"He's sure sweating a lot."

That didn't surprise me. I didn't expect to sweat much longer, though. I knew I was a dead man. I'd stumbled into something I wasn't supposed to see, some kind of stun weapon. Since I couldn't move my eyes I hadn't gotten a good look at them, but I remembered vague shapes dangling from their belts, and everything about them shrieked commando. They weren't here to play games.

So I'd surely be killed.

About all I didn't understand -- at least in the tactical sense was why Louise had revealed herself to me so many times before now. Had she been trying to enlist my help in some way? I remembered how badly she'd wanted me to stay away from work today. Okay, so she was trying to keep me from being here when they made their search ... except that I hadn't even known I was going to be here until an hour ago. Normally, I wouldn't have been in this hangar at this hour.

Something had screwed up badly for them and I had no idea what it was, but l was sure the easiest solution for their present problem was for me to die.

I couldn't believe it when I heard them going away.

Then Louise was back. She loomed over me so suddenly that if I could have moved, I'd have jumped a foot. I could feel my heart hammering, and the drops of sweat flowing down the side of my face.

"Smith," she said. "You don't know me. I can't tell you who am. But you're going to be all right."

Testimony of Louise Baltimore

I had never seen Gate Operations as quiet as it was when I stepped through from Bill's hotel room.

These things are relative, of course. I wasn't there ten seconds before the Gate Congruency Duty Officer warned me to get out of the way, and I stood aside to watch about a hundred soldiers of the Roman Second Century fall down the chutes and into the sorting apparatus.

But when they were gone, the place was utterly quiet. On a slow day Operations is about as quiet as Chinese New Year.

I went up to Gate Control. Lawrence was there at his console, which was not surprising since he couldn't leave it. What was surprising was that out of hundreds of other duty stations, there were only five or six gnomes left. It was a little bit as if, on a trip to Nepal, one discovered most of the individual peaks of the Himalayas had taken a trip to Japan.

One station still occupied was Lawrence's second-in-command, David Shanghai. He was flipping switches one at a time, and each time he hit one a light went off on his console. He had a faint smile on his face.

"Hello, Louise," Lawrence said. "I hope the assignment wasn't too hard."

"He was hard enough," I said. "What's all this? Where's everybody? I thought there wouldn't be any more snatches until this paradox was resolved."

He shrugged.

"We didn't plan to. Then this situation in North Africa presented itself, and we just decided to go for it. I guess old habits die hard. We got ninety-three centurions in prime condition. They'll be a "lost battalion," or whatever they call it."

David's board was almost dark now. When he had it down to one glowing ready-light, he looked up at Lawrence.

"Good-bye," he said, and he nodded to me. He turned off the last light.

His eyes closed, and he leaned back in his chair.

"Good-bye," Lawrence said, not looking at him. The words were too late, anyway. David was already dead. He'd switched off his heart, located somewhere under his chair.

"Is that where everybody went?" I asked.

"That's it. Will you be needing me for anything?"

"Fuck you. What a thing to ask. Where's Sherman?"

"He's at your apartment. He said to remind you that your second time capsule is ready to be opened in thirty minutes. After you read it, he said, you'll know what to do."

I looked at Lawrence. He didn't look back, just gazed over the deserted Operations floor.

"Are you really ready to shut yourself off?"

"There's no hurry. I can wait until you've seen Sherman."

"It's a hell of a thing for me to ask," I said, "but I'd appreciate it if you would. Just until I see if he has anything else in mind."

"You know where to find me."

I went to the ready-room to get some clothes. There were three of my girls in there, dead, holding hands.

"Wipe those smiles off your faces," I told them. "This is going to look terrible on your records."

They didn't seem to appreciate the humor. I went to my locker and poked. through it. Talk about time's closet. I had outfits in there ranging from poorly cured leopard hide to a spacesuit you could carry in your hip pocket. But my last pair of blue jeans had been ruined about a million years ago while being worn by a wimp who was also wearing my face.

What do you wear when you go to see the end of the world? What's the proper outfit for an extinction? I chose the dress I'd worn when we took the Titanic. Those had been the good old days.

There was shooting as I neared the tube station that would take me to the Federal Building. A lot of laughter punctuated the shots. It sounded like some drones were having a gay old massacre.

I hung back. The puny weapons the BC allows drones are big enough to blow out the back of your head if you put the barrel in your mouth, but they were no match for my firepower. I was in no mood to slaughter a bunch of drones, even suicidal ones.

The sounds moved away, and I entered the station. There were six or seven bodies. One of them moved, and I went to her. I turned her over. She'd taken four or five bullets, was very bloody, and a little surprised.

"It hurts," she said. I nodded.

"You may last another couple hours," I told her.

"Oh, I hope not."

I nodded again, and put my arms around her head. She looked up at me and smiled.

"I like your dress," she said.

I broke her neck.

This time there was no audience at the Fed. I went to the one chair in the room and sat down. My second time capsule was waiting for me on the table across the room.

"There you are, Louise," said the BC. "I see you made it."

"In a punctual manner of speaking."

"Would you like to open it now?"

"is it time?"

"Close enough."

So I went to the table and took the shiny metal rectangle from the remains of the metal brick. Once again, it was in my handwriting.

No jokes this time, Louise. There is a way; all is not lost. Sherman is telling the truth. Do exactly what he says, no matter who tells you different. I'll talk to you again on the last day.

The message hadn't said anything about hurrying. It's a good thing; I wasn't in the mood to hurry, and I'd resigned from the Gate Project. I hadn't told anybody, not that is mattered.

I went to a high place on the edge of the city and looked down at what was left.

It had been a hell of a city at one time. There were buildings out there dating back forty thousand years. The Fed was the biggest one.

Then there were the newer items. The Gate had been there for thousands of years, but the structures we'd built to house it were only six hundred years old. Next to it was the derelict field. Stretching off in the other direction were a hundred square miles of wimp vaults: low warehouses with a hundred million cubicles, one of which held my child.

On the third side of the Gate complex was the series of temporary geodesic domes -- they'd only been there two hundred years -- which we called the holding pens. What they held were about two hundred thousand sleeping human beings and ninetythree very confused Roman centurions who would soon be asleep themselves, if anybody was still there to handle the process.