By Larry Niven Published by Del Rey Books: A GIFT FROM EARTH WORLD OF PTAVVS NEUTRON STAR THE SHAPE OF SPACE ALL THE MYRIAD WAYS THE FLYING SORCERERS PROTECTOR THE FLIGHT OF THE HORSE A HOLE IN SPACE TALES OF KNOWN SPACE: The Universe of Larry Niven THE LONG ARM OF GIL HAMILTON A WORLD OUT OF TIME CONVERGENT SERIES (TT) RINGWORLD ENGINEERS LIMITS THE INTEGRAL TREES THE SMOKE RING With Jerry Pournelle: FOOTFALL LUCIFER'S HAMMER LUCIFER'S HAMMER Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle FAWCETT CREST ? NEW YORK A Fawcett Crest Book Published by Ballantine Books Copyright 1977 by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle To Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, the first men to walk on another world; to Michael Collins, who waited; and to those who died trying, Gus Grissom, Roger Chaffee, Ed White, Georgi Dobrovolsky, Viktor Patsayev, Nikolai Volkov, and all the others. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Excerpts from GIFFORD LECTURES, 1948 by Emil Brunner. Excerpt from a private speech by Robert Heinlein. Reprinted by permission. From "Pure, Sweet, Culture" by Frank Garparik. Copyright @ 1977 by Frank Garparik. Used with permission of the author. From How The World Will End by Daniel Cohen. Copyright 1973, McGrawHill. Used with permission of McGrawHill Book Co. From The Naked Ape by Desmond Morris. Copyright McGrawHill 1967. Used with permission of McGrawHill Book Company. Excerpt from The Cosmic Connection by Carl Sagan. Copyright 1973 by Carl Sagan and Jerome Agel. Reprinted by permission of Doubleday & Company, Inc. Excerpts from The Coming Dark Age by Roberto Vacca, translated from the Italian by Dr. J. S. Whale. Translation Copyright 1973 by Doubleday & Company, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Doubleday & Company, Inc. From Moons and Planets: An Introduction to Planetary Science by William Hartman. Copyright 1972, Wadsworth Publishing Co., Inc. Used with permission of Wadsworth Publishing Co., Inc. Excerpts from Sovereignty by Bertrand de Jouvenal. Copyright 1957 by University of Chicago Press. Used with permission of University of Chicago Press. From The Elements Rage by Frank W. Lane. Copyright 1965 by Chilton Book Co. Used with permission of Chilton Book Co. Song "The Friggin Falcon" 1966 by Theodore R. Cogswell. All rights reserved, including the right of public performance for profit. Used by permission of the author and the author's agent, Kirby McCauley. DRAMATIS PERSONAE TIMOTHY HAMNER, amateur astronomer ARTHUR CLAY JELLISON, United States Senator from California MAUREEN JELLISON, his daughter HARVEY RANDALL, ProducerDirector for NBS Television MRS. LORETTA STEWART RANDALL BARRY PRICE, Supervising Engineer, San Joaquin Nuclear Project DOLORES MUNSON, Executive Secretary to Barry Price EILEEN SUSAN HANCOCK, Assistant Manager for Corrigan's Plumbing Supplies of Burbank LEONILLA ALEXANDROVNA MALIK, M.D., physician and kosmonaut MARK CZESCU, biker GORDON VANCE, Bank President and neighbor to Harvey Randall ANDY RANDALL, Harvey Randall's son CHARLIE BASCOMB, cameraman MANUEL ARGUILEZ, sound technician DR. CHARLES SHARPS, Planetary Scientist and Project Director, California Institute of Technology's Jet Propulsion Laboratories PENELOPE JOYCE WILSON, fashion designer FRED LAUREN, convicted sex offender COL. JOHN BAKER, USAF, astronaut HARRY NEWCOMBE, letter carrier, US Postal Service THE REVEREND HENRY ARMITAGE DR. DAN FORRESTER, Member of technical staff, JPL LT. COL. RICK DELANTY, USAF, astronaut MRS. GLORIA DELANTY BRIGADIER PIETER JAKOV, kosmonaut FRANK STONER, biker JOANNA MACPHERSON, Mark Czescu's roommate COLLEEN DARCY, bank teller GENERAL THOMAS BAMBRIDGE, USAF, Commander in Chief, Strategic Air Command JOHN KIM, Press Secretary to the Mayor Of Los Angeles THE HONORABLE BENTLEY ALLEN, Mayor of Los Angeles ERIC LARSEN, Patrolman, Burbank PD JOE HARRIS, Investigator, Burbank PD COMET WARDENS, a Southern California religious group MAJOR BENNET ROSTEN, USAF, Minuteman Squadron Commander MRS. MARIE VANCE, wife of Gordon Vance HARRY STIMMS, automobile dealer in Tujunga, California CORPORAL ROGER GILLINGS, Army SERGEANT THOMAS HOOKER, Army MARTY ROBBINS, Tim Hamner's assistant and caretaker JASON GILLCUDDY, writer HUGO BECK, owner of a commune in the foothills of the High Sierra Prologue Before the sun burned, before the planets formed, there were chaos and the comets. Chaos was a local thickening in the interstellar medium. Its mass was great enough to attract itself, to hold itself, and it thickened further. Eddies formed. Particles of dust and frozen gas drifted together, and touched, and clung. Flakes formed, and then loose snowballs of frozen gases. Over the ages a whirlpool pattern developed, a fifth of a lightyear across. The center contracted further. Local