Ryan turned his night glasses away from the muties and looked toward Honey Lake. The body of water was much larger than indicated on the map they’d been working from. It glistened, dark and oily, in the distance, acting like a mirror for the stars and moon above. The reflection resembled a piece of sky that had fallen and taken root in the desert rock and sand.
Then a flare ignited, reflected on the lake’s surface as it skipped between the stars like a rock skimming waves.
Ryan glanced back up, knowing what he was actually seeing was in the sky.
“There,” Krysty said, taking him by the arm and pointing to the east.
Ryan stared at the orange-white burn streaking across the sky. It looked only inches long, but he knew what he was looking at was actually several miles in length.
“It’s reentering the atmosphere,” Bernsen said in a reverent voice.
“On fire?” Jak asked. “Be burned time gets here. Waste to come if does.”
“Dear boy,” Doc said, “the space station itself might not be burning up. What you’re seeing is the friction of the station battering against the air.”
“It could still burn up before it reaches the ground,” Mildred stated. “Space stations weren’t designed as reentry vehicles.”
“No, not as a general rule,” Bernsen said, his eyes glued to the action in the heavens, “but this one was built to withstand a hell of a beatingmeteors, satellites and space weapons if it was ever under attack. There was so much the Russians hoped to gain from the recording equipment aboard it. They built it to last.”
Below their position the muties were all pointing skyward. Their chanting and ululation had increased to almost deafening proportions even over the distance separating them from the companions. More wood dropped onto the camp fires, making the flames reach even higher.
Ryan watched, a thrill going through him. Looking at something no one had ever seen before was always exhilarating.
The space station, if that was what it truly was, fell quickly. The orange faded to yellow as the heat increased, then turned white. Streaking earthward, the space station’s trajectory abruptly changed.
“It’s breaking apart,” Ryan said.
“No!” Bernsen screamed, almost starting over the ridge. J.B. grabbed the man by the shirt collar and hauled him back. “It can’t break apart! It’s not supposed to do that!”
“Stay put,” the Armorer warned, “or you’ll never get the chance to tell anyone you saw this. I’d sooner kill you than let the muties have a chance, because they’d take us right along with you.”
Bernsen stuffed his fists against his mouth, shaking his head from side to side.
Ryan watched as the space station broke up into at least four pieces. He thought he might have seen a fifth go spinning away to the south, but whatever trail it might have made disappeared quickly against the harsh light of the reentry burn.
The light was so bright it reduced the night’s shadows to pinpricks against the uneven ground, almost blinding in its intensity. The largest piece continued along its trajectory toward Honey Lake. The lake’s surface blazed with white fire, shimmering across the surface, only a few pockets of darkness left where debris shoved up through the water.
“Dark night!” J.B. exclaimed as it got closer, approaching with increasing speed as bits and pieces of the space station were torn off or burned off and streamlined the craft. “Damn thing’s so big it’s going to fall on top of us!”
“Stand your ground,” Ryan advised. “If we start moving, we could end up right under it, or the muties will see us.”
The companions all dug into the ground, watching the falling space station’s final approach. It slammed into the ground 150 yards from the mutie campsite, sundering the rock and scattering sand before it like an ocean wave. Tremors shook the earth.
The chanting broke as the sand washed over the muties, knocking dozens of them to the ground. A moment later the space-station wreckage rolled over them, pulping them against the desert floor. The closer ranks of muties broke and ran, coming up the grade toward the companions.
Behind them, red-hot and throwing off heat waves that could be felt even along the ridgeline, the chunk of space station skidded toward Honey Lake. In seconds it shot out over the black depths and sank, glowing eerily until it disappeared.
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