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  Yakov’s contact. “Yes, it’s me. Small world, Jonas.”

  The three men angled over to Thad. “Where are they?” the short one hissed.

  “Follow me,” Thad whispered. He ushered them into a nearby pantry.

  The pantry was empty—not only of people, but with many of its shelves cleared. Thad reached into his tote and delivered the parcel and the sack of batteries.

  Jonas tore open the parcel, nodded approval, and put everything into his satchel. “These better work.”

  “They will.” Thad opened the door. “We have to get into the shelter.”

  “In a minute.” Jonas seemed oddly indifferent to the CME racing their way. “Now give me user ID and password for a sysadmin account for the powersat.”

  “It’s useless. Sysadmin log-on only works from hardwired terminals on PS-1 itself.” And going there now, with the CME about to strike, would be insanity. Thad could not get his mind around what these men thought to accomplish. “We have to get to the shelter.”

  “Indeed we do.” Jonas smiled enigmatically. “Our mutual acquaintance told me that the magic word is ‘Robin.’”

  Thad flinched. “All right.” He recited his log-on codes. “Now can we go?”

  “We three will go. You have to disable long-range comm first.”

  “I can’t turn off comm,” Thad protested. “We have people still on the surface. They’re shutting down and securing the observatory, solar-cell factory, nuclear power plant, and anything else they can get to in time.”

  “Long range,” Jonas repeated. “As in, reaching Earth. But I said disable, not turn off.”

  “The long-range radio is already switched off as protection against the CME. If I turn it back on, the CME will get it.”

  “This isn’t up for discussion.” Pause. “Remember Robin.”

  “All right.” For Robin. “Let me take you to the shelter before someone gets suspicious about us.”

  “We wouldn’t have it any other way,” Jonas repeated.

  The surface crew, still in their vacuum gear, emerged from the main air lock as Thad shepherded Jonas and his companions toward the shelter. “Stragglers,” Thad explained.

  When they reached the entrance to the shelter, lights blazed inside. He wondered if anyone had thought about pumping out the heat from so many extra bodies, or to bring in extra fuel cells.

  “There you are.” Irv looked relieved. He stood beside an open hatch. “Cutting it close, don’t you think? Go on down. I’m going to make one final sweep of the station.”

  Pausing on the ladder that led down a shaft into the shelter, Jonas shot a dark look over his shoulder.

  “I’ll check things out, Chief,” Thad said.

  “Station chief’s prerogative.”

  “Our visitors have met you,” Thad said, desperately. “You keep them calm while I do the run-through.”

  Irv shrugged. “Okay. Don’t tarry.”

  Tarzan-swinging toward the command center, Thad tried to imagine an innocent-seeming way to disable comm. He could not just pop the circuit breaker or jiggle loose a socketed component. After the CME had passed, someone might get to the command center before him. But when the CME came through, all sorts of electronics would fry.…

  He found heavy-gauge wire in a parts cabinet and snipped off a length. Gripping the wire with insulated pliers, he shorted the high-voltage terminal of the power supply to components inside the main radio console. Sparks flew. On circuit boards, devices went pop. Smoke erupted. For good measure he fried the diagnostic subsystem, too, then closed the cabinet doors.

  By wrapping his hand in a handkerchief, he managed to coil the wire—still hot, its insulation bubbled and blackened—without doing harm to the fingers of his counterpressure suit. He rushed to his tiny room to cram the coiled wire under the drawer’s false bottom. It would not do for anyone to find the wire.

  He found Irv pacing outside the shelter entrance. “I was about to come looking for you.”

  “Ye of little faith,” Thad said. “Let’s go down.”

  * * *

  Dillon stood in the shelter, obsessively looking around, obsessively checking the wall clock. The CME was almost upon them.

  Welded aluminum panels lined the shelter, a volume hollowed out deep beneath Phoebe’s main base. Phoebe’s mines offered many minerals in abundance, but not metals. Those had to be lofted from Earth, and that happened only for a good reason. Such as providing a few key parts of PS-1. And a sturdier storm cellar …

  A stranger (a woman, he thought) had shoved a drink bulb into his hands. Someone in a blue flight suit, anyway, so he or she was one of the Phoebe personnel. He had half drained the bulb before it registered that he had burnt his mouth on hot coffee. Tuning out the discomfort, he checked the clock again. Another minute had passed.

