Moonfall

EPILOGUE

Tuesday, April 15,2025 The New White House, Presidential Dining Room.

The dinner had included notables from around the globe, celebrating the first anniversary of what many were now calling the birth of the Space Age, but what President Haskell liked to think of as the long-delayed birth of the Human Family. They'd watched year-old videos of crowds cheering in Paris and Shanghai, Jerusalem and Kansas City, as the Possum sailed across the skies over Florida, trailing fire, and faded at last from human sight.

Not forever, of course. They had a six-year reprieve. Which meant that the nations of the world had no choice but to see Project Skybolt to its conclusion.

The first lady had made it her special responsibility to coordinate the construction of a memorial museum to be dedicated to those who gave their lives in the common effort, to the flight crews of Copenhagen, Rome, Berlin, the Christopher Talley, to Bigfoot Caparatti and Tony Casaway.

A new world had emerged from the catastrophe. Los Angeles was gone, apparently forever. The lake that formed in the desert regions of central California between the coastal ranges and the eastern peaks was being described by geologists as "temporary," but they were talking in millennial terms. A group of towns was already springing up along its shores.

No one was left unscarred. The drain on national treasuries caused by the destruction forced world leaders into a cooperative effort unlike anything history had seen before. Military forces seemed to have lost, at least for the time being, their ancient function. No one, in the days after the coming of the Possum, seemed willing to take up arms against a neighbor. The peoples of the world had stood together against a common misfortune, and a new bond may consequently have formed among them, a bond that transcended national and religious identities, that recognized a common vulnerability. Even in Jerusalem, at long last, an accommodation seemed to have been reached.

In its own dark way, the comet may have been a blessing.

The special guests at the White House dinner had been Andrea Bellwether and Tory Clark. The architects of survival, the president had called them, knowing that Rick Hailey would have approved of the phrase. Tory had said the usual things, spread the credit around, looked embarrassed, and sat down to waves of applause. Andrea said only that her father would have been proud.

Feinberg remarked later that history would remember the technique as the Bellwether Maneuver.

Later the president invited both women to a private party in the Kolladner Room, where they passed the evening with Saber, Keith Morley, Chaplain Pinnacle (who with quick thinking had selected Evelyn Hampton to carry the crucial message to the president), Wes Feinberg, Orly Carpenter, Jonathan Porter, and the flight crews of the various vehicles of Project Rainbow. And of course, with the first lady, Evelyn Haskell.

There are plans to make the celebration an annual event. Unfortunately, however, Rachel Quinn and Lee Cochran will be unable to attend next year. They'll be on their way to Mars.