Lucifer's Hammer

“You just don’t seem yourself lately.”

“Work,” Vance said. “Too much work lately. This hike will fix everything.”

“Good,” Harvey said.

The shower felt good. He let hot water pound on his neck and he thought: Too late. The sensible, phlegmatic ones would stick it out, with the odds still hundreds, maybe thousands, to one in their favor. The panicky ones had already bought supplies and struck for the hills. There were also the sensible, cautious ones like Gordie Vance, who’d pla

Then there were the ones in between. There must be tens of millions, and Harv Randall was one of them, and look at him now: scared too late, and nothing to do but wait it out. In five days the nucleus of Hamner-Brown would be past, on its way to that strange, cold region beyond the planets…

Or it wouldn’t be.

“There must be something.” Harvey said, talking to himself in the privacy of a roaring shower. “Something I can do. What do I want out of this? If that damned dirty snowball ends the blessings of civilization and the advertising industry… okay, back to the basics. Eat, sleep, fight, drink and run. Not necessarily in that order. Right?”

Right.

Harvey Randall took Friday off. He called in sick, and by sheer bad luck Mark Czescu was in and took the call.

Mark got obvious pleasure out of asking it. “Hammer Fever, Harv?”

“Knock it off.”

“Okay. Making a few plans myself. Meeting a couple of friends, getting to a nice safe place. Forgot to tell you. I won’t be around on Hot Fudge Sundae, which falls on a Tuesdae next week. Want we should swing by your place after — if, as and when?”

He got no answer, because Harvey Randall had already hung up.

Randall went to a shopping center. He made his purchases carefully, and all on credit cards, or with checks.

At a supermarket he bought six big round roasts weighing twenty-eight pounds, and half their stock of vitamins, and half their stock of spices and considerable baking soda.

At a health-food store two doors down he bought more vitamins and more bottled spices. He bought a respectable amount of salt and pepper, and three pepper grinders.

Next door, a set of good carving knives. They’d needed new kitchen knives for a year. He also bought a sharpening stone and a hand-operated knife sharpener.

There was a tool kit he’d been wanting for years, and this was the time, he decided. While he was in the hardware store he picked up other odds and ends. Plastic plumbing parts, cheap stuff, that would thread onto iron pipe. There might be a use for it one day, if; and it would be handy around the house if not. There wasn’t a camp stove to be had, but the clerk knew Harvey and obligingly fetched out four hand-pumped flashlights and two Coleman lanterns that had just come in, along with four gallons of Coleman fuel. He also gave Harvey a knowing look that Randall was coming to recognize.

At the liquor store he bought a hundred and ninety-three dollars’ worth of everything in sight: gallons of vodka and bourbon and scotch; fifths of Grand Marnier, Drambuie and other esoteric and expensive liqueurs. He loaded everything into the wagon and then went back for bottles of Perrier water. He paid by credit card — and got another knowing look from the clerk.

“I’m ready to throw one hell of a party,” he told Kipling. The dog thumped his tail on the seat. He liked to go places with Harvey, although he didn’t get the chance as often as he wanted. He watched as his master went from store to store; to drugstores for sleeping pills and more vitamins, iodine, first-aid cream, the last box of bandages; back to the grocery for dog food; back to the drugstore for soap, shampoo, toothpaste, new toothbrushes, skin cream, calamine lotion, suntan lotion…

“Where do we stop?” Harvey asked. The dog licked his face. “We have to stop somewhere. Good Lord, I never thought much about the blessings of civilization before, but there are just a lot of things I wouldn’t want to live without.”

Harvey took his purchases home, then went back down the hill to collect the TravelAII from the mechanic who usually worked on it. If Harvey hadn’t been a very old and valued customer, he’d never have got squeezed in for tuneup, oil change, grease job, and general before-trip checkup; the garage wasn’t taking on new jobs for a week, and there were dozens of cars waiting for rush jobs.

But he got the TravelAII, and filled both tanks with gas. He filled the strap-on tanks for good measure, but he had to go to three service stations to do it; there was unofficial gas rationing in the L.A. basin.

After lunch it was bloody work. Twenty-eight pounds of beef had to be sliced into thin strips — thin! The new knives helped, but his arms were cramped by di

“It is going to hit us,” Loretta said firmly. “I knew it.”

“No. Odds are hundreds, thousands, to one against it.”

“Then why that?” she asked. It was a good question. “My kitchen is just covered with little slices of raw meat.”

“Just in case,” Harvey said. “And it keeps. Andy can use it for hikes, if we don’t.” He got back to work.

The easy way to make beef jerky is not the way the Indians used. They employed a slow fire, or a summer sun, and their quality control was poor. Far better to set a modern oven at 100° to 120° and leave the thin strips of beef in for twenty-four hours. The meat isn’t supposed to cook; it’s supposed to dry. A good strip of beef jerky is bone-dry, and hard enough to kill you if you file the end to a point. It will also keep practically forever.

Beef jerky is too limited a diet to keep a human being alive forever. The time can be greatly extended with vitamin supplements, but it’s still dull. So? If the Hammer fell, boredom would not be the major cause of death…

For bulk and carbohydrates, Harvey had grits. Nobody else in Beverly Hills, it seemed, had thought of them, and yet several of the stores carried them. He’d also found a sack of cornmeal, although there’d been no wheat or rye flour.

The fat from the beef he pounded into pemmican, mixing it with the little sugar they had around the house, with salt, with pepper, and some Worcestershire sauce for a bit of flavor. That he’d partly cook, keeping the fat that melted out for more pemmican, and to store bacon in. Bacon covered with fat and kept protected from air will keep a long time before going rancid.

So much for food, he decided. Now for water. He went out to the swimming pool. He’d started emptying it last night. It had almost drained, and he began filling it again. This time it wouldn’t get chlorine. When it was filling well he put the cover over it to keep leaves and dirt out.

Take a long time to drink all that, he thought. And there’s the contents of the hot-water heater at any given time. And… He rooted around in the garage until he found a number of old plastic bottles. Several had held bleach and still smelled of it. Perfect. He filled them without rinsing. The others he washed out carefully. Now, even if the pool went, there’d be some water.

Eat, drink. What’s next? Sleep. That one was easy. Harvey Randall never threw anything away, and he had, in addition to his regular backpacking bag, a U.S. Army Arctic sleeping bag, a summer-weight bag, bag liners, Andy’s discarded bag, and even the one he’d bought that only time Loretta had tried a hike. He took them all out and hung them on the back clothesline. Solar heat. The simplest and most efficient solar power system known to man: Hang your clothes out to dry, rather than use an electric or gas dryer. Of course not many “conservationists” did it; they were too busy preaching conservation. And I’m being unfair, and why?