eddies, whirling frantically near the center of the storm, collapsed to form planets. It formed as a cloud of snow, far from the whirlpool's axis. Ices joined the swarm, but slowly, slowly, a few molecules at a time. Methane, ammonia, carbon dioxide; and sometimes denser objects struck it and embedded themselves, so that it held rocks, and iron. Now it was a single stable mass. Other ices formed, chemicals that could only be stable in the interstellar cold. It was four miles across when the disaster came. The end was sudden. In no more than fifty years, the wink of an eye in its lifetime, the whirlpool's center collapsed. A new sun burned fearfully bright. Myriads of comets flashed to vapor in that hellish flame Planets lost their atmospheres. A great wind of light pressure stripped an the loose gas and dust from the inner system and hurled it at the stars. It hardly noticed. It was two hundred times as far from the sun as the newly formed planet Neptune. The new sun was no more than an uncommonly bright star, gradually dimming now. Down in the maelstrom there was frantic activity. Gases boiled out of the rocks of the inner system. Complex chemicals developed in the seas of the third planet. Endless hurricanes boded across and within the gasgiant worlds. The inner worlds would never know calm. The only real calm was at the edge of interstellar space, in the halo, where millions of thinly spread comets, each as far from its nearest brother as Earth is from Mars, cruise forever through the cold black vacuum. Here its endless quiet sleep could last for billions of years . . . but not forever. Nothing lasts forever. 1 THE ANVIL Against boredom, even the gods themselves struggle in vain. Nietzsche January: The Portent The baytrees in our country are all wither'd And meteors fright the fixed stars of heaven; The palefaced moon looks bloody on the earth And leanlook'd prophets whisper fearful change. These signs forerun the death or fall of kings. William Shakespeare, Richard II The blue Mercedes turned into the big circular drive of the Beverly Hills mansion at precisely five after six. Julia Sutter was understandably startled. "Good God, George, it's Tim! And dead on time." George Sutter joined her at the window. That was Tim's car, yup. He grunted and turned back to the bar. His wife's parties were always important events, so why, after weeks of careful engineering and orchestration, was she terrified that no one would show up? The psychosis was so common there ought to be a name for it. Tim Hamner, though, and on time. That was strange. Tim's money was thirdgeneration. Old money, by Los Angeles standards, and Tim had a lot of it. He only came to parties when he wanted to. The Sutters' architect had been in love with concrete. There were square walls and square angles for the house, and softly curving freeform pools in the gardens outside; not unusual for Beverly Hills, but startling to easterners. To their right was a traditional Monterey villa of white stucco and red tile roofs, to the left a Norman chateau magically transplanted to California. The Sutter place was set well back from the street so that it seemed divorced from the tall palms the city fathers had decreed for this part of Beverly Hills. A great loop of drive ran up to the house itself. On the porch stood eight parking attendants, agile young men in red jackets. Hamner left the motor running and got out of the car. The "key left" reminder screamed at him. Ordinarily Tim would have snarled a powerful curse upon Ralph Nader's hemorrhoids, but tonight he never noticed. His eyes were dreamy; his hand patted at his coat pocket, then stole inside. The parking attendant hesitated. People didn't usually tip until they were leaving. Hamner kept walking, dreamyeyed, and the attendant drove away. Hamner glanced back at the redcoated young men, wondering if one or another might be interested in astronomy. They were almost always from UCLA or Loyola University. Could be . . . Reluctantly he decided against it and went inside, his hand straying from time to time to feel the telegram crackle under his fingers. The big double doors opened onto an enormous area that extended right through the house. Large arches, rimmed by red brick, separated the entry from the living areas: a mere suggestion of walls between rooms. The floor was continuous throughout: brown tile laid with bright mosaic patterns. Of the two hundred and more guests expected, fewer than a dozen were clustered near the bar. Their talk was bright and cheery, louder than necessary. They looked isolated in all that empty space, all that expanse of tables with candles and patterned tablecloths. There were nearly as many uniformed attendants as guests. Hamner noticed none of this. He'd g...
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