Lucifer's Hammer

Wagoner shrugged. “Don’t know. Right classy whale, isn’t it?” Wagoner had a large bandage around his forehead. It looked impressive, like a scene from The Red Badge of Courage. He didn’t tell people about it though: that he’d slung a thermit grenade with too much vigor and fallen onto a rock and rolled downhill until he thought he was going to be gassed, but he wasn’t. He was pretty well gassed now, on bourbon and water. He told Rick, “At least we won’t ever have to do that again.” He’d been saying that a lot.

Happiness was contagious. Rick wanted to join in. If only he could quit worrying about that damned power plant, and about Joh

Rick shoved toward Hamner. The noise level doubled. Hamner kept moving toward the back of the hall, toward the Mayor’s office, and Rick followed. A number of people shouted for silence, adding to the general noise level. Eileen Hamner saw Rick, slipped from under Tim’s arm and came toward him. “There’s something I have to tell you,” she said.

Rick knew at once. It turned him cold with the chill of a man about to faint. “How did Joh

“Tim says saving their asses. That’s all I know.”

He felt his knees weaken, but he stayed stiffly upright. “I should have made him let me go,” he said to nobody. Now there are three astronauts left in the world. “Does Maureen know?”

“Not yet. Where is she?”

“Last I saw, in the Mayor’s office with her father.” The Senator wasn’t going to like this much either. “I’ll come with you.” He pushed through, making a way for both of them.

So Joh

Someone passed Tim a bottle. Scotch. This time he drank and carried the bottle into the Mayor’s office. The leaders were there: the Senator, sitting behind the Mayor’s desk; Al Hardy, hovering over him; Maureen, Chief Hartman, the Mayor. They looked happy, triumphant. Tim resented that. He knew he was irrational, that they deserved their celebration, but his grief was too great. He limped on into the office, pleased to see their grins fade as they saw the way he walked, the expression on his face. He felt Eileen and Rick Delanty crowd in behind him, then the door was closed.

“You were attacked again?” Al Hardy asked.

“Yes.” Tim looked at Maureen. She knew. She knew from his face. No point in being gentle about it. “General Baker is dead. We stopped their attack, but just barely. And the rest of it I want to say to everybody.” He kept his attention on the Senator. He didn’t want to see Maureen’s face.

Hardy turned to the Senator. “All right with me,” he said. Jellison nodded, and Hardy went past Tim to the door. “Get it quiet out there,” he said.

Steve Cox went to the podium and rapped for attention, while Hardy led Tim over and a dozen hands helped him up on the platform. Someone moved the Senator’s chair to the doorway so that he could hear. The Mayor and Chief Hartman stood behind him, leaning forward. Tim couldn’t see Maureen.

He braced himself on the lectern, facing hundreds of eyes, and drank more scotch. It warmed him. The room was almost quiet: no talking, except for newcomers crowding in by the door, and shushing noises from those already inside; He had never spoken before a live audience in real life… before the comet fell. They were too close, too real; he could smell them. He saw George Christopher making his way through the crowd like an icebreaker, moving triumphantly, like Beowulf displaying the arm of the monster Grendel, and hell, they all looked like that. Triumphant. And waiting expectantly.

“Good news first,” he said. “The power plant’s still ru

Applause and triumphant laughter erupted. Tim should have expected that, from the warriors who’d decimated the New Brotherhood’s main force, but he hadn’t. He was jolted. Where did these yahoos get off, drinking and dancing and bragging while the men and women Tim Hamner had left behind waited to die? When quiet came he spoke in anger.

“General Baker is dead. The New Brotherhood isn’t,” Tim said. He watched the reaction. Anger. Incredulity.

“They won’t come here again,” someone shouted. There were more cheers.

“Let him talk. What happened?” George Christopher demanded. The room was silent again.

“The Brotherhood came at us with boats, the first time,” Tim said. “It wasn’t hard to drive them off. Then we heard on the radio that you were fighting them, and we figured that would be the end of it, when you said you’d won.” He gripped the lectern, remembering the shouting celebration they’d held in the San Joaquin plant after news of the Stronghold victory.

“But they did come back. Today. They had a big raft. Sandbags around it. Mortars. They stayed out of range of anything we had, and they were blowing us apart. One of the shells got a steam line, live steam, and Price’s people had a hell of a time putting it back together. Another shell got Jack Ross.”

Tim watched George Christopher lose his triumphant grin.

“Jack was alive when we took him off the boat and put him in the van. But he was dead when we got here,” Tim said. “Another mortar went off just in front of me. It hit the sandbags we’d put on top of the cooling tower, where we had the radio. It killed the guy next to me and blew the radio apart, and it punched a piece of shrapnel into my hipbone. It’s still there.

“They kept that up. Standing off where we couldn’t shoot back. Price’s people had made some ca

In the corner of his eye Tim saw Maureen in the doorway of the Mayor’s office. She stood behind her father, her hand on his shoulder. Eileen was near her.

“We had a racing boat we used as a tug,” Tim said. “Cindy Lu. Joh

“Ran away,” George Christopher said. “They always run.”

“They didn’t run,” Tim said. “They retreated. There was some crazy white-haired guy standing in plain sight on one of the boats. We kept shooting at him, but we never hit him. He was shouting at them to kill us. Last I heard, he still was. They’ll be back.”

Tim paused to see what effect he’d had. Not enough. He’d killed the gay mood of the party, but all he saw was resentment and sorrow. Nothing else.

“They killed fourteen of us, counting Jack. Hit maybe three times that many, and a lot of them will die. There’s a nurse and some medicines, but no doctor. We need one. We need another radio.” Their looks: anger, sorrow, resentment. They knew what he’d say next. He went doggedly on. “What we need most is reinforcements. We can’t take another attack like that one. I don’t think gas bombs will do it either. We need guns. Machine guns you took from the New Brotherhood would help. But mostly we need men, because it takes just about all the power-plant staff on standby just to keep the place going in case there’s a hit on the plant. Price’s people are…” He fumbled for words. Hell, it would sound corny. So what? “They’re magnificent. I saw a guy wade into a cloud of live steam. Live steam. He walked right into it to turn a valve, to turn the steam off. He was still alive when I left, but there wasn’t any point in bringing him here.