Jack McDevitt - The Moonfall

Willem Stephan moved the throttle forward, and the spacecraft began to pick up velocity. He informed Moonbase that he was leaving orbit, and was relieved to watch the lunar surface begin to drop away. He'd been in orbit thirty-eight hours, and was starting back with 162 passengers. Not quite as many as he'd expected, but the incident with the Micro had slowed the operation down.

But Rome was in orbit now, and she would collect passengers during the night, until she was joined by the American plane early tomorrow morning.

Gruder looked at him. "I'm glad to be away," he said.

"Yes, old friend. As am I."

Saturday, April 13

White House. 1:15 A.M.

The president had been at a party at the Polish embassy when Haskell's message reached him: UNABLE COMPLY YOUR LAST. HAVE TO LOCK UP.

Henry read it several times. Damned fool.

The Iraqi ambassador, standing beside him, asked what was wrong.

"Nothing of significance, Oman," he said, sliding the paper into a pocket.

People had talked about Senator Butler's latest gaffe (calling the voters "morons" without realizing the mike was hot), the ongoing food fight between two of Washington's top journalists which had nothing to do with politics and everything to do with a fashion model, and the discovery that a respected late-night political commentator had been buying child pornography. But Henry could not stop thinking about his beleaguered vice president.

At around three, back at the White House, he called Kerr aside and showed him the news. "This is Hailey's idea," said Kerr. "They want more drama. They want you to go on TV and tell him to quit monkeying around and get on the plane."

"That's what I thought at first, Al. But he knows I can't do that. They've admitted they can't get everybody out and they're starting to release names of people who're staying behind. How will it look if I demand they send him back, and then we find out that a father with three kids had to stay instead? No. The damned fool had to get out before all this became public information. It's too late now." He shook his head. "You've got to admire him. I guess it's that goddam Teddy Roosevelt schtick." Ephrata, Pennsylvania. 1:50 A.M.

Claire was asleep in the cab of the Pine River Furniture truck. They'd stopped in the parking lot of the Old Rock Bank on Route 322. The rest of the convoy was God knew where because the phone system was overwhelmed and Archie couldn't patch through to anybody. Moreover, the truck's power cells had begun to weaken. Lines at the charge stations were a mile long, so they'd given up and pulled over to wait for morning. Weather permitting, the sun would recharge their cells.

The sky was lost in the glare of security lights. The rain had finally stopped, but the night was still damp.

The parking lot was small, with a chain drawn around its perimeter. A sign proclaimed: PARKING FOR BANK PATRONS ONLY. VIOLATORS WILL BE TOWED. They were sharing space with a half-dozen other vehicles. There was still occasional traffic, but the general crush had dissipated.

Archie admired Claire's ability to sleep in the truck cab. He'd tried every position he could, but he was still uncomfortable, dead tired, and wide awake. At no time during the entire exercise had the threat from tidal waves seemed more unreal.

The cell phone chimed.

Archie fumbled for it, trying to remember which pocket he'd put it in. "Hello?"

"Archie?" Susan's voice, obviously relieved.

"Hello, love. Are you okay?"

"I'm fine. I'm at Helen's. But it's been a nightmare. I've never seen anything like this. I've been trying to call all night. Couldn't get through."

"I know. I'm glad you're off the road."

"Archie, the expressway was terrible. It was bumper-to-bumper all the way from South Jersey. Where are you? Are you in Carlisle?"

"No. Traffic's been bad here too. But we're okay. We're parked for the night. The road looks pretty clear now. If it stays that way we'll be in Carlisle by noon."

"All right, champ. Be careful." SSTO Arlington Flight Deck. 5:50 A.M.

George brought the big spacecraft into lunar orbit precisely on schedule. He was three thousand kilometers above the surface, and it was a good feeling, watching the moonscape turn beneath him, watching Earth disappear beneath the horizon. For the first time in his life, he was out of sight of the home world.

And the comet looked very close.

Twenty minutes later, a moonbus arrived alongside, and his first passengers began to file aboard.

Police have reported isolated incidents of overnight looting in the Baltimore suburbs of Catonsville and Edgemere. At least eleven people have been jailed, and another dozen, including three police officers, hospitalized in related incidents. Baltimore mayor Patricia Godwin, in an effort to head off the kind of disruptions that accompanied the breakdown of public order after the Gandar execution two years ago, has put on extra police and announced that violators will be dealt with severely. She added that she could not guarantee that citizens wouldn't take matters into their own hands and shoot would-be thieves. This has been widely interpreted as a suggestion that homeowners who contemplate using deadly force to defend their property need not fear vigorous prosecution, as happened after the Gandar riots. • • • SSTO Copenhagen. 6:17 A.M.

After a nineteen-hour run, Copenhagen established visual contact with Skyport. When the space station appeared in the windows, people in the passenger cabin began to applaud.

"Actually, the end of the Moon, if that's what we're really about to see, would be a very good thing. People need to be reminded periodically that a living world is a changing one. And we resist change with all the ferocity we can muster.

"This instinct, this love for the status quo, this conviction that the world is a stable and reliable place to live, is an idea left over from an era when people lived exactly as their grandparents had. When change was always bad news: that the Nile had overflowed its banks again, that the barbarians had arrived, that the plague was in town. We are wired to maintain the status quo.

"This need to conserve the present is a survival instinct that now works to our detriment. We see it in our failure to pursue nanotech research, in our fear of biotechnological enhancement techniques, in the resistance to the Mars mission. We see it in our daily lives in our inability to use the technologies that lie at our fingertips. Do you know how to program your VR player? A recent USA Today poll showed that sixty-five percent of those surveyed did not believe that life had improved since the end of the twentieth century.

"If the Moon truly disappears from our skies tonight, it will serve to remind us that nothing is forever, that the world keeps changing, and that we'd better learn to change with it. This is Judy Gunworthy with the Transglobal News Service, at the Johnson Space Center." Moonbase, Grissom Country. 10:47 A.M.

Charlie shook hands with each of his agents, thanked them for efforts in his behalf, and tried to reassure them he would be all right. He explained that he'd notified their superiors that they'd left under protest, that he'd ordered them out, and that under the circumstances they had no choice but to obey. "I've recommended in-grade increases for all of you."

They smiled. Isabel momentarily lost her professional demeanor and embraced him. "I wish you'd change your mind," she said.

After they left, Rick came by and tried so hard to talk him out of staying that he lost track of time and had to dash out to catch his own flight.