Lucifer's Hammer - Larry Niven [105]
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 Once inserted and turned to the first click, the keys couldn't be withdrawn without other keys neither Luce nor Rosten had.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 tanned scalp, was not even breathing hard. MacDonald had earned his strength; archeologists work harder than ditchdiggers.
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.
"Funny hobby, for us," said Willis.
"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