TO STARMAN David Foster, it was a soft, rainy morning. He had just
awakened after a night on the SE supply asteroid O344, and the only
sound was the faint hum of the operating system. He wrapped himself a
little more snugly into his blanket and kept his eyes shut. His
imagination easily turned the murmur into the soft sound of rain sifting
through the leaves of the tree outside his bedroom window on his uncle’s
farm in West Virginia. With slightly more effort he could imagine a
drizzle drumming lightly on the wooden shingles above and drifting out
onto the empty fields in the early autumn days shortly after harvest.
His Uncle Francis and Aunt Clare were dear to David. Although he had
been raised on the Moon, close to his father’s work, he had been born in
Clark’s Bridge Crossing, the village near their farm. From the time he
was old enough to show any notice of the world around him, David had
loved the stars. Even now, he loved interplanetary travel, exploration,
and adventure better than anything, but in his heart was an
emotionally-intense place where he kept his memories of the West
Virginia farm where he had spent so much of his childhood.
The small towns and family-owned farms had become indispensable to the
rebuilding of America after the Collapse. In the United States the
nuclear devastation of those horrifying years had been severe. Most
major cities had been destroyed, but much of the outlying and rural
areas had survived. In the latter half of the 21st century new
leadership arose from these areas, and the American spirit, which for a
hundred years had gradually been eclipsed by special-interest groups,
lobbyists, fringe organizations, and major corrupt economic interests,
was largely purified. The “old values” became popular again, if not
always followed. A generation of leaders arose with an appeal similar to
that enjoyed by the “log cabin” presidents. A candidate who claimed to
have basic values and homespun philosophy was guaranteed to win support
from the remaining American population.
With his eyes still closed, David smiled. He tried to imagine the aroma
of his Aunt Clare’s freshly-ground coffee coming from the kitchen,
mingled with the smell of hot-off-the-griddle blueberry pancakes. The
drizzle was stopping, and the dawnlight of the newly-risen sun was
sending sparkles through the light rainy haze that shrouded the fields
and crowning the eastern fields with the arc of a rainbow. The haze
would soon burn off, leaving the dark earth sodden and leaves dripping.
He smiled even wider. He could hear his aunt’s voice now...
“Come and get it, Starmen!” pealed the voice of George St. George. “Got
some more of that engine-oil coffee steaming away, and I managed to whip
together some biscuits from some powdered stuff I found!”
Zip’s eyes shot open and took in the neutral walls of the cubicle where
he, Mark, and Joe had slept. The faint hum of O344’s system was drowned
out now with the rustle of human movement as the asteroid miners
gathered around the table.
“There’s some sort of orangy liquid I mixed up from some other powder,
too! Probably has some good vitamins in it!”
In minutes the Starmen and miners were tucking in to the best that
George St. George could do with the supplies at hand.
After breakfast, the Starmen sat in the lounge. Mark was poring over the
printout that he had taken from the power plant on the pirates’
asteroid. He had a digital copy of much of the layout of the asteroid,
and information on the power plants, propulsion structures, and
sheathing equipment. The papers were filled with charts, maps, and
diagrams; a few sections were written in an unintelligible, alien
language. He couldn’t even tell which symbols were letters and which
were numbers.
“I hope they didn’t use a pictorial alphabet like Chinese,” said Joe,
looking over Mark’s shoulder.
“No,” the big Starman answered. “There are plenty of recurring symbols,
so I assume it’s a language like our own, with letters and words.
Somebody will be able to decipher this without too much difficulty. It’s
far beyond my skill, though.” He rubbed his chin. “But I can recognize a
lot of the machinery.”
Zip was sitting nearby. He hadn’t spoken much during breakfast. The
images of the farm pulled at him again. “Mark, Joe,” he began. He
hesitated a moment while they turned to him. They could see he was
puzzling through something, and waited patiently for him to continue.
“SE says that Zimbardo has targeted Earth with an asteroid over forty
miles long. What’ll that do to home?”
Mark was suddenly deeply saddened. Zip always referred to the Moon as
home. He spoke softly.
“One of my professors at Starlight University talked about a study
conducted in the early 21st century. Back then, scientists started
becoming concerned about asteroid impacts, and they built a complex
computer model to see what would happen if a large asteroid struck
Earth.”
“What did they find?” whispered Joe.
“Well, the model found that, depending on the angle of entry, the impact
can produce a massive corridor of incineration ahead of the impact site.
In that area, just about all life ends in minutes. But the model
predicted other changes that destroyed nearly all life on Earth within a
few years.”
