"I beg your pardon?" This was from Claire, who had just entered the room.

"What I'm trying to say," said Scott, "is that the old days were different. Whatever you bought, it went up. People said they didn't need the advice of the pros. Because they always made money. But that's not true anymore. You need an expert now-"

"I'm sure," said Mariel, "everybody knows that, Dad." She turned to her guests. "Are you two hungry? Can I get you something to eat?"

"Thank you," said Archie, "we ate lunch on the road." He was admiring the furnishings. The room was done in oak and leather. One wingback chair had come from Pine River. Another original oil painting, people on a hillside beneath threatening skies, hung over the mantel.

"It's by Tollinger," Mariel said, apparently expecting him to recognize the name.

Archie nodded as if he wondered how he could have missed the fact.

Claire had been circling the piece, and now she closed in on it. "It's the Coeur deVivre" she said, startled.

"Yes," said Mariel.

Archie understood from Claire's sudden breathlessness that the painting was worth quite a lot. "Scott," he said, "what do you like on the market right now?" Moonbase, Chaplain's Quarters. 2:26 P.M.

"Chaplain? This is Jack Chandler. I wanted you to know that we've got a bus coming back for us. We're going to make a run for it."

"Thank God."

"To be honest, I'm not all that optimistic. But it's a chance."

"Yes. Anything's better than sitting here."

"But Evelyn thought it would be a good idea if we tackled the evening with a full stomach. We're planning a dinner. Will you come?"

"Certainly."

"Good. Excellent. We'll eat, have a few drinks, if that's agreeable. And then we'll go over to the Spaceport."

"Okay."

"Six-thirty."

Right. Very British, that. Tea and lamb chops on the eve of disaster. "I'll be there," he said.

Distributed to participating networks via Pool Agreement.

"This is Keith Morley reporting live from Moonbase, where Comet Tomiko is now very large in the eastern sky, and where the vice president of the United States has announced that he is holding fast to his intention to "lock the door and turn out the lights." Drama is building as the comet approaches. It's due here in a few hours. According to Jack Chandler, the director of Moonbase, the last scheduled flight will depart at six-thirty P.M., leaving behind the vice president and several others, who will try to return to Skyport by microbus.

"But the bus that will carry Haskell and six other people will barely be off the surface before the comet hits. Operations people here are not confident the vehicle can survive the blast that is expected at impact. Bruce, I'll be staying with this story, and we'll just have to see how it plays out.

"This is Keith Morley at Moonbase." SSTO Rome Passenger Cabin. 2:33 P.M.

They were about an hour and a half from departure out of lunar orbit. Rick Hailey had been watching Earth set while a moonbus approached. He bit into a tuna sandwich and turned his attention to the bus as it drew alongside. It cruised in tandem for a few minutes, a large black sphere with the pilot's blister at the top. The buses looked clumsy on the ground, but in flight they had their own special grace.

Light spilled out of the windows and he could see people moving inside. It drifted gradually closer, passing beyond his window's angle of view. Then the pilot announced that docking was imminent. "Please remain in your seat," he asked, "until we get the incoming passengers settled."

Rick felt the shudder that marked the moment of contact, heard hatches open, heard voices, and watched the new arrivals begin to file into the cabin, coming through the main airlock.

There were no flight attendants to help. Instead, at the captain's request, a dozen or so passengers had volunteered to act in that capacity and had been issued white armbands and given a crash course by the flight engineer in kitchen capabilities and whatnot. Now this group squired the newcomers to the bloc of seats reserved for them.

They were quiet, subdued, obviously happy to be at last on the plane. Slade Elliott was among them. Elliott, whose career, like Charlie's, depended on image, also knew enough not to take the first stage out of town. He'd hung on until near the end. But you didn't see him getting caught up in the general crash. He was Rick's kind of guy. And with the action hero on board, the man who'd escaped a thousand dangers, Rick felt safer.

Outside, the comet was rising, a great orange spume against the black sky. He looked at it and thought about the vice president. Charlie Haskell was going to die out there, and Rick wished he could prevent it. He knew there was a lesson to be learned here, but he hadn't quite sorted out in his own mind precisely what it was.

Charlie was genuinely likable. But the poor son of a bitch had been booby-trapped by events. Rick knew that when the time came to publish his memoirs, the loss of Charlie Haskell would be one of the more compelling chapters.

His own political career was now in dire jeopardy as well. None of the other candidates was likely to take him on. He'd had to burn a few bridges and he was now Haskell's guy. Some would even be inclined to believe Charlie's "turn out the lights" remark had been Rick's idea.

Rick wouldn't object to going to work for the other party if someone were to make the right offer. It was a pity really. You don't get many shots at the White House. And it was all gone. Blown out of the water just like that.

And Haskell's sacrifice was probably unnecessary. The voters have a short memory, Charlie. He wondered whether the vice president had even stopped to consider how much damage he was doing to his friends. Still, the road to the presidency seemed to run right through Moonbase. Right through the heart of that goddam comet.

More hatches closed somewhere in the bowels of the plane.

Rick pulled down the shade.

Distributed to participating networks via Pool Agreement.

"This is Tashi Yomiuri coming to you live from lunar orbit. I'm in one of the space planes, the SSTO Rome, and we're taking our last passengers on board now before we start back for Earth. The comet is about eight million miles away, coming toward us at almost a million miles an hour.

"We've been orbiting the Moon three times a day at a height of about three thousand kilometers. Which means we see the comet rise and set every eight hours. We've been able to watch it grow.

"The mood on the spacecraft is somber. People are frightened, and they'll be very glad to be on their way."

Excerpt of Commentary by Melinda Bright.

"People speculate about how far the comet has come, how old it is, why it's traveling so fast. We've heard astronomers suggest that it might have been blown out of a supernova, and that if it was, the supernova must have happened millions, or perhaps billions, of years ago.

"If that's true, this thing has had the Moon's number for a long time. I remember as a little girl sitting in our backyard in Kentucky, watching the Moon from my swing, and thinking how long it had been in the sky, and how it would be there forever. Now we know that's not so. The comet's been on its way possibly since the first humans climbed down out of the trees, and this day was marked on some cosmic calendar with all the inevitability of a quadratic equation. We've been congratulating ourselves that the comet's going to hit the Moon and not the Earth. And I agree that's reason to feel fortunate.