Act of God (19 page)

"Touchdown," DaSilva reported, as a clunk-shudder made the ship vibrate.

"Ship 2 down," said the radio.

"We're the first Americans to land on an interplanetary body," Flower said.

"Hip hooray," said Hoerter. "We'll celebrate on the way home. Make her fast." From the "top" of the vessel, six more anchors were fired into the surface, giving the ship a tentlike web of guy cables and the stability that would be needed for the ice-mining operations. "All right, gyrenes," Hoerter said, "suit up and go out on patrol."

Flower and Sam helped one another into what were probably the world's first combat spacesuits. Dull gray in color, they were lined with Kevlar, a fabric that was almost bulletproof but vulnerable to high-velocity armor-piercing projectiles. They were compartmentalized so that a bullet or other projectile piercing some non-critical part of the body would not destroy the suit's integrity. It wasn't much, but it was the best the engineers could come up with. They had special traction boots, backpack rockets, an integrating gyro compass and direction sensors for the ships' radio beacons. If a marine stepped too lively and catapulted himself into space, he could use the rocket pack to fly back to the ship.

Potentially more dangerous to them than enemy action was a solar flare during the outdoor activity. High-energy particles in the solar wind could be deadlier than bullets. The Earth Base could signal dangerous solar activity, but that would do little good when they were several hours from the nearest shelter.

The ship extruded a landing ramp and Sam and Flower pulled themselves down to the surface. Within a few minutes, Fred and Hansen joined them from the other ship. The crews were already getting ready to start feeding the water separation system. This was the priority mission for the crews and they would be at it around the clock until they had plenty of reaction mass for the return trip. Ugo and Laine would have to conduct their experiments, collect their samples and study the cometary environment when they were not busy feeding the hungry water machine, if ever.

"Who touched the ground first?" Fred asked when the marines were assembled.

"Flower and I came down the ramp about the same time," Sam said. "Flower, did you touch down first or did I?"

"I didn't notice."

"Well I was the first one down from Ship 2," Fred said. "But which of us touched the surface first? This is a historic moment, dammit!"

"We have more important things to worry about," Sam said. "If everything works out, none of this ever happened anyway. Everybody checked out?" All answered affirmatively. There was always the possibility of close combat, and the question of weapons had been a difficult one. Conventional firearms were no good, as the recoil would knock the shooter right off the comet. Lasers would have been ideal, but a manageable handheld laser had yet to be developed. Sam had a miniaturized, low-power rocket launcher that looked like a cross between a mini-bazooka and a shot gun. The pay-load was a sticky miniature grenade that just might attach itself to an enemy's spacesuit and explode. Each of the remaining three marines carried a modified recoilless rifle. It was decided that, in space, the idea was not to attack the enemy's body but to attack his suit. Impact weapons like clubs and axes were useless in free-fall; a combatant would have to take a firm grip of an opponent in order to shove a knife into him. For that contingency, however, each marine carried a sharp, double-edged dagger.

"Good luck," said Hoerter. Sam and Laine had agreed to dispense with parting words. They would resume their lives after the mission. "I'd say something historical and inspiring," Hoerter went on, "but I'm plumb out of inspiration. We can always lie about what we said. Get going."

"We have four klicks to cover," Sam told his team. "Me first, followed by Fred, then Flower, then Hansen. Keep close, it'll be easy to lose each other in this fog. If anyone gets separated don't try to go on to the Russian base. Return to the ships. Now let's move out."

On Earth, a four-kilometer jaunt would be a pleasant walk, in good weather. An experienced jogger would scarcely have worked up a sweat in four kilometers. To an old-fashioned American, it would be a bit under two and one-half miles. On the surface of the comet, it was an endless nightmare. None of the marines had ever walked on a low-gravity body before, not even the moon. The minuscule gravity of the comet made even moon-type walking impossible. They had no leisure to learn and practice. It was on-the-job training with a vengeance.

