Riverdale, NY 10471
www.baen.com

ISBN: 0-671-72052-X

Cover art by Bob Eggleton

First printing, December 1992

Distributed by Simon & Schuster
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020

Production by Windhaven Press, Auburn, NH
Printed in the United States of America
firm enough to walk on. An illusion; a geography of vapors as insubstantial
as the dreams of youth. If he were to set foot upon them . . . The clouds did
not float in free fall, as was proper, but in an acceleration frame that could
hurl the scoopship headlong into an enormous ball of rock and iron and
smash it like any dream.
    Falling, they called it.
    Alex felt the melancholy stealing over him again. Nostalgia? For that
germ-infested ball of mud? Not possible. He could barely remember Earth.
Snapshots from childhood; a chaotic montage of memories. He had fallen
down the cellar steps once in a childhood home he scarcely recalled.
Tumbling, arms flailing, head thumping hard against the concrete floor. He
hadn't been hurt; not really. He'd been too small to mass up enough kinetic
energy. But he recalled the terror vividly. Now he was a lot bigger, and he
would fall a lot farther.
    His parents had once taken him atop the Sears Tower and another time
to the edge of the Mesa Verde cliffs; and each time he had thought what an
awful long way down it was. Then, they had taken him so far up that down
ceased to mean anything at all.
    Alex stared out of Piranha’s windscreen at the cloud deck, trying to
conjure that feeling of height; trying to feel that the clouds were down and
he was up. But it had all been too many years ago, in another world. All he
could see was distance. Living in the habitats did that to you. It stole height
from your senses and left you only with distance.
    He glanced covertly at Gordon Tanner in the copilot's seat. If you were
born in the habitats, you never knew height at all. There were no memories
to steal. Was Gordon luckier than he, or not?
    The ship sang. He was beginning to hear it now.
    And Alex MacLeod was back behind a stick, where God had meant him
to be, flying a spaceship again. Melancholy was plain ingratitude! He had
plotted and schemed his way into this assignment. He had pestered Mary
     But bitter because ... That part he did not want to think about. Just enjoy
the moment; become one with it. If this was to be his last trip, he would
enjoy it while he could. If everything went A-OK, he'd be back upstairs in a
few hours, playing the hero for the minute or so that people would care. A
real hero, not a retired hero. Then back in the day-care center wiping snotty
noses. It would be years before another dip trip was needed. He'd never be
on the list again.
     Which meant that Alex MacLeod, pilot and engineer, wasn't needed any
longer. So what do you do with a pilot when pilots aren't needed? What do
the habitats do with a man who can't work outside, because one more
episode of explosive decompression will bring on a fatal stroke?
     Day care. Snotty noses. Work at learning to be a teacher, a job he didn't
much like.
     Look on the bright side, Alex, my boy. Maybe you won't make it back at
all.
     Sure, he could always go out the way Mish Lykonov had in Moon Rat,
auguring in to Mare Tranquilitatis. They'd have a ceremony-—and they'd
miss the ship more than him. Even Mary. Maybe especially Mary, since
she'd got him the mission.
     He straightened in his seat and touched the controls again. Maybe just a
touch of resistance ...
     "Chto delayet? Alex!"
     Something had prodded Gordon awake. Alex glanced to the right.
"What is it?"
     "I'm getting a reading on the air temperature gauge!"
     "Right. There's enough air outside now to have a temperature."
     Gordon nodded, still unbelieving.
     Gordon had read the book. Come to that, Gordon read a lot of books,
but books don't mean much. No one ever learned anything out of a book,
anyway. This was why they always teamed a newbie with an old pro.
Hands-on learning. The problem with on-the-job training for this job was
     Old war horse heard the trumpet again. Now it s your turn. Take the
stick." Fun was fun, but it was time for the kid to wrap his hands around
the real thing. There was only so much you could do in a simulator. "There.
Feel it?"
    "Uh . . ." Gordon pulled back slightly on the copilot's stick. He looked
uncertain.
    He hadn't felt anything. "Take over," Alex growled. "You're flying the
ship now. Can't you tell?"
    "Well . . ." Another tentative move at the controls.
    Piranha wobbled. "Hey! Yeah!"
    "Good. Look, it's hard to describe, but the ship will tell you how she's
doing if you really listen. I don't mean you should forget the gauges. Keep
scanning them; they're your eyes and ears. But you've got to listen with
your hands and feet and ass, too. Make the ship an extension of your entire
body. Do you feel it? That rush? That's air moving past us at five miles per
