#22 Event Horizon

by Robert Walton

“Get in the car, Martha.”

“Just a minute, George.”

“We’ve got to get moving.”

“There’s no need to panic. CNN said it would be several hours before it hits.”

“CNN has been wrong before. We’ve got to get east of the mountains.”

“In a minute.”

George shuddered with frustration but spoke with the calmness of a man long married, “The freeways are backed up, even with one-way control.”

Martha shrugged, “Just a few more things.” She dropped two lipsticks and a jar of moisturizer in her small bag.

“You’re taking make-up?”

“Of course.”

“This is an evacuation, not an opera opening.”

“Do you have the pictures?”

“They’re in front of the bottled water.” George plucked up a bag filled with apples, American cheese and triscuits. He stuffed it in the trunk next to the wheel well.

“George?”

“What?”

“Should we check on the Petersons?”

George shook his head. “They’re at Disneyworld with their grandkids.”

“The Garcias?”

“They left half an hour ago. Martha, let’s go!”

Martha zipped her maroon bag shut and sighed. “I hope that’s all.”

“Let’s go.”

“George?”

George paused with one hand on the open driver’s side door. “What now?”

“Do you think the mountains might not stop it?”

George’s shoulders sagged. “I don’t know.”

Martha sighed. “It doesn’t seem real.”

“It’s real.”

Martha murmured, “It might be beautiful.”

Mountain-tops behind her glowed orange and gold with the setting sun. Night had yet to touch them, but it soon would.



In a mechanicized future Earth is controlled and dominated by competing O’Neill colonies, circling a submissive society and struggling for complete control. The Vienna Station, one of those competitors, is in the hands of Masters who will use a reconstituted Mozart, a broadcast premiere of a new Concerto to the billions and an intricate plan of espionage to crush all opposition . . . but the cloned Mozart, an orchestral cellist Drusilla and renegade science combine in opposition.

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