Lucifer's Hammer - Larry Niven [67]
"At last," Johnny Baker said. "And we've got a few minutes' oxygen left. Rick, take a moment to enjoy the view."
"Good," Rick huffed into his mike.
Baker didn't like the way he said it. Delanty was breathing too hard, and too irregularly. But he said nothing.
"I thought that last one would never come loose," Delanty puffed.
"But it did come loose. And if it hadn't, we'd have fixed it," Baker said. "Those goddam bastards with their perfect black boxes. Well, this time they gave me the tools for the job. There's nothing a man can't do with the right tools."
"Sure, it's all a piece of cake now."
"Right. No worries. Barring a few international tensions, a possible Cuban hijacker, and several masses of dirty ice moving at fifty miles a second—our way."
"That's a relief." Huff! "Hey, John, I see South Africa. Only—you can't tell where the international boundaries leave off. No national borders. Johnny, I'm on the verge of a philosophical breakthrough."
"You can't see the lines of latitude and longitude, either, but that doesn't make them unimportant."
"Um."
"So you can't see international borders from space, and everyone tries to make a big point of it. If we keep that up, you know what'll happen?"
Rick laughed. "Yeah. Everybody's gonna start painting their borders in neon orange a mile wide. Then all the college kids will scream about damage to the environment—"
"And blame you for starting it. Let's go in."
June: Interludes
But what about a direct head-on collision with a comet? How big and massive are the heads of comets? The head of a comet consists of two parts. The solid nucleus and the glowing coma. We only have to worry about the nucleus. Of course, comets vary a good deal in size. One estimate is that the nucleus of an average comet is 1.2 miles in diameter. But a really huge comet may have a nucleus thousands of miles in diameter. Any comet that hits the earth directly is going to pack quite a wallop.
Daniel Cohen, How the World Will End
Woe to you, my people! For have you not raised the abomination of desolation across the earth? Have you not seen the wickedness of the cities, and smelt the very stench of the air itself? Have you not defiled the earth, which is the very temple of the Lord?
"Hear the words of the Prophet Malachi: 'For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble; and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of Hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch.
" 'But unto you that fear my name shall the Son of righteousness arise with healing in his wings.'
"My people, the Hammer of God comes to smite the wicked and the proud; but the humble shall be exalted. Repent, while there is yet time; for no man can escape the mighty Hammer that even now blots out the stars. Repent, before it is too late. There is yet time."
"Thank you, Reverend Armitage. You have heard the Reverend Henry Armitage and 'The Coming Hour.' "
Mark Czescu had the saki heating in a reagent bottle with a ground-glass stopper. He poured refills into tiny cups, then poured more saki into the bottle and set it back in water simmering on the stove.
"I had two plants sitting on my desk," he said. "One was a rubber marijuana plant, with 'cannabis sativa' stamped under the leaves. The other was an Aralia elegantissima. If you don't know, it looks a lot like marijuana." He handed a cup to Joanna, another to Lilith. "One day my boss came in with a bigwig from the central office. They didn't say anything that day, but the next day my boss was saying, 'Get rid of it.' " He handed Frank Stoner the third cup, and settled in the armchair with his own. "I said, 'What?' He said, 'I'm not completely ignorant, you know. I know what that is.' Carol Miller went into hysterics. She called