There was a flash of painfully bright light. For what seemed like a few seconds, it was as light as day outside.
Connor interrupted himself.
“What —” he began.
As the flash died, they felt it. The ground shook wildly. Beakers and tools tumbled off the infirmary shelves. Abby’s mug bounced off the bench, spraying coffee. Medyevin almost fell off the edge of the cot where he was perched. There was a thunderclap, a sonic detonation so profound that it hurt.
Cutter was already on his feet. The roof lamps were swinging crazily from the overheads. Outside, voices rose in agitation. They could hear people shouting and whistles blowing.
“What the hell was that?” Connor asked.
Cutter rushed outside, followed by Abby, Medyevin and Antila. Chaos had gripped the advance camp. Personnel, some of them in their long underwear, bedrolls clamped around their shoulders, were milling in the yard. Cutter heard the general’s adjunct Zvegin shouting orders.
The wind hit them. It was coming out of the northwest, hard on the heels of the shockwave. It went from zero to force ten in a split second. The forest around the camp swirled and thrashed, and the tent structures buffeted and cracked like sails in a gale. Everyone covered their faces, staggered by the fury. Several guy wires snapped, cracking like whips. One of them struck a soldier and sent his body flying. Part of a tent section ripped away and took off into the sky like a camouflage magic carpet.
The riptide of wind lasted about fifteen seconds and then it dropped. The vast Siberian midnight returned to the way it had been minutes before, except that now, to the northwest, a patch of sky on the horizon was lit up.
It was the underglow of a huge fire.
Cutter headed for the longhouse. Inside, officers were shouting and arguing with one another, or demanding information and responses from radio sets that whined and wailed with electrostatic lament. Cutter saw General Markov talking agitatedly with several aides, and Koshkin trying to get a heavy-duty military walkie-talkie to work.
Cutter shouldered his way through the press, with Abby right behind.
“What just happened?” he demanded of Koshkin.
“Go back to your billet,” Koshkin said, struggling with the device.
“Tell me what just happened.”
Koshkin looked at them.
“There has been an incident. An explosion. You know as much as I do.”
“Not really.”
Koshkin shrugged.
“Something has detonated to the northwest of this position. It may have been a munitions accident.”
“A munitions accident?” Cutter echoed. “Out here?”
“There are a number of armour and artillery units deployed in this region under the general’s command.”
“You mean tanks?” Cutter asked.
“Amongst other things,” Koshkin replied. He gave up on the walkie-talkie and tossed the handset back onto a desk, grunting in frustration. “Radios are down.”
“You’ve got tanks out here?” Cutter pressed.
“We have armour. We have air cover,” Koshkin said. “How else do you think we can keep the herds contained?”
“And you think... what?” Cutter raised his hands. “That a tank just exploded?”
“It happens sometimes. A misfire can cause a catastrophic ignition of the magazine.”
“That wasn’t a tank exploding,” Cutter stated. “God, not even a full magazine could do that.”
“If it wasn’t a military accident,” Koshkin said, “do you really want to consider the alternative? That it was a bomb? A warhead? A strike by some enemy?”
“This is the backend of Siberia, you fool,” Cutter snapped. “It’s hardly a key target for any hostile power. What we just heard and felt was something else entirely.”
Koshkin stared at him, eyes flashing at the insult.
“Go back to your billet, or I will have you taken back to your billet.”
Cutter met his gaze.
“I thought I was here to help you.”
“Exactly how can you help with this, Professor Cutter?”
“I’m not sure, but I know this has happened here before,” Cutter said. Koshkin’s face went dark.
“That is strictly classified inf —”
“It’s in all the history books,” Cutter interrupted irritably. “Hell, you can Google it. Tunguska. 1908. An asteroid strike flattened over 2,000 square kilometres of forest. Wait... What did you think I meant?”
“Nothing.”
“Just stop it! Talk to me! Something like this has happened here since 1908, hasn’t it? That wasn’t an isolated incident!”
