The boy raised his weapon. Except for its elaborate telescopic sight and chopped barrel, it looked pretty ordinary to Wili: a typical New Mexico autorifle, heavy and simple. The clip probably carried ten 8-mm rounds. With the barrel cut down, it wouldn't be much more accurate than a pistol. Wili had successfully dodged such fire from a distance of one hundred meters. Jeremy patted the rifle, apparently ignorant of all this, "Really hot stuff, sir. It's smart."

"And the ammunition?"

"That too. One clip anyway"

Naismith smiled a jagged smile. "'Kolya really coddles you youngsters-but I'm glad of it. Okay," he seemed to reach a decision, "it's going to depend on you, Jeremy. I didn't bring anything that heavy.... An hour walk from here is a trail that goes south. We should be able to reach it by twilight. A half hour along that path is a bobble. I know there's a clear line of sight from there to your farm. And the bobble should confuse our `friends,' assuming they aren't familiar with the land this close to the coast.

New surprise showed on Jeremy's face. "Sure. We know about that bobble, but how did you? It's real small."

"Never you mind. I go for hikes, too. Let's just hope they let us get there."

They proceeded down the road, even Jeremy's tongue momentarily stilled. The sun was straight ahead. It would set behind Vandenberg. Its reflection in the Dome edged higher and higher, as if to touch the true sun at the moment of sunset. The air was warmer and the green of the trees more intense than in any normal sunset. Wili could hear no evidence of the men his friends said were pursuing.

Finally the two suns kissed. The true disk slipped behind the Dome into eclipse. For several minutes, Wili thought he saw a ghostly light hanging over the Dome above the point of the sun's setting.

"I've noticed that, too," Naismith replied to Wili's unspoken question. "I think it's the corona, the glow around the sun that's ordinarily invisible. That's the only explanation I can think of, anyway."

The pale light slowly disappeared, leaving a sky that went from orange to green to deepest blue. Naismith urged Berta to a slightly faster walk and the two boys swung onto the back of the cart. Jeremy slipped a new clip into his rifle and settled down to cover the road.

Finally they reached the cutoff. The path was as small as any Jeremy had pointed to during the day, too narrow for the cart. Naismith carefully climbed down and unhitched Berta, then distributed various pieces of equipment to the boys.

"Come on. I've left enough on the cart to satisfy them... I hope." They set off southward with Berta. The trail narrowed till Wili wondered if Paul was lost. Far behind them, he heard an occasional branch snap, and now even the sound of voices. He and Jeremy looked at each other. "They're loud enough," the boy muttered. Naismith didn't say anything, just switched Berta to move a bit faster. If the bandits weren't satisfied with the wagon, the three of them would have to make a stand, and evidently he wanted that to be further on.

The sounds of their pursuers were louder now, surely past the wagon. Paul guided Berta to the side. For a moment the horse looked back at them stupidly. Then Naismith seemed to say something in its ear and the animal moved off quickly into the shadows. It was still not really dark. Wili thought he could see green in the treetops, and the sky held only a few bright stars.

They headed into a deep and narrow ravine, an apparent cul-de-sac. Wili looked ahead and saw - three figures coming toward them out of a brightly lit tunnel! He bolted up the side of the ravine, but Jeremy grabbed his jacket and pointed silently toward the strange figures: Now one of them was holding another and pointing. Reflections. That's what he was seeing. Down there at the back of the ravine, a giant curved mirror showed Jeremy and Naismith and himself silhouetted against the evening sky.

Very quietly, they slid down through the underbrush to the base of the mirror, then began climbing around its sides. Wili couldn't resist: Here at last was a bobble. It was much smaller than Vandenberg, but a bobble nevertheless. He paused and reached out to touch the silvery surface - then snatched his hand back in shock. Even in the cool evening air, the mirror was warm as blood. He peered closer, saw the dark image of his head swell before him. There was not a nick, not a scratch in that surface. Up close, it was as perfect as Vandenberg appeared from a distance, as transcendentally perfect as mathematics itself. Then Jeremy's hand closed again on his jacket and he was dragged upward around the sphere.

The forest floor was level with the top. A large tree grew at the edge of the soil, its roots almost like tentacles around the top of the sphere. Wili hunkered down between the roots and looked back along the ravine. Naismith watched a dim display while Jeremy slid forward and panned the approaches through his rifle sight. From their vantage Wili could see that the ravine was an elongated crater, with the bobble - which was about thirty meters across - forming the south end. The history seemed obvious: Somehow, this bobble had fallen out of the sky, carving a groove in the hills before finally coming to rest. The trees above it had grown in the decades since the War. Given another century, the sphere might be completely buried.

For a moment they sat breathless. A cicada started buzz-ing, the noise so loud he wondered if they would even hear their pursuers. "They may not fall for this," Naismith spoke almost to himself. 'Jeremy, I want you to scatter these around behind us as far as you can in five minutes." He handed the boy something, probably tiny cameras like those around the manor. Jeremy hesitated, and Naismith said, "Don't worry, we won't be needing your rifle for at least that long. If they try to come up behind us, I want to know about it."

The vague shadow that was Jeremy Kaladze nodded and crawled off into the darkness. Naismith turned to Wili and pressed a coherent transmitter into his hands. "Try to get this as far up as you can." He gestured at the conifer among whose roots they crouched.

Wili moved out more quietly than the other boy. This had been Wili's specialty, though in the Los Angeles Basin there were more ruins than forests. The muck of the forest floor quickly soaked his legs and sleeves, but he kept close to the ground. As he oozed up to the base of the tree, he struck his knee against something hard and artificial. He stopped and felt out the obstacle: an ancient stone cross, a Christian cemetery cross really. Something limp and fragrant lay in the needle mulch beside it-flowers?

Then he was climbing swiftly up the tree. The branches were so regularly spaced they might as well have been stair steps. He was soon out of breath. He was just out of condi-tion; at least he hoped that was the explanation.

The tree trunk narrowed and began to sway in response to his movement. He was above the nearby trees, pointed, dark forms all around him. He was really not very high up; almost all the trees in the rain forest were young.

Jupiter and Venus blazed like lanterns, and the stars were out. Only a faint yellow glow showed over Vandenberg and the western horizon. He could see all the way to the base of the Dome; this was high enough. Wili fastened the emitter so it would have a clear line of sight to the west. Then he paused a moment, letting the evening breeze turn his pants and sleeves cold on his skin. There were no lights anywhere. Help was very far away.

They would have to depend on Naismith's gadgets and Jeremy's inexperienced trigger finger.

He almost slid down the tree and was back at Naismith's side soon after that. The old man scarcely seemed to notice his arrival, so intent was he on the little display. "Jeremy?" Wili whispered.

"He's okay. Still laying out the cameras." Paul was looking through first one and then another of the little devices. The pictures were terribly faint, but recognizable. Wili wondered 'how long the batteries would last. "Fact is, our friends are coming in along the path we left for them." In the display, evidently from some camera Paul had dropped along the way, Wili could see an occasional booted foot.