The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (43 page)

I
tried to watch ship and missile both, lost both—jerked eyes away from
binoculars, suddenly saw missile—then saw it impact, between us and
catapult head. Closer to us, less than a kilometer. No, it did not go off, not
an H-fusion reaction, or I wouldn’t be telling this. But made a big,
bright explosion of its own, remaining fuel I guess, silver bright even in
sunlight, and shortly I felt-heard ground wave. But nothing was hurt but a few
cubic meters of rock.

Ship
was still coming down. No longer burned bright; could see it as a ship now and
didn’t seem hurt. Expected any instant that tail of fire to shoot out,
stop it into a dido landing.

Did
not. Impacted ten kilometers north of us and made a fancy silvery halfdome
before it gave up and quit being anything but spots before eyes.

Mike
said, “Report casualties, secure all guns. Go below when secured.”

“Gun
Alice, no casualties”—“Gun Bambie no
casualties”—“Gun Caesar, one man hit by rock splinter,
pressure contained”—Went below, to that proper phone, called Mike.
“What happened, Mike? Wouldn’t they give you control after you
burned their eyes out?”

“They
gave me control, Man.”

“Too
late?”

“I
crashed it, Man. It seemed the prudent course.”

An
hour later was down with Mike, first time in four or five months. Could reach
Complex Under more quickly than L-City and was in as close touch there with
anybody as would be in-city—with no interruptions. Needed to talk to
Mike.

I
had tried to phone Wyoh from catapult head tube station; reached somebody at
Old Dome temporary hospital and learned that Wyoh had collapsed and been bedded
down herself, with enough sleepy-time to keep her out for night. Finn had gone
to Churchill with a capsule of his lads, to lead attack on transport there. Stu
I hadn’t heard from. Hong Kong and Prof were still cut off. At moment
Mike and I seemed to be total government.

And
time to start Operation Hard Rock.

But
Hard Rock was not just throwing rocks; was also telling Terra what we were
going to do and why—and our just cause for doing so. Prof and Stu and
Sheenie and Adam had all worked on it, a dummy-up based on an assumed attack.
Now attack had come, and propaganda had to be varied to fit. Mike had already
rewritten it and put it through print-out so I could study it.

I
looked up from a long roll of paper. “Mike, these news stories and our
message to F.N. all assume that we have won in Hong Kong. How sure are
you?”

“Probability
in excess of eighty-two percent.”

“Is
that good enough to send these out?”

“Man,
the probability that we will win there, if we haven’t already, approaches
certainty. That transport can’t move; the others were dry, or nearly.
There isn’t that much monatomic hydrogen in HKL; they would have to come
here. Which means moving troops overland by rolligon—a rough trip with
the Sun up even for Loonies—then defeat us when they get here. They
can’t. This assumes that that transport and its troops are no better
armed than the others.”

“How
about that repair crew to Bee Ell?”

“I
say not to wait. Man, I’ve used your voice freely and made all
preparations. Horror pictures, Old Dome and elsewhere, especially Churchill
Upper, for video. Stories to match. We should channel news Earthside at once,
and announce execution of Hard Rock at same time.”

I
took a deep breath. “Execute Operation Hard Rock.”

“Want
to give the order yourself? Say it aloud and I’ll match it, voice and
choice of words.”

“Go
ahead, say it your way. Use my voice and my authority as Minister of Defense
and acting head of government. Do it, Mike, throw rocks at ‘em! Damn it,
big rocks! Hit ‘em hard!”

“Righto,
Man!”

“A
maximum of instructive shrecklichkeit with minimum loss of life. None, if
possible”—was how Prof summed up doctrine for Operation Hard Rock
and was way Mike and I carried it out. Idea was to hit earthworms so hard would
convince them—while hitting so gently as not to hurt. Sounds impossible,
but wait.

Would
necessarily be a delay while rocks fell from Luna to Terra; could be as little
as around ten hours to as long as we dared to make it. Departure speed from a
catapult is highly critical and a variation on order of one percent could
double or halve trajectory time, Luna to Terra. This Mike could do with extreme
accuracy—was equally at home with a slow ball, many sorts of curves, or
burn it right over plate—and I wish he had pitched for Yankees. But no
matter how he threw them, final velocity at Terra would be close to
Terra’s escape speed, near enough eleven kilometers per second as to make
no difference. That terrible speed results from gravity well shaped by
Terra’s mass, eighty times that of Luna, and made no real difference
whether Mike pushed a missile gently over well curb or flipped it briskly. Was
not muscle that counted but great depth of that well.

