Lucifer's Hammer

“So long as we get down,” Joh

Leonilla chuckled. “Can we all wade? The water doesn’t look deep. In fact…” She stared down at the scene below while the others waited. She was in the chair beside Joh

“Two hundred meters,” Joh

Splot! The overburdened Soyuz landed hard. That felt like land. Joh

They were all soaked in sweat. It had been a hot ride. “Everybody okay?” Joh

“Rojj.”

“Yes, thank you.”

“Let’s get the hell out,” Rick said.

Joh

“Oops.”

“What is it?” Rick asked. Leonilla craned to look past him.

“Curtain time,” said Joh

He raised his hands. It wasn’t easy to keep them high and still scramble out of the capsule. What were they all so damned nervous about? He moved, rotated, so they could see the U.S. flag on his shoulder. “Don’t shoot, I’m a hero.”

They were not a prepossessing lot. They were half-drowned rats in farm clothes much the worse for total disaster, and their faces were as grim as their guns. There were a couple of bloody bandages in evidence, too. Joh

One spoke from the semicircle. He was white-haired and stout — though not as stout as his coveralls; they had all shrunk within their clothes. But his arms were as thick as a wrestler’s. The lightweight machine gun looked fragile in his big hands. “Tell us, Hero, how you come to be in a commie airplane.”

“Spaceship. We’re from Hammerlab. You know about Hammerlab?” (Head belong you-fella him savvy big rocket go up up up in sky long-time not come down?) “Hammerlab was the joint Apollo-Soyuz mission in space. We went up to study the comet.”

“We know.”

“Okay, the Apollo got a hole poked through it. We think it got hit by a snowflake moving at God’s own speed. We had to beg a ride home with the Soviets. In their spaceship. I’m—”

“Joh

“Pleased to meet you,” said Joh

“Go ahead,” said the white-haired spokesman. He was obviously the man in charge, partly by tradition, partly because of bull strength. The submachine gun didn’t hurt his leadership credentials. It hadn’t moved, aimed not quite at Joh

“The other astronauts. Two Soviets and another American. It’s crowded in there. They’d like to come out, if… well, if you people can stay calm about it.”

“Nobody excited here,” the spokesman said. “Bring out your friends. I got some questions for them. Like why did the commies come down here?”

“Where could we go? Only one spaceship for the four of us. Leonilla?”

She stepped out, smiling, her hands slightly raised. Joh

The hard stares softened. The white-haired man lowered his weapon. “I’m Deke Wilson,” he said. “Come on out, miss. Or is it comrade?”

“Whatever you choose,” she said. She scrambled down from the open hatchway and stood blinking at the reflected light off the sheet of water two hundred yards to the west. “My first visit to America. Or outside the Soviet Union. They wouldn’t let me out before.”

“Others coming,” Joh

Brigadier General Jakov was not smiling. His hands were high and his back was straight, the hammer-and-sickle and CCCP prominent on his shoulder. The farmers were looking wary again. “General Pieter Jakov,” Joh

A couple of the farmers were giving their friends knowing looks.

Rick emerged, also smiling, making certain that the U.S. flag showed.

“Colonel Rick Delanty, U.S. Air Force,” Joh

The farmers were relaxing. A little.

“First black man in space,” Rick said. “And the last, for about a thousand years.” He paused. “We’re all the last.”

“For awhile. Maybe not that long,” Deke Wilson said. He slipped the submachine gun back on its shoulder strap so that it pointed to the sky There was a subtle change in the way the others held their weapons. Now they were a group of farmers who happened to be carrying guns.

One of the men flashed a mischievous grin. “They made you ride in back?”

“Well, it was the only bus out there,” Rick said.

There were laughs. “Derek, take your boys and get back to the roadblock,” Wilson said. He turned back to Baker. “We’re a little nervous here,” he said. “Some Army mutineers ru

“It is that bad?” Leonilla said. “That bad so quickly?”

“Maybe we shouldn’t have come down,” Rick said.

“There are vital records in the spacecraft.” Pieter Jakov laid a hand possessively on the Soyuz. “They must be preserved. Is there anyplace they can be studied? Any scientists or universities near here?”

The farmers laughed. “Universities? General Baker, look around you. Take a good look,” Deke Wilson said.

John Baker stared at the desolation surrounding him. To the east were rain-drenched hills, some green, most barren. All the low areas were filled with water. The highway that ran north and east looked more like a series of concrete islands than a road.

To the west was a vast inland sea, lapped with waves a foot high, dotted with small brown hills that had become islands. Treetops rose from the water in regular arrays where an orchard was not quite submerged. A few boats moved across this sea. The water was muddy, dark and dangerous, and it stank with dead things. Cattle, and…

The remains of a rag doll bobbed gently with the waves. It floated about thirty yards offshore. Not far from it, perhaps somehow attached to it, were wisps of blonde hair and checkered cloth, not recognizable as the remains of anything human. Deke Wilson followed Baker’s look, then turned away toward the farmhouse standing on the hill above the sea. “Nothing we can do,” he said. His voice was bitter. “We could spend all our time burying them. All of it. And we’d still not get it done.”

It was then that the full horror of Hammerfall struck Joh

Wilson frowned a question.

“It isn’t just Bang! and it’s over, civilization’s fallen and we have to rebuild it. There’s the aftermath, and that’s worse than the comet—”

“Damn right,” Wilson said. “You’re goddam lucky, Baker. You missed the worst of it.”