Abby glanced from one to the other of them in alarm. Cutter looked so fierce, and Koshkin so murderous, she wasn’t sure which one of them was in more danger.
“Please just tell us,” she said to Koshkin.
The Russian looked at her, and then back at Cutter.
“If what has just happened is what you say, it may be the fourth time such a thing has occurred in this region.”
“Fourth?” Cutter asked, amazed. “That includes 1908?”
“Yes. Local tribesmen reported another incident in the early sixties. Much smaller. The third was just over two years ago. It’s what brought us to this region in the first place. The government thought there had been some kind of nuclear accident. The blast site found was, again, much smaller than the 1908 incident. In locating it, we encountered our first erratics.”
“So there could have been four?”
“The number could be higher than that,” Koshkin said. “We have circumstantial evidence suggesting there may have been almost a dozen strikes in this region in the last hundred years. The 1908 strike was by far the most destructive.”
“How does that happen?” Abby asked. “How do so many meteorites all end up hitting the same place? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“It’s a big place,” Koshkin said. But he looked skeptical.
“Even so,” she replied, “the statistical chances have got to be...”
“Astronomical?” Cutter suggested.
“You’ve got a theory, haven’t you?” Abby asked him.
“Maybe,” Cutter replied. He looked at Koshkin.
“We’re going to look at the impact site,” he said.
It wasn’t a request.
TWENTY-TWO
They left the advance camp long before dawn, travelling into the northwest aboard a pair of grumbling all-terrain vehicles that lit the forest trail with their high-beam headlamps and running spots.
Before they left they packed everything they thought they might need. Used to having the resources of the ARC at his disposal, Cutter found little that would be helpful. Yushenko brought his ubiquitous video camera. Suvova was the best-equipped, he noticed with a touch of admir-ation. He was curious, though, when she packed what seemed to be a can of spray paint.
Cutter and Abby rode in the lead vehicle with all the members of the scientific group except Medyevin, who had stayed at the camp to help Connor. Cutter had insisted that Koshkin should allow the scientific group to accompany the expedition.
They sat together in the crew space of the lumbering ATV, lit by little green roof lights, rocking and lurching as it bounced along. Bulov sat in a corner, folded his arms, and made a show of sleeping. Koshkin travelled up front with the driver. Every ten minutes, he tried the radio. They were still getting nothing.
“So what will we find?” Abby asked. “A crater, right?”
“A big one, I should think,” Yushenko said, and he nodded.
“Actually, not if it’s anything like the 1908 event,” Cutter countered. “This area is so remote, back then it took twenty-five years for an expedition to arrive and investigate. It was a team led by... ah, the name escapes me.”
“Kulik,” Bulov said without opening his eyes. “Leonid Kulik.”
“That’s right,” Cutter said, “Leonid Kulik. He expected to find a huge crater, but there wasn’t one. Just a circula
r patch of charred trees about fifty, sixty kilometres across.”
“That’s huge,” Abby said.
“Yeah,” Cutter agreed. “It’s estimated the blast was the equivalent of 800 atomic bombs.”
Abby whistled. “But no crater?”
“It was an airburst,” Cutter explained. “The asteroid punched into the atmosphere and burnt up before it hit the ground.”
“Why?” Abby asked.
“The object disintegrated due to the extreme stresses of atmospheric entry,” Bulov said.
“You seem to know the details,” Cutter observed.
“When I heard I was being posted here, I read up on the subject.” Bulov opened his eyes for the first time. He looked across the crew space at them. “Tunguska is clearly a remarkable place; it always has been. Stars fall from the sky; monstrous beasts roam the dark forests. Folklore has always told these tales.”
“Folklore is often a surprising indicator of hidden truths,” Suvova remarked.
