"Can we get moving?" asked Tony.

"Almost done," said Bigfoot.

At ten twenty-six, the liquid oxygen tank reached full and the pump shut off. Bigfoot disconnected, and threw the umbilical aside. Saber decided she had enough power, and broke her line loose and dropped it.

"Get inside," Bigfoot said. "I'll be with you in a minute."

"Why don't we call it a tankful and clear out?"

Yeah. What the hell.

She started for the cargo hatch while Bigfoot shut down, jerked the umbilical out of the fuel receptacle, capped it, and closed and secured the latch. He lobbed the line as far as he could, which in lunar gravity was a substantial distance. Then he was right behind Saber, dashing for the open hatch while she told Tony that refueling was complete. They'd cut it a little short in the interests of time, she said, but he shouldn't start the engine yet. She was scrambling into the cargo deck airlock and simultaneously extending a hand to Bigfoot. "We're inside," she told Tony. "Go!" Bigfoot stabbed at the control panel and the outer hatch swung shut. Oxygen poured into the chamber. The engine lit and the bus trembled.

The inner hatch opened. Saber popped through and dashed across the hold, removing her helmet as she went. She was quite agile in low-g footwork and she left Bigfoot far behind.

She swung up the ladder and erupted into the passenger cabin, still carrying her helmet. The Micro began to rise.

Bigfoot meantime had closed and sealed the airlock. Then he tried to follow Saber into the passenger cabin, but the bus was moving quickly now and his weight was increasing. He struggled halfway up the ladder, realized he couldn't make it, and concluded his sole mission was to close the hatch between decks. He caught a last glimpse of Saber moving monkey-style up toward the cockpit as he pulled the hatch shut and secured it. Then he retreated back down the ladder.

They were on their way. Moonbase Spaceport. 10:24 P.M.

Viewers around the world watched the scene in Bay Four through Keith Morley's camera as Saber flung her umbilical away and dashed for the open hatch. Then Bigfoot appeared in the picture, moving with deliberation through the light gravity, throwing himself up and into the airlock. Saber helped drag him inside. And the hatch closed.

Morley was still speaking in a voice-over, describing the passengers' coolness, admitting his own tensions. Later, many viewers would wonder how he'd managed not to get on the nerves of the others, especially during that final countdown, whispering in his coolly dramatic tone, "six minutes to impact, five minutes," and so on.

Occasionally the image switched to the comet, captured by a range of instruments on the ground and in space. Several had been placed at ground zero at Mare Muscoviense, where they looked directly up at the oncoming monster. In the lower right corner, a clock ticked off the remaining time.

News media estimates indicated that 3.6 billion people saw the first wisp of smoke from the main engine just before it roared into life. That number made it the third most watched telecast ever, behind Super Bowls LXX and LXXII.

The blast from the main engine blanked the screens. But Morley plowed smoothly ahead: "I see we've lost our picture. Bruce, from this point on we're going to have to rely on audio…"

Transglobal went to a split screen, matching a live image of the comet with a photo of Keith Morley in a tropical shirt and a Panama hat, taken during the Rio conference in January.

"We're clear of the terminal, picking up speed. You can hear the roar of the engine." (Pause.) "I should tell you, by the way, that we've switched over to internal relay so we won't lose the audio signal no matter what happens at Moonbase.

"It's becoming a little hard to talk. I'm getting pushed into my seat. My weight's come back, but I feel as if I weigh an extra hundred pounds or so. The sky's different from the way it looked when I came last week. It's lit up.

"I can't see the pilot. The door to the flight deck is closed. Saber Rolnikaya came through here from the cargo deck minutes ago and went up to the cockpit. She was wearing a p-suit and carrying her helmet, which she handed to me. I'm going to hang on to it as a souvenir of the occasion.

"However this turns out, everyone should be aware, Bruce, that this is a group of very special people. You can't see any of them anymore, but they're hanging on pretty well. I don't know what's running through their minds right now, but I can tell you what's running through mine. I'm scared." AstroLab. 10:33 P.M.

Feinberg had gone to the AstroLab, where he watched the approach from the operations room. A dozen monitors displayed magnetic fluctuations, relative velocity, comet brightness, spectrum analysis. The Farside observatory had used its chemical oxygen iodine laser to vaporize a small section of Tomiko. The analysis showed slight but significant amounts of titanium and aluminum. What kind of comet carried processed metals?

"I really wonder about it," Feinberg told an assistant whom he trusted not to quote him. "We might be suffering a loss of monumental proportions."

The assistant understood he was not talking about the Moon. Or the hazards from falling rock. She nodded.

"I wish we could have got a closer look," Feinberg continued. "Landed on it. Dug it up."

"It's moving too fast," she said. "Even if it were just passing through, we could never have caught up with it."

Feinberg stared at Tomiko's image in the displays. What are you?

Tomiko had lost a substantial fraction of its initially observed velocity. But it was still running with the solar wind at almost twenty-four thousand kilometers per minute. Halfway around Earth in thirty seconds.

Astronomers were still trying to account for the velocity. A mathematician at the University of Hamburg, noted for metaphysical ramblings, suggested that the comet had in fact been aimed, that its velocity was intended to demonstrate that it was not part of a natural event, and that the pinpoint strike on the Moon was a warning. He did not elaborate.

The networks and the Web, during the final hours before impact, had been filled with admonitions to get right with God.

The Moon was in its first quarter. Seen from New York, it was in the western sky. The comet was a magnificent sight, spread across the heavens, its tail leading the way, overwhelming the Moon, reaching across the Atlantic and diving beneath the horizon. The corona, on the other hand, was bright and solid, a sheath of golden light.

Marilyn Keep watched Tomiko closing in from Louise's terrace. Larry seemed content to talk finances with the boys, to leave her in Marv's company, to behave as if he were the only male in the world. By ten-thirty she'd had too much to drink. Marv was taking advantage of whatever occasional solitude they could find, a brief interlude on the terrace, a moment passing each other in a corridor, to brush lightly against buttock or breast. She didn't mind it at all, as long as they did not get caught. She liked the brief suggestion of possession, enjoyed the sudden fluttering excitement. It was the first time during her marriage she'd allowed anything like this. When she looked reprovingly at Marv, his eyes glowed with mischief. And his fingertips casually touched her hip, as if it were something they did all the time, as if they shared some mutual secret. So it happened that, as the comet touched the Moon, while all eyes turned skyward, Marilyn was really quite busy with something else.

At Point Judith, Luke Peterson watched from his backyard through a pair of field glasses. He'd read enough, and seen enough, to know there was more danger near the water. But the night was peaceful, and the sky was full of stars, except where the comet wiped them out. This was where he lived. If God had set the machinery in motion to take him tonight, well then, God would find him at home.