Lucifer's Hammer

by Larry Niven

  Lucifer's Hammer

  Larry Niven

  The gigantic comet had slammed into Earth, forging earthquakes a thousand times too powerful to measure on the Richter scale, tidal waves thousands of feet high. Cities were turned into oceans; oceans turned into steam. It was the beginning of a new Ice Age and the end of civilization. But for the terrified men and women chance had saved, it was also the dawn of a new struggle for survival — a struggle more dangerous and challenging than any they had ever known…

  Nominated for Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1978.

  Lucifer’s Hammer

  by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle

  To Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, the first men to walk on another world; to Michael Collins, who waited; and to those who died trying, Gus Grissom, Roger Chaffee, Ed White, Georgi Dobrovolsky, Viktor Patsayev, Nikolai Volkov, and all the others.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Excerpts from GIFFORD LECTURES, 1948 by Emil Brunner. Excerpt from a private speech by Robert Heinlein. Reprinted by permission.

  Prom “Pure, Sweet, Culture” by Frank Garparik. Copyright @ 1977 by Frank Garparik. Used with permission of the author.

  From How The World Will End by Daniel Cohen. Copyright 1973, McGraw-Hill. Used with permission of McGraw-Hill Book Co.

  From The Naked Ape by Desmond Morris. Copyright McGraw-Hill 1967. Used with permission of McGraw-Hill Book Company.

  Excerpt from The Cosmic Connection by Carl Sagan. Copyright 1973 by Carl Sagan and Jerome Agel. Reprinted by permission of Doubleday Company, Inc.

  Excerpts from The Coming Dark Age by Roberto Vacca, translated from the Italian by Dr. J. S. Whale. Translation Copyright 1973 by Doubleday Company, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Doubleday Company, Inc.

  From Moons and Planets: An Introduction to Planetary Science by William Hartman. Copyright 1972, Wadsworth Publishing Co., Inc. Used with permission of Wadsworth Publishing Co., Inc.

  Excerpts from Sovereignty by Bertrand de Jouvenal. Copyright 1957 by University of Chicago Press. Used with permission of University of Chicago Press.

  From The Elements Rage by Frank W. Lane. Copyright 1965 by Chilton Book Co. Used with permission of Chilton Book Co.

  Song “The Friggin Falcon” 1966 by Theodore R. Cogswell. All rights reserved, including the right of public performance for profit. Used by permission of the author and the author’s agent, Kirby McCauley.

  DRAMATIS PERSONAE

  TIMOTHY HAMNER, amateur astronomer

  ARTHUR CLAY JELLISON, United States Senator from California

  MAUREEN JEEETSON, his daughter

  HARVEY RANDALL, Producer-Director for NBS Television

  MRS. LORETTA STEWART RANDALL

  BARRY PRICE, Supervising Engineer, San Joaquin Nuclear Project

  DOLORES MUNSON, Executive Secretary to Barry Price

  EILEEN SUSAN HANCOCK, Assistant Manager for Corrigan’s Plumbing Supplies of Burbank

  LEONILLA ALEXANDROVNA MALIK, M.D., physician and kosmonaut

  MARK CZESCU, biker

  GORDON VANCE, Bank President and neighbor to Harvey Randall

  ANDY RANDALL, Harvey Randall’s son

  CHARLIE BASCOMB, cameraman

  MANUEL ARGUILEZ, sound technician

  DR. CHARLES SHARPS, Planetary Scientist and Project Director, California Institute of Technology’s Jet Propulsion Laboratories

