To what purpose?
Was it happening everywhere? All along the Arm? On the other side of the Galaxy? "The big telescope," he said.
Hutch looked at him. "Pardon?"
"I was thinking about the telescope at Beta Pac. It was pointed toward the Magellanic Clouds."
"You figure out why?"
"Maybe. The Monument-Makers knew about the dragons. Do you think they might have been trying to find out whether other places were safe? Beyond this galaxy?"
Hutch listened to her pulse. "That's a good question," she said.
1600 hours.
The Knapp was approaching from sunward. Carson talked at length with David Emory. Despite the time delay, the conversations distracted him from the moment-to-moment terrors of the ride through that fierce sky. Emory asked about everything, the conditions in the city by the harbor, what they had seen at the space station, how they had found the dragon. He expressed his sorrow at the loss of their colleagues. He had known Maggie, had worked with her, admired her. "I never met George," he said.
Carson had by then changed places with Hutch. In the cockpit, Angela asked if she understood why Emory was so inquisitive.
"He doesn't expect us to survive," she guessed. "He doesn't want mysteries afterward. So he's getting all his questions in now."
1754 hours.
They had left the dragon behind, and the sun as well, and passed onto the night side. But an eerie red glow lay on the horizon. Below, the land flowed past, rendered soft and glossy by the snow. "We'll go another hour or so," Angela said, "and then we'll look for a plain somewhere, as flat as we can find, where nothing can fall on us."
The pictures coming in from Knapp revealed that the anomaly had become so tenuous, so inflated, so unraveled, that one could not say precisely where it was. It seemed to have spilled across the system of moons and rings.
At the target area, monitored by the cameras, boiling light filled the sky.
7952 hours.
The shuttle cleared a range of glaciers and glided low over country that was flat and featureless, save for a few hills on the horizon. They had come approximately halfway around the globe. "Ideal," said Carson. "Let's park it right here."
On board NCA Ashley Tee. 2006 hours.
Ashley reached the end of its forward flight. For a microsecond, a flicker of a moment, it came to an absolute halt, relative to Delta. Then the instant was gone, and it reversed course and began its return. Inside the ship, the moment would have gone unnoticed (the thrust, after all, continued unabated from the same quarter of the vessel), had not a green console lamp blinked on.
"Closing," said Drafts. He knew that Janet had seen the signal, had in fact been watching for it. But it was something to say. A benchmark to be noted. They were, at last, on their way.
2116 hours.
Angela gave up trying to raise the ships. "It's getting worse," she said. Her gauges were all over the park. "That thing is putting out a hurricane of low-frequency radiation, mostly in the infrared, microwave, and radio bands. But we're lucky: it could just as easily be generating X-rays, and fry us all."
Their own sky was almost serene, save for the angry glow on the horizon.
2304 hours.
Two hours to impact. More or less. With so ephemeral an object, who could know?
Transmissions from the mesa site were garbled beyond recovery. Angela switched away from them. She also shut down all nonessential systems, and did a strange thing: she turned out the cockpit lights, as if to conceal the location of the shuttle.
The conversation was desultory. They talked about incidentals, how strange the sky looked, how nobody was going to leave home again. And they reassured one another.
Had long-dead Pinnacle experienced these things? "They have to be part of the natural order," Carson said. "Every eight thousand years they come in and take you out. Why?"
"It's almost as if," said Angela, "the universe is wired to attack cities. Is that possible?"
Hutch sat in the darkness, feeling like prey. What was the line Richard had quoted? Something there is that doesn't love a wall. "It might be," she said, "that it's part of a program to protect life."
Carson's brows drew together. "By blowing it up?"
"By discouraging the rise of dominant species. Maybe it's a balancing effect. Maybe the universe doesn't approve of places like New York."
In the west, they saw lightning. Coming this way.
"Air pressure's going down fast," said Angela. The ground shook. It was only a tremor, a wobble. "Maybe we should get back upstairs."
"No." Carson sank into his chair and tried to relax. "We're safer here."
Monday; 0004 hours.
Ashley was accelerating. But whatever was going to happen would be over long before they arrived on the scene. Janet had spent much of her time trying to talk with Emory, but the signals had faded in the electromagnetic flux created by the dragon. On her screens, Delta and the thing had joined. Drafts was frantic, and had grown worse as the hour approached. He was not helped by the loss of communications. And being pinned in his web chair did nothing to ease his frustration.
Janet tried to sound optimistic. Hutch and Angela Morgan together! If there was a way to survive, she knew one or the other would find it.
0027 hours.
The skies flowed past, churned, exploded. Heavy bolts ripped the night, and the wind howled around them. Snow and ice rattled against the shuttle.
The plain trembled. One by one, the shuttle's monitors died.
Carson hovered in the rear doorway, between the two women. "We're doing okay," he said.
"Never better," said Hutch.
"You betcha," said Angela, with mock cheer. "Here we sit with God coming after us."
"We'll be fine," said Carson.
There was no point at which it could be said that contact actually occurred. The dragon no longer possessed defini-
live limits. It had opened out. Filaments tens of thousands of kilometers long had broached Delta's atmosphere hours earlier. But Carson and the women knew that the moon was now firmly in the embrace of its fierce visitor.
