“Wanna tell me what all that was about?” Seth asked, and I realized that in my haste I had not switched the sound to local mode. He had heard every word that I said.

“It was nothing. Merely the girls organizing a party. What has been happening there?”

“Not a thing. Wish they’d organize a party for me; this place is as boring as it gets.”

Perhaps. But I heard a soft hissing, steadily becoming fainter.

I said, “There has been another particle bundle penetration.”

“Well, yeah, we did have that. But you’d hardly call it much of a party.”

As Seth was speaking, his voice, already low, dropped to a whisper. He put a finger to his lips and pulled back farther into the shadow of the cupboard.

“What is it?” Speaking at this volume I was sure that only he could hear me.

“We got visitors. Better be ready.”

There was a sound of footsteps from beyond the other end of the chamber. A second later a gray-clad figure zoomed into the room, used the web of ropes to change direction, and just as rapidly shot away through an exit on the opposite side. It was a man. He passed within ten feet of the shrouded white figure and did not seem even to notice it.

“Tech services, in a hurry,” Seth said. “Using the cargo hold as a shortcut. Must be trouble someplace close.”

“Not, one hopes, too close.” It had seemed like a splendid idea, arranging our trap at a time when everyone on Sky City would be desperately busy with his or her own duties; unless, of course, the focus of those duties happened by accident to lie in the very place where the trap was set, and we became inundated with visitors. On such chance events, I suspect, rests many a man’s reputation for cunning or folly.

The cargo bay again became quiet except for the unnerving groan of walls and supports and the occasional crack and hiss of a particle bundle. I switched briefly from remote viewing in order to catch a glimpse of local conditions at Otranto Castle. The sky outside the castle was darker now. The clock on my study indicated that the peak of the particle storm lay only forty minutes in the future. If anything were to happen, on Earth or in Cargo Bay Fourteen, this was surely the time.

I returned to Sky City and realized at once that the situation had changed. In the few moments of my absence a dark-clad figure had appeared at one of the entrances to the cargo bay. It stood there, silent and immobile, apparently examining every detail of the interior of the chamber. The face was shadowed and in half profile, and I could make out no features. Finally the figure moved forward and upward, heading for the white shroud suspended from the rope nets.

“Now, Seth,” I whispered. “This is it.”

He nodded. I saw him ease the beam weapon from his belt, and then he was gliding across the room toward the newcomer. He uttered no sound, but as he turned to glance at me I could read his lips. They mouthed, “Party time.”

36

The water supply tanks of Sky City sat on the forward face of the great disk, turned now to point directly toward Alpha Centauri. Their value to the space city had always been incalculable, but in advance planning for the particle storm they promised extra value. In principle, their multiple billions of gallons provided protection to whatever lay behind them. In practice, like many other notions involving the Alpha Centauri supernova, the idea had been ruined by the discovery that the particles arrived as dense and massive bundles of huge penetrating power.

Star Vjansander sat cross-legged on the floor of a room behind the water tank that had been converted to a makeshift lab. Wilmer stood beside her. She shook her head in irritation. The floor of the room already had a small puddle near the wall. Now another bundle had evaded the snaring loops of the defensive shield, zipped effortlessly through the twenty-meter layer of the water tank, and created a neat hole in the bulkhead midway between Star and Wilmer. Before the hole could seal itself, a jet of water squirted through from the tank and splashed Star’s cheek and neck.

“Garr.” She rubbed at her face with a grimy hand, and glanced at the wall where the hole was quietly closing. “That didn’t miss by much, did it? Thirty centimeters one way or the other, yer’d have been needing either a new partner or a new pecker.”

She did not sound too distressed by their close shave. It was Wilmer, sitting on a chair a couple of feet away, who seemed more upset. He scowled down at Star and said, “I’m beginning to think I need a new partner. You seen these figures?”

” ’Course I have. I’m the one got ’em off Lauren an’ give ’em ter yer.”

“I mean, really seen them — tried to analyze them? Bruno Colombo must be tearing the hair off his head, wondering what to tell Earth.”

“I don’t care if he’s pulling hair off his arse; he’s all mouth and trousers. How d’yer expect me ter know what the figgers mean? I’ve been doin’ convergence calculations the last two days, an’ these are observed counts.” Star took the sheet from Wilmer anyway, and ran her eye down the column. “Nobody but me an’ you will think this is a problem. Colombo will love these numbers. They show the particle counts are way below what we calculate.”

“I know. And how does that make me and you look?”

“I dunno.”

“Well, I do. Like a couple of daft buggers, that’s what. We predicted the form of the convergence, and every Sniffer reading confirms that we got it right. The pencil of the beam is narrowing as it approaches the solar system. On the strength of that we went to Celine Tanaka and told her it was all over, Earth was in deep shit. Now the counts don’t agree. An’ they have to be right, they come from observation. Data rules.”

“So maybe we don’t get wiped out after all. Yer a hard man ter please, Wilmer Oldfield.” Star bounced up in one easy movement and pulled her shorts away from her damp rump. She handed him the data sheet. “Here. All yours. Me, I’m going aft to see what’s happening with Hyslop and his crowd. You might as well do the same. We need a better idea, an’ we don’t have one.”

“Right. I’ll be there.” Wilmer stared at the sheet he was holding. He started to stand up, stood motionless for a long time, and at last plopped back onto the chair. After a few moments his hand went up to the pink patch on top of his head. He started rubbing.

37

Night had vanished two hours ago. Now it seemed to be returning. The office was darker, with interior lights turned off and most of the illumination provided by the display screens.

Celine glanced at each of them. Everything coming in by radio feed showed a blur of electronic noise added to the video signal. Contact with Nick Lopez had been lost, though he should now be well north of the equator and safely landed. Fiber-optic links with the Southern Hemisphere revealed a world empty of human life. People had fled north, or moved to deep shelters. Plants and animals were not so lucky. The landscapes of South America, southern Africa, and Australia were strewn with dead creatures large and small, and the smoking remnants of trees and shrubs cast a purple-gray haze over everything.

Most of the mobile observation units still functioned, but their pictures jerked and twitched and veered as though the guidance signals from the main reporters were not quite working. As Celine watched, the screen showing a feed from McMurdo Sound collapsed to a kaleidoscope of random colors. An Antarctic reporter had taken a direct hit. After a twenty-second delay, a substitute circuit closer to the South Pole cut in with images of bare rocks and steaming, desolate ice cliffs.

She went to the window and stared southeast toward the Sun. She was in the supposedly “safe” Northern Hemisphere. But the gold circle of Sol was dimming, minute by minute, overlaid by a grid of dark lines. They were wider and more numerous than during the previous storm, and as Celine watched the Sun faded steadily in a cloud-free sky. Soon it became a ghostly gray cutout against a black background.