He lumbered into the bathroom, washed away the strange wetness he found around his eyes. All through his career, he'd done his best to project an appearance of calm strength. It hadn't been hard: He was built like a tank, and he was naturally a low-blood-pressure type. There were a few cases that had made him nervous, but that had been reasonable, since bullets were flying. In police work, he'd seen a fair number of people crack up. For all the publicity given cases like the Kansas Incursion, most of the violence in his era was simple domestic stuff, folks driven around the bend by job or family pressures.

He smiled wryly at the face in the mirror. He had never imagined it could happen to him. The end of sleep was a walk down night paths now. He had a feeling things were going to get worse. Yet there was a part of him that was as analytical as always, that was following his morning dreams and daytime tension with surprised interest, taking notes at his own dismemberment.

Downstairs, Wil threw open the windows, let the morning sounds and smells drift in. He was damned if he'd let this funk paralyze him. Later in the day, Lu was coming over. They would talk about the weapons survey, and decide who to interview next. In the meantime, there was lots of work to do. Yel‚n was right about studying the high-techs' lives since the Extinction. In particular, he wanted to learn about Sanch‚z's aborted settlement.

He was barely started on this project when Juan Chanson dropped by. In person. "Wil, my boy! I was hoping we might have a chat."

Brierson let him in, wondering why the high-tech hadn't called ahead. Chanson strode quickly around the living room. As usual, he was energetic to the point of twitchiness. "'alas Spanol, Wil?" he said.

"S¡," Brierson replied without thinking; he could get by, anyway.

"Buen, " the archeologist continued in Spanolnegro. "I really get tired of English, you know. Never can get just the right word. I'll wager some people think me a fool because of it."

Wil nodded at the rush of words. In Spanolnegro, Chanson talked even faster than in English. It was an impressive-and nearly unintelligible-achievement.

Chanson stopped his nervous tour of the living room. He jerked a thumb at the ceiling. "I suppose our high-tech friends are taking in every word?"

"Uh, no. They're monitoring body function, but I would have to call for help before our words would be interpreted." And I asked Lu to make sure Yel‚n did no eavesdropping.

Chanson smiled knowingly. "So they tell you, no doubt." He placed a gray oblong on the table; a red light blinked at one end. "Now the promises are true. Whatever we say goes unrecorded." He waved for Brierson to be seated.

"We've talked about the Extinction, have we not?"

"S¡. " Several times.

Chanson waved his hand. "Of course. I talk to everybody about it. Yet how many believe? Fifty million years ago, the human race was murdered, Wil. Isn't that important to you?"

Brierson sat back. This would shoot the morning. "Juan, the Extinction is very important to me." Was it really? Wil had been shanghaied more than a century before it. To his heart, that was when Virginia and Anne and W. W. Jr. had died-even if the biographies said they lived into the twenty-third century. He had been shanghaied across a hundred thousand years; that was many times longer than all recorded history. Now he lived at fifty megayears. Even without the capital-e Extinction, this was so deep in the future that no one could expect the human race to still exist. "But most high-techs don't think there was an alien invasion. Alice Robinson said the race died out over the whole twenty-third century, and that there weren't signs of violence until very late. Besides, if there were an invasion, you'd think we'd have all sorts of refugees from the twenty-third. Instead we have nobody-except the last of you high-techs from 2201 and 2202."

Chanson sniffed, "The Robinsons are fools. They fit the facts to their rosy preconceptions. I've spent thousands of year! of my life piecing this together, Wil. I've mapped every square centimeter of Earth and Luna with every diagnostic known to man. Bil Sanch‚z did the same for the rest of the Solar System I've interviewed the rescued low-techs. Most of the high-tech think I'm a crank, I've so thoroughly abused their hospitality There's a lot I don't understand about the aliens-but there': a lot that I do. There are no refugees from the twenty-third because the invaders could jam bobble generators; they had some superpowerful version of the Wachendon suppressor The extermination was not like twentieth-century nuclear war over in a matter of weeks. I've dated the Norcross graffiti a 2230. Apparently, the aliens were using specifically antihuman weapons early in the war. On the other hand, the vanadium tape Billy Sanch‚z found on Charon appears to be from lat. in the century. It ties in with the new craters there and in the asteroids. At the end, the aliens dug out the deep resistance with nukes."

"I don't know, Juan. It's so far in the past now-how ca we prove or disprove anyone's theories? What's important is t, make sure our settlement succeeds and humanity has another chance."

Chanson leaned across the table, even more intense than before. "Exactly. But don't you see? The aliens had bobbler too. What destroyed civilization threatens to destroy us now

"After fifty million years? What could be the motive?"

"I don't know. There are limits to physical investigation, n matter how patient. But I think it was a close thing back in the twenty-third. The aliens pulled out all the stops at the end, are it was barely enough. After the war, they were very weak-perhaps on the edge of extinction themselves. They were gone from the Solar System for millions of years. But make no mistake, Wil. They have not forgotten us."

"You expect another invasion."

"That's what I've always feared, but I'm beginning to feel otherwise. There are too few of them; their game is steal now. They aim to divide and destroy. Marta's murder was only the beginning."

"What?"

Chanson flashed a quick, angry smile. "The game is not so academic now, is it, my boy? Think on it: With that murder, they crippled us. Marta was the brains behind the Korolev plan.

"You claim they're here among us? I should think you high-techs can monitor things coming into the system."

"Certainly, though the others don't bother. One of the safest places for long-term storage is on cometary orbits. Such bobbles return every hundred thousand years or so. Only I seem to realize that a few more return than go out. At least half my time has been spent building a surveillance net. Over the megayears I intercepted three coming in with substantial hyperbolic excess. Two came out of stasis in the inner Solar System, surrounded by my forces. They came out shooting, Wil."

"Did they use the super Wachendon suppressor?"

"No. I think their surviving equipment is scarcely better than ours. With my superior position, I managed to destroy both of them."

Wil looked at the little man with new respect. Like all the high-techs, he was a monomaniac; anyone who pursued one objective for centuries would be. His conclusions had been ridiculed by most of the others, yet he stuck by them and had done his best to protect the others from a threat only he could see. If Chanson was right... Wil's mouth was suddenly dry. He could see where this was leading. "What about the third one, Juan?" he said quietly.

Again that angry smile. "That one was much more recent, much more clever. It did a lookabout before I was in position. I was outmaneuvered. By the time I got back to Earth, it was already here, claiming to be human-claiming to be Della Lu, long-lost spacer. Your partner is a monster, my boy."

Wil tried not to think about the firepower that floated over their heads. "Is there any solid evidence? Della Lu was a real person.