Джек Макдевитт - Engines Of God

No one had much appetite. In a world that had lost its anchor to reality, it was hard to get seriously involved with a turkey sandwich. Anything now seemed possible.

Long ago, when she was nine years old, Hutch had gone with her father to see Michael Fairish, the magician. It had been an evening filled with floating cabinets, people getting sawed in half, and a black box that yielded an unending supply of doves, rabbits, and red and white kerchiefs. Priscilla Hutchins had tried to fathom the methods used by the magician, but she had been astonished time and again. And although she knew that trickery was involved, that magic wasn't real, she had nevertheless lost touch with the physical world, and reached a point at which the impossible failed to surprise her.

She was at that point now.

After dinner, she went outside and sat down in the snow. She let the alienness of the scene suck at her, as if it might extract some hidden part, and infuse a portion of itself, a particle of enchantment that would re-establish a cable to comprehension. It was almost as if this world had been placed here exclusively for her and her companions, that it had waited through billions of unchanging years for precisely this moment.

The others joined her after a while, en route to other tasks, but they too paused in the growing radiance of the thing in the east.

Ashley continued to relay updates on the dragon, which was still running hot and true. Drafts was sliding from professional acceptance to near-panic, and had begun urging them to use the shuttle to get off-world. Janet, who had perhaps been through too much with Hutch and Carson, merely told them she knew they'd be okay.

After a while, they got up and straggled over to the shuttle. They disconnected the 1600 and carried it inside the dome. Not that it would matter when the fire fell out of the sky.

They began packing.

"I don't think we should wait until tomorrow," said Angela. "I'd feel better if we cleared out tonight."

"We live better here," said Carson. "There's no point in scrunching up in the shuttle for an extra day." He went inside and came back with more Chablis. To prove the point.

So they waited under the hammer and debated whether they would be safer on the ground or in the air at the moment of impact. Whether it wasn't paranoid to think they were actually being chased by this thing. ("It's not us" each of them said, in one form or another. "It's seen the mesas. It's the mesas it's coming after.") Whether, if they made a run for it, the object would adjust course again and come after them. Them, and damn the mesas. After a while, despite the tension, Hutch couldn't keep her eyes open. No one went to bed that night; they all slept in the common room, stretched out in chairs.

Hutch woke, it seemed, every few minutes. And she decided, if she ever went through anything like this again (which she would, but that's another story), she'd by God, clear out at the first hint of funny business.

Somewhere around five, she smelled coffee. Angela held out a cup.

"Hi," said Hutch.

The dragon was an angry smear in the sky.

"I'll be glad," said Angela, "when we're out of here."

There was a ring around the sun, and a thick haze over the plain. A half-moon had broken through in the southwest.

Fresh snow lay on the ground when Angela and Hutch came out of the dome, carrying their bags. There were a few flakes in the air. "It's frustrating when you think about it," said Angela. "Cosmic event like this, and we have to go hide on the other side of the world."

Hutch climbed into the shuttle. "I suppose we could stay, if you insist," she said.

"No. I didn't mean that." Angela handed her bags through, took her place at the controls, and studied her checklist. "But I wish we had a ship, so we could lay off somewhere and watch the fireworks." Hutch activated the commlink, and picked up the feed from Ashley. The dragon blinked on. The view wasn't good now because the ship was very distant. And still retreating.

Angela thought the main body might be more than a million kilometers behind the forward spouts. Yet the mind still saw it as a thundercloud. An ominous thundercloud. Belching and roiling and flickering. But still only a thundercloud. She tried to imagine a similar visitation over the Temple of the Winds. What would a nontechnological race have made of this harpy? And she wondered about the Monument-Makers. Why had they sicked it on that unfortunate race? And left their final ironic taunt? Farewell and good fortune. Seek us by the light of the horgon's eye.

And, in that moment, she understood.

The comm panel blinked. "Incoming," said Angela.

David Emory's face blinked on. "Hello, ground station," he said. "What's happening? Do you need help?"

Relief and pleasure swept through Hutch. "David, hello. Where are you?" But he did not react. She watched and counted off the seconds while her signal traveled outward to him, and her newborn hope died. He was too far away.

Carson climbed through the hatch. "I see the cavalry has arrived," he said. "Where are they?"

David broke into a wide smile. "Hutch. It's good to see you. I'm on the Gary Knapp. What is that thing! What's going on?"

Hutch gave him a capsulized version.

"We'll get there as quickly as we can."

"Stay clear," she said. "Stay clear until the dust settles."

By mid-morning they were in the air.

They all watched the dragon: Emory on the Knapp, Janet and Drafts on Ashley, and Carson's group in the shuttle.

The pictures now were coming from the Knapp. They were clearer than anything they'd had before. Delta resembled a child's ball floating before a cosmic wall of black cloud.

They were about to be swallowed.

Enormous fountains of gas and vapor billowed away; vast explosions erupted in slow time, as if occurring in a different temporal mode. Fiery blossoms disconnected and drifted away. "It's disintegrating," Angela said. "It's moving quite slowly now, and I'd guess it's thrown off seventy percent of its mass. It's coming here, but afterward it won't be going anywhere else."

They'd left the plain and its mesas behind, and were gliding above a nitrogen swamp, bathed in the shifting light. Carson was in the right-hand seat. He kept making remarks like "My God, I don't believe this," and "No wonder they all got religion."

Gales battered the craft. Hutch, in back, wondered whether they'd be able to stay in the air. She watched the pictures coming in from Knapp. "The gas giant's tearing it up," she said, straining to make herself heard over the wind. "If we're lucky, maybe there won't be any of it left when it gets here."

"Forget that idea," said Angela. She took a deep breath. "It's a Chinese puzzle. Have you noticed anything odd?"

Carson studied the display. "Have I noticed anything odd!" He stifled laughter.

She ignored the reaction. "No quakes," she said.

"I don't follow."

But Hutch did. "It's fifteen hours away. Does this place have plates?"

"Yes."

She looked at Carson. "A celestial body that close should be raising hell with local tectonics. Right?"

"That's right." Angela poked her keyboard, asked for new data. "If nothing else, we should be getting major tidal surges." The swamp had given way to a mud-colored sea. Thick, slow waves rolled ashore. A few meters higher up, the rock was discolored. "That would be high tide," she said. "This doesn't look like anything unusual."

"What's the point?" asked Carson.

"The point is that these oceans, even these kinds of oceans, ought to be jumping out of their beds. Hold on." She opened the Knapp channel, and asked David to get readings on the positions of the satellites. While she waited, she brought up the entire file on the gas giant and its family of moons. She established orbits, computed velocities, and calculated lunar positions.