Then darkness came like an act of mercy and for a little while he could concentrate on the stars. He clung to them with the fierceness of panic, the only real things left in this horrible world Orion the hunter; Pegasus, the great shimmering horse of midnight; Cassiopeia in her starry chair. 11 Half an hour later the sun rose again, and Brian felt his sanity give a deep shudder and slide closer to the edge of its own abyss. The world below was gone; utterly and finally gone. The deepening blue sky was a dome over a cyclopean ocean of deepest, purest ebony. The world had been torn from beneath Flight 29. Bethany's thought had also crossed Brian's mind; if push came to shove, if worse came to worst, he had thought, he could put the 767 into a dive and crash them into a mountain, ending it for good and all. But now there were no mountains to crash into. Now there was no earth to crash into. What will happen to us if we can't find the rip again? he wondered. What will happen if we run out of fuel? Don't try to tell me we'll crash, because I simply don't believe it  you can't crash into nothing. I think we'll simply fall . . . and fall ... and fall. For how long? And how far? How far can you fall into nothing? Don't think about it. But how, exactly, did one do that? How did one refuse to think about nothing? He turned deliberately back to his sheet of calculations. He worked on them, referring frequently to the INS readout, until the light had begun to fade out of the sky again. He now put the elapsed time between sunrise and sunset at about twentyeight minutes. He reached for the switch that controlled the cabin intercom and opened the circuit. 'Nick? Can you come up front?' Nick appeared in the cockpit doorway less than thirty seconds later. 'Have they got their shades pulled back there?' Brian asked him before he could come all the way in. 'You better believe it,' Nick said. 'Very wise of them. I'm going to ask you not to look down yet, if you can help it. I'll want you to look out in a few minutes, and once you look out I don't suppose you'll be able to help looking down, but I advise you to put it off as long as possible. It's not ... very nice.' 'Gone, is it?' 'Yes. Everything.' 'The little girl is gone, too. Dinah. Laurel was with her at the end. She's taking it very well. She liked that girl. So did I.' Brian nodded. He was not surprised  the girl's wound was the sort that demanded immediate treatment in an emergency room, and even then the prognosis would undoubtedly be cloudy  but it still rolled a stone against his heart. He had also liked Dinah, and he believed what Laurel believed  that the girl was somehow more responsible for their continued survival than anyone else. She had done something to Mr Toomy, had used him in some strange way ... and Brian had an idea that, somewhere inside, Toomy would not have minded being used in such a fashion. So, if her death was an omen, it was one of the worst sort. 'She never got her operation,' he said. 'No.' 'But Laurel is okay?' 'More or less.' 'You like her, don't you?' 'Yes,' Nick said. 'I have mates who would laugh at that, but I do like her. She's a bit dewyeyed, but she's got grit.' Brian nodded. 'Well, if we get back, I wish you the best of luck.' 'Thanks.' Nick sat down in the copilot's seat again. 'I've been thinking about the question you asked me before. About what I'll do when and if we get out of this mess ... besides taking the lovely Laurel to dinner, that is. I suppose I might end up going after Mr O'Banion after all. As I see it, he's not all that much different from our friend Toomy.' 'Dinah asked you to spare Mr Toomy,' Brian pointed out. 'Maybe that's something you should add into the equation.' Nick nodded. He did this as if his head had grown too heavy for his neck. 'Maybe it is.' 'Listen, Nick. I called you up front because if Bob's timerip actually exists, we've got to be getting close to the place where we went through it. We're going to man the crow's nest together, you and I. You take the starboard side and right center; I'll take port and left center. If you see anything that looks like a timerip, sing out.' Nick gazed at Brian with wide, innocent eyes. 'Are we looking for a thingumabobtype timerip, or do you think it'll be one of the more or less fuckadelic variety, mate?' 'Very funny.' Brian felt a grin touch his lips in spite of himself. 'I don't have the slightest idea what it's going to look like, or even if we'll be able to see it at all. If we can't, we're going to be in a hell of a jam if it's drifted to one side, or if its altitude has changed. Finding a needle in a haystack would be child's play in comparison.' 'What about radar?' Brian pointed to the RCATL color radar monitor. 'Nothing, as you can see. But that's not surprising. If the original crew had acquired the damned thing on radar, they never would have gone through it in the first place.' 'They wouldn't have gone through it if they'd seen it, either,' Nick pointed out gloomily. 'That's not necessarily true. They might have seen it too late to avoid it. Jetliners move fast, and airplane crews don't spend the entire flight searching the sky for bogies. They don't have to; that's what ground control is for. Thirty or thirtyfive minutes into the flight, the crew's major outbound tasks are completed. The bird is up, it's out of LA airspace, the anticollision honker is on and beeping every ninety seconds to show it's working. The INS is all programmed  that happens before the bird ever leaves the ground  and it is telling the autopilot just what to do. From the look of the cockpit, the pilot and copilot were on their coffee break. They could have been sitting here, facing each other, talking about the last movie they saw or how much they dropped at Hollywood Park. If there had been a flight attendant up front just before The Event took place, there would at least have been one more set of eyes, but we know there wasn't. The male crew had their coffee and Danish; the flight attendants were getting ready to serve drinks to the passengers when it happened.' 'That's an extremely detailed scenario,' Nick said. 'Are you trying to convince me or yourself?' 'At this point, I'll settle for convincing anyone at all.' Nick smiled and stepped to the starboard cockpit window. His eyes dropped involuntarily downward, toward the place where the ground belonged, and his smile first froze, then dropped off his face. His knees buckled, and he gripped the bulkhead with one hand to steady himself. 'Shit on toast,' he said in a tiny dismayed voice. 'Not very nice, is it?' Nick looked around at Brian. His eyes seemed to float in his pallid face. 'All my life,' he said, 'I've thought of Australia when I heard people talk about the great buggerall, but it's not. That's the great buggerall, right down there.' Brian checked the INS and the charts again, quickly. He had made a small red circle on one of the charts; they were now on the verge of entering the airspace that circle represented. 'Can you do what I asked? If you can't, say so. Pride is a luxury we can't  ' 'Of course I can,' Nick murmured. He had tom his eyes away from the huge black socket below the plane and was scanning the sky. 'I only wish I knew what I was looking for.' 'I think you'll know it when you see it,' Brian said. He paused and then added, 'If you see it.' 12 Bob Jenkins sat with his arms folded tightly across his chest, as if he were cold. Part of him was cold, but this was not a physical coldness. The chill was coming out of his head. Something was wrong. He did not know what it was, but something was wrong. Something was out of place ... or lost ... or forgotten. Either a mistake had been made or was going to be made. The feeling nagged at him like some pain not quite localized enough to be identified. That sense of wrongness would almost crystallize into a thought ... and then it would skitter away again like some small, notquitetame animal. Something wrong. Or out of place. Or lost. Or forgotten. Ahead of him, Albert and Bethany were spooning contentedly. Behind him, Rudy Warwick was sitting with his eyes closed and his lips moving. The beads of a rosary were clamped in one fist. Across the aisle, Laurel Stevenson sat beside Dinah, holding one of her hands and stroking it gently. Wrong. Bob eased up the shade beside his seat, peeked out, and slammed it down again. Looking at that would not aid rational thought but erase it. What lay below the plane was utter madness. I must warn them. I have to. They are going forward on my hypothesis, but if my hypothesis is somehow mistaken  and dangerous  then I must warn them. Warn them of what? Again it almost came into the light of his focussed thoughts, then slipped away, becoming just a shadow among shadows ... but one with shiny feral eyes. He abruptly unbuckled his seatbelt and stood up. Albert looked around. 'Where are you going?' 'Cleveland,' Bob said grumpily, and began to walk down the aisle toward the tail of the aircraft, still trying to track the source of that interior alarm bell. 13 Brian tore his eyes away from the sky  which was already showing signs of light again  long enough to take a quick glance first at the INS readout and then at the circle on his chart. They were approaching the far side of the circle now. If the timerip was still here, they should see it soon. If they didn't, he supposed he would have to take over the controls and send them circling back for another pass at a slightly different altitude and on a slightly different heading. It would play hell on their fuel situation, which was already tight, but since the whole thing was probably hopeless anyway, it didn't matter very 'Brian?' Nick's voice was unsteady. 'Brian? I think I see something.' 14 Bob Jenkins reached the rear of the plane, made an aboutface, and started slowly back up the aisle again, passing row after row of empty seats. He looked at the objects that lay in them and on the floor in front of them as he passed purses . . . pairs of eyeglasses ... wristwatches ... a pocketwatch ... two worn, crescentshaped pieces of metal that were probably heeltaps . . . dental fillings ... wedding rings ... Something is wrong. Yes? Was that really so, or was it only his overworked mind nagging fiercely over nothing? The mental equivalent of a tired muscle which will not stop twitching? Leave it, he advised himself, but he couldn't. If something really is amiss, why can't you see it? Didn't you tell the boy that deduction is your meat and drink? Haven't you written forty mystery novels, and weren't a dozen of those actually quite good? Didn't Newgate Callender call The Sleeping Madonna 'a masterpiece of logic' when he Bob Jenkins came to a dead stop, his eyes widening. They fixed on a portside seat near the front of the cabin. In it, the man with the black beard was out cold again, snoring lustily. Inside Bob's head, the shy animal at last began to creep fearfully into the light. Only it wasn't small, as he had thought. That had been his mistake. Sometimes you couldn't see things because they were too small, but sometimes you ignored things because they were too big, too obvious. The Sleeping Madonna. The sleeping man. He opened his mouth and tried to scream, but no sound came out. His throat was locked. Terror sat on his chest like an ape. He tried again to scream and managed no more than a breathless squeak. Sleeping madonna, sleeping man. They, the survivors, had all been asleep. Now, with the exception of the bearded man, none of them were asleep. Bob opened his mouth once more, tried once more to scream, and once more nothing came out. 15 'Holy Christ in the morning,' Brian whispered. The timerip lay about ninety miles ahead, off to the starboard side of the 767's nose by no more than seven or eight degrees. If it had drifted, it had not drifted much; Brian's guess was that the slight differential was the result of a minor navigational error. It was a lozengeshaped hole in reality, but not a black void. It cycled with a dim pinkpurple light, like the aurora borealis. Brian could see the stars beyond it, but they were also rippling. A wide white ribbon of vapor was slowly streaming either into or out of the shape which hung in the sky. It looked like some strange, ethereal highway. We can follow it right in, Brian thought excitedly. It's better than an ILS beacon! 