Lucifer's Hammer - Larry Niven [94]
"We are effectively inside the coma," Leonilla was saying. "This is not especially evident. The chemical activity is long past. But we see the shadow of the Earth like a long tunnel leading through the tail."
Rick caught that last phrase. Nice, he thought. If I get a chance to broadcast live to Earth, I'll use it.
They all had work, which they did while they chattered into recorders. Rick had a hand-held camera, a Canon, which he worked like a madman, changing lenses and film as rapidly as he could. He hoped the automatic features were in good order, and forced himself to take a few frames with widely different speeds and apertures, just in case.
The status board inexorably ticked off seconds.
The long lens gave a good view through the observation port. Rick saw: half a dozen large masses, many more small ones and a myriad of tiny glinting points, all enmeshed in pearly fog. He heard Baker's voice behind him. "Duck's-eye view of a shotgun blast."
"Good phrasing," Rick said.
"Yeah. Hope it's not too good."
"I have lost all signal from the radar," Pieter Jakov said.
"Roger. Give it up and make visuals," Baker said. "Houston, Houston, are you getting anything from the inside TV?"
" … roger, Hammerlab … JPL … Sharps is in love, send more … higher-power transmission … "
"I'll put on higher power when the Hammer's closer," Baker said. He didn't know if they heard. "We're saving the batteries." He looked up at the status board. Ten minutes before the solid objects got to closest approach. Twenty minutes maybe for it all to pass. A half-hour. "I'll increase transmitter power in five minutes; say again, increase to full power transmission in five minutes."
CLANG!
"What the fuck was that?" Baker demanded.
"Pressure remains unchanged," Jakov said. "Pressure holding in all three capsules."
"Good," Rick muttered. They'd closed the airlocks to Apollo and Soyuz; it seemed a reasonable precaution. Rick stood by with the meteor patches anyway. Hammerlab was by far the largest target.
And just how did the engineers estimate the size that a meteor patch ought to be? Rick wondered. From their size—about the maximum-size hole it would be worth repairing? Anything bigger would finish them anyway? To hell with it. He went back to his photographs. Through the Canon lens he looked into a galaxy of foamy ice, a tremendous, slow shotgun blast that was visibly coming toward them, spreading around Hammerlab rather than sliding sideways. "Jesus, Johnny, it's coming close."
"Rojj. Pieter, get the main telescope uncovered. I'm going to full power. We'll send transmissions from here on in. Houston, Houston, visual indicates Earth is in the path of outer edges of nucleus; I say again, Earth is in the path of outer nucleus. Impossible to estimate size of objects that may strike Earth."
"Make certain that message gets through," Leonilla Malik said. "Pieter, see that Moscow knows as well." There was urgency and fear in her voice.
"Eh?" Rick Delanty said.
"It is passing east of the Earth," Leonilla said. "The United States will be more exposed, but there will be more objects close to the Soviet Union. The opportunities for deliberate misinterpretation are too great. Some fanatic—"
"Why do you say this?" Jakov demanded.
"You know it is true," she shouted. "Fanatics. Like the madmen who had my father killed because Great Stalin was not immortal! Do not pretend they do not exist."
"Ridiculous," Jakov snorted, but he went to the communications console, and Rick Delanty thought he spoke urgently.
Hammerfall: One
In 1968 the close approach of an asteroid called Icarus set off a small but very definite end-of-the-world scare. There had already been rumors that a series of world-wide cataclysms was going to begin in 1968. When news that Icarus was heading toward earth and was going to make its closest approach on June 15, 1968, got around, it somehow became combined with the other end-of-the-world rumors. In California groups of hippies headed for the mountains of Colorado saying that they wanted