her lips were moving.

Yeah. If there'd ever been a moment for divine intervention, this was it. Antonia Mabry, Mission Control. 4:14 A.M.

"Zero."

Feinberg pushed the button. London and Tokyo, the forward vessels on the Plain and in the Back Country, went to full thrust.

Simultaneously Carpenter activated the simulation. The main screen acquired an image of how the Possum should react; and an overlay in red depicted what was actually happening. So long as there was no divergence between white and red graphics, they would be okay.

The tension in the compartment was so great that Feinberg actually felt faint. The space had become claustrophobic, and he would have done almost anything to get normal gravity. His stomach pressed on his heart.

He'd found it difficult to eat since leaving Atlanta. All his anatomical systems seemed to be in disarray. He wished he'd insisted on staying at the AstroLab, where he'd have been more effective because he wouldn't have been constantly ill.

The program brought in the other engines, went to full thrust here, quarter thrust there. It played the seven power plants like a symphony.

At zero plus one minute the tumble began to slow. The Possum edged toward stability.

Feinberg had placed Lowell at the rear of the Possum to take full advantage of its nuclear capability. There it would run throughout the operation at full power, acting as a kind of outboard motor.

The phone, surprisingly, did not ring. Carpenter had thought Haskell would be on it constantly, demanding updates throughout the operation, wasting his time. But it remained silent.

"This is Angela Shepard outside Union Station in Chicago. Despite the late hour, you can see that enormous crowds have gathered here along Jackson Boulevard. The flight from the city goes on, but many of those who remain are coming together in the downtown area. We're getting reports that the same phenomenon is occurring throughout the Midwest, people gathering to await the outcome of the Rainbow mission. Here, the streets are filled, bells are tolling, traffic's at a standstill. But it's almost a festive atmosphere, unlike the terrifying scenes we witnessed over the weekend from the coastal cities, and even earlier today in parts of the Midwest.

"It's as if some vast herd instinct has taken over. People we've talked to seem to be optimistic. By ten to one, in our informal poll, they say they think the rock will be stopped. Some have brought pots and cowbells, and they're ready to celebrate.

"There've been some arrests for disorderly behavior, but police are telling us it's not what you might expect, not people looting stores, but just folks partying a little too hard. I have to say, it's one of the strangest things I've ever seen. We came here tonight expecting to see panic, and instead we get this." (Camera pans the street filled with people laughing and singing.)

"They've been told that, if the Possum comes, they'll be able to see it from here, looking toward the southwest. It's a warm night. The Moon-cloud is down, and the sky is absolutely clear.

"Almost everybody has a TV. They're slung over shoulders, or slipped into back pockets. The stores all seem to be open and televisions are on everywhere. I'm looking now at an image of this broadcast in the window of a furniture store. These folks started arriving in the early evening and they've been here all night. Whatever happens this morning, you have to admire the courage of these people." (Off-camera applause.)

"Back to you, Don. This is Angela Shepard in Chicago."

Minot, North Dakota. 3:16 A.M. Central Daylight Time (4:16 A.M. EDT).

Minot might have had a little more steel in its blood than the average North Dakota town. Its citizenry was reinforced by a large population of air force dependents, who'd decided they couldn't do anything about the danger in the sky, but who'd gathered at two elementary schools and kept them open for the hundreds of lost and stranded people who were coming in from the south. Now, with some bacon and scrambled eggs in her stomach, Marilyn Keep felt much better. She stood with her husband in a small crowd outside the Dwight Eisenhower Elementary School auditorium, drinking coffee and half watching a battery-powered TV somebody had put on a chair.

Most of the USAF operational personnel were gone, hauling supplies to stricken areas, carrying out sick and injured, trying to get through the emergency as best they could. But the support people, and the dependents, were still in Minot.

Marilyn was asked about New York, and she described the flooded streets, the sense of being isolated on the rooftop, the child against whom she'd closed the door. ("It's okay" someone said, "you couldn't help it.")

The television carried a close-up of one of the space planes, the long fiery lances from its twin engines illuminating the dark rock. They were two minutes into the operation now, and the reporter said that everything was going well. So far. Even if it didn't, she thought, even if the situation broke down, surely they were far enough north to be safe.

Surely. Percival Lowell Utility Deck. 4:20 A.M. Zero plus six.

The reality was that Keith Morley had no idea how things were going. He was in effect doing play-by-play, and he'd assumed that he'd somehow be able to see the operation. But he had only the images being transmitted from the monitoring vessels, flashes of light in the darkness, recognizable on close-up as flames boiling out of rockets. But there was no way to know what, if anything, was happening with the Possum. He had no background against which to measure movement. For that matter, he couldn't be sure that any apparent movement wasn't a result of changes in the position of the sensors on the circling ferries.