By this time the sky was incandescent, pulsing like the light atop a police car, and the temperature was well over one hundred ten degrees Fahrenheit.
She touched Jake’s arm. “I’m going to speak to the captain,” she said.
“He told us to stay in our rooms. What the devil is this? It’s hotter than hell out here. Is it some kind of nuclear war or something?”
As calmly as she could, she gave him the sixty-second version of the disaster. “It’s the end of the world as we know it, Jake,” she concluded. “You were too busy having fun today, I didn’t want to spoil it for you.” She left him standing there stunned, and ran up toward the bridge.
Encountering one of the ship’s officers, she asked what news was coming in from the outside world. “None,” was the reply. “Not asound.” Then the officer reaffirmed what the captain had said: that the ship’s systems were all functioning, antennas in place, skilled operators anxiously rotating dials. But no signals had been detected—not for the last half hour. He barred her way toward the control center, saying, “The captain ordered it, ma’am—and that means everybody. That’s his exact words, ma’am.”
The tension throughout the ship was now palpable. The sky continued to glow unnaturally, and the heat coming from every angle created the feeling that the vessel and everyone aboard was in a pressure cooker.
After an hour—an agonizing hour—the red glow diminished, the sky turned a murky purple-blue, and the heat started gradually to ease. The immediate crisis seemed to have passed. Jane and the others felt relieved, dazed, and most of all, bewildered.
The first shock wave arrived at a little past four in the morning with a dull thud and a shuddering of the ship. But there was no visible damage, and Captain Nordstrom again gave a brief and calming message over the loudspeaker system. Three hours later, the
Shortly after the first shock wave passed, a large ocean swell, some fifty feet high, surged under the hull. Nordstrom and his officers had been on the alert for just such a contingency, and had positioned the ship so that the wave presented no threat to the vessel. Still, the sudden rise and descent was an unwelcome surprise to nervous systems already stressed to the maximum.
The night hours eventually passed; but the sun did not appear at its usual time. There was a heavy gray cloud cover, tinted with patches of red, particularly to the northwest, where as was later discovered, fires were raging on the land. Then, in midmorning, instead of the sky brightening, light began to wane. Abruptly, the ship was plunged into total blackness. The outside temperature, which had been alarmingly hot, and then moderated, now began to plummet. Soon the deck railings were covered with thin sheets of ice.
Inside their seagoing cocoon, most passengers felt relatively comfortable. But their mental and emotional state was anything but untroubled. In a strange way, incredulity served to avert panic. The situation was beyond anything these people could ever have imagined, or learned to fear, so that they were dazed almost more than they were frightened.
About noon, the captain spoke again, giving reassurances about the well-being of the ship. “We were refueled and provisioned at Richards Bay the day before yesterday,” he said, “so we are amply supplied and capable of cruising, if need be, through several weeks of dark and cold. Besides, my meteorologist has every expectation that the skies will soon clear.” It was fairly obvious to all listeners that this “expectation” was based more on hope than on science.
Several times during the afternoon, the captain repeated his reassurances, although since he had no new information, they became less and less comforting. Finally, Jane Warner contacted him to say that she had checked her figures one more time and was now ready to report on her conclusions. So, shortly before dinnertime, the captain was able to tell his anxiously attentive audience that he had something of interest to relate. With that, he informed them about Dr. Warner and the telephone discussion she had held with her fellow academics in Arizona. He concluded his remarks by announcing that Dr. Warner would deliver a lecture that evening, revealing what she had learned from her colleagues, and sharing with everyone her analysis of their situation.
2
If ever there was, in the history of the world, an ultimate bad-news-good-news message, Jane Warner’s presentation was definitely it. Her scientific terminology could not soften the horrifying reality that apparently human civilization had been destroyed. On the other hand, the ship, along with portions of the land nearby, had so far been spared—and perhaps with good reason. This was, as Jane announced at the outset, the bottom line. It was critical, of course, that the darkness abate before too long, for without sunlight there can be no life. There was no way to predict reliably when this might happen; but at least the ship provided safe haven, if need be, for a period of weeks.
From the beginning of that first day—a day without a sunrise—there had been a bustle of activity. The clergy on board held religious services devoted to memorial and supplication. Wilson Hardy asked leaders of the seminar to schedule sessions dedicated to post-disaster survival techniques. The cruise staff organized various diverting activities, such as word games, bingo, and exercise sessions. The children were entertained by a continual round of treasure hunts and capture the flag contests, anything to keep them from asking to go out on deck. But for most passengers—and crew as well—the main activities were listening to the captain’s periodic reports, and peeking out the windows looking for light in the sky.
At the appointed time for the lecture, nearly all of the adult passengers, and many of the crew, assembled in the largest ballroom to hear from the woman who knew the most about what had happened. For those who could not be present because of important duties, or for whom there was no room, her remarks were carried all over the ship on the loudspeaker system.
“Yes, it seemed safe to assume that the diversion technique would work again. A real no-brainer,” Jane Demming Warner said. Her words descended on the hushed audience like so much fallout, irradiating their minds and searing their souls. “To guard against the possibility of rocket failure, an additional two launches were added to the four that had been used previously. This time there were three rockets from the United States and three from Russia. Then, for assurance against failure of a bomb, each of the six rockets was armed with three nuclear warheads. All you really needed was one functioning warhead on one functioning rocket, yet the redundancy was warranted since there was time for only one attempt.
“This was a high-speed chase scene,” Jane continued. “The comet raced through space at a speed of forty- two kilometers per second, literally pursuing the earth—and we move pretty briskly ourselves with an orbital speed of about thirty kilometers per second. So, the overtaking velocity was twelve kilometers per second. Things would have been even dicier if the comet had been traveling toward us head-on—at a combined speed of seventy-two kilometers per second. But consider, twelve kilometers per second translates into more than one million kilometers per day. And, to picture the arena in which the event occurred, remember that the average distance between the earth and the sun is only about one hundred fifty million kilometers.”
The captain sat with his arms folded, his eyes half-closed, absorbing the information. Like nearly everyone else aboard, he had only half-listened to the news reports about the planned diversion. The event had seemed as unreal as a science fiction novel, and was now as ominous as the morning headlines that would never be published. It seemed absurd when reduced to physics and numbers, inconceivable, totally beyond comprehension.
Jane shuffled through her papers and then continued. “NASA, DOD, the Russians, and other foreign experts, working in a joint committee, selected an intercept spot about as far away from Earth as the moon is—four hundred thousand kilometers, about two hundred fifty thousand miles. Fortunately, the moon was scheduled to be on the other side of the earth at the time of impact, so it would not get in the way. That was considered fortunate. Oh, yes! Some good fortune!” She looked up from her notes, hoping to catch a smile, but saw only blank, numbed faces. “Now, four hundred thousand kilometers is pretty far away when we consider the complexities of aiming a high- speed missile from Earth; but it’s awfully close when we’re dealing with an overtaking velocity of a million
