Lucifer's Hammer - Larry Niven [139]
Rick's bellow echoed the length of the cabin. "Shit!" Then, "Sir. The Apollo's in vacuum. Shall I close up my hat and go see if the heat shield's damaged?"
"Don't bother. Shit!" A hole anywhere in the Apollo would kill them during reentry. They were back to one spacecraft. Johnny turned back to Pieter Jakov, who was still watching through the viewport.
A blow to the back of General Jakov's neck, right now, before he expects it. Or go back to Russia. As prisoners of war? Hardly. Johnny Baker remembered scenes from the Gulag Archipelago. His hand arched to strike. Rick could handle Leonilla, and they'd have …
He thought it, but he did nothing. And Pieter Jakov turned toward them all and said, carefully, "They're moving east. East."
They stared at each other, Baker and Jakov, for a moment that stretched endlessly, then both dived frantically toward the communication panel
"Roger, Looking Glass, White Bird out," Johnny Baker said.
"You got through?" Rick demanded.
"Yeah. At least somebody acknowledged." Johnny Baker looked down at the roiling mess below. "I think God hears us pretty well up here. I don't see any other way we could have got a message through that."
"Skip distances. Random ionization patterns," Jakov said.
Johnny Baker shrugged. He wasn't interested in arguing theology. The capsule fell silent as they watched the flight of the missiles. The sparks were going out now as they reached their trajectories. They would light again, but far more brightly …
But before the flames died, it had been easy to see that the missiles were not rising to curve over the North Pole. A slim crescent of Earth showed, more than enough to let them orient themselves, and the missiles were plainly moving east, toward China.
And there had been the nuclear explosions over Russia. The Chinese had attacked first, and what the Hammer had spared was now radioactive hell.
Pieter's family was down there, Johnny Baker thought. And Leonilla's, if she has any. I don't think she does. Jesus, I'm lucky. Ann left Houston weeks ago.
Johnny laughed quietly to himself. Ann Baker had no reason to stay in Texas. She'd taken the kids to Las Vegas for a divorce that had probably saved her life. As for Maureen … Yeah. Maureen. If any woman could have survived Hammerfall on brains and determination, it was Maureen. She'd said she was going to California with her father.
"There is much to be done." Pieter Jakov was a study in professional detachment, except for the quiet edge in his voice. "We cannot survive here more than a few weeks at most. General, we have no onboard computer. You must use your equipment to compute our reentry."
"Sure," Johnny said.
"We will need both of you." Jakov tilted his head toward the other end of the capsule, where Rick Delanty seemed huddled in on himself.
"He'll help when we need him," Baker said. "He's got to take this pretty hard. Even if his wife and kids are still alive, even if they got them out, he'll never know it."
"Not knowing is better," said Pieter. "Much better."
Johnny remembered Moscow, doubly destroyed, and nodded.
"Perhaps Dr. Malik should administer a tranquilizer," Jakov was saying.
"I told you, Colonel Delanty will be all right," Johnny Baker said. "Rick, we need a conference."
"Sure."
"Why?" Jakov demanded. "Why did they do it?"
The sudden question did not surprise Baker. He'd been wondering when Jakov would say something.
"You know why," Leonilla Malik said. She left her place at the viewport. "Our government had already coveted China. With the threat of glaciers coming, Russians have only one place to go. Europe has been destroyed, and there is very little to the south. If we can reach that conclusion, the Chinese can also."
"And so they attacked," Jakov said. "But not in time. We were able to launch our own strike."
"So where will we land?" Leonilla asked.
"You are very calm about this," Jakov said. "Do you not care that your country