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MANHATTAN TRANSFER by John E. Stith
Copyright 1993

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                         MANHATTAN TRANSFER
                          (Copyright 1993)
                          by John E. Stith

                             Chapter 1
                             Going Up

     Manhattan never sleeps.  It doesn't even blink.  By three in
the morning, it was as close to lethargy as it ever gets, but
that was still busier than a nursery full of hyperactive kids
with megadoses of sugar and caffeine.
     As something quite out of the ordinary began, Manhattan lay
awake in the dark.
                                #
     Slightly past the orbit of Saturn, over forty degrees above
the plane of the ecliptic, ionized particles of the solar wind
encountered a disruption where none had existed before.
     Space twisted.  An artificial rotating singularity deformed
the fabric of space, bending it in on itself until a black hole
formed.  Charged particles that would normally have sped directly
through the region, instead began to move in arcs, most of which
ended at the singularity.  They accelerated as their paths curved
tighter toward the gravitational lens, speeding faster and faster
as they approached, and, during their final nanoseconds of
existence outside the event horizon, spewing X-rays like tiny
distress calls.
     The event horizon bloomed to a diameter of several hundred
kilometers before it stabilized.  While the solar wind funneled
into the region, an enormous black starship emerged from inside
the event horizon.  The starship, almost as black as the region
of space it slid out of, absorbed radiation across the entire
spectrum as it spun sedately.  As the nearby singularity was
switched off, the event horizon shrank until it vanished, and the
only obstruction to the solar wind was the ship itself.
     The huge squat disk-shaped ship sported octagonal rather
than circular endplates.  The disk was about ten kilometers tall,
as thick as a small moon, and the octagonal endplates spanned
over ten times that distance.  The ship's spin slowed until it
hung motionless in the dim starlight.  The ship then began to
pivot into the solar wind.  The black ship kept adjusting its
orientation until one octagonal surface pointed generally at the
distant yellow G-type star.  The precise alignment was at the
small blue planet, third from the sun.  Moments later, the
enormous ship began to accelerate smoothly toward Earth.
                                 #
     The whup-whup-whup from the chopper's blades rose in pitch
and volume as the pilot pulled back on the collective, and the
chopper rose a meter off the concrete at the edge of Manhattan.
The six passengers were all secured, and the sounds in the
pilot's headphones were positive, reassuring.  He let the craft
hover a moment on the ground-effect cushion as he readjusted his
shoulder strap.  As soon as he felt in control, he let the
chopper continue its rise.  Below him the circular markings of
Manhattan's East 60th Street heliport began to shrink.  As he
rose, he let the chopper turn slowly, and he scanned the space
over nearby building tops.  When the chopper faced the East River
and JFK International beyond, the pilot pushed on the cyclic
stick and tilted the chopper slightly forward, still rising as
the craft began to move toward the airport.
     The pilot enjoyed the runs between Manhattan and JFK,
particularly at times like now--the morning rush hour.  This was
one of the few jobs in flying where you could "drive" over the
roads below in Queens.  He took a lot of pleasure in passing
slow-moving traffic on the Long Island Expressway, BQE, and Van
Wyck, cruising right over the stalls and backed up sections,
ignoring pileups and emergacharge trucks.
     He reached cruising height just before the East River.
Below was the Queensboro Bridge, doing its best to jam more
people into Manhattan.
     A sudden shadow was the first indication of trouble.
Reflexes took over and he lost a little altitude just in case.
If the passengers complained, he couldn't tell, because the
headphones and the rotor roar would block anything up to a
scream.
     The helicopter pilot had just convinced himself there was no
problem when a faint pencil of red light cut the grimy sky
vertically in front of the windshell bubble.  He jammed the stick
and tried to veer away, but he had no time.  The whine of the
rotors suddenly changed pitch as the rotor blades hit the shaft
of laser light.  The chopper became a machine gun, firing severed
pieces of rotor off to his left.  In milliseconds, the slicing
light had whittled every rotor down to half its original length,
and then the chopper itself hit the beam.  A band saw moving at
the speed of light, the laser sliced the chopper right down the
middle.  The engine overhead exploded as the casing surrounding
the whirling components split into pieces.
     Shrapnel from the exploding engine perforated bodies of the
pilot and passengers as the two halves of the chopper began their
plunge to the East River.  The pilot hadn't even had time to
utter the one word traditionally heard as black box recordings
terminate.
                                 #
     Matt Sheehan had heard little more than the roar of the
A-train subway since it sped away from the Jay Street station in
Brooklyn and lurched under the East River.  He'd taken a small
detour through Brooklyn after landing at JFK and taking the
subway through Queens.
     As he stared out the window into the dark, he saw nothing
except an occasional utility lamp as the car rocked on its rails.
He was aware of snippets of conversation, but paid no attention.
The morning rush hour crowd was so dense, Matt held his small
flight bag in the same hand that gripped the overhead strap.  The
woman in front of him faced the door, pretending as he did that
it was comfortable to be as close as lovers.  The mass of bodies
rocked with the motion of the car.  Through the front of the car,
Matt could see the lead car making small zig-zag motions.
     The woman suddenly turned and looked around angrily.  She
scanned nearby faces, returning to Matt's.  Her eyes were green.
Her skin looked tanned, but the smooth texture said her
complexion came from parents rather than the sun.  She said, "I
really don't appreciate that."  Matt got a glimpse of even white
teeth.
     It took Matt a moment to realize someone in the crowd must
have pinched her or touched her in a way even more intimate than
the close contact necessitated.  He almost said, "You sound like
my wife," but instead he hunched up one shoulder and extricated
his free arm from the mass of bodies.  He held his hand palm out.
"I didn't touch you," he said calmly.  "At least not anywhere
except here."  His gaze flicked down to where her shoulder
touched his chest.
     The woman, whose hair was shiny black, held his gaze a
moment before she said, "I'm sorry," and started scanning other
faces again.
     Me, too, he thought as the subway continued to jostle the
riders, a giant hand rocking the crib too energetically.  Matt
felt tired.  He hadn't slept well on the flight from Mexico City
to JFK, and wished he had more energy for his detour through
Manhattan.
     He let his eyelids droop closed, then popped them open a
second later, when the car lurched violently.  The overhead light
went out.  In the same instant, a shower of sparks splattered
from somewhere behind him, and the screaming and shouting
started.
     A rumbling series of loud explosions sounded, so many of
them separated by so little time that the noise was more a
high-speed rat-a-tat-tat than distinct booms.  Matt felt his body
pushed forward into the woman ahead of him as emergency brakes
decelerated the car, and he felt a sudden breeze behind him.  The
floor of the car lurched again, and by the time the car jerked to
a stop, the floor seemed to tilt toward the rear.
     As the screams and shouts finally gave way to angry and
panicked loud questions like, "What the hell's going on?"
directed to no one in particular, the car jerked several times
and came to a halt in blackness.  A woman's voice split the dark,
yelling, "Get your Goddamn hand off me!"
     The echoes from behind him had changed texture and
lengthened, as if they no longer came from an enclosed car.
People began spreading out, and suddenly a man cried, "Hey--" His
voice trailed off until an impact forced more air out of his
lungs.  A few matches and cigarette lighters pierced the
darkness.  At first all they revealed were the forward half of
the car and a confused throng of people.  And Matt drew in a
breath as he realized what didn't show--the rear half of the car.
He pushed his way toward the back as more cries came from that
direction: "Oh, my God."  "Harry, Harry!  What happened?"
     As he got closer, Matt realized that the back half of the
car was gone.  He swallowed hard.  People cowered at the sides of
the vehicle, hanging on tightly and looking into the blackness
behind the car.  A man who apparently was the one who had just
fallen got to his feet on the floor of the tunnel and looked up
in surprise.  Matt reached the severed edge of the car, and the
temperature from packed bodies dropped noticeably.  He took a
deep breath and tried to control his fear.
     The subway car had been sheared in half.  The metal edges of
the floor, walls, and ceiling still glowed a dull red from the
heat of whatever had done this.  Matt had once seen the edges of
a hole created by an armor-piercing missile smashing through a
tank wall.  That hole reminded him of these edges, but here were
no curling can-opener edges, just the shaved nubs, looking like
plastic cut with a very hot knife, a hardware-store 3-D model of
how walls were made.  On the floor of the car and on the clothing
of a couple of people apparently in shock, were splatters of what
could only be blood.  In the air were musty smells of machine
oil, ozone--and fear.
     In the tunnel behind the car, Matt could at first see only
faint reflections from the rails.  He took a tiny penlight from
his bag.  With help from the light, he jumped to the track bed,
careful to stay clear of the extra rail on the outside, even
though the power was almost certainly off.  A couple of meters
from the severed edge of the car he found a man lying on the
tracks, moaning.  Matt grabbed a hunk of fabric and pulled the
man's leg so it no longer touched the rail.  His heart pounded in
his chest, but finally it began to slow as the initial adrenaline
rush faded.
     The man's right hand was gone, cut cleanly at the wrist.  He
heard gasps from behind him.  The wound seemed to be partially
cauterized already, but blood oozed and pulsed into the cinders.
Matt took the man's belt, looped it a few times around the bare
wrist, and fastened it tightly enough to bar further blood loss.
Quietly, in what he hoped was a reassuring tone, he said to the
injured man, who probably couldn't hear him anyway, "Okay,
fellow, I'm here.  We're going to get medical help for you.
You'll be fine."
     Matt played his penlight over the nearby ground, but he saw
no sign of the man's missing hand.  Behind him a couple of people
jumped to the cinder track bed.  He called toward them, "A man
here needs medical attention if there's a doctor around."
     He moved farther down the tracks.  The next couple of meters
could have been the aftermath of combat.  There would be no
helping the people here.  What was left of a man had been cleaved
vertically just to the right of his head.  The rest could only be
described as large and mostly recognizable pieces of human
bodies.
     Matt had seen casualties this horrible before, but he had
always known why.  Here he was totally confused.  Was this the
result of some terrible accident?  Earthquake?  The work of
terrorists?  Nothing made any sense.  Somewhere behind him a
nervous laugh got out of control and turned to a repetitive wail
before it ended with the sound of a slap.
     He walked past the remains and stopped.  Instead of the rear
half of the severed car, or even empty rails extending under the
river, here was nothing.  The rails themselves were severed,
butting up flat against a dark wall that completely blocked the
tunnel mouth.  As Matt came closer, he could feel the heat
radiating from the dull-black surface barring the way.  Water
pooled on the tunnel floor.  Where the hell was the rear half of
the train?
     As he played his light on the mottled surface, voices behind
him said, "What the hell is that?" and "Mother of God."
     Matt glanced behind him and saw an array of tiny flames
piercing the black.  A man in a business suit stumbled forward.
"Agatha.  Agatha!  Can you hear me?"
     Matt walked back to the man, passing a couple of onlookers
with lighter flames flickering.  "I'm sorry, but unless Agatha is
in the car you just came from, she probably can't hear you.  Come
on.  We've got to get out of here fast.  We're probably still
under the river, and something's cut the tunnel.  We could be
flooded at any time."
     The suited man shook, his gaze directed toward the blocked
end of the tunnel.  The man who had lost his hand lay still on
the ground, surrounded by three people who looked at him with
horrified expressions, but weren't helping.  Matt moved closer.
     "Help me carry him out," he said to the onlookers.  He
forced his voice to be calm despite his urge to run.  "It's risky
to move him because he might have a concussion or broken bones
from the fall, but he's got to get medical attention, and it's
going to be a while before any help gets down here."
     "What happened?" asked one of the three, a woman with dazed
eyes.
     "I don't have any idea at all.  Maybe a bridge above us
collapsed.  I hope we'll find out when we get above ground."  He
hoped the prospect of finding out more when they got moving would
appeal to them, but he didn't give the bridge theory any real
credence.  This was something worse.  How much worse, he had no
idea.
     "Take off your coat so we can use it as a litter," Matt said
quickly to the taller man, who wore a raincoat.
     The man didn't respond.
     "Come on."  Matt grabbed the man's arm.
     The man took the coat off as though in a trance.  Matt laid
out the coat next to the injured man.
     "Come on," he said as he knelt beside the man.  "Help me
move him."
     Like obedient automatons the three each gripped a shoulder
or a leg and helped shift the injured man onto the coat.  Matt
took the edge of the coat next to the man's damaged arm so he
could make sure nothing bumped against it.  Together the four of
them lifted the man to waist height and started up the tunnel.
"If anyone gets tired, say so before you lose your grip.  We're
taking a big enough risk already."
     As they reached the severed car, Matt stopped to retrieve
his bag, and he found some passengers were still inside the car.
"Something is blocking the tunnel back there.  Everyone who can
walk had better get started.  No help is going to be here anytime
soon from the way things look.  Walk forward to the next stop.
Anyone who's in good enough shape to run should do it and call
nine-one-one.  And stay away from the extra rail.  Move fast, but
stay calm."
     Someone in the dark said, "My buddy says you can call for
help from phones on the tunnel walls."
     "If you see one, try it.  Otherwise just keep going.  But
help anyone who needs it.  Who can pass the word to the people in
the lead car?"  As soon as he heard a voice say, "I can," he and
the others moved forward with the victim.  Seconds later Matt
realized that a blinking minivid "active" light was tracking them
as they walked.  Whoever it was even had a pinhead lamp shedding
dim light on the tunnel walls.  Irritated that someone was
photographing them, he said, "Take your home movies somewhere
else, why don't you?  We need to get out of here."
     A feminine voice sounded from behind the light.  "This is
for WNBC.  What's your name, please?"
     The voice seemed familiar.  As a man with a lighter moved
closer to the person with the minivid, Matt saw that it was the
black-haired woman whose shoulder had bumped against his chest
since the last stop.  Matt made no reply.
     They maneuvered past the walkway beside the severed car and
past the lead car.  Matt made sure no one was left aboard as they
passed.  Flickering light illuminated a scattering of possessions
left behind.  A headphone lay near a dark spill of blood on a
bench.  Someone must be in one shoe, because a lone sneaker with
its laces still tied rested in a corner.  An expensive video
player had been left behind, along with a few coin-sized disks
that by now would have footprints on them.  A half-eaten sandwich
wrapped in a deli bag lay flattened on the dirty floor.  As they
passed the lead car, Matt understood why the motorman had been no
help.  He was dead, smashed against the glass by the sudden stop.
     Matt and the others were able to walk without jarring the
injured man too badly, and they began to head up the moderate
slope as quickly as they could without risking further injury to
the victim.  Steam rose slowly from a grate somewhere ahead.  A
couple of other people stayed close to them, holding cigarette
lighters and matches in turns so the group could see a little of
their surroundings.  The woman carrying one corner of the
raincoat got a couple of offers to have someone else take her
place, but she turned them down.  Ahead of them, the other
passengers seemed to be taking it all in stride.  Matt supposed
living in New York required people to be adaptable.
     Matt kept walking, trying to jostle his passenger as little
as possible, as he wondered what they would find when they got
out of the tunnel.
                                 #
     Rudy Sanchez got a second cup of coffee from the machine in
the hall and took it back to his office.  The hall was dark.  No
one else was in yet, and Rudy liked to savor the feeling of being
in before the rest of the offices began to fill.  He got twice as
much done when the building was calm and quiet as he did when
office hours began.  Beating the morning rush enhanced the
feeling.
     He glanced out the window at the stream of cars coming
across the Brooklyn Bridge and sat down, ready to get back to
planning the replacement for the old generator on the upper east
side.  He'd been thinking about how to start the next phase when
he realized something about the sound of the city had changed.
He went back to the window.
     At first everything seemed normal.  Traffic was a little
slow, but that was hardly surprising.  As Rudy watched, his eyes
widened as a black shape of some kind came out from behind the
Chase Manhattan Bank Tower.  What the hell?  It seemed to be some
kind of craft, paralleling the coastline, and as it moved, it
directed a dim red pencil of light through the dirty air, toward
the ground.  Where the pencil touched land or water, destruction
followed.
     In awe Rudy put down his coffee cup and stared.  What the
hell was going on?  He put his face nearer the glass and looked
to both sides.  Another identical black ship was moving along the
coast farther to the north.
     Both black, windowless craft flew an even course as they
slanted what had to be high-power lasers toward the Manhattan
shoreline.  Rudy looked at the nearer craft.  From just aft of
the laser's origin, a gun muzzle threw a stream of pellets so
fast and so frequently, there seemed to be a brown shaft of light
right behind the laser.
     A deep rumbling sound reached Rudy, quaking the floor under
his feet and vibrating the windows.  He had the impression of
thousands of small explosions occurring in the slit opened up by
the lasers.
     As Rudy moved to turn on the radio on his desk, the lights
went out.
                                 #
     Abby Tersa had left Grand Central Terminal and was on her
way to the United Nations General Assembly Building when the
traffic lights went off.  Normally she enjoyed the six-block
walk, but today she stood on the sidewalk in front of the
Chrysler Building and backed against the wall as the crowd roared
and the car honking intensified, as if to fill the gap caused by
the sudden absence of subway sounds and the hubbub from freight
elevators and exhaust fans.
     Abby had never seen a power failure since she'd moved to the
Bronx three years earlier.  It made her nervous.
     She edged along the base of the building, feeling the urge
to get to work quickly, but knowing that without power for
microphones, amplifiers, recorders, and lights, she wouldn't be
needed for much translating.  She was wondering if the power
would return anytime soon when she saw the black craft move from
behind the tall slab of the U.N.  Secretariat Building.  The
craft aimed its laser down toward where the East River met the
Manhattan shore.
     Fighting down the panic, Abby began sprinting toward the
U.N.  Fifteen years ago she had been in training for the
Olympics.  In a timed run during physical education in junior
high, she'd been surprised to learn that she was the fastest
runner in her class.  Encouraged by her parents, who saw running
as a good thing to balance out all the hours that she spent in
her room studying, she went out for the track team.  At first she
had rationalized the activity partly because it was one more way
she could exercise her foreign language skills, but she grew to
enjoy the running itself, finding that when she hit her stride
she could block all her worries.  This time she found herself
unable to block the image of that strange ship.
                                 #
     Arsenio Hecher pulled into the right lane fast, finding a
spot that wasn't directly behind a delivery truck.  His fare, a
white couple with a kid, didn't complain.  Out-of-towners were
quieter than the natives.
     Arsenio kept watch in the cab's rear-view mirror as the
vehicle moved onto the Brooklyn Bridge, heading northwest into
lower Manhattan.  The traffic moved fast for rush hour, but it
was never fast enough.  Sometimes Arsenio thought about finding
someplace less congested so he could really move, but when it
came right down to it, he liked the way New York itself moved.
Anyplace else would seem like a sleepy country afternoon, and he
could never go back to that.
     Faint sunlight hit gray waves cresting in the East River.
Arsenio honked a reply to a fellow yellow as the other cab edged
past him.  Why was the other lane always faster?
     The cab had just emerged from the shade of the large bridge
support near the Manhattan shore when a moving shadow flashed
over the roofs of cars and trucks ahead.  Someone must have been
on a hell of a low path to La Guardia.  Arsenio craned his neck
to see what kind of plane it was.
     The woman in the back seat asked, "Does this sort of thing
happen a lot here?"
     He didn't know what she was talking about until he looked
forward again, A field of red tail lights glared at him and horns
began to honk even faster.  As he watched, a sparkling red light
flashed across a truck ahead of the car in front of him.
     Arsenio slammed on the brakes as the truck exploded.  The
car behind him smashed into his rear bumper, and the man in the
back seat yelled, "What the hell!" as in the rear-view mirror
Arsenio saw a truck plow into the guy behind him.  The kid began
to cry.
     From the corner of his eye, Arsenio saw steam explode from
the water at the edge of the river, as though a long thin heater
lay just below the surface.  As the cab finally showed signs of
stopping successfully, the road surface began to tilt forward.
The bridge was coming apart!  "Crap!"
     The Goddamn bridge was turning into a drawbridge, but
backwards.  The section Arsenio's cab was on tilted down.  As his
panic rose, and he jammed his foot on the brakes hard enough to
force the antilock on, he could see cars on the other side of the
break burning rubber as they tried to gun it up the slope.
Electric motors whined, climbing to the top end of the scale as
the wheels spun, and cars slid backward, smoke rising from their
tires.  His heart raced even faster than the time he'd been
mugged.
     For just an instant, Arsenio thought the cab was stopped
precariously on the slope, but the bridge lurched again, and the
car behind him hit his bumper one last time.
     The cab slid off the end of the broken bridge.  The screams
from the back seat blended into one loud roar.
     Arsenio cursed uncontrollably, his hands locked on the
steering wheel and his foot still pistoned into the brake pedal
for the entire time it took before the cab smashed into the
water.
                                 #
     From his darkened office, Rudy Sanchez looked out at the
destruction along the Manhattan shore.  The Brooklyn Bridge had
been severed, two trucks sliced in the process, and cars had
spilled like toys into the river.  Boats docked along the piers
had been cut in two as steam roiled into the morning air.  Rudy
stood in shock, the dead telephone still gripped in one hand.
     He had been tempted to run to help someone, anyone, but now
he just stood, temporarily locked by indecision and fear.  It
seemed to him that anything he did now would be bailing a tidal
wave with a teaspoon.  A couple of fires had started where
natural gas lines ran under the East River to Brooklyn, but
cutoff mechanisms that didn't depend on power would limit the
amount of gas available to burn.
     The black craft closest to him switched off the red light,
undoubtedly some unbelievably high-power laser.  The craft rose
swiftly with no vapor trail until Rudy lost sight of it.
     The city sounded sick.  The occasional rumble of a passing
subway hadn't been audible for several minutes.  The increased
frantic honking from cabs and trucks grid-locked without working
traffic lights more than made up for the lack in volume, but
provided no comfort.
     A flicker of black caught Rudy's eye.  The craft were
returning.  He leaned forward and could see two more of them
flying in formation but spreading the pattern as they fell.  And
what they were doing was even stranger than before.  There seemed
to be some filmy transparent material stretched between the
craft.  They looked as if they held some enormous soap bubble.
What in God's name was happening?
     The nearest black craft settled slowly toward the shoreline,
stretching its corner of the bubble as it fell.  Moments later
the craft hovered over a severed dock.  The corner of the soap
bubble widened, and the edge of the bubble began to pull itself
down toward the shoreline, apparently sealing itself to the
ground or to some material the ship had deposited in the groove
it had cut earlier.  Within minutes, the filmy bubble had settled
into a smooth seal for as far as Rudy could see.  It seemed big
enough to be covering the entire island of Manhattan.
     The black craft rose, moving away from Manhattan as it did.
Another one entered Rudy's field of view.  Seconds later they
both stopped, and stayed where they were, hovering.
     Rudy had no warning.  In one moment the ships just hovered.
In the next moment a giant flashbulb went off.  Rudy could see
nothing but sparkles surrounding a large red spot for the next
minute, but slowly his vision returned.  When it did, he could
see the bubble was still in place, but now it seemed more
tangible.  It was still transparent, but the reflections seemed
brighter and they no longer wavered.
     The hovering craft were gone.  As Rudy tried to see where
they might be, an enormous shadow crept over lower Manhattan.
                                 #
     Julie Kravine took a last few shots with her minivid, then
shut off the sand-grain light.  The image of the stalled subway
cars faded from her retinae, and she turned to follow the
stragglers up the tunnel.
     Ahead of her were the four people carrying the man who had
lost his hand.  Julie cringed, just thinking about it again.  And
she remembered the severed bodies they were leaving behind.  She
had taken shots of them, too, more so that people would believe
her report rather than because they'd be used on the news.  She
hadn't felt this ambivalent since she left Tom.
     Julie felt uneasy.  The ground rumbled with some
unidentifiable tremble, and things just felt wrong.  If the
tunnel collapse was some localized catastrophe, she'd be hearing
the rumble from other subways as they traveled nearby.  Instead,
the only vibration was that constant faraway tremor.
     The rumble stopped.  Suddenly the underground felt
completely quiet, unnatural.  Something was definitely very
wrong.  Julie hurried ahead, following the flickering lights.
She stumbled, then got back to her feet and started picking
cinders out of her palms.  The tunnel smelled oily.
     She caught up with the foursome.  A couple of men walked
with them, holding cigarette lighters, obviously ready to take
over for anyone who got tired.  She turned on her tiny light and
minivid, capturing ten seconds before turning them off.  She felt
a pride in how well New Yorkers were responding to the trouble.
Her sister in Columbus complained about the crime rate and the
apparent unfriendliness, but when things got tough, New Yorkers
found ways to cope.
     Julie moved to catch up again.  She was tired from covering
a late-night hostage crisis in south Brooklyn The good part was
that it had left her with all her recording gear and a moderate
battery charge at just the right time.
     She caught up with the others and turned on her minivid, set
to voice-only to save the charge.  The tall man who had been next
to her in the subway when it all started gripped one corner of
the raincoat holding the injured man.  He was the same one who
had calmed the crowd with sensible directions and a take-charge
attitude that didn't smack of dictatorship.  And he was the same
one who had declined comment earlier.  Was he a cop?
     The man was going to be the focus of this piece, whether he
liked it or not, Julie decided.  She moved deliberately to one of
the other three people carrying the injured man.
     "I'm Julie Kravine with WNBC," she said to the woman who
carried one corner of the raincoat.  "What's your name?"
     "Bette Waylon."  The woman wore a dark jacket with the
bracelet cuffs made popular in Way Down and Way Over.
     "Can you tell me what you thought when the lights went out?"
     "Nothin' I guess.  That I'd be late for business."
     "Any ideas about what might have caused this?"
     "Naw.  But we can find out on TV when we get back up."
     "Anyone else here with a theory?"  Julie watched the tall
man.  He opened his mouth but he didn't say anything.
     Julie moved around until she was next to the tall man.  He
glanced at her, then looked ahead.
     "And your name is, sir?"
     The man replied without looking at her.  "Matt Sheehan."
     As she formulated her next question, Matt added, "And I
apologize for being rude back there.  I thought you were just
another idiot with a camera.  I guess I was a little edgy."
     "I think we're all a little edgy," Julie said, thinking that
he seemed the least edgy of anyone down here.  "You a cop?"
     "A cop?  No."
     "You seemed to adapt pretty quickly to the situation.
What's your background?
     "I've spent some time in the service."
     "Ah.  So, do you have any theories about what happened back
there?"
     The man was silent for a moment and several pairs of feet
crunched gravel on the dark tunnel floor.  "Not really."
     "Nothing at all?"
     "No.  Just that I'm betting the problem isn't just down
here."
     "Why makes you say that?"
     "Just because this section of tunnel goes under the river.
It's got to be going through bedrock.  Anything generating enough
force to do damage like what's back there isn't going to be
confined to one tunnel."
     Julie had been so intent on getting pictures and reactions
that she hadn't thought much about anything else, but a sudden
lurch in her stomach told her the man was probably right.  An
instant later she wasn't so sure the reaction had been nerves.
     The ground shook.  People carrying the injured man stumbled
as they passed through a plume of rising steam.
     Julie crouched in the dark tunnel, feeling the same
sensation she felt in an elevator as it accelerated upward.
                                 #
     In the Columbia University Computer Science Department
Building, Dr. Bobby Joe Brewster awoke with a start.
     For an instant, he felt he was at sea.  The desk his head
rested on didn't seem solid, and neither did the chair he sat in.
He jerked his head upright.
     "Piss!"  Bobby Joe looked at the dark computer screen in
front of him.  The atmospheric simulation run had been almost
complete when he must have finally fallen asleep.  And now he'd
have to start over.  The power had gone off, and it had stayed
off long enough for his uninterruptible power supply to use up
its charge.
     The floor lurched and a stylus on Bobby Joe's desk rolled a
few centimeters and stopped.  "What--"
     Either some of the students in his computer modeling class
were playing one hell of a trick on him, or something was really
screwy.  He rose and moved to the window.
     Yup, something was really screwy, Bobby Joe decided.
     He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and took another look
over nearby building tops and watched New Jersey sink.
     "All right, you guys," he said loudly.  "It's a convincing
display."
     He listened for laughter or some other response.  Nothing.
He looked out the window again, first as far to the left as he
could see, and then as far to the right.  He'd spent enough time
in VirtReal simulations to know what was real and what wasn't.
This was real.  But it was unreal.
     Traffic had come to a complete standstill on every road he
could see.  In the distance a huge mall vaguely resembled an
aircraft carrier from this high up.  Boats left their trails in
scummy water.  Slowly moving out into the Hudson was a line of
turbulence.
     He looked up as best he could with his cheek flattened
against the glass.  Overhead was a solid black cloud.  Or was it?
The edge looked awfully straight.
     Bobby Joe looked back at New Jersey.  He could see roads
he'd never seen before, and the shoreline was beginning to
disappear from view as it fell below nearby rooftops.
     Fear forced him into nervous humor.  This was not going to
be a good day.
                                 #
     Annie Muntz was eating breakfast and watching the morning
news in Queens when the lights flickered and the TV picture froze
on the last frame.  Motion out the window caught her eye.
     On the table next to the couch was a thick tumbler with an
inch of Scotch in it.  She rose and moved closer to the window
for a better look, taking her drink with her.
     At first, Annie thought somehow her apartment building was
sinking into the ground, because the Manhattan skyline was slowly
but undeniably rising into the air.  And the skyline was under a
huge transparent arc, as if all the buildings had been put under
a giant cake cover.
     As she watched, her knees felt weak.  The entire
bubble-covered island of Manhattan was slowly rising into the
air.  As it continued to rise, she saw what was underneath the
island.  Below street level was a huge cone that extended even
deeper than the Empire State Building was tall.
     A dozen dark lines led from points all around the island up
into the air.  Annie's gaze followed the cables and saw an
enormous black ship even bigger than the captured borough,
hovering above it.  A puzzled expression wrinkled her forehead.
The alcohol level in her blood was high enough that for a long
moment she considered the possibility that she was witnessing the
advertising stunt to end them all.
     Finally Annie yelled to her husband in the next room, "Hey,
Herb, come here.  You really should see this."
                                 #
     The rear half of the A-train subway had sustained far more
damage than the front half.  The rear half had crashed into
something very hard.
     Groans filled her ears as Shirley Hamilburg regained
consciousness.  Her first thought was that she'd had a
super-realistic dream about going to work, and then she worried
that she'd overslept.  Finally she opened her eyes and managed to
convince herself she really was awake despite the fact that she
couldn't see.  Where was Frankie, and what was wrong with her
eyes?
     Light flickered somewhere to her left.  She turned her head
to see where it was coming from, and she finally realized that
she really had been on a subway car.  So where was she now?  The
light flickered again.  It was someone with a cigarette lighter
or a match.  Suddenly she realized how hot she was.  The air was
stifling.  She was still in the car.
     Shirley lifted her head, feeling the pull of pain from her
shoulder as she shifted position.  Lights flickered from
somewhere outside of the car.  She was in a mass of bodies like
some nightmarish orgy.
     Shirley tried to extricate herself from the mass of bodies.
When a nearer flame lit the darkness, she saw that the man ahead
of her must have hit the handrail support pole very hard.  From
near the front of the car came the sound of someone throwing up,
and Shirley winced.  She'd almost rather be dead than be throwing
up.
     Shirley finally managed to free herself.  She moved over a
few still bodies by supporting most of her weight from the
overhead bar.  The door had already been forced open.  Outside,
to the right, near the front of the train, lights flickered.  She
edged between the car and the side of the tunnel.  The car itself
was obviously not sitting evenly on the rails, and it leaned
toward the opposite side of the tunnel.  She passed the end of
the car and walked beside the car ahead, which had jackknifed.
     Shirley caught up with a small group of people holding
flickering matches and lighters.
     By the wavering light she could see that the first car in
line had somehow been cut off as though God possessed a giant
meat cleaver.  The crumpled half-car rested against a solid
obstruction blocking the entire tunnel.  Two lifeless faces gaped
and stared unseeing through the blood-smeared window.
     Shirley stared at the blocked end of the subway tunnel.  A
man beside her said, "I don't understand.  What's going on?"
     Shirley shrugged.  She had no answers.
     A sudden rumbling and creaking began.  Someone in the small
crowd said, "It's moving!"
     Sure enough, the black barrier at the end of the tunnel was
sliding upward.  And outward.  Light filtered into the tunnel,
and Shirley squinted as her eyes adjusted.
     The gap between the tunnel mouth and the upward-moving plate
widened.  The gap kept on widening.  Instead of revealing the
other side of the tunnel, though, a chasm opened just past the
mouth of the tunnel.  Someone in the group murmured, "Holy crap."
     The others in the crowd seemed as speechless as Shirley was
until the bottom of the moving shape reached eye level.  More and
more light filtered down until daylight finally reached the
bottom of what was an immense cavity like a strip mine.  And
above the void, an incredibly large dark shape floated higher and
higher.
     Water began to spill past the tunnel mouth, but not before
Shirley had gotten a view of gaping tunnel mouths on the sides of
the elongated chasm.  The pair of holes more or less in line with
the direction the severed subway tunnel pointed had to be the
Holland Tunnel, and just to the right was a PATH rail line tube.
To the north were another pair of severed tunnels that would be
the Amtrak rail lines.  God almighty.
     Even farther north was a trio of tubes, the Lincoln Tunnel.
Grimy black smoke poured from the rightmost circle.  Water began
to slosh past the other tunnel mouths as Shirley's mind finally
began to come to terms with what was fairly obvious but very
difficult to accept: all of Manhattan was rising into the air,
leaving a huge long hole in the ground in the same shape as the
island.
     The waterfall grew louder and louder, but for the moment,
the water was moving past the tunnel mouth fast enough that
little water entered.  By that time, the entire perimeter of the
lip looked like Niagara Falls.
     A man in a sweater and a vest said slowly, "Oh, God.  Do you
realize what will happen when the water fills the hole and
reaches this height?"
     Suddenly Shirley knew exactly what would happen.  At about
the same time someone else said, "We'd better schlepp our butts
out of here!"
     A kid in a black jacket said, "We'll never get all the way
back before the water runs down the tunnel and reaches us.  We'd
be better off jumping in."  By now the falling water made a
thunderous noise.
     "Yeah, sure," said the man in the sweater.  "Be my guest.
Go ahead and jump.  It's like a Goddamn blender out there.  And
if we wait for the water to reach here, we'll just get caught and
sucked back down here as the water drains into the tunnel."
     "We'll, we gotta to do something," the kid said.
     "Right.  I'm running."  The man ran back into the dim
tunnel.  Most of the others followed, and Shirley went, too.
     They ran through the nightmare blackness until Shirley's
lungs threatened to explode.  They hadn't even managed to reach
the lowest section of the tunnel before the water began flooding
in.  The whooshing made her heart race even faster.  Wind started
rushing out of the tunnel, and two cigarette lighters went out.
Cold water swept past Shirley's ankles, and seconds later she was
sloshing though calf-deep water.
     The water seemed to suddenly move faster, and it swept
Shirley off her feet.  The current carried her in total darkness.
Her feet dragged against one wall.  Her body tumbled in the
turbulent current.  She couldn't tell which way was up, but she
had to breathe.
     Shirley had held her breath as long as she possibly could by
the time the current smashed her head against a maintenance
panel.
                                 #
     Rudy Sanchez stood transfixed at the window as the Municipal
Building creaked around him as though in a high wind.  Some
enormous ship above the city was obviously lifting the entire
bubbled island into the air.  A disturbance spread into the water
in the Upper Bay as though a drain had opened in a giant bathtub.
The Staten Island ferry had been moving toward Manhattan, but by
now it had turned 180 degrees and was trying desperately and in
vain to move south before it was dragged backward into the
depression.  Rudy could see a mass of people at the back rail of
the ferry as the crest of turbulent water began to shake the
ferry apart.  Rudy had to shut his eyes.
     When he opened his eyes again, Rudy could no longer see the
ferry, but as he craned his head and looked southwest he was just
in time to see the Statue of Liberty disappear below the horizon,
looking for all the world as if she were waving good-bye.
     In less than a minute Brooklyn dropped from sight, and
within minutes Rudy could no longer see the Atlantic ocean.  The
atmosphere slowly shifted from blue toward black.  The image of
the Statue of Liberty still burned in his memory.
     Rudy glanced at people on the ground.  Hardly anyone was
moving, and almost everyone seemed to be staring at the dome.
     The sky outside the dome now looked almost black.  Rudy
could see stars around the edges of the huge black shape
overhead, and on the ground shadows seemed sharper than normal.
The sun was brighter than he'd ever seen it.
     As Rudy watched, the dark shape overhead suddenly grew
wider, blotting out more and more stars until the only stars Rudy
could see were almost level with him, visible through the side of
the dome.  His stomach twisted as he decided the ship towing the
city hadn't come closer, but instead they were now underneath a
ship that dwarfed the one that had picked up Manhattan.  Rudy
swallowed hard.
     The black shape started to blot out more and more stars, as
though a huge black cylinder was being lowered around the island.
Rudy watched helplessly as they were pulled upward into the giant
ship.
     The light from the sun was cut off, and Manhattan moved into
darkness.

                            Chapter 2
                          Free Utilities

     As unnatural darkness spread over the Manhattan morning,
Dorine Underwood, the mayor of New York City, watched in shock
from her west-wing-office window in City Hall.  Her job demanded
her to expect the unexpected, but this was absurd.
     Dorine had also been at her desk before the regular start of
the business day.  Getting in early was the only way she could
keep up with the steady stream of daily visitors and still manage
to keep the city mechanisms operating smoothly.  Long ago she had
learned the importance of delegating, but she still had to make
sure all the tentacles of city government waved in a consistent
manner.  Her predecessor had served but a single term, thanks in
part to snafus like having scheduled tours of area medical
research labs on Animal Rights Day.
     The changed city sounds had brought her to the window, where
her body momentarily seized up.  She couldn't breathe, couldn't
swallow.  She just stood there petrified, on the verge of panic,
as Manhattan rose through the atmosphere.
     The darkness was not total.  The few buses, cabs, trucks,
and cars stopped on the streets below and not yet abandoned by
their drivers showed twin sets of lamps cutting through the
artificial night.
     Dorine would have felt more comfortable in the dark.  The
dark could let her pretend nothing had changed.  None of the
headlights below penetrated the bubble she had seen placed around
the edge of the shoreline.  Instead, the lights reflected off the
bubble, creating a fun-house mirror image of the panicked city
and making the recent changes impossible to disbelieve.  She
shivered uncontrollably in the warm room.
     For a moment she closed her eyes in another futile attempt
to pretend everything was normal.  In the self-imposed blindness,
Dorine Underwood realized that even in darkness the events of the
last half-hour could not be ignored.  She felt lighter.
     She opened her eyes again and this time focused on herself
instead of on the panic outside.  She lifted her arm.  Her wrist
seemed to have strings attached, pulling gently upward.  She knew
what that meant--that the island of Manhattan was now in a weaker
gravity field than Earth's--but she still had trouble accepting
it.
     As a test, she jumped.  Fortunately her office ceiling was
so high that she didn't hit her head hard enough to hurt.  She
fell back to the floor in slow motion, and the time it took her
to fall was so long that she tipped on the way down and landed
awkwardly on one ankle before falling to the floor with far less
dignity than proper for a mayor of the Big Apple.
     Unhurt but astonished, she regained her footing and looked
out the window again.  Her breath came in short bursts.  Nothing
in the mayor's manual had been adequate preparation for this.
                                 #
     Julie Kravine had felt the tremors as she hurried along with
the others in the subway tunnel, and now she, too, realized that
somehow she was much lighter than before.  Walking was no longer
an instinctive act; she had to concentrate on keeping her balance
between steps, and the ground seemed slick.  The foursome
carrying the wounded man had all stumbled, twice almost dropping
the victim.
     One of the men said, "What's going on?  This feels like one
of those low-gravity rides at Epcot."
     Flickering lights from the cigarette lighters seemed
slightly taller and thinner than before.  The tall man who had
more or less assumed command, Matt, said, "I can't think of any
explanation.  Let's just get this guy to safety, and we'll all
find out."
     Julie found herself wanting to participate in the discussion
rather than just acting as an observer.  She said, "This isn't
just some tunnel cave-in, though, don't you think?  I'm nervous."
     Matt said, "I'm nervous, too.  But there's not much we can
do about it, is there?"
     Julie shook her head.  Probably no one saw the gesture in
the dim light.
     After a few more steps, the woman in the foursome suddenly
said, "Look!  Up there!  There's a light."
     A train.  Julie was suddenly nervous.  Was there enough room
for the train to pass without grinding them against the tunnel
walls?  Would it crash into their stopped train, killing even
more people?  The worried thoughts all flickered through her
brain so fast that only a second later she realized the idea of a
running train no longer made sense.
     She was right.  Far ahead was the first working emergency
light Julie had seen since they left the stalled cars behind.
They must be close to the station.  Finally they'd find out what
was going on.
                                 #
     Matt and the three helpers maneuvered the man who'd lost his
hand up onto the subway platform.  The man rested on his back
while they climbed up to the platform easily in the lighter
gravity.
     As Matt picked up his corner of the raincoat again, the
injured man's eyelids fluttered, then opened.  "What?" he said
groggily.  His eyes focused somewhere behind Matt, and his
forehead wrinkled in puzzlement.  Matt glanced where the man was
looking and saw a subway poster from the Ultimate Savior Church,
showing in huge black letters, "Repent!"
     Matt looked back at the man and said, "We're here.  You've
got help.  Don't worry about anything."
     Pain flickered across the man's face, and Matt wished they
had some anesthetic for him.  The man looked to be in his
forties, with thin lips, black eyes, and lopsided eyebrows.  His
eyes closed, then opened slightly and closed again, like eyes of
a child who wanted to stay up late but just couldn't last any
longer.
     Even as they made their way up the dark stairs from the
subway tunnel, Matt saw additional confirmation that whatever had
happened was something far out of the ordinary.  If the problem
had been local, they would have found help at the station, or
even before.  On their way up, they encountered no one, and the
city sounds seemed strange even to him.
     Car horns filtering down the stairwell didn't sound like the
normal jumbled mess of short blasts.  Instead, maybe a dozen
horns of various pitch and volume blared steadily, as though a
dozen accidents had left drivers slumped over their steering
wheels.
     Matt and the others reached the final stairs to the street
without finding any lighting other than the occasional emergency
lamps.  From the distance came the sounds of crying and a mass of
mumbling people.  The reporter moved ahead of them up the stairs.
Matt watched his footing carefully and kept checking on the
injured man.  When they reached ground level, they moved past
some people cowering near the wall, and Matt found the reporter
standing there motionless, looking up.
     Instead of the daylight Matt had expected, he found night.
Suspended over Manhattan was a reflected image of a darkened city
lit only by the headlights of buses, cabs, trucks, and cars
stalled and abandoned in the grid-locked streets.  The sidewalks
were lined with people in clumps staring up at the distorted
reflections.  Here and there a person lay flat on the ground.
Someone maybe a half-block away wailed steadily.  Matt's stomach
lurched.  He could understand the people lying down; the image
suspended over the city, coupled with the low gravity, gave him a
sharp twinge of acrophobia.
     One of the men in the foursome wobbled a bit, then
recovered.  Luckily the victim's weight was much less of a burden
than before.  Matt glanced around.  Down the block was an
ambulance caught in the traffic snarl.
     "Let's get this guy down there," Matt said, and pointed.
     They threaded their way through the people on the sidewalk
and street.  When they reached an open area and walked faster,
Matt almost lost his footing.  The pavement seemed too smooth, no
doubt thanks to the low gravity allowing less friction.
     The ambulance attendants stood on the pavement next to their
open doors, both looking up at the sky.
     "We've got someone who needs your attention," Matt said to
the driver.
     It took a moment for the driver to focus on Matt and start
to react to what he was saying, but after a few seconds his
training must have taken over, and he and the other attendant
started to put the man with no hand onto a stretcher.  Matt
explained that they hadn't been able to locate the man's hand.
     The reporter came up beside Matt as the paramedics started
puffing medication into the man's arm.  The man's eyes fluttered
open again, and the reporter asked, "Do you remember anything
about what happened to you?"
     The man glanced toward the arm without a hand.  He licked
his lips and said softly, "I think God's trying to tell me
something."  His voice was mellow, resonant, despite the
softness.
     "What do you mean by that?" she asked, but the man's eyes
closed and his features relaxed, no doubt thanks to the
medication taking over.
     Matt got back to the curb just as a bright light came on in
the sky to the west of the city.  A round spot the size of the
sun penetrated the reflected images above the skyline and began
to grow brighter.  A hush fell over the people on the sidewalks
and in the street.
     The "sun" grew brighter and brighter until it hurt to look
at it, and the city streets lightened until they were as bright
as day.
     When the "sun" reached what seemed to be its maximum
intensity, the dome started losing its reflectivity, and in
stages began to grow transparent.  Matt moved a few steps so he
could see better to the east.  The first thing he realized was
that although his memory told him the Brooklyn Bridge should be
in view, it wasn't.  Rather, all that showed was a stub of the
bridge.
     The dome continued to increase in transparency, and Matt
felt his mouth go dry.  He could see through the dome, and what
he saw didn't bear any resemblance at all to Brooklyn.
     Instead, the island of Manhattan rested on a vast gray
plain.  In the distance was another dome sitting on the plain,
and to its left another.  Slightly farther away than the pair was
yet another dome.  Matt shifted position again as the crowd came
to life with screams and loud voices.  He could see two more
domes in the distance.
     Beneath the other domes were what seemed to be other cities,
one a jumble of prismatic arches, another what looked like one
enormous building, another a mass of needle-thin spires with
halos near the top, and even someone much less well-traveled than
Matt would have instantly known these cities had never existed on
Earth.
                                 #
     Julie kept her minivid active and tried as hard as she could
to focus her thoughts on the mechanics of her job.  Thank God the
recorder still had a moderate charge.  The minivid optics were
attached to her headband, feeding what they saw into her glasses
and to the recorder that hung lightly at her waist.
     She had made several deliberate pans of the dome overhead
and recorded the stalled traffic with drivers milling about on
Fulton and Broadway before the artificial sun came on and the
dome cleared.  Now she used her telephoto on the cities inside
the domes out there on the plain.  In one of the nearest bubbles,
which contained maybe a hundred very large pyramid-shaped blue
buildings with irregular windows, she could make out the motion
of what looked to be people.
     Light glinted from the dome over the blue city, and in the
short time she recorded the scene, the brightest reflection moved
just a hair to the right.  The "sky" was brighter over that side
of the dome, as though it had its own "sun" pointed at it but was
shielded from view in this direction.  She waited a few moments
and the reflection was again slightly to the right of where it
had been before.  In her telephoto image, she could see a couple
of distant domes that looked dark.  Some domes were simple
portions of spheres; others were distorted to accommodate tall
structures, the way the tent-shaped dome over Manhattan was.
     Julie looked back up at the dome above Manhattan.  The
bubble came close to touching the tip of the southernmost of the
twin towers of the World Trade Center.  She moved past a small
crowd of people on the sidewalk and took some more shots.  The
honking seemed to have died down a little since she and the
others had gotten up to the street, but people clogged the road,
walking between stopped trucks and buses, or standing rigid and
looking up.  A couple of people near the intersection were
shouting unintelligibly.
     Julie noticed more eye contact than normal among people in
the crowd, as though many of them were silently asking, "Do you
see this, too?"  In the street she recognized another journalist
but couldn't tell if he was wearing a minivid.
     "Are you going to be all right?" asked a voice behind her
shoulder.
     She turned and found Matt Sheehan standing there, his small
flight bag held in one hand.  "It's a little too early to tell
right now, don't you think?"
     "I meant as far as getting around the city."
     "Sure.  I'll be fine.  Do you realize that there seem to be
people living under those other domes?"
     "No, but I'm glad to hear it.  That probably means they
intend to keep us alive."
     Motion in the direction of what was left of the Brooklyn
Bridge made them turn in unison.  What seemed to be an enormous
transparent hose was extending down from somewhere above, the top
end invisible.  Julie turned and saw another hose to the "south."
She turned full circle and could see four different hoses
dropping around the island.  Presumably more hoses were dropping
near the north end of the dome, near Harlem and Washington
Heights.
     The end of the nearby hose almost reached the flat plain
outside the dome.  Julie started her minivid again and watched
through the telephoto viewfinder.  "That hose, or whatever it is,
is starting to curve," she said for Matt's benefit.
     The hose continued to curve until it completed a
ninety-degree turn, facing the dome.  "It's coming closer to the
dome," Julie said.
     As the large transparent tube came closer, the end grew in
diameter.  Finally it stuck itself against the side of the dome,
maybe fifty meters in the air, about as high as the Brooklyn
Bridge support.
     "So are the rest of the tubes," Matt said as he turned back
to face the closest one.
     Where the lip of the hose touched the dome, a bright ring
formed.  The dome material in the circle and just outside the
circle shimmered, and then the clear dome material within the
circle melted away from the center until it looked as if some
huge glass blower had just perfectly formed the spout on a glass
teapot.
     Julie was aware of several distant sirens as she stood
watching the dome material near the hose lose its shimmer.
Within seconds the dome and hose were back to their normal
transparency, as though they had been connected forever.
     "What do you suppose those things are for?" she asked.
     Matt glanced at the ring of tubes.  "If they want to keep us
alive, we're going to need air pretty soon.  I'd vote for
ventilation."
     Another set of hoses began to drop from the sky.  As Julie
and Matt watched, she realized she could feel a breeze when
before there hadn't been one.
     "You must be right about the air," she said, then looked
around.  "Tell me something.  Does it look to you like the light
has moved since it came on?"
     Matt glanced toward the "sun."  "Maybe a little.  To the
right?"
     "That was my guess, too."
     "I always wondered what it would be like to live in an ant
farm."
     "You're kiddin' me."
     Matt looked at her.  "Yeah, I'm kidding."
     One of the second set of hoses had melted through the dome.
This hose was smaller and lower to the ground, and whatever was
happening to the dome itself was different.  Instead of a simple
hole in the dome, part of the dome, or part of the hose, was
extruding a shape into the interior of the dome.  They watched in
awe for several seconds before Matt suddenly laughed.
     "What?" Julie asked.
     "It's a bird-feeder.  That cup is going to fill with water,
I bet you--" he hesitated.  "I don't know that betting you money
makes any sense anymore."
     Julie looked back at the junction and the interior shape as
it stopped mutating.  He was right.  A bird-feeder was just what
it looked like.  "I've seen a lot of things, but I'm having a
tough time believing this is all real."
     "Me, too."
     Julie heard cries from somewhere in the crowd behind her.
She turned and saw several people looking and pointing upward.
She looked to where they pointed, and she saw shapes appearing on
the top of the tent-shaped bubble.
     She and Matt watched in silence as what looked to be
lettering of some kind formed on the dome.  Through her
telephoto, the large black shapes split into a few smaller
shapes, as though the aliens' paragraphs themselves formed
two-dimensional shapes.  The characters were completely foreign
to her.  Most of the marks had such ill-defined shapes, they
looked more like a child's doodling than actual writing, possibly
alien pictographs rather than characters.
     "Any guesses as to what that says?" she asked.
     Matt took a long look.  "I suppose it must be a message to
us rather than some label for themselves, but if it were for
their own use, I'd be afraid it said something like, 'Manhattan
Zoo,' or worse."
     "Worse?"
     "Yeah, it could say, 'Laboratory Animals.'"
                                 #
     Minutes after the artificial night began, Dorine Underwood
saw the "sunrise" from her office, and it gave her new hope.  If
their captors were providing light, they wouldn't be preparing to
kill everyone right away.  She hoped.
     Given that the city was still alive, she had an organization
to run.  Her thoughts still flicked from topic to topic in her
typical stress reaction, and she willed herself to calm down.
She must be calm.  Dorine took a couple of deep breaths and
forced herself to look for something good in the situation.  It
took her several minutes.  Finally she decided that the only
slightly good news was that she wouldn't have her day constantly
interrupted by out-of-towners.
     She paused for a few seconds and picked up a picture of
Rafael.  He was off designing a new theater in Cleveland, however
far away that was now.  She gripped the picture tightly enough
that the glass popped as it pressed more tightly against the
photo of her husband.  "Dear God," she said softly.  "Give me
strength to do what must be done.  And give Rafael the strength
to handle--whatever it is that's happened."
     She dabbed at her eyes briefly, then strode into the hall.
No one was going to say Sherilyn Underwood's little girl wasn't
up to anything the Lord threw her way.  And she'd be damned if
anyone got an opportunity to say a white mayor would be handling
things better.  She didn't get to be mayor of New York City by
caving in whenever the unexpected happened.
     She found Freddy the night guard still near his post.  He
stared out the hallway window completely entranced.
     "Freddy," she said softly, and touched his arm.
     Freddy jumped.  "God damn.  Don't do--" Freddy regained
control.  "Oh, it's you, Ms. Mayor.  I'm sorry.  You just scared
the--"
     "It's all right.  I understand completely.  Something very
strange has happened out there."
     "You're damn--er, you ain't wrong there, ma'am."
     "Look, I've got a job for you.  Are you ready?"  Seeing the
man's hesitation, she added, "We've got a city to run.  Something
bad has happened out there, and the people of Manhattan need us
more than ever."
     "Yes, ma'am.  You're right.  I'm ready."
     "That's good.  What I want you to do is walk over to Barnaby
Jolliet's office.  Tell him I said for him to use his best
judgment about getting the police out there to reassure people.
And ask him for three of his walkie-talkies so we can talk until
the phones are on again.  You got that?"
     "I got it, ma'am.  And bring you all three walkie-talkies?"
     "Right.  Unless you see Ken Randall.  Give him one.  And
when you get back, tell everyone you can find in the building
there'll be a meeting in the planning room in twenty minutes--at
nine-thirty.  Tell that to Mr. Jolliet, too, and Ms. Phillipe in
the Municipal Building."
     "You got it, Ms. Mayor."  Freddy seemed visibly relieved to
see that someone was reacting as though this were something that
could be handled.  Dorine hoped the rest of Manhattan would react
the same way.
     Dorine went back to her office and looked out the window.
On the street, a pair of men jumped straight into the air.  Their
heads must have cleared the second floor before they fell gently
back to the ground.
     She looked over the skyline.  One more good thing about
this.  The air looked cleaner than it had in decades.
                                 #
     Julie turned off her minivid after training the lens on the
message on the dome.  "I hope you're wrong about what it says,"
she said.  "I hope it says, 'We'll have you back in twenty-four
hours.'"
     Matt looked at one of the domes outside their own.  "Doesn't
seem too likely, though, does it?"
     "No," Julie said.  "Damn, I hate to admit this, but I'm
scared."
     "Me, too," said Matt.  "Me, too."
     Some of the buses and cars in the street were abandoned.  By
now, many drivers had just parked as far from the center of the
road as they could, and left their vehicles there.
     Matt hesitated.  "I was on my way to visit a friend who
works in the Municipal Building.  You're not going to have any
trouble getting home or wherever you need to go?"
     "I'll be fine.  Who's your friend if I need to get hold of
you?"
     "Rudy Sanchez."
     Julie reached into a pocket.  "Here's my card in case you
need to reach me."
     "Thanks.  You take care of yourself."
     "You, too."  Julie turned, and within seconds she was lost
in the crowd.
                                 #
     Matt walked over to Park Row, past City Hall Park, which was
packed with onlookers staring up at the reflections from the
interior of the dome.  People on the street were slipping and
sliding with the lower friction and the unfamiliarity with low
gravity.  A few people adapting more quickly ran with long, high
bounding steps or jumped straight up as far as they could.  A cab
surged through a gap in traffic and tried to make a hard turn,
but wound up sliding sideways until it mashed the fender on a
stalled truck.  A couple of street people slumping on the
sidewalk next to the building pulled their coats more tightly
around themselves.
     Matt found the Municipal Building straddling Chambers
Street.  No one questioned him as he checked an office directory
that said Rudy's office was on the nineteenth floor, then started
up the stairs.
     The nineteenth floor was a long dim corridor lit only by a
few emergency lamps and light filtering through office windows.
Matt reached the southern end of the hallway and found the name
tag he'd been looking for.  As he hesitated in the hall, a man he
didn't recognize hurried out of the office.
     Matt rapped on the door frame.  "Hello.  Anybody home?"
     From behind a tall file cabinet, Rudy Sanchez appeared.
Rudy had grown up in East L.A., then gotten his degree in
mechanical engineering before entering the military, where Matt
had met him.  He'd shaved his moustache since Matt had seen him
last, and added maybe ten pounds, but in the light from the
window, he looked fit.  "Matt?  You're a day early.  God, it's
good to see you."
     "Same here."  Matt shook hands, and he smiled despite the
tension.  Rudy's grip had lost none of its strength.  It felt
good to see a familiar face in the middle of all this.
     Rudy sighed.  "If you had just been a day late, you might
have been spared all this."
     "Well, I am here."  Matt moved to the window, and Rudy
joined him.  From this height, he could see a few more domes
that, from ground level, had been hidden behind the closest
domes.
     Matt said, "God damn.  I still can't believe this is really
happening."  His face felt hot.
     "I know what you mean.  I feel like I'm dreaming."  Rudy
hesitated.  "I don't mind telling you this whole business scares
me."
     Matt stared at one of the distant domes.  "Me, too.  A
person would be pretty damn stupid not to be scared right now."
     "What the hell do you figure's happening?"
     "You mean other than the fact that we've been captured by
some pretty advanced aliens?" Matt said with a forced chuckle.
     "Yeah, other than that little detail."  Rudy's face showed
the tension running through his body.
     "You got me.  That they want us alive.  Those big hoses out
there seem to be supplying air at a comfortable temperature.
Those slightly smaller hoses seem to be bird-feeder water
supplies."
     "Makes sense to me, too, but for God's sake why?" Rudy
asked.
     "I've got no better idea than you do."
     Rudy shook his head.  "I've got to go to an emergency
planning meeting in five minutes.  Your skills could come in
mighty handy right now.  Want to come along?"
     "Fine by me.  I'd like to do be doing something.  I feel
terminally edgy."
     Rudy turned his head.  "Is Nadine all right?  I thought you
said she'd be meeting you here."
     Matt stared out the window.  For a brief moment, he was
looking out the window of a chalet in the Swiss Alps, and Nadine
was beside him.  "Nadine had a change of plans.  She's still in
Cairo.  I talked to her a couple of nights ago.  She wants a
divorce."
     For a moment Rudy stared out the window toward the domes in
silence.  "Well, I guess you could say she got it, huh?"
     In spite of himself, Matt laughed.
                                 #
     Dorine cut short the pre-meeting nervous conversation and
convened the emergency session promptly on time.  Fortunately the
room had a large window so they didn't need artificial lighting.
The group was smaller than she had expected.  No doubt that meant
some people were walking to work from stalled subways, or had
gone home to deal with emergencies there, or had been outside the
borough when it was pulled loose.  Perhaps a fair number of
people simply couldn't cope with the strange circumstances.
     She scanned faces in the group.  Good.  The police
commissioner, Barnaby Jolliet, was here.  She saw people from the
city council and the Office of Emergency Management.  "Where's
Michelle Phillipe?" she asked.  "Anybody know?"
     "No one has seen her this morning," said a man in his late
thirties or early forties.  "I don't think anyone senior to me in
the City Manager's office is in right now.  I'm Rudy Sanchez."
     "All right.  Let's start with quick department summaries and
then go to planning.  I suppose we all know equally little about
what's really happening, so all we can do is get this borough
functioning as best we can.  There may be a couple of million
people in Manhattan right now, and they're going to need
protection, food, water, electricity, waste disposal, medical
help."  Dorine scanned faces.
     "Barnaby, how do things stand with the police?"
     Barnaby Jolliet, a man with a ruddy complexion, shifted in
his chair.  Despite his slightly blustering manner, and an
occasional unwillingness to admit he didn't know an answer,
Barnaby was competent and hard-working.  "We've made a good
start.  All the precincts except for the sixteenth and the
thirty-fourth are in communication with walkie-talkie relays.
We've got officers with bullhorns going up all the avenues,
restoring order and telling people we're getting things under
control.  We've stopped looting in several spots, but so far most
people don't seem to be trying to take advantage of the
situation.  It's more like people are still in shock."
     Barnaby held up his walkie-talkie.  "For those of you with
walkie-talkies, stay off channels A through G; those are for
police use.  Channels H and I are emergency channels.  Channel K
is the city government party line."  He put the walkie-talkie on
the table and looked at Dorine.  "We need to keep people in
check, and we can do that.  The tough part is when, not if, we
have a big fire.  Without water, we're going to be flat out of
luck."
     "I know.  Good summary.  What about water?"
     "Why are we bothering with this?" suddenly asked an older
man who Dorine recognized as a long-time city employment worker.
"You're treating this like just another emergency, but it's not.
It's crazy out there!"
     "We have to do what we can," Dorine said forcefully.
"Without us the chaos will be damn sight worse.  There are some
areas, like yours, and like the tourist bureau, that won't be as
busy as normal, but other groups will be a lot busier.  Anyone
without something to do should volunteer in another area.  Back
to my question about water."
     Michelle's stand-in, Rudy, spoke up.  "It looks like the
aliens are making water available to us.  One of my people is
getting a battery-operated computer ready so we can find what we
need in inventory.  With some luck, can run hoses from the alien
supply into the water mains.  With pumps we can get it up to near
the same pressure we had before.  I've sent a team of people out
to shut off pipes to sections that were severed.
     "I've also got people on their way up to generators that
should be working, but they'll only run until reserve tanks of
natural gas and oil are empty.  Probably we should restrict the
use of gasoline to emergency needs."
     Dorine nodded.  "Good idea.  Barnaby?"
     Barnaby nodded.  "I'll get the word out."
     "What if that water they're giving us is drugged?" asked a
woman next to Barnaby.
     Rudy answered.  "Then there's nothing we can do about it.
If we don't drink, we don't stay alive.  The only significant
amount of water we brought with us is in the Central Park
reservoir, in the pipes, and in storage tanks in some of the
higher buildings.  But that and what's in City Tunnel Number One
won't last long without recycling, besides which, water may well
be leaking from several tunnels.  I've got someone checking on
the possibility of using local chemical labs to distill water,
but I doubt we can find a quick way to keep up with the volume we
need."
     "Anything else in your area?"
     "Steam we won't need, as long as the aliens are providing
air at a reasonable temperature.  Telephones will be up once we
have emergency electricity.  Sewage will be a problem pretty
soon, but I'll see what we can do.  Food's going to be the worst
problem.  And I can use almost all the help I can get."
     "Noted.  What haven't we covered?"
     The room was silent for a moment, then the sandy-haired man
sitting next to Rudy said, "Alien contact?"
     "We don't have an office for that," Dorine said lightly.
"Don't you figure they'll contact us?"
     "Perhaps.  But we can push the process along.  That message
on the 'roof'--we should be decoding it.  And apparently there's
not only one set of aliens."
     "Okay, you're in charge, Mr.--"
     "Matt Sheehan."
     Rudy spoke up.  "He's on, ah, the same floor I'm on."
     "Just a minute," said the man from employment.  "Who is this
guy, and what are his qualifications?"
     Rudy said, "Well, for one thing, he's here."  After a couple
of chuckles faded away, he added, "Matt's an army colonel, one of
the best organizers and best leaders I ever had the pleasure of
serving under when I was still in the Army."
     Matt spoke up.  "If anyone else wants the job, I certainly
won't be offended.  My feeling is that whatever experts we have
in the city may know how to approach various aspects of the
problem, but might be better utilized if they're free to do the
actual work.  What I can do is listen to expert advice, plan, and
get resources available for whoever winds up on the team.  I
think I can do that well.  And if at any time the mayor wants to
put someone else into the job, that's fine with me.  Would anyone
else prefer to do the job?"
     Barnaby drummed his fingernails on the hard black
walkie-talkie case.  "There was a Colonel Sheehan or a Major
Sheehan in the news a couple of years ago.  Something in
Paraguay.  Alvoranza somebody led a successful coup against the
new democratic government.  An Army team went in and took him
out.  They moved in so fast Alvoranza didn't have time to blink.
Are you that Sheehan?"
     Rudy opened his mouth before Matt did.  "That was him.
Order was restored in thirty-six hours.  And the only casualties
were a half-dozen of Alvoranza's thugs."
     Barnaby nodded as he filed away the information.
     Dorine let the silence last about five seconds before she
said, "All right.  What else hasn't been covered?"
     The seconds of silence were again broken by Colonel Sheehan.
"Someone should coordinate an ambulance patrol around the
shoreline, including everything underground, like subways and car
and rail tunnels."
     Barnaby used his walkie-talkie briefly to pass on
instructions.  When he was done, he looked at Dorine and said,
"I had people on the shore, but we hadn't started on the PATH
tubes yet."
     Dorine nodded.  Again a short silence was broken by Colonel
Sheehan.  "If a team worked on getting all the buses and cabs
back to garages or stations, the streets might be passable for
emergency vehicles."
     "Good."  As Dorine scanned the group for someone in
transportation, she found a face and saw an acknowledging nod.
     "Anything else, Colonel Sheehan?"  Dorine smiled despite the
tension.
     "While the police pass the word that people are trying to
restore city operations, maybe they should be telling people to
turn on their TVs and radios to some local station as soon as
Rudy has a generator back on-line, in case we need to get
information to as many people as possible, or ask for help from
specialists."
     Barnaby said, "Makes sense," and he used his walkie-talkie
again.
     Dorine looked at Sheehan again.  His dark eyes looked calm,
in contrast to more than half of the people at the meeting.  He
saw her looking at him, and he said, "If there is a supply of
cots available, maybe some could be placed in the main city
government building lobbies so anyone who anticipates working out
of the office for a while can get some occasional rest."
     Dorine nodded and scanned the group.  A woman Dorine didn't
recognize raised her hand and said, "I can arrange that."
     Dorine let the next silence last several seconds.  "Okay,
then.  Let's get busy.  And, Barnaby, can you get Colonel Sheehan
a walkie-talkie?"
     Barnaby agreed.  As people started to rise, a woman wearing
a high-neck collar asked, "But what's happening to us?  Don't you
want to know?"
     Dorine said, "Of course we want to know.  But we can't waste
time right now speculating.  Once we know the support systems are
in place, we can devote more effort to the next steps."
     The woman was clearly unsatisfied by the answer, but she
didn't press the issue.
     On the way out of the room, Dorine instinctively brushed her
hand against the wall to turn off the light switch.  She wondered
briefly how many other habits she'd have to break.
                                 #
     Rudy Sanchez was waiting impatiently as the cherry-picker
slowed to a stop and the driver stepped down from the cab.  Rudy
could have assigned this duty to someone else, but he had to be
doing something, and he had always enjoyed hands-on work more
than management.
     "Sorry it took me so long," the driver said.  "The streets
are a little crazy still."
     "I don't doubt it," Rudy said.  "Okay, here's the deal.  I
want to get up close to that."  He pointed at the bird-feeder
embedded in the dome over the severed concrete of Pier 17, right
in front of where the Pier 17 Pavilion had been left behind when
Manhattan made its move.  Pieces of wreckage from severed boats
floated in isolated pockets of water caught near the bubble.
     While waiting for the truck, Rudy had suddenly thought about
the people left on the pavilion.  They would have been stranded
on their own little rectangular island until help arrived.  If
their telephone lines hadn't gone through Manhattan, he could
imagine the disbelief on the other end when someone called to
explain that they needed a boat to pick them up because Manhattan
had gone away.
     As soon as the driver had maneuvered the truck into
position, Rudy grabbed the end of a large hose and tied it to the
cherry-picker cage, then stepped into the cage and thumbed the
controls.  He glanced at the "sun," which had moved maybe thirty
degrees to the right in the last two hours.
     As the cherry-picker cage started lifting him up toward the
large interior cup that held what he was convinced was water, two
more police cars arrived, escorting a truck with more piping and
the large pumps he would need.  People from his department,
assisted by volunteers, started unloading the material.
     The cherry-picker cage moved to where Rudy wanted to be, and
he stopped about fifteen meters over the ground.  The cage
bounced more slowly than normal as it came to rest.  From his
pocket he took a pair of vials, and carefully dipped each into
the liquid.  Moments later he was reasonably convinced he was
dealing with normal water.  He filled another set of vials to
send out for chemical analysis.  They wouldn't pump this into the
city until the verification was complete, but Rudy's gut told him
the water would pass all the lab tests, particularly when using
it was the only choice.
     The bird-feeder tray was shaped a little like an oversized
bathtub stuck on the inside of the dome, constantly filled by the
hose coming from somewhere above.  Rudy couldn't see any
mechanism that told a valve somewhere to pass more water or to
shut off, but there had to be one.
     He touched the side of the tray.  The material felt cool to
the touch.  He rapped his knuckles on it, and the sound it
produced felt more like he had knocked on the side of a huge cube
of material instead of on an extruded piece no thicker than his
thumb.  He got no sense of vibration at all; just a sensation
like tapping on bedrock.  He got out a sharp pocketknife and
purely out of curiosity tried to cut a sliver of the material off
the edge.  He could as easily have scraped a sliver of glass off
a crystal goblet by using a sharp piece of cardboard.  Finally he
remembered the people on the ground.
     He called to the volunteer near a portable generator
connected to a self-priming pump, "Let her rip."
     The man yanked the cord, and the noisy generator sprang to
life, the large stand vibrating on the pavement.  Rudy swung the
end of the hose over the lip of the bird-feeder, and it started
to make noisy snorkling sounds as water displaced the air in the
hose.  The surface of the water in the bird feeder grew
turbulent, and Rudy pushed the hose deeper.  Water started
spewing out the hose on the other side of the pump.  Rudy let it
run for several seconds, and the water level in the bird-feeder
didn't diminish.
     "Okay," he yelled, "now push that red lever toward the white
mark."
     The man did so, and the roar from the pump increased in
pitch and volume.  The pump vibrated so strongly that it started
creeping along the pavement and had to be restrained.  The
surface of the water in the bird-feeder grew more and more
choppy, but the water level stayed where it was.  Water shot out
the pump hose into an arc that spanned fifty feet.  Rudy was
about to make an educated guess about the velocity that implied
before he remembered that the reduced gravity spoiled his rules
of thumb.  Still, his gut told him that with enough pumps and
hoses leading from the bird-feeders down to nearby fire hydrants,
water was not going to be a problem.
     About the same time he reached that conclusion, another set
of tubes started coming down from the "sky" outside the dome.
                                 #
     Matt Sheehan walked north on First Avenue, past the Bellevue
Medical Center, its white glazed brick reflecting the artificial
sunlight.  He had thought about getting a ride, but the low
gravity made walking a fairly efficient way to get around.  His
knees twinged a bit due to the lunar-walk motion, but otherwise
his body felt fine.  From his belt hung a small walkie-talkie.
     He had come north through Chinatown.  At Chatham square the
statue of Confucius had been surrounded by people who apparently
felt that would be as good as anyplace to find answers to the
obvious questions.  No one had been using the pagoda-shaped phone
booths, but the exotic-vegetable vendors had been swamped as they
tried to pack up their products.
     Matt suddenly checked his watch to make sure it really was
still morning, assuming "morning" meant anything anymore.  The
"sun's" position made it feel like afternoon, but it wasn't.
     He had passed Bellevue Hospital minutes earlier.  The
frequency of passing ambulances wailing like huge mechanical
babies made it obvious they were busily dealing with people who'd
been on the perimeter when the city was cut loose.  What wouldn't
be as audible was the process of dealing with all the people who
must be suffering psychological problems that would be just as
damaging, if not as immediately life threatening.
     All along his walk, he had seen glimpses of crowds to the
east, pressed against the base of the dome, peering out at the
other domed cities.  From a distance the throngs looked like
spectators merely curious about a construction project.  He'd be
willing to bet that almost every one of them would pay a year's
salary to be able to get a glimpse of the dirty East River.  Once
in a while someone in the back ranks would jump straight up.
Matt wasn't sure whether the jumping was to get a better view or
simple experimentation.
     A couple of kids rode their bicycles past Matt very
carefully.  The low gravity reduced the tire friction enough that
turning and stopping looked difficult, and the kids seemed
nervous.  Perhaps they just didn't want to leave their bikes
wherever they had been.  Walking seemed a much better way of
getting around now.
     Once Matt adjusted to the new walking motion, he began to
function almost on automatic, wondering what the hell had
happened and why.  But despite trying to concentrate on what
should have been by far the biggest issue, his thoughts keep
going back to Nadine.
     Matt should have worried more, he supposed, when she hadn't
objected to being transferred to Cairo, when the assignment to
Argentina would have left open the possibility that they could
get together if there was a break in the war.  At the time, he'd
just assumed she was as fed up as he was with the no-win drug
wars that few people here seemed to appreciate.
     He'd felt numb since that call a few days ago.  Today, he
felt a stronger sense of purpose than he had in quite a while,
but even that wasn't enough to keep his mind totally occupied.
He continued north, passing more war-zone streets of stalled
traffic and confused pedestrians.  Sirens near the entrance to
the Queen-Midtown Tunnel brought his thoughts back to the city.
     At the intersection of First Avenue and 40th Street, a red
Terra sports car almost ran him down as it careened up First,
zig-zagged around stopped buses and trucks, and swung onto 40th,
its tires skittering across the pavement, rather than screeching.
The car almost flipped over in the lighter gravity.  The driver
gave Matt a rude gesture as though Matt should have known the car
was coming and should, therefore, have waited inside.
     When Matt reached the enormous lobby of the U.N.  General
Assembly Building, it was nearly empty.  A baffled-looking guard
watched warily as Matt approached.  Matt was still surprised to
see so many people functioning on automatic.  Apparently New York
had less than its share of people who folded up completely under
emergencies.
     "Yeah?" said the guard.
     "I've just come up from the mayor's office.  I need to
locate several translators."
     "Yeah?" said the guard.  A couple of his shirt buttons
looked close to popping.  The man's eyes looked glazed.
     Matt decided maybe this guy wasn't functioning quite as well
as he had thought at first.  "Yeah.  Can you tell me where I'd be
likely to find them."
     "Kinda slow day here."
     "Yeah."  Matt hesitated.  He was convinced now that the man
was shell-shocked.  The man's eyes were virtually motionless
except for an occasional blink, and his features were fixed in a
permanent state of confusion.  He was reacting to stimuli, but
taking no action on his own.
     Matt said, "Okay, I'm going to look around, see if I can
find some translators.  This is official city business.  You got
a problem--" Matt caught himself and quickly rephrased the
question.  "Ah, that should be okay, don't you think?"
     The guard said, "Yeah."
                                 #
     Matt was about to give up when a blonde woman in a
windbreaker and carrying a collapsible umbrella pushed open a
door to Hammarskjold Library.
     "Are you perhaps a translator?" he asked.
     The woman glanced up toward the dome.  "Well, yes.  But I
don't have any experience in translating for aliens."
     "Well, then, I'm afraid you won't do us any good.  We need
people with at least five years' experience."
     The woman was silent for a moment.  "You don't know me well
enough to tease me."  Her voice held a hint of British English.
     Matt blinked, then smiled.  "You're perfectly right.  I have
no idea why I did that."
     The woman smiled back, revealing even white teeth.  Her gray
eyes gave her expression a questioning look containing more ease
than anyone Matt had seen that day.  She hesitated, then said, "I
might be able to help."
     "You really are a translator, then?"
     "Is twelve languages enough?  I'm really only qualified in
five of them, but I can at least read the others."
     "You're teasing me now."
     "No, I am not."
     Matt smiled.  "My name is Matt Sheehan."
     "Mine is Abby Tersa.  And I don't think you actually want
translators if you want to talk to the aliens.  You want
linguists or cultural anthropologists.  Translators just use what
they've been taught.  You want someone who can figure out a new
language, I assume."
     "Oh.  But you--"
     "You're in luck.  I love the nature of languages, and my
primary background is cultural anthropology.  I had to take a
fair number of linguistic courses on the way.  Actually, I was
just doing a little moonlighting as a translator."
     "Well, good.  You're hired."  He paused.  "I don't mean to
be rude, but we need as many people as possible."
     "No offense taken.  I can put up a notice in the
translators' conference room where people are more likely to see
it when they calm down."
     "Terrific."
     Abby disappeared inside and was back in a couple of minutes.
"What now?"
     "I'm on foot.  Can you handle the walk to the Municipal
Building."
     With a smile Abby said, "I think so."
                                 #
     Matt and Abby had almost reached Houston Street going south
when someone threw a large empty packing box into their path.
     The slow-motion, long-stride gait they had assumed gave Matt
time to see what was coming, but no way to react.  His feet hit
the box, which promptly spun underfoot, and he went down,
skidding in the low gravity.  From a recessed doorway emerged
four grubby young men in their late teens or early twenties.  Two
of the four had knives in their hands.
     Matt tumbled slowly, his inertia complicating recovery.  It
took him less than a second to realize that any money in his
wallet was virtually worthless.  These guys must have a different
target: Abby.  They'd try to put him out of commission, then move
in on her.
     "Keep running!" he yelled to Abby.  He tucked his body as he
approached the sidewalk and rolled on one shoulder, then his
back.  He came to a kneeling position a moment later, by which
time the men were moving toward him as fast as they could in the
underwater mode forced by the low gravity.  Matt stood up, and
just as quickly sat down again.  All four men were moving quickly
enough and awkwardly enough that they windmilled right by him.
Matt managed to hit one man's calf as he sped past, and the man
went into a slow spin that made him hit the sidewalk face first.
     Matt cursed himself.  He should have figured that part of
the population would be the kind to take advantage of a situation
like this rather than going home and waiting for word about what
was going on.  With four of them, he needed a smaller playing
field.  He turned, took a couple of steps, and leapt high, hoping
his instincts would be good enough.  His body arced into the air,
carrying him an easy couple of meters higher than the top of the
stalled bus he had aimed for.  He tilted forward, windmilling
wildly to keep from going over face forward, and just in time his
feet landed on the roof of the bus.  He bounced and skidded and
came to a stop centimeters from the edge of the slick roof.
     The thugs weren't very smart; the first one came alone.  The
guy in the dirty brown sweatshirt jumped up as awkwardly as Matt
had.  Matt feinted and punched the guy in the nose, and the guy
started a slow-motion spin back to the ground.  Matt tipped
backward for a couple of seconds before he regained his balance.
     Two of the thugs, one with a knife, jumped up
simultaneously.  They started to approach warily, and behind him
Matt heard another pair of feet dimple the bus roof as they landed.

