Moonfall

5.

Fax Received and Broadcast by C-Span. 8:26 A.M.

We're all on a bus, the whole human race. The bus is tearing along a road that's mostly empty. But there are a few rocks on the road, and maybe once in a while another vehicle, and we've just discovered there's no driver. -Dan White, Oklahoma City Skyport Orbital Lab. 8:41 A.M.

Substantial pieces of the World Wide Web were missing. Whole networks had dropped out of sight; power companies had gone down; telephone systems had collapsed. Still, the redundancies and bypasses that had accreted over the years served it well, and it stayed up and running. If one's telephone company was still operational, access to the Web remained.

Skybolt's champions became especially visible on-line. There was a flood of I-told-you-so comments. And the names of congressmen who had been prominent in attacking the project were being posted for general consumption.

The Possum was still approaching, but it had passed behind the curve of the Earth and was consequently no longer directly visible from Skyport's onboard observatory. The best images now were coming in from ground-based telescopes. Tory and Windy watched the show on their main display.

POSIM-38's lack of symmetry, its resemblance to a flattened club, or possibly (as someone had suggested) a sliced squash, gave it a unique identity. The prevailing explanation for its shape was that one side had been more directly exposed to the blast and that combustible materials had boiled off, leaving a relatively smooth, cooling residue. The flat side was promptly dubbed the "Plain," as opposed to the rounded, heavily scored rear, which astronomers were calling the "Back Country." A ridge formed a kind of spine, running lengthwise through the Back Country. It was the only feature on the terrain that did not seem to have been smoothed by the melting of the rock. Someone called it "Solitary Ridge," and the name stuck.

It was six minutes away, approaching at 10.7 kilometers per second. Tory was relaying everything she had to her consumers, one of whom, she'd been informed, was the new president of the United States. "He's personally interested," the NASA higher-ups had told her with great solemnity.

Damned well he should be. She hoped he'd be smart enough to get the point.

A klaxon went off somewhere, signaling another penetration of the space station. Windy's eyes met hers. The prospect that a rock might rip through the bulkhead at any time tended to be distracting. She tried to push the thought into a corner of her mind and refocus on the Possum.

It was coming in over the western Pacific, where it would enter the atmosphere at an acute angle. The NASA Goddard Flying Observatory, positioned over the East China Sea, was sending them test pictures of clear, star-filled skies.

Ordinarily, the networks would have given the event extensive coverage, but on this Sunday morning it was all but preempted by the reports of continuing calamity from around the world. The scene of immediate disaster had moved well into the Pacific now, as Earth turned on its axis. Rock rained from the skies along Asian coasts, destroying Tokyo, and damaging Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Singapore.

Tory was tied into Feinberg's private channel on the AstroLab circuit. But the astrophysicist was off the line now. The BBC had interviewed him about an hour ago. The Possum would come very close, he said, but he assured the viewers it would miss.

Others were less certain. The Chinese had already announced their intention to register a complaint that their American allies were waiting until after it passed before using their missiles. They hinted darkly that the Americans secretly hoped it would fall on China. The secretary of state, in a predawn press conference, commented that he wasn't concerned, that if the Possum merely put on a fireworks display and continued on its way, as expected, the Chinese would have nothing to complain about; and that if it did hit China, and the scientists were correct that it was big enough to end civilization, then there'd be nobody around to listen to the complaint. He smiled at his remark.

A timer was keeping track: Two minutes to atmospheric contact. Three minutes to closest approach.

The station klaxons had stopped wailing. A voice over the intercom informed Tory that sections of D deck, the main promenade, had lost pressure and were temporarily closed.

A news bulletin appeared on the screen: the Americans were canceling the missile strike. No explanation given. Press conference at ten o'clock.

One minute.

The Possum was by no means the only big object out there. At last count, sixty-two others had been designated and tagged. But none constituted an immediate threat. The biggest, POSIM-55, was a true extinction rock. It was four times the size of the Possum. Enough to finish everyone except maybe the cockroaches. Fortunately, it was going into a relatively stable orbit. In fact, she thought, despite the terrible losses, we've been lucky. It could have been far worse. And the rain of ejecta had noticeably eased during the last couple of hours.

"There's still a lot of debris out there," said Windy. "When this is over we should recommend the airlines stay on the ground a few more days."

Ten seconds.

It was moving in quickly now, skimming across the face of the planet, the Pacific far below, the Asian mainland coming up fast. The virtual imager tracked it into the blue-black haze of the ionosphere. As she watched, the Possum began to redden, pieces fell away, and wisps of smoke formed contrails.

The screens dedicated to the Flying Observatory had not yet picked it up. Two of the displays showed enhanced telescopic images; the third was a naked-eye view. She watched intently and then saw it, a sharp white line drawn through the shimmering blue haze. Its closest approach to the surface would be at two hundred kilometers.

Other imagers on the ground tracked it. A CNN reporter, standing with a camera team on a hillside near Hainan, caught it as it burst into flame. People standing with him gaped and sighed. The long fireball streaked across their sky. Then the roar of its passage broke on them, deep and guttural. It took the witnesses by surprise and they covered their heads. A few shrieked and threw themselves to the ground.

It rumbled among the constellations, a celestial locomotive with the boiler ripped open and its fiery insides exposed. And then it disappeared in the west, toward Wuhan.

"Looks good so far," said Windy, his voice tense.

Mobile stations at Chengtu and in the Himalayas caught it as it began to dwindle. At Lahore, it became quieter, more sedate, and seemed smaller. The roar was gone. The Afghans saw only a long pink line in the sky, and somewhere over the land of the Mullah, it winked out.

Tory had a link open to the AstroLab and she heard their applause. "Bye-bye, baby," said a delighted female voice. AstroLab. 8:58 A.M.

Feinberg was constitutionally unable to celebrate. He was by nature reticent, reserved, reclusive. For him, the local Wal-Mart was more remote than Cygnus X-l. Years before, Feinberg had had the good fortune to be at Palomar when Supernova 2017A exploded in the Lagoon Nebula, NGC6523. The Lagoon is in Sagittarius, less than five thousand light-years away. It had been so far the astrophysical event of the century. But while his colleagues celebrated, Feinberg had been forced to pretend. He understood his own personality well enough; he knew that he'd never learned to enjoy himself. Even this morning, when (at least in his own mind) he'd intervened to save the president from a potentially disastrous decision, it would not have been his nature to take several of his colleagues out for a round of eggs and pancakes, and relish the moment.

Instead, when the dust settled, he simply went home.

He'd been up for the better part of five consecutive days, and he was exhausted. The sky was finally growing clear, and he didn't see that he could do any more. Cynthia Murray, his number two, would track the Possum, and when she knew what it was going to do, she'd call him.

Outside, the trees were full of birds and it was as if nothing had happened.