Lucifer's Hammer - Larry Niven [101]
She emptied the beef Stroganoff into a cooking pot and grinned down at it so the others couldn't see. They'd want to know why she was grinning, and it wasn't something she wanted to explain. If she wondered why she was getting the hots for Frank Stoner …
But it bothered her. Joanna had a very good education, courtesy of her upper-middle-class parents. She didn't make much use of it, but it had left her with considerable curiosity, particularly about people—which included herself.
"This is just about perfect," Mark said.
Frank grunted disapproval.
"No? Why not? Where else?" Mark demanded. He'd picked this spot and was proud of it.
"Mojave is better," Frank said absently. He laid out his sleeping bag and sat on it. "But that's a long way to go for nothing. Still … we're on the wrong plate."
"Plate?" Joanna said.
"It's plate tectonics," Mark said. "You know, the continents float around on top of the melted rock inside the Earth."
Frank listened absently. No point in correcting Mark. But the Mojave was certainly a better place. It was on the North American plate. Los Angeles and Baja California were on another. The plates joined at the San Andreas Fault, and if the Hammer fell the San Andreas would sure as hell let go. It would shake both plates, but the North American would get it less.
It was just an exercise anyway. Frank had checked with JPL; the odds of the Hammer hitting Earth were low. You were in more danger on the freeway. This business of camping out was for drill, but it was Stoner's nature that if he did anything, he did it right. He'd made Joanna bring her own bike, although she preferred riding behind Mark on his. Take all three; we might lose one.
"All for drill," Frank said. "But maybe the drill's worth the effort."
"Eh?" Joanna had the stove going now. It roared in the late afternoon.
"Nothing silly about being ready for the collapse of civilization," Frank said. "Next time it won't be the Hammer, it'll be something else. But it'll be something. Read your newspapers."
That's it, Joanna thought. He's got me thinking that way. And that's why … it sure made more sense to be teamed up with Frank Stoner than Mark Czescu if civilization was coming to an end.
And Frank had wanted to go to the Mojave. Only Mark talked him out of it. Mark couldn't quite admit to Hammer Fever. It would look silly.
They ate earlier than they usually did. Frank insisted. When they finished, there was just enough light to boil out the cooking pots. Then they lay down on their sleeping bags in near darkness, watching the glow die out over the Pacific, until the night grew cool and they climbed in. Joanna had brought her own bag and hadn't zipped it together with Mark's, although they usually did on camp-outs.
The light died in the west. One by one the stars came out. At first there were only stars. Then the turning sky brought a luminous film up from the east. It blended with the glowing lights over Los Angeles, grew brighter, until by midnight it was brighter than L.A., as bright as a good northern aurora. Still it thickened and brightened until only a few stars showed through the Earth-enveloping tail of Hamner-Brown Comet.
To keep themselves awake, they talked. Crickets talked around them. They had slept that afternoon, though neither Frank nor Mark would tell that to the others. It would have been an admission that each was in his thirties and feeling it. Frank told stories about the ways the world might end. Mark kept interrupting to make points of his own, adding details, or anticipating what Frank would say and saying it first.
Joanna listened with increasing impatience. She fell silent, brooding. Mark always did that. It never bothered her before. Why was she getting pissed off at him now? Part of the same pattern. Wow, Joanna thought. Female instincts? Glom on to the strongest guy around? That didn't make sense. It certainly wasn't part of her philosophy. She was