Projectile fragments.”
I spit crumbs. “In there?” The city center was still a molten, orange pit.
“In protective suits.”
“Protective? But the fragments—”
“Aren’t radioactive.” He nodded. “Not even explosive. These devices are just large masses moving at high speeds. Enough kinetic energy to incinerate a city. Last century, humans bombed Dresden and Tokyo into firestorms with incendiaries. But big rocks from space work, too. Ask the dinosaurs.”
“Why hunt fragments?”
He rolled his eyes at the smoke. “What else have we got to study? But we pegged the enemy as extra-solar system that way. The metals were too exotic for our neighborhood.”
I had a feeling Howard’s neighborhood and mine differed by light-years. He fitted me out with a goggled, rubber respirator mask. One of those firefighter-technology deals with the little sidepack that manufactures oxygen. Over our uniforms we each wore fire-resistant coveralls and boot covers. I also got to wear an empty backpack.
We drove toward the city center until the rubble deepened, then left his ancient car, he called it a Jeep, and hiked.
Smoke, flickering firelight, and my goggles blurred tipped, brick walls that towered above us, poised to crush us at every turn.
My heart pounded. I glanced around at the debris, expecting to find a bloody, severed limb or a charred body under every drywall slab.
“Jason, don’t expect this to be a graves-registration detail.”
“A what?”
“We won’t see many recognizable remains. When a skyscraper collapses on a body, a person disappears.”
I squeezed my eyes shut at the image. Respirator or not, I breathed through my mouth and still smelled burned flesh.
Howard held his aluminum walking stick out for balance and high-wired across a blackened girder that bridged a brick pile. I followed, knees shaking. I joined him on the other side as the girder groaned, snapped, and a ton of bricks cascaded next to Howard.
“Watch out!”
He waved his stick. “You’ll get used to it”
Insulated suit notwithstanding, sweat trickled down my cheeks inside the mask. My lenses fogged. As we closed on ground zero, buildings no longer existed separately. I recognized only occasional doorframes or papered walls. A corkscrewed electrovan bumper wore a charred sticker, mt.
LEBANON HONOR STUDENT. I swallowed.
“How do you find things in this mess, Howard?” He shrugged. “Practice. And instinct My grandfather was a prospector.” He paused. “Did you lose family in this, Jason?” His voice buzzed through his respirator.
“All of it. My mom. Indianapolis.”
He stopped. “I’m sorry.”
I shrugged. “You?”
“My only living relative was an uncle who lived in Phoenix.”
“So we’re both orphans.”
“Lot of that going around, these days.” He duck-walked under a blackened wood beam angled between two rubble piles.
“Howard! That looks shaky!”
“I have a nose for these things.” He waved his hand without turning around, then poked ashes aside with his walking stick. “Holy Moly!”
Definitely an Intel weenie. Any self-respecting GI would have said “fuck!”
He bent and tugged at something. “Jason, come over—”
The debris mound that supported one end of the beam rattled. Above Howard’s head, pulverized brick pebbles trickled.
The beam above him teetered.
I lunged. “Howard!”
Whump.
Dust swirled. Where there had been Howard there was now a wall-board-and-charred-lumber mound.
“Howard!”
No answer but the fire’s roar.
I had liked Howard. He was as goofy as Walter Loren-zen but as genuine.
I dug, flinging board and plaster and found a boot, a pant leg, then all of Howard. The beam pinned his chest.
I brushed dust from his mask lenses.
“Howard?”
He opened his eyes and gasped. “Holy Moly!”
The beam’s charcoal surface crumbled warm in my hands but on the second try I budged it, and he wriggled out.
I dropped the beam and made an ash cloud, then faced him.
He stood staring down at an object he turned in his gloved hands.
“Howard, you okay?”
“Perfect. Thank you, Jason. You saved my life. More important, you saved this.”
“What is it?”
“Not sure. But it’s alien.”
He held up a prune-size twisted metal bit, so hot his insulated glove smoked. “This iridescent blue’s characteristic of a Projectile hull. Like titanium, but with trace elements rare in the solar system.”
“It’s worth getting killed for?”
He frowned inside his mask. “Nah. This shrapnel is all we ever find.” He waved a hand at the ruins. “We have no idea where to look for anything larger. We’ve tried every sorting and detection device and methodology.”
We walked as he talked.
I pointed at rubble. It looked… different “What about there?”
Howard turned. “Why?”
I shrugged. “I dunno. Something.”
Howard shrugged, and we dug.
Two minutes later, I touched it. Inside my suit, hair stood on my neck.
“Howard…” I wrapped my gloved fingers around something curved, then yanked.
It popped loose, and I stumbled back.
The thing I held was iridescent, blue metal, dinner-plate size, and so hot it warmed my skin through my gloves.
Howard pounced from where he had been digging and snatched it away, muttering, “Holy Moly, Holy Moly.”
He rotated the fragment. The convex side was scorched black. “This was the exterior surface. It was coated with ceramic that friction burned away as the Projectile entered our atmosphere.”
“It’s important?”
“Biggest frag we’ve ever found. Most of the Projectile vaporizes.” He drew his finger along one side of the fragment. It was a round edge, like somebody had taken a bite, and silver. “But this part here is the prize.”
“What?”
“My educated hunch—the army puts up with me because I have good educated hunches—is this is a rocket- nozzle edge.”
“So?”
He punched a button on a handheld global-positioning unit, and it beeped. I supposed he was marking the location where we found this little treasure. He motioned for me to turn around, unzipped my backpack, slipped