'We're in business!' he said, laughed idiotically, and shook his clenched fists in the air. 'It must be two miles across,' Nick whispered. 'My God, Brian, how many other planes do you suppose went through?' 'I don't know,' Brian said, 'but I'll bet you my gun and dog that we're the only one with a shot at getting back.' He opened the intercom. 'Ladies and gentlemen, we've found what we were looking for.' His voice crackled with triumph and relief. 'I don't know exactly what happens next, or how, or why, but we have sighted what appears to be an extremely large trapdoor in the sky. I'm going to take us straight through the middle of it. We'll find out what's on the other side together. Right now I'd like you all to fasten your seatbelts and  ' That was when Bob Jenkins came pelting madly up the aisle, screaming at the top of his lungs. 'No! No! We'll all die if you go into it! Turn back! You've got to turn back!' Brian swung around in his seat and exchanged a puzzled look with Nick. Nick unbuckled his belt and stood up. 'That's Bob Jenkins,' he said. 'Sounds like he's worked himself up to a good set of nerves. Carry on, Brian. I'll handle him.' 'Okay,' Brian said. 'Just keep him away from me. I'd hate to have him grab me at the wrong second and send us into the edge of that thing.' He turned off the autopilot and took control of the 767 himself. The floor tilted gently to the right as he banked toward the long, glowing slot ahead of them. It seemed to slide across the sky until it was centered in front of the 767's nose. Now he could hear a sound mixing with the drone of the jet engines  a deep, throbbing noise, like a huge diesel idling. As they approached the river of vapor it was flowing into the hole, he now saw, not out of it  he began to pick up flashes of color travelling within it green, blue, violet, red, candy pink. It's the first real color I've seen in this world, he thought. Behind him, Bob Jenkins sprinted through the firstclass section, up the narrow aisle which led to the service area . . . and right into Nick's waiting arms. 'Easy, mate,' Nick soothed. 'Everything's going to be all right now.' 'No!' Bob struggled wildly, but Nick held him as easily as a man might hold a struggling kitten. 'No, you don't understand! He's got to turn back! He's got to turn back before it's too late!' Nick pulled the writer away from the cockpit door and back into first class. 'We'll just sit down here and belt up tight, shall we?' he said in that same soothing, chummy voice. 'It may be a trifle bumpy.' To Brian, Nick's voice was only a faint blur of sound. As he entered the wide flow of vapor streaming into the timerip, he felt a large and immensely powerful hand seize the plane, dragging it eagerly forward. He found himself thinking of the leak on the flight from Tokyo to LA, and of how fast air rushed out of a hole in a pressurized environment. It's as if this whole world  or what is left of it  is leaking through that hole, he thought, and then that queer and ominous phrase from his dream recurred again SHOOTING STARS ONLY. The rip lay dead ahead of the 767's nose now, growing rapidly. We're going in, he thought. God help us, we're really going in. 16 Bob continued to struggle as Nick pinned him in one of the firstclass seats with one hand and worked to fasten his seatbelt with the other. Bob was a small, skinny man, surely no more than a hundred and forty pounds soaking wet, but panic had animated him and he was making it extremely hard for Nick. 'We're really going to be all right, matey,' Nick said. He finally managed to click Bob's seatbelt shut. 'We were when we came through, weren't we?' 'We were all asleep when we came through, you damned fool!' Bob shrieked into his face. 'Don't you understand? WE WERE ASLEEP! You've got to stop him!' Nick froze in the act of reaching for his own belt. What Bob was saying  what he had been trying to say all along  suddenly struck him like a dropped load of bricks. 'Oh dear God,' he whispered. 'Dear God, what were we thinking of?' He leaped out of his scat and dashed for the cockpit. 'Brian, stop! Turn back! Turn back!' 17 Brian had been staring into the rip, nearly hypnotized, as they approached. There was no turbulence, but that sense of tremendous power, of air rushing into the hole like a mighty river, had increased. He looked down at his instruments and saw the 767's airspeed was increasing rapidly. Then Nick began to shout, and a moment later the Englishman was behind him, gripping his shoulders, staring at the rip as it swelled in front of the jet's nose, its play of deepening colors racing across his cheeks and brow, making him look like a man staring at a stainedglass window on a sunny day. The steady thrumming sound had become dark thunder. ' Turn back, Brian, you have to turn back!' Did Nick have a reason for what he was saying, or had Bob's panic been infectious? There was no time to make a decision on any rational basis; only a splitsecond to consult the silent tickings of instinct. Brian Engle grabbed the steering yoke and hauled it hard over to port. 18 Nick was thrown across the cockpit and into a bulkhead; there was a sickening crack as his arm broke. In the main cabin, the luggage which had fallen from the overhead compartments when Brian swerved onto the runway at BIA now flew once more, striking the curved walls and thudding off the windows in a vicious hail. The man with the black beard was thrown out of his seat like a Cabbage Patch Kid and had time to utter one bleary squawk before his head collided with the arm of a seat and he fell into the aisle in an untidy tangle of limbs. Bethany screamed and Albert hugged her tight against him. Two rows behind, Rudy Warwick closed his eyes tighter, clutched his rosary harder, and prayed faster as his seat tilted away beneath him. Now there was turbulence; Flight 29 became a surfboard with wings, rocking and twisting and thumping through the unsteady air. Brian's hands were momentarily thrown off the yoke and then he grabbed it again. At the same time he opened the throttle all the way to the stop and the plane's turbos responded with a deep snarl of power rarely heard outside of the airline's diagnostic hangars. The turbulence increased; the plane slammed viciously up and down, and from somewhere came the deadly shriek of overstressed metal. In first class, Bob Jenkins clutched at the arms of his seat, numbly grateful that the Englishman had managed to belt him in. He felt as if he had been strapped to some madman's jetpowered pogo stick. The plane took another great leap, rocked up almost to the vertical on its portside wing, and his false teeth shot from his mouth. Are we going in? Dear Jesus, are we? He didn't know. He only knew that the world was a thumping, bucking nightmare ... but he was still in it. For the time being, at least, he was still in it. 19 The turbulence continued to increase as Brian drove the 767 across the wide stream of vapor feeding into the rip. Ahead of him, the hole continued to swell in front of the plane's nose even as it continued sliding off to starboard. Then, after one particularly vicious jolt, they came out of the rapids and into smoother air. The timerip disappeared to starboard. They had missed it ... by how little Brian did not like to think. He continued to bank the plane, but at a less drastic angle. 'Nick!' he shouted without turning around. 'Nick, are you all right?' Nick got slowly to his feet, holding his right arm against his belly with his left hand. His face was very white and his teeth were set in a grimace of pain. Small trickles of blood ran from his nostrils. 'I've been better, mate. Broke my arm, I think. Not the first time for this poor old fellow, either. We missed it, didn't we?' 'We missed it,' Brian agreed. He continued to bring the plane back in a big, slow circle. 'And in just a minute you're going to tell me why we missed it, when we came all this way to find it. And it better be good, broken arm or no broken arm.' He reached for the intercom toggle. 20 Laurel opened her eyes as Brian began to speak and discovered that Dinah's head was in her lap. She stroked her hair gently and then readjusted her position on the stretcher. 'This is Captain Engle, folks. I'm sorry about that. It was pretty damned hairy, but we're okay; I've got a green board. Let me repeat that we've found what we were looking for, but  ' He clicked off suddenly. The others waited. Bethany Simms was sobbing against Albert's chest. Behind them, Rudy was still saying the rosary. 21 Brian had broken his transmission when he realized that Bob Jenkins was standing beside him. The writer was shaking, there was a wet patch on his slacks, his mouth had an odd, sunken look Brian hadn't noticed before ... but he seemed in charge of himself. Behind him, Nick sat heavily in the copilot's chair, wincing as he did so and still cradling his arm. It had begun to swell. 'What the hell is this all about?' Brian asked Bob sternly. 'A little more turbulence and this bitch would have broken into about ten thousand pieces.' 'Can I talk through that thing?' Bob asked, pointing to the switch marked INTERCOM. 'Yes, but ' 'Then let me do it.' Brian started to protest, then thought better of it. He flicked the switch. 'Go ahead; you're on.' Then he repeated 'And it better be good.' 'Listen to me, all of you!' Bob shouted. From behind them came a protesting whine of feedback. 'We' 'Just talk in your normal tone of voice,' Brian said. 'You'll blow their goddam eardrums out.' Bob made a visible effort to compose himself, then went on in a lower tone of voice. 'We had to turn back, and we did. The captain has made it clear to me that we only just managed to do it. We have been extremely lucky ... and extremely stupid, as well. We forgot the most elementary thing, you see, although it was right in front of us all the time. When we went through the timerip in the first place, everyone on the plane who was awake disappeared.' Brian jerked in his seat. He felt as if someone had slugged him. Ahead of the 767's nose, about thirty miles distant, the faintly glowing lozenge shape had appeared again in the sky, looking like some gigantic semiprecious stone. It seemed to mock him. 'We are all awake,' Bob said. (In the main cabin, Albert looked at the man with the black beard lying out cold in the aisle and thought, With one exception.) 'Logic suggests that if we try to go through that way, we will disappear.' He thought about this and then said, 'That is all.' Brian flicked the intercom link closed without thinking about it. Behind him, Nick voiced a painful, incredulous laugh. 'That is all? That is bloody all? What do we do about it?' Brian looked at him and didn't answer. Neither did Bob Jenkins. 22 Bethany raised her head and looked into Albert's strained, bewildered face. 'We have to go to sleep? How do we do that? I never felt less like sleeping in my whole life!' 'I don't know.' He looked hopefully across the aisle at Laurel. She was already shaking her head. She wished she could go to sleep, just go to sleep and make this whole crazy nightmare gone but, like Bethany, she had never felt less like it in her entire life. 23 Bob took a step forward and gazed out through the cockpit window in silent fascination. After a long moment he said in a soft, awed voice 'So that's what it looks like.' A line from some rockandroll song popped into Brian's head You can look but you better not touch. He glanced down at the LED fuel indicators. What he saw there didn't ease his mind any, and he raised his eyes helplessly to Nick's. Like the others, he had never felt so wide awake in his life. 