  PENELOPE JOYCE WILSON, fashion designer

  FRED LAUREN, convicted sex offender

  COL. JOHN BAKER, USAF, astronaut

  HARRY NEWCOMBE, letter carrier, US Postal Service

  THE REVEREND HENRY ARMITAGE

  DR. DAN FORRESTER, Member of technical staff, JPL

  LT. COL. RICK DELANTY, USAF, astronaut

  MRS. GLORIA DELANTY

  BRIGADIER PIETER JAKOV, kosmonaut

  FRANK STONER, biker

  JOANNA MACPHERSON, Mark Czescu’s roommate

  COLLEEN DARCY, bank teller

  GENERAL THOMAS BAMBRIDGE, USAF, Commander in Chief, Strategic Air Command

  JOHN KIM, Press Secretary to the Mayor Of Los Angeles

  THE HONORABLE BENTLEY ALLEN, Mayor of Los Angeles

  ERIC LARSEN, Patrolman, Burbank PD

  JOE HARRIS, Investigator, Burbank PD

  COMET WARDENS, a Southern California religious group

  MAJOR BENNET ROSTEN, USAF, Minuteman Squadron Commander

  MRS. MARIE VANCE, wife of Gordon Vance

  HARRY STIMMS, automobile dealer in Tujunga, California

  CORPORAL ROGER GILLINGS, Army

  SERGEANT THOMAS HOOKER, Army

  MARTY ROBBINS, Tim Hamner’s assistant and caretaker

  JASON GILLCUDDY, writer

  HUGO BECK, owner of a commune in the foothills of the High Sierra

  Prologue

  Before the sun burned, before the planets formed, there were chaos and the comets.

  Chaos was a local thickening in the interstellar medium. Its mass was great enough to attract itself, to hold itself, and it thickened further. Eddies formed. Particles of dust and frozen gas drifted together, and touched, and clung. Flakes formed, and then loose snowballs of frozen gases. Over the ages a whirlpool pattern developed, a fifth of a light-year across. The center contracted further. Local eddies, whirling frantically near the center of the storm, collapsed to form planets.

  It formed as a cloud of snow, far from the whirlpool’s axis. Ices joined the swarm, but slowly, slowly, a few molecules at a time. Methane, ammonia, carbon dioxide; and sometimes denser objects struck it and embedded themselves, so that it held rocks, and iron. Now it was a single stable mass. Other ices formed, chemicals that could only be stable in the interstellar cold.

  It was four miles across when the disaster came.

  The end was sudden. In no more than fifty years, the wink of an eye in its lifetime, the whirlpool’s center collapsed. A new sun burned fearfully bright.

  Myriads of comets flashed to vapor in that hellish flame Planets lost their atmospheres. A great wind of light pressure stripped an the loose gas and dust from the inner system and hurled it at the stars.

  It hardly noticed. It was two hundred times as far from the sun as the newly formed planet Neptune. The new sun was no more than an uncommonly bright star, gradually dimming now.

  Down in the maelstrom there was frantic activity. Gases boiled out of the rocks of the inner system. Complex chemicals developed in the seas of the third planet. Endless hurricanes boded across and within the gas-giant worlds. The inner worlds would never know calm.

  The only real calm was at the edge of interstellar space, in the halo, where millions of thinly spread comets, each as far from its nearest brother as Earth is from Mars, cruise forever through the cold black vacuum. Here its endless quiet sleep could last for billions of years… but not forever. Nothing lasts forever.

  1

  THE ANVIL

  Against boredom, even the gods themselves struggle in vain.

  Nietzsche

  January: The Portent

  The bay-trees in our country are all wither’d

  And meteors fright the fixed stars of heaven;

  The pale-faced moon looks bloody on the earth

  And lean-look’d prophets whisper fearful change.

  These signs forerun the death or fall of kings.

  William Shakespeare, Richard II

  The blue Mercedes turned into the big circular drive of the Beverly Hills mansion at precisely five after six. Julia Sutter was understandably startled. “Good God, George, it’s Tim! And dead on time.”

  George Sutter joined her at the window. That was Tim’s car, yup. He grunted and turned back to the bar. His wife’s parties were always important events, so why, after weeks of careful engineering and o
rchestration, was she terrified that no one would show up? The psychosis was so common there ought to be a name for it.

  Tim Hamner, though, and on time. That was strange. Tim’s money was third-generation. Old money, by Los Angeles standards, and Tim had a lot of it. He only came to parties when he wanted to.

  The Sutters’ architect had been in love with concrete. There were square walls and square angles for the house, and softly curving free-form pools in the gardens outside; not unusual for Beverly Hills, but startling to easterners. To their right was a traditional Monterey villa of white stucco and red tile roofs, to the left a Norman chateau magically transplanted to California. The Sutter place was set well back from the street so that it seemed divorced from the tall palms the city fathers had decreed for this part of Beverly Hills. A great loop of drive ran up to the house itself. On the porch stood eight parking attendants, agile young men in red jackets.

