And no complaints.
It was raining in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and no one was going to see the Moon at all. Claire Hasson and Archie Pickman sat with the three Esterhazys, watching Keith Morley's report from the launchpad. It was all very exciting for Archie, despite the skepticism of his hosts. "See," said the elder Esterhazy to no one in particular, as the Micro fled the lunar surface, "what did I tell you? They're free and clear." His son Jeff was very much like him, except for a condescending smile that seemed to have become a permanent part of his features. Other than that, he had the same pinched face, the same bullet head, the same irritatingly self-confident expression. The male Esterhazys were not persons with whom one spoke; they were persons to whom one paid attention.
Archie was worried that the vice president was going to get killed.
"Ridiculous," said Jeff. "You don't really believe this, do you?" He looked sympathetically at Archie.
"What part of it don't you believe?"
"Archie," said Scott, speaking with the dry voice of experience, "this whole thing's an election stunt."
"You think the White House controls comets?"
"Don't get upset," said Jeff. "But these people saw their opportunity and took advantage of it. They've choreographed everything so Haskell comes out of it looking like a hero. There's no danger, never has been. It's going to look close, it has to look close, but they'll get clear okay."
Archie saw Mariel Esterhazy frowning and shaking her head at her husband. Please shut up, the gesture said. "I don't think so," said Archie.
"That's the payoff for them," glowed Scott. "You're an intelligent man, Arch, and they've even got you fooled."
The Kapchiks had gotten out of Pacifica and well out into the Diablos. They were on a two-lane mountain road, well above the floor of a valley filled mostly with scrub. The Sun was just dropping into the peaks behind them. The same Moon and comet that lit the night sky over Rhode Island floated in daylight directly overhead. They'd been driving in heavy traffic since leaving San Francisco, carefully keeping both vehicles together. But they were high up now, certainly safe from any deluge, and they were looking for a place to turn off when they came across a cluster of tourist shops. A rusting sign proclaimed the area to be the Jenkins Point Shopping Center. There was a charge station, a Mexican restaurant, and a souvenir store. Although they'd been traveling several hours, Jerry's solar units had replenished the power and he was still carrying almost a full charge.
The electric cars of the Twenties were far more economical than their gas-fueled alternatives. They didn't have the acceleration most drivers would have preferred, and they needed to be plugged periodically into rechargers when operated at night or in gray weather. Recharging was the major drawback of the system because it took a half hour, and might be required every five hours or so when conditions weren't right. But in sunlight they could run almost indefinitely.
The Jenkins Point Shopping Center was located on an overlook on the western rim of the San Joaquin Valley. "Why don't we stay here tonight, hon?" Jerry suggested.
It was as good a spot as they were likely to find, snuggled against the face of the mountain. Other people had apparently had the same idea. Roughly forty cars were parked in a secondary lot on the south side of the road, across from the shops. Where there was still plenty of room.
Jerry turned off the highway. He found a space where they could put both vehicles side-by-side against an ancient plank fence. Beyond the fence, the mountainside rose almost sheer for two hundred feet. The kids asked if they could go to the top, but lost interest when Marisa pointed out there was no way to get there. They agreed to substitute the restaurant, called Pablo's.
Jerry had parked at the extreme eastern end of the lot. This got them to one side of the crowd and also looked like a good spot to set up the telescope. To Jerry's left, the land ran abruptly downhill into a gully.
The Moon looked soft and fog-ridden.
Tomiko was a bright nebulous blur, following the track of its tail, cruising down the sky. People were bunched together in the lot, looking up, no one talking. Traffic on the two-lane road stopped and the cars emptied.
Erin asked where Moonbase was. She wanted Jerry to set up the telescope so she could see the microbus. But there wasn't time, even if the telescope had the capability, which he doubted.
The only person at that moment who might have been able to see the Micro as it lifted away from the lunar surface was Tory Clark, who had redirected L1's ADCOM telescope array and instructed it to lock onto any moving object in the Alphonsus area. But the light wasn't favorable for high magnification at that range, so she too was unsuccessful.
Passengers on board the Merrivale would have had to look east to see the collision. But the sky was overcast and a light drizzle had slicked down the decks. Horace had not recovered from his disappointment over the loss of Amy, and on this night he was not at all aware of any unusual events in the sky.
Arecibo, which tracked the comet throughout its six-day run, estimated its impact velocity would be 417.6 kilometers per second.
At the AstroLab, Wesley Feinberg watched it move toward the Moon with both fascination and sadness. The collision would be intoxicating, an astronomical joy unique to this generation. But they were losing this most fascinating of comets.
Comet cores are often more solid than their "dirty snowball" appearance had led twentieth-century astronomers to believe. Whether this was the case with Tomiko, or whether Tomiko was an asteroid with a massive accumulation of ice and dust, or whether it was something else altogether, no one was ever going to know.
9.
Micro Passenger Cabin. 10:34 P.M.
They were also watching the comet on board the Micro, where the images from the Farside observatory had expanded into pure light. Even in the cargo hold, where Bigfoot had spread out some cushions left there for him by Tony, a wallscreen was picking up the Transglobal feed. Keith Morley's picture was on-screen, with a voice-over running conversation between the journalist in space and Bruce Kendrick on the ground.
"Here in the Micro, Bruce, everyone's quiet. We're just waiting now to see what's going to happen."
"Can you see anything yet, Keith?"
"No. The horizon's bathed in light. In all directions. I wish 1 had a camera to show you. But nothing's changed out there as far as I can tell."
"How high are you?"
"1 don't know. High. Maybe six thousand meters."
They were closer to five thousand meters a moment later, when the light exploded.
Impact came at 10:35:17 EDT.
The world watched through its array of orbiting telescopes. What they saw resembled not a large meteor crash, but a lightning strike. Tomiko had filled the sky, filled the lenses, floating in the optical field until there was nothing but comet. And then it came silently down, not a giant piece of rock and ice, nor a falling star of immense proportions. Rather, it was a lightning bolt blasting the moonscape, melting the regolith and its underlying rock, crushing the mantle, vaporizing everything within hundreds of kilometers of ground zero.
The Moon spasmed.
The comet nucleus ripped deep into the ground before exploding in an enormous fireball that melted the mantle to a depth of more than six hundred kilometers, exposing the outer core. Shock waves rolled through the lunar interior at thousands of kilometers per hour. The fireball expanded over the fracturing surface, moving seemingly in slow motion, spreading around the Moon, cradling it, engulfing it.