Lucifer's Hammer

“And nine times the cost,” Delanty said.

“And then there would have been no need of us,” Leonilla Malik said.

Jakov looked at her coldly. He started to say something, but decided not to. It was true enough, and they all knew it.

“Jesus, they sure packed it in,” Delanty said. “Let’s eat.”

“You feel no effect? From the free fall?” Leonilla asked.

“Him? Old Iron Ear?” John Baker laughed. “Hell, he eats lunch on roller coasters. Now me, I feel it a bit, and I’ve been here before. It goes away.”

“We should eat now. We are entering darkness, and we will want to deploy the solar wings in light,” Jakov said. “I, too, suggest the Soyuz, where there is more room. And we have a surprise. Caviar. It should be eaten in bowls, but doubtless we can make do from tubes.”

“Caviar?” Baker said.

“It is high in food value,” Leonilla said. “And soon the new canal will be finished and there will be plenty of water in the Caspian and the Volga for our sturgeon. I hope you like caviar—”

“Sure,” Baker said.

“Shall we get to it?” Jakov led the way into the Soyuz.

No one noticed that Rick Delanty held back, as if reluctant to begin lunch after all.

Delanty and Baker were outside. Thin lines co

Skylab had wings covered with solar cells. They were supposed to deploy automatically, but they hadn’t.

Hammerlab had a different design. The wings were folded against the body, and were designed to be deployed by human muscle power. Baker and Delanty supplied that.

The solar-cell power was all needed. Without it they couldn’t operate the laboratory — or even keep it cool enough to live in. Space is not cold. It has no temperature at all: There is no air to give it a temperature. Objects in sunlight absorb heat, which must be pumped out. Human beings generate even more heat No man can live long in an insulated environment, whether a pressure suit or a space capsule. A man generates more heat inside each cubic inch of his body than the Sun does in each cubic inch of its surface. Of course, there are a great many cubic inches of Sun…

So they needed the solar cells, and that took work. They moved large masses — in space there is no weight, but the mass remains — against friction. Their pressure suits resisted every motion, but eventually it was done. Nothing was broken, nothing was jammed. The system had been designed for simplicity — and to use the talents of intelligent men in orbit.

“At last,” Joh

“Good,” Rick huffed into his mike.

Baker didn’t like the way he said it. Delanty was breathing too hard, and too irregularly. But he said nothing.

“I thought that last one would never come loose,” Delanty puffed.

“But it did come loose. And if it hadn’t, we’d have fixed it,” Baker said. “Those goddam bastards with their perfect black boxes. Well, this time they gave me the tools for the job. There’s nothing a man can’t do with the right tools.”

“Sure, it’s all a piece of cake now.”

“Right. No worries. Barring a few international tensions, a possible Cuban hijacker, and several masses of dirty ice moving at fifty miles a second — our way.”

“That’s a relief.” Huff! “Hey, John, I see South Africa. Only — you can’t tell where the international boundaries leave off. No national borders. Joh

“You can’t see the lines of latitude and longitude, either, but that doesn’t make them unimportant.”

“Um.”

“So you can’t see international borders from space, and everyone tries to make a big point of it. If we keep that up, you know what’ll happen?”

Rick laughed. “Yeah. Everybody’s go

“And blame you for starting it. Let’s go in.”

June: Interludes

But what about a direct head-on collision with a comet? How trig and massive are the heads of comets? The head of a comet consists of two parts. The solid nucleus and the glowing coma. We only have to worry about the nucleus. of course, comets vary a good deal in size. One estimate is that the nucleus of an average comet is 1.2 miles in diameter. But a really huge comet may have a nucleus thousands of miles in diameter. Any comet that hits the earth directly is going to pack quite a wallop.

“Woe to you, my people! For have you not raised the abomination of desolation across the earth? Have you not seen the wickedness of the cities, and smelt the very stench of the air itself? Have you not defiled the earth, which is the very temple of the Lord?

“Hear the words of the Prophet Malachi: ‘For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble; and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of Hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch.

“ ‘But unto you that fear my name shall the Son of righteousness arise with healing in his wings.’

“My people, the Hammer of God comes to smite the wicked and the proud; but the humble shall be exalted. Repent, while there is yet time; for no man can escape the mighty Hammer that even now blots out the stars. Repent, before it is too late. There is yet time.”

“Thank you, Reverend Armitage. You have heard the Reverend Henry Armitage and ‘The Coming Hour.’ ”

Mark Czescu had the saki heating in a reagent bottle with a ground-glass stopper. He poured refills into tiny cups, then poured more saki into the bottle and set it back in water simmering on the stove.

“I had two plants sitting on my desk,” he said. “One was a rubber marijuana plant, with ‘ca

Frank Stoner sprawled in sinful comfort on the couch, with Joa

“Couple of years. They had to lay me off two months later.”

Frank gri

“Huh? No, it had nothing to do with the rubber marijuana. They just had to lay off some people. Since then… Well, the steadiest work has been with Harv Randall.” Mark leaned forward, eyes sparkling. “Those man-in-the-street gigs are fun. We met this army colonel who was afraid to open his mouth, afraid something would get out. There was a guy at a wrestling match who couldn’t wait for Hammerfall. That’s when the real he-men will rule the world, right?” He smiled at Lilith, who was a pale blonde with a lovely heart-shaped face and big boobs. He’d met Lilith at the Interchange, the topless bar where she danced.

Frank Stoner was sipping just enough saki to be polite. Mark hadn’t noticed. He emptied his cup in one swallow — you had to drink it fast or it would get cold — and said, “We even interviewed some bikers. The Unholy Rollers were in that night. I don’t think they took it seriously, though.”