The Moonfall

Jack McDevitt

The Moonfall

Sca

ISBN 0-06-105112-8

HarperCollins(r), and HarperPrism(r) are trademarks of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. Cover illustration (c) 1997 by John E

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For Fran and Brian Cole, the Clearwater Desperadoes

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am indebted for assistance, advice, and encouragement to: Franklin R. Chang-Diaz of the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center; Ted Dunham and Bruce Koehn of the Lowell Observatory; Terry Gipson, St. Louis Science Center; Sergei Pershman, University of Pe

The manuscript also profited from the guidance of Fred Espenak of NASA Goddard, both directly and from his excellent book, Fifty Year Canon of Solar Eclipses: 1986-2035 (Sky Publishing Corp., Cambridge, MA, 1988). Thanks to Ben Bova for permission to use his version of Moonbase, the details of which were derived particularly from Welcome to Moonbase (Ballantine Books, 1987).

Geoff Chester of the U.S. Naval Observatory and science fiction writer Walt Cuirle of the Isaac Asimov Seminar were subjected to constant harassment during the production of this book. They bore up patiently and both are, I believe, still talking to me.

Maureen McDevitt helped the manuscript through several incarnations, and Caitlin Blasdell provided her usual good judgment at HarperPrism. Thanks also to Dolores Dwyer for editorial assistance.

Ron Peiffer assisted with the Coast Guard segments, and Lewis Shiner brought the duct tape.

MOONFALL

Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat. -Theodore Roosevelt

CHAPTER ONE

Monday, April 8,2024

1.

Cruise Liner Merrivale, eastern Pacific. 5:21 A.M. Zone (9:21 A.M. EDT)

The Merrivale was bound for Honolulu, four days out of Los Angeles, when the eclipse began. Few of the passengers got up to watch the event. But Horace Brickma

She'd hinted she'd also like to see the event. Amy had been beautiful in the starlight, and his heart had pumped ferociously, bringing back memories of his twenties, which he recalled as a time of romance and passion. It was Horace's impression he'd terminated the various relationships of his youth, much to the despair of the women; that in those early days he had not been ready for serious commitment. But still there were times he woke in the night regretting one or another of his lost paramours. He wondered occasionally where they were now and how they were doing.

It was an odd sort of dawn, Sun and Moon clasped together in a cold gray embrace. The ocean had grown rough and Horace sat in his chair sipping hot coffee, wondering what was keeping Amy. He tugged his woolen sweater down over his belly and reminded himself that it was dangerous to look directly at the spectacle. Most of the other early risers had brought blankets, but Horace wanted to cut a dashing figure and the blanket just didn't fit the image.

To his consternation, a voluble banker whom he'd met the previous day appeared before him, greeted him with the kind of cheeriness that's always irritating early in the morning, and sat down in an adjoining deck chair. "Marvelous experience, this," said the banker, lifting his eyes in the general direction of the eclipse while extracting a folded copy of the Wall Street Journal from a pocket of his nautical blue blazer. He tried to read the paper in the gray light but gave up and dropped it on his lap.

He began to chatter about commodities and convertibles and price-earnings ratios. Horace's eyes swept the near-empty decks. A middle-aged man at the rail was watching the eclipse through sunglasses. A steward strolled casually over and offered him one of the viewing devices the ship had been distributing. Horace was too far away to hear the conversation, but he saw the man's a

The wind was begi

The steward approached Horace and the banker, holding out the devices. "You don't want to look directly at it, gentlemen," he said. Horace took one. It consisted of a blue plastic tube about six inches wide, with a tinfoil disk attached to one end. "Point it toward the eclipse, sir," said the steward, "and it'll project the Sun's image onto the disk. You'll be able to watch in perfect safety." The tube was decorated with the ship's profile and name. Horace thanked him.

She was now twenty minutes late. But Amy had an eight-year-old daughter to take care of, so there was a degree of unpredictability in any rendezvous.

He became aware suddenly that the banker had asked a question. "I'm sorry," Horace said. "My mind was elsewhere."

"No problem, partner." The man was finishing up with middle age. He was oversized and prosperous-looking. His hair was shoe-polish black, and the deck chair complained whenever he shifted weight. "I know just what you mean."