                            Chapter 3
                        Signals and Noise

     The roof of the bus had about the same area as a boxing
ring, but here the edges of combat territory bordered on a steep
drop to hard pavement.
     At the sound of the feet behind him on the bus roof, Matt
turned, wanting to deal first with the single attacker.  But the
person behind him wasn't the other thug; it was Abby Tersa.  She
held her collapsed umbrella ready to use as a weapon.  Her blonde
hair slowly settled beside her face in the light gravity, and
anger had reached those cool gray eyes.
     Matt turned back to the two approaching men.  Both of them
looked as if they had last shaved four days ago without help from
a mirror.  One of them held a knife.  Another good sign that Matt
was dealing with amateurs--the knife was on the inside.  The man
wouldn't be able to take a wide swing without damaging his
partner beside him.  That handicap would be wasted if Matt took
his partner out first, so Matt concentrated on the knife.
     The man with the knife moved ahead of his companion,
possibly figuring that he'd use his weapon to soften up Matt
first so his buddy didn't have to work up much of a sweat.  He
moved toward Matt, but his companion moved to catch up, holding
almost even with him.
     Matt moved suddenly and directly for the knife-wielder.
Surprise flashed across the man's dark eyes, and he made a feint
with the knife.  Matt took a calculated risk, and the second time
the man lunged, Matt crouched sideways and kicked one foot hard
toward the man's kneecap.
     The kick connected.  In the low gravity, Matt's recoil
tipped him over, but the man he'd kicked was no immediate threat.
Matt had heard no grinding crunch when his kick connected, so the
man probably wasn't going to suffer any permanent damage, but he
was off-balance and definitely in pain.  He lurched in a small
circle, like a bear with one foot in a trap, until he fell off
the bus, his knife flying away in a graceful arc.  Matt got back
to his feet while the remaining man was still watching his
partner's slow-motion spill.
     The man's unarmed companion looked so shocked, Matt decided
the time was right for some psychology.  Simultaneously Matt
grinned with the intensity of someone absolutely certain of a
favorable outcome, moved toward the man confidently, and slowly
reached inside his jacket.  That was enough for the remaining
man.  He turned and took a running leap from the roof of the bus
to the roof of a stopped car and kept going.
     Matt turned toward Abby, relieved that they were unhurt.  As
she took as step toward him, the fourth thug sprang into view.
He had also jumped too high, and his arc carried him and his
knife in a trajectory toward Abby.  The man was tilting forward a
little, obviously no more experienced in low-gravity jumping than
they were.
     Matt started to move closer to where the man was going to
land, but Abby beat him to it.  Just as the man approached the
edge of the bus roof, Abby sent a strong high kick directly into
the man's stomach.  The air whooshed from his lungs, and the
knife went flying harmlessly away.
     The man hit the corner of the bus roof.  If he'd been able
to draw a breath already, the impact would have left him
breathless all over again.  He grimaced in pain as he slid off
the roof.
     When Abby had kicked, she lost her balance.  She hopped on
one leg, tilting into a backward series of hops that merely
postponed her eventual fall.  "Oh, no!" she cried.
     Matt caught her just before she hopped backward off the roof
of the bus.  Abby wrapped her arms around him tightly and
shuddered.
     Abby's hair smelled fresh.  Matt pushed a loose strand back
into place.  A long moment later, Abby let go.  "Ah, sorry," she
said.
     "My pleasure."  Matt smiled.  "You do that sort of thing a
lot?"
     Abby shook her head, and her blonde hair swirled slowly.
     Together they moved to the edge of the roof where the man
had fallen.  He lay on the ground, groaning loudly.  From his
position, it was obvious that his fall had been interrupted by a
fire hydrant.  In normal gravity, he might well have suffered a
broken back.  Probably now he just felt as though he had one.
     A small crowd gathered on the sidewalk as Matt used his
walkie-talkie to tell the police they were needed.  When he
finished, Matt glanced at Abby and said, "Going down?"
     Abby nodded and together they leaped.  As they floated back
to the ground, Matt recalled a slow-motion jumping image from the
remake of The Six Million Dollar Man.
                                 #
     Stuart Lund awoke in a hospital bed and realized almost
instantly that his right hand was gone.  Severed at about a
thirty-degree angle at the wrist, the stump was covered with
something that looked like a thin layer of gauze.  He stared at
the stump for a long moment, then out of curiosity imagined the
hand was still there and tried to make a fist.  The action sent
pain into his wrist.  He felt a muscle tighten in his forearm and
then relax.
     With his arm still in the air, he looked around.  The long
room was filled with the constant commotion of a too-busy staff
trying to deal with all the problems of patients occupying two
long rows of beds, but Stuart paid almost no attention to his
present surroundings.
     A series of images raced unbidden through his brain.  On the
subway, he had been taking advantage of the crush of people to
rest his right hand against the derriere of an attractive woman
farther back in the car.  He could still feel the pain where the
hand had been cleaved from his wrist.
     He had regained consciousness while resting on the subway
platform and the first thing he saw when he opened his eyes was
the "Repent!" sign in the row of advertisements.
     Stuart had never been a strongly religious man.  In fact, he
hated the times when his aunt used to force him to attend
services at the Church of Modern Christian Discipline.
     The sign right next to the "Repent" sign had been a ballet
advertisement proclaiming, "Dance All You Can Be," but Stuart
felt certain God hadn't been trying to tell him to become a
dancer.
     But there was no denying what had happened to him.  God had
intervened in an unmistakable way.  God had cut off his hand to
say, "Sin no more," but God had left Stuart alive and had shown
him the "Repent!" sign for some reason.  Stuart didn't feel he
knew a lot about God, but he did know from Albert Einstein that
God didn't play dice.  God must have a definite purpose for
Stuart.
     But what was it?
                                 #
     Rudy Sanchez looked over the Pier 17 pumping installation
with satisfaction.  A hose ran from the bird-feeder into a
generator-driven pump, which sent a steady flow into a nearby
fire hydrant.  The hose vibrated with the rush of liquid.  The
"sun" had traveled about 180 degrees around the city since it had
come on, and about six hours had passed.  Unlike the real sun,
this one provided no radiant warmth.  Moving from shade to
"sunlight" made no change in the temperature, which was a steady
twenty-five degrees C everywhere air moved freely.
     "That's good," Rudy said to Victor Krunkale, a water works
supervisor, a big man with hands so large that Rudy imagined he
had a hard time buttoning his shirt.  "Can you get your team to
install at least another ten setups like this?  Then we'll make
some measurements and see if we've got enough capacity."
     "It might take me three shifts," Victor said.  "We had lots
of no-shows today."
     "Whatever it takes.  Maybe the fire threat will be lower
since no one's using natural gas, but if we get a bad fire,
people are going to need water even more than they already do."
Rudy turned to Nicholas Dunte, who had been waiting for the last
few minutes.  "Okay, let's go see this thing you're talking
about."
     Nicholas gestured toward the cherry-picker.  They got in and
the driver took them southwest past a few severed piers.  Before
they reached the place Nicholas had told him about, Rudy suddenly
asked the driver to stop.  He got out and approached a discolored
spot at the base of the bubble.  "Just a sec."
     Rudy knelt in front of the patch that had caught his eye.
For a moment he just looked through the clear bubble at the flat
plain beyond.  From here he used to be able to see Squibb Park in
Brooklyn.  Outside the enclosed city, the featureless gray
surface was unbroken except by other domes.   Rudy couldn't see
signs of motion in the nearest dome, one with scores of
multicolored spires.  The plain itself had the texture of
matte-finish paint.  It showed no reflections, just a uniform
gray surface that could have been diamond hard or bubble-gum
soft.  The surface of the plain was roughly even with ground
level, so the subterranean portion of Manhattan had to be
embedded in the gray stuff.
     Rudy looked more closely at the base of the bubble itself.
In most places the clear surface extended straight into the slit
between the city and the flat gray plain.  Here, however, the
bubble gradually blackened as it approached the ground.  Level
with the concrete Rudy knelt on, the bubble was black.  Between
there and the clear section seemed to be a boundary layer, where
what looked to be two kinds of materials flowed together,
establishing a strong bond.
     The seam reminded Rudy of tinted sunglasses, the kind that
were clear at the bottom and dark at the top, but when he ran his
fingers over the surface he could tell the texture change was
more significant than mere tinting.  Above the boundary layer,
the dome felt perfectly smooth and slick, like clean glass.  Just
above ground level, the black surface was slightly rough, and it
felt like wrought iron.
     Next to him, Rudy saw that Nicholas had found a loose piece
of packing material to kneel on.  Nicholas was one of the most
capable city workers under Rudy, and he was also probably the
most fastidious.
     Rudy got his knife from his pocket and applied the blade to
the black surface.  He pushed hard on the knife and drew the
blade along the surface.  When he looked closely, he could see no
sign that the blade had made any impression.
     "Got any theories?" Rudy asked.
     Nicholas ran his fingers over the clear part and then over
the black section.  He pulled a handkerchief from a pocket and
cleaned off his fingers as he thought.  Finally he said, "Two
possibilities occur to me.  One, this section of the bubble has
been damaged somehow.  Two, the bubble doesn't go all the way
down to bedrock.  They must have supported the section of earth
they excavated to ensure the island wouldn't fall apart when they
lifted us.  Perhaps the black material is what was used below
ground, and what we see here is the region where it was fused
into the bubble material."
     Rudy stood up and realized they had attracted a small crowd
of curious onlookers.  "Okay," he said to Nicholas.  "How much
farther is this other tube?"
     Nicholas got back up and looked southwest.  "Not far.  We're
halfway there already."
     They traveled a minute or two in the cherry-picker, then the
driver stopped, and they got out.  Nicholas pointed up at a large
silvery circle where a smaller opaque hose met the side of the
dome.
     Rudy and Nicholas rode the cherry-picker cage upward to the
spot.  The cage hung in the air, vibrating slightly as Rudy took
a closer look.  Inside the large silvery circle were four more
circles, two medium ones side-by-side on top, each with a small
circle directly below it.  The large circles were a somewhat
darker shade of silver.
     The two smaller circles seemed to be controls.  Around the
perimeter of each of the smaller circles was a series of dots, a
little like minute marks on an analog watch.  In the "clock" on
the right, the dot at two o'clock glowed.  In the "clock" on the
left, a dot near three o'clock blinked on and off.
     After examining the array of circles, Rudy finally said to
Nicholas, "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"
     "Probably.  If you're thinking about electricity."
     As Rudy nodded, Nicholas took a multimeter from a pocket in
his overalls.  He wiped some lint off the display face and handed
it to Rudy.  "You want to do the honors?"
     "How about if we each take one lead?"
     Nicholas took the red lead and Rudy took the black.  Rudy
set the multimeter to "volts" and they each extended their probes
to the large circles above the "clocks."
     "You feel that?" Rudy asked.  He pulled the probe away from
the silver circle and let it snap back again.
     "Yeah, it feels like a magnet.  But I really don't believe
these probes are ferromagnetic."
     Both men let their probes just hang from the silver circles.
     "Forty-two volts at eleven Hertz," Rudy said a moment later
even though Nicholas could easily read the display.  A small
green light on the multimeter stayed on steadily, indicating a
clean sine wave.  "You want to try the adjustment on your side?
Here, this pen is pretty well insulated."
     "Thanks anyway."  Nicholas took a long plastic adjusting
tool from his pocket.  Carefully he reached forward and pressed
the plastic tip against the dot next to the one that glowed.  The
glowing dot went out, and the one Nicholas touched came on,
glowing slightly brighter.
     The display said a little over fifty volts.  "All right!"
Rudy said.  "Do it again."
     The next step up was about sixty volts.  Nicholas poked one
dot after another until they got 104 volts, then 125 and 150.
Rudy set the meter on the lip of the cherry-picker cage, and
Nicholas kept going as each successive light got brighter and
brighter until the voltage rose to the point where the two men
didn't trust the meter leads to insulate safely, so Nicholas set
the voltage back to 125.
     "Can I use that?" Rudy asked.
     Nicholas handed him the insulated tool, and Rudy pushed the
dot next to the blinking dot.  The blinking one went out, and the
one Rudy pushed started blinking faster than the previous one.
The meter said the new frequency was 13.2 Hertz.  In a series of
steps, Rudy took the frequency up to about fifty-seven Hertz and
then a little over sixty-eight Hertz as the lights flashed
faster.  As a final test, he made sure he could get up to 440
Hertz.
     "I think we're in business," Rudy said.  "We should be able
do anything from wall-socket to substation.  We'll probably have
a little extra work dealing with two-phase instead of three, but
I think we can get from here to there."  He reached to pull the
meter leads loose, but they stayed where they were.  "I'll be
damned," he said, and looked closer.  The leads seemed to have
been pushed into the surface of the silvery circle.  By pulling
with steady pressure for several seconds, he was able to get the
leads back out.  The silvery surface looked totally smooth and
unblemished.
     Nicholas looked closely, too, then raised his eyebrows.
     Rudy pushed the controls to lower the cage to the ground,
not far from still more onlookers.  When the cage reached the
pavement, Nicholas let Rudy swing the gate open, no doubt to keep
his hands from getting dirty.
                                 #
     Abby Tersa was looking out the window of Rudy's office when
he returned.  Matt was sitting at Rudy's desk with the Manhattan
yellow directory on the portable computer's screen.
     "Hello," Abby said.
     Rudy unsnapped an equipment belt and set it on the corner of
the desk.  "Hi."  He wiped sweat from his forehead.  "Those
stairs are murder.  Thank God the gravity is low."  He came
closer to Abby.  "And you are?"
     "Abby Tersa."  She shook Rudy's hand as Rudy gave her his
name.
     "Abby's our first translator--er, make that linguist," Matt
said.  "How's it going so far for you?"
     "So far, so good.  I've got several teams working on water
and power.  We may have water to midtown in six or eight hours,
and water in most areas in a day.  I just pulled back the team
working on the ConEd generator up north, because we're being
provided electricity, too.  My guess is, we'll be ready to turn
on switches during the next day or two.  The biggest problem is
recycling high-voltage cable--taking sections from where they're
no longer needed to where we need them."
     Matt said, "There are some other problems.  You know of any
way to make food from nothing but water and electricity?  Every
place I saw selling food had a line long enough to buy them out.
And I suppose stuff in freezers is spoiling all over the city."
     Abby spoke up.  "What are people using for money?"
     Matt shook his head.  "I think it's a variety of things.
Drugs, cigarettes, sex.  Some people are apparently using actual
money.  I guess I'm not as optimistic as they are that we'll get
back to a place where money will be any good, but who knows?"
     Abby said, "If they're supplying water and electricity,
don't you think they'll supply everything?"
     Matt and Rudy looked at each other as though deciding who
got to answer.  Matt said, "My guess is you're right.  I just
hate not knowing.  And if people get too hungry, there's going to
be even worse panic."
     Rudy said, "I agree.  And I'm hungry, too."
     Matt looked at his watch.  "Okay, so what do you say to The
Restaurant in Windows of the World?  With a hundred stories to
climb, we shouldn't have much competition."
     Rudy nodded.  "Sounds good to me.  What about you, Abby?
Hungry?"
     Abby scrutinized the two men.  Both looked quite serious.
"No, why don't you go without me?"
     Matt said, "We can't have that.  How about if we eat in,
instead?"
     "Well, all right," Rudy said, as though he were making a
huge sacrifice.  He walked to a vertical two-door cabinet and
flung the doors open.  "So, what's your pleasure?  Breakfast
cereal, pop-morsels, cookies, a banana or an orange?"
     Abby approached the cabinet with amazement.  Every shelf was
fully loaded with food, including several choices of tea,
crackers, Tangy-Treats, and a huge supply of microwaveable
EverLast snacks.  "Did you get some warning that this was going
to happen?"
     Rudy shook his head.  "I'm here a lot of hours.  I just
decided I might as well be comfortable."
     Matt said, "He's a workaholic."
     "And you're not?" Rudy grabbed an banana and started to peel
it.
     Suddenly hungry, Abby took an orange.  "You two are old
friends?"
     "What is it now?" Matt said.  "Fifteen years?"
     "Something like that."  Rudy took a bite of his banana.
"So, what were you doing when I came in?"
     Matt glanced at the screen.  "We're making a shopping list.
Most of it won't do much good until we get power.  Oh, that
reminds me.  Can you put in a request with the mayor to give us a
floor on one of the World Trade Center towers, near the top?"
     "A whole floor?"
     "As much as we can get of one, anyway.  I'm sure a fair
amount of the towers will be used for transient housing, but it's
not like a whole lot of world trade is going to be happening,
right?"
     "True.  What for?"
     Matt pointed at the window and the domes beyond.  "I'm
feeling a little voyeuristic."
                                 #
     The walkie-talkie on Dorine Underwood's desk crackled and
Barnaby Jolliet's voice came over the speaker virtually
interference free, thanks to the inactivity of most local sources
of electrical noise.  "Mayor?"
     Dorine picked up her unit and pressed talk.  "I'm here."
She turned off the portable computer she was using to compile
to-do lists and turned to face the window as she talked.  The
"sun" had traveled almost 360 degrees since it had come on twelve
hours ago.
     "The megaphone team has reached the north end again, and
they're ready for the next sweep.  They were delayed by some more
looting on 47th Street, but things seem under control for now.
Any changed information you want to be in the new broadcast?"
     Dorine didn't need to look at her notes.  "Yes.  The water
pressure in midtown, including Bellevue, is reported to be
adequate for moderate use.  Anyone concerned about dehydration
can get help there, but tell them to stay where they are if they
can.  Water should be available almost everywhere by noon
tomorrow.
     "Power will probably be restored to the Civic Center area
and to midtown by sometime late tonight.  Other areas will follow
over a period of about two days.  Anyone with industrial power
experience who's willing to volunteer to be on a work crew so we
can get more power up faster should meet at Times Square at
midnight or six A.M.  Nothing else right now."
     "Got it.  Thanks."
      Without taking her eyes off the window, Dorine reached
behind her and set the walkie-talkie back on her desk.  By her
watch the city had managed for about twelve hours and it was
still intact.  Of course, they really had no idea yet how many
people might have been killed on the perimeter of the city, or
had jumped from windows, or were now going quietly out of their
minds.
     As she sat at her desk, exhausted, the "sun" went out.
     The first thing Dorine realized was that one of the two
nearest emergency lights had gone dead after this long without a
charge.  The second thing was that the "sun" hadn't actually gone
completely out.  It was still where it had been, but now it was
much dimmer.  As her eyes adjusted, she realized the light's
intensity now made it an artificial full moon.
     The "sun" had been too bright to look at, so the illusion
was adequate as long as she didn't think about its circular path,
but the "moon" was an outright fake.  No craters, no dark seas,
just a uniform dull silver like a distant porthole in a huge
ship.  Dorine felt her face grow warmer.
     Dorine got up and closed her office door and locked it.  She
went back to her desk, sat down, and put her head down on
Rafael's picture.  Only a minute later in the big and lonely dark
room, beneath the light of a silvery moon, she cried.
                                 #
     Abby Tersa woke in darkness.  For an instant, she didn't
know where she was or what had wakened her.  Then she recognized
the dark outlines of a desk, a bookcase, and a couple of file
cabinets.  She was in an unused office down the hall from Rudy
Sanchez, lying on an uncomfortable cot.  Then the rest of it came
back to her, and she suddenly felt lost, helpless.
     Immediately she forced away the feelings, swung her legs
over the edge of the cot, and stood up.  At the window was the
same view of the darkened financial district, lit only by the
glimmer of the huge lamp traveling around the city, still on the
dim setting.  Motion on the ground caught her eye.
     On Chambers Street a group of eight or ten people walked
through the silent street.  Puzzled, Abby watched as they
approached one of the cars abandoned near the center of the
street.  The group surrounded the car, one at each corner, one at
each side, and one in the middle of each bumper.
     As though on signal, their heads all dipped.  An instant
later the car moved sideways toward the curb.  They were carrying
the car.  Automobile theft was suddenly much easier than it had
been.  But what could people do with the cars?
     When the car was fairly close to the cabs and trucks already
at the side of the road, the group set the car down on the
pavement and walked up the street toward the next one in the
middle of the street.
     At the same instant that Abby understood the group wasn't
stealing cars, but was in fact clearing the roads, a
deep-throated rumbling noise sounded for a second and then
stopped.  The fluorescent lights overhead began to glow, but went
off again before lighting fully.  That was what had wakened her.
Now that the air conditioning fans were off again, the building
once more seemed artificially quiet.
     As she looked back out the window, the rumbling started
again, and the overhead lights came on.  Lights in City Hall came
on, and lights along Chambers and Lafayette and Park Row came on,
too.  A whole little section of Manhattan had power.
     Across the island, the twin towers of the World Trade Center
remained black.
     Abby checked her watch.  Almost five A.M.  She moved to the
cot and slipped into her shoes, then opened the office door.  She
started toward Rudy's office, but stopped as she reached the open
doorway to the office Matt occupied.  From the doorway Abby could
see Matt staring through the window into the darkness beyond, as
though he were oblivious to the newly restored power.
     She wasn't sure if the attraction to him was sexual or
maternal.  He was an unusual mix of strength and vulnerability.
He made decisions easily and quickly, but she knew something was
bothering him a lot, something beyond the obvious predicament.
     Abby knocked lightly on the door frame.  Matt didn't
respond.  She knocked harder, and this time he turned around.
     "Oh, hi," he said.
     "Good morning."
     "Morning."
     "Are you all right?" she asked.
     "Sure, fine.  Just fine."
     Sometimes people can lie convincingly, but Matt didn't seem
to have the energy to try.  Abby didn't believe him.
                                 #
     "I think I see a tube that wasn't there yesterday," Rudy
said.  He squinted at the dome wall.  He was almost positive that
dark hose was new.  "I need to go investigate.  Can you guard the
fort until I get back?"  He moved quickly to grab his tool belt.
     Abby looked up from the small photo of the message on the
dome roof.  "Sure.  If the phones start ringing or if any other
linguists show up, we still need all the help we can get, right?"
     "Right.  And Matt should be back in an hour or so I think."
     "No problem."  Abby hesitated.  "Is he all right?"
     "Matt?  Sure, as much as any of us are.  And he's been
through some pretty tough stuff and come out fine.  Why do you
ask?"  Rudy buckled the belt.
     "No reason."  Abby wasn't sure why she lied.
     Rudy started for the door.  As he was almost through it,
Abby asked, "Does he have any family left behind?"
     "His wife," he called behind him, thinking more about the
new hose than anything else.
                                 #
     The hose was new.  It met the dome near the East River Park,
just south of the severed end of the Williamsburg Bridge.
     Rudy drove onto the grass.  As he got close enough to see
that the hose was equipped with a bird-feeder tub, too, a
cherry-picker drove up and Nicholas stepped down from the
driver's seat.  "You saw it, too, huh?" Nicholas said.
     "Yep."
     They stepped into the cage and Nicholas hit the controls.
Rudy looked at Nicholas's bloodshot eyes and said, "Didn't you
get any sleep last night?"  Rudy had gotten the four hours that
he'd recommended to everyone on the crews.  The "sun" had come
back on at the same time and position it had gone on the first
time, so the pattern was obvious: one twelve-hour rotation on
"sun" and one twelve-hour rotation on "moon."
     "I know what you said," Nicholas said, "but I just can't
sleep at all as long as the problems we've got aren't solved.
Haven't you ever been so upset you couldn't sleep?"
     "Yeah, but these problems are bound to last longer than I
can go without sleep."
     The cage reached the brown bird-feeder and Nicholas slowed
their approach.  He stopped a foot from the edge.  "Why do they
put these things so high?"
     "No idea.  Unless they think we're much taller.  Or they
figure the height keeps the masses away so they don't cause any
damage or get hurt while experts figure out how to hook up
internal systems."
     "What internal systems do we have that interface to Rabbit
Chow?"
     "That's sure what it looks like, isn't it?"  The tub must
have held a hundred liters of small green stubby cylinders
smaller than pencil erasers.  Rudy bent over for a closer look.
The tiny cylinders had the mottled color of old green linoleum,
with mirror-smooth curved sides and flat non-reflecting ends, as
though the little pellets were extruded from tiny tubes in the
larger hose, and sliced off every centimeter as the material came
into the tub.
     With one hand, Rudy scooped air in the direction of his nose
to try to sense the odor without getting an undiluted dose that
could conceivably be dangerous.  He smelled nothing.
     Rudy took a piece of paper from his pocket.  With one end he
scooped up five of the pellets.  As they rested in the curve of
the page, he carefully folded the paper several times.
     Nicholas said, "They've taken care of air and water.  Don't
you suppose this is intended to be food?"
     "Yep.  But I'm not sticking that in my mouth until I'm sure
it's safe."
     "But people are running out of food already.  You want to
wait until the lab checks it before setting up a way to handle
distribution?"
     "No.  I think you're right.  I just want to play safe.
There's nothing wrong with working both in parallel.  But let me
make a call and get a cop car to take this up to Bellevue so
that's not the critical path."
     Nicholas nodded, and Rudy used his walkie-talkie to make the
request.
     "So," Rudy said when he was finished.  "What are the
choices?"
     "Well, we can't pump this stuff like water.  And depending
on how concentrated it is, it may take a lot of work to shovel
and deliver.  We could maybe get some industrial vacuuming
equipment and beef it up to get the stuff out of here.  I'm not
sure about transportation.  Too bad there weren't a bunch of
tanker trucks in the city."
     A police siren in the distance came closer and closer.  Rudy
gazed north for a moment and said, "You know, we do have a lot of
cement mixers."
                                 #
     The ringing phone startled Julie Kravine.
     When power had been restored to the WNBC offices a few hours
earlier, she had immediately tried the phones.  Dead.  Her next
action was to start recharging her minivid batteries.
     The sound of the phone ringing in her own cubicle was
reassuring, a touchstone that for an instant could let her block
out the reality beyond the short, tan walls.
     "WNBC, Julie Kravine," she said into the mouthpiece.
     "Hi.  This is Matt Sheehan.  We met on the subway."
     "Hello.  How are you doing?"
     "Fine.  I'm assisting in the City Manager's office.  I want
to ask you for two favors.  I probably should have talked to the
station manager or something, but this seemed easier."
     "Shoot."
     "One, power's up everywhere but the Heights and Chelsea, and
they think they'll get those problems solved in the next few
hours.  We'd like you to start broadcasting the message that at
eight P.M.  the mayor will address the city, and we'd like you to
get a video link set up so she can talk from her office."
     "You got it.  I'll need to do some coordinating, but we'll
do it.  What's your number?"
     Matt gave it to her.
     "Okay, what's the second thing?"
     "I need to borrow a bunch of video cameras with long lenses
and a bunch of other video gear.  A cop car with a truck can be
there in an hour."
     "Gonna be doing some big-time home videos?"
     "In a sense."
                                 #
     Dorine Underwood sat at her desk at a few minutes before
eight P.M.  Behind her a sign listed the audio channels viewers
could turn to for the five languages her speech would be
translated into.  The overhead office lights and the light
spilling in from the hallway provided more comfort than she had
realized they might, somehow being unmistakable signs that life
went on.  She hoped her presence on TV screens in the city would
be a similar reassurance for the residents.  That would be
possible only if she was calm and matter-of-fact, so she took a
couple of deep breaths and glanced at her notes again.
     "Madam Mayor, you're on in ten seconds," said one of the
television crew.  Six broadcasting organizations were represented
tonight.  The man counted down on his fingers...three, two, one.
The red light came on.
     "Good evening, my fellow New Yorkers."  Dorine looked into
the lens and spoke coolly.  "I don't have to tell you how strange
the situation in which we find ourselves is.  In fact we still
don't know the true extent of what's happening to us.  I'll tell
you the official view, just so you don't worry too much about
whether you're personally going crazy, as I know I felt for a
little while.  At 7:10 A.M.  Eastern Standard Time on Tuesday,
March twentieth, 2012, Manhattan was somehow cut loose from its
surroundings and taken, presumably by some very advanced race of
aliens, into a huge ship.  Whether we're here as part of a zoo
exhibit, or these aliens thought they were doing the equivalent
of removing a tumor, we don't have the faintest idea.  I'm sure
we'll find out.
     "What I'm here to tell you tonight is that we are coping.
As you hear these words, every district in Manhattan now has
electricity and water.  Natural gas is apparently going to be
unavailable for the duration, as is steam.  Crews have been out
around the clock, rewiring substations, adjusting valves to
equalize water pressure, putting out fires, and shutting gas
valves to prevent any more accidents with the gas still in the
pipes.  We have no way of obtaining further supplies of gasoline,
so its use is restricted to authorized emergency and police
vehicles and occasional official business uses such as
transporting equipment needed for utility operations.  Anyone
using such vehicles is urged to use them only if equivalent
electric vehicles are truly unavailable.
     "Food is probably of primary importance to everyone, and I
want to tell you there is food available, and there's enough for
everyone.  No one will go hungry.  What we will be is bored.
     "I'm sure you realize we don't have the facilities or the
raw material to manufacture enough food for everyone in
Manhattan.  The supply we do have is being furnished by our
captors, as is the electricity and water we are using.  We have
no alternative.  The food the aliens are providing has been run
through exhaustive testing by doctors at Bellevue.  It contains
more calcium than most of us will need, but not so much that it's
unsafe.
     "Twenty minutes after I stop talking, and that won't be too
long now, city cement trucks are going to start an around-the-
clock sweep through the city, stopping at every intersection.
They're carrying loads of small nutrient pills."  Dorine much
preferred that designation to "Rabbit Chow."
     "The Bellevue doctors have determined that an average adult
can subsist on about a half-liter per day.  Anyone can take up to
a liter every time a truck comes around, and we believe the
supply to be unlimited.  We'll be working on better delivery
methods, but for now, at least we can all eat.  I'm sure that
you're going to find this whole process irritating, from the food
itself to the delivery method.  But we have to have food, and it
has to be distributed quickly.  This is our only choice.
     "I do have some requests.  I know that natural food already
in the city is going to be more appetizing than what we're being
provided, and I fully expect it will be eaten.  What I ask is
that you donate any unopened soft food you have to any area
hospital so it can be available for the very young and for the
sick and injured.  In addition, we need to consolidate all extra
supplies of medication, to make sure medicine is available for
emergencies and so that until it's needed it's carefully stored
for longevity."
     Dorine put aside a page of paper and looked at the next
sheet.  "Other needs exist; I know that and you know that.  One
of those needs is housing for people who don't live in Manhattan.
At the end of this broadcast will be a series of phone numbers
for people to call.  City employees will be standing by, ready to
coordinate referrals to area hotels and businesses.  If you have
space for a visitor in your home or apartment, please let us
know.
     "Another need is information.  I know you want to know
what's going on, as do I.  I'll have a status update at this same
time and channel every night.  I'll tell you the key things we've
learned.  Probably highest on that list is whether we are
contacted by our captors, or if we can translate the message on
the dome above us.  Also following this broadcast will be a
series of telephone numbers where you can ask questions you'd
like to see me answer.  The most-asked questions that we find
answers to will be handled every night.
     "City employees have been working around the clock to make
essential services available to you.  I think they've done a
tremendous job.  And now I need to ask for your help.  We need
special skills in a variety of areas, and again there will be
numbers to call after this telecast.  First of all we need to
decipher the message from our captors.  Any expert linguists or
cultural anthropologists, or people with experience in
cryptography or mathematics, are desperately needed.  In
addition, we can use any experts in communications systems, video
image analysis, and physics, as we try to learn as much as we can
about our new environment.  If you've got those skills, please
call and give us a summary of your abilities.  And tell us how to
reach you so we can do that when the need arises.  We also need
more volunteers to help with city utility support, and we need
volunteer fire fighters.
     "Finally, I want to say how much pride I have in you all.
We've gone through a terrible misfortune, and although I've seen
reports of looting and crimes against persons, by far the
majority of you have reacted admirably, by helping people in
trouble, by sharing personal property and resources available to
you, and by generously aiding strangers.  That makes me very
proud.  And I want you to know that law and order has been
restored.  The fire department is ready to roll, and all hospital
emergency numbers and hot lines are functional.
     "You have all done a splendid job of coping, and I'll pass
on news of any new developments as they happen.
     "Good night, Manhattan."
                                 #
     Dr. Bobby Joe Brewster turned down the sound on his small
office TV.
     He leaned back in his chair and put his feet on the desk,
still amazed at how much quieter the Columbia campus was now.  He
considered what the mayor had said.  It would be an interesting
challenge to try to decode alien transmissions if that was the
goal.
     He glanced at his computer.  Cut off from Earth, he'd be
deprived of his constant supply of new programs and upgrades.
That had to be the worst aspect of this entire mess.  The sooner
they established communications, the sooner they could return to
Earth, perhaps.
     Bobby Joe had grown up doing everything at a younger age
than expected, so he had acquired a fair amount of public modesty
to reduce the jealousy of people he was overtaking.  Now wasn't
the time for modesty, though.  He was very likely to be one of
the best people in the dome for what the mayor had talked about.
     He took his feet off the desk and leaned forward to reach
the loop recorder on the desktop.  He had it perpetually
recording so he could always repeat anything from the previous
thirty minutes.  He touched the reverse control and sped the
image back until the phone numbers came up on the small screen.
When he found the right number, he froze the image.
     As he picked up the phone, he felt excited.  If they got
back to Earth, he could go back to eating real food.
                                 #
     Matt stepped out of the elevator onto the 105th floor, five
floors below the observation deck on the southern tower of the
World Trade Center, just as thankful as he could be that the
power had been restored.
     The hallway was quiet as he turned toward the south wall,
but the sounds of activity from inside a large office ahead grew
louder as he approached.  He entered the room.  Near the windows
was a group of journalists, some with their lenses directed at
the scenery outside, some focused on the activity at the center
of the room, all of them under strict notice that any disruption
to the workers would mean immediate expulsion.
     The room reminded him of a combat operations center, with
large wall-screens covering most surfaces, but no combat
operations center he'd ever been in had a view like that out the
south window.  For a moment, he ignored the activity in the room
and walked to the window.  From here, the reflections from the
top of the bubble were only a hundred meters away, and Matt knew
the bubble almost touched the WTC observation deck not too far
over his head.
     A dozen bubbles poked out of the gray plain below.  Two of
them rose even higher than the World Trade Center.  In each
bubble, the ground was roughly level with the plain.  Matt drew
in his breath involuntarily even though he had seen these domes
before.  One dome contained what looked to be a large hill with
bluish grassy-covered slopes and scattered black spots that Matt
assumed to be cave or tunnel openings.  No recognizable sign of
intelligent life showed on the surface.
     The strangest enclosed habitat, to Matt's naked eye, was an
impossibly tall and thin bubble surrounding a trio of incredibly
high trees with huge circular, sun-tracking, yellow-green leaves.
In the middle of the triangle formed by the trees was an alien
version of a city.  Huge ropes looped around the giant tree
branches suspended a series of woven structures rising vertically
in a column that seemed to be fifty percent taller than the World
Trade Center.  String-like tubes from the dim recesses overhead
stretched down and connected at points all the way up and down
the dome, which looked more like an inverted test tube than
anything else.  Matt wondered if someone in that dome were
watching him.
     "I still get the shivers looking out there," said a feminine
voice next to him.
     Matt turned and found Abby standing nearby.  "Me, too.
Sometimes I just want to refuse to believe it somehow."
     Abby stood silently looking out the window until Matt said,
"I really appreciate your help in getting things organized up
here.  You're a hard worker."
     "And you're not?"
     Matt smiled and ignored the question.  "On the observation
deck, they told me the new camera seems to be fully functional.
What does it look like down here?"
     "Take a look."  Abby motioned him over to one of the wall
screens.
     The screen she directed him to displayed a large image of
the message on the top of the dome.  Abby said, "Bobby Joe set up
a frame buffer, so we've got this good image to work from while
the cameras are busy looking at other things."  In a semicircle
before the screen sat four more linguists with their computers,
busily trying to make sense of the message.  The message itself
looked even stranger in close up.  Five large shapes were each
composed of several smaller shapes, which in turn were composed
of smaller shapes that could have been icons or crude pictures.
Matt had no idea if some of the sub-elements were merely elements
of characters like the three straight lines in a capital "A" or
if somehow even the small elements contained significance of
their own.
     "You make anything of it so far?" Matt asked.
     Abby shook her head, and her blonde hair swayed.  "Obviously
it's going to be tougher than finding clues based on similarities
to a lot of our known languages.  What we need first is a
conceptual breakthrough, something that will get us a start on
figuring out generically what kind of message they're trying to
tell us or what basis they have for communication."
     "This may be a stupid question, but what if the message is
reversed?  I mean what if it reads correctly from the top of the
dome, or what if they write from bottom to top, or some other
variation?"
     "Right now we're trying to stay open to any possibility.
The computer can easily make mirror-image versions and other
views, so we can look at it in a number of ways."
     "I don't envy you your job.  I wouldn't know where to
start."
     "I'm not sure we do, either.  I wish we could see the people
who wrote that message.  We might be able to get some clues from
their appearance."
     Motion on a nearby screen caught Matt's eye, and he and Abby
moved on.  Across one wall was a huge mosaic screen, showing
high-resolution views of over a dozen habitats, most apparently
in normal color, a couple of them obviously false-color
enhancements.  At a controlling computer where he could see all
the screens was Dr. Bobby Joe Brewster, the electronics and video
whiz who had responded to the mayor's calls for expert help.  He
hadn't even waited for morning, but had come right over after the
broadcast and met the crew.
     "What do you have going, Bobby Joe?" asked Matt as they
approached.  Matt had to ask twice to break the man's
concentration.
     "Oh, hi.  God, isn't this terrific?  I know people who would
have let someone nail them into a coffin for a year just to have
a shot at something like this.  I mean, just look at all those
cities."
     Bobby Joe was in his mid-twenties, with blue eyes and a
skull shaved bald.  He radiated excitement and enthusiasm.
Fortunately, from Matt's point of view, he also radiated
competence.  Matt still felt he should be calling the man "Dr.
Brewster" after seeing the article in Time Multimedia Magazine.
Bobby Joe had used computers to find a solution to a
long-standing control-system problem that had baffled more than
one genius.  He'd been a child prodigy, moving so rapidly through
correspondence classes that he'd been called in for a spot quiz
that lasted an entire day.  After that session, no one had any
doubts that Bobby Joe honestly knew everything he claimed to
know.  He was on the Columbia staff working with experts at least
a decade or more older than he was.
     Bobby Joe had been a great help in configuring several
cameras and the computer systems, and Matt was sure his
usefulness was far from ending.
     Bobby Joe pointed at a section of the screen in the lower
left.  As he did, the view changed very slightly.  "I've got one
of the cameras cycling through a sequence of sixteen cities.  On
each pass, I grab the latest image and plop it up on the screen.
I've got the computer doing some quick comparisons between each
successive frame, so it can sound an alarm if something
significant changes."
     As Matt watched the wall mosaic, one at a time the views of
each city flickered as a new image replaced the previous one.
One of the views showed an immense perfect cube with the visible
surfaces divided into a sixty-four-square chessboard pattern,
half of the squares with a brown tint, half with an orange tint.
Each of the sixty-four surfaces seemed to be further subdivided
into sixty-four smaller squares where every other tiny square on
the sides was black.  On the top of the gigantic structure, the
non-tinted squares were white.
     Two other cities were also cubic, one of them with lots of
open air.  An enormous structure of girders formed the cube
itself.  Thirty or forty horizontal girders at equal intervals
lined each side, and in turn supported sets of horizontal girders
that ran through the cube at each level.  From that network of
girders hung individual boxes like small buildings of varying
sizes.  The screen had enough resolution for Matt to see
creatures that resembled large caterpillars.  One was in the
process of leaving one building and going to another by first
spanning the gap with the front of its body, then shifting most
of its body to the destination, and finally pulling its tail end
in after it.
     The other cubic city was one huge building with large,
irregularly spaced round windows.  Matt couldn't see anything
through the windows.
     One of the cities was completely concealed from view.  All
that showed under a very short dome was a mound of red dirt
reminiscent of an anthill.  Matt assumed the rest of the city lay
under the surface of the ground.
     Matt said, "Have you seen any species that looks more
like--"
     He was interrupted by a chiming sound from the computer.
     "Hang on," Bobby Joe said.  "We may have something
interesting here."  He gave several commands with the keyboard,
and a blinking box formed around one of the city views.  That
view grew to occupy half of the large screen.  The resolution
made the alien city look like it was just on the other side of a
large window.  In very general terms, the city looked more like
Manhattan than did most of the cities.  It was generally level,
with walkways on the surface of the ground.  On the land lay an
array of mostly conic structures, like large tee-pees, some much
taller than others.  At the top of one of the tallest cones, Matt
could see a light that changed colors in a seemingly random
pattern, as though he were watching just one square centimeter of
a large screen showing a TV broadcast.
     Bobby Joe tapped on the keyboard, and he centered a small
circle on the light source.  "Let's set up a real-time
oscillograph."
      A square appeared on one side of the image, with a dotted
line between the light source and the graph.  In the graph box
was a vertical spectrum bar, the color ranging from red at the
bottom to blue at the top, and a continuously moving trace
appeared, showing the color versus time.  The moving point drew a
sine wave extending higher than blue on the scale, and then began
drawing what seemed to be noise.  It went back to a sine wave for
a couple of seconds, and then back to noise.
     Bobby Joe leaned back in his chair.  "I do believe someone's
trying to talk to us."

                            Chapter 4
                           Video Games

     Rudy stepped up into the cherry-picker cab with Nicholas.
The driver took them south without needing to be asked.
     "Where's the closest one of these new tubes?" Rudy asked.
     Nicholas took out a handkerchief and patted some sweat on
his forehead.  "About where the Wall Street helipad used to be."
     Once they were on the South Street Viaduct, they made good
time.  The driver stopped the truck in the northbound lane
closest to the edge of the dome.  Rudy and Nicholas took the
cherry-picker cage into space over the edge of the viaduct,
moving closer and closer to the connection point between the dome
and a blue hose that disappeared into the sky outside the dome.
The circular junction looked unlike any of the others Rudy had
seen so far.  This one seemed to be a transparent membrane, a
thin layer of flexible plastic wrapping stretched across the
opening.
     Rudy looked at it for several seconds before he finally
said, "Okay, I see it.  Now what did you want to tell me about
it?"
     Nicholas smiled smugly as he took a few paper clips from his
pocket.  "Here, take one."
     Rudy did.
     "Now toss it at that membrane."
     Rudy raised his eyebrows, and then did as Nicholas
suggested.  The paper clip sailed right toward the membrane and
it hit.  After that nothing happened.  The paper clip just wasn't
there anymore.
     Nicholas sailed another paper clip at the membrane.  It,
too, reached the thin layer and apparently ceased to exist.
     After a moment of considering the waste disposal
ramifications, Rudy began to smile, too.  "So, what you're
telling me is that pretty soon we'll be able to flush our toilets
again?"
                                 #
     Abby stared at the recording graph as her spine tingled.  A
bright dot on the left edge of the trace fluctuated up and down
as it spewed a fine line to one side.  The trace moved slowly to
the right and disappeared as it reached the edge of the box as
new data reminiscent of an electrocardiogram constantly replaced
it.
     "I'll accept your statement that this implies an intelligent
message, but it doesn't tell me anything yet," Abby said.  She
looked back at the screen showing the distant light source as it
changed colors.  The conical building supporting the light showed
a dark line spiraling around it, reaching all the way from the
top to the ground.  She wondered if it were a spiral staircase.
     "Are you recording this?" Matt asked Bobby Joe.  Several
times earlier, Abby had caught Matt staring off into the
distance, obviously sad, no doubt feeling the loss of his wife
back on Earth.  But now his expression was interested, showing
none of the pain she'd seen before, and she was glad for him that
he had something to take his mind off the woman he was so
obviously in love with.
     Bobby Joe didn't turn from his chair in front of the small
console, but he said, "You're nuking right."
     Matt turned to Abby.  "It doesn't mean anything to me,
either, but I'm willing to bet Bobby Joe can make some sense of
it."  He leaned over Bobby Joe's shoulder.  "Where's it coming
from?  I mean which dome is it?  I can see what it looks like,
but where is it on the plain in relation to us?"
     Bobby Joe used the controls to change the view on a big
screen next to the one showing the graph.  At first the view
included just the conical building the light came from, but then
he made the camera zoom back more and more so the cone began to
shrink to a dot as the dome containing it came into view, and
then several more domes entered the sides of the picture.  By the
time the view stopped changing, it was obvious that the dome was
one of the farthest ones away.
     "Just a sec."  Bobby Joe hit some more controls, and the
screen suddenly showed little green "X"s at the top of each dome.
Then the domes vanished and the only thing left was the set of
"X"s.  One of the "X"s changed from green to red, the one where
the transmitting dome had been.  Finally, he tilted the display,
so the band of "X"s spread vertically and the ones near the top
spread out horizontally, and Abby could tell Bobby Joe had
somehow translated the screen image to a crude top view map.
Even as she realized that, a distance marker came on the screen,
showing the length of one kilometer on that scale.  The nearest
dome was about ten kilometers away.  The dome with the light must
have been five times that far away.  An octagonal outline showed
on the screen, marking the boundaries of the huge area they were
in.  Manhattan was fairly near the center, and the transmitting
dome was near one wall.
     "You're saying that dome is, what, over fifty kilometers
from here?" Matt asked.
     "You got it," Bobby Joe said.  He sounded pleased with being
able to provide the information.  Abby hadn't yet heard Bobby Joe
sound in the least bit disturbed by recent events; in fact, he
seemed positively excited and intrigued.
     "So, what are they trying to tell us?"
     "You got me.  But we can try a few things.  Let's convert it
to sound, and see what we get."  Bobby Joe's fingers played over
the controls, and a minute later every head in the room popped up
as strange squawks came over speakers next to the screen.  A
second of noise like a radio receiver tuned to an empty channel
was followed by a second of a clear tone a few octaves above
middle C.  Bobby Joe listened briefly and shook his head.  "Let
me speed it up."
     He traced his finger across a bar on the small screen in his
console and the noise increased in pitch to the point that the
tone became a repeating click, and the sound in between became
high-pitched noise.
     "Okay, let's slow it down."  Bobby Joe drew his finger
across the screen right to left, and the noise dropped back to
where it had been and continued getting deeper until the tone was
so low that it rattled the tables in the room.  The rumbling in
between became no more intelligible.
     Bobby Joe hit some more keys.  "Okay, let's try some video.
If we assume the information between the sine waves is a picture
built out of frame lines like a TV, then--then this is going to
take me some time.  Give me a couple of hours, okay?"
                                 #
     Julie Kravine reached the 105th floor in the south tower of
the World Trade Center and the elevator doors opened.
     Directly in front of the doors was a guard.  He took his
feet off the table in front of him and stood.  "I'll need to see
some ID, miss, if you want to get past here."
     Surprised, Julie took out her card.  "Isn't this a little
unusual?"
     "It sure is.  But the folks on this floor have already had a
couple of crazies come up to kvetch about how they shouldn't be
talkin' to aliens."  The man checked her ID against a list that
fit on one sheet of paper.  "All right, Miss Kravine.  Down that
hall as far as you can go, then turn and it's the third door on
the right."
     Julie hesitated.  "And what do you think about talking to
aliens in those domes out there?"
     "Well, ma'am."  The guard scratched the stubble on his chin.
"I guess if we can talk to them, maybe they're not all that
strange.  And if we can't, what's the harm in trying?"
     I don't know, Julie thought as she walked toward the room on
the south wall.  Would they be punished for breaking some unknown
rule?
     The room was even busier than she had expected it to be.  On
the perimeter of the room were several journalists, some of whom
she recognized.  She noticed some of the screens borrowed from
the station, but some of the rest of the equipment must have come
from a communications company or a school.  She slipped on her
viewfinder glasses and turned on the minivid resting on her hip.
The rectangular viewfinder border came on, and she turned her
head so the optics on her headband would catch the center of
activity.
     Two men and two women worked their computers in front of a
large screen showing the symbols on the dome overhead.  Matt
Sheehan and some people she didn't know stood behind a bald man
at a control console.  The large screen held a rectangular array
of flickering black and white confetti.  As the man at the
console moved his hands across the touch screen, the rectangle of
confetti changed aspect ratio and became a horizontal bar.  In a
series of steps, it narrowed and grew in height until it was
square, and then kept changing until it was a vertical bar.  The
confetti inside was the only consistent property.
     Julie turned her minivid toward the expanded views of other
domes.  One of them covered what looked to be glass houses.
Inside the structures were creatures that looked vaguely like
cockroaches that walked upright.  In one of the larger
structures, behind two or three transparent walls, a group of a
dozen or so of the creatures sat in a ring.  In a small building,
three of the creatures tumbled and gyrated in unison.  It was
only then that it occurred to Julie that perhaps even though she
could see through these walls, perhaps the creatures living there
could not.
     She turned back to Matt and the group at the largest screen.
She caught his eye and he came closer, bringing with him a
shorter blonde woman.
     "Thanks again for the equipment loan," he said.  "It's
invaluable."
     "You're welcome.  I'm glad it's being put to good use."
     Matt introduced the blonde as Abby Tersa, who was in charge
of several people working on translating the message overhead.
Julie shook her hand.  Abby seemed calm but ultra-alert, as
though she were really enjoying the job.
     Julie said to Matt, "Well, I'm here for the return favor.
Is there anything you don't want on the news?"
     Matt glanced around.  "I can't think of anything that needs
to be restricted.  This screen is a display of a signal we're
getting from the dome in that view up there, the one with all the
cones.  So far it's not making any sense, but--" Matt suddenly
stopped and looked at the screen showing the conical buildings.
"Just a minute."
     Matt went closer to the bald man at the console and tapped
his shoulder.  "Say, how hard would it be to try to convert that
image to a triangular picture?"
     "Triangular?" the man said.
     Matt pointed at the screen showing the conical buildings.
"Like that shape."
     The bald man was quiet for a moment.  "Why not?  I'll give
it a shot."
     Matt came back to Julie and pointed at the bald guy.
"That's Dr. Bobby Joe Brewster.  He's from Columbia U, and he's
been terrific for getting this set up."
     Matt pointed to the upper left dome on the display and
started giving her a rundown on what little they knew so far
about each view.  About the time he finished the last screen,
Bobby Joe suddenly cried out, "Yes!"
     On the center screen was a triangular screen full of
confetti.  Besides the shape of the outline, the only thing
different from before was that the confetti was changing much
more slowly.  Julie didn't see that it was much of an
improvement, but she moved closer with Matt.
     Bobby Joe manipulated the controls as he spoke to Abby.  "I
think we're getting closer."  A second later, the triangle began
to shrink and then expand.  Abruptly it locked into a fixed size,
and the confetti was gone.  In its place was a distorted view of
something that moved slowly down the screen.
     Bobby Joe continued his efforts, and the screen image came
closer and closer to an image that made sense.  No longer bits of
pure black and white, the screen became a gray-scale view that
looked like an old photographic negative sliced into horizontal
strips.  The slices disappeared as Bobby Joe did something with
his left hand, then the blacks swapped places with whites, and
the image was suddenly a monochrome view of a room, containing
two people who looked very much like human beings, one a Latin
male.
     The male spoke.  "Lucy?  Lucy, is that you?"
     The woman looked nervous.  "Oh, no, señor."
     As the woman averted her face, the man said, "That is you!"
     What sounded like an old-fashioned laugh track came from the
speakers.
     Matt, looking incredulous, turned to Bobby Joe.  "That's
what we're picking up from the dome out there?"
     Bobby Joe looked up at Matt and gave him the biggest grin
Julie had seen in days.  He said, "Oops, sorry, wrong channel."
     One of the women behind Julie suddenly started to laugh
hysterically, and her laughter cut off just as abruptly.
                                 #
     Matt tapped Bobby Joe on the shoulder.  Bobby Joe looked up.
     "Come with me for just a minute," Matt said.
     Bobby Joe looked puzzled, but he rose from his chair and
followed.
     Matt left the operations center and entered an unused room
down that hall.  Bobby Joe looked nervous.  "I'm sorry about the
I Love Lucy recording.  It's from a file of stuff I keep."
     "It's all right," Matt said.  "I'm not going to hold that
little incident against you, and it'll be forgotten the instant
we get back in that room.  But if you're going to be of any help,
you are not to waste anyone's time with jokes like that.  We've
been tasked with an important job.  When the pressure's off, I
can laugh just like anyone else.  Right now we can't afford the
luxury of unproductive time."
     "I'm sorry.  It's just that sometimes I--" Bobby Joe turned
away, then seemed to screw up his resolve, and he turned back to
Matt.  "Sometimes I feel like a geek.  I'm not strong and tall
and macho.  And especially in this company, I'm a little
intimidated.  I guess humor is what I do to overcome that."
     Matt nodded.  "I think I understand.  But maybe you're
underestimating us.  No one has to be tall or muscular or
articulate to help us save ourselves.  What we need from you is
your intelligence and your skill.  No one is going to be looking
down at you because you're not a football player.  We don't want
a football player.  We need you.  We need your skills."
     Bobby Joe seemed to stand a little taller.  "I understand.
I'll do my best.  But just so I understand, is all humor off
limits?"
     "No.  But if it costs us time, or if it unsettles people, or
if it irritates people, it hurts us all right now."
     "Understood."
                                 #
     Julie watched as Bobby Joe touched the controls again.  A
new image formed on the screen, this one a view of a planet's
surface.
     Noise in the room fell to nothing until the only sounds were
those of Bobby Joe's hands on the console controls.  Colors
replaced some of the shades of gray, and the picture took on a
false-color look common in satellite photos of resources.
     The colors mutated for several minutes, and a true-color
moving image formed on the triangular screen.  In the foreground
were two conical structures in vivid detail, showing people
walking down the stairs.  Only these people weren't human.  They
made Julie think of humans who had been very badly burned.  Their
skin was brown and leathery, clearly showing a web of white veins
everywhere their skin was visible.  The most unusual feature of
their faces was the single eye, centered just below the forehead.
     The view moved sideways, and a black shape appeared in the
air.  The sky suddenly changed to a deeper blue, probably because
Bobby Joe was still making adjustments.  The black craft looked
exactly like the ones Julie had seen in amateur recordings made
as Manhattan had been lifted.  The view swung downward and the
horizon came into view.  Stretching far into the distance were
clusters of cones much like the ones sitting under the dome they
could see on the other screen.  Running between the clusters were
a grid of bridge-like connecting structures.  Below the black
ship, a line of destruction followed its path.  Clouds of vapor
steamed off the surface, and a crack opened up, as though an
earthquake were ripping apart the surface.
     The view moved to the left, following the rift in the ground
as it lengthened, and an enormous structure came into view.  It
was a high, square platform supported by four huge leaning
columns, each with a stairway winding around the perimeter.  The
platform grew in the image, and it became obvious that what had
at first seemed to be a mottled surface was instead a huge crowd
of people.  Julie was trying to guess how many people might be
there, certainly many thousands, when the violent slicing reached
the platform.  In what seemed to be super slow motion, a swath of
destruction cut through the multitudes, and the platform split
into two city-sized plates that began to tilt then fall toward
the ground as masses of people slid off the edges.
     Many seconds passed before the first falling people hit the
ground.  A cloud of dust began to rise as the structure reached
the ground and began to crumble.  Julie felt dazed, numb.
Thousands upon thousands of people must have died in a period of
one minute.
     Julie was still in shock as the image showed black ships
putting a filmy bubble in place.  The sudden flash of light made
her blink.  Behind her someone was crying.
     The recording continued as the land beyond the edge of the
dome lurched and dropped away.  Suddenly the image started
jumping violently.  The recording had been taken from near enough
the edge that whoever was on the camera side of the lens ran
toward the dome and reached it in time to aim down at the
planet's surface.
     The planet already seemed as far below as it would probably
look like from a commercial airliner.  The planet was
predominantly gray, with far less surface water than Earth.  The
view tilted upward and showed a huge black shape blocking out
most of the stars.  Unfamiliar constellations disappeared as the
black shape grew larger.
     The view tilted back toward the planet, now far enough below
that the thin layer of atmosphere glowed over the curved horizon.
     Two things happened concurrently.  Starting at the apex of
the picture, a black band expanded downward and cut off the view
entirely after about ten seconds.  During the last three or four
seconds, something happened over the planet's horizon.  Julie
thought of a huge lightning storm as seen from several miles
away, but this was on a planetary scale.  The air in the thin
band still visible flickered with bright light, as though a
fireworks display to end them all had started just out of direct
sight.
     The black band reached the bottom of the screen, and the
view of the horizon narrowed to a slit before it was cut off
completely and the image went black.  In the silent room, Julie
could hear her heart beat.
     The recording began all over.
     Finally Matt swallowed hard, then said to Bobby Joe, "If we
provide you with equivalent recordings from the ones made in
Manhattan, can you translate them to this format and send them to
the people in that dome?"
     "Probably.  It'll take some doing.  The hardest part is the
transmitter.  Most of our stuff's intended for transmitting in a
fairly narrow spectrum, but I can probably cobble something
together."
     "Okay.  Let me know if you need resources you don't have."
Matt turned to Julie.  "You've probably got a fair selection of
amateur videos at the station.  When you get a chance, can you
get someone to edit some video equivalent to what they saw, and
get it to Bobby Joe?"
     Julie nodded.  She still wasn't sure if she could speak.
                                 #
     Dorine Underwood faced the camera and worked toward the
conclusion of her nightly message.  She still had a headache from
a long, angry conversation with Oscar Anklehunt, the U.N.
Secretary General.  Oscar plainly felt the situation was one of
Earth dealing with an alien threat, whereas Dorine argued that
the mayor of the city was the one in the position of dealing with
aliens.  As she had most of her normal network of support intact,
and Oscar was in charge of a large group of delegates cut off
from their home countries, Dorine had never doubted who'd win the
argument.  It just took some time to convince Oscar.
     He kept insisting on getting all the information available
to anyone, and he demanded that support be provided him so he, as
the sole representative of the world's collective governments,
could deal with the situation.  When Dorine had finally had
enough, she asked Oscar how many people reported to him.  When he
answered, Dorine explained that a thousand times that many people
were in place in the city government, all under her direction,
all of whom knew their jobs and were getting a steady supply of
new guidance as more information became available.
     At the end of the conversation she threw him a bone and said
she could still use more translators and she'd appreciate his
help in sending them her way.  Oscar was enough of a statesman to
know when the battle was over, and he finally backed down from
his original demands and promised to help.  He was obviously
unhappy to have to be fitting into her plans, but he knew when he
was outgunned.
     Dorine looked back at the camera and tried to keep her tone
casual.  The audience was bound to include people on the verge of
suicide.  "...so I'm happy to report the restrictions on toilet
usage and water consumption have been lifted.  Garbage collection
will start tomorrow, but I caution you not to throw away anything
that might have future use.
     "Following this telecast will be a series of numbers to call
for medical help for withdrawal symptoms.  Area hospitals have
already responded very well to those who are suffering from drug
withdrawal, and they've got specialists ready to help with the
tobacco and alcohol withdrawal that's not very far away.  Better
get used to it, folks; the supplies have been cut off.  Chemical
labs and home brew will last just so long.  It's only a matter of
time until every ounce of controlled substances in Manhattan is
used up.  The area trauma centers have been extremely busy, and
additional operators are standing by on suicide hot-lines.  We
will do all we can to help.  And we are going to make it one way
or another."
     One thing that gave Dorine even more faith was a visit
earlier in the day from a senior member of the Italian families,
saying they would be doing their part in discouraging gang
violence and pitching in for the common good, just the way they
had done in WW II.  A week ago, Dorine would have been pleased to
see the gentleman in jail, but at the moment Manhattan could use
all the help it could get.  The drug problem was going to get a
lot worse than it already was, but she didn't want to panic
people.
     "On the subject of food, I know there's a sizable number of
people who are either too proud to eat anything delivered from a
cement mixer, or are suspicious of anything provided by our
captors.  I understand both of those feelings, but we simply
don't have any choice.  There are too many of us, and too little
conventional food left.  We eat what we're being provided, or we
starve.
     "And finally, to answer the most-asked question from
yesterday's phone messages, the reason we're trying to contact
other races in this giant zoo or whatever it is, is that we want
to learn as much as we possibly can.  That's the same reason
we're trying to decipher the message on top of the dome.  I don't
want to hold out any false hopes, but we need to keep learning.
For all we know, by finding out more and more about why we were
taken, we can possibly negotiate our return.  The point is that
ignorance leaves us in the worst possible position.
     "There are many theories about why we're here, ranging from
some grotesque biological or sociological experiment to crackpot
ideas such as us being a food supply.  We need to find out what
the real answer is.  We might not like whatever we find out, but
perhaps we'll get some answers.  I'm assuming that not many
people listening to this broadcast would willingly stay here
forever.  We may not have any choice, but sticking our head in
the sand is the coward's way, and New York isn't known for its
cowards.
     "Good night, Manhattan."
                                 #
     Stuart Lund switched off the television in his hospital
room.  This wasn't right.
     What could the mayor be thinking?  The message on top of the
dome was obviously a message from God.  What else could this
whole business be but the second coming of Noah's Ark?
     The only other possibility was the millennium coming a
little late, but, one, God could certainly count, and, two, if
this were the millennium, then God would have saved only those
worthy of saving, and while Stuart had high regard for many
people he knew in Manhattan, he couldn't possibly accept the
monumental coincidence that every single person worthy of saving
happened to be in Manhattan at exactly the same time.
     He struggled to get out of bed and find his clothes.  The
task would have been easier with both hands, but Stuart had
flatly resisted the idea of a prosthetic hand.  God had made him
this way.  Who was he to try to reverse God's will?
     He had to get out.  Whoever interpreted the message from God
on the dome above should be someone called by God, not some
scummy bunch of scientists.
                                 #
     Matt awoke on a cot, high in the World Trade Center, the
dream of Nadine still vivid in his mind.  Her decision still cut
deep, and he found himself recalling danger signs that he'd
ignored because he wanted her so much.
     Nadine had always been something of a flirt, a woman very
conscious of her power over men.  Before they were married,
they'd had an argument on the way to a picnic with other military
personnel assigned to McChord Air Force Base, south of Tacoma.
They reached the picnic grounds, a football-field-sized irregular
area partly cleared of trees but surrounded by forest.
     Matt had tried to apologize for his share of the sharp words
spoken in the car, but when they arrived, Nadine was cool,
unforgiving.  They drifted in and out of conversations with
friends and casual acquaintances, all the while Matt feeling
frustrated that they couldn't get closure on the argument and put
it behind them.  As people were getting ready for the big meal, a
male officer whose name Matt couldn't even remember anymore
pulled a muscle in his back while carrying a huge bag of ice.
With hardly any coaxing at all, Nadine volunteered to give the
guy a back rub.
     Matt watched for a couple of minutes as Nadine started the
back rub and threw in some flirting for good measure.  As Matt
watched, the pain inside his gut grew and grew, and somehow
summoned up that old unrelated feeling from his childhood, the
feeling that no matter what he did, it would never be enough to
satisfy his parents.  After a few minutes he couldn't stand it
anymore.  He had to get away.
     He backed away from the small group, turned, and strode
toward the woods.  As he did, he was aware that he held the slim
hope that Nadine would see the hurt, and that she would follow
him, that maybe they could talk and smooth things over.  He made
a point of not going much farther when he reached the edge of the
trees.
     He walked maybe ten meters into the trees and came to a
small clearing, barely hearing the cries of birds in the trees,
amazed at how strong his reaction had been.  He waited there
twenty or thirty minutes, feeling that if Nadine cared anything
at all about him that she would have been there by that time.
Finally the feelings built to the point that he cried, and the
feeling of loss of control just made him hurt that much more.
     When he finally recovered, he went back to the picnic area.
The back rub was over, and Nadine was casually chatting with a
couple of people from their unit.
     That night, sex was more fiery than it had been in several
weeks.  Matt had lain awake for a long time afterward, wondering
if that had been Nadine's goal, and angry at himself that he was
so easily manipulated.
     Matt took a deep breath, blinked away the recollection, and
swung his feet over the edge of the cot.  He stretched and walked
to the window.  The array of domed cities in the distance focused
his attention on the present.
     Minutes later he was back in the operations room.  Bobby Joe
had beat him there again and was busily engaged at the control
console.
     "Any word?" Matt asked.
     "None so far.  I really think our transmission is getting
out there, though."
     Matt sat down beside Bobby Joe.  "We've been transmitting
for--" he looked at his watch "--coming up on forty-eight hours
so far.  You'd think that would be enough time for them to
realize we're answering their signal.  Why don't they transmit
something else to tell us they understand?"
     "I wish I knew."
     "Any chance the atmosphere outside the dome absorbs more
than we think it does?  Maybe our signal is a lot weaker than
theirs."
     "Don't think so.  I can pinpoint the portion of our signal
that's reflecting off that dome, and my computer and my gut say
they should be getting just as strong a signal as we are."
     Matt leaned back and rubbed his forehead.  He was still
sitting there when Abby came in and sat down.
     "Good morning," she said.
     "Hi."
     "You look tired."
     "I shouldn't be," Matt said.  "I got plenty of sleep.  How
are things with your message?"
     Abby shook her head.  "Still no progress.  We all feel quite
inept."
     "No one said it would be easy.  Whoever wrote that message
isn't very much like us, I'd bet."
     "Still, there's got to be a way."
                                 #
     "You want to cut a hole through the dome?" Dorine Underwood
said.  "Isn't that a bit drastic?"
     The council meeting was slightly larger than normal, since
Matt Sheehan had brought some of his team along.
     "I know it sounds that way, Ms. Mayor," Matt said.  "But
we've given it a lot of thought and it seems to make the most
sense.  Can I outline our reasoning?"
     Dorine hesitated.  "All right.  It can't hurt to hear it."
     "First of all, every indication we have says we're going to
be here for a long time, if not forever, if we accept the status
quo.  We've heard nothing from our captors except the sign over
our heads, and we've been beaming messages via radio frequencies
and broad-spectrum light in every possible direction, and we
still haven't heard a peep out of our captors.  I understand that
they might have trouble decoding what we're sending, and we'll
probably have trouble with any message from them, but we've
received nothing.  Either they're unaware of our transmissions or
they're ignoring us.
     "I believe that getting out of this enclosure is the only
thing that might increase our chances of being taken home.  If
we're enough of a nuisance, maybe they won't want us."
     "Possibly.  But they might just dump us in space."
     "That's a risk.  I don't think it's very likely, but that's
a risk."
     Dorine searched Matt's eyes.  She was used to watching
people's eyes.  Who was it that said something about eyes being
the window to the soul?  He looked honest.  He had readily
admitted her fear had some justification, rather than just
brushing aside the objection.  "Go on, Colonel Sheehan."
     "Okay.  First some background."  Matt gestured at the bald
man sitting next to him.  "You may recognize Dr. Brewster from a
Time article last year.  Dr. Brewster, with a couple of
associates from Columbia University, has made an extensive series
of spectroscopic measurements, looking at the atmosphere out
there, between the domes, and in addition they've been able to
make measurements of the atmospheres inside most of the other
domes.  Their findings indicate the air outside between the domes
is breathable, although at a lower pressure than in here.  About
eighty percent of the domes contain various mixtures of oxygen
and nitrogen with minor amounts of carbon dioxide, water vapor,
and trace gases that won't hurt us.  There might be circumstances
where we'd need oxygen masks, but in general, we'd be perfectly
safe."
     Barnaby had grown increasingly agitated while Matt spoke.
As soon as Matt paused for a breath, Barnaby said, "Sure, maybe
we can breathe the air, but what about bugs?  Who knows what kind
of germs might get in here?"
     Matt nodded.  "You're right that that's a factor in this
decision.  And it's not just the micro-organisms that could get
in here; we could be letting our own germs loose on everyone
else.  Doctor?"  He turned toward an older woman near him.  "This
is Dr. Rosenthal.  She's a molecular biologist, also from
Columbia."
     The woman cleared her throat.  "As Mr. Sheehan says, this
question involves several calculated risks.  In our own
experience, many micro-organisms work on fairly specific targets.
Many diseases that attack humans, for instance, don't have the
slightest effect on most other mammals, let alone reptiles,
amphibians, or birds, or creatures even more different from us.
The odds suggest that micro-organisms from alien worlds are
unlikely to be dangerous to us, and vice versa.  Mr. Sheehan's
plan does involve taking precautions, in case we're wrong, but in
any event my feeling is that the risk is smaller than what we
have to gain."
     "Thank you, Doctor," Matt said.  "Again, one of the key
aspects of this decision is the basic question: are we willing to
live in prison for the rest of our lives?"
     Dorine said, "There might well be a significant number of
people here who do want to live as long as they naturally can."
     "I understand that, Ms. Mayor.  Again, our plan would strive
to isolate the people going outside from the people staying here,
so that even if there is a health problem, it will affect only
the volunteers on the team."
     "All right.  Go on."  Dorine was glad she hadn't had to run
against this man in the last election.  He was ready for every
question, and had convincing arguments for all his statements.
Her most recent opponent had been a wealthy man who had gotten
his way so often that his debating skills had atrophied.
     "I guess the final reason for wanting to go outside is that
we hope to learn more from the residents in other domes, but
we're having difficulties trying to talk to them from a distance.
The linguists feel, and it makes sense to me, that direct two-way
contact has the best chances of speedy communication.  If I'm in
the room with you, and I point at a chair and say 'chair,' and
you tell your computer to record what I said and what object I
pointed to, then we can swap roles and both sides can begin to
build up a vocabulary.  Of course, I could have meant 'sit down'
or 'wood' or 'cushion,' but with a face-to-face opportunity, we
can assemble enough data to start finding out what's really being
said.  Right now, with only one-way communication established,
we're having a tough time doing anything more than verifying that
one of the other domes experienced something like what we did.
Also, it could turn out that some of the races that we'd find it
easiest to talk to might be races with no electronics
communications equipment.  A team would continue trying to
establish radio or light-beam communications, so we wouldn't be
abandoning that process."
     "You present a compelling argument.  But what if we're
unable to cut through the dome?"
     "Then we haven't lost anything, have we?"
                                 #
     "You don't really expect to cut through it with that, do
you?" Matt asked Rudy Sanchez.  The two men stood on the grass in
Battery Park, looking at a small plastic bubble sealed to the
inside of the dome.  Inside the sealed volume was a city worker
with an oxyacetylene torch ready to go.
     "Not really, but we have to try it, right?"
     Matt nodded.  The first test they'd conducted was to see if
they could scratch the surface with an industrial diamond.  They
hadn't been able to mar the surface.  A sledge hammer driven
against a tungsten carbide bit didn't do anything except make a
lot of noise.  A variety of strong acids and bases had done
nothing more than make a mess.  The only result from an attempt
with a strong laser was a discolored spot on the surface of the
gray plain outside the dome; the laser light went through the
dome material without causing any measurable change.
     Rudy responded to a gesture from the city worker, and he
raised his thumb.
     Matt heard the whoosh of the twin gas jet lighting, and
bright white light danced on nearby reflecting surfaces.  After
about five minutes the light died, the gas jet popped as it shut
off, and the man inside the bubble lifted his helmet and shook
his head at Rudy.
     "Damn," Rudy said.
     Matt sat in silence with him for a couple of minutes, as
they waited for Bobby Joe.  Bobby Joe was shaking his head as he
approached.
     "No good," Bobby Joe said.  "I've got temperature readings
from about a meter from the flame, ten meters away, and a hundred
meters away."
     "And they all read the same, right?" Rudy said.
     "You got it.  They all rose a few hundredths of a degree.
Whatever that stuff is, it's one superfine heat conductor.  We
can't get any one spot hot enough to do any damage because the
heat spreads through it so fast."
     Rudy raised an eyebrow in Matt's direction.  "I don't think
we've got anything that'll do the trick."
     Matt sighed.  "I believe you.  I guess it's time we went for
a drive."
                                 #
     The caravan of city trucks traveled south in the northbound
tube of the Battery Tunnel, moving deeper as they approached the
blocked end.  The two lanes in the southbound tube bound for
Brooklyn still had too many abandoned vehicles clogging them.
Two large trucks trailing the procession stopped before the
others did.  Teams from each truck got out and prepared to build
decontamination barriers across the width of the tunnel.
     Power was on here, too, although there hadn't been much need
for it recently.  The existing Battery Tunnel lights reduced the
need to bring in additional artificial lighting, and the fans
would help to keep the air breathable, at least until, and if,
the crew was near to breaching the barrier to the outside.  Matt
listened to the metallic whine of tires as the noise bounced back
from the tunnel walls.
     The lead truck pulled to a halt in the right lane, fifty
feet from the black seal at the end of the tunnel.  Paramedic
teams had removed the victims left behind when the tunnel was
severed, but the last twenty or thirty feet of roadbed still bore
the dark stains of blood and oil.
     To Matt the black material blocking the tunnel looked just
like the stuff at the end of the subway tunnel.  He walked the
final meters to the wall and put his fingers against it.  It had
the feel of wrought iron.  The surface tilted away from him, so
it was maybe forty-five degrees from vertical.  He pulled a
fingernail down the surface, and felt the roughness.  When he
scratched sideways, he could feel a series of tiny ridges.
     "Can I borrow a hammer?" he asked Rudy.
     Rudy set a small toolbox on the stained concrete and
withdrew a ball-peen hammer.
     Matt swung the hammer against the black surface.  Wrought
iron would have absorbed more of the energy.  Against this
surface, the hammer snapped back as though Matt had hit a cubic
meter of stainless steel.  "Doesn't sound encouraging, does it?"
     "Not really," Rudy said.  Six more people from Rudy's
organization approached the wall and started their own
investigations.
     "How did this layer get here?" Matt asked as even more
people formed several smaller groups to attack the surface with a
variety of techniques.
     Rudy shrugged.  "We don't know really.  No one reported
seeing any material brought down, and I'm sure it isn't a simple
layer of melted rock.  Quite a few people reported hearing a
series of explosions like you heard.  One possibility proposed by
metallurgists is that the aliens shot a huge number of explosive
pellets into the cut formed by the lasers.  If the pellets
contained material that sprang into its original shape and fused
together, what we could have is a huge cone underneath the city."
     "Sounds a little strange to me," Matt said.
     "This whole business is a little strange.  One of the things
the metallurgical folks found is that the material is magnetized,
and that the direction corresponds to the direction the magnetic
flux would have been oriented on Earth.  That's one reason they
think that for at least a short time, a lot of the barrier
material was fluid, so the magnetic dipoles could move freely and
align themselves with the strongest magnetic field present."
     "So, if that theory's true, even if we can't get through
this section, there's a possibility of a gap at the very bottom
of the cone.  All we'd need to do is tunnel down who knows how
far through solid granite."
     "Simple, eh?" Rudy grinned.  "And we should be able to
figure out how deep we'd have to go.  We can measure this
angle--" he pointed to the black barrier "--and we can measure
the angles in other locations.  My guess is the hole they cut is
at least a kilometer deep in the center."
                                 #
     Julie Kravine put her ID back in her pocket and walked
deeper into the tunnel.  Ahead were flashing yellow lights of
city maintenance vehicles parked in the right lane of the tunnel.
She turned on her minivid and started recording as a matter of
habit.
     A pinpoint of brilliant light turned on in the distance
ahead, and a shower of sparks flew to one side.  The sparks fell
to the ground so slowly, the display seemed more like faraway
fireworks.
     Rudy Sanchez sat on the back bumper of a city electrical
truck.  He looked tired.  Julie got within a couple of yards of
him before he looked up and smiled as though he were glad to see
her.  Too many people looked away when reporters arrived.
     "Hi," he said.
     "Hi, yourself.  How's it going?"
     "Slow.  Very very slow.  Or not at all, depending on your
point of view."
     The sparks were still flying in the air near the barrier
ahead.  "Don't you think you're gonna' be able to cut through
it?"
     "I just don't know.  Isn't that the kind of answer reporters
hate?"
     "Not when it's honest."
     "It's honest.  We've tried acid, diamond-tipped blades,
torches--" he jerked his thumb toward the sparks "--welding
equipment.  Nothing."
     "Why keep trying if you're sure it's impossible?"
     "'Cause I'm not sure.  Different materials have different
weaknesses.  Maybe we'll find a weak link."
     "Sounds like wishful thinking to me."
     Rudy was silent for a moment.  "Maybe so.  But you remember
paper newspapers from when you were a kid?"
     "Sure."
     "You ever try to tear out an article on part of a page?  If
you did, you probably noticed that tearing the page vertically
was easy.  But tearing across the page was damn near impossible
to do, at least in a straight line."
     "Yeah.  So?"
     "So the paper was stronger in one direction than the other,
because of the way the fibers lined up.  Other materials are like
that, too.  Some of them you can pull on the ends really hard and
they can support thousands of pounds of tension, but bend them in
two and they snap just like a little piece of wood.  We need to
figure out how to snap this stuff."
     "You know you did that very well?" Julie said.  Rudy looked
puzzled, so she went on.  "When I talk to technical people, most
of them either don't try to explain very well because they want
to feel superior, or they really do try to explain, but they
sound like they're reciting their doctoral thesis--they don't
know how to explain things to people who don't talk their
jargon."
     "Well, thanks.  You do your job well, too.  I've seen
reporters who ask all the questions and just absorb the answers
like some mechanical person.  Or they ask questions to impress
the audience.  You seem to care about what you're hearing.  And
you think about what you hear.  You've asked some pretty
interesting questions in the last few days--questions that should
be occurring to the people you're asking, but you beat them to
it."
     The light sparking against the barrier went off.  Julie felt
uncomfortable with the compliment, and said, "Yeah, well,
thanks."
     A guy Julie hadn't seen before approached and said to Rudy,
"No luck.  That was six cycles of hot and cold, and it still
looks exactly the same."
     "Ok, thanks" Rudy said.  He made a mark on his clipboard.
"Can you tell Verhogan it's his turn?"
     "Sure thing."  The man went back toward the barrier.
     "What's next?" Julie asked.
     "The surface seems to be made up of a huge number of
filaments, all running from the surface down to wherever they all
meet, all fused together; we can feel the ridges, like a beaded
curtain dipped in glue, only a lot smaller.  Verhogan's built a
very strong spreader.  It's got tiny grippers meant to catch on
those little ridges, so maybe we can pry a gap between
filaments."
     "You gonna' go watch?"
     "Yeah.  This one I was a little more curious about."
     As Julie walked with Rudy toward the black wall, a truck
backed up against the surface.  On the rear of the truck was a
device with wide jaws made from shiny metal.  Julie aimed her
minivid at the contraption, watching light glint from the fine
rows of teeth.
     Once the truck was parked tightly against the wall, the
driver got out of the cab and walked around to where a big
electric winch was mounted on the side of the truck.
     Rudy lowered his voice slightly.  "The winch will drive
apart the two grippers, if we're lucky."
     Julie couldn't see much with the truck covering the working
area, but she left her minivid on.  The driver of the truck
looked at a small display screen as he adjusted two wheel-handled
controls.  When he finished, he pushed a button next to the
winch, and then quickly moved back from the truck.
     The winch made grinding noises for a few seconds before the
noises dropped in pitch and the winch began to work harder.
Several more seconds went by before there came a loud sproing as
something in the mechanism gave way, and the winch began to race.
     "Didn't sound real good to me," Julie said.
     "Me, neither," Rudy said.
     A few minutes later, after the truck had been driven
forward, two workers verified that part of the mechanism had
broken and the wall was unaffected.
     "How many more ideas do you have?" Julie asked.
     "Not too many," Rudy admitted.  "But it's always the last
one that works."
     "Always?"
     "Usually.  'Cause the cliché is that when you get something
that works, that's when you stop trying."
                                 #
     The last one worked.
     Rudy felt like he'd been working five days without sleep
when he got word that the dipole oscillator was ready to try.  He
was having trouble working up enthusiasm, but he went for a look
anyway.
     Julie Kravine was back down in the tunnel, obviously eager
to find out the results.  She wasn't much younger than Rudy, but
he felt like an old man in the face of her obvious energy.
"What's this one gonna' do, Rudy?"
     "Well, it's a little like a microwave oven, except that what
we're cooking is outside the oven.  A microwave oven heats things
by creating an oscillating field that makes water molecules want
to line up with it as it changes polarity over and over.  Once
the water molecules start twisting back and forth like that, the
friction with other molecules makes heat.  It's the modern
equivalent of rubbing two sticks together.
     "This thing does it a little differently.  It's set up to
make magnetic domains twist back and forth, like an old bulk tape
eraser, except much stronger and much more focused.  The theory
is that if we can generate enough internal heat and make enough
molecules bounce around, then maybe we can weaken that stuff."
     Julie looked pleased with the description.
     Next to the black wall was a large machine with a
cone-shaped extension pointed right at the wall, almost touching
it.  As Rudy and Julie watched, Dr. Brantower, a woman in her
fifties, gave a go-ahead sign.  A click sounded from somewhere,
and an intense humming sound filled the tunnel.  A spot on the
black wall right in front of the cone began to glow brightly.  It
stayed bright for five seconds, at which time the same click
sounded, the humming disappeared, and the spot on the wall faded
back to black.
     Dr. Brantower and a man Rudy didn't know went over to
examine the spot.  After a minute or so, Dr. Brantower called
out.  "Hey, Rudy!  The surface texture is changed!"
     Rudy felt a surge of energy, and suddenly felt younger than
Julie.  They went over to the wall, and Julie played her minivid
over the surface while Rudy took a close look.  Sure enough,
instead of the black ridged surface, a spot the size of a
fingernail was slightly gray and the ridges had been smoothed
over.  As Rudy watched, Dr. Brantower took a nearby flat-blade
screwdriver and prodded at the surface.  Particles flaked off
like dust, and Rudy's heartbeat quickened.
     "All right!" Rudy shouted.  "You're a genius, Doctor."
     Dr. Brantower laughed with delight.
     Ten minutes later, Rudy and Julie and a crowd much larger
than before watched from a distance as the cone slowly drew a
plate-sized glowing circle on the black wall.
     While the circle was cooling, a quick lottery picked a lucky
winner for the person who got to swing a sledge hammer at the
center of the circle.  Fortunately the winner was a muscular man.
He swung the sledge hammer so hard Rudy worried about the head
flying off, but the head hit squarely in the center of the
circle.  The circle of material stayed where it was but it
clearly vibrated in the second or two after the blow.
     A cheer went up in the crowd.
     As soon as they verified that the latest gas reading around
the hole was safe, Rudy and several others went for a closer
look.  Around the entire perimeter, the black material had
crumbled away.  What showed in the gap looked like a sheet of
dirty wires running up and down.  As Rudy watched, one of the men
pried loose a single fiber that had more give than piano wire.
Someone else inserted a crowbar and tried to break the fiber.  It
stretched without breaking.
     "Get a jack," Rudy said.
     In minutes, a jack was in place, and one of the workers
slowly notched it up one click at a time, pulling one end of the
crowbar.  When the strand had stretched about a foot, the man
pushing on the jack began to strain harder, and just as it seemed
the strand would prevent him from clicking the jack one more
notch, the strand snapped and the crowbar clattered to the
ground.
     "That's it!" Rudy shouted.  "That's it!  This may take a
while, but now it's just a matter of brute force and turning the
crank."  He took a deep breath and glanced at Julie, who looked
as happy as he felt.
     Just a few minutes later, though, as Rudy watched the crew
start to cut a large door-shaped hole in the black wall, he
realized that he was also a little scared.
     He hoped they were really doing the right thing.