  The shelter was full, but more people kept crowding inside. Dillon recognized maybe half the faces in the shelter, from among hotel guests and staff. A few others looked familiar. He guessed he had seen those people, in fact, remembered having had a dinnertime conversation with one, at space training in Houston.

  That was another world. Literally.

  Maria, reunited with Adriana, stood across the shelter speaking rapid-fire Spanish. At least Dillon thought it was Spanish. With so many people talking at once it was hard to tell.

  Jonas, Felipe, and Lincoln were in a huddle near the entrance. They, like many of the evacuees, had blankets draped over their shoulders. Of the three, Dillon could see only Jonas’s face. He looked tense.

  Why the hell not look tense, Dillon thought. He still shook from the long hopper ride.

  Jonas saw Dillon watching. “Join us,” Jonas mouthed.

  They were smart and tech-savvy. They would understand what was going on. As Dillon edged through the crowd to stand with them, more people came in. One gave Jonas a nervous, sideways glance.

  Dillon flinched at a sudden loud booming. Looking toward the noise, he saw the station chief rapping on the still-open metal door. People turned, and some quieted down. More rapping and booming. The crowd gradually fell silent.

  “May I have your attention?” Weingart said. The station chief’s hand had moved to the metal door’s simple latch handle. “According to forecasts, the leading edge of the CME will reach us in five minutes. It’s time we close ourselves into the shelter to wait it out.”

  “Is everyone accounted for?” Jonas asked. “From Phoebe, the hotel, and PS-1?”

  “Yes,” Weingart said.

  “Here, inside this room?” Jonas persisted. “Everyone.”

  “Yes.” Weingart repeated impatiently. “It’s time we—”

  “Excellent,” Jonas said. “My friends and I will be leaving.”

  “I cannot allow that,” Weingart said. He began pulling the door. “We’ll be all right.”

  “I’m afraid I must insist.” Jonas threw off his blanket and dropped his bag. He held—a gun! So did Lincoln. Felipe had a gun in each hand.

  At least the devices looked like guns. They had handgrips and outward-pointing metal rods. But unlike any gun Dillon had ever seen, the “barrel” was solid rather than hollow and was wrapped in wire coils. A metal doughnut, smaller in diameter than the coils, hugged the barrel at its handgrip end. A battery sat beneath the barrel.

  “What is this?” Weingart asked. “Whatever you have in mind, forget it. It’s about to become lethal out there.”

  “Nevertheless,” Jonas said. “Felipe, give the boss his gun.”

  One of the odd guns was shoved into Dillon’s hands!

  At some level he must always have known Yakov would never let him go free, for an eerie calm washed over Dillon. He could stop thinking, stop speculating what he might do or should do or could do. He could not possibly disassociate himself from whatever was about to happen.

  His only hope of a future lay in joining these men. A future in Russia, under the Russian equivalent of a witness-protection program, even if everything worked out—but
still, a future. He wondered if Crystal would join him.

  “It’s suicide to go out there,” Weingart said. “A very messy suicide. The radiation won’t kill you immediately, but you’ll get many times a lethal dose. I can’t let you go.”

  Jonas waggled his gun. “You can’t make us stay. Now back away from the door.”

  “I don’t know what kind of Tinkertoy gadget you have—”

  Zap!

  Weingart gaped at the red, bloody hole in his thigh. For a moment, he looked stupefied. Then he crumpled, collapsing in slow motion.

  In the sudden hush, Dillon heard the high-pitched whine of a circuit recharging.

  “It’s called a coil gun,” Jonas said conversationally. He thumbed something on the handgrip. With a click, a new metal doughnut emerged and settled onto the barrel. “It uses electromagnets to accelerate a metal washer. Does anyone else require a demonstration?”

  No one spoke.