'I don't know what we do now.' he said, 'but if we're going to try that hole, it has to be soon. The fuel we've got will carry us for an hour, maybe a little more. After that, forget it. Any ideas?' Nick lowered his head, still cradling his swelling arm. After a moment or two he looked up again. 'Yes,' he said. 'As a matter of fact, I do. People who fly rarely stick their prescription medicines in their checked baggage  they like to have it with them in case their luggage ends up on the other side of the world and takes a few days to get back to them. If we go through the handcarry bags, we're sure to find scads of sedatives. We won't even have to take the bags out of the bins. judging from the sounds, most of them are already lying on the floor ... what? What's the matter with it?' This last was directed at Bob Jenkins, who had begun shaking his head as soon as the phrase 'prescription medicines' popped out of Nick's mouth. 'Do you know anything about prescription sedatives?' he asked Nick. 'A little,' Nick said, but he sounded defensive. 'A little, yeah.' 'Well, I know a lot,' Bob said dryly. 'I've researched them exhaustively  from AllNite to Xanax. Murder by sleeping potion has always been a great favorite in my field, you understand. Even if you happened to find one of the more potent medications in the very first bag you checked  unlikely in itself you couldn't administer a safe dose which would act quickly enough.' 'Why bloody not?' 'Because it would take at least forty minutes for the stuff to work ... and I strongly doubt it would work on everyone. The natural reaction of minds under stress to such medication is to fight  to try to refuse it. There is absolutely no way to combat such a reaction, Nick ... you might as well try to legislate your own heartbeat. What you'd do, always supposing you found a supply of medication large enough to allow it, would be to administer a series of lethal overdoses and turn the plane into Jonestown. We might all come through, but we'd be dead.' 'Forty minutes,' Nick said. 'Christ. Are you sure? Are you absolutely sure?' 'Yes,' Bob said unflinchingly. Brian looked out at the glowing lozenge shape in the sky. He had put Flight 29 into a circling pattern and the rip was on the verge of disappearing again. It would be back shortly ... but they would be no closer to it. 'I can't believe it,' Nick said heavily. 'To go through the things we've gone through . . . to have taken off successfully and come all this way . . . to have actually found the bloody thing ... and then we find out we can't go through it and back to our own time just because we can't go to sleep?' 'We don't have forty minutes, anyway,' Brian said quietly. 'If we waited that long, this plane would crash sixty miles east of the airport.' 'Surely there are other fields  ' 'There are, but none big enough to handle an airplane of this size.' 'If we went through and then turned back east again?' 'Vegas. But Vegas is going to be out of reach in . . .' Brian glanced at his instruments. ' . . . less than eight minutes. I think it has to be LAX. I'll need at least thirtyfive minutes to get there. That's cutting it extremely fine even if they clear everything out of our way and vector us straight in. That gives us . . .' He looked at the chronometer again. ' . . . twenty minutes at most to figure this thing out and get through the hole.' Bob was looking thoughtfully at Nick. 'What about you?' he asked. 'What do you mean, what about me?' 'I think you're a soldier ... but I don't think you're an ordinary one. Might you be SAS, perhaps?' Nick's face tightened. 'And if I was that or something like it, mate?' 'Maybe you could put us to sleep,' Bob said. 'Don't they teach you Special Forces men tricks like that?' Brian's mind flashed back to Nick's first confrontation with Craig Toomy. Have you ever watched Star Trek? he had asked Craig. Marvellous American program ... And if you don't shut your gob at once, you bloody idiot, I'll be happy to demonstrate Mr Spock's famous Vulcan sleeperhold for you. 'What about it, Nick?' he said softly. 'If we ever needed the famous Vulcan sleeperhold, it's now.' Nick looked unbelievingly from Bob to Brian and then back to Bob again. 'Please don't make me laugh, gents  it makes my arm hurt worse.' 'What does that mean?' Bob asked. 'I've got my sedatives all wrong, have I? Well, let me tell you both that you've got it all wrong about me. I am not James Bond. There never was a James Bond in the real world. I suppose I might be able to kill you with a neckchop, Bob, but I'd more likely just leave you paralyzed for life. Might not even knock you out. And then there's this.' Nick held up his rapidly swelling right arm with a little wince. 'My smart hand happens to be attached to my recently rebroken arm. I could perhaps defend myself with my left hand  against an unschooled opponent  but the kind of thing you're talking about? No. No way.' 'You're all forgetting the most important thing of all,' a new voice said. They turned. Laurel Stevenson, white and haggard, was standing in the cockpit door. She had folded her arms across her breasts as if she was cold and was cupping her elbows in her hands. 'If we're all knocked out, who is going to fly the plane?' she asked. 'Who is going to fly the plane into LA?' The three men gaped at her wordlessly. Behind them, unnoticed, the large semiprecious stone that was the timerip glided into view again. 'We're fucked,' Nick said quietly. 'Do you know that? We are absolutely deadout fucked.' He laughed a little, then winced as his stomach jogged his broken arm. 'Maybe not,' Albert said. He and Bethany had appeared behind Laurel; Albert had his arm around the girl's waist. His hair was plastered against his forehead in sweaty ringlets, but his dark eyes were clear and intent. They were focussed on Brian. 'I think you can put us to sleep,' he said, 'and I think you can land us.' 'What are you talking about?' Brian asked roughly. Albert replied 'Pressure. I'm talking about pressure.' 24 Brian's dream recurred to him then, recurred with such terrible force that he might have been reliving it Anne with her hand plastered over the crack in the body of the plane, the crack with the words SHOOTING STARS ONLY printed over it in red. Pressure. See, darling? It's all taken care of. 'What does he mean, Brian?' Nick asked. 'I can see he's got something your face says so. What is it?' Brian ignored him. He looked steadily at the seventeenyearold music student who might just have thought of a way out of the box they were in. 'What about after?' he asked. 'What about after we come through? How do I wake up again so I can land the plane?' 'Will somebody please explain this?' Laurel pleaded. She had gone to Nick, who put his good arm around her waist. 'Albert is suggesting that I use this'  Brian tapped a rheostat on the control board, a rheostat marked CABIN PRESSURE 'to knock us all out cold.' 'Can you do that, mate? Can you really do that?' 'Yes,' Brian said. 'I've known pilots  charter pilots  who have done it, when passengers who've had too much to drink started cutting up and endangering either themselves or the crew. Knocking out a drunk by lowering the air pressure isn't that difficult. To knock out everyone, all I have to do is lower it some more ... to half sealevel pressure, say. It's like ascending to a height of two miles without an oxygen mask. Boom! You're out cold.' 'If you can really do that, why hasn't it been used on terrorists?' Bob asked. 'Because there are oxygen masks, right?' Albert asked. 'Yes,' Brian said. 'The cabin crew demonstrates them at the start of every commercial jetflight  put the gold cup over your mouth and nose and breathe normally, right? They drop automatically when cabin pressure falls below twelve psi.


If a hostage pilot tried to knock out a terrorist by lowering the air pressure, all the terrorist would have to do is grab a mask, put it on, and start shooting. On smaller jets, like the Lear, that isn't the case. If the cabin loses pressure, the passenger has to open the overhead compartment himself.' Nick looked at the chronometer. Their window was now only fourteen minutes wide. 'I think we better stop talking about it and just do it,' he said. 'Time is getting very short.' 'Not yet,' Brian said, and looked at Albert again. 'I can bring us back in line with the rip, Albert, and start decreasing pressure as we head toward it. I can control the cabin pressure pretty accurately, and I'm pretty sure I can put us all out before we go through. But that leaves Laurel's question who flies the airplane if we're all knocked out?' Albert opened his mouth; closed it again and shook his head. Bob Jenkins spoke up then. His voice was dry and toneless, the voice of a judge pronouncing doom. 'I think you can fly us home, Brian. But someone else will have to die in order for you to do it.' 'Explain,' Nick said crisply. Bob did so. It didn't take long. By the time he finished, Rudy Warwick had joined the little group standing in the cockpit door. 'Would it work, Brian?' Nick asked. 'Yes,' Brian said absently. 'No reason why not.' He looked at the chronometer again. Eleven minutes now. Eleven minutes to get across to the other side of the rip. It would take almost that long to line the plane up, program the autopilot, and move them along the fortymile approach. 'But who's going to do it? Do the rest of you draw straws, or what?' 'No need for that,' Nick said. He spoke lightly, almost casually. 'I'll do it.' 'No!' Laurel said. Her eyes were very wide and very dark. 'Why you? Why does it have to be you?' 'Shut up!' Bethany hissed at her. 'If he wants to, let him!' Albert glanced unhappily at Bethany, at Laurel, and then back at Nick. A voice  not a very strong one  was whispering that he should have volunteered, that this was a job for a tough Alamo survivor like The Arizona Jew. But most of him was only aware that he loved life very much ... and did not want it to end just yet. So he opened his mouth and then closed it again without speaking. 'Why you?' Laurel asked again, urgently. 'Why shouldn't we draw straws? Why not Bob? Or Rudy? Why not me?' Nick took her arm. 'Come with me a moment,' he said. 'Nick, there's not much time,' Brian said. He tried to keep his tone of voice even, but he could hear desperation  perhaps even panic  bleeding through. 'I know. Start doing the things you have to do.' Nick drew Laurel through the door. 25 She resisted for a moment, then came along. He stopped in the small galley alcove and faced her. In that moment, with his face less than four inches from hers, she realized a dismal truth  he was the man she had been hoping to find in Boston. He had been on the plane all the time. There was nothing at all romantic about this discovery; it was horrible. 'I think we might have had something, you and me,' he said. 'Do you think I could be right about that? If you do, say so  there's no time to dance. Absolutely none.' 'Yes,' she said. Her voice was dry, uneven. 'I think that's right.' 'But we don't know. We can't know. It all comes back to time, doesn't it? Time ... and sleep ... and not knowing. But I have to be the one, Laurel. I have tried to keep some reasonable account of myself, and all my books are deeply in the red. This is my chance to balance them, and I mean to take it.' 'I don't understand what you mea' 'No  but I do.' He spoke fast, almost rapping his words. Now he reached out and took her forearm and drew her even closer to him. 'You were on an adventure of some sort, weren't you, Laurel?' 'I don't know what you're  ' He gave her a brisk shake. 'I told you  there's no time to dance! Were You on an adventure?' '... yes.' 'Nick!' Brian called from the cockpit. Nick looked rapidly in that direction. 