                            Chapter 5
                             Gray Goo

     Lifeless automobiles lined both sides of the street as
though some nearby rich collector had long ago run out of space
to house them.
     Matt Sheehan's car dipped its nose as he drove south, moving
into the left lane of the northbound half of the Battery Tunnel.
The Manhattan digital audio station had been out of commission
since they had been brought here, and the lone FM station
currently on the air faded into static as he moved deeper.  That
was just as well; the song reminded him of a long hike he and
Nadine had made outside of Rio.  As he reached the column of cars
and trucks parked in the right lane, a cop flagged him down,
looked at his face, and told him about a parking space just ahead
of a truck parked about thirty meters ahead.
     On foot Matt passed through the decontamination station
where his skin and clothes were misted by a noxious combination
of ingredients recommended by members of the Board of Public
Health, none of whom, as far as Matt could tell, had never come
through in person.  He almost wished he was back in the WTC with
Abby and the other linguists, but his help didn't seem needed
there, and he was curious about the black barrier.
     Beyond the decon station were a few more trucks parked on
the right.  Near the black barrier clustered a small crowd.
     Matt came up behind Rudy and Julie, who sat together on a
large box.  He tapped Rudy's shoulder and exchanged hellos with
the two of them, who both seemed in good spirits.  Julie's
minivid was inactive for the moment.
     "Shouldn't be long now," Rudy said.  He pointed at the large
square outline in the black barrier.  "They've weakened the base
material all around that doorway, and they're cutting the
individual strands holding the top in place."
     "I'm glad I got down here before they finished."
     "Any change in the transmission?"
     "Nope.  Bobby Joe doesn't know what to make of it.  I don't
understand, either.  If they want to talk, what we're sending
back should be a pretty clear hello."  Matt rubbed the muscles at
the back of his neck.  "Bobby Joe's a strange bird, though."
     "What now?"
     "If he had his way, instead of transmitting the capture
pictures, I think we'd be sending them Silly Sheila cartoons.
'Can't you just see the expressions on their faces when they
decode this?' he says."
     Julie smiled, and said, "But he's a smart guy."
     "No doubt about it.  He's invaluable.  He's just one of
those guys who takes a little more supervision than average.  I
bet if he was married and had kids, he'd have them totally
confused.  But, boy would they have interesting expressions."
Matt looked back at the crowd near the black barrier.
     Rudy hesitated.  "You look tired."
     Matt took his gaze off the clump of workers and looked at
Rudy.  "A little.  I guess we all are."
     About the same time, someone in the crowd near the barrier
called out, "We got it!"
     Rudy and Julie got up, and the three of them moved forward.
Julie turned on her minivid.  Workers pried at the top of the
square outline and slowly a very thin section of black material,
still attached at the bottom, tilted out from the rest of the
barrier like a drawbridge pivoting outward from a castle wall.
Revealed behind the section was the same gray material they had
seen covering the plain.
     The black square tilted all the way down until what had been
the top edge rested against the stained pavement.  Along the
hinged junction were exposed hundreds of tiny fibers.  The sheet
of black material looked paper thin, but it hardly flexed when a
massive construction worker put his full weight in the center of
it and bounced on his steel-toed work boots a couple of times.
"Mighty strong stuff," the guy said.
     Now that they had breached the barrier, Matt was more
interested in the gray material.  If it had anything like the
strength of the black sheet, they still had a long job in front
of them.
     A worker wearing gloves swung a hammer lightly at the gray
wall, then looked carefully at where the hammer had silently hit.
He swung again, harder, and Matt heard a soft dull thud.  When
the hammer came back, Matt could see a shadowed indentation on
the gray wall, and he felt relief, convinced the gray stuff was
going to be easier to deal with.
     Rudy stepped onto the black sheet.  He pulled out a pocket
knife and put on a pair of gloves.  The knife blade seemed to cut
into the gray surface fairly easily.  Seconds later, Rudy shook a
small wedge of the gray stuff off his knife and into a beaker
held by a woman in a long white lab coat.  Rudy glanced at the
faces of the work crew.  "Good work.  The chemists will tell us
pretty soon how safe this stuff is, but so far it looks like it's
going to be easy going from here on out.  Take a break if you
want."
     Most of the group drifted away, but one man offered Rudy a
very long screwdriver and said, "Want to see how deep you can
go?"
     Rudy took the screwdriver, put the point against the face of
the gray substance, and leaned into it.  The screwdriver buried
itself to the handle.  When he pulled it back out, the blade was
clean.  He looked toward Matt and said, "This stuff seems to have
the consistency of modeling clay."
     Matt took a closer look.  An hour later, he was still
standing near the exposed gray material, talking with Rudy and
Julie, when the woman in the white lab coat came back and told
Rudy that the stuff was safe unless anyone tried to eat it.  The
pH was neutral, it wasn't flammable or explosive, it didn't
generate dangerous particulates like asbestos did, and it didn't
give off any dangerous gases.  Her summary was that it was as
safe as modeling clay.  She took some more of the gray stuff back
to the lab with her, to do more extensive testing.
     Rudy called the crew back to work and passed on the summary.
He used his knife again and, as though the occasion was a bizarre
wine and cheese party, cut small wedges for everyone to examine.
"If we're going to tunnel very far, we've got to cut through
quite a few meters of this," he said.  "I'd appreciate your
thoughts on the best ways to do it."
     Matt held a sample of the gray substance in his hand.  It
didn't feel sticky.  He squeezed it, and it flattened just like
soft clay.  He stretched it, and it thinned to the diameter of a
pencil before it broke.  The two halves mixed together easily,
leaving no sign that they had been separated.  He sniffed the
material and detected no odor.
     Other people nearby subjected the material to some
improvised tests, like putting a glob on the floor and hammering
it, and lighting a match under a piece.  The hammered piece
looked like flattened modeling clay, and the heated piece turned
darker until it looked like discolored clay that was stiffer than
normal.
     Finally a man with a shovel stepped forward.  He put the
edge of the shovel against the wall and planted his heel firmly
against the back end.  Without too much trouble he removed a
shovelful of the gray stuff and plopped it onto the pavement.
"Maybe we just dig," the man said.
                                 #
     Abby came up behind Matt as he stared out the window of the
World Trade Center command post and said, "How about dinner
tonight?"
     He turned and smiled.  "You haven't found any horde of real
food have you?"
     Abby wasn't sure what there was about his smile, but it
always made her want to smile back.  "I'm afraid not.  But we
could picnic on the roof.  That would be a change."
     "Sure.  Why not?"
     They still had an hour of "daylight" left when they reached
the observation deck.  Matt carried a plastic liter jug of water,
and Abby carried a jar of food pellets and a couple of paper
cups.  They walked up to the highest level of the deck.
     "Would this table suit you, monsieur?"  She gestured toward
the nearby open space.
     Matt looked around the empty observation deck and at the
domes beyond.  For just a second, his eyes took on that faraway
look that she hated to see.  "You sure you don't have anything
with a view of the Hudson?"
     "Don't I wish."
     They sat.  Abby looked at Matt, and thought more seriously
about the question.  "You think it's really possible that we may
see the Hudson again?"
     "I wish I knew.  I'm not sure I can handle a steady diet of
this stuff for the rest of my life."  Matt gestured at the jar of
food pellets.
     "How's it going down below?" Abby asked as she took the cups
and poured water for them both.
     "By the time I left, they had dug a tunnel about two meters
deep into that putty-like gray stuff outside.  If everything goes
well, I expect they'll reach the surface tomorrow."
     Abby popped a foot pellet in her mouth.  It was as tasty as
a pencil eraser, as brittle as a calcium pill.  "And then what?
Whoever steps outside gets picked up and put back in the cage?
Or gets sizzled by enormous huge insect zapper?"
     Matt took a couple of the food pellets.  "I guess that's
possible.  We don't really know how closely they're watching
what's going on.  Rudy suggested spreading a tarp over a jeep,
and painting it the same shade of gray as the plain.  I'm not
convinced yet, and in any event we've got to get to the surface
first."
     "I want to go, you know."  Abby looked at him over her cup
of water.  She felt surprisingly relaxed, enjoying the
opportunity to be alone with Matt.
     "On the trip to the other dome?"
     "Of course."
     "Could be dangerous."  His gaze made her want to be in
danger with Matt rather than perfectly safe without him.
     "That's very true.  That's why I thought you'd be especially
eager to hear about volunteers."
     Matt grinned.
     Abby knew right then he'd been teasing her and that the
answer was yes.  She could read that message far easier than
written words.  God, why had she never met anyone like this
before?  "Well?"
     "Well.  Well, we have to have a linguist."
     Abby felt a brief tremor pass through her body, but wasn't
entirely sure whether it was the result of knowing she could go,
or knowing she could go with Matt.  She covered her reaction by
taking another drink of water.
     "Thanks for not teasing me too long."
     "Tease you?  God forbid.  You're teasing me."
     "Would you like that?"  Without even realizing what she was
doing, Abby moved closer to him.
     Matt's expression was cheerful as she looked into his eyes
from a closer vantage point.  His expression slowly became more
serious, as Abby said nothing, and she felt sure she could see
the longing in his eyes.  What she couldn't tell was whether Abby
was at the front of his brain, or if his wife took that position.
She found it more difficult to breathe.
     Finally Matt said, "If circumstances were a little
different, I'd like that a lot."
     Abby's courage suddenly faltered, and she didn't feel up to
asking him which circumstances he was referring to.  She could
easily imagine how bad she'd feel if Matt went on to remind her
that he was married.
                                 #
     Manhattan is home to over 100 nationalities, most of which
seem homogeneous only to the outsiders.  One such diverse group
is the Native Americans.  Many of them rallied at the American
Indian Community Home Gallery on Broadway north of SoHo.
     From Arapaho to Iroquois to Sioux to Zuñi, they gathered at
their island within an island for mutual support and to compare
theories.  At any time of day, there would always be at least a
few groups of people talking, singing soft chants, or simply
sitting near each other.  More than a few of them made jokes
about how first the white man stole Manhattan from the Indians
and now someone else seemed to have stolen it again.
                                 #
     A cop let Rudy pass.  Sometimes when Rudy walked from one
place to another, he could let his thoughts drift, and for a
brief time he could imagine everything was the way it used to be.
He had worked hard to escape that tiny two-bedroom house in East
L.A., and few things here reminded him of the small homes in the
barrio.  He'd told Matt and Abby his store of food in his office
was because he spent so much time there, and that was partly
true, but the main reason was one he seldom admitted to himself.
After a childhood of competing with too many people for too
little food, he had wanted never again to feel hunger for very
long.  The irony of now having to subsist on the alien food
pellets was not lost on him.
     Although he enjoyed its cosmopolitan life a lot, Rudy had
never expected to wind up in New York.  In fact, he had heard so
much about it that he had once told Matt he'd never consider
living in New York unless he had so much money he could afford
his own zip code.
     As soon as he stepped past the decontamination barrier the
thoughts dissipated.  He looked ahead, and he knew something was
wrong.
     He was early, as was his habit.  None of the tunnel-digging
crew had arrived yet.  He reached the guard who'd been on duty
and found the man asleep.  Rudy walked closer to where
pole-mounted trouble lights glared harshly near the tunnel mouth.
     Actually it could no longer be called a tunnel mouth.  Where
yesterday a short tunnel had been cut into the gray material, now
the square opening in the black wall was filled with the gray
stuff, and gray goo had flowed from beyond the barrier into the
Battery Tunnel.  Looking a little like gray toothpaste squeezed
through a square hole, the gray goo formed a thick alluvial fan
extending over a meter from the opening.
     Rudy knelt near the gray material and pressed a hammer into
the stuff.  It still possessed the modeling clay firmness, but
reason told him it must really be a fluid, albeit an extremely
viscous one.  He found a small pebble on the pavement and placed
it about a centimeter from the edge of the gray goo.  He watched
the gap.  He couldn't detect the gap actually shrinking, but
several seconds later he could tell that it was in fact smaller
than before.
     He walked over to the dump truck and climbed up until he
could see inside the back.  What had been a pile of chunks of the
gray stuff now looked more like gray cake batter poured into a
pan.  The high point was in the middle, but the stuff was
obviously flowing slowly, gradually working its way into the
corners.  Another day and it would probably be level.  Glass took
years to fatten the bottom of window panes.  On the viscosity
scale, this stuff was much nearer cold molasses than glass.
     Rudy remembered the piece of the gray goo that someone had
burned the day before, and thought about how it had seemed
stiffer.  He retrieved an oxyacetylene torch, turned on the gas
jets, and lit it.
     At the edge of the gray goo that had now covered the pebble,
he played the torch over the surface and watched it darken and
shrink back.  He found another pebble and placed it about a
centimeter from the new edge.
     As he moved around the fan-shaped spread of goo, heating the
edge with the torch, he heard sounds of surprise as the
construction crew began to arrive.
     Nicholas showed up within an hour.  By then the goo had
spread no farther.  Instead it looked like dough rising, confined
by a darkened perimeter.  Workers were just finishing the job of
putting a panel in front of the opening and bracing it in place
to minimize the flow.
     "I got your message," Nicholas said.  "I left Emile in
charge.  Fortunately things are going smoothly."
     "Thanks for coming down," Rudy said.  He gave Nicholas a
quick summary.  "So, you got any ideas on how to tunnel through
this stuff safely?"
     Nicholas shook his head and moved closer to the gray goo.
He performed some of the same tests that Rudy had done, but
Nicholas's tests were conducted at pencil length or with the aid
of gloves.  Finally he came back to Rudy.
     "I may be thinking of some of the same things you are,"
Nicholas said.
     "That's fine.  I just didn't want to precondition you."
     "Well, the obvious first.  The tunnel walls have to be
braced, just like we were working in dirt."
     "Right."  Rudy wasn't sure if it was his imagination or if
Nicholas had shuddered slightly when he said, "working in dirt."
     "Okay.  This stuff seems about half as heavy as water, so
that means the pressure at this point is about half of what it
would be in water this deep.  We're roughly, what, thirty meters
below the surface.  At one-half atmosphere for every ten
meters--" Nicholas pushed up his sleeve and exposed a wrist
calculator.  After pushing a few buttons, he said, "Eventually
you're going to have something near fifty tons pushing on that
panel."
     Rudy nodded.
     "But the depth is the only real nuisance.  If we were to go
back up top and dig just underneath the bottom of the bubble.
you'd have a lot less pressure.  You should be able to tunnel
pretty easily there."
     "True, but we've got a lot easier environmental control
where we are.  Plus, if we are being watched, this is a lot
safer."  Rudy thought a minute, then snapped his fingers.  "I bet
if we wanted, we could tunnel all the way to the next dome just
below the surface without much trouble at all."
     "Except for the nuisance of having to get rid of the stuff
you dig out.  And getting fresh air all that way."
     "We might have ways around that.  Near the surface, the
pressure would be low enough that maybe we could just push our
way through it.  That way we wouldn't risk being seen on the
surface."
     "And bracing the walls would be a lot easier near the
surface."
     "Actually, we might not have to."
     "I think you'd better explain, boss."
     Rudy reached down and picked up a piece of the gray matter
discolored from being heated.  He rapped it against the wall,
then handed it to Nicholas, who grabbed it with a handkerchief.
"There's a chance that we already have the bracing material we
need."
                                 #
     Bobby Joe Brewster leaned back and examined the close-up
views of individual domes on the large display before him.
     One window on the screen showed the first dome in what Bobby
Joe thought of as the grand tour--the bubble almost about ten
kilometers away, directly south of Battery Park.  Whatever these
people looked like, they must like the outside even less than
Bobby Joe did.  He hadn't seen any sign of activity since he
started scanning.  The dome looked to be only a tenth the size of
the one over Manhattan, but the building inside dwarfed every
human structure.  The dome held but one giant building, a cube
that must be half as tall as the World Trade Center towers.
Irregular rows of large round windows helped him learn nothing
about the interior of the building, because he couldn't see in.
He stared at the patterns made by the windows, and wondered
vaguely if they spelled anything.
     Bobby Joe adjusted his controls, giving more power to the
transmitters directed toward that dome.  A scan of the receivers
with antennas pointed at the dome said they still had detected no
reply.
     Bobby Joe absently reached for the plastic plate beside the
console and grabbed the last couple of food pellets.  He popped
them in his mouth and took a drink of water from the soft-drink
container.  It would have been easier to use a glass, but the
gaudy decorations on the triangular container made him feel less
cut off from his normal diet.
     He wiped his mouth and looked over at Abby where she sat at
a computer terminal with the screen displaying the alien message.
Before his conversation with Matt, he'd have been tempted to
share his theory with Abby that the aliens took Manhattan,
leaving behind a ransom demand, and that the Earth was refusing
to pay.
                                 #
     When Matt reached the blocked end of the Battery Tunnel, he
looked around for Rudy, but saw no sign of him.  Even more
workers than last time bustled about in controlled chaos.  A
faint rumbling shook the pavement, an indication that some of the
subways were running again on a vastly reduced schedule, mainly
carrying outpatients between hospitals and home.
     The smaller tunnel through the black wall and into the gray
goo looked different, more like a large mine shaft except for the
gradual curve upward.  Four-by-eight plastic beams lined the
walls, floor, and ceiling.  Three people wearing hardhats with
lights came out of the shaft.  Rudy was the third.  He talked to
a woman who jotted down notes as she listened, and then he looked
up and saw Matt.
     "I think we're getting the hang of it," Rudy said as he came
closer.  He took off his hardhat and scratched his scalp.  "It's
like tunneling through very slow-motion water.  The cutting is
easy, and as long as we're quick, the stuff doesn't rush back in.
We're heating the sides as we go.  Cooking the stuff makes it a
little like very tough rubber.  That alone might be enough to
maintain the tunnel shape once we get high enough--where the
pressure is lower."
     "Great.  I'm sure glad someone like you is in charge of it."
     Rudy shook his head.  "I sure didn't feel that way when I
came back down here and saw that gray stuff flowing out.  I
should have thought about that possibility.  If we had been
digging fast enough, we might have wound up trapping workers at
the end of the shaft."
     Matt put a hand on Rudy's shoulder.  "I'm confident you'll
do everything right.  I've always been more sure of you than you
were."
     "And vice versa, now that I think about it.  Want to take a
look inside?"
     "Sure."
     Matt followed Rudy to the mouth of the shaft.  A half-dozen
tubes and cables converged from various points and entered the
tunnel along the floor.  He didn't have to stoop inside the
tunnel, despite his height and the hardhat.
     They squeezed to one side as a worker on the way out hurried
past.
     Rudy pointed to the wall formed by adjacent vertical plastic
beams.  "Behind those beams is a fused layer of permaseal, and
past that is the goo itself, heated enough to seal it.  Some
material-properties folks are conducting more tests right now,
trying to see how the strength varies as a function of the
temperature and duration of the heat.  They're also trying to
judge whether it's likely to change back.  I think this section
is safe no matter what, but closer to the surface we can probably
get by with a lot less effort.  We've gone to around-the-clock
operation so the goo doesn't have time to make trouble."
     They walked up the moderate incline, and Rudy said, "We
would have cut it steeper, to get to the easier path earlier, but
this will make it safer to get stuff in and out of the tunnel."
     They edged past a worker maneuvering a wheelbarrow loaded
with chunks of the goo.  At intervals, small lights hung from a
cord fastened to the ceiling beams.  By the time they had passed
ten of the lights and climbed what Matt guessed to be ten meters,
they reached the working end of the tunnel.
     The final ten meters of tunnel were even wider than the
section they had gone through.  All the surfaces showed rough
hewn gray material.  At the very end of the tunnel, a worker
played a torch back and forth over the surface of the wall in a
regular pattern.  Just back from that point, a small team
wallpapered the floor, ceiling, and walls with shiny sheets of
material.  Between the wallpaperers and the finished tunnel,
another small team set plastic beams in place.  The last couple
of finished beams didn't look as even as the rest to Matt, and he
assumed they would be pressed into final alignment by the goo
itself as it pushed harder and harder from the outside.
     As Matt and Rudy watched the goings on, they had to make way
for an empty wheelbarrow and then a pair of workers with a large
drill.
     One of the workers said to Rudy, "We're ready for the test
hole."
     Rudy said, "Good.  Go ahead," then turned to Matt as the men
moved past and began to set up their equipment.  "They're going
to drill to the surface so we can get an air sample from out
there.  You can stay if you like, but this is new, so we could be
in for some surprises."
     Matt said, "I'll stay.  That's part of the reason I came."
     A couple of minutes later one of the drillers gave Rudy a
high sign.  Rudy took a small box from his shirt pocket and
pressed a switch on it.  The lights in the tunnel winked off and
then rapidly back on several times, then came back on steady.
Rudy raised his voice.  "We're about to drill a test hole to the
surface, so anyone who's not involved should take a rest break."
     As soon as a few workers had left the area, the drillers put
on nose masks, aimed the long drill bit vertically at the roof of
the tunnel, and turned on the drill.  The drill moved fairly
easily up toward the ceiling as gray grit fell slowly to the
tunnel floor.  When the drill got near the ceiling, they stopped
it, freed the bit, and attached an extension, which they then
tightened into the drill, and continued.
     By the time they had gone through a stack of extensions, the
drill finally began to turn faster.  "I think we're there!" one
of the workers shouted.
     Running the drill in the opposite direction, and removing
and stacking extensions for several minutes, left them with their
original pile.  As the bit itself finally came out of the hole
and they shut off the drill, Matt could hear the whistling of air
escaping just before a worker slapped a small silver square of
permaseal over the hole.  The sound stopped, and an indentation
formed in the permaseal.  Moving quickly, the other worker
retrieved the rounded end of a hose.  The permaseal cover came
off the hole, and the pair of men ran the hose up the hole until
a white ring around the hose met the ceiling, leaving about two
meters of hose, capped with a threaded stem.
     Matt could still hear a soft hiss of escaping air, but a
worker stuffed what looked like real modeling clay into the small
gap around the hose, and the sound died.
     "Okay," Rudy said as another worker brought in a pump
connected to a long extension cord.  "Now for the interesting
stuff."  As soon as the pump and hose were connected, he moved
closer and motioned for Matt to follow.
     Rudy switched on the pump, and a light next to a gas
canister lit.  Over the throbbing sound, he said, "Right now, the
hose is mostly full of our own atmosphere.  I'm pumping gas from
the hose into this canister, and I'll give it a safety margin."
     The pump throbbed for a couple of minutes before Rudy
flipped a switch.  The light near the first canister went out,
and a light next to a second, much smaller canister lit.  After a
few more seconds, he turned off the pump.  "Okay.  We've got a
sample of the atmosphere up there.  The only other thing we need
now is the pressure.  He flipped another couple of switches, and
a lamp illuminated an attached pressure gauge.  The black digits
rose quickly to 0.60 and then climbed more slowly, settling on
0.642 atmospheres.
     "Good," Matt said.  The first report he'd gotten had said
the pressure was probably in the sixty to seventy percent of
Earth normal range, and it was comforting to get agreement.  "And
how soon does the lab say they can analyze this?"
     Rudy detached the canister containing the outside gas
sample.  "A few hours.  Part of that is just transit time."
     Rudy gave directions to one of the workers who had brought
in the pump.  The woman disconnected the hose and sealed it, then
wheeled the pump back down the tunnel.
     "I don't know that there's much more to see right now," Rudy
said.
     Matt nodded and they started walking down the slope, out of
the tunnel.  They passed several workers returning to their jobs.
     Back in the open Matt said, "You're doing great.  Everyone
seems to know exactly what to do, and everyone's efficient.  But
that's no surprise."
     "Thanks.  By the way, I should have a real surprise for you
in a day or two."
                                 #
     Matt pulled the city car into the artificial sunshine and
left the Battery Tunnel behind.  He probably should have gone
directly back to the World Trade Center, but people there knew
their jobs, and they were doing all they could.  He needed a few
minutes alone.
     He stepped on the accelerator, and the electric motor whine
rose smoothly.  Minutes later the car climbed the ramp onto the
nearly deserted West Side Expressway.  Matt pulled over to the
right and stopped.  He wondered how loud the honking would have
been if he'd done that just a few days before.  All the streets
had at least one lane cleared for emergency vehicles.  In places
that meant abandoned cars had been forced onto the sidewalks.
     He looked back at the mass of buildings.  He was still
pleasantly surprised at how well the residents had adapted.  To
be sure, the number of shouters was up a little, but street
musicians and mimes and magicians and poetry readers were out in
force, doing their part in giving the public something to take
their minds off the situation.  And they were probably getting
far more attention than normal, which had to be rewarding.  The
political and religious cranks were out in force, and they all
seemed to like the current situation even less than Matt did.
     In the distance he could see some kids playing basketball.
They'd had to fashion an extension from a pipe, so the hoop and
backboard were two or three times their normal height.  The kids
bounced around the court as though it were a huge trampoline and
they were in slow motion.  The scene prompted a vague
recollection of some kid's movie from long ago about basketball
players able to jump three to five meters in the air.
     For many people, the reason to continue their day-to-day
routine was now gone.  Crime had risen slightly to take up some
of the slack, but the volunteer lists were overflowing for
virtually every city function that needed more help than normal.
A black market flourished, but since money meant nothing, the
trading was limited to exchanging  services or an
ever-diminishing supply of luxury goods and consumables that were
used up, worn out, ingested, or burned.
     Matt looked through the dome at the bubbles beyond, and he
thought of Nadine.
     Sure, they'd had their share of arguments, but who didn't?
He realized now that having her abruptly say she wanted out when
he had thought things were okay cut several ways.  It made him
question his judgment about everything.  If he was that close to
her and still couldn't see the inevitable, what did that make
him?  And why couldn't he drive her from his mind when he had a
much larger problem to face?
     Angry at himself, Matt looked back at Manhattan and tried to
force Nadine from his mind.  Several blocks away, a crowd had
gathered at an intersection.  He wondered vaguely what the
attraction was.
                                 #
     Stuart Lund raised both arms to the crowd.  He had found
that although people looked away if they saw him in an everyday
context, here the stump on his right arm was a virtual magnet for
attention.  With a deep, resonant voice, he said, "God is talking
to us.  Are you listening?
     "He talked to me in the moments while he was taking us away.
He took my hand, and he told me to repent."  Stuart liked that
line.  God had taken his hand, in two senses.  But he wasn't too
proud of it.  God wouldn't approve of that.
     "Surely everybody here knows about Noah's Ark.  Well, here
we are on Noah's Ark Two.  God will put us back on the Earth as
soon as He's scrubbed it clean once again."  Already Stuart saw
comprehension flicker across a new face or two, and he knew he
was gaining.  God had, obviously, been all-knowing when he
realized that Stuart could convey His message well.  The streets
held hardly any traffic now, so the crowd was free to spill into
the intersection.
     Quite a few of the people in the crowd watched Stuart
intently, a couple of them unconsciously rocking back and forth
as they stood.  No doubt the crowd was every bit as agitated
about recent events as Stuart was, and people just needed a
direction for their energy to be focused.
     Stuart didn't stop to count the faces, but as he maintained
frequent eye contact with everyone who had stopped to listen, he
was sure there were more than fifty people listening.  People
looked scruffier than New Yorkers normally had before, partly
because of the fact that it was harder to do laundry now, partly
because some of the people seemed to think this was some kind of
vacation, that they had been relieved of their daily
responsibilities.  Most of these people listened attentively,
possibly aware, as Stuart was, that this cataclysmic event had
given them new responsibilities.  Stuart drew a breath and
continued.
     "But not all of us are listening to God's word."  Stuart
gestured at one of the closest domes.  "We're here, among God's
other chosen people.  All of us will be restored to our own
sparkling clean worlds.  But not if we tamper.  Not if we're
disobedient.
     "God obviously wants us to stay here until He is ready for
us to go back.  God has obviously put His word over our heads.
But there are people who are trying to escape this enclosure,
trying to pretend they are on an equal footing with God.  And
they're trying to interpret God's word with no assistance from
the religious community that surely is ready to help.
     "Even as I talk to you, these people, with the mayor's
consent, are putting us at risk.  Their egotism, their sheer
arrogance, is going to make God decide He has made a
mistake--that none of us should be allowed to return to a
pristine Earth.  If they continue, they will kill us all!"
                                 #
     Abby walked beside Matt as he looked for Rudy.  They found
him finishing a conversation with a couple of workers.
     Rudy looked up, saw them, and smiled.  "We're just about at
the surface," he said.  "Come on and take a look."
     Matt glanced at her, and she nodded.  Matt said, "Lead on."
     Rudy guided them past the motor-driven winch and toward the
tunnel mouth.  "Since you were here last, we added the winch to
help bring out the stuff we've dug and to carry up more wall
lining material."
     "Wow," Abby said as they got into the tunnel.
     "Some view, huh?" Rudy said.  "This will take us a few
minutes.  You're looking at about a ten-story climb."  The tunnel
ran straight through the gray goo, climbing at a thirty-percent
grade.
     It reminded Abby of a long escalator tunnel, but this one
was longer than any she'd been in.  From here, the top of the
tunnel was just a point of light.
     The trio passed an empty wheeled cart as it rolled down the
tunnel floor, bouncing lightly from one plastic beam to the next.
Cables at both ends connected its handles to a line overhead.
     Rudy said, "Walking up and down this kind of a grade without
stairs will use some muscles you might not normally use.  Don't
be too surprised if you're a little sore tomorrow."
     "That seems funny," Abby said.  "With the light gravity it's
hard to imagine anyone straining a muscle."
     "Yeah, that's what I thought, too."
     They finally reached the top of the tunnel, where it widened
into a square room about three meters on a side.  A horizontal
brace at waist height spanned the room.  One end of the brace met
the plastic beams forming the wall.  The other side of the beam
braced a large square panel on the opposite wall.  Protruding
from the ceiling was a periscope.  The level floor and ceiling
were lined with plastic beams.  At the base of two of the walls,
steel beams rested on the floor.
     Rudy went to the periscope and swung the eyepiece toward
Matt and Abby.  "Want to take a look around?"
     Matt gestured to Abby to go ahead.
     Through the periscope Abby got her first view of the
Manhattan dome from the outside.  By turning the periscope, she
saw a ground-level view of the flat gray plain and a couple of
other domes in the distance.  She let Matt take his turn.
     Abby looked back down the tunnel while Matt was occupied.
It somehow looked even longer from this perspective.
     "What are the I-beams for?" Matt asked when he finished with
the periscope.
     Rudy glanced at one of the beams.  "To keep us from floating
to the top.  I didn't think about that right away, but when we
first got this section completed, the ceiling was about a meter
under the surface.  When we checked again, the distance had
shrunk to about ninety centimeters.  Then I finally got smart.
Especially with this top section having a bigger volume, we're
essentially a big bubble in molasses.  As long as what's in the
bubble weighs less than the same volume of goo, we slowly float
upward.  If we load this place down too much, we'll sink.  Get it
just right, and we'll float at a constant depth."
     An idle cable suddenly tightened, then started to move, and
a pulley mounted to the ceiling braces began to rotate as the
cable reeled, bringing something up from the bottom.
     "Time for my surprise," Rudy said.  "Help me move this
beam."
     As Rudy spun a handle several turns, the beam across the
room loosened.  Matt looked puzzled as he helped Rudy move the
beam to the edge of the room.  Rudy moved aside the plate
covering most of one wall and exposed a large circle of gray goo
almost as tall as the room itself.
     Abby looked down the tunnel.  Something large was blocking
most of the light, leaving only the occasional overhead lamps to
show where the tunnel was.
     As the shape coming up the tunnel grew larger, Rudy said,
"Okay.  Now you've got two choices.  We can cut through the roof
here according to plan, and start walking on the surface.  And
then we run the risk of sinking slowly into this stuff if we're
forced to stop for a while.  And we run the risk of being
detected.
     "Or we can get there beneath the surface with the borer."
     Matt looked as though he was about to start asking questions
when Rudy waved him silent.  Seconds later, an enormous
contraption with a round plate on the front end swung slowly from
the tunnel into the room.  Rudy clicked a button on a small box
in his pocket and the contraption came to a halt.
     Abby and Matt walked slowly around the machine, in spots
having to squeeze between it and the wall.  The thing, a modified
compact tank, was about the size of a car, but more boxy and
windowless.  At the front end were two huge disks, taller than
the rest of the contraption, even taller than Abby, and about a
half-meter thick, mounted adjacently like two large truck tires
on the same axle.  At the back Abby could see tank-like treads.
Shiny tubing ran from a large tank forward into a maze of pumps
and cables.  Near the lower rear was a huge box labeled "Fuel
Cell."
     Rudy cautioned them to back into the tunnel for just a
minute.  He reached up and unsnapped a clasp, and the device
settled onto the floor.  He pushed some more buttons on his
remote, and the tank-like thing went into action, moving toward
the circular surface of gray goo.  The huge round front of the
contraption lined up with the exposed round patch of goo, and a
long plunger slowly telescoped from the rear of the unit until it
started to push against the braced wall and then halted.  A
mechanical whine grew louder, and Abby realized the outside disk
on the front of the contraption was being pushed into the exposed
goo.
     Several seconds later, the front disk had pushed directly
into the goo, and less than a minute later the disk behind it was
covered, also.  Rudy pushed some more buttons, and the plunger
retracted into the body of the machine.  Abby and Matt came back
into the room.
     As a couple of Rudy's crew silently joined them in the room,
the contraption suddenly moved farther into the wall for half a
meter, stopped, then resumed, again tunneling through the goo.
She smiled at Matt's expression of wonder.
     "Rudy, you're a genius," Matt said softly.
     The borer was disappearing into the round tunnel it created.
Someone had stuck a bumper sticker on the rear end.  "I brake for
aliens."
     Rudy looked as pleased as a kid who'd just learned to ride a
bike.  "Thanks.  We don't know for sure yet, but it should be
able to do about a kilometer an hour.  The front disk contains a
piston.  The back disk expands when it stops, to anchor the unit,
and it heats the goo around the perimeter, making it tough
enough, we think, to maintain the tunnel shape.  While it's
anchored, the piston pushes forward to make the tunnel slightly
longer.  When that cycle is complete, the piston retracts, the
back disk compresses, and the treads take it forward for the next
step.  When we heat the goo, it oxidizes, turning darker and
getting more dense.  It also flows and expands very slightly, so
I think we've found the best way to move through it."
     "You're really a genius," Matt said again.
     "I didn't do this on my own.  I just helped design it.  With
the entire resources of Manhattan available, there isn't much we
can't do.  We think that with this size of tunnel, surrounded by
the much denser rubbery goo that we get when we heat the stuff,
that the tunnel will float just below the surface.  So, if you
want, you can tunnel to the next dome.  What we'll have to be a
little careful about is not letting it sit in any one place too
long, because it's so heavy."
     Rudy grabbed a hand-drill with a long bit, entered the round
tunnel, which was already a few meters deep, and waved them in.
It was darker since no lights had been installed, but Abby could
see circles around the perimeter every half-meter or so.  Rudy
drilled straight up through the roof of the tunnel.  Moments
later came a whoosh of escaping air.
     Rudy hurried back into the room and retrieved a gray pipe
with a knobby end.  He pushed the plain end into the hole, and
then aimed his hardhat light at the end sticking out.  "Since the
atmosphere out there is tolerable, we'll put a pressure seal in
this room, and all you need to do is every once in a while put in
one of these ventilation fans so you'll have breathable air no
matter how long the tunnel gets.  We've got two models: a blower
and a sucker.  This one's meant to suck air into the tunnel.  And
it's got a built-in light.  The pipe itself is a wrapped up sheet
battery.
     "The blower model is similar, but it has a tube that drops
to the floor, so those will handle carbon dioxide exhaust.  Even
though carbon dioxide's heavier than oxygen, the air mixes enough
that you won't actually have a carbon dioxide layer at the bottom
of the tunnel.  If we put these in a little closer together than
necessary to get just enough oxygen, it should all work out
fine."
     The borer had continued to move while Rudy explained.  Abby
was sure it was moving at the equivalent of a very slow walk.
     Matt's grin was infectious.  "Rudy, you're a nuking genius."
He looked into the darkness of the tunnel the borer had left in
its wake.  "I guess we're about ready for the strangest journey
we've ever had."
     Abby looked at the disappearing borer and felt a tiny chill.
"Or maybe the second strangest."
                                 #
     Ten days after the capture, Dorine Underwood gave the team a
brief send-off.  "I want you to remember that we'll have a large,
heavily armed team ready to follow you if you run into trouble."
     "We appreciate that," said Matt.  "I know you'd like to send
a larger team to begin with.  In some ways I agree, but I have to
admit, I'm a little glad the oxygen limitation forces us to go
with a small number.  That puts fewer people at risk, and it
should lower the chances of our being detected."  Despite some
strong opinions among Dorine's advisors, he had successfully
argued for his choices on the team, justifying Rudy on the basis
of having been the key designer of the borer, plus his general
engineering and military skills.  Contacting the residents of
other domes without someone like Abby would have been pointless.
Bobby Joe would be there for help with electronics and science,
since some of the communication attempts might well need to tap a
common understanding of how the universe worked.
     Julie and several other journalists stood at the rear of the
conference room, capturing events on video for the rest of the
population.
     Dorine looked at the map on her wall.  It showed the
intended route through the domes.  With her concurrence, the path
headed toward the dome that was transmitting, veering near some
of the domes between Manhattan and the destination dome, mainly
domes the telescopic survey had told them contained civilizations
that looked the most similar to human life.
                                 #
     Matt used his walkie-talkie to tell the people back in
Manhattan all was well.  In the darkness ahead, the borer
continued its jerky assault on the goo.  Behind him was Abby, lit
by the headlights of a small electric cart driven by Bobby Joe
Brewster.  And behind Bobby Joe was the longest pipe Matt had
ever seen.  Far in the distance, Rudy's hardhat lamp bobbed as he
walked toward them, catching up fairly easily.  The limited space
overhead denied him the low-gravity lope, but he was doing fine
with the lean-way-forward- and-keep-from-falling gait.  Everyone
wore a knife, to be used to cut themselves out if the tunnel
walls collapsed.  Their shirts and pants sported numerous small
pockets, each with a snapping flap.
     Abby's soft voice rose above the mechanical noises from the
borer and the electric cart.  "Too bad Rudy didn't design a borer
that cut square tunnels.  I keep turning my ankle."  The tunnel
walls absorbed the sound, unlike an actual pipe that would have
generated metallic echoes.
     "You could drive," Matt said.
     "And deprive Bobby Joe?"
     Matt could feel her smile in the dim light.  Driving for
hours at parade velocity would be grating for him, too.  But
Bobby Joe had been an urbanite for so long that driving was a
change of pace.
     Rudy caught up and sat on the rear deck of the small trailer
towed by the cart.  He put the drill back in a tray on top.
"Okay.  The last air pump seems to be working fine.  And the
readings say we still have plenty of oxygen."
     The smell of the air in the tunnel made Matt think of a
clear, warm day high enough in the mountains that the pollutants
were rarer than they were in the city.  They had all adjusted
easily to the reduced pressure, since the oxygen content of the
gas outside was slightly higher than on Earth.  Fortunately it
wasn't enough higher to make fire a severe risk.  The air
temperature was a few degrees higher than the new Manhattan norm,
but with short sleeves and limited exertion that wasn't a problem
either.
     "Great," Matt said.  "Bobby Joe, how much farther?"  One of
the things Matt had learned so far was that Bobby Joe didn't like
being called BJ.
     Bobby Joe consulted a small display resting on a ledge near
the steering wheel and added, "Just about a kilometer."
     That meant they'd covered almost nine kilometers, or roughly
twice the east-west width of Manhattan.  Matt's legs felt tired
despite the low gravity.  He probably wouldn't have been that
tired if they had walked briskly the whole way, but somehow the
shopping-mall pace fatigued him more.
     They could have let the borer continue ahead unattended and
then catch up from time to time, but Matt didn't have enough
confidence in it yet.  If the heating element failed to operate
for some reason, the borer might just start to sink into the
depths of the goo, a submarine with no ballast tanks.
     From time to time, Matt pushed hard on the tunnel walls to
convince himself they were indeed the stiffer form of the gray
goo, and that they wouldn't soon start closing in.  The warmth
left behind by the borer was comforting.  The human body was
heavier than the goo, so without that barrier they would
eventually sink to the neutral buoyancy depth, however far down
that was, but not before they were left trying to breathe gray
goo.
     Half a kilometer later, they stopped long enough to unfold
the porta-potty for those in need and to drill another air pump
hole.  By the time they caught up with the borer, they were
almost at the dome.
     "How about if you let me take the lead?" Rudy asked.
     That was fine with Matt.  He and Abby followed as Bobby Joe
called out distances and Rudy controlled the borer's path, trying
to guide it into a curve that just touched the dome.
     "I've probably got up to thirty meters of slop in these
readings," Bobby Joe said.
     Rudy said, "That's all right.  If we have too hard a time,
we can drill another air tube and take a closer look."
     "Fifty meters...forty meters."
     The tunnel began to curve noticeably over the next couple of
minutes, bearing right, so they could graze the side of the dome.
     Matt looked back and decided the tunnel had curved about
thirty degrees and risen slightly.  A moment later, the nearest
light behind them winked out as they continued the curve.  The
cart's headlights illuminated Rudy and the borer.
     "Thirty meters...twenty meters."
     They curved still more.
     "Ten meters.  We're turned eighty degrees."
     Rudy kept the tunnel straight from that point.  Seconds
later the noise from the borer shifted.  It seemed to be slowing
down for ten or twenty seconds, and then resumed its normal
noise.
     "I think we're there," Rudy called back.
     As Matt and Abby came forward, the tunnel began to curve
slightly to the left, following the edge of the dome.  Rudy
stopped the borer and backed it up a couple of meters.  Bobby Joe
stopped the cart, and Matt and Abby crawled past the trailer and
the cart to get up to where Rudy stood.
     A couple of swaths of black showed at about shoulder height
on the wall nearest the dome.  Matt looked closely, and his
hardhat lamp illuminated the familiar black barrier texture.
     "Time to surface, Captain?" Bobby Joe asked.
     "Actually it's 'Colonel,'" Rudy corrected.
     "That's right?  You're really a colonel?"
     Matt said, "Yes, but I'm a little out of my jurisdiction.
'Matt' will do just fine.  And, yes, I'd say it's time to
surface."
     "All right!  I'll get the stuff."
     Matt and Abby exchanged grins.
     Moments later Bobby Joe was back with a kit of tools.  Rudy
put on a pair of goggles, and then grabbed the drill.  At the top
of the tunnel, he drilled a vertical hole.  Moments later, light
filtered through the small hole.  Rudy inserted a periscope and
took a brief look.  "Want to see?"
     Abby and Bobby Joe took the next looks.  When they were
finished Matt put his eye to the periscope.  Directly in front of
him, less than a meter away was the edge of the bubble.  "Great
work, Rudy."
     Rudy picked up a circular saw and plugged it into the
extension cord from the power supply on the cart.  The other
three backed up as Rudy applied the saw to the tunnel ceiling.
In less than a minute, he had a rectangular piece of goo cut
loose, and diffuse light made the tunnel brighter.  They could
see the dome rising and curving out of sight from where they
stood.  Rudy applied a torch to the edge of the goo to keep it
from spilling into the tunnel, and Matt had Bobby Joe get the
cart so they could stand on it.
     Matt pulled a gray tarp from a bag of supplies.  When the
cart was in place, he climbed up on it, holding the tarp over his
head as he rose.  A moment later, his head and chest were above
the plain.  He reached up and taped two corners of the tarp to
the outside of the bubble, then pulled the other two corners away
from his body.  In the distance was the Manhattan dome looking
quiet and calm.  He heard nothing except his own breath.  The
sheer distance of flat nothingness felt eerie.
     Rudy handed him a couple of rods.  Matt took one, slipped it
into a sewn pocket in one corner of the tarp, and stuck the rod
into the gray goo.  He did the same thing with the other rod and
the fourth corner of the tarp, and they had a small square roof
that should stay up for an hour or so before the rods sank into
the goo.
     Matt looked back inside the dome and experienced a renewed
awe at seeing a structure not built by humans.  The huge square
building inside looked enormous now, where before in the monitor
it had simply looked big.  The building was bathed in deep blue
light like moonlight.  The video camera had corrected for light
levels, but to Matt's unassisted eyes the scene was dim.
     The large round windows held no hint of what might be
inside.  On the ground, an irregular series of planters contained
vegetation that looked both alien and dying.  Perhaps the plants
were in fact perfectly healthy, but the tightly curled black
leaves and the gnarled and wiry black branches looked pathetic.
As before Matt could see no sign of life aside from the pitiable
vegetation.
     Matt stepped down, and the others each took a turn.  When
Rudy finished, Matt said, "Okay, Bobby Joe, how about if you get
up there and try out your communication toys."
     "Sure thing!"  Bobby Joe took a couple of boxes from the
rear of the cart and climbed into the opening.  He spent almost
fifteen minutes making discouraging noises, and then finally came
down.
     He set the boxes back on the cart.  "Nothing.  I beamed in
both light and RF, in a range of frequencies.  I listened for
everything I could.  Either they don't hear us, or they're
ignoring us."
     Matt took a large wrench from the cart, and climbed up.  He
took a long look for any sign of activity before he finally
tapped the wrench against the bubble.  It made a bong like
bouncing it against a battle-cruiser hull.  He swung the wrench
harder.  Ten times he swung it, slightly harder each time.  The
last bong might have been heard back in Manhattan.
     For several more minutes, he stared at the silent building,
still seeing no signs of activity.  He climbed back down into the
tunnel.
     "Very strange.  Enough of these domes are so obviously
populated, I'm having a hard time thinking our captors took an
empty building, so I don't know what to think.  Either these
folks heard us and they're ignoring us, or maybe they're
different enough that they don't even have ears.  Or they don't
hear in the same range we do.  Or they've got some cultural thing
about going outside."
     "Or talking to strangers," Abby said.
     "Does this all mean what I think it means?" Rudy asked.
     "Probably," Matt said.  "I think we need to know what's
going on, and I don't see any alternative but to go inside and
take a look around."

                            Chapter 6
                          Anybody Home?

     Abby swallowed hard as she gripped one corner of the square
slab of solid-feeling dark-gray material Rudy had cut from the
tunnel roof.  Matt, Rudy, and Bobby Joe each took the other
corners.  The four of them pushed the slab back into place, as
though fitting a very thick and stubborn ceiling tile into the
lid of the world's longest coffin.
     As the tunnel darkened again, Abby felt the claustrophobia
tighten its grip on her lungs.  As a kid, a friend of hers,
Christie something, had closed a trunk lid while Abby was lying
inside.  The inability to stretch her arms and straighten her
legs was even more frightening than the smothering darkness.
Instantly she was afraid the trunk was soundproof and her friend
wouldn't hear her cries for help.  Abby screamed and nothing
happened.  She screamed again, pounding on the inside of the
trunk lid.  The lid was immovable.  Panic electrified her and she
suddenly imagined staying stuck in that position until she
starved, or until she went crazy, which might happen first.
     At the moment when she'd given up hope, her vocal cords
rough from screaming, a line of white had appeared, and the trunk
lid swung upward.  Abby choked.  She stuck her legs out the side
of the trunk so the lid couldn't close again, caring not one
little bit how her legs might get hurt if her friend tried to
close the lid again.  But there was her friend, helping her out,
as startled by Abby's reaction as Abby herself had been.
     "Good, good.  That's got it," Rudy said finally, when the
tough bottom of the slab came fairly close to matching the
surrounding edges of the tunnel ceiling.  He got a torch from one
of the tool bins on the cart and applied the flame to the seam
around the slab.  The gray goo flowed together in the seam, like
ice cream melting between counter-top tiles, and in places Abby
could no longer see where the edges met.  Rudy pushed a
ventilation fan through a hole in the center of the restored area
and sealed the goo around it.
     "Kinda messy," Bobby Joe said of the uneven seam.
     From what Abby had seen of the constant mess that seemed to
follow Bobby Joe around, he was a fine one to talk.  The only
thing about him that always seemed clean was his bald scalp.
Abby told herself Bobby Joe was probably the only one on the team
not totally repulsed by the zipper-lock plastic bags they carried
for emergency elimination.
     Rudy put down the torch and turned to Matt.  "When we cut
through the wall and tunnel to the surface inside that dome,
we're going to have to put the dirt somewhere.  If we want to be
able to bring the borer back through this tunnel at some point,
we're going to want a small side tunnel to dump the dirt in.  I
guess it's about time we arranged that."
     "How much time will that take?" Matt asked.  "It's been a
long day."
     Abby glanced at her watch and realized Matt was right.  It
was already after 11 P.M., and they'd started early.  Suddenly
she felt tired.
     "Shouldn't take more than fifteen minutes," Rudy said.
     "Okay," Matt said.  "What's involved?"
     "We back up the borer maybe ten meters from where we stopped
it, then turn it as much as we can while we tell it to go forward
again."
     "Let's do it."
     Bobby Joe backed up the cart and the trailer while Rudy
operated his hand control.  The treads on the borer made a
slightly higher-pitched noise when they moved in reverse, and
Abby saw the back of the borer slowly come out of the darkness at
the end of the tunnel.  It got within a few meters of them before
Rudy halted it.
     Rudy pushed another button and the plunger, a head-sized
circular plate on the end of a pipe, extended toward them.  "This
shaft normally forces the borer away from a wall and into the
opposite wall, but we can use it another way."
     Following Rudy's instructions, Matt, Abby, and Bobby Joe
joined Rudy and they took positions along the plunger.  When Rudy
gave the signal and started the borer moving forward again, they
all pushed as hard as they could against the side of the plunger,
to curve the borer's path more sharply than it could handle on
its own.  Bobby Joe rested his back against the tunnel wall and
pushed with his feet.  Abby's shoulder bumped against Matt's and
tingled even after the contact was lost.
     The plunger moved a few centimeters deeper into the tunnel
as the borer made labored noises.  Abby was afraid the pressure
they exerted wasn't enough, but a moment later she had to shift
position because the plunger began to move slowly toward the
opposite wall as it continued to pull farther into the tunnel.
     "Looking good!" Rudy said.
     Bobby Joe fell to the floor as the plunger moved too far
away, and Matt, Rudy, and Abby strained harder to maintain the
curve.  Soon the plunger was against the tunnel wall, and for the
next couple of minutes the four of them managed to keep the end
of the plunger against the wall as the borer pulled forward.
     In another minute Rudy said they could let go.  They slowly
followed the borer into a tunnel that grew darker and darker
without the light from the cart adding to the small lights on
their helmets.
     Sure enough, the tunnel split into a "Y."  For a moment Abby
felt as if they had been miniaturized and put inside an artery
junction in a human heart.  Rudy stopped and ran his hand over
the narrowest section of the junction, halfway between the top
and bottom.  "I'd better get the torch.  This section might be
too weak to hold.  And the tunnel face in the dead end hasn't
been heated, so I'll have to torch that manually.  We can
probably leave the borer parked about eight hours without
worrying too much about it sinking."
     "Sounds good," Matt said.  "When you're done with that, we'd
better get some rest."
     While Rudy was busy with the torch, Matt, Bobby Joe, and
Abby retrieved sleeping bags from the cart.  The sleeping bags
and the flickering torchlight brought back a sudden memory of the
one camping trip Abby had been on, a disastrous weekend when she
was seven.  Her parents had gone through a long series of
vacation experiments, looking for something they would both
enjoy, almost always finding out that one but not the other liked
the most recent try.
     When they'd tried sailing, Abby's father loved it, but
Abby's mother got seasick and lacked the coordination to maneuver
quickly as the boat came about.  She had been dunked twice in the
frigid water off the coast of Maine before they gave up on
sailing.  When they tried horseback riding, her father had been
doing all right until his mount rode under a stout branch.  Her
father complained about back pains for months after the fall.
     At first the camping trip had seemed like a success.  Aside
from being out of breath for about three solid hours as they
hiked, all three of them enjoyed the clean air, glimpses of
squirrels and birds, and the absence of the deep rumbling sounds
of the city.  It was only when they were setting up camp that
things began to go wrong.  When they'd loaded their packs with
several tins of food, her dad had seen several pop-tops, so he
didn't think to bring a can opener for the rest.
     Trying to open cans by using rocks and keys and other
instruments at hand managed to get tempers so high that no one
paid much attention to the building clouds.  Abby had been amazed
at how quickly the weather could change from still, clear air to
a drenching downpour.  Trying to sleep and stay warm in a wet
sleeping bag was a never-to-be-forgotten experience.  By four the
next morning they were all more than ready to get up and start
back for the car.  And then getting lost on the way back was a
vocabulary-building experience that got her father angry enough
that Abby worried that he'd have a heart attack.
     Abby laid her sleeping bag and air mattress on the curved
tunnel floor and pushed the switch on the pump.  She sat on the
floor next to it and watched as the mattress popped into shape.
     Abby hoped this camping trip was going to be better than the
last one.
     Moments later she lay down on the air mattress and tried to
go to sleep.  Sleep normally came easiest if she was tired but
not too tired, and right now she was too tired.  Or too worried.
She saw her parents' faces in the blackness, and she wished she
could be with them again, even if they were in the same mood they
were in on the camping trip.
     She wondered if she'd ever see them again, and she wished
that she had some way of telling them she was safe.  For now.
                                 #
     The arched entrance to Temple Emanu-El at Fifth Avenue and
65th Street had set a new record for the number of people passing
through in a twenty-four-hour period.
     As with most places of worship, the crowd included a fair
number of non-believers who were here for their first time, or
their first time in years.  The crowd also included a number of
Jews who believed Elijah would announce the Coming of the Messiah
on a Passover.  With the recent upheaval coming so close to
Passover, many of those same people wondered if now was the time
they had been waiting for.
                                 #
     Matt woke before his watch alarm went off.  On the cart ten
meters down the tunnel, the small utility light they had left on
provided a faint glow that was just enough to highlight shapes of
other sleepers on the tunnel floor.  Matt touched the light
button on his watch, and the numbers said it was ten minutes
before they were due to get up.  Matt sat up and crossed his
legs, trying to be quiet, but impatient to be on the move.
     The nearest sleeping bag rustled.  Abby's soft voice said,
"How are you doing?"
     "Okay," he whispered.  "You?"
     "I'm nervous about going in there."
     "Me, too.  The three of us can go in first and get you on
the second trip."
     "No."  Abby's whisper was intense.  "I should be there, for
all the reasons we've talked about.  I just had to be honest."
     She was right.  When they encountered aliens, they still ran
the risk of accidentally saying something like, "Your food looks
like rancid axle-grease," when trying to say, "It's not safe for
us to eat your food."  They had to tread carefully when for all
they knew a casual touch on the cheek might be tantamount to
suggesting sexual relations.  "You're sure you're going to be
okay?"
     "Positive.  But thanks for being sympathetic.  I wasn't sure
if much of that went on in combat."
     "Well, we're not in combat."
     "Yet."
     Suddenly Bobby Joe's voice carried through the tunnel.
"Time for work."
     Matt shook his head.  He looked at his watch again and said,
"Okay, Bobby Joe."
     After breakfast, the first order of business was an air
barrier across the tunnel leading back the way they had come, to
prevent contaminants in the atmosphere here from interfering with
anyone trying to reach them with medical help.  If the earlier
remote readings were right, the pressure in the dome they were
about to cut into was slightly higher than that between the
domes.  Unchecked, the atmosphere from this dome would flow into
the tunnel and out to the open space between the domes.  And
despite the fact that the oxygen content should be similar,
letting the different mixture shunt into the open space could
very possibly show up on their captors' sensors.
     The barrier consisted of a frame built from four
quarter-circle arcs, which, when fastened together, formed a
circle just enough larger than the tunnel that it was a tight fit
against the gray goo.  Two layers of thin plastic were ample to
keep the air flow negligible.
     As Matt and Abby got the air barrier in place, Rudy drilled
an air hole to the outside and placed one of the blower pumps in
it so there'd be a dependable source of oxygen blowing in from
the outside, no matter what the dome contained.  After a few
minutes the pump had built up enough positive pressure that
Matt's ears popped, and the pump began to slow down.
     Matt helped Rudy ready the dipole oscillator as Bobby Joe
cleared off the tray on top of the cart, positioned it by the
proposed opening to the dome, and scraped the goo off a square
portion of the flat black barrier, a meter on each side., making
a black window in the tunnel wall.  The black surface leaned
toward them, perhaps forty degrees from vertical.  While Bobby
Joe drove ahead and dumped the scrapings in the side tunnel, Rudy
rolled the dipole oscillator into place.
     With the device, Rudy drew a one-meter square on the black
surface.  The air in the tunnel grew noticeably warmer as the
device traveled along the black surface, leaving a gray line
behind.
     When the gray line of weakened barrier material was
complete, Rudy got out the tool he called "the cutter" and
positioned it at one of the top corners of the gray outline.  He
switched it on, and it began to turn, strong tiny hooks snagging
individual fibers, pulling them slowly around a spool, and
stretching them until one by one they finally broke.  The process
was like cutting a very strong section of screen door whose wires
ran only vertically, and sounded like fingernails run over the
teeth of a comb.
     Cutting the fibers along the one-meter line took almost a
half-hour, so they all took turns holding the cutter.  Near the
end of the cutting, Rudy stood as far back as he could while
cutting the final fibers.
     With a crowbar Matt popped the top of the black square loose
from the rest of the black barrier.
     The black square tipped forward into the tunnel, revealing a
square meter of hard-packed dirt.  Rudy folded the black square
down as far as it would go.  Bobby Joe scooped out enough more
goo from near the bottom of the opening so the black square would
fold down toward the tunnel floor instead of sticking out into
the tunnel.  Matt applied a torch to the newly exposed goo.
     Rudy got out the drill.  "Okay.  I guess it's time to check
the air in there."
     Matt unhooked the air pump at the top of the tunnel and
inserted the periscope.  "Still no sign of activity up there," he
said moments later.
     Rudy switched on the drill and slanted the long bit toward
the surface.   The bit tore through the dirt with little
resistance, and dirt spilled into the tray on top of the cart.
In less than a minute Rudy was pulling the bit back out.  As the
bit came out, a flurry of dust spurted into the tunnel, and Matt
could hear the rush of air flowing through the hole.  The barrier
plastic billowed away from them and held, and a second later the
air flow stopped.  Rudy stuck a hose into the hole.  Matt's ears
popped again.
     On the near end of the hose was the gas analyzer.  In less
than a minute, Rudy gave the other three a thumb's up.  "We're in
business.  Nitrogen's a little higher than we thought, and
argon's just a little higher, but we'll be fine.  Best of all,
it's about twenty-three degrees C."
     Matt and Rudy took turns with the drill, making a series of
slanting holes in a square pattern just inside the opening in the
black barrier.  Dirt spilled into the tray atop the cart, and
dust swirled in the air.
     When the outline was cut, Rudy and Matt attacked the dirt
with shovels and within minutes had excavated almost a cubic
meter of dirt.  Bobby Joe drove forward and they dumped the dirt
into the dead-end tunnel.
     To Matt the dirt itself looked just like dirt on Earth.
What was different was the network of black roots.  One long root
looked like a rope with knots every several centimeters, but was
surprisingly easy to cut with the shovel.
     By the time they could see a head-sized column of dim blue
light filtering through the hole to the surface, they were all
coughing steadily as the dust hung in the air.
     Another twenty minutes was enough to dig a meter-square
opening from the tunnel to the surface inside the dome, and by
that time the dust was more manageable.  A few more shovelfuls of
dirt were enough to make a small ledge at waist level.
     The tunnel section containing the borer had drifted a little
lower in the goo, so Rudy moved it several meters from its old
position.  As he finished attaching adhesive mounts to the black
barrier and to the door they had cut open, Bobby Joe came back
from dumping the last load of dirt into the side tunnel, and Matt
looked at the faces of the trio.  Rudy seemed wary but ready.
Abby appeared nervous and determined.  Bobby Joe could have been
ready to take his winning lottery ticket to claim his check.
     Now that they were about to enter another dome, everyone
wore a holstered pistol in addition to the scabbarded knife.  In
addition, from Abby's belt hung her computer, pre-loaded with
communication aids she'd developed during the last week and with
several language translation programs.  It held only two
gigabytes of main memory and a 400-gigabyte solid-wafer outboard
memory, and she had complained several times about running out of
storage.  On her other hip hung her minivid recorder, and on her
headband were affixed the minivid optics.
     "Is everyone ready?" Matt asked.
     They all said they were.
     "All right.  We've talked about this before, but I want to
say it one last time: when we step past this barrier we are a
military unit.  What I say goes, and it goes instantly without
argument.  Is that clear?" Matt looked only at Abby and Bobby
Joe.  He knew Rudy didn't need this.
     Abby nodded.  Bobby Joe said, "Yes, sir.  Absolutely, sir."
     Matt looked suspiciously at Bobby Joe and decided he was
hearing simple, genuine eagerness, nothing more.
     "And if anything happens to me, Rudy is your leader."
     He got more agreement.  He had repeated this in hopes that
the brief military orientation he'd given them would be enough to
let the group function smoothly.  If trained military people with
the same skills had been available, he would have felt it
necessary to use them instead, but adding more military personnel
to the team would put that much more strain on the oxygen
available through the ventilation pipes, and the larger the party
entering the dome, the greater the possibility of them being
viewed as a threat.
     Matt used his walkie-talkie to tell guards at the Manhattan
airlock they were about to enter the dome, then quickly
double-checked the items on his belt.  He removed his hardhat.
     "All right.  We're ready" he said.  In the light gravity, he
hopped onto the ledge, then slowly stood upright in the dim blue
light.  His shoulders came level with the ground, and he looked
up at the nearby building.  He could hear nothing but the faint
rush of moving air, probably coming from the ventilation hoses
attached to the dome.  The air was comfortably cool but smelled
unpleasant, vaguely sulfurous.
     The building was several times wider than the biggest
shopping mall Matt had ever seen.  From this perspective, it
could be as tall as the World Trade Center, but the height was
harder to judge.  The huge circular windows showed nothing but
reflections.  "Hello!" Matt yelled.
     No sudden scurrying, no startled rustling.  The building
seemed as dead and silent as before.  High overhead a dim blue
light outside the dome shed moonlight.  Matt looked around.  In
the direction the Manhattan dome should have been sat a closer
dome obstructing the view.
     Matt waited another ten seconds, then said softly, "All
quiet."  He jumped straight up.  As his feet cleared the surface
of the ground, he spread his legs.  He landed gently on the
surface, straddling the hole, then moved forward.
     Rudy's head appeared in the hole, and Matt gave him a
come-ahead signal.
     Abby was next.  She landed on the ground and looked around.
     Bobby Joe was last.  He didn't spread his feet quite wide
enough.  He almost fell back in the hole before Matt and Rudy
each grabbed one arm and pulled him up.
     Rudy grabbed the end of a cord and pulled on it.  The black
trap door they had cut through the barrier started to swing
closed.  As the gap narrowed, Rudy's feet slipped on the uneven
ground, but he got trap door completely closed.
     Rudy fixed an adhesive cable holder to the end of the cord
and stuck it against the interior wall of the dome.  Matt armed
the tension alarm, and they were ready.  Anyone trying to leave
the dome without entering the right combination should sound an
alarm heard back at the Manhattan airlock.
     "All right, people," Matt said.  "Let's go."
     Matt took the lead.  Abby fell in behind him, with Bobby Joe
behind her, and Rudy trailing.
     The foursome walked toward the building.  In the dim light,
they cast dark-blue shadows that made Matt think of old cheap
films that shot "night" scenes in daylight with a filter.  Not
far from them, a ramp lead up to a water-filled bird-feeder.
     They had walked less than five meters when the dirt ended
and they stepped onto a smooth surface, a textured plaza
surrounding the building.  As Matt glanced to his left at a
planter filled with the scrawny black growth he'd seen from a
distance, a bright light switched on.
     "Whoa!" said Bobby Joe.
     Matt spun nervously, his heart beating faster.  He looked
for the source of the light, wondering if they'd triggered it or
if someone within had spotted them and finally reacted.  He
relaxed when he realized that neither explanation was right.
     The light came from the blue "sun," which had just switched
from "night" to "day."
     As soon as everyone understood what had happened, jittery
expressions turned a little less nervous.  Matt moved forward.
     Now that Matt's eyes had adjusted to the brighter light, the
pattern on the plaza floor no longer looked like random paint
splatters.  A variety of circle sizes covered the surface, but
inside each little circle were markings that looked more like an
unfamiliar language than haphazard marks.  The surface no longer
looked clean, either.  Two long irregular cracks ran through the
plaza floor from the edge all the way to the building.
     Abby got out her minivid and captured several images.  She
startled Matt by jumping straight up in the air, more than five
meters, but then Matt realized she was recording a large view of
the patterns so she could try later to decipher them.  She
floated gently back to the ground and flicked off the minivid.
     The black vegetation in the planters smelled vaguely like
mint and rotten eggs.  Matt kept his distance as he thought about
Venus flytraps and other strange vegetation on Earth.
     Up close, the building seemed to be finished with a
seamless, textured material resembling blue Astroturf except that
the individual blades formed regular geometric patterns of boxes
within boxes.  It took Matt a moment to realize that all the
little blades were positioned with their flat surfaces
perpendicular to the rays from the "sun."
     They approached the nearest huge entrance, a half-circle
wider than a Manhattan block.  At ground level was an alternating
series of blue and gray vertical stripes, each a meter wide and
three meters tall.
     As they came nearer to the wide array of stripes, the
closest gray stripe slid upward, a door opening.  Matt could see
nothing inside.
     Matt walked through the doorway, followed by Abby, Bobby
Joe, and Rudy.  As Rudy stepped through the door, it slowly
lowered into its original position.  Matt was suddenly afraid of
being trapped.  He moved toward the door, and it opened again.
     Inside it was just as quiet as it had been outside.
Interior blue-tinged lamps set in rows high on the walls were so
numerous that no one had a shadow anymore.  Inside the huge
building was another building.  The "lobby" was a very tall
thirty-meter gap between the exterior shell and the interior
building, which seemed to be as tall as the outside shell.
Ahead, an open corridor lined with blue lights led straight into
the interior building and dwindled to a point.  Along the wall of
the interior building, a stairway with half-meter-wide steps and
no guard rails zig-zagged all the way up to the ceiling.
     Halfway to the ceiling, one of the huge circular windows
admitted blue light.
     "Maybe there's no one here," Rudy said.
     Bobby Joe said, "Maybe these folks have pretty strong
feelings about drop-in company."
     The team followed Matt into the interior, and they moved
into a corridor with a ten-meter-high ceiling.
     They walked twice the length of a football field before they
found any break in the walls.  A perpendicular corridor stretched
into the distance in both directions.  At the far ends of each
hallway were squares of light no bigger than a fingernail viewed
at arm's length.
     "You see that flickering?" Rudy asked.
     "Yes?" Matt said softly.
     They all looked at the light spilling from a door cut into
the cross corridor.  They moved to the door.  Inside, a big
barber pole rotated slowly.  From the pole extended horizontal
one-meter rods, which dropped smoothly as they moved around the
pole.  At the floor, they disappeared into a slot, one every
three or four seconds.  A half-moon opening on the ceiling showed
the level above, and the turning rods came through the opening
above just as fast as they disappeared into the slot below.
     "I don't think we have a word for it," Matt said finally.
"My guess is the closest is 'escalator' or 'elevator.' Maybe
'escalifter.'"
     Rudy said, "I'd go along with that.  If that's right, this
must be the down side.  Maybe there's an up somewhere near."
     They found the up on the opposite side of the main corridor.
It looked just the same except that the rods rose as they turned
around the central pole.
     Abby said, "Maybe everyone is upstairs for some reason."
     "Certainly possible," Matt said.  "I think we'd better give
it a try.  Let's go.  Be ready to get off at any time, but I
don't plan on stopping until we see some indication of life."
     Abby said, "I'm going to let my minivid run."  She quickly
snapped on a collar and attached the tiny black minivid optics to
the front of it, pointing it straight ahead, its tiny lens
looking like a jewel set in a square of onyx.
     Matt said, "All right."  He moved to a position where rods
periodically passed overhead on their way up.  He let the first
rod go by, then grabbed at the next one to come along.
     His body lurched into the air, putting pressure on his grip,
but a second later the pressure relaxed and he felt nothing but
the gentle centrifugal force as the central pole lifted him and
the rod higher and higher.  Cool air rushed at his face.  He
moved closer to the central pole and the force diminished.
     The rod carried him through the open semicircle in the roof,
and in the next half turn put him in a position where his feet
would conveniently hit the floor if he were to let go.  The
180-degree turn had showed him nothing but another empty
corridor, though, so he held on.
     He looked up and realized the semicircle cut into the next
ceiling was oriented 180 degrees from the one he'd just come
through, meaning that for someone who lost a grip, the longest
possible fall would be only one floor, completely safe, given the
light gravity.
     The ride continued.  He swung up into another deserted
corridor.  As the pole carried him upward and through the next
semicircular opening, he saw below him that Abby was just being
carried into the level he was departing.
     Matt corkscrewed up through another empty corridor, and
another.  The corridors all looked virtually identical.  He
passed floor after floor, growing more and more puzzled at the
lack of activity.
     When finally his feet cleared the level of the roof, he
said, "All off on this level," and released his grip.  The
corkscrew escalifter motion pushed him up in a gentle arc.  He
stumbled when his feet hit the floor.
     Matt moved out of the way as Abby let go and windmilled
until she had her balance.  Bobby Joe fell when he got off, but
Rudy managed to avoid stepping on his head.
     They stood under a small pavilion roof, with doorways on
four sides.  Matt helped Bobby Joe to his feet, and they all
watched the top of the escalifter for a moment.  As the rods
neared the top of the rotating pole, they pivoted downward until
they were vertical, at which time they seemed to melt into the
rotating column.  Matt turned away, and the four of them walked
out onto the flat surface of the roof.
     They could see another dome fairly close, probably the down
version.  In the distance they could see seven other pairs of
escalifter domes, and by moving several meters, Matt could see an
eighth set, so from above the nine pairs of domes would be
centered in each of the squares of a tic-tac-toe grid.
     In the distance was the top of the Manhattan dome, showing
only the top half of the World Trade Center towers and the tops
of some of the other tall buildings.  The Manhattan dome itself
seemed to clear the highest points with a margin of no more than
ten percent of their height.
     "Where is everybody?" Bobby Joe asked finally.
     "It's spooky," Abby said.
     Matt shook his head.  "As long as we've got a clear shot at
home, let me give them an update."  He took the walkie-talkie off
his belt and pressed talk.  "Manhattan base, this is Rover."
     He released the switch, and listened.  Nothing.
     He tried again, and listened again.  Still nothing.
     Matt looked closely at the unit.  The battery-charge
indicator said it should be fine, and he couldn't see any sign of
damage.  He turned to Bobby Joe.  "Any ideas?  It doesn't seem
likely they wouldn't be listening."
     Bobby Joe made a quick check and confirmed that Rudy's and
Matt's walkie-talkies could talk to each other with no trouble
and that the batteries were almost fully charged.
     "So," Matt said.  "Are we out of range?  We haven't gone
that far since we left the tunnel."
     Bobby Joe said, "My guess is that it's not the range.  I bet
it's the dome.  I bet the dome doesn't pass RF in this frequency.
We know it passes light, a lot farther up the spectrum, but we
don't actually have any proof that we can transmit stuff like
this through it.  Maybe that's why we haven't picked up any RF
signals from other domes.  And maybe that's why we haven't gotten
any answers to the RF we've been sending."
     "Okay.  But that still leaves us with quite a few questions.
Like where is everybody?"
     Abby unsnapped her minivid and pointed it at the dome above
them.  Matt looked up and saw what looked to be an identical copy
of the message on the roof of the Manhattan dome.
     Matt let Abby finish taking a few seconds of video before he
said, "I think it's time we went back down.  But let's take the
center shaft."  He pointed toward it.  "Bobby Joe, how's your
black box working?  Any chance of us getting lost?"
     Bobby Joe took a unit the size of a slice of bread from his
belt and inspected the readings on it.  People at Columbia had
provided the inertial guidance unit and calibrated it for the
lower gravity.  "We should be fine.  In case you're curious,
we're a little over 300 meters up."
     "All right.  Let's go."
                                 #
     Stuart Lund was actually enjoying himself more than he had
expected to.  God had dealt him a painful blow with the loss of
his hand, but Stuart was making progress with his street-corner
proselytizing, and that progress made him feel more worthwhile
than he had felt in a long time.  A couple of acolytes followed
him as he walked toward his normal street corner and tried to
decide how to start his morning speech.
     When he had wakened this morning, he'd interrupted a dream.
In the dream, an old man with long white hair had said to him, "I
am.  Heed me.  Soon all will be right."
     The old man had carried a clipboard held to his chest with
one arm, the way school kids in old Norman Rockwell paintings had
carried their schoolbooks.  Or, now that Stuart thought about it,
the way Moses was illustrated carrying the ten commandment
tablets.
     Near the end of the dream, the old man had turned the
clipboard so Stuart could see the front, which bore a copy of the
strange message on top of the dome.
     According to the news reports, the Mayor had dozens of
people working on translating the message.  Of course they had to
be wrong, no matter what they decided in their ignorance.  If
even one of the team had been receptive, as Stuart was, they
would already know what Stuart now knew.  I am.  Heed me.  Soon
all will be right.
     Stuart reached the corner of Broadway and 12th Street and
found a crowd already assembled, waiting patiently.  The crowd
was even larger than it had been when he quit the day
before--another sign from God that Stuart was doing what was
expected of him.  In fact the crowd was starting to run out of
space.
     Stuart was ready to start making demands of these people.
It wasn't enough for them to merely listen and exclaim agreement
when it seemed appropriate.  They needed to take actions just as
Stuart himself did.  He decided on a simple test.
     He raised his arms.  Voices rippled through the crowd as
some of the regulars caught sight of him.  Seconds later many
faces had turned toward Stuart.  "We are too crowded here," he
said.  "Follow me up the street to Washington Square Park."
     Stuart began to walk south.  He didn't look back, but he
kept watching the store window reflections.  Within seconds the
glimpses he caught of the crowd told him they were in fact
following.
     Good.  Next he needed to ask them for something larger.
     Maybe the first thing he should ask was that some of them
stop operations at the World Trade Center.  If the Mayor's people
trying to interpret God's word were left to themselves, with all
the time in the world, they would eventually decide they had to
say something.  They wouldn't be able to interpret what the
message really meant, because they were going about it all wrong.
But they would have to save face.  They would have to make up
something that seemed plausible to themselves to justify their
work.
     This must not be allowed.  Stuart would ask his people to
disrupt activities there, to remind those people they were really
trying to interpret the word of God.  This was a good plan, he
decided.  And if his followers would indeed be willing to take
this action on his behalf, that would tell him even more clearly
that he was doing the work of God, and that God was helping him
do what must be done.
     And if that worked, then he would have to decide what the
next step might be.
                                 #
     As the group approached the pair of escalifters in the
middle of the roof of the huge building, Abby realized she was
feeling more nervous than she had when they first entered the
dome.  She tried to figure out why.
     It could be just that something was so very wrong here.  If
something bad had happened to residents of a city that had been
here longer than Manhattan, maybe that meant Manhattan was soon
to suffer even more badly than it had already.  Or maybe it was
her natural empathy making her imagine feelings that whoever
lived here might have had.  Unless they were hiding for some
reason, a whole city of people seemed to have vanished.  Had they
known what was happening to them?  Did they go one at a time,
leaving the survivors to dread their turn, at the same time
powerless to affect what was happening to their friends?
     Abby shivered in the cool air and forced her thoughts back
to the mission.
     She stopped suddenly, wondering again why there was no sign
of the residents.  She had wondered if they were hiding inside.
That could still be true.  She realized she had stopped, and she
started moving again.
     They finally reached the dome covering an escalifter.
     "Is everyone ready?" Matt asked.  She hadn't seen that
faraway look on him once since they had entered this dome.  She
wasn't sure whether the strangeness of this place kept him from
dwelling on his wife, or if being in a "combat" role was enough
to make him ignore everything else until his team was safely out.
     Matt stood at the edge of the cutout in the roof and grabbed
one of the rods as it swung past him, and he was on his way.
Abby took a breath, and grabbed the next one.
     She floated for a second as the rod pushed her down through
the weak gravity field even faster than she would have fallen the
first meter or two.  Then her body was moving down at the same
rate as the rod, and she felt the weak pull of gravity and the
outward force as she spun around the central pole.
     They went past several floors that looked exactly like the
ones they had already seen.  She was starting to assume they'd go
all the way to the ground when Matt released his grip and
shouted, "Let's get off here!"
     Moments later the four of them stood in the deserted hallway
next to the escalifter.
     Matt looked down the hall.  "This building just can't be
nothing more than hallways and those few circular rooms, whatever
they are.  There's too much wasted space.  I think we need to do
a little more exploring."
     They walked about twenty meters before Rudy said, "Wait a
minute."  He ran his finger down the wall.  "What's this?"
     When Abby looked closer and moved her head to just the right
place, she could see a hairline crack running floor to ceiling, a
seam narrower than the ones between adjacent wall panels in her
parents' house.
     Matt walked down the corridor about twenty meters and then
came back.  "There seem to be pairs of them.  About a meter
apart, a pair every couple of meters.  Are you thinking they
might be doors?  Or just some construction artifact."
     Rudy looked at the floor, then at the ceiling.  "Well, right
about here, doors would make a lot of sense."
     Abby pressed on the wall.  She moved down the hallway,
pushing on the wall every second or so, looking to see if the
wall showed any other features.  Aside from the thin seams, the
wall was just like the sandpaper surface on the ground floor,
apparently unbroken.
     Matt said, "If these lines define the edges of doorways, I
wonder if the doors are anything like what we came through on the
way in."  He put his palms against the surface and pushed upward.
     A meter-wide section of the wall from floor to ceiling slid
upward.  Abby drew in her breath.
     Through the gap she could see interior blue lights, smaller
versions of the ones in the hall.
     No sound came from within.  Matt stepped cautiously through
the doorway.  Abby followed, her heart beating much harder than
before.
     A corridor ran straight back from the doorway.  About ten
meters farther along the corridor, it widened, but Abby couldn't
see what was around the corner.  Matt stopped and turned back.
"Bobby Joe, I want you to stay here, under the door.  We don't
want to take a chance on getting sealed in here."
     Bobby Joe looked grateful not to have to go in.  "Yes, sir."
     As Matt, Abby, and Rudy went forward, Abby smelled a strong
unpleasant odor, reminiscent of a refrigerator left unplugged and
closed.  The corridor opened onto what seemed to be living
quarters.
     This section was wider than the spacing between doors.  If
every door led to quarters, they must be jigsawed into place,
some with the quarters closer to the main hallway than others.
On a low pedestal was a one-meter-by-two-meter cushion.  About a
meter above it was a platform holding what could have been a
chair and a desk.  The chair was a cushion about as thick as
Abby's wrist.  Near it was a U-shaped desk mounted about a
quarter meter off the platform.   Against the wall was a column
of small drawers.  On the wall was a design with a big square
beside a big circle.  Inside the large square was a smaller
circle, and inside the large circle was a smaller square.
     "I'm going to get pictures of what's in the drawers, if
anything," Abby said.  She hopped up to the platform and reached
forward to open the lowest drawer.
     Inside it was a disk like a compact with buttons on the
front.  She pulled it out and set it on the desk.  "Could be a
remote control unit?  Or a communicator?"
     Abby made sure it was in the field of view of her minivid
for a second, then tried the next drawer.  It contained a red
ball that felt rubbery.  She showed it to Matt and Rudy, then put
it back.  As she checked the last drawer and found it empty, Rudy
said, "I think you folks should see this."
     Abby followed Matt into an adjoining room.  In the center of
the room was a circular stand covered with an uneven layer of
solid brown fur.  The unpleasant odor was stronger here.
     "What do you think--" Rudy was saying as he moved around to
the far side of the room.  "Uh oh."
     "What?" Matt asked.
     Rudy pointed at the floor.  Abby squeezed closer and saw
that Rudy pointed to an oddly shaped knife, its blade almost
covered with green foam.
     "Oh, God," Matt said.  "That's not just some covering of
fur, is it?"
     Abby's throat was raw, and she felt lightheaded.  "You
mean--"
     Matt used one foot to prod at the fur atop the circular
base.  Abby felt she was going to vomit when Matt's toe moved a
layer of the brown fur enough to reveal the glassy green eyes,
mottled snout, and rictus of a creature with a head shaped
vaguely like a badger's.  The skin and fur were liquefying.
     "God," Rudy said faintly.
     "I've got to get out of here," Abby managed to say.
     "Let's all get out of here," Matt said.
     Matt quietly told Bobby Joe what they'd seen.  About five
seconds after Bobby Joe had moved from his position on the door,
it slowly and silently lowered into the closed position.
     In six more tries, Matt and Rudy encountered two more dead
aliens, both positioned similarly to the first.
     "Let's get out of here," Matt said.
     As they started back toward the escalifter, Bobby Joe said,
"Do you think they were murdered or they committed suicide?"
     Matt looked at Abby and said, "Theories?"
     Abby said, "I don't think I've really got any more than you
have to guess with.  If they were all murdered in the same place
and the same way, that could indicate an incredibly busy
murderer, or an organized approach, conducted by a team of
murderers.  You'd think at least a few of the victims might have
struggled more or have been caught in some other location.  And
that would mean that maybe the murderer or murderers are likely
the only ones we'll find alive.
     "Suicide makes a lot more sense to me, but I'm really just
wildly guessing.  The fact that they each had their own weapon
nearby, the fact that they all died in the same location, in the
same way, suggests suicide."
     Bobby Joe said, "Makes sense.  But why?  I mean we're not
really happy to be here, but we're doing the best we can."
     "Could be lots of reasons.  Could be their religion
predicted something close enough to what happened that they're
doing what's expected of them in that situation.  Could be they
just couldn't handle captivity, being shut in.  That one in
particular is questionable, because a building like this would
generate the feeling of being shut in all the time.  I don't
know why.  I'd just guess that it was suicide."
     Talking about it had helped Abby relax.  By the time they
reached the escalifter, she felt ready to descend.  She followed
Matt, and seconds later her body rotated smoothly around the
central shaft as the device carried her deeper into the heart of
the complex.
     They passed more corridors on the way down, but when they
were about halfway down to the ground level, she started to smell
that horrible smell from before, and they came through the top of
an enormous circular room, perhaps as wide as a football field.
As Abby turned she saw a section of the wall covered with a large
2-D photo of what looked to be two buildings.  They came closer
to the floor, and she saw a sea of brown fur.
     Her arms felt weak.  She tightened her grip on the rod,
suddenly afraid she'd fall.  Dead bodies were everywhere.
Hundreds of them, thousands.
     Matt shouted up, "Abby and Bobby Joe stay on and don't get
off until the next floor.  Rudy, get off with me."
     "No," Abby heard herself shout.  "I can handle it."
     By then Matt had let go and hit the surface of the floor.
The pole spun another revolution, and Abby let go.  She skidded
out of the way, and Bobby Joe got off, then Rudy.
     She turned to Matt.  "It's okay.  I think I can handle it--"
     Matt looked furious.
     "Oh, come on," Abby said.  "You don't have to protect--"
     "That's not the issue."  Matt's voice was harsh, cutting
harder than she'd ever heard it.  "We're operating on military
rules.  I gave you two an order."  His gaze widened to include
Bobby Joe.
     "But I really don't--" Abby stopped suddenly, realized what
he was talking about.  She suddenly felt small.
     Matt took a deep breath.  Abby could see him willing himself
to relax.  He said, "Listen to me very carefully.  This is not
about power.  This is not about protection.  This is not about
men versus women.  What it is about is safety and surviving.
When we're out here and I give an order, I want to know you'll
obey it.  When we get back to base, you can question it all you
want, and you can quit, but out here I have to know you'll do
exactly what I say.  For all you know, I had just seen an armed
enemy or something equally hazardous.  If I don't phrase it as a
command, you can ask questions.  If it's a command, you've got to
act on it.  Right then.  Any questions?"
     Abby swallowed and shook her head.  "None.  You're exactly
right."
     Bobby Joe said, "Understood."
     Matt visibly relaxed.
     Abby said, "I really do understand.  I realize why it's
necessary, and I'm ready to cooperate.  I guess it's taking me a
little time to adjust to a military style, but I'm ready.
Really."
     Matt nodded.  "Okay."  He took a deep breath.  "All right,
as long as we're all here, anyone got any theories?"
     Abby swallowed and forced herself to look at their
surroundings.  None of the furry bodies were closer than ten
meters, but beyond that perimeter, there must have been
thousands.  The four humans walked in a small circle around the
escalator as Abby tried to ignore the nauseating smell.
     Each body rested on one of those little couch things.  This
room could have been a huge meeting hall.  Near many of the
bodies she could see small cups on the floor where they had
apparently fallen.  Blue drops of some liquid showed near several
of the cups.
     "What do you think?" asked Matt after a long silence.
     "I really don't know enough to explain this.  But it looks
like some horrible Jonestown or Tekafganton," she said softly.
     Matt said, "You mean a mass suicide?"
     Abby came around to where the huge picture covered part of
the wall.  It showed two huge buildings, judging from the
relative size of the buildings and the two groups of small
creatures standing in the foreground.  One of the buildings was a
very large cube, the other a big cylinder.  As Abby stared at the
picture for a moment, at the creatures in the foreground, she
recalled the picture in the room several floors above, and
suddenly felt very cold.  "Oh, no.  Oh, God."
     "What?" Matt asked.  "What is it?"
     Abby hesitated.  "I had a flash.  I don't know I'm right,
but it's one way of explaining what's happened.  I might be just
looking at it with a human point of view, but--"
     "Go on."
     "Look at the picture.  That square building on the right.
That's this one--the one we're in.  Those creatures in front of
the building.  They all have solid brown fur, and that ruffling
along the forehead, like the creatures here.  Now look closely at
the creatures in front of the cylindrical building."
     "They look the same."
     "No.  Look closer.  Look at their mouths, their snouts,
whatever.  Look very closely."
     Matt was silent for a moment.  "You mean it looks like
there's some gray in the fur there?  The ones in front of the
cylindrical building have touches of gray fur the others don't?
And none of them have those ridges along the forehead?"
     "Yes."  Abby's body shook as she said the word.
     "I still don't get it," Matt said finally.
     "You remember that picture up above?  The one with the large
square and the large circle?"
     "Yeah."
     "This is still just a guess, all right?  There could be lots
of other explanations.  This is just one possibility."
     "Yeah."
     "It's possible that the gray fur around the snout and those
forehead ridges distinguish one sex from the other.  I think it's
possible that the square and circle might represent something
that distinguishes their sexes.  Those are big ifs, but if I'm
right, it could be this entire building housed only one sex, and
that the circular building left behind housed the other sex.  If
that's right, those Goddamned aliens who took us--who took
them--took all of one sex and left the other sex behind."