  Jonas smiled. “Good. Stay inside and you might live through this.”

  Felipe, Lincoln, Jonas, and Dillon backed out of the entrance, closing the hatch behind them.

  * * *

  The hatch slammed shut.

  The boom of finality jarred everyone from their stunned silence. Around the shelter there were sudden shouts, and tears, and knots of whispered consultation.

  Marcus shivered. He knew those men. From the training center. The one they called boss was—Marcus needed a moment to retrieve the name—Dillon Russo.

  Phoebe’s doctor was struggling through the crowd toward Irv Weingart. One of the hotel evacuees, shouting, “I’m a doctor,” was pushing that way, too.

  “Quiet!” Thad yelled, louder than anyone. “Everyone move against the walls, please, as best you can. Let the doctors through.”

  Marcus sidled backward, doing his part to clear a path, then twitched as someone grabbed his arm. Savvy.

  “Those bastards trained with us!” she said. “I’m sure I saw them in Houston.”

  “I remember.”

  How much did he remember? One evening he had taken an empty seat at their table. All but Dillon had left. He and Dillon had discussed training, of course. But hadn’t there been something else? Dillon had criticized Marcus for … eating meat.

  Vegetarianism was not what bothered him. That was a lifestyle choice, and it did not mark someone as an extremist, let alone a terrorist. But Dillon had not criticized the animal rights aspect or the health benefits of a meat-free diet. He had complained that raising beef expended too much energy. The pieces fit.

  “Shit!” Marcus said. “Almost certainly, the four of them are Resetter extremists. They’ll be after PS-1!”

  Thad must have heard. He pushed through to Marcus. “Tell me what you know.”

  Marcus told his story, ending with, “We have to stop them.”

  Thad tapped his wristwatch. “It’s too late, unless you have a death wish.”

  No, but Dillon and his buddies must have one to expose themselves to a CME. Marcus wondered: Did the CME somehow figure into their plan?

  The work crew had left PS-1 with its systems shut down, like unplugging a TV before a lightning storm. A CME washing over the powersat would still do some damage, but robots and spare parts staged inside metal sheds would handle any necessary repairs. Unless—

  Marcus said, “If those guys reactivate PS-1, the CME damage will be bad. Very bad. Maybe start-over-from-scratch bad.”

  Thad looked conflicted. “They’re out there, willing to die for their cause. We’re in here. If you are nuts enough to leave the shelter, they’re armed.”

  Marcus started unfolding his datasheet.

  “What are you doing?” Savvy asked.

  “Maybe we can net to the command center from here.” Only the shelter walls were lined with metal. A Faraday cage. If they opened the hatch a crack and tossed out the datasheet, it could transmit a message to the command center. “Call down to NASA. They can order PS-1 into safe”—inert—“mode.”

  Thad shook his head. “Won’t work. Our long-range comm is off for the CME.”

  “We have to do something.” Marcus glanced over to where doctors still worked on Irv Weingart’s leg. He looked zoned out on painkillers. “Who is in charge? I need to talk to him.”

  Thad smiled sadly. “With Irv out of commission? The sorry truth is, I’m in charge.”

  CONFLAGRATION | 2023

  Thursday, September 28

  “You know what we know,” said the man at the Space Weather Prediction Center.

  Valerie heard exasperation in his voice, but suspected that she was projecting. She had been monitoring the news—for anything and everything about spaceflight—since sending off Marcus. It seemed impossible that it had been only three days since his launch, and only three hours since the break-off of comm from orbital facilities. Her gut insisted something was wrong.

  “Then you don’t know when this CME will be past?” she said.

  “Nor how long the magnetosphere will take to settle back down after the CME has left us. That’s what I’m telling you.” And what he kept telling her, no matter how many ways she rephrased her questions. “Unless there is something else?”

  “You’ve been very kind,” she told him. If not very helpful. “Thank you.”

  He hung up before she could reconsider.

  Valerie clicked through the CME alert warning on the weather center’s home page to pore over the latest data in their public databases. The instrument readouts she found all suggested that the ion flux had yet to peak. She went back to the home page to subscribe to any updates. This once she wished she could have news texted straight to a cell phone.

