Lucifer's Hammer

The tower, the large central building of JPL, was gone. In its place there was a crumpled mass of glass, concrete, twisted metal, broken computers. The Von Karman Center was similarly in ruins. One wall had fallen, and through it Sharps saw the first unma

“End! When will it end?” someone was screaming. Sharps could barely hear the words.

Finally the quake began to die. Sharps stayed down. He would not tempt the fates. What remained of the parking lot was tilted downslope and bulged in the middle. Now Sharps had time to wonder who had been on the stairway behind the cameramen. Not that it mattered; they were gone, the camera people were gone; everyone who had been within fifty feet of the stairwell had vanished into the mass below, covered by the hillside and the mangled remains of cars.

The day was darkening. Visibly darkening. Sharps looked up to see why.

A black curtain was rolling across the sky. Within churning black clouds the lightning flared as dozens, scores, hundreds of flashbulbs.

Lightning flared and split a tree to their right. The instantaneous thunder was deafening, and the air smelled of ozone. More lightning crashed in the hills ahead.

“Do you know where you’re going?” Tim Hamner demanded.

“No.” Eileen drove on, speeding through empty, rainwashed streets. “There’s a road up into the hills here somewhere. I’ve been up it a couple of times.”

To their left and behind them were more houses, mostly intact. To the right were the Verdugo Hills, with small side streets penetrating a couple of blocks into them, each street with its “Dead End” sign. Except for the rain and lightning, everything seemed normal here. The rain hid everything not close to them, and the houses, mostly older, stucco, Spanishstyle, stood without visible damage.

“Aha!” Eileen cried. She turned hard right, onto a blacktop road that twisted its way along the base of a high bluff, a protruding spur of the lightning-washed mountains ahead. The road twisted ahead, and soon they saw nothing but the hill to the right, the brooding mountains looming above and a golf course to their left. There were neither cars nor people.

They turned, turned again, and Eileen jammed on the brakes. The car skidded to a halt. It stood face-to-face with a landslide. Ten feet and more of flint and mud blocked their way.

“Walk,” Tim said. He looked out at the lightning ahead and shuddered.

“The road goes a lot further,” Eileen said. “Over the top of the hills, I think.” She pointed to her left, at the golf course protected by its chain link fence. “Tear a hole in the fence.”

“With what?” Tim demanded, but he got out. Rain soaked him almost instantly. He stood helplessly. Eileen got out on the other side and brought the trunk keys.

There was a jack, and a few flares, and an old raincoat, oil-soaked as if it had been used to wipe the engine. Eileen took out the jack handle. “Use that. Tim, we don’t have much time—”

“I know.” Hamner took the thin metal rod and went over to the fence. He stood helplessly, pounding the jack handle into his right hand. The task looked hopeless. He heard the trunk lid slam, then the car door. The starter whirred.

Tim looked around, startled, but the car wasn’t moving. He couldn’t see Eileen’s face through the driving rain and wet glass. Would she leave him here?

Experimentally he put the jack handle between the wire and a fence post and twisted. Nothing happened. He strained, throwing his weight onto the handle, and something gave. He slipped and fell against the fence, and felt his wet clothing tear as a jagged point snagged him. It cut him, and the salt on his clothes was in the wound. He hunched his shoulders against the pain and hopelessness, and stood, helpless again.

“Tim! How are you doing?”

He wanted to turn and call to her. He wanted to tell her it was no use, and that he was miserable, and he’d torn his clothes, and…

Instead, he crouched and inserted the jack handle again, twisting and prying at the wire, until it broke free of the post. Then again, and again, and suddenly the whole length of fence was loose there. He went to the next post and began his work.

Eileen gu

Tim ran for it. She hadn’t stopped completely, and now it seemed she wasn’t going to stop at all. He ran to catch up and tugged open the door, threw himself onto the seat. She gu

Tim laughed. There was a note of hysteria in it.

“What?” Eileen asked. She didn’t take her eyes off the grassy fairway ahead.

“I remember when some lady stepped on the Los Angeles Country Club green with spiked heels,” Tim said. “The steward nearly died! I thought I understood Hammerfall, and what it meant, but I didn’t, not until you drove across the greens…”

She didn’t say anything, and Tim stared moodily ahead again. How many man-hours had gone to produce that perfect grassy surface? Would anyone ever again bother? Tim had another wild impulse to laughter. If there were golf clubs in the car, he could get out and tee off on a green…

Eileen went completely across the golf course and back to the blacktop road up into the hills. Now they were in wilderness, high hills on either side of them. They passed a picnic ground. There were Boy Scouts there. They had a tent set up, and they seemed to be arguing with the scoutmaster. Tim opened the car window. “Stay on high ground,” he shouted.

“What’s happened below?” the scoutmaster asked.

Eileen slowed to a stop.

“Fires. Floods. Traffic jams,” Tim said. “Nothing you’ll want to go into. Not for awhile.” He motioned the adult closer. “Stay up here, at least for the night.”

“Our families…” the man said.

“Where?”

“Studio City.”

“You can’t get there now,” Tim said. “Traffic’s not moving in the valley. Roads closed, freeways down, lot of fires. The best thing you can do for your families is to stay up here where you’re safe.”

The man nodded. He had big brown eyes in a square, honest face. There was a stubble of red beard on his chin. “I’ve been telling the kids that. Julie-A

“Yeah,” Tim said. He turned away. He couldn’t look into the scoutmaster’s eyes.

“We’ll stay another day, then,” the scoutmaster said. “They ought to have things moving again by tomorrow. Kids aren’t really prepared for this rain, though. Nobody expects rain in June. Maybe we ought to go down into Burbank and stay in a house. Or a church. They’d put us up—”

“Don’t,” Tim said. His voice was urgent. “Not yet. Does this road go on over the top?”

“Yes.” The man brought his face close to Tim’s. “Why do you want to go up into that?” He waved toward the lightning that flashed on the peaks above. “Why?”

“Have to,” Tim said. “You stay here. For the night, anyway. Let’s go, Eileen.”

She drove off without saying anything. They rounded a bend, leaving the scoutmaster standing in the road. “I couldn’t tell him either,” Eileen said. “Are they safe there?”

“I think so. We seem to be pretty high.”

“The top is about three thousand feet,” Eileen said.