Lucifer's Hammer

“So who are they picking for the big comet-watching flight?” Evan demanded.

“Damned if I know,” Baker said. “Nobody in Washington’s talking.”

“Hell, they’re sending me,” Rick Delanty said. “I have it on good authority.”

Baker froze with his beer half opened. Three other men nearby stopped talking, and the wives held their breath.

“I went to a fortune-teller in Texarkana, and she—”

“Jesus, give me her name and address, quick!” said Joh

“Yeah,” Rick said without shame. He began turning the hamburgers with a long-handled spatula. “Why won’t they tell us earlier? They’ve had a dozen of us training for weeks, and still no word. And this’ll be the last flight for anyone until they finish the Shuttle. Six years I’ve been on the list, and never been up. Sometimes I wonder if it’s worth it.”

He set the spatula down. “I wonder, and then I remember Deke Slayton.”

Baker nodded. Deke Slayton was one of the original Seven, one of the first astronauts to be chosen, and he never went up until the Apollo-Soyuz handshake in space. Thirteen years before a space mission. He was as good an astronaut as anyone, but he was better in ground jobs. Training, mission control; too good on the ground. “I wonder how he stood it,” Joh

Rick nodded. “Me too. But I am the world’s only black astronaut. I keep thinking that’s got to be worth something.”

Gloria came over to the grill. “Hi, Joh

“What,” Jane shouted from near the beer cooler, “do astronauts always talk about when there’s a mission pla

“Maybe they’re waiting for the right moment,” Joh

“Not fu

“But as good a theory as any,” Rick told her. “If I knew how NASA picks one man over another, I’d be on every mission. What the hell brings you back from the five-sided fu

“Orders. Start training again. I’m in the pool for Hammerwatch.”

“Hmm.” Rick poked at one of the burgers. Almost done. “And wouldn’t that do it,” he said. “Two in a row. You’d have a first.”

Baker shrugged. “I don’t know how it works either. Never have understood how I got on the Skylab—”

“You’d be a good one,” Rick said. “Experience in space repair work. And this thing’s being cobbled up fast, no time for all the tests. It makes sense.”

Gloria nodded, and so did the others, who weren’t quite listening to them. Then they went back to their conversations. Joh

Odd, how the silence spread in a growing circle.

“Leonilla Malik. An M.D., so we don’t have to take a doc.” Joh

“Maybe,” said Drew Wellen, and he was the only one talking, “maybe they think they have something to prove.”

“Maybe we do too,” someone said.

Rick felt it like a soft explosion in his belly. Nobody had promised him anything at all, but he knew. He said, “Why is everybody suddenly staring at me?”

“You’re burning the hamburgers,” said Joh

Rick looked down at the smoking meat. “Burn, baby. Burn,” he said.

At three in the morning Loretta Randall followed strange sounds into the kitchen.

Yesterday’s newspaper was spread across the middle of the kitchen floor. Her largest rectangular cake pan was in the middle, and was filled with a layer of flour. Flour had sprayed across the newspaper and beyond its edges. Harvey was throwing things into the cake pan. He looked tired, and sad.

Loretta said, “My God, Harvey! What are you doing?”

“Hi. The maid’s coming tomorrow, isn’t she?”

“Yes, of course, it’s Friday, but what will she think?”

“Dr. Sharps says that all craters are circular.” Harvey posed above the cake pan with a lug nut in his fingers; he let it drop. Flour sprayed. “Whatever the velocity or the mass or the angle of flight of a meteor, it leaves a circle. I think he’s right.”

The flour was scattered with shelled peas and bits of gravel. A paperweight had left a di

Loretta sighed with the knowledge that her husband was mad. “But, Harvey, why this? Do you know what time it is?”

“But if he’s right, then…” Harvey glanced at the globe he had brought from his office. He had outlined circles in Magic Marker the Sea of Japan, the Bay of Bengal, the arc of islands that mark the Indies Sea, a double circle within the Gulf of Mexico. If an asteroid strike had made any one of those, the oceans would have boiled, all life would have been cremated. How often had life begun on Earth, and been scalded from its face, and formed again?

If he could explain succinctly enough, Loretta would lie awake in terror until dawn. “Never mind,” he said. “It’s for the documentary.”

“Come to bed. We’ll clean this up in the morning, before Maria gets here.”

“No, don’t touch it. Don’t let her move it. I want photographs … from a lot of angles…” He leaned groggily against her, their hips bumping as they returned to bed.

April: Two

No one knows how many objects ranging in size from a few miles in diameter downward may pass near the Earth each year without being noticed.

Tim Hamner was waiting by the TravelAII when Harvey came out of the studio building. Harvey frowned. “Hello, Tim. What are you doing out here?”

“If I go inside, it’s a sponsor calling, and that’s a big deal, right? I don’t want a big deal. I want a favor.”

“Favor?”

“Buy me a drink and I’ll tell you about it.”

Harvey eyed Tim’s expensive suit and tie. Not really appropriate for the Security First. He drove to the Brown Derby. The parking attendant recognized Tim Hamner, and so did the hostess; she led them in immediately.

“Okay, what’s it about?” Harvey asked when they had a booth.

“I liked being out at JPL with you,” Hamner said. “I’ve sort of lost control of my comet. Nothing I can do the experts can’t do better, and the same with the TV series. And it is your series. But…” Tim paused to sip his drink. He wasn’t used to asking for favors, especially from people who worked for him. “Harvey, I’d like to come along on more interviews. Unpaid, of course.”

Oh, shit. What happens if I tell him it can’t be done? Will he talk to his agency? I sure as hell don’t need a test of strength just now. “It’s not always so exciting, you know. Right now we’re doing man-in-the-street interviews.”

“Aren’t those pretty dull?”

“They can be. But sometimes you get pure gold. And it doesn’t hurt to check in with the viewers now and then.” And I work my way, goddammit!

“What are you looking for? Can you use much of it?”

Harvey shrugged. “I won’t throw away good film — but that’s not the point. I want attitudes. I want the unexpected. If I knew what I was after, I could have someone else do it. And…”

“Yeah?” Tim’s eyes narrowed in the dim light. He’d seen a fu

“Well, there are strange reactions I don’t understand. They started after Joh