They found that they could cover distance faster by not using their feet at all. Instead, they pulled themselves along the surface with their hands, always careful not to push away from the surface and lose such little traction as they had. The rocket packs were for emergency use only. There was too much danger of their becoming separated should they use them. They had practiced with the rocket packs at Midway , but Midway had no obscuring fog. So, like crustaceans scuttling along a murky ocean bottom, they made their way toward the Russian base.

The surface was not as smooth as it had looked at first. It was broken by innumerable fissures and jagged prominences, all of them impeding progress. The fog was thicker in some places than others, forcing them to maintain close contact. Sometimes the surface was slippery, other times crumbly, and at no time was it easy to traverse.

"We must be getting close by now," Sam said. Then he was staring over a straight lip into a deep hole. The fog made it impossible to determine how far the hole extended, but its straight lines looked decidedly artificial. The others lined up with him, staring into the hole.

"We've found their quarrying operation," Flowers said.

"Let's go find the ships," Sam said.

Carefully, they skirted the lip of the hole. It seemed to be about fifteen meters across. "There're the ships," Fred said.

Looming ahead of them in the mist were two squat, boxy Russian ships, both of them just as formless as the American craft. Hansen started taking pictures with his helmet-mounted camera. There was nobody visible outside the ships, and no activity was to be seen. There were no cranes or other equipment lying about. "Keep clear of the rocket nozzles," Sam cautioned. "They look ready to go."

Gingerly, they skirted the ships. The hulking apparitions looked as if they had been abandoned there, but when Sam touched his helmet to the side of one, he thought he could sense movements inside. What to do now? The original plan had called for him to approach the Russian party peacefully, invoke the clause in the new Geneva accord and claim their right for on-site inspection of the Russian ships for possible violation of the accord. Sam had pictured himself walking up to the gaping, spacesuited Russians, his hands out, showing empty palms and saying something like: "White man come in peace." Things just never worked out the way you'd planned.

"Flower, try to establish radio contact." Flower was the one who had studied Russian in college. Should his Russian prove inadequate to the task, they could always call on Laine. If all else failed, Sam had his explosives.

"What's that over there?" Hansen said. They looked where he was pointing.

"Let's go take a look," Sam said. "Flower, you stay here and keep trying radio contact." They made their way to a pair of tremendous frames, cradles each containing six icebergs. Each cradle was tethered to the surface by thin anchor lines to prevent the centrifugal effect of the comet's rotation from casting cradle and icebergs into space. A much more substantial cable connected each cradle to one of the ships.

"That's what they came for," Sam said.

"If nothing else works," Hansen said, "we could always cut these suckers loose. We have enough C-4 to make saddle charges for both of these cables. I'd feel better using the ship's lasers, though."

"It'd be a violation of international law," Sam mused. "Better than touching off a full-scale atomic war. We could always say I went nuts and did it in a fit of anti-communist sentiment." They went back to the first ship.

"Still no answer," Flower said. "Either they aren't listening on any of the frequencies I've tried, which isn't likely, or they're ignoring us, which is."

"What the hell," Fred said, "why don't we just knock?"

"Might as well," Sam said. "We are about to pay mankind's first trans-lunar neighborly call." He pulled himself up to the airlock hatch and pounded on the door. At the first impact, the Russian craft began to vibrate.

"Shit!" Hansen called. "They just cast their anchors loose!"

"Into the hole!" Sam ordered. He clambered down a landing strut and they frantically scrambled to the first hole they had come across. In near-panic, they were making a slow job of it. The Soviet ships activated their boosters and began an almost imperceptible movement forward. Hansen and Flower hauled themselves over the lip first and disappeared inside. Fred made an ill-judged step and went sailing over the hole, floundering helplessly. "My Buck Rogers won't cut in!" she yelled.

"Oh, Christ!" Sam swore. This was what came of inadequate testing and preparation. He launched himself at her and managed to grab her by what passed, in a spacesuit, for the scruff of her neck. With both feet, he shoved her down into the hole, propelling himself away from it at the same rate. He managed to get himself pointed in the right direction, prayed, and hit the power switch of his rocket pack. It cut in just as it was supposed to and he accelerated toward the hole. Now, if he could just keep from squashing himself against the side or bottom—He flipped end-for-end and fired a short burst from the pack to decelerate. His feet contacted the floor of the hole with no great impact and he was safe. For the moment.

