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Lucifer's Hammer - Larry Niven [308]

By Root 1548 0
that clean white line across the sky. He'd forgotten how beautiful that could be.

Tim waved solemnly at the plane. "You can fly," he said. His voice rose. "You can fly. But we control the lightning."

The asteroid was a child of the maelstrom: a rough nugget of nickel-iron with some stony strata, three miles along its long axis. No man had ever seen a mastodon when the passing of mighty Jupiter plucked the nugget from its orbit and pulled it out toward interstellar space.

It was on the second lap of its long, narrow elliptical orbit. The iron surface was frosted with strange ices now, as it passed the peak of the curve and began to coast back toward the Sun.

And the black giant was there. Its ring of cometary snowballs glowed broad and beautiful in starlight. Infrared light traced bands and whorls in its stormy surface. It was the only major mass out here between the stars, and the asteroid curved toward it and increased speed.

Infrared light bathed and thawed the frosted iron. The ringed planet grew huge.

The asteroid plunged through the plane of the ring at twelve miles per second. Battered and pocked with glowing craters, it receded, carrying in its own small gravitational field a spray of icy masses from the ring. They came like attendants, ahead and behind, in a pattern like the curved arms of a spiral galaxy.

The asteroid and a score of comets pulled free of the black giant and began their long fall into the maelstrom.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Dramatis Personae

Prologue

1: THE ANVIL

January: The Portent

January: Interlude

February: One

February: Two

March: One

March: Interludes

March: Two

April: One

April: Interludes

April: Two

May

June: One

June: Interludes

June: Two

June: Three

June: Four

2: THE HAMMER

Hammerfall Morning

Hammerfall: One

Hot Fudge Tuesdae: One

Hammerfall: Two

Hot Fudge Tuesdae: Two

Hot Fudge Tuesdae: Three

Tuesday Afternoon

3: THE QUICK ANDTHE DEAD

Rich Man, Poor Man

The Landlord

The Mailman: One

The Mailman: Two

The Stronghold: One

Sanctuary

Beggar Man

The Stronghold: Two

4: AFTER DOOMSDAY

First Week: The Princess

Second Week: Mountain Men

Fourth Week: The Wanderers

Fourth Week: The Prophet

Sixth Week: The High Justice

Ninth Week: The Organization Man

Journey's End

Exile's Story

The Magician

The Expedition

Expendables

Valley of Death

Aftermath

The Final Decision

Epilogue

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