Impact

'That all?'

'That's plenty big enough.' Abbey inserted the tip of the pick between two broken rocks and pried them apart with a sucking sound of mud, and wrestled them up the slope. She was getting coated with mud and the rain was trickling down her neck, but she didn't care. She was about to make the discovery of a lifetime.

Randy Worth screwed the Marea's engine panel back on and wiped off his greasy fingerprints. He shifted position and shined the light down into the engine compartment--everything looked normal, no sign of his work. He set the hatch back in place and dogged it down tight, again wiping it clean of greasy marks.

The tools went back into the backpack, which he zipped up and slung over his shoulder. He stood up and looked around, his eye traveling over every surface, seeking any inadvertent sign of his presence. All clean. He checked the engine settings, circuit breakers, and battery dial to make sure they were all in the position he had found them.

He ducked out of the pilothouse and listened toward the island. The rain was now drumming on the roof and pecking the surrounding ocean, but he could still hear the sounds of digging, the ring of iron against rock, the babble of excited conversation. It sounded like they'd be at it for a while yet.

He moved to the stern, untied his dinghy, and climbed in. His skin itched, his scalp crawled, and something funny was going on behind his eyeballs. Crank was what he needed, and fast. He'd worked hard--he'd earned it. He pulled hard with the oars, so hard that one jumped out of its oarlock. With a curse, his hands trembling, he refitted it and rowed on. Soon the Marea had disappeared in the mist and a few minutes later his own scow loomed up, streaked with rust and oil.

He climbed into his boat and retreated into the cuddy, where he fumbled around for the stash and pipe. He took out a rock with trembling fingers, tried to put it in the bowl, dropped it, swore, hunted it down, managed to get it in, and fired it up.

Oh motherfuck, that was good. He lay back with a groan, feeling his cock go hard with the rush, his thoughts turning to what he would do to those bitches when he got them.

Abbey continued shoveling mud into the bucket and prying out rocks, gradually clearing out the bottom of the crater where the bedrock had fractured. The rain continued, getting harder, and she could begin to hear surf on the invisible rocks below. A swell was making--they had better finish soon.

She pried out an exceptionally big rock and Jackie climbed down to help her manhandle it out of the hole. She probed some more with the shovel, then got on her hands and knees and felt about in the chilly muck with her hands. 'It really busted things up down here. But I think we're getting close.'

'You look a fright,' said Jackie, with a laugh.

'You don't look like a debutante at the cotillion either.'

More rocks, more mud came out of the hole. She stopped to feel around the muck with her hands.

'Abbey, we're not finding any meteorite.'

'It's here. It's got to be.'

She got on her knees and scooped mud off the granite bedrock below. The rain began washing the bedrock clean. Abbey could see, with mounting excitement, a radiative pattern of cracks in the bedrock, but the mud kept flowing in. 'It's got to be right here,' she said loudly, as if to make it so. She scooped more mud and rocks into the bucket.

'It wasn't one of the rocks we tossed out, was it?' Jackie asked.

'I told you, it's nickel iron!'

'Whoa, just asking.'

Exasperated, her heart sinking, Abbey felt all over the bottom of the depression. Perhaps the meteorite was wedged so firmly it felt like part of the bedrock. She scooped as much of the mud and gravel up with her hands as she could, filling the bucket a few more times.

'Jackie, fill that bucket with seawater and we'll wash this clean.'

Jackie disappeared down the hill with the bucket, and returned a few minutes later. Abbey dashed it over the muddy, broken layer of bedrock.

There was a gurgling sound and the water ran down a hole in the bedrock, just like going down the drain of a sink.

'What the fuck?' She stuck her fingers in the hole.

'I'll get some more water.'

Jackie jogged back up the hill with the bucket slopping water over the side. Abbey snatched the bucket and poured it into the pit. Once again the water disappeared, as if down a drain, this time exposing a perfectly round hole in the bedrock, about four inches in diameter, going straight down into the Earth. A web of cracks radiated from it.

Abbey removed her glove and stuck her hand in the hole, feeling down as far as she could. The sides were as smooth as glass, a cylindrical hole so perfect it could have been drilled.

She seized a pebble and dropped it into the center of the hole. After a moment, she heard a faint splash from below.

Abbey stared up at Jackie. 'It's not here. The meteorite isn't here.'

'Where is it?'

'It just kept going.' And, despite all her efforts to stifle it, she began to sob.

32

The ruined monastery was crowded with fleeing villagers, the monks laying out sick people in the bombed-out sanctuary and bringing them food and water. The sound of crying children and weeping mothers mingled with the babble of confused and terrified voices. As Ford looked around for the abbot, he was startled to see orange-robed monks carrying heavy weapons, bandoliers of ammunition slung over their shoulders, evidently patrolling the trails coming in from the mountains. In the distance, over the hilltops, he could see a black column of smoke rotating into the hot sky.

He finally found the abbot, kneeling over a sick boy, comforting him and giving him sips of water from an old Coke bottle. The abbot looked up at him. 'How did you do it?'

'Long story.'

He nodded and said, simply, 'Thank you.'

'I need a private place to make a satellite call,' said Ford.

'The cemetery.' He gestured toward a mossy trail.

Leaving the chaotic scene at the monastery behind, Ford made his way into a thinned area of forest. Scattered among the trees were dozens of stupas, small towers, each containing the ashes of a revered monk. The stupas had once been gilded and painted but now they were faded by time, some broken and tumbling to the ground. Ford found a quiet spot among the tombs, took out his satellite phone, plugged it into a handheld computer, and dialed.

A moment later Lockwood's thick voice came on. It was 2 A.M. in D.C. 'Wyman? Did you succeed?'

'You're a damned liar, Lockwood.'

'Just hold on. What do you mean?'

'You knew all along where the mine was. The damn thing's huge, you couldn't miss it from space. Why did you lie to me? What was the purpose of this charade?'

'There are reasons for everything--excellent reasons. Now: do you have the readings I asked for?'

Ford controlled his anger. 'Yes. Everything. Photographs, radiation measurements, GPS coordinates.'