Saw them way, way too late for there to be any hope of avoidance.

  Marcey spotted them at the same moment, hands starting to lift toward her face. She remembered in that fraction of a frozen second that most people’s last words were believed to be expletives.

  “Oh, fuck,” she said.

  “Hang on!”

  The nose was coming down.

  Ten feet up.

  Five.

  The speedometer was still trembling over the hundred-mile-per-hour mark.

  There was a surging moment when Jim Hilton thought that the nosewheel of the Aquila might just clear the lethal obstruction.

  But it didn’t.

  Chapter Eight

  A light wind was blowing across the torn wreckage of the ship.

  Arma-glass cracking and falling in tinkling shards under the pressure of the crash. Liquid dripping from a dozen places. A ruptured oil line that was oozing, thick and brown, into the scraped earth. High-octane fuel, colorless, the air shimmering around it, trickled into the gray-brown dust.

  Metal groaned and settled, parts torn off and scattered back along the huge gouge in the runway, the pieces of debris trailing off into the surrounding grass and dirt. When the leading wheel had caught in the pile of discarded cables, it had tipped the shuttle over onto its blunt, heat-seared nose.

  There was an eerie moaning, tiny bursts of sound, almost like someone panting with excitement during the beginnings of sexual arousal. But the cause wasn’t lust. It was pain.

  “My leg, my leg. Oh, sweet Jesus, help me, help… My leg.”

  The voice so thin and strained that it wasn’t even possible to work out whether it came from a man or a woman.

  Jim Hilton lay still and took long, slow breaths, fighting for self-control, knowing that they’d crashed. Lost it in the biggest way. He remembered the control panel rising toward him, and the bow window starring into a million diamonds before the dust had flooded into his mouth and nose and eyes.

  Now it was amazingly quiet.

  “Check yourself first.” Jim was certain that his lips had moved, but he wasn’t able to hear any words come out of them.

  Toes and feet and legs all seemed to be in place and functioning. Fingers and arms. Neck was very stiff with what felt a bit like a highway whiplash reaction. The restraining belts that crisscrossed his chest were still holding Jim in his seat, though he was hanging at a slightly crooked angle, head to one side, eyes tightly shut.

  The voice behind him had fallen silent.

  Finally he plucked up his courage and opened his eyes. The shuttle had cartwheeled along, shedding wings and tail plane as it did so. The remains had overtaken the fuselage and were scattered all around the nose, some of them glinting in the late-afternoon sunlight. Fresh air was coming in through the windows, every one of which was smashed.

  There was a strong smell of fuel.

  “Oh, no… Better move. Marcey,” he called, turning to his copilot.

  She was still sitting in her seat… most of her was still sitting in the seat.

  The enormous strain of the crash had burst the buckles on her restraints, so that she’d been tossed to one side. Her right arm had been caught in a window and torn apart at the elbow. Her left leg had snapped in mid thigh, and the two jagged ends of the femur were protruding through the bloodied cloth of her pants.

  And her head was missing.

  “Oh, Christ, Marcey…”

  The front of the cabin was awash with thick arterial blood, splashed everywhere, including all over his uniform.

  “Skip?”

  “That you, Jed?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How is it?”

  “Bad. I think I’ve sprained my ankle. Cut on the side of my head. Ribs bruised. Ligament strain in my injured knee.”

  “The others?”

  “Reckon Mike Man’s bought the farm. Looks as though his neck snapped. Hanging over, the back of his head sort of dangling between his shoulders. Looks kind of…”

  “The others, Jed?” Jim was trying to loosen the buckle on his own seat belt with fingers that were slick with Marcey’s blood. Around his groin and thighs was a sensation of cooling wetness where he’d lost control of his bladder.

  “Can’t see. You all right?”

  “Yeah. Seem to be.”

  “Marcey?”

  “No.”

  A short silence. “Can just see Ryan. Doesn’t look too good. He was moaning about his leg. Now he’s gone quiet.”

  “Carrie and Steve. Pete. Mac and Kyle? How about them?”

  Jed sighed. “Can’t see from where I am, Jim. Place is just smashed up to shit back here. Best come take a look.”

  A muffled voice reached them.

  “I’m here.”