“Like what?” Zip’s voice was dusky.
“I’m sounding like a textbook,” complained Mark.
“Go on,” insisted Zip.
Mark closed his eyes and tilted his head back. “A few hours after the
impact, clouds of noxious gases billow up and block out the sun for
months. Temperatures drop drastically all over the Earth and corrosive
acid snow and rain fall. These short-term effects alone--intense cold,
darkness, and acid rain and snow--kill the plants and photosynthetic
plankton, the base of most food chains. Herbivores starve, and then the
carnivores that feed on the herbivores starve. This is enough to kill
most of the remaining human life on the planet. After the clouds clear,
the atmosphere is thick with carbon dioxide from fires and decaying
matter. Then the carbon dioxide contributes to global warming that lasts
for ages.”
Tears slowly escaped from Zip’s closed eyes and made tracks down his
cheeks. He remembered that when he was small his aunt and uncle had
taken him on a two-hour flight in their small plane to the place closest
to their home where there was a field of nuclear devastation. His first
view of the terrain beyond the boundary had been indelibly burned into
his seven-year-old mind. The cities and towns surrounded by fields,
orchards, streams, ponds, and woods had rapidly tapered off below a
slight rise into a land of gray, utterly lifeless, gasping dust
thatreached as far southeastward as the eye could see. The center of the
field had been the nation’s capital, the third of the great American
cities to be destroyed in the holocaust of 2048.
“How big was the asteroid they modeled?” asked Joe.
“About six to ten miles across,” said Mark.
“And the one Zimbardo has aimed at Earth is forty miles long?”
“Bigger. A little bigger than that,” answered Zip quietly. “Bigger.” He
felt a chilling darkness come over him, almost as if he had walked into
an inky refrigerator. He shivered uncontrollably for a moment, then sat
up and took control of himself.
“Today we get the _Star Ranger_ back!” he announced in a clear voice.
“and we’re heading back to Earth! Be ready for immediate departure!”
* * * * *
An immense metal and glass wheel, half a mile in diameter, rotated
slowly in the jeweled heavens. It was the primary manufacturing and
launching headquarters of Nolan Mining Enterprise. It orbited the Moon
about 500 miles above the surface.
Robert Nolan was burning with a zealous flame of energy. Although often
close to burning out, he never went over the edge. His apparently
bottomless resources had allowed him to achieve remarkable things in
twenty years. Now he was in the command bubble that lifted like an
antenna from the heart of the space station. A tower two hundred yards
long lifted out from the plane of NME’s manufacturing and launching
facility. At its end was a large observation and control center that
commanded a view of every aspect of one side of the plant.
“Launch in forty-three minutes exactly,” said an operative in the
command bubble. Nolan stood, looking intently over the man’s shoulder at
the screen in front of him. Nolan’s eyes shifted repeatedly back and
forth from the screen to the actuality that lay spectacularly open to
view before him.
“Sir?” said another technician, turning toward Nolan. “The _Lux Mundi_
has now completed docking.” The _Lux Mundi_ was Richard Starlight’s
personal spacecraft.
“Excellent, John,” said Robert Nolan. “Please have Mr. Starlight sent up
here without delay.”
“Yes sir.” The technician turned back to his station and issued
commands. In less than four minutes, an elevator brought Richard
Starlight into the center of the command bubble of Nolan Mining
Enterprise. He stepped out onto the floor and looked around quickly.
“Over here, Rick,” said Nolan, stepping toward his friend.
“Bob! Good to see you!” The men shook hands briefly. “All went well at
our end,” Richard whispered.
Nolan stepped back and spread his hands toward the launching arena of
the space station.
“Terrific news,” he said. “We’ll be launching in about forty minutes.”
The two men went into Nolan’s office and sealed it. Though everything
was visible through clear partitions, no one could hear what went on
inside.
“I’m so sorry I fell apart at that meeting, Rick,” Robert began.
“Don’t give it a thought, Bob. You’ve done very well for the project
since then. This is a great offering you’re making.”
“The least we can do, in addition to making as many of the microwave
probes as we could, is provide these freighters.”
“Ahead of schedule, too, by a little bit. All the companies pulled
together and made the probes to Dr. Hoshino’s specifications. I like his
design. His plan should work very well, very well indeed!”
“It’s a wonderful design, Rick! Dr. Hoshino is a genius to a degree
above everyone else of this generation. We ought to be able to locate
any asteroid that Lurton Zimbardo throws at us. But stopping it is a
different problem.”
“If we find it in time, that shouldn’t be too hard, either.”
