She waited, and watched.
And then she saw, emerging from shadow into moonlight, the dark shape of a rowboat moving steadily across the narrow channel separating the other island from Little Green. As she stared, it resolved itself into a dinghy being rowed with care by a tall man, and it was heading right for their island, angling toward her end of the island in such a way that it wouldn't be visible from the fishing shack. The boat moved swiftly with the incoming tidal current. It would be landing in minutes on a beach just below the bluff at the island's tip.
Abbey backed into the woods and crept to a point where she could observe the probable landing point. The man pulled steadily, the faint splash of his oars reaching her across the water. He remained a dark silhouette, hunched over as he rowed. In a minute the boat grounded with a crunch. He hopped out, pulled the boat up the strand, and then stood quietly, looking around, his face still in shadow.
Abbey flattened herself on the mossy ground, watching. The man removed something from his waist and seemed to be checking it; she saw the faint gleam of metal and realized it was a handgun. He reholstered it and, with a quick look about, slipped into the darkness of the trees. He would be passing her way in a moment.
Abbey rose and sprinted through the woods, ducking branches and leaping fallen trees, and in a few minutes she arrived at the cabin, bursting through the door.
"Thanks to you, I burned the ham--"
"Jackie. We gotta go. Now."
"But the hamburgers--"
Abbey grabbed her hand and pulled her toward the door. "Now. And keep quiet--there's someone on the island with a gun."
"Oh my God."
She pulled her out into the darkness and cast about. He would probably be coming straight to the cabin.
"This way," she whispered, pulling Jackie across the meadow and into the woods stretching toward the southern end of the island. But the woods were too small and too obvious to be a good hiding place. On the other hand, the boulders and whalebacks at the southern tip of the island offered a better option, especially since it was low tide, exposing a range of giant, seaweed-covered rocks.
She motioned to Jackie to follow and they snuck through the trees to the bluff above the rocks. The Moon was still low in the sky and the tall spruces cast a shadow over the jumbled boulders, burying all in darkness. They slid down the dirt bluff and scrambled over the boulders, Abbey heading below the high-tide line to the long string of rocks jutting into the water.
"Tide's coming in," whispered Jackie, slipping and sliding over the seaweed. "We'll be drowned."
"This is only temporary."
At the far end, she found a dark hiding place between two steep-sided, seaweed-covered boulders with crawl spaces along their underside. The tide was coming in fast.
"Get in there."
"We're gonna be wet."
"That's the point."
Jackie hunkered down against the black, cold seaweed, wedging herself under the overhang of the rock. Abbey did the same, pulling and arranging the seaweed around and over her as much as possible. The strong smell of it filled her nostrils. She could see back up through the rocks to the spruces and, just barely, to the lighted cabin across the meadow five hundred yards away. Just beyond, the water lapped and gurgled among the rocks as the tide came in.
"Who is it?" Jackie whispered.
"The guy who's after us. Now shut up."
They waited. After what seemed like an eternity, Abbey saw the man's figure emerge from the forest into the moon-drenched meadow. Gun drawn, he slowly circled the cabin, crept up to a window and, flattening himself against the outside wall, peered inside. He spent some time looking, and then moved around to the door and kicked it in. The noise shattered the calm night air, echoing across the dark water.
He went into the cabin and came out a moment later, looking around. A flashlight appeared in his hand and he slowly circled the meadow, shining it into the trees.
Meanwhile, the tide came in.
The figure disappeared into the woods above their hiding place, the light flashing through the trees, back and forth.
He reappeared at the edge of the woods, on the top of the bluff above the rocks. Picking his way down, he stood on a tall rock, playing the light along the shore, the yellow beam licking about the rocks around them, probing here and there. Abbey put her hand on Jackie's arm and felt a tremor.
The figure began walking toward them, the loose cobbles dislodged by his feet making a rattling sound. The light flashed over the tops of the boulders again, probing briefly on either side of them. Meanwhile, Abbey could feel the tide crawling among the seaweed-covered rocks at their feet. What was the rate? Something like a vertical inch rise of water every two minutes, even more at the full moon.
As he got closer, she pulled her head back and down into the seaweed. She could feel the hiss of water now swirling around her feet, the gentle swell coming in and out. As the man got closer, she heard his hard breathing.
Once again, this time very deliberately, the yellow beam moved over the rocks. It passed by them with excruciating slowness. Once. Twice. Then came a grunt, and he began to move off. The beam flickered over a jumble of rocks to their right and moved on down the shore.
The water swept in around her ankles, stirring the seaweed, hissing back out. Darkness returned. Abbey waited for a minute, then two, and ventured another look. She could see him moving cautiously down the shore, a few hundred yards away, probing as he went, heading toward their dinghy.
"We've got to get off this island," Abbey whispered.
"How the hell are we going to do that with our dinghy out there in the open?"
"We're gonna take his."
Jackie was shaking. Abbey put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. "You stay here. Move up a little with the tide. I'll go steal his dinghy, get our boat, and come to you. I'll pass as close to shore as I dare. When you hear me coming, start swimming. The current'll be with you."
"Okay," Jackie whispered.
