Footfall

Gillespie turned toward the repair crew. “Five minutes. Close your faceplates now.” Then, by intercom, “Testing. Can you all hear me?”

They responded.

“All perso

A dozen crash couches covered the floor. Harry and Rohrs and Gamble and the others were strapped down like mental patients; the only difference was that they could pull their arms free. An umbilical carried oxygen from the wall, and made a cold spot on Harry’s chest. Harry was feeling claustrophobic. And elated! Here’s Harry the Minstrel in a by-god space suit, waiting for launch!

Rohrs said, “It’ll be rough on the pilots, riding outside like that.”

“At least they’ve got windows,” Harry said.

Someone said, “Here we lie, waiting for an atom bomb to go off under our asses …”

“There has to be a more graceful way to say that,” Tiny Pelz said. Dr. Pelz was an atomjack, built heavy and strong. He looked strange with his bushy black beard shaved off to fit him into the pressure suit.

The desks and tables and phones and lines were all gone. The ready room was neat and clean. Padded handholds lined the walls and ceiling.

Harry remembered the men in Kansas who had gone forth to battle the enemy with tanks. They talked to keep their courage up. Harry didn’t know these men. Young, strong, healthy — if he told them about his back problem, what would they say? Pelz would understand, or Rohrs, or Gamble.

“One minute,” said a ti

They watched for bright light in their screens. The snout meteor could fall at any second. The silence grew thick, the tension stretched until Harry could stand it no longer. He bellowed, “Sancho! My armor!”

The youthful faces looked at him. Some were gri

Maintaining a civilization in here was going to be worse than Isadore had thought. He’d never seen human beings crowded close. Miranda and her deputy sheriff shared a bunk. All the bunks held two or three each, and if the supports collapsed the bunk would not fall. There was no room.

He heard, “Oh, God, it’s another meteor!” and wished he hadn’t. It could start an epidemic of fear; and it might be true. Bill Shalt was still fulminating at Commander Ke

“Hey, Bill,” Isadore bellowed. Nothing less would be hear “We always prepare for the wrong disaster. You told us. Remember?”

Shakes turned. “Well, this idiot won’t tell me what disaster we are prepared for.”

“Reminds me,” Commander Ke

“We built it good. Two layers of — why? You crammed two thousand Indians in here with no deodorant, and now you want to know it’s safe?”

“I do.”

“It’s safe. Two layers of concrete separated by—”

The sound of the end of the world slammed against the ceiling, For a moment that incredible crowd was totally silent. Then it came again: SLAM.

Commander Ke

SLAM

“-first bomb fails you just start over.”

SLAM

“If the second bomb fails, you’re already—”

SLAM

“-already in the air. You’ll fall. They’re on their—”

SLAM

“-way, by God! You can give me that drink now.”

SLAM

41 BREAKOUT

Heroes are created by popular demand, sometimes out of the scantiest of materials.

God was knocking, and he wanted in bad.

WHAM

WHAM

WHAM

quiet

“The respite will be brief,” Gillespie bellowed. Harry barely heard him in the silence after the bombs. How many were there? Twenty? Thirty?

“Stay in harness and be ready for acceleration.”

Goddam! We made it! The screens showed little but clouds. Harry caught a glimpse of Vancouver Island and the Straits of Juan de Fuca. There would be nothing to see but the Pacific Ocean anyway. Presently Earth was a shallow arc, cloud-white, and beyond it a winking light, blip blip blip. “Digit ship under power, two o’clock high!”

“Roger, I see it,” Gillespie said.

“There’s another!” Ensign Franklin shouted into the mike, then lowered his voice and tried to sound like an astronaut. “Nine o’clock low, far away. Accelerating.”

“Roger. Stand by for acceleration. Fire.”

Harry was shoved back against his couch. In the moment before thrust resumed, the screens showed lines of spurt bombs leaving their rails on all sides. The spurt bombs looked like fasces, bundles of tubes around an axis made up of attitude jets and cameras and a computer. They moved in straight lines past the rim of the Shell, turning as they went …”

WHAM

Harry waited. Nothing. Then Gillespie’s voice in the intercom.

WHAM

WHAM

The nearer of the blinking lights had gone out. The view in one screen expanded once and again. Something showed dim against the stars. How far?

“Object in view, nine o’clock low.” Franklin had his voice under control now. He sounded like Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff. “Might be Big Mama.”

“Roger. acceleration.”

Gillespie sounds tired already. Maybe he’s just bored?

WHAM

WHAM

Spurt bombs rained into the blast. The forward view jittered but that distant object was too blunt to be a digit ship. Other cameras swung in arcs… and that glare-green star was a digit ship, and it had found them with its lasers.

Harry switched the intercom to local. “Max, when do we turn the Shuttles loose?”

“Not for a while.”

“But—”

“Just now we can shoot anything that moves.”

“But if we wait too long—”

“Harry, we all have work to do. Ed flies the ship, we watch for bandits.”

“Yeah.” And when the ship gets holes in it, we go fix it. That’s democracy.

WHAM

WHAM

Harry lost count of the explosions.

“Blue fire around primary target,” Ensign Franklin said. He was shouting again. “Sir, I think they’re accelerating.”

“Roger.”

WHAM

WHAM

Harry’s universe was a madness of noise and jolts, as if a giant had put him in a garbage can and used the can for a field hockey puck.

Quiet.

“Looks quiet for a while. Keep your straps on, and take a break.”

Harry opened his faceplate. So did the others in the damage control section.

“I think we took out that first digit ship. The second is receding; it can’t slow down in time to hurt us, and the third is around back of the Earth. Odds are we won’t see another digit ship for the next hour.

“We’re moving toward the prime target. It’s ru

“Enjoy,” Max Rohrs said. He took out a pack of cigarettes. “Anybody really mind?” He offered them around. Harry reached out eagerly.

Ensign Franklin said pointedly, “There are studies that prove smoking takes ten years off your life. Harry, you really ought to give that up.”

“Well, I don’t believe in statistics. What about Max?”

“He’s smoked so long it will probably kill him about—” Franklin looked at the wall chronometer “-now, and I’ll be in command of damage control.”

Nobody wanted a second cigarette. Harry tried to relax; half close his eyes, to look like Franklin and his two Navy boatswain’s mates. His three personal TV sets showed unchanging views down access ducts within the Brick. Harry began playing with the view. Steam pipes; more steam pipes; outside, looking past the attitude jets into the overhang of the nose shield…