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Curtis said. "Maybe we could tell just how much weather slop will
get into the Northern Hemisphere."
"Lots," Ransom said. "It's too near the equator."
"Mess up both hemispheres," Reynolds said. "Neat."
"Fear, fire, foes," Curtis muttered. "Tsunamis, hurricanes,
rainstorms . . ." He stood with a satisfied look. "One thing, it won't
hurt Bellingham."
"That's a comfort," someone said.
"Goddam right it is," Curtis said. "About the only one we've
got."
"As strategy it's hard to beat," Joe Ransom said. "Look when
the tidal waves--"
"Shut up," a young naval officer shouted. "Later, man, but for
now just shut up."
Jenny bent over to listen as Curtis and Ransom continued to
talk.
To the east: the island of Madagascar would shadow
Mozambique and South Africa, a little. The waves would wash
Tanzania, Kenya, the Somali Democratic Republic, wash them clean
of life. Northeast, it would wash the Saudi Arabian peninsula. The
Arabian Sea would focus the wave; a mountain range of water
would march into Iran and Pakistan. That's the end of OPEC, Jenny
thought with a flash of vindictive triumph. The end of the oil too.
India would be covered north to the mountains. The Bay of
Bengal would focus the wave again: it might cross Burma as far as
China. The islands of the Java Sea would be inundated. The wave
would wash across western Australia...
"My God," the naval officer said in sudden realization. "They'll
try to land afterward, of course, but where?"
"That's why it's such a--"
"Marvelous strategy, yes, Mr. Ransom," Admiral Carrell said.
"Where would we send our fleets? India? Saudi Arabia? Australia?
Africa?"
"South Africa," Curtis said. "Look here. Most of the industry
and white population are down at sea level. Tsunamis will wreck all
that. Beyond the coast is the Drakensberg escarpment, up to the
high plateau country, and that'll survive just fine. So they land at
Johannesburg and Pretoria and they have themselves an isolated
industrial foothold."
Admiral Carrell bent over to examine the globe. "Perhaps ..."
A horp warbled through the room. "Now hear this. Ten
minutes to estimated time of impact."
The room fell silent.
Herdmaster Pastempeh-keph felt the tiny thrust decrease further
as he made his way to the bridge.
Matters there ran over smooth trails. Koothfektil-rusp turned
to say, "The Foot is on target. The Defensemaster may break us
loose at any time."
"Do it," said Pastempeh-keph. "Defensemaster, you lead now."
He settled himself on his pad and set his claws on the recessed
foothold bars.
A recording bellowed for attention throughout the huge ship.
"Take footholds! Take footholds! Thrust in eight breaths."
The Herdmaster's claws tightened on the bars. What can go
wrong? The drive won't fail us; we've been running it steadily for
many eight-days. The prey can't possibly stop the Foot now. If
they could harm Message Bearer, they would have acted earlier.
Message Bearer surged steadily, smoothly backward, swinging
round to face outward from Winterhome.
As the pitted and gouged mass of nickel and iron moved away,
a magnificent blue-and-white crescent moved into view. Thrust built
up, and the Herdmaster felt himself sagging into the pad. His
muscles, grown slack in low gravity, protested. He welcomed the
feeling of gravity.
At a thrust higher than homeworld gravity, acceleration
peaked. Then the motors on the digit ships began to fire, and
thrust rose again. The crescent was dead aft, growing tremendous.
Message Bearer was accelerating outward and backward from
Winterhome.
The Foot would strike ahead of Message Bearer. The impact
point would still be in view.
The Herdmaster summoned a view of the humans' quarters.
They'd reached the restraint cell safely; they were on their bellies on
the padding. It looked uncomfortable.
Thrust dropped in increments as pairs of digit ships left their
moorings around the aft rim. The Herdmaster watched their pulsing
drive flames curve away. They must decelerate more drastically to
take up orbit about Winterhome. The last four merely took up
station alongside the mother ship. If something deadly rose from
Winterhome, they might be of help.
But nothing broke the curdled clouds. The terminator swung
round until half the disk was lighted, and the Foot was invisible
against the night side. There, just inside the shadow, a red pinpoint
flare! The pinpoint glowed orange, then white, then blinding white,
all within the fraction of a breath. Herdmaster Pastempeh-keph
contracted his pupils. It wasn't enough. He turned away. The lurid
light on the walls of the control complex flared, and held, and
dimmed. He turned back.
A white flare was dimming, expanding, reddening. Rings of
cloud formed and vanished around an expanding hemisphere of
flame. Clouds spread outward through the stratosphere, hiding
what was beneath.
Fistarteh-thuktun spoke formally. "Our footprint is on their sea
bed."
"Attackmaster, it's right in the middle of that stretch of water.
Is that where you wanted it?"
"Exactly on target," said Koothfektil-rusp.
"Well done."
Message Bearer was passing Winterhome at sixty
makasrupkithp per breath; but Winterhome's rotation kept the
Footprint in sight. A fireball stood above the planet's envelope of
air. It clung to the mass of the planet like a flaming leech.
Light reflected orange from a solid stretch of cloud cover. The
fireball stood in a ring of clear air. A ring-shaped ripple beneath the
cloud sheet expanded outward at terrible speed. The ripple picked
up distortions as it traveled.
"The shock wave through the ocean distorts the cloud cover,"
Koothfektil-rusp said. "Like bulges moving beneath a fallen tent.
Our experts will be able to pick out the contours of the continents
and ocean floor by the way they retard the wave."
It was mysterious and horrible. It only suggested the millions
of prey who would drown beneath the clouds and the seawater.
"Thus we achieve equality with the Predecessors," said
Fistarteh-thuktun.
The Herdmaster was jolted. "Are you serious?"
"I don't know. What horror lies beneath that fortunate shroud
of water droplets? How many of the prey will we drown? How much
terrain do we bar to the use of any living thing? What was our own
world like when the Predecessors were dying and our fithp were
brainless beasts?"
The layer of cloud was now flowing backward, into the fireball.
Another layer formed above, high in the stratosphere, beginning to
spread. Waves of blue light formed and dispersed. Pretty pictures,
abstracts, but on an awesome scale...
One may hope that we have not invented a new art form. Awe
and horror: the Herdmaster trampled them deep into the bottom of
his mind. "We came to take Winterhome. Do the thuktunthp hold
knowledge to help us understand this?"
"Perhaps. We accept, do we not, that the Predecessors altered
the natural state of a world? Their world, our world. Now
Winterhome is our world. Look how we distort its natural state.
What did their meddling cost the Predecessors? Have we done
better?"
Have we done better? We must speak again, you and I. But
this path was chosen long ago, and we must follow it.
"Attackmaster. You may assume command of the digit ships. Begin
your landings."
Commander Anton Villars stared through the periscope and tried to
look calm. It wasn't easy. An hour before the message had come to
USS Ethan Allen. The long-wave transmitters were reliable but slow.
The message came in dots and dashes, code tapped out and taken
down to be put through the code machines. It couldn't be orders
to attack the Soviet Union. There was no Soviet Union. Villars had
been prepared to launch his Poseidon missiles against an unseen
enemy in space. Instead:
LARGE OBJECT RPT LARGE OBJECT WILL IMPACT 22.5 S LATITUDE
64.2 E LONGITUDE 1455 HOURS ZULU OBSERVE IF SAFE STOP
IMPACT ENERGIES ESTIMATED AT 4000 MEGATONS RPT 4000
MEGATONS STOP ANY INFORMATION VALUABLE STOP GODSPEED
STOP CARRELL
Safe? From four thousand megatons? There wasn't any safety.
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