  Hamner left the motor running and got out of the car. The “key left” reminder screamed at him. Ordinarily Tim would have snarled a powerful curse upon Ralph Nader’s hemorrhoids, but tonight he never noticed. His eyes were dreamy; his hand patted at his coat pocket, then stole inside. The parking attendant hesitated. People didn’t usually tip until they were leaving. Hamner kept walking, dreamy-eyed, and the attendant drove away.

  Hamner glanced back at the red-coated young men, wondering if one or another might be interested in astronomy. They were almost always from UCLA or Loyola University. Could be… Reluctantly he decided against it and went inside, his hand straying from time to time to feel the telegram crackle under his fingers.

  The big double doors opened onto an enormous area that extended right through the house. Large arches, rimmed by red brick, separated the entry from the living areas: a mere suggestion of walls between rooms. The floor was continuous throughout: brown tile laid with bright mosaic patterns. Of the two hundred and more guests expected, fewer than a dozen were clustered near the bar. Their talk was bright and cheery, louder than necessary. They looked isolated in all that empty space, all that expanse of tables with candles and patterned tablecloths. There were nearly as many uniformed attendants as guests. Hamner noticed none of this. He’d grown up with it.

  Julia Sutter broke from the tiny group of guests and hurried to meet him. There was a tight look around her eyes: Her face had been lifted, and was younger than her hands. She made a kissing motion a fraction of an inch from Tim’s cheek and said, “Timmy, I’m glad to see you!” Then she noticed his radiant smile.

  She drew back a little and her eyes narrowed. The note of mock concern in her voice covered real worry. “My God, Timmy! What have you been smoking?”

  Tim Hamner was tall and bony, with just a touch of paunch to break the smooth lines. His long face was built for melancholy. His mother’s family had owned a highly successful cemetery-mortuary, and it showed. Tonight, though, his face was cracked wide apart in a blazing smile, and there was a strange light in his eyes. He said, “The Hamner-Brown Comet!”

  “Oh!” Julia stared. “What?” That didn’t make sense. You don’t smoke a comet. She tried to puzzle it out while her eyes roved to her husband — was he having a second drink already? — to the door — when were the others coming? The invitations had been explicit. The important guests were coming early — weren’t they? — and couldn’t stay late, and—

  She heard the low purr of a big car outside, and through the narrow windows framing the door saw half a dozen people spilling out of a dark limousine. Tim would have to take care of himself. She patted his arm and said, “That’s nice, Timmy. Excuse me, please?” A hasty intimate smile and she was gone.

  If it bothered Hamner it didn’t show. He ambled toward the bar. Behind him Julia went to welcome her most important guest, Senator Jellison, with his entourage. He always brought everyone, administrative assistants as well as family. Tim Hamner’s smile was blazing when he reached the bar.

  “Good evening, Mr. Hamner.”

  “Good it is. Tonight I’m walking on pink clouds. Congratulate me, Rodrigo, they’re going to name a comet after me!”

  Michael Rodriguez, laying out glasses behind the bar, missed a beat. “A comet?”

  “Right. Hamner-Brown Comet. It’s coming, Rodrigo, you can see it, oh, around June, give or take a few weeks.” Hamner took out the telegram and opened it with a snap.

  “We will not see it from Los Angeles,” Rodriguez laughed. “What may I serve you tonight?”

  “Scotch rocks. You could see it. It could be as big as Halley’s Comet.” Hamner took the drink and looked about. There was a group around George Sutter. The knot of people drew Tim like a magnet. He clutched the telegram in one hand and his drink in another, as Julia brought the new guests over and introduced them.

  Senator Arthur Clay Jellison was built something like a brick, muscular rather than overweight. He was bulky, jovial and blessed with thick white hair. He was photogenic as hell, and half the people in the country would have recognized him. His voice sounded exactly as it did on TV: resonant, enveloping, so that everything he said took on a mysterious importance.