                            Chapter 7
                           A Tree Grows

     Surrounded by death and silence, Matt stared at the picture
of the pair of buildings.  The churning in his stomach said
Abby's theory was probably right.  The idea that members of one
sex would kill themselves when stranded without the opposite sex
was extreme, but it somehow fit with the idea that the sexes
would live in separate buildings.  Whether Abby's theory was
right or not, the fact was the residents here were dead, and that
probably wouldn't be true if they had been left alone.
     In the stunned silence, Rudy said, "I bet you're right.
Whoever captured us could lift one of those buildings, but taking
both, separated by that much distance, would have been too much.
I wonder if they know what they've done."
     "Or if they care," Abby said.  "The transmission we saw
earlier made it look like they go in fast and remove all their
targets just as fast as they took Manhattan."
     "If they moved slowly, no one would be left in the city when
they took it," Rudy said.  "Except maybe a few crazies."
     Finally Matt said, "Let's get out of here."
     They lined up in their original order, and Matt grabbed an
escalifter rod, letting it take him downward into the complex.
He spun through floor after floor, almost numb with shock at the
idea that their captors had taken citizens of only one sex.
Either they had moved so quickly that they had no time to
determine the magnitude of the mistake they were making, or they
had known what they were doing and didn't care.
     Matt spun through floor after deserted floor, the feeling of
horror growing inside him.  At last he reached the ground floor
and released the rod.  Seconds later the foursome stood together
quietly.  Matt no longer worried that the still building held a
possible ambush, but he wished he could trade that former feeling
for the bitter gnawing in his stomach that he now felt.
     As they reached the corridor leading to the outside and Matt
saw how long it looked, he sighed, staring into the distance.  He
wondered if being separated from Nadine would be any less painful
if she had still wanted to be together.  They'd been walking for
a few minutes when Matt became aware of the feeling of being
watched.  He glanced left and saw Abby's gaze on him.
     "Are you doing all right?" she asked softly.
     "Sure.  I'm tough."  Matt said the words with a light tone,
bordering on self-mocking.  He didn't feel very tough right then,
and he knew Abby knew it.
                                 #
     Stuart Lund came down from the second floor just two minutes
before the service was supposed to begin, and he found that once
again they had outgrown the number of chairs.  People stood in
the back of the large room, leaning against the walls, and every
chair was occupied.
     The clamor of conversations died as Stuart walked from the
back of the room, up the narrow aisle toward the spray-painted
microwave packing box that was now his lectern.  He took pride in
recognizing it as a lectern when most people incorrectly called
it a podium.
     Stuart had a member of his congregation to thank for the
space for the church.  Warehouses had been gradually getting less
and less useful at the same time Stuart's folk kept growing.
Between services, Stuart still took to the streets, but now he
took with him each time a different handful of people to act as a
crowd seed.
     Stuart had realized early that few people liked to be the
very first to stop and listen, but if they could pause near the
back of a small throng, they felt secure enough that they might
stay ten or fifteen minutes, and by that time many of them were
hooked.  By having some of his congregation start the "crowd,"
the new arrivals assembled that much sooner.
     Stuart reached the front of the large room and turned to
look into the eyes of the closest people.  The people here were
excited, as excited as he was that in this time of need they had
a chance to be a part of what God wanted them to do.
     Today he would talk to them about the expedition outside the
city, and he knew they would be as upset about it as he was, as
soon as they understood that trying to get closer to God was no
more acceptable now than it had been when the Tower of Babel was
attempted.
                                 #
     By the time they left the large building, Abby's thoughts
had cleared a little.
     The horror she had felt earlier remained, but she now felt a
little additional emotional distance from what she was more and
more sure was the terrible fate of the residents here.
     As they'd walked, she'd noticed Matt's faraway expression
return several times, and she wondered if the division of the
sexes was a particularly painful reminder of his wife being left
back on Earth.  Abby was irritated with herself because she
couldn't deny that she was attracted to the man.  Maybe it was
because he seemed to be a mix of strength and vulnerability much
like she saw in herself.  Maybe it was something as stupid as the
warmth she felt when he gave her that floodlight smile.
     Even the blowup after she had disobeyed his order hadn't
shaken her feelings.  She'd known immediately he was right, and
somehow she knew that if their positions had been reversed he
would have been just as accepting of criticism as she had been.
     The bright "sun" was still on as they walked to the opening
they'd dug in the ground.  Rudy's cord was still fixed to the
metal disk stuck on the inside of the dome.  Rudy sprayed a
pocket aerosol tube on the edge of the disk, and moments later it
slid down, then popped off the transparent bubble surface.
     The black door into the tunnel opened.  Abby took another
look through the bubble as Rudy dropped into the hole and
disappeared.  The gray plain could almost have been a huge
stagnant lake, unrippled in dead calm, a congealed sargasso sea.
From the roof, Manhattan had looked much they way it had looked
from Staten Island Ferry, except for being a little farther away
and a little clearer since the air between the domes was clean.
Now Manhattan was gone again, hidden by another dome.
     When it was her turn to go down, she almost didn't want to
enter the tunnel again, but she did.  She put on her hardhat.
     Matt stayed on the surface, and she could hear him calling
Manhattan on his walkie-talkie.  Several seconds later he joined
the rest of them in the tunnel, where he tried his walkie-talkie
again.  This time the speaker crackled with a reply.
     "Manhattan base.  What do you need?"
     "I need a comm check.  Can you count to fifty for me?"
     "You got it.  One two three--"
     As Matt moved back up into the cutout in the dome, Abby
heard, "four five six seven--" The "eight" faded, and she heard
nothing more as Matt pulled the black door closed.  Several
seconds passed before Matt opened the door and came back into the
tunnel.  "...twenty-four twenty-five..."
     Matt clicked his walkie-talkie, but the other end counted
all the way to fifty before they took a break to listen.
     Matt spoke into the walkie-talkie.  "The clear bubble
material cuts off your signal.  Even with the squelch all the way
down, I couldn't hear anything when I was inside the bubble.  The
black barrier material reduces the signal but doesn't stop it."
     "Understood, Rover."
     Matt gave the people back in Manhattan a summary of what
they had learned so far, and what they suspected.  A long silence
ensued.  When they finally acknowledged what Matt had said, he
terminated the call, then helped as all four of them sealed the
black barrier cutout back into place.  Rudy stripped the
protective layer off a length of supertape and carefully applied
the material to the seam, giving the glue a few seconds to set.
     The tunnel felt downright gloomy with only the hardhat
lights and the light from the cart.
     "What next?" Bobby Joe asked.
     Matt looked at Bobby Joe, then Rudy, then at Abby.  His gaze
still on her, he said, "We'd better start for the next dome."
                                 #
     "Those people are still out there!" Stuart Lund said.
"Every day they spend on this foolish journey, the greater the
risk that God will punish all of us."  Stuart's voice was a
little hoarse from trying too hard to project.
     On faces in his congregation, Stuart saw anger and fear.
And that was good.  These people should be as angry and as
fearful as Stuart was, because only when they felt would they
begin to act.
     "The Battery Tunnel no longer serves any purpose that
benefits humankind," Stuart said in the deliberately understated
style he'd adopted.  So many pulpit-ravers had tried their vocal
cords on the American public, Stuart was convinced that someone
outside of the mold would be taken more seriously.  "Once it led
to Brooklyn, but Brooklyn is beyond our hearing, beyond our
seeing, beyond our touching."  Stuart continued to speak
carefully, getting the crowd angry, preparing to divert that
anger to where it would do the most good.  A young boy perhaps
ten years old sat between two adults, and the boy looked as angry
as his parents did, which was a good sign that Stuart was really
reaching them.  He thanked God for preparing him with the
techniques of persuasion.
     In the row just behind the young boy sat an expressionless
man, a short man with a crew cut.  Stuart's gaze caught the man,
and for just an instant the short man's eyes widened.  A diffuse
warmth spread through Stuart's chest.  These people would do
anything he asked.
     "Now the Battery Tunnel leads to damnation.  Now it points
the way of the snake.  We must stop this outrage against God."
     Stuart kept working the crowd to a higher pitch of fear and
anger.  After the service, he was rewarded with a great honor; a
group of about ten of the congregation members who talked among
themselves at the back of the room came to him with ideas of how
to discourage use of the Battery Tunnel.  One of the ideas was
just Biblical enough that it appealed to Stuart.
                                 #
     As the borer performed its slow-motion magic, Matt grew
impatient.  Fast cars and high-speed jets were more to his taste
than this creeping assault on the gray goo.  As a passenger, he'd
once taken enough gees in an F-22 to drain a fair amount of blood
from his brain before the automatic systems detected the same
thing happening to the pilot and reduced the thrust.  Here he was
in danger only from accidentally falling asleep.  Even the diet
was tedious.  The trailer behind the borer held a large supply of
nothing but food pellets and water.
     "What brought you to New York?" he asked Abby, who walked
just ahead of him in the dim light.
     "Feet."
     "Okay, you don't have to talk about it."
     "No, that's not what I meant," she said.  "I went out for
track when I was in school.  I was already interested in
languages and linguistics at that point, and my folks encouraged
me to do something physical so I didn't stay cooped up with my
studies all the time.  Eventually it occurred to me that I could
use running to meet more people from other countries if I was
lucky enough to make the Olympic team."
     "And did you?"
     "No.  I came close, but I just didn't spend enough time at
it for one thing.  You don't get on the team unless you're pretty
single-minded about it and work a lot of long hard hours.  But I
did get to the point that I liked running a lot.  Manhattan
seemed like a place I could run, and at the same time I could
meet a variety of people.  The melting pot is still bubbling in
Manhattan."
     Matt smiled.
     "Once I got here, I started to get bored just running the
same course all the time.  I wanted to run wherever I wanted to."
     "Could be a little dangerous, depending on where you wanted
to run.  A beautiful woman by herself in a deserted place."
     "Well, I'm not beautiful.  And a lot of times it doesn't
matter whether you're a man or a woman as long as you're a
stranger.  But that's why I took self-defense classes."
     Matt didn't respond to her inaccurate statement about
beauty.  "So that explains your skill when we were on the way
back from the UN."
     "Yes.  No one's going to tell me where I can run and where I
can't."
     Matt could hear the smile in her voice even though her face
was lost in the darkness ahead, and he smiled, too.  Abby
reminded him of a girl who had lived next door to him when he was
growing up in Omaha.  She hardly knew Matt existed, and at the
time Matt had been gangling, constantly unsure of himself, while
Tami had been poised, pretty, and popular.  But what had been
important was that Tami knew what she wanted to do, and she went
out and did it.  She was intelligent and funny and caring.  She
and Abby seemed to have a lot in common.  After Matt's thoughts
had strayed to the past and returned, he wondered how much damage
is done because girls grow up faster than boys.
     "So, what did you do when you were growing up?" Abby asked.
     Matt hesitated.  "I go into trouble a lot.  I guess you'd
say I was kind of wild."
     Abby was silent.
     Matt went on.  "My dad was killed in an accident.  He was on
an Army training exercise when his helicopter crashed.  I was
eight.  Mom idolized him.  She didn't want anything to do with a
'replacement.'"
     "So you grew up without a father?"
     "Mostly.  He was gone a lot even before that.  But I'm not
trying to blame my behavior on that.  I don't really know why I
did the things I did.  Maybe I needed an outlet for my anger.
Maybe I figured nothing mattered.  Here a good man died in a
senseless accident.  I don't know."
     "What kinds of things did you do?"
     "'Crimes against property,' the police called them.  I never
hurt anyone, but there were a lot of busted mailboxes and broken
windows in my neighborhood.  Things like that."
     "But you grew up."  It was a statement, not a question.
     "Yeah, I did, I think.  Maybe there's hope for Bobby Joe,
huh?"
     "What happened?"
     "It's funny.  One day I was feeling particularly angry, I
kicked over a big section of a fence a couple of blocks from my
house.  I started to leave and I looked up.  I saw the man who
lived in the house.  He'd been watching me from a window.  He
looked, I don't know, just sad.  I went home that night, waiting
for the police, knowing they'd be there at any minute.  I'd had
enough trouble with them already that I was sure I'd be sent
someplace for a few years.  I considered running away.  I lay
there the whole night, trying to decide what I'd do when they
came for me."
     "And?"
     "And they never came.  The guy didn't call them.  I walked
past his house the next day, and he was out there fixing the
fence.  I went closer--I mean what could I lose?  He looked up at
me--he had a couple of nails in his mouth.  I knew he recognized
me, but he didn't say anything.  I just stood there and watched.
Finally he said, 'Something I can do for you?'"
     Matt took a deep breath.  "I still don't really know what
changed right then--whether I realized that people did pay a
price even though I didn't hurt anyone directly--or if I realized
that things do matter--that just because my dad died in an
accident that didn't mean the whole world was senseless, maybe."
     "So?"
     "So I said, 'Can I help?' He looked up at me and considered
that for a minute.  Finally he said, 'You can put that new post
in that hole and then pour cement around it.' So I did.  I worked
a couple of hours with him, and he didn't say a word.  I came
back the next day and we nailed up the boards and painted them.
When the whole job was done, I finally got up the nerve to ask
him why he hadn't called the cops.
     "He looked at the new fence, and he looked back at me.  And
then he said, 'Looks like I made the right decision, don't you
think?'"
     Abby was silent as they continued walking.
     Matt cleared his throat.  "I stayed real busy that summer.
I patrolled the neighborhood, and whenever I saw anyone doing any
work on their place, I stopped and asked if I could help.  The
first couple of people I asked turned me down, but pretty soon
people understood that I wanted to do exactly what I said I
wanted to do."
     "I think that must have taken a lot of courage," Abby said
at last.
     Matt was trying to decide what to say when Rudy called from
somewhere ahead of them in the tunnel.  "Time for another air
vent."
     "I can do it this time," Matt yelled back.
     "You got it."
     Rudy appeared in the glow from Abby's hardhat light and he
handed her the bag of tools.  She passed them back to Matt.
     "See you folks in a few minutes," Matt said as Rudy went
back toward the cart.
     "Any problem with me helping?" Abby asked.
     "No problem at all.  I don't need much help, but the company
is nice."
     Matt set the bag on the tunnel floor and made a quick check
to ensure everything he needed was there before he started
drilling.  It all looked good.  He took out the drill and
inserted the long bit.
     He reached up, aiming his hardhat light at the tunnel roof
where the bit dug into it.  Abby aimed her headlamp upward, too,
and when Matt glanced at her, the reflected light spilled onto
her face, and he could see that instead of looking at the drill
bit she was watching him.  It was so tempting to try to get
closer to Abby, to help wipe away the pain from the way Nadine
had left his life, but it wouldn't be fair to himself or to Abby.
If he tried to use Abby to fill that gap, he wouldn't know if he
was responding to her or to the situation.  And it would just
hurt Abby if it turned out he was reacting to the past instead of
the present.
     Abby's expression changed, as though she were about to say
something, and Matt realized he'd been staring at her for several
seconds.  She looked so appealing, even with the hardhat covering
most of her hair.  He looked back up at the drill bit, which was
almost all the way through.
     "Abby," he said, unsure what he really wanted to say.  "I'm
glad you're on this--mission."
     Her lips parted, then closed again.  Finally she said just,
"So am I."
     The drill bit quit giving resistance as it broke through to
the top.  Matt switched off the drill and pulled out the bit as a
small rain of flakes of goo swirled to the tunnel floor.
     Abby knelt and retrieved a new air tube from the bag, and as
Matt took the bit out of the drill, she pushed the tube into the
opening.  The last tube had been for intake, so on this one they
attached a flexible hose and taped it to the tunnel walls so it
came near the floor.  Matt attached a fan, and set it to exhaust.
As it started to hum softly, he applied flame from the torch
around the junction between pipe and the goo, sealing it against
leaks.
     Abby held the bag as Matt put the torch back inside.
     "Thanks for the help," Matt said.
     "Any time," Abby said.  "Any time at all."
                                 #
     Twenty blocks north of the drug center of Manhattan, on
138th Street, the Abyssinian Baptist Church was as crowded as
every other church.
     Over fifty people waited in a room filled with memorabilia
from the days of Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.
     Shirlee Bathcomb fidgeted as she waited with her parents for
the people ahead of them to clear the sanctuary so they could
attend a service and the people behind them could follow.  The
sound of voices raised in song reached her as she stared at a
picture of Powell shaking hands with an old mayor of New York.
Shirlee felt better knowing the current mayor was black, but she
wasn't sure if it made much difference when whoever brought them
here wasn't talking to anyone.
     The idea that they had been brought here to be slaves had
occurred to Shirlee, but she'd discarded the idea as being too
horrible to contemplate.
                                 #
     Abby was getting really tired of the confines of the tunnel
by the time they reached the next dome.  Except for the fact that
the smoothly bored hole was clean, the experience was like slowly
traveling for kilometers through a sewer.
     They had arrived after a long day, and they decided to wait
until the next morning to cut through the gray ceiling.  After
dreams of rats so large they almost blocked the way, and of
flying above an immense field of grass, Abby felt moderately
rested but highly impatient as Rudy cut the square opening to the
surface just outside the dome they wanted to visit.
     The foursome got the slab of goo out of the way.  When it
was Abby's turn to look outside, she looked up and up and gasped.
     Right next to their camouflaged cutout was a dome that might
have been only as big around as a big city block, but it soared
into the sky far higher, she was sure, than the towers of the
World Trade Center.  On the other side of the bubble material was
a trio of huge trees whose bases sat in an equilateral triangle.
Large circular leaves all faced the "sun," a yellowish bright
light like the one over Manhattan.
     Suspended by vines or ropes slung over stubby tree branches
was a city with a far different texture than the previous one.
Here and there in the web-work of ropes were woven structures
vaguely like grass huts, but many of which were far larger.
Figures moved high in the air, crossing on ropes, descending or
ascending on larger, knotted ropes reaching from level to level,
like ornamental strings used for decoration on the biggest tree
in the universe.
     None of the beings were close enough to see clearly with
unassisted vision, but she had the impression of thin-limbed
people, rather than apes or similar primates.  She put on her
minivid viewer, then cranked up the telephoto.
     Centered in the jittery frame was a spindly alien tree
dweller.  As the alien's arms reached for a rope, light filtered
through a fleshy web extending between the torso and the arm.
Recording all she could see, Abby panned the minivid until she
was startled by the much-larger image in her viewfinder.
     She blinked, then started reducing the telephoto
enlargement.  One of the aliens had apparently noticed her.  It
was a child, judging by the smaller size compared to the other
beings she'd seen.
     The alien came closer, watching intently as it jostled down
a rope.  It stopped and cocked its head in the familiar posture
of a human getting a different perspective on something it
doesn't see clearly or doesn't recognize.
     Abby directed her voice through the roof of the tunnel.
"Someone's coming to investigate."
     "Does it look hostile?" Matt asked from below.
     Abby looked back to confirm her first impression.  The
approaching figure moved quickly toward her, not fast enough to
be a predator on the run, not slow enough to be trying to sneak
up.  Nothing like a weapon was visible.  In one hand the alien
carried something vaguely like a whip, but it didn't seem to be
using it as a weapon.  The end of the cord seemed to want to
naturally form a coil with several loops.  Occasionally the alien
would snap the cord toward a branch or rope just out of its
range.  The snapping motion would uncurl the end of the cord and
it would wrap around the branch it had been aimed at.  The alien
would use the support provided by the weak connection to the
branch, and when it had moved far enough that it no longer needed
the support, it pulled the coiled section loose so it was ready
to use again.
     "No, it doesn't," Abby said.  "And there are more on the
way."
     From higher up in the tree city another couple of the
smaller versions of the aliens started down to look at Abby.
Their bodies were all spindly, with taut skin over prominent
bones.  One alien from even farther up jumped from a limb, spread
its arms, and glided about ten meters down to a grid of ropes
strung between the trio of trees.
     As the first couple of curious tree dwellers reached the
ground and approached, at least a dozen more were on their way
down to investigate.  Abby didn't notice any of them calling to
others, but the group kept growing.
     Abby backed against the surface of the goo as Matt joined
her.  Within a few minutes at least a dozen short aliens and a
couple of tall ones stood against the inside of the bubble,
inspecting Abby and Matt, curiosity plain in their expressions,
despite mottled skin that on a human would have probably denoted
some terrible disease, and an emaciated look that for humans
would mean death couldn't be far off.
     "Think it's time for your computer?" Matt asked.
     Abby nodded and took it from her belt.  She snapped it open
and unfurled the screen.  She switched the power on, and a color
2-D startup image came up on the screen.  She aimed the screen
toward the still growing group of aliens and called up the first
image.
     The screen was thin enough that she could see the image
through the back of the screen and verify that it was the right
one.  The image was a side view of Manhattan, one chosen to match
what it looked like from this general direction.  Next to the
dome stood a human man and woman.  Abby pointed to herself and to
Matt, and then pointed at the couple on the screen.  She pointed
at Manhattan in the picture, and then pointed at the real thing
in the distance.  She watched the aliens as she pointed at
Manhattan and saw eyes move, telling her these people knew what
pointing meant.  A cat would stare at your fingertip, but these
people looked at where she pointed.
     She triggered the next image, an artist's conception of a
top view, showing Manhattan under a dome.  The image began to
shrink and more domes came into view.  Abby found the one with
the small round shape, pointed to it, and pointed inside the
dome.
     The picture of the couple was superimposed on the screen
near the Manhattan dome, and the couple began to move slowly
across the screen, leaving a dotted line behind them.  They
stopped next to the small circular dome.  Abby again pointed to
Matt and herself.
     The next image showed a side view of the edge of the dome.
In a series of steps, a circular tunnel formed beneath the
surface of the goo, a hole formed in the tunnel roof, and a human
stood up showing half of its body.  Next the human went back
inside the tunnel.  A hole formed in the tunnel wall, leading
through the underground barrier and coming out on the surface of
the ground inside the dome.  The final image showed two people
sitting opposite each other, an effort to convey the idea of
dialogue.
     As the sequence completed, Abby saw indecipherable
expressions on faces beyond the clear barrier.  Seconds later,
one of the tallest aliens began to back up.  Instantly everyone
in the group was doing the same thing.  They all backed up until
they were perhaps ten meters from the barrier, and then all made
gestures that were fairly easy to interpret as inviting.  The
aliens put palms down and mimicked pawing in the dirt, or perhaps
scooping something toward them.
     Matt said softly, "Does that seem as friendly to you as it
looks to me?"
     "I suspect so.  I'd say they understand, and they're ready
for us to come inside."
     "Can you see any reason why we shouldn't proceed?"
     "None.  We don't have any guarantee that they're as peaceful
as they seem, but I don't expect any warmer welcome anywhere."
     "You want to stay here and keep them company?  I think we
can move a meter along the tunnel and cut through there."
     "Sure."
                                 #
     Light filtered through the stubby tunnel to the surface.
This time the air pressure inside the tall dome was about the
same pressure as in the tunnel.  The cutting and digging and
sampling had gone well, much like going into the first dome.
They had sealed the hole in the top of the tunnel as soon as they
could see through the new hole.
     Matt looked up through the gap and began to feel nervous.
He trusted Abby to start communications as smoothly as possible,
but there were so many unknowns.
     Bobby Joe brought the cart back after dumping dirt in a new
side tunnel, and Rudy and Matt cleared out a few more shovelfuls
of dirt.
     They were ready.  Matt still felt uneasy, but he couldn't
think of any reason to delay, so he moved down the tunnel far
enough to get some quiet as he called Manhattan base and gave
them a quick update.
     Matt and Abby were again the first two out of the tunnel.
They stood on the wiry grass next to the tunnel mouth, breathing
in the sweet scent of growing vegetation, looking into the clear
white eyes of a group of at least forty of the aliens.  The mix
of the group had shifted toward the adults.  More tall aliens had
arrived, and several of the shortest ones had climbed back up
into the arboreal complex.
     From here Matt couldn't help but think of Jack and the
Beanstalk.  The trio of trees extended into the inverted test
tube, stretching far taller than Matt had imagined was possible.
He couldn't remember how tall redwoods managed to get on Earth,
but if this city had come from a lower gravity planet, he
supposed the limits to vertical growth would be less severe.
     "Next," Matt called into the hole in the ground.
     Bobby Joe Brewster came up as cautiously as a child on his
best behavior at an adult gathering.  Finally Rudy reached the
surface.  He fastened the "door" closed, and hopped lightly to
the surface.  The four of them stood together, all acting as
carefully as innocent suspects facing a cop's loaded gun.
     The tallest aliens were slightly taller than Matt.  The few
remaining shorter aliens all came at least up to shoulder height.
All bare-chested, they were dressed below the waist in what
appeared to be one very long turban-like strip of cloth about as
wide as a hand, wrapped in strip after strip ankle to hips to
opposite ankle.  Their all-white eyes formed an uncomfortable
reminder of cheap horror videos, but nothing about them seemed
threatening.  Their noses were darker than the rest of their
faces, and their arms and heads showed no indication of body
hair.  Maybe Bobby Joe should have been the spokesperson instead
of Abby.
     As soon as the humans were all motionless, Abby said,
"Hello."  Alien heads turned to look at each other, but that was
the only reaction until a gap formed in the wall of aliens.
     Between the two small groups of aliens, a lone alien stood.
This alien's nose was even darker than the others', and he looked
even more fragile than the others.  The alien made what Matt took
to be a come-ahead sign.  In accordance with the plan made
earlier, Matt didn't react.  He waited for Abby's direction.
Only in the event that he felt defensive action was necessary
would he resume control inside the dome.
     Abby said softly to her human companions, "I think we're
being invited in.  Let's go."
     Abby stepped forward in the lead, followed by Matt, then
Bobby Joe, then Rudy.  If they were stepping into a trap, that
was too bad, but all had agreed earlier that the humans had to
act as though the people they met were friendly until proved
different.  It would be all too easy to create hostilities when
probably no one in the domes wanted to be here.  Matt's
exploration team had to be treated as expendable.  If the worst
happened, and they were killed, the base team in Manhattan would
know which dome was hostile, and would keep any of the
inhabitants from reaching Manhattan.
     As the four of them walked, Matt was aware of the aliens
inspecting him as carefully as he looked at them.  The group of
tree dwellers formed loosely around them, some walking by their
sides, some ahead, some behind.  Soft sounds of movement came
from above them in webbing between the trees.
     Their leader reached the base of one of the enormous trees.
At least a dozen knotted ropes or vines hung down low enough to
curl on the ground.  A couple of the tree dwellers grabbed ropes
and began to pull themselves up.  The leader made another
come-ahead gesture and began climbing, too.
     Matt and Abby glanced at each other and then followed the
aliens up into the tree city.  Climbing was easy in the light
gravity, more like lifting a twenty-kilo weight with a rope and
pulley than like lifting one's weight in normal gravity.  The
tree was probably as big around as fifty telephone poles bundled
together.
     Matt and Abby reached the rough equivalent of a floor in an
Earth building.  Ropes supported by the three trees were woven
together in a loose cat's cradle grid-work dense enough to break
the fall of anyone dropping from a higher level.  The area
between the trees was about the same as a football field squashed
into a triangular shape.
     The tree dwellers above them continued climbing, so the
humans followed.  Matt couldn't hear any sound that seemed like
voices, just the rustling noises of other climbers.
     They came to the next level and here the grid-work of ropes
was denser.  In addition, several woven huts rested on the grid,
each with a series of support ropes leading from the upper
corners of the huts up toward the next level.  They kept
climbing.
     At each of the next few levels the huts grew more numerous.
When the aliens stopped climbing, they were on a level with one
very large hut resting on a dense grid of ropes.  The
frail-looking tree dweller walked onto the grid, stepping on the
thick ropes and grabbing occasional overhead ropes to keep
balanced.  Abby followed, and Matt followed her, relieved that
the low gravity and frequent layers of grids would be forgiving
if they happened to fall through one of the openings in the grid.
     Matt glanced back and saw Bobby Joe and Rudy following.
Bobby Joe looked as nervous as if he were treading a high wire
without a net.
     They reached the hut without Bobby Joe having a cardiac
arrest from his obvious fear of heights, and they entered through
permanently open cutouts.  Inside was a smaller hut, with cutout
doorways offset from the exterior doorways, perhaps to cut the
wind, or to limit visibility.  The floor was virtually solid now.
Matt could see slices of light through it, but saw no danger of
falling or even losing his balance.  The floor swayed almost
imperceptibly as people near him walked.  Openings in the ceiling
served as skylights.  Each of the square cutouts had dark squares
right next to it, as though the covers could be pulled closed
when necessary.
     In the center of the large interior hut was a low circular
table at about knee height.  Already seated at the table were
three frail-looking aliens.  The alien who had lead them sat at
the table next to them.  Also around the perimeter of the table
were four vacant cushions made of rope and leaves.  Matt was
impressed with them having exactly the right number, and wondered
what might have happened if their party had contained five people
or some other number.  Maybe they'd accidentally brought the
socially acceptable number of diplomats.
     The alien who had led them here gestured at the cushions.
     Abby said, "Let's take seats, shall we?"
     As the four humans sat down at the table, the rest of the
tree dwellers who had accompanied them silently moved to the
walls and sat on the floor around the perimeter.  Matt wondered
if they were observing or protecting.
     Matt and Abby took the center two cushions on their side,
with Bobby Joe and Rudy sitting on the two outside.  The four
people across the table from them didn't look friendly, but
neither did they look hostile.
     One of the four, the one with a mark shaped vaguely like an
octagon on one cheek, leaned forward and turned over a square
flap in the center of the table.  On the reverse side of it was
apparently a writing surface.  The alien traced a fingertip along
the surface, and a line formed, just like on an old magic slate.
     The fingertip continued its travel, and the line turned into
a tall, thin upside-down "U."  Next to it the alien drew a
semicircle.  Beneath the open ends of the two curves, the alien
drew a long straight line forming a base on which both curves
rested.  The alien leaned back and gestured at the drawing.
     Abby leaned forward and put a fingertip on the hemisphere.
She drew her finger in a path from the inside of the hemisphere,
under the long line, and then up into the tall upside-down "U."
The line her finger made was wider than the ones the alien had
drawn.  One of the tree people looked puzzled, and Abby said
softly, "I think maybe they originally thought we might be the
aliens who run this ship."
     The tree dweller drew several horizontal lines in the "U"
starting at the bottom.  At the sixth line it added a small
circle.  Then it continued the line Abby had drawn, moving from
the ground up to where they all now sat.
     Around the pair of domes, Abby drew a very large circle.
Then she continued the original line by moving her finger from
inside the "U" and not stopping until her finger was completely
outside the large circle.
     All four aliens simultaneously rocked their heads from side
to side.  Matt glanced at Abby, and she looked puzzled.
     With a slow, cautious movement, Abby removed her computer
from her belt.  She set it on the table and just left it there
for a few seconds, as though she were trying to make it plain
that it was not a weapon.
     The aliens stopped their head-rocking motion and looked
closely at the computer.  Abby unsnapped and unfurled the screen,
positioning it so they could see it.  She snapped on the power
switch.
     Suddenly the air was filled with screaming.  The aliens
across the table put their hands to their heads and screeched
like cats in pain.  One of them keeled over backward.  The aliens
at the edge of the room were reacting, too.  Some of them
staggered to their feet, at the same time holding their heads in
their hands.
     "Turn it off!" Bobby Joe yelled.
     Abby looked blank for an instant.  As Bobby Joe moved to
turn off the computer, Abby finally reacted and moved even
faster.  Her fingers hit the switch, and the screen went dark.
     Around the room, the cries started dropping in volume.  The
aliens across the table looked stupefied.  Ones near the edge of
the room started to recover and began to approach, menace clear
in their stance now.
     Bobby Joe said urgently, "Don't touch the computer."
     Matt said, "Move back slowly.  Abby, tell us what to do to
look as unthreatening as we can."
     "Keep down," she said.  "Keep your hands in front of you
where they can see them.  Don't move quickly."
     "What the hell happened?" Rudy asked.
     Bobby Joe talked quickly, quietly.  "I think they're
telepathic.  That's probably why they haven't tried speech on us.
That's why they all seem to decide the same thing around the same
time.  I bet when the computer turned on, whatever RF it leaks
was enough to bombard the receptors they use for telepathy.  We
just did the equivalent of spraying them with sound or light way
past their threshold of pain."
     Matt said, "Abby, you've got to figure out how to convince
them it was an accident."
     Aliens from the perimeter of the room continued their angry
approach.  The aliens right across the table still seemed dazed,
except for the one who had fallen.  That one remained motionless.
     "I think you're right."  Abby slowly pointed at the
computer, then made a gesture of sweeping it away from her, as
though she didn't want it near her.  Then she put her hands to
her head and imitated the aliens' screams.  She backed away from
the computer and pointed at it again.  "That's all I can think of
for now."
     Maybe it was enough.  The tree dwellers from the perimeter
managed to look less menacing, and halted their approach.  They
now seemed intent on the computer.  A couple of them moved to the
one who had fallen, gently picked up the alien, and moved
carefully out of the hut.  Slowly the three remaining at the
table began to show signs of recovery.  One of them tapped its
temple a couple of times, and then shook its head.
     Matt glanced at one of the doorways and realized that the
emergency had attracted many more aliens.  He glanced at another
doorway.  They were surrounded by a huge group now, but the group
was still.
     In the temporary calm, Rudy said, "But why didn't the
computer bother them when--oh, we were outside the dome."
     Matt said, "Score one for our captors' planning.  If the
domes didn't block RF, we might have pointed a directional
broadcast at a race like this and maybe have killed them all.
And in case it's not obvious already, don't anyone try to use a
walkie-talkie inside this dome."
     Very gradually the aliens in the room seemed to relax.  Matt
was very grateful they were dealing with an intelligent race; had
this happened with people incapable of understanding the concept
of accidents or unintentional results, the four of them might all
have been dead by now.  And the next party to come here could
easily make the same mistake all over again.
     One of the tree dwellers used a short loop of rope to pull
the computer over to the opposite side of the table.  Matt and
the others made no objection.  When things had calmed down a
little more, Abby reached slowly forward to the drawing board.
In an unused area she drew an outline of the computer on the
outside of the dome.  Radiating from it she drew a series of
jagged lines in all directions.  The lines that went in the
direction of the dome stopped at the edge of the city.
     She drew a jagged line through a stick figure inside the
hemisphere.  Next she drew a similar line through a stick figure
inside the "U."  Next to the stick figure she drew another figure
on its side.
     Matt thought he saw comprehension on the faces across the
table, but he couldn't be sure.
     A spindly tree dweller pushed through the crowd near the
doors and entered the room.  The alien sat down and took the
place deserted by the one who had fallen.  Matt realized there
was probably no need for Abby to repeat what she'd drawn so far,
not with a telepathic race.
     One of the aliens took the pad and turned it over.  When the
pad was upright again, the previous drawings had vanished.  The
alien drew a large circle, and then proceeded to indicate that
they had been cut loose from the surface of a planet and placed
here.  Abby traced a series of drawings that showed the same
thing had happened to Manhattan.
     When Abby finished, the alien again used a long, bony finger
to draw.  On the perimeter of the planet they had come from, it
drew a series of cross marks.
     "I don't know what that means," Abby said.  "I think we're
getting near the point where I'm going to have to generate some
pictorial vocabulary."
     Matt watched as Abby made a dot and wrote a numeral one next
to it, then made two dots and wrote a two.  He followed along
with her, generally understanding what she was communicating, but
his attention wandered when they weren't actually learning any
specific information about their circumstances.
     During the next several hours, Abby managed to learn that
the tree dwellers had been in captivity for about a decade, Earth
time.  Shortly after that, the session was interrupted.
     "They want us to follow them," Abby said.
     The four humans followed six of the tree dwellers out of the
meeting room and up to the next level of cat's cradle rope grid.
There their hosts approached a raised, cross-shaped platform on
which laid the body of a tree dweller who Matt thought was the
one who'd been at their table earlier.  With the aid of a small
version of the magic slate, Abby confirmed the identity.  God,
the first city they entered that was occupied by living people
and they'd already killed someone.  He felt sick.
     Another tree dweller approached with a small twig that
burned at one end, and Matt suddenly realized how much damage
fire could do to this city.  He looked up and saw that on the
level above them, a large group of tree dwellers stood around a
huge ring of what looked like large water balloons made from skin
or some translucent plant tissue.
     The tree dweller with the burning stick reached the body on
the platform.  The alien applied the flame near the body's feet,
and in moments the exposed surface of the platform was in flames.
Inside the flickering brightness, the body darkened and burned.
     The tree dwellers in a ring around the platform hung their
heads, so Matt did the same.  The fire burned for five or ten
minutes, and when it died out, nothing remained except an uneven
pile of ashes, not even bones.
     Two tree dwellers approached, scooped the ashes into a small
pan, and then poured water from a bladder into the pan and
stirred the ashes.  They poured the remainder of the water onto
the platform, where it hissed and then grew quiet.  The sludgy
mixture of water and ashes was spread on the bark of the nearest
tree.
     When they got back to the meeting room, one of the tree
dwellers made marks on the pad, at which time Abby said, "They
say it's time to eat a meal.  I think they understand we
shouldn't risk trying their food without some testing."
     Matt asked Abby, "Do they mind if we send someone to get our
food?"
     Soon Abby said, "No.  That's fine."
     Matt looked at Rudy.  "Would you do it?"
     Rudy nodded.  He left in the company of a couple of the tree
dwellers.
     When Rudy got back, the four humans and the four tree
dwellers ate a meal, each species using its own food.  Matt was
glad they had their own supply, not just because he knew it would
be safe, but also because the tree dwellers' food pellets smelled
like something that had been in the refrigerator too long.
      Not long after lunch, Abby was able to determine that the
tree dwellers had not yet been able to decode their message from
the captors, either.  She suggested that with only one language,
and with a reliance on thought more than a written vocabulary,
the tree dwellers might be the last to decode it.
     By mid afternoon, Matt's attention was beginning to wander.
The tree dweller they had killed wouldn't have had to die if this
expedition hadn't been undertaken.  And all they'd learned so far
was what they had expected--that other cities had received the
same treatment as Manhattan.
     Abby was leaning over drawing a couple of symbols on the
slate when suddenly she jerked upright.  "Oh, God."
     "What's the matter?" Matt asked.
     "Ah, ah, I don't want to say.  Maybe it's nothing.  I just
remembered that the cremation platform was cross-shaped.  The
cross may be their symbol for death."
     "So?"
     "Let me try to find out something.  I'll tell you as soon as
I actually know anything."
     Abby quickly scratched lines through everything she'd been
working on and started a new drawing.  Her fingers trembled as
she drew.
     The tree dwellers drew figures in response.
     After about ten more minutes of interaction, the blood
drained from Abby's face.  On the pad was another version of the
large circle with a series of crosses around its perimeter.
     Abby turned toward Matt.   "Oh, God.  The rest of them were
killed.  I've been praying there's a chance I was wrong, but I
don't think so."  She took a deep breath.  "They know this
because they're telepathic.  I'm still a little uncertain on time
units, but as near as I can make out something like twenty days
after they were captured, while this ship was still near their
planet, fire rained from the sky, and every single person
remaining on their planet was killed."

                            Chapter 8
                       Armed and Dangerous

     Two men picked their way through steam passageways and sewer
tunnels beneath the southern-most section of Broadway.
Flashlights powered by rechargeable batteries generated beams
that cut through the haze, forming crude light-sabers whose
points danced on the dark walls ahead.
     Benny Kellermund, the man following, was a short man with a
crew cut and a boxer's build.  He'd wanted to be in the Mafia,
but entrance requirements had toughened to the point that he
didn't qualify.  He had a reputation for unpredictability, and
neither of the two guys he knew well enough to recommend him had
been willing to do so.
     Lucky Stiles, the man in front, had the body of a fighter
and the charm of an IRS agent in the middle of a tax-evasion
audit.
     Benny took a long final drag and finished his last
cigarette, which was probably to be nearly his very last
cigarette.  Instead of flicking the end into the scummy water
filling the trough that ran along the center of the tunnel,
Benny stuffed the last quarter inch of tobacco into his pocket.
Later in the week, he'd assemble the remaining sections into the
last cigarette he might ever smoke.
     Benny cleared his throat.  He'd been trying to breathe
without paying attention to the stench, but he'd been
unsuccessful.  He wasn't all that crazy about opening his mouth,
but he was curious.  "How come you don't get lost down here?  It
all looks the same."  His voice generated spooky echoes.
     "Practice, practice, practice," said Lucky.
     Benny shut up.  His back was sore from having to bend
forward to balance the bulky load he carried, but Lucky carried a
similar load, and he wasn't complaining.  They passed dark side
passages and turned corners from time to time, but only once did
Lucky seem in doubt about which way to turn next.  Occasionally,
light filtered down from a grate high above, but mostly it was
just dark.  Benny didn't shine his light down any of the side
tunnels or unexpected cavities.  He preferred not to know what
the darkest corners held.
     Benny's adrenaline level was up, but his pulse was close to
normal.  Even though the Mafia wouldn't take him, he'd found his
own ways to belong.  He'd formed a street gang, and he'd done
jobs like this often enough that it was almost routine, except
for being underground.  He felt good, knowing that when he was
finished, the mayor would think twice about doing anything that
might cause their captors to retaliate.  People shouldn't be
rocking the boat.  They could all have a nice life in Manhattan.
The island was all he knew of Earth, and all he cared about on
Earth.  The preacher was right; rocking the boat could only cause
trouble.
     Something moved in the water as Benny and Lucky moved along
a new section of tunnel.  Benny made a point of not looking, but
he couldn't help think of the stories of baby alligators flushed
down toilets.  Alligators were mean enough as it was.  What if
they remembered being flushed down a toilet?
     "Are we almost there yet?" Benny asked.  His voice generated
more metallic echoes.
     "If you gotta take a leak, you can just turn left."
     "I'm fine.  Just curious."  No way was Benny undoing his
zipper down here.  He wasn't even sure if he'd keep his shoes
when he got back to the surface.
     "We're close, okay?"
     "Okay."  Up on the streets, Benny felt equal to Lucky,
sometimes maybe more than that, but down here he felt reliant on
Lucky.  Here Lucky was clearly the expert.
     Benny started to shift his load to his other shoulder, but
realized that would make walking in the curved tunnel difficult.
Something behind Benny scraped against concrete.  He didn't look
around, but the hair on the back of his neck bristled.  Benny
could hold his own in any fight, but this place made him
distinctly uncomfortable.
     They passed a series of iron rungs set into the concrete,
leading up into the darkness, and for a few seconds Benny
regretted watching the Aliens films so many times.  He almost
wished he had a flame thrower.
     The explosives in his shoulder pack seemed to grow more
awkward by the minute.  In the light gravity, the pack wasn't too
heavy, but the bulk still made it hard to turn or stop instantly.
He followed Lucky into another tunnel, this one with a huge
number of pipes of varying sizes running along the length of the
tunnel roof.  His foot kicked a candy bar wrapper aside, and his
next step generated the crunch of a beetle or a roach being
ground into the cement.  Benny wasn't about to stop and decide
which.
     After another few minutes, Lucky actually had to stop and
consult a small map before pointing into a tunnel that seemed to
slope perceptibly downward.
     At the other end of the tunnel was a junction where six
tunnels met, and Benny could feel vibrations through the soles of
his shoes.
     "Here," Lucky said as he unshouldered his pack and started
to put it on the ground.  At the last minute, he hung the strap
on a bolt holding a pipe at chest level.
     Benny acted as a nurse to Lucky's doctor impression as Lucky
requested materials from the packs and he carefully set them into
position.  "Packet," meant Lucky wanted another greasy,
plastic-wrapped brick of explosive.  "Glue," meant lucky wanted
the glue gun to fasten something into place, once a fuse, once a
timer.
     This part of the trip made Benny the most nervous.  Not many
of Benny's friends called him things like "imaginative," but he
sure was.  He could see himself and Lucky getting blown to bits
by just a quick accident.  The wrong thing dropped, the timer
begin defective.  For all he knew, accidentally putting the
explosive next to a hot pipe would trigger it.
     If Lucky shared Benny's fears, he kept them to himself.
Seconds later Lucky finished his work, and they moved down
another tunnel.  A couple of minutes later, Lucky was again at
work.
     "Okay, that just about does it," Lucky said finally.
     Benny realized he was sweating.  "You're sure that'll do
it?"
     "Sure I'm sure.  That huge pipe there?  It's the one of the
tunnel ventilation tubes.  When this baby goes--poof--it starts
suckin' air from right here down into the tunnel.  And that first
job, back in the other tunnel?  That'll rupture the biggest
water-line for blocks around.  This whole tunnel will be flooded,
and guess where the water's gonna want to go?"
     "So, how much time do we have?"
     Lucky looked at his watch.  "About two--two and a half
minutes."
     "What?  Let's get the hell out of here!"
     "Fine by me."
     Lucky hoisted his pack and started moving back the way they
had come.  Benny was right behind.
     "Hurry it up, will you?" Benny said.
     "Keep your pants on.  Oh, did I say two minutes?  I meant
twenty minutes."  Lucky laughed his screwy laugh, sounding like
something halfway between a hiccup and a belch.
     "You moron."
     "Had you going.  Am I right?"
     "Get outta' here."
     For an instant, Benny considered tipping Lucky into the
trough of scummy liquid flowing along the bottom of the tunnel,
but he knew he'd never find his way out on his own.
     He followed Lucky through turn after turn, thinking of ways
to get even.  A pair of red eyes illuminated by his flashlight
took his mind off the problem temporarily.
     "Hold up," Lucky said suddenly.  He stopped so abruptly
Benny almost bumped into him.  Lucky turned so Benny could see he
was looking at his watch.  "Should be just about now."
     Benny listened carefully, suddenly too aware of the creaks
and slithering sounds and the soft buzzing that could have been
flies caught in a big spider web nearby.  "Why should I believe
you this--"
     "Shhh!"
     And then it came.  Two dull cracks, then silence, then a
slow thundering noise as the rumbling made the tunnel walls
vibrate.  Grit fell from the ceiling, and somewhere a pipe
clanked three times.
     "Yes!" said Lucky.
     "All right!"  Benny turned to face the way they had come,
and the rumbling seemed a little louder.  He visualized the water
flooding into the Battery Tunnel.  That should give the mayor
second thoughts about whether she should have people down there.
"You're a wizard," he said softly.
     "Tell me somethin' new," said Lucky.
     The two men moved off into the tunnel.  Occasionally Benny
looked back nervously, a little worried that he'd see a wall of
water coming toward them.  If that happened, it probably wouldn't
even matter that he couldn't swim.
                                 #
     Blood pounded in Matt's ears.  "Their entire population
killed?" he said, disbelieving.
     Abby looked from the alien diplomats to Matt.  "Yes.  They
heard the dying screams of a planetful of their race.  A lot of
what they heard wasn't coherent, but they got the strong
impression of the whole atmosphere being on fire.  From a live
person there's always a residual amount of noise.  Only when
someone of their race dies does that person go completely silent.
And silence is what they heard afterward.  I'm amazed they
haven't all gone mad."
     "God above," Matt said slowly.  "How sure are you that
you're correctly understanding them?  And is there any chance
that the bubble being in place is what cut off the rest of the
transmissions?"
     Abby said, "I'm virtually positive I'm understanding them
correctly, but I'll try to go at it a different way to make
absolutely certain."
     As Abby started drawing on the tree dwellers' slate again,
Rudy leaned forward and caught's Matt's attention.  Softly he
said, "As horrific as that sounds, we do already have some
evidence that suggests what they're telling us is true."
     Matt thought for a moment.  "You're talking about the
flashes of light over the horizon in the transmission we
received?  What we figured was a huge lightning storm?"
     "Yes.  If our captors really do destroy the planet after a
city they take is off the surface, that lightning storm could
have been caused by them.  That lightning storm could have been
something far worse."
     Abby exchanged several more drawings before she said, "What
I've already told you has to be the right interpretation.  These
people could be lying to us, but I really think that's what
they're saying."
     Matt nodded.  "Do these--people--'hear' anything from our
captors?"
     Moments later Abby said, "No.  They've never been able to
communicate with anyone who's not a member of their race.
Apparently they can 'hear' electrical noise when it's generated,
but to them that's all it is: noise."  Abby hesitated.  "God, I
hate to even think this, but it's the obvious conclusion.  If the
people on their planet were destroyed after the city was
captured, and that was what happened to the people who've been
transmitting, that probably means the same thing--the same thing
has happened to everyone on Earth.  Or that it might happen soon,
if it hasn't already."
     Matt felt suddenly as if he'd been punched.  He felt very
old and afraid.  The other three members of the human contingent
were silent for a long moment, no doubt trying to get over the
shock.  Under his breath, Matt said, "Jesus, not Earth."
     Finally Matt summoned strength and said, "But why would they
be doing this?  Why would they take a city and then destroy the
rest of the population?"
     Rudy said, "They could be killing the rest to make sure no
one ever tries to get the cities back."
     Bobby Joe fidgeted.  "If all these cities constitute a
gigantic zoo, then they could represent an investment.  If you
had a collection of anything, wouldn't it be worth more if it
contained the only ones in existence?"
     Matt looked at Abby.  "These people say it took about twenty
days between the city capture and the destruction of the
population.  But the transmission we received from the other dome
makes it seem that it started immediately.  I wonder why the
difference."
     Abby shook her head.
     The aliens watched quietly as the humans talked.
     Matt leaned toward Bobby Joe.  "If the dome stopped RF from
the computer, how does it transmit whatever frequencies are used
for their telepathy?"
     Bobby Joe spread his hands.  "Can't tell for sure.  If their
telepathy isn't confined to line of sight, it could be that it
uses long-wave RF and the dome stops only short wavelengths.  It
could be telepathy uses spread spectrum transmission, and again
the dome cuts only part of that.  Could be they were sending
through the black base material instead of the dome."
     "We've got to leave," Matt said suddenly.  "Can you tell
them we've got to get out of here right away?  If there's a
chance that Earth is still alive, we can't just sit here."
     Abby hurriedly made more marks on the drawing board, and
within seconds the humans were being escorted out of the meeting
room.
     As they descended the knotted ropes, Matt tried to imagine
reasons their captors would destroy the remaining populations on
their home planets, but he could think of nothing that made
sense, at least nothing that would make sense if their captors
thought like human beings.  But there was no reason at all to
believe their captors shared anything about the human outlook.
     Large crowds of the tree dwellers watched from each of the
layers the human team passed on the way down, no doubt as curious
about humans as the humans were about them, and no doubt all
aware the humans were leaving suddenly.
     The team reached the ground, and Rudy moved to open the door
into the tunnel.  One at a time they dropped down into the hole
and moved sideways into the tunnel.  As Rudy and Bobby Joe folded
the black cutout back into place, Matt walked along the tunnel
toward the still borer for a full minute before he switched on
his walkie-talkie, just in case the frequency it used was harmful
to the tree dwellers.
     "Manhattan base, this is Rover," Matt said into the mike.
     "Go ahead, Rover."
     "We've got bad news, and we're coming back.  Please contact
the mayor and request an emergency session in--" Matt made a
quick estimate.  "--in about four hours."
     "Will do.  What's wro--hey, what the hell!"  The Manhattan
transmission cut off abruptly.
     "Hello, Manhattan base.  Hello!"  Matt took his thumb off
the transmit switch and listened.  Nothing.
     "Hello, Manhattan base.  This is Rover.  Do you read me?"
Still nothing.  What the hell was going on?  He left the
walkie-talkie on and went back to the others.
     "We've got more problems," he said.  Abby, Rudy, and Bobby
Joe stopped what they were doing and looked at him.  "The
transmission from Manhattan base was just cut off."
     "What the hell is happening?" asked Bobby Joe.
     "This is unbelievable," said Abby.
     "True.  But it's happening."
     "What's the next step, then--go back?" Rudy asked.
     Matt thought for several seconds.  "Abby and I are going
back.  We need to get back to Manhattan and have a quick meeting
to decide what we should do next.  Rudy, I want you and Bobby Joe
to keep the borer going as fast as you can.  Keep heading for the
dome that's been transmitting, and we'll catch up as soon as we
can."
     Rudy said calmly, "You already know what the meeting is
going to decide, don't you?"
     "Yeah, I think so.  If in fact this ship does grab cities
and then destroys the planets, the only way I can think of to
keep Earth from being destroyed, if it hasn't been already, is to
disable this ship."
                                 #
     St.  Patrick's Cathedral was a bewildering mixture of calm
and turmoil.  As a round-the-clock prayer vigil continued, the
crowds were heavier than ever before as five to ten thousand
people vied for the space meant for 2500.  Around the perimeter
of the church had been established prayer centers for people who
couldn't fit inside the church, under its enormous vaulted
ceiling.
     A group of at least a thousand people sat in a huge circle
around the statue of Atlas that stood between St.  Patrick's and
the Rockefeller Center.  The deacon who stood on the statue's
base as she read prayers and talked to the crowd was convinced
that well over half the crowd wasn't Catholic, but she didn't
care.  Sometimes it took extraordinary events to get people's
attention.
                                 #
     Abby's legs were getting tired.  She guessed that Matt was
even more tired, but he hadn't complained and she wasn't about
to.
     They'd been running more than an hour through the tunnel
back to Manhattan.  The low tunnel ceiling prevented long, high
strides and forced them into a leaning-forward-almost-falling
gait that also made her neck sore.  Fortunately, running in the
tunnel was easy on the feet, like running on an endless strip of
cork.  Matt ran in front and Abby matched his pace.  They'd still
heard nothing more from Manhattan.
     "Uh oh," Matt said.
     Abby slowed as quickly as she could.  By the time she was
stopped, she realized that something was wrong with the tunnel
floor.  The entire stretch they'd run along had the normal
circular shape, like a huge pipe.  Here, the bottom of the tunnel
was flattened.
     Just as she realized what the problem must be, Matt
confirmed it.  "The tunnel must have a leak up ahead."
     Abby's hardhat light penetrated the dark tunnel.  Where they
stood, the circular passage was flattened on the bottom, like a
coin hit by a hammer on the bottom edge.   The goo spreading
along the floor looked deeper ahead.  "It looks like the tunnel
dips down."
     Matt looked behind them, and then ahead again.  "I think
you're right.  The extra mass of the goo that's in the tunnel
makes it heavier than normal, so it's sinking."
     "So that might pull the ventilation pipes below the
surface."
     "If it sinks very much, that's true.  I just hope the tunnel
isn't blocked completely."
     Matt started moving ahead again, more slowly this time.
Abby followed.
     The level of the goo on the tunnel floor gradually grew
higher.  At the same time, the tunnel dipped slightly deeper.
Within a minute, they reached the point where the goo filled the
bottom half of the tunnel, and they had to start crawling on
their hands and knees.  Abby felt her lungs grow colder as they
moved forward and the clearance diminished to not much more than
a half-meter.  She could no longer see past Matt to tell what it
looked like ahead.
     "Stop," Matt said.  "It's getting even tighter ahead."
     Abby stopped, extremely grateful they weren't going any
deeper.  Now that she was no longer moving forward, she was aware
that her body trembled.
     Matt reached for his walkie-talkie and started speaking.
"Rudy, this is Matt."
     A moment of silence was followed by, "I read you.  What is
it?"
     "The tunnel has sprung a leak.  We're maybe a kilometer from
Manhattan.  I'm guessing the breach is around one of the
ventilators; that's what the odds suggest anyway.  I'm hoping
there's still enough clearance for Abby and me to get through it.
If we get stuck, we can try to use our knives to cut to the
surface, but it would be better if you could back us up.  If you
don't hear from us in fifteen minutes, get back here double-time
and help us out, all right?"
     As Matt spoke, Abby's chill began to spread again.  She was
already squeezed far tighter than she ever wanted to be.
Wherever she looked, she saw the image of that trunk lid closing.
She imagined getting stuck right where she was as the goo moved
in ultra-slow motion to fill in the tunnel completely.
     "You got it," Rudy said.  "I can start now if you want."
     "No, I think I can see far enough that the gap begins to get
bigger on the other side of the leak."
     "All right.  Standing by."
     "Thanks."  Matt called back to Abby.  "I'd suggest you hang
your walkie-talkie around your neck, to make sure you can get to
it.  It's going to get a little tighter before we're through."
Matt hesitated.  "Are you going to be okay with this?"
     Abby shut her eyes and forced herself to say, "Sure."  Now
she had a terrifying image of herself stuck in the tunnel, not
totally unable to move, but too traumatized to go forward or
backward.
     "That's good.  Depending on how tight this gets, I may need
you to help pull me back out."
     Abby bit her lip.
     "All right," Matt said.  "Let's go."
     Abby followed Matt as they were reduced to crawling though
the nearly blocked tunnel.  Her head kept hitting the tunnel
roof, and she imagined Matt was already meeting resistance from
both the floor and ceiling.  She closed her eyes and tried
desperately to imagine she was crawling across a desert, sand
below her, and nothing but miles and miles of sky above her.  It
didn't work.  Her breath came in ragged spurts.
     Ahead of her Matt grunted.  "I think we're almost at the
tightest spot.  It does look like a leak from around a ventilator
tube."  He made audible straining noises as he pushed himself
farther into the narrowing fissure.  Abby's heart beat at double
time.  If he was taking this calmly, then she could, too.  She
had to.
     Finally Matt said, "Yeah, here it is.  I'm going to use my
matches to try to seal it as long as we're here."
     Abby could hear him hacking with his knife, no doubt
clearing some of the leaking goo away from the pipe.  She tried
to think about a hot bath or a run through Central Park, but all
she could focus on was one morbid thought.  Even with the leak
sealed, the extra goo in the tunnel might make the tunnel heavy
enough to sink right here.  The more the tunnel floor dropped,
the more the goo could start pulling closer to the center of the
depression, forcing the tunnel to sink even faster, and further
accelerate the process of the goo flowing toward the middle.
     A match flared ahead of Matt.  Light flickered through the
gaps around his body and off the narrow walls for several
seconds.  The match went out, and Matt lit another.  After what
seemed a long span of minutes, he finally said, "All right.  I
think that's got it."
     Matt crawled forward again, his straining noises even
louder.  After moving another half-meter into the gap, he called
back and said, "I think I'm almost through, but I can't quite
make it.  Can you brace yourself and put your hands against my
feet so I can push just a little farther?"
     At first Abby couldn't speak.  "But what if you get stuck?"
     "I'm hoping that won't happen.  And I'm hoping that now the
leak is sealed, if I do get stuck, it'll only be a matter of time
until the goo flows far enough that I can get free.  Just make
sure you don't go so far that you get stuck, too.  One of us has
to have our hands free."
     "You're certain you want to do this?"
     "No," Matt admitted.  "But I've got to.  And I really think
we can make it."
     Abby wanted to scream, but she couldn't.  She was petrified,
her muscles suddenly locked in a terrifying self-imposed rigor
mortis.  The image of Matt stuck ahead of her in the tunnel and
the tunnel closing in behind her as she struggled to get free was
horrifying.
     "Abby!  Abby!"  She finally heard Matt's voice over the
ringing in her ears.  Suddenly she was able to breathe again, and
she took in a gasp large enough to make her feel even bigger in
the confined area.
     She deliberately bit her tongue and the pain cut through the
haze.   She tried to force everything but Matt out of her mind
and did her best to ignore her fears.  She moved forward and felt
Matt's shoes.  "Okay," she said a moment later, her voice shaky.
     Matt's shoes pressed into her hands, hard, harder.  She
tried not to think about dying.  And finally the pressure went
away.
     "I think that did it!" Matt shouted.
     Abby craned her head and saw Matt's feet move ahead another
half-meter.
     "I'm through the worst of it.  Come on ahead!"
     Abby didn't need that request repeated.  She scuttled
forward, having to pull in her elbows to clear the worst of it,
wondering how tight Matt had felt.
     She crawled forward, her arms outstretched, pulling herself
along by sticking her knife in the goo, and pushing herself
forward, sometimes with the tips of her shoes on the tunnel
floor, sometimes with her heels against the ceiling.  She was
smaller than Matt; surely she would be able to get through a
space he had managed.
     The ceiling was low enough that she was sure she was forming
grooves as she pulled herself along.  The roof and floor felt
like the jaws of a vice, and for an instant she was completely
unable to speak, unable even to draw air into her lungs.  Oh,
God, please no, don't do this.  Please let her breathe again.
     With her eyes squeezed closed in fear, she tugged herself
forward, trying to breathe, but afraid that if she filled her
lungs she'd be stuck here forever in a sweltering, dark coffin.
She started to cry, but controlled herself as soon as she had
sobbed only once.  Her body was hot, far too hot.  No air could
circulate around her.  She gritted her teeth and made herself
keep moving forward.
     She traveled a meter and then another.  Thank God.  He was
right.  The tunnel was getting slightly wider again.  Suddenly
she moved even faster, afraid there might somehow be two leaks
and that somewhere ahead the tunnel would begin to narrow again,
and they'd never be able to back out all the way though that
closing gap.
     The tunnel grew wider and taller until before she realized
it the passage was a half-circle, the leaked goo blocking only
the bottom half of the tunnel, and the top half was totally
clear.  She kept following Matt, willing her heart to slow down.
When finally the tunnel was two-thirds clear, giving them almost
enough room to stand up and run, her hardhat light revealed a
perfectly round tunnel ahead in the distance.
     Matt stopped.  Abby stopped right behind him and put her
head down so he couldn't see her face.  Her body shook for a long
moment, and finally she felt herself getting back in control.
     When she looked up, Matt was sitting cross-legged, his back
to the tunnel wall, breathing deeply, his hands over his face.
He put his hands down and looked at her.  "Are you all right?" he
asked softly.
     "Yeah," Abby said.
     His voice shuddered.  "I haven't been that scared in a long
time.  Damn!"
     Abby moved closer and sat beside him.  "I thought it was
just me."
     "No, it wasn't just you."  Matt's breathing finally started
to relax.  He picked up his walkie-talkie and pressed the talk
switch.  "We're through, Rudy."
     Rudy acknowledged, and Matt leaned his head back against the
tunnel wall.
     Abby said, "I figured you never got scared."
     "I probably get scared every day of my life.  That's just a
little worse than normal."
     "What do you get scared of?"
     "Lot of things.  Growing old alone.  Making the wrong
decision."
     "I didn't know you were scared until we got here."
     Matt looked at her now.  He seemed to be feeling much
better.  A glimmer of his smile had returned.  "I'm the
designated leader.  I've got some responsibilities."
     Abby nodded.  "Well, I was scared, too.  Scared--I was
terrified.  I just knew I was going to die back there."
     Matt nodded, then reached one arm around Abby's shoulder.
She leaned toward him and for the first time was aware that she
was trembling.  Gradually she relaxed.
     They sat there fifteen or twenty seconds before Matt
squeezed her shoulder.  "We've got to get back.  Are you okay
now?"
     "Are you?" she asked.
     "Yeah.  I think so."
     "Then let's go."
     They duck-walked for a few meters until the floor was low
enough to allow running again.  Matt in the lead, Abby following,
they ran.  The rhythm of air filling then leaving Abby's lungs
moved into a familiar pattern, and within a minute or two she
realized that she felt very good.  Good to be alive.  Good to be
running.  Good to be with Matt.
                                 #
     Seeing the airlock door in the distance filled Matt with
relief.  "We're almost there," he called to Abby, who ran behind
him.
     "Thank God."
     Matt was tired of the lean-forward gait, but he still wasn't
as tired as he would have been if he'd just run several
kilometers in Earth gravity.  He slowed down, and by the time he
neared the chamber housing the airlock doors he was walking.
     The first airlock door frame was jammed to fit into the gap
defined by the chamber walls and ceiling.  It held a half-width
sliding door that could be opened from either side regardless of
the relative pressures.
     Cautious since communications had been cut off so abruptly,
Matt unlocked the door and slid it open just a millimeter.  Air
whistled through the gap for a few seconds, then slowed.  Matt
slid the door all the way open.
     Matt and Abby stepped into the airlock, and Matt slid the
door closed and locked it.  Matt unlocked the inner door and slid
it open just a crack.  Air whistled in.
     "That's funny," Matt said, worried.
     "What is?"
     "When I opened the outer door, air was forced out.  I
assumed that meant the space between the doors was at Manhattan
pressure.  So when the inner door to Manhattan opened, there
shouldn't have been any change.  But the air on the far side of
the door is at a higher pressure."
     Matt put a hand near the gap and felt the air blowing in.  A
moment later his ears popped.  Finally the inrush of air slowed
and stopped.  Matt looked at Abby, then opened the door all the
way.
     They stepped through the opening.  Lights on the other side
were still on.  They walked a few steps to the end of the chamber
and stopped at the opening to the tunnel leading downward to
where it joined the barrier outside the Battery Tunnel.
     The tunnel didn't look right.  The string of lights led
downward just the way they had the last time Matt had seen them,
but now just this side of where Matt had expected to see the
opening to the Battery Tunnel, a dark barrier cut across the
tunnel.
     "What's going on?" Abby asked.
     "I don't know.  Let's take a look."
     Matt and Abby walked down the tunnel, stepping from one
plastic beam to the next.  They were almost to the dark barrier
before Matt realized what it was.
     "It's water," he said.  "The tunnel is flooded."
     "You're right.  God, I wonder what happened."
     They came even closer and a discoloration on the surface
finally became clear.
     "It's a body," Matt said.
     He moved closer.  Floating face down in the dark liquid was
a uniformed body, probably the guard who'd been in this tunnel
when it flooded, the man who'd been talking with him at the time.
Matt stepped on the lowest dry beam and braced himself against
the wall.  With his free hand he was able to grab the victim's
belt.
     He pulled the body from the water, and Abby helped drag the
victim up the tunnel until the man's feet cleared the water by a
meter.  They let the body down gently on its back.  The man's
forehead showed a vicious bruise, but the water had washed away
the lost blood.
     "I'm afraid there's nothing we can do for this guy," Matt
said.
     One glance at the wrinkled face told Matt the time for
artificial respiration was long past.  The man had probably
drowned about the same time they lost communications with him.
     Abby took several deep breaths and finally said, "Well, we
know why this man quit talking to us.  But what happened?"
     "You got me.  Maybe our captors found out about our tunnel.
Maybe one hell of an accident."
     "I guess I'd prefer an accident."
     "Me, too."  Matt lay down on the sloping tunnel floor, his
head near the water level.  Submerged lights still shone dimly in
the water.  A moment later, Matt said, "The level's going down."
     Abby knelt next to Matt.  "Any idea how fast?"
     Matt watched a little longer.  "It looks like about
centimeter every five seconds."   He stood up and thought.  "I'd
guess a couple of hours."
     "Maybe we're low enough and near enough that our
walkie-talkies will reach inside."
     "Good thinking."  Matt took his unit from his belt.  "Rover
calling Manhattan.  Do you read?"
     After a few seconds the reply came.  "This is Manhattan.
Are you all right?  What happened with the aliens?"
     "We're all fine, but the guard you left in the tunnel up to
the airlock is dead."  Matt decided to say nothing about what
they had learned until he saw the mayor.
     "God, that makes four.  Some crazies flooded the Battery
Tunnel.  Some of the water is draining naturally through the
drains that still work.  We're also pumping it out as fast as we
can."
     "How soon do you expect we can get through?" Matt asked.
     "A few hours from now."
     "We have to schedule an emergency session with the mayor to
start just as soon as we get out of here."
     "No can do.  She's announced that she's going on the air to
talk about this at 8 P.M."
     "Patch me through to her.  It's important."
     "More important than this?  Guaranteed?"
     "Guaranteed."
     Several minutes passed but finally Matt heard Dorine
Underwood's voice on his walkie-talkie.  "This is the mayor."
     "This is Matt Sheehan.  It's vital that we talk."
                                 #
     The mayor's conference room in City Hall was packed with
almost every senior surviving member of city government.  At the
perimeter of the room were numerous journalists, including Julie
Kravine.
     From where Julie watched, she could see Matt Sheehan, Abby
Tersa, and Dorine Underwood engaged in a private conversation.
As soon as they finished, Dorine made her way through the crowd
toward Julie.
     "Miss Kravine?" Dorine said.
     "Yes, Ms. Mayor."
     "The ground rules have changed.  Live coverage of this
meeting is no longer possible.  I'll make a statement at the
conclusion, but I don't want the meeting itself on the air.  I
anticipate some strong arguments, and I think at this point it's
better to wait until we can show everyone a united front.  You're
probably as aware as I am that just in the last day we've had as
many suicides and new admissions to mental clinics as we had in
that first day.  People already have enough stress.  Waiting an
hour on this meeting will add to it, but not as much as getting a
direct connection to what I expect will go on in here.  Is that
clear and can you and the others abide by those terms?"
     Julie hesitated.  She knew a "no" would mean expulsion.
"Well, I'm not real happy about it, but if that's the way it's
got to be, I'll pass the word."
     "Thank you.  I think you'll understand soon enough."  Dorine
looked tired as she turned and went back to take her seat.  Julie
wondered what was going on.
     A minute later Dorine rapped her gavel on the table top.  In
seconds the room was quiet.  Dorine and Matt and Abby and another
eight people sat at the rectangular table, and several front rows
of seats were filled to capacity with senior members of city
government.
     Dorine looked out at the audience and said, "This emergency
meeting is now in session.  We have some big decisions to make
tonight, and some of what you're going to hear is no doubt going
to be disturbing.  I ask you to remain as quiet as possible
unless you have the floor.
     "The exploratory team has encountered new information about
our situation.  If the information is to be believed, we may have
no choice but to act on it.  We're here tonight to evaluate this
information, and then to make decisions.  This information will
be presented by Matt Sheehan, Colonel, U.S.  Army.  I've reviewed
his military record and suffice it to say that he has a
reputation for honesty and effective action.  Colonel Sheehan."
     Matt scanned faces in the crowd briefly.  Julie knew her own
team was recording, even though they didn't have permission to
transmit yet.
     Matt said, "What I'm going to tell you is going to be
difficult to accept at first.  I'm going to give you the bottom
line in just a minute, and then I'm going to backtrack and show
you the evidence we have to back this up.  You'll have a chance
to ask questions when I've finished.  In the meantime, I ask you
to try as hard as possible to remain quiet so I can finish.  Time
is critical.
     "We have very strong evidence about the aliens who brought
Manhattan here.  We think their actions fit a pattern.  The real
bottom line is that shortly after they snatch a city, they
exterminate the population remaining on the planet.  Therefore,
the entire population of Earth is either already beyond help, or
they need our help very much right now.  I have recommended to
the mayor that we embark immediately on a mission to find a way
to disable this ship to the extent that it cannot be used to
destroy what remains of the human race."
     Julie sagged against the wall behind her and shivered.  Her
ears rang in the stunned silence.
     The silence lasted only a couple of seconds before the
yelling started.  Dorine rapped her gavel on the table several
times, and the noise abated.
     Matt continued.  "The evidence for the conclusions I just
mentioned come from two sources.  One is subjective, and requires
us to take the word of another captive alien race.  The other is
more objective, although still open to interpretation, and comes
from the transmission we received from a different captive city."
     Matt first explained about Abby's communications with the
telepathic, tree-dwelling race, who claimed to hear the dying
screams of the rest of their race.  Then he turned on a video
unit connected to a large wall screen behind the table.  He
played the recording Julie had seen earlier, but this time when
it reached the section where the city was about to disappear into
the ship and the lightning showed over the horizon, Julie knew
that couldn't just be lightning from some enormous storm.
     Now the room was nearly silent, except for the sounds of two
or three people sobbing.
     "There you have the evidence for what I've told you tonight.
In addition to that we have evidence in this same recording that
thousands of people died as their city was cut loose.  And added
to that, we know that when Manhattan was captured, many people
died in the process.  I believe this undeniable disregard for
life is fully consistent with the belief that whoever was left on
the planet would not live much longer anyway."
     Julie had felt horror as Matt talked.  Now she felt the
beginnings of anger, anger that their captors had come so far to
so callously kill so many people they'd never even had contact
with.
     "So, what are we going to do about this?" Matt asked.  "That
has to be the next question.  And my answer is this: as soon as
possible, I, or anyone you appoint, will take a team and leave
Manhattan.  We will be equipped with the most powerful explosives
and weapons we can find.  Our goal will be to, as fast as
possible, break out of the area these cities are imprisoned in,
locate the propulsion system, and damage it to the extent that
this ship cannot be used to destroy the Earth."
     Dorine had to use her gavel again to quiet the sudden
outbursts.
     "Why the propulsion system?  Why not power or something
else?" asked Dorine.
     "For one thing we figure the propulsion system will be
easier to identify than other subsystems.  If we keep the ship
from being able to move, we're hoping that would buy us enough
time to be more selective in what we damage.  If, for instance,
we tried to destroy the power plant, whatever and wherever that
is, we might harm ourselves, too."
     Another flurry of questions made hearing impossible.
     When calm was restored, Matt said, "That's all I had to say.
How about if we deal with questions, but one at a time?"
     Dorine controlled the question process.  A man in the back
said, "What if we're too late?  What if--if the Earth has already
been destroyed?"
     Matt said, "Then all we can do is prevent this ship from
harming other planets, other civilizations."
     A woman asked, "But what if you accidentally destroy the
ship, or if you destroy the life-support systems that Manhattan
is dependent upon now?"
     Matt hesitated.  "Very good question.  For Manhattan that's
the worst-case scenario, but it's one that we have to
acknowledge.  When it comes right down to it, for every single
person in Manhattan there are, what, two to three thousand people
on Earth.  If you had to choose between a couple of million
people here in Manhattan, and five or six billion people and the
Earth itself, which would you choose?"
     It took Dorine almost a minute to get the group under
control again.
     "But maybe we're guessing wrong," a man said.  "Maybe they
only do that to some of the planets."
     Matt said, "Perhaps.  But we have evidence for a sample of
two, and so far the evidence suggests 100 percent."
     "Isn't it possible that our captors will find the team
before it does any damage and decide to destroy Manhattan because
we're dangerous?"
     "Yes," Matt said.
     "What do you think the odds of success are?" a woman asked.
     "I honestly don't know," Matt said.  "I think I know what
the odds are for Earth if we do nothing."
     "What makes you think there isn't another ship that actually
does the damage?  Maybe this is just one ship in a small fleet."
     "If this isn't the only ship, then perhaps there's no hope.
If it is the only ship, and it certainly seems large enough to be
the only one, then we can only hope that doing significant damage
here will delay their plans and give us more opportunity to stop
the slaughter."
     "How big a team should we send?" asked a woman in the back.
     That question brought the biggest argument.  Matt
recommended one small team, partly to minimize the risk of being
detected, partly because they had only one borer and the oxygen
supply coming into the tunnel was limited.  People on opposite
poles of the argument wanted either several large teams sent, or
no one sent.  Dorine sided with Matt, partly because of trust in
his judgment, partly because of the obvious limitations.  As a
further compromise, another two borers would be built, and a
large armed troop would be readied.  A member of the press would
accompany the team, to let people on both extremes of the
argument get unbiased reports on what was happening.
     As the heat finally began to diminish, a man in the front
row asked, "Mayor, do you really think we should do this?"
     Dorine took her time as a few tremors in the crowd died
down.  "I think, that unless someone comes up with a brilliant
idea in the next ten minutes, yes, we should.  We should equip
this team with what they need.  And then, in whatever manner is
appropriate for our various religions, we all should pray."