The air was thick with ash and snow. It drifted down onto the plain, and a black crust began to form.
"Maybe," said Angela, "there really is no core."
"Let's hope not," said Carson. And he was about to add, optimistically, that maybe it wouldn't be much worse than a large storm after all, when white light exploded overhead, and a fireball roared out of the sky and ripped into the snowscape.
It wasn't close, but they all flinched.
"What was that?"
"Meteor?"
"Don't know—"
"Damn," said Hutch.
Carson took a deep breath. "Angela, how long do you think this will last?"
"Hard to tell. The worst of it should end within a day or two. It's still moving pretty quickly. And it's not tracking Delta's orbit, so we should come out of it fairly soon." They could hear her breathing in the dark. "I think this place is going to have even lousier weather than usual for a while though."
"I'm scared," said Hutch.
So was Carson. But he knew it would be improper to concede the point. Someone needed to show strength. "We'll be okay," he told her. He wished they could get pictures from the ground cameras. What was happening at the site?
The dragon's head dissolved. Billows and fountains expanded, collapsed, and blew apart. They rubbed together like great cats. Chunks of rock and ice, apparently buried within the thick atmosphere, were expelled.
On Delta, methane seas exploded into nearby low-lying areas. Tornado-force winds, generated by sudden changes in pressure, roared around the globe. Everywhere, it was midnight.
Rock and ice fell out of the sky. Their fiery trails illuminated the general chaos. Most were small, too small to penetrate even the relatively thin atmosphere. Others plowed into ice fields, and blasted swamps and seas.
Volcanoes erupted.
Out on their plain,
Hutch, Angela, and Frank crouched in the shuttle and waited. Waited for the world-cracking collision that would come when the core of the dragon struck ground. As it must. As Angela, despite her assurances to the contrary, sincerely believed it must.
But it never happened.
The winds hammered at them, and the plain trembled, and black rain and ice and thick ashes poured down.
The night rumbled and flared.
Gradually, they became persuaded that the worst was over, that the hurricane-force winds were diminishing. They would survive; they needed only ride out the storm. And they grew talkative. An atmosphere that might best be described as nervous festive set in. Things banged and exploded and crunched in the night. But they were still there. And they silently congratulated themselves on their good luck. At one point, their rising spirits were helped along when they thought they heard Janet's voice in the ocean of static pouring out of the receivers.
Navigation lights were mounted low on both sides of the cowling, behind the cockpit on the fuselage, and beneath the wings. Periodically, Angela blew the snow and soot off the windscreen and turned them on. Mounds were building high around them.
"I'll make you a bet, Frank," said Hutch.
"Which is—?"
"When we start reading the history of the Monument-Makers, we're going to discover that a lot of them cleared out."
"How do you mean?"
"Left the Galaxy. Probably went to one of the Magellanic Clouds. Somewhere where they don't have these things."
"Maybe. I think they entertained themselves bringing them down on the heads of whatever primitives they could find. I don't think the Monument-Makers were very decent critters."
"I think you've got it wrong," she said.
"In what way?"
She took Carson's wrist. "Oz was a decoy," she said.
He leaned closer to her. "Say again."
"Frank, they were all decoys. The cube moons. The Oz-creation at Beta Pac. They were supposed to draw these things off."
"Well, if they were," he said, "they apparently didn't work."
"No. I guess they did the best they could. But you're right. They didn't work. In the end, the Monument-Makers couldn't even save themselves."
He sat down on the deck behind her seat. "You think they got hit by one of these things?"
"I think they got hit twice. The interstellar civilization probably got nailed. They collapsed. Maybe they ran. I don't know. Maybe they got out and made for the Lesser Magellanic. Ran from these things because they couldn't divert them, and couldn't stop them."
"What about the space station?" he asked. "What do you think happened there?"
"— Survivors. Somebody rebuilt. But they didn't get as far the second time. They didn't go interstellar. Maybe it was a different type of civilization. Maybe they lost too much. They were just at the beginning of their space age when the wave came again." She was glad now for the dark. "Frank, think what their technology must have been at its height. And how much advance warning they had. Maybe thousands of years. They knew these things were out there, and they tried to help where they could. But you're right: they didn't succeed."
"The goop is getting a little high," said Angela. "I think it would be a good idea to shift locations. We don't want to get buried."
"Do it," said Carson.
She took them up. Their navigation lights, freed, spilled out over the black snow. The wind rocked the vessel, swept it clean.
Lightning lanced through the night. They timed the distant rumble, guessed at the effect of local air pressure. It was about twelve kilometers away. Cautiously, she set back down.
They passed coffee around. "It figures," said Carson. "We knew all along that the natives lived through these. Except, I guess, the urban populations." He looked hard at Hutch. "I think you're right. About Oz. When did you figure it out?"
"A few hours ago. I kept thinking how much Oz looked like a city. Who were they trying to fool?" She kissed Carson lightly on the cheek. "I wonder if they understood what these things really are? Where they come from?"
