Charles Sheffield - Between the Strokes of Night

A dense cluster of points of fire was sweeping up over the north pole. At the same time, a new starburst was rising from eastern Siberia. The launch readout had gone insane, emitting a series of high-pitched squeaks as individual launches became too frequent to be marked by a separate beep from the counter. Over two thousand missile launches had been recorded in less than three minutes. “Couldn’t work. Couldn’t ever work,” said Salter Wherry softly. “First strike never would — always leaves something to hit back.”

His head slumped down. For the first time, Charlene had the thought that she might be seeing something more than old age and worry. “Wolfgang! Give me some help here.”

She moved to Wherry’s side and placed her hand under his chin, lifting his head. His eyes were bleary, as though some translucent film covered them. At her touch he feebly raised his right hand to grip hers. It was icy cold, and his other hand clutched at his chest.

“Couldn’t work. Couldn’t.” The voice was a rough whisper. “It’s the end. End of the world, end of everything.”

“He’s having a heart attack.” Charlene leaned over to lift him, but Wolfgang was there before her.

“Hans. You could do this better than we can, but you’d better stay here — we have to know what’s going on. Alert the medical facility, tell them we think it’s a heart attack. Ask them if we should move him, or if they want to treat him here — and if they want him at the facility, tell me how to get him there.” Charlene helped to lift Wherry from the seat. She did it as gently as she could, while some part of her brain stood back astonished and watched Wolfgang and Hans. There had been a strange and sudden change in their relationship in the past few minutes. Hans was still older, more senior, and more experienced. But as events became more confused and depressing, he seemed to dwindle, while Wolfgang just became more forceful and determined. At the moment there was no question as to who was in control. Hans was following Wolfgang’s orders without hesitation. He was at the console, ear mike on, and his fingers were flying across the array of keys.

“Leave Wherry here,” he said after a few seconds. “Med Center says Olivia Ferranti will be right over. Make sure he can’t fall over, then don’t move him. Don’t try any treatment unless he stops breathing. They’ll bring portable resuscitation equipment with them.”

“Right.” Wolfgang gestured to Charlene, and between them they carefully lowered Salter Wherry to the floor, supporting his head on Wolfgang’s jacket. He lay quiet for a moment, then made an effort to lift himself.

“Don’t move,” said Charlene.

There was a tiny sideways movement of his head. “Displays.” Wherry’s voice was a rustling whisper. “Have to see the displays. Reconnaissance. Cities.” Hans had turned to watch them. He nodded. “I’ve already asked for that. Major cities. What else?”

“Can you reach the ship with the Institute senior staff on board?” asked Wolfgang. “We have to talk to JN. They’re well clear of the atmosphere, but I don’t know if they’re line-of-sight from here.”

“Doesn’t matter.” Hans turned back to the console. “We can go through relays. I’ll try to reach them. We’ll have to use another channel for that. I’ll feed them in to the screen behind you.”

He set to work at the keyboard. He was the only one with enough to occupy him completely. Charlene and Wolfgang stood by feeling helpless. Salter Wherry, after his effort to raise his head, lay motionless. He looked drained of all blood, with livid face and hands bent into withered claws. His breath gargled deep in his throat, the only sound that broke the urgent beep of new launches. The sparks were no longer concentrated in a band around the Earth’s equator. Now they covered the globe like a bright net, drawn tighter in the northern hemisphere and over the pole.

Olivia Ferranti arrived just as the reconnaissance satellite images appeared on the screen. The doctor took one startled look at the blue-white blossoming explosion that had been Moscow, then ignored it and knelt beside her patient. Her assistant rapidly connected electrodes from the portable unit to Salter Wherry’s bared chest, and took an ominous-looking saw and scalpel from a sterilized carrying case.

“Transmissions from the ship coming in,” said Hans. “Who do you want?” “JN,” said Wolfgang. “Charlene, you’d better talk to her. Tell them not to move away from a rendezvous trajectory until our missile defense goes off here. They’ll be safe anywhere — “

His words were lost in a huge burst of noise from the communications unit. “Damnation.” Hans Gibbs rapidly reduced the volume to a tolerable level. “I was afraid of that. Some of the thermonuclear explosions are at the edge of the atmosphere. We’re getting electromagnetic pulse effects, and that’s wiping out the signals. We’re safe enough, all the Wherry systems were hardened long ago. I’m not sure about that ship. I’m going to try a laser channel, hope they’re hardened against EMP, and hope we’re line-of-sight at the moment.” The reconnaissance screens told a chilling story. Every few seconds the detailed display shifted to show a new explosion. There was no time to identify each city before it vanished forever in the glow of hydrogen fusion. Only the day or night conditions of the image told the watchers in which hemisphere the missiles were arriving. It was impossible to estimate the damage or the loss of life before a new scene was crowding onto the screens. Salter Wherry was right, the hope of a preemptive first strike had proved an empty one.

Wolfgang and Charlene stood together in front of the biggest screen. It still showed the view from geostationary orbit. Again the display was sparking with bright flickers of light, but this time they were not the result of computer simulation. They were explosions, multiple warhead, multimegaton. The whole hemisphere was riddled with dark pocks of cloud, as buildings, bridges, roads, houses, plants, animals, and human beings were vaporized and carried high into the stratosphere.

“Hamburg.” Wolfgang whispered the word, almost to himself. “See, that was Hamburg. My sister was there. Husband and kids, too.”

Charlene did not speak. She squeezed his hand, much harder than she realized. The explosions went on and on, in a ghastly silence of display that almost seemed worse than any noise. Did she wish the screen showed an image of North America? Or would she rather not know what had happened there? With all her relatives in Chicago and Washington, there seemed no hope for any of them. She turned around. On the floor, a mask had been placed over the lower part of Salter Wherry’s face. Ferranti had opened Wherry’s dark shirt, and was doing something that Charlene preferred not to look at too closely to his chest. The assistant was preparing a light-wheeled gurney.

Dead, or alive? Charlene was shocked to see that Wherry was fully conscious, and that his eyes were swivelling to follow each of the displays. There was an intensity to his expression that could have been heart stimulants, but at least that dreadful glazed and filmy look was gone.

Charlene followed Wherry’s look to the screen at the back of the room. A fuzzy image was building there, with a distorting pattern of green herringbone noise overlaid upon it. As the picture steadied and cleared, she realized that she was looking at Jan de Vries. He was sitting in a Shuttle seat, a pile of papers on his lap. He looked thoroughly nauseated. And he was crying.

“Dr. de Vries — Jan.” Charlene didn’t know if he could hear her or see her, but she had to cry out to him. “Don’t try to rendezvous. We’re operating a missile defense system here.”