Lucifer's Hammer

“If you’ve got to eat human meat, the ones you want are the healthy ones, the ones who run the fastest and shoot back the best. The ones you can catch are the sick ones. The meat makes you sick, too. Better you eat diseased cattle than sick men—”

“Shut up, pussy doctor. You know why they died. They died because you’re not a real doctor at all, you’re only a pussy doctor.”

“Sure. First time you catch a real doctor, I’m for the pot.”

“Stick close to me if you want to live that long.”

Cowles had been a gynecologist before Hammerfall. He had left a commercial hunting lodge and driven downslope in the endless rain, and stopped at the border of the new sea that covered the San Joaquin Valley. Hooker’s band had found him there, sitting on the fender of his car in the pouring rain, slack-jawed and fresh out of ideas. If Cowles had not had just enough sense to name his profession, he would have joined the stewpot then.

He had protested at being conscripted into the army, until Hooker told him the true situation.

He was docile enough now. There had been no more mumbling about the rights of the citizen. Hooker didn’t doubt that he did the best he could to save lives. And he marched as fast as the slowest of them — with the stewpot following behind, carried by three men who were still healthy. Gillings was one of them. It gave Hooker an extra measure of safety: Gillings would have to drop the stewpot before he shot Hooker in the back.

Hooker didn’t want to shoot anyone. They’d already lost too many men, to disease, to desertion, to the guns in the valley behind them. Who’d have thought those farmers could put up such a good fight? Against a military outfit with modern weapons?

Only it wasn’t a very good military outfit, and they didn’t have much ammunition, and they hadn’t been very smart about anything. No time to train the recruits. No real discipline among the troops. Everybody edgy, wondering if a real Army patrol was out looking for them, or even a bunch of civilian cops.

There wasn’t any turning back, though, not now. And they couldn’t march faster than the news. What they needed was more recruits, only they couldn’t do much recruiting until they had plenty to eat. Economics could be a terrible enemy. To kill a man for the pot, and gather the fuel and water to make him meat, required a given amount of effort. If the company’s numbers dropped too low, the meat would spoil before it could be eaten. Waste of effort, waste of… murder.

It was small wonder that Hooker felt he was pursued by furies. Nothing had worked right since Hammerfall Day, and that was weeks ago. He’d forgotten exactly how many days, but two troopers kept an independent record, crossing off days on pocket calendar cards; if Sergeant Hooker needed to know precisely he could find out.

He’d learned to delegate other responsibilities too. He had to. As a sergeant he’d done the detail work; now that he was effectively the commanding officer he couldn’t. He didn’t think too much about how good an officer he was. There wasn’t anybody else to do it.

Left. Right. Away from that valley, back south again, where they might find some place to stop, new recruits, something to eat besides…

He studied the clouds and wondered if they were really moving in a counterclockwise whirlpool. The only cover in sight was a house ahead and downslope. He ought to send scouts now. Shelter might be needed. He hoped it was abandoned. And maybe there’d be some ca

“Right, Sarge.” Two troopers, two of the healthy ones, broke from the formation and ran down the hill.

“Talk them to death?” the doctor asked.

“I need recruits, pussy doctor. And we have some stewed meat left, enough to last another day…” Hooker spoke absently. He was still watching Bascomb and Flash as they moved toward the farmhouse, and that weather worried him. It was only just past noon, but the clouds did seem to be moving in a bathtub whirlpool pattern…

Something bright showed in the clouds. It couldn’t be sunlight breaking through. It was only a ruddy pinpoint, moving very fast, almost parallel to the clouds, dipping in and out of their dark underbellies. Hooker cried, “Noooo…”

Doctor Cowles edged away, suspecting madness.

“No,” Hooker said softly, “no, no, no. We can’t take it. Enough is enough, don’t you understand? It has to stop now,” Hooker explained, his eyes on the falling bright point. He couldn’t take it, nobody could take it, if the Hammer should fall again.

His prayer was answered, weirdly, as a parachute bloomed behind the meteorite. Hooker stared, not understanding.

“It’s a spacecraft,” Cowles said. “I’ll be damned. Hooker, it’s a spacecraft. Must be from Hammerlab. Hooker, are you all right?”

“Shut up.” Hooker watched the descending parachute.

Gillings bellowed from behind him. “Hey, Sergeant, what does an astronaut taste like? Like turkey?”

“We’ll never know,” Hooker called, and it was good that his voice was under control; good that only Cowles had seen his face. Cowles wouldn’t talk. “They’re coming down in the valley. Right where those farmers shot the shit out of us yesterday.”

Falling east, blind. Clouds shone fiercely bright beneath the meteorite Soyuz. Here and there were whirlpool patterns, hurricane patterns. North of their path there had been a towering spike of cloud, a mother of hurricanes spi

“Could be anything down there,” he reported.

Falling more steeply now. Out of the clouds, but it was still dark below. Land, sea, swamp? It didn’t matter. They were committed. The Soyuz had no fuel, no power, no way to maneuver. They’d stayed up as long as they could, until they were down to their last few pounds of oxygen, the last of their rations; until Hammerlab, with its low electrical power because of the sandblasted solar cells, was almost intolerably hot; until they couldn’t stay in orbit any longer, and had to return to a blasted Earth.

It had seemed appropriate to make mankind’s last space flight last as long as possible. Maybe they’d done some good. They’d been able to pinpoint the strikes and broadcast their locations. They’d seen the rockets rise and fall and the atomic blasts, and that was all over now. The Sino-Russian war went on and on and might last forever, but it wasn’t fought with atomic weapons any longer. They’d seen it all and broadcast what they saw, and somebody heard them. There’d been an acknowledgment from Pretoria, and another from New Zealand, and almost five minutes of conversation with NORAD and Colorado Springs. Not a lot to show for four weeks in orbit past Hammerfall, but they’d have stayed if there’d been nothing. The last of the space travelers.

“Parachute opening,” Pieter said from behind him. I

“Rough ride,” Rick said from behind his other ear. “Maybe because we’re overloaded.”

“No, it’s always like this,” Leonilla said. “Are your Apollos more comfortable?”

“I never came down in one,” Rick answered. “It must be easier on the nerves. We wear pressure suits.”

“Here there is no room,” Pieter said. “I have told you, we made the design different after that trouble that killed three kosmonauts. We have had no leaks, da?”

“Da.”

The view was clearing, and coming up fast. “I think we are too far south,” Pieter said. “The winds were not predictable.”