So
Mike could program rock-throwing to suit time needed for propaganda. He and
Prof had settled on three days plus not more than one apparent rotation of
Terra—24hrs-50min-28.32sec—to allow our first target to reach
initial point of program. You see, while Mike was capable of hooking a missile
around Terra and hitting a target on its far side, he could be much more
accurate if he could see his target, follow it down by radar during last
minutes and nudge it a little for pinpoint accuracy.

We
needed this extreme accuracy to achieve maximum frightfulness with
minimum-to-zero killing. Call our shots, tell them exactly where they would be
hit and at what second—and give them three days to get off that spot.

So
our first message to Terra, at 0200 13 Oct 76 seven hours after they invaded,
not only announced destruction of their task force, and denounced invasion for
brutality, but also promised retaliation bombing, named times and places, and
gave each nation a deadline by which to denounce F.N.’s action, recognize
us, and thereby avoid being bombed. Each deadline was twenty-four hours before
local “strike”.

Was
more time than Mike needed. That long before impact a rock for a target would
be in space a long way out, its guidance thrustors still unused and plenty of
elbow room. With considerably less than a full day’s warning Mike could
miss Terra entirely—kick that rock sideways and make it fall around Terra
in a permanent orbit. But with even an hour’s warning he could usually
abort into an ocean.

First
target was North American Directorate.

All
great Peace Force nations, seven veto powers, would be hit: N.A. Directorate,
Great China, India, Sovunion, PanAfrica (Chad exempted), Mitteleuropa,
Brasilian Union. Minor nations were assigned targets and times, too—but
were told that not more than 20 percent of these targets would be
hit—partly shortage of steel but also frightfulness: if Belgium was hit
first time around, Holland might decide to protect her polders by dealing out
before Luna was again high in her sky.

But
every target was picked to avoid if possible killing anybody. For Mitteleuropa
this was difficult; our targets had to be water or high
mountains—Adriatic, North Sea, Baltic, so forth. But on most of Terra is
open space despite eleven billion busy breeders.

North
America had struck me as horribly crowded, but her billion people are
clumped—is still wasteland, mountain and desert. We laid down a grid on
North America to show how precisely we could hit—Mike felt that fifty
meters would be a large error. We had examined maps and Mike had checked by
radar all even intersections, say 105° W by 50° N—if no town
there, might wind up on target grid … especially if a town was close
enough to provide spectators to be shocked and frightened.

We
warned that our bombs would be as destructive as H- bombs but emphasized that
there would be no radioactive fallout, no killing radiation—just a
terrible explosion, shock wave in air, ground wave of concussion. We warned
that these might knock down buildings far outside of explosion and then left it
to their judgments how far to run. If they clogged their roads, fleeing from
panic rather than real danger—well, that was fine, just fine!

But
we emphasized that nobody would get hurt who heeded our warnings, that every
target first time around would be uninhabited—we even offered to skip any
target if a nation would inform us that our data were out-of-date. (Empty
offer; Mike’s radar vision was a cosmic 20/20.)

But
by not saying what would happen second time around, we hinted that our patience
could be exhausted.

In
North America, grid was parallels 35, 40, 45, 50 degrees north crossed by
meridians 110, 115, 120 west, twelve targets. For each we added a folksy
message to natives, such as:

“Target
115 west by 35 north—impact will be displaced forty-five kilometers
northwest to exact top of New York Peak. Citizens of Goffs, Cima, Kelso, and
Nipton please note.

“Target
100 west by 40 north is north 30° west of Norton, Kansas, at twenty
kilometers or thirteen English miles. Residents of Norton, Kansas, and of
Beaver City and Wilsonville, Nebraska, are cautioned. Stay away from glass
windows. It is best to wait indoors at least thirty minutes after impact
because of possibility of long, high splashes of rock. Flash should not be
looked at with bare eyes. Impact will be exactly 0300 your local zone time
Friday 16 October, or 0900 Greenwich time—good luck!

