defective. Company presidents were lynched; lynching became a world-wide mania, something to take one’s mind off the war. Generals were skinned alive, diplomats drawn and quartered, premiers boiled in oil, but nothing seemed to help. The ones who mattered were in bunkers five miles deep.
There were peace efforts. The usual ending to a conference was the vaporization of the host city. Geneva took a beating, and so did Helsinki, and Djakarta, and Sapporo, and Juneau. Eventually, negotiators were shot on sight if they tried to enter a city.
After seven years the war no longer appeared on the evening news. All public news-gathering operations had been destroyed. All satellite time was used for encoded military messages, and no one had a television to receive a broadcast, anyway. About a hundredth of the Earth’s nuclear arsenal hadbeen expended, and another twentieth destroyed before it could be used. There was still a lot left.
There were not many people, though.
It had been three years since a crop of any consequence had been brought in. Those few who survived on the surface scrounged for canned food, hunted, and ate each other. But there was little game left, animal or human.
Since the beginning of the war messiahs had been proclaimed at the rate of three or four per hour. Most of them claimed to know how to stop the war, but none of them did. Most of them were dead, now, and soon the Earth would be, too.
***
For seven years the Outlanders had been walking on eggs. Quick to declare neutrality at the outset of the war, the Lunar and Martian cities and the orbital colonies hoped only to stay out of the way while civilization collapsed down on Earth. Opinion varied as to whether the three Lunar nations could survive without support from Earth. There were almost a million people living on the moon at the outbreak of the war. The Martians figured to hold out twenty years, but no more than that.
Outnumbering these planet-bound settlements were the O’Neil colonies. There were hundreds of them, with populations ranging from five to a hundred thousand. Most were located at L4 and L5, points of gravitational stability sixty degrees in front of and behind Luna. There were also sizable clusters at L1 and L2, despite the perturbations that tended to make the structures drift out of the libration points; with a small thruster, even the largest colony could remain stable with minimum energy expenditure.
Those thrusters came in handy for something else as the war dragged on. Quietly, not making a big fuss about it, some of the O’Neils began converting into space vehicles. The newer ones had drives that were more than adequate already. Others needed some time, and took the slowest of orbits, but a migration began of all those who felt they could survive without the Earth.
There were a lot of places to go, none of them very good. One tried to make it in orbit aroundMercury, where the free energy was intense. It proved to be
too
intense. A few took up orbit around Venus, and in Trojan orbit with Venus. Many more went out to the neighborhood of Mars, or to the Earth’s Trojan points. The problem was to get far enough away from the Earth to seem not worth shooting at and unlikely to hit, while staying close enough to the sun to survive.
A very few decided to take the big leap. They converted their homes into starships and headed out.
***
Conal heard about these events from refugees arriving during the seventh year of the war. An inescapable image came to mind: he saw the Earth as a blackened globe, cracking apart, girdled in flame. Tiny mites were scurrying away in droves.
“Rats leaving a sinking ship,” he told Cirocco.
“And what would you expect rats to do?” she countered. “Go down bravely? The rat’s about the smartest animal there is, and the toughest. The rats don’t owe the ship a damn thing, and neither do those ellfivers.”
“No need to bite my head off.”
“I’ll keep doing it as long as you think
There were peace efforts. The usual ending to a conference was the vaporization of the host city. Geneva took a beating, and so did Helsinki, and Djakarta, and Sapporo, and Juneau. Eventually, negotiators were shot on sight if they tried to enter a city.
After seven years the war no longer appeared on the evening news. All public news-gathering operations had been destroyed. All satellite time was used for encoded military messages, and no one had a television to receive a broadcast, anyway. About a hundredth of the Earth’s nuclear arsenal hadbeen expended, and another twentieth destroyed before it could be used. There was still a lot left.
There were not many people, though.
It had been three years since a crop of any consequence had been brought in. Those few who survived on the surface scrounged for canned food, hunted, and ate each other. But there was little game left, animal or human.
Since the beginning of the war messiahs had been proclaimed at the rate of three or four per hour. Most of them claimed to know how to stop the war, but none of them did. Most of them were dead, now, and soon the Earth would be, too.
***
For seven years the Outlanders had been walking on eggs. Quick to declare neutrality at the outset of the war, the Lunar and Martian cities and the orbital colonies hoped only to stay out of the way while civilization collapsed down on Earth. Opinion varied as to whether the three Lunar nations could survive without support from Earth. There were almost a million people living on the moon at the outbreak of the war. The Martians figured to hold out twenty years, but no more than that.
Outnumbering these planet-bound settlements were the O’Neil colonies. There were hundreds of them, with populations ranging from five to a hundred thousand. Most were located at L4 and L5, points of gravitational stability sixty degrees in front of and behind Luna. There were also sizable clusters at L1 and L2, despite the perturbations that tended to make the structures drift out of the libration points; with a small thruster, even the largest colony could remain stable with minimum energy expenditure.
Those thrusters came in handy for something else as the war dragged on. Quietly, not making a big fuss about it, some of the O’Neils began converting into space vehicles. The newer ones had drives that were more than adequate already. Others needed some time, and took the slowest of orbits, but a migration began of all those who felt they could survive without the Earth.
There were a lot of places to go, none of them very good. One tried to make it in orbit aroundMercury, where the free energy was intense. It proved to be
too
intense. A few took up orbit around Venus, and in Trojan orbit with Venus. Many more went out to the neighborhood of Mars, or to the Earth’s Trojan points. The problem was to get far enough away from the Earth to seem not worth shooting at and unlikely to hit, while staying close enough to the sun to survive.
A very few decided to take the big leap. They converted their homes into starships and headed out.
***
Conal heard about these events from refugees arriving during the seventh year of the war. An inescapable image came to mind: he saw the Earth as a blackened globe, cracking apart, girdled in flame. Tiny mites were scurrying away in droves.
“Rats leaving a sinking ship,” he told Cirocco.
“And what would you expect rats to do?” she countered. “Go down bravely? The rat’s about the smartest animal there is, and the toughest. The rats don’t owe the ship a damn thing, and neither do those ellfivers.”
“No need to bite my head off.”
“I’ll keep doing it as long as you think
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