                            Chapter 9
                        Mechanical Failure

     On the way back out to Rudy and Bobby Joe and the borer,
Abby rode on the back of a new cart.  This one made her nervous,
because it was completely filled with plastic explosives, timers,
detonators, and the other paraphernalia gathered overnight by a
new member of the team.
     Richard Welkon, an ex-army demolitions expert, sat beside
her.  The man made Abby almost as nervous as the explosives did,
mostly because he was so quiet.  Abby hadn't yet seen him joke or
smile, not that now was the best time for joking and smiling, but
an occasional release of the nervous tension she felt was
probably a good thing.  Richard seemed like a bomb himself,
silently ticking.
     A small trailer behind the cart carried a supply of weapons,
ammunition, and explosives.  Abby hadn't seen that big a cache
since a newscast had documented the fall of a teen gang in the
upper west side.  In fact, she wouldn't have been surprised if
some of the boxes of explosives had orange spray-painted logos
saying, "Property of the Tail Gunners."
     Matt drove the cart through the tunnel, covering ground
almost as fast as he and Abby had moved when they were running
the opposite direction.  Beside Matt sat Julie Kravine, her
minivid apparently active even though one kilometer of tunnel was
much like another.  Julie had argued successfully that if they
were possibly going to destroy a significant amount of technology
currently unknown to the human race, the least they could do was
save images of it.  In addition to that, having six on the team
instead of four allowed a greater chance that some of the team
could sleep while the others worked, without getting the team so
large that its size caused oxygen-supply problems.  The networks
had hastily proposed a list of journalist candidates, and Matt
had picked Julie because she was a known quantity who would
require no learning curve.
     They had already passed the area that had caused Abby and
Matt so much grief on the last trip.  Matt's efforts had indeed
stopped the leak, and the goo had flowed enough that they were
able to drive over most of it, having to shovel only the few
meters nearest the ventilation tube.
     Abby felt herself pushed gently sideways as the cart started
a turn, and seconds later they passed a sealed opening in the
tunnel wall.  She pointed at it as it vanished in the darkness
that kept pace with them behind the trailer.  "That's the opening
to the dead city we explored earlier."
     Richard nodded and said, "Mmm."
     Abby wasn't sure why she had bothered.
     When they curved past the sealed entrance to the tree
dwellers' city, Abby didn't say anything.
     They caught up with Rudy and Bobby Joe just as Rudy was
directing the borer in an arc that took the tunnel right past
another domed city.  As long as they were limited by the speed of
the borer, Matt wanted to take a quick look at the city.  Rudy
and Richard continued ahead, and Abby felt measurably better as
soon as Richard was out of sight.
     Matt drilled a hole to the surface, but before he put in the
ventilator tube, he pushed the periscope up through the hole.
     As Matt took a look through the periscope, Bobby Joe jerked
his thumb in the direction of Richard and the cart and said to
Abby, "That's a great idea, bringing a robot.  Food will last us
that much longer."
     Abby smiled, feeling better that she wasn't the only one
bothered by Richard's icy demeanor.
     Matt stepped away from the periscope, and said, "Who's
next?"
     Julie took a turn.  "These guys have sure done a lot of
decorating."
     When Abby took a turn she understood what Julie had meant.
The bottom two or three meters of the dome were virtually covered
with drawings.  She saw occasional glimpses of motion through
untouched slivers of the dome, but couldn't get any clear view of
what was inside.
     Bobby Joe took his turn, then shook his head.
     Matt looked at Abby.  "Any guess as to what that's all
about?"
     Abby took another look, this time noticing that several of
the patterns were replicated.  In fact, at least half of the
drawings seemed to be duplications.  If the drawings were some
sort of visual history, she wouldn't expect that much
duplication.  She pulled back from the eyepiece and shook her
head.  "I don't really have enough information to make an
intelligent guess, but if I had to make a totally wild guess, I'd
say these people could be trying to communicate with our captors,
or they could be worshiping whoever brought them here."
                                 #
     As soon as the team was safely on its way, Dorine Underwood
held a press conference.  She had resolved to make the broadcast
as unemotional as possible, in hopes of instilling a little calm
in the middle of the new storm of bad news, but she had to pause
during her description of what had happened to the race occupying
the huge square building.  She swallowed hard and went on.
     Despite the risk the team was taking, she felt more
comfortable about explaining their new mission, stressing that it
was vital that they stop the ship from moving to destroy yet
another planet.
     "This was a difficult decision, and I'm asking you to accept
it.  This is a time for courage, a time for all of us to act as
heroes, not a time to crawl into a hole and hope the problem will
go away.  This action has risks.  Inaction has even larger
risks."
     Dorine paused for a drink of water.
     "The final item for now is the Battery Tunnel incident.  I
can understand that our actions outside the dome scare some of
us.  But we will not tolerate further interference and
destruction.  There's a chance that we will be the only survivors
of the human race.  That we are killing each other when we should
be focused on survival is contemptible.  And it will stop."
                                 #
     "We cannot stand by and let the forces of darkness march
over us!" Stuart Lund called out.  His voice felt especially
smooth today, and the growing crowd gave him hope.
     Stuart paused for a breath and looked out over his
"congregation," which nearly filled the open section of the
warehouse.  He saw renewed fear and anger on the faces in the
crowd, the same fear and anger that he felt.  People in authority
were always making bad decisions, so in one sense today was like
every other day.  But it wasn't really.  The mayor's decision to
send out a team with explosives and weapons was simply too much.
Too many lives, too many souls were at risk.
     He resumed his "Make a Difference" speech, exhorting his
followers to do anything in their power to reverse the decision,
to help make the mayor see the wrongness in her plan.  He talked
another ten minutes.  He had enough material to keep going for
another several hours, but he could sense the restlessness in the
congregation.  The people wanted to do something.  They believed,
too, and if he kept talking now, he'd be less and less effective.
So he stopped.  He had little doubt that the tunnel flooding had
been the work of his congregation; they'd certainly find fresh
ways to hamper the new effort.
     "God will know who among us who stand idle and allow this
so-called expedition.  Talk to your friends.  Take a stand.  Make
sure they know you feel this is wrong.  Make a difference."
     The people cheered and clapped, most of them in obvious
agreement.  Something had to be done.  Stuart felt a little
uncomfortable with the lack of decorum, but the immediate
feedback was tremendously encouraging.
     As people filed out, a few stayed to ask questions.  The
next to the last in line was a short but stocky man who
introduced himself as Benny Kellermund.  The man behind Mr.
Kellermund was obviously with him, but he didn't volunteer his
name.  The silent man looked as if he'd been in a number of
fights.  Stuart was suddenly nervous that his preaching was
somehow cutting into someone else's line of work and he was
about to be warned.
     Mr. Kellermund waited until the few people in the
congregation were out of hearing, then said, "Reverend, you're
exactly right."
     Stuart felt surprise and a quick sense of relief.
     "The mayor's got a hair up, er, the mayor is an idiot.
We've got to stop her before this expedition stuff ruins
everything we have here.  Me and my friend, we're on your side."
     The friend nodded when mentioned, but he still didn't speak.
     Mr. Kellermund glanced around.  "Look, can we talk somewhere
a bit more private?"
     Stuart took a look around, too.  A few of the congregation
members lingered near the door.  Under different circumstances,
these two men would have made him uncomfortable, but now they
were on his side, and of the people Stuart had seen today, these
two seemed more likely to get results than most.
     "Upstairs," said Stuart.  "I have a small office on the
second floor."
     The men followed Stuart up the stairs, through a small maze
of construction materials, and into a small office that contained
a cot and a table and a chair.
     "Is this better, Mr. Kellermund?"
     "Much.  But call me Benny."  Benny still didn't introduce
his companion.  "Anyway.  We're on your side.  In fact, we're
responsible for the flooding."
     "No," Stuart said in surprise.  He realized that he'd been
hoping the flood was an act of God, a pipe that suddenly burst of
its own accord, or some other sign that God was clearly on their
side.
     "Yes.  My friend here is very handy with tools."
     "Well, I'm very grateful."  Stuart fell silent, unsure of
what to say.
     "Anyway, I think I can do something to stop the team," Benny
said.  "I think my friend can do something about convincing the
mayor to change her mind."
     At another time the man's intense stare and his dark eyes
might have made Stuart a little nervous, but the team needed to
be stopped, and the mayor had to be convinced, so he didn't feel
the need to question the man further.  "Thank you," he said
finally.  "Whatever assistance you can lend, your help will be
rewarded by God."
                                 #
     "I don't care about any reward from God," said Benny
Kellermund.  "I just don't want to die."  He sat on a
straight-backed chair in his apartment, a modest place in the
Upper West Side.
     Lucky Stiles leaned back in a stuffed chair that almost
swallowed him.  "I don't know.  You'd think the tunnel stuff was
enough."
     Benny thought about Lucky's hesitation.  "You know Stella,
that little blonde who hangs out at Spacey's?  She owes me a
couple of big favors.  I already talked to her about you, and
she's waiting for you tonight."  The currency of the day was
favors, labor exchanges.  This was the only thing he had to offer
that he thought might be enough.
     "Stella?  Yeah, I remember her."
     "Did I ever tell you Stella can tie a knot in a cherry stem
with her tongue?  She knows lots more exciting tricks."
     "And she's waiting for me?"
     "If you'll do this.  It's what you want, too.  You don't
want Manhattan squashed because we're doing things we shouldn't
be doing."
     Lucky said, "Well, I can probably convince the mayor of the
error of her ways."  He laughed, a smoker's laugh that turned to
a cough.
                                 #
     Rudy raised the periscope near another dome, this one
containing what looked like a large grassy hill rather than a
fabricated city.
     The large hill reminded Matt of a wasp's nest, constructed
by sticking on little sections one after another.  Here and there
on the hillside were cave openings.  Near several of the caves,
small creatures frolicked in the grass.  They were mostly green,
and apparently had hard shells, like armadillo hide, covering
much of their torsos.  Matt couldn't tell if they could retract
the limbs or head.  Matt found himself grinning as he watched the
little creatures rough-house with one another, like cats at play.
     "Those little guys sure are cute," he said finally,
relinquishing the view to Julie, who agreed with him.
     When it was Abby's turn, she watched for several minutes
before she said, "Is it my imagination, or do those creatures
stay in almost the same place all the time?"
     Matt took another look.  After a couple of minutes he had to
agree.  "You're right.  I wonder why that would be.  Maybe
they're extremely territorial?"
     Bobby Joe took another look, and then Julie took a second
turn.  She held her minivid optics up to the periscope.  Shortly
she said, "I see the reason.  They're on leashes."
     When Matt got a chance to look through Julie's viewfinder,
he could see clearly with the magnified view.  Attached to the
rear legs of the small creatures were clear straps, short enough
that they couldn't get tangled up, and long enough that the
creatures could get to each other.
     Bobby Joe said, "It's like letting your dog outside and
making sure it doesn't go too far.  Maybe they're pets, or maybe
that's just they way they do playpens."
     Matt trained the lens on the cave opening nearest the
frolicking group of creatures.  The hair on the back of his neck
stood up as the lens revealed glimpses of two or three huge
creatures hiding inside the cave.  About the only thing Matt
could see clearly were wide rows of teeth.  Something moved at
the edge of his field of view.  Two fast-moving yellow-green
creatures were approaching the small, tethered creatures.  The
following seconds were full of activity.
     The yellow-green creatures moved so quickly Matt never did
get a good picture of them, except to see large sharp talons as
one of the creatures cut loose one of the tethered youngsters.
At almost the same time, large versions of the youngsters erupted
from the nearby cave.  When the fight was over, one of the
invaders had fled with his catch, and the other invader was dead.
     Matt sucked in his breath.   "It looks to me, like those
little guys out there are bait."
     Abby looked through the lens next, and Matt told her what he
had seen and which cave to look at.  Seconds later she said, "I
bet you're right.  But this isn't quite the normal version of
using bait, not like, say, humans using worms to catch fish.  I
think those are adults using their own young for bait."
     Matt peered through the periscope after Julie finished
making a short recording.  The semi-dark tunnel felt even more
uncomfortable as he looked through the dome at the glint of wide
rows of teeth in the cave on the hill.  "I wonder why our captors
would have brought this hill.  Everything else we've seen is
fairly clearly a city of some kind."
     Abby spoke up.  "Hard to say.  One possibility is that our
captors are more like these creatures than any other captives.
Maybe their cities look like this from the air."
     Matt scratched his ear.  "Oh, that gives me a chilling
thought.  I can imagine a city that's mostly underground, like an
iceberg at sea.  Depending on how deep these people cut when they
extract a city, they could cut right through the center of a
city, or not even take very much of it."
     "Sounds terrible but possible," Abby said.  "If they left
behind half of the first city we saw, I suppose they could have
even done the equivalent of swooping down on a body and removing
only the heart."
     Bobby Joe stepped forward from the semi-dark in the tunnel.
"But this all makes it sound as if they're dummies.  Or maybe
kids who've just got their first chance to play with their
parents' starship."
     "It is puzzling," Matt said.  "Maybe they're just in a
terrible hurry for some reason."
     Bobby Joe said, "Maybe they have a quota.  Or maybe they're
on a huge scavenger hunt.  Can you just imagine the list?  'One
island city, one hill city, one enormous square building.'"
     Matt shook his head.  "Implausibility aside, I don't know
that that's consistent with destroying the rest of the planet
after they've got a city."
     "Sure it is.  That way the competition has to look even
longer to get the one for their list.  Can you imagine how long
it might take them to get another smoggy island city with
internal combustion engines still in use?"
     "This is nonsense," Julie finally said.  "These guys aren't
gonna go racing around the universe to play games."
     Abby said, "You're probably right.  But an intelligent
species that would go around destroying lives and worlds just so
they can build a bizarre zoo with intelligent captives is hard to
accept, too.  We obviously need to stay open to the possibility
that they don't think like us.  For all we know, what they've
done is perfectly reasonable and kind, from their point of view."
     Matt suddenly jerked away from the periscope.  "Jeez!"
     "What?" Abby said.
     "Something just jumped at the periscope.  I didn't even see
it coming."  Matt had his eye back on the periscope.  "It looks
moist and formless, and it's just oozing down the inside of the
dome."
     The others took turns looking.
     "One more reason for not going in there," Abby said.
     Julie recorded a few seconds for posterity.  "It looks like
it's pulling itself back into shape."
     Matt took one last look.  At first the gooey mess on the
inside of the dome had made it seem that the creature had been
moving so fast it had ruptured against the hard surface, but now
the creature actually seemed to be recovering.  Matt caught
glimpses of tissue that alternately suggested squid suckers and
fur, but he never got a look at the entire creature.  His stomach
felt queasy.  If they had cut an opening in this dome...
     "Come on," Matt said.  "Let's get the ventilator in place
and catch up with Rudy and Richard."
                                 #
     In East Harlem, called Spanish Harlem by some and El Barrio
by far more, Manny Garzon sat on the steps in front of his
apartment building.
     Heavy booming from several car stereos and boom boxes almost
made the morning seem normal, but Manny knew it wasn't a normal
day.
     He wished his family had stayed in Puerto Rico.  Then they'd
be safe.  His mom complained so much that only white people were
Americans, Manny had been surprised to learn that Puerto Rico was
part of America.  He still didn't understand why then they'd had
to move from one part of America to another just to live in a
slightly nicer place.
     He looked up at the dome over the island and said to
himself, "No doubt about it.  We should'a stood at home."
                                 #
     By the time Abby and the others caught up with Rudy and
Richard, the borer had almost reached the city that was
transmitting the video they had all seen.  Rudy curved the path
the borer took so that it went past the dome very closely.
     "Are we going inside this one?" Abby asked Matt.
     "I want to if it looks safe, but it's also a function of how
much time we have to spare."  Matt raised his voice.  "Let's have
a short planning meeting, everyone.  Rudy, let the borer just go
on ahead for now."
     The six of them sat in a line on the tunnel floor, Matt and
Rudy in the center, Abby and the others on the ends.
     "How long will it take the borer to reach the wall we're
heading toward?" Matt asked.
     Rudy tapped a few buttons on his watch.  "I think we've
probably got another twelve to fifteen hours at the rate we're
going.  And there's no way to speed that up."
     "Okay.  That gives us enough time to explore this dome and
at least try to get a clue as to why no one's responding to our
return signal.  The more we can learn, the better, as long as it
doesn't slow us down.  Rudy, you and Richard stay with the borer,
and trade off enough to get whatever sleep you can.  Unless we
see anything that changes my mind when we take a closer look at
the dome, I'd like Abby and Bobby Joe with me.  Julie, you've got
your choice."
     "I'd like to get pictures of the city," she said.
     "That's fine, but especially when we're outside this tunnel,
we have to act like a military unit.  Abby and Bobby Joe can
probably fill you in if the lecture last night wasn't enough."
     Abby smiled ruefully and nodded.
     "Can we ever," said Bobby Joe.
                                 #
     Matt, Abby, Bobby Joe, and Julie moved as quickly as they
could into the alien city.  In the sky on the far side of the
city, a dim reddish "sun" sent out weak light.  The air smelled
of burnt leaves.
     The silhouette of the city was an erratic graph, peaks and
valleys formed by a collection of cone-shaped buildings of
varying sizes and distances from Matt.  One of the taller and
closer cones was topped by a light that varied irregularly in
color and intensity; Rudy had deposited them close to the
building that was still transmitting a signal to the world
outside the city's bubble--a signal that had been answered with
no apparent effect.
     They passed by a couple of cones that were approaching
Matt's height.
     As they reached a few cones that were about five times
Matt's height, the tall tip of a cone near the center of the city
began to pierce the "sun."  Moments later they entered shade.
     One of the nearest cones reached what had to be 100 meters
into the air and had an exterior spiral staircases.  Matt could
still see the cone with the beacon, slightly deeper into the
city, but minutes later they walked through what felt a little
like a mountain valley, with sharply pointed hilltops all around.
     "I still don't see anything that looks like a door," Abby
said.  "Do you think we have to go up those staircases to get
inside these cones?"
     "I was hoping you'd tell us," Matt said.
     The group made another turn, and Matt saw their destination
cone.  They reached the bottom of the spiral stairs and started
up.  The spiral was a gentle rise, looping around the cone six
times as it rose.  Soon they got an aerial view of the
surrounding city and could see domed cities in the direction of
Manhattan.  In the opposite direction was visible the nearest
wall of the chamber enclosing the collection of cities.  Almost
directly opposite Manhattan, a faint vertical line showed at the
junction of two flat surfaces, and Matt remembered a graphic
image Bobby Joe had generated, one showing that from above, the
chamber outline was a huge octagon.
     Two-thirds of the way to the top, Matt suggested a rest
stop.  He looked back toward the hill-city and Manhattan,
imagining he could see the route the tunnel had cut.
     "You and Rudy were in the army together, weren't you?" Julie
said unexpectedly.
     Matt took his gaze away from the route they had traveled and
looked at her.  "Yes.  Mostly in Brazil and Argentina."
     "What's he like?"
     "Like he is now.  He's one of those few people I'd want to
have on my side if I were starting a small company.  Whatever
he's paid, he's worth more."
     "Why'd he get out of the army?"
     Matt hesitated.  "He got into a situation where he either
had to blow the whistle on a respected colonel who had some
unsavory habits involving young boys, or have to live with his
conscience and let it go on."
     "So he got out?"
     "He blew the whistle and then got out.  Rudy was born in
East L.A.  and a lot of his friends were Hispanic, so maybe he
took the colonel's transgressions a little more personally than
some other outsider might have."  Matt looked at the horizon.
"South America is a mess right now.  The internal politics are a
cesspool, and the career potential for whistle blowers isn't very
good.  One of them ran into a bad accident in the jungle."
     "But you stayed in."
     "Yup.  I was angry, too, but sometimes you can do more from
within the system.  A couple of months later, after the charges
had been dismissed for lack of evidence, the colonel got himself
accidentally photographed by surveillance cameras that had been
undergoing testing before being sent out to remote airstrips
suspected of servicing drug runners.  And copies of the film were
accidentally duplicated and sent to several organizations along
with routine test photographs."
     "You're saying you're responsible for those accidents?"
     "Oh, no.  Rudy did most of the work.  I just signed a few
requisition forms, stuff like that.  Rudy told me later that he
and the colonel came back on the same flight.  Rudy was amazed at
how many martinis a person could consume between Rio and New
York."  Matt looked at the view for a moment.  "I told you all of
this in your role of being a friend of Rudy's, not as a reporter.
I assume you understand that."
     "I do.  That's why I was curious."
     "He's a good guy.  He's a little possessive, in the good
sense.  New York is his city now.  This team is partly his
responsibility.  He works hard to make sure that no one hurts
anything that's partly his."
     "What would Rudy say about you?"  This question came from
Abby.
     "About me?  I don't know.  That I'm a bad gambler because I
don't know when to give up, cut my losses.  That I repeat my
mistakes.  That I have a tendency to stop along the way and look
at the view.  That I've been doing it too long now."  Matt
smiled.
     The time it took to walk around the cone grew significantly
shorter as they moved farther up the side.
     Bobby Joe said, "Do you realize how slow the sun is moving?"
     Matt looked down to where the tip of the shadow of the cone
they were climbing hit the ground, and he realized Bobby Joe was
right.  It had hardly moved in the whole time they'd been
climbing.  "These folks must be used to very long days, huh?"
     "Good guess."
     A final quick revolution brought them to the top of the
cone.  Inside a low wall was a meter-wide path that formed a
nearly complete circle, and inside the path was a short cone,
only three meters tall, flattened on top.  Sitting on the flat
top was the transmitter, which here was too bright to look at
directly as it flashed purple then green then crimson.
     Matt made a quick communications check with his new
light-spectrum walkie-talkie, and Manhattan base responded.
     Bobby Joe spotted a cable going from the bottom of the
broadcasting light, down the surface of the cone for several
centimeters, and then vanishing.  By pushing on the right spot, a
section of the cone moved as a doorway formed in its place.
                                 #
     Dorine Underwood found a near riot when she reached the
conference room five minutes before the morning status meeting.
She hadn't heard the crowd so agitated since the abduction of the
city.
     Her throat was dry, not because of anxiety, but, she
suddenly realized, because she had kept taking her allergy
medication after arriving here.  Now that the air contained far
less dust and pollen, she could probably stop.
     She stepped into the meeting room.  The conversation level
dipped for an instant, then rose even higher than before.  She
could guess what the concern was already: second thoughts.
     Several times during the night, Dorine had found herself
awake and worrying about the same thing.  For the past several
days, Manhattan had been functioning smoothly enough that she had
started going back to her home at Gracie Mansion on the Upper
East side at night.  She felt more relaxed in her own bedroom
than she had been sleeping on a cot in City Hall, but back at
Gracie Mansion were more reminders of Rafael.  She said another
quick prayer that he was still alive, because despite her fear
that the team outside could cause the destruction of Manhattan,
she was convinced the evidence was right.  Something terrible was
going to happen to Earth, or it had already happened.
     Dorine took her seat and called the meeting to order.  The
room quieted.  She made no attempt to sidestep the issue.  It
wouldn't go away on its own, and she knew no other issue would
get much real attention until this one had been dealt with.  "All
right.  Who wants to start?"
     First up was Tony Robinson, the council president, a short
man whose eyelashes were so long Dorine sometimes wondered if
they were real.  "Ms. Mayor, you've got to stop Sheehan and his
team.  All they're going to do is get us all killed."
     "I understand that we are all at risk, but are you telling
me you're prepared to let the whole Earth die to save yourself?"
     Tony snorted.  "That's not the issue.  The video from the
aliens in those huge cones showed their planet being destroyed
right after their city was taken.  The Earth is probably already
dead."
     A flurry of murmurs took several seconds to die down.
     "That's only one data point," Dorine said.  "The other one
we have from the tree city says the people on their planet
survived for between three and four weeks.  If Earth is on the
same schedule, we still have somewhere between a few days and
more than a week to make a difference."
     "But there's no way to know the Earth is still alive right
now.  We could be taking this risk for nothing."
     "You'll get no argument from me on that.  But there's also
no way we can tell the Earth isn't alive and healthy.  For the
time being."
     "But.  Ms. Mayor, you've got to--"
     "Just a minute, Mr. Robinson."  Dorine scanned faces in the
room.  "I want to get a sense of the attitude here, by having a
show of hands.  I'm not saying I'm going to reverse my position,
but I do want to see how people's feelings run.  Everyone who
thinks we should continue our efforts to prevent this ship from
harming Earth, please raise your hands."  Several hands rose, and
Dorine counted them.  "All right, everyone who thinks we should
stop and play safe, raise your hands."  She counted fewer hands.
"Undecided?"
     "All right," she said.  "By my count, we've got about sixty
percent in favor of continuing, twenty percent who think we
should stop, and twenty percent who just don't know.  Out there,
where people don't have as informed an access to the facts, TV
polls report thirty percent think we should stop, but I don't
think that should prevent us from doing the right thing."
     Dorine took a breath and looked closely at faces of the
people she could normally count on for unequivocal support.  On
two of the five faces she saw traces of doubt.  "Of the people in
this room, only a couple have had the bravery and the
unselfishness to be willing to serve as police officers.  I can't
imagine a lot of things scarier than walking into a dark
warehouse where there's some reason to believe the shadows hold
danger, danger that could take your life in the next five
minutes.  For a short time, we've all suddenly been called on to
show that courage, and I'll be the first to admit I'm scared.
I'm scared bad.  But we've got to do this.  We can't just turn
our backs and let someone else do it.  There is no one else.  If
we can all be brave for a short time, maybe we'll find out
there's still time for us to make a difference, maybe not.  Maybe
we'll find out the Earth has already been destroyed, but at least
we'll know we tried to help them.  And if we're too late, we can
bide our time and wait for a better opportunity to do something
about our situation.  No matter what, I promise you no one is
going to do anything that will put us at risk without a damn good
reason."
                                 #
     Lucky Stiles felt hot in the cool apartment, his body
slippery with sweat.  This was the part he hated the most.
     Seeing the news story after the fact, watching the horrified
expressions on the faces of the people who had been close but not
too close was the best.  He folded a section of paper into place
with fingertips covered by latex gloves.  He didn't bother with
any safety equipment like goggles, though.  If he made a mistake,
he'd be beyond the reach of cosmetic surgery.  Maybe the boys in
white coats would be able to scrape some of his cells off the
refrigerator door and clone him, but Lucky wouldn't be around to
lie down personally on some operating table.
     He was glad his upstairs neighbors had been out of town when
Manhattan moved.  Ever since then, he had no longer heard the
bass throbbing through the ceiling, and right now he was
especially glad not to have the irritation.  Lucky's fingers
trembled ever so slightly as he wrapped the last flap of paper
into place and slipped the packet carefully into the
pre-addressed envelope.
     He took a deep breath.  At the sink he sprinkled water on
the flap glue and sealed the envelope shut.  A drop of sweat fell
off his forehead.
     He could sure use a beer right now.  This certainly
qualified as a special occasion.  In the refrigerator were his
two last cans of Coors, bought by a buddy on a recent vacation.
Lucky was convinced that the beer canned in Colorado tasted
better than the stuff in the local stores.  When Lucky finished
the can, he went down to the street and dropped the envelope in a
nearby mailbox.  The envelope looked funny without a stamp, but
the mayor herself had announced that mail without stamps would be
delivered.
     That served her right.  What happened next would be her own
fault.
                                 #
     Matt was relieved to see no sight of a threat on the other
side of the door.
     Inside, above eye level, Matt could see straight through the
wall on the far side of the cone.  They followed the cable into
the interior, down the internal stairs, which curved in a
corkscrew arc.  Above them, virtually the entire cap of the cone
was transparent, including the floor they had first stood on.
     As soon as they passed the floor they'd been on, he could
see an even greater distance down into the cone than they'd been
able to see before.  The other stairways and the one they were on
wound downward in long graceful spirals that eventually stopped
at another circular floor perhaps a hundred meters below.  At two
or three points on each stairway were boxes the size of a small
room suspended in the air, as though glued to the side of the
stairway.
     The group descended, following the cable, until they reached
a room containing a small pedestal supporting a black cube and a
black cone, both about as tall as a coffee cup.  On one side of
the cone was a moving image, the same image they had received in
Manhattan.
     Bobby Joe picked up the cone displaying the picture.  As he
twisted the cone, Matt realized the back of the cone was also
displaying an image.  Bobby Joe rotated the cone until the other
image was clearly visible.  "Well, looky looky."
     The picture was the video Julie had put together, showing
Manhattan's experience.
     "So they are receiving us," Matt said.  "And that doesn't
just mean that our signal is getting through; it means they
wanted to be able to receive.  So where are they?  And why
haven't they replied?"
     No one had an answer.
     They descended, exploring the small rooms, and ten minutes
later they found a room that was occupied.  In a clear,
coffin-shaped box lay an alien body that looked like the ones in
the transmission.  The body was humanoid, a Cyclops.  The single
eyelid was closed.  The alien's skin was brown and leathery, with
the worst case of varicose veins Matt had ever seen.  Thin black
lips surrounded a small mouth, and pig-like snout showed one
nostril.  Flat against its chest was something that looked like a
hastily performed skin graft with tendrils reaching into the
larger creature's chest.  No one had the slightest idea whether
it was a pet, a symbiont, medical implant, or something else
entirely.
                                 #
     Stuart Lund surveyed his congregation in silence.  He was
ambivalent about the latest news.  On the one hand, the idea that
the people who had ventured outside the dome could bring down
God's wrath terrified him.  On the other hand, since the latest
news of the trek was made public, new arrivals had been
accumulating faster than Stuart's helpers could count.  Obviously
the dome contained a large number of people who were
uncomfortable with the idea of sending out people to damage the
structure holding Manhattan and those other cities.
     Stuart knew that the team had absolutely no possibility of
success, but the sooner he could organize something that would
stop the effort, the lower the risk of retaliation.  Flooding the
Battery Tunnel had been a good idea, but the police had been able
to drain it too quickly.  There had to be something else they
could do.  Something that would stop the craziness outside and
bring everyone back inside.
     The moment of silence had stretched long enough, so Stuart
opened his eyes and said, "Please be seated."
     The congregation filled the warehouse floor.  People way in
the back were too far away for Stuart to make out distinct faces,
but Stuart knew his words reached that far.  Congregation members
had collected an adequate supply of public address system
components, and wires ran in six directions from the pulpit.  The
only concession to having mixed and matched several PA systems
was that no one had found a cable that let one microphone drive
an array of amplifiers, so Stuart spoke into a collection of
microphones that made him feel he was giving a press conference
for the entire known world.
     A wave ran through the congregation from front to back as
almost two thousand people settled into their chairs, the ones in
front moving first, and row after row following.  For just an
instant, Stuart saw an image of water parting before him.
     "I'd like to welcome anyone new to us this morning," Stuart
said when the rustling quieted down.  "I don't think it's news to
anyone here that we are in the middle of the greatest test we've
ever faced.  God is undoubtedly watching us closely, measuring,
judging, testing.  And I think we need to make sure we get a good
report card."
     Within fifteen minutes, Stuart had his followers hoarse from
screaming.

                            Chapter 10
                           On the Loose

     Matt backed away from the unmoving alien and rapped his
knuckles on the wall.
     The alien didn't react.  The single gray eyelid remained
closed.  The other three came closer until they surrounded the
body.
     Matt slowly reached out and prodded one arm, then touched a
hand.  "I don't know about heavy sleepers, but I'm remembering
the 'sun' that hardly moves.  Maybe their days and nights are
extremely long, like weeks or months for us.  Maybe this is the
middle of the night, and maybe during the night they hibernate."
     Abby looked at Matt.  "That makes a whole lot of sense.
They could have started their transmitter a long time ago.  If we
had responded during the 'day' they would have replied.  But now
they'll sleep until 'morning.'"
     Matt touched the alien's wrist.  "I can't feel a pulse, but
that doesn't tell me anything, I guess."  He put a hand on the
alien's neck.  After a moment he said, "I can feel something.
It's more like a slow vibration than a heartbeat, but I think
this--person--is alive."
     Abby reached forward and put her hand on the alien's neck,
also.  "I think you're right.  I can feel it, too."  Abby put a
hand on the coffin-like enclosure.  "And I can't feel anything
here, so I don't think it's vibration from somewhere else."
     Matt said, "Let's get out of here.  I think we've learned
enough here for now, and besides, we've got more pressing
business.  The borer should be getting closer to the outside
wall."
     They walked back through the valley between cones, and Matt
suddenly felt envious of people who could sleep a long time.  He
looked back at the "sun."  "It's been about four hours since we
were here.  How far do you think the 'sun' has moved?"
     Bobby Joe moved a couple of steps sideways, then tapped a
few buttons on his watch.  "This is just a really crude estimate,
because I didn't get any good reference before, but it looks to
me as if it's only moved two or three degrees.  If that's true.
that would make their night" --he pushed some more keys--
"somewhere between twenty and thirty of our days."
     "No wonder we didn't get a reply yet," Abby said.
     Back in the tunnel, Matt called Manhattan base with his RF
walkie-talkie and told them why their return transmission hadn't
been acknowledged.
     Matt switched channels.  "Rudy, this is Matt."
     "Go ahead," said Rudy's voice a moment later.
     "We're out and we're safe.  We should be able to catch up
with you in an hour or so."
     "No need to hurry.  The borer just broke down."
                                 #
     Abby easily kept up with Matt as their long, slow leaning-
forward strides carried them through the tunnel just ahead of
Julie and Bobby Joe.  Besides Abby's talent for running, being
several centimeters shorter than Matt helped her get slightly
longer strides without coming too close to the tunnel ceiling.
Her hardhat light bounced back and forth with the motion of her
body.
     She was still breathing comfortably ten minutes later when
they caught up with Rudy and Richard.  They slowed to a halt and
for a moment the only sounds were a mechanical tap tap tap from
ahead and Bobby Joe's gasping for air from somewhere behind.  For
being a basically healthy person, Bobby Joe was in the worst
shape of anyone Abby knew.
     Rudy lay on his back, his hands busy twisting something on
the end of a socket wrench.  Richard sat on the cart.  Abby
nodded to him and he nodded back.
     "What's up?" Matt asked.
     "What's down is more like it," Rudy said.  "The tread on the
right side vibrates enough when it moves that it wore through a
bracket supporting some control lines.  I think I caught it
before it did much damage.  I should be ready to give it another
try in ten or fifteen minutes."
     "Great.  You need anything?"
     "I'm fine.  Maybe you should put in another ventilation hole
and take a peek.  According to the inertial navigation unit,
we're getting pretty close."
     "Will do."
     As Matt moved back to do that, Julie came forward, followed
by Bobby Joe.  Bobby Joe's breath still came in audible drags.
     "How're you doing?" Julie said.
     "Good," Rudy said.  "I think we're almost back in business.
How was the tour?"
     "Stranger than Macy's in late December.  But interesting.
Fascinating.  Apparently everyone's asleep."  Julie started to
describe what they'd seen.
     Abby started back toward Matt and moved past Bobby Joe, who
was still panting.  She said, "This trip is probably the best
thing that could have happened to you.  I think it's good for you
to get out and get some exercise."
     Abby reached Matt as he started drilling a hole in the
tunnel roof.  Minutes later she was looking through the
periscope.  They were indeed near the edge of the huge enclosure
that housed all the domes.  The enclosure wall seemed no farther
away than a few hundred meters.  The vertical line where two wall
surfaces met now resolved into two parallel lines.
     "What do you think those lines in the corner are?" she
asked.
     Matt took another look.  "Maybe the sides of an elevator
shaft."
     "One that would stop on this level?"
     "No idea.  It probably wouldn't be a good idea for us to try
it even if it did stop here.  I can imagine some warning bell
ringing on the bridge if we did."
     "So you're thinking we'll cut through the wall?"
     "That's the first thing to try.  I expect the wall to be
strong, but I don't know that it needs to be any stronger than
the one we already came through."
     "And if we can't get through?" Abby said.
     "Then we'll try the next thing and the next thing and the
next thing."
     "You sound like nothing can stop us.  Why are you so
optimistic?"
     Matt took his gaze away from the periscope and looked at
Abby.  His hardhat light was angled high enough up that his eyes
were visible.  "I haven't run nearly as much as you have, or run
with your class of athlete, but I'd be willing to bet that back
in your racing days, once in a while you found yourself halfway
through a race, and you felt like dying.  You felt that at any
second you'd pass out, or you'd have to stop and throw up.  Ever
feel like that?"
     "Yes, a few times."
     "But you kept going, didn't you?"
     "Yes."
     "And, for those races, what were the smallest stakes?"
     Abby thought back.  "I guess the most trivial was the time I
was running against three of the fastest boys in high school.  I
wasn't actually competing with them in the strict sense, because
they separated boys and girls for actual competition.  But one of
the boys had teased me about being slow."
     "So you felt like dying but you kept running, whether you
won or lost, and the only thing you stood to lose was your pride.
Is that an accurate description?"
     "Actually I did win," Abby said with satisfaction.
     Matt smiled.  "I think you also answered your own question.
If you did that much for ego, how hard would you fight when the
stakes were survival--and certain death for the entire world?"
     Abby was silent for several seconds and then she smiled.
"You're saying the people who brought us here picked on the wrong
folks?"
     "Yeah, I'd say that.  What do you think?"
     "I think you're right.  If I weren't so angry, I'd almost
feel sorry for them."
     "Now you're talking."  Matt pulled out the periscope and
inserted an air hose and pump.
     Abby hesitated.  "But we aren't really invincible."
     "That's a fact.  But we're not going to give up easily."
     "You know," Abby said, "your wife is a very lucky woman."
     "I don't know about that," Matt said, but the words were
muffled because Abby suddenly turned and started walking back
toward the others.
     How could she be so stupid to say something like that?
Matt's wife was probably already dead, dead with everyone else on
Earth, and Abby had to go and say she was lucky.  Her brain was
mush.  And then she realized she had just walked away from Matt
while they'd been in the middle of a conversation.  What excuse
could she offer?  She could think of nothing that wouldn't make
her sound brainless.  And she couldn't just go back right now,
because she had no idea what she should say.  She hadn't felt
this flustered in a long time.  She felt like a dumb teenager all
over again as a flush warmed her face.
     Abby moved past the trailer and found Julie, Bobby Joe, and
Richard still watching Rudy.  For an instant she expected they
would all turn and stare at her for acting so stupid with Matt,
but of course they didn't.  They hadn't been anywhere close.
     "I think that's got it," Rudy said.  He collected several
tools, then deposited them in the trailer.
     At about the same time, Matt got back.
     "I think we're back in business," Rudy said before anyone
else said a word.  "I'm going to give it a try in a couple of
minutes."
     "Good," Matt said.  "The ventilator seems to be working
fine."  As he moved past Abby to get closer to Rudy, his hardhat
light was directed at the back end of the borer, and Abby's body
was in darkness.  With a gesture guaranteed to be invisible to
the others, Matt gently squeezed her shoulder.
     Abby didn't know what the touch meant, whether it was,
"That's okay; we all say stupid things," or, "I understand; I'm
nervous, too," or what, but she realized almost immediately that
she felt better.  Much better.  Her shoulder tingled.
     At the same time, Matt continued talking.  "It looks like
we're only a few hundred meters away from the wall, so the borer
doesn't have to work for very long."
     "Good," Rudy said.  "That's consistent with the readings."
He picked up the borer control and punched a couple of buttons,
saying, "Here goes."
     The borer moved forward just enough to notice, then stopped.
Seconds later, it moved forward slightly.  After a minute of
watching it, Rudy said, "I think it's operational again."
     Everyone but Richard said a word or two of congratulations
and thanks.
                                 #
     When the inertial navigation unit told Matt they were within
twenty meters of the wall, he warned Rudy to slow down the borer.
     "Okay," Rudy said.  "You still want to curve so we wind up
running parallel to the wall for the last few meters?"
     "Go for it."
     From behind him in the tunnel, Matt heard Bobby Joe say
something about parallel parking.  "Hey, Bobby Joe.  Why don't
you do something useful.  When we go through this wall, we could
be going into a different atmosphere and pressure.  Go back about
fifty meters and put in another air barrier."
     "Will do."  Bobby Joe grabbed equipment and headed back.
     Matt held the inertial navigation display where Rudy could
see it as he controlled the path of the borer.  They were
approaching the intersection of two walls that met at about a
135-degree angle.  The display showed two lines meeting at a
point.  Near the intersection, an orange dot with a tail like a
comet showed their current position and most recent history.
Superimposed on the display was a dim grid currently showing
one-meter squares.
     In the upper right corner of the display were their actual
coordinates relative to the ground-floor lobby of the World Trade
Center, shown in rectangular and polar coordinates.  One of the
polar coordinates said they were 48,912 meters from home.  One of
the rectangular coordinates said they were 17.4 meters below
where the inertial navigation box had been zeroed out.
     They slowly moved another four meters as the range gradually
slowed and the angular displacement crept up in very small
increments.  The comet-tail image on the display confirmed that
they were curving left toward the wall.  Matt looked behind him
and saw Abby, Julie, and Richard walking slowly behind them in
the gently curving tunnel.  Just before Matt looked forward,
Richard stumbled, then caught his balance again.
     Soon the tunnel straightened out as the borer moved next to
the wall, closer and closer to the intersection.  Occasionally
the borer's whine would increase in pitch as it dragged against
the wall.  A lighter gray streak at about waist height on the
right wall showed where the borer had scraped against it.
     Finally, as the borer neared the intersection, Rudy turned
it away from the surface, curving its path more to the left so
that minutes later, according to the display, the borer was going
parallel to the adjacent wall.
     "That should about do it," Rudy said.  He shut off the borer
and for an instant all was quiet in the tunnel.
     "Good," Matt said.  "Before we do anything else, let's make
sure we've got a good seal."
     Under Matt and Rudy's direction, the team retrieved tape
from the trailer and applied sections of tape wherever the borer
had come close enough to the wall to leave gaps or thin sections
of solidified goo, just to make sure no goo leaked into the
chamber.  Bobby Joe got back in time to help them finish.
     "What next, boss?" Bobby Joe asked.
     Matt rubbed the back of his neck.  "The next order of
business is to dig the goo away from the intersection of these
two walls.  Rudy thinks wherever there's a seam might be the
easiest place to try to get through the wall, and that will also
let us find out if that elevator shaft or whatever it is will be
useful."
     "We're not going to just blast our way through?"
     "Nope.  This wall might be a divider between our compartment
and the bridge, or it might be a hull between us and the outside.
If we don't use a little caution, we could all wind up sucking
vacuum."
     "It could be this chamber isn't actually in the ship any
longer.  We could be hidden away on the back side of the moon or
something."
     "That's possible, but their pattern seems to be pick up a
city, add it to the collection, and move on.  Anyway, even if we
were on Luna, we could still be a meter from vacuum."
     "Okay.  I just thought if we were ready to use some
explosives, then Richard would get a chance to talk."
     "I am quite able to carry on a conversation when it's
appropriate, thank you very much," Richard said.  Suddenly
everyone was looking at him.
     "Dick, it's really great to hear you talk," said Bobby Joe.
     "People call me Richard."  His tone almost made his breath
frosty.
     "How can you be sure?" Bobby Joe asked innocently.
     Richard's eyes narrowed, and Matt moved in to divert the
energy into something useful.  "All right.  We need to clear the
goo away from the wall, especially near the corner.  Bobby Joe,
you and I will take the first shift."
     Matt and Bobby Joe attacked the goo, both cautious not to
let their shovels clang against the wall.  As they worked, the
other four used the borer to make a small side tunnel to use for
storage of discarded goo.  The soft clattering noise from the
borer's treads was comforting in its regularity.
     In an hour they had exposed the intersection between the
walls.  The walls did in fact meet at a 135-degree angle, but two
short walls jutted out from the two long walls and met in a
vertical seam, as though a diamond-shaped shaft ran vertically
along the intersection.
     Matt finished installing another ventilation tube as Rudy
played a torch over the rough edges of the goo left after the
excavation.  Behind Rudy, Richard, Julie, and Abby sealed strong
tape over the junction between hardened goo and the wall surface
now revealed, so no goo could leak in.  The team had cleared an
area about a meter high and eight meters wide.  The walls around
the elevator shaft, if that's what it was, didn't look any
different than the other walls.
     Rudy came back from the trailer with a stethoscope connected
to an amplifier and headphones.  "If everyone can be quiet for a
minute, I'd like to see if I can hear anything from the other
side."
     Rudy knelt on the tunnel floor and stuck a suction cup
against the cleared wall surface.  He put on the headphones and
turned on a small switch on the amplifier.
     He turned a dial on the amplifier, then scratched again,
then listened intently for fifteen seconds.  Finally he took off
the headphones and said, "Nothing."  He moved to retrieve a drill
from the trailer.
     Rudy put a bit into the drill and said, "Let's start small.
If it is vacuum on the other side, or if there are people close
enough to notice, this probably makes the most sense.  Plus, we
can stick a small fiber-optic probe through and do some snooping
before we decide what to do next."
     "Sounds good to me," said Matt.
     The wall looked like brushed aluminum or steel in the glare
of the hardhat lamps.  Faint lines defined large equilateral
triangles, a meter on each side, as though the wall had been
built from triangular plates that had then been welded together,
or molecularly bonded.  Rudy positioned the drill at the center
of one of the triangles and pulled the trigger.
     At first the bit just spun on the surface, like a spinning
toothpick held against a plate of glass, but then it started to
form a dimple in the metal.
     An extremely fine powder sparkled in the light from the
hardhats as the tiny particles slowly fell away from the bit.
After a minute or so, Matt could tell that the bit had moved
slightly into the surface.
     Rudy leaned on the drill for several minutes.  Matt's mind
had begun to wander, and he was unsure whether they might break
through in seconds, hours, or days.
     The drill suddenly lurched forward several centimeters.  At
the same time, a red gas began to escape from around the
perimeter of the bit.
     "Everyone but Rudy, get out of here!" Matt shouted.  "On the
other side of the barrier.  Now!"
     As Abby, Julie, Bobby Joe, and Richard scrambled to get
away, Rudy pulled the drill bit out of the hole and Matt stuck
his thumb over the opening.
     "I've got some tape," Rudy said.  "Just a sec."
     Rudy scattered small tools as he pawed through the tool box.
A moment later, he and Matt were alone in the tunnel and he
pulled out a roll of tape.
     "Okay," Rudy said.  "Move it."
     Matt pulled his thumb away, and Rudy slapped a piece of tape
against the wall surface, cutting off the tiny jet of red gas.
Both he and Matt held their heads as far away from the opening as
they could.  Matt tried not to breathe.
                                 #
     In the East Village, a small group of Hindus gathered for
mutual solace in the apartment shared by two of the group.
     Gerard Ghendl desperately wished that if he were near death
that somehow he could travel to Benares to bathe in the sacred
river Ganges to cleanse himself of his sins.
     Gerard knew the trip was impossible, though, so he tried not
to think about it.  Instead he thought about karma, and wondered
what, as a group, the inhabitants of Manhattan had done to
deserve this.
                                 #
     Matt held the ends of the tape in place as Rudy stuck
several more pieces over it.  When they pulled their hands away,
the tape held, and they couldn't see any gas leaking out.
     "Let's move away," Matt said.
     The two men came to a stop about ten meters from the taped
hole.  Rudy coughed a couple of times.
     "You feel okay?" Matt asked.  He looked closely at his thumb
but saw no indication of damage.
     "Yeah.  Nervous, but okay.  You?"
     "I'm okay.  At least that apparently wasn't some fast-acting
poison."
     "Not that affects us anyway."
     "Can you hook up the gas analyzer?"
     "Right away."  Rudy went to the trailer and retrieved
equipment.  Minutes later he had an intake tube positioned near
the taped hole, and the sampler pump was running.
     "It'll need to sample for about ten seconds," Rudy said.  "I
can hold the tube."
     "No.  I've already been exposed.  No point in risking both
of us."
     Rudy shook his head, but went back to the pump.  "Any time
you're ready.
     Matt peeled edges of the tape back until he had exposed the
small hole again.  He put the end of the tube over the spurting
red gas.
     "Okay, that's enough," Rudy said finally.
     Matt pushed the tape back into place, sealing the hole, and
put another couple of strips over the rest.  He went over to
watch over Rudy's shoulder.  "So, what have we got?"
     Rudy was silent for a moment.  "Mostly oxygen.  Some
nitrogen.  And a smaller amount of some compound I can't
identify.  That has to be what's coloring the gas.  But I can
only hope it's not harmful in the quantities we inhaled.  It
probably wouldn't be much good for our lungs, though, if we had
to breathe a lot of it.  The good part is that nothing in this
stuff is emitting radiation."
     "Right," Matt said.  "I'm going to call the others back.  We
need to talk."
     Minutes later the six of them were once again near the
cleared portion of the wall.
     "So, what was that stuff?" Julie asked.
     Matt looked at Rudy, who explained.
     "Is that what our captors breathe?" asked Bobby Joe.  "Maybe
we need to go back and get scuba gear."
     "That's not the only problem," Abby said.  "I don't know if
we'd be able to see through that stuff."
     The group was silent for a long moment.
     Finally Matt said, "I'm not sure our captors breathe that
stuff."
     "I may be thinking the same thing you are," Rudy said.
     "A fence?"
     "Could be."
     "What are you talking about?" Richard asked.
     Matt turned to Richard.  "When Rudy was drilling, the bit
cleared the wall, and the drill pushed forward several
centimeters, and it stopped again, but the bit wasn't sunk in all
the way.  There's another surface just behind the one Rudy
drilled through.  This red gas may be confined to the gap between
these two layers."
     "For what purpose?" Julie asked.
     "To make it easy to find out if anyone breaks out, and
exactly where it happened.  If we had used explosives just now,
we might easily have blown a hole so large and jagged that we
couldn't seal it.  If we'd been using a really high-power laser,
we could have drilled right through the second surface at the
same time, and that gas would be filtering out the other side
even though we patched this side."
     "That seems kinda low-tech," Bobby Joe said.
     "Maybe," Rudy said.  "But the advantage is that it's very
easy to implement.  They've got hundreds of square kilometers to
protect, and instrumenting the entire surface with sensors or
setting up enough lasers and mirrors to let them check for breaks
that way would be a hell of a lot of work.  This way they just
build two boxes, one inside the other.  They periodically measure
the pressure of the gas between.  Easy."
     "It makes a lot of sense to me," Matt said.  "But what other
theories should we explore?  One possibility that's been
mentioned is that it's our captors' natural atmosphere.  What
else?"
     "Maybe we drilled into a duct," Bobby Joe said.  "A duct
that's carrying this stuff to a particular location.  Or we hit a
tank of the stuff."
     "A tank would probably be at a lot higher pressure," Rudy
said.  "And a duct going from somewhere to somewhere implies some
other need for red air."
     "Any other possibilities?" Matt asked.  After a moment of
silence, he said, "The first theory still makes the most sense to
me.  So what do we do next?"
     Julie said, "Well, if we can't get through here, maybe we
can get through someplace else."
     "I bet the whole perimeter is protected this way," Rudy
said.  "But I think maybe we can get through anyway."
                                 #
     Abby watched nervously as Rudy used the saw to cut slowly
through the wall panel.  The job was complicated by bad
visibility and the layer of plastic.
     On Rudy's suggestion, they had taken a large sheet of the
clear plastic material used for tunnel air barriers and taped it
over the triangular panel Rudy intended to cut loose.  The sheet
of plastic ballooning out from the wall was significantly bigger
than the proposed opening, and they had taped it so that several
of Rudy's tools were on the inside.  Rudy gripped the saw through
the plastic, as though he were operating some equipment in a
sealed environmental chamber.  The red air filling the balloon
made it hard to see what was going on inside.  They had installed
a blower pump in the tunnel ceiling to keep the pressure on this
side of the plastic as high as possible.
     "I want your hardhat for just a second," Abby said to Rudy.
She took it, replaced the lamp battery with a freshly charged
battery, and put the hardhat back on Rudy's head.  "Okay."
     "Thanks," Rudy said.
     Abby had just finished trading recharged minivid batteries
when Rudy said, "That's almost got it.  I need help holding the
cut-out so it doesn't fall between the two walls."
     Matt and Richard moved closer.  Matt reached through the
plastic and maneuvered a screwdriver up to where he pried out one
edge of the cut-out.  Minutes later Rudy completed the cut and,
hampered by the plastic barrier, Matt and Richard lowered the
plate against the wall.
     In the large triangular opening the red air made visibility
difficult, but there did indeed seem to be another surface just
centimeters away.
     Rudy and Matt reached through the bottom of the plastic and
grabbed some of the goo they had put there before taping the
plastic in place.  Slowly they pushed pieces into the gap around
the triangular opening.
     "I think we're just about ready," Rudy said finally.
     "Okay," Matt said, turning toward Abby.  "We're going to
need to move quickly.  "Abby, you and Bobby Joe get your torches
ready.  Rudy and I will cut out the center of this plastic.
Richard, you and Julie are ready with tape?"
     Julie said, "Yes," for both of them.
     Abby and Bobby Joe started their torches.
     "All right.  Take your last few breaths," Matt said.
"Three--two--one."  With their knives, Matt and Rudy quickly cut
out the center of the taped plastic and forced the edges into the
gap with the goo, being careful to stay out of the way of the
torches.  Red air swirled into the room, and Abby could see a few
tiny jets of red air escaping from leaks between the wall and the
goo stuffed into the gap around the perimeter of the cutout.
     Abby moved forward and quickly played the flame over the
goo.  She watched with relief as it darkened and expanded to seal
the gap.  A couple of small red spurts of air cut off.  She
choked as she finally had to breathe, but by then the red cloud
was dissipating.
     As soon as Abby finished a section with the torch, Richard
slapped some tape over the gap as an additional barrier.
     Everyone in the chamber was coughing for several minutes as
they raced to complete the seal.  Even after they finished, it
took a while for Abby's breathing to return to normal.  She
wasn't sure if the problem was just the red air or if her
adrenaline reaction might have made it worse, but finally she
felt all right again.
     Matt surveyed the sealed gap around the edge of the
triangle.  "Looks good.  Everyone did a great job."
     The view was clear now, and the tinge of red in the air
finally vanished.  Beyond the triangular opening was indeed
another similar surface, as though they had just cut through the
first wall of a car door.
     Rudy held up his drill.  "Shall I?"
     Matt grabbed a roll of tape and said, "Go ahead.  I'm really
curious.  Let's play a little safer this time, though.  Everyone
but Rudy, please go back down the tunnel.  Richard, you lead the
way back.  Be cautious."
     Abby didn't like this part much better than the earlier
wait.  As she walked down the tunnel with the others, she
realized that she didn't mind taking a risk along with Matt, but
that she didn't like the idea of him taking a risk that she
didn't share.
     Abby, Bobby Joe, Julie, and Richard reached the air barrier,
took it down, and then put it back up when they were on the other
side.  Abby sat down on the tunnel floor, leaned back against the
curved wall, and flipped her hardhat light off to conserve the
charge.  The business end of the borer sat facing them only a
couple of meters away, and she felt nervous to be on this side of
it.
     Bobby Joe stood and paced.  After a couple of minutes, he
said, "So, Richard.  What's a bomb guy do?"
     "I am not a 'bomb guy.'"
     "Oh, sorry.  Demolitions expert.  So, what's your
background?"
     "Twenty years in the real world.  In the world where if you
make a mistake, someone scrapes the pieces of your body into a
cigar box and buries you like a pet in the back yard."
     "You sound a little bitter.  Why do you do the work if you
hate it so much?"
     "I don't hate it.  I love it.  I just don't like people to
trivialize it."
     "You love it?" Bobby Joe said.
     "Yes."  At first Abby thought that was all Richard was going
to say, then he added, "Perhaps it's like a drug addiction, but I
feel so alive when I'm working.  The rest of the time, I'm just
waiting to get back to work.  Like right now."
     "They're coming back," Julie said.
     The hardhat light on the far side of the air barrier came
closer, and Rudy called out, "All right.  It's safe to come
back."
     In the chamber everything looked much as it had before
except that now a small hole penetrated the second wall.
     "The other side is air, just about like here," Matt said.
"And the pressure is about the same.  But we can't see much; it's
dark."
     Rudy proceeded to use the saw to cut a triangle slightly
smaller than the one cut in the first wall.  As he finished the
cut, Matt and Richard maneuvered the piece of metal into the
tunnel and set it on the floor.  Beyond the opening was nothing
but blackness.
     "Leave your lamp off at first," Matt said as Rudy started to
lean his head into the opening.
     Rudy switched off the lamp, then took off his hardhat
entirely before he stuck his head into the darkness and looked
down then up.  He pulled back into the tunnel.  "I don't see
anything at all," he said softly.
     Everyone on the team got a turn.  Abby couldn't see anything
when she looked, either, except possibly a very faint glimmer,
that may or may not have been imagination, directly across from
the opening.
     "All right," Matt said finally.  "I guess there's no harm in
using our lights."
     Rudy switched on his hardhat lamp and now Abby could see a
vertical wall about a meter away from the triangular opening they
had cut.  The surface of the wall was flat-black, absorbing so
much light that despite its being illuminated Abby had to move
her head back and forth a couple of times to convince herself the
wall really was close.
     "Whoa!" Bobby Joe said when it was his turn to look.
     Abby understood his reaction when she looked down.  She felt
the vertigo coming from standing on top of a tall building under
construction.  The gap between the two walls receded into the
depths, broken only by staggered rows of large beams extending
between the pair of walls, a beam every two or three meters.  She
could see at least fifty rows down as the reflections grew weaker
and weaker.  The invisible bottom could have been a hundred
meters away or a million.
     A similar view showed to the right and straight up.  To the
left, the intersection between the wall they had cut through and
the one next to it blocked her view, but she supposed the view
around the corner would be much the same.  The air between the
walls was significantly cooler, and Abby suddenly felt very
small.
     "What now?" Bobby Joe said softly.
     "I'm not sure," Matt said.  "I suppose we see what's beyond
that next wall.
     Abby turned and saw that Rudy had already retrieved a rope
from the trailer and was tying a loop around his waist.  "I'm
ready," he said as he picked up the drill and a roll of tape.
     Matt looked like he was going to object, but then said,
"Just a minute.  Let's get some tape over this new edge so we
don't cut the rope or anyone's hands.
     Minutes later Rudy climbed into the dark opening as Matt and
Bobby Joe held onto the rest of the rope.  Rudy got his balance
on one of the beams running between the walls, moved slowly
toward the far wall, and straddled the beam.  He brushed his
fingers against the far surface.  "This wall is cold."
     Rudy locked his feet together under the beam and put the
drill against the wall.  He switched it on, and Abby realized how
nervous she was that someone beyond the wall would hear them this
time.  She deliberately relaxed her breathing.
     The drill noise sounded for at least five minutes before
Rudy switched it off.   He moved his head close to the wall and
aimed his hardhat lamp toward the point where the drill bit had
been.  He turned back to the group watching through the
triangular cutout and said, "I don't know that we're going to get
through here very easily.  I can't see even a scratch."
     Bobby Joe looked at Matt.  "If that wall is really cold, it
could be an outside wall."
     "True.  Just a second."
     A moment later Matt came back from the trailer with a long
flashlight topped with a wide reflector.  He aimed the lamp down
into the space between the walls, then up.
     After Rudy crawled back into the tunnel, Abby got a chance
to see what the powerful flashlight revealed.  Looking down, she
could see a faint glimmer that suggested a floor.  To the right
side and straight up, there wasn't even a hint that the surfaces
ever stopped--just a never-ending forest of black beams shrinking
in the distance and sucking away the light.
     Matt took another look into the chasm.  "I think the closest
surface must be down there.  I think our next step is to get to
it."
     Abby took a deep breath and told herself this would be no
worse than the tunnel had been.  Probably.

                            Chapter 11
                         First Encounter

     "Is everyone ready?" Matt asked.  He felt nervous about
entering the hole between the walls.  At the same time he was
excited that they were finally getting closer to being able to do
something positive, and worried that they might be too late.
     "Except for one thing," Rudy said.  "I'd better park the
borer."
     "I thought it was parked."
     "It is.  I should have said, 'park it more securely.'" Rudy
walked down the tunnel toward the borer.  "We're going to be
leaving it parked a lot longer than normal.  I just don't want it
sinking to the bottom.  Besides the fact that I don't want to
lose it, I also don't want it pulling this section of the tunnel
down with it.  We don't need to have goo start pouring into the
hole we just made, and I don't want it to snap the tunnel and
flood it, either."
     As Matt followed Rudy toward the borer, he realized that the
tunnel floor was in fact dipping down as they approached, even
though it hadn't been all that long since they had parked the
borer here.
     "So, what are you going to do about it?" Matt asked.
     "Balloon," Rudy said.  "I'm going to give it some flotation
support, so it's closer to neutral buoyancy.
     As Matt watched, Rudy retrieved a dozen small pipes, gas
canisters, and inflatable bladders.  Rudy hammered the pipes into
the walls, then sealed each pipe with a torch.  Finally he
attached a small gas canister to each bladder and stuck the limp
bladders into the pipes.  Each canister had a small lip that
hooked over the pipe it fit next to.  Rudy twisted the valves on
each of the gas canisters.
     "Okay," Rudy said.  "I'm almost set.  The goo flows slowly
enough that it will take a while for those balloons to fill, but
I think it'll go fast enough that the borer won't sink very far
before it starts to rise again."
     Finally, Rudy took a huge balloon and connected a larger gas
canister.  The balloon expanded to fill the entire tunnel.  Rudy
let the gas keep running until the balloon formed a tight fit,
then turned off the gas.  "One more layer of insurance," Rudy
said, "in case the tunnel springs a leak."
     Matt and Rudy went back to the hole in the wall.  "Okay.  Is
everybody armed and ready?" Matt asked.
     Abby and Bobby Joe patted the Glock 17s at their hips and
said, "Yes."  Everyone else said "Yes," without needing to
double-check.  Canteens hung opposite the holsters.
     "All right.  Let's get on with it."  Matt picked up the end
of a long coiled rope and snapped the hook onto his belt.  He
climbed up and into the dark space between the walls.  The black
surfaces absorbed much of his helmet light.  Matt climbed onto
one of the beams that ran between the walls.  Richard hooked the
next clip onto his own belt, then climbed into the hole and let
the slack in the rope fall into the blackness.
     "Hand me the lamp," Matt said.
     Richard gave him a utility lamp.  Matt took it and stuck the
suction base to the wall, well away from the opening.  Matt set
the lamp to flash once every five seconds so the battery would
last a long time.
     "All right," Matt said.  "I'm going to another beam."
     Richard said, "Okay.  I'm hooked up, and so is Abby."
     Matt nodded.  He took a breath and leaped for the beam
closest to the nearby corner intersection.  His body felt
weightless as he arced through the darkness toward the beam three
meters away.  His hardhat almost hit the beam in the row above.
His feet hit the next beam, and he steadied himself against the
walls.
     He leaned into the blackness, and he could just see around
the corner.  The space between the two parallel walls looked the
same as where he was--just an unending series of beams between
the surfaces.
     Matt leaped back to the beam he had been on and prepared to
jump diagonally down to the next row.  He looked at the beam he
was bound for.  It was almost three meters below him, and about
half that distance away horizontally.  He checked the slack in
the rope to make sure he wouldn't get almost all the way and then
get sprung back like a dog on a leash.  Fortunately the low
gravity made a jump of that distance much easier than it would
have been otherwise.
     He made his best guess as to how fast he'd fall, and he
pushed himself away from the beam.  He dropped deeper into the
darkness.
     The beam rose to meet him, but he wasn't moving sideways
fast enough.  Instead of hitting the beam with his feet, he was
falling past it just as his arms got close enough to grab it.
     He held on more easily than he had expected.  He pulled
himself up to the beam.  Seconds later, he jumped to the next
beam down on a diagonal.  This time he pushed harder and hit the
beam with his feet.  He bounced and steadied himself against the
walls.  His backpack was large but not too heavy, and contained
part of Richard's supplies.
     Matt looked up toward Richard and called softly, "Next."
     Richard moved onto the beam near the hole, then followed
Matt to the beam he had just been on.  Richard also misjudged the
jump, but he managed to scramble up onto the beam seconds later.
     Within minutes the rest of the team were all in the gap.
Behind Richard were Abby, Bobby Joe, Julie, and finally Rudy.
Lengths of rope stretched between each adjacent pair.  Matt was
so far down into the darkness that he felt he was in a tall
elevator shaft, and the hole above looked like a dim opening onto
a poorly lit floor some five stories above.  Flashes from the
lamp next to the opening were much easier to see than at first.
     The team made another series of jumps, bringing each member
lower into the chasm.  As Matt watched the group catch up, they
looked like giant fireflies with a purpose.  Abby must have
landed wrong, because Matt heard a sudden "whoops!" but when he
looked back she was all right.
     They worked into a pattern where each person would jump just
after the person ahead in line jumped, and soon Matt figured they
were moving down one level about every ten seconds.  The cycle
was interrupted occasionally, once by Bobby Joe missing his beam
entirely, but fortunately his weight in the low gravity was only
twenty or thirty pounds, and Abby and Julie were able to support
their ends of the rope while Bobby Joe climbed up to the beam he
had missed.
     Richard's only reaction during the incident was a muttered,
"Klutz."  Shortly after that, Richard himself slipped and had to
climb back up.
     They'd been going on and off for an hour when Matt called a
slightly longer halt.  "How is everyone holding up?" he asked.
He could see the five other hardhat lamps but couldn't make out
anyone's face.
     No one complained.
     "How deep are we, Bobby Joe?"
     "The box says 1162 meters."
     Matt took the big flashlight from his backpack and aimed it
at the floor of the chasm again.  The floor seemed brighter this
time.  "We're making significant progress, it seems to me.  I'd
guess we've gone at least a quarter or a third of the way."
     "How about if I drop a dollar and we time it?" Bobby Joe
said.
     "Go for it," Matt said.
     A moment later the sparkle of the silver coin lit the beam
from Matt's hardhat lamp.  "Everyone be quiet for a minute or
two," Bobby Joe said.
     The silence lengthened to almost five minutes, and still
Matt had heard nothing.
     "Something's wrong," Bobby Joe said finally.  "It had to
have hit by now."
     "Let's get moving again," Matt said.  "We'll figure it out
later."
     Abby's soft voice came to him clearly in the darkness.  "Be
careful, Matt.  Maybe the coin hit some barrier."
     "Will do."
     The team resumed hopping diagonally down into the darkness.
They had been jumping for another half-hour when Matt realized he
had misjudged the last several beams, overshooting each of them.
He called a halt.  "Has anyone else been misjudging their jumps
recently?"
     Everyone but Richard admitting they were having the same
trouble, and finally Richard admitted it, too.
     "I feel fine," Matt said.  "I don't think I'm getting tired
or anything.  Any theories?  And how deep are we now, Bobby Joe?"
     No one had any theories.
     "We're about 2339 meters down," Bobby Joe said.  A moment
later, he added, "Uh oh."
     "Uh oh what?" Matt asked.
     "I'm not sure.  But the depth reading is still increasing.
And I'm just sitting here."
     "Are we moving?" Julie asked.
     Rudy said, "You mean the ship?  I don't think we'd be able
to tell.  Since we haven't felt any acceleration other than
gravity since we've been inside, my guess is that somehow they've
got the technology to shield the interior of the ship from the
ship's motion."
     "That's lucky for us, too," Matt said.  "If this ship can
accelerate as quickly as those smaller black ships, we'd probably
be dead.  Bobby Joe, how does that box work?"
     "The inertial navigation unit?  It's got a three-axis sealed
unit with guts that stay oriented the same direction all the
time.  Accelerometers in all three axes feed into a microcomputer
that integrates the input and computes how far the box has been
moved.  The vertical axis had to be recalibrated for the lower
gravity in here.  Right now it assumes a constant reading of
about one-sixth gee means we're staying level.  If we go up, the
increased acceleration tells the box what's happening, and it
knows we're going up.  If we go down, the decreased acceleration
tells the box that, too."  Bobby Joe was silent for a moment,
then said, "Ah!"
     "Ah?"
     "If we're in a lower-gee field, it could be tricked into
thinking we're descending.  And that would explain why we're
overshooting beams."
     "True," Rudy said.  "And if that's the case, then the box is
no good for telling how deep we are anymore."
     "Any better explanations that occur to anyone?" Matt asked.
     No one said anything.
     "Okay.  Let's get moving again."
     They continued their descent, angling down as though
following a huge excavated cavern in a deep mine.  Within
minutes, Matt was convinced the gravity was lower.  His leaps
took longer, and the lateral push required grew smaller.
     "The gravity is definitely lower," Bobby Joe said.  "And the
box is saying we're dropping even faster."
     Soon the gravity was even weaker.  Matt felt a tightening in
his throat, and a queasiness in his stomach.  He had to hold onto
the beams to avoid floating upward.  He looked back down into the
dark chasm, and realized that "down" was no longer as easily
identifiable as it had been.  He looked behind him.  Far in the
distance behind him he thought he saw something small and shiny
traveling up, but an instant later it was gone.
     "This is getting a little crazy," Matt said after moving
past a few more beams.  "If anyone has anything in a pocket
that's not snapped, you'd better fasten it down.  This is
virtually zero gee."
     From beam to beam, Matt now just gave himself a gentle nudge
in the right direction and glided straight to it.  Moving between
beams over the blackness was like walking from log to log as they
floated on the surface of the water in a dark bottomless pit.
     The air grew dusty, and several times Matt sneezed.
     The first time he missed a beam, he realized the rules were
continuing to change.  He had floated straight toward it at
first, but then slowly curved "up," missing the beam by
centimeters.
     Matt floated until he hit a different beam, one in the same
row he had started from.  "We've passed zero!  What used to be
'down' is now 'up.'"
     He positioned himself on the top of the beam, what five
minutes ago would have seemed the bottom, and leaped again for
the beam he'd been going for earlier.  This time he made it.  He
looked back and saw the pinpoint flashing light in the distance,
and the line of climbers behind him.  They were still on a
straight path from their starting point, but now it felt as if
they were climbing out of the chasm instead of going deeper into
it.
     "Can you point your big light back that way?" Bobby Joe
asked.
     Matt got out the lamp and aimed it behind him.  Very far in
the distance a small silvery object moved slowly "up."
     "That's my dollar," Bobby Joe said.  "It's just oscillating
through the zero-gee point.  Eventually air resistance will slow
it down enough that it just hovers in this region.  And that's
why it's so dusty here.  This is kind of a bizarre gravity well,
where everything gathers."
     Matt directed the flashlight toward the "floor" he had seen
earlier.  No reflections returned.  "Uh oh," he said.  "The floor
we saw earlier must have been just the dust in the air in the
region we just passed through."
     "Does that mean we should stop?" Bobby Joe asked.
     "No.  Just that the environment is stranger than we
expected."
     They resumed their trek.  After several minutes Matt began
to get more comfortable with the idea that they were now
traveling "up."  Each time he jumped from one beam to the next,
he had to jump just a little higher.
     They kept climbing.  The gravity was still lower than what
they'd been used to lately when Richard said, "Lucky the gravity
has varied smoothly.  Otherwise, we might risk jumping into a
ten-gee field."
     Matt had a sudden image of dragging the other five behind
him to their deaths.
     "No problem."
     Matt kept climbing through the rows of beams, feeling like a
child in a huge jungle gym.  When he cleared the next beam, he
looked back to make sure he could see the flashing lamp they had
left at the hole.  It was still there, but very faint.
     After another break they reached a region where the gravity
seemed as strong as it had been when they started out.  Finally
the scenery ahead changed.  They were apparently nearing another
corner of the huge octagon-shaped level of the ship.
     Five minutes later that suspicion was confirmed.  The wall
met another wall at a 135-degree angle.  Matt gave the command to
stop, and he stuck another small flashing light to the wall.
     "So, what now, boss?" Bobby Joe asked.  "Try to go through
the wall?"
     "I think the first step is to explore the boundary," Matt
said, then pointed.  "Look up there.  It seems to me there's a
break in the row of beams."
     "I think I see what you mean," Abby said.
     Julie took advantage of the break to pan with her minivid,
capturing more video.
     "Quiet!" Matt said suddenly.
     In the stillness of the semi-dark gap, Matt could hear the
others breathing shallowly.  In addition a hum from somewhere
around them grew louder and louder.  Rapidly the hum grew to a
peak and then started to fade again, but Matt couldn't determine
which direction the sounds came from.
     "Elevator?" Rudy whispered.
     "Possible."
     Several seconds after the hum was no longer audible, Matt
said, "Let's go."
     Matt in the lead, the group jumped from beam to beam.
Minutes later they halted as the hum came and went again.
     After five more minutes, Matt was convinced there was some
kind of irregularity in the spacing of the beams above.  When
they finally reached the area, he felt more encouraged than he
had been in more than a day.  Set into the inside wall was
something that had to be a door.  They waited without speaking
for a minute as the elevator hum rose and then faded.
     "Maybe we're in business," Matt said.
     The others gathered around on the nearby beams and looked.
They each sat on a beam, their legs hooked together beneath the
beam.  Abby recorded video of the unintelligible markings on the
door.
     The door was octagonal, about two meters across.  On four
edges were octagonal handles.
     "The size suggests that our captors are approximately as big
as we are," Abby said.  "That's good."
     "Why's that good?" asked Bobby Joe.
     "How would you want to try to establish communications with
a flea or a whale?" she asked.
     "Are we going through?" said Richard after a moment of
silence.
     "Yes, but cautiously.  On the other side of the door might
be atmosphere we can't breathe.  There might be aliens coming
down a transparent elevator every five minutes.  There might be
alarm bells going off."
     Matt hesitated.  "All right.  We've heard the elevator pass
by here a couple of times in the last ten or fifteen minutes.
That's good and bad.  Bad because it means we may have our first
confrontation soon.  Good because it means the elevator is in use
often enough that if we use it, we have a chance of remaining
undetected."
     "Do you think the door really will sound an alarm?" Julie
asked.
     "My gut says no, mainly because the protection around the
enclosure is pretty thorough.  If we wind up getting split up,
though, you know what to do.  Rudy's second in command, followed
by Richard."
     "What about another atmosphere on the other side?" Rudy
asked.
     "We play safe.  If this section contains breathable air, my
guess is that the living quarters do, too, but again, we can't
assume that.  Bobby Joe, can you get out the analyzer?"
     Bobby Joe brought out the gas analyzer and unwound the
flexible tubing extending from it.
     "All right," Matt said.  "Let's try to open the door."   He
was closest, so he edged nearer and gripped one of the four
handles.  He turned it, and it rotated easily under his hand.  He
kept turning, and the knob kept turning without reaching a stop.
He turned it the opposite direction until he was sure it was well
past its starting position, and he still felt no resistance.
     "This isn't encouraging," he said.  He reached for another
knob.  It reacted the same way.
     "I wonder if that means the door's been disconnected
somehow," Rudy said.  "Maybe it was just here when this ship was
built, and now it serves no purpose."
     "Possible," Matt said.  "But I wouldn't do that aboard a
human ship.  Things like emergency exits don't get used all that
often, but when there's an emergency, you want them to work.
And you don't want people wasting valuable time trying to get
through a dead end."
     "Maybe they don't think like we do," Bobby Joe said.
     "I think Bobby Joe's right," Abby said.  "But that doesn't
mean the door won't operate.  Maybe they just operate doors
differently than we do."
     "All right," Matt said.  "I'm open to discussion."
     Abby said, "For starters, there are four handles instead of
one.  Maybe that means they have to be turned in sequence, or
simultaneously."
     "What sequence?"
     "I don't know.  With four handles there are only so many
possibilities.  Since up and down tend to get confused in space,
my guess is that they rely on something that doesn't depend on
orientation, other than facing the door."
     "So that would be clockwise or counterclockwise?"
     "Or some pattern, like a combination that's independent of
the actual starting point?"
     "Seems reasonable," Abby said.
     "They spent several minutes trying combinations.  Nothing
worked.
     "Well, Abby?" Matt said.
     Abby was silent for a moment.  "Maybe," she said slowly,
"maybe you have to turn all four knobs simultaneously."
     Matt looked back at the knobs.  "That's pretty demanding for
an emergency exit.  You're assuming they require the buddy
system?  Two people working together?"
     "Not necessarily.  The people who built this ship might have
more limbs than we do.  And this might not be an emergency exit.
It might just be a door that they wanted to make difficult to
open accidentally."
     Matt thought about that a moment.  "Rudy, can you give me a
hand?"
     Rudy moved from beam to beam until he was on the beam
adjacent to Matt.  "Okay, I'm ready."
     Matt grabbed the two handles farthest from Rudy.  "Can you
reach those other two?"
     Rudy locked his ankles underneath the beam and leaned out
into space.  He was just able to reach the two handles.
     "All right," Matt said.  "Turn them clockwise."  He did the
same.  Nothing.  They tried counterclockwise.  Nothing.
     Suddenly Matt had an image of standing at a sink and
simultaneously turning on a hot and a cold water tap.  "Turn the
one in your right hand clockwise, and the one in your left
counterclockwise."  He did the same.
     A muted click sounded from somewhere inside the door.
                                 #
     Dorine Underwood stopped at the office door and leaned in.
"Anything hot, Tim?"
     Tim Adjmati looked up from sorting mail, his black eyes
reflecting pinpoints of light from the overhead lamp.  "Nothing
so far, but one marked personal."  He was building three stacks
of opened mail that Dorine really wasn't keen on starting yet.
     The last three envelopes marked personal that Dorine had
received were all from Raphael.  He never gave her cards at home.
Instead, he had liked to think of Dorine and her routine suddenly
interrupted by a smile.
     From the door she could see the small package that Tim
pointed at.  It was a little larger than a book, wrapped in brown
paper and heavily taped.
     "There's nothing personal in that stack," Dorine said.  She
tried to keep the sadness out of her voice.  Besides the image
she had to maintain, she didn't want anyone feeling sorry for
her.
     Tim nodded.
     "I'll stop back in a couple of minutes on my way back from
Lamar's office and grab anything that looks hot."
     "Yes, ma'am."
     Lamar wasn't in his office when Dorine got there, so she
found a piece of scratch paper and left a note.  She could have
used the electronic mail system, but trips to various offices
constituted almost all the exercise she was getting lately.
     She turned back down the hall toward Tim.  She had covered
about half the distance between the two offices when the building
suddenly shook and a deafening blast started her ears ringing.  A
discharge of papers and wood splinters and smoke exploded from
the office Tim had occupied.
     Dorine stumbled, then regained her balance.  She moved
closer.  The doorframe was bent and splintered.  On the wall
across from the office was a darkened surface roughly the same
shape as the doorway.  The air was thick with smoke and swirling
paper fragments.
     Dorine took a glance through the doorway and sank to her
knees, oblivious to the sounds of approaching people.
                                 #
     "All right," Matt breathed.  The unlocked door stayed in
position.  He pushed gently on it, and it gave.  Good.  At least
they had no pressure differential to deal with.  "Bobby Joe, hand
me the nozzle."
     Bobby Joe tossed the loose end of the tubing connected to
the gas analyzer.  Matt caught it.  With it held in his left
hand, he unsnapped his pistol and removed it from his holster.
Next to him, Rudy also readied his weapon.
     Matt pushed the tube toward the thin crack that had opened
on the left edge of the door.  Bobby Joe started the pump,
drawing gas into the analyzer.  The sound felt far too loud.
     Soon Bobby Joe said softly, "It's safe."
     Matt stood up on the beam.  With his free hand, he unsnapped
the rope from his belt.  He pushed the edge of the door with his
foot, and it pivoted inward.  Light flooded into the cavity
between the walls, and Matt's eyes adjusted.
     Matt crouched and moved through the door and into the empty
room beyond.  He stayed low.  In front of him was a short wall,
maybe a meter tall, topped with a clear observation panel,
through which he could see distant tubes running from the chamber
ceiling down toward bubbled cities.
     To his immediate right was a solid wall about three meters
tall and about three meters to a corner.  He moved to the
135-degree corner and peered around.  The other half of the
observation deck was identical, except that what seemed to be an
elevator door broke the surface of the wall.  Set into the outer
wall beyond the elevator was another door like the one he had
just come through.  The matching door had the same pattern of
four handles, two on top, two on the bottom.  It bore identical
legends, meaningless to Matt.
     Matt moved back to the doorway.  Quietly he said, "Come on
out, but stay low."
     Moments later all six team members crouched in the
observation chamber.  Matt pushed the door shut with a soft snap,
and with Rudy's help made sure they could open it again.  Finally
Matt closed it again, on the off chance that some status light
might attract attention.
     "God, this place is big," Bobby Joe said softly.
     Matt peered over the low wall, through the bottom of the
transparent surface.  They were high enough to easily make out
the octagonal shape of the enormous gray floor far below.  More
than a dozen strange cities sat under individual clear domes.
Spires in a city near the far wall reached almost as high as they
were now.  From this distance some of the cities resembled
elaborate old-fashioned paperweights.  Life-support hoses ran
from numerous ceiling ports down to sides of the bubbles.  In one
of the nearest domes, a huge irregular building with parapets
slowly rotated.
     "I don't see Manhattan," Julie said.
     "It's not down there," Rudy said.  "We're turned around
because of the gravity switch.  We're looking at what's
underneath the plain we tunneled into.  If we'd known, we could
have tunneled right through and come up on the other side of the
world."
     "Elevator," Richard said.
     "Quick," Matt said.  He pointed toward the side of the
observation deck concealed from the elevator door.
     Everyone moved quickly and quietly.  They waited thirty
seconds, but never heard the hum they had heard before.
     "Maybe it was my imagination," Richard said finally.  "Maybe
my nerves are a little tight."
     "All right," Matt said.  "We're all a little jumpy.  No harm
done."
     Back at the observation window, Julie used her minivid as
she said, "You're saying these people have built a huge pancake?
We're looking at one side, and the other side looks just like
it?"
     "Exactly," Rudy said.  "Except that this side looks less
populated."
     Richard had dug out binoculars from his backpack.  "I can't
see any windows near the other elevator shafts."
     Matt said, "So maybe this is one-way material?"
     "Makes sense," Abby said.  "These people haven't shown
themselves to anyone that we know of.  That would be consistent
with them wanting to keep it that way."  She turned to use her
minivid on the legends on the doors.
     Rudy looked up.  "Those small circles on the ceiling could
be observation ports, too.  Maybe the elevators are mainly being
used by people who want to get from one side to the other, rather
than by people who may stop on the way."
     "Interesting theory," Matt said, "but I don't know that we
can count on it."
     In the silence, Julie, who had been looking at cities
through her minivid telephoto, said, "The city by the right wall
on the right looks vaguely like an old castle.  I guess they
didn't just take people from high-tech worlds."
     "True.  They took us, didn't they?" said Bobby Joe.
     "All right," said Matt.  "We need to get out of here.  The
basic question is whether to try the elevator or go back to
crawling between the walls.  I'm for the elevator.  Anyone have a
good reason why we shouldn't try it?"
     No one spoke.
     "All right."  Matt drew his pistol again.  "Let's do it."
     The elevator door was octagonal, about three meters from top
to bottom and from side to side, with a single pull handle on the
left.  Next to the handle was a set of four buttons in a vertical
line.  The inner two were circles.  The top and bottom were
ellipses aligned so the long axis was vertical.
     "Any guesses as to what the controls do?" Matt said.  He
tugged lightly on the elevator door handle, but it didn't budge.
     The silence lasted several seconds.  Abby said, "Beyond the
obvious, that maybe the top pair says we want to go up and the
bottom pair says we want to go down, I don't know."
     Rudy said, "The ovals suggest speed to me.  Maybe the
circles are the regular up and down buttons and using the
ellipses says you're in a hurry and you want an express."
     Matt said, "Or maybe the circles take you to the top of the
chamber and the ellipses take you to the floor or floors beyond
that."  He reached forward and pushed the bottom button.
     A bright line formed around the perimeter of the ellipse,
and it began to blink.  "Why down instead of up?" asked Rudy.
     "This side is less built up than the side Manhattan is on.
I'm just guessing that means the bridge is on the Manhattan side.
I figure the odds are no worse than fifty-fifty."  Matt looked at
the five other faces around him.  "I want everyone armed when the
door opens, but be careful.  Don't shoot unless it's absolutely
necessary to protect yourself or to prevent one of our captors
from escaping."
     Moments later the blinking line around the ellipse stayed on
steady.
     "Could mean we'll have company," Abby said.  "Or it could
mean the elevator has started on its way here."
     As they watched the indicator, the bright line around the
outside grew wider as the interior dark ellipse shrank.
     "That's got to mean it's getting closer," Abby said.
     "Why only one handle here and four on the other door?" Matt
asked.
     "My guess is the other door isn't an everyday access door
the way this one might be.  They didn't want anyone accidentally
opening it."
     By the time the dark ellipse had nearly vanished, Matt heard
the hum of an approaching elevator.  Seconds later, the dark spot
vanished as the oval indicator completely filled with light.  As
the hum died, the ellipse started to blink, and a click sounded
from the elevator.
     Matt gripped the handle with his left hand and aimed his
pistol into the elevator.  He yanked on the elevator door, and it
swung open smoothly.
     The interior was empty.
     Behind Matt, Julie said, "Thank God."
     The interior fit all six of them comfortably.  It seemed
more like the interior of a subway car than a normal elevator,
though, because it was ringed with several rows of handles, one
at eye level, one at chest level, and one at waist level.
     Matt got in last and pulled the door closed.  An iris
closed, concealing the unreadable markings on the inside of the
door, and just as a red circle began to glow next to the entry,
the elevator lurched into free fall and Matt grabbed a handle
with one hand.
     "Oh, God," Julie said softly.
     After a few seconds of free fall, Rudy said, "We're turning.
The elevator is rotating."
     Matt realized he was right.  Over a period of about ten
seconds, it seemed the elevator turned end for end, still in free
fall.  Seconds later, he felt a gentle nudge of gravity as the
elevator accelerated slightly.
     A couple of minutes passed as the elevator noises rose in
pitch and Matt imagined them whipping past stop after stop.
Gravity began to grow stronger.
     Rudy said, "Either we're speeding up more, or we passed the
zero-gee midpoint, and what we're feeling is additional gravity
instead of acceleration."
     They hurtled through the elevator shaft, the elevator
shuddering perceptibly, but the apparent gravity didn't increase
past what they had been used to for their days aboard the ship.
     Bobby Joe said, "They really should leave some airsick bags
in here."
     Matt glanced over his shoulder, and he caught Abby's gaze.
He looked at her for a long moment without speaking.  She seemed
worried, which was natural, but she also gave him a nervous smile
that for an instant cut through all his fears and made him wish
this mission were long in the past.
     The pull of gravity seemed to lessen, and the vibrations
began to drop in pitch.
     "We're getting ready to stop," Richard said.
     The elevator cage slowed more and more, finally coming to a
complete stop.  The iris dilated and exposed the interior of a
different door with still different unreadable markings.  Matt
readied his gun.  "On your toes, folks."
     He pushed open the door.
     Matt left the elevator quickly.  "We got lucky.  I don't see
anyone around.  Let's get out of here pronto."
     "Let's move," Matt said.  He made sure everyone was behind
him as he started moving toward a trio of large cylinders about
fifty meters away.  From near the elevator door, a track-bed with
a single wide rail reached into the distance in the direction of
the center of the ship.  Two more monorails vanished in the
distance along the walls.  The ceiling here was maybe fifty
meters high, and from the open space all around, Matt could
believe this level was just as wide as the city chamber below
their feet.  Far in the distance the floor and ceiling converged
along perspective lines, and Matt was unsure if they'd be able to
see all the way across the 100-kilometer span if the ceiling was
only a half-percent of that distance or an even smaller fraction.
With the current tension, he didn't care too much about stopping
and doing the math.
     At seemingly random locations ahead were tall and bulky
equipment housings, some with unrecognizable machinery exposed,
like one that could have been a huge oil-derrick as visualized by
someone on a bad drug trip.  Others were simple boxes or upright
cylinders.  The air was filled with the soft sound of gas being
expelled, as though a thousand tire pumps were running just on
the threshold of hearing.  No individual lights showed anywhere.
Instead, the ceiling emitted a uniform yellow-green light.
     They reached the cover of the trio of cylinders without
hearing the sounds of discovery.  Of course Matt didn't know if
they'd even be able to hear the aliens' voices.  Perhaps they
were telepaths like the tree dwellers, or they could have
bat-like voices pitched high enough to be inaudible, or they used
something other than sound.
     Matt felt uneasy even in the comparative cover of the
cylinders, each several meters in diameter, ranging in height
from twice as tall as Matt to maybe five times his height.  No
matter where they moved, they were still visible from at least
one direction.  At least they could make sure they weren't
visible from the monorails, which Matt figured were the most
likely sources of trouble.  Abby captured legends from the sides
of the cylinders on video.
     "What the hell is all this stuff?" Julie asked quietly.  No
one answered.
     Matt took a long look in the one direction he could see and
could detect no signs of motion.  He jumped straight up, just far
enough that his head and shoulders cleared the top of the lowest
cylinder.  He reached out and made sure the flat top was firm
before he fell back to the floor.
     "Rudy," Matt said softly, "I want you to come with me on top
of this cylinder so we can take a look around.  Everyone else
stay down here and stay as hidden as you can."
     Matt and Rudy jumped to the top of the cylinder and
crouched.  The surface felt quite solid.  Matt pointed to the
next-higher cylinder, and he went first.  Rudy joined him seconds
later and they both lay flat as they crept toward the edge that
would give them the best view of the interior of this level.
     Matt made a slow sweep with binoculars as Rudy did the same.
He could see almost all the way across the ship; near the center
there seemed to be a section walled off from the outside.  Spread
out around the area they could see, were occasional massive
concentrations of strange equipment.  Their size and placement
suggested that each major concentration of equipment was directly
above a captured city or over a berth for one not yet here.  Matt
supposed the devices would be doing things like driving air and
water and food down the tubes they could see vanishing through
the floor, and pulling waste and used air back up for recycling.
From each concentration of equipment seemed to be a monorail
running to the walls of the central enclosed area.
     What they could see of this octagonal level seemed to be
split into pie wedges by monorails that came from the enclosed
midpoint out to each of the corners.  Centered in each pie wedge,
about five kilometers from the outside walls, were enormous red
cylinders probably as big around as a city block, extending from
floor to ceiling.
     Between the largest concentrations of equipment were smaller
enclosures in a variety of sizes, dotted irregularly across the
floor of the ship.  Matt decided they might provide enough cover
to let the group pass undetected.
     Beside him, Rudy said, "Uh oh."
     Matt took his eyes away from the binocular eyepieces long
enough to see where Rudy was looking.  He turned that direction
and held up his binoculars.  Just as Rudy said, "We've got
company," Matt saw the approaching monorail car.
     "They may not be coming because of anything we did," Matt
said.
     "True.  It just makes me nervous."
     As the car approached, Matt was able to start resolving more
and more details.  By the time the car was a few hundred meters
away, Matt could see two riders.
     Rudy saw them at the same time, because he said, "God, they
look like giant spiders."
                                 #
     Dorine's daily telecast had begun on a more somber tone than
usual.  The police still had no clue to whether the letter-bomber
was a lone crank or someone stirred up by one of the several
rabble rousers vying for public attention.  She now had people
watching all the major dissident groups, but that small added
sense of security barely diminished the pain of losing Tim
Adjmati.
     As she explained the circumstances surrounding Tim's death,
she couldn't help thinking about the fact that on the other side
of the camera lens was someone who wanted her dead.
     "And now I'd like to address the person who did this.  If
you believe that an incident like this will change my policy,
you're sadly mistaken.  If you think that, had you succeeded, the
person stepping into my spot would do things differently, you're
an idiot.  My only concern is the welfare of the citizens; more
than a million people in this dome want to get out of here, or at
the very least to know why we're here.
     "If you object to the quest for knowledge and control over
our lives, then that's too bad.  But the path we're on is far too
important for us to be swayed by fear and intimidation.  We're
not on a playground where one kid with a handgun can intimidate
the whole class.
     "It's a damn shame that Tim Adjmati died because someone
within the sound of my voice thought things would change if I was
dead.  That's just plain wrong.  We owe it to Tim, and we owe it
to ourselves, to do everything we can to save ourselves.
     "And nobody with a letter-bomb is going to take that from
us."

