Judgment Day (44 page)

CHAPTER 88 WOUNDED

Meteor Crater, near Flagstaff, Arizona, is one of the youngest impact craters found on the Earth. . . . Between 5 and 20 megatons of kinetic energy were released during the impact, which left a bowl-shaped crater roughly 1.2 km in diameter and 200 m deep, surrounded by an extensive blanket of ejecta.

—
THE NEW SOLAR SYSTEM
, J. KELLY BEATTY, BRIAN O'LEARY AND ANDREW CHAIKIN (EDS.I)

C
olonel Watson felt like a fool for falling for Mark Shepherd's "Look over there" trick, but for a moment he had believed Shepherd's threat to drop an asteroid on him and his men. Now Watson realized it was all deception and he was furious with himself for falling for it. He hadn't expected to capture one of their ships, but now he had a chance.

"Shoot it down," Watson ordered.

The
Genesis
was illuminated with a laser by one soldier, the second holding the missile. A few seconds later a tone indicated a tracking lock.

"Aim for the power plant," Watson ordered. "That should disable it and bring it down."

The private shifted his weapon from the center of the rising ship toward the drive unit, but still didn't fire.

"Fire, Private, before it gets too high. We want it intact." When the soldier didn't respond Colonel Watson turned on him. "Soldier, I'm ordering you to fire that weapon."

Then the young man lowered the weapon, turning to face his commander.

"I can't fire, sir. There's innocent people inside."

Watson's humiliation grew. Brow-beaten by Fry, tricked by Shepherd, and now his own men disobeying him. Watson was desperate to regain the respect a colonel deserved. Yanking the weapon away from the soldier, Colonel Watson put the missile launcher to his shoulder.

"I'm going to court-martial you," Watson said, reaiming the weapon as the
Genesis
climbed toward orbit.

"Keep the laser on the power plant, soldier," Watson ordered.

"I can't, sir. It's rotating away from us."

"Then aim dead center. It's not getting away."

As his head tilted up with the weapon, tracking the ship, Watson noticed a bright dot in the sky above him. Suddenly he realized that Shepherd hadn't lied about sterilizing the compound. Watson fired the missile, then dropped the launcher, shouting to his men to run for cover. Confused by their commander's retreat, the soldiers hesitated until they too saw the bright dot swelling above them. Dropping weapons as they ran, they scattered in all directions, running for their lives.

Seconds later the missile caught the fleeing ship, exploding on contact. Pieces of the hull sprayed from one of the cylinders, black dots against the bright sky. Then more dots fell from the
Genesis
—they were people, dripping like blood from the wounded ship. Some of the falling drops were children.

CHAPTER 89 DELIVERY

If a projectile is large enough, it can survive passage through the Earth's atmosphere, more or less intact and strike the ground or the ocean at high velocity. The threshold size for survival depends on the material strength and density of the body and on its velocity at the time of encounter; for a stony body, this size appears to be about 150 m . . .

—
THE NEW SOLAR SYSTEM
, T. KELLY BEATTY, BRIAN O'LEARY AND ANDREW CHAIKIN (EDS.)

M
icah followed the asteroid deep into the atmosphere, paralleling it rather than trailing it. As it fell, the asteroid's surface would heat, vaporizing volatile metals on the surface, and if hot enough, the entire mass. Micah's goal was to bring it through the upper atmosphere intact and then allow it to pick up enough speed to annihilate the complex without endangering the troops occupying the town. Once the
Exodus
had released the asteroid, controlling the fall became more difficult. With its asymmetrical mass and constant rotation, the gold asteroid sheared out of every gravity field that Micah tried to envelope it with. The best he could do was repeatedly re-form the field, slowing the asteroid in fits and starts, keeping it from accelerating to speeds where it would vaporize.

Before evacuating the launch complex, Mark had arranged for a homing signal to be broadcast, and Micah's navigational computer was keeping his ship on track. Micah concentrated on the asteroid, keeping it on a parallel course, at the same rate of descent. A chirping sound from the computer indicated he let the asteroid go. Now in free-fall, gravity took over, accelerating the asteroid, building up the kinetic energy that would be released when contact with the ground converted it to heat.

As he watched the asteroid turn into a meteor, Shelly called from the
Genesis
.

"Micah, this is Shelly. Are you there, Micah?"

"I'm here, Shelly," Micah said, happy to hear his wife's voice.

"We've been hit by a missile. We can't pressurize one of the cylinders and the drive has been damaged. We've lost one of our fields and we're barely maintaining lift."

Instantly Micah rotated the sphere, scanning for the
Genesis
.

"Give me a beacon, Shelly."

