Future Crimes Part 21

there's no chance that it could turn away. Could we turn it away? All the nuclear force that we possess, concentrated into a solitary Gotterdammening, might well disperse it--but it might just as well transform the icy menace into a fiery nuclear holocaust, descending on the Earth."

The dirty-looking man beside him--an apocalyptic lyricist who'd written three eerily prophetic numbers released on a grange rock alb.u.m the year before-gave a little laugh.

"Some say the world will end in fire,"

" he said, quoting Frost. "

"Some say in ice. From what I've tasted of desire, I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate to say that for destruction ice is also great. And would suffice."

Ted gave a little laugh, because Ted Koppel is a literate man who recognized the quote; the other members of the panel looked at the grange poet as though he'd grown wings and commenced to fly.

"Frost," said the lyricist.

"If you don't know him, you should."

At twenty minutes of the hour, newsmen broke into the panel to report the announcement everyone expected: There'd been a big meeting in the secret halls of the United Nations Security Council, and the big powers had agreed to send up all of their thermonuclear munitions under the control of an American shuttle pilot. The technical setup of the mission would take five weeks, at a minimum, but that still left plenty of time on the outside if something went impossibly wrong.

After the news interruption, the panel was a bevy of relief.

Everything's going to be okay, someone said, the cavalry's come over the hill.

And they all believed that for a moment that went on till the camera lights went down.

Believed it through the evening, past dawn into the day.

But at 10:27 am that next morning, Was.h.i.+ngton time, one of the astronomers who'd been watching through the night panicked.

And called Reuters.

By noon the hysteria had found us all, consuming us forever.

REUTERS--Astronomers who ask not to be identified report that the Earth-bound comet popularly known as the Wis.h.i.+ng Star--one of the largest ice and-gravel objects ever observed in the solar system-has begun to accelerate out of its...o...b..t.

Astronomers and others were at a loss to explain the acceleration.

"Heavenly bodies don't pick up and soar out of their orbits," the scientist said.

"It can't happen. And it doesn't. But we're observing it."

The unnamed scientist refused to speculate on causes.

"You want me to talk about woo-woo stuff?" he asked.

"I'm not going to do it. Call it a frightening anomaly-because the thing is still moving toward the Earth.

Much, much faster, now. It will impact somewhere in the next forty-eight hours if it continues at this rate."

They tried to get a shuttle up in time, but there was none in adequate repair to launch on such short notice--NASA's engineers were still hard at work on the 0 rings when the Wis.h.i.+ng Star sped through the moon's...o...b..tal circ.u.mference. NORAD did what it could, sending three volleys of ICBMs up through the atmosphere to smash the comet--but the only smas.h.i.+ng came when the missiles themselves shattered lifeless and dead against the comet's crystalline facade.

"What happened to the warheads?" Ted asked on Nightline.

"Those missiles should have blasted bright enough to light the dark side of the moon."

This was the Nightline deathwatch show; it started early at 10 pm, Eastern, and was scheduled to run through impact (and the presumed end of the world) at 2:37 am.

No one had an answer, of course, as to why the NORAD missiles did not detonate. No more than they had a notion why or how a comet could accelerate toward the Earth.

But at seven minutes after one in the morning, the newsmen had more news.

"Ted, we've got a bulletin. It's big."

"Go ahead, Pete, break in. What's up?"

"The comet is decelerating into orbit around the Earth. And the astronomers have gotten a good look at the impact spots where the NORAD missiles died-they say that the comet isn't a comet."

"Isn't a comet?" Ted asked, sounding puzzled and confused.

"Well then what the devil is it?"

"They say it looks to be some sort of a s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p, sheathed in ice."

The engineers in the repair bay managed to solve their 0-ring problem somewhere after four o'clock that morning. The lift-prep team went directly into action--fueling, rolling out, and setting up the shuttle.

They cut corners that weren't safe to cut;~and it's a wonder no one died in the launch that followed. But no one did, and in retrospect the prep crew did the only thing they could, given the emergency; and some folks will try to tell you that they cut their corners prudently at that Regardless At 6:03 am Eastern the shuttle Defiance took off from Canaveral, bound toward the bright new artificial moon that hung above our world.

At 6:32 the Defiance eased into an orbit alongside the Wis.h.i.+ng Star.

At 6:37 the shuttle crew began trying to hail the crew of the vast icebound s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p--by radio; with flares. By maneuvering about the alien craft, looking for a portal that might offer entry.

But they found no response.

At length they attempted to breach the alien craft themselves, s.p.a.ce-walking about the s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p's icy surface for hours and hours, looking for some sign of life.

But there was none.

Then they attempted to force an entry, clearing the icy capsule away until they could pry at the hull with their hammers and their bars.

To no avail.

Nothing that the crew of the shuttle Defiance attempted to do to the alien vessel had any effect at all--and none of it prompted reaction, either.

In the end, their commanders down in Houston ordered them back home to Edwards Air force Base.

And then the world began to wait.

It didn't have to wait for long.

Forty-eight hours after the Defiance touched down at Edwards, a tiny craft of alien design emerged from an aperture in the great icebound vessel, and slowly slowly slowly it descended.

It didn't bother to slow and burn through orbit; the aliens descended on a plume of force made of fire, dust, and miracles--technologies that no one knew or could imagine let them descend vertically toward Was.h.i.+ngton.

Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C.

The unearthly craft descended exactly at the thick of things, toward Pennsylvania Avenue at rush hour, where a thousand thousand cars and trucks and buses braced at one another, pus.h.i.+ng traffic toward escape at low velocity.

When the alien shuttle hung a dozen yards above the ground, it hesitated, as though waiting for the traffic to disperse.

And after a while the traffic did disperse.

And the alien module descended to the pavement.

And a portal opened, releasing a ramp.

As Roni Tahr emerged.

That was the first moment that anyone in the world--anyone on our world--caught sight of Roni Tahr. Till that moment, no human man or woman had ever seen him or heard tell of him; and while there are those who claim they always knew he was to walk among us there isn't any realistic cause to take them seriously.

The alien shuttle opened, and Roni Tahr emerged;