Lucifer's Hammer

by Larry Niven

  “May as well be hung for a sheep,” Jellison said. “You’re coming out with us, of course. We’ll need equipment. End-of-the-world equipment. Couple of four-wheel-drive vehicles—”

  “Land Rovers,” Al said.

  “Hell no, not Land Rovers,” Jellison said. He poured another two-finger drink. “Buy American, dammit. That comet probably won’t hit, and we sure as hell don’t want to be owning foreign cars after it goes by. Jeeps, maybe, or something from GMC.”

  “I’ll look into it,” Al said.

  “And the rest of it. Camping gear. Batteries. Razor blades. Pocket computers. Rifles. Sleeping bags. All the crap you can’t buy if—”

  “It’s going to be expensive, Senator.”

  “So what? I’m not broke. Get it wholesale, but be quiet about it. Anybody asks, you’re… what? You’re going along on a junket to Africa. There must be some National Science Foundation project in Africa—”

  “Yes, sir—”

  “Good. That’s what all this is for, if anybody asks. You can let Rasmussen in on the plot. Nobody else on the staff. Got a girl you want to take along?”

  He really doesn’t know, Al thought. He really doesn’t know how I feel about Maureen. “No, sir.”

  “Okay. I’ll leave it to you, then. You realize this is damn foolishness and we’re goin’ to feel awful silly when that thing has passed by.”

  “Yes, sir.” I hope we are. Sharps called it the Hammer!

  “There is absolutely no danger. The asteroid Apollo came within two million miles, very close as cosmic distances go, back in 1932. No damage. Adonis passed within a million miles in 1936. So what? Remember the panic in 1968? People, especially in California, took to the hills. Everyone forgot about it a day later — that is, everyone who hadn’t gone broke buying survival equipment that wasn’t needed.

  “Hamner-Brown Comet is a marvelous opportunity to study a new kind of extraterrestrial body at comparatively — and I emphasize comparatively — close range, and that’s all it is.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Treece. You have heard an interview with Dr. Henry Treece of the United States Geological Survey. Now back to our regularly scheduled program.”

  The road ran north through groves of oranges and almond trees, skirting the eastern edge of the San Joaquin Valley. Sometimes it climbed over low hills or wound among them, but for most of the way the view to the left was of a vast flatland, dotted with farm buildings and croplands, crossed by canals, and stretching all the way to the horizon. The only large buildings visible were the uncompleted San Joaquin Nuclear Plant.

  Harvey Randall turned right at Porterville and wound eastward up into the foothills. Once the road turned sharply and for a moment he had a view of the magnificent High Sierra to the east, the mountaintops still covered with snow. Eventually he found the turnoff onto the side road, and further down that was the unmarked gate. A U.S. Mail truck had already gone through, and the driver was coming back to close the gate. He was long-haired and elegantly bearded.

  “Lost?” the mailman asked.

  “Don’t think so. This Senator Jellison’s ranch?” Harvey asked.

  The mailman shrugged. “They say so. I’ve never seen him. You’ll close the gate?”

  “Sure.”

  “See you.” The mailman went back to his truck. Harvey drove through the gate, got out and closed it, then followed the truck up the dusty path to the top of the hill. There was a white frame house there. The drive forked, the right-hand branch leading down toward a barn and a chain of connected small lakes. Granite cliffs reared high above the lakes. There were several orange groves, and lots of empty pastureland. Pieces of the cliff, weathered boulders larger than a California suburban house, had tumbled down into the pastures.

  An ample woman came out of the house. She waved to the mailman. “Coffee’s hot, Harry!”

  “Thanks. Happy Trash Day.”

  “Oh, that again? So soon? All right, you know where to put it.” She advanced on the TravelAII. “Can I help you?”

  “I’m looking for Senator Jellison. Harvey Randall, NBS.”

  Mrs. Cox nodded. “They’re expecting you, up to the big house.” She pointed down the left-hand branch of the drive. “Mind where you park, and look out for the cats.”

  “What’s Trash Day?” Harvey asked.

  Mrs. Cox’s face already wore a suspicious look. Now it changed to deadpan. “Nothing important,” she said. She went back onto the porch. The mailman had already vanished inside the house.

