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F'lessan caught his breath. He'd seen volcanoes erupt; the one Piemur had
discovered off the westernmost tip of Southern Hold blew up periodically,
sending clouds of gray ash to blot the sun and stifle even the rich tropical
vegetation. The one in the near Eastern
Ring, which the Ancients had called Young Mountain, liked to send immense
boulders skyward and great lava flows down its side, spinning burning chunks
onto its neighbors. The islands that the comet was heading for were much
larger and he shuddered at the thought of all of them becoming active. They
would cause tidal waves, which could have a disastrous effect on coastal
areas-like
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Monaco.
"It could still just graze," Erragon murmured to Stinar, in a tone that gave
F'lessan no confidence in that possibility at all.
He glanced up at the legend, numbers whirring into new configurations all the
time, as
Yoko telemetry updated them.
"It's only got a few minutes to change course," F'lessan said.
Erragon glanced at him, blinking, as if he'd forgotten the bronze rider's
presence. "Did you know your Weyrleaders are in the conference room with
Master Wansor?"
Lessa and F'lar were also here? When-and why-had they arrived? Obscurely he
was glad they had, especially the way this event was proceeding.
"No, but I'd rather be in here and know the worst," F'lessan said, watching
Erragon's shoulders twitch in startled reaction to the last word. "Where will
it hit us?"
"We don't know yet," but F'lessan saw Erragon's eye flick to the Impact
Probability, which flickered onto 60 percent.
All three men caught their breath as the percentage jumped in a matter of
seconds to 100 percent.
"That's still a consequence of the grazing impact,"
Erragon said but F'lessan didn't think he believed that. "The ellipse is
shrinking. Can you adjust
Yoko's visuals?"
On the map in the right-hand corner, the figures flickered in latitude and
longitude, following the last downward plunge of the comet. Filling that
screen at maximum magnification, the tuberlike shape of the comet nucleus
showed geysers and jets blowing into space; chunks breaking off, floating
slowly away. F'lessan was amazed since he knew the speed at which the comet
was traveling and that eerie, almost dignified, breakup of its parts was like
a Gather dance.
"It's going to miss ... " Stinar whispered, unconsciously pushing both hands
in a deflecting motion.
"Just a few more degrees ... " Erragon, too, was taut as if, by exerting
sufficient willpower, he could shift the plummeting fireball south and east.
"It's got to be far enough away ... " F'lessan was adding his tension in an
unconscious effort to affect a descent that no effort could now alter.
F'lessan found himself squinting at the sudden brightness of the picture-the
brightness of sunlit sea or the comet. The magnitude of its dust trail now
registered an eye-blinding intensity of -9!
A new message imposed itself prominently:
120 seconds to perigee
-705
seconds to impact.
The monitor altered abruptly, darkening, and F'lessan saw the line on the
sidebar that indicated
Yoko was displaying a constructed image, made up of the optical, infrared,
microwave, and other print capabilities that Erragon had once tried to
describe to F'lessan.
The nucleus of the comet looked suddenly darker but the reduction of the glare
relieved his eyes. Ominously the message now read
60
seconds to atmosphere.
Another read
20 seconds to impact, Angle 12°: magnitude of dust trail -9.
People splayed fingers in front of their eyes. The glare-reduced optical
version saved them from the splintering whiteness that erupted, which the
monitor hastily continued to reduce. A screen flicked to a new
image-identified as "synthetic radar"-as
Yoko attempted to see through the clouds.
Twenty seconds couldn't have elapsed, F'lessan thought and then realized that
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Yoko was slightly behind in its reporting. Where had it impacted? The island
chain or the sea?
No one spoke. All seemed to be holding their breath. The silence was broken by
printers churning out reams of hard copy that fell unnoticed into baskets or
spilled to the floor. As the comet was spilling its substance onto the sea?
Flaming molten debris down on the nearest Ring islands?
Even the image on the screen seemed to recoil from the incredible brightness.
Squinting through his fingers, F'lessan saw the radar image showing the
surface topography-and a series of rings on the ocean. Waves traveled outward
from the impact point, immediately followed by a much higher fountain of water
as the sea fell back into the impact crater. Then he had the distinct [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]