Lucifer's Hammer

She wondered what her status was. Her father had been a physician with a fairly good reputation among the Kremlin elite. Then had come the “Doctors’ Plot,” an insane Stalinist delusion that the Kremlin physicians were trying to poison The Revolutionary Leader of Our Times, Hero of the People, Teacher and Inspired Leader of the World Proletariat, Comrade Josef Vissarionovich Stalin. Her father and forty other doctors had vanished into the Lubianka.

One of her father’s legacies was a 1950 copy of Pravda. He had carefully underlined every mention of Stalin’s name: ninety-one times on the front page alone, ten times as Great Leader, and six as Great Stalin.

He should have poisoned the bastard, Leonilla thought. It wasn’t a pleasant concept; there was a long tradition about that. The Oath of Hippocrates wasn’t taught in Soviet medical schools, but she had read it.

As the daughter of an enemy of the people, Leonilla’s future hadn’t seemed very bright; but then had come a new era, and Dr. Malik was rehabilitated. By way of reparations, Leonilla had been rescued from secretarial work in an obscure Ukrainian town and sent to the university. A liaison with an Air Force colonel had resulted in her learning to fly, and from that, weirdly, to her ambiguous status in the kosmonaut corps. The colonel was now a general and long since married, but he continued to help her.

She had never been in space. She had been trained for it, but she had never been chosen. Instead, she treated flyers and their dependents, and got in flying time when she could, and hoped for a lucky break.

There was a tap at the door. Sergeant Breslov, a young man of no more than nineteen years, proud to be a sergeant in the Red Army; only, of course, it wasn’t the Red Army anymore and hadn’t been since Stalin had been forced to rename it during what he had to call The Great Patriotic War. Breslov would have preferred the Red Army. He often talked of carrying freedom across the world on the point of his bayonet.

“There is a long message for you, Comrade Captain. You have been transferred to Baikunyar.” He frowned at the bottle which Leonilla had forgotten to put away.

“Back to work,” Leonilla said. “That is worth celebration. Will you join me?” She poured a glass for Breslov.

He drank standing at stiff attention. It was one way of showing disapproval of officers who drank before lunch. Of course, many of them did, which to Breslov was another indication of how things had gone downhill since the Red Army days his father boasted of.

In three hours she was flying toward the spaceport. She could hardly believe it: urgency orders, authorizing her to fly a jet trainer, her belongings to be sent after her. What could be so important? She pushed the question from her mind and reveled in the joy of flying. Alone, in the clear skies, no one looking over her shoulder, no other pilots eager for their chance at the stick: ecstasy. Only one thing could be better.

Could that be why they’d sent for her? She knew of no space missions. But perhaps. I’ve been lucky for a long time. Why not more luck? She imagined being in a real Soyuz waiting for the big boosters to roar and fling the spacecraft up into clean space, and for the hell of it she flipped the jet trainer into a series of aerobatics that would have got her grounded if anyone had been watching.

A sudden gust across the San Joaquin Valley shook the trailer slightly, bringing Barry Price to instant wakefulness. He lay still, listening for the reassuring sound of the bulldozers, his crews were still at work on the nuclear power plant. There was light outside. He sat up carefully to avoid waking Dolores, but she stirred and opened one eye. “What time is it?” she asked, her voice heavy with sleep.

“About six.”

“Oh, my God. Come back to bed.” She reached for him. The covers fell away, revealing her ta

He moved away, avoiding her, then caught her hands in one of his and held them while he bent to kiss her. “Woman, you’re insatiable.”

“I haven’t had any complaints yet. Are you really getting up?”

“Yes. I’ve got engineering work to do, and we’ve got visitors later, and I’ve got to read that memo McCleve sent over yesterday. Should have got to it last night.”

She gri

“No.” He went to the sink and ran water until it was hot.

“You wake up faster than any man I’ve ever known,” Dolores said. “I’m not getting up at the crack of dawn.” She pulled the pillow over her head, but she continued to move slightly under the covers, letting him know she was awake.

Still available, Barry thought. Yo ho! Then why am I putting on my pants?

When he was dressed he pretended to think she was asleep and quickly left the trailer. Outside he stretched in the morning sunshine, breathing deeply. His trailer was at the edge of the camp that housed much of the San Joaquin Nuclear Project work force. Dolores had one far away, but she didn’t use it often these days. Barry walked toward the plant with a grin that faded as he thought about Dolores.

She was wonderful. And what they did in their copious free time hadn’t affected their work at all. She was more administrative assistant than secretary, and he knew damned well he couldn’t get along without her; she was at least as important to his work as the operations manager, and that terrified Barry Price. He kept waiting for the possessiveness, the not unreasonable demands for his time and attention that had made life with Grace so unpleasant. He couldn’t believe that Dolores would remain satisfied simply to be his… what? he wondered. Mistress wasn’t right. He didn’t support her. The idea was fu

He stopped to get coffee from the big urn at the construction supervisor’s shack. They always had excellent coffee. He carried a cup up to his office and took out McCleve’s memo.

A minute later he was screaming in anger.

He hadn’t calmed down when Dolores arrived about eight-thirty. She came in with more coffee to find him pacing the office. “What’s the matter?” she asked.

Another thing I love about her, Barry thought. She never demands anything personal at the office. “This.” He lifted the memo. “Do you know what those idiots want?”

“Obviously not.”

“They want me to hide the plant! They want us to bulldoze up a fifty-foot earth embankment around the whole complex!”

“Would that make the plant safer?” Dolores asked.

“No! Cosmetics, that’s all. Not even cosmetics. Dammit, San Joaquin is pretty. It’s a beautiful plant. We should be proud of it, not try to hide it behind a lot of dirt.”

She put the coffee down and smiled uncertainly. “You have to do it?”

“I hope not, but McCleve says the Commissioners like the idea. So does the Mayor. I’ll probably have to, and dammit, it messes hell out of the schedule! We’ll have to pull men off the excavations for Number Four, and—”

“And meanwhile, your PTA ladies are due in fifteen minutes.”

“Lord God. Thanks, Dee. I’ll compose myself.”

“Yes, you’d better do that. You sound like a bear. Be nice, these ladies are on our side.”

“I’m glad somebody is.” Barry went back to his desk and his coffee and looked at the piles of work he still had to do, and hoped the ladies wouldn’t take long. Maybe he’d get a chance to call the Mayor, and just maybe the Mayor would be reasonable, and then he could get to work again…

The plant yard buzzed with activity. Bulldozers, forklifts, concrete trucks moved in an intricate, seemingly random pattern. Workmen carried materials for concrete forms. Barry Price led the group through this maelstrom almost without noticing it.