'Coming!' he shouted, and then looked back at Laurel. 'I'm going to send you on another one. If you get out of this, that is, and if you agree to go.' She only looked at him, her lips trembling. She had no idea of what to say. Her mind was tumbling helplessly. His grip on her arm was very tight, but she would not be aware of that until later, when she saw the bruises left by his fingers; at that moment, the grip of his eyes was much stronger. 'Listen. Listen carefully.' He paused and then spoke with peculiar, measured emphasis 'I was going to quit it. I'd made up my mind.' 'Quit what?' she asked in a small, quivery voice. Nick shook his head impatiently. 'Doesn't matter. What matters is whether or not you believe me. Do you?' 'Yes,' she said. 'I don't know what you're talking about, but I believe you mean it.' 'Quik!' Brian warned from the cockpit. 'We're heading toward it!' He shot a glance toward the cockpit again, his eyes narrow and gleaming. 'Coming just now!' he called. When he looked at her again, Laurel thought she had never in her life been the focus of such ferocious, focussed intensity. 'My father lives in the village of Fluting, south of London,' he said. 'Ask for him in any shop along the High Street. Mr Hopewell. The older ones still call him the gaffer. Go to him and tell him I'd made up my mind to quit it. You'll need to be persistent; he tends to turn away and curse loudly when he hears my name. The old Ihavenoson bit. Can you be persistent?' 'Yes.' He nodded and smiled grimly. 'Good! Repeat what I've told you, and tell him you believed me. Tell him I tried my best to atone for the day behind the church in Belfast.' 'In Belfast.' 'Right. And if you can't get him to listen any other way, tell him he must listen. Because of the daisies. The time I brought the daisies. Can you remember that, as well?' 'Because once you brought him daisies.' Nick seemed to almost laugh  but she had never seen a face filled with such sadness and bitterness. 'No  not to him, but it'll do. That's your adventure. Will you do it?' 'Yes ... but . . .' 'Good. Laurel, thank you.' He put his left hand against the nape of her neck, pulled her face to his, and kissed her. His mouth was cold, and she tasted fear on his breath. A moment later he was gone. 26 'Are we going to feel like we're ... you know, choking?' Bethany asked. 'Suffocating?' 'No,' Brian said. He had gotten up to see if Nick was coming; now, as Nick reappeared with a very shaken Laurel Stevenson behind him, Brian dropped back into his seat. 'You'll feel a little giddy ... swimmy in the head ... then, nothing.' He glanced at Nick. 'Until we all wake up.' 'Right!' Nick said cheerily. 'And who knows? I may still be right here. Bad pennies have a way of turning up, you know. Don't they, Brian?' 'Anything's possible, I guess,' Brian said. He pushed the throttle forward slightly. The sky was growing bright again. The rip lay dead ahead. 'Sit down, folks. Nick, right up here beside me. I'm going to show you what to do ... and when to do it.' 'One second, please,' Laurel said. She had regained some of her color and selfpossession. She stood on tiptoe and planted a kiss on Nick's mouth. 'Thank you,' Nick said gravely. 'You were going to quit it. You'd made up your mind. And if he won't listen, I'm to remind him of the day you brought the daisies. Have I got it right?' He grinned. 'Letterperfect, my love. Letterperfect.' He encircled her with his left arm and kissed her again, long and hard. When he let her go, there was a gentle, thoughtful smile on his mouth. 'That's the one to go on,' he said. 'Right enough.' 27 Three minutes later, Brian opened the intercom. 'I'm starting to decrease pressure now. Check your belts everyone.' They did so. Albert waited tensely for some sound  the hiss of escaping air, perhaps  but there was only the steady, droning mumble of the jet engines. He felt more wide awake than ever. 'Albert?' Bethany said in a small, scared voice. 'Would you hold me, please?' 'Yes,' Albert said. 'If you'll hold me.' Behind them, Rudy Warwick was telling his rosary again. Across the aisle, Laurel Stevenson gripped the arms of her seat. She could still feel the warm print of Nick Hopewell's lips on her mouth. She raised her head, looked at the overhead compartment, and began to take deep, slow breaths. She was waiting for the masks to fall ... and ninety seconds or so later, they did. Remember about the day in Belfast, too, she thought. Behind the church. An act of atonement, he said. An act ... In the middle of that thought, her mind drifted away. 28 'You know ... what to do?' Brian asked again. He spoke in a dreamy, furry voice. Ahead of them, the timerip was once more swelling in the cockpit windows, spreading across the sky. It was now lit with dawn, and a fantastic new array of colors coiled, swam, and then streamed away into its queer depths. 'I know,' Nick said. He was standing beside Brian and his words were muffled by the oxygen mask he wore. Above the rubber seal, his eyes were calm and clear. 'No fear, Brian. All's safe as houses. Off to sleep you go. Sweet dreams, and all that.' Brian was fading now. He could feel himself going ... and yet he hung on, staring at the vast fault in the fabric of reality. It seemed to be swelling toward the cockpit windows, reaching for the plane. It's so beautiful, he thought. God, it's so beautiful! He felt that invisible hand seize the plane and draw it forward again. No turning back this time. 'Nick,' he said. It now took a tremendous effort to speak; he felt as if his mouth was a hundred miles away from his brain. He held his hand up. It seemed to stretch away from him at the end of a long taffy arm. 'Go to sleep,' Nick said, taking his hand. 'Don't fight it, unless you want to go with me. It won't be long now.' 'I just wanted to say ... thank you.' Nick smiled and gave Brian's hand a squeeze. 'You're welcome, mate. It's been a flight to remember. Even without the movie and the free mimosas.' Brian looked back into the rip. A river of gorgeous colors flowed into it now. They spiralled ... mixed ... and seemed to form words before his dazed, wondering eyes SHOOTING STARS ONLY 'Is that ... what we are?' he asked curiously, and now his voice came to him from some distant universe. The darkness swallowed him. 29 Nick was alone now; the only person awake on Flight 29 was a man who had once gunned down three boys behind a church in Belfast, three boys who had been chucking potatoes painted dark gray to look like grenades. Why had they done such a thing? Had it been some mad sort of dare? He had never found out. He was not afraid, but an intense loneliness filled him. The feeling wasn't a new one. This was not the first watch he had stood alone, with the lives of others in his hands. Ahead of him, the rip neared. He dropped his hand to the rheostat which controlled the cabin pressure. It's gorgeous, he thought. It seemed to him that the colors that now blazed out of the rip were the antithesis of everything which they had experienced in the last few hours; he was looking into a crucible of new life and new motion. Why shouldn't it be beautiful? This is the place where life  all life, maybe  begins. The place where life is freshly minted every second of every day; the cradle of creation and the wellspring of time. No langoliers allowed beyond this point. Colors ran across his cheeks and brows in a fountainspray of hues jungle green was overthrown by lava orange; lava orange was replaced by yellowwhite tropical sunshine; sunshine was supplanted by the chilly blue of Northern oceans. The roar of the jet engines seemed muted and distant. he looked down and was not surprised to see that Brian Engle's slumped. sleeping form was being consumed by color, his form and features overthrown in an everchanging kaleidoscope of brightness. He had become a fabulous ghost. Nor was Nick surprised to see that his own hands and arms were as colorless as clay. Brian's not the ghost; I am. The rip loomed. Now the sound of the jets was lost entirely in a new sound; the 767 seemed to be rushing through a windtunnel filled with feathers. Suddenly, directly ahead of the airliner's nose, a vast nova of light exploded like a heavenly firework; in it, Nick Hopewell saw colors no man had ever imagined. It did not just fill the timerip; it filled his mind, his nerves, his muscles, his very bones in a gigantic, coruscating fireflash. 'Oh my God, so BEAUTIFUL!' he cried, and as Flight 29 plunged into the rip, he twisted the cabinpressure rheostat back up to full. A splitsecond later the fillings from Nick's teeth pattered onto the cockpit floor. There was a small thump as the Teflon disc which had been in his knee  souvenir of a conflict marginally more honorable than the one in Northern Ireland  joined them. That was all. Nick Hopewell had ceased to exist. 30 The first things Brian was aware of were that his shirt was wet and his headache had returned. He sat up slowly in his seat, wincing at the bolt of pain in his head, and tried to remember who he was, where he was, and why he felt such a vast and urgent need to wake up quickly. What had he been doing that was so important? The leak, his mind whispered. There's a leak in the main cabin. and if it isn't stabilized, there's going to be big tr No, that wasn't right. The leak had been stabilized  or had in some mysterious way stabilized itself  and he had landed Flight 7 safely at LAX. Then the man in the green blazer had come, and It's Anne's funeral! My God, I've overslept! His eyes flew open, but he was in neither a motel room nor the spare bedroom at Anne's brother's house in Revere. He was looking through a cockpit window at a sky filled with stars. Suddenly it came back to him ... everything. He sat up all the way, too quickly. His head screamed a sickly hungover protest. Blood flew from his nose and splattered on the center control console. He looked down and saw the front of his shirt was soaked with it. There had been a leak, all right. In him. Of course, he thought. Depressurization often does that. I should have warned the passengers ... How many passengers do I have left, by the way? He couldn't remember. His head was filled with fog. He looked at his fuel indicators, saw that their situation was rapidly approaching the critical point, and then checked the INS. They were exactly where they should be, descending rapidly toward LA, and at any moment they might wander into someone else's airspace while the someone else was still there. Someone else had been sharing his airspace just before he passed out . . . who? He fumbled, and it came. Nick, of course. Nick Hopewell. Nick was gone. He hadn't been such a bad penny after all, it seemed. But he must have done his job, or Brian wouldn't be awake now. He got on the radio, fast. 'LAX ground control, this is American Pride Flight  'He stopped. What flight were they? He couldn't remember. The fog was in the way. 'Twentynine, aren't we?' a dazed, unsteady voice said from behind him. 'Thank you, Laurel.' Brian didn't turn around. 'Now go back and belt up. I may have to make this plane do some tricks.' He spoke into his mike again. 'American Pride Flight 29, repeat, twoniner. Mayday, ground control, I am declaring an emergency here. Please clear everything in front of me, I am coming in on heading 85 and I have no fuel. Get a foam truck out and ' 'Oh, quit it,' Laurel said dully from behind him. 'Just quit it.' Brian wheeled around them, ignoring the fresh bolt of pain through his head and the fresh spray of blood which flew from his nose. 'Sit down, goddammit!' he snarled. 'We're coming in unannounced into heavy traffic. If you don't want to break your neck  ' 'There's no heavy traffic down there,' Laurel said in the same dull voice. 