IV
Earth trembled.
She shook like a palsied animal, and great fissures rent her thick hide as tidal waves lashed like gigantic hammers at the coastlines of her continents and mercilessly overran a host of the jewel-like islets that studded her vast oceans.
Her artificial satellites had long since come crashing down, and her natural moon teetered threateningly in its age-old course. Great, jagged chunks broke loose as the barren mass of rock circled perilously close to de Roche's Limit.
Some of the lower, sturdier buildings in the cities which dotted her wide continents were yet intact, and in the largest, the capital city itself, a number of the broad, deep-laid malls and thoroughfares were still at least partially passable.
But Senator Martin Stine, Conservative Socialist representing the state of Penn-York, had trouble keeping his temper in check nonetheless. It was temper aroused as much from the anxiety of deep rooted fear as from the irritation of trying to guide his pneumo-car through the debris-littered avenue leading to the capitol, and the thought jittered again through his mind that he should have taken one of the overheads even though some of them were sagging dangerously in places.
But he hadn't taken one, and there was less than a quarter-mile to go. If he hadn't been adding so indiscriminately of late to his normally 195-pound, six-foot two-inch frame he could've parked the damn car and run the rest of the way. Only a block or so yet.
And at this session, the fur was going to fly for sure if the planet hung together long enough for it to even get underway. He'd warned them the last time about the Tinkers. Deaf. Everybody.
His heavy face was red when he at length arrived in front of the capitol mainramp. He didn't wait for a robotparker to come and take over, but simply stopped his vehicle in its tracks and abandoned it where it stood. And despite the extra pounds he'd recently put on, he moved with an almost feline grace up the broad, inclining ramp, the anger steadily mounting in him.
He entered the vast chamber and took his seat, just as the muted roar of private, nervous conversation was broken by the tri-diannouncer.