“Indeed it is,” Cutter said, with a nod to his former professor. “That’s kind of what I’ve been trying to say all along. There’s something here that explains it all. You scoffed at the notion of a temporal anomaly, Bulov, and that’s fair enough. Believe what you want. I certainly haven’t ever observed an anomaly that’s remained active for any longer than a few days. But maybe there is something here, a focus — something that’s been going on for decades, or even centuries.”
No one responded. Everyone was lost in their own thoughts for a moment as the ATV rumbled along.
“So how big was it?” Yushenko asked eventually.
“What?” Cutter responded.
“The asteroid. You say it destroyed... What was it?”
“It flattened 2,000 square kilometres of forest,” Cutter replied. “The impact was picked up on seismometers on the other side of the planet.”
“And the pressure shock,” Bulov said, “travelled around the planet at least three times. There are barograph records to prove it. So much dust and gas was thrown into the atmosphere it resulted in unusually brilliant night skies across the northern hemisphere for almost a year. I seem to remember that they were famously able to play after midnight at your Lord’s cricket ground in London.”
Cutter nodded. “Apparently.”
“So it was huge?” Yushenko said. “A huge explosion, a huge asteroid?”
“The Tunguska impactor was probably about fifty metres across,” Bulov said.
“That doesn’t sound so big.” Yushenko sounded disappointed.
“Velocity can be as important as mass,” Cutter explained. “If it was a long-period comet, it would have been travelling a great deal faster than a near-Earth asteroid. It’s the difference between throwing a rock at a target or shooting a bullet at it.”
“Was it like the meteor that killed off the dinosaurs?” Abby inquired. “The boundary event thing?”
“The K-T boundary event was an object that hit the planet off the Mexican coast,” Bulov said. “It’s known as the Chicxulub impactor. We don’t know if it was a comet or a meteor, but it was similar to the Tunguska event. However, it did leave a crater.”
“The principle differences,” Cutter put in, “are that the Chicxulub impactor hit the sea, and was somewhat larger.”
“How much larger?” Abby asked. “Seventy-five metres? A hundred?”
“Ten thousand,” Bulov replied.
TWENTY-THREE
Connor woke to the sound of drumming. It took him a moment to remember where he was, and a little longer to realise the sound was being caused by rain pattering off the roof of the medical tent.
His arm throbbed, and he was far more aware of his aches and bruises than he had been the night before. Sleep had rested his mind a little, but it had allowed his body to stiffen and become sore. He sat up on his bunk, trying to get his arm to loosen.
Apart from the rain, it was quiet. One lamp was still burning. Pale day-light threaded in through the window sections. Connor got up and hobbled over to the workbench with a blanket around his shoulders. The bench surface was littered with tools and component parts.
There was still so much to do. Despite his enthusiasm the previous evening, he’d already begun to realise the scale of the task he’d set himself. Building the first ADD had been hard enough. Doing it again, with a hand that didn’t work and couldn’t give him anything like the degree of precise control he needed, wasn’t going to be a picnic.
He sighed, and picked through some of the bits and pieces on the bench. He wondered how Abby and Cutter were doing. He wondered what they were doing.
Umarov’s laptop lay at one end of the bench. It was plugged into one of the generator sockets to recharge. Connor stared at it for a moment, and then opened it and woke it up.
He glanced across the infirmary. Umarov, the only other person in the place, was still unconscious in his cot, sleeping a deep, dreamless sleep induced by pain-control drugs.
One-handed, Connor typed in a few commands on the keyboard to bring up the GPS programs he’d been using the night before. He stared at the screen a little more, and wondered about some of the other application logos.
“You’re awake.”
Connor jumped at the voice and turned. Medyevin was coming in through the tent door, rain dripping off the slicker he was wearing. Connor quickly closed the lid of the laptop.
“How are you?” Medyevin asked, wiping the rainwater off his face. He smiled cheerily. “I wanted to get started again, but I didn’t want to wake you too early.”
“I’m fine,” he replied. “Little stiff in the old joints.”