  Harvey shrugged and started the TravelAII. The drive ran between barbed-wire fences, orange groves to the right, more pasture to the left. He rounded a bend and saw the house. It was large, stone walls and slate roof, a rambling, massive place that didn’t look very appropriate for this remote area It was framed against more cliffs, and had a view through a canyon to the High Sierra miles beyond.

  He parked near the back door. As he started around to the big front porch, the kitchen door opened. “Hi,” Maureen Jellison called. “Save some walking and come in this way.”

  “Right. Thanks.” She was as lovely as Harvey had remembered her. She wore tan slacks, not very highly tailored, and high-top shoes, not real trail shoes but good for walking. “Waffle-stompers,” Mark Czescu would have called them. Her red hair looked recently brushed. It hung down just to her shoulders, in waves with slight curls at the ends. The sun glinted off in pleasing highlights.

  “Did you have an easy drive?” she asked.

  “Pleasant enough—”

  “I always like the drive up here from L.A.,” Maureen said. “But I expect you can use a drink right about now. What’ll you have?”

  “Scotch. And thanks.”

  “Sure.” She led him through a service porch into a very modern kitchen. There was a cabinet full of liquor, and she took out a bottle of Old Fedcal scotch, then fought with the ice tray. “It’s always all over frost when we first come up,” she said. “This is a working ranch, and the Coxes don’t have time to come up and fuss with the place much. Here, it will be nicer in the other room.”

  Again she led the way, going through a hall to the front room of the house. The wide verandah was just beyond it. A pleasant room, Harvey decided. It was paneled in light-colored wood, with ranch-style furniture, not really very appropriate for such a massive house as this. There were photographs of dogs and horses on most of the walls, and a case of ribbons and trophies. mostly for horses, but some for cattle. “Where is everybody?” Harvey asked.

  “I’m the only one here just now,” Maureen said.

  Harvey pushed the thought firmly down into his unconscious, and tried to laugh at himself.

  “The Senator got caught by a vote,” Maureen was saying. “He’ll catch the red-eye out of Washington tonight and get here in the morning. Dad says I’m to show you around. Want another drink?”

  “No, thank you. One’s enough.” He put the glass down, then picked it up again when he realized he’d set it on a highly polished wood lamp-table. He wiped the water ring off with his hand. “Good thing the crew didn’t come up with me. Actually they’ve got some work to finish up, and I’d hoped we could get the footage on Senator Jellison tomorrow morning, but if he couldn’t be available tomorrow I’ve got the gear in the car. I used to be a fair cameraman. They’ll be here in the morning, and I thought I would use the evening to get acquainted with the Senator, find out what he’d like to talk about for the camera…” And I’m chattering, Harvey thought. Which is stupid.

  “Care for the grand tour?” Maureen asked. She glanced at Harvey’s Roughrider trousers and walking shoes. “You won’t need to change. If you’re up to a tough walk, I’ll show you the best view in the valley.”

  “Sure. Let’s go.”

  They went out through the kitchen and cut across the orange groves. A stream bubbled off to their left.

  “That’s good swimming down there,” Maureen said. “Maybe we’ll have a dip if we get back early enough.”

 
They went through a fence. She parted the barbed wire and climbed through effortlessly, then turned to watch Harvey. She grinned when he came through just behind her, obviously pleased at his competence.

  The other side of the fence was weeds and shrubs, never plowed or grazed. The way was steep here. There were small trails, made by rabbits or goats. They weren’t really suited for humans at all. They climbed several hundred feet until they got to the base of a great granite cliff. It rose sheer at least two hundred feet above them. “We have to go around to the left here,” Maureen said. “It gets tough from here on.”

  Much tougher and I won’t make it, Harvey thought. But I will be damned if I’ll have a Washington socialite show me up. I’m supposed to be an outdoorsman.

  He hadn’t been hiking with a girl since Maggie Thompkins blew herself up on a land mine in Vietnam. Maggie had been a go-get-’em reporter, always out looking for a story. She had no interest in sitting around in the Caravelle Bar and getting her material third- or fourth-hand. Harvey had gone with her to the front, and once they’d had to walk out from behind Cong lines together. If she hadn’t been killed… Harvey put that thought away, too. It was a long time ago.

