“You all right?” asked Val, touching his shoulder.
“A miracle,” muttered fat Walter.
Val didn’t comment. He took his seat at the dead controls. Power cell checked out at full charge. He ran his fingers over the controls—turning everything off. As he opened the switches one by one, the panel lit up again. Glancing out the port he saw a crew trying to right an overturned craft. Other groups of hunters could be seen milling around silent machines.
“A miracle,” repeated Walter.
“We’ll see,” said Val.
His was the only craft in flying condition. Something had overloaded circuits and erased meck brains for miles around. Craters dotted the buckeye camp. All he saw were skeletons—human and Agromeck. Piles of bones. Broken bodies scattered along the perimeter—some covered with Agrifoam. Nothing moved except the rising columns of smoke. He circled the camp recording the desolation with the craft’s optic banks.
“There’s your miracle,” sneered Val. “Olga has wiped out the buckeyes completely.”
Walter didn’t notice.
“Didn’t you hear her voice—Olga’s voice?”
Val set down beside a smoking Agromeck.
“What voice?”
Walter tried to get the Huntercraft to play it back, but its recent memory was blank. The craft put in a request to the CO to see if any other sensor reported Olga’s voice. The CO didn’t answer.
“Class Two here,” came the response finally.
“Where’s the Class One?” asked Val nervously.
“The meteor destroyed too many of his circuits. His ego did not survive. I will handle his functions until he can be rebuilt,” said the Class Two.
“What meteor?” asked Val.
“A big one. Impacted near the Coweye Sump—formed a new lake about thirty miles in diameter. Many shaft cities collapsed.”
Val was impressed.
“What was your request of the CO?” asked the CT.
“Did you hear Olga’s words?” asked Walter eagerly.
“I have snatches of many conversations from all over the globe. This meteor shower hit everywhere. Give me some key words from the message, and I’ll try to match them up.”
Walter coughed. The excitement had precipitated a little pulmonary edema and the domino mask of cyanosis had darkened his lips and the skin around his eyes. He tried to remember.
“Children of Olga,” he said haltingly. “Flaming chariot. Fiery wheels—”
The Class Two retrieved and sorted:
“That’s it,” gasped Walter.
Val shuddered. “Take it easy, old man. Your heart can’t take all this excitement. If you’re not careful you’ll end up joining them in the Land of Olga. Can’t you see what it means? They’ve gone to Olga in death—heaven. They are safe from us there. That’s for certain.”
“But Olga’s words?” protested Walter.
“Just a random buckeye prayer during the fireworks. They died happy—thinking that Olga had come for them. And, I guess she did. Look at all the bodies,” said Val.
Val left orthopneic Walter resting in his couch while he climbed out to examine the camp on foot. The ground was strewn with Iron-Age weapons, bones, bodies and peculiar glassy particles. He checked buckeye bodies for signs of life—none. He walked down into one of the warm craters and stood on the exposed skin of a cybercity. He picked up fragments of the spongy, rug-like synthesoil—singed. Samples of the soil, glassy particles and a variety of hot rocks were boxed for study later.
The thirty-foot craters just uncovered the city’s organs. The fifty-foot craters cracked into them. Val glanced nervously at the yawning black cracks of ’tween walls. He knew they were nearly a mile deep—open all the way to shaft base.
Several other Huntercraft were now operational. They joined him in examining the area. Irrigators washed away the foam, exposing more bodies. Thick-skinned bodies with all the melanocyte pigments—yellows, reds, browns and blacks. Big-boned bodies—many over six feet tall. Walter wheezed up to Val with his own bone box.
“They’re big ones,” he said.
Val nodded. “I guess when you consider that they’re almost two feet taller than we are—on the average—you can label them as tall—abnormally tall.”
Walter noticed the variety of peculiar hot rocks too.
“Tektites,” said Val. “That was a meteor shower last night, remember?”
For three days Val and a crew of tecks studied the site. Agromecks worked their way in from the perimeter—cultivating and filling in the craters. Finally, they were forced out of their study area by the impatient machines.
On their way back to Orange Country, Val took his wing of Huntercraft southeast to check out the big crater. They spotted it easily—a thirty-mile-wide lake with a serrated rim.
“That rim reminds me of the toothy rim on Mount Tabulum,” said Val. “Same cause, I guess.”
Old Walter nodded.
The HC meck, Scanner, welcomed them back to Hunter Control. Negative log. No sightings since their departure. The buckeyes were gone.
Val supervised the unloading of artifacts from the 50:00 buckeye camp—weapons, beads, chewed and charred bones, rocks and glassy particles. Tecks carried off samples to their various departments in HC. Analytical gear was dusted off and warmed up. Most of the bones had the soft, spongy appearance of chalky pâpier-maché—citizens’ bones.
“What do you want these checked for?” asked the teck carrying a box of rocks and glass.
Val shrugged. He didn’t know what you checked tektites for.
“It was a meteor shower. Search the stacks for tektites. Find out anything you can. How big were they before they entered our atmosphere—how old—where did they originate? Those kind of things,” said Val.
The teck looked puzzled.
“I suppose we could find out some things. We’d have to borrow from Central Lab. How soon do you need it?”
“Take as long as you like,” he said, waving him away.
Walter smiled: “I don’t know what all the scientific fuss is for. It was a miracle—a wonderful miracle.”
Val laughed. “I just want to find out what kind. A real miracle shouldn’t leave fragments like that around. Spiritual tektites should vanish.”
Walter objected: “But the buckeyes are gone.”
“Maybe. But the census figures were scrambled in all the shaft cities around there. The fireworks could have driven them underground.”
“They can’t hide in the Big ES,” said Walter. “Their stature, pigment and attitude would betray them.”
Val frowned. “It will be a year before all the cybers are working well again. That big meteor messed up a lot of circuits. I would like to know where the five-toed have gone. Optical records gave a body count of less than ten thousand. There were half a million before the Big Hunt. Cannibalism? Doubt it. Those look like citizen bones to me. Where are the five-toeds?”
“Olga took them to heaven,” said Walter.
“I have an open mind,” sneered Val. “But before I classify this as a miracle I’ll need more than pyrotechnics and a short body count. A deity would be welcome by everyone—if she could help us. We all could use more calories and living space.”