“I want it witnessed that I have made every attempt to reaffirm my warning to whoever ordered this,” Idorf said. “The only contacts that we have been able to make from up here all claim to know nothing. It seems that your attempts have fared no better. I am left with no choice.”
“Communications everywhere are in shambles,” Hayer said.
“Then it would behoove those responsible, all the more, to make their intentions plain,” Idorf replied. “Consider my position. Our delegation has been kidnapped, almost certainly to be used as hostages. So we already have evidence of designs in some quarters to seize this ship. In such circumstances I have no option but to treat these vessels as hostile. As captain, I must place the safety of the Osiris before all else.”
Hayer closed his eyes, and nodded. Several of those with him exchanged solemn looks but none spoke.
“The lead object is approaching the fire line,” one of the operators handling the radar data announced from his console. Attention turned to a holo display that was copying the situation report relayed from the Osiris. It showed part of a translucent red sphere centered on a white, three-way cross representing the Osiris, with the four vessels shown as blue dots moving in from outside. Idorf had stated that he would have no part in any verbal melodramatics. The weapon would detonate automatically if the boundary was breached. Since the Osiris did not carry an unlimited supply of them, it was set with lasing rods registering on all four targets.
“We are transmitting at them continuously on all of your recognized international bands. . . .” Idorf reminded everyone.
Keene watched with a strangely detached fascination, having to force himself to be mindful that these slowly moving patterns of light were not part of some simulation or one of Robin’s computer games, but a depiction of real events taking place some hundreds of miles above their heads at that very moment. Beside him, Colby Greene stared unblinkingly through his spectacles and licked his lips dryly.
“Lead object at the limit now,” the radar tech announced.
Moments later, a different voice reported, “Detonation has been detected.”
And after several more seconds: “Target echoes getting weaker, starting to break up.”
On the screen showing the Osiris’s Control Deck, Idorf turned and left without another word. And that was all there was to it. Impersonalized, soundless warfare, automated and sanitized modern style.
While the link was still open, one of the Kronian crew patched in the current views from high orbit. Fires were spreading across what looked like half the grasslands of southern Africa, with burning patches of oil lighting up the western Indian Ocean from Madagascar to Somalia. The world was turning into a ball of dirty smoke. A view away from Earth showed Athena like an immense, glowing octopus, its incandescent tentacles reaching ahead as it drew nearer.
* * *
Late in the afternoon, Keene managed to get a connection to Corpus Christi through a JPL hookup into Amspace’s spacecraft tracking net and talked to Harry Halloran, the technical vice president. Curtiss had gone ahead and put together an evacuation scheme since there was still no clear direction from the city and county authorities. The intention was to move inland to Lubbock, where the state was preparing reception centers, and which put them on the way to still higher country if a further move became necessary. There had been scattered meteorite falls all over southern Texas. Les Urkin’s bedroom and the family room beneath it were demolished five minutes after he went down to join his wife for breakfast. The family had packed their things and moved to Kingsville, where everyone was assembling. The downtown office was already closed. Harry couldn’t say if any of the girls from Protonix had arrived, and as far as he knew there was no sign yet of Wally Lomack back from Washington. The weather over the Gulf was doing strange things, and fears were rising of hurricane and tornado conditions developing. The sea out there was like black, moving mountains. Keene told him that the JPL scientists had talked about immense amounts of heat being dumped in the upper atmosphere. Nobody was sure what the effects of the resultant instabilities might be. Harry said that cattle inland were going crazy from corrosive air and thirst. Water supplies were already the big concern.