  Maureen Jellison, the Senator’s daughter, had long, dark red hair and pale clear skin and a beauty that would have made Tim Hamner shy on any other night; but when Julia Sutter turned to him and (finally!) said, “What was that about a—”

  “Hamner-Brown Comet” Tim waved the telegram. “Kitt Peak Observatory had confirmed my sighting! It’s a real comet, it’s my comet, they’re naming it after me!”

  Maureen Jellison’s eyebrows went up slightly. George Sutter drained his glass before asking the obvious question. “Who’s Brown?”

  Hamner shrugged; his untasted drink slopped a little onto the carpet, and Julia frowned. “Nobody’s ever heard of him,” Tim said. “But the International Astronomical Union says it was a simultaneous sighting.”

  “So what you own is half a comet,” said George Sutter.

  Tim laughed, quite genuinely. “The day you own half a comet, George, I’ll buy all those bonds you keep trying to sell me. And buy your drinks all night.” He downed his scotch rocks in two swallows.

  When he looked up he’d lost his audience. George was headed back to the bar. Julia had Senator Jellison’s arm and was steering him toward new arrivals. The Senator’s administrative assistants followed in her wake.

  “Half a comet is quite a lot,” Maureen said. Tim Hamner turned to find her still there. “Tell me, how do you see anything through the smog?”

  She sounded interested. She looked interested. And she could have gone with her father. The scotch was a warm trace in his throat and stomach. Tim began telling her about his mountain observatory, not too many miles past Mount Wilson but far enough into the Angeles Mountains that the lights from Pasadena didn’t ruin the seeing. He kept food supplies there, and an assistant, and he’d spent months of nights watching the sky, tracking known asteroids and the outer moons, letting his eye and brain learn the territory, and forever watching for the dot of light that shouldn’t be there, the anomaly that would…

  Maureen Jellison had a familiar glazed look in her eyes. He asked, “Hey, am I boring you?”

  She was instantly apologetic. “No, I’m sorry, it was just a stray thought.”

  “I know I sometimes get carried away.”

  She smiled and shook her head; a wealth of deep red hair rippled and danced. “No, really. Dad’s on the Finance Subcommittee for Science and Astronautics. He loves pure science, and I caught the bug from him. I was just… You’re a man who knows what he wants, and you’ve found it. Not many can say that.” She was suddenly very serious.

  Tim laughed, embarrassed; he was only just getting used to the fact. “What can I do for an encore?”

  “Yes, exactly. What do you do when you’ve walked on the moon, and then they cancel the space program?”

  “Why… I don’t know. I’ve heard they sometimes have troubles…”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Maureen said. �
��You’re on the moon now. Enjoy it.”

  The hot dry wind known as the Santa Ana blew across the Los Angeles hills, clearing the city of smog. Lights glittered and danced in the early darkness. Harvey Randall, his wife, Loretta, beside him, drove his green Toronado with the windows open, relishing the summer weather in January. When they arrived at the Sutter place he turned the car over to the red-jacketed attendant, and paused while Loretta adjusted her smile before moving through the big front doors.

  They found the usual mob scene for a Beverly Hills party. A hundred people were scattered among the little tables, and another hundred in clumps; a mariachi group in one corner played gay background music and the singer, deprived of his microphone, was still doing pretty well telling everyone about the state of his corazon. They greeted their hostess and parted: Loretta found a conversation, and Harvey located the bar by searching out the thickest cluster of people. He collected two gin and tonics.

  Bits of conversation ricocheted around him. “We didn’t let him on the white rug, you see. So the dog had the cat ‘treed’ in the middle of the rug and was pacing sentry duty around the perimeter…”

  “…was this beautiful young chick one seat ahead of me on the plane. A real knockout, even if all I could see was her hair and the back of her head. I was thinking of a way to meet her when she looked back and said, ‘Uncle Pete! What are you doing here?’ ”

  “…man, it’s helped a lot! When I call and say it’s Commissioner Robbins, I get right through. Haven’t had a customer miss a good option since the Mayor appointed me.”

  They stuck in his mind, these bits and pieces of story. For Harvey Randall it was an occupational hazard of the TV documentary business; he couldn’t help listening. He didn’t want to, really. People fascinated him. He would have liked to follow up some of these glimpses into other minds.