The two friends talked for a little longer, then went out to watch the
launch. Seven unmanned NME freighters were prepared to carry Earth’s
hope into space. They would be accompanied by a dozen armed ships
supplied by Space Command. The rendezvous of freighters and warships was
only a half-hour’s flight time from the space station. Then they would
proceed on the eight-day journey to the site of deployment.
In a private office and laboratory below, Robert Nolan’s chief assistant
Beowulf Denn finished making a voice recording of the details of the
launch. He included the number of freighters, the number and type of
Space Command warships appointed to guard them, their course, hour of
departure, and timing of the deployment of the probes.
When he had finished the recording, he inserted the disk into a computer
independent of the NME computer system and speeded up its contents so
that the entire message was less than 0.03 seconds long. He then
encrypted it and transmitted the result on a tight beam communicator to
coordinates in space which he kept only in his head. After the message
had been sent, he destroyed the disk and removed all signs on his
computer that the action had occurred. The message he sent could be read
only one time and then would erase itself, leaving no trace at the
receiving end that it had ever existed.
* * * * *
Seven ships had arrived at O344. The Starmen were outside, having sped
through the airlock with the first news that the ships from Ceres were
at hand. They stood on the edge of the landing zone and watched the
ships come close to O344. Only the dark red _Star Ranger_ and one other
ship touched down. Sim Sala Bim was the first to debark.
“So pleased to see you young men are safe!” he spouted. “So much has
happened in these three weeks! Here is your _Star Ranger_, ready for
duty!” The Indian was excited. Zip had shaken off his own dark mood and
was rising to the challenge. The other two Starmen were eager to lift
off and get back into the battle against Lurton Zimbardo.
“Nice to see you, Sim!” cried out Zip, as he and the man from Ceres
shook hands through their spacesuits. “George and his men will be ready
in a moment. They are wonderful people! Salt of the earth types, though
I’ll bet none of them has been on Earth for years!”
“We’ll get them back to Ceres safely, don’t worry about that!” advised
Sim. “You just go on and stop this crazy fellow.”
“Let’s get going, Starmen!” urged Zip. They had already made their
farewells to the asteroid miners, and had decided to leave the alien
ship on O344 for research in a less anxious time. Joe had sealed it and
seen that it was securely clamped to the asteroid’s surface.
Within a few minutes, the Starmen were aboard the _Star Ranger_ in their
accustomed places.
Just before they lifted off, Zip turned on his communicator.
“George,” he said. “Thanks for your friendship. You gave me a gift I
don’t think you’re even aware of.”
“Oh yes I am too aware of it, David.” responded the cheery voice. “The
gift of confidence. Do your Latin and find out what ‘confidence’ really
means. Blessing and peace go with you men.” A chorus of voices sounded
in the background, also offering farewells.
Zip signed off. In minutes O344 was behind them.
* * * * *
When Lurton Zimbardo had first announced to Earth that he had aimed a
huge asteroid through space on a collision course, the news of impending
doom spread over the farthest reaches of the globe, bringing with it
hysteria and despair. Pockets of unrest and violence sprang up but the
phenomenon was short-lived. The memory of the Collapse was too recent,
and the populace would not permit violence to prevail--but there was
nothing to take its place. Cities, nations, and then continents ground
to a standstill as people left their jobs and homes and wandered from
place to place aimlessly. The thought of utter, unprecedented
destruction for the whole planet, the home of mankind, struck at the
very heart of the people. The very elderly, who remembered the worst
days of the Collapse, felt their spirits quail within them.
It was a time such as the world had never seen before. In the years to
come it became known as The Day the Earth Stood Still. No one knew where
to flee, how to flee, or even if fleeing could do any good. After a time
the panic quieted down to a heartless agonizing despair, and a heavy,
dark spirit fell over the planet.
* * * * *
“Crass, Lather, Bolcher! Get your men and go! The Earthmen have launched
their detection equipment!” Lurton Zimbardo was giving orders over the
intercom from the control center of his asteroid. Moments earlier the
pirate leader had received a message which informed him of the launch
time of Earth’s freighters and other details of Earth’s defense plan.
“There are seven freighters accompanied by twelve Space Command
warships! Each of you take five ships. Find the convoy and destroy the
freighters! At all cost, destroy the freighters!”
Zimbardo slammed down the communicator and watched his men scurry for
their ships. At the speed they could travel, they should be able to
intercept the convoy in about a week--a full day before optimal site for
deployment of the microwave probes. Zimbardo had little doubt of the
outcome of the encounter. Earth had no idea that the plans were known to
him, and the pirate ships were invisible to their radar.