Suddenly, Abbey noticed a flash in the sky, a rapid brightening. For a moment she thought the killer had found them, suddenly turning on his flashlight beam.
"Shit!" Jackie said, ducking and covering her head in an instinctual movement.
After a moment, Abbey poked her head up and stared at the Moon. "Oh my God! Jackie!"
A huge fireball blossomed on one side of the Moon, with a jet of glowing dust shooting laterally from the opposite side, extending itself as if in slow motion, becoming so bright Abbey had to shield her eyes. It was strange, weird, a spectacularly beautiful phenomenon, like the Moon had burst, releasing a string of glittering jewels spilling out of its interior, glowing with internal fire.
Meanwhile, the fireball on the other side of the Moon also expanded in size and color, from brilliant cold blue in the center to a greenish yellow, grading to orange and red at the edges, like a wedge expanding from the surface of the Moon.
"What the fuck?" Jackie stared, her eyes wide.
The brightening light bathed the islands, the dark spruces, the rocks, the sea in a greenish yellow color, false and garish. The horizon came up, razor-sharp, the sky above it deep purple, the ocean below a pale green flecked with black and red.
Abbey turned her gaze back to the Moon, squinting her eyes against the brightness; a kind of halo was now developing around the disk, as if the Moon had been struck or shaken, lofting dust into space. A vast silence seemed to settle onto the seascape, the spectacle unfolding in absolute stillness which made it seem all the more surreal.
"Abbey!" came Jackie's low, panicked voice. "What is it? What's happening?"
"I believe," said Abbey slowly, "that the weapon on Deimos just took a potshot at the Moon--a much bigger one, this time."
69
Harry Burr walked down the shingled beach, semiautomatic pistol in one hand, probing the woods and rocks with his flashlight, searching for a glimpse of fleeting figures, a face crouching among the trees, something. He knew they were on t
he island--their dinghy was still up on the beach and burgers had been burning on the stove. He was also pretty sure Ford didn't have a piece--otherwise he'd have used it in the bar or at the parking lot. So he was the only man with a gun.
He swore under his breath. Somehow they'd gotten wind of his coming. They'd probably heard the sound of his boat engine, which at night carried across the water a long distance. Still, he was holding all the cards; he'd cornered them on a small island and there was no way they could escape--except by dinghy. They couldn't swim to their boat--the tide was coming in full bore and the currents were swirling past the island at several knots. They'd be swept past before they'd ever make it.
There were two dinghies on the island: his and theirs.
It wasn't hard to see what they'd do: try to get one of them. His first job was to secure them. He walked down the beach to where their dinghy was pulled up. He thought of shoving it off into the current but decided that would be risky, leaving himself without a backup if something should go wrong. Instead, grasping the painter, he hauled it up into the woods where it was more or less hidden. Then he removed the oars and hid each one in widely separated locations, shoving them into raspberry thickets. It would take hours to find them.
Now to secure his own boat.
A sudden light above his head caused him to duck and spin around, gun at the ready, until he realized it was coming from above. The full Moon. He stared up at it as a bright jet seemed to come off its surface and extend into the night sky. Another bright spot appeared on the opposite side. What the hell was it?
Just a strange cloud passing over the Moon, creating a striking optical illusion.
Moving rapidly and silently through the trees, he worked his way toward the northern end of the island until he had reached his own dinghy. It sat peacefully in the brightening moonlight. He was about to haul it up and hide it as he'd done the other one when he had an idea: to leave it in full view as bait, hide and wait for them to come get it. When they found their own dinghy missing, they'd come after his. What other course of action did they have? They couldn't hide forever.
He took up a well-hidden position behind a jumble of rocks at the edge of the shore and waited.
The sky grew brighter by slow degrees, and he glanced upward, wondering what the hell was going on with the Moon. The strange cloud kept getting bigger, and it really didn't look like a cloud after all.
He turned away, focusing on the problem at hand, waiting for them to come. He hardly had to wait: after only a few minutes he spied a shadow moving along the edge of the forest; he raised his Desert Eagle, switched on the internal laser sights, then thought better of it and turned them off. No reason to spook them with a dancing red dot. They would be close enough for a kill without it.
But the silhouette was alone. It was the girl. Ford was not with her.
70
Driving south on Interstate 295, near Freeport, Ford noticed the sudden light in the night sky. He peered out the windscreen at the Moon and, with a sudden feeling of dread, pulled off the highway to get a better look. He stepped outside in the summer night and stared, aghast, at the jet of light rising from the Moon's surface. As he watched, more cars began pulling off the highway, people getting out to stare and take pictures.
A long trail of glowing material seemed to be shooting away from the Moon's surface, elongating across the night sky, blazing yellow. And on the opposite side was a similar puff of debris, more bulbous, material ejected as if from an impact.
It looked exactly like the Moon had been shot through by something that entered on the right and exited on the left.
Another shot from the thing on Deimos?
No question about it. And this time a much larger projectile of strange matter must have been used, big enough to create a spectacular display on Earth. Perhaps even designed to create a display. The last one had largely gone unnoticed; this one wouldn't. Even as he watched, the tail of debris kept extending itself, gradually elongating into a broad curve by the Moon's gravity.