                            Chapter 12
                             Archies

     Abby heard the soft whoosh of air from somewhere on the
other side of the cylinder just about the same time that Matt
called softly down from the top of the highest cylinder.
     "Abby, I need you up here, but you've got to move quietly.
The rest of you stay alert, and stay hidden from the monorail
that goes toward the center of the ship.  We've got company."
     Abby jumped to the top of the middle cylinder and her feet
landed softly, making her glad she was getting better at judging
distances.  She turned to the one Matt was on.  He lay flat on
the cylinder top.
     Matt said, "Don't jump up here the same way.  Jump just high
enough to reach me, and let me pull you the rest of the way."
     Abby gauged the jump as well as she could, and leaped.  Matt
had to have a good reason for the request.
     Her jump brought her head and shoulders just above the top
of the cylinder Matt lay on.  Matt grabbed her hands and held on.
Matt's body slipped slightly toward the edge, but with Matt's
help Abby was able to crawl to the top of the cylinder.
     Matt held a finger to his lips, then turned his body around
until he and Abby both faced the opposite side of the cylinder
top, where Rudy lay quietly next to his backpack and Matt's.
Matt put his lips very near Abby's ear and said quietly, "We
spotted some of the residents.  I want you to get some video of
them in case that will help you understand their language.  Take
off your backpack so your profile is low.  And so you don't make
any sounds of surprise when you see them, they look kinda like
big spiders."
     Abby turned her head until she was looking directly into
Matt's eyes, not more than a few centimeters away.  His pupils
dilated for a half-second, and then settled back to normal.
Despite the tension, she had time to be aware of the desire to be
this close to Matt at some time when survival wasn't as immediate
an issue.
     She eased out of her backpack and slithered toward the far
lip of the cylinder, her minivid already recording.  She touched
the control at her temple and cranked up the lens as far up as it
would go.  The telephoto image jittered wildly as she moved.
     As soon as she peeked over the edge, she saw motion.  A
monorail car was slowing down as it neared the outside wall.
     In the car were two aliens who really did look a lot like
large spiders, the way a cat would look like a dog to someone
who'd never seen anything but dogs.  The monorail car pulled to a
stop, and the aliens got out.
     Their elongated and segmented bodies were about a meter
above the ground, maybe a meter from front to back, and perhaps
only a third of a meter wide and high.  The rear segment was
slightly larger than the front segment, and they were joined at a
spot where the segments narrowed to a diameter no larger than a
human neck.  Both segments sported stripes of light fur that
showed where their clothing didn't reach.  She couldn't tell if
their clothes served the same purpose as human clothes, or
whether they just happened to be elaborate holders for the tool
belts circling the forward segment.  The clothes, if that's what
they were, were black bands around both segments, covering about
half of each.
     The segments in front bore single eye-stalks.  Fortunately,
their eyes seemed to be directed toward their destination, rather
than at this trio of cylinders.  Of course they could have a much
wider field of view than humans did, so Abby stayed cautious.  As
they walked, one of the two aliens waved its eye-stalk back and
forth a couple of times, perhaps helping it judge distance, or
perhaps some body language Abby had no way to decipher.  Abby got
a glimpse of one of their mouths and saw dark teeth.
     Each alien had eight long, multi-jointed furry legs, thicker
than large crab legs, and Abby thought about all the octagons
contained in the ship's design.  The four front legs swiveled
from joints under the first segment; the rear four were attached
to the back segment.  The aliens walked on their middle four
limbs, making the two in front and two in back available for
other purposes.
     At the end of each limb was an appendage that looked vaguely
like a monkey's hand, with dark fur but short individually
articulated digits.
     As they walked, Abby realized that she must have
subconsciously expected them to move with slightly jerky actions,
as though drunk or uncoordinated, and she realized that
impression must have been generated by too many old films in
which creatures unlike humans were photographed with stop-motion
or animation.  These creatures walked fluidly, gracefully, with
almost all the joints bending smoothly and in unison.  In their
own way, they were very pretty.
     The creature in front reached the elevator door and pressed
one of the buttons with a graceful motion.  The elevator door
opened almost immediately.  The two spider-like aliens went
inside and pulled the door closed behind them.  Abby hadn't seen
any indication that the aliens had been aware of their presence.
     To Abby's right, Rudy let out a sigh.  To her left, Matt
said, "Wow.  Let's get out of here."
     The three of them slowly backed away from the edge.  When
they were near the opposite side, they put their backpacks on.
One at a time, they swung over the edge of the roof and dropped
gently back down to the floor.
     Matt described what they had seen to Julie, Richard, and
Bobby Joe, "I want to get away from the monorail while things are
quiet.  Abby's got video we can all look at when we get someplace
a little safer."
     Richard pointed toward the nearest huge red cylinder.  "I
suggest we head toward that cylinder.  It's the largest thing
around, and the only thing that reaches the ceiling, so from what
I can see here, it's got the best odds of being associated with
the propulsion system."
     Matt considered that for a few seconds.  "All right.  I'll
take the lead.  After me, Abby, Bobby Joe, Richard, Julie, and
Rudy.  You know the drill."
     Matt took a quick look around, then headed for a pair of
boxy cabinets not far off.  He moved quickly and smoothly.  From
there, he signaled for Abby to follow.  She ran, the mechanical
nature of all the surroundings giving her the feeling that she
was running across bare space on a hugely magnified circuit
board.  She reached Matt at the integrated circuit without
tripping on a resistor or capacitor.  "What if they've got
monitoring cameras on the ceiling?"
     "Then we're dead," Matt said.  "But if they're monitoring
the ship in such detail that they could see us, they'd be running
the risk of information overload.  This is a huge place.  As long
as they don't know we're out, we've got a chance.  As soon as
they suspect they've got problems, then we could have a tough
time staying undetected."
     Bobby Joe reached their side and gave the go-ahead to
Richard.
     Matt said, "Bobby Joe, make sure you've got the coordinates
of that corner noted."
     Bobby Joe nodded.  "The vertical measurements are all
screwed up, but I can get the X-Y."
     The next spot of cover was a curving U-shaped fence-like
barrier formed by a series of vertical dumbbell-shaped uprights.
From there, the group worked their way over the strange terrain,
moving from one structure to another as the equipment housings
grew more numerous.
     Almost thirty minutes later, they reached a structure that
reminded Abby of an oversized doghouse.  The six of them huddled
inside.
     "All right," Matt said.  "I think from here on we can risk
going a little faster, and moving in a group."
     "We're really up against spiders?" Richard asked suddenly.
     "Yes.  Abby, you want to let people take a look at the video
you took?  It's probably for the best that anyone who's going to
be shocked, get it over with here in private instead of the next
time we see them up close."
     Minutes later, Bobby Joe said, "They're not exactly like
Earth spiders.  Real arachnids that look like this have all eight
legs attached to the forward segment.  And their mouths are
different."
     "I assume the 'hands' are different, too," Richard said.
     Julie said, "I'm glad they look like spiders.  I'd like this
even less if they turned out to look like cuddly bunnies or
something."
     Abby didn't say anything, but she realized she actually felt
the opposite way.  If appearances were part of the equation, she
wished their captors were cuddly and cute, making it as difficult
as possible for anyone in the group to pull the trigger or light
the fuse or do whatever one did.  They had to be absolutely
certain they were doing the right thing.
                                 #
     Stuart Lund walked up Broadway feeling agitated.  There had
to be a way he could force the mayor to call back the expedition
team.
     The wide street stretched almost twenty blocks ahead of him
before the curve near Times Square hid it from view.
Occasionally Stuart's gaze would drift up the lengths of the tall
buildings ahead, and then he'd notice the overhead dome, and then
he'd get even more agitated.  God had called on Stuart, and here
he was, apparently ineffectual.
     His congregation understood.  And as much as he was saddened
by the death of the man sorting the mayor's mail, he took pride
in the fact that they had sent her a message.  For the mayor to
believe that her view was the only correct interpretation of the
situation was just maddening.  How could she be so blind that she
could think she understood the one true way?
     There had to be a way to convince her, a way to show her the
mail-room incident was a real expression of the wills of
thousands of people, millions of people.
     Stuart walked for blocks lost in thought.  Occasionally he'd
almost bump into someone and then pay more attention for a few
seconds.  Quite a few people were on the street, but the pace was
decidedly slower than on Earth.  Many of these people must have
been out for a walk or just people-watching.  They didn't move
with the same fervor they had possessed when they had been on the
way to work or on the way to a Broadway production.
     Stuart reached 33rd Street and crossed against the light.
Normally he was one of the few people who waited on the corner
when the traffic was clear, but when traffic was almost
nonexistent he felt no harm was done.
     He neared 34th Street and saw that Macy's was closed.  The
fact made perfect sense, but it was still unsettling.  Macy's of
all places.
     Stuart started to cross 34th Street against the light.  When
he was halfway across the street, he took another look both ways
for traffic.  A second later he stood motionless in the middle of
the street, looking up and to his right.  There, on the south
side of 34th Street was the Empire State Building, reaching, it
seemed, all the way to the dome above.  Stuart stood mesmerized,
his thoughts racing.
     Stuart still remembered his first visit to Manhattan.  His
parents had brought him, and on their first day they went to the
top of the Empire State Building.  The building had seemed to
Stuart to be New York.  It was somehow a symbol of the whole
sky-scraper island for him.  He never thought of New York as the
empire state, but whenever he thought about the Empire State
Building, he was instantly reminded of the congregation of tall
buildings and mid-town Manhattan and pretzel vendors and seeing
the Statue of Liberty in the distance and seeing the wake of the
Staten Island Ferry.  The Empire State Building was New York.
     Seconds later Stuart realized he was standing in the middle
of 34th Street as people passed him on either side.
     Suddenly he knew he had to go to the top.  He turned and
walked back to the curb, then down 34th Street toward the Empire
Stare Building.  From here he couldn't tell if any people were on
the observation decks.  He didn't know if the elevators were
running.  But he had to go.  He had an idea.
                                 #
     Abby gave Matt a head start and followed.  Behind her Bobby
Joe followed.
     She felt filthy, sweaty.  The men were probably even
filthier by now, and they all looked like unshaven bums.  Except
Matt.  He, too, was unshaven and ragged, but somehow he didn't
look like a bum.  Bobby Joe's combination of bald skull and
facial hair made him look vaguely as if someone had twisted his
head upside down.
     She desperately wished for sleep.  They'd taken a short
break that seemed no longer than ten minutes, and then it was
over.
     They scurried across the floor from one piece of cover to
the next.  In the distance ahead was the tall red cylinder
stretching all the way to the ceiling.  About midway between it
and where they were was a large collection of equipment cabinets
and big machinery of unknown purpose.
     They skirted a small field that looked like a graveyard with
metal posts instead of tombstones.  As Abby forced her body to
keep up with the long, slow strides, she thought again about how
tired she was.  And if she was this tired, the odds were that
Bobby Joe and Julie were even more tired.  They weren't
complaining, though, and neither would she.
     After almost a half-hour they reached a structure with a
roof so low even Abby had to duck.  Poles at each of the four
corners supported the thin roof, and stubby walls on two sides
rose about a meter off the ground.  It vaguely resembled a
carport, but Abby had no clue as to what it was really for.
     The group took cover as Matt and Rudy scanned the horizon.
Abby leaned back against the low wall and stretched her legs.
Julie sat nearby, rubbing her ankles and calves.
     Julie and Bobby Joe groaned when a few minutes later Matt
informed the group it was time to move again, but they didn't
actually object.  Within minutes of being on the run, they
encountered another monorail track, this one running crosswise
between the radial tracks.
     They crossed the track and kept going, the large collection
of structures growing steadily closer.  The dark shapes
projecting above the horizon grew higher and more numerous,
giving Abby the feeling she was approaching a huge oil refinery.
     Their path cut through the center of the deserted tract of
equipment, and Matt slowed the pace.  They passed under arches
and through cutouts in the buildings.  On Abby's left was a large
transparent tube that came through the floor and curved to meet
the side of a huge octagonal cabinet.  Sludge resembling rocky
road ice cream moved slowly through the tube, upward and into the
cabinet.
     Five minutes later Matt signaled for the group to slow down.
Ahead was something that at first looked like a pond, but as they
approached more closely Abby could see it was a window built into
the floor, an observation port through which they could see the
world below.  She could see the city of cones beneath its dome
far below, miniaturized by being seen from several times the
height of the tallest cone, an airplane-window view rather than a
bird's-eye picture.
     The transparent port was at least ten meters across,
surrounded by a raised lip.  Suspended over the observation port
were strange instruments aimed down through the port, some of
them mounted on articulated supports like dentists' drills,
others running on sets of tracks like small construction cranes.
Capping the whole array of equipment was a suspended and
inverted, transparent bowl.  The lip of the bowl extended several
meters out from the perimeter of the observation port, but hung a
couple of meters in the air, allowing access to the port.
     Matt cautioned the team to stay clear of the edge of the
observation port as they navigated around it.  A moment later,
Abby got a glimpse of Manhattan far in the distance toward the
center of the octagonal area below.
     Matt must have seen it, too, because he stopped and held up
his new walkie-talkie and spread the silvery antenna into a
flashbulb reflector.  "Manhattan base, this is Rover."
     Seconds later, a female voice said, "This is Manhattan base.
How are you?"
     "We're all right.  We should be able to take action soon."
Matt explained what they'd found after cutting through the wall.
     "Well, you'd better move fast.  The streets are full of
protesters not too happy with the plan.  They're marching toward
Gracie Mansion, and they're busting up cars all along the way.
Some preacher's got them stirred up.  Says we're on the way to
heaven and you guys are just going to blow it up."
     "We're maybe a kilometer or two higher than you are, and
from here I've got to say this doesn't look like my idea of
heaven."  Matt released the talk switch and suddenly motioned
Bobby Joe to come closer.
     "Can we transmit some of Julie's video down there?  Seeing
actual pictures of the Archies and this level might slow down the
protests."
     "Okay.  Tell them to get set to receive some video at ten
percent of normal speed."
     Matt continued the walkie-talkie conversation as Bobby Joe
asked Abby and Julie if he could use their minivids for a few
minutes.  Abby and Julie cued their recorders to the start of
what they thought would be the best sections.
     Bobby Joe opened a small compartment on the side of Matt's
walkie-talkie and uncoiled a small cable from inside.  The plug
on the end of the cable went into the side of a minivid.  He
fingered the minivid controls, then said to Matt, "All right.
It's sending.  The walkie-talkie was optimized for a lower
bandwidth than video, so we can't transmit at normal speed, but
they should be getting it."
     Abby moved so she could get a clearer view through the
observation window.  Standing near the lip of the port was a
little like standing near the edge of a tall cliff.  Distance
turned one of the domed cities below into a cake under glass.
Julie quietly gave her report along with the video.
     Matt scanned the horizon a couple of times during the time
the minivids were connected.  Finally he told Bobby Joe to stop.
"Manhattan base, we'll check in again if we get a chance."
     "Roger, Rover."
     "Let's get out of here," Matt said as he folded up the
reflector antenna.  "We've been out in the open too long."
     The group continued toward the large red cylinder in the
distance.  They had been angling through the equipment-littered
landscape for no more then ten minutes when Matt unexpectedly
fell slowly forward and scrambled almost flat on the ground.  He
gave an urgent hand signal to take cover.  He got as close as he
could to a narrow, low wall.  As Abby and the others scrambled
into position behind the same structure, she got a glimpse of a
distant monorail car approaching, running more or less parallel
to the wall they were hiding behind.
     Abby quietly took her pistol from the holster.  The Glock 17
felt slightly oily, and she blamed that on sweat.  The
semi-automatic was loaded with a seventeen-round magazine
containing nine-millimeter cartridges.  The pistol was light to
begin with; in the low gravity it felt like a toy gun in her
hand.
     Abby had thought the sound of a gun being fired was one of
the scariest sounds in the world.  Now she was aware of a sound
that chilled her even more--the soft click click of a gun being
cocked.
     Over her heartbeat, Abby could hear a soft whoosh of air
grow louder as the monorail car came closer.  She didn't breathe
again until she was sure the sound was starting to grow softer.
It was only then that she let herself think about how good it
felt to lie down for a couple of minutes.
     Matt waited several minutes before he cautiously raised his
head over the wall.  "They're gone.  We'd better keep moving."
     The group stayed closer together as they threaded their way
through what resembled a grove of telephone poles, hundreds of
shiny blue poles that reached halfway to the ceiling, spaced far
enough apart that an obstacle course driver could have driven a
compact car between them.
     Rudy said, "I just had a thought.  With all the monorails
running either radially or on transverse runs from radial to
radial, you know what it would look like from the air?"
     "A giant spider-web," Abby said.
     "And," Bobby Joe said, "it probably won't be long before
we're heading straight for the center."
     Julie said, "To think that I could have gone on vacation
about a week before this all started.  I was considering going
out to Colorado with a friend."
     "Yeah, but then you might be roasting more than just wienies
right now," Bobby Joe said.
                                 #
     Benny Kellermund was leaving the warehouse church with the
rest of the congregation after one of the two daily services.
     The preacher was at the main door, and he seemed to be
looking for Benny, because he gave a big sigh when he caught
Benny's attention.
     "I need to talk to you," Stuart Lund said.
     "Sure, okay," said Benny.
     "It concerns your friend, too.  Could you stop by in about
an hour?"
     "Yeah, I guess we could do that."
     "Thanks very much.  I think I've got an idea that will
interest you."
                                 #
     "This is encouraging," Richard said.  "They wouldn't build
something this sturdy if all it did was recycle air for one of
the prisons below."
     Abby suspected he was right.  The closer they got to the red
cylinder, the more obvious it was that the massive structure was
a product of heavy duty engineering.  The floor, which had
supported the numerous pieces of large equipment they had already
passed, here was braced.
     "I'm beginning to think you're right," Rudy said.  "This
really does look more like something designed for propulsion than
anything we've seen so far."
     The group moved closer, picking their way through stuff that
a giant might have strewn around while working on some enormous
automobile.  Monstrous valves, levers that didn't move but looked
as if they were ready to do so at any moment, glowing cubes that
pulsated with greenish light, none of it made the slightest sense
to Abby.  She continued taking video whenever she saw markings on
equipment or noticed anything that cried out for being
immortalized on video.  On the way, she put in a fresh battery.
     The red cylinder seemed like a huge storage tank at an oil
refinery, except for one thing.  Small doors were scattered over
the surface of the cylinder.  Ladders led to many of the doors,
ladders unlike the ones Abby was used to.  These ladders were
more like pairs of back-to-back ladders, probably designed so the
Archies could use one set of legs on each side.
     At four locations Abby could see gantry-like structures
rising next to the base and meeting the cylinder wall at a door.
     Finally they squatted under a T-shaped structure not twenty
meters from the base of the cylinder.  Matt looked at Richard and
said, "Are you ready to put some explosives in place?"
     Abby cleared her throat deliberately.  "I'm nervous about
this.  Suppose this isn't really the propulsion system?  I still
can't make much sense of the symbols I've seen."
     "It's a calculated risk," said Matt.
     "Even if it is the propulsion system," Julie said.  "That's
still no guarantee that blowing it to pieces will help us."
     "Again, it's a calculated risk.  We could be doing the wrong
thing, but this is one of those times that doing nothing is doing
the worst thing."  Matt looked at Abby and back at Julie.  He
turned to Richard.  "Get started."
     "Sure," said Richard.  "The whole works?"
     "Whatever's appropriate, but I don't want to use it all yet.
And I want it on a long timer, say ten hours.  I want to have
time to be a long way from here, and I want time to change our
minds if we learn more during those hours.  This definitely feels
like propulsion to me, but I understand the possibility that it
could be some vital piece of life support for the entire ship."
     "There's another reason for making sure we disable the
ship's propulsion," Rudy said.
     "And that is?"
     "It'll make it that much tougher for them to take us
somewhere harder to escape from, and farther from home."
     Matt nodded.  "Makes sense."  To Abby and Julie he said, "I
hope you're satisfied with this, but we're not a democracy right
now."  He scanned the area ahead and said, "All right.  Let's
go."
     They moved quickly to the octagonal door at the base of the
cylinder.  It opened smoothly.  Matt stepped through, and the
team followed.  Abby stepped through, very happy to see handles
on the inside of the door, too.
     Abby looked up and had to catch her breath.  Several years
ago, she'd been on a tour at Canaveral and had seen how large the
thrusters were.  What was contained in the cylinder didn't
actually look like a thruster, but the enormous funnel reminded
her of one.  The funnel sat with its narrow end almost touching
the floor, the large end not far from the ceiling.  Gigantic
coils wound around the underside of the funnel.  The individual
coils must have had about the same diameter as a manhole cover.
     Lights ringed the cylinder wall in rows about ten meters
apart.  Here and there inside the huge cylinder, catwalks led
from the cylinder walls to work areas near what looked like huge
gray barnacles on the coils.
     Richard pointed toward one of the barnacles nearest the
ground.  A double ladder led to a small platform just under it.
     Richard took Rudy's backpack and his own and went up the
ladder.  From the floor below, Abby watched as Richard took out
slabs of a putty-like substance and tucked them between coils so
they didn't show from the ground.
     Abby caught Matt's attention.  "Why would the Archies wait
before they destroy the planet?"
     "I really don't know.  Maybe it's function of how
interesting the planet itself is.  Maybe they save more video
images if it's something unlike what they've seen before."
     Rudy said, "Could be lots of reasons, probably most of which
we wouldn't even understand.  Maybe sometimes they have to charge
up their weapons from a nearby sun, and that takes a while."
     "All done," Richard said as he climbed down.
     "Good.  Let's get out of here," said Matt.
     Matt pushed the door open slowly.  Abby was sure they'd see
a huge spider blocking the entire doorway, and despite her
rational awareness that these aliens had nothing in common with
Earth spiders other than an unusual similarity in appearance, she
suddenly thought about spiders that ate their mates.
     Outside the door the way was clear.  Matt stepped through
and the rest of the party followed.
     They didn't stop moving until almost an hour later when they
took cover in a small clearing surrounded by rectangular
equipment cabinets about a meter high.
     "God, I'm tired," said Bobby Joe the instant he sat down.
     Abby was tired, too, more tired than she'd been in ages.
Her eyes hurt, her legs hurt, her shoulders hurt.
     "Rest well," Matt said.  "We're moving on in ten minutes."
     Abby leaned back against one of the cabinets and closed her
eyes.  She imagined she was back in her apartment in bed, in the
most comfortable bed in the world.
     She turned on her right side and saw the morning sunshine
streaming through the window.  She turned to her left and saw
Matt lying next to her.  Matt's eyes opened suddenly and he said,
"We've got to go."
     "What?"
     "We've got to go," Matt said again.
     Abby felt a hand gently nudging her shoulder.  She opened
her eyes and saw Matt kneeling beside her.   He was dressed in
his multi-pocketed expedition shirt.  Above his head was the
ceiling of the Archies's ship.  Abby blinked.
     "All right," she said.  "I'm awake."
     Moments later the team resumed the trek.  Ahead in the
distance was the center of the web, where walls from floor to
ceiling concealed what lay inside.  The horizon seemed even more
cluttered than before with equipment cabinets and machines of
unknown purpose.
     Hours dragged on until Abby no longer cared whether they
were spotted, no longer feared capture, as long as it would
afford her the chance to sleep or die.  Matt had obviously been
hesitant to break out the stimulants, but a little earlier
everyone on the team had popped a couple of pills.  They seemed
to make almost no difference.
     They grew closer to the walled area in the center of the
ship.  And then, when they had traveled so far that the wall was
only another several hundred meters away, she got her second or
third or fourth wind.  Reality still had a mildly dream-like
quality to it, but she felt more energy, more aware of her
surroundings.
     A series of doors were set along the bottom of the wall.  At
each door, a monorail track stretched out toward the perimeter of
the huge floor they were on.  Next to the nearest monorail door
was a smaller octagonal door, possibly intended for foot traffic
or emergencies.
     Matt signaled them to stop and take cover.  Seconds later,
Abby watched through a crack between two cabinets as a monorail
car with one Archie aboard approached a door farther down the
side of the wall.  About ten seconds before the monorail reached
the door, the large door swung open silently.  The monorail car
sped through without slowing, and the door swung closed again as
soon as the car had vanished.
     From that point on, everyone carried their pistols in their
hands instead of in their holsters.
     The group snaked forward, threading between more equipment
cabinets and strange structures, until they all crouched not
thirty meters from a monorail door and the smaller door next to
it.
     "I suppose we need to see what's on the other side of the
wall?" said Rudy.  Rudy volunteered to go check.  He took off his
pack and set it on the floor.  He moved forward, pistol ready.
     Rudy scanned the area before him briefly, and then he ran,
faster than Abby had expected.  Just a few seconds later, he was
at the door.  He gripped the handles and just as he was about to
pull the door open, the larger double doors over the monorail
track began to open.  Rudy flung himself sideways, getting as
close to the base of the monorail track as he could, and seconds
later a monorail car sped outward, occupied by two Archies.
     Abby held her breath, afraid the Archies would see Rudy, but
the car kept going without slowing down and coming back.  The
door on Rudy's side swung closed over his head.  Rudy stayed
motionless where he was for a full minute before he got back up
and moved to the smaller door.  He put his pistol in his belt and
twisted the handles.  As soon as the door pulled forward a
little, Rudy retrieved his pistol.
     He pulled the door open a little more and peered through the
gap.  Finally he pulled it open farther and leaned inside.
Seconds later he turned toward the rest of the team and gave a
come on sign.
     "Let's go.  Fast!" said Matt.
     The team moved faster than they had in hours.  Less than a
half-minute later, they were all through the door and it was
closed behind them.
     Abby suddenly felt heavier as she ran behind Matt as they
moved farther into the enclosure.  The gravity must be higher in
this section somehow.  Another wall, perhaps a kilometer away in
the distance ahead, formed part of what must have been a still
smaller octagonal enclosed area.  Between the inner wall and the
outer wall lay a forest of large enclosed kiosks.  Through the
maze of kiosks Abby could see short sections of monorail tracks
continuing in toward the center of the complex.
     The kiosks were octagonal, about two meters on a side and
about three meters tall.  Their placement seemed to be random.
Abby and the others followed Matt until they were hidden from the
nearby monorail track by two or three kiosks.
     The kiosks were almost all a uniform gray, except for a few
nearest the monorail track, each of which had a dark band around
the base.  Matt approached one of the kiosks.  Abby saw that it
seemed to have an entry corridor rather than a door.  A little
like park restrooms, the kiosk was a solid enclosure with an
extra short wall that came directly out from the wall, then bent
at a octagonal-corner angle and continued for a couple of meters.
Apparently, one could walk right inside, but the interior
couldn't be seen from outside.
     Matt moved closer to the kiosk with a dark band around the
base.  He slowly entered the short corridor and peeked around the
corner into the interior.  Just as softly, but obviously more
tense, now, Matt backed up and motioned the team to get away.
     The team moved quickly and quietly past several more kiosks,
one with a band around the base, and several plain ones.
     Matt cautiously entered the corridor around another one of
the kiosks, this one a plain one.  Just about the same time that
Matt peeked around the edge of the interior doorway and motioned
the rest of the team to come ahead and join him, a dark band
appeared around the base of the kiosk.
     Abby followed him.  Inside the unoccupied kiosk was an
octagonal room about three meters across.  Against one wall was
what was probably a bed.  Set into the opposite wall was an
unfamiliar-looking console.  The ceiling glowed a soft blue.
     "What did you see back there?" asked Rudy softly.
     Matt kept his voice very low, too.  "A sleeping Archie.
These must be quarters."
     Abby said.  "I think you're right.  And I think we must have
just turned on the no vacancy sign."

                            Chapter 13
                        Trapped Like Bugs

     "You want to blow up the Empire State Building?" repeated
Lucky Stiles.
     Benny, Lucky, and the preacher were in the upstairs office
at the warehouse.  Benny was having as much trouble shifting
gears as Lucky was.
     Stuart Lund had a glow to his eyes Benny hadn't seen before.
This guy was excited.
     "No, no, no," said the preacher.  "I don't really want to
blow it up."
     "But you want I should put a bunch of explosives up there
and rig them to go off?" asked Lucky.
     "Yes.  But as a threat.  Not that we'd actually do it."
     Benny sat silently, just observing Lucky and the preacher.
     "I don't understand," said Lucky.  "I either do something or
I don't do something.  You're talking about not doing something,
or you're talking about doing something?"
     "I'm talking about threatening to blow up the building if
the mayor doesn't cancel the expedition."
     "Okay.  So what if she doesn't?"
     "But she will.  She won't want the Empire State Building
blown up.  She'll have to realize that if people feel so strongly
about stopping the expedition, that it should be stopped.  She'll
call them back."
     "I mean," Lucky said, "what if she doesn't?"
     The preacher looked as if this was a brand new idea to him.
"But I'm telling you, she will."
     "Let's say I'm not convinced.  Actually, I kinda like the
idea.  But I don't understand.  You say if she doesn't cancel,
you'll do this.  That means you gotta be ready to do it."
     "Right.  Exactly.  We'd be ready to do it.  We just wouldn't
need to actually pull the switch."
     "But if she says no, then I can pull the switch, tight?"
     "Er--" The preacher was quiet.
     "I mean, if we're not prepared to follow through with the
threat, there is no threat, am I right?"
     "I see what you're saying," the preacher said slowly.  "It's
just that we won't need to follow through because the mayor will
give in."
     "Okay, okay," Benny said suddenly.  "I think I can
straighten this out.  Lucky, you can pull the switch if the mayor
says no.  The preacher says she won't say no, so as long as the
preacher is right, you don't pull the switch.  If the preacher is
wrong, which he says he isn't, then you can pull the switch.  But
the preacher says that won't happen."
     Lucky scratched his head.  "Thanks, I think."
     The preacher sat there saying nothing, like some robot given
unclear directions.
     "But there's still a problem," Lucky said.
     "And what's that?" asked the preacher.
     "There aren't enough explosives in the world--or at least
here--to do the job."
     The preacher frowned.  "I thought you did the job with the
water in the Battery Tunnel with explosives."
     Lucky nodded.  "Yeah, but this is different.  We're talking
about a huge building.  I mean, in World War II, a bomber flew
right into the side of the building.  Somewhere near the top,
too.  The bomber isn't there anymore.  The building is.  What
does that tell you?"
     "Gee," the preacher said.  "I hadn't thought about it.  But
I do remember that story."  He leaned back in his chair and
looked depressed.  "So this whole conversation's been for
nothing?"
     "Depends.  I can do a lot of damage.  With some luck, I
might even be able to blow off the top section, along with the
antenna tower.  If that thing came crashing down, it'd do a lot
of damage.  And that would get the mayor's attention.  'Course if
I never pull the switch, none of this matters anyway."
     "Well, it does matter.  If the mayor doesn't believe the
threat is real, then she won't act."
     "Like I say, I can do a lot of damage.  I could put stuff
close enough to the observations towers that they'd be gone, or
they be closed forever.  And every time anyone looked at the
skyline, they'd see what a dumb move the mayor made."
     The preacher brightened at that.  "Maybe this will work.  So
you'd have to have some kind of remote control."
     "That's for sure.  They haven't made a fuse long enough for
me to get out of the building in time.  Plus which, we don't want
it going off automatically.  I've got to be in control, so when
the mayor says okay I don't push the button."
     "And you could rig it so that anyone tampering with the
explosives would set them off?"
     "Piece of cake."
     The preacher leaned forward in his chair and looked into
space for a minute.  "I think it will work.  Will you do it?"
     Lucky hesitated.  He looked at Benny.  "What do you think?"
     "If that expedition keeps going, they're going to stir up a
hornet's nest.  We only have to push the button if the mayor
doesn't listen to reason.  The preacher says she will.  And if
she doesn't, it's her fault.  We got nothing to lose."
     "I don't know.  We're talking about a lot of trips to the
top with backpacks.  You willing to help?"
     "Sure.  The preacher says the elevators are still going."
     Finally Lucky said, "What the hell.  At least we don't have
to worry about rats and alligators this time."
                                 #
     "Rise and shine, Bobby Joe."
     At first Bobby Joe's eyes felt as if they were glued shut.
A hand jogged his shoulder, but it took him several seconds to
get past squinting in the light.  Matt Sheehan knelt next to
where Bobby Joe had fallen asleep on the floor of the kiosk.
     "You've had your two hours.  That's all we can afford."
     "Oh, God."  Bobby Joe pulled himself upright and leaned back
against the wall.  If he had been trained in anatomy, he probably
could have identified by name the one or two muscles that weren't
sore and the one or two joints that weren't stiff.  Matt helped
him up.
     Richard, Julie, and Abby still slept on the floor.  Rudy
stood guard by the door.  Light-headed from sleep deprivation and
low gravity, Bobby Joe moved to the wall and ran his finger along
the desktop that supported what had to be a computer and
communications console, if the Archies worshipped the same
technology god.
     Matt's voice came from over Bobby Joe's shoulder.  "I think
it's time you earned your keep.  You think you can figure out how
to use the system?"
     "Too early to tell.  If our being here was one of the things
they had in mind when they designed the system, I'd have better
luck teaching Richard to be a public speaker.  If their race is
one hundred percent honest and respectful of property rights and
'need to know,' then I've got an outside chance."  Bobby Joe's
generation began manually programming VCRs for their parents, so
he had more faith in his abilities than he let on.
     "I can't expect miracles.  Just do your best.  I suppose you
and Abby will need to work together, so she can try to interpret
while you do your computer stuff.  Wake her up as soon as you
think there's something for her to start on."
     Bobby Joe ran his fingers over his bald scalp.  "Will do."
     The first puzzle was how to sit down.  The Archies might
just stand when they used the computer, but then again maybe they
didn't.  Bobby Joe knelt and looked closely at the wall below the
console.  If he were designing living quarters meant to be as
space efficient as possible, he'd go for built-in furniture that
folded out of the walls.  Maybe the Archies did, too.  They were
a lot different from humans in appearance, and perhaps in
thought, but both humans and Archies had to function with the
same rules of space and time.  If the Archies wanted to fit ten
units of materials in a five-unit kiosk, they had to live with
some of the same constraints humans would have.
     The two square meters of wall surface under the desk showed
no obvious blemishes, deformations, or knobs.  Bobby Joe pushed
on a series of points anyway, just in case human color vision
didn't pick up everything the Archies' eyes could see.  No
results.
     Bobby Joe stood up, wondering if perhaps some action at the
console would activate a device that would move a chair into
place.  He didn't want to touch the console yet, though.  When he
found out how to turn it on, for all he knew he might start
transmitting video to a central location.  That should get a
reaction from the Archies.
     Besides that, a console switch would imply some powered,
mechanized method of getting a chair in place.  Again, if he were
designing a setup like this, he wouldn't want to rely on motors
and actuators when a simpler system would be cheaper and more
reliable.
     Kneeling again, he inspected the two walls adjacent to the
console.  Nothing obvious there, either.  Crap.
     Matt told Rudy it was time to trade places.  Matt took over
the guard position, and Rudy lay down on the floor to sleep.  The
place looked like Bobby Joe had imagined summer camp to be, only
more octagonal.  And some of the campers had new beards.
     Bobby Joe stood up again, puzzled.  Maybe the Archies did
just stand while they used the console.  He ticked off
possibilities on his fingers and stopped abruptly when he hit
"ceiling."
     The kiosk roofs were peaked, reaching a point about a meter
above the seam where the roof met the wall.  But the ceiling was
flat.  A close examination of the ceiling showed a set of eight
small squares forming a ring about a meter wide.  Bobby Joe
reached for the square set in the pie slice above the console.
He couldn't reach it.
     Bobby Joe jumped and pushed the square.  It clicked.  Slowly
in the light gravity, the ceiling pie slice began to pivot, the
point in the center swinging down into the room, bending at a
hinge along the edge where the ceiling met the wall.
     As the ceiling segment swung down, a segmented sheet above
it unfolded like Japanese origami or whatever they called that
stuff when you fold a piece of paper into some 3-D shape.
Finally eight segments touched the floor.  Bobby Joe felt an
inordinate amount of pride in the accomplishment, despite the
fact that the chair didn't look like it would be very comfortable
for a human.  The "chair" was more like a short ladder with only
two wide steps.  Apparently an Archie would rest on it with the
rear body segment supported by the lower step, the higher step
supporting the forward segment closer to the console.
     Bobby Joe put some weight on the bottom step.  The structure
stretched a bit, but held.  Bobby Joe wondered how heavy humans
were compared to the Archies.  Finally he sat on the rear shelf
and leaned forward on the upper shelf.  His posture was a little
like that of someone sitting backward on a chair and leaning
forward to rest on the chair back.  The position was slightly
more comfortable than standing.
     He glanced back at Matt, who gave him a thumbs-up.  Bobby
Joe felt a small surge of pride in pleasing him.  As he averted
his gaze, he noticed another faint square set into the floor.
     Bobby Joe knelt beside the chair and fingered the square on
the floor.  Finally he pressed his thumb against the square and
it sank into the surface.  As it did, a larger octagonal outline
appeared next to the square hole.  Gingerly, he pushed the
octagon sideways and revealed a similarly shaped dark opening.
He looked up at Matt and said, "Maybe this is how they get rid of
trash."
     Matt nodded and looked impressed.  Bobby Joe slid the cover
back into place and stood up.  Now for the hard part--figuring
out the console.
     On the surface of a trapezoidal shelf about a half-meter
deep was an octagon split into eight pie wedges.  In front of it
was a much smaller octagon, about the size of a dollar.
     On the wall above the shelf was a much larger octagon.  To
the left and to the right of the octagon were much smaller
octagons, about the size of a thumbnail.  The one on the right
had a glassy sheen to it, and the one of the left was perforated
with a few hundred tiny holes.  Bobby Joe felt good to have a
starting point.  The odds suggested that the two small octagons
were a camera lens and a microphone.
     Bobby Joe dug through his backpack and found some tape.  He
tore off two short sections and applied the pieces to the two
small octagons.  If he accidentally turned on console
communications, he didn't want a bunch of Archies showing up to
find out why one of their kiosks was infested with apes.
     Nothing on the desktop looked like an on-off switch.  Bobby
Joe touched the small octagon at the front of the desktop.
Instantly the large octagon on the wall lit, displaying eight pie
wedges, each with an image.
     Bobby Joe stared at the eight images.  They could have been
icons, or they could have been actual text in the Archies'
language.  Bobby Joe looked at Matt and said, "I think it's time
I woke Abby."
     "Okay."
     A couple of minutes later, Abby and Bobby Joe stood on
opposite sides of the chair and looked at the screen.  Abby's
minivid optics module sat on the chair, angled so it could record
whatever images they summoned on the console.
     The images themselves surprised Bobby Joe by being of lower
quality than he'd guessed was likely.  They were granular, the
individual pixels easily discernible.  In addition, they
flickered, like TV screens shown on old films, and the flickering
was even worse when he looked at the screen from the corner of
his eye instead of straight at it.
     Abby rubbed her eyes and said, "This may tell us something
about their eyes.  They may not see as well as we do, and their
persistence of vision may be longer than ours."
     "So this might look just fine to them?"
     "It's possible.  This ship wouldn't have been cheap to
build.  I'd bet they could have higher resolution if they wanted
it.  And it could be they don't see in stereo since the display
is flat.  Having only the one eye-stalk suggests that they have
either no stereoscopic vision, or stereoscopic with fairly
limited depth perception since the separate views would have to
be pretty close together."
     "Well, it may be okay for them, but I bet it'll give me a
headache in an hour."
     "Mmm," Abby said.
     "Any ideas so far?"
     Abby pointed to the pie wedge on the left.  "That image
there reminds me of a side-view silhouette of their mouths.  It
looks a little like a spider's mouth, but with no mandibles."
     "Yeah, it does.  So maybe that indicates communication,
speech?"
     "Could be."
     "If that's true, we don't want to activate that function."
     "How would we if we wanted to?" asked Abby.  "Touch the
corresponding wedge on this control panel?"
     "That's my first guess, but I didn't want to try anything
like that without a clue as to what it might be turning on.
Showing a mouth might not mean speech or communication, and I
didn't want to be ordering a pizza."
     "Don't talk about real food, all right?  I'm getting so very
tired of green pellets."
     "Sorry about that."  Bobby Joe hesitated.  "Do spiders have
good vision?"
     "I don't know, but that's probably just as well.  If we
think of the Archies as just big spiders, I think we're bound to
make mistakes.  As much as possible, we should focus on what we
can learn about the Archies and extrapolate from there.  For
instance, we shouldn't expect they lay eggs unless we get some
direct evidence for that assumption."
     "Okay.  So what next?"
     "I've got several video images stored.  Language or symbols
from things like the elevator door and several machines.  I need
to create a small catalog of them.  I want to use more space than
a computer screen."  Abby looked at Matt.  "Any problem with
writing on the wall?  It'll make it tougher to cover our tracks."
     "Go ahead.  It won't be long before that's less important."
     Abby and Bobby Joe went to work, with Abby locating images
and Bobby Joe transcribing them on the wall, along with a brief
note about where they came from.  When they finished, a dozen
images decorated the wall next to the console.
     To Bobby Joe several of the images looked more like
Rorschach ink blots than characters.  Abby's image collection
included the sign on the dome over Manhattan, and images from the
emergency exit door, the elevator, the monorail car, the location
Richard had planted explosives, and several other unidentified
equipment cabinets.  Now that they were all together on the wall,
Bobby Joe could see a similarity in most of the images except for
the sign on the dome.  On the right-hand side of all the other
images was a distorted octagon and a square with a vertical line
at its center.
     Abby must have been looking at the same thing, but she was
ahead of Bobby Joe.  She pointed to the octagon and square from
the message on the emergency door.  "You know what?  I'm
beginning to think these symbols on the end are location
references.  This octagon is almost whole.  But look at the ones
from places farther inside.  They're smooshed in."
     "That's a technical term, right?"
     "Right.  The one from near the observation port is smooshed
in maybe ten percent.  The one from what you guys guessed was
part of the propulsion system is smooshed farther in, and the
actual location is physically closer to the center of the ship.
The octagon we found on the elevator is almost whole.  I think
the smooshing says where you are, what direction from the center
of the ship, and how far out from the center.  And the thin line
in these squares shows elevation in the ship.  Everything on this
level looks the same, but the one from the emergency door says we
were closer to the middle of the ship."
     Bobby Joe scanned the images, looking for any inconsistency
that could disprove the hypothesis.  He didn't find one.  "So are
you saying the Archies have a pictographic language?"
     "I'm betting they don't.  If their history is something like
ours, separate groups developed their own languages, and
pictographs are an easy solution that allows a group of people
who don't all use the same language to quickly understand the
message.  Even if they do all use the same language now,
pictographs are still convenient shorthand."
     "So all we need to do is figure out what these other seven
pictures mean?  How do we do that?"
     "That's the first step.  And all I can say for now is keep
your mind as open as you can, and be prepared for the possibility
that we just won't be able to decipher everything.  Think about
the "I Love New York" bumper sticker with the heart symbol for
the word 'love' and what the Archies would need to know to
understand it.  The heart is an internal organ, so they're not
going to know what it looks like without a dissection or a scan.
Then they would need to know that our stylized shape correlates
to the heart, and they'd need to know the historical basis for
believing the heart is the source of emotion.  Plus they'd need
to know that in that context, red is good.  The symbol is
actually a ideogram, not a pictograph."
     "They'd never figure that out without a lot of help.  So
you're saying we're going to have that tough a time, too?"
     "With some of the figures, maybe.  Then again, we might get
lucky and find the equivalent of a side view of a stairway used
to show where the stairs are.  Some pictographs should simply be
a small picture of what they represent."
     "So we're back to making guesses as to what these things
represent?"
     "Yes."
     Bobby Joe and Abby stared at the eight pictographs.  Finally
Bobby Joe said, "The one that looks like a 3-D octagon.  Could
that be the ship we're on?"
     "Could be," Abby said slowly.  "But they use octagons so
frequently it could be other things, too."  She looked at the
picture of the message on the dome ceiling.  "The first symbol in
the message is the same one."
     Bobby Joe looked back at the symbols on the screen.  "That
one on the right looks a lot like a dome."
     "Yeah, it does.  How about if we try it?"
     Bobby Joe turned to Matt.  "Any problem if we try out some
of the console functions?"
     Matt shook his head.  "Give it a shot."
                                 #
     Benny Kellermund and Lucky Stiles entered the Empire State
Building from 34th Street.  Benny felt instantly dwarfed in the
two-story passage surrounding the banks of elevators.  He also
felt a sharp twinge of guilt.  This grand old building was coming
up on a hundred years old.
     The building was much quieter than he'd seen it in the past.
Apparently the bulk of the normal visitors were from out of town.
Now the supply of out-of-towners was pretty limited.  A large
sign said no admission fee was being charged and for people to
use the elevators whenever they wanted.
     Benny walked with Lucky, trying to look casual.  Both men
wore maintenance clothes.  Lucky had explained that would be
their best camouflage, and Benny had seen the wisdom.  They both
also wore bulky backpacks.  They had talked about suitcases and
cardboard boxes and other options and finally settled on this
plan.
     No one seemed to be paying them any attention as they passed
elevators meant for people who worked in the bottom two-thirds of
the building and reached the express elevators that would reach
all the way to the eightieth floor.  For the first time in
Benny's memory, an elevator was waiting for them.  They got in
alone, and Lucky pressed the button for eighty.
     "Seems slow," Lucky said as they began to rise.
     "It's the low gravity," Benny said,
     "I knew that," Lucky said.
     Benny smiled, but he didn't say anything.
     "What?" Lucky asked.
     "Nothing.  Nothing."  Benny blanked his expression, but he
still felt good about knowing things Lucky didn't.  Lucky was
good with explosives, but he wasn't smarter than Benny.
     Benny's ears popped only once on the way to the top.  He was
sure they had popped two or three times on the way up in the
past.  He was suddenly sure it was the result of the lighter
gravity, but he wasn't exactly sure why.
     The doors opened on the eightieth floor.  Benny and Lucky
moved down the hall to the pair of elevators that would take them
to the eighty-sixth floor.  On previous trips on windy days,
Benny had been able to feel the building shudder slightly with
the gusts.  Today the building hummed with air-conditioner noise
and the vibrations of elevators and other machinery, but the
floor felt rock solid under his feet.
     One of the elevators to the eighty-sixth floor was ready for
them when they reached the door, and going these six floors
seemed to take half the time it had taken them to rise the first
eighty floors.
     On the eighty-sixth floor, Lucky was all for going directly
to the elevator that led to the 102nd floor, but Benny convinced
him they should go out on the observation deck first.  "After
all, it might be a long time before anyone's allowed up here
again, if you know what I mean."
     They went out to the open-air observation deck, and the view
took Benny's breath away for an instant.  The air inside the dome
was totally clear.  Beyond the security barrier, the World Trade
Center towers looked so close they could have been only twenty
blocks away.  Benny looked up at the remaining dozen or so floors
rising from the center of the observation deck.  The antenna
tower on top of the domed building, just above the higher
enclosed observation deck, rose even taller, so high that it
seemed to almost touch the transparent dome overhead.
     Benny's surge of pride in Manhattan and the sense of
familiarity generated by his previous trips to this point were
displaced by an emotion he refused to identify as fear.  Those
domes outside.  From here Benny had the best view he'd ever had
of those outside domes, and he felt cold.  Just past the tip of
the Chrysler Building with its curves and points was an
incredibly tall and thin dome that for no obvious reason reminded
Benny of the ant farm his aunt Martha had given him when he was
five or six.  He had a sudden image of the way the ant farm had
eventually looked in the trash, the glass cracked, the ants all
dead.
     Benny got as close as he could to the edge and looked down
on the closest buildings.  "You remember those Letterman reruns
where he dropped watermelons and stuff off a big building?"
     "We should go," said Lucky.  "We got things to do."
     Benny followed him silently, more nervous than he wanted to
admit about whether they should be doing this.  He kept telling
himself the explosives would never actually be used.
     They took stairs up a floor and got on the elevator that
would go all the way to the top--the 102nd floor.  Lucky pressed
the button for the ninetieth floor.  Benny was still amazed at
not having to wait for elevators.
     At the ninetieth floor the men got out on a floor much
smaller than the first eighty-six floors.  Benny said, "Did you
know they built this entire building in a year and a half?"
     "Get outta' here."  Lucky clearly didn't believe him, but
Benny was sure he remembered right.
     "That's true.  I wouldn't make that up."
     "You couldn't build something like this in ten years.  You
know how long the Farber Building's been under construction?  You
can't even get a bridge fixed in a year and a half."
     Benny let the subject drop.  "Why here?" he asked as he
followed Lucky.  "Why the ninetieth?"
     "Compromise.  Much lower, and we wouldn't have a hope of
doing any real damage.  Much higher and all we'd do is take down
the antenna.  This should be just about right."
     They made a complete circuit of the floor without seeing
another person.  Finally Lucky tried the knob on a door near the
elevator.  The door was locked.  Lucky set his pack on the floor
and knelt next to the door.  From his jacket pocket he took a
small tool and started playing with the lock.
     "What's in there?" Benny asked.
     "Shhh."
     A half-minute later Lucky had the door open.  He found a
light switch inside, and the lamp revealed a janitor's closet.
He motioned Benny inside, then shut the door.  "This is close to
the elevator, so it's one good location to blast.  Later on we
can put stuff near the outside wall, 'cause there'll be support
beams running up through the walls."
     "You really think you can cut the whole thing off here?"
     "I don't know.  But they're gonna know they were hit."
     Benny nodded.  For the next twenty minutes he did what Lucky
told him.  When they finished, a beige box occupied a corner
between the ceiling and two walls.  On the box was a large
official-looking sign saying, "Air Quality Monitoring.  Do Not
Touch."
     Behind that sign, which would come off without much effort,
was another sign saying, "High Explosive.  Tamper Alarm Active.
Don't even think about touching this."
                                 #
     Bobby Joe turned back to the console and pressed the octagon
wedge corresponding to the dome.  The eight images on the screen
vanished, replaced by eight more.
     "Well, this is easier," Abby said.
     Bobby Joe agreed.  The eight new pictographs were body
types.  One showed silhouette of a humanoid, another something
like a badger.  Others showed a body shape suited for swimming, a
generic-looking eight-legged creature, and a many-legged
creature.
     Abby pressed the wedge associated with the humanoid
creature.  This time only six of the wedges were occupied, all
with variations on the humanoid form, one with a huge head,
another that looked very much human.  Abby pressed the one that
looked human.
     The screen changed from its normal eight-wedge octagon.  A
circular image formed in the center, surrounded by smaller icons
on eight trapezoids that showed around the perimeter of the
image.  The image itself was an overhead shot of Manhattan.
     The icons were less meaningful now.  Bobby Joe pressed one
at random and the view changed to a false-color image.  "That
could be infrared," Bobby Joe said.  The icon corresponding to
what he had pressed was now inverted.  He pressed the same wedge
again, and the icon returned to normal at the same time the
central image returned to normal.
     Abby pressed an icon that looked like a megaphone, and the
central view grew in magnification as long as she leapt her hand
on the surface.
     Bobby Joe tried an icon consisting of four double-headed
arrows that formed a snowflake octagon.  The image in the center
began to move to the side.  He moved his finger on the wedge and
the direction of motion changed.  He moved the image until it was
centered on midtown, then pressed the magnification image Abby
had used.
     The image grew until they could see that Fifth Avenue was
crowded with people.  What seemed most unusual was the complete
absence of steam rising from any below-pavement leaks in the
normal heating-steam supply lines.  Bobby Joe moved the image
until it was centered on Fifth Avenue and kept magnifying it.
The image grew until they could see individual people holding
signs saying, "Stop the expedition," and "God will protect us."
They could see only the signs held by people getting a little
tired and letting the poles rest on their shoulders.  The
vertical signs were nothing but narrow slits.
     Bobby Joe increased the magnification until he could see a
small portion of the pavement when it wasn't obscured by the
heads of protesters.  A Baby Ruth wrapper grew until it filled
the screen.  Seconds later the image was large enough that he
could read the ingredients, and then someone's blond head filled
the screen, dark roots showing along the part.
     "How do we back out of this and get to some other
information?" Abby asked.
     "I'd guess this small octagon."  Bobby Joe touched the
symbol at the front of the desktop.  The image of the blond head
vanished and the screen returned to the one showing the several
forms of humanoids.  Bobby Joe pressed it again until they were
back at the original eight icons.  "I wonder if escape keys are
universal."
     "Let's try this one."  Bobby Joe touched an icon that looked
like an octagon connected by a curved line to an eight-pointed
star.  The next display showed icons in only two wedges.  He
picked the one that looked like a dot next to a circle.  The next
eight symbols were all nearly identical, and he picked the one of
the bottom.  For another minute or two he kept pressing switches
as a series of images flashed on the screen.  Abby thought he
repeated his course a time or two, but he was hard to keep up
with.  She had a sudden image of Bobby Joe as a computer vandal,
impatiently and furtively breaking into some bank computer
system.  Finally he slowed down and gave her a summary of what he
had learned.  "I'm impressed," she said softly, and Bobby Joe
beamed.
     The center of the screen suddenly filled with a slowly
moving video image of a forest, seen from airliner altitude.
Abby backed up and picked another image, this one showing an
ocean coast dotted with small villages.  The next image was one
Bobby Joe recognized.  Portions of England and France divided by
the English Channel moved slowly south.
     Abby pushed a wedge and the image began to magnify smoothly.
She let it continue until they could see ships bobbing in the
English Channel, and traffic on both sides of the chunnel.
"Thank God," Abby said softly.  "They haven't started the
destruction yet."
     "If these are live."
     "Right.  If they are live, then maybe the Archies are making
a complete record of Earth before they destroy it?"
     "Could be.  But why?  So they can show before and after
shots to their buddies?"
     "Or for posterity."
     Matt said from behind them, "Or to show to potential
adversaries, to demonstrate their power."
     Abby backed out of that section of information, shutting off
the image of Earth.  "I can't watch this right now."  She
selected the 3-D octagon and another set of icons appeared.
     "Hey," Bobby Joe said, "if they can't see in stereo, why
would they have a 3-D icon?"
     "Take a look at a ball with one eye closed.  You can still
see that it doesn't look like a two-dimensional circle."
     "Gee, if they only have one ear, they could have saved a
mint on hi-fi equipment."
     Abby picked another icon, and the center of the screen
filled with what looked to be plans for the ship.  She skipped
around and found a top view of the octagonal floor on which
Manhattan lay.
     Bobby Joe knew roughly how large the ship was, but seeing
the tiny noodle-shaped image in the octagon that formed the sides
of the ship still took his breath away.
     Abby picked a side view of the ship.  According to a
blinking dot, they were on the uppermost floor.  The ship was
divided into the two back-to-back levels containing cities.  On
each end the view showed a thin floor.  The floor they were on
looked more cluttered than the floor on the opposite side of the
ship.  Further in toward the center of this floor were two more
concentric octagons.
     Another view showed the eight huge cylinders highlighted.  A
different view of them from the side showed dotted lines
extending to a point in space as though the cylinders formed a
giant lens.
     "It still looks to me like the cylinders are associated with
propulsion," Bobby Joe said.
     "Good," said Matt.  "The timer should go off in about an
hour.  Try to find another target we can reach quickly.  Armed
with the views of the ship, if we can keep them off guard long
enough, we might be able to find the bridge and plant some
explosives."
     "Blow up the bridge?"
     "No.  That would probably guarantee we'd all die.  But the
threat might give us leverage."
     "Maybe you should call for the second team to bring out more
explosives and weapons?"
     "I've thought about that a lot, but I don't think it's worth
the risk right now.  If we can thoroughly understood the
situation, and know for sure what to damage, what not to damage,
maybe it will make more sense.  But right now, not knowing any
more than we do about how well the ship is monitored, having more
people moving around just increases the odds that they'll capture
us."  Matt hesitated.  "As soon as you can find out from that
console where the bridge is, we'll head for it."
     Bobby Joe nodded and turned to Abby.  "Can I take over the
search for now?"
     "Sure.  Having this access has helped a lot.  I think I'm
closer to decoding the message on the dome ceiling.  So far, I'm
pretty sure that two of the pictographs mean 'ship' and 'city.'"
     Bobby Joe went back to the data on the ship itself.  An icon
resembling a tic-tac-toe grid led him into a set of overlaid
displays where each segment showed interconnections of one type
or another, but with no clues he could easily recognize as
indicating whether the currently highlighted web represented
communication lines, power lines, pneumatic tubes, water or air
supplies, waste disposal, or lines that had no counterpart on
Earth.
     It didn't take him long, though, before he was able to start
making some assumptions that seemed reasonable to him.  A web
that all funneled into a central area of the ship was more likely
to be communication lines than waste disposal.  A couple of
networks that focused on an enormous circular structure well away
from the populated area of the ship were more likely to be air,
water, or waste.  Abby helped him discover that the Archies'
directional indicators were half-octagons pointed opposite to the
direction Bobby Joe's intuition said they should be, and that
helped eliminate possibilities.  Waste disposal, for instance,
presumably wouldn't be sending material all over the ship, unless
the Archies were really pretty disgusting creatures.
      "I think I've got it," Bobby Joe said a few minutes later.
     Matt woke Richard and asked him to stand guard, and then he
was looking over Bobby Joe's shoulder.
     "All right," said Bobby Joe.  "The lines highlighted right
now are what I suspect are communication lines for two-way
traffic and monitoring.  I suspect that where they converge is
the bridge."  The display looked a little like a street map of
D.C., showing a mass of lines radiating out from one point, a
point inside the innermost octagon.  "And this overlay is what I
think is power lines."  The power lines radiated from a different
point, a large cylinder about halfway between the center of the
ship and the edge, in the wedge adjacent to the one they had
moved through.
     Bobby Joe pointed.  "I think that must be the power plant.
You can see the pattern of large supply lines spreading into
smaller lines as the grid stretches out to the smallest systems.
There's extra shielding here and here.  This thing shows four
lines, so you wouldn't need that if this was the water supply.
And you can see that the bridge is supplied by some large lines.
We could try to cut the power to the bridge."
     "Or we could threaten the power plant itself.  It doesn't
look as hard to get to as the bridge."
     Matt's alarm beeped, and he looked at his watch.  "It's time
Richard's explosives were set to go."
     "Will we be able to feel anything here?"
     "Count on it," said Richard.
     Bobby Joe, Abby, Matt, and Richard waited in silence.
Rudy's snore was audible.
     Two minutes came and went.  And a third.
     Suddenly the floor began to vibrate.  In a couple of seconds
the vibration stopped, and a second later it started again, even
more intense, and lasted almost half a minute.  In about the
middle of the period, an alarm started, at least that was what
Bobby Joe figured.  It sounded more like a musical doorbell than
an alarm.  A sequence of eight to ten notes repeated every
second.
     "Sounds awfully complex just to say "trouble," Matt said.
     Abby said, "I agree.  That might be enough to say not only
what kind of trouble, but where it is."
     Matt turned to Richard.  "Good job."  To everyone he said,
"They're probably going to be stirred up for a while.  I suggest
we wait here for a couple of hours, and then make a break for the
power plant."
     Abby said slowly, "From the feel of things, we've already
done a significant amount of damage to the ship."
     "True.  I wish we had a way to assess the damage.  Maybe
you'll be able to make a guess from here."
     Bobby Joe was about to turn back to the console when he
noticed Abby's eyes.  She looked puzzled, and her gaze was fixed
on Richard's shoes or something near them.  Bobby Joe looked that
direction and saw nothing special.
     Matt had noticed, too.  "What's up, Abby?"
     "What's that?"  She pointed.
     Richard raised one foot.  "Did I step in something?"
     Bobby Joe saw what she was looking at.  A small bug stood
motionless in the crack formed by the junction of the wall and
the floor.  "An insect?"
     "I don't think so," Abby said.
     Matt moved closer as Richard backed away.  With his toe,
Matt brushed the bug away from the wall, and then hit it toward
the center of the room.
     "I don't like this at all," Matt said.  "Get Rudy and Julie
awake."
     Bobby Joe got a closer look at the bug, which was sitting
still.  It looked vaguely like a spider, but it had twice as many
legs, and the whole thing looked too regular, too symmetrical to
be a typical insect.
     Matt crushed the thing under his sole, and when his foot
moved away, what was left was a small pile of rubble, not a
greasy stain.  "They know we're here."
     Julie and Rudy were up in seconds, squinting in the light.
Three pistols clicked at almost the same time as their owners
readied them.
     Matt looked at Rudy.  "I want you to--"
     A tennis ball, or something that looked a lot like one
bounced into the kiosk.  As Matt scrambled to get to it, maybe to
throw it back out like a hand grenade, two more bounced in.  The
first one exploded before Matt reached it, and the other two
exploded a second later.
     From the one Bobby Joe could see, dozens of tiny streamers
shot out in every direction.  Several of them touched his pants
and shirt and stuck.  He tried to pull one of them off his shirt,
and his hand stuck to it firmly.  As he pulled back toward the
wall, he pulled Julie off balance.  Julie fell over, and the
streamers linked between her and Bobby Joe went taut and pulled
Bobby Joe off balance.
     He didn't fall all the way to the floor, though.  A couple
of the streamers had hit the wall, and so he dangled there,
unable to get loose.

