CRADLE OF SATURN BY JAMES P. HOGAN

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The village of Montemorelos lay among scrubby hills at the top of a long rise from the coastal plain, a few miles before the launch site itself. There was no route farther inland, and by the time the truck arrived, lines of vehicles were jammed around the outlying area. Maybe their intention had been to sit out the high tide here, and then descend again to the highway and get to the main Sierra Madre range during the next period of low tide. Very likely, many of the refugees hadn’t thought beyond simply getting to the nearest high ground. But now, with nothing but a wall of flame to the west, they were choked along the lanes and pulled off into the surrounding fields under the increasing downfall, with nowhere to go. Some were trying to improvise shelters out of the vehicles or farm buildings, while others seemed to have lost their heads and were running around aimlessly or just sat immobile as if seized by a stupor. The spotlight that Keene was directing from the cab window picked out people struggling to get others out of a crumpled car, more falling out in the open. Ahead, one side of the village was in flames; even as Keene watched, something landed among the houses, throwing up a shower of debris in the glow.

The main thoroughfare through the center was jammed with vehicles, wreckage, and milling people, and several times Legermount had to stop and back up to find a way around the alleys between the houses. People pressed around constantly, either trying to stop the truck to get help or to gain access to it after losing their own transport. It would have been suicidal to stop. There was no way of telling if any of the cries, angry shouts, and thuds of fists and other objects beating the sides were due to the truck’s hitting any of them; there was nothing to be gained from thinking about it.

Keene had worried that some might have taken it into their heads to look for shelter among the launch site constructions, even though there was nothing else beyond the village in that direction and no route inland. However, past the village center the way became clearer, and as they came to the outskirts it began to look as if they might have a clear run for the last few miles. Then, as it rounded a bend in the road, the truck came upon several cars and a van pulled over to the side with a cluster of figures apparently trying to repair something.

At the truck’s approach, several of them stepped out in front of it, waving it down with flashlamps, giving Legermount little choice but to brake or run right over them. There was just time for Keene’s spotlamp to pick out the stove-in side of the van and the mixture of capes, parkas, and uniforms—whether police or some kind of military, it was impossible to tell—when a harsh voice barked something on the driver’s side. A figure outside grabbed for the door, but Legermount had already locked it. An arm came in through the broken window to seek the inside handle; Mitch lunged at it with his rifle butt. At the same time, another figure twisted the lamp from Keene’s grasp and opened the passenger door. Whoever they were, they were desperate and panicking. Their van was out of commission, and they wanted the truck. There was more shouting, and Keene felt himself gripped by the jacket and pulled from his seat. He managed to produce his automatic, but a gloved hand swiped it aside. For an instant he was looking at a swarthy, mustached face framed by a parka hood pulled up over a peaked cap, eyes wide, teeth bared; he saw a pistol coming up toward him and knew that moment of slow-motion awareness, like the split-second before a car crash when what’s about to happen is clear but a dreamlike paralysis makes it impossible to intervene. . . . And then Legermount fired three times in quick succession across the cab with a handgun, and the figure cried out and recoiled backward.

Shouts were coming from inside the rear of the truck. Looking back through the cutout in the cab wall, Keene saw light flooding in as the doors were torn open and more figures appeared, waving rifles. Somebody fired a shot from inside but without effect. The ones outside began raising their weapons to aim into the truck.