Lucifer's Hammer

“Apollo recovery fleet,” came the answer. “And we’ve lost communications with them. Last words we got were: ‘Fireball southeast.’ Then ‘Fireball overhead.’ Then nothing.”

“Thank you,” Forrester said.

“Houston, HOUSTON, THERE IS A LARGE STRIKE IN THE GULF OF MEXICO; I SAY AGAIN, LARGE STRIKE THREE HUNDRED MILES SOUTHEAST OF YOU. REQUEST YOU SEND A HELICOPTER FOR OUR FAMILIES.”

“Jesus, how can Baker be so calm about it?” someone demanded.

What damn fool is that? Sharps wondered. New man. Never heard the astronauts when there’s a real problem. He glanced over to Forrester.

Dan Forrester nodded. “The Hammer has fallen,” he said.

Then all the TV screens went blank, and the loudspeakers hissed with static.

Two thousand miles northeast of Pasadena, in a concretelined hole fifty feet below ground, Major Be

He had justification. The night before, he’d got a call direct from General Thomas Bambridge, and the SAC Commander in Chief didn’t often speak personally to missile squadron commanders. Bambridge’s message had been short. “I want you in the hole tomorrow,” he’d said. “And for your information, I’ll be up in Looking Glass myself.”

“Goddam,” Major Rosten had answered. “Sir… is this the Big One?”

“Probably not,” Bambridge had answered, and then he’d gone on to explain.

Which wasn’t, Rosten thought, very reassuring. If the Russkis really thought the U.S. was blind and crippled…

He glanced to his left. His deputy, Captain Harold Luce was at another console just like Rosten’s. The consoles were deep underground, surrounded by concrete and steel, built to withstand a near miss by an atomic bomb. It took both men to launch their birds: Both had to turn keys and punch buttons, and the timing sequence was set so that one man couldn’t do it alone.

Captain Luce was relaxed at his console. Books were spread out in front of him: a correspondence course in Oriental art history. Collecting correspondence degrees was the usual pastime for men on duty in the holes, but how could Luce do it, today, when they were unofficially on alert?

“Hey, Hal…” Rosten called.

“Yo, Skipper.”

“You’re supposed to be alert.”

“I am alert. Nothing’s going to happen. You watch.”

“Christ, I hope not.” Rosten thought about his wife and four children in Missoula. They’d hated the idea of moving to Montana, but now they loved it. Big country, open skies, no big-city problems. “I wish—”

He was interrupted by the impersonal voice from the wiregrill-covered speaker above him. “EWO, EWO,” the voice said. “EMERGENCY WAR ORDERS, EMERGENCY WAR ORDERS. THIS IS NO DRILL. AUTHENTICATION 78-43-76854-87902-1735 ZULU. RED ALERT. RED ALERT. YOUR CONDITION IS RED.”

Sirens screamed through the concrete bunker. Major Rosten hardly noticed as a sergeant came down the steel ladder to the entrance and slammed shut the big Mosler Safe Company bank-vault door. The sergeant closed it from the outside and twirled the combination dial. No one would get into the hole without blasting.

Then, as regulations required, the sergeant cocked his submachine gun and stood with his back to the big safe door. His face was hard, and he stood rigidly, swallowing the sharp knot of fear.

Inside, Rosten punched the authentication numbers into his console, and opened the seals on an envelope from his order book. Luce was doing the same thing at his console. “I certify that the authentication is genuine,” Luce said.

“Right. Insert,” Rosten ordered.

Simultaneously they took the keys from around their necks and put them into the red-painted locked switches on their consoles. Once inserted and turned to the first click, the keys couldn’t be withdrawn without other keys neither Luce nor Rosten had. SAC procedure…

“On my count,” said Rosten. “One. Two.” They turned the keys two clicks. Then they waited. They did not turn them further. Yet.

It was mid-morning in California; it was evening in the Greek isles. The last of the sun’s disk had vanished as two men reached the top of the granite knob. In the east a first star showed. Far below them, Greek peasants were driving overloaded donkeys through a maze of low stone walls and vineyards.

The town of Akrotira lay in twilight. Incongruities: white mudwalled houses that might have been created ten thousand years ago; the Venetian fortress at the top of its hill; the modern school near the ancient Byzantine church; and below that, the camp where Willis and MacDonald were uncovering Atlantis. The site was almost invisible from the hilltop. In the west a star switched on and instantly off, blink. Then another. “It’s started,” MacDonald said.

Wheezing, Alexander Willis settled himself on the rock. He was mildly irritated. The hour’s climb had left him breathless, though he was twenty-four years old and considered himself in good shape. But MacDonald had led him all the way and helped him over the top, and MacDonald, whose dark red hair had receded to expose most of his darkly ta

The two sat crosslegged, looking west, watching the meteors,

They were twenty-eight hundred feet above sea level on the highest point of the strange island of Thera. The granite knob had been called many things by a dozen civilizations, and it had endured much. Now it was known as Mount Prophet Elias.

Dusk faded on the waters of the bay far below. The bay was circular, surrounded by cliffs a thousand feet high, the caldera of a volcanic explosion that destroyed two thirds of the island, destroyed the Minoan Empire, created the legends of Atlantis. Now a new black island, evil in appearance and barren, rose in the center of the bay. The Greeks called it the New Burnt Land, and the islanders knew that some day it too would explode, as Thera had exploded so many times before.

Fiery streaks reflected in the bay. Something burned blue-white overhead. In the west the golden glow faded, not to black, but to a strange curdled green-and-orange glow, a back drop for the meteors. Once again Phaethon drove the chariot of the sun…

The meteors came every few seconds! Ice chips struck atmosphere and burned in a flash. Snowballs streaked down, burning greenish-white. Earth was deep in the coma of Hamner-Brown.

“Fu

“Sky watching? I’ve always loved the sky,” MacDonald said. “You don’t see me digging in New York, do you? The desert places, where the air’s clear, where men have watched the stars for ten thousand years, that’s where you find old civilizations. But I’ve never seen the sky like this.”

“I wonder what it looked like after you-know-what.”

MacDonald shrugged in the near-dark. “Plato didn’t describe it. But the Hittites said a stone god rose from the sea to challenge the sky. Maybe they saw the cloud. Or there are things in the Bible, you could take them as eyewitness accounts, but from a long way away. You wouldn’t have wanted to be near when Thera went off.”

Willis didn’t answer, and small wonder. A great greenish light drew fire across the sky, moving up, lasting for seconds before it burst and died. Willis found himself looking east. His lips pursed in a soundless Oh. Then, “Mac! Turn around!”

MacDonald turned.

The curdled sky was rising like a curtain; you could see beneath the edge. The edge was perfectly straight, a few degrees above the horizon. Above was the green-and-orange glow of the comet’s coma. Below, blackness in which stars glowed.