second. Newton's not flying us anymore. You are."
    Gordon flashed a nervous grin, like he'd just discovered sex.
    "What's our flight path?" Alex asked.
    "Uh . . ." A quick glance at the map rollout. "Greenland upcoming."
    "Good. Hate to be over Norway."
    "Why?"
    Why. Didn't the kid listen to the downside news broadcasts? Gordon,
this is your planet! Don't you care? No, he probably didn't. It was his
grandparents planet.
    "There's war in Norway. If we flew over, somebody would cruise a
missile at us sure as moonquakes, and we'd never even know which side
did it."
    The new tiling was wonderful. In the old days, the ship's skin would be
glowing; but now . . . Four thousand degrees and no visible sign at all. Still,
they'd be glowing like a madman's dream on an IR screen, new tiles or no,
and that was all the Downers would need to vector in on.
had pooled their resources, everyone was supposed to learn each other s
language; but Alex hadn't gotten past "Ya tebye lyublyu." Hello was
"zdravstvuitye." Alex thought there was something masochistic about
speaking a language that strung so many consonants together. "Be fair,
Gordon. If you had ice growing a mile thick in your backyard, wouldn't
you want to move south?"
    Gordon mulled it. "Why south?"
    He couldn't help the grin. "Never mind. Let me take her again. Hang on,
while I kill some velocity. Watch what I do and follow me." He stroked the
stick gently.
    Here we go, baby. You'll love this. Drop the scoop face-on to the wind.
Open wide. That's right. Spread your tail, just for a moment ... Alex
realized that his lips were moving and clamped them shut. The younger
ones didn't understand when he talked to the ship. Gordon was having
enough trouble feeling the ship. "Okay," he said finally, "that's done. Take
over, again."
    Gordon did, more smoothly than before. Alex watched him from the
corner of his eye while pretending to study the instruments. Piranha was a
sweet little ship. Alex had flown her once, years before, and considered her
the best of the three remaining scoopers. Maybe that was just Final Trip
nostalgia. Maybe he would have felt the same about whichever ship he
flew on his last dip; but he would shed a special tear for Piranha when they
retired her. The scoopers were twenty-two years old already and, while
there was not much wear and tear parked in a vacuum, screaming through
the Earth's atmosphere like a white hot banshee did tend to age the gals a
bit. Jaws was already retired. Here was Gordon at nineteen, just getting
started; and the ships at twenty-two were ready to pack it in. Life was
funny.
    Alex ran a hand lightly across the instrument panel. Scoopships were
pretty in an ugly sort of way: lifting bodies with gaping scoops that made
them look like early jet airplanes. They could not land-—no landing gear-—
     Alex? Gordon said suddenly. Why not Greenland?
    "Hmm?"
    "Why isn't anyone in Greenland shooting missiles?"
    Alex grinned. That was good. Gordon was flying a scoopship on a dip
trip, sucking air at five miles per, and trying to make casual conversation.
That's right, Gordo. You can't do this sort of thing all tensed up; you've got to be
relaxed.
    "Nobody there but Eskimos," he explained. "An Ice Age doesn't bother
them any. Hell, they probably think they've all died and gone to Inuit
Heaven."
    "Eskimos I do not know. Gogol once wrote good story that speaks of
Laplanders but I did not understand-—" The sky had turned from black to
navy blue. Wouldn't want to get any lower. Gordon glanced out the
windscreen and said, "Shouldn't we be seeing land by now?"
    Alex shook his head, realized Gordon wasn't looking at him and
answered. "No, the cloud-deck off the pole . . ." He stopped. The white
below them wasn't the cloud shroud any more. They must have gone past
the southern edge or hit a hole in it. White on white. Cloud or ice. If you
didn't actually look you, might not notice. "Damn, damn. The ice is still
growing."
    Gordon didn't say anything. Alex watched him a moment longer then
turned his attention to the gauges. Gordon was nineteen. There had always
been an Ice Age, so it did not surprise him that the glaciers had crept
farther south. Alex thought he remembered a different world-—green, not
white-—before his parents brought him upstairs. He wasn't sure how much
of it was genuine childhood memories and how much was movies or
photographs in books. The habitats had a fair number of books on tape,
brought up when they still got along with the Downers.
    The green hills of earth, he thought. Now the glaciers-—not rivers of ice,
but vast oceans of ice-—were spreading south at tens of miles a year.
Hundreds of miles in some places. In the dictionary, "glacial" meant slow;
Alex looked again through the cockpit windscreen and sighed.
    "We could have stopped it," he said abruptly.
    "Eh?" Gordon gave him a puzzled glance.
