And so, he thought, thrusting his hands into his pockets and walking faster, had he. Maybe Ichino was right, with his talk of retirement. Nigel knew he probably shouldn’t let himself be so influenced by another’s thinking—Ichino was nine years older, after all, with a different perspective—but the two of them had spent so much time together these last years, after the Snark business. They’d worked together on elaborate computer codes, trying to get a response from the retreating Snark. Long after NASA had given up they’d continued, Nigel certain that if Snark knew it was talking to him personally it might open up, answer. But hopes faded, time blurred…

These moods had come on him more often of late, memories snagging in the brain and refusing to let go. He was damned if he was going to start living in the past, yet in the present he’d lost all momentum. He was drifting, he knew. Even the most intense moments—Icarus, the last weeks with Alexandria, the scorched days of possession in the desert—blurred. It was no use whatever to say: Remember the consuming strangeness, the heady experience. Because those dead years dwindled, the walls that encased them thinned and let in a pale light from the present. Whatever he’d sought became misty.

He shrugged, shrouded in his thoughts. As he was turning a corner something caught his eye.

The sky flickered. He looked north. Above the University buildings and the Berkeley hills a dull yellowish glow seeped through a stacked cloud formation, as though something vastly brighter were illuminating them from behind. Nigel stopped and studied it. In a moment the effect faded. The phenomenon was silent and seemed to possess a kind of ponderous swelling pressure; he felt a sense of unease. He studied the sky. There was nothing else unusual, only a flat vacant blue. A crescent moon hung in the haze and smog above San Francisco.

Commercial satellite 64A, nicknamed High Smelter, happened to see it first. Its orbit, 314 kilometers up, took it over the Pacific north woods. From this height—a mere hair’s width, on an astronomical scale—the earth is a swirl of white clouds, masking mottled brown continents and twinkling oceans. There are no traces of man. No checkerboard farmlands, no highways or cities. They are invisible on this scale.

But the core fuser crew on duty in High Smelter saw the orange egg born in the woods quite clearly. It began as a fat, bright flare. The mottled egg billowed up and out, a scarlet searing wall that boiled away the forest. The blister swelled, orange cooling to red. Cloud decks evaporated before it. The egg fattened into a sphere and at last the chilling signature appeared: a mushroom, vast and smoky. Flames licked at his base. A deep rumble rolled over the forest. On the ground, animals fled and men turned to stare, unbelieving.

The scene played itself out for her again. That afternoon she and Toshi had played sanshi, as usual, then quick showers and a drink in a small café nearby. But this time Alicia was waiting for them in the bar and as Nikka looked on she and Toshi unraveled their story of deception, intrigue, snickering assignations in friends’ apartments, all covered with a thin veneer of professed love, it’s-all-for-the-best-Nikka, we’re-all-adults-here, it’s not really the sexual thing at all, you understand, and on and on and on. She came home afterward and carefully, neatly put away her sanshi racket and clothes. She took another shower. She drank something warm and alcoholic, she couldn’t remember quite what. Then she thought she would lie down for a moment and she remembered well the sensation of falling onto the bed, of an absolute limitless time involved in the downward flowing toward it, of descending, of seeming to take forever. The falling, that was how she remembered Toshi. That was the end of it, the injured center of the self plunging down to absolute dark oblivion. She had stayed there three days, never getting out even for food or the doorbell or the telephone, sure she was sick, sure she was dying, hating herself for never saying anything in the bar, always being silent and pleasant and smiling. Nodding when they said it all, nodding, understanding, and all the time falling helplessly backward into that swirling black, falling—

“Alphonsus calling Nikka Amajhi. Alphonsus…” Slowly she came out of it. The cobwebs of memory faded. She shook her head. Her leg throbbed and she moved it reflexively, which made it hurt more. She looked down at it and saw a sheared strut jammed against her thigh. The porous elastic mesh of the skinsuit was intact, though, so she probably only had a bad bruise. She fumbled—and the radio monitoring light went on with a reassuring glow.

“Nikka here. I’m down at”—she read the coordinates—“from unknown causes. Something blew the back off my sled.”

“Injuries?”

“Don’t think so.”

“We got your Mayday some minutes ago. There’s no sled near there, but another survey craft has just changed course to reach you. It’s pretty close and I think it can be there in a short while.”

Nikka noticed something on the dash and suddenly froze. “Hold on. I’m checking something.” She worked quickly and silently for several minutes, unbuckled herself from the pilot’s couch and awkwardly, favoring her leg, climbed halfway down the sled to check connections. In a few moments more she was back in the couch.

“I hope that survey craft hurries up.”

“Why? What’s wrong?”

“I just checked my oxygen reserve. I have about fifty-six minutes.”

“Is that your emergency bottle? What happened to the rest?”

“It wasn’t a very soft touchdown. My wheels blew and the front end pranged.”

“Better check the front.” The voice from Alphonsus had suddenly acquired an edge.

She got down, taking the general purpose tool with her, and worked on the front of the sled for several moments. It was a mass of twisted metal and wire. Nikka could slip her fingers to within a foot of the oxygen bottles there, but no further. Her skinsuit gave her good manual dexterity and she knew she could probably worm a few fingers closer to one of the bottles, but at that angle she still could not remove the seal. Most of the bottles had ruptured on impact but two still might have positive pressure. For several more moments she pried at the front of the sled, rested a moment and then tried again. Nothing moved.

“Alphonsus.”

“Right. One oh five should be there within ten minutes.”

“Good, I’ll need it. I was running on direct air lines from the bottle in front. The line vacced just after landing—the cylinder I was using ruptured. I guess I blacked out. My console switched my line to the emergency bottle behind the couch and I’m running on that. The forward bottles are pinned in by tubing and the bumper. The nose is completely folded back over.” Nikka looked up at the sky. “I should be able to see that—”

There was a brilliant, soundless flash. Something came out of the coppery dome on the hillside and arced away. Above the distant horizon there was a sudden yellow explosion, a ball that thinned and disappeared in a few seconds. “Something—” Nikka began.

“We’ve lost the survey craft, one oh five. Their carrier is gone.” There followed a babble of voices that went on for several minutes. Nikka stood silently looking at the great dome about three hundred meters away. It was immense, definitely artificial, a dull crushed ball clinging to the hillside. The sudden flash seemed to have come from somewhere at the base.

It was several minutes before Alphonsus spoke again. “I’m afraid something has—”

“Never mind, I know. I saw it happen. That ship is gone.” She described the dome. “I saw it shoot at something over near the horizon, around coordinates”—she estimated the numbers and gave them—“and it made a hit. That must be what blew the back off my sled. The people in the one oh five weren’t so lucky.”