                            Chapter 14
                            Talk to Me

     "Jeez, are my legs tired," Benny complained.
     "What a wimp," Lucky said.  "People run up these steps every
year.  Don't you watch the news?  And that was in regular
gravity."
     "Yeah, but those are trained athletes.  We're not running
some race.  And those guys don't carry big packs."
     The men had reached the seventy-second floor of the Empire
State Building.  On their last two trips, they had encountered a
building guard who apparently didn't have enough to do.  This
time they had taken the stairs to vary the pattern.  Only a
couple of floors earlier Benny had realized that walking up the
stairs carrying packs was probably at least as suspicious as
being seen a third time in an elevator.  Lucky was insistent,
though.
     They climbed the remaining floors to the ninetieth in
silence, except for the sound of Benny''s panting.  Fortunately
they didn't run into the guard again.
     This time Lucky planted more explosives along the outside
walls of the ninetieth floor.  When Benny had asked Lucky where
he was getting all the explosives, Lucky told him he had a
stockpile.  Benny asked why he had such a big stockpile, but all
Lucky would say was that he liked to go fishing a lot.  Benny let
the subject drop.
                                 #
     Unable to move, Abby was loaded onto a cart as though she
were a side of beef.  She could see through only one eye.  The
other was sealed shut by one of the sticky streamers.
Thankfully, the streamer had stuck to her cheek and forehead,
too, so she didn't have the other ends of the streamer tugging
directly on her eyelid.  Another streamer sealed her lips closed,
and she thanked God nothing had blocked her nostrils or stuck to
her eye before she blinked.
     Someone else was piled on top of her, but she couldn't tell
who.  She assumed all six of the team were stuck together by the
streamers that had exploded from the balls tossed into the kiosk.
     "Watch where you--uh!"  Bobby Joe started to moan.
     Another body hit the cart in front of her, and her view was
partly cut off by someone's sleeve.  She felt chilled, and the
claustrophobia closed in on her as she realized how little she
could move.  Her right arm could move forward and backward a few
centimeters before a sticky strip curtailed the motion.  Her left
arm and leg felt immovable.  Sections of the sticky strips had
probably stuck to the bottom of the cart on either side of her
leg.  She could turn her head only a few degrees.
     An Archie moved past her field of vision, and she peered at
it under one squinting eyelid.  This close the Archie seemed
enormous, but she told herself that was only because it resembled
something humans expected to be small.  Its abdomen sported a mat
of short black hairs as thick as the hair on human head.  As it
passed by, she realized it had a short tail.  She couldn't
imagine how a tail would be useful to creatures like the Archies,
but she still possessed an appendix that didn't seem very
necessary.  She was suddenly aware of an odor like that of
lemon-scented laundry detergent.
     A chattering sounded from somewhere out of sight, answered
by a higher-pitched chattering from behind her.  Their voices
reminded her of dolphin sounds she'd heard except for seeming
more purposeful, as though a deliberate conversation was taking
place, but it was in another language.  Question, reply, command,
response.
     She was dimly aware that their treatment implied the Archies
didn't necessarily want to kill them, but she hoped they weren't
just left this way for much longer; otherwise she'd probably
prefer almost any alternative.
     The cart moved forward.  Everyone must be on board, all six
of them stuck together like flies on wadded-up flypaper.  Abby
suddenly thought about the barbaric way humans treated lobsters
about to be consumed, and forced her thoughts elsewhere.
     The roof of a kiosk moved past her field of view.  Abby was
suddenly more nervous as she realized that she'd heard Bobby Joe
speak a couple of times, but not anyone else.  Were the others
silent because they had nothing to say, or the sticky strips
prevented them, or because they were smothering to death?  Abby
had no idea whether the Archies would take a close look at the
humans and bother to free nasal passages for anyone in need, even
if they understood what was happening.
     The roof of another kiosk drifted past.  Not being able to
move her body was driving Abby crazy.  She tried hard to
straighten her right leg, and suddenly it moved, her leg moving
inside her pant leg.  Just as her foot moved several centimeters,
it came up short as it hit something, and from that direction
came an "Ooof."  At least that said someone else was alive for
sure, although she couldn't tell if the voice had been Rudy's or
Richard's.  She bit the inside of her lip and forced herself to
get her mind off being immobilized.  Think of anything else,
anything at all.
     She closed her eye and imagined herself on a cinder track.
She was seventeen again.  It was a spring morning, the air crisp
and clean.  She crouched in starting position on the track, and
for a second or two her fingers pushed into the small gravel.
     The starting gun fired, very loud despite the fact that it
fired only a blank.  You'd think they could load a little less
gunpowder if they knew the blast didn't have to propel the normal
bullet.  She hurtled into space and began to pump her legs.
     Her ears recovered from the blast, and all she could hear
were cleats scattering gravel as they hit the ground, and the
beginnings of lung sounds, other runners breathing routinely, not
the gasping agony of the 440 finish line.
     Abby was on the inside, where she liked to be, starting out
behind so just pulling even with another runner before the final
curve meant she was ahead, and the other runner knew it, too.
     She and the other three runners hit the last curve, Abby in
second place but knowing the inner curve gave her an advantage
now, both physical and psychological.  Her breath burned through
her lungs as she hit that final stage where she was committing
all her energy until she passed the tape.  Whatever penalty her
body had to pay for the effort would be put off until the race
was over.
     From ahead and behind came gasps for breath mingling with
Abby's own, the crunch-crunch-crunch of compressing and
scattering cinder, the swish-swish of arms moving forward and
back, and legs pumping forward.
     The runner Abby slowly overtook never turned her head, but
Abby knew the instant the other's peripheral vision and hearing
told her Abby was next to her.  The runner pushed into a higher
gear, and somehow Abby did the same.
     They were even.
     They held even for another second or two, then Abby began to
edge ahead.  The first centimeters were the hardest, but by the
time Abby was a half-meter ahead, suddenly she knew nothing could
stop her and she widened her lead, still widening it when she
broke the tape.
     She kept running, slowing gradually for fear she'd tip over
and fall forward now that her body knew it could shut down the
blast of energy, entering recovery mode and now letting her know
how much her stomach and lungs hurt.  Seconds later she was able
to slow to a stop and before she bent forward to get as much air
as possible into her lungs, she caught a glimpse of her parents
in the stands.  Her father was on his feet, cheering, more
animated than she'd ever seen him, loud enough that she could
even make out his individual voice in the crowd.
     In that moment she realized how much she wanted to please
him, to please the man who once too often let it slip that he'd
really wanted a boy.
     Her chest hurt.  She knew she was far too young for trouble
like that, but for just an instant she felt the pain had come
from her heart.
     The cart carrying her shook.  Abby opened the one eye that
she was able to, and she saw the roof of another kiosk.  The
bumping increased and part of the ceiling was obscured by a
closer dark lip of something shorter.  For a terrible moment she
visualized them being levered into a large trash compactor to be
disposed of like useless debris.
     They weren't in a trash compactor, though.  Seconds later
she recognized the roof of one of the monorail cars.  Before long
they accelerated smoothly in an unknown direction.
     They must have been heading inward, because if they'd been
going outward, they would have passed through a doorway soon
after they started, and she saw no signs of that.  They traveled
for five minutes or fifteen as Abby tried not to think about
being unable to shift position.
     Near the end of their monorail journey the car did pass
through a doorway into a new area, after which time the ceiling
was lower than it had been, now only about ten meters high.  The
cart was unloaded from the monorail car, and passing through her
field of vision were two more Archies, chattering to each other.
     They passed through another doorway and the echoes changed.
They were in a smaller space now.  The cart came to a halt.
     Some chattering began behind Abby's back.  From the sounds,
three or four different Archies were present.  She wished she'd
had the minivid on before all this started so she would have at
least the voice recording.  From somewhere came a spraying sound
and Bobby Joe said, "Well, it's about time."
     A few seconds later Abby realized one foot was free to move.
She straightened her leg, feeling a strong sense of relief.
Behind her bodies shifted.  Something hard fell onto a metallic
surface.  The air carried the scent of paint.
     A weight that had been pressing on her shoulder lifted.  An
Archie entered her field of view.  It was holding a small object
like a balloon.  It squeezed the balloon, and a fine mist sprayed
toward the cart.  The sticky strips over Abby's mouth and eye
turned limp and fell off.  She was able to move.  She took a deep
breath and slowly got up.
     Two Archies stood silently on both sides of the only door in
the room.  Both carried in their forward two arms what had to be
weapons.  The gray devices bore unrecognizable knobs and
attachments, but they also sported unmistakable gun muzzles that
easily sliced through the language barrier.  Two more Archies
were engaged in getting the sticky mass of humans separated.  On
the floor sat a stack of minivids, pistols, and stuff from their
backpacks.
     Abby was the last to get free.  Matt was safe and he gave
her a look that said he was relieved that she was all right.  He
sat against the far wall.  Rudy and Julie and Richard sat nearby,
also looking nervous but all right.  As an Archie pushed Bobby
Joe toward the others, he sat down and joined them.  Abby did,
too.
     As the six humans sat against the wall, two Archies pawed
through the pile of equipment in the center of the room.  Abby
patted her hip and realized she no longer had either pistol or
holster.
     The Archies were forming two piles in the center of the
room.  Into one pile went holsters, empty backpacks, the
minivids, computer, canteens, and things like the resealing
plastic bags and rope.  Into the other pile went the pistols, a
power drill, flashlights, and Richard's plastic explosives.  The
weapons pile then went onto the cart, which one of the Archies,
one with stripes of yellow in its clothing, pulled out of the
room.  The other Archie near the center of the room backed up so
it was nowhere near line of sight between the armed Archies and
the humans.
     The Archies all wore two utility belts, one around each body
segments, and Abby couldn't help but think of old pocket
protectors and saddlebags.  Their heads met their forward
segments with not much opportunity to swivel.  When they wanted
to look in a different direction, they either moved their entire
bodies, or just the eye-stalks that protruded from what would be
the forehead on a human.  Their knobby legs were wider near their
body than at the ground, like tripod legs.  At the end of each
limb was a four-fingered hand.  The rear two hands were idle at
the moment, and she briefly wondered what joke Bobby Joe would
make from that.
     Abby glanced at the room itself finally.  Rather than being
octagonal, it was actually square.  What could have been a sink
stood in one corner.  In the opposite corner was a console like
the one in the kiosk.
     The Archie who had left returned with two flimsy drawings,
unmistakably drawings of the ship.  It set the drawings on the
floor, then took a small marker from a belt around its forward
segment.  On an overhead view of the plain below, it drew a short
line from the Manhattan dome.  On the top view of the floor they
were on, it drew a small line from a kiosk out to a huge
cylinder, no doubt the one they had damaged.  Finally it tossed
the marker onto the floor between itself and the six humans.
     No one moved or said anything for a moment.
     "It wants us to draw the path we took, wouldn't you say?"
Abby said.
     Matt stood up and moved forward.  He reached the marker,
picked it up, and approached the Archie, whose eye-stalk tracked
him all the way.  Calmly Matt handed back the unused marker.  He
returned to the wall and sat down.
     Bobby Joe laughed softly and said under his breath, "Go
spawn yourself, Archie."
     The Archie stood there a moment with the marker in its hand,
and then it jumped straight up in the air just high enough that
Abby could see clearly that all four center legs had left the
ground simultaneously.  Abby tentatively cataloged the response
as annoyance.
     The Archie stood there for several seconds, motionless
except for its eye-stalk, which scanned the row of humans.
Finally, it turned and chattered at the other Archies, and they
all withdrew, the armed Archies at the rear.  The last thing Abby
saw before the twin doors slid closed together was a pair of
eye-stalks watching as if the Archie were worried that the humans
might dash to the door.
     It was a legitimate fear, Abby understood then.  For all the
Archies knew, humans might have far quicker reaction times than
they did.  Suddenly she decided the Archies probably had even
more backup nearby, just in case.
     "All right," Matt said.  Abby could hear the discouragement
in his voice.  "They've left us with a console.  If it hasn't
been disabled, at least we can continue learning about the ship
and the Archies.  Abby, can you and Bobby Joe get started?"
     Abby hesitated.  "Can I take a ten-minute break first?"
     Matt looked at her.  "Sure."
     What Matt didn't say, but Abby read into his expression,
was, "No hurry."  The Earth was probably already doomed anyway;
they couldn't have done enough damage to prevent that.  Exploring
with the console was a busy work request that was probably most
useful in just keeping them occupied.  Once the Archies decided
what to do about them, the humans would probably all be killed
anyway.
     Abby let her eyes close for just a second, and she took a
few deep breaths.
     Matt and Rudy sifted through the pile of possessions the
Archies had left behind and began to tape up a privacy curtain in
front of what looked something like a sink.  Julie retrieved her
minivid and began recording.  Abby was surprised at how
accurately the Archies had divided their equipment into
threatening and non-threatening piles.
                                 #
     Abby hadn't felt this tired in a long time.
     She and Bobby Joe stood at the console as Matt and Rudy and
Julie watched over their shoulders.  Julie had her minivid active
most of the time.  Bobby Joe had actually had a joke-free hour,
and he'd been invaluable in helping interpret drawings of the
ship.  Richard slept.  He also snored.
     Abby held less hope than before that they'd done adequate
damage to the ship.  The console showed that the floor opposite
the one they were on also held eight huge cylinders, one in each
slice of the octagon, and the other set was even larger.  Maybe
they had a completely redundant propulsion system.
     Their efforts at the console had concentrated on two
areas--finding out what else they could damage, given an
opportunity, and what escape routes might exist.  Abby was a
little surprised the Archies hadn't disabled the console, but the
team's best guess was that the Archies figured the humans had
already had access to a console so there was little to lose.
Besides that, the Archies could easily have disabled specifics
they were nervous about allowing access to.  Abby wondered if
allowing access was a way of saying they were not hostile.
     Their examination of the current screen content was
interrupted by the sound of the two doors opening.  Two armed
Archies entered, followed by two more, and two more after them.
Julie aimed her minivid at the new arrivals.  After the six armed
Archies formed a barrier in front of the door, a seventh Archie
squeezed between two of the others.  This Archie may have been
the one they'd seen earlier, because its clothing looked similar,
yellow stripes in the material.
     The Archie brought two things.  The first was a transparent
bowl of familiar food pellets, which it set on the floor as
though a pet dog were nearby.  In addition it carried a small box
with eight switches on top of it.  It set the box on the floor
near the bowl.  It moved toward the console, then stopped,
apparently waiting for the humans to get out of the way.
     Abby and the others stepped back, and the Archie used one
graceful limb to touch the console switch that let it back out of
the information they had been exploring, and then it chose
another area.  Eight new icons came up on the screen.  The Archie
made a point of pressing one of the wedges slowly enough for the
humans to see which one it had touched, and the screen changed
again.  One of the icons looked like the box on the floor.
     The Archie then backed up and left the room.  Two at a time
the armed Archies departed until the humans were alone again.
     "What was that all about?" asked Matt.
     "I don't know," Abby said.
     Rudy picked up the box and they examined it.  Each of the
eight switches was a rotary switch with eight positions.
     A brief chattering from the console turned their heads back
to the screen.  A picture of an Archie came up on the screen.  At
the same time a chattering sound like the previous one, but
subtly different, came from a speaker on the console.  The screen
changed and showed a top view of an Archie with the two front
limbs highlighted.  Another sound came from the speaker.
     "It's language lesson time!" Abby said.  "I need the
computer.  And can someone set up my minivid and just let it
run?"
     As quickly as she could she readied the computer, and as the
sequence of sounds and images continued, fell into a pattern.
Each time the computer produced a snippet of the Archies'
language and showed an image, she had the computer record the
sound bite and immediately afterward spoke and recorded her best
guess as to what was being described.
     After cataloging several snippets, Bobby Joe interrupted to
show her what he'd deduced about how to slow down the flow, or
speed it up, or reverse it.  Touching the left and right side
wedges on the keyboard put the sequence into forward or reverse,
and the distance from the center determined the speed.  Abby went
back to the beginning and recorded the sound associated with the
image of an Archie.
     She made no attempt at first to break the collection of
words into categories or try to deduce anything about speech
patterns, phonetics, morphology, semantics, or syntax.  Almost
every word she heard sounded like the previous three words.  All
she could hope to do for a start was build the collection of
sounds linked to human best-guess expressions.
     The sequence of images continued, some of them looking like
photographic images, others looking like artists' conceptions,
still others just icons.
     If she had been studying the individual sounds, trying to
replicate them or understand them, she'd still have been on the
first two or three sounds.  Instead, after a couple of hours, she
reached the end of the sequence, and her computer said it had
recorded 884 sets.  She leaned back, feeling drained.
     Bobby Joe pushed another one of the keyboard wedges, and the
console spoke for a couple of seconds, probably five or six words
strung together.
     "Do that again in just a minute," Abby said, suddenly
feeling more energetic.  She told the computer to start listening
for foreign words in its vocabulary and to play back the English
version after each word it found.
     Seconds after that, Bobby Joe played back the sequence.
From Abby's computer came her recorded voice speaking the
sentence, "Ship Archies dome human city."  Since the intonation
on each word was similar, her voice sounded like a spelling
checker.
     Bobby Joe looked at her and said, "Me smart now."
     From the corner of her eye, Abby saw Matt give Bobby Joe a
come-here signal, and Abby was just able to make out his words as
Matt said, "Abby is our best hope of communicating with these
guys.  Slow her down and you and I are going to have a little
talk."
     Abby reached forward and triggered another phrase.  This
time her computer said, "Ship Archies two human."
     She shook her head and played more sentences, slowly
realizing by analyzing sentence after sentence that earlier she
had made a series of small errors, like saying "two" when the
symbol probably had meant "with."  Each time she was able to
reach a conclusion about a specific word, she went back and
changed her recording and rethought some of her assumptions, as
though she were working a three-D crossword puzzle.  She hit an
easy stretch, a series of dots obviously meant to represent
numbers--first one dot, then two, then three and so on, and then
the images went back to more difficult ones.
     A long time later, what seemed like days, she was aware of
Matt standing nearby.  She turned to him.  "I think I'm getting
pretty close to a basic working vocabulary.  It's still bound to
have errors, but it's starting to make sense."
     She played another Archie sentence, and her computer said,
"Mouth Archies box two one three four five six seven eight."
Abby looked at the box the Archie had left, and Matt retrieved
it.
     "You think it's a combination?" Abby asked.
     "You're the expert."
     "I think it's a combination."
     "And if I set the combination on these switches?"
     "Then maybe that's a signal that we're ready to talk.
Probably what I thought meant 'mouth' actually means 'talk' or
'speak.'"
     "Are we ready?" Matt asked.
     "We're as close as we're going to get for a while longer.
I've been using Archie-to-human look-up, but I can also set it to
human-to-Archie."
     The others came closer as Matt turned the switches on the
box, lining the points on the knobs up with the right number of
small dots drawn at each position.  As he set them he said, "Two
one, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.  I don't know if they
use left-to-right or right-to-left, but I guess we'll find out."
     A few minutes later the double doors opened again, and armed
Archies moved cautiously back into the room.  The Archie with
yellow stripes in its clothing moved forward and stopped.  Matt
stepped forward and handed it the box, which it accepted.  The
Archie's hand was dark-skinned, like most of its body.  The hand
was smaller than a human's, with no sign of the equivalent of
fingernails.  The hand swiveled as the Archie placed the box into
a small pouch on the belt on its rear segment.  Abby glanced back
and saw that Julie had her minivid recording again.
     The Archie's head was so big Abby found herself comparing it
not to insect heads, but to animal heads.  It was a little like a
sightless buffalo with a large dark nose and gray teeth.  The
eye-stalk protruding from the forehead seemed terribly vulnerable
to Abby, but perhaps it was much stronger than it seemed, or
perhaps the Archies' regenerative mechanism was more thorough
than humans'.  Suddenly she had to suppress a grin as she
realized what the large worm-like eye-stalk vaguely resembled.
     The Archie chattered briefly, and Abby's voice came from the
computer, saying "Archie."  Abby touched a switch on the computer
and said, "Human."  The computer chattered, and suddenly the
Archie sat down in the middle of the floor, its center four limbs
folded underneath it, the back two and front two extended.  Its
eye-stalk pointed toward Abby.  The armed Archies didn't change
position.  Matt and the others sat behind Abby in a semicircle.
Abby was again aware of a scent like laundry detergent.
     The Archie pulled a small egg-shaped device from its forward
belt.  It spoke and again the computer translated.  "Archie ship
explosion one."  As it spoke, it manipulated the egg, and a
couple of meters away the console screen changed.  The new screen
showed damage to the huge red cylinder.  Then the Archie spoke
again.  "Archie ship explosion two."  The console screen changed
and showed a top view of the ship.
     Abby turned to Matt.  "I think it's asking if we planted
more explosives, and if so, where."
     "I want some information from them before we answer that.
Ask them why they took Manhattan."
     Abby turned to the Archie and tried to figure out how to
phrase that, given her limited vocabulary with almost no verbs.
Finally she decided on trying to use a sequence as the Archie had
and said, "Planet city two.  Dome city ship three.  One," and the
computer chattered.
     The Archie was silent for almost a minute, then said, "One
planet city fall.  Two dome city not fall."
     Abby said to Matt, "I think I got a couple of words wrong.
I think it's saying the city is safe now.  That now it's
protected."
     "What about the Earth?  Is it all right?"
     Abby turned and thought.  She'd correct "fall" to safe"
later.  She gave the Archie a choice.  "Human planet fall.  Human
planet not fall."
     "Human planet not fall."
     "Thank God."  She hesitated.  "Human planet not fall.
Archie human planet fall."
     "Human planet not fall.  Archie human planet not fall."
     "I think it's saying the Archies are not going to hurt
Earth."
     "Why should we believe them?" Matt asked.  "We know they
destroyed the world the tree people lived on.  And we've got
evidence that at least one other planet was destroyed."
     "Tree people planet not fall.  Archies tree people planet
fall."
     "Tree people planet not fall.  Archies Tree people city dome
not fall.  Tree people planet fall."
     Abby tried several times to phrase the question another way
and got several variations on the answer.  Finally she turned to
Matt and said, "I think its saying that the Archies didn't
destroy the tree people's planet.  Someone else did."
     "Someone else?  So they--they're just rescuing cities before
someone else comes along and wipes out the planet?"
     "I think so.  If I'm interpreting all this correctly, the
Archies are trying to preserve a little bit of each civilization
before someone else destroys it all."
     "Can you find out how much time there is before whoever is
destroying planets destroys the Earth?"
     Abby turned back and thought.  Finally she phrased her
question.  She thought she knew what the answer meant, but she
tried to ask it another way.
     "I've asked it twice, in different ways.  I got what I think
is the same answer both times."
     "So when is it?  When do they say the Earth will be
destroyed?"
     "I'm still unsure of time units, but I think it could be any
time now."
                                 #
     Dorine Underwood was finally talked into taking the call.
"This is the mayor," she said.
     "It's about time," said a male voice that made Dorine think
of a large rodent.
     "You want to speak to me or not?"
     Hesitation.  "Yes," the voice said suddenly.  "Cancel the
expedition.  You're going to get us all killed."
     "I can't do that.  The expedition is our only hope of
survival.  Look, it's been nice talking to you, but--"
     "Wait!  A lot of people are going to be killed if you don't
stop.  The Empire State Building is wired to explode."
     "Look, I'm really very busy."
     "I'm not joking.  There are 200 kilos of plastic explosive,
all ready to blow if anyone touches them, or if I send the
signal."
     "Has anybody ever told you you're a son of a bitch?"
     "I don't think you're taking me seriously.  And I don't like
that.  I'm the one who climbed through the sewers and did the
Battery Tunnel job, and you took that seriously.  Do you only get
excited when it's too late?"
     Dorine had received crank calls a number of times in the
past, but somehow this one didn't seem to fit the pattern.  The
man might be telling the truth.  "What are your terms?"
     "That's better.  Have the expedition called off by midnight.
Or else the--"
     Suddenly the phone on the other end clattered.
     "Hello?" said Dorine.  "Hello?"
     Several seconds passed before a voice came on the line, a
different voice this time.  "Hello.  Mayor?"
     "Yes."
     "Sergeant Wilkins here.  He was calling from a public booth
on Broadway.  We're searching the area now, and we'll keep you
posted."
     "Okay.  Thanks."
     Dorine immediately called the chief of police.  "Barney, I
just got a call saying there are 200 kilos of plastic explosive
in the Empire State Building.  I want the building evacuated, and
I want an estimate of how bad the damage could be, assuming it's
been placed in the most effective spot.  Then see if you can find
qualified bomb squad volunteers.  Use your own judgment on how
much else needs to be evacuated.  I think the guy's for real, but
I don't know for sure."
     "You got it."
     Dorine hung up the phone and wondered what to do.  There was
no question about halting the expedition, but the idea of someone
destroying the Empire State Building made her sick.

                            Chapter 15
                          Damage Report

     Matt rubbed his forehead and looked at the Archie who sat
just a meter in front of Abby.  Its brown head looked hard, like
chitin on a magnified ant's head.  The Archie's eye-stalk swung
toward Matt, looking far too much like a penis with an eye on the
tip.   The eye didn't look like a human eye; it was faceted, like
a fly's eye.
     "I'm still having a little trouble shifting gears," Matt
said.  "What this Archie is saying, essentially, is that we're an
endangered species, and that they grabbed Manhattan so they could
preserve what little they could?"
     "That's the way I see it," Abby said.
     The Archie spoke again, and Abby's computer said, "Human
Archie ship.  Human human city."
     Matt raised his eyebrows, and Abby said, "I think it's
saying it wants us back in Manhattan."
     "No."  Matt thought for a moment.  "Tell them we cannot sit
by and do nothing about the Earth.  Tell them we've got an
explosive a thousand times larger than the one that went off
already, and that it's hidden on the ship.  It will explode
unless we command it not to.  As long as they cooperate fully and
answer all our questions, we will not damage the ship.  But if
they do not cooperate, we will have to assume they are lying to
us, and we'll let the explosion destroy the ship.  We insist on
staying here and finding out what's going on."
     Abby looked at Matt without expression for a second.  "I'll
give it a try."  She and the Archie talked via the computer for
several minutes, as the Archie got more and more animated, its
eye-stalk twitching, and its body quivering.  Finally Abby turned
to Matt and said, "The Archie obviously is unhappy with
that--angry, indignant, insulted, I don't really know how to
characterize the feeling, and I don't know if it really has a
human counterpart, but the Archie has agreed to let us stay here
and learn more."
     "Good.  Ask them who's destroying all these planets and
why."
     Moments later Abby sighed and said, "This isn't working.  I
need to know more about their language."
     "Okay, can you tell them that and tell them we don't want to
be captives here.  We want free run of the ship, and we promise
not to do more damage if they're telling the truth."
     "Truth is going to be a tough idea to get across right now."
     "Then just say we won't damage the ship."
     Abby spoke and her computer translated.  She and the Archie
went back and forth, the Archie growing more agitated at first,
and then finally relaxing a little.  The Archie's eye-stalk
pointed first at Matt, then Abby.  The Archie's oblong mouth was
ringed with what looked like tiny hairs.
     This time the Archie apparently had to consult with its
peers.  It rose smoothly on its center four legs and left the
room.
     Abby said, "This is really hard to calibrate, but I'm
getting the feeling these Archies are acting less like what I'd
imagine a starship crew to be like, and more like I'd expect a
group of civil servants or bureaucrats to act.  If I'm reading
this right, the objections were more along the lines of this
being against the rules, rather than objections that our having
more explosives here might damage the ship or injure people."
     Rudy shook his head.  "These creatures are acting more like
labor unions than a starship crew."
     Julie nodded, then asked, "If they want proof of this
explosive we claim to have, what then?"
     Matt said, "I don't know.  Maybe we can show them file
recordings of nuclear testing."
     "Yeah," said Bobby Joe.  "And if they're willing to trust
images, we could show them the death-star being blown up."
     "I hadn't thought about how easy it is to fake images.  I
guess we just have to act tough and cross our fingers.  Certainly
the fact that we got here and set off one explosion must have
helped convince them we can be real trouble if we don't get our
way."
     As they waited, Rudy asked, "Do these Archies have names?"
     Four Archies remained standing against the wall next to the
door, their weapons still trained on the humans, their eye-stalks
still directed at the humans.
     Abby shook her head.  "I don't know."
     Bobby Joe looked around.  "You could try 'dickhead.'"
     Abby turned away and Matt couldn't see her expression, but
her shoulders shook slightly, and he got the feeling she was
trying to hide the urge to laugh.
     Minutes later the Archie returned.  It spoke to the four
others, who all lowered their weapons and left the room.  It
chattered briefly, and Abby turned to Matt and said, "If I'm
understanding correctly, we can go where we want as long as an
Archie is nearby.  I think you're right; having detonated the
explosion has made them take us more seriously.  And Rudy's
right, too.  I'm getting the feeling the Archies are having
trouble adapting to this new situation.  They seem to be trained
to do their normal jobs, but they have trouble dealing with
change.  As long as we tell them clearly what we want, and refuse
to negotiate, my guess is that we can do quite a lot."
     "Interesting.  Tell them we want to be on the bridge and for
you to be able to continue your language lessons.  I assume by
now doing that in person would be quicker than at a console."
     "That's true."
     "All right.  Tell them that, and tell them we won't damage
the ship any more as long as they do what we ask."
     Abby spoke again, and the computer chattered.
     The Archie responded, clenching and unclenching its front
two hands as it spoke, and Abby said, "I think it's still pretty
unhappy about all this, but it seems willing."
     The Archie rose and this time the humans all rose with it.
"Rudy, help me grab the stuff we've got left," Matt said.
     The six humans followed the Archie through the door, where
they were joined by five more Archies, all armed.  The procession
turned down a hallway and walked about fifty meters before
passing through another doorway.
     This was the bridge.  Matt had no doubt at all.  The room
was octagonal, maybe fifty meters across, and it had no ceiling.
     Matt knew there had to be some surface covering the top of
the room, whether it was a totally transparent layer, or a clear
force field, or simply the very best holographic display screen
he'd ever seen.  Whatever the actual mechanism was, the bridge
held a comfortable atmosphere while appearing to be open to the
night sky.
     The view was dazzling.
     Roughly in the center of the display or directly above the
ship was the Earth and Luna.  They were far enough away that Luna
was the brightest star in the sky, one with its circular disk
just visible.  The Earth was a blue marble streaked with white.
The Milky Way angled across the sky, hints of reds and blues and
yellows in pinpoints almost too tiny to make out, against what
seemed to be a band of white clouds stretching out of sight at
both ends of the window.
     Julie gasped.  "It's kind of a cosmic ticker-tape parade."
     Matt could suddenly see the similarity--stars so dense that
there had to be a legion of stars hidden by the closest ones.
The swath of stars spread through the sky like ticker tape
filling the gap between the dark buildings bordering a parade
route.
     Matt was finally able to tear his gaze away from the starry
sky.  The room itself was dimly it.  Directly in the center of
the room sat an Archie in a reclining chair tilted back far
enough that it looked straight up into the expanse of distant
suns.
     "Abby," Matt said.  "Ask for your language lesson now.  And
try to get it quickly.  I don't know if there's anything we can
do, but if there is, it's got to be done quickly.  Maybe we can
transmit a message from here to Earth if you find out enough
about what's going on."
     Abby nodded and spoke to the Archie.  They moved off toward
a corner while the other five Archies stayed with Matt and the
others.
     Rudy said softly, "I don't think there's much reason to
communicate with Earth.  They don't have any defenses that could
help against something like this.  If they're are still alive and
we can't stop what's happening, all we do is give them a few
hours or days of hell instead of five minutes."
     "That's probably true, but maybe a few people could survive
in orbit if they get enough warning.  It's a tough call."
     Rudy nodded.
     Matt scanned the room.  Eight other Archies on their own
recliners surrounded the central Archie in an octagonal pattern,
each looking up at the sky.  Farther out sat still more Archies,
but the ones on the perimeter sat in chairs that allowed them to
face the walls, on which display after display showed views of
the interior of the ship from various points of view, and
magnified images of the stars.  A couple of screens showed views
of Earth, one of them showing the whole globe, the other showing
a low-orbit scan of a brown and vermilion land mass.
                                 #
     "This is the mayor," Dorine said into the phone.
     Barney's voice was calm as he identified himself, and Dorine
felt grateful even before hearing his message.  "The bomb squad's
located the explosives in the Empire State Building.  The guy was
telling you the truth."
     "And?"
     "And I think we've got a good shot at disabling them.  The
control mechanism is an old, discrete job, and I've got a couple
of guys with experience."
     Dorine knew anyone who had that experience and who was still
alive must have avoided a lot of mistakes, and that was a
comforting thought.  "You'd better give them a chance at it
then," she said.  "I'm not backing down."
     "You got it."  Barney didn't say it in so many words, but
the pride in his tone of voice said, "That's exactly what I would
do."
                                 #
     For a few seconds, the starry scene overhead reminded Matt
of a night long ago when he had lain on his back past midnight
and stared up at a sky filled with stars.  The air had been
filled with the sound of crickets and unidentified snaps and
creaks as the wind flowed over his body.  Far in the distance, a
train had sounded its whistle, and the faint rumble of the cars
sounded almost like distant thunder.
     "Matt."  Abby was next to him again, and the Archie was next
to her.
     "Yeah."
     "It doesn't sound good."
     "Go ahead."  Rudy and the others moved nearer so they could
hear.
     "I talked with her some more--"
     "Her?"
     "If I've got the sexes correctly identified.  Anyway, I'm
getting more confidence in what they're saying.  I think I
understand the vocabulary we've got so far correctly.  The
message on the domes is meant to say, 'The ship is moving the
city to safety.' She says they had expected the message would be
easier to figure out than it was.  And she says the Archies are
in fact scooping up cities to protect them.  There's another
ship, built by someone else, that's apparently on a programmed
course of locating worlds that fit some criteria and converting
them for their own purposes.  It's completely automated--no
intelligence aboard."
     "Converting.  Like we would terraform another world?  Change
its climate and atmosphere so it would be convenient for us?"
     Abby spoke to the Archie, then turned back to Matt.  "Yes,
something like that, except that whatever this planet shaper does
also kills the indigent life so it doesn't interfere."
     "God.  A robot ship converting planet after planet for their
own purposes, and not caring what happens to anything living
there?"
     Julie said, "Sounds a lot like us and the rain forests."
     "And who are the people who built this planet shaper?" Matt
asked.
     After consultation Abby said, "They don't know.  Some other
alien race.  To the Archies we're an endangered species.  They're
preserving what life they can.  If they're able to locate another
Earth-like world, they'll eventually plant us there."
     "But that won't help the Earth, for God's sake."  Matt
turned abruptly and looked at the screens showing the Earth from
space.  "There are billions of people down there.  And it's our
home.  We can't just let some ship come along and do whatever
they do to it."
     Rudy said, "Not only that, but the same thing could still
happen again for all we know."
     Abby stood there silently.
     "Where is this planet shaper?" Matt asked.  "How far away?"
     Abby talked to the Archie again.
     "They don't know.  It's at least several hours away because
it hasn't showed up in our solar system yet.  Apparently the ship
jumps through space when it's going a long distance, but when it
gets here it moves more like we would expect it to."
     The Archie said something to Abby and she listened for a
moment as the computer analyzed it.  "Apparently the Archie's
ship has the same choices--moving fairly normally around the
solar system, or, if the ship is well away from the sun, it can
jump long distances.  What we heavily damaged was their ability
to make those long-distance jumps."
     Matt said, "I'm sorry we damaged their ship, but I don't see
that as an immediate problem."
     Abby traded more words.  As she did, the Archie scratched
its rear with one back leg.
     "They see it as an immediate problem.  A major problem.  If
I'm getting this right, when the planet shaper gets ready to
jump, they can watch which way it's going and then jump ahead to
beat it.  Without the ability to jump, they can't save anyone
from the next place the planet shaper goes.  They'll all be
killed.  It might take them long enough to fix the drive that the
planet shaper will have time to destroy several more planets
before they can resume rescue operations."
     "Oh, God," Matt said softly.  Finally he said, "Please tell
them that was never our intent.  We thought we'd be preventing
the destruction of Earth."
     Abby relayed that information and turned back to Matt.
"They understand that now."
     "Why don't they fight the planet shaper?  Stop it now, and
none of this would be necessary."
     Moments later Abby said, "They can't.  This ship has no
weapons.  It's designed specifically to rescue cities.  That must
be part of the reason the Archies seem uneasy with the changed
situation.  They're trained to do a specific job, and we're
asking them to do a different one."
     "No weapons?  There's nothing they can do to stop the planet
shaper?"
     Abby talked again, then turned to Matt.  "On or near their
home planet, they are designing and building a ship, a destroyer,
to eliminate the planet shaper.  But the destroyer won't be ready
in time."
     "How soon will it be ready?"
     "There's a chance I'm getting time units wrong, but I think
she's saying a couple of years.  I know it's more than a couple
of months.  Obviously far too late to help Earth."
     "Unless the planet shaper isn't actually coming here after
all.  Maybe they made a mistake.  Maybe that's why it hasn't
showed up yet."
     Abby talked to the Archie again.
     "She says they haven't been wrong yet."
     The Archie spoke to Abby again.
     "She says even if the ship did have weapons, the crew is
trained specifically for saving cities, not waging war.  That's
got to be why they seem more like bureaucrats than warriors."
     Matt was silent for almost half a minute, furiously thinking
of options.  "I see two choices.  One, roll over on our backs
with our feet in the air like the Archies.  Or, two, do something
about it.  We're going to do something about it."
     "What?" said Richard.  "We have no weapons.  Haven't you
been listening?"
     Matt swiveled to stare at Richard.  He moved one pace toward
Richard and very quietly he said, "If I want complaints or
negativity from you, I'll ask for them very clearly.  Right now,
I don't want them.  Is that clear?"
     Richard swallowed hard, then nodded.  "Yes."
     Matt turned to Abby.  "Tell your friend we need an escort
for Bobby Joe and Julie.  They're going to the closest
observation port."
     As Abby spoke to the computer, Matt looked at Bobby Joe.  "I
want you to contact Manhattan, first to tell them exactly what's
happening, and second to get an inventory of anything they can
think of that might be useful.  It's pretty unlikely anyone was
transporting nuclear weapons through Manhattan when it was
grabbed, but who knows.  The Mayor is going to have to go on the
air and ask for anything that can help.  Take Julie with you and
get enough of what's in her minivid sent down there so we won't
have anyone wasting time not accepting this as fact.  As soon as
you've made the initial transmission, get back here.  If I'm
busy, try to set up a link between this room and Manhattan."
     Abby touched Matt's arm.  "She's agreed."
     Matt looked at Bobby Joe and Julie.  "Go."
     Bobby Joe nodded.  He knelt by the pile of their remaining
belongings and picked up the new walkie-talkie and two old ones.
He and Julie left, followed by one of the other Archies.
     To Abby, Matt said, "Tell this Archie that we want to know
everything there is to know about the capabilities of this ship,
and how many smaller ships it contains, what they're capable of."
     Abby spoke, then listened.
     "She says it's useless."
     "Tell her we don't care.  The damage they've suffered to the
ship so far is nothing compared to what we'll do if they don't
cooperate."
     As Abby spoke, Matt said to Richard and Rudy, "I want you
two listening closely to whatever we learn about the Archies'
capabilities.  I'll want any suggestions you can think of for
options, no matter how peculiar, as long as they're serious."
     Abby said, "I don't think she feels it's of any help, but
she'll tell us everything about the ship."
     "That's fine.  I don't care what she believes as long as she
cooperates.  Oh, and tell her I'll want to talk to the captain
soon."
     After a moment Abby said, "She is the captain."
     Matt glanced back at the Archie occupying the central chair
on the deck.  "Oh.  I had assumed the captain would be sitting up
there."
     "Apparently she feels this is more important."
     "All right.  What do we have to work with?  Those lasers on
the ships that cut Manhattan loose sound like they can be used as
weapons, for instance."
     Abby spoke to the captain and moments later turned back to
Matt.  "Aboard this ship are twenty smaller ships.  If I'm
getting this right, they have sixteen ships with cutters--I
suppose those are the lasers--and they have two spares.  Then
they have two lifters, much bigger ships."
     "What weapons are aboard the lifters?"
     The Archie's eye-stalk dipped a couple of times as it
answered Abby's question.
     "No weapons."
     "Well, we have to find a way to stop the planet shaper."
     After a moment, Abby said, "They really don't want to fight.
The captain is sure they can't damage the planet shaper and she
doesn't want to risk damaging the smaller ships.  She's pretty
clearly not equipped to deal with a military operation."
     Motion to Matt's side caught his eye and he turned to see
Bobby Joe and Julie returning with their Archie escort.  Matt
raised his eyebrows.
     "It's going to be easier than we thought to set up a comm
link between here and Manhattan," Bobby Joe said.  "The nearest
observation port is about a minute from here.  I've got your
optical walkie-talkie set up for line-of-sight transmission, and
it's cross-connected to a regular walkie-talkie.  You can talk
directly from here, or we can relay anything you want.  They're
getting the Mayor now, and she should be online any time.  We can
transmit some video as soon as you want.  And if you like, later
we can set up one of the minivids so it transmits a frame every
ten seconds from here in addition to voice."
     "Perfect.  Rudy, keep going with getting a summary of what's
available.  I'll talk to the Mayor."
     Matt picked up one of the walkie-talkies and snapped it on.
"Matt Sheehan here.  Who am I talking to?"
     "Barnaby Jolliet.  The mayor should be on the line any
second now.  It may take her a minute or two to get fully awake."
     Matt looked at his watch and realized for the first time
that in Manhattan it was a little after one in the morning.
     "Dorine Underwood here," came her voice clearly.
     "Matt Sheehan.  Good news, bad news, and a request for
help."
     "Shoot."
                                 #
     Twenty-eight minutes later, Dorine Underwood blinked at the
camera lens as a hyperactive crew got ready for an emergency
telecast.  A police car permanently assigned to the Gracie
Mansion had sped her downtown as fast as the driver could safely
travel in low gee.  The siren wailed as traffic lights
automatically turned green in the path ahead.  Others in her
office had arranged the emergency TV crew, who knew nothing about
what Dorine was going to announce.
     Still others had switched on air raid sirens all over the
island, the signal for everyone to turn on their television sets.
As Dorine had sped through dark streets in the police car, she
had occasionally heard the air raid wailings over the siren, and
she felt she was in another dream, a dream like the one on the
morning Manhattan had been lifted into the air, a dream like the
one the morning she'd found out her son Terry had died in a
traffic accident, broad-sided by a drunk.
     In the studio, Dorine still felt not quite real somehow.
Some of the things Matt Sheehan had told her were still spinning
through her brain, edging their way from knowledge to fear.  She
didn't disbelieve anything he had said; it was just taking her a
while to convert the information into reality.
     On a monitor in front of her was a still frame of a starry
sky with Earth near the center.  The frame changed and she saw
the ship's bridge with the human team and several of the huge
spider creatures.  On a monitor next to that one was her live
image, looking far too pale for her heritage.  She pushed a lock
of hair behind one ear.
     A technician finished the countdown.
     "Hello, New Yorkers," said Dorine to the camera lens.  She
always started with a few words that could be missed by people
suddenly saying or hearing, "Shhh.  She's starting to talk," as
the audience came to attention.  "Obviously I wouldn't have
scheduled this telecast for two a.m.  if time were not critical.
     "I'm going to give you an overview, and then I'm going to
tell you what we must do next, and finally I'm going to show you
some video that will leave no doubts about what I'm saying.
     "Put very briefly, we in Manhattan are all safe.  No harm is
going to come to us.  The Earth itself is in danger, however.
Sometime in the next hours or days, the Earth is going to be
under attack, faced with weapons it has no defense against.  That
is the reason I am talking to you now.  It's possible that we may
be able to help in some currently unforeseen manner."
     The view in the second monitor changed to show an
airplane-window view of Manhattan under its taco-shell dome, and
Dorine lost her next thought until she looked back at her notes.
     "This is going to be a little difficult to accept, but
perhaps no harder to accept than our current home.  The alien
race who brought us here did so not to keep us like zoo specimens
or to experiment on us.  They brought us here because the Earth
itself is in immediate danger.  A huge, automated alien ship
built by yet another race is on a programmed course of
destruction, converting habitable planets into planets that will
one day comfortably support their own life.  One of the things
the ship does is clear the planet of other life forms.
     "The ship we are on has as its purpose taking a city from
each planet about to be destroyed, so they can eventually
relocate the cities to other planets that will support life.  For
that reason, this ship is unarmed, except for the lasers used to
cut cities loose from their planets, and the people who 'rescued'
us do not believe the lasers are a sufficient weapon against this
other ship--the planet shaper ship.  An armed destroyer being
built to overcome this--planet shaper--will not be ready in time
to help the Earth."
     Dorine carefully avoided saying outright that everyone still
on Earth was probably doomed.
     "We're at a turning point.  We can either do nothing, in
which case we'll never see the Earth again, and we'll eventually
be deposited on some other planet to live out our lives.  Or, we
can fight.  We can try to destroy the planet shaper.  If we're
successful, the Earth and everyone on it will be safe.  We might
not be successful.  Certainly the odds are against us.  But we
cannot stand by and not try.
     "What we need now is a weapon.  We need something that can
help us change the odds, to help us destroy the planet shaper.
If you know of anything that is here with us in the dome that can
help, I want to know about it.
     "What I don't want to know about are conventional weapons.
Rifles, even assault rifles, and things like bazookas are not
going to help us defeat a huge, armed ship.  But if, for
instance, any nuclear weapons were being transported through
Manhattan when we were taken, or if, God help us, a group of
terrorists had a weapon ready to use as a threat, we need to know
about it.  If you know of any hugely powerful weapon of any kind,
call nine-one-one right now.  The nine-one-one system operators
are ready to funnel emergency calls like this into a staff
standing by right now.  Do not call nine-one-one during the next
hour unless your call clearly pertains to exactly what I
requested, or it's an emergency that threatens many lives.
Anyone abusing the nine-one-one system during the next
twenty-four hours will be dealt with harshly, under martial law
provisions.  The lives of billions of people are at stake.
     "Now, for those of you who are having trouble accepting all
of this information, or are simply curious about the ship we are
on--and I assume that's almost everyone--I'm going to show you
some still-frame video that's been sent back by Matt Sheehan and
his team, who are at this moment on the ship's bridge high above
us, at the center of the level that forms the roof of this giant
chamber we're in."
     Dorine pressed the switch the technicians had rigged, and
the first still-frame replaced her image on the monitor.  Matt
Sheehan and Abby Tersa stood next to a spider-like creature
almost as tall as they were.  Above their heads was a view of
space that made it seem as if the roof of the bridge had just
been ripped away.
     When Dorine had finished showing the still frames, her image
came back up on the monitor.
     She took a breath, wanting her audience to be able to catch
their breaths also.  Finally she said, "I don't know how much
time we've got, but right now I don't have any more information.
The station is going to keep this channel transmitting around the
clock until we know the fate of the Earth.  Until we get
additional information, or need to make more requests, the
transmitted sound will be turned down all the way.  I suggest you
just leave your televisions on and don't turn down the volume.
The crew here will show a series of still-frames sent down by the
exploration team, and I will be back on the air as soon as we
know anything more.
     "Perhaps a miracle will occur.  Perhaps the planet shaper
will not arrive.  Perhaps our 'rescuers' made a mistake about
which way it is traveling.  Whatever happens, I think this is
another one of those times when Manhattanites who are so inclined
might do well to pray in whatever manner you're comfortable with.
     "I honestly don't know what we're going to do, but I do know
we can't just do nothing."
                                 #
     Stuart Lund stopped in the street, watching a huge array of
television screens on display as they all moved in unison,
showing what the mayor said had been transmitted from the
exploratory team.  He suddenly felt tired.
     Stuart turned and shouted to his followers who nearly
surrounded him, "These images must have been falsified.  You all
know how easy it is to generate pictures like this.  You see it
every day in movies."
     In the portion of the crowd near enough to see the pictures
for themselves, people turned to their neighbors and whispered.
A few people turned and started to walk away.  A man at the back
started to shout, but the guy next to him shut him up.
     Stuart began to speak again, but suddenly stopped in
mid-sentence.  Abruptly he felt tension in his stomach as he
realized what was wrong.  He was having trouble working up the
enthusiasm he'd had before.  The pictures were extremely
unsettling.  If Stuart and all the others were indeed in God's
house, awaiting God's decision, these images of giant spiders
didn't square with Stuart's expectations.  Not at all.
     The earlier pictures had been easier to accept as fakes,
mainly because only one of the images showed a spider, and that
really had looked like a fake.  These pictures showed more than a
dozen of the creatures, most of them sitting in chairs obviously
designed for their strange bodies.
     As Stuart stood at the side of the street, he realized it
was over.  He scanned faces among his followers.  Many of them
seemed to accept his denouncement of the video, but his followers
weren't the problem.  Stuart was the problem.  He realized then
and there that he no longer had the conviction he had started out
with.  The videos could all be fakes, but he had a terrible
feeling they weren't.
     So it no longer mattered what the crowd believed.  Stuart's
enthusiasm and conviction had carried them this far.  Without
that certainty in his voice and manner, they would know he had
changed.  The fire he had felt could not be faked.  The crowd
would know within minutes that the fire had died.
     Stuart stood there, numb, and his followers looked at his
face, and they began to whisper among themselves as they looked
from his face to the television monitors and back.
     The crowd began to dwindle slowly at first, but within ten
minutes the stragglers were clearly disgruntled, distraught, and
dispersing.  Stuart no longer had the will to try to stop them.
He sagged.  He sat on the curb, watching most of his followers
spread out along the dark streets.  Maybe a tenth of the people
stayed behind, most of them looking expectantly at Stuart,
obviously still willing to believe.  But Stuart wasn't sure he
had anything appropriate to say.
     A burly man in a plaid shirt came forward through the
diminishing throng.  He stopped in front of Stuart long enough to
say, "Maybe we should all repent for all those bugs we've stepped
on, huh?"
     A young mother with two children at her side walked up to
Stuart.  The woman said gently, "We still believe you, Reverend."
     Stuart waved her away.
     As he sat there watching most of people disappear, two boys
in their late teens or early twenties came up and stood facing
Stuart, their feet spread wide in a hostile stance.
     The taller boy wore a conventional Mohawk, and his companion
sported a twin Mohawk.  They both wore left-hand-side-only
mustaches made popular last year by Twisted Sabbath, and both had
tattoos on their upper arms.
     The taller boy said, "You made us look stupid.  We really
don't like to look stupid."
     Stuart was sorely tempted to tell them they looked pretty
stupid anyway, but he just turned his back and walked away.  If
they wanted to follow him and attack, let them.  Stuart didn't
care anymore.
                                 #
     "That bastard," Benny Kellermund said as he watched the
screen relaying pictures from the bridge of the ship.  "Man, do I
feel stupid."
     "That's 'cause you are stupid," Lucky Stiles said.
     "You thought he was right, too."
     "Yeah, maybe."
     "Well, we know we're nowhere near heaven.  And those spider
things aren't going to come down here and kill us.  They would
have killed us already if that's what they wanted."
     "Right again, brain surgeon."
     "So, what are we going to do?"
     "You mean are we going to pull the switch?  Explode the
Empire State Building?"
     "Right."
     "Well, it's pretty tempting."
     Benny knew he looked shocked.  He was speechless.
     "Just kidding," Lucky said quickly.
     "So, do we go back and get the stuff?"
     "Are you kidding?  They'll have cops all over the place.
And I'm not lugging that stuff back down.  They can have it."
     "Yeah?"
     "Yeah.  I'll find a pay phone and tell the mayor how to get
it out safely."
     "Man, we came pretty close."
     "Too close."  Lucky rose suddenly.  "I'm gonna go out for a
while.  I'll be back."
                                 #
     "It doesn't sound good," Rudy said.  "Not if the lasers
won't do any good against the planet shaper."
     Matt rubbed his eyes.  "True.  But there's got to be
something we can do."
     "Even if the Archies aren't willing to fight?" Richard
asked.
     Matt glanced at the Archies at their positions on the
bridge.  "We'll just have to persuade them."
     Abby took a break from her conversation with the Archie
captain.  She came over and sat down next to the group of humans.
"So far I haven't found any inconsistencies in their story.  You
want what I've got now or later?"
     "Go ahead," said Matt.  "We should hear pretty soon if
there's anything in Manhattan that might be useful.  And the more
we know about the Archies' ship, the better."
     "All right.  Some of this will be repetition.  When the
planet shaper finishes with whatever planets it damages in a
solar system, it starts up some kind of interstellar drive that
I'm just going to call warp drive.  I think what happens is that
the ship somehow jumps from one location in space to another one
far away, and it has to make sure it's far from the sun--several
times the distance we're at now.  The planet shaper makes a
series of these jumps, and eventually arrives in a new solar
system, and starts doing whatever it does again.  Apparently the
planet shaper doesn't distinguish between inhabited and
uninhabited planets.
     "Anyway, the Archies' ship is better at this warp drive, if
I understand this correctly.  By watching which way the planet
shaper jumps, the Archies can see what solar systems lie on that
course, and then make a single huge jump, getting to the
destination before the planet shaper does.  If the solar systems
are close together, the Archies don't gain much lead time, but if
the planet shaper has to make a long series of jumps, then the
Archies usually have more time.  When the planet shaper jumped
toward us, the Archies knew it would take several jumps, so
they're not surprised the planet shaper hasn't arrived, but it
could be here any time.  It all sounds fairly inexact, but I
guess that's because they can't predict exactly what intermediate
steps the planet shaper will make."
     Rudy looked up.  "So that's why the destruction on the
planet with the city of cones started even before the city was
secure.  The Archies didn't have much of a lead."
     "Exactly," Abby said.  "And that's why we're still here in
our own solar system.  The Archies have to wait until the planet
shaper is finished here before they know which way to go next."
     "God, I hate that sound," Bobby Joe said.  "They sound like
teenagers when they eat."
     Not far away, one of the Archies was eating as it sat at its
station.  The Archie apparently sucked its food into its mouth,
sounding as if it were trying to get the last dribble of malt
through a straw.  Then, for a change of pace, it made a sound
like it was sucking strands of spaghetti.
     Abby grimaced.  "I take back that last sentence.  The
Archies don't have to wait here until they see which way the
planet shaper goes; they have to wait here at least until they
fix the warp drive.  Oh, and on the other side of the ship, the
other set of eight huge cylinders--they're the main components
of the normal drive.  They can still get around inside the solar
system with the normal drive.  They just can't make the
long-distance jumps until the damage is fixed."
     "And how long will that take?" Matt asked.
     "They think about twenty to thirty days."
     "I don't understand.  If they can fix it in that long, why
do they say they'll be unable to help the next few planets?"
     "Because they think it may take them quite a while to find
the planet shaper again.  Incidentally, no more than one out of
ten of the planets it converts has life on it; they figure it
will hit another fifty or sixty planets before their search will
locate it again."
     "How can they transform an entire planet that fast?"
     "They don't.  The initial barrage kills most of the native
life, but the total transformation takes many years.  Part of
what the planet shaper does is deposit machinery--I don't know
what size they're talking about--that slowly finishes the job."
     Motion overhead caught Matt's eye.  Thin arcs formed in what
Matt now realized had to be a display rather than a window on top
of the bridge.  A gray line intersected the Earth and curved out
of sight on both ends.  Six more gentle arcs formed in the
display, two of them intersecting what looked to be stars, one
yellow, one red.  Six of the arcs seemed to all fall in a plane,
but the most distant arc cut through the plane at an angle of
maybe twenty degrees.  In addition, the outside curve cut inside
the nearest curve for part of its arc.
     "Those must be orbits," Bobby Joe said.  "We're a little
above the plane of the ecliptic.  I bet those curves represent
the orbits of Earth and the other planets."  He pointed.  "Those
bright 'stars' on the lines near the center must be Mars and
Saturn.  The other planets must be behind us or at our side."
     "Makes sense," said Rudy.
     "Of course it--whoa!"  Bobby Joe's mouth dropped open as
elements of the display changed.  The two "stars" representing
Mars and Saturn suddenly grew until they were perhaps a quarter
of the size of the Earth in the display.
     Mars was a reddish disk with few blemishes.  Saturn was
large enough to show its rings.
     "What happened?" Richard asked.  "We can't have moved.  The
Earth looks the same."
     "Display enhancement," Bobby Joe said.  "I like it.  They
magnified small elements in the display, just enough to show
details.  If they'd zoomed the whole display enough to show that
much of Saturn, they would have narrowed the field to something
less than one percent of what we can see.  By doing it this way,
we still get the big picture, but we can see what's what.  Very
elegant."
     The display suddenly shifted, as though the ship were
turning.  Enormous cross hairs formed in the display, and the
lines spread into filmy translucent planes, dividing space into
four quadrants.  Grids formed on both of the planes, and then two
dotted lines emerged from the Earth, each one extending toward
one of the grids.  Matt was sure the two points where the dotted
lines intersected the grids defined the Earth's position relative
to the ship.
     Jupiter, its streaked clouds visible, and Venus, a yellowish
disk, appeared in the screen, obviously made to look close by the
display enhancement.
     Suddenly several of the Archies on the bridge chattered.
Abby turned to the captain as a star near Jupiter began to blink.
More dotted lines appeared between it and the grid planes.
Dotted lines sprouted from Jupiter, and Matt realized the new
object was roughly midway between the orbits of Jupiter and the
next planet out, which Bobby Joe reminded him was Saturn.
     Matt felt the adrenaline rush and a brief, sharp pain in his
chest even before Abby turned from the captain and verified what
they were all assuming.
     In a hushed voice she said, "The planet shaper has arrived."

                            Chapter 16
                          Throwing Rocks

     Abby felt the hush in the room as human eyes turned and
Archie eye-stalks swiveled toward the new pin-point of light
blinking against the backdrop of stars.  After the initial flurry
of whispering and chattering, the bridge was suddenly as quiet as
an early morning run.  Even Bobby Joe was still.  Then Abby was
aware of Julie speaking quietly into a walkie-talkie, calmly
feeding details to Manhattan.  At the moment, Abby envied Julie's
calm acceptance of recent events, no doubt aided by her
experience in covering tragedy after tragedy in the past.  Then
again, maybe she was just like Abby, striving to be calm on the
outside, but inside, a furious whirlpool of questions and fears.
     At times Abby felt like moving off to a corner and going
quietly and seriously insane.  In Abby's place, her mother
probably would have done exactly that.  Her mother had been
frightened just to think of Abby living on her own in New York.
     Several times Abby had been on the verge of panic, despite
her outward calm.  Each time she had felt that fear tightening
her throat, the experience had been something like feeling really
out of breath halfway into a long run.  And each time she had
miraculously found her second wind, just as when she ran.
     She couldn't freeze now; she couldn't give in to the panic.
Now that the planet shaper had actually arrived, she had a sudden
image of her parents sitting out on the back porch, waiting in
quiet anguish, wondering what had happened to Abby.  Unless the
team could somehow find a way to divert or destroy the planet
shaper, her parents would be gone, without even knowing why.  An
image from an old nuclear holocaust film jammed in her brain and
wouldn't go away until she pinched herself so hard the pain
brought her back to the bridge.
     The area surrounding the blinking light in the display
shimmered, and a larger image formed in its place, as though the
planet shaper had suddenly moved much closer than it had been
seconds earlier, or the Archies had magnified its image, the way
they had with the planets.
     The planet shaper looked more like a shiny piece of jewelry
than a starship.  Not quite a four-leaf clover, the planet shaper
brought to mind a cluster of four silvery teardrops, all joined
at their narrow ends.  At that central junction was a small
sphere, the glob of glue holding the four sections together.  Two
teardrops opposite each other were slightly elongated, so
together the teardrops formed a diamond.  Distorted star fields
reflected off the shiny surfaces.
     Suddenly the star images slid aside and new ones replaced
them as the planet shaper changed orientation.  Abby was struck
by how beautiful the ship was.
     "God," Richard whispered.
     Abby glanced at Matt.  She couldn't read his expression.  He
could have been in the middle of a poker game or a war.  And this
really was war, she realized.
     A line began growing from the planet shaper.  The Archie
captain said something Abby's computer transformed into,
"Direction."
     The line continued growing until seconds later the
destination was obvious: Venus.  The line kept lengthening
until it intersected the image of Venus.
     "Maybe they don't want the Earth," Abby said suddenly.  To
the captain she said, "One planet?  Not Earth?"
     The Archie's four support legs flexed for just an instant,
and its entire body dipped.  It chattered and the computer said,
"Two planets."
     Bobby Joe said, "Earth and Venus must both be close enough
to whatever profile they're using to pick planets.  Venus is
close to the size of Earth, and close to the same distance from
the sun."
     "What about Mars?" asked Rudy.
     Bobby Joe shook his head.  "Mars has about ten percent of
the mass of Earth.  Venus is more like Earth, except for the heat
and atmosphere, and I'm guessing this thing can deal with those
little problems."
     "Now what?" Matt asked.
     Abby asked the question of the Archie captain.
     "Wait.  Watch," came the answer.
     Julie approached Matt.  "The Mayor wants to talk to you."
She offered him her walkie-talkie.
     Matt held the unit to his mouth and answered.  A moment
later, he said, "Yes, ma'am.  Maybe I can get Bobby Joe to set up
a second link so Julie can continue feeding a steady stream and
we can still talk."  Matt glanced at Bobby Joe, who thought for a
couple of seconds then nodded.  "Yeah, apparently it's possible."
     Matt listened for a long moment.  "No, I don't think that'll
help much, either."  Pause.  "All right.  We'll do our best."
     Matt listened a moment longer.  "I understand.  I was about
to ask the Archies to make sure we know as much as they do about
the planet shaper, and we've still got some questions about their
own capabilities.  If there aren't any supplies in Manhattan that
will help, maybe ideas can help.  Would you put out a call just
the way you did for materials?  If there are any experts with
useful suggestions about space warfare or any useful ideas
triggered by what we learn about the planet shaper, pass them up
to us fast.  Right at the moment, we're a little short on
options.  We need creative, devious ideas.  There has got to be a
way to stop that ship."
     A moment later Matt handed the walkie-talkie back to Julie.
To Bobby Joe he said, "Okay.  Get a second link set up as soon as
possible, and give me a walkie-talkie on the second channel as
soon as you're finished."
     "Will do," said Bobby Joe.  He hurried off toward the
nearest line-of-sight point without even a smart remark.
     Matt glanced at Abby, then at the others in the small group.
"The mayor has set up a technical team to help get answers to
questions that may come up.  And I'm officially in charge of the
war effort.  By the time anyone else could get here from
Manhattan, it might all be over anyway, plus we're the Archie
experts now."  He looked at the overhead screen.  "First item of
business.  Abby, tell the captain we want to intercept the planet
shaper.  About there if we can."  He pointed to a spot about a
third of the way from Venus to the location of the planet shaper.
     Abby nodded.  This would be pushing the limits of her speech
translation, so she grabbed a marker, sat down, and began to
write directly on the floor of the bridge.  She made sure the
captain was watching.  She drew an octagon and said, "Archie
ship."  She drew a four-leaf clover and said, "Planet shaper."
     As she drew, the Archie captain folded her legs underneath
her and sat on the floor, tipped forward so her eye-stalk could
point at the drawing on the floor.  Her mouth hung open, and Abby
tried not to look at it.
     Abby drew a line from the planet shaper to a dot she called,
"Planet."  From the Archie ship to the intercept point she drew
an arrow.  From the planet shaper to the same point she drew a
second arrow.  Finally she said, "Move," and retraced the arrow
from the Archie ship to the intercept point.
     The Archie's eye-stalk wiggled from side to side, then she
chattered.  The translator said, "Waste."
     Abby went back and forth a couple of times trying for
clarification as her anger built up and she had to work harder to
conceal it.  Finally she looked up at Matt.  "She's saying it's a
waste of time or energy.  She says this ship has no weapon that
can damage the planet shaper.  I'll show her two choices--either
moving this ship or having this ship explode."  Matt nodded.
     Abby drew a picture of a fractured octagon, then what she
thought was the "or" symbol, then retraced the line to the
intercept point again.
     Finally the Archie brushed its mouth with one of her forward
legs, then chattered to her nearest compatriot, who in turned
chattered at the Archie in the center of the bridge.  That
Archie's eye-stalk swiveled to point at the captain, who
proceeded to tap one hand against the floor.
     Moments later the image overhead changed as a series of
concentric circles formed, centered on a point about a third of
the way from Venus to the planet shaper.  The set of circles
began to expand slowly.  The display reminded Abby of scenes in
movies showing the cockpit display as an airliner came in for a
landing.  Each circle disappeared as it reached a diameter of
about a meter, and at the same time tiny circles appeared in the
center of the smallest circles.  "I think we're moving," Abby
said.
     Abby wasn't sure why she'd had to go through with the threat
again.  It was almost as if the Archie captain didn't believe
anything that had been said only once or twice.  Maybe the team
was now closer to being taken more seriously.
     The rate at which the circles grew increased, as though the
ship were moving faster and faster.  Julie directed her minivid
at the display.
     "What next?" Abby asked.
     Matt stared at the expanse of stars above as he spoke.  "If
they're unwilling to fight, or unequipped to fight, they're only
good for one thing: following our directions.  Can you tell the
captain that she's going to have to be prompt about doing what we
ask?  Tell her that we won't take any action as long as she
cooperates quickly, but keep reminding her that we still have the
power to destroy this ship."
     "I'll give it a shot."
     Abby spent more than ten minutes trying to get the concepts
across to the Archie captain.  As she was still working on it,
Bobby Joe came back and handed Matt a walkie-talkie, saying the
second link was all set.  Abby drew on a new section of floor,
trying to get across the idea of an undamaged ship, and finally,
several minutes later, the Archie captain verbally agreed to the
request and confirmed Abby's suspicion that tapping a hand on the
ground meant "yes."
     "Okay," said Abby.  "I think she's still having a hard time
accepting the idea that we would deliberately destroy the ship
that's keeping us alive, but I tried to convince her we think
differently from them.  It's odd, though.  A couple of times I've
gotten the feeling they actually like having someone telling them
to do something more than save cities and watch the planets be
destroyed.  Maybe they're feeling guilty about not being able to
do more.  What next?"
     Matt said, "Next she's got to tell us everything she knows
about the planet shaper's weapons and its defenses."
     That request took almost a half-hour to complete, but Abby's
hope grew as she was able to add more vocabulary to her
computer's translation bank as she did it.  Communication ease
was accelerating.  The planet shaper's hull was mirror-like as
part of its defense.  The surface would apparently easily reflect
the cutting lasers employed by the Archie shuttlecraft.  And
beneath the reflecting layer was a very hard material, so hard
that the Archies felt no projectile would penetrate it.  Small
projectile weapons like human rifles and even anti-tank weapons
would be useless.
     "But muzzle velocity is meaningless," Bobby Joe pointed out.
"The weapons we're talking about have muzzle velocities measured
in thousands of meters per second at most.  If we're going to
reach where we're going any time soon, we'll be traveling at
millions of kilometers per second.  Just dropping a bullet in
empty space and veering away would leave the bullet traveling a
thousand times faster than we could shoot it."
     Matt said, "Good point.  But what about the planet shaper's
offensive weapons?"
     The Archie captain was less sure about what weapons the
planet shaper carried.  Apparently they hadn't had much reason to
care.  Abby finally decided the Archie captain was telling her
the planet shaper did in fact carry a weapon that could strike at
a distance, but she didn't have the vocabulary to pin down what
it was.
     "Well, we've got to damage the planet shaper somehow," Matt
said finally.  "We got to find a way of turning something into an
offensive weapon."
     As Matt talked to the others, Abby realized she had finally
obtained a large enough sampling of Archie-speak that she could
load it into a language program that would start to extrapolate
additional data to fill in the gaps.
     If only it could help.
                                 #
     Dorine Underwood couldn't avoid a yawn.  She wasn't at all
bored, but she'd been awake for too long.  She was exhausted.
She held up a hand to the camera operator to say, "Just a couple
of seconds more."
     Finally she nodded.  The camera light came on and she saw
the "on the air" signal.
     "Hello, New Yorkers.  By now many of you have been watching
what's happening on the bridge of this ship we're aboard.  Now
that the planet shaper has arrived, our captors are telling us
there's less than a day before the ship reaches Venus, and then
perhaps only another eight hours before it reaches Earth.  We
were lucky that, thanks to where the planet shaper appeared, it
happened to be closer to Venus than to the Earth.  That bought us
an extra half day.
     "We need to make sure that gift is not wasted.  We need to
find out some way of crippling or destroying the planet shaper
before it reaches Earth.  I want to be very clear on this point.
If the ship we're in takes offensive action against the planet
shaper, there is a risk that it will strike back.  By trying to
save the Earth, we ourselves will be at risk.
     "I believe the risk is one we have to take.  I say this as
someone who has a husband still on Earth, but I would say it
anyway.  I don't honestly know how to evaluate the risk, any more
than someone running into a burning building to save a child
knows exactly what the odds are.  I think for the most part you
will agree with me that we have to take the risk.  If the worst
happens to us, and this ship is damaged while stopping the planet
shaper from destroying life on Earth, then at least we will know
that for every life in this dome, we saved a thousand lives on
Earth, and the Earth itself.
     Dorine pinched the bridge of her nose, then looked back at
the camera.  "I also have to say I've lost some of my optimism.
We may not find a way to save the Earth.  We're in a ship built
for comparatively peaceful purposes, up against a ship built by
people who probably expected it to run into massive opposition.
     "But I also have a strong belief in human ingenuity.  If
there is a way to fight the planet shaper, we will find it.  If
none exists, then we will have at least done everything possible
to help.
     "The nine-one-one lines are open again, this time for
suggestions or tactics we could employ against the planet shaper.
As before, abuse of the nine-one-one system will be dealt with
harshly.  If you've got a legitimate idea, call.  If you don't
know that it's useful, call anyway.  We'll filter the ideas down
here, and pass as many as we can to the team on the bridge.  Keep
watching the telecast from the bridge, in case any new
information triggers more possibilities.
     "Thank you, Manhattan."
                                 #
     Rudy said, "We could have the Archies ram the planet shaper
with a shuttlecraft."
     Abby asked the Archie captain about that and got the answer
that even if she were willing to try, which was unlikely, she was
pessimistic about the impact being large enough to do significant
damage.
     Bobby Joe's eyes opened wide.  "Between Mars and Jupiter are
lots of asteroids.  What if we could grab a big one and throw it
at the planet shaper?"
     Matt nodded to Abby.  "See if you can get an answer to
that."  He clicked on his walkie-talkie and asked the mayor to
run the same question by the technical team that was now standing
by.
     Within a few minutes Matt interrupted Abby's discussion with
the captain.  "The technical team says it's feasible, but the
answer depends on the maximum acceleration the Archies' ship can
attain.  We'd have to go through three acceleration phases.  One
get up to a high enough speed to approach a suitable asteroid
long enough before the planet shaper arrives, a second to slow
down to match speed with the asteroid, and a third to get the
ship and the asteroid up to ramming speed."
     Abby shook her head.  "I don't think it will work.  She was
trying to tell me the ship couldn't move fast enough, and now I
know what that means."
     Matt relayed that information to Manhattan.  Seconds later,
he said, "All right.  They're ready to relay some of the initial
suggestions that they've recorded and that the technical team
thinks are at least adequate to pass on to us.  I think if we all
get close to the walkie-talkie I can crank up the sound enough
that we can all hear so I don't have to relay everything."
     Matt sat down next to Abby.  Bobby Joe, Rudy, and Richard
huddled close by as Julie kept transmitting.  "Go ahead," said
Matt.
     The sound was tinny but audible.  What sounded like an old
man said, "Warn Earth.  They can use atomic weapons on that
sucker."
     A young girl's voice said, "Squirt acid on the ship.
Dissolve it."
     "Fly out of the sun.  Surprise it," said a male voice.  A
different voice, presumably one of the technical team, added,
"This one makes sense not just because of the obvious visual
difficulty the planet shaper would have.  Besides that, the sun
gives off a huge amount of broad-spectrum noise that might
interfere with other kinds of sensors, too."
     A nervous man said, "I think perhaps--perhaps we should just
ram the planet shaper with this ship."
                                 #
     For the last twenty hours, the largest display in Times
Square had been showing live video from what residents had dubbed
The Mayor Channel.  At the moment, the screen showed the bridge
of the Archies' ship, along with Matt Sheehan and Abby Tersa.
     Herb Abjernal watched the screen intently, wishing he had a
cigarette, ignoring the jostling of the huge crowd.  At the
corner of Seventh Avenue and West 43rd Street, a tall pedestal
supported twelve huge speakers that carried the audio to go with
the video.  Herb was close enough to the speakers that when the
Mayor or someone else spoke, the sound hurt his ears, but he
didn't move away because sometimes the crowd's excited reaction
almost covered up the words.
     At the moment, the speakers were silent, and Herb heard the
loud voice of a man on the south side of the intersection.  "What
the hell do we owe Earth?  All the rest of the world ever did was
complain about New York.  They're probably glad we're gone.  Why
should we risk our lives to help those idiots?"
     Even if Herb hadn't had a daughter in Hawaii and a son in
Arizona, he would still have been angry.  He considered moving
from his chosen spot, but the angry reactions from the people
nearest the speaker said there was no need to move.  The man was
being cursed in three languages.
     The man started up again, saying, "We're all safe.  No one
is going to touch us if we don't interfere.  I say--"
     Whatever else the man had to say was interrupted by the
meaty sound of a punch.  Voices rose again, but Herb didn't hear
the complainer say anything more.  Who said New Yorkers just
stood by and let crap happen?
                                 #
     "You know," Matt said, "we do have something really massive
we could throw at the planet shaper.  And we wouldn't have to go
anyplace to get it."
     Rudy cocked his head.  "And what might that be?"
     "A city.  The dead city we explored."
     Abby sensed the first glimmer of hope she'd felt for hours.
     Richard nodded, and Bobby Joe said, "I like it!"
     To Abby, Matt said, "Ask the Archies if that's possible, and
if it is, to get started removing the city as fast as they can.
We won't want to match speed at the intercept point; we'll want
to be moving as fast as we can relative to it."
     Abby nodded and turned to the Archie captain.  She tried to
get the question across, being extremely careful to identify the
correct city.
     The Archie captain seemed to get excited.  Her two front
legs twitched as Abby completed the first question.  Finally Abby
turned back to Matt and said, "She thinks they can do it.  And
she seems to think it might work.  They'll start now."
     One of the wall screens showed an overhead view of the huge
square building they had searched earlier, and Abby identified it
as the correct city.
     "Tell them about setting a course so the final approach has
this ship directly between the sun and the planet shaper," Matt
said.  "We can't assume they know anything about fighting."
     "Let me help, will you?" Bobby Joe said to Abby as he
reached for the marker.
     Bobby Joe drew on a new section of floor, showing the
straight line between the planet shaper and Venus and the
straight line between the Archies' ship and the interception
point.  He scratched through the straight line and next to it
drew a curve that ended at the intercept point.  He drew a
tangent to the final portion of the curve and drew a straight
line directly into the sun.  Bobby Joe suggested what Abby should
say, translating from technical to layman as Abby completed the
translation.
     Finally she was convinced the Archie captain understood.
     The captain chattered to a nearby Archie.  Seconds later,
Bobby Joe said, "Terrific!"
     Abby followed his gaze to the overhead display, which had
changed.  The series of expanding concentric circles had
stretched out so they were no longer concentric but instead
formed a transparent shape like the old-fashioned curved cone of
an early mechanical record player.  Instead of heading directly
for the intercept point, their path curved closer to the sun.
                                 #
     "Hello?" Lucky Stiles called.
     His voice echoed in the warehouse, but no reply came.  Lucky
moved quickly up the stairs and through the maze to the
preacher's office.
     "Hello?" he called again.  Still no answer.
     The office was unoccupied.  The preacher must have been out
someplace, getting more idiots to follow him.
     Lucky withdrew a package from his coat pocket and quickly
did what he needed to do.
                                 #
     Jamie Fahred carefully pushed the buttons on the portable
phone.  Nine-one-one.  Seconds later a woman's voice said,
"Please state your suggestion concisely.  Go."
     Jamie hesitated, then let the idea burst forth.  "I think we
should move the Earth so it's on the other side of the sun so
they can't see it."
                                 #
     "I don't think we're going to be able to contact Earth,"
Abby said.  "At least not in time to help.  With Bobby Joe's
help, I've tried to describe radio, and as best as I can tell,
they use some other method of communication."
     Abby didn't know whether to be disappointed or not.  There
was nothing the people on Earth could do to avert disaster.  If
her parents were doomed to die soon, maybe it would be best if
they didn't have their final hours filled with panic and
frustration.
     "All right," Matt said.  "We've had some suggestions for
taking parabolic satellite dishes and modifying them so they
could be used to feed signals toward Earth.  People in Manhattan
are working on the modifications, but there's probably not enough
time to finish and move the equipment to someplace it could be
used."
     Abby sighed.  "All right.  You ready for the inventory?"
     "Shoot."
     "Each shuttlecraft has a high-power laser.  The Archies say
they've got power to run them almost continuously for a long
time.  I didn't figure out what a long time was except that it's
at least longer than a month."
     Rudy looked up.  "Even if we can't cut through the outside
surface, we might be able to heat the interior enough to cook
whatever's inside--depending on the reflectivity of the surface."
     "Okay," Matt said.  "What else?"
     Abby looked at the short list she'd written on the floor.
"Enough bubble material to cover another hundred cities."
     Richard had been lying flat on the floor with his eyes
closed.  He opened his eyes suddenly and said, "That could make a
good defensive barrier for this ship if it's impervious to the
planet shaper's weapons."
     Matt shook his head.  "The point is not to defend this ship;
what we need to defend is the Earth.  We'd need a lot more.  What
else?"
     "They've got more of the black material they inject in the
cuts to go under the cities.  Again enough for another hundred
cities or so.  They're more concerned about using it up than they
are about using the lasers."
     "That's because they don't think we can destroy the planet
shaper.  Can we just get close to the planet shaper and push on
it?  If this ship has more thrust, we could just keep them at bay
until some other weapon is available?"
     Abby talked with the captain again.  "No luck," she said
finally.  The captain is sure that if a ship this large gets
close to the planet shaper it will be fired on.  And even all the
shuttles together don't have the combined thrust of the planet
shaper."
     "How big is that thing anyway?" Bobby Joe asked.
     After conferring with the captain, Abby said, "Apparently
it's about a tenth of the size of this ship.  Oh, and she also
says they have virtually unlimited fuel for acceleration for both
this ship and all the shuttlecraft."
     "Take a look," Bobby Joe said suddenly.  "The movers are
here."
     Abby looked at the large screen Bobby Joe pointed at.  The
huge octagonal port on one wall of the huge chamber below was
open, revealing the stars beyond.  Eight black shuttlecraft in
formation moved slowly through the opening, several of them
visibly shaking in the fast-moving air that shot toward freedom.
The port slowly dilated closed as the shuttlecraft formation
drifted carefully inward.
     An adjacent screen showed the dead city, its life-support
tubes separating from the dome and retracting into the ceiling.
                                 #
     Fawn Terricole called nine-one-one on an antique Mickey
Mouse phone so old that it had to have one of those interface
boxes so it could be connected to the phone line.  She could feel
her heart beat louder as the ring sounded in her ear.  She rubbed
a smudge off the white in Mickey's eye.
     When it was her turn to talk, she said, "What if we were to
disguise the Earth, so it already looked like whatever those
people want it to look like?  Then they wouldn't have to change
it."
                                 #
     "Any way to tell what the odds of success are?" Matt asked
Rudy.
     Rudy shook his head.  "Apparently this city should have a
mass that's no more than a few percent of the mass of the planet
shaper.  But a bullet is a smaller fraction than that when you
compare it to a human body.  Relative speed and internal shock
waves are the key, and that's what we're taking advantage of."
     "But we're firing a bullet at a tank."
     "Right.  But penetration isn't the only way we can win.
Ever see a picture of someone without an air-bag who hit the
windshield but didn't go through?  Even if all we can do is
suddenly slow down the planet shaper, that might be enough to do
a lot of damage to whatever's inside.  If we've got enough
kinetic energy, we might slow it down the same way a brick wall
slows down a car."
                                 #
     Francesca Abdalla spoke precisely and slowly into the phone.
"Use the bubble material to cap as many cities on Earth as
possible before the ship arrives.  That way at least the people
inside could survive."
                                 #
     The eight black shuttlecraft had surrounded the dead city
and hooked support lines to points around the perimeter.  Abby
held her breath as the eight ships rose until the lines were all
piano-wire tight.
     They held that formation for almost thirty seconds, and
finally the domed city started to move slowly upward.  Abby
realized she'd been holding her breath the whole time.  Oh,
please, let this work.
     On the star field above, the planet shaper was much closer,
and the set of expanding circles was cycling even faster than
before, no doubt indicating they were moving faster and faster.
The path through the circles was closer to a straight line again.
The Archie captain had explained that once the city moved outside
the ship, it would no longer be subjected to the gravity/inertial
field established inside the ship.  From that point on, the city
would fly an independent path, a straight line at constant speed
determined by the ship's motion at the release point.
     By that time, the Archies' ship had to be on a perfect
trajectory.  The ship could swerve away from the impact point,
but the city would be a bullet in a vacuum.  If the planet
shaper's instruments picked up the approaching mass and changed
its course, the bullet would be wasted, the chance forever lost.
     The Archie captain sounded more optimistic than she had
earlier.  The dead city emitted no signals that might help the
planet shaper detect it, and the black material absorbed signals
that might be generated by the planet shaper.
     Abby felt a strong sense of accomplishment that, aided by
the computer, she was getting better and better at understanding
the Archie captain.  Communication had passed beyond the
essentials, and she was learning even more about the Archies, who
called themselves something that translated to omni sense.
     On the Archies' home planet, the competing life forms
usually had one or two prominent senses, but the Archies were the
only species to possess vision, hearing, and smell.  Abby was
relieved that omni sense didn't rhyme with dickhead, or Bobby
Joe's designation would be tougher to ignore.
     The city rose still farther, and Abby could see part of the
black cone beneath it.  Below it in the goo was a deep
cone-shaped depression that might take days to fill up.
     The dead city continued rising, and the bottom point of the
black cone rose past the level of the plain.  The domed mass rose
smoothly until minutes later the entire city, looking vaguely
like a monstrously large snow cone, began to drift sideways,
maneuvering through the maze of life-support tubes carrying
nutrients to the still-living cities.
     The overhead display showed the set of circles concentric
once again.  The sun was no longer in the display.  If the Archie
ship was on course, they would be speeding into their own shadow
as they raced closer and closer to the planet shaper.
     Once again the huge octagonal opening on one side of the
ship dilated.  The dead city and its eight pall bearers slid into
space.  The eight shuttlecraft moved into a ring surrounding the
lip where the bubble met the black cone, and they pulled the city
through the portal.  The dark point of the cone was aimed
directly at the planet shaper, and the dome over the city was lit
by brilliant sunshine.  The octagonal portal dilated closed as
the eight shuttlecraft started to drift away from the motionless
mass.
     The Archie commander chattered to one of her compatriots.  A
view of the city appeared on another wall screen and abruptly
began to shrink as the ship veered away.  The bullet was on its
own trajectory.