Micah's computer picked up the signal and fed the coordinates to navigation. Accelerating as fast as his body could stand, Micah angled into the sky, breaking the sound barrier as he passed into a cloud bank. Closing rapidly, he slowed, his radar picking up the ship, ahead and above.

"I see you, Shelly."

"We've lost a second drive, Micah. We're going down."

Wobbling, the
Genesis
dropped, picking up speed as the remaining power plant struggled to keep the ship in the sky.

Rolling the sphere violently, Micah's head smacked the headrest, his ear painfully crushed. Diving, he chased the
Genesis
down, coming in above and upside down, looking for the docking ring.

"I'm above you, Shelly. Lock the ring as soon as I've docked."

"It's too late, Micah," Ira said. "There's not enough time."

In the background Micah could hear people crying. They had packed everyone into the two intact cylinders, using every available space including the flight deck.

"Shut up, Ira," Micah said. "I'm working."

Warning lights winked on, the skin of the sphere overheating. Recklessly, Micah chased the falling ship, bringing himself over the docking ring, trying to match the movements of the wobbling ship. Feeling he had the rhythm of the
Genesis
, he took the sphere down, trying to insert the docking probe into the docking ring, but the ship rocked unexpectedly, and he hit the ring at an angle, bouncing off the ship in a scream of tearing metal. As he steadied his gyrating ship, the indicator lights on his docking board all went red, the docking probe hopelessly damaged.

"It's over, Micah," Ira said. "We'll see you in Glory."

Micah could see the ground rushing up at them.
Genesis
wasn't in free fall but it was accelerating and the impact would destroy the ship and kill everyone on board.

"Shelly, open the loading bay in the damaged cylinder."

"What?"

"Open it, Shelly!" Micah shouted.

The hatch cracked, then slowly opened, the doors opening out, the winds buffeting them, threatening to rip them off. Micah flew the sphere in front of the falling ship, again watching the roll of the
Genesis
, timing his move.

"Micah, don't do it!" Shelly shouted. "We can't both die—the children, Micah."

"I'm working here, Shelly," Micah said, then his sphere shot forward, and with a scream of metal jammed itself into the cargo bay.

Stunned from the impact, Micah hung limp in his harness until the pain from a broken arm roused him. Using his good arm, he checked the indicator board for his drive—the drive wasn't damaged. Powering up the drive to levels never used, he extended the field, enveloping as much of the ship as he could. Within the gravity field of the sphere he had no sensation of up and down, and he waited for impact, not knowing whether his little sphere could add enough lift to save the
Genesis
. Just when he thought it had worked the ship hit, slamming his broken arm against the chair, consciousness briefly dissipating, the sphere nearly disgorged from the gullet of the ship—but he lived, and the ship was still whole. After a brief eternity Shelly's voice was in his aching head.

"Micah, you did it," Shelly said.

"But we hit."

"Not hard. We bounced. We're rising slowly, but the
Rock of Ages
is on the way. Are you all right in there? We can't get you out until we dock at New Hope."

"Pressure's still good but the controls aren't responding," Micah said.

"What about you?" "We lost nine people, Micah. Four children."

"Who, Shelly?"

"Mrs. Robeson and her baby. The Samms lost both their twins, Sydney and Taylor. Rob and Erin Kenton and their oldest boy, Jeff. Betty Lambert and Kelly Young."

Micah knew them all, and the pain was more than he could bear. He began to weep.

CHAPTER 90 IMPACT

No man is a Christian who cheats his fellows, perverts the truth, or speaks of a "clean bomb," yet he will be the first to make public his faith in God.

—
MORE IN ANGER
, MARYA MANNES

T
he Gilroys lost their ranch to the military once the quarantine on the Fellowship was imposed. Now media access to the hill overlooking the Fellowship's compound was restricted. Roland Symes had been invited to witness the take-over of the Fellowship compound, as were Bill Towers and Wyatt Powder and their news crews. Roland knew they had been selected because they had shown no love for the Fellowship, although hid it behind a thin veneer of objectivity.

Video cameras had captured the brief firelight and the retreat of the cultists to the launch facilities. Even more spectacular was the escape attempt of the
Genesis and
the subsequent missile attack. The explosion was recorded, but they were too distant to assess the damage. Then came the most dramatic video,- the fall of the
Genesis
, the chase by the sphere, and finally the sphere's collision. Somehow the pilot of the
Genesis had
regained control in the nick of time, plowing a furrow in the earth and then caroming into the air again.

Thinking the action was over, Roland, Powder, and Towers watched as trucks rumbled toward the launch compound, loaded with equipment and

engineers ready to occupy the facility and uncover the secrets of the cult's technology.