  “Mac?”

  “Yeah. Got a seat on my head. Think it’s Carrie in it. Most times I’d have jumped at the chance to have her sit on my face. Now I’d like her moved off.” After a pause came the sounds of a struggle. “There. Strong smell of fuel back here, Jimbo.”

  “On my way.”

  Glass crunched under his boots as he moved. Jim had to lean on the arm of Marcey’s seat to lever himself up, and he nearly vomited at the sticky warmth of the pooled blood. The Aquila was tilted to port, and as he looked aft Jim realized how lucky it was that any of them had survived the crash.

  At least he and Jed and Mac were alive and relatively uninjured.

  As he stood there, resting his hand on the edge of the control-cabin door, Jim could see a tangle of limbs. Several of the seats looked as if they had come away from their moorings and been thrown, with their occupants, toward the rear of the vessel.

  Steve had blood coming from his eyes, eyes fluttering as he started to come around.

  “Can you read… read me… ?” he muttered.

  Jim stooped and checked the pulse, finding it slow but regular.

  “There’s a leak from the tanks, Steve. Got to get up. Now.”

  “Yeah, sure. Get up. On my way. Read you, Jim. Ready or not, here I come.”

  With a hand under the arm, the radio operator was heaved upright, where he stood swaying, looking around at the destruction.

  “You all right?”

  “Been better.”

  “Get the lock opened. Some of the others need help.”

  “Boy, heavy landing, Jim.”

  “Tell you later.”

  Farther back he saw McGill supporting Jed Herne. Beyond them he saw Mike Man, unmistakably dead, his neck broken by the impact of the crash.

  Pete Turner was moaning softly on the floor of the cabin, doubled over in the fetal position, hands clasped between his thighs.

  Carrie was still in her seat, unconscious, a large bruise across her forehead, blood trickling from nose and mouth and ears.

  Oddly there didn’t seem to be any sign of either Kyle Lynch or Jeff Thomas. Jim looked around the shambles, seeing piles of equipment in one corner. A foot was sticking out from under it.

  “I need some help,” he called, blinking at a sudden wave of dizziness.

  “Door’s open,” shouted Steve Romero. “Big lake of fuel all around us, Jim.”

  “Stay out and get clear. See if there’s any help on the way.”

  He knew there wouldn’t be.

  It was an extraordinary circumstance, a space shuttle coming in to land on its own at Stevenson. Ordinarily, with any threat of a crash landing, there would be a huge carpet of foam and fire trucks and blood wagons, sirens and the anthill look of organized panic.

  But the base was still and silent.

  “Jed’s knee’s not good,” said Mac, framed in the aft hatch. “Best he gets out of the way.”

  “Let’s get at it, then.”

  The pile of chairs and desks and computer gear, in the corner suddenly began to move.

  “Get this shit off of me. I’ll sue for fuckin’ billions for this. Oh, my face!” The voice was rising hysterically. “I’m cut! For Christ’s sake, I’ve been fucking cut!”

  “Jeff’s alive,” said Jim Hilton flatly.

  “So’s Carrie. Knocked out clean. I’ll get her out in the open. The others can take her then.”

  McGill unstrapped the young woman and lifted her with effortless ease, carrying her like a baby toward the open lock.

  “Where the fuck is everyone?” Jeff Thomas’s voice was, not surprisingly, on the ragged edge of panic. “I’m bleeding here.”

  “Keep still, Jeff! We’ll get you out in a couple of seconds.”

  Jim was trying to keep a count in his head, but the names and faces kept slipping treacherously away from him.

  Marcey was dead. Decapitated in the crash. Mike Man was gone. Bob Rogers had died in…no, he’d been dead for a long time.

  Jed and Steve were outside safe. So was Carrie. Jeff was alive.

  “Me and Mac are here,” Jim said to himself.

  “Sure we’re here, good buddy,” said Mac, returning from the door.

  Three dead in the ship. Maybe more. Three safe outside. Him and Mac. That made eight. Pete Turner breathing, but on the floor looking a lot less than well. Nine. Jeff Thomas made ten.

  “Kyle and Ryan unaccounted for,” he said to Mac.