"That was a slick move, Sam," said Hansen, admiringly.

"Yeah. Let's not celebrate just yet. If one of those ships passes right over us we'll fry like shrimps in a wok."

They held their breath and stared up, picturing zillions of high-energy ions sizzling from the nozzles of the Russian ships. Once, they caught sight of the upper framework of one of the ships as it passed the rim of the hole in perfect silence. Then, for several minutes, nothing.

"Let's go on up," Sam said.

The ships were gone, along with the cradles and the icebergs. Nothing was left on the site but the cast-off anchor lines. After they had rounded the curvature of the cometscape, Hoerter's voice came across their helmet radios: "Taggart! What the hell's going on?"

"The Russkies have flown the coop. Either they knew we were coming or they were ready to go home anyway. They have a dozen big icebergs."

"Hell, I know they left! We got 'em on our instruments as soon as they pulled away. Why the hell didn't you answer when I tried to call you?"

"Because we were hiding in a hole, goddammit!" Sam said. He was in no mood for a dressing-down from somebody who had been safe all this time. Relatively safe, anyway.

"All right, just come on back while you have air to travel on. Don't lose anybody on the way. Out."

"Out," Sam said. Then, to the others, "Remind me to kick his butt sometime."

"So much for the first interplanetary raid," said Flower, disappointedly.

"None of our great firsts is working out," Fred complained.

"Let's be the first interplanetary raiding party to get home alive. Move out, people." They made their way back to the ships with a little less difficulty. They were learning.

When they returned, the water-mining was proceeding at maximum speed. The Americans had come prepared for a short stay, and they had brought heavy ice-diggers with conveyer tubes. When they were inside Ugo helped Sam get his helmet off. "The separation system works like a charm," Ugo reported. "Your buddy Goro turns out a good product. Luckily, the job ain't been all that demanding so far, just dust and a few pebbles to sort out. We oughta have the tanks full in about forty-eight hours."

Hoerter pulled himself back to the airlock. "Good job, Sam, just bad timing, I guess. Get some sack time. As soon as you re awake, I want you to take Ugo and Laine back to the Russian site. Measure those holes and bring back samples from the surrounding matrix of each. I want to know to the kilogram how much mass they're heading out with."

"Hey!" Ugo complained. "What about my experiments?"

"Do them on the way," Hoerter said, "or do them at the site, or do them coming back, or don't do them at all, but get me those figures."

"Once again," Ugo said when Hoerter was gone, "science takes a back seat to the military. He's turning into a real hardass, ain't he?"

"So am I," Sam said. "It's looking more and more like a war, Ugo."

"Yeah. Space War One. Who woulda thunk it?" He scratched in his beard. All the men had beards these days, and nobody smelled very good, either. Space travel could put a severe strain on interpersonal relationships. "We'll catch 'em, though."

"You're sure about that?" Sam sounded dubious.

"Positive. Each of them ships is carrying back six great big hunks of ice. That's a lot of mass to accelerate. All we're taking back is the reaction mass for our return trip. We got rockets and long-range lasers and they're probly unarmed, since they never thought they'd have to fight in space. We'll blow their ass away if they don't listen to reason."

"If we can find them," Sam said.

"No sweat. Between me and that fancy computer, we'll locate them."

During the next two "days," the water was loaded and two large chunks of ice were cut away with lasers for spare reaction mass. Ugo and Laine measured the Russian excavations and managed to collect surface samples and core samples as well as take measurements of the cometary environment. Neither slept during their time on the comet. Among his other souvenirs, Ugo collected a large bump on his forehead. He had forgotten that Newton's law of inertia still works perfectly well in free fall.

"Ah, Sam—" Ugo said during the measuring expedition on the second day, "Fred told me about how you saved her butt here yesterday. I want you to know—"

Sam broke in hastily. "I didn't even know which one of them it was," he lied. "I wasn't going to lose any of my people."