Today, though, Ames seemed not to have noticed Robb's tardiness. When Robb came into the rowing room, the tall, dark-haired doctor merely looked up from the computer terminal he had been staring at and smiled a welcome.

"Good game Saturday," he commented.

Robb shrugged modestly. "I didn't really do much. A dozen plays, and that was about it."

Ames chuckled. "If you don't let the other team keep the ball, the defense is going to sit on the bench." His face turned more serious then. He was a good-looking man, though not quite handsome, and he appeared to be no more than thirty-five, though he was actually nearing fifty. He always joked to the boys that he had to work hard to keep as fit as his patients. "How are you feeling?" he asked.

"Fine," Robb replied. Without being told, he stripped down to his underwear, then stretched out on a treatment table next to the wall. An osteopath as well as an M.D., Ames ran his fingers expertly over Robb's spine, then instructed the boy to roll over on his right side and draw up his left knee. Wrapping his arms around Robb's torso, Ames applied a quick but gentle twist to the boy's back, and Robb felt just a hint of something like vibration as one of his lower vertebrae adjusted itself back into perfect alignment.

"Looking good," Ames commented, then began wrapping the sleeve of a sphygmomanometer around his upper left arm. Satisfied, he nodded toward one of the rowing machines, and Robb, after pulling on a pair of gym shorts, took his position at the mechanical oars. He waited patiently as the doctor inserted an I.V. needle into his thigh, not even flinching as Ames expertly found the vein. "We'll be monitoring your blood today," he said, and Robb nodded, used to the procedures after more than a year.

Facing him was a wide, curving screen whose sides were just beyond the reach of his peripheral vision. At a signal from Ames, Robb began rowing. With the first stroke, the screen in front of him came to life.

It was a river scene, and though it looked to Robb like it might have been the Charles River in Boston, he knew that it was actually a computer-generated graphic, thrown onto the screen by three separate projectors. From where he sat, the illusion was almost perfect. He felt as if he were actually on the water. A few yards away he could see three other sculls, keeping pace with him.

He applied himself harder to the oars, and immediately the other sculls seemed to drop behind, until the other rowers, too, picked up their pace, and one of them began gaining on him.

Robb could feel himself sweating now, and he began working harder. Once again he pulled ahead, but then, while two of the other boats continued to drop back, the third once more began catching up with him. Cursing silently to himself, Robb renewed his efforts.

At the computer terminal, Marty Ames studied the graphic readouts of the changes in Robb's blood chemistry as the boy punished himself even harder. The blood-sugar level began dropping, and then he watched as Robb's adrenal gland kicked in and a short burst of adrenaline shot into the boy's system.

Then, as the adrenaline faded from Robb's circulatory system, Ames's fingers flew over the keyboard.

Once more the graphics on the screen changed.

Robb's eyes narrowed angrily as he saw his computer-generated competitor gaining on him. He leaned into the oars harder, but he was getting tired now and didn't seem to be gaining any speed. He looked up from his labors to see the other boat catch up with him and move off to the right to pass him.

"No!" Robb shouted out loud, then bit his lips in angry determination as he realized how much energy he'd wasted on the useless outburst. The tendons of his neck standing out, he forced himself to row harder. Once more he caught up with the other scull.

Abruptly, the screen went blank. It was over.

He was back in the rowing room at the sports clinic and Marty Ames was smiling at him, his expression reflecting his pride in Robb.

"Not bad," he said, which, coming from Marty Ames, was considered high praise. "How'd it feel?"

Robb rested against the oars for a moment, panting, then shook his head. "I don't know," he said. "This setup really gets to me sometimes.Iknow nothing's real, but when I'm doing it, I get so into it I could swear I was in a real race. And that guy in the number-three boat almost beat me."

"How come he didn't?" Ames asked with deceptive mildness as he began removing the needle from Robb's thigh.

Now it was Robb who grinned. " 'Cause I got pissed at him," he confessed. "I just got pissed off at losing."

"And that," Ames said, "is exactly the point. Your anger released a shot of adrenaline, and the adrenaline was just enough to put you across the line. In case you're interested," he added, glancing once more at the computer screen, "you beat him by exactly thirteen hundredths of a second."

"Not much," Robb commented, standing up and stretching his tired muscles.

"It was enough to win," Ames told him. "And it'll get better. If you just keep at it, it'll keep getting better."

As Robb headed for the shower a few minutes later, he knew he'd keep at it, because he knew how much he liked winning.

He liked it a lot.

A whole lot.

CharlotteLaConner knew that Chuck wouldn't approve of what she was about to do, and she was equally certain that he would find out about it. In Silverdale, after all, everyone always knew what everyone else was doing. Not that she particularly objected to the close scrutiny of a small town, she reflected as she put the final touches to the quarterly expense report she was compiling for the R amp;D Division. It was just that every now and then-times like today-she would have preferred a little more privacy.

She pressed the enter key on her computer, waited until the machine announced that the expense report had been successfully transmitted back into the main tank of theTarrenTech computer, then logged off for the day.

Charlotte had been working for only a few months, part of an experiment the company was conducting that, if successful, would allow women in Silverdale to work part-time at home. For now, the experiment was limited to the wives of men working for the company; only one man was participating-BillTangen, whose wife Irene, was a pharmaceutical expert, working full-time while Bill took care of their baby daughter. For Charlotte, the program was working out perfectly. She discovered she liked working alone and got far more done in the space of a few hours than she'd ever accomplished while working full-time in the division offices. This morning, however, she'd found it hard to concentrate, and after finishing the expense report, she decided to call it a day.

It was Rick Ramirez who had been preying on her mind all morning. Indeed, the injured boy had never really been out of her mind. Not that his name had even been mentioned yesterday. Silence had fallen over theLaConner household since the angry scene when Jeff had stormed from the house.

Neither Chuck nor Jeff would discuss it with her.

And that, Charlotte now realized, was what bothered her the most. Her husband and her son had clearly put the terrible incident out of their minds as though nothing at all had happened. But she herself had been unable to escape the image of the Fairfield player lying hurt on the field, and had awakened this morning determined to go to the hospital to see how he was doing.

But why did she feel so guilty about it? What on earth could possibly be wrong with visiting an injured boy?

She could almost see Chuck gazing at her with that look of his, the look that told her he couldn't fathom her thought processes, and that, therefore, there must be something wrong with them. And she could hear him, too, his voice taking on what she thought of as his "logical tone."