Impact

'If it was built to keep tabs on intelligent life,' said Chaudry, 'it's probably got exceedingly powerful artificial intelligence capabilities; one would assume it could decipher any language.'

'How old is it? When was it built?'

Ford spoke up. 'The image shows erosion and pitting by micrometeoroids as well as blanketing by regolith thrown up by ancient impacts. That machine's at least a few hundred million years old.'

Mickelson turned to Chaudry. 'You agree?'

Chaudry scrutinized the image. 'Yes, I do. This is very old.'

'So you think it's real?'

Chaudry hesitated. 'I'd like to see the original images and its location before I answer that question.'

'We don't have time right now for verification,' said Lockwood. 'We have four hours to report to the president. Let's pass by the military option and move on to communication. Assuming it can interpret English, do we communicate with it?'

'We've got to reassure them we mean no harm,' said Chaudry.

'You start pleading peace with them,' Mickelson said, 'that's advertising your weakness.'

'We are weak,' said Chaudry, 'and that machine knows it.'

Silence followed.

Derkweiler raised a hand. 'The Spacewatch group at NPF has been studying ways to divert killer asteroids. Maybe we could use one of their techniques to nudge a large asteroid from the Asteroid Belt and send it plunging into the machine. Like a dinosaur-extinction-size asteroid.'

Chaudry shook his head. 'It would take years to plan such a mission, launch it, and get it to Mars. And we don't even have the technology yet to do it. We've got to tell the president the truth: we have no options.' He glared around the room.

This was followed by another long silence, which Lockwood finally broke. 'We're still hung up on the military option. Forget the military option and let's talk about something else--what the hell is this machine, who put it there, and what's it trying to do?'

Ford cleared his throat. 'It might be defective.'

'Defective?' Chaudry looked surprised.

'It's old. It's been sitting for a long time,' said Ford. 'If it's damaged, maybe there's a way to mislead it. Fool it. Trick it in some way. Its behavior up to this point has been erratic, unpredictable. That may not be deliberate--it may be a sign of malfunctioning.'

'How?' asked Mickelson.

At this a silence fell. Lockwood glanced at his watch. 'It's almost dawn. I ordered a quick breakfast at five in the private dining room. We'll patch over the others and continue the discussion there.'

Ford rose, deliberately leaving his jacket draped on the back of the chair. He exited the room and waited in the hall for the room to empty, the stragglers emerging and making their way to the dining room at the far end of the hall. Ford lingered near the door, watching everyone leave. The second to last to leave was Marjory Leung. She looked like hell. Ford had been sure she was the mole, but she hadn't taken his bait.

Chaudry was the last to emerge from the conference room.

The mission director came out, his hand just withdrawing from his suitcoat pocket. Ford stepped up quickly as if to speak to him confidentially, shot his hand into the pocket, and pulled out a piece of paper.

'What the hell--?' Chaudry cried, his wiry body moving like lightning, his arm shooting out to snatch back the paper, but Ford sprang back out of reach.

He held the paper up before a group of astonished witnesses. 'This is the password to the hard drive. Dr. Chaudry here just lifted it out of my jacket pocket. I said there was a mole in your group. And we just caught him.'

85

Burr stood in the pilothouse, swiveling the spotlight around, peering into the storm. The beam stabbed into the raging murk, showing nothing but boiling water and rocks. Where were they? Had they drifted out of the lee? He fiddled with the dials of the radar, trying to tune in a coherent image beyond the limited range of the light, but all he could get was static.

A bolt of lightning flashed, illuminating the towering rocks on his right. The roar of surf was almost deafening and the water around him was webbed with spindrift, the sea heaving.

'Son of a bitch!' Burr pulled down the VHF mike and pressed transmit. 'Where are you?'

No answer.

'Respond or he's dead!'

Still no answer. Was it a trap? He hollered into the VHF, 'I got the gun at his head and the next one's for him!'

With a sudden roar the boat surged forward, throwing Burr off balance. He seized the passenger seat and arrested his fall, trying to pull himself up as the boat accelerated. 'What the hell are you doing?' he cried, struggling to brace himself and get the gun back over on the fisherman. He stared through the pilothouse windows: the son of a bitch was accelerating the boat straight for the reef, a wall of rock rising from a hell of boiling surf, rain streaming from its ramparts.

'No!' He lunged for the wheel with his left hand while bringing the gun up with his right and firing it almost point-blank at Straw. But the fisherman anticipated the move and jerked the wheel, causing the boat to careen sideways, throwing him off balance. The shot went wide and Burr fell hard, crashing through the flimsy wheel house door to end up sprawled in the rear cockpit.

'Motherfucker!' He struggled to rise, grasping the gunwale railing and pulling himself up into the teeth of the storm. The boat had swung ninety degrees and was still tilting to one side, coming broadside to the sea. Straw jerked the wheel back again, trying to keep Burr off balance. But he seized the rail and hauled himself to his feet despite the tilting deck, bucking and heaving, and braced himself while bringing the gun up and aiming it into the pilothouse at Straw. He was about to fire when he heard a new sound--a full-throated roar of an engine--and turned to see a terrifying sight. A boat suddenly materialized out of the storm, bulling straight at him at full speed, gleaming steel keel splitting the black sea, throwing water to either side. And standing in the forepeak, gripping the rails, like a figurehead from hell, was the girl. He scrambled backward, trying desperately to get out of the way, but at that very moment Straw threw the Halcyon into reverse, guaranteeing a collision and throwing him sideways again. Off-balance, one arm wrapped around the rail, Burr could do nothing but point the weapon and unload it, pulling the trigger one, two, three, four times--

With a deafening crash of pulverized fiberglass, the bow slammed into the gunwale, bursting through it and riding up on the deck; Burr made one final effort to throw himself out of the way but he still didn't have his footing on the bucking deck. The bow struck him square in the chest with a massive bone-crunching blow. It felt like his rib cage had been shoved into his spinal cord and he hurtled through the air, plummeted into the raging waters, sinking helplessly down into the black, cold, crushing depths.

86