Джек Макдевитт - Engines Of God

"Son of a bitch," squealed Angela. "It's turning toward us." Simultaneously, she pulled back the yoke, and the shuttle bucked into the air. The wind howled. The thing in the night burned, a blue-white star churning to nova.

"Button up," called Hutch, sliding into her harness and igniting the energy field. Carson scrambled for a handhold.

Hutch locked Angela down in her web seat, and sealed off cargo, where Carson was seated. Then she clipped on her own restraints.

"Frank?"

"I'm okay," he said. "Get us out of here."

Angela put the juice to the magnets, and the shuttle leaped forward, and up, and the light passed beneath them. They heard the subsequent roar and felt the shock wave, and came around in time to see a white geyser climbing skyward.

Hutch looked toward Angela. "Strange meteor."

She nodded. "I'd say so."

The wind dragged at them, blew them across the sky.

Angela was trying to ease back onto the surface when a thunderbolt exploded alongside and the night filled with light. Their electronics went down, and the vehicle lurched wildly. Smoke leaked into the cockpit.

Angela activated her fire-retardants, fought the shuttle into near-level flight, and started back up. "Safer upstairs," she said.

"No," said Carson. "Down. Take us down."

"Frank, we need to be able to maneuver. We're a sitting duck down there."

"Do it, Angela. Get us on the ground."

"You're crazy," said Hutch.

Angela looked distraught. "Why?"

Another bolt hammered them.

"Just do it," Carson said. "As quick as you can."

Hutch watched him on the monitor. He was pulling together the air tanks they'd stored.

Angela pushed the stick forward. "We should be trying to get above this," she protested.

"How do you get above meteorsT' demanded Carson.

Status lamps blinked off, came back on. Something exploded in back and a roar filled the vehicle. They began to fall.

"We're holed," cried Hutch.

Angela banked left and whacked the navigation console. "Portside rear stabilizers are gone," she said. Through the bedlam of escaping air, howling wind, raining rock and ice, she managed to comment coolly, "Looks like you'll get your way. We are sure as hell going down."

The sky was filled with lightning.

"Fifty meters," said Angela.

They jounced back onto the plain, throwing up gouts of snow and soot. Another meteor was tracking across the sky to their rear. They watched it pause and begin to brighten.

"Out," Carson cried.

Angela started to argue, but Hutch reached over and punched the air cyclers. "It's okay," she said.

They grabbed the tanks and dragged them out as soon as the hatch had opened. Hutch tumbled into the snow, got up, and kept going.

Carson was right behind her.

"Run," he cried. He had three tanks, lost one, but did not go back for it.

The fireball was coming in over a range of hills to the north.

They ran. The snow was crusted and kept breaking underfoot. Hutch went down again. Damn.

Hang onto the tanks!

"You sure he knows what he's doing?" Angela asked.

"Yes," said Hutch. "I think so. Go."

The women struggled to put distance between themselves and the shuttle. Carson stayed with them.

The meteor trailed fire. Pieces broke off and fell.

"Everybody down!" cried Carson. They threw themselves into the snow.

The fireball roared in and blasted the shuttle. Direct hit.

The ground buckled, the icescape brightened, and a hurricane of snow and earth rolled over them. Rocks and debris struck Hutch's energy field.

When it subsided, Carson switched on his lamp. They saw only a crater where the shuttle had been.

Angela shivered. She looked at the sky, and back at the lamp. "For God's sake," she said, "turn it off."

Carson complied. "If you like," he said. "But I think we'll be all right now."

She tried to bury herself in the snow, to hide from the clouds.

"It was never after us" said Carson.

"How can you say that?" Angela asked.

More lightning. "Right angles," he said. "It wanted the shuttle. Your flying box."

Over the next few hours, the electricity drained out of the heavens. They sat quietly, watching the storms clear off. "I think I understand why the Quraquat used the image of a Monument-Maker to portray Death," Frank said.

"Why?" asked Angela.

"Shoot the messenger. The Monument-Makers probably had no compunctions about landing, introducing themselves, and telling the Quraquat what the problem was." He smiled. "You know, Richard was right. There are no aliens. They all turn out to be pretty human."

"Like George," said Hutch.

Carson drew up his knees and wrapped his arms around them. "Yes," he said. He looked at Angela and explained: "They couldn't stop the goddam things, so they created a diversion. Made something else for them to attack."

"Well, something occurs to me" said Angela. "This thing" — she waved in the general direction of the sky—"was part of the wave that struck Beta Pac about 5000 B.C., Quraqua around 1000 B.C., and Nok in AD 400. More or less. Right?"

"Yes," said Carson.

"It's headed toward Earth." She looked unsettled.

Carson shrugged. "We've got nine thousand years to deal with it."

"You know," Hutch said, "Janet mentioned that we may already have had some direct experience with these things. She thinks the A wave correlates to Sodom."

Angela's eyes narrowed. "Sodom? Maybe." She fixed Carson with a tight smile. "But I'm not sure we've got as much time as you think. The B wave is still out there."

Hutch moved closer to her companions. The B wave, the wave that had struck Beta Pac in 13,000 B.C., and Quraqua four thousand years later, would be relatively close to Earth. "About a thousand years," she said.

"Well," said Carson, "whatever. Nine or one, I still think we've got plenty of time."

A shadow crossed Angela's face. "I suspect that's close to what the Monument-Makers said."

LIBRARY ENTRY

No successful probe of an Omega cloud in Sight has been made. Efforts to transmit signals through the objects have yielded no results as of this writing. (See Adrian Clement's excellent monograph, The Omega Puzzle, quoted in full in Appendix Hi, for a lucid discussion of the theoretical problems involved.)

The only attempts to take a manned vehicle beneath the outer layers were made 3 and 4 July, 2211, by Meg Campbell, on the Pasquarella. Campbell made consecutive descents to 80 meters and 630 meters. She failed to return from a third try.

A detailed analysis of the Omega clouds must apparently await the development of new technology.

— Janet Allegri, The Engines of God Hartley & Co., London (2213)

AFTERWORD

Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton, NJ. April 2231.

To date, there are few substantive answers about the Monument-Makers. A vast ruin exists deep beneath the harbor city on Beta Pacifica III. It is known to be from the Cholois, or Monument-Maker, era. (The term means the Universal People, and it seems to have been used to include other intelligent species.) Excavation is proceeding with due caution. What is currently known is that Priscilla Hutchins' suggestion that a substantial number of the Cholois fled their home is correct. They planned, initiated, and may have completed, an intergalactic leap.

Surviving members of the species still exist on the home world. They are few, and have been reduced to a state of near-savagery. None have been found with any memory of their former greatness, save in their myths.

Recent investigations support the view that the inhabitants of the space station at Beta Pac III witnessed the destruction of their world by an Omega cloud, and chose to die in space rather than return to a devastated homeland. Investigation continues.