With that, his followers swiftly departed. Cotton gave one last look back at the doorway and made an almost apologetic shrug before exiting.

Grady was momentarily puzzled by Cotton’s parting gesture, but one glance at the sputtering fuse got him struggling against his ropes once more. They only bit tighter into his wrists.

Marrano quietly wept beside him. “Not this. Not this.”

Alcot’s weary voice spoke: “It won’t help, Jon.”

Grady looked up at the fuse and realized just how short it was. Barely a foot or so remaining unless there was more to it than he could see. It was impossible to say how much time they had—so no reason to give up yet. “Bert. Can you get your hands free?”

Alcot shook his head sadly. “I’m sorry you won’t get to enjoy this triumph.”

“We’ll get out of here. Hang on,” Grady shouted. “Can anyone get a hand free?”

Lum’s frightened voice came from the other side. “No. I’m trapped, Jon.”

“Me, too!”

“Christ! Does anyone have a Swiss Army knife or something? How about a phone?”

Johnson’s voice could be heard from the far side. “They took everything . . .”

The prisoners sat in silence for a few moments, listening to the fuse hiss.

Alcot laughed ruefully. “We really did do it, though. Didn’t we, Jon? We took a peek behind the curtain of the universe.”

“Yes. Yes, we did.” Grady nodded as he scoured his field of view for some means of escape.

“We probably would have won the Nobel Prize. Now someone else will discover this someday . . .” Alcot looked up at Grady again. “At least we know we were first.”

Grady nodded. The burning fuse neared the top of a barrel. If that was all the fuse there was, it wouldn’t be long. Just seconds left.

“Jon?”

“Yes, Bert?”

“Good-bye.”

“Good-bye, Bert.”

The fuse disappeared into the barrel, and a white light enveloped Grady.

He felt nothing more.

CHAPTER 3

Postmortem

Jon Grady became aware that he was sitting in a stylish, modern office lobby high atop an unfamiliar city skyline. The view out the window was spectacular. Modern skyscrapers stretched along a coastal plain. It was a beautiful day.

What the hell?

Grady turned to see that he was sitting in a row of empty, modernist chairs in some sort of waiting room. He was wearing his only suit, loafers, and his lucky tie—the fabric a print of helium atoms. He caught his reflection in a mirrored wall opposite. It was the same outfit he’d been wearing three years earlier when he’d been interviewed for a research grant—in other words, the last time he’d worn a suit. Libby had helped him pick it out. Helped him look normal. His hair, too, was cut short, and he was clean-shaven.

Grady searched his pockets and found only a note on which Libby’s clean script spelled out “Good luck!

What the hell?

A handsome young man sitting behind a nearby built-in reception desk nodded to him. “Mr. Hedrick will see you now, Mr. Grady.”

Grady turned uncertainly. Social convention required that he get up now. Instead, he held up a pausing finger. “Uh . . . hang on a second.”

“Can I get you some water or coffee?”

Grady took a calming breath. “No, thanks. It’s just that . . . I was just . . .” He considered the possible scientific explanations. He had no idea how he’d gotten here. Just moments ago he’d been strapped to a bomb. Was this a hallucination? A last hurrah from the dying neurons in his brain? Time was relative, after all. This might all be happening in the instant he experienced biological death.

He looked around. It seemed pretty convincing.

“Are you all right, Mr. Grady?”

He wasn’t exactly certain. “I think I might be dying, actually.”

“Excuse me?”

Grady took another deep breath. “Who am I here to see?”

“Mr. Hedrick, sir. I’ll buzz you in.”

The assistant tapped some unseen button, and a nearby set of double doors opened, revealing a huge and opulent office suite beyond.

“Go right in.” The young man smiled pleasantly. “I’ll have some water brought to you.”

Grady nodded as he rose to his feet. “Thanks.” With another deep breath, he wandered over to the doorway and entered the most lavish office he’d ever seen. The multistory bank of windows on the far wall had a breathtaking view, through which he could clearly see the Sears Tower—or Willis Tower or whatever the hell they called it nowadays. Chicago. He was in Chicago. He remembered that he’d met with a grant committee in Chicago years before. But not in a place like this.

The office he stood in could have easily served as a small aircraft hangar, with several closed doors leading out of it to either side. Thirty-foot ceilings and modern burled wood walls—one of which had a large round seal engraved into it depicting a silhouette of a human head with a tree branching within like dendrites in the human brain. Arching around the top edge were the letters “BTC” and rounding the bottom were the Latin words “scientia potentia est.”

Knowledge is power.

Just below the seal a well-groomed and handsome Caucasian man in his fifties stood behind a large, modernist desk dotted with exotic souvenirs—complex Victorian clocks, mechanical contraptions, elaborate sculptures hinting at biological origins, and oversize double-helix DNA strands sealed in glass. The man was dressed in pressed casual business attire. Massive translucent digital displays were arrayed above and behind him, projecting a riot of silent video imagery and digital maps of the world. The displays looked impossibly thin and the images on them vibrant, hyperrealistic.

The man motioned for his visitor to come forward. “Mr. Grady, it’s good to finally meet you. I’ve read so much about your life and work. I feel I know you. Please sit. Can we get you anything?”

Grady still stood twenty feet away. “Uh. I’m . . . I’m just trying to understand what’s going on.”

The man nodded. “It can be disorienting, I know.”

“Who . . . who are you again? Why am I here?”

“My name is Graham Hedrick. I’m the director of the Federal Bureau of Technology Control. I must congratulate you, Jon—may I call you Jon?”

Grady nodded absently. “Sure. I . . . Hold it. The Federal Bureau of what now?”

“The Federal Bureau of Technology Control. We’ve been monitoring your work with great interest. Antigravity. Now that is a tremendous achievement. One might say a singular achievement. Likely the most important innovation of modern times. You have every reason to be proud.”

A male voice spoke just to his right, startling him. “Your water, Mr. Grady.”

Grady turned to see a humanoid robot standing next to him—a graceful creature with soft, rubber-coated fingers whose body was clad in a carapace of white plastic. Its face consisted only of beautiful tourmaline eyes glowing softly. Looking at him expectantly.

Grady glanced down to see a glass of water in its hand. “Uh . . .” He gingerly accepted the water and held it with increasing numbness.

Hedrick watched him closely. “You really should sit down, Jon. You don’t look well.”

Grady nodded and moved toward a chair in front of the great desk.

The machine stepped aside with the grace of a puma. “Be careful of the step, sir.”

“Thanks.” The moment he sat down Grady started gulping water, glancing around nervously.

Hedrick motioned for calm. “Slowly. I know it can be quite a shock. We would have applied a sedative, but it’s important you have full command of your faculties for this conversation.”

Grady finished the water and took deep breaths. “Where am I? What the hell’s happening?”