Lucifer's Hammer

“I’m sorry,” Forrester said.

“Sure,” Hardy said. “Hamner, there are towns out in the valley. Under water. We’re hoping either you or Baker will have a chance to do some salvage work. Both of you have scuba experience, but the only wet suit we could buy turns out to be small. I don’t know if Baker can get into it, which means you may have to do the diving. There’s another list in that packet of papers Forrester gave you. Stuff we need. But give his first priority.”

“And we want information,” Senator Jellison said. He sounded tired, and Tim thought he looked gray, but perhaps it was only the pale yellow kerosene light. “We’ve had short radio contact with people on the other side of the San Joaquin Sea,” Jellison said. “There were oil fields out there, lots of them, and there seem to be survivors. They were friendly enough on the radio, but you never can tell. Anyway, find out what you can. Maybe the power-plant people know. We can use allies. Baker has authority to make deals. You don’t, but you know conditions here better than Joh

Tim looked thoughtful. “Everybody has assumed the people at the power plant will be friendly,” he said. “What if they’re not? I thought my observatory… anyway, what if they’re not?”

“Baker has instructions on that,” Jellison said. “Warn them about the ca

“And see what you can salvage out in the valley,” Hardy said. “We can’t let all this manpower and gasoline go to waste.”

A rancher put his head in the door. “Scouts are back,” he said. “It’s okay. We have the boats.”

Hardy nodded. “All right. Hamner, get your goodbyes said. Now I’ll go find out exactly what all this cost us,” he said, with distaste. He went.

Under the black beard Dan Forrester’s lips were a hard, thin line. Forrester didn’t always show his anger. It showed now only in the way he fumbled for words before saying, “Giving up the power plant would not turn out to be an optimum solution.”

“We’ll save it. You guard the home front.” Tim went back out into the cold night. Four hours until dawn.

Maureen blinked back tears as the truck drove away. She watched the taillight dwindle and vanish on the highway south, and stood in the cold wind long after she couldn’t see it any longer.

It all made sense. If they had to send off an expedition, Joh

She didn’t want to go inside. In there Al Hardy and Harvey Randall would be working with Dr. Forrester, pla

“I’m a goddam prize in a goddam contest,” she said aloud, “in a goddam fairy tale. Why doesn’t anyone ever speak for the princess?” She could hardly blame her father for the symmetry of it all, though she was tempted. But it was all so pat, it made so much sense.

The Stronghold had to have allies. People who might join to fight the ca

And the power plant had to be saved, thanks to Forrester’s gentle extortion. But, cut off from events by the sea around them, how were the defenders to know their friends from their enemies? Best to send a man with some military authority, a man any adult American would recognize in a fog on a moonless night: General Joh

Which left Harvey Randall free to work with Dr. Forrester, whom he had known in a previous life, on the weapons to defend the Stronghold.

So the knights were riding off in three directions, and he who came back with the prize — his life — would inherit the princess and half the kingdom. They could all come back. It could happen. But when did the princess ever get her choice?

“Hello.”

She didn’t turn to look. “He’s so damn visible.”

“Yeah,” Harv said. He wondered, but in silence, how the Angels who hated the atomic plant so much would feel about the space program. Someone like Jerry Owen would recognize Baker as fast as any power-plant operator would. “That’s why he’s there,” he said. When she didn’t answer, didn’t even turn, he went back inside.

There were four boats for twenty men. Two were cabin cruisers, small fiberglass boats used in inland lakes, powered by outboards. There was a twenty-foot open dory, also with an outboard; and there was the Cindy Lu. She was a bomb. Twenty feet long, and only wide enough for two people to sit in the tiny cockpit. The rest of the boat was an enormous inboard engine covered with bright chrome.

Cindy Lu had lost most of her bright tangerine metallicflake paint. The chrome didn’t glow when Joh

“This was quite a find,” said Horrie Jackson. “We can use her to—”

“She’s gorgeous! Who cares what she’s for?”

The fishing-camp leader chortled. “Isn’t she just? But the Senator wanted something that could tow a load. And since I’m comin’ along I’d as soon have something fast. Just in case we have to run away from anything.”

“Were not going there to run away,” Baker told him.

Jackson’s grin was wide. He was missing a tooth. “General, I’m going because they hired me. Some of my boys are going because the Senator’s man said he’d take their women up into that valley and keep ’em there for the winter. I don’t know what the last astronaut is doing here.”

“Don’t you care?” Baker demanded. “Isn’t it worth saving? It could be the last nuclear power plant on Earth!”

Jackson shook his head. “General, after what I’ve seen T can’t think more than a day ahead. and right now all I know is you’re going to feed me awhile. I remember…” His brow furrowed. “Seems so long ago. The papers were screaming about how the gov’mint was putting an atomic plant right next to us and if a melt-down happened… I don’t remember. But I can’t get excited about saving an atomic plant.”

“Or anything else,” Jason Gillcuddy said. “Disaster syndrome.”

“Let’s board,” Horrie Jackson said coldly.

Tim Hammer made his choice: One of the boats had an awning, protection from the drizzle. He sat next to Hugo Beck. The man must have had enough of being avoided. Mark and Gillcuddy boarded the same boat. Horrie Jackson took the pilot’s chair. then looked around to find that Joh

“I don’t suppose she’ll be too fast for an astronaut,” he called “but you won’t get so wet under the awning.”

Baker laughed. “What’s a little rain to a man in love?” He activated Cindy Lu with a marrow-freezing, mind-numbing roar.

The small fleet moved cautiously out from shore, out into the inland sea. The water was dangerous with treetops, floating debris, telephone poles. Horrie Jackson led the way in the cabin boat, going very slowly. The top of a silo marked where a submerged barn must be; he steered wide. He seemed to know exactly where to turn to find the cha

The night was not quite pitch black. A dull glow beyond the drizzle marked where the moon was hidden by the constant cloud cover.