Craig cried out and his eyelids fluttered.

“Do you have to be so rough?” Laurel asked sharply.

Nick gazed at her for a moment, and she dropped her eyes at once. She could not help comparing Nick Hopewell’s eyes with the eyes in the pictures which Darren Crosby had sent her. Widely spaced, clear eyes in a goodlooking — if unremarkable — face. But the eyes had also been rather unremarkable, hadn’t they? And didn’t Darren’s eyes have something, perhaps even a great deal, to do with why she had made this trip in the first place? Hadn’t she decided, after a great deal of close study, that they were the eyes of a man who would behave himself? A man who would back off if you told him to back off?

She had boarded Flight 29 telling herself that this was her great adventure, her one extravagant tango with romance — an impulsive transcontinental dash into the arms of the tall, dark stranger. But sometimes you found yourself in one of those tiresome situations where the truth could no longer be avoided, and Laurel reckoned the truth to be this: she had chosen Darren Crosby because his pictures and letters had told her he wasn’t much different from the placid boys and men she had been dating ever since she was fifteen or so, boys and men who would learn quickly to wipe their feet on the mat before they came in on rainy nights, boys and men who would grab a towel and help with the dishes without being asked, boys and men who would let you go if you told them to do it in a sharp enough tone of voice.

Would she have been on Flight 29 tonight if the photos had shown Nick Hopewell’s dark-blue eyes instead of Darren’s mild brown ones? She didn’t think so. She thought she would have written him a kind but rather impersonal note Thank you for your reply and your picture, Mr Hopewell, but I somehow don’t think we would be right for each other — and gone on looking for a man like Darren. And, of course, she doubted very much if men like Mr Hopewell even read the lonely-hearts magazines, let alone placed ads in their personals columns. All the same, she was here with him now, in this weird situation.

Well, she had wanted to have an adventure, just one adventure, before middle-age settled in for keeps. Wasn’t that true? Yes. And here she was, proving Tolkien right — she had stepped out of her own door last evening, just the same as always, and look where she had ended up: a strange and dreary version of Fantasyland. But it was an adventure, all right. Emergency landings... deserted airports... a lunatic with a gun. Of course it was an adventure. Something she had read years ago suddenly popped into Laurel’s mind. Be careful what you pray for, because you just might get it.

How true.

And how confusing.

There was no confusion in Nick Hopewell’s eyes... but there was no mercy in them, either. They made Laurel feel shivery, and there was nothing romantic in the feeling.

Are you sure? a voice whispered, and Laurel shut it up at once.

Nick pulled Craig’s hands out from under him, then brought his wrists together at the small of his back. Craig groaned again, louder this time, and began to struggle weakly.

“Easy now, my good old mate,” Nick said soothingly. He wrapped the tablecloth rope twice around Craig’s lower forearms and knotted it tightly. Craig’s elbows flapped and he uttered a strange weak scream. “There!” Nick said, standing up. “Trussed as neatly as Father John’s Christmas turkey. We’ve even got a spare if that one looks like not holding.” He sat on the edge of one of the tables and looked at Bob Jenkins. “Now, what were you saying when we were so rudely interrupted?”

Bob looked at him, dazed and unbelieving. “What?”

“Go on,” Nick said. He might have been an interested lecture-goer instead of a man sitting on a table in a deserted airport restaurant with his feet planted beside a bound man lying in a pool of his own blood. “You had just got to the part about Flight 29 being like the Mary Celeste. Interesting concept, that.”

“And you want me to... to just go on?” Bob asked incredulously. “As if nothing had happened?”

“Let me up!” Craig shouted. His words were slightly muffled by the tough industrial carpet on the restaurant floor, but he still sounded remarkably lively for a man who had been coldcocked with a violin case not five minutes previous. “Let me up right now! I demand that you—”

Then Nick did something that shocked all of them, even those who had seen the Englishman twist Craig’s nose like the handle of a bathtub faucet. He drove a short, hard kick into Craig’s ribs. He pulled it at the last instant... but not much. Craig uttered a pained grunt and shut up.

“Start again, mate, and I’ll stave them in,” Nick said grimly. “My patience with you has run out.”

“Hey!” Gaffney cried, bewildered. “What did you do that f—”

“Listen to me!” Nick said, and looked around. His urbane surface was entirely gone for the first time; his voice vibrated with anger and urgency. “You need waking up, fellows and girls, and I haven’t the time to do it gently. That little girl Dinah — says we are in bad trouble here, and I believe her. She says she hears something, something which may be coming our way, and I rather believe that, too. I don’t hear a bloody thing, but my nerves are jumping like grease on a hot griddle, and I’m used to paying attention when they do that. I think something is coming, and I don’t believe it’s going to try and sell us vacuum-cleaner attachments or the latest insurance scheme when it gets here. Now we can make all the correct civilized noises over this bloody madman or we can try to understand what has happened to us. Understanding may not save our lives, but I’m rapidly becoming convinced that the lack of it may end them, and soon.” His eyes shifted to Dinah. “Tell me I’m wrong if you believe I am, Dinah. I’ll listen to you, and gladly.”

“I don’t want you to hurt Mr Toomy, but I don’t think you’re wrong, either,” Dinah said in a small, wavery voice.

“All right,” Nick said. “Fair enough. I’ll try my very best not to hurt him again... but I make no promises. Let’s begin with a very simple concept. This fellow I’ve trussed up—”

“Toomy,” Brian said. “His name is Craig Toomy.”

“All right. Mr Toomy is mad. Perhaps if we find our way back to our proper place, or if we find the place where all the people have gone, we can get some help for him. But for now, we can only help him by putting him out of commission — which I have done, with the generous if foolhardy assistance of Albert there — and getting back to our current business. Does anyone hold a view which runs counter to this?”

There was no reply. The other passengers who had been aboard Flight 29 looked at Nick uneasily.

“All right,” Nick said. “Please go on, Mr Jenkins.”

“I... I’m not used to...” Bob made a visible effort to collect himself. “In books, I suppose I’ve killed enough people to fill every seat in the plane that brought us here, but what just happened is the first act of violence I’ve ever personally witnessed. I’m sorry if I’ve... er... behaved badly.”

“I think you’re doing great, Mr Jenkins,” Dinah said. “And I like listening to you, too. It makes me feel better.”

Bob looked at her gratefully and smiled. “Thank you, Dinah.” He stuffed his hands in his pockets, cast a troubled glance at Craig Toomy, then looked beyond them, across the empty waiting room.

“I think I mentioned a central fallacy in our thinking,” he said at last. “It is this: we all assumed, when we began to grasp the dimensions of this Event, that something had happened to the rest of the world. That assumption is easy enough to understand, since we are all fine and everyone else — including those other passengers with whom we boarded at Los Angeles International — seems to have disappeared. But the evidence before us doesn’t bear the assumption out. What has happened has happened to us and us alone. I am convinced that the world as we have always known it is ticking along just as it always has.”