“Target
110 W by 50 N—impact will be offset ten kilometers north. People of
Walsh, Saskatchewan, please note.”

Besides
this grid, a target was selected in Alaska (150 W x 60 N) and two in Mexico
(110W x 30 N, 105 W x 25 N) so that they would not feel left out, and several
targets in the crowded east, mostly water, such as Lake Michigan halfway
between Chicago and Grand Rapids, and Lake Okeechobee in Florida. Where we used
bodies of water Mike worked predictions of flooding waves from impacts, a time
for each shoreline establishment.

For
three days, starting early morning Tuesday 13th and going on to strike time
early Friday 16th, we flooded Earth with warnings. England was cautioned that
impact north of Dover Straits opposite London Estuary would cause disturbances
far up Thames; Sovunion was given warning for Sea of Azov and had own grid
defined; Great China was assigned grid in Siberia, Gobi Desert, and her far
west—with offsets to avoid her historic Great Wall noted in loving
detail. Pan Africa was awarded shots into Lake Victoria, still-desert part of
Sahara, one on Drakensberg in south, one offset twenty kilometers due west of
Great Pyramid—and urged to follow Chad not later than midnight Thursday,
Greenwich. India was told to watch certain mountain peaks and outside Bombay
harbor—time, same as Great China. And so forth.

Attempts
were made to jam our messages but we were beaming straight down on several
wavelengths—hard to stop.

Warnings
were mixed with propaganda, white and black—news of failed invasion,
horror pictures of dead, names and I.D. numbers of invaders—addressed to
Red Cross and Crescent but in fact a grim boast showing that every trooper had
been killed and that all ships’ officers and crew had been killed or
captured—we “regretted” being unable to identify dead of
flagship, as it had been shot down with destruction so complete as to make it
impossible.

But
our attitude was conciliatory—“Look, people of Terra, we
don’t want to kill you. In this necessary retaliation we are making every
effort to avoid killing you … but if you can’t or won’t get
your governments to leave us in peace, then we shall be forced to kill you.
We’re up here, you’re down there; you can’t stop us. So
please be sensible!”

We
explained over and over how easy it was for us to hit them, how hard for them
to reach us. Nor was this exaggeration. It’s barely possible to launch
missiles from Terra to Luna; it’s easier to launch from Earth parking
orbit—but very expensive. Their practical way to bomb us was from ships.

This
we noted and asked them how many multimilliondollar ships they cared to use up
trying it? What was it worth to try to spank us for something we had not done?
It had cost them seven of their biggest and best already—did they want to
try for fourteen? If so, our secret weapon that we used on FNS Pax was waiting.

Last
above was a calculated boast—Mike figured less than one chance in a
thousand that Pax had been able to get off a message reporting what had
happened to her and it was still less likely that proud F.N. would guess that
convict miners could convert their tools into space weapons. Nor did F.N. have
many ships to risk. Were about two hundred space vehicles in commission, not
counting satellites. But nine-tenths of these were Terra-to-orbit ships such as
Lark—and she had been able to make a Luna jump only by stripping down and
arriving dry.

Spaceships
aren’t built for no purpose—too expensive. F.N. had six cruisers
that could probably bomb us without landing on Luna to refill tanks simply by
swapping payload for extra tanks. Had several more which might be modified much
as Lark had been, plus a few convict and cargo ships which could get into orbit
around Luna but could never go home without refilling tanks.

Was
no possible doubt that F.N. could defeat us; question was how high a price they
would pay. So we had to convince them that price was too high before they had
time to bring enough force to bear. A poker game—We intended to raise so
steeply that they would fold and drop out. We hoped. And then never have to
show our busted flush.

Communication
with Hong Kong Luna was restored at end of first day of radio-video phase,
during which time Mike was “throwing rocks,” getting first barrage
lined up. Prof called—and was I happy to hear! Mike briefed him, then I
waited, expecting one of his mild reprimands—bracing self to answer
sharply: “And what was I supposed to do? With you out of touch and
possibly dead? Me left alone as acting head of government and crisis on top of
us? Throw it away, just because you couldn’t be reached?”