Lucifer's Hammer

by Larry Niven

Cubic miles of water have been vaporized, and the rain clouds encircle the Earth. Cold fronts form along the base of the Himalaya massif and rainstorms sweep through northeastern India, northern Burma, and China's Yünan and Szechwan provinces. The great rivers of eastern Asia, the Brahmaputra, Irrawaddy, Salween, Mekong, Yang-tze and Yellow rivers, all begin along the Himalaya foothills. Floods pour down across the fertile valleys of Asia, and still the rains fall in the highlands. Dams burst and the waters move on until finally they meet the storm-lashed salt water driven inland by waves and typhoons. As the rains fall across the Earth, more steam rises from the hot seas near Hammerstrikes; with the water go salt, soil, rock dust, vaporized elements of the Earth's crust. Volcanoes send more billions of tons of smoke and dust rising into the stratosphere. As Hamner-Brown Comet retreats into deep space, Earth resembles a brilliant pearl with shimmering highlights. The Earth's albedo has changed. More of the Sun's heat and light are reflected back to space, away from the Earth. Hamner-Brown has passed, but the effects remain, some temporary like the tsunamis which still surge through the ocean basins, some on their third journey; hurricanes and typhoons that lash land and sea; the planetwide rainstorms that engulf the Earth. Some effects are more permanent. In the Arctic the water falls as snow that will not melt for hundreds of years.