There was supposed to be room for seven hundred and fifty, plus another hundred and fifty in the little annex where nonvoters sat. From the noise, there were more than a thousand heads crammed in, and more milling around in the corridors outside. The auditorium was named after a former principal of the old Nantucket High School; it was big, a broad blunt wedge with concrete steps that were upholstered in blue where people sat and left bare in the strips they were supposed to use for stairs. The whole idea had been sold to the Town Meeting as a civic center and place for amateur theatricals as well as a school facility.

The principal had been a fearsome old biddy, by all accounts, and she'd ruled with an iron hand for the best part of two generations. He tried to imagine how she'd have handled this.

"Why isn't Scinters going to do it?"

"Because he and the chairman of the board of selectmen have been in Boston since Friday last!" Joseph Starbuck snapped. "Of the other four selectmen, Vida… Dr. Coleman has her under sedation." The town clerk's mouth shut like a steel trap. "Along with about a hundred others right now. Four suicides, he says, and a dozen attempted. Jane's babbling, and that leaves Tom and Clarice."

Cofflin blinked: those two weren't the brightest of the lot. "Well, somebody's got to do it. Listen to them out there! They need someone who sounds like he knows what he's doing. You're the town clerk."

"I'm not up to it. Too old, getting set in m'ways. Afraid you'll have to do it, Cofflin."

"Me? I'm the police chief, not an elected official!"

"You're also the only one who seems to be doing anything much. You know what's going on. Get out there, man, or we'll have a riot on our hands."

For a moment Jared Cofflin felt his mind stutter. I wanted someone to take over! The reality of what he'd found on the mainland still sat in his mind like a lump of stodgy food, refusing to split up and move through the rest of his brain. If he couldn't come to terms with this… event, how on earth was he going to help everyone else do it? They all want someone to take over, and they want it now.

Jared Cofflin took a deep breath and walked out onto the stage. The acoustics were superb, enough to bring across the rasp of fear and building rage in the crowd's undertone. These people were in fear of their lives, and if the man who spoke didn't give them something to calm their terror they might well rip him into quite literal pieces. And then go on to destroy the town and any chance of saving their lives in a surge of blind ferocity.

He walked out to the podium and stood in front of the meeting, shoulders slightly hunched as if he was facing into a winter storm. "All right," he began. "You know we're still not in contact with anyone on the mainland. Some of you have probably heard why. Now I'll tell you all. The whole-" he suppressed the word that came to mind- "damned island is back in, well, in the past."

The noise burst over him like surf. He quieted it-somehow, eventually-and went on: "Over at the observatory, Ms. Rosenthal-" he nodded to where she sat not far from him-"used the computer and telescope there to figure it out."

"What if they're wrong? Computers-" someone shouted.

"You may not have noticed," Cofflin said, stung into heavy sarcasm, "but we're still cut off from the mainland. Because there isn't any mainland, at least, no buildings or roads. Just wilderness. I went and took a look personally. Nothing but trees and Indians with spears.

"Quiet! We're not going to get anything done by shouting!" Cofflin bellowed, angry at last and somehow no longer in the least afraid. "George, Matt, Susan, get those people there out of here!"

Most of those who'd broken down let themselves be led away quietly. One had to be put in a hammerlock and handcuffed. "Put him in the cells-he can cool off overnight," Cofflin said. Unfortunately, that was one of the town selectmen. There goes half of what's left of our elected government.

The babble subsided. "All right, now you know. Andy Toffler and me and Ms. Rosenthal here, and Lieutenant Walker from the Eagle, flew over to the mainland this morning. There's no Hyannis, and there's no Boston, no roads and no buildings. The Indians threw spears at us. We took some pictures-Andy, could you get that projector working?"

The wounded pilot wheeled his chair about on the dais, slipping the pictures they'd taken under an overhead projector that threw them enlarged onto a pull-down screen.

The pictures flicked on, sharp close-ups of the Indian camp. Then a blurred one as Doreen dove for cover, and then another series done with steady clarity. She may have been on the verge of a breakdown, but she kept doing her share of the work, he thought with respect. Good pictures too: an Indian winding up, running forward, the streak of the spear, then the weapon standing in the ground. At last two of each of the wounded Indians, close-ups of their faces and gear.

"Captain Alston of the Coast Guard ship Eagle-the Eagle was just offshore last night and ended up here with us, for those of you who didn't know-has something to say. Let's let Captain Alston talk, people," he said.

His own voice was hoarse, his head ringing with too little sleep and too much coffee. Captain Alston cleared her throat. Hard weathered hands turned the uniform cap as she stood, then stopped as if she was forcing herself not to fidget. Otherwise she stood calm as a statue, a welcome contrast to how most people were acting.

"We were near the edge of the, ah, phenomenon," she said.

Her Southern accent made her voice soft, but the diction was oddly precise, almost finicky, as if every word was carefully chosen. The voice of an autodidact, self-educated.

"It evidently, ah, transposed an ellipse of ocean as well as the island, reachin' several miles offshore; we've seen evidence of that-dead fish caught at the rim, and so fo'th. The only thing we could tell about it was that it was electrical in nature-there were static discharges and effects on our electronic equipment. My observations of the stars confirm Ms. Rosenthal's. The stars have moved, and the shift's… the same sort that would be produced by bein'… thrown back in time. How long did you say, Ms. Rosenthal?" She pronounced the title miz.

"The spring of 1250 B.C.," Rosenthal said. "Three thousand two hundred and forty-eight years before the present. Before what was… before the… transition event."

"All right, now," Cofflin said when order had been restored. "Doc Coleman?"

Coleman, a lean, bony man in his sixties who headed the island's hospital-clinic, stood up. "I'm treating the… Indian. His leg wound's stabilized. He's never been vaccinated, he's got no fillings or other dental work on his teeth-remarkably good teeth, by the way-and from the X-rays, he's had several broken bones that healed without benefit of casts."

"All right," Cofflin said. "We've obviously got an emergency here. We're…" It was hard to go on. "We're back in the past, somehow-the whole island is. The question is, what are we going to do about it?"

Someone raised his hand. Cofflin recognized him vaguely, as much because of the way he looked as for a few brief exchanges of words; some sort of professor who spent part of his summers here. A Californian; tall, balding, with a brown bush of beard and beak-nosed. He looked a lot calmer than most of the people here. Maybe he'd keep people paying attention until things quieted down.

"You, sir."

"Ian Arnstein-Dr. Ian Arnstein. I'm a professor of classical history at the University of San Diego. I was wondering if anyone had considered the implications of what's happened to us."

The Westerner looked around. "Look, either… whatever happened will reverse itself, or it won't. If it goes into reverse, we don't have to worry. We do have to worry if it doesn't. We're all in danger of death if it doesn't."