In the old days, he would have expected them to defer to him. He would have reminded them that none of them would be here, that none of this would be happening, if not for him. Who but he had a better right to be near the glass? But now it simply amazed him that he had ever been capable of thinking that way. What right had he to anything?

Besides, they all had a right to be at the window. All of them, Spacers and Settlers, technicians and engineers and spaceworkers, specialists of every possible sort, had all worked impossible shifts, taken on impossible tasks on unmeetable schedules-and succeeded.

Davlo gave up and made his way toward the equally crowded cargo bay. They had set up huge repeater screens there. And there was at least some hope he would be able to see better from there.

The hope was realized the moment he set foot in the cargo bay. The main viewer screen had a view of Comet Grieg. There it was, huge and misshapen, a gleaming ball of rock and ice, hanging in the velvet darkness, sheathed in the shining gold of the parasol that was now draped over its pockmarked surface.

Once he would have felt nothing but sheer, vain pride in what he had caused to happen. But now, to look on that enormous object, and know that he had changed its fate, that his actions and those of others had converted a vagrant thought in the back of his mind into the huge and stunning piece of reality floating in the darkness, simply terrified him. What hubris. How could humans imagine themselves to have the competency, the wisdom, the right to attempt anything so grandiose?

He glanced at the countdown clock, and saw that they were getting close. Only a few seconds left.

Could they truly do this thing? Could they, would they, truly bring this flying mountain down onto their world? It seemed impossible. It seemed madness, suicidal.

A wave of panic swept over Davlo, hemmed in by the swarm of bodies. Someone in the front of the crowd began to chant out the countdown. “Twenty. Nineteen. Eighteen. “Another voice joined in, and another, and another, until the entire room full of people who had made this thing happen were shouting out the numbers in unison. “Seventeen! Sixteen! Fifteen!” the voices cried out, calling a bit louder with every number.

All except Davlo. Suddenly he was gripped by fear, by shame, by guilt. It could not work. It couldn’t possibly. They were going to destroy the world. He had to stop them, stop this. It was a mistake, a horrible, terrifying mistake that could never be put right. Dropping a comet on a living world? No. No! He could not let them. He plunged forward, into the crowd, and tried to get to the front, call out a protest, a warning, but the crowd was too tight, the shouting voices too loud. He could not move forward, and he could not hear himself. “Ten!” they shouted. “Nine! Eight!”

But it could not be. It must not be. The dangers, the risks, were too great. The image of Kaelor, Kaelor at his death, Kaelor dying to prevent this thing flashed through his mind. “No!” he shouted out. “No! Stop!”

“Seven! Six! Five! Four!”

“Please! Stop!” he shouted out, though no one could hear. “It’s me, Lentrall! It’s a mistake! Stop!”

“THREE!”

“TWO!”

Davlo Lentrall sagged backward, let his body go limp. The bloody-minded arrogance of it all. How could he have dreamed that he, and he alone, could see the way? Now he had killed them all.

“ONE!”

“ZERO!” they all shouted.

“Zero,” Lentrall whispered to himself in horror.

The screen flared into spectacular brightness, the light of a new sun blooming into life at the base of Comet Grieg. A tail, a jet of power and light and energy, lanced out from the detonation thruster, the powerful and intricate and clever device that allowed the comet to be aimed straight for its target, let it move toward the doom of the planet with far greater precision and efficiency. A tail of blazing, glowing plasma stabbed out into the darkness, and a shudder of power and motion rippled along the gleaming surface of the sunshade parasol. Rips and tears appeared in it as huge fragments of stone and ice tore free of the comet and smashed holes in the reflective plastic sheeting.

And the comet began to move, slid into its new heading, shifted into its new orbit and its new destiny. Down toward Inferno. No, thought Lentrall. No. He would have to stop it. He had to get down there first. He would have to get back to Inferno, and prevent the disaster he had set in motion. Somehow.

The burn ended, the jet of light died, the room erupted in cheers and shouts and applause, but Davlo Lentrall did not notice. He looked toward the screen, and saw nothing there but a monstrous weapon he had aimed at his own world.

What have I done? he asked himself.

What have I done?

CINTA MELLOY WALKED down the chaotic streets of Depot, dodging the traffic that seemed to be roaring past in every direction at once. There he was again, just up ahead. She ducked around a corner as her man glanced around behind himself. She was fairly sure he had not spotted her. Fairly. The man was suspicious, no doubt of that. But he was also an amateur, and that cut into his effectiveness a lot. Cinta watched as Davlo Lentrall stopped to put another of his ridiculous posters up. Cinta hadn’t even bothered to examine any of them, choosing instead to keep her eye on her man. Besides, she knew, more or less, what they had to say. STOP THE COMET! STOP THE MADNESS! PROTEST NOW! LEAVE THE PLANET ALONE! MASS MEETING TONIGHT!

Pointless. All of it. Much as she agreed with the sentiments on the posters, she knew damned well it was far too late. The deed was done. Cinta permitted herself no such delusions. She knew the comet was coming. And presumably, so did Lentrall. The populace certainly knew it. The only ones showing up at the meetings were Lentrall, a few whacked-out loners, and a collection of spies and informants-some of them from the SSS, and the others easily identified off the surveillance photos.

So why was Lentrall bothering? Or was all this nonsense a cover for something else-and if so, what?

Lentrall looked behind himself again, and Cinta ducked out of sight again, or at least tried to do so. She wasn’t even quite sure why she was following him. She had simply spotted him on the street, and started trailing him.

Up went another poster. Cinta shook her head and gave it up. She turned around and started back the way she had come. She was tempted to order a formal watch kept on Lentrall, assign the job to less obvious and more skillful watchers than herself. If she wasn’t so badly short-handed, she would have done just that. But there were so damned many others to watch.

At least the evacuation itself seemed to proceeding in an orderly and sensible fashion. The heavy lifters, the construction crews, the seemingly endless series of auxiliary services-emergency medical, motor pool repair, preimpact cartography, provisions, accommodation and sanitation for all the extra bodies-somehow, incredibly, it all seemed to be dropping into place. Those Dee and Dum units Kresh was nursemaiding clearly knew their stuff.

But there was plenty else happening-and none of it seemed even remotely promising to Melloy. She had loaned a detachment of SSS personnel to the evacuation effort, as per Tonya Welton’s orders, and Cinta had even flown to Depot to take personal charge of it herself. But none of it was doing any good. The SSS was here, doing its overt job-but they also had a covert agenda. They were supposed to watch the other players in the game-and the others were giving them plenty to watch.

The CIP had its own security people out, and they were watching the SSS-as they should have been. There was still the Government Tower Plaza fiasco on the books, after all. The Ironheads seemed to be everywhere, out in force, the black uniform visible on every street, in every shop. One of the SSS watch teams had even spotted their old friend Norlan Fiyle, quite openly going into and out of the local Ironhead HQ. And then there were the hordes of New Law robots, frantically conducting their own evacuation out of their undersized offices over on Shipping Street. The SSS had stacks of images of Caliban, the No Law robot, going in and out of there, and a fair collection of shots of Prospero too-though he seemed to come in less often, and stay for shorter periods.