Lucifer's Hammer - Larry Niven [127]
Finally she let go. "I'm glad I found you. Let's get moving."
"Count off," Gordie called.
"One," Andy Randall answered. The others sang out in turn: "Two." "Three." "Four." "Five," Bert Vance said. He was a little late, and glanced up nervously, but his father didn't seem to have noticed. "Six."
"And me," Gordie said. "Okay, Andy, lead off. I'll play tail-end Charlie."
They started down the trail. The cliff was less than a mile away. Twenty minutes, no more. They rounded a bend and had a magnificent view stretching eastward across the tops of the pine trees. The morning air was crystal clear; the light was … funny.
Gordie glanced at his watch. They'd been hiking ten minutes. He was tempted to skip his compulsory halt for bootlace adjustments. What difference would it make? Nobody would have blisters, not in another half-mile, and walking along, trying to be natural, was harder than the decision had been.
There was a bright flash to the east. Brilliant, but small. Much too bright to be lightning, and out of a clear sky? It left an afterimage that blinking couldn't get rid of.
"What was that, Dad?" Bert asked.
"Don't know. Meteor? Hold up, up in front. Time for boot adjustments."
They dropped their packs and found rocks to sit on. The bright afterimage was still there, although it was fading. Gordie couldn't look directly at his bootlaces. Then he noticed that the wind had died. The forest was deathly still.
Bright flash. Sudden stillness. Like—
The shock wave rumbled across them with a thunder of sound. A dead tree crashed somewhere above them, thrashing in final agony among its brothers. The rumbling went on a long time, with rising wind.
Atom bomb at Frenchman's Flats? Gordie wondered. Couldn't be. They'd never test anything that big. So what was it?
The boys were chattering. Then the ground rumbled and heaved beneath them. More trees fell.
Gordie fell onto his pack. The other boys had been shaken off their rocks. One, Herbie Robinett, seemed to be hurt. Gordie crawled toward him. The boy wasn't bleeding, and nothing was broken. Just shaken up. "Stay down!" Gordie shouted. "And watch for falling limbs and trees!"
The wind continued to rise, but it was shifting, moving around to the south, no longer coming from the east, where they'd seen the bright flash. The earth shook again.
And out there, far beyond the horizon, rising high into the stratosphere, was an ugly cloud, mushroom-shaped. It climbed on and on, roiling horribly. It was just where the bright flash had been.
One of the boys had a radio. He had it to his ear. "Nothing but static, Mr. Vance. I keep thinking I hear something else, but I can't make out what."
"Not surprising. We almost never get anything in the mountains in daytime," Gordie said.
But I don't like that wind. And what was that thing? A piece of the comet? Probably. Gordie laughed bitterly. All that fuss about the end of the world, and it was nothing. A bright flash out there in Death Valley—or maybe it wasn't the comet at all. Frenchman's Flat was that way, a hundred and fifty miles or so …
The ground had stopped shaking. "Let's move on," Gordie said. "On your feet."
He pulled on his pack. Now what? he asked himself. Can I … will the boys be all right without me? What's happening out there?
Nothing. Nothing but a goddam meteor. Maybe a big one. Maybe as big as that thing in Arizona, the one that made a half-mile crater. An impressive thing, and the boys saw it fall. They'll talk about it for years.
But it doesn't solve my problem. The bank examiners will still be around next Friday, and—
"Funny clouds up there," Andy Randall said. There was worry in his voice.
"Yeah, sure," Gordie said absently. Then he noticed where Andy was pointing.
Southwest. Almost due south. It was as if a pool of black ink had been poured across the sky. Huge, towering black clouds, rising higher and higher, blotting out everything …
And the wind was howling through the trees. More clouds, and more, seeming to