    "The Ice Age. Big orbiting solar mirrors. More microwave power
stations. Sunlight is free. We could have beamed down enough power to
stop the ice. Look what one little SUNSAT has done for Winnipeg."
    Gordon studied the frozen planet outside. He shook his head. "Ya nye
ponimál," he admitted. "I faked the examiners, but I never did get it. The
what-did-they-call-it, polar ice cap? It stayed put for thousands of years.
Then, of a sudden it reaches out like vast white amoeba."
    All of a sudden, Alex's earphones warbled. He touched a hand to his
ear. "Piranha here."
    "Alex!" It was Mary Hopkins's voice. She was sitting mission control for
this dip. Alex wondered if he should be flattered . . . And if Lonny was
there with her. "We've got a bogey rising," said Mary. "Looks like he's
vectoring in on you."
    So, they don't shoot missiles out of Greenland? Find another line of
work, Alex—boy; you'll never make it as a soothsayer. "Roger, Big
Momma." He spun to Gordon. "Taking over," he barked. "Close the scoop.
Seal her up. Countermeasures!"
    "Da!" He said something else, too rapid to follow.
    "English, damn your eyes!"
    "Oh. Yeah. Roger. Scoops closed."
    Piranha felt better. Under control. "Close your faceplate." Alex pulled his
own shut and sealed it.
    "Alex, I have something." Gordon's voice sounded tinny over the radio,
or maybe a wee bit stressed. "Aft and to the left and below," he said.
    Seven o'clock low.
    "Constant bearing and closing."
tear off. Just small, fat fins and a big, broad, flat belly to be melted,
evaporated or pierced. Alex bit his lip. Don't think about that. Concentrate
on what you can do.
    The sharp turn pushed him against the corner of his seat. Alex relaxed
to the extra weight and prayed that his Earth-born bones would remember
how to take it. Decades of falling had turned him soft. The acceleration felt
like a ton of sand covering him. He felt the blood start in his sinuses. But he
could take it. He could take it because he had to.
    Gordon sat gripping the arms of the copilot's seat. His cheeks sagged.
His head bowed. Gordon had been born in free fall and thrust was new to
him. He looked frightened. It must feel like he'd taken sick.
    The turn seemed to go on forever. Alex watched the bogey on the scope.
Each sweep of the arm brought the blip closer to the center. Closer. He
pulled harder against the stick. The next blip was left of center. Then it
arced away. Alex knew that was an illusion. The missile had gone straight;
Piranha had banked.
    "You lost it!" Gordon shouted. He turned and looked at Alex with a grin
that nearly split his face in two.
    Alex smiled back. "Scared?"
    "Hell, no."
    "Yeah. Me, too. Anyone flying at Mach 26 while a heatseeking cruise
missile tries to fly up his ass is entitled to be scared." He toggled the radio.
It was Management Decision time. "Big Momma, we have lost the bogey.
Do you have instructions?"
    There was a pause; short, but significant. "We need that nitrogen," said
Mary's voice.
    Alex waited for her to finish, then realized that she had. We need that
nitrogen. That was all she was going to say, leaving the ball in his octant.
    Of course we need the nitrogen, he thought. Recycling wasn't perfect.
Gas molecules outgassed right through the walls of the stations. Every now
and then someone had to take the bucket to the well and get some more.
    Well, Mary was a free citizen, wasn t she? If the wife of the station
commander wants a little extracurricular, it's her choice. She had never
pushed him away; not until that last night together. We're hanging on up
here by our fingernails, she had said then. We've got to all pull together;
stand behind the station commander.
    Right.
    Nobody could stand behind Lonny Hopkins because he never turned
his back on anyone. With good reason. Maybe he's right. He is good at the
goddam job, and maybe our position is so precarious that there's no room
for democratic debate. That doesn't mean I have to like it.
    And it's decision time.
    "Understood, Big Momma. We'll get your air." Take that, Commander
Lonny Hopkins. He clicked off and turned to Gordon. "Open the scoops, but
bleed half of it to the scramjets."
    "Alex . . ." Gordon frowned and bit his lip.
    "They say they need the air."
    "Yeah-da." Gordon's fingers flipped toggled switches back up.
    Alex felt the drag as the big scoop doors opened again. The doors had
just completed their cycle when Gordon bean shouting. "Ekho! Ekho
priblizháyetsya!"
    "English!"
    Something exploded aft of the cabin and Alex felt his suit pop out. His
ears tried to pop, and Alex MacLeod whined deep in his throat.
    He'd forgotten, but his nerves remembered. It wasn't falling he feared, it
was air tearing through his throat, daggers in his ears, pressure trying to
rip his chest apart. Five times his suit had leaked air while they worked