'No heavy traffic, no foam trucks. Nick died for nothing, and I'll never get a chance to deliver his message. Look for yourself.' Brian did. And, although they were now over the outlying suburbs of Los Angeles, he saw nothing but darkness. There was no one down there, it seemed. No one at all. Behind him, Laurel Stevenson burst into harsh, raging sobs of terror and frustration. 31 A long white passenger jet cruised slowly above the ground sixteen miles cast of Los Angeles International Airport. 767 was printed on its tail in large, proud numerals. Along the fuselage, the words AMERICAN PRIDE were written in letters which had been raked backward to indicate speed. On both sides of the nose was a large red eagle, its wings spangled with blue stars. Like the airliner it decorated, the eagle appeared to be coming in for a landing. The plane printed no shadow on the deserted grid of streets as it passed above them; dawn was still an hour away. Below it, no car moved, no streetlight glowed. Below it, all was silent and moveless. Ahead of it, no runway lights gleamed. The plane's belly slid open. The undercarriage dropped down and spread out. The landing gear locked in place. American Pride Flight 29 slipped down the chute toward LA. It banked slightly to the right as it came; Brian was now able to correct his course visually, and he did so. They passed over a cluster of airport motels, and for a moment Brian could see the monument that stood near the center of the terminal complex, a graceful tripod with curved legs and a restaurant in its center. They passed over a short strip of dead grass and then concrete runway was unrolling thirty feet below the plane. There was no time to baby the 767 in this time; Brian's fuel indicators read zeros across and the bird was about to turn into a bitch. He brought it in hard, like a sled filled with bricks. There was a thud that rattled his teeth and started his nose bleeding again. His chest harness locked. Laurel, who was in the copilots seat, cried out. Then he had the flaps up and was applying reverse thrusters at full. The plane began to slow. They were doing a little over a hundred miles an hour when two of the thrusters cut out and the red ENGINE SHUTDOWN lights flashed on. He grabbed for the intercom switch. 'Hang on! We're going in hard! Hang on!' Thrusters two and four kept running a few moments longer, and then they were gone, too. Flight 29 rushed down the runway in ghastly silence, with only the flaps to slow her now. Brian watched helplessly as the concrete ran away beneath the plane and the crisscross tangle of taxiways loomed. And there, dead ahead, sat the carcass of a Pacific Airways commuter jet. The 767 was still doing at least sixtyfive. Brian horsed it to the right, leaning into the dead steering yoke with every ounce of his strength. The plane responded soupily, and he skated by the parked jet with only six feet to spare. Its windows flashed past like a row of blind eyes. Then they were rolling toward the United terminal, where at least a dozen planes were parked at extended jetways like nursing infants. The 767's speed was down to just over thirty now. 'Brace yourselves!' Brian shouted into the intercom, momentarily forgetting that his own plane was now as dead as the rest of them and the intercom was useless. 'Brace yourselves for a collision! Bra ' American Pride 29 crashed into Gate 29 of the United Airlines terminal at roughly twentynine miles an hour. There was a loud, hollow bang followed by the sound of crumpling metal and breaking glass. Brian was thrown into his harness again, then snapped back into his seat. He sat there for a moment, stiff, waiting for the explosion ... and then remembered there was nothing left in the tanks to explode. He flicked all the switches on the control panel off  the panel was dead, but the habit ran deep  and then turned to check on Laurel. She looked at him with dull, apathetic eyes. 'That was about as close as I'd ever want to cut it,' Brian said unsteadily. 'You should have let us crash. Everything we tried ... Dinah ... Nick ... all for nothing. It's just the same here. Just the same.' Brian unbuckled his harness and got shakily to his feet. He took his handkerchief out of his back pocket and handed it to her. 'Wipe your nose. It's bleeding.' She took the handkerchief and then only looked at it, as if she had never seen one before in her life. Brian passed her and plodded slowly into the main cabin. He stood in the doorway, counting noses. His passengers  those few still remaining, that was seemed all right. Bethany's head was pressed against Albert's chest and she was sobbing hard. Rudy Warwick unbuckled his seatbelt, got up, rapped his head on the overhead bin, and sat down again. He looked at Brian with dazed, uncomprehending eyes. Brian found himself wondering if Rudy was still hungry. He guessed not. 'Let's get off the plane,' Brian said. Bethany raised her head. 'When do they come?' she asked him hysterically. 'How long will it be before they come this time? Can anyone hear them yet?' Fresh pain stroked Brian's head and he rocked on his feet, suddenly quite sure he was going to faint. A steadying arm slipped around his waist and he looked around, surprised. It was Laurel. 'Captain Engle's right,' she said quietly. 'Let's get off the plane. Maybe it's not as bad as it looks.' Bethany uttered a hysterical bark of laughter. 'How bad can it look?' she demanded. 'Just how bad can it  ' 'Something's different,' Albert said suddenly. He was looking out the window. 'Something's changed. I can't tell what it is ... but it's not the same . He looked first at Bethany, then at Brian and Laurel. 'It's just not the same.' Brian bent down next to Bob Jenkins and looked out the window. He could see nothing very different from BIA  there were more planes, of course, but they were just as deserted, just as dead  yet he felt that Albert might be onto something, just the same. It was feeling more than seeing. Some essential difference which he could not quite grasp. It danced just beyond his reach, as the name of his exwife's perfume had done. It's L'Envoi, darling. It's what I've always worn, don't you remember? Don't you remember? 'Come on,' he said. 'This time we use the cockpit exit.' 32 Brian opened the trapdoor which lay below the jut of the instrument panel and tried to remember why he hadn't used it to offload his passengers at Bangor International; it was a hell of a lot easier to use than the slide. There didn't seem to be a why. He just hadn't thought of it, probably because he was trained to think of the escape slide before anything else in an emergency. He dropped down into the forwardhold area, ducked below a cluster of electrical cables, and undogged the hatch in the floor of the 767's nose. Albert joined him and helped Bethany down. Brian helped Laurel, and then he and Albert helped Rudy, who moved as if his bones had turned to glass. Rudy was still clutching his rosary tight in one hand. The space below the cockpit was now very cramped, and Bob Jenkins waited for them above, propped on his hands and peering down at them through the trapdoor. Brian pulled the ladder out of its storage clips, secured it in place, and then, one by one, they descended to the tarmac, Brian first, Bob last. As Brian's feet touched down, he felt a mad urge to place his hand over his heart and cry out I claim this land of rancid milk and sour honey for the survivors of Flight 29 ... at least until the langoliers arrive! He said nothing. He only stood there with the others below the loom of the jetliner's nose, feeling a light breeze against one cheek and looking around. In the distance he heard a sound. It was not the chewing, crunching sound of which they had gradually become aware in Bangor  nothing like it  but he couldn't decide exactly what it did sound like. 'What's that?' Bethany asked. 'What's that humming? It sounds like electricity .' 'No, it doesn't,' Bob said thoughtfully. 'It sounds like..' He shook his head. 'It doesn't sound like anything I've ever heard before,' Brian said, but he wasn't sure if that was true. Again he was haunted by the sense that something he knew or should know was dancing just beyond his mental grasp. 'It's them, isn't it?' Bethany asked halfhysterically. 'It's them, coming. It's the langoliers Dinah told us about.' 'I don't think so. It doesn't sound the same at all.' But he felt the fear begin in his belly just the same. 'Now what?' Rudy asked. His voice was as harsh as a crow's. 'Do we start all over again?' 'Well, we won't need the conveyor belt, and that's a start,' Brian said. 'The jetway service door is open.' He stepped out from beneath the 767's nose and pointed. The force of their arrival at Gate 29 had knocked the rolling ladder away from the door, but it would be easy enough to slip it back into position. 'Come on.' They walked toward the ladder. 'Albert?' Brian said. 'Help me with the lad 'Wait,' Bob said. Brian turned his head and saw Bob looking around with cautious wonder. And the expression in his previously dazed eyes ... was that hope? 'What? What is it, Bob? What do you see?' 'Just another deserted airport. It's what I feel.' He raised a hand to his cheek ... then simply held it out in the air, like a man trying to flag a ride. Brian started to ask him what he meant, and realized that he knew. Hadn't he noticed it himself while they had been standing under the liner's nose? Noticed it and then dismissed it? There was a breeze blowing against his face. Not much of a breeze, hardly more than a puff, but it was a breeze. The air was in motion. 'Holy crow,' Albert said. He popped a finger into his mouth, wetting it, and held it up. An unbelieving grin touched his face. 'That isn't all, either,' Laurel said. 'Listen!' She dashed from where they were standing down toward the 767's wing. Then she ran back to them again, her hair streaming out behind her. The high heels she was wearing clicked crisply on the concrete. 'Did you hear it?' she asked them. 'Did you hear it?' They had heard. The flat, muffled quality was gone. Now, just listening to Laurel speak, Brian realized that in Bangor they had all sounded as if they had been talking with their heads poked inside bells which had been cast from some dulling metal  brass, or maybe lead. Bethany raised her hands and rapidly clapped out the backbeat of the old Routers' instrumental, 'Let's Go.' Each clap was as clean and clear as the pop of a trackstarter's pistol. A delighted grin broke over her face. 'What does it m  'Rudy began. 'The plane!' Albert shouted in a highpitched, gleeful voice, and for a moment Brian was absurdly reminded of the little guy on that old TV show, Fantasy Island. He almost laughed out loud. 'I know what's different! Look at the plane! Now it's the same as all the others!' They turned and looked. No one said anything for a long moment; perhaps no one was capable of speech. The Delta 727 standing next to the American Pride jetliner in Bangor had looked dull and dingy, somehow less real than the 767. Now all the aircraft  Flight 29 and the United planes lined up along the extended jetways behind it  looked equally bright, equally new. Even in the dark, their paintwork and trademark logos appeared to gleam. 'What does it mean?' Rudy asked, speaking to Bob. 'What does it mean? If things have really gone back to normal, where's the electricity? Where are the people?' 'And what's that noise?' Albert put in. The sound was already closer, already clearer. It was a humming sound, as Bethany had said, but there was nothing electrical about it. It sounded like wind blowing across an open pipe, or an inhuman choir which was uttering the same openthroated syllable in unison aaaaaaa ... Bob shook his head. 'I don't know,' he said, turning away. 'Let's push that ladder back into position and go in Laurel grabbed his shoulder. 'You know something!' she said. Her voice was strained and tense. 'I can see that you do. Let the rest of us in on it, why don't you?' He hesitated for a moment before shaking his head. 