Prophets

saturated to burn very well. If it had been the dry season, Flynn would have already been looking at thousands of hectares of smoldering forest.

He flew down close to the site, looping it twice, recording all the data he could with the craft sensors. Then he approached for a landing in the thickest part of the burn zone.

“Shouldn’t you call this in?”

“Yeah, I should.” The little craft slowed until it was lifted only by the contragrav, and slowly began to drift down. “I should also clear any landings with base before descent.”

“As long as we’re clear on the rules here.”

Flynn tweaked the descent until the craft was over a relatively flat patch of bare ground. With the contragrav at 85 percent, the little flier drifted gently to the ground, rocking slightly on its landing skids. Once settled, he cut the contragrav, and the whole ship shifted as the ground took the ship’s full five-thousand-kilo weight.

“We’re here.” Flynn threw off the harness, turned around in the pilot’s chair, and grabbed the survey kit from its slot behind the cockpit.

“Hey, I understand—I want to see this, too. But call this in before you step out there. I’m just as fucked as you if you get pinned under a burning tree and no one knows where we are.”

Flynn sighed. He turned around and flipped a switch. A light flashed on the console showing an active beacon. He turned on the communicator and said, “This is Flynn Jorgenson, in survey craft 103. Disembarking at 0°15’5.25” North, 78°42’14.38” West. Assessing probable meteor impact site.” He hit the “Transmit Repeat” button without waiting for base to acknowledge him.

“Happy, Grandma?” He grabbed the survey kit again, and hit the release for the hatch.

The hatch slid aside along the fuselage, letting in air thick with the smell of smoke and steam. It was bad enough that Flynn’s eyes burned. He grabbed a respirator mask and fitted it over his face. The gasket sealed flush with his overalls, which were made of fireproof ballistic fiber and had their own environmental controls.

He stepped outside and his feet sank into about twenty centimeters of mud and ash. At ground level, the scar of the impact was even more apparent, if that was possible. A trench of bare earth cut down the center of the blast zone, razor-straight. On either side, the splintered remnants of charred trees leaned aside, pointing away from the scar in the ground.

Flynn pulled the camera out of the survey kit and began recording images, topography, infrared, and spectroscopic data.

“You’re quiet,” Flynn said as he slogged through the mud and ash toward the hot spot at the end of this gradually deepening trench.

“I have a bad feeling about this.”

“Why?”

“Does this look like a normal meteor impact?”

Tetsami had a point. Something with enough mass to survive reentry and still be visible during descent should have left a bigger scar. And the oblique angle? Atmospheric breaking and gravity should bring the path near vertical—but this almost looked like a controlled impact . . .

“Holy Jesus Tap-dancing Christ!”

“What?” Flynn snapped his head up from the camera and looked around, suddenly afraid that Tetsami’s burning tree was about to fall on him.

“No, damn it, look at it, look at the fucking egg!”

“Egg? What egg?”

He suddenly saw Tetsami’s effigy appear in his field of vision, face twisted in fear and frustration. She pointed. “THERE! Look THERE!”

Flynn turned around and found himself standing about three hundred meters from the terminus of the impact site. The object was still steaming, and half buried under the mound of mud and clay it had pushed up in front of