  They scrambled up through a cleft in the rocks. “Do you come up here often?” Harvey asked. He tried to keep the strain out of his voice.

  “Only once before,” Maureen said. “Dad told me not to do it alone.”

  Eventually they reached the top. They were not, Harvey saw, on a peak at all. They were at one end of a ridge that stretched southeastward into the High Sierra. A narrow path led up into the rock cliff itself; they’d come all the way behind it, so that when they got to its top they faced the ranch.

  “You’re right,” Harvey said. “The view’s worth it.” He stood on a monolith several stories high, feeling the pleasant breeze blowing across the valley. Everywhere he looked there were more of the huge white rocks. A glacier must have passed through here and scattered the land with these monoliths.

  The Senator’s ranch was laid out below. The small valley carved by the stream ran for several miles to the west; then there were more hills, still dotted with bungalow-size white stones. Far beyond the hills, and far below the level of the ranch, was the broad expanse of the San Joaquin. It was hazy out there, but Harvey thought he could make out the dark shape of the Temblor Range on the western edge of California’s central valley.

  “Silver Valley,” Maureen announced. “That’s our place there, and beyond is George Christopher’s ranch. I almost married him, once — ” She broke off, laughing.

  Now why do I feel a twinge of jealousy? Harvey wondered. “Why is it so funny?”

  “We were all of fourteen at the time he proposed,” Maureen said. “Almost sixteen years ago. Dad had just been elected, and we were going to Washington, and George and I schemed to find a way so I could stay.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “No. Sometimes I wish I had,” she said. “Especially when I’m standing here.” She waved expressively.

  Harvey turned, and there were more hills, rising higher and higher until they blended into the Sierra Nevada range. The big mountains looked untouched, never climbed by human. Harvey knew that was an illusion. If you stooped to tie your bootlaces on the John Muir Trail, you were likely to be trampled by backpackers.

  The great rock they stood on was cloven toward the edge of the cliff. The cleft was no more than a yard wide, but deep, so deep that Harvey couldn’t see the bottom. The top of the rock slanted toward the cleft, and toward the edge beyond it, so that Harvey wasn’t even tempted to go near it.

  Maureen strolled over there, and without a thought stepped across the cleft. She stood on a narrow strip of rock two feet wide, a three-hundred-foot drop in front of her, the unknown depth of the cleft behind. She looked out in satisfaction, then turned.

  She saw Harvey Randall standing grimly, trying to move forward and not able to do it. She gave him a puzzled look; then her face showed concern. She stepped back onto the main rock. “I’m sorry. Do heights bother you?”

  “Some,” Harvey admitted.

  “I should never have done that — what were you thinking of, anyway?”

  “How I could get out there if something happened. If I could make myself crawl across that crack—”

  “That wasn’t nice of me at all,” she said. “Anyway, let me show you the ranch. You can see most of it from here.”

  Afterward, Harvey couldn’t remember what they’d talked about. It was nothing important, but it had been a pleasant hour. He couldn’t remember a nicer one.

  “We ought to be getting back down,” Maureen said.

  “Yeah. Is there an easier way than the one we came up?”

  “Don’t know. We can look,” she said. She led the way off to their left, around the opposite side of the rock face. They picked their way through scrub brush and along narrow goat trails. There were piles of goat and sheep droppings. Deer too, Harvey thought, although he couldn’t be sure. The ground was too hard for tracks.

  “It’s like nobody was ever here before,” Harvey said, but he said it under his breath, and Maureen didn’t hear. They were in a narrow gully, nothing more than a gash in the side of the steep hill, and the ranch had vanished.

  There was a sound behind them. Harvey turned, startled. A horse was coming down the draw.

  Not just a horse. The rider was a little blonde girl, a child not more than twelve. She rode without a saddle, and she looked like a part of the huge animal, fitted so well onto him that it might have been an undergrown centaur. “Hi,” she called.

  “Hi yourself,” Maureen said. “Harvey, this is Alice Cox. The Coxes work the ranch. Alice, what are you doing up here?”