"I wonder," Angela said, "if this is the way organized religion got started." They all laughed.
More lightning. Closer.
"Maybe we should start paying attention to the storm," said Hutch.
Angela nodded. "It does seem to be walking this way, doesn't it?"
Another bolt glided to ground, illuminating the cockpit.
"I think it's seen us," Hutch said.
"Hey." Angela caught her shoulder. "Don't let your imagination get overloaded."
"It's only lightning out there," whispered Carson.
Angela, as a precaution, powered up.
"What kind of sensor range do we have?" asked Hutch.
"Zip. If we have to go, we'll be flying blind."
A long, liquid bolt flowed between land and sky. Hills and plain stood out in quick relief, and vanished. Thunder rolled across them. "It is coming this way," whispered Angela.
"I don't think we want to go up in this wind if we can avoid it," said Carson. He was about to add something, when another fireball appeared. It sliced across the sky. They watched it move through the dark, right to left, watched it stop and begin to brighten.
"Son of a bitch," squealed Angela. "It's turning toward us." Simultaneously, she pulled back the yoke, and the shuttle bucked into the air. The wind howled. The thing in the night burned, a blue-white star churning to nova.
"Button up," called Hutch, sliding into her harness and igniting the energy field. Carson scrambled for a handhold.
Hutch locked Angela down in her web seat, and sealed off cargo, where Carson was seated. Then she clipped on her own restraints.
"Frank?"
"I'm okay," he said. "Get us out of here."
Angela put the juice to the magnets, and the shuttle leaped forward, and up, and the light passed beneath them. They heard the subsequent roar and felt the shock wave, and came around in time to see a white geyser climbing skyward.
Hutch looked toward Angela. "Strange meteor."
She nodded. "I'd say so."
The wind dragged at them, blew them across the sky.
Angela was trying to ease back onto the surface when a thunderbolt exploded alongside and the night filled with light. Their electronics went down, and the vehicle lurched wildly. Smoke leaked into the cockpit.
Angela activated her fire-retardants, fought the shuttle into near-level flight, and started back up. "Safer upstairs," she said.
"No," said Carson. "Down. Take us down."
"Frank, we need to be able to maneuver. We're a sitting duck down there."
"Do it, Angela. Get us on the ground."
"You're crazy," said Hutch.
Angela looked distraught. "Why?"
Another bolt hammered them.
"Just do it," Carson said. "As quick as you can."
Hutch watched him on the monitor. He was pulling together the air tanks they'd stored.
Angela pushed the stick forward. "We should be trying to get above this," she protested.
"How do you get above meteorsT' demanded Carson.
Status lamps blinked off, came back on. Something exploded in back and a roar filled the vehicle. They began to fall.
"We're holed," cried Hutch.
Angela banked left and whacked the navigation console. "Portside rear stabilizers are gone," she said. Through the bedlam of escaping air, howling wind, raining rock and ice, she managed to comment coolly, "Looks like you'll get your way. We are sure as hell going down."
The sky was filled with lightning.
"Fifty meters," said Angela.
They jounced back onto the plain, throwing up gouts of snow and soot. Another meteor was tracking across the sky to their rear. They watched it pause and begin to brighten.
"Out," Carson cried.
Angela started to argue, but Hutch reached over and punched the air cyclers. "It's okay," she said.
They grabbed the tanks and dragged
them out as soon as the hatch had opened. Hutch tumbled into the snow, got up, and kept going.
Carson was right behind her.
"Run," he cried. He had three tanks, lost one, but did not go back for it.
The fireball was coming in over a range of hills to the north.
They ran. The snow was crusted and kept breaking underfoot. Hutch went down again. Damn.
Hang onto the tanks!
"You sure he knows what he's doing?" Angela asked.
"Yes," said Hutch. "I think so. Go."
The women struggled to put distance between themselves and the shuttle. Carson stayed with them.
The meteor trailed fire. Pieces broke off and fell.
"Everybody down!" cried Carson. They threw themselves into the snow.
The fireball roared in and blasted the shuttle. Direct hit.
The ground buckled, the icescape brightened, and a hurricane of snow and earth rolled over them. Rocks and debris struck Hutch's energy field.
When it subsided, Carson switched on his lamp. They saw only a crater where the shuttle had been.
Angela shivered. She looked at the sky, and back at the lamp. "For God's sake," she said, "turn it off."
Carson complied. "If you like," he said. "But I think we'll be all right now."
She tried to bury herself in the snow, to hide from the clouds.
"It was never after us" said Carson.
"How can you say that?" Angela asked.
More lightning. "Right angles," he said. "It wanted the shuttle. Your flying box."
Over the next few hours, the electricity drained out of the heavens. They sat quietly, watching the storms clear off. "I think I understand why the Quraquat used the image of a Monument-Maker to portray Death," Frank said.
"Why?" asked Angela.
"Shoot the messenger. The Monument-Makers probably had no compunctions about landing, introducing themselves, and telling the Quraquat what the problem was." He smiled. "You know, Richard was right. There are no aliens. They all turn out to be pretty human."
"Like George," said Hutch.
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