'Might not have to. Incoming from the Wink shuttle.' He put it on visual. 'Go ahead, Alpha.'
The woman pilot looked down at him. 'We've got an emergency, Kosmik. Please let me speak with Dr. Truscott.'
The director stepped forward. 'I'm here. What's the problem?'
'We still have people in the tunnels. They aren't going to make it out before the deadline.'
'Why not?' Truscott bit off the words, like pieces of ice.
'They were trying to finish up. Sorry. I don't have control over this. Can you delay the firing?'
Truscott let her hang a moment. 'How long?'
'An hour,' Hutch said. She sounded desperate. 'One hour.'
'You have any idea how much trouble this makes for us? What it costs?'
'Please,' said Hutch. Her eyes were wet and red. 'If you go ahead, you'll kill them.'
She let the pilot see her contempt. 'One hour,' she said, finally. 'And that's it.'
Hutch nodded, and looked relieved. 'Thanks.'
When the link had been broken, Sill said evenly, 'That's a mistake.'
'We'll argue about it later. Get the word out. Tell everyone to stand down. One hour.'
Kosmik Ground Control South, Aloft. Friday; 0954 hours.
The first white lamp lit. The nuclear weapon at Delta Point had just armed.
lan Helm sat in the right-hand seat of his shuttle. No clouds obscured his view. The south polar ice sheet spread out below him, from the ridges along the Koranda Border, which masked the line of the northernmost volcanoes, to Dillman Harbor, where they'd set up the first base camp two years ago. He remembered standing in that great silence, cold even through the Flickinger field because his heating unit had malfunctioned, warmed rather by the exhilaration of the moment, by the knowledge that he would one day annihilate this ice continent, melt its mountains and its foothills, fill its valleys and rills with steam and rain. In a single glorious sequence, he would convert this wasteland into the stuff of regeneration. No one would ever really give him credit, of course. Caseway and Truscott would take all of that. And they deserved it; he didn't begrudge them their due. He was satisfied that the design was his. And the finger on the detonator.
'lan.' A green light flashed on the instrument panel. 'Sill's on the circuit. Wants to talk.'
The blue and white glare from icecap and ocean hurt his eyes. Helm looked at his pilot. 'Jane,' he said, 'do we have a disconnect?'
She frowned. 'Just pull the plug.'
He yanked it out. 'Let everybody know that we're worried about the possibility of bogus instructions. Set up a code word. No one is to accept a transmission without it.'
'What code word?'
He thought briefly. 'Fidelity.' Jane looked troubled. 'I'll put it in writing.'
'Truscott won't be happy.'
'I'm saving her from herself,' he said.
Two more lamps blinked on. One at Little Kiska close to the pole, and the other at Slash Basil inside a volcano.
'Eventually, she'll thank me.'
LIBRARY ENTRIES
The velocity of a tsunami equals the square root of gravitational acceleration times the depth of the water. Depths in the ocean surrounding the southern icecap on Quraqua are relatively modest; the velocity of the wave could be expected to diminish in the narrow confines of the Yakata. Calculation shows that a major tsunami, traveling at the unlikely average speed of 850 kilometers per hour, could not reach the Temple within four hours. At WOO hours, Jacobi was correct in believing he still had a substantial safety margin from waves originating at the ice pack.
However, in their concern about tsunamis, the Academy team overlooked a more immediate danger: shock waves triggered by the collapse of the ice pack would travel at 7.1 kilometers per second, arriving at the Temple area in about six minutes.
A major fault, running east to west across the Yakata, would react to the shock waves by triggering a seismic response. This secondary earthquake would almost certainly generate sea waves. It was these waves which struck the coastline approximately eleven minutes after the initial detonation.
— Barnhard Golding,
God on Quraqua: The Temple Mission (2213) Eberhardt & Hickam, Chicago
Let your courage shine before you, fear nothing, take no thought for your well-being. Live by the law, and know that, in your darkest hour, I am at your side.
— Fragment from Knothic Hours (Translated by Margaret Tufu)*
'Original hard copy includes notation 'Let us hope so' in translator's handwriting, dated Friday, June 11, 2202.
14
Temple of the Winds. Friday; 0943 hours
The two chases constituted the essence of the find. Rescue these, with their text relatively intact, and they would have all they could reasonably hope for. Therefore, despite the urgency, Richard moved with caution. He and Henry took the time they needed to extricate the artifacts from their tomb and start them up the tunnel. George moved ahead of them, removing obstacles and where necessary widening the passage.
They reached the vertical shaft at four minutes to ten.
Henry shone a light upward. 'What do you think? Wait it out here until after zero hour? If there's a quake while we're in the shaft, the chases could get damaged.'
Richard could not help but admire Henry's singleminded-ness. A quake in the shaft would damage more than the chases. On the other hand, he couldn't see that they were any safer staying put. 'Let's keep moving,' he said.
A line stretched up into the dark. George passed it to Henry, and they secured it around the first of the artifacts.
'Melanie, we have a problem.'
She had known there would be problems. There were always problems when you tried to shut down an operation this size. 'What is it, Harvey?'
He looked unhappy. 'Helm won't answer up.'
They were inside two minutes. 'Forget him. Call the control posts direct.'
'1 tried. Signals are locked out. We need a password.'
'Hutch.' Truscott's voice. 'Go ahead, Kosmik.'
The director's face was red with anger. 'I've been unable to get through to our stations. Detonation will proceed as scheduled.'
'But we've still got people down there,' Hutch protested.
'I'm sorry. We'll assist any way we can. Keep us informed.'
Ten o'clock.
The southern sky brightened. A second sun might have ignited just below the horizon. Hutch looked away. 'Richard.'
'Okay.'
'It's started. I can see it from here.'
'All right. Keep cool. We're coming. We've got time.'
The sea was calm.
'Ready here,' said George. He was at the top of the shaft.
'Look okay?' Henry asked Richard.
'Yes. Let's do it.'