                            Chapter 17
                       Urban Disintegration

     Stars shifted in the huge overhead screen as the Archies'
ship veered away from the path of the dead city.  The planet
shaper was an immense silvery mass consuming the central quarter
of the screen.  Reflections of stars rippled across its contours.
At the edge of the view, the dead city floated into view,
accompanied by four Archie shuttlecraft assigned to give any
necessary last-minute course-correction nudges.
     From near the center of the bridge, Matt watched the screen,
and for the moment nothing else in the universe mattered.  He
wished he could view the action from a point along their previous
trajectory, so he could watch as the dead city approached the
planet shaper head on.  The drawback was that, had the Archie
ship stayed on the same course, it would not survive.  It was a
big enough target that the planet shaper would probably see it
too soon as it flew out of the sun, since it would eclipse the
sun in plenty of time for the planet shaper to notice it.  Right
now, the Archie ship should be small enough to be nothing more
than a comet as far as the planet shaper was concerned.  And even
if the planet shaper didn't react to it in time, a collision
would probably destroy the Archie's ship with no real guarantee
of destroying the planet shaper.  Matt felt as if he were trying
to win a battle against a tank while equipped only with a
passenger car.
     The rest of the team watched the screen without speaking as
the Archie captain chattered into her control panel.  She had
taken the central chair, and the other nine Archies had all
changed positions in series, as though the eight seats
surrounding the captain were in pecking order rather than
assigned to specific functions.  The Archie who had been the last
one ejected from a chair had left the bridge.
     Abby stood next to Matt, near enough that her shoulder
bumped his upper arm.  Matt looked at her and she deliberately
edged slightly closer so their arms touched.  Abby looked at him
and held his gaze without moving away.
     Matt put his arm around her shoulder.  In response, Abby
leaned against him for a moment.
     Motion on a large wall screen riveted Matt's attention, as
it suddenly presented the view Matt had wished for earlier.
Without being consciously aware of the action, he moved away from
Abby and toward the screen.  The planet shaper was dead center,
growing noticeably.  The view must have been coming from one of
the shuttlecraft escorting the dead city.  He hoped the craft
could get free safely.
     The planet shaper grew larger in the screen, the bright sun
reflecting off a half-dozen curved stretches of the ship's hull.
As the image grew larger, a small dark spot formed near the
center of the brightest reflections, and Matt realized the spot
was the shadow cast by the dead city.  The planet shaper just
kept getting bigger and bigger, as though a specimen under a
microscope.  Its surface showed no features, just seamless
reflectivity, as the mirrored star field continued to distort
while they grew closer.  Matt thought of a knight in shining
armor faced by a pencil hurtling through the dark.  And he
remembered pictures of straws of hay shot into oak trees during
tornadoes.
     The Archie captain spoke, and a louder chattering response
sounded from speakers somewhere in the room.  The view in the
wall screen suddenly began pulling to one side faster and faster
as the shuttle pilot veered to safety.
     On the ceiling screen, the four escort shuttlecraft split
off from the dead city, which seemed to be only seconds from
impact with the planet shaper.  The planet shaper turned, or
seemed to turn, but when Matt saw the star field behind the
planet shaper moving more quickly he realized that they were
almost even with the planet shaper, watching it from the side as
they passed.  Matt held his breath.
     The black cone of the dead city occulted a strip of stars as
it sped toward the planet shaper, its dome gleaming in the
sunshine to its back.  The cone was no bigger than an arrowhead
about to hit a body.  At just about the same instant that Matt
felt the Archie's ship was directly even with the planet shaper,
the gap between the dead city and the planet shaper closed to
zero.
     Matt had watched enough movies that he was expecting an
enormous explosion with billowing clouds of flame and fireworks
sparklers spinning off in all directions.  That never came.
     Total silence accompanied the view.  The impact point was
out of sight, occurring between two of the clover leaves, but
suddenly there was no doubt about whether the city hit.  The
planet shaper suddenly began to turn like a giant pinwheel.
     "Yes!"  Bobby Joe shouted as a spray of material jetted out
of the gap where the impact must have occurred.  Bits and pieces
in the spray glinted brightly on the sun side and started to fade
as the Archies' ship's velocity carried it past the planet
shaper.
     The Archie captain chattered and received two replies.  The
view of the planet shaper magnified until it nearly filled the
screen.  As they watched, the ship's rotation slowed, then
stopped.
     "Oh, God," Rudy said softly, and Matt knew exactly what he
meant.  The only way the ship would stop rotating like that was
if it had been powered to a stop, with thrust applied in the
right direction for the right amount of time.  The planet shaper
was obviously still operational.
     Within minutes they had confirmation that the planet shaper
was still decelerating at just about the right rate to bring it
into orbit around Venus.
     "Decelerate," Matt said to Abby.  "We've got to stop and go
back.  To catch up with the planet shaper."
     It took Abby a moment to get the captain's attention.  The
captain's first response, relayed through Abby was, "Waste.  Why
bother?"
     Matt's first reaction was to threaten the captain that he'd
twist her head off if she didn't.  He tightened his self-control
and forced himself to say, "Tell her we'll explain later, but to
just do it."  Maybe later Matt could think of a good reason.  At
the moment, he felt like he was David and had just found out
Goliath was wearing full body armor.
     "Okay."  Abby exchanged several sentences with the captain
and she finally sighed, the said, "She's agreed.  At least she's
lost nothing irreplaceable and this ship suffered no damage."
     As the view from a returning shuttlecraft showed the
enormous dark octagon of the Archie's ship, the planet shaper was
already just a dark speck against the sun.
                                 #
     Stuart Lund flipped on a light as he moved toward the
stairs.  Climbing the stairs gave him the impression that full
gravity had returned, he felt so heavy as he moved.
     On the second floor, he navigated his way through the
leftover construction materials and entered his office.  He felt
like lying down on the cot and sleeping for a year.
     On the table was a gift-wrapped present with a card.  The
pink paper with small pictures of babies was almost certainly
inappropriate for any gift for him, but supplies like wrapping
paper were scarce, and the choice didn't bother Stuart.
     He picked the card off the top of the present.  It was
snagged on something, and a hair-thin fiber snapped as the card
came away in his hand.  He opened the card.  The sloppy
handwriting said, "You almost made us blow up the Empire State
Building.  You've got ten seconds."
     Stuart instantly knew what the note meant, but he made no
effort to run.  Instead, with a tired sigh, he sat down in the
chair next to the table and rested his face in his hand.
     When it came, the explosion shattered windows three blocks
away.
                                 #
     Kay Arknette turned down the sound on the Mayor Channel and
moved to the utilitarian black desk phone.  She felt
self-conscious as she called nine-one-one.  This was not the kind
of thing a grade school teacher did.  Finally, after the
go-ahead, she said, "I think if it's either us or the Earth, we
should ram the planet shaper with this ship.  If we're not sure
this ship can do enough damage, wait until the planet shaper is
close to Venus or Earth and ram it from above.  It might survive
hitting us, but I'll bet it won't survive the impact when we both
hit the ground."
     It wasn't until Kay had hung up the phone and let her
breathing slow down that she had a sudden additional thought.  If
they did run this ship at a very high speed directly toward the
planet shaper and the planet below, and if the planet shaper was
able to suddenly move out of the way, then they would lose
everything.
                                 #
     It took several hours to lose the velocity that it had taken
them several hours to gain, but finally the Archies' ship was
moving toward the planet shaper again.  By that time, the planet
shaper had almost reached Venus.
     Abby had been doing a terrific job of getting more
information out of the Archies.  The team was incredibly lucky to
have someone as talented as her.  One of the mysteries she'd
recently found an explanation for was the lack of Archie response
to their earlier transmissions.  Having only one native language,
the Archies were extremely inept--Abby's word, not the
Archies'--at communicating with other species.  Their monitoring
equipment checked for physically observable problems associated
with the life-support systems, such as the water supply flooding
a city, but they hadn't been listening for any transmissions,
figuring they wouldn't be able to understand them anyway.
     It seemed to Matt that they could have done better than they
expected.  Their expectations were chains more effective than any
prison could be.
     As Abby continued to talk with the Archie captain, Matt
approached Bobby Joe.  "There's something I don't understand.
I've been thinking back to school and seeing diagrams of transfer
orbits.  In this ship we don't seem to be paying any attention to
stuff like that.  What is it that I'm not getting?"
     "Energy.  This ship can accelerate so fast that orbital
mechanics are noise-level concerns.  When it takes you months to
go from one planet to another, you have to factor in where the
planet's going to be when you finally show up.  When you can get
there in hours, the planet has hardly had time to move."
     Matt nodded.  He had a stiff neck from looking up at the
overhead screen so much of the time.  Centered in the display
were the magnified images of the planet shaper and Venus.  Venus
was a yellowish ball of gas whose image suddenly transformed into
something more like Jupiter's.  The image now showed what seemed
to be huge spirals of light clouds over a darker planetary body.
     "I didn't think the planet shaper was close enough yet to
start doing anything," Matt said.
     "I don't think it did anything," Bobby Joe said.  "I bet the
Archies just added ultraviolet conversion to the spectrum they're
viewing with."
     Beyond the planet shaper and Venus was a bloated
reduced-intensity image of the sun.  The surface brightness had
been decreased so it was only marginally brighter than Venus, and
a huge sunspot showed near the equator.  A slow-motion prominence
had erupted near the bottom of the disk and was arcing out from
the sun to what seemed to be half the radius of the sun itself.
The diffuse halo around the sun, what Bobby Joe had identified as
the corona, billowed out to about twice the sun's radius,
transforming the sun into a cosmic fried egg, its yellow yoke
surrounded by translucent egg-white.
     "Oh, God, no," said Bobby Joe.  "It's feeding time again."
     Matt saw the first Archie leave its chair and head for the
meal cart that had appeared in a small doorway.  As soon as the
first Archie had retrieved its small bowl of what Matt labeled
porridge, the next one up in the pecking order fetched a meal
until finally the Archie captain went to get a bowl.
     By that time, all the other Archies on the bridge were
making that awful sucking noise as they drew the porridge into
their mouths.  The substance must have had enough water content
on its own, because Matt saw none of the Archies drinking.  Bobby
Joe grimaced at the sounds.  At periodic intervals, the Archies
disappeared one by one to take care of elimination, but as far as
Abby had been able to tell, the Archies did not sleep.  They had
occasional naps or rest periods during which they were very
relaxed though fully aware.  She hadn't yet been able to
communicate the notion of sleep.
     Matt wished humans had the same trait.  He had taken a short
nap when he reached the point that he just couldn't stand it any
longer, and even now he felt extremely fatigued, his eyes gritty.
A light-headed feeling persisted with the constant hypertension
symptoms of rapid heartbeat and shortened attention span.
     On the display above, the line that had recently been
pointing from the planet shaper just past Venus changed.  It
turned into a circle that surrounded Venus.  Matt knew even
before Abby confirmed the fact that the planet shaper had entered
orbit around Venus.  The Archie ship was still several hours away
from catching up.  The idea that, since they were past the
midpoint of their catchup journey, they were now deliberately
slowing down even as they tried to catch up with the planet
shaper as fast as possible was enormously frustrating.
     At least, thanks to the inertial shield system the Archies
ship must have according to Bobby Joe, they didn't feel like they
were slowing down.  When Bobby Joe had talked about the
acceleration, but said that for the ship to move from a stop near
one location and arrive at a stop very far away in a matter of
hours, the ship had to be accelerating at enough gees to squash
everyone inside if it weren't for some kind of protective field.
He supposed that however the ship isolated the interior from the
acceleration, that process had to burn almost as much energy as
the acceleration itself.
     A wall screen began to display a closeup view of Venus,
showing just enough space around it that the planet shaper was
visible as it began to curve around to the far side of the
planet.  At ten-second intervals, what looked like tracer bullets
fired downward from the planet shaper into the cloud cover
surrounding Venus.
     In the ship's wake was a series of brilliant but diffuse
flashes underneath the top layer of clouds, as if a lightning
storm was speeding across the planet's surface at an enormous
rate.  The flashes turned the clouds slightly greenish and made
them bubble, disrupting their patterns.  The images weren't all
that different from a series of depth charges exploding after
being dropped from a mine-sweeping helicopter, except that the
depth charges affected an area less than a kilometer wide, while
each of these explosions had to be covering hundreds of
kilometers.
     After every eight or ten tracer bullets came a brighter
flash, as though the series of shots included a mixture of
devices.  Within minutes the natural swirling patterns of clouds
in the atmosphere were visibly disrupted.
      "God almighty," Bobby Joe said softly.
     Abby came back from a conversation with the captain.  "She
says the planet shaper has started on the first phase of its
conversion.  This phase is designed to destroy all surface,
atmospheric, and aquatic life.  If I'm understanding correctly,
the planet shaper deposits some material that absorbs massive
amounts of oxygen and maybe carbon dioxide, traps it for a long
time, and then starts to slowly release it back into the
atmosphere."
     "Venus doesn't have much free oxygen," said Bobby Joe, "but
if I remember right, it's got a lot of carbon dioxide.  If they
get rid of a fair amount of Venus's atmosphere, the planet could
start cooling down to a comfortable temperature.  There'd still
be a lot to do to make it habitable, depending on the life form
it's meant for."
     Abby shook her head.  "I haven't been able to find that out
yet.  I'm not sure if it's a vocabulary problem or what.  But I
don't think the planet shaper only tampers with planets where
success is guaranteed.  Apparently if it's anywhere close to the
profile, the planet shaper does its work, but the builders may or
may not wind up using the planet."
     Rudy glanced at Matt and shook his head sadly.  "Maybe
whoever built that ship isn't all that different from us."
                                 #
     Shirley Tandler-Gomez dialed nine-one-one and waited.  "If
the lasers on the shuttlecraft aren't powerful enough to damage
the big ship, maybe they would be stronger if every single one of
them went on at the same time, all pointing at the same spot on
the ship."
                                 #
     "There it is," said Bobby Joe.
     Matt looked back at the screen and saw the planet shaper
just coming out from behind Venus.  Following it, in the
atmosphere below, was the chain of fireballs, more visible now
than they had been earlier.  In addition a smaller series of
explosions burst in vacuum above the altitude of the planet
shaper.
     In the wake of the high-altitude explosions was a dark cloud
forming about five times higher than atmospheric envelope.
Within a couple of minutes, Abby had learned from the captain
that the cloud was likely to be a solid-smoke material to be left
in orbit as a sun-screen to reduce the amount of sunlight
reaching the planet.  When and if the planet was colonized, a
huge array of orbiting shades and mirrors would give the planet
an artificially shorter day.
     As they watched, a magnified image of the planet shaper
appeared on an adjacent screen.  The image swelled farther and
farther until it nearly filled the screen.  Roughly two-thirds of
the glossy surface of the ship reflected stars; the other third
reflected the lemon-yellow clouds of Venus.
     The image continued to grow until Matt suddenly thought he
saw a dark patch on the side of one of the clover-leaf masses.
Whoever was controlling the display apparently saw the same
thing, because the image shifted until the dark spot was centered
in the screen, and the magnification continued.
     "What's that?" Rudy said.
     "I don't know yet," Matt said.  "But it could be good news."
     The image kept growing as all the humans watched.  Soon it
filled half the screen and still kept growing.
     "All right!" Bobby Joe yelled.  Several of the Archies
chattered, either in response to the loud noise, or because they
were encouraged also.
     As the dark patch grew, Matt realized he was grinning.  The
ship had a hole in its hull where the city had struck it.  The
dark patch they were seeing was part of the interior of the
planet shaper.  The ship was still functioning, but it wasn't
invincible.

                            Chapter 18
                  Demolition Expert to the Stars

     "We may have a chance after all," Matt said under his
breath.  Part of being a good soldier is trying to find any
possible route to success.  Another part is knowing when to cut
your losses and quit.  Privately he had been desperately worried
that the planet shaper had no weakness they could capitalize on.
     The dark patch on the side of the planet shaper said the
ship was vulnerable.  Goliath was bleeding.
     "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" Rudy asked.
     "Maybe."
     "If that's an opening in the hull, the ship might be
especially vulnerable to a second attack at the same point."
     "And the lasers would be worth trying now?"
     "Exactly."
     Matt turned to Abby.  "We've got to get the captain to risk
at least a couple of the shuttlecraft.  She can see the damage as
well as we can.  Surely now that we've got a chance to stop this
thing here and now she'll be willing to send them out.  We've
told her we're willing to destroy this ship unless she
cooperates, and she may believe that or she may not.  Try working
on her guilt, if they feel any.  They essentially killed the race
in the city we threw at the planet shaper.  This has got to be
put to a stop."
     Abby nodded.  "I'll do my best."
     As Abby moved closer to the Archie captain, Richard appeared
at Matt's side.  Richard's forehead glistened with sweat.
     Matt said, "You look like you've got something to say."
     Richard nodded.  "If the Archies send out a few
shuttlecraft, they may be able to do enough damage with the
lasers.  Or they might not.  So far the lasers by themselves
don't seem too effective against mirrors."  Richard swallowed.
     "And?"
     "And I think one of the shuttlecraft would have a much
better chance going in there if it had an additional weapon: high
explosives.  And obviously that would require an expert to use
them."
     Matt looked at Richard long enough for the man to back down
if he wanted to before Matt finally said, "Am I to understand
you're volunteering for the mission?"
     "Yes, sir."
     Matt nodded.  "You're a good man, Richard.  I'll have Abby
find out if it's possible."
     Richard blinked a couple of times and swallowed.  Matt was
glad to see the man looked as nervous as Matt felt.  That was
good sign of sanity.  Anyone not nervous about that prospect was
either an idiot or unqualified, or both.
     Matt reached Abby's side as she talked to the Archie
captain.  At the first opportunity he had her ask if a human
would fit into an Archie shuttlecraft along with the Archie crew.
She raised her eyebrows but asked the question.
     "Yes," Abby said when she got the response.  Softly, her
face paler than normal, she said to Matt, "Are we talking about
you?"
     "No.  Richard."
     Abby took a deep breath and blinked.
     "Now tell the captain we want that human to carry explosives
like the ones that damaged this ship.  The supplies we brought
with us are the closest ones."
     As Abby spoke with the captain and her own voice
occasionally came from the computer translator, Matt thought he
could see what was going on in the captain's mind.  The captain
wouldn't like the idea of sending a human out there in a
shuttlecraft, and she wouldn't like the idea of taking offensive
actions that could possibly tell the planet shaper that it should
consider the Archie ship a threat, and then act on that threat.
What the captain would probably like was the idea of getting the
explosives off the ship itself.
     After several exchanges, the captain finally agreed.  Abby
said, "I'm surprised.  When I started trying to use guilt, it
seemed to me the response was even better than when we threatened
them."
     Matt heard the words, but his thoughts were on Richard.  He
felt the chill associated with sending a man out to die, almost
as if he were pulling the trigger himself.  He didn't spend any
time trying to rationalize the situation by telling himself
Richard had volunteered or that it was a necessary thing to do.
Instead he said silently, "God grant you luck, Richard."
     To Abby, Matt said, "Can you equip Richard with a small
vocabulary?  Hand signs or whatever works.  Just so he can say
things like 'forward,' 'backward,' 'stop,' and whatever else he
can fit into a half-dozen gestures the Archies can understand."
     Abby nodded.  "What are his chances out there?"
     "I don't know.  Not very good.  Just don't let that thought
contaminate your actions."
     Abby hesitated.  Matt knew she was aware of the stakes, but
sending someone into battle to die was never easy.  He said,
"When I used to play handball, I found that if I got a big lead
on my opponent, I'd let up.  Sometimes I'd win by a big margin
anyway.  Sometimes I'd win by a small margin.  And sometimes I'd
lose to an inferior player.  There's no room for that kind of
luxury in war."
     "Yes, sir," she said finally.
     "I think I know exactly how you feel."  He walked away from
her then, partly because the conversation was over, partly
because he wanted to wipe a speck of dirt from his eye in
private.
                                 #
     A hoarse voice spoke to one of the nine-one-one operators.
"If the spiders could use that bubble stuff and some silvery
stuff to make some gigantic mirrors, we could focus the sunlight
and toast that ship to a cinder."
                                 #
     Richard tightened his grip on the monorail strut as the car
sped past a part of the ship he hadn't seen before.  He hadn't
traveled this fast since before Manhattan had been lifted.  The
wind assaulted his eyes, which already stung due to lack of
sleep, and made him squint.
     Squinting into the wind made him feel heroic somehow, like
an admiral in the prime sea-faring years squinting into the salt
spray, hoping for his first glimpse of land in more than a month.
     The Archie sitting next to him spoiled the illusion and
brought back the tremble Richard could conceal most of the time.
At least the Archie wouldn't know that meant Richard was scared.
What did Archies do when they were scared?  Did they even get
scared?
     Matt must have understood back there, understood that
Richard wasn't the unshakable rock that he wished he could be.
At least Bobby Joe hadn't seen the break in his facade.  Richard
didn't need any more smart remarks from Bobby Joe.
     What he wanted was acceptance, friendship, respect.  The
cool, aloof professional attitude seemed to get Richard respect,
but it stood in the way of friendship.  Richard could see that,
but he didn't know what to do differently.
     The monorail car flashed past a series of large coils that
stretched from the floor to the ceiling high overhead.  Richard
was sure the monorail was going much faster than he'd seen the
cars move before.  He tapped his foot against the knapsack full
of the tools of his trade to make sure it was still with him.
     "What are you looking at?" he said suddenly to the Archie
sitting next to him.  The Archie's eye-stalk had swung toward
Richard instead of the path ahead.  This Archie wore clothing
with narrow stripes of blue and red that made Richard's vision
vibrate.
     The Archie chattered briefly in reply, saying something
Richard had no hope of translating.  Suddenly he felt his
interactions with humans were just as filled with confusion as
this recent exchange, just as alien as the Archie next to him,
its body resting on a seat designed to support the two segments,
its legs folded up around it.  When Richard said nothing more,
the Archie's eye-stalk swung ahead, making Richard wonder briefly
if the Archie's ears were also on its eye-stalk, making it a
weird biological analog of the multifunction sticks in cars that
controlled turn signals and headlights.
     He kept thinking about the situation, deliberately not
thinking about what would happen when the monorail car pulled to
a stop.  He was a typical human being.  Why then couldn't he just
figure out how to feel comfortable with other humans?  Surely
they all must be basically like him, have the same desires, the
same reactions to similar situations.  Why couldn't he, whenever
necessary, say how would I react in this situation?  and then
know what someone else would be thinking?
     But he knew things did not work that simply.  If it had,
he'd still be married.  He tried very hard to put himself in the
other person's shoes, but all too often other people's responses,
even Shirley's, were 180 degrees away from what he guessed they
might be, even when he felt he was in possession of all the
relevant information.
     So here he was, doing what he feared most, trying to pretend
he wasn't scared.  But that was still better than having people
think he was a coward.
     The monorail car started to slow down.  Ahead a door slid
open at the base of a huge cylinder that reached all the way to
the high ceiling.  Within seconds it was obvious that the
monorail wouldn't be able to stop before it reached the cylinder,
and, sure enough, it went right through the doorway and came to a
stop inside, resting under a ceiling no more than five meters
high.  The Archie stayed seated, so Richard did, too.
     The door closed behind the monorail car and the car suddenly
began rising.  A half-minute later, the gravity faded then
resumed as the car pulled to a stop at a new level.  A doorway
ahead of the car opened, and the Archie touched a control near
the base of the pedestal that supported the chair he sat on.
     The monorail car moved silently forward and through the
doorway, which closed behind it, and came to a stop on what was
apparently a flight deck.  Eight black shuttlecraft formed a
semicircle most of the way around the stopped monorail car, each
of the shuttlecraft sunk maybe halfway into depressions in the
deck surface.  Overhead was another ceiling screen showing an
expanse of stars even brighter than the nights when Richard had
been on the farm.  Four Archies were busily working on one of the
shuttlecraft, using devices on the ends of hoses and cables that
stretched from openings in the far wall.  A large poster or
display screen on another wall showed a panorama of an alien
planet, one with a thick layer of clouds.  It took Richard a
moment of orientation to realize the clouds were in use as a
projection screen, but he couldn't tell if the strange characters
and small scenes displayed there were advertising or
entertainment or road maps or almost anything else.
     Richard surveyed a nearby shuttle.  Doors were cut into the
sides of the craft so that the bottom lip of the hatches were
even with the deck floor.  The outlines of numerous doorways
showed on the walls of the round room, as though spare parts and
equipment lay just beyond.  The stench of something uncomfortably
like burning machine oil hung in the air.
     The Archie got out of the monorail car and moved toward one
of the shuttlecraft, fortunately not the one being worked on.
The Archie extended one rear leg toward Richard and made a
curiously human-like come here gesture with one small digit, no
doubt having learned that during Abby's short training session.
Richard put on his backpack, then gave the Archie a thumb's up
gesture that it should now recognize as okay.
     Though most Archies seemed graceful, this one Archie waddled
as it walked, and Richard suppressed a nervous grin.  God knows
he himself was no picture of grace.  He wanted to be, to always
be cool and restrained and smooth, but his body always betrayed
him, making him have to repeat a word in an otherwise perfectly
phrased sentence, or making him stumble when he had been proud of
how expertly he'd just done his job.  When he was defusing a
bomb, or wiring a detonator, or any of a variety of near-death
experiences required by the job, with the sweat rolling off his
forehead, somehow his brain sent the message to the rest of his
body: don't screw up right now.  And his body obeyed.  When his
life depended on his performance, he was good.  He was very good.
But when it only seemed that his life depended on his
performance, he felt like Charlie Chaplin doing one of those
deliberately clumsy routines.
     The Archie waddled through the open hatch into a
shuttlecraft, and Richard suddenly realized just how big the
ship was, at least on the outside.  The shuttlecraft was almost
a city block long, probably half that wide.  It must have been
sunk eighty percent of its height into the deck.
     Richard followed the Archie into a narrow passageway that
forced the Archie's body higher because it had to pull in all its
elbows.  The passageway turned right, went a couple of meters,
and then angled downward into the very center of the
shuttlecraft.
     The amount of light from behind abruptly diminished and
Richard's ears popped as the pressure changed.  The hatch had
slid closed without a sound, and the craft was presumably
pressurizing itself slightly over ambient pressure.
     The downward slope of the passageway was easy for the
Archie, difficult for Richard.  He almost slid down the final
meter of the passage as he tried to grip small overhead
finger-holds and fit his toes into the small crevices on the
sloping floor.
     A smell of raw fish and moldy cheese grew stronger now, and
Richard felt uneasy in the small space.  For the first time, he
wondered what Archies ate.  The Archie had traveled all the way
into the center of the shuttlecraft and it sat on a bench similar
to the one in the monorail car.  Richard had expected an
acceleration couch of some sort, but now that he thought about
it, probably the shuttle possessed the same
acceleration-canceling system Bobby Joe had talked about the main
ship having.
     With the Archie in place in the egg-shaped central space,
there wasn't actually all that much room left over for a human
companion.  Richard squeezed into the compartment, fitting his
body behind the Archie's, and he tried to find a posture that
wouldn't cut off his circulation.
     The rounded shell of the cabin was vaguely like an airliner
cockpit except for having a narrower variation in the style of
the controls.  What seemed to be a thousand small circles of
light formed longitude and latitude grid lines where they were
visible from the Archie's eye-stalk.  Just below each circle of
light was a depression sized so that an Archie could push a
finger into it.  Circling the base of the pedestal supporting the
Archie body were two rows of about eight knobs each.
     The Archie busied itself at the controls, using at least
four of its legs to push briefly on a control here or a control
there.  Sometimes the light just above the control changed hue,
sometimes a blinking light changed to a steady light.  Directly
in front of the Archie, a silvery ball rose out of the floor, as
though levitated by a magnetic field.
     The Archie's eye-stalk swiveled toward Richard briefly, then
swung back toward the front.  If it was afraid, Richard couldn't
tell.  It poked yet another control, and an octagonal screen lit
overhead.  Centered in the screen was the Archie captain, and
next to her was Abby.
     The Archie chattered briefly and the captain responded.
Abby said, "I can see you, Richard.  Can you see us?"
     "Yes.  Can you hear me?"
     Abby nodded.  "Loud and clear."
     The Archies chattered some more, and Abby said, "They're
going to launch another three shuttlecraft.  When they get close
enough to the planet shaper, the other three ships are going to
fire on it and take evasive action.  The pilot of your ship is
going to plot a trajectory that lets you drift closer, like a
stray asteroid or something, in hopes that it won't show up as a
threat.  They think the planet shaper's hull is strong enough
that it won't even bother to react to the three ships firing on
it, but they don't know."
     "Sounds fine to me."  Richard kept expression casual as he
detected a metallic taste.  Did this attempt really make any
sense?
     Moments later Abby asked, "Are you ready?"
     Richard nodded.  "Sure thing."
     "Good luck then."
     Bobby Joe suddenly stepped into view.  His bald head
reflected diffuse spots of light from the bridge.  "Richard?"  He
hesitated.  "Good luck to you."
     Richard swallowed hard.  "Thanks."  Bobby Joe's opinion
hadn't seemed important to him, but suddenly Richard felt
appreciated, and the abrupt feeling made him flush.
     The Archie captain chattered briefly.
     The Archie pilot gripped the silvery ball with two hands.
     Suddenly Richard was suspended in space.  The entire top
half of the shuttlecraft had disappeared, or more accurately, it
had turned transparent.  The screen above still showed Abby and
the captain on the bridge, and the rows of lighted controls still
showed, but it was as if the rest of the shuttlecraft had
suddenly turned to glass.  Richard sucked in his breath.
     Below him, the depression in the deck was clearly visible.
It resembled a large empty swimming pool, but with several dark
scars apparently caused by a shuttlecraft arrival.
     The Archie pilot gripped the silver ball in two hands and
pulled it up fast.  Richard felt no acceleration, but his stomach
suddenly dropped.  The huge Archie mother-ship fell away from the
shuttle as though some enormous chain on the other side had
yanked it away.  Richard's perceptions were momentarily trashed,
and it took him several seconds to decide what must have been
true: the shuttle had just risen very high and very fast.  The
apparent lack of acceleration made acceptance difficult, but
intellectually he knew the shuttle had in fact been the one to
move.
     The star field was almost complete now, above and below the
shuttlecraft, and Richard felt as though he were suspended in
space without a suit but able to breathe.  Within no more than a
second, the dark outline of the Archies' ship had dwindled to a
dark pinpoint against the surprisingly close disk of Venus with
its turbulent yellow clouds.  Except for the lack of
acceleration, the experience was something like ejecting from a
jet fighter.
     Richard and the Archie pilot sat in sunshine sent from a sun
that looked even larger than normal but didn't seem very bright,
no doubt thanks to some fancy filtering.
     The Archie pilot punched a control, and grid lines formed
outside the shuttlecraft, as though a giant globe with latitude
and longitude lines was centered on the shuttlecraft.  The pilot
gripped the silvery ball and turned it.  Stars whirled and the
ship spun in space to a new orientation.  When a vector through
the nose of the ship came near a dotted-line vector that had been
stationary with respect to the fixed stars, the vector line
snapped into alignment, just like a drawing program snapping a
stylus to designated grid lines.
     Richard finally realized one more reason his perceptions had
been tricked into thinking briefly that the large Archie ship,
now a small dark octagon against the clouds of Venus, had been
the one to move.  The shuttlecraft was almost perfectly silent.
When Richard listened closely, he could hear his own breathing
and a faint rush of air, like ventilation air turbulence.
Besides that, all he could hear was a tick-tick-tick sound that
reminded him of a furnace heating up, the metal clicking
occasionally as it expanded or contracted.
     Three orange dots appeared to the sides of the shuttlecraft,
and a red four-leaf clover appeared at the end of the vector
pointing the direction the shuttlecraft was traveling.  The three
other shuttlecraft moved swiftly into a triangular formation,
speeding away as they moved into their attack trajectory, well
away from the flight path of the shuttlecraft Richard rode in.
     Richard swallowed hard as the four-leaf clover expanded,
occulting more and more stars as it grew closer.  It was no
longer the red symbol but instead he could see the actual shiny
surface of the ship.  The other three shuttle craft appeared to
be approaching the planet shaper from something more than ninety
degrees away from his own course.  He wondered how close they'd
get before they used their lasers, curious about why he'd seen no
shots yet, but then he realized that he wouldn't ever see them,
unless they reflected off the planet shaper's surface toward the
shuttlecraft he rode in.  In the dirty air over Manhattan, the
faint glow had been visible to some watchers; here in vacuum
there would be no particles to reflect the light or to be
vaporized by the energy surge.
     The planet shaper grew larger and larger until it eclipsed
half of the starry sky, its curved mirror surface making it even
more threatening than a solid color would have seemed.  They were
close enough to see the star field shift over the ship's surface
as their aspect angle changed.
     Richard glanced up at the screen over his head.  Matt had
joined Abby and the Archie captain.  All three were silent.  That
was just as well; Richard didn't feel like talking right now.
     They were close enough now to see the dark hole where the
city had hit the ship.  It was a dark cavity in a shiny tooth.
They moved closer.
     One of the shuttlecraft vanished in about a second, like a
time-lapse photo of a mothball vaporizing.  The planet shaper was
fighting back after all.  Richard prayed the shuttlecraft had
been destroyed because it had fired at the planet shaper, rather
than just because it was close.
     The Archie captain chattered briefly.
     "We've lost two of the shuttle craft," Abby said quietly.
     The dark patch loomed, bounded by distorted star fields.
Richard forced himself not to wipe his forehead.
     Larger.  Larger.  The dark patch occupied a third of the
forward view.
     "We've lost the third shuttle," Abby said.
     They came closer and closer to the huge hole in the side of
the hull.  The hole must have been ten blocks wide.
     The hole stretched to span all the way from top to bottom,
and Richard was suddenly afraid they wouldn't be able to stop
fast enough to avoid crashing into something in the interior.
     "Are you all right?" Abby asked suddenly.
     "Yeah.  Why?"  Richard looked down at the surface of the
shuttlecraft and suddenly he knew why.
     "The sensors here say your shuttle was hit."
     "Apparently they're right.  But we're still okay."  Below
him part of the clear ship had taken on the misty translucence of
a bathroom window.  The planet shaper must have decided to fire
on them anyway, but it had just been too late.  Richard took a
deep breath.
     They were inside the hole now.  Everything was dark except
for some starlight filtering through the hole behind them.
Abruptly the interior lit up.
     Richard squinted against the sudden light.  At first he was
afraid some internal lights had come on within the planet shaper,
but he couldn't see any individual light sources.  The light must
have been coming from the shuttlecraft.
     But no, that wasn't right either.  He could clearly see
shadows scattered around the distant interior walls.  If the
light came from where he was, it would fill the shadows visible
from there.  Finally he understood what must have happened.  The
Archie pilot had turned on image intensification.  Whatever
process that resulted in the shuttlecraft seeming transparent had
been boosted, turning starlight and dim internal illumination
into bright light.
     Thank God the Archies' eyes responded to intensity somewhere
near the same range as humans.  Otherwise, he might be helplessly
looking around in the dark.  Or at the other end of the range, he
might be immersed in a more terrifying kind of darkness:
blindness.
     The interior of the ship looked sculpted or grown, rather
than fabricated.  Richard had entered the guts of a starship; he
was in the intestines of some enormous beast.
     He looked back toward the hole they had come through.  The
edges of the hole were not the curled-in metal of an artillery
hit.  Instead the hull of the ship just ended cleanly as though a
bullet had torn through a stretched piece of flesh, taking the
damaged tissue with it.
     Bits and pieces of rock and sheets of building material and
bodies from the destroyed city drifted around the periphery of
the cavity.  Apparently most of the destroyed mass had eventually
drifted out of the hole as the planet shaper braked during its
approach to Venus.  What remained were only the pieces trapped by
ribs or walls in the interior.
     Ahead was a large hole in the side of what reminded Richard
of the interior of a heart, with several huge arteries leading
off in several directions, curving enough that he couldn't see
where they led.  On that scale, the shuttle craft was no larger
than a blood cell.  Apparently the impact of the city hitting the
ship caused this opening also.
     The Archie pilot aimed its eye-stalk toward Richard and
chattered.  Richard had no idea what it was saying, but moments
later Abby said, "He's asking you which way you want to go."
     "Can you see what I see?"
     "Yes," Abby and Matt said simultaneously.
     "You have any guess?"
     Seconds later Matt said, "No.  Take your pick."
     Arbitrarily Richard pointed at the tube on top.
     The pilot moved the silvery ball and the shuttlecraft moved
expertly into the tube and began to move forward, staying in the
center of the tube.  Richard glanced up at the screen and was
gratified to see it still showed a clear view.  He had been
afraid that the transmission would be interrupted by going deeper
into the planet shaper.
     Richard opened his knapsack and dug through what he had
left.  Ninety percent of the contents were plastic explosive.  He
had brought two timed detonators, but at the moment he planned to
use only one.  He might change his mind, depending on what he
found, but for now he readied what he had for one big charge.  He
set the timer for four minutes and left it on hold.  It was only
as he finished that he realized what had been nagging at his
subconscious.  He'd been concentrating too hard on the wrong
problem.  The shuttlecraft had no airlock, and he had no pressure
suit.
     Richard swallowed hard.  "Slight problem here.  I'm probably
going to have to go EVA without a suit when the time comes.  Can
you find out how fast the pilot can get air back in the shuttle
and how long an Archie can go without air?"
     Abby and Matt exchanged nervous glances, And Abby spoke to
the captain.  It took her several tries, apparently because of
some confusion over time units.  Finally Abby said, "An Archie
can apparently do without air for about five or ten minutes.
That's the good news.  The bad news is that the shuttlecraft is
designed for the Archies, and therefore it takes over a minute to
pressurize.  They figured that was a comfortable safety margin."
     "I think I'll be okay."  Richard said, more calmly than he
actually felt.  "I've done some demolition jobs in shallow water,
where we snorkled instead of using scuba gear.  I think I can
hold my breath that long, and even if I miss by a few seconds
I'll know that air is coming back.  It's not like if the
pressurization is too slow that I wind up sucking water.  Plus,
if I'm quick, I should be able to get the explosive planted
before all the air is gone."
     For several seconds after Richard finished talking, all he
could think about was how much of a macho idiot he had been for
volunteering.  Why couldn't they have had something with more
punch, like a nuclear warhead?  He was so small in comparison to
the planet shaper, he felt as if he was trying to explode a
planet with a flare gun.  If only they could find something that
looked like a control center.
     Richard watched the walls of the tunnel as they moved deeper
into the ship.  The walls were ribbed like an old radiator hose.
The Archie pilot had tried its laser on the wall in several
spots.  Each slash formed and lasted a couple of seconds before
it began to smooth over and heal.  Ten seconds after a burn, the
tunnel was looked as good as before the cut.
     "Let's save the lasers for later," Richard said.  Abby
relayed the instruction, and the Archie removed a finger from a
control.  Richard noticed that each of the Archie's joints was
ringed with a fine circle of silver fur.
     A junction appeared ahead, and when they reached it, the
Archie pilot halted the shuttle so it hovered in the center of
the five-way intersection until Richard told it to go straight
through.  They could get lost forever in this maze if they took
too many turns.
     The tunnel began to shrink gradually.  At first it had been
maybe twenty times the diameter of the shuttlecraft, and soon it
was down to about ten times the diameter.  They came around a
gentle curve and found the entire tunnel blocked with what looked
like a gray membrane.
     "Ask if we can cut through this," Richard said.
     Seconds later a bright red spot formed on the wall in front
of them.  The wall around the spot darkened and Richard began to
have hope that they actually could cut through the wall when
suddenly the entire wall dilated open.
     "Holy crap," Richard murmured.
     Beyond where the wall had been was a huge spherical room,
many times wider than the tunnel.  Other tunnels led from the
chamber to every direction, so many tunnels that their mouths,
some closed, some open, took up half the area of the chamber
wall.  The shuttlecraft floated through the dilated doorway.
     Suspended near the center of the volume was a gray and red
mottled sphere smaller than the shuttlecraft.  A dozen filaments
connected it to anchor spots on the walls.  As they came closer,
Richard could see that it wasn't a sphere, but rather was made up
of flat shapes, octagons interspersed with squares.  The object
pulsated slowly, as though it were a deformed heart.
     "That's our target," Richard said.  Abby talked to the
captain, who chattered to the pilot in case Richard's pointing
finger wasn't enough of a command.  Richard looked behind the
shuttlecraft as they moved farther into the huge chamber,
watching to make sure he could identify which tunnel they had
come through.
     They moved closer.  The heart contracted every few seconds
and glistened in the amplified light, which, in the chamber, had
taken on a noticeable purple tinge.
     "Have him try the laser on it," said Richard.
     Seconds later the pilot put his finger on the laser control
again, and a molten spot formed on the surface of the sphere.
After fifteen seconds the spot looked no different.  They were
close enough now that Richard could see crevices at several
points on the surface.
     "That thing must be carrying off the heat somehow," Richard
said.  "Or else it's just really tough.  Everything in here must
be industrial strength.  Have him stop."
     The laser switched off, and the molten spot returned to its
former mottled appearance within a second.
     "Have the pilot ready to cut the lines holding that thing in
the center as soon as I'm finished and the hatch is closed
again."  Richard took his knapsack, edged around the Archie
pilot, and started crawling up the passageway.  "Can you still
hear me?"
     "Yes," called Abby.
     "And now?"  Richard called from just around the corner into
the middle section of the corridor.  He could no longer see the
Archie pilot.  Apparently the ship's hull hadn't actually turned
transparent, but rather the center of the ship was the focus of
an elaborate view screen.
     "Yes."
     Richard turned the final bend and found himself at the
hatch.  He found a couple of adequate handholds.  "And now?" he
yelled.
     "Yes," came Abby's voice faintly.
     "Have him position the shuttle so the hatch is near one of
the crevices.  When I give the signal, have him open the hatch.
Tell him to close it again after twenty seconds."
     "Will do."
     Richard's forehead dripped sweat as he waited the
half-minute for the pilot to position the ship.
     "He's all set," Abby said.
     Richard took several deep breaths, both to calm himself and
to oxygenate his lungs.  Dear God, please let me live through
this.  Finally he yelled, "Go!"
     The hatch slid suddenly aside and air began to gust out.
Directly ahead of him Richard could see the ugly mottled surface
with a crevice right in the middle of the stretch he could see.
     His ears popped and he tried to swallow fast enough to keep
up.  The scene began to turn red.  The instant the air flow
finally stabilized enough that he didn't feel in as much danger
of being blown out of the ship, Richard reached into his knapsack
and hit the combination on the detonator timer.  He made sure he
saw it flash once before he hoisted the knapsack by a strap,
swung it back and forth twice to gauge the gravity, and hurled
the whole thing into the crevice.
     His vision lasted long enough to see the knapsack lodge
itself in the crevice, and he shut his eyes.  Already his lungs
felt red hot and his head felt flushed.  He pulled back into the
corridor and made sure no part of his body would block the hatch
as it closed.
     Time played tricks on him.  By the time the hatch slid
closed, he was convinced that five minutes had gone by.  He had
been expelling the air from his lungs as slowly as possible
despite the fact that the air seemed to want to force itself out
through his mouth and nostrils.
     His ears ached horribly, and he could hear nothing.  Please,
God, let the air be filling up the shuttle again.
     His head rang.  His eyes kept tightly closed, partly because
of the pain, partly because he worried about damage to them in
the low pressure.
     Finally he could not wait any longer.  His lungs were on
fire.  He opened his mouth and sucked in as much air as he could,
which was nothing.  It wasn't like breathing in water, but it was
no less frightening.  He heard no sound as his lungs expanded,
and felt no resistance of air trying to squeeze through his
throat.  There was just nothing there.
     The black before his eyes filled with even more sparkles.
                                 #
     A throbbing in Richard's ears was the first sign that he was
in fact still alive.  He realized he was breathing again.
     His chest was on fire, his eyes stung, and his ears rang.
He realized with shame that his shorts were wet.
     He heard a hiss of air.  He could hear!
     He opened his eyes.  The shuttle corridor was still tinged
in red.  He pulled himself along the floor to the point where the
corridor dipped down into the control area where the pilot's
eye-stalk pointed at him.
     "I'm okay," he said shakily.  Either his ears were still
recovering, or his voice had popped up an octave.
     Dimly from somewhere he heard two or three human voices
exclaim, "All right!"
     Richard started down the sloping corridor on his hands and
knees.  He was halfway down the corridor when he lost his grip,
and he tumbled the rest of the way, banging into the pilot as he
jolted to a stop.  "Sorry about that."  You damn klutz, he told
himself.
     Amazingly the four minutes hadn't elapsed.  The pilot had
the shuttlecraft hovering near one wall of the chamber.  The
laser must have been trained on one of the cords between the
sphere and the chamber wall, because a spot glowed brightly near
the center of one strand.
     Richard looked at his watch.  Just as he looked back up, one
of the other tunnel covers dilated open and eight shuttlecraft
drifted into the chamber.  At first Richard thought they were
Archie shuttlecraft, but he would have been told if eight more
shuttles were inside.
     One of them must have fired on his shuttlecraft, because
abruptly another segment of the hull turned from transparent to
frosted translucence.
     "What the hell's going on?  Those shuttles look like Archie
shuttles," Richard said just as the explosive in the crevice
detonated.

                            Chapter 19
                            Plan Nine

     Frozen in place, Matt watched the screen as Richard's words
flooded the bridge, and the alarm in his voice spread through
Matt's body.  The approaching shuttlecraft did look like the ones
the Archies themselves had employed.  These were black and boxy,
too, though they sported two bright circles on the front surface.
The pair of spots suggested headlights, but Matt felt sure they
were weapons.  Apart from the bright circles, the shuttlecraft
looked virtually identical to the Archies' vehicles.  As Richard
had said, what the hell was going on?
     The adjacent screen showed a view of what had happened to
the ruddy sphere in the center of the enormous chamber.  The
explosives scattered small fragments and reddish globs into
space, filling half the chamber with clutter as though someone
had exploded a bowl of red gelatin.  Bits and pieces flew into
the few tunnels that were open, while the rest of the spray hit
the side of the chamber or closed tunnel mouths.  Most of the
material stuck where it landed, but some of it bounced back into
space and drifted.
     Half of the sphere was gone.  One side of it was nothing
more than a huge irregular crater.  The half-sphere drifted back
and forth as its tethers started to damp the motion.  The tethers
themselves must also have been the source of nutrients used to
rebuild the sphere, because they had all become fatter than
before.  In spots where the contrast was high, Matt could see
that the tethers were acting like engorged blood vessels,
carrying fluid inward to the surface of the sphere.  The damaged
area of the sphere began to grow smoother.
     At the same time, the eight newly arrived ships spread apart
as if to attack from several positions.
     On the screen, Richard shouted, "Get us out of here!"  Abby
instantly translated through the Archie captain, but Matt was
sure the Archie pilot acted even before getting the translation
of what Richard had said.  Even as the shuttle began to move, the
attacking craft opened fire.  An instantaneous spurt of red light
came from one of the craft, and in line with the flare of red,
the hull lost some of its transparency.  Spots started forming
all over the side facing the enemy, blotches where the clear view
suddenly turned to frosty translucence, as though dirty raindrops
were falling on clean glass.
     "No, not that one.  That one!"  Richard pointed at the
tunnel next to the one the pilot was heading for.
     Matt held his breath.  The only sound on the bridge was
coming from Richard's transmission.
     More frosted splatters formed on the hull, coming faster and
faster.  The shuttlecraft didn't make it to either tunnel.  When
it was no more than a couple of seconds away from the relative
safety of even the wrong tunnel, a huge cracking sound came over
the speaker.
     Only a slow-motion replay made the sickening events clear,
but the hull of the shuttle split open.  Even before the air had
time to rush out, weapon beams crashed through to the inside, and
a flame started playing on the interior of the shuttle, like a
scientist's butane torch blasting through the open end of a short
test tube.  Mercifully, the transmission from that point onward
lasted significantly less than a second, not even time enough for
Richard to scream.
     The screen displaying the last image of the interior of the
shuttlecraft froze, and the screen showing a better view of the
attacking ships froze at the same time.
     Matt closed his eyes against the pain.  He felt Abby sag
against him, and he blindly put one arm around her.  From
somewhere in the room came sobbing sounds.  Bobby Joe shouted,
"Damn it!"
     Matt forced his eyes open again.  The screen they had been
watching was black.  One of the other screens showed the planet
shaper still in orbit over Venus, still throwing a series of huge
sparks down into the atmosphere as though nothing of consequence
was happening inside its breached hull.
     To the blank screen, Matt said softly, "I'm sorry, Richard.
You did everything you possibly could do."
     Abby wiped tears away as Matt looked back at her.  He gave
her a few seconds to recover and then said, "Tell the captain we
want to know why it is that the planet shaper has what look like
Archie shuttlecraft protecting its interior."  As Matt spoke, he
was aware that the captain's eye-stalk was trained on him.
     Abby nodded and took a couple of breaths, then began to
speak to the translation computer.  After her question was
complete, the bridge seemed quieter than it had ever been.
     After a delay long enough that Matt thought the captain was
refusing to reply, she chattered at the computer.  Matt heard the
response directly from the computer in Abby's voice.  "Archies
built the planet shaper."
     A flurry of conversation and amazed reactions erupted.
Julie moved closer with her minivid.
     Matt clenched his fist.  "So this whole thing has been some
God damn charade?  They're just pretending to try to stop it?"
                                 #
     David Suth stared at the huge Sony screen at the north end
of Times Square as The Mayor Channel relayed video from the
bridge.  The crowd around him had shuddered with the destruction
of the craft carrying Richard, and now David felt the outrage of
betrayal.  The crowd went wild, and the shouting masked the
sounds piped down from the bridge for almost a minute.  For
another fifteen seconds, all David could hear was the sound of
people telling each other to hush.
                                 #
     A young voice on the phone said, "Them spiders should use
that same stuff that's in the dome.  Make a big wall between the
ship and the Earth.  Or put a gigantic bubble around the Earth so
they can't get at it.  Or take some of that black stuff that's
underground and make it so they can't see the Earth.  Maybe
they'll just leave."
                                 #
     Almost everyone on the bridge was in motion, either moving
from one place to another or simply shifting from one foot to the
other.  Matt was so angry at the revelation that the Archies had
built the planet shaper and the loss of Richard that he
deliberately forced himself to wait a moment and get a grip on
his temper before trying to find out what was going on.
     Without being asked more questions, the captain began
chattering again.  Abby rephrased some of the sentences spat out
by the translating computer and said, "The planet shaper is a
real threat.  And she says the Archies have honestly been trying
to defeat it."  More chattering.  As the Archie captain spoke,
her eye-stalk drooped.
     Abby said, "She says she'll give us more information, but
that the planet shaper was built by a--a subspecies or one of the
Archie races--by Archies anyway.  It was built a long time ago,
and they now see it as a horrible mistake.  They really are
building a huge destroyer that should be capable of eliminating
the planet shaper, but it won't be finished in time to help any
of the worlds the planet shaper will visit soon.  In the
meantime, they've been trying to save parts of the populations.
I think the reason they didn't tell us this before is that they
are ashamed."
     "God almighty!" Matt yelled to no one.  He took a deep
breath and to Abby he said, "Why can't they just stop the planet
shaper?  Turn it off."
     Shortly Abby said, "It's completely automated.  There aren't
any Archies on board controlling it.  They designed it to be
autonomous and set it in motion.  They figured there would be a
chance that some other race might try to shut it off or subvert
its goal, so they tried to make it indestructible.  Apparently
there are safeguards to keep it from destroying worlds occupied
by Archies."
     "Unbelievable.  This is just unbelievable."  Matt looked
back at the screen showing the planet shaper continuing to seed
Venus' atmosphere.  "Is there anything else important we should
know?"
     Moments later Abby said, "She says no.  I really don't have
any way to know how straight she's being with us, but my gut says
she's telling us the truth."
     "I just don't understand how a race that built something
like the planet shaper can now be so ineffectual, so unequipped
to live with the consequences."
     "We're not dealing with the inventors of the planet shaper.
We're dealing with accountants in space."
     Matt raised his eyebrows.
     "I mean the captain is no more representative of their race
than I am.  The Archies on this ship simply aren't warriors.
They were picked for their ability to cut cities loose and
provide life support for them.  A crew meant for fighting the
planet shaper would have had completely different selection
criteria.
     "This is still all too new, but if I'm understanding things
right, the Archies are a much older race than we are.  Maybe
because of that age, they've been growing more and more
specialized.  For whatever reason, we're generalists compared to
them, and the captain has realized that.  In fact, I think that's
the main reason they're willing to follow our orders; we're the
only ones around who are adept at stepping outside the boundaries
of their normal job descriptions."
     Matt nodded, finally understanding.
     "There's something I don't understand," said Rudy.  "If
Archies and humans can live in the same environment, why would
the planet shaper do anything to Earth?"
     Matt nodded for Abby to go ahead and ask.
     Abby finished asking the question and listening.  "She says
one of the planet shaper's tasks is to eliminate all local life,
whether on the ground, in the oceans, or in the air.  It seeds
the planet with vegetation that supports their own metabolism.
Apparently the planet shaper scorches the surface, then freezes
it, then starts the seeding process.  If necessary, the planet
shaper performs additional jobs.  Venus is too hot, so the planet
shaper is going to leave a huge sun screen in orbit."
     "That must be what it's doing now," Bobby Joe said.
     Matt looked at the screen Bobby Joe watched.  A series of
small explosions trailed the planet shaper as the ship moved
along its orbit.  Behind the explosions, what looked like a dark
cloud stretched into a wider and wider band, forming a very wide
but thin ring around the equator, high above Venus's natural
cloud cover.
     "I wonder if that stuff is something like solid smoke
material," said Bobby Joe.
     "If it is, would it stay in a stable orbit?" asked Rudy.
     "I don't know.  Maybe it'll stay up until they don't need it
anymore.  Look, you can see a huge portion of the surface
already--that patch in the upper right.  If they're getting rid
of the cloud cover and blocking some of the sunlight from
reaching the planet in the first place, I'd bet Venus is going to
cool down pretty fast--at least on the time scale we're talking
about.  I don't imagine anyone's going to arrive here to live in
the next few years."
     "Does that mean it's almost finished with Venus already?"
asked Matt.
     "Yes," was the answer from the captain.
     "What about scarecrows?" asked Bobby Joe.  "If the planet
shaper is programmed to avoid worlds populated by Archies, can we
do something quick to Earth to trick the planet shaper into
thinking it's occupied by Archies?"
     A moment later Abby reported the captain's response.  She
was utterly convinced nothing could be done.  The criteria was
unclear, but evidently a world had to be supporting millions of
Archies for the planet shaper to decide to pass it by.
Apparently when the Archies started to settle a new world, they
typically had an enormous number of colonists ready to go all at
the same time.
     "Look," Rudy said.  He pointed at the screen showing the
planet shaper.  Where there had been an ellipse around Venus, the
display now showed a straight line toward Earth.  The planet
shaper was moving off rapidly.
     "Follow it," Matt said quickly to Abby.  "Maintain this
distance."
     Abby relayed the instructions to the Archie captain, who
followed them without argument this time.
     "How long do we have before arrival at Earth?" Matt asked.
     Abby's face was pale when she passed back the answer.
"About three hours."
     Matt took a deep breath.  "Can the shuttlecraft keep up with
us?  Can they accelerate as rapidly as this ship?"
     The answer was yes.
     "I want all remaining shuttlecraft launched.  Have them stay
close to this ship, but ready to move."
     This time the captain seemed uneasy about obeying.  She
didn't want to lose any more shuttles, she said.
     Matt looked at the Archie captain as he spoke to Abby.
"We've got to settle this for once and for all.  We cannot waste
time like this.  Remind her this small party of humans did
extensive damage to this ship.  There are millions more of us
watching every move that's made now.  And if any request we make
in the next few hours is denied, the penalty will be higher than
whatever the request would have cost.  The Archies started this,
and they damn well better be ready to stop it."
     Matt went on.  "Tell her the Earth and the people on it are
far more important than we are, and we will go to any length
necessary to guarantee the Archies meet our demands.  The Archies
caused this situation, and they're damn well going to risk
anything we ask them to risk to set things right."
     When Matt finished and Abby began to talk to the captain,
Bobby Joe said.  "Maybe we can try convincing them with images.
Manhattan is sure to have some stock footage of atomic bomb
testing.  We could be ready to display it here it in a couple of
minutes to show them what we're capable of."
     "Good suggestion.  But what if she says, 'Great.  Let's use
it on the planet shaper'?"
     Bobby Joe said, "Never mind."
     Abby spoke to her computer, which chattered as Matt kept
staring at the captain.  For a solid ten seconds after the
computer became silent, the Archie stared back, as though trying
to arrive at a painful decision.
     Matt suddenly said to Abby, "Tell her this ship is useless
for its intended mission now since we can't follow the planet
shaper until the drive is fixed.  This is their only chance to do
something genuinely useful since this ship left port.  They owe
us that much.  And remind her that we're their only hope.  We're
the generalists, right?  We're the ones best equipped to make the
decisions right now."
     Abby gave the captain the additional direction.
     The captain's eye-stalk twitched as she looked at Matt.
Suddenly she gave what Matt felt was a thumb's up sign and he
said to himself, that had better not be the finger.  The captain
chattered to her crew and to Abby.
     "She got the message," Abby said.
     After some more chattering, Abby added, "I'm pretty sure I'm
understanding things right.  This crew really is essentially a
civil service team.  They've been trained to save cities, not to
wage war, and that's why they've resisted.  As you pointed out,
their mission cannot proceed for now, and since they're finally
convinced that we're military experts, they're willing to follow
orders."
     Matt nodded, feeling he was anything but an expert in
fighting a space battle.  He was careful not to show his lack of
confidence.
     Within minutes the displays showed about a dozen
shuttlecraft move into space near the Archie's ship.  The
shuttlecraft paralleled the ship's course.
     "Good," Matt said.  "Now tell her that if nothing else we
try works, our last resort will be to ram the planet shaper."
     Abby swung back to relay the message, did a double-take, and
then turned again to the computer.
     A minute later Abby said, "She says, 'You are right.  This
is our fault.  We are prepared to die, but what about the
cities?'"
     "Tell her we'll have to decide that later."
     When the exchange was complete, Rudy said softly, "Are you
dead serious about that possibility?"
     Matt shook his head.  He spoke loud enough that he was sure
his voice would carry to Julie's minivid and to the audience
below.  "One, I don't even know if that would be effective.  Two,
I'd have to have permission from the mayor.  Three, mainly I
wanted the Archie captain to know that we consider it an
alternative.  I have to assume that if there's any weapon or idea
they've been holding back, they'll be honest about it now.  And,
frankly, I'm not sure how we would force them to do it.  If
they're all going to die, it's not like we have a lot of
leverage."
     Matt picked up the walkie-talkie and said, "I need to talk
to the mayor."
                                 #
     Dorine answered the call instantly.  "Mayor here."
     "It's reality check time," came Matt Sheehan's voice.  "If
I'm doing things you don't approve of, you need to speak up."
     "I know how to manage a city, not fight a war.  It may seem
like the same thing sometimes, but it's not.  If I see anything
that I can't live with, I'll get on the horn, but I'm not about
to undermine your authority at this point.  You've got my
blessing."
     "Thank you, mayor.  About the possibility of ramming.  As
much as we want to save the Earth, I don't know that we could
justify killing the only remnants of dozens of other
civilizations.  They're victims as much as we are.  I wish we had
time to contact more of the other cities.  It could be one of
them has a weapon that would do that job, but they've been unable
to use it because it would destroy their own city.  But we've got
hours, not days or months."
     Dorine swallowed hard.  "Do what you have to if there's a
way to save Earth.  I trust your judgment."
     "Thanks."
                                 #
     Matt put down the walkie-talkie and took a deep breath.
     Rudy raised his eyebrows.  "So, what next?"
     "I don't know."  Matt turned to Abby.  "While we're
thinking, tell the captain to take four of the shuttlecraft, move
them to a safe distance from the planet shaper, and turn their
weapons into the hole we made earlier.  Have them keep them on
until we tell them to stop."
     Abby nodded.
     "All right," Matt said.  "We've gotten a lot of suggestions
from Manhattan.  Some of them may not be feasible, some may be
ineffective.  We've got to pick something that seems to have the
best chances."
     Rudy looked at a list he'd been maintaining.  "A lot of them
fall into general categories.  Using weapons against the planet
shaper.  Trying to trick it into bypassing Earth.  Using the
bubble material as a barrier."
     Bobby Joe looked at the screen.  Matt followed his gaze and
saw four of the shuttlecraft had moved close to one another at a
distance from the planet shaper.
     "Abby, get them to show us a closeup of that hole if you
can."
     Moments later another screen showed just that.  It was
impossible to tell if any significant damage was being done.  All
they could see was a pulsating red glare reflecting from surfaces
near where the lasers were striking.
     Bobby Joe said, "The planet shaper's weapons seem more
effective than the shuttlecraft lasers.  They're probably
intended as weapons rather than cutting tools.  I wonder if
there's a way we can turn the planet shaper's own weapons against
itself."
     "Right," Rudy said.  "Huge mirrors."  He said it with a
sarcastic tone, but as soon as he fell silent, he and Bobby Joe
looked at each other with widening eyes.
     "Maybe it is possible," Rudy said.  "The bubble material
they use to form domes over cities.  If the Archies can form some
corner reflectors, maybe we could bounce back whatever they're
projecting."
     "Explain," said Matt.
     "A corner reflector is three mirrors intersecting at right
angles.  Anything hitting one of the mirrors is bounced right
back where it came from."
     "Right," said Bobby Joe.  "And even if we don't destroy the
planet shaper, we could sap its energy, and that might provide
protection for our shuttlecraft to get closer."
     "How do we get the silver surface?" asked Matt.
     "We might not need it," Bobby Joe said.  "It could be that
whatever beam they're using would be reflected from the bubble
material itself.  Or it could be the Archies have some metal they
can eject.  Have one of the shuttlecraft use its laser to boil
the stuff and then ram the bubble material against it.  If we're
lucky, it'll be like dropping liquid solder on glass--it'll form
a thin flat coating.  It won't be anything near an optical grade
mirror, but it might be enough to reflect a significant fraction
of whatever hits it."
     Matt said, "Go for it.  Have Abby relay whatever
instructions you think best.  I'll be considering what to try
next."
     "Next?" said Bobby Joe.
     "Yes, next.  We can't wait around until we find out if this
works.   We don't have time.  We have to get another plan moving,
and another, and another.  If we're incredibly lucky, one of them
will work.  If a miracle happens and two of them work, then maybe
we're guilty of overkill.  But I don't think that's very likely."
     Bobby Joe and Rudy got busy feeding Abby directions for the
Archie captain, and Matt took Rudy's list and started examining
it.
     Within a couple of minutes it was apparent that the Archies
did have some non-essential equipment that they could sacrifice
for the raw materials.  The captain ordered some of the crew to
eject it so the shuttlecraft could move it where they needed it.
Fortunately, both the planet shaper and the Archie's ship had
finished the initial acceleration phase and were headed toward
Earth at a constant velocity, so loose materials would fly side
by side.
     As soon as Bobby Joe was free, Matt said, "I guess when we
have one tool, suddenly every job seems to call for the same
tool.  This bubble material--we could use a similar technique for
making a huge mirror.  The lasers on the shuttlecraft.  How much
heat do they generate compared to the same area of plain
sunlight?"
     "I don't know.  I might be able to make an estimate.  Why?"
     "Because if we could make a curved mirror that focused the
sunlight over a few square kilometers, or even a hundred square
kilometers, would that be more effective than the lasers?"
     "Even on Earth you can light a cigarette with a parabolic
mirror that's probably no wider than your hand.  Maybe it would
be effective.  Like I said, the reflectivity won't be as high as
a good mirror, but we could more than make up for than in area.
We'd want a parabolic mirror with a very long focal length so it
could focus everything that hits it into a point, say, a hundred
kilometers away from it.  Let me give it a try.  The Archies may
not be trained as fighters, but the shuttle pilots manipulate the
bubble material pretty well."
     "Have at it."
     A sparkling on one of the screens caught Matt's attention.
One of the Archie shuttlecraft had already ejected some bubble
material.  As Matt watched, the ship slowly formed three planes,
making the corner of a cube.  Apparently the bubble material in
its flimsy state stuck to itself.  Finally one of the
shuttlecraft flashed the bright light that triggered the bubble
material to solidify, and the surfaces took on the appearance of
rigid glass.
     The shuttlecraft trained its laser on a shiny unidentifiable
object.  The laser seemed to be pulsing on and off.  The object
began to glow a dull red as it slowly collapsed into a molten
sphere that spun at a leisurely rate.
     A minute later, the Archie shuttle gripped the clear box
corner and accelerated toward the molten metal.  The globe of
metal hit directly at the junction of the three planes and seemed
to explode.  When the view was clear again, at least half of each
of the three bubble planes was no longer clear, but instead was
shiny and metallic in appearance.  They had deposited at least a
crude mirror surface.
     "Yes!" shouted Bobby Joe.
     Another shuttle was in the process of constructing a second
corner reflector.  Farther away, two shuttles were apparently
starting to stretch a huge sheet of bubble material into a
gigantic flat plane.  The process took ten or fifteen minutes
that felt like hours.  When the shuttles finished, one of them
accelerated slowly against the center of the plane and the
perimeter of the bubble plane fell slowly behind as though
someone had thrown a rock at a sheet.  The curvature didn't look
right, though.  It was more cone-shaped than parabolic.
     The shuttle backed away from the bubble material, which was
now drifting slowly off course.  The ship maneuvered around and
came at the bubble material from the opposite side and started
accelerating against the center.  The bubble material began a
slow transformation from convex to concave, and at just the
moment that it finally seemed to Matt to be in a parabolic shape,
the other shuttle set off the flash that cured the bubble
material and locked it into shape.  The curved sheet was so large
that it was taller than the planet shaper.
     Several shuttlecraft had been heating metal to coat the
surface.  A trio of shuttles got behind the curved surface and
pushed it through space toward the molten globs.  The reflective
spots formed as molten metal collided with the bubble material
were enormous, probably because the metal spread into a very thin
layer.  As the shuttles were finishing the parabolic mirror, Matt
gave commands for two other shuttles.
     The first shuttle to complete fabricating its corner
reflector began accelerating toward the planet shaper, keeping
itself hidden behind the reflector.  It got within what Matt
figured was a range likely to cause the planet shaper to decide
an intruder was present.  At the same time, the second shuttle
with a corner reflector started toward the planet shaper, also.
     Sparks flew from the closest reflector.  Seconds later two
things were obvious.  One, the planet shaper's weapon had
vaporized some of the mirror finish on the corner reflector, and
two, a significant amount of energy had been reflected back to
the planet shaper.  A dull spot showed on the planet shaper's
surface where the hull was no longer shiny.
     The planet shaper fired at the second corner reflector.
Again, material vaporized from the reflector surface, and another
dull spot formed on the planet shaper's hull.
     "The large reflector is just about ready," Rudy said.
     Matt looked at the screen Rudy was watching.  A huge mirror
a little like the ones in flashlights hung in space, blocking a
quarter of the sky and reflecting a distorted star field.  "Good.
Have the captain warn the shuttles to stay out of the path, and
get that thing pointed at the planet shaper."
     Abby passed on the instructions.  Guided by shuttlecraft at
its edges, the mirror began to turn slowly.
     One of the corner reflectors took another hit, and then the
other one, too.
     "I've got an idea," Matt said.  He turned to Abby.  "Ask the
captain if they know where the sensors are.  How does that thing
see?"
     As Abby phrased the question, Matt turned to Rudy and Bobby
Joe.  "If we can put its eyes out, that might be almost as good
as destroying it.  What if we take molten metal like the Archies
used to coat the mirrors and just throw that at the sensors?"
     "Could work," Bobby Joe said.  "Slick."
     "It has sensors at the farthest point out on each of the
clover leaves," Abby reported seconds later.
     Matt explained what he wanted them to try, and Abby gave the
instructions.
     "Oh, no," Rudy said.
     Matt looked up at the screen.  Seconds earlier it had shown
an Archie shuttlecraft and a corner reflector.  The bubble
material was still there, but it was nearly clear again.  The
planet shaper must have used enough energy to vaporize most of
the reflecting layer, and the shuttlecraft hiding behind it.  A
bigger dull gray area covered a section of the planet shaper
hull, so it had paid a price for the damage.
     "Have them build two more corner reflectors," said Matt,
"And then just toss them at the planet shaper without using a
shuttle to guide them.  If we're lucky, the planet shaper will
damage itself even more."
     Minutes later on another screen, an Archie shuttlecraft
launched a large mass of metal at the planet shaper.  As the mass
moved closer to the planet shaper, the shuttlecraft trained its
laser on the mass, heating it to incandescence.  Twice the
shuttle shifted position, apparently to keep the mass on track
for its target.
     The second corner reflector flared.  The shuttlecraft that
had been behind it was now retreating, undamaged.
     Abby said, "The captain says the large mirror is almost set
to focus light on the planet shaper."
     Matt watched the screen as the enormous mirror began to slow
to a halt.  In an adjacent screen two more shuttles were building
corner reflectors.
     "All right!" Bobby Joe shouted.
     The screen displaying the planet shaper showed a brilliant
spot of light reflecting from the surface.  The spot drifted
across the surface of the hull.  At first, Matt thought the line
trailing behind it was an artifact of bright light on his
retinae, but seconds later he was sure he was wrong.  The intense
heat had actually damaged the surface of the ship.  Thank God.
     The thanks were premature, because suddenly the huge mirror
began to turn again as the surface material began exploding off
the front of the clear backing.  Obviously the planet shaper was
firing on the huge mirror.  Within seconds, the mirror's
reflective layer had been decimated.  And the planet shaper kept
firing at the bubble material as the blasts forced it farther and
farther away.
     About the same time, the molten glob of metal launched by a
lone shuttlecraft came closer and closer until it hit the outer
edge of one of the clover leaves.  It splattered against the
surface, flattening out and clinging.  A huge irregular blotch
marred what had been a shiny mirror surface.
     "Yes!" Bobby Joe shouted.  "Even if we don't destroy this
thing completely, it's going to know it was in one hell of a
fight."
     Matt glanced at the overhead screen.  The Earth had grown to
a large blue-white ball.  They needed far more than to just give
the planet shaper a good fight.
     The shuttlecraft near the huge reflector started to refinish
the reflective layer, but it had been engaged in the task no more
than a few seconds when the shuttlecraft suddenly began to
disintegrate.
     "Oh, God," Abby said softly.
     Another molten glob of metal was speeding toward a different
clover leaf, but the planet shaper was learning.  It blasted the
mass to loose atoms before it reached the surface of the ship.
Matt was amazed and gratified to see that the mass still managed
to pepper the planet shaper's hull.  Dispersed or not, it had
still been traveling at an enormous velocity.
     Abruptly, the loose corner reflectors and the remains of the
parabolic mirror shot out ahead of the planet shaper and the
Archies' ship.  Both ships had started to decelerate as they
neared Earth.
     Matt turned to Julie and said, "I need to know if the mayor
will authorize our trying to ram it.  I still don't know if the
risk is justified, but I need to know if it's an option."
     Julie turned pale as she acknowledged the request and
started talking over the walkie-talkie.
     The Earth grew rapidly on the wall screen as the Archies'
ship followed the planet shaper into a high earth orbit.  At the
same time Matt felt more tired than ever before and he managed to
continue functioning anyway.
     From a safer range, another shuttlecraft continued to direct
its weapon into the exposed portion of the planet shaper's
interior.
     Without warning, the planet shaper began to shoot a series
of flares into the Earth's atmosphere, starting over the tan and
white shape of Africa.  Without stopping its deadly hail, the
planet shaper suddenly turned its weapons on the shuttlecraft.
     "God damn," Bobby Joe said as he stared at the screen
showing the shuttlecraft disintegrating.  "It can't get much
worse than--"
     "Don't say it!" Matt snapped.
     The hail of flares continued shooting down toward Africa as
suddenly the bridge shuddered.  The Archie captain began
chattering to her crew.
     Matt swung back to Abby.  "What's happening?"
     Seconds later Abby said.  "We've been hit.  Apparently the
planet shaper has finally decided that this ship is where all
these shuttlecraft are coming from.  The captain is pulling back,
out of range."
     The bridge shuddered again.
     Matt felt a metallic taste in his mouth as he waited for
information.
     A tinkling bell started to sound.  The captain chattered
some more.  Her eye-stalk trembled.
     Seconds later Abby turned to Matt and gave him the captain's
assessment.  "The second blast hit part of the propulsion system.
They can repair it, but probably not in time to get far enough
away.  The ship is limited to very low power."
     Bobby Joe said softly, "So now all that thing has to do is
move in for the kill, and then finish destroying the Earth at its
leisure."

                            Chapter 20
                            Enclosure

     "Oh, God," said Abby.  "Now we can't even try to ram them."
     On the overhead screen, the planet shaper was approaching.
The chimes continued to ring on the bridge.  The Archie captain
looked busy, and several screens changed to what were probably
status displays, columns of strange pictographs that each blinked
at a different rate.  Matt thought the captain's gaze was
accusatory, but he was probably putting human terms on the
Archie.  The chimes suddenly stopped, but Matt knew disaster was
still eminent.
     Matt turned to Rudy.  "Is there enough bubble material to
enclose this ship?  We're screwed unless we come up with
something fast."
     Rudy's eyes widened.  "I don't know, but I've got an idea.
I only see one chance, and it's a long shot, but I think it's our
best option.  Can I have Abby give orders?"
     "Quiet, everyone!" Matt said loudly.  He was completely out
of ideas, and he trusted Rudy's judgment as much as his own.  "Go
for it," he said to Rudy.
     Rudy said, "Abby, tell the captain to take every remaining
shuttlecraft and have them start forming very large bubble
sheets.  Have them try to enclose the planet shaper."
     "But it can shoot through--" Bobby Joe started.
     "Quiet!" Matt shouted.  "Do it, Abby."  Sweat felt cold
along his spine, and he wished he knew more about what Rudy had
in mind, but time was down to nothing.  The only good thing at
the moment was that to pursue the Archies' ship, the planet
shaper had temporarily stopped seeding Earth's atmosphere.  As
the planet shaper turned, Matt realized it was doing so more
slowly than he'd seen it turn before.  Possibly the collective
damage done by Richard and the other shuttlecraft was finally
making it harder for the robot ship to function.
     Abby gave the instructions to the captain.  The captain
aimed her eye-stalk at Matt for just a second, then began
relaying orders.  As soon as the first orders went out, Rudy had
additional instructions to relay.
     The planet shaper grew slowly in the overhead screen as it
all too obviously began its approach for a final killing blow.
Obeying their orders despite the changed threat, six or seven
remaining shuttlecraft began to surround the planet shaper, each
preparing to eject bubble material.
     Matt and Rudy fixed their gaze on the screen.  Rudy said
softly, "If they're successful in getting a bubble around the
planet shaper, tell the captain to change course immediately to
keep us as far from it as possible."
     "Won't it follow us?"
     "I don't think so."
     "We won't have time to try anything else."  Matt took his
gaze from the screen and looked at Rudy.
     Rudy met his gaze with the same calm he'd shown in a
drawn-out battle in Brazil.  "I know.  I don't think there's
anything else we can try that offers better odds."
     The shuttlecraft had all matched course with the planet
shaper, but they maintained a cautious distance.  Once they were
all in position, they each accelerated toward the planet shaper.
As soon as they were all dropping toward the surface of the
silvery vessel, they began to eject bubble segments.
     The bubble segments grew and grew until they each
individually seemed to dwarf the planet shaper as it loomed in
the view screen.  A minute later the shuttlecraft and their
bubble sections had cut their approach distance by half.
     The Archies' ship shuddered again.  Matt looked at Rudy and
they exchanged worried glances as a new set of chimes started and
then stopped.
     Matt had begun to think the planet shaper being so close to
the Archies' ship had made it focus all of its attention on the
ship, but at almost the same time each shuttlecraft let its
bubble material loose, the planet shaper fired on one of the
shuttlecraft, disintegrating it.  The huge ship fired on one of
the other shuttles as it accelerated away, but the shuttlecraft
had increased its range enough that it was only damaged rather
then obliterated.
     Another one of the shuttlecraft winked out of existence.
     The bubble layers came closer at an agonizingly slow speed
until they finally began to overlap and start to adhere to
adjacent sections as though six clear sheets of fly-paper were
surrounding a large bug.  The planet shaper suddenly accelerated
away from the center of the converging bubble sections, but it
was too late.  The process seemed to speed up then, as the sheets
of bubble material sealed together.  Seconds later, the flashbulb
lights in four of the surviving shuttlecraft exploded light on
the bubble surrounding the planet shaper, and the bubble material
transformed into a crystal clear and hard shell like the one over
Manhattan, but completely enclosing the planet shaper.
     "Now!" said Rudy.
     Abby instantly gave the command to the captain.  The aspect
angle of the planet shaper began to change slowly as the Archies'
ship started to limp aside from the path it had been on.  Matt
found his fists were clenched, and he tried to relax them.
     Within seconds it was obvious that the planet shaper had not
changed course to pursue them, but instead was continuing on its
original course at the same speed.
     "Yes!" cried Bobby Joe.  He watched the screen a moment
longer, as though to convince himself the planet shaper really
was not following them, and then he turned to Rudy.  "How did
you--oh," he said, a wide grin suddenly forming.  "I understand."
     "You want to tell the rest of us?" Matt said.
     Rudy took his gaze off the screen and looked at Matt.  "The
planet shaper's propulsion system is temporarily disabled.  As
long as it's inside the bubble, we're safe if we don't get too
close.  We know some of their weapons can act through the bubble
material, even though they apparently can't destroy the bubble
material itself.  But I'm worried that there's still a chance it
can break through that stuff, either now or later.  We've bought
some time, but we still need to destroy it."
     "I know just the thing," said Bobby Joe.  "If it can't use
its interstellar propulsion system because it's too close to the
sun, and it can't use the normal propulsion system because it's
in the bubble, all we need to do is somehow stop it relative to
the sun.  Then we just sit back and watch it fall."  Bobby Joe
pointed to the display where the sun was visible.  The cosmic
disposal waited nearby if only they could use it.
     Matt said, "All right.  The planet shaper can't speed up or
slow down on its own.  Can it turn inside the enclosure?"
     Rudy nodded.  "It should be able to."
     "Okay.  Abby, have the captain tell one of the shuttlecraft
to fly in a slow circle just out of range of the planet shaper's
weapons.  Have it deliberately keep edging into the area covered
by the sensors we took out."
     Abby passed on the instructions, and moments later Matt saw
one of the shuttlecraft come slightly closer to the planet
shaper.  Seconds later the planet shaper slowly started to turn
inside the enormous bubble as it tried to track the shuttle that
kept flying toward its blind spot.
     "All right," Matt said.  "Tell her to have the shuttle keep
moving until the dead sensor is directly in the middle of the
shadow side of the bubble."
     About the same time the shuttlecraft stopped orbiting the
planet shaper and began to hover, and the planet shaper stopped
rotating, Rudy said, "I think I see what you're doing.  Great
idea."
     "And what is that?" Bobby Joe asked.
     "Just a second.  Okay, Abby, now have a couple of the
shuttlecraft move off to a great distance and then approach the
planet shaper through its shadow."
     "Oh," Bobby Joe said.  "A push.  I like it."
     Within a few minutes two Archie shuttlecraft approached the
dark side of the bubble around the planet shaper.
     "All right," Matt said.  "Now have those two shuttlecraft
position themselves next to the bubble and start accelerating as
fast as they can.  Have them retreat if the planet shaper starts
to turn.  We can't risk waiting around for this thing to fall
into the sun on its own good time; I want to give it a strong
push."
     Abby looked relieved as she passed on the instructions.  The
Archie captain was not objecting in the slightest.
     The shuttlecraft pushed against the dark side of the planet
shaper's bubble until that side of the bubble rested against the
surface of the planet shaper.  Further effects of the push
weren't evident for several seconds, no doubt because of the
planet shaper's large mass, but the bubble-enclosed destroyer
finally began moving slowly sunward.
     The giant screen plotted a course vector from the planet
shaper.  The course just missed the sun.  The Archie captain
chattered to her crew.  One of the shuttlecraft repositioned
itself against the bubble, and the vector slowly rotated until it
intersected the center of the sun.  The planet shaper began to
dwindle to a point and slowly became a speck against the sun.
     Matt finally turned to Rudy and said, "Okay.  Now why?"
     "Why no thrust?  Plain old Newtonian physics.  I don't know
what propulsion method the planet shaper uses, but unless it
operates on principles that are unknown to us, it relies on equal
and opposite reactions.  And recent events seem to confirm that."
     Julie moved closer with her minivid to capture Rudy's
explanation, and Matt saw her relieved smile.
     "When you fire a pistol, you feel the kick.  When you fire a
rocket, the rocket moves one way because the exhaust gas is being
pushed out the opposite direction.  You're trading off high
velocity for something small, like the bullet, for low velocity
of something more massive, like the gun and your arm."
     "That still doesn't answer my question.," Matt said, but he
already had an intuitive feel for what Rudy was explaining.
     "I'm getting there.  The equal-but-opposite-reaction holds
true for an open system.  If you stand on a frictionless flat car
and fire a bullet down the tracks, you and the flat car will
start moving the opposite direction.  But if you have a closed
system, things change.  Suppose you're in a box car and you fire
a bullet at a target mounted on the wall.  The instant you fire
the bullet, the car starts to move backward, but as soon as the
bullet embeds itself in the target, that equal-but-opposite
energy cancels out the reverse momentum, and the car stops."
     "It's like trying to run on ice," said Bobby Joe.  "If you
can't push the ground out behind you, you can't go forward."
     "Exactly," said Rudy.  "As the planet shaper tries to
accelerate, the body of the planet shaper pushes against one side
of the bubble, and the thrust force or reaction mass presses
equally on the other side of the bubble.  The planet shaper now
has no more propulsion than a rock."
     "You're a genius," Matt said.  He was finally letting
himself hope that they had really defeated the other ship.
     "Nope.  I just got to thinking about some of the ideas that
people sent up from Manhattan.  We never would have succeeded
without the people down there suggesting protecting the Earth
with a bubble.  I just twisted the idea a little."
     The group watched in silence as the planet shaper moved
faster and faster toward the sun.  When the shuttlecraft had
pushed it past the orbit of Venus, moving faster by the second,
the shuttle began to slow down.  The bubble-enclosed planet
shaper sped faster and faster by itself, slipping steadily
downward into the sun's gravity well.  One of the large wall
screens filled with a heavily magnified image of the planet
shaper inside its bubble, becoming smaller and smaller against
the huge mottled disk of the sun.
     Next to Matt, Abby said softly, "Please, God.  Don't let it
get loose.  Don't."
     Bobby Joe and Rudy bet each other on the range at which the
destruction would be visible, both feeling that no material built
by humans or Archies could last long enough to disappear inside
the sun before vaporizing.
     "As far as I know," Matt said, his voice shaking slightly,
"Richard will be the first person buried in the sun.  Maybe we
should have a moment of silence to reflect on his efforts and for
those of the Archie pilots who died today."
     Abby told the Archie captain what they were doing.  The
Archies may well have had no similar custom, but they, too, were
silent until the humans began speaking again.
     "Look!" Bobby Joe said to Rudy.
     The bubble surrounding the planet shaper was glowing
brighter and brighter.  Just seconds later the bubble vaporized
and the planet shaper exploded like a firecracker tossed into a
blast furnace.  The largest pieces exploded in a short series of
additional explosions as the incredible heat churned metal into
mist.
     A couple of the Archies leapt high in the air and clasped
all eight pairs of hands together before falling slowly back to
the floor.  Bobby Joe and Rudy screamed and yelled, but Matt paid
little attention.  The instant after the planet shaper exploded,
he looked at Abby, who looked at him at exactly the same time.
     Matt moved closer to Abby.  His knees felt weak.  He reached
out toward her and she moved closer.
     "Thank God it's over," she said.
     As the Archies chattered loudly and Bobby Joe screamed, Matt
and Abby wrapped their arms around each other and hugged tightly.
Abby was trembling.  A moment later Matt pulled back far enough
to see her eyes and said, "Maybe it's just beginning."  He kissed
her on the lips, and she responded with the same enthusiasm that
he felt.
     A long moment later, Abby suddenly pulled back, frowned, and
glanced at Julie, who, despite having Rudy's arm around her,
still held her minivid aimed at the center of the bridge.
     Abby brushed a lock of hair away from her eye.  She started
to talk but had to clear her throat and try again.  "Aren't you,
ah, aren't you worried that your wife might see this when we get
back?"  She wiped a tear from the same eye.
     Matt frowned for a second until he understood.  He smiled.
"I don't give a damn what she thinks."
     "But I thought--"
     "Two days before I reached New York, she said we were
through.  At the time, it seemed like bad news."  Matt grinned
even more broadly.
     Abby choked.  Matt couldn't tell if she was laughing or
crying, but the way she kissed him, he decided it didn't matter.
     Matt held her tightly for he didn't know how long until
finally Julie and Rudy approached.
     "Can we interrupt?  The mayor's on the line."  Julie grinned
as she handed Matt a walkie-talkie.
     "Yes, ma'am," Matt said into the mouthpiece.  He tried as
hard as he could to get rid of the stupid grin he felt on his own
lips, but he couldn't.
     Dorine Underwood's voice was ragged, from either emotion or
transmission distortion.  "Thank you, Matt.  I'll have a lot more
to say later, but you did good.  You did very, very good."  The
line was quiet for a moment.  "We're all very grateful.  You
should see the streets down here.  I haven't ever seen anything
like this."
     "Thank you, Mayor.  We're amazed, too.  When you talk to
people, let them know that it was their ideas that made it
possible.  We were so scared up here, we couldn't have done one
percent of this on our own."
     "Bull.  But that's a generous thing to say.  Lord, this is a
proud day."
     Abby touched Matt's arm again, and he said good-bye to the
mayor.  The bridge finally started to calm down as the Archie
captain pointed her eye-stalk at Matt.   She chattered into the
translating computer.  Two of her legs twitched.
     Seconds later the translating computer said, "You possess
our thanks.  We are very-very-very happy to stop.  We are ready
to help.  We possess no experience in placing cities where they
came from, but we are ready.  What first should we do?"
     Abby put her arm around Matt's waist and squeezed.
     As Matt looked at the captain, Bobby Joe raised his hand.
Wearing his most serious expression, Bobby Joe said, "Just a
suggestion, but I think it would be interesting to buzz
Brooklyn."

                             THE END
                      of MANHATTAH TRANSFER
                         by John E. Stith

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AUTHOR INFO FOR THIS FILE: MANHATTAN TRANSFER is written
by John E. Stith. This work will remain protected
by copyright for the authorÆs life plus seventy years.
Author's web site: http://www.neverend.com.
Author's email:    [e-mail].
If the web site moves or author's email address changes, do a web
search and find the new information.

Stith has published the following novels as of the year 2000:
Look for them if you enjoy this work.  Excerpts from each one can
be found on authorÆs web site.
     SCAPESCOPE: Intrigue in NORAD complex in future
     MEMORY BLANK: Amnesia story on L-5 colony
     DEATH TOLLS: Mystery set on Mars
     DEEP QUARRY: Private eye finds buried starship
     REDSHIFT RENDEZVOUS: Hard SF in slow-light environment.
          Nebula nominee.
     MANHATTAN TRANSFER: Manhattan is kidnapped. Hugo honorable
          mention.
     REUNION ON NEVEREND: Interplanetary gateways and secret
          agent
     RECKONING INFINITY: Investigation of huge organic ômoonö

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