'I'm not prepared to say right now, Laurel. I want to go inside and look around first.' With that they had to be content. Brian and Albert pushed the ladder back into position. One of the supporting struts had buckled slightly, and Brian held it as they ascended one by one. He himself came last, walking on the side of the ladder away from the buckled strut. The others had waited for him, and they walked up the jetway and into the terminal together. They found themselves in a large, round room with boarding gates located at intervals along the single curving wall. The rows of seats stood ghostly and deserted, the overhead fluorescents were dark squares, but here Albert thought he could almost smell other people ... as if they had all trooped out only seconds before the Flight 29 survivors emerged from the jetway. From outside, that choral humming continued to swell, approaching like a slow invisible wave  aaaaaaaaaaaaaa 'Come with me,' Bob Jenkins said, taking effortless charge of the group. 'Quickly, please.' He set off toward the concourse and the others fell into line behind him, Albert and Bethany walking together with arms linked about each others' waists. Once off the carpeted surface of the United boarding lounge and in the concourse itself, their heels clicked and echoed, as if there were two dozen of them instead of only six. They passed dim, dark advertising posters on the walls Watch CNN, Smoke Marlboros, Drive Hertz, Read Newsweek, See Disneyland. And that sound, that openthroated choral humming sound, continued to grow. Outside, Laurel had been convinced the sound had been approaching them from the west. Now it seemed to be right in here with them, as though the singers  if they were singers  had already arrived. The sound did not frighten her, exactly, but it made the flesh of her arms and back prickle with awe. They reached a cafeteriastyle restaurant, and Bob led them inside. Without pausing, he went around the counter and took a wrapped pastry from a pile of them on the counter. He tried to tear it open with his teeth ... then realized his teeth were back on the plane. He made a small, disgusted sound and tossed it over the counter to Albert. 'You do it,' he said. His eyes were glowing now. 'Quickly, Albert! Quickly!' 'Quick, Watson, the game's afoot!' Albert said, and laughed crazily. He tore open the cellophane and looked at Bob, who nodded. Albert took out the pastry and bit into it. Cream and raspberry jam squirted out the sides. Albert grinned. 'Ith delicious!' he said in a muffled voice, spraying crumbs as he spoke. 'Delicious!' He offered it to Bethany, who took an even larger bite. Laurel could smell the raspberry filling, and her stomach made a goinging, boinging sound. She laughed. Suddenly she felt giddy, joyful, almost stoned. The cobwebs from the depressurization experience were entirely gone; her head felt like an upstairs room after a fresh sea breeze had blown in on a hot and horrible muggy afternoon. She thought of Nick, who wasn't here, who had died so the rest of them could be here, and thought that Nick would not have minded her feeling this way. The choral sound continued to swell, a sound with no direction at all, a sourceless, singing sigh that existed all around them  AAAAAAAAAAAAAA Bob Jenkins raced back around the counter, cutting the corner by the cash register so tightly that his feet almost flew out from beneath him and he had to grab the condiments trolley to keep from falling. He stayed up but the stainlesssteel trolley fell over with a gorgeous, resounding crash, spraying plastic cutlery and little packets of mustard, ketchup, and relish everywhere. 'Quickly!' he cried. 'We can't be here! It's going to happen soon  at any moment, I believe  and we can't be here when it does! I don't think it's safe!' 'What isn't sa  ' Bethany began, but then Albert put his arm around her shoulders and hustled her after Bob, a lunatic tourguide who had already bolted for the cafeteria door.


They ran out, following him as he dashed for the United boarding lobby again. Now the echoing rattle of their footfalls was almost lost in the powerful hum which filled the deserted terminal, echoing and reechoing in the many throats of its spoked corridors. Brian could hear that single vast vote beginning to break up. It was not shattering, not even really changing, he thought, but focussing, the way the sound of the langoliers had focussed as they approached Bangor. As they reentered the boarding lounge, he saw an ethereal light begin to skate over the empty chairs, the dark ARRIVALS and DEPARTURES TV monitors and the boarding desks. Red followed blue; yellow followed red; green followed yellow. Some rich and exotic expectation seemed to fill the air. A shiver chased through him; he felt all his bodyhair stir and try to stand up. A clear assurance filled him like a morning sunray We are on the verge of something  some great and amazing thing. 'Over here!' Bob shouted. He led them toward the wall beside the jetway through which they had entered. This was a passengersonly area, guarded by a red velvet rope. Bob jumped it as easily as the highschool hurdler he might once have been. 'Against the wall!' 'Up against the wall, motherfuckers!' Albert cried through a spasm of sudden, uncontrollable laughter. He and the rest joined Bob, pressing against the wall like suspects in a police lineup. In the deserted circular lounge which now lay before them, the colors flared for a moment ... and then began to fade out. The sound, however, continued to deepen and become more real. Brian thought he could now hear voices in that sound, and footsteps, even a few fussing babies. 'I don't know what it is, but it's wonderful!' Laurel cried. She was halflaughing, halfweeping. 'I love it!' 'I hope we're safe here,' Bob said. He had to raise his voice to be heard. 'I think we will be. We're out of the main traffic areas.' 'What's going to happen?' Brian asked. 'What do you know?' 'When we went through the timerip headed cast, we travelled back in time!' Bob shouted. 'We went into the past! Perhaps as little as fifteen minutes ... do you remember me telling you that?' Brian nodded, and Albert's face suddenly lit up. 'This time it brought us into the future!' Albert cried. 'That's it, isn't it? This time the rip brought us into the future!' 'I believe so, yes!' Bob yelled back. He was grinning helplessly. 'And instead of arriving in a dead world  a world which had moved on without us  we have arrived in a world waiting to be born! A world as fresh and new as a rose on the verge of opening! That is what is happening now, I believe. That is what we hear, and what we sense ... what has filled us with such marvellous, helpless joy. I believe we are about to see and experience something which no living man or woman has ever witnessed before. We have seen the death of the world; now I believe we are going to see it born. I believe that the present is on the verge of catching up to us.' As the colors had flared and faded, so now the deep, reverberating quality of the sound suddenly dropped. At the same time, the voices which had been within it grew louder, clearer. Laurel realized she could make out words, even whole phrases. 'have to call her before she decides ' 'I really don't think the option is a viable' 'home and dry if we can just turn this thing over to the parent company  ' That one passed directly before them through the emptiness on the other side of the velvet rope. Brian Engle felt a kind of ecstasy rise within him, suffusing him in a glow of wonder and happiness. He took Laurel's hand and grinned at her as she clasped it and then squeezed it fiercely. Beside them, Albert suddenly hugged Bethany, and she began to shower kisses all over his face, laughing as she did it. Bob and Rudy grinned at each other delightedly, like longlost friends who have met by chance in one of the world's more absurd backwaters. Overhead, the fluorescent squares in the ceiling began to flash on. They went sequentially, racing out from the center of the room in an expanding circle of light that flowed down the concourse, chasing the nightshadows before it like a flock of black sheep. Smells suddenly struck Brian with a bang sweat, perfume, aftershave, cologne, cigarette smoke, leather, soap, industrial cleaner. For a moment longer the wide circle of the boarding lounge remained deserted, a place haunted by the voices and footsteps of the notquiteliving. And Brian thought I am going to see it happen; I am going to see the moving Present lock onto this stationary future and pull it along, the way hooks on moving express trains used to snatch bags of mail from the Postal Service poles standing by the tracks in sleepy little towns down south and out west. I am going to see time itself open like a rose on a summer morning. 'Brace yourselves,' Bob murmured. 'There may be a jerk.' A bare second later Brian felt a thud  not just in his feet, but all through his body. At the same instant he felt as if an invisible hand had given him a strong push, directly in the center of his back. He rocked forward and felt Laurel rock forward with him. Albert had to grab Rudy to keep him from falling over. Rudy didn't seem to mind; a huge, goony smile split his face. 'Look!' Laurel gasped. 'Oh, Brian  look!' He looked ... and felt his breath stop in his throat. The boarding lounge was full of ghosts. Ethereal, transparent figures crossed and crisscrossed the large central area men in business suits toting briefcases, women in smart travelling dresses, teenagers in Levi's and teeshirts with rockgroup logos printed on them. He saw a ghostfather leading two small ghostchildren, and through them he could see more ghosts sitting in the chairs, reading transparent copies of Cosmopolitan and Esquire and US News  World Report. Then color dove into the shapes in a series of cometary flickers, solidifying them, and the echoing voices resolved themselves into the prosaic stereo swarm of real human voices. Shooting stars, Brian thought wonderingly. Shooting stars only. The two children were the only ones who happened to be looking directly at the survivors of Flight 29 when the change took place; the children were the only ones who saw four men and two women appear in a place where there had only been a wall the second before. 'Daddy!' the little boy exclaimed, tugging his father's right hand. 'Dad!' the little girl demanded, tugging his left. 'What?' he asked, tossing them an impatient glance. 'I'm looking for your mother!' 'New people!' the little girl said, pointing at Brian and his bedraggled quintet of passengers. 'Look at the new people!' The man glanced at Brian and the others for a moment, and his mouth tightened nervously. It was the blood, Brian supposed. He, Laurel, and Bethany had all suffered nosebleeds. The man tightened his grip on their hands and began to pull them away fast. 'Yes, great. Now help me look for your mother. What a mess this turned out to be.' 'But they weren't there before!' the little boy protested. 'They ' Then they were gone into the hurrying crowds. Brian glanced up at the monitors and noted the time as 4 17 A.M. Too many people here, he thought, and I bet I know why. As if to confirm this, the overhead speaker blared 'All eastbound flights out of Los Angeles International Airport continue to be delayed because of unusual weather patterns over the Mojave Desert. We are sorry for this inconvenience, but ask for your patience and understanding while this safety precaution is in force. Repeat all eastbound flights . . .' Unusual weather patterns, Brian thought. Oh yeah. Strangest goddam weather patterns ever. Laurel turned to Brian and looked up into his face. Tears streamed down her cheeks, and she made no effort to wipe them away. 'Did you hear her? Did you hear what that little girl said?' 'Yes.' 'Is that what we are, Brian? The new people? Do you think that's what we are?' 