"Looks like it's over," Towers said. "I want to get a look inside their facility. You've been in there, haven't you, Symes?"

"Once, but there were lower levels I never saw," Roland said. "I wouldn't get my hopes up. Everything of value will be gone or destroyed."

"The military has techno-wizards that can reconstruct what went on in their factory from the microscopic residue on the walls," Towers said. "It's the end of their monopoly on space."

"Look down there," Powder said suddenly. "It looks like the army is retreating."

Grabbing his binoculars, Roland could see soldiers running in all directions.

"In the sky," Powder shouted.

Streaking above was a bright object trailing flame. Roland backed away, fighting the instinct to run, fascinated by what was to come. Towers stumbled back into his cameraman and they went down in a heap. Powder turned tail and ran, his cameraman holding his ground, camera tracking the asteroid all the way down.

The explosion was spectacular. Blinding flash like a nuclear bomb, an earsplitting boom, then the shock wave of pressurized air knocking lawn chairs and people to the ground. Both cameramen were on the ground now, steadying their cameras on the orange ball that had been the launch compound. Hot wind warmed their faces even at this distance. The fireball was dissipating now into a roiling mass of dust and debris, towering high into the air, forming a mushroom cloud, symbol of the nuclear age.

"Radiation," Towers said. "We have to get away from here."

"It wasn't a nuclear bomb," Roland said.

"If it wasn't a bomb—" Towers started.

"It was a rock—a man-made meteorite," Roland said. "I hope those techno-wizards you were talking about are good at the atomic level, because the cult's secrets have just been atomized."

CHAPTER 91 DISCOVERY

In humankind's conception of God, the supreme being is supposed to be omniscient. Yet a reading of the Bible shows that each of God's plans is ultimately thwarted by Satan. If God has the intellectual advantage, how is this possible?

—
A HISTORY OF GOOD AND EVIL
, ROBERT WINSTON, PH.D.

F
ry filled every one of Thorpe's demands quickly and without question. Thorpe had the latest equipment, endless supplies, even a popcorn machine in the lounge—fresh popped corn one of the many weaknesses he indulged. Sitting with his feet up on his desk, he munched popcorn and drank a Diet Coke, watching video of the raid on the cult compound. Like watching a theatrical film, he cheered when the soldiers attacked, screaming at the cultists to run like the cowards he knew they were. His assistants stayed on the other side of the wall, working at meaningless tasks he assigned them. Behind him the rebuilt sphere sat waiting—it could float, but control of the ship eluded him.

He now knew the drive functioned when particles were fired into a chamber from three particle guns. What happened to the particles once inside he could only guess. He also knew the drive chamber was polarized and the magnetic field intensified exponentially when the particles were fired. Faster firing meant a stronger field, but only to a point, then more rapid fire seemed to have no effect. He also knew that the by-product of the firing was a reduction in gravity immediately surrounding the sphere—he could float it. He assumed the chamber held a vacuum, but firing metallic particles through a magnetic field into a vacuum did not neutralize gravity, at least not in his lab where he had tried it a hundred times.

The secret was in the drive chamber itself, but he couldn't crack the casing until they had additional ships, and they couldn't get those until he could fly this one.

The video came to his favorite part, the
Genesis
taking off, the missile seeking its target, then the explosion and the bodies falling from the ship. Stopping the action after the last of the bodies hit the ground, he rewound, stuffing another handful of popcorn in his mouth, then soaking the mass in his mouth with a swig of Diet Coke. As the picture ran backward he noticed the dust clouds below the ship. Reversing, then freezing the picture, he leaned forward studying the dust, seeing patterns. Tracing them with his finger he could see three clearly overlapping lines. Pushing PLAY he watched the dust, picking out the lines that changed subtly. Understanding dawning, he set the player to run a loop, watching the dust clouds over and over. Eventually, he rifled through boxes until he found a recording of the cult on the moon. Watching the powdery moon dust dance, he could see three lines again—three fields, three particle guns. Scrounging through his cabinet again, he found recordings of the earliest launches of the cult—there was little dust to watch, since they always launched off the concrete pad.

It was a clue, but when he fired the particle guns he saw no evidence of multiple fields. Still, if he fired them simultaneously—no, not simultaneously, but in series? Shouting to his assistants, he rousted them from their hiding place, putting them to work. Stuffing his mouth with the last of his popcorn he thought of Ira Breitling and the murder of Constance.

"I'm coming, Ira Breitling, I'm coming after you."

Then he turned to his anxious assistants, shouting orders with renewed vigor.