3

The duty roster was ripped into three dozen narrow strips and the langoliers were closer now.

Craig could feel their approach at the back of his mind — more weight.

More insupportable weight.

It was time to go.

He picked up the gun and his briefcase, then stood up and left the security room. He walked slowly, rehearsing as he went: I don’t want to shoot you, but I will if I have to. Take me to Boston. I don’t want to shoot you, but I will if I have to. Take me to Boston.

“I will if I have to,” Craig muttered as he walked back into the waiting room. “I will if I have to.” His finger found the hammer of the gun and cocked it back.

Halfway across the room, his attention was once more snared by the pallid light which fell through the windows, and he turned in that direction. He could feel them out there. The langoliers. They had eaten all the useless, lazy people, and now they were returning for him. He had to get to Boston. It was the only way he knew to save the rest of himself... because their death would be horrible. Their death would be horrible indeed.

He walked slowly to the windows and looked out, ignoring — at least for the time being — the murmur of the other passengers behind him.

4

Bob Jenkins poured a little from each bottle into its own glass. The contents of each was as flat as the first beer had been. “Are you convinced?” he asked Nick.

“Yes,” Nick said. “If you know what’s going on here, mate, spill it. Please spill it.”

“I have an idea,” Bob said. “It’s not... I’m afraid it’s not very comforting, but I’m one of those people who believe that knowledge is always better — safer — in the long run than ignorance, no matter how dismayed one may feel when one first understands certain facts. Does that make any sense?”

“No,” Gaffney said at once.

Bob shrugged and offered a small, wry smile. “Be that as it may, I stand by my statement. And before I say anything else, I want to ask you all to look around this place and tell me what you see.”

They looked around, concentrating so fiercely on the little clusters of tables and chairs that no one noticed Craig Toomy standing on the far side of the waiting room, his back to them, gazing out at the tarmac.

“Nothing,” Laurel said at last. “I’m sorry, but I don’t see anything. Your eyes must be sharper than mine, Mr Jenkins.”

“Not a bit. I see what you see: nothing. But airports are open twenty-four hours a day. When this thing — this Event — happened, it was probably at the dead low tide of its twenty-four-hour cycle, but I find it difficult to believe there weren’t at least a few people in here, drinking coffee and perhaps eating early breakfasts. Aircraft maintenance men. Airport personnel. Perhaps a handful of connecting passengers who elected to save money by spending the hours between midnight and six or seven o’clock in the terminal instead of in a nearby motel. When I first got off that baggage conveyor and looked around, I felt utterly dislocated. Why? Because airports are never completely deserted, just as police and fire stations are never completely deserted. Now look around again, and ask yourself this: where are the half-eaten meals, the half-empty glasses? Remember the drinks trolley on the airplane with the dirty glasses on the lower shelf? Remember the half-eaten pastry and the half-drunk cup of coffee beside the pilot’s seat in the cockpit? There’s nothing like that here. Where is the least sign that there were people here at all when this Event occurred?”

Albert looked around again and then said slowly, “There’s no pipe on the foredeck, is there?”

Bob looked at him closely. “What? What do you say, Albert?”

“When we were on the plane,” Albert said slowly, “I was thinking of this sailing ship I read about once. It was called the Mary Celeste, and someone spotted it, just floating aimlessly along. Well... not really floating, I guess, because the book said the sails were set, but when the people who found it boarded her, everyone on the Mary Celeste was gone. Their stuff was still there, though, and there was food cooking on the stove. Someone even found a pipe on the foredeck. It was still lit.”

“Bravo!” Bob cried, almost feverishly. They were all looking at him now, and no one saw Craig Toomy walking slowly toward them. The gun he had found was no longer pointed at the floor.

“Bravo, Albert! You’ve put your finger on it! And there was another famous disappearance — an entire colony of settlers at a place called Roanoke Island... off the coast of North Carolina, I believe. All gone, but they had left remains of campfires, cluttered houses, and trash middens behind. Now, Albert, take this a step further. How else does this terminal differ from our airplane?”

For a moment Albert looked entirely blank, and then understanding dawned in his eyes. “The rings!” he shouted. “The purses! The wallets! The money! The surgical pins! None of that stuff is here!”

“Correct,” Bob said softly. “One hundred per cent correct. As you say, none of that stuff is here. But it was on the airplane when we survivors woke up, wasn’t it? There were even a cup of coffee and a half-eaten Danish in the cockpit. The equivalent of a smoking pipe on the foredeck.”

“You think we’ve flown into another dimension, don’t you?” Albert said. His voice was awed. “Just like in a science-fiction story.”

Dinah’s head cocked to one side, and for a moment she looked strikingly like Nipper, the dog on the old RCA Victor labels.

“No,” Bob said, “I think—”

“Watch out!” Dinah cried sharply. “I hear some—”

She was too late. Once Craig Toomy broke the paralysis which had held him and he started to move, he moved fast. Before Nick or Brian could do more than begin to turn around, he had locked one forearm around Bethany’s throat and was dragging her backward. He pointed the gun at her temple. The girl uttered a desperate, terrorized squawk.

“I don’t want to shoot her, but I will if I have to,” Craig panted. “Take me to Boston.” His eyes were no longer blank; they shot glances full of terrified, paranoid intelligence in every direction. “Do you hear me? Take me to Boston!”

Brian started toward him, and Nick placed a hand against his chest without shifting his eyes away from Craig. “Steady down, mate,” he said in a low voice. “It wouldn’t be safe. Our friend here is quite bonkers.”

Bethany was squirming under Craig’s restraining forearm. “You’re choking me! Please stop choking me.”

“What’s happening?” Dinah cried. “What is it?”

“Stop that!” Craig shouted at Bethany. “Stop moving around! You’re going to force me to do something I don’t want to do!” He pressed the muzzle of the gun against the side of her head. She continued to struggle, and Albert suddenly realized she didn’t know he had a gun — even with it pressed against her skull she didn’t know.

“Quit it, girl!” Nick said sharply. “Quit fighting!”

For the first time in his waking life, Albert found himself not just thinking like The Arizona Jew but possibly called upon to act like that fabled character. Without taking his eyes off the lunatic in the crew-neck jersey, he slowly began to raise his violin case. He switched his grip from the handle and settled both hands around the neck of the case. Toomy was not looking at him; his eyes were shuttling rapidly back and forth between Brian and Nick, and he had his hands full — quite literally — holding onto Bethany.

“I don’t want to shoot her—” Craig was beginning again, and then his arm slipped upward as the girl bucked against him, socking her behind into his crotch. Bethany immediately sank her teeth into his wrist. “Ow!” Craig screamed. “owww!”

His grip loosened. Bethany ducked under it. Albert leaped forward, raising the violin case, as Toomy pointed the gun at Bethany. Toomy’s face was screwed into a grimace of pain and anger.