Lucifer's Hammer

The hall was quiet. They couldn’t hear anything through the door of 314. “Now what?” Eric asked.

Harris shrugged, then knocked loudly on the door. There was no answer. He knocked again. “Police,” he said. “Miz Darcy?”

There was no answer. The lady who’d called them was coming up the stairs behind them. “You sure she’s in there?” Eric asked.

“Yes! She was screaming.”

“Where’s the manager?”

“Not here. I called him, but there wasn’t anyone there.”

Eric and his partner exchanged glances.

“She was screaming for help!” the lady said indignantly.

“We’ll probably catch hell for this,” Harris muttered. He stood to one side and gestured to Eric. Then he drew his service revolver.

Eric stepped back, raised his foot and smashed it at the locked door. Once. Then again. The door burst open and Eric darted inside, moving quickly to one side the way he’d been taught.

There was only one room. There was something on the bed. Later Eric remembered thinking just that: “Something.” It looked so little like a girl in her twenties…

There was blood on the bed and on the floor beside it. The room smelled of bright copper and expensive perfume.

The girl was nude. Eric saw long blonde hair, arranged carefully on the pillow. The hair was spattered with blood. One of her teats was gone. Blood oozed from punctures below the missing breast. Someone had drawn figures in the blood, tracing an arrow down to point to her dark pubic hair. There was more blood there.

Eric doubled over, struggling with himself, holding his breath. His partner came in.

Harris took one look at the bed, then looked away. He sent his eyes searching the room, saw no one, then looked for doors. There was a door across the room, and Harris moved toward it. As he did, the closet door opened behind him and a man darted out, breaking for the opening to the hallway. He was past Joe Harris, ru

Eric breathed deeply, got control of himself and moved to intercept the man. The man had a knife. A bloody knife. He raised it high, point toward Eric. Eric brought up his pistol and leveled it at the man’s chest. His finger tightened on the trigger.

The man threw up his arms. The knife dropped from his hand. Then he fell to his knees. He still said nothing.

Eric’s pistol followed the man. His finger tightened again. A half-ounce more… No! I am a police officer, not a judge and jury.

The man held his hands in supplication, almost as if in prayer. When Eric moved closer, he saw the man’s eyes. They did not hold terror, or even hatred. The man had a curious expression, of troth resignation and satisfaction. It did not change when he looked past Eric Larsen at the dead girl.

Later, after the detectives and the coroner had come, Eric Larsen and Joe Harris took their prisoner to the Burbank City Jail.

“You’ll get him there alive.” The voice was a whine. It belonged to a lawyer who lived in the apartment building. He’d come while they were still questioning the suspect, and shouted that the police had no right to keep after the man. He advised the man to keep silent. The man had laughed.

Eric and Harris took their prisoner to the patrol car and put him inside. He would be turned over to the L.A. County Jail the next day.

During the whole time the man had said nothing. They knew his name from his wallet: Fred Lauren. They’d also heard his record from R I. Three previous sex offenses, two with violence. Probation, probation, then parole after psychiatric treatment.

When they reached the station, Eric hauled Lauren roughly out of the car.

“That hurts,” the man said.

“That hurts. You son of a bitch!” Harris moved close to Lauren. His arm jerked, sending his elbow into the pit of the prisoner’s stomach. He did it again. “Nothing that ever happens to you will hurt the way you…” Harris couldn’t say anything else.

“Joe.” Eric moved between his partner and the prisoner. “He’s not worth it.”

“I’ll report you!” Lauren screamed. Then he giggled. “No. What’s the point? No.”

“Now he’s scared,” Eric said. “Not when he was arrested.” And not now, Eric saw: As soon as Harris moved away and they began walking Lauren into the station, the fear vanished, replaced by the look of resignation. “Okay, tell me,” Eric said. “You think the judge will give you probation again? You’ll be on the street in a week?”

The man giggled. “There won’t be any streets in a week. There won’t be anything!”

“Hammer Fever,” Eric muttered. He’d seen it before: Why not commit a crime? The end of the world was coming. The papers had a lot of stories about that. But none like this, and none in Burbank before.

“I’ll be glad when that goddam thing’s past,” Harris said. He didn’t mention the body on the bed. You lived with that, or you quit; but you worked it out on your own.

“It’s going to be a long night,” Eric said.

“Yeah, and we’ve got morning watch tomorrow.” Harris looked up at the glowing sky. “Be damned glad when that thing’s past.”

They camped at Soda Springs. It was a good campground, surprisingly uncrowded; Gordie Vance had expected a dozen other scout troops to be there. Instead, there was only Gordie and the six scouts he’d brought with him. Hammer Fever, Gordie thought. Nobody wants to be this far from roads and civilization.

They dropped their packs with relief. The boys went dashing off to the spring. There were two springs: One bubbled with clear mountain water, pure and cold; the other was rusty in color, and tasted awful, although the boys pretended they liked it. The water was naturally carbonated, and they made Wyler’s root beer in their canteens. Gordie didn’t bother telling them not to drink too much. Nobody ever did.

They cooked supper over the Svea gasoline backpacker stoves. Gordie let Andy Randall choose the di

“But my teacher said it might,” one of the younger boys was saying.

“Nuts,” Andy Randall told him. “Dad’s been out to JPL dozens of times, and their computer says it won’t. Besides, Mr. Hamner told me—”

“You know him?” the younger scout asked.

“Sure.”

“But he invented the Hammer.” Involuntarily they looked upward, to the huge glowing smear in the evening sky. “It sure looks close,” the younger scout said.

The long mountain twilight ended, and the stars came out. The Hammer glowed fiercely in the night sky before it sank behind the Sierra. Gordie got the boys into their sleeping bags. They wanted to stay up and watch; there were bright aurora displays across the sky, with the stars showing through jagged lines of green and red.

Gordie climbed into his own sack. As usual he dropped straight off to sleep, programmed to wake in a couple of hours so that he could walk around and see that the boys were all right. I’m a conscientious bastard, he thought, just before he dozed off. It was fu

He woke at midnight — and that was all the sleep he got that night.

The sky was frantic. It streamed overhead like luminescent milk in black water. Stars winked in Hamner-Brown’s tail, then sank into the background as blazes of color flashed across from horizon to horizon. Somewhere in the far distance there were brighter flashes, and after a long time, thunder. Gordie made his rounds in a trance.

Andy Randall was awake. He hadn’t bothered to set up a tube tent, although it often rains in the Sierra in June. Andy lay in the open, his head propped on his pack, his long arms under his neck. “Quite a show,” he whispered.

“That it is,” Gordie said. He was careful to keep his voice cheerful and under control. When they asked later, Andy would have to say that Gordon Vance had shown no signs of depression. “Get some sleep,” Gordie said. “We don’t have far to go tomorrow, but the trail’s tricky in places.”