  She tipped back in her chair, searching her office for inspiration. And found none. She rechecked NASA’s space weather alert. It had not changed in two hours. She surfed, promising herself she would work Real Soon Now. She found no inspiration on the net, either.

  She had tried and failed at a hurried breakfast to explain CMEs to her parents. But however esoteric solar outbursts were to Mom and Dad, CMEs were part of her job—in the way hecklers were part of a comedian’s job. When the eruption of plasma that was a CME barreled into the solar wind, the interaction could blast out radio noise.

  Interference. Disrupted observations. PS-1 and Phoebe. Marcus. Damn!

  She stomped down the hall to Aaron Friedman’s office. He was a solar radio astronomer. Maybe he could offer a useful forecast on the CME passing.

  “Did you hear this CME coming?”

  “Good day to you, too. No, I didn’t.” Aaron shrugged. “They aren’t all noisy.”

  Because if you could hear them all, it would be too easy. Nor could you see them all. Not, anyway, the ones you would most want to see: those racing straight at the Earth. The sun’s glare washed out their faint glow until, all too close, oncoming CMEs appeared as dim halos around the solar disk. To spot an onrushing CME was especially hard now, at the peak of the sunspot cycle, while the solar disk was pocked with sunspots and coronal holes, while it teemed with prominences and filaments.

  So it was not too surprising that this CME had gone undetected until its leading edge of ions washed over the early warning spacecraft stationed a million miles sunward from Earth. It was not the first CME to almost reach Earth before it was detected, nor would it be the last.

  Then why—besides fear for Marcus, besides something to distract her until communications could be reestablished—did this CME bug her? The sheer bad timing?

  “Is that all you wanted?” Aaron asked, channeling the young man at the Space Weather Prediction Center. Or, at least, his exasperation.

  She wanted Marcus, safe on the ground. Safe in her arms.

  “How bad is this CME?” she asked.

  “It’s a whopper, but not bad. Not so far, anyway. I haven’t heard of outages that don’t have other, more mundane explanations.”

  Nor had she, in her recent surfing, seen any incidents to blame on a CME. That was odd. So what, other than mess
with anything electrical, might a CME do?

  She vented at Patrick in his office for ten minutes before having a constructive idea. “Do me a favor? Find me an aurora webcam.”

  He tapped away, and a holo popped up over his desk. “Here’s a feed from Norway.”

  Leaning one way then the other, she studied the streaming video: a handful of flickering, glowing green tendrils in the sky. Pretty, but she had seen far more impressive specimens of the northern lights. “Okay, try somewhere else.”

  A second vid opened. “Alaska,” he said.

  She saw only blue sky in this image. Daylight sometimes washed out the northern lights, but still …

  Unasked, he offered her a third view. “From the bottom of the world, McMurdo.”

  “Is it just me?”

  “I don’t get it, either. The CME should be whipping up huge auroras, even if it isn’t messing with electrical systems on the ground.” He tapped his desk with a pencil. “So where are the spectacular auroras?”

  “That’s the question,” she said.

  The young man still on duty at the Space Weather Prediction Center—for all that he clearly wished Valerie would stop phoning—had no explanation, either.

  * * *

  Everyone looked to Thad for guidance, and he had none to offer. He had to struggle to manage monosyllabic grunts. He watched as others dispensed food and water.

  I’m going into shock, he thought. Or could someone with the presence of mind to diagnose shock be in shock?

  Irv Weingart lay stretched out on the floor, his leg bandaged and the bleeding stopped, loopy with painkillers but breathing easily. The remainder of the shelter was standing room only.

  At least, Thad thought, they could stand forever without tiring. On Phoebe’s surface the bulkiest person among them might weigh a pound. Here, deep within the tiny world, everything and everyone weighed even less than on the surface.

  You could not hang someone in Phoebe’s feeble gravity. Almost, he laughed. Almost, he cried.

  As time passed, the mood within the shelter grew angrier and angrier.