'I don't know,' he said, 'but that's what it feels like.' 'That was wonderful,' Albert said. 'My God, that was the most wonderful thing.' 'Totally tubular!' Bethany yelled happily, and then began to clap out 'Let's Go' again. 'What do we do now, Brian?' Bob asked. 'Any ideas?' Brian glanced around at the choked boarding area and said, 'I think I want to go outside. Breathe some fresh air. And look at the sky.' 'Shouldn't we inform the authorities of what' 'We will,' Brian said. 'But the sky first.' 'And maybe something to eat on the way?' Rudy asked hopefully. Brian laughed. 'Why not?' 'My watch has stopped,' Bethany said. Brian looked down at his wrist and saw that his watch had also stopped. All their watches had stopped. Brian took his off, dropped it indifferently to the floor, and put his arm around Laurel's waist. 'Let's blow this joint,' he said. 'Unless any of you want to wait for the next flight east?' 'Not today,' Laurel said, 'but soon. All the way to England. There's a man I have to see in . . .' For one horrible moment the name wouldn't come to her ... and then it did. 'Fluting,' she said. 'Ask anyone along the High Street. The old folks still just call him the gaffer.' 'What are you talking about?' Albert asked. 'Daisies,' she said, and laughed. 'I think I'm talking about daisies. Come on  let's go.' Bob grinned widely, exposing babypink gums. 'As for me, I think that the next time I have to go to Boston, I'll take the train.' Laurel toed Brian's watch and asked, 'Are you sure you don't want that? It looks expensive.' Brian grinned, shook his head, and kissed her forehead. The smell of her hair was amazingly sweet. He felt more than good; he felt reborn, every inch of him new and fresh and unmarked by the world. He felt, in fact, that if he spread his arms, he would be able to fly without the aid of engines. 'Not at all,' he said. 'I know what time it is.' 'Oh? And what time is that?' 'It's half past now.' Albert clapped him on the back. They left the boarding lounge in a group, weaving their way through the disgruntled clots of delayed passengers. A good many of these looked curiously after them, and not just because some of them appeared to have recently suffered nosebleeds, or because they were laughing their way through so many angry, inconvenienced people. They looked because the six people seemed somehow brighter than anyone else in the crowded lounge. More actual. More there. Shooting stars only, Brian thought, and suddenly remembered that there was one passenger still back on the plane  the man with the black beard. This is one hangover that guy will never forget, Brian thought, grinning. He swept Laurel into a run. She laughed and hugged him. The six of them ran down the concourse together toward the escalators and all the outside world beyond. The Library Policeman THIS IS FOR THE STAFF AND PATRONS OF THE PASADENA... THREE PAST MIDNIGHT CHAPTER 2 The Library (I) 1 Sam had gone by the Library hundreds of times during his years in Junction City, but this was the first time he had really looked at it, and he discovered a rather amazing thing he hated the place on sight. The Junction City Public Library stood on the corner of State Street and Miller Avenue, a square granite box of a building with windows so narrow they looked like loopholes. A slate roof overhung all four sides of the building, and when one approached it from the front, the combination of the narrow windows and the line of shadow created by the roof made the building look like the frowning face of a stone robot. It was a fairly common style of Iowa architecture, common enough so Sam Peebles, who had been selling real estate for nearly twenty years, had given it a name Midwestern Ugly. During spring, summer, and fall, the building's forbidding aspect was softened by the maples which stood around it in a kind of grove, but now, at the end of a hard Iowa winter, the maples were still bare and the Library looked like an oversized crypt. He didn't like it; it made him uneasy; he didn't know why. It was, after all, just a library, not the dungeons of the Inquisition. just the same, another acidic burp rose up through his chest as he made his way along the flagstone walk. There was a funny sweet undertaste to the burp that reminded him of something ... something from a long time ago, perhaps. He put a Turn in his mouth, began to crunch it up, and came to an abrupt decision. His speech was good enough as it stood. Not great, but good enough. After all, they were talking Rotary Club here, not the United Nations. It was time to stop playing with it. He was going to go back to the office and do some of the correspondence he had neglected that morning. He started to turn, then thought That's dumb. Really dumb. You want to be dumb? Okay. But you agreed to give the goddam speech; why not give a good one? He stood on the Library walk, frowning and undecided. He liked to make fun of Rotary. Craig did, too. And Frank Stephens. Most of the young business types in Junction City laughed about the meetings. But they rarely missed one, and Sam supposed he knew why it was a place where connections could be made. A place where a fellow like him could meet some of the notsoyoung business types in Junction City. Guys like Elmer Baskin, whose bank had helped float a strip shopping center in Beaverton two years ago. Guys like George Candy  who, it was said, could produce three million dollars in development money with one phone call ... if he chose to make it. These were smalltown fellows, highschool basketball fans, guys who got their hair cut at Jimmy's, guys who wore boxer shorts and strappy teeshirts to bed instead of pajamas, guys who still drank their beer from the bottle, guys who didn't feel comfortable about a night on the town in Cedar Rapids unless they were turned out in Full Cleveland. They were also Junction City's movers and shakers, and when you came right down to it, wasn't that why Sam kept going on Friday nights? When you came right down to it, wasn't that why Craig had called in such a sweat after the stupid acrobat broke his stupid neck? You wanted to get noticed by the movers and shakers ... but not because you had fucked up. They'll all be drunk, Craig had said, and Naomi had seconded the motion, but it now occurred to Sam that he had never seen Elmer Baskin take anything stronger than coffee. Not once. And he probably wasn't the only one. Some of them might be drunk ... but not all of them. And the ones who weren't might well be the ones who really mattered. Handle this right, Sam, and you might do yourself some good. It's not impossible. No. It wasn't. Unlikely, of course, but not impossible. And there was something else, quite aside from the shadow politics which might or might not attend a Fridaynight Rotary Club speaker's meeting he had always prided himself on doing the best job possible. So it was just a dumb little speech. So what? Also, it's just a dumb little smalltown library. What's the big deal? There aren't even any bushes growing along the sides. Sam had started up the walk again, but now he stopped with a frown creasing his forehead. That was a strange thought to have; it seemed to have come right out of nowhere. So there were no bushes growing along the sides of the Library what difference did that make? He didn't know ... but he did know it had an almost magical effect on him. His uncharacteristic hesitation fell away and he began to move forward once more. He climbed the four stone steps and paused for a moment. The place felt deserted, somehow. He grasped the doorhandle and thought, I bet it's locked. I bet the place is closed Friday afternoons. There was something strangely comforting in this thought. But the oldfashioned latchplate depressed under his thumb, and the heavy door swung noiselessly inward. Sam stepped into a small foyer with a marble floor in checkerboard black and white squares. An easel stood in the center of this antechamber. There was a sign propped on the easel; the message consisted of one word in very large letters. SILENCE! it read. Not SILENCE IS GOLDEN or QUIET, PLEASE but just that one staring, glaring word SILENCE! 'You bet,' Sam said. He only murmured the words, but the acoustics of the place were very good, and his low murmur was magnified into a grouchy grumble that made him cringe. It actually seemed to bounce back at him from the high ceiling. At that moment he felt as if he was in the fourth grade again, and about to be called to task by Mrs Glasters for cutting up rough at exactly the wrong moment. He looked around uneasily, halfexpecting an illnatured librarian to come swooping out of the main room to see who had dared profane the silence. Stop it, for Christ's sake. You're forty years old. Fourth grade was a long time ago, buddy. Except it didn't seem like a long time ago. Not in here. In here, fourth grade seemed almost close enough to reach out and touch. He crossed the marble floor to the left of the easel, unconsciously walking with his weight thrown forward so the heels of his loafers would not click, and entered the main lobby of the Junction City Library. There were a number of glass globes hanging down from the ceiling (which was at least twenty feet higher than the ceiling of the foyer), but none of them were on. The light was provided by two large, angled skylights. On a sunny day these would have been quite enough to light the room; they might even have rendered it cheery and welcoming. But this Friday was overcast and dreary, and the light was dim. The corners of the lobby were filled with gloomy webs of shadow. What Sam Peebles felt was a sense of wrongness. It was as if he had done more than step through a door and cross a foyer; he felt as if he had entered another world, one which bore absolutely no resemblance to the small Iowa town that he sometimes liked, sometimes hated, but mostly just took for granted. The air in here seemed heavier than normal air, and did not seem to conduct light as well as normal air did. The silence was thick as a blanket, as cold as snow. The library was deserted. Shelves of books stretched above him on every side. Looking up toward the skylights with their crisscrosses of reinforcing wire made Sam a little dizzy, and he had a momentary illusion he felt that he was upside down, that he had been hung by his heels over a deep square pit lined with books. Ladders leaned against the walls here and there, the kind that were mounted on tracks and rolled along the floor on rubber wheels. Two wooden islands broke the lake of space between the place where he stood and the checkout desk on the far side of the large, high room. One was a long oak magazine rack. Periodicals, each encased in a clear plastic cover, hung from this rack on wooden dowels. They looked like the hides of strange animals which had been left to cure in this silent room. A sign mounted on top of the rack commanded RETURN ALL MAGAZINES TO THEIR PROPER PLACES! To the left of the magazine rack was a shelf of brandnew novels and nonfiction books. The sign mounted on top of the shelf proclaimed them to be sevenday rentals. Sam passed down the wide aisle between the magazines and the sevenday bookshelf, his heels rapping and echoing in spite of his effort to move quietly. He found himself wishing he had heeded his original impulse to just turn around and go back to the office. This place was spooky. Although there was a small, hooded microfilm camera alight and humming on the desk, there was no one manning  or womaning  it. A small plaque reading A. LORTZ stood on the desk, but there was no sign of A. Lortz or anyone else. Probably taking a dump and checking out the new issue of Library journal. Sam felt a crazy desire to open his mouth and yell, 'Everything coming out all right, A. Lortz?' It passed quickly. The Junction City Public Library was not the sort of place that encouraged amusing sallies. Sam's thoughts