This was striking confirmation that Abbey was right: that the alien artifact on Deimos was a weapon and had fired again, this time at the Moon. But why? As a demonstration of power?
There was no sense gaping by the side of the road, thought Ford. He had a plane to catch. He slipped back into his car and switched on the radio, tuning it to the local NPR station. The thunderous sounds of Bach's Passacaglia and Fugue in C Minor came out the speakers, but almost immediately a newscaster broke in, interrupting the program with a special announcement about the "extraordinary phenomenon occurring to the Moon."
"We reached Elaine Dahlquist," the announcer said, "an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Dr. Dahlquist, can you tell us what we're seeing up there?"
"My initial guess, Joe, would be that the Moon was struck by a major asteroid, perhaps two fragments at once, striking simultaneously on either side."
"Why didn't anyone see it coming?"
"Good question. Evidently we're dealing with an asteroid that escaped the attention of Spacewatch and other near-Earth asteroid search programs. Here at Harvard-Smithsonian we've turned our telescopes on the Moon, and I understand the Keck Observatory and the Hubble Space Telescope are also looking at it--as well as thousands of other telescopes, amateur and professional."
"Is there any danger to us on Earth?" the announcer asked.
"There are reports of an electromagnetic pulse or a shower of charged particles causing scattered power failures and computer network problems. Other than that, I'd say we're safe here on Earth. The Moon is two hundred and forty thousand miles away."
Ford turned off the radio. As he drove down the interstate, the light in the sky continued to increase, slowly but steadily, as the debris cloud extended out. It was yellowish in color, grading off to reddish hues at the edges--hot, condensing debris from the strike. But the show would soon be curtained; the intermittent clouds that had earlier covered the sky had given way to a squall line of black weather, looming on the horizon, flickering with internal lightning.
He glanced at the clock: he was half an hour from the Portland airport; he'd catch the midnight flight to D.C. and be there by two or three A.M.
But first, he had to set up a little sting.
71
Dawn never breaks in a Vegas casino or the White House Sit Room, Lockwood thought as he followed the duty officer into the windowless, cocoon-like Situation Room, already packed with people. Lockwood recognized the ferret-like demeanor of the national security advisor at the head of the conference table, Clifford Manfred, whose Italian suit and Thomas Pink tie were perhaps a touch sharp for Washington. Seated with him was the director of central intelligence, a gray man in a gray suit with alert gray eyes; several nondescript intelligence analysts and a communications specialist. A huge flat-panel video display at the far end was split into multiple screens, one with a real-time image of the Moon--now with two jets coming off it--and the others showing silent news feeds from the U.S. and foreign media. Other screens around the walls displayed images of people attending by video conference, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, a small, precise man with snowy hair, wearing an admiral's uniform.
Lockwood took a seat in one of the big black leather chairs. There was a low murmur of voices around him and the clank and rattle of spoons in coffee mugs as coffee was served. Everyone was awaiting the arrival of the president.
A few minutes later a hush fell in the room, almost by intuition, and the door opened. A duty officer appeared, followed by the president's chief of staff and then the president himself, dressed in an impeccable blue suit, tall and lean, his once black hair salted with gray, his roving eyes taking in everything, his jug ears sweeping the room like a radar beacon. His unflappable demeanor cast a spell over the room like oil on water, dissipating the air of tension. Everyone made to rise and the president waved his hand. "Please, please, stay seated."
They rose anyway and reseated themselves
as the president himself took a seat, not at the head of the table, but in an empty chair halfway down. He turned to Lockwood. "Stan, I've got a country on the verge of panic. Every talking-head astronomer in the country is spouting off and saying something different. So start from the beginning and tell us what's really going on--and keep in mind some of us are scientific idiots. Is this just a light show or should we be worried?"
Lockwood rose, a slender manila file folder in his hand. "Mr. President, I regret to say it's more serious than anything you might imagine."
A silence. Everyone was staring at him.
"Some background. On April fourteenth, a meteor streaked over the Maine Coast. At the exact same time, our worldwide seismic system--designed to locate underground nuclear tests--registered an explosive signature in the remote mountains along the Thai-Cambodia border. We located what appeared to be an impact crater, and we sent out a man to investigate. It turns out it wasn't a crater--but an exit hole. Later, our man discovered the entrance hole--on an island off the coast of Maine."
"Wait a minute--are you saying something went through the Earth?"
"Correct."
"Who's this man you sent?"
"An ex-CIA officer named Wyman Ford. We're trying to find him now."
"Go on."
"We've determined the thing that passed through the Earth was probably a small lump of strange matter, also called a strangelet. This exotic form of matter is superdense--the entire Earth, if made of it, would be the size of an orange. It has a very alarming property: it converts normal matter to strange matter on contact."
"So why's the Earth still here?"
"It was a very small piece, perhaps not much larger than an atom, and it was going fast. It blew all the way through the Earth and kept going. If it had been going slower and ended up caught inside the Earth, we'd be gone now."
"My God."
"That's just the beginning. We extrapolated the orbit back and found it originated at Mars."
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