Rutherford gave an exaggerated 'aw shucks' gesture. 'Actually, it might be better if it didn't come directly from me. McMasters knows we're friends, and he might fit things together and give you a hard time for leaking information. I think I can handle it so that one of my associates has the inspiration.'

The two men grinned at one another and then lapsed into a contemplative silence. After several minutes, Rutherford stirred and walked over to a window and looked out.

He turned and asked, 'What in hell are we getting into here, Bob?'

Isaacs returned his look, unspeaking.

Rutherford continued, 'I keep coming back to the fact that this flung is locked to a fixed direction in space. That must be a crucial hint. And the fact that it moves easily through solid earth and miles of water. What does that mean?' He turned to the window again, anxious to express disturbing thoughts, but subconsciously unable to face his friend at the same time.

'You know the image I get? A beam. A beam of some kind, focused into the earth and playing back and forth.'

He turned suddenly, angry at a situation that departed so profoundly from his experience, forcing him to strange, uncomfortable extrapolations.

'Damn it, Bob, you know I'm a hard-nosed, practical man. But don't we have to face up to the idea that something is out there? Doing this to the earth?'

Isaacs ground his right fist into his left palm. 'I confess, Av, when I first heard about the selective orientation in space, I found myself toying with such a notion. I put it out of my mind as idle fantasy. Now I don't know. I do know the more I learn about this thing, the more scared I am.

Avery Rutherford stood next to the captain of the USS Stinson and gazed out across the ocean as it reflected the early morning sun. Rutherford delighted at being able to spend these long days of mid-June where he loved to be the most. His job was challenging and important, but it kept him behind a desk far too much. He had grown up in boats of all sizes in the waters off Newport and the only time he felt fully alive was at sea. A hectic week had been required to feed Isaacs's hint to his aide, Szkada, then to work up a plan and arrange for the ship, but it was worth it. Rutherford felt great!

The captain barked commands as they closed on the chosen position. Finally, the trim craft lay dead in the water, and they waited and watched and listened. The ship, a Spruance class destroyer, was designed for intelligence work and bristled with sophisticated tracking and detection devices. At last, word came up from the sonar room that their target had appeared, moving incredibly rapidly, headed for the surface in a scant thirty seconds. Rutherford gritted his teeth and framed his field glasses on the water a thousand yards away where they had calculated the influence would reach the surface.

The sonar data were automatically fed into the ship's computers to plot the trajectory. He listened to the tense messages on the intercom from the sonar room, the voice clipped, rapid, hurrying to keep up with something moving too fast. The new prediction showed the point of surfacing to be several hundred yards further from the ship than originally estimated, but still very close. Ten seconds. Rutherford felt a knot of tension as beads of sweat grew on his forehead. He tried to keep his mind neutral, but an image kept intruding, that of a ray guided by an unseen hand. He could sense that ray arcing through space like nighttime tracer bullets, then cutting a swath through the earth.

Over the intercom came the tinny squawk as the sonar operator counted down the time to contact with the surface:

'Five.'

'Four.'

'Three.'

'Two.'

'One.'

Rutherford held the binoculars tightly to his face, the magnified image of the water welded in his brain. He braced himself for the shock, either physical or mental.

'Zero.'

Nothing.

Absolutely nothing happened except for a small splash at the margin of his field of vision. Then he blinked and even that was gone. Faintly over the water a strange hissing carried, but that, too, quickly faded.

Rutherford and the captain exchanged amazed looks.

The captain punched a button on a console.

'What have you got?'

'Nothing, Captain, it's gone,' came the negative reply. He turned to Rutherford.

'If it's like the Seamount event, sonar should pick up something going down after some delay.'

Rutherford nodded.

The sonar man had been alerted not to increase the gain on his instrument in the interlude.

Again came the faint hiss. Rutherford raised his glasses too late to see a second rise of spray some distance from the first splash.

'Whup! There it is!' came the report of reacquisition from the sonar room. They listened as the relayed reports followed the acoustic noise to the sea bottom far below.

Rutherford spent the next two hours in the computer room overseeing the analysis of the tapes of the sonar signal. His examination of the previous underwater events suggested to him that the phenomenon did not move along precisely the same line. This data supported that view. There was a certain erratic behaviour superposed on the basic fixed direction of motion. They would never be able to tell exactly where and when the surfacing would occur. He thought to himself, so your aim's not perfect, you bastards, and took some satisfaction in that.

The estimate of the next nearest surfacing was refined on the computer and Rutherford reported that to the captain. After some discussion they agreed that for all the furore underwater, whatever it was seemed to lose potency at the surface. They agreed to get as close as possible to the next event. The destroyer headed for a spot about a hundred and ninety miles west which, in a little more than twenty-four hours, would fall along the right path at the proper phase so that the phenomenon should approach the surface.

They arrived in late afternoon and spent the remainder of the daylight hours cruising the area obtaining comparison data on the sonar background and checking for anything which could represent a precursor to the expected event. There was none.

Rutherford turned in early. He spent a restless night and dropped into sound sleep only shortly before daybreak when a young crewman awakened him.

Two thousand miles west of where the Stinson made slow circles in the mid-Atlantic, Robert Isaacs roused from a troubled sleep, carrying his dreams with him. He was watching the tops of the heads of figures as they roamed the flat terrain of satellite photos. One figure tried to turn its face upward to be recognized. Isaacs could feel the strain of its effort, and head swivelling backward, the forehead tilting upward, upward, upward, but never enough to reveal the face.

Then, there — Not a Russian! Rutherford !

Isaacs jerked awake, staring at the ceiling, his pulse racing. His twitch disturbed Muriel. She snuggled over to him, cupped a bleep in her hand, and pushed her nose into his shoulder.

'You all right, honey?'

'Uumph. Just a dream.' He turned towards her and threw a comforting arm over her hips. Soon she was breathing deeply again. He lay awake, slowly relaxing back towards sleep. Rutherford Ship Water Sonar.

The Novorossiisk!

This time he sat bolt upright. No dream. Dear god! How could he be so dense? The Novorossiisk was so long ago, succeeded in his attention by the attack on FireEye, the shuttle mission, the feverish developments at Tyuratam. But this had to be it! The Novorossiisk had been in the Med, near thirty degrees latitude. The Seamount had reported something going up and something going down. Rutherford had radioed the same behaviour yesterday. The Novorossiisk had reported something going down. Why not up? Lost in the shuffle? Who knows? Must check that out. Was the Novorossiisk in the right place? Check that out. Oh goddamn, Rutherford said he was going to sit right on