Not a star, a light, a flame, one moment a point, then a disc, then an unbelievable flame-shedding spear pointed directly at him, dropping to impale him.
For an instant his horrified face was bathed by the red glow, the grounds, the building, all illuminated as by the light of a terrible red dawn.
Then it struck.
Six hundred tons of rocket struck the Earth at five miles a second and turned this frightful speed into energy, heat energy that exploded outward with the force of an atomic bomb. One moment the plant, the towering flats of Cottenham New Town, the Library Gardens, the shops, the pubs, were standing there. The next instant they were not.
Buildings, bricks, bodies, trees, furniture, cars, everything was destroyed in a fraction of a second, vaporized in the heat, torn apart and wiped from existence. Half the town and all the factory went in the first explosion. The rest followed so closely behind that there was no time, no warning. Perhaps some were momentarily aware of the incredible sound of impact and the light that followed; perhaps a few knew that something impossible had happened and had the beginning of a burst of fear that was destroyed before it could be formed.
After the explosion came the shock wave. The air, compressed far beyond its capacity to absorb more energy passed on its tremendous charge an instant later, an expanding canopy of death that radiated in all directions. It passed through a flight of birds a mile away and, unmarked, they all fell dead from the sky.
On the ground it was a rolling barrage of invisible guns that lifted up the ground, the trees and hedges, the plants and animals and buildings and obliterated them, pulverized them as it passed. It ran over the Tanner farm and mixed man, cow, milk, machine into a hideous jumble, exploded the house of Giles' wife and son the same instant.
The dart was never thrown, the game never finished, the holiday plans left unfulfilled. Irene would have to worry no more about her Post Office account. There would certainly be no Blackpool this year.
There would be no life, no future, no existence for twenty thousand nine hundred and thirty-one men, women and children. Where this town and all its bustling life had been there was now only a seared wasteland, a desert of death in England's green countryside, decently concealed for the moment beneath the shroud of dust and smoke that hid the horror below.
23
GET 07/52
President Bandin was in the toilet, in his own private toilet when someone pounded on the door. He burst out seconds later, holding the towel, his hands still wet, fire in his eye. Bannerman was standing there, white faced, almost trembling. This in itself was enough to stop Bandin, who never in his life had expected to see that leathery skin drained of blood, the man suddenly as old as his years, older. The words came quickly.
“My God,” was all that Bandin could say, in a hoarse whisper, not even knowing that he spoke, slumped against the open bathroom door with the forgotten towel clutched in his hand.
“My God, oh my God. . “
It took seconds, then minutes, then almost an hour to find out what happened in any detail. Colonel O'Brian, the silent witness at Ground Command Control, in Kapustin Yar, knew that something had gone completely wrong at the precise moment the controllers did. He had the same readouts before him, the same information. His fists tensed, tighter and tighter, as he saw the first erratic firing, then the continuous firing — then the change in orbit. The new orbit could not be measured quickly or easily and he was aware of the growing panic, the hysteria in the voices calling to each other and he was to verify this in many secret interrogations in the coming months. But right now all he could do was watch.
As the figures flowed in the computer worked out an orbit. An unbelievable one. Slowly the voices died away and all sound ceased as the orbit was plotted on the screen. Changing, turning, downward, accelerating. With their mind's eye they could see the danger growing unbelievably before them, watch enacted out minutes after the tragedy the last flight of the core booster of Prometheus One. Watch until the utterly incomprehensible moment when the orbit, the path of the booster in space, ended.
The computer, which had been printing out the rows of figures, came to the end of its information and fell silent. The chattering of the printer stopped at the same moment. The silence was absolute.
“Send this!” O'Brian ordered, and was surprised at the roughness in his voice. Silverstein looked up at him, taken unaware, for he did not know one word of Russian and even less of space technology, and had not the slightest idea of what had gone wrong. “Top priority, and I mean top. For the President. Core booster malfunction. Appears to have impacted the Earth. Site unknown.” He scrabbled in the papers before him and made some quick calculations. “First estimate would be area fifty-two degrees north latitude, zero degrees longitude.”
“Where is that, Colonel? Where is it?” The sergeant was beginning to have some realization of what was happening.
“Zero longitude? Greenwich, England…”
They looked at each other in mutually shared horror. They both knew England well. Knew how crowded with people that island was. Silverstein slowly tapped out the information that O'Brian gave him, but knew this was only the outline of the tragedy. When there was nothing more to report he typed a query for return information soonest on point of impact.
The orbit analysis from Kapustin Yar was sent directly to the White House, followed by Houston's own orbit from their tracking stations. Then Houston ran their own figures and the Russian ones through the computer once more and came up with an estimated point of impact, theoretically correct to within a quarter of a mile. Instead of bringing the raw data to the President the Information Officer in the White House made a xerox of the southern half of England and drew a red circle with a felt tip pen on the site. He then put the map and the final figures in a leather attaché case and ran for the elevator. Because he was well known, plus the fact that rumors of what had happened were already circulating, the guards at the conference room door opened it as he approached. Almost the entire cabinet was there, hastily summoned, and every eye was on him when he entered. The President held out his hand and the officer gave him the papers. Bandin looked at them in silence until the door had closed, then raised his head slowly. There was a faint tremor in his hands.
“It looks from here, I can't really tell, as though the rocket came down in the countryside. There's a lot of countryside in England.” His voice was hollow, his words unconvincing even to himself. General Bannerman reached for the map and he passed it over in silence. Forgetting that he had never worn them at a public meeting before, Bannerman took the gold-rimmed pince-nez reading glasses from his breast pocket and put them on.
“Countryside, yes,” he said. “But the motorway cuts right through here. It's heavily traveled, I know. And there is one name here, not easy to read in the xerox. Looks like Gottenham New Town.”
“Cottenham New Town,” Dr. Schlochter said in his best scholastic voice. Unlike the others the Secretary of State seemed outwardly unmoved by the developing events. “One of the more successful British attempts to move light industry out of the cities and into areas in need of development. You will remember that I was there at the dedication ceremonies with the Minister of Labor.”
No one remembered or cared. The President turned to Charley Dragoni who sat at the secretarial table, a telephone pressed to his ear. “Well?” he called out.
“I have your office holding on calls to Whitehall and the Embassy in London, Mr. President. They know nothing more than we do, but will report as soon as they do. I'm holding myself here on the scrambler line which has been patched through to Ten Downing Street. The Prime Minister is in conference, taking reports, but he knows you're waiting for his call. I… excuse me. Yes?” He listened to the phone for a moment while they all waited in silence. “Yes, thank you, I'll pass on the information.” He looked up. “The Prime Minister will be with you in a few moments, sir, as soon as he has finished a call to the Kremlin.”