  “Saw you going up,” she said. Her voice was small and high-pitched, but well modulated, not shrill.

  Maureen caught up to Harvey and winked. He nodded, pleased. “And we thought we were the intrepid explorers,” Maureen said.

  “Yeah. I had enough trouble getting up by myself, without taking a damn big horse.” He looked ahead. The way was steep, and it was absolutely impossible for a horse to get down there. He turned to say so.

  Alice had dismounted and was calmly leading the horse down the draw. It slipped and scrambled, and she pointed out places for it to step. The horse seemed to understand her perfectly. “Senator coming soon?” she asked.

  “Yes, tomorrow morning,” Maureen said.

  “I sure like talkie’ to him,” Alice said. “All the kids at school want to meet him. He’s on TV a lot.”

  “Harvey — Mr. Randall makes television programs,” Maureen said.

  Alice looked to Harvey with new respect. She didn’t say anything for a moment. Then, “Do you like ‘Star Trek’?”

  “Yes, but I didn’t have anything to do with that one.” Harvey scrambled down another steep place. Surely that horse couldn’t get down that?

  “It’s my favorite program,” Alice said. “Whoa, Tommy. Come on, it’s all right, right here — I wrote a story for television. It’s about a flying saucer, and how we ran from it and hid in a cave. It’s pretty good, too.”

  “I’ll bet it is,” Harvey said. He glanced at Maureen, and saw she was grinning again. “I’ll bet there’s nothing she can’t do,” Harvey muttered. Maureen nodded. They scrambled up the sides of their dry wash when it ended in a thicket of chaparral. The ranch was visible again, still a long way down, and the hillside was steep enough that if you fell, you’d roll a long way and probably break something. Harvey looked back and watched Alice for a second, then stopped worrying about her and the horse. He concentrated on getting himself down.

  “You ride alone up here a lot?” Maureen asked.

  “Sure,” Alice said.

  “Doesn’t anybody worry about you?” Harvey asked.

  “Oh, I know the way pretty good,” Alice told him. “Got lost a couple of times, but Tommy knows how to get home.”

  “Pretty good horse,” Maureen said.

&
nbsp; “Sure. He’s mine.”

  Harvey looked to be sure. A stallion, not a gelding. He waited for Maureen to catch up to him. Masculine pride had kept him trying to lead the way, although it was obvious that they ought to leave that to Alice. “Must be nice to live where the only thing to worry about is getting lost — and the horse takes care of that,” he told Maureen. “She doesn’t even know what I’m talking about. And last week a girl her age, about eleven, was raped in the Hollywood Hills not more than half a mile from my house.”

  “One of Dad’s secretaries was raped in the Capitol last year,” Maureen said. “Isn’t civilization wonderful?”

  “I wish my boy could grow up out here,” Harvey said. “Only, what would I do? Farm?” He laughed at himself. Then the way was too steep for talking.

  There was a dirt road at the bottom of the steep hillside. They were still a long way from the ranch, but it was easier now. Alice somehow got onto the horse; Harvey was watching the whole time, but he didn’t see how she managed it. One second she was standing next to the animal, her head lower than its back, and the next moment she was astride. She clucked and they galloped off. The illusion that she was somehow a part of the beast was even stronger: She moved in perfect rhythm with it, her long blonde hair flowing behind.

  “She’s going to be one real beauty when she grows up,” Harvey said. “Is it the air here? This whole valley’s magic.”

  “I feel that way sometimes too,” Maureen told him.

  The sun was low when they got back to the stone ranch house. “Little late, but want to catch a swim?” Maureen asked.

  “Sure. Why not? Only I didn’t bring a suit.”

  “Oh, there’s something around.” Maureen vanished into the house and came back with trunks. “You can change in there.” She pointed to a bathroom.

  Harvey got into the trunks. When he came out, she was already changed. Her one-piece suit was a shiny white material. She had a robe over one arm. She winked at him and dashed off, leaving Harvey to follow. The path led by a pomegranate grove and down to a sandy beach by a bubbling stream. Maureen grinned at him, then plunged quickly into the water. Harvey followed.