The Moonfall by Jack McDevitt

Author:Jack McDevitt [McDevitt, Jack]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: sf

9.

Micro Passenger Cabin. 10:34 P.M.

They were also watching the comet on board the Micro, where the images from the Farside observatory had expanded into pure light. Even in the cargo hold, where Bigfoot had spread out some cushions left there for him by Tony, a wallscreen was picking up the Transglobal feed. Keith Morley's picture was on-screen, with a voice-over running conversation between the journalist in space and Bruce Kendrick on the ground.

"Here in the Micro, Bruce, everyone's quiet. We're just waiting now to see what's going to happen."

"Can you see anything yet, Keith?"

"No. The horizon's bathed in light. In all directions. I wish 1 had a camera to show you. But nothing's changed out there as far as I can tell."

"How high are you?"

"1 don't know. High. Maybe six thousand meters."

They were closer to five thousand meters a moment later, when the light exploded.

Impact came at 10:35:17 EDT.

The world watched through its array of orbiting telescopes. What they saw resembled not a large meteor crash, but a lightning strike. Tomiko had filled the sky, filled the lenses, floating in the optical field until there was nothing but comet. And then it came silently down, not a giant piece of rock and ice, nor a falling star of immense proportions. Rather, it was a lightning bolt blasting the moonscape, melting the regolith and its underlying rock, crushing the mantle, vaporizing everything within hundreds of kilometers of ground zero.

The Moon spasmed.

The comet nucleus ripped deep into the ground before exploding in an enormous fireball that melted the mantle to a depth of more than six hundred kilometers, exposing the outer core. Shock waves rolled through the lunar interior at thousands of kilometers per hour. The fireball expanded over the fracturing surface, moving seemingly in slow motion, spreading around the Moon, cradling it, engulfing it.

Tony watched it come. From his perspective, it was a wall of fire racing in from the north. He sensed the sudden stillness in the passenger compartment, saw the moonscape break up beneath him, saw Alphonsus disappear into the ground. A curtain of dust rolled over the churning scene, and the darkened flight deck glowed red.

The Micro fled before the fire, crawling away at a constant one g.

The sensors exploded in a tornado of pings and bleeps. Debris rattled against the hull. The Micro rocked and dipped and swerved, a leaf caught in a vast wind. A tread came off and a warning lamp blinked on.

Fire filled the sky.

It seared his eyes and licked at the blister housing the flight deck.

Saber switched off the warning. "Rising external temperatures," she said.

Tony nodded and refrained from sarcasm.

Something hit from below, hurled them higher, snapped his neck back. Bulkheads and decks creaked.

"Water line," said Saber. "Cargo."

That meant Bigfoot was getting wet. "Shut her down," said Tony.

"Done."

The attitude jets were firing in frantic sequences, trying to maintain stability.

Tony was hurled against his harness and thrown back into his seat. The Micro rolled and fell and soared. The storm swept it along, a steel bubble in a sea of fire.

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