Lucifer's Hammer

“Something’s happening upstream,” Harvey shouted. “I can’t see—”

“Don’t worry about it. Is the road down from the reservation clear of gas?” Alice demanded.

“Hold on a second… Yes.”

“Stand by.”

Moments later trucks came down that road. They carried Tallman’s Indian troops, and more ranchers. Harvey thought he recognized George Christopher in one of the trucks. They roared on in pursuit of the fleeing enemy, but were stopped at the top of the ridge beyond the road junction. Now it was the Stronghold’s turn to deploy and probe, search for weak spots, clear the roads…

While behind them the valley had become an alien world. Its unusual atmosphere was yellow-tinged, deadly to men without pressure-suits. Its native life was eerie to look upon: slow-moving quadrupeds and belly-crawlers, some armed with metallic stings, growing ever more torpid until most seemed to hibernate and only a few still moved. Like snails they crawled on their bellies, leaving trails of red slime, and they moved at snail’s pace downhill toward the river. River life thrashed about, incredibly active, then suddenly stopped moving, to float motionless with clumsy blunt fins wavering in the current.

When dark came, the silence was that of a dead, deserted world.

Aftermath

From the Far East — send you one single thought, one sole idea — written in red on every beachhead from Australia to Tokyo — “There is no substitute for victory.”

It was too dark to see. A cold wind blew down from the Sierra. Harvey turned to Marie. “Victory.”

“Yes! We did it! My God, Harvey, we’re safe!” It was too dark to see her face, but Harvey knew she must be gri

He started the TravelAII. Alice had told him to stay out of the valley, away from the main road. They’d have to drive to the Stronghold on the dirt cowpath. He put the car in gear and moved gingerly ahead. The headlamps showed the road ahead, smooth, untraveled, but the drop to the left was steep, and Harvey knew they were sinking deep into the mud surface. It would be easy to go over the edge. That was frightening — that they could be killed after the battle was over — but it was only a bad road, and he’d been on a lot of those; it wasn’t malevolent.

A wave of exhilaration swept over him. He had to fight an urge to gun the car. He had never been so aware of being alive. They rounded the mountain and crossed the ridge leading down to Senator Jellison’s house, and then he did let himself go, gu

He drove as if ru

“Harvey, you can’t think about them as people.”

“You too?”

“Yes. A little. But we’re alive! We’ve won!”

The TravelAII leaped upward at the top of a small hillock, all four wheels briefly leaving the ground. It was stupid driving at this speed, but Harvey didn’t care. “We’ve fought our last battle,” he shouted. “Ain’t go

“I’m not because you won’t give me a chancel” Marie shouted. There was laughter in her voice. “And you didn’t run, and neither did I, and it would have been so easy…” She laughed again, this time with a peculiar note in it. “And now, my friend, we go collect the traditional reward for heroes. Find Maureen. You’ve earned it.”

“Strange to say, I thought of that. But of course George will be coming back—”

“You leave George to me,” Marie said primly. “After all, I’ve got a reward coming, too. You leave George to me.”

“I think I’m jealous of him.”

“Too bad.”

The mood lasted only until they reached the Senator’s stone ranch house and went inside. There were many others there. Al Hardy, drunk but not with liquor, gri

Many were absent. They might be among the dead, they might have joined the pursuit; they might have fled, and be fleeing still, unaware that nobody was hunting them. The victors were too tired to think about them. Harvey searched until he found Maureen, and he went to her. There was no lust between them, only an infinite tenderness, concern; they touched each other like children.

There was no party, no celebration. Within minutes the gathering was finished. Some dropped into chairs and slept; some went to their own houses. Harvey felt nothing now; only the need to rest, to sleep, to forget everything that had happened that day. He had seen this before, in men returned from patrol in Vietnam, but he had not felt it himself: drained of energy, drained of emotion, not unhappy, able to rouse himself to brief moments of excitement only to have them slip away and leave him more exhausted than ever.

He woke remembering that they’d won. The details were gone; there had been dreams, vivid and mixed with memories of the past few days, and as the dreams faded so did the memories, leaving him only the word. Victory!

He was Iying on the floor of the front room, on a rug and covered with a blanket; he had no idea how he had come there. Perhaps he had been talking with Maureen and simply fallen to the floor. Anything was possible.

There were sounds in the house, people moving, smells of cooking food. He savored them all, the sounds and smells and sensations of life: The gray clouds outside the window seemed infinitely detailed, vivid and brilliant as sunlight; the bronze trophies on the walls were a marvel that needed investigation. He treasured each moment of life and what it might bring.

Gradually the mood faded. It left him desperately hungry. He got up, and saw that the living-room rug itself looked like a battlefield. They lay where fatigue had dropped them. Someone had lasted long enough to spread blankets… and had run short. Harvey spread his own blanket over Steve Cox, who was coiled into a ball against the cold, and followed his nose toward breakfast.

There was bright sunlight in the room. Maureen Jellison stared in disbelief. She was afraid to get out of bed; the bright sun might be a dream, and it was a dream she wanted to savor. Finally she convinced herself that she was awake. It was no illusion. The sun came in the window, warm and yellow and bright. It was over an hour high. She could feel its warmth on her arms when she threw back the covers.

Gradually she came to full wakefulness. Terror and blood and a fatigue like death itself, the memories of yesterday ran together like a too-fast movie film. There had been the horror of the morning, when the Stronghold forces had to hold fast, retreating slowly, letting the Brotherhood into the valley but never on the ridges; the gradual retreat that could not seem too obvious, with troops who couldn’t be told the battle plan for fear that they would be captured; finally the general panic, when they had all run.