suddenly spun back to a little rhyme from his childhood. NO more laughing, no more fun; Quaker meeting has begun. If you show your teeth or tongue, you must pay a forfeit. If you show your teeth or tongue in here, does A. Lortz make you pay a forfeit? he wondered. He looked around again, let his nerveendings feel the frowning quality of the silence, and thought you could make book on it. No longer interested in obtaining a jokebook or Best Loved Poems of the American People, but fascinated by the library's suspended, dreamy atmosphere in spite of himself, Sam walked toward a door to the right of the sevenday books. A sign over the door said this was the Children's Library. Had he used the Children's Library when he had been growing up in St Louis? He thought so, but those memories were hazy, distant, and hard to hold. All the same, approaching the door of the Children's Library gave him an odd and haunting feeling. It was almost like coming home. The door was closed. On it was a picture of Little Red Riding Hood, looking down at the wolf in Grandma's bed. The wolf was wearing Grandma's nightgown and Grandma's nightcap. It was snarling. Foam dripped from between its bared fangs. An expression of almost exquisite horror had transfixed Little Red Riding Hood's face, and the poster seemed not just to suggest but to actually proclaim that the happy ending of this story  of all fairy tales  was a convenient lie. Parents might believe such guff, Red Riding Hood's ghastlysick face said, but the little ones knew better, didn't they? Nice, Sam thought. With a poster like that on the door, I bet lots of kids use the Children's Library. I bet the little ones are especially fond of it. He opened the door and poked his head in. His sense of unease left him; he was charmed at once. The poster on the door was all wrong, of course, but what was behind it seemed perfectly right. Of course he had used the library as a child; it only took one look into this scalemodel world to refresh those memories. His father had died young; Sam had been an only child raised by a working mother he rarely saw except on Sundays and holidays. When he could not promote money for a movie after school  and that was often  the library had to do, and the room he saw now brought those days back in a sudden wave of nostalgia that was sweet and painful and obscurely frightening. It had been a small world, and this was a small world; it had been a welllighted world, even on the grimmest, rainiest days, and so was this one. No hanging glass globes for this room; there were shadowbanishing fluorescent lights behind frosted panels in the suspended ceiling, and all of them were on. The tops of the tables were only two feet from the floor; the seats of the chairs were even closer. In this world the adults would be the interlopers, the uncomfortable aliens. They would balance the tables on their knees if they tried to sit at them, and they would be apt to crack their skulls bending to drink from the water fountain which was mounted on the far wall. Here the shelves did not stretch up in an unkind trick of perspective which made one giddy if one looked up too long; the ceiling was low enough to be cozy, but not low enough to make a child feel cramped. Here were no rows of gloomy bindings but books which fairly shouted with raucous primary colors bright blues, reds, yellows. In this world Dr Seuss was king, Judy Blume was queen, and all the princes and princesses attended Sweet Valley High. Here Sam felt all that old sense of benevolent afterschool welcome, a place where the books did all but beg to be touched, handled, looked at, explored. Yet these feelings had their own dark undertaste. His clearest sense, however, was one of almost wistful pleasure. On one wall was a photograph of a puppy with large, thoughtful eyes. Written beneath the puppy's anxioushopeful face was one of the world's great truths IT IS HARD TO BE GOOD. On another wall was a drawing of mallards making their way down a riverbank to the reedy verge of the water. MAKE WAY FOR DUCKLINGS! the poster trumpeted. Sam looked to his left, and the faint smile on his lips first faltered and then died. Here was a poster which showed a large, dark car speeding away from what he supposed was a school building. A little boy was looking out of the passenger window. His hands were plastered against the glass and his mouth was open in a scream. In the background, a man  only a vague, ominous shape  was hunched over the wheel, driving hell for leather. The words beneath this picture read NEVER TAKE RIDES FROM STRANGERS! Sam recognized that this poster and the Little Red Riding Hood picture on the door of the Children's Library both appealed to the same primitive emotions of dread, but he found this one much more disturbing. Of course children shouldn't accept rides from strangers, and of course they had to be taught not to do so, but was this the right way to make the point? How many kids, he wondered, have had a week's worth of nightmares thanks to that little public service announcement? And there was another one, posted right on the front of the checkout desk, that struck a chill as deep as January down Sam's back. It showed a dismayed boy and girl, surely no older than eight, cringing back from a man in a trenchcoat and gray hat. The man looked at least eleven feet tall; his shadow fell on the upturned faces of the children. The brim of his 1940sstyle fedora threw its own shadow, and the eyes of the man in the trenchcoat gleamed relentlessly from its black depths. They looked like chips of ice as they studied the children, marking them with the grim gaze of Authority. He was holding out an ID folder with a star pinned to it  an odd sort of star, with at least nine points on it. Maybe as many as a dozen. The message beneath read AVOID THE LIBRARY POLICE! GOOD BOYS AND GIRLS RETURN THEIR BOOKS ON TIME! That taste was in his mouth again. That sweet, unpleasant taste. And a queer. frightening thought occurred to him I have seen this man before. But that was ridiculous, of course. Wasn't it? Sam thought of how such a poster would have intimidated him as a child  of how much simple, unalloyed pleasure it would have stolen from the safe haven of the library  and felt indignation rise in his chest. He took a step toward the poster to examine the odd star more closely, taking his roll of Tums out of his pocket at the same time. He was putting one of them into his mouth when a voice spoke up from behind him. 'Well, hello there!' He jumped and turned around, ready to do battle with the library dragon, now that it had finally disclosed itself. 2 No dragon presented itself. There was only a plump, whitehaired woman of about fiftyfive, pushing a trolley of books on silent rubber tires. Her white hair fell around her pleasant, unlined face in neat beautyshop curls. 'I suppose you were looking for me,' she said. 'Did Mr Peckham direct you in here?' 'I didn't see anybody at all.' 'No? Then he's gone along home,' she said. 'I'm not really surprised, since it's Friday. Mr Peckham comes in to dust and read the paper every morning around eleven. He's the janitor  only parttime, of course. Sometimes he stays until one onethirty on most Mondays, because that's the day when both the dust and the paper are thickest  but you know how thin Friday's paper is.' Sam smiled. 'I take it you're the librarian?' 'I am she,' Mrs Lortz said, and smiled at him. But Sam didn't think her eyes were smiling; her eyes seemed to be watching him carefully, almost coldly. 'And you are ... ?' 'Sam Peebles.' 'Oh yes! Real estate and insurance! That's your game!' 'Guilty as charged.' 'I'm sorry you found the main section of the library deserted  you must have thought we were closed and someone left the door open by mistake.' 'Actually,' he said, 'the idea did cross my mind.' 'From two until seven there are three of us on duty,' said Mrs Lortz. 'Two is when the schools begin to let out, you know  the grammar school at two, the middle school at twothirty, the high school at twofortyfive. The children are our most faithful clients, and the most welcome, as far as I am concerned. I love the little ones. I used to have an allday assistant, but last year the Town Council cut our budget by eight hundred dollars and . . .' Mrs Lortz put her hands together and mimed a bird flying away. It was an amusing, charming gesture. So why, Sam wondered, aren't I charmed or amused? The posters, he supposed. He was still trying to make Red Riding Hood, the screaming child in the car, and the grimeyed Library Policeman jibe with this smiling smalltown librarian. She put her left hand out  a small hand, as plump and round as the rest of her with perfect unstudied confidence. He looked at the third finger and saw it was ringless; she wasn't Mrs Lortz after all. The fact of her spinsterhood struck him as utterly typical, utterly smalltown. Almost a caricature, really. Sam shook it. 'You haven't been to our library before, have you, Mr Peebles?' 'No, I'm afraid not. And please make it Sam.' He did not know if he really wanted to be Sam to this woman or not, but he was a businessman in a small town  a salesman, when you got right down to it  and the offer of his first name was automatic. 'Why, thank you, Sam.' He waited for her to respond by offering her own first name, but she only looked at him expectantly. 'I've gotten myself into a bit of a bind,' he said. 'Our scheduled speaker tonight at Rotary Club had an accident, and ' 'Oh, that's too bad!' 'For me as well as him. I got drafted to take his place.' 'Ohoh!' Ms Lortz said. Her tone was alarmed, but her eyes crinkled with amusement. And still Sam did not find himself warming to her, although he was a person who warmed up to other people quickly (if superficially) as a rule; the kind of man who had few close friends but felt compelled nonetheless to start conversations with strangers in elevators. 'I wrote a speech last night and this morning I read it to the young woman who takes dictation and types up my correspondence ' 'Naomi Higgins, I'll bet.' 'Yes  how did you know that?' 'Naomi is a regular. She borrows a great many romance novels  Jennifer Blake, Rosemary Rogers, Paul Sheldon, people like that.' She lowered her voice and said, 'She says they're for her mother, but actually I think she reads them herself.' Sam laughed. Naomi did have the dreamy eyes of a closet romance reader. 'Anyway, I know she's what would be called an office temporary in a big city. I imagine that here in Junction City she's the whole secretarial pool. It seemed reasonable that she was the young woman of whom you spoke.' 'Yes. She liked my speech  or so she said  but she thought it was a bit dry. She suggested  ' 'The Speaker's Companion, I'll bet!' 'Well, she couldn't remember the exact title, but that sure sounds right.' He paused, then asked a little anxiously 'Does it have jokes?' 'Only three hundred pages of them,' she said. She reached out her right hand  it was as innocent of rings as her left  and tugged at his sleeve with it. 'Right this way.' She led him toward the door by the sleeve. 'I am going to solve all your problems, Sam. I only hope it won't take a crisis to bring you back to our library. It's small, but it's very fine. I think so, anyway, although of course I'm prejudiced.' They passed through the door into the frowning shadows of the Library's main room. Ms Lortz flicked three switches by the door, and the hanging globes lit up, casting a soft yellow glow that warmed and cheered the room considerably. 'It gets so gloomy in here when it's overcast,' she said in a confidential we'reintherealLibrarynow voice. She was still tugging firmly on Sam's sleeve. 'But of course you know how the Town Council complains about the electricity bill in a place like this or perhaps you don't, but I'll bet you can guess.' 'I can,' Sam agreed, also dropping his voice to a nearwhisper.