Footfall

“What evidence is that?” the President asked. He sounded curious, rather than demanding.

“They chose to attack the United States ,” Anson said. “Clearly the strongest nation on Earth.”

“But—”

Anson fell silent at the interruption, but when the President didn’t say anything else, he continued. “Clearly the strongest nation, at least as seen from space. Roads, dams, cities, cultivated lands, harbors, electronic emissions — all would indicate that the United States is the dominant nation.” Anson looked around as if for contradictions, but no one said anything. “Yet they chose to land here, and according to all the intelligence reports we have, they’re setting up a perimeter defense. As if they intend to stay.”

“We’ll see about that,” General Toland muttered.

Anson raised an eyebrow.

Toland looked around nervously. “We’re pla

“With what?” Dr. Curtis demanded.

Toland looked at the writer with disapproval.

“It will be a large assault,” the President said. “Mr. Anson, I agree that they intend to stay. Do they have a choice? I don’t see how they can expect to launch enough ships to get their people off the Earth.”

“Lasers,” Curtis said.

They all looked at him. He shrugged and pointed to Anson. “Sorry, it’s Bob’s turn.”

“We’ll let Dr. Curtis explain in a moment,” Anson said. “We agree then that they’ve come to stay. Despite their early successes, I would be greatly surprised if they expected this first effort to succeed. Eventually we’ll win, throw them out of Kansas . Surely they expect that. Therefore, they plan other attempts. One supposes they will make certain preparations for those attempts.”

“What might they do?” the President asked.

Anson turned to Joe Ransom. “Mr. Ransom will address that.”

“They’ve already used kinetic energy weapons,” Ransom said. “It’s clear that any ship capable of crossing interstellar space will have a very powerful engine. Mr. President, I think they’ll drop a Dinosaur Killer.”

The President looked puzzled, but Joe Ransom was Only hitting his stride. “An asteroid some nine kilometers across very probably killed the dinosaurs and wiped out most of the life on Earth at the time. There’s a layer of dead clay that corresponds to that era, and we find asteroidal material in it. all over the world-but skip the evidence; it almost doesn’t matter. What matters is that the aliens have already thrown rocks, and they’ve got the power to move a small asteroid. We’ve got the mathematics to work out the results. The effects will be global, and very bad.”

There’s an understatement, Je

“Depending on how large, and where it strikes, an asteroid could do just about anything.” Anson said. “Tidal waves may destroy many coastal cities. Cloud cover: we could get weeks or months of endless night and endless rain. It could trigger a new ice age.”

“You can’t be sure they’ll hit us with an asteroid,” the President said.

“It’s the way to bet. I wish we could guess how big it will be.”

“Mr. President,” Anson said. “They obviously have the ability to do it. They’ve been out in space for fifteen years. Surely they’ve thought of it.”

“I see.” Coffey nodded seriously.

“Is there anything we can do about it?” Admiral Carrell demanded. “Could we deflect it?”

“How? They shoot down anything we send up,” Curtis said.

“So what do we do?” Admiral Carrell asked.

Anson turned to the other writer. “Dr. Curtis has given that some thought. Wade—”

“We’ll never beat them while they own space,” Curtis said. “As long as they control space, they can find junk to hit us with. One Dinosaur Killer after another.”

Blunt son of a bitch, Je

“We can’t stop them from bombarding us with asteroids until we can take control of space again, and we’ll never get space away from them while they have that mother ship,” Curtis continued.

“Perfect naval doctrine,” Admiral Carrell said. “But a navy needs ships, Dr. Curtis!”

“Orion,” Curtis said. “Old bang-bang.”

The President looked puzzled, and Je

“Take a big metal plate,” Curtis said. “Big and thick. Make it a hemisphere, but it could even be flat. Put a large ship, say the size of a battleship, on top of it. You want a really good shock absorber system between the plate and the ship.

“Now put an atom bomb underneath and light it off. I guarantee you that sucker will move.” He sketched as he talked. “You keep throwing atom bombs underneath the ship. It puts several million

pounds into orbit. In fact, the more mass you’ve got, the smoother the ride.”

Admiral Carrell looked thoughtful. “And once in space—”

“The tactics are simple,” Curtis said. “Get into space, find the mother ship, and go for it. Throw everything we have at it. Ram if we have to.”

“Hard on the crew,” the President said.

“You’ll have plenty of volunteers, sir,” Ed Gillespie said. “The whole astronaut corps for starters.”

True enough. Most of them had friends at Moon Base. Odd, they did use nuclear weapons there, but nowhere on Earth.

“Is this-Orion-feasible?” Admiral Carrell asked.

Curtis nodded. “Yes. The concept was studied back in the sixties, Chemical explosive test models were flown. It was abandoned after the Treaty of Moscow ba

“Michael?” the President asked.

“Sony, sir. We’ve already given it a code name. The Archangel Michael cast Satan out of Heaven.”

“Appropriate enough name. However, our immediate problem is to get them out of Kansas …

“That does no good,” Curtis said. “As long as they own space, they can land whenever and wherever they want, and there’s damned little we can do about it. Mr. President, we have to get to work on Michael now.”

The President looked thoughtful. “Perhaps I agree.” He turned to Ed Gillespie. “General, we’re pretty shorthanded here. I believe you’re presently without an assignment?”

“Yes, sir,”

“Good. I want you to head up the team for Project Archangel. Look into feasibility, armament, who you need for a design team, where you’d build it, how long it would take. Report to Admiral Carrell when you know something. Perhaps these gentlemen can help you.” He looked to the writers.

“Sure,” Curtis said. “One thing, though—”

“Yes?”

“We could use my partner. Nat Reynolds. Last I heard, he was in Kansas City .”

“Combat area,” General Toland said.

“Nat’s pretty agile, though. He may have got away. And he’s just the right kind of crazy,” Curtis said earnestly.

“Major Crichton can see to that,” the President said. “Now, to return to something you said earlier. Lasers?”

“Yes, sir,” Curtis said “I believe they’ll use lasers to launch theft ships from the ground”

“Why?”

“Why wouldn’t they? They’ve got good lasers, much better than we have, and it’s certainly simple enough if you’ve got lasers and power.”

“I asked the wrong question,” Coffey said. “How?”

Curtis looked smug again. He sketched. “If you fire a laser up the back end of a rocket-a standard rocket-motor bell shape, but thick-you get much the same effect as if you carried rocket fuel aboard, but there’s a lot more payload, because you can leave your power source on the ground. Your working mass, your exhaust, is air and vaporized rocket motor, hotter than hell, with a terrific exhaust velocity. It uses a lot of power, but it’ll sure work. Pity we never built one.”

“Where would they get the power?” the President asked. “They’ve blown up all our dams. They can’t just plug into a wall socket,”