THE TORRENT OF DEATH

THE COLLOQUIUM HAD BEEN HASTILY THROWN TOGETHER, but almost every member of the Institute for Advanced Study’s faculty crowded into the auditorium to listen to Li Chengdu.

He felt unworthy of this honor, unprepared for this responsibility, as he slowly climbed the three steps and crossed to the podium standing in the middle of the bare stage. All the buzzing conversations stopped. The auditorium fell absolutely silent as this tall scarecrow of a Chinese sage reached the podium.

Remarkable, thought Li. Nearly two hundred of the most argumentative men and women on Earth, and they all expect me to enlighten them.

For several hushed moments he merely stood there, nearly six and a half feet of lanky scientist, and stared out at the audience. Physicists, mathematicians, historians, biologists, even the economists were well represented. No outsiders, though. No news reporters or photographers.

Good, thought Li.

He began: “As you know, Mars was once inhabited by intelligent species. They were apparently driven to extinction at approximately the same geological time that represents the boundary between Cretaceous period and Tertiary era on Earth, which has been called the Time of Great Dying.”

“Three-quarters of all life-forms on land and sea were extinguished on Earth. On Mars, every species above the complexity of lichen was destroyed.”

“It would appear, then, that a torrent of death swept through the inner solar system some sixty-five million years ago …”

Beverly Urey was only a distant cousin to the Nobel laureate chemist, but she was an astronomer at the Keck telescopes in Hawaii and the news media reporters tracked her down in the vast moonscape of Mauna Kea’s ancient caldera.

“We have a report from Princeton that said a torrent of death hit Earth and Mars sixty-five million years ago!” one of the reporters shouted at her.

“Well, yes,” she replied, somewhat dazed by their numbers and aggressiveness, “I suppose you might say that.”

“But they’re not dead,” said Hodell Richards, with a thin smile.

The host of the network TV show, a genial intelligent man with a secret passion for astronomy, smiled back skeptically. “The Martians aren’t extinct?”

“Not at all.” Richards had changed in the seven weeks since the first discovery of the Martian building. His lean, ascetic face had filled out somewhat. His hair was shorter, more in style with the current fashion. He had shaved off his mustache.

“But our scientists on Mars—”

Richards cut the host short. “Do you really think they’re telling us the whole story?” he asked archly.

“They’re not?”

“Of course not! They couldn’t. The government won’t let them.”

“But the Mars expedition isn’t being run by the government.”

Ignoring the inconvenient fact, Richards looked straight into the camera. “As I’ve been saying all along, the Martians have established a secret base for themselves here on Earth, in Tibet. We’ve got to find it!”

Arching a brow, the host said, “You think, then, that the Martians pose a threat to us?”

“They’re here to conquer us through genetic engineering. They want to plant their seed in Earth women and create a new race of Martians here on Earth and take over our planet.”

The host kept his quizzical smile in place, but inwardly he was thinking, The things I do just to keep the ratings up.

Pete Connors sat at his desk in Tarawa, surrounded by phone screens that connected him with the Baikonur launch center in Kazakhstan, the office of the chairman of the International Consortium of Universities in New York, the International Space Station in orbit around the Earth, and the office of the woman who headed the expedition’s logistics department, thirty meters down the hall from him.

Each of the faces on the screens looked harried, frustrated, almost angry. Each of them was talking—almost hollering—at the same time.

“All right,” Connors said firmly, “let’s cut the crap.”

They all fell silent.

“We’ve got to set the replenishment mission launch back from our current date, that’s clear. All agreed?”

Glumly, one by one, they agreed.

“Okay, it’s no gut-buster. Nobody’s head is gonna get chopped off and the people on Mars won’t be endangered by the delay. Is that clear?”

Nods and mumbles.

“I know you’ve all been getting a lot of pressure from the media. Just ignore it.”

“And just how in hell do we do that?” asked the launch director at Baikonur, a grim-faced Russian.

“Buck any and all media questions to me,” Connors said. “I’ll handle the news jocks.”

“Really?” asked the woman in New York.

With a sweetly reasonable smile, Connors replied, “Yep. I’m setting up a major media conference right here on this balmy tropical isle. Get those suckers out here and off your backs so you can do your work and we can entertain ’em with swaying palm trees and a tour of the mission control facilities.”

“I get it,” said the engineer in the space station, “It’s the slow season for tourists down there.”

Connors smiled toothily. “You got it.”

Once she got rid of the reporters, Beverly Urey returned to her work.

Hypothesis: A giant swarm of meteoroids swept through the inner solar system roughly sixty-five million years ago.

Evidence: Mega-extinctions on both Earth and Mars caused by the impacts of the meteoroids.

Question 1: Impact craters have been found on Earth and associated with the K/T extinctions. Can we find similar craters on Mars and get accurate dates for them?

Question 2: The Moon would have been hit, too. Can we locate craters of that age on the Moon? And what about the other planets?

Question 3: Can we find the meteoroid swarm?

She sighed as she pondered that last question. Sixty-five million years ago. Whatever’s left of the swarm is much too far away for our telescopes to detect.

Then she sat up, eyes suddenly wide with fear. Unless their orbit is bringing them back toward us!

*     *     *

Fr. DiNardo knelt in the small confessional. Usually its dark, cramped confines brought him some measure of comfort, like a return to the womb.

But not today.

His confessor, on the other side of the screen, sat down heavily, making the wooden bench creak. DiNardo smelled the priest’s aftershave lotion; it overpowered the distant scent of incense from the altar.

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” DiNardo began his confession.

The priest said nothing, waiting.

DiNardo swallowed hard, tasted bile. He took a breath, then whispered urgently, “I have sinned against the first commandment.”

“The first commandment?”

“I fear that I am losing my faith,” DiNardo answered, miserable.

“I don’t understand,” said the confessor.

“It’s the Martians.”

“The Martians are causing you to lose your faith?” the priest whispered, clearly puzzled, alarmed.

“Yes.”

“How can this be?”

DiNardo hesitated. Then he explained, “How can a just and merciful God create a race of intelligent creatures and then kill them all?”

“How do you know—”

“They were intelligent!” DiNardo hissed. “They constructed buildings. They invented writing. I cannot believe that they did not have souls.”

“Yes, perhaps they did.”

“Then how could God have destroyed His own handiwork?”

“We cannot fathom the workings of divine purpose,” the confessor said.

“It isn’t right,” DiNardo whispered harshly. “To kill them all … all of them …”

The confessor was silent for several moments. Then he whispered, “Judgment Day has already come on Mars.”

DiNardo gasped at the thought.

“Apparently,” the confessor went on, “God decided to bring the trial of tears on Mars to an end. He called the Martians back to him. Their time of testing ended sixty-five million years ago.”

“Judgment Day,” DiNardo murmured.

“It is not our place to question God’s actions. We must accept what He has done.”

“Judgment Day,” DiNardo repeated.

“It may seem harsh to you, but the Martians are now in their heavenly home, looking upon the face of God. Is that a cruelty?”

DiNardo almost laughed aloud. “No, Father. You’re right, of course. I was looking on it from a strictly secular point of view.”

“For your penance, I think perhaps a retreat would be in order. Renew your spiritual strength, my friend.”

Retreat? DiNardo stiffened at the thought. Spend a week or more in prayer and meditation, cut off from the rest of the world? Miss the news from Mars?

That would be penance indeed, he thought.