  “Ryan’s gone. Right at the back, behind Mike’s seat. Thrown about and got a leg caught. Ripped him open at the groin. Artery popped and he bled to death.”

  “Oh, shit.” Jim pressed the tips of his fingers to his forehead, fighting for control. “There was a mass of wires and rope and stuff across the runway. Couldn’t see it until…”

  Mac patted him on the shoulder. “Later’ll do for that, Captain,” he said quietly.

  “Let’s get the others away before something shorts out and we all get microwaved.”

  “Get Pete out. I’ll clear all this stuff away from Jeff.”

  Mac pointed at the foot that was sticking out from the wreckage. The pants leg above the ankle was torn, showing black skin. “Kyle’s under there, as well. I’ll take Pete out and come back.”

  “Yeah.”

  Now the sum added up. Four outside. Four inside, definitely chilled meat. Him and Mac. Now Kyle and Jeff Thomas.

  The journalist was keeping up a frightened tirade. “For Christ’s… I can smell fuel. Burning. Fuckin’ move it, will you?”

  A durasteel table had been ripped away from the massive impact of the crash landing and was now wedged across the corner of the cabin, pinning down everything underneath it.

  Jim braced himself against the wall and kicked at one of the buckled legs, jarring it free.

  “Careful, you prick! That hurt my ribs.”

  “Shut it, Jeff. I’m getting you out.”

  The panic diminished in the voice. “Sure, sure, Jim.”

  The captain heaved and pulled at the tangle of equipment. Without his noticing it, Mac had come back again and started using his enormous strength to rip and tear the pile apart, finally revealing Jeff Thomas, flat on his back, glaring up at them.

  His nose was smashed, purple and bloody, and there was a deep cut sliced from the corner of his right eye down to the swollen mouth. His neck and shoulders were slobbered with bright crimson blood.

  “Get me up, guys,” he said, reaching a hand to them.

  Now they could also see part of Kyle Lynch’s body, motionless on its side, head right in the corner of the cabin.

  “I’ll take him out, Jim. Be right back.”

  “Sure.”

  Jeff doubled over as Mac helped him, none too gently, to his feet. “Oh, think I got broken ribs, as well.” He looked around him at the utter devastation. “Where’s everyone?”

  Mac was tugging him toward the open door. “Some didn’t make it. Come on, Jeff.”

  “Didn’t make it? You mean they’re dead, Mac? Who’s dead? I have to…”

  The voice faded, and Jim was left alone with the four corpses and Kyle Lynch.

  The tall, slender radio operator was breathing, and the pulse in his throat was beating strongly. His eyes were closed, and there was a thread of blood from his open mouth.

  “Kyle. Time to move, son. Journey’s over and we’ve come home.”

  He shook him gently, then harder. The young man’s head lolled on his shoulder, tongue protruding, drops of crimson dribbling from it.

  “Here. I’ll take his feet, Jim. You hold his shoulders.”

  Behind McGill one of the navigation computers exploded in a burst of fire and fountaining yellow-and-silver sparks.

  “Barbecue’ll start real soon, Jim,” warned the big man.

  The smell of the high-octane rocket fuel was even stronger outside the entrance to the Aquila. The two officers waded through the lake of volatile liquid, ankle deep in the furrowed crater created by the vessel.

  Jim Hilton felt sick, his guts churning with bile. His head was spinning, and he staggered in the unaccustomed gravity of Earth.

  He could dimly see the little group of survivors, sitting and standing together a couple of hundred yards away.

  “Keep going,” urged McGill, taking most of the weight of the unconscious man.

  “Want a hand?” yelled Jed Herne.

  “No! Stay there.” Jim’s throat hurt, and the muscles in his thighs and shoulders were fast turning into jelly.

  “Want to go back for the bodies?” panted Henderson McGill. Despite his great strength, the astrophysicist was struggling to keep going.

  “Rest up some. Then get them. We’re nearly there.”

  They reached the others and laid Kyle in the dusty grass.

  At the same moment the wreckage of the Aquila exploded in a huge ball of fire and’ yellow smoke, the force of the blast sending Jim to his knees, his lungs sucking in the wave of intense heat.

  “Mission over,” said Steve Romero.

