Something, she thought, is very wrong.

And yet, somehow, in some hidden chamber of her heart, she had always known it would come to this.

The boys, she thought. They are the main priority now. Thank God they are both home. Perhaps she should go and wake them.

…But what if the shit really was hitting the fan? How could they prepare? Perhaps they ought to go to the store. Buy canned and packet food, long-life milk. A butane stove. Blankets, torches, thick coats, an axe. Gas for the car.

A gun.

Somewhere, a siren started a mournful wailing. It seemed to puncture her.

They finally did it, she thought. Her plans broke up in her head, and she cried out.

It was over, she realized, with a deep, unwelcome stab of comprehension. The last vestige of control she could exert over her life was gone. She wouldn’t even be able to save her children.

Rain began to fall: heavy, scummy droplets of it, breaking open on the sidewalk. She lifted her face into it; the rain was salty, and stung her eyes. She wondered where Saturn was, in the hidden sky.

Was it worth it, Mother? Was it worth all this, blowing everything apart, just so you could get to walk in the slush up there?

The rain fell harder, soaking her. She hurried up the path to her children.

Dark, thick storm clouds streamed over the sky above Fahy, obscuring the sun. Rain started to fall, big droplets, pelting against the marble surfaces, her clothes and hair, heavy and warm and salty.

She permitted herself a fragment of hope. After all she wasn’t dead yet. The strike itself was over. The world was going to be a piece of shit after this, war or not; but maybe, just maybe, she might live through this to see it.

Maybe NORAD and the rest had miscalculated, she thought. Maybe 2002OA just wasn’t a big enough punch to—

But there was something on the horizon, now: a grey wall, perhaps a bank of cloud.

Oh.

The secondary effects need not concern her any more, she thought.

The wall was water, a bank of it that had to be a mile high. Already it was marching inland. Even from this distance she could see debris embedded in its curving, steel-grey flank: rocks, fragments of ships, pieces of smashed-up buildings. It was the debris that would do the damage, she knew; with its help that wave could scour the ground clean of any sign this capital city had ever existed.

We don’t deserve this, she thought. Although maybe it looks different if you sit in Beijing. And there are those who say something like this, some terrible conclusion, was inevitable, that the huge technological project we’ve been following was bound to end in grief and destruction.

But I know we don’t deserve to have this done to us. Sure, we got things wrong. And we’re guilty of being the only nation in history to have dropped an atomic weapon on an opponent. But didn’t we beat back the Nazis and the Japs? Wasn’t it a good thing that we won the Cold War, and not the other side? Was it really such a terrible thing, to aspire to walk on the moons of Saturn…?

I will, she thought, never see the sun again.

She felt a wrench, a deep sorrow.

The clouds thickened, and moist air buffeted her face, driven ahead of that horizon-spanning piston of water.

He looked oddly beautiful, she thought with a rogue part of her mind: his face blank and intent, ruined eyes closed, that WASP hair shining in the hab module floods. And he was so strong…

He pulled at the neck of her T-shirt, trying to rip it. The coarse hem burned into her neck. The tough fabric wouldn’t rip, so he pushed his hand up inside her clothing instead. He reached her breast and grabbed it, squeezing hard. Then he shoved his hand downwards over her belly, trying to get into her pants.

He pushed his face forward and began to gnaw at her lips once more.

Her left hand was free.

She grabbed the door frame and yanked backwards, as hard as she could.

On Earth, perhaps she couldn’t have budged Angel. But here they were in one-seventh gravity. Locked together, they began to tip over.

Angel released the hand he’d held over his penis, and reached behind to brace his fall. She tried to keep from falling with him; she grabbed at the doorway. But his other hand was stuck inside her clothing; he dragged her down on top of him, helpless.

He landed heavily on his arm, and there was a snap, like the breaking of a thin branch. Angel screamed. He scrabbled against the floor, like a turned-over beetle, his ruined eyes turning back and forth.

She rolled away from him. It was the first moment since he’d bust into her quarters that she hadn’t been in physical contact with him. He was stirring. Clutching his damaged arm against his chest, he was turning over, getting to his knees.

She tried to stand up, but she felt weak and off-balance. She crawled away, towards the galley.

He reached out and grabbed her ankle. The effort cost him the support of his good arm, and she could see him fall flat on his chest. But even so he was able to drag her back towards him.

She was rolled onto her back. For a moment she lay with her feet mere inches from his face. With one slam of her heel in his face, she thought, this could be over. She lifted up her free foot, trying to make herself do it.

Angel flopped towards her, so that his mass trapped her legs, his bad arm pinned between them. He didn’t seem to notice the pain now. With his good hand he reached up and grabbed at the waist of her pants, trying to haul them off her.

Suddenly, Rosenberg stood over them. He held one of their improvised snow shovels, with its sharp blade of Apollo hull section. Holding the handle with two hands, he raised the blade over his head.

His bespectacled face was blank, thoughtful, as if he was considering some abstract problem.

“Rosenberg! Don’t… we have to…”

He brought the blade swinging down through the air, as if he was chopping wood. The blade hit Angel’s neck, with a moist, soft noise, like slicing cabbage.

Blood splashed. Angel stiffened, throwing his head back.

Then he slumped forward against her, his hand still locked in her waist band. The blade seemed to be stuck in his neck.

Rosenberg bent and grabbed Angel’s long hair. He hauled, and just peeled Angel away from her. She saw blood — her blood? — dribbling from Angel’s mouth.

Rosenberg dumped Angel aside. The blade came free of Angel’s neck now, and tumbled to the floor with a clatter.

Benacerraf sat up. The neck of her T-shirt was stretched, but not torn. There was a smear over the front, of blood and saliva and snot. Angel had managed to pull her shorts down as far as her hips, and her bony pelvis was exposed, a dark rim of pubic hair. She tugged at a flap of cloth, covering her crotch.

“He’s dead,” Rosenberg said evenly.

“I think he broke his arm, when I fell on him.”

Rosenberg shrugged. “Brittle bones. He had the skeleton of an old man. To hell with him.”

“Are you all right, Rosenberg?”

He studied her, as if examining a specimen of gumbo. “I don’t know. I’ve come a long way from JPL.”

“Yeah.”

She shuddered, and pulled her arms around her torso.

Hadamard was on his belly, on the ground. Immense chunks of debris, rusted and torn, clattered down around him.

An earthquake, in Florida.

His arms were splayed out, over the ground. His face was pressed into the sweet grass. The grass, he noticed, was a rich green, and still moist from the dew of the morning, and where his cheeks and chin had crushed the blades, there was a warm chlorophyll smell.

There was blood on the grass, though, a deep crimson, and a sharp stab of pain in his mouth. He probed gingerly with his tongue. The front of his mouth was a mess; it felt as if his lower teeth had been smashed, and his lip felt ripped open, as if his teeth had jammed themselves through the flesh.