Douglas Preston - Impact

There were two dinghies on the island: his and theirs.

It wasn't hard to see what they'd do: try to get one of them. His first job was to secure them. He walked down the beach to where their dinghy was pulled up. He thought of shoving it off into the current but decided that would be risky, leaving himself without a backup if something should go wrong. Instead, grasping the painter, he hauled it up into the woods where it was more or less hidden. Then he removed the oars and hid each one in widely separated locations, shoving them into raspberry thickets. It would take hours to find them.

Now to secure his own boat.

A sudden light above his head caused him to duck and spin around, gun at the ready, until he realized it was coming from above. The full Moon. He stared up at it as a bright jet seemed to come off its surface and extend into the night sky. Another bright spot appeared on the opposite side. What the hell was it?

Just a strange cloud passing over the Moon, creating a striking optical illusion.

Moving rapidly and silently through the trees, he worked his way toward the northern end of the island until he had reached his own dinghy. It sat peacefully in the brightening moonlight. He was about to haul it up and hide it as he'd done the other one when he had an idea: to leave it in full view as bait, hide and wait for them to come get it. When they found their own dinghy missing, they'd come after his. What other course of action did they have? They couldn't hide forever.

He took up a well-hidden position behind a jumble of rocks at the edge of the shore and waited.

The sky grew brighter by slow degrees, and he glanced upward, wondering what the hell was going on with the Moon. The strange cloud kept getting bigger, and it really didn't look like a cloud after all.

He turned away, focusing on the problem at hand, waiting for them to come. He hardly had to wait: after only a few minutes he spied a shadow moving along the edge of the forest; he raised his Desert Eagle, switched on the internal laser sights, then thought better of it and turned them off. No reason to spook them with a dancing red dot. They would be close enough for a kill without it.

But the silhouette was alone. It was the girl. Ford was not with her.

70

Driving south on Interstate 295, near Freeport, Ford noticed the sudden light in the night sky. He peered out the windscreen at the Moon and, with a sudden feeling of dread, pulled off the highway to get a better look. He stepped outside in the summer night and stared, aghast, at the jet of light rising from the Moon's surface. As he watched, more cars began pulling off the highway, people getting out to stare and take pictures.

A long trail of glowing material seemed to be shooting away from the Moon's surface, elongating across the night sky, blazing yellow. And on the opposite side was a similar puff of debris, more bulbous, material ejected as if from an impact.

It looked exactly like the Moon had been shot through by something that entered on the right and exited on the left.

Another shot from the thing on Deimos?

No question about it. And this time a much larger projectile of strange matter must have been used, big enough to create a spectacular display on Earth. Perhaps even designed to create a display. The last one had largely gone unnoticed; this one wouldn't. Even as he watched, the tail of debris kept extending itself, gradually elongating into a broad curve by the Moon's gravity.

This was striking confirmation that Abbey was right: that the alien artifact on Deimos was a weapon and had fired again, this time at the Moon. But why? As a demonstration of power?

There was no sense gaping by the side of the road, thought Ford. He had a plane to catch. He slipped back into his car and switched on the radio, tuning it to the local NPR station. The thunderous sounds of Bach's Passacaglia and Fugue in C Minor came out the speakers, but almost immediately a newscaster broke in, interrupting the program with a special announcement about the "extraordinary phenomenon occurring to the Moon."

"We reached Elaine Dahlquist," the announcer said, "an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Dr. Dahlquist, can you tell us what we're seeing up there?"

"My initial guess, Joe, would be that the Moon was struck by a major asteroid, perhaps two fragments at once, striking simultaneously on either side."

"Why didn't anyone see it coming?"

"Good question. Evidently we're dealing with an asteroid that escaped the attention of Spacewatch and other near-Earth asteroid search programs. Here at Harvard-Smithsonian we've turned our telescopes on the Moon, and I understand the Keck Observatory and the Hubble Space Telescope are also looking at it--as well as thousands of other telescopes, amateur and professional."

"Is there any danger to us on Earth?" the announcer asked.

"There are reports of an electromagnetic pulse or a shower of charged particles causing scattered power failures and computer network problems. Other than that, I'd say we're safe here on Earth. The Moon is two hundred and forty thousand miles away."

Ford turned off the radio. As he drove down the interstate, the light in the sky continued to increase, slowly but steadily, as the debris cloud extended out. It was yellowish in color, grading off to reddish hues at the edges--hot, condensing debris from the strike. But the show would soon be curtained; the intermittent clouds that had earlier covered the sky had given way to a squall line of black weather, looming on the horizon, flickering with internal lightning.

He glanced at the clock: he was half an hour from the Portland airport; he'd catch the midnight flight to D.C. and be there by two or three A.M.

But first, he had to set up a little sting.

71

Dawn never breaks in a Vegas casino or the White House Sit Room , Lockwood thought as he followed the duty officer into the windowless, cocoon-like Situation Room, already packed with people. Lockwood recognized the ferret-like demeanor of the national security advisor at the head of the conference table, Clifford Manfred, whose Italian suit and Thomas Pink tie were perhaps a touch sharp for Washington. Seated with him was the director of central intelligence, a gray man in a gray suit with alert gray eyes; several nondescript intelligence analysts and a communications specialist. A huge flat-panel video display at the far end was split into multiple screens, one with a real-time image of the Moon--now with two jets coming off it--and the others showing silent news feeds from the U.S. and foreign media. Other screens around the walls displayed images of people attending by video conference, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, a small, precise man with snowy hair, wearing an admiral's uniform.

Lockwood took a seat in one of the big black leather chairs. There was a low murmur of voices around him and the clank and rattle of spoons in coffee mugs as coffee was served. Everyone was awaiting the arrival of the president.

A few minutes later a hush fell in the room, almost by intuition, and the door opened. A duty officer appeared, followed by the president's chief of staff and then the president himself, dressed in an impeccable blue suit, tall and lean, his once black hair salted with gray, his roving eyes taking in everything, his jug ears sweeping the room like a radar beacon. His unflappable demeanor cast a spell over the room like oil on water, dissipating the air of tension. Everyone made to rise and the president waved his hand. "Please, please, stay seated."

They rose anyway and reseated themselves as the president himself took a seat, not at the head of the table, but in an empty chair halfway down. He turned to Lockwood. "Stan, I've got a country on the verge of panic. Every talking-head astronomer in the country is spouting off and saying something different. So start from the beginning and tell us what's really going on--and keep in mind some of us are scientific idiots. Is this just a light show or should we be worried?"