  Chapter Nine

  The sun was low in the western horizon, beginning to set behind the Sierras. Shadows speared across the flat expanse of the Air Force base. Like a great black fist, the column of oily smoke from the burned-out wreckage of the Aquila punched into the cloudless sky, casting its own pall over the desert.

  Jim Hilton sat in the dry dust, knees drawn up, staring blankly at the devastation of his command. He coughed, aware of a stabbing pain in his chest.

  “You got something on the shoulder of your jacket,” said Steve Romero. “What is it?”

  Jim wriggled his arm around to peer at himself and saw a thick, clotted smear of pinkish gray, like spilled food.

  “Marcey’s brains,” he said.

  A coyote howled somewhere near the western perimeter of the airfield. Everyone turned to look in that direction.

  Jed shaded his eyes with his hand. “Reckon part of the main perimeter sec fence is down. Or is it my eyes?”

  Jim struggled to focus across the sand and stubbled grass. It did look as though at least three of the metal support towers were down. He also noticed something else.

  He picked a few blades of grass from where he was sitting, lifted them in the palm of his right hand and peered at them.

  “What d’you make of that, Mac?” he asked, offering them across to Henderson McGill. “Grass.”

  “What color?”

  “Green. What else?” He lowered his head. “Well, a kind of pinkish gray-green with that sandy dirt all over it.”

  “No. It’s more red than any other color.”

  “Like the forests,” exclaimed Carrie Princip, who was lying on her back, her head in Jed Herne’s lap. “Earthblood.”

  The coyote gave its hunting cry again, and she shuddered.

  Jim sighed. “Look. Something’s wrong as it can be. We got four dead friends burned up over there. It’ll soon be dark, and we need to be in the main mission command buildings by then.”

  They’d come to their grinding halt at the far northwest of the base, with the rectangular block of control buildings behind them—at least four miles away across two runways.

  “Want a status report on everyone, Captain?” asked Pete Turner.

  “Good idea. I’ll start with me. I feel sick. Tired. Whiplash in the neck. But not so bad. How ‘bout you, Pete?”

  “Something hit me in the balls like a kicking mule. Pissing blood but it’ll pass. Feel sick. I can walk, though.”

  “Mac?”

  “Burn on the inside of my left arm. Can’t remember getting it. Feel as though I’ve taken part in a double triathlon. Nothing that a hot bath and forty-eight hours’ sleep—and a decent meal and drink—won’t cure.”

  “Jed?”

  The former pro footballer sniffed, touching his knee. “Ligament strain. Not so bad as I thought at first. Ribs sore, real sore. Ankle is strained. Not a sprain like I thought at first. Tendon pain in the left wrist. Small cut above the right ear, but it stopped bleeding. Think that’s all.”

  Jim Hilton managed a smile. Every professional sportsman or woman that he’d ever known had been utterly preoccupied with his or her own body and its various minuscule malfunctions. “Can you walk?”

  “Guess so, but not too far and not too fast. If we’re going to make the HQ by dark, I’d better get going right away.” He stood up, hopping on his good leg. “Anyone noticed some of those buildings look fire damaged? Soot around doors, windows and over the roof.” He hesitated. “But…but it’s hard to be sure at that distance. Might be shadows.”

  “We’ll check it when we get there.” Jim turned to Carrie, who was still lying down. “How about you?”

  “Just my head. Like it’s been filled with Crazeefoam and helium. Reckon I can make it. Like Jed said. Slow and easy.”

  Jeff Thomas had been walking in small circles, kicking up puffs of dust from his expensive trainers. “Don’t bother asking, Captain Hilton. You can see, can’t you? If I look one quarter as bad as I feel, then your ass is history.”

  McGill laughed despite the bizarre horror of their situation, managing to sound genuinely amused. “Truth is, Jeff, that you look twenty times worse than you feel.”

  “Yeah, and fuck you, too, you…” he snarled, then stopped as McGill turned to smile at him.

  “Steve?” Jim glanced across to where the radio operator was sitting in the dirt, head slumped. “Hey, Steve?”

  “I’m in charge of communications, Captain. Yeah, I am.” Steve was nodding wisely. “In charge, all right. Me and Jeremiah. This is Sierra Tango Echo Victor Echo signing off.”