Tony watched it come. From his perspective, it was a wall of fire racing in from the north. He sensed the sudden stillness in the passenger compartment, saw the moonscape break up beneath him, saw Alphonsus disappear into the ground. A curtain of dust rolled over the churning scene, and the darkened flight deck glowed red.

The Micro fled before the fire, crawling away at a constant one g.

The sensors exploded in a tornado of pings and bleeps. Debris rattled against the hull. The Micro rocked and dipped and swerved, a leaf caught in a vast wind. A tread came off and a warning lamp blinked on.

Fire filled the sky.

It seared his eyes and licked at the blister housing the flight deck.

Saber switched off the warning. "Rising external temperatures," she said.

Tony nodded and refrained from sarcasm.

Something hit from below, hurled them higher, snapped his neck back. Bulkheads and decks creaked.

"Water line," said Saber. "Cargo."

That meant Bigfoot was getting wet. "Shut her down," said Tony.

"Done."

The attitude jets were firing in frantic sequences, trying to maintain stability.

Tony was hurled against his harness and thrown back into his seat. The Micro rolled and fell and soared. The storm swept it along, a steel bubble in a sea of fire.

Morley's running account was broadcast from the Micro to a Comsat, relayed to his New York studio, where it was combined with the network signal and returned to Tony's console. But the signal, not surprisingly, had died. The monitor carrying the Transglobal telecast was a blizzard of interference. Tony thought about informing the journalist he was no longer getting through, that he might as well give it up, but decided to say nothing. It kept Morley occupied, and maybe served as a link to safety for the others.

"Engine overheating," said Saber.

"Roger." Let it overheat. They'd be lucky if that was the worst that happened.

Something inside let go with a bang.

"Passenger cabin," Saber told him. "CDS." That was the Coolant Delivery System. Nothing to worry about.

A tentacle of melted rock splashed across the blister. The glass began to bubble. Tony opened his channel to cargo. "Bigfoot, you okay?"

"Great ride, Tony."

"Doing what I can. We're almost out of it."

Saber glanced at him. The world outside was full of fire. "What makes you say that?"

"One way or another. We can't take much more of this."

"Engine's in the red," she said.

He couldn't shut down. The Micro needed two-point-four kps to avoid falling back to the surface. Acceleration was passing two-point-zero. He watched it climb, not knowing whether there was a surface to fall back to, suspecting he'd be carried along with the blast whatever he did.

Two-point-two.

The storm clattered and banged and raged against the hull.

He'd have to cut power once he reached escape velocity. Or risk losing the engine and possibly the ship.

"Tony, we're pushing it."

"Don't worry," he said. "There's always a certain amount of leeway built into these things."

Two-point-three.

Red lamps were blinking all across the status board.

Two-point-four. Tony gave it another minute and killed the engine.

Riding now in relative quiet, they listened to the storm beating against the hull, the squeals of the status board, and the electronic burble of the instruments.

Saber picked up the mike. "Everybody okay down there?"

Evelyn's voice responded: "Alive and well."

"Good. Stay with it. We know it's loud but we're doing okay." She explained why they'd shut the engine down. "But we're still moving. We'll relight in a few minutes and begin to accelerate again."

At that moment the flames fell away, and the Micro rose above great, dark, boiling clouds. A river of light exploded from one and arced gracefully across Tony's field of vision.

Then he was out among the stars. Earth, blue and serene, floated almost directly ahead.

Saber sighed happily.

"Too soon," he said.

To underscore the point, a slab of rock the size of a pickup spun out of a dark cloud and took off an auxiliary antenna. It would have done much worse, but Tony reacted quickly and rolled away.

• • • SSTO Arlington Flight Deck, 20,000 kilometers from Luna. 10:36 P.M.

The leading edge of the blast was expanding at almost three hundred kilometers per second. Two other spacecraft were in its path, Arlington, a little over an hour away; and Rome, which had gotten about a six-hour start.

There hadn't been much George Culver could do to protect his plane other than put as much distance as he could between himself and the Moon. The short, stubby wings that supported the SSTO in atmospheric flight had retracted, antennas were down, passengers had been warned of approaching turbulence.

In this case, the term was a mild understatement. Behind them, the entire universe seemed to have lit up.

Mary wiped her lips with the back of her hand. "I don't know," she said, watching it roll toward them.

They'd stayed too long. There hadn't been enough time to get everybody off, but no one had wanted to admit it. They should have left with Rome, just cut their losses and gone. But who was going to make that kind of decision?

"Hang on." It was all George could think of to say in the instant before the wave washed over them. Astrolab. 10:37 P.M.

The AstroLab was located in central Massachusetts, not far from the Quabbin Reservoir. It was housed in one of those garish ultramodern steel and glass abstract buildings, designed to demonstrate a kind of mathematical flow but which really only succeeded in marring the landscape. It would have looked good on Boston's Commercial Street. But among lakes and forest it was an abomination. It reminded Wes Feinberg of a swirl of lime Jell-O.

At the critical moment in the event, Feinberg did something that those who knew him well might have predicted: He left the turmoil of the Astrolab, where his colleagues were crowded breathlessly around the main display, watching raw data flow in through radio, infrared, and X-ray telescopes, from ACCD's CMM photon counting systems, and UV detectors. And he wandered out to the north walkway.

It was a cool night, and he was glad he'd worn his woolen sweater. He pushed his hands into his pockets and looked out over the trees. Where the Moon had been, there was now a blood-red cloud, lit by inner fires. It was expanding and it cast a ruddy glow across the forest.

The facility had filled up and overflowed with people from coastal areas and with some locals who sensed it was the right place to be on this night. Feinberg had talked with several. None admitted to believing there was serious danger to the world; yet here they were, well inland. Better safe than sorry, they told him. The American motto: Safety first.

He could see flashlights in the parking lot. People were herding together, watching the event, ooohing and aaahing. Cries of "Look at that," and "It's beautiful" filled the night air. Campfires burned in the surrounding hills and back on the picnic grounds. There were occasional flashes as people tried to take pictures of the event. SSTO Rome Passenger Cabin, 143,000 kilometers from Luna. 10:38 P.M.

Tashi Yomiuri had thought about trying the stunt that Keith Morley had pulled, but in the end, prudence had held sway. Now, watching the eruption on her monitor, she knew she'd made the right choice to put a decent amount of distance between herself and that inferno. Morley's broadcast had just been cut off at the source, and while Bruce Kendrick talked as if contact would be restored momentarily, Tashi believed that her colleague was gone. Posthumous Nobel? Maybe. Probably. But it wasn't the price she was prepared to pay.

There'd been a Pool arrangement, and all networks had been carrying the Morley report. But her producer back in New York had alerted her to be ready to go, now that Morley would no longer be a factor. "We'll want a blow-by-blow of what's happening," he'd said. "You're as close as anybody." He sounded exhilarated. "What can you see? What are the reactions of the passengers? Anybody breaking down?"