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Jones nodded and walked off, toward the gates of the launch base that had been grafted into the small town. The round-topped mountains there were of a hard blue basalt covered in deep layers of rich topsoil. They were also old as the ages, and no seismic activity had been detected there ever since people started watching for such things. That made the place, according to those in charge, perfect for an underground launch base. It had seemed to Jones an excess in caution at first, but now he knew better.

He reached the main gate, little more than a block beyond the small park, and was quickly waved through to the elevator bunker. With a quick pause for a last look at the lightening sky, he stepped in and immediately felt the floor dropping from under his feet. The trip down took little over a minute and the capsule dropped him off a few paces from the briefing room.

Most of the other pilots were already there, filling the rows of seats in the small arena. A large screen behind the stage showed a three-dimensional schematic of the Earth, centered on the south pole. Red covered everything up to around the thirty-fifth parallel, following an irregular border. It struck him as dangerously close.

General Matthias was at the podium. The last pilots walked in right behind Jones.

“Good morning, gentlemen. As you can see,” he tapped the thick line that marked the edge of the cloud on the screen, “the red smoke expanded another few hundreds of kilometers since last night, continuing the surge that started five days ago.”

The pilots, seasoned and trained as they were, took in a collective breath. Officially everything to their south had been evacuated, but they knew many people had refused or been unable to leave. Their own town was supposed to hold only military personnel, yet many of the locals—like Karl—remained.

[continues]