“I’m not surprised,” Medyevin laughed. “I thought you were finished yesterday for sure.”
“Yeah, close call, huh?”
Medyevin peered up through the tent window at the sky.
“Terrible weather, isn’t it? Terrible rain.”
“What?” He really didn’t want to make small talk.
“The weather, it is bad.” Medyevin smiled again. “I thought it was the British pastime — to talk about the weather?”
“Now that you mention it,” Connor said, nodding, “it is.”
“Well, this is Sibir,” Medyevin chuckled. “Even in summer, which is now, can you believe it? Even in summer, the weather is not so good.”
“Just glad I don’t have to go out in it,” Connor said. “Speaking of which, have we heard anything from the professor and Abby?”
“I don’t know,” Medyevin replied. “I could check.”
“That’d be good,” Connor said. “I’d like to know that they’re both okay. And it would be useful to find out if the radio is back up and working this morning, too. We’re going to need it.”
Medyevin pulled up the hood of his slicker again.
“I’ll go over to the longhouse and check with the radio room. I’ll only be a couple of minutes. Can I get anything for you while I’m there? Some coffee?”
“Now you’re talking,” Connor said eagerly.
Medyevin hurried back out into the rain, head down. Connor heard his footsteps splash away across the yard.
He flipped the laptop back open, and began to work as quickly as his one hand allowed. He launched an application and then pulled down a sub-menu. He began to fiddle. Medyevin had told him, rather proudly, that Russia was outsourcing its hardware to ensure high-end quality. As a result, most of the aps were universally used standards that he was more than a little familiar with, even if some of them had been modified for military use.
“Come on,” he murmured to the machine. “I don’t want Cyrillic. Thank you. Okay, what are you? Oh, I know you. Yeah, you’ll do.”
“What do you think you’re doing?” Natacha Antila asked.
Connor spun round, trying not to look guilty.
“Nothing!” he said.
“You are out of your bed,” she said. “You should be in your bed. You are a most disobedient patient.”
“Sorry,” he said, reachin
g behind his back to lower the laptop’s screen. Antila was wearing a tracksuit. She had come in through the medical tent’s main doorway, and was busy toweling dry. She was soaked through.
“Have you been out running?” Connor asked.
“I like to start my day with a run, before calisthenics.”
“Wow, that’s healthy,” he said.
“Were you working?” she asked.
“When?”
“Just as I came in.”
“Oh, yeah, yeah, just playing around. There’s so much to do.”
Antila looked him up and down and her eyes narrowed.
“You look like there’s something wrong,” she observed.
“No, nothing.” That time he was sure he sounded guilty.
“You’re hiding something.”
“Really, I’m not,” he said.
“Did you get up too fast? Are you feeling any pain? You look pale.”
“I guess,” Connor began. “I guess maybe I am a little woozy. My arm’s sore.”
“That’s understandable,” she said. “You’re trying to do too much. I’ll get you some painkillers.”
“That’d be great,” Connor said, and he smiled.
Antila took a last look at him, and then walked into the part of the tent that served as the dispensary. Connor heard her unlock the pharms cabinet.
He flipped the laptop back open, and finished what he’d been doing as fast as he could, then he waited while the completion bar slowly loaded.
“Come on, come on...” he whispered.
“Did you speak?” Antila called from the dispensary.
“No, nothing,” he replied. “Just talking to myself.”
Done.
Connor quit the aps he’d been using, and closed the lid of the laptop just as Medyevin hurried back in.
“It’s raining even harder now!” the scientist complained. He handed Connor a mug of coffee. “I had to hold it under my slicker to stop the rain falling in it.”
“Thanks,” Connor said. “Anything from the professor?”
Medyevin shook his head. “No contact. Radios have been working again since dawn, but it’s patchy. Nothing reliable. We’ll just have to wait.”
Connor nodded. Antila came back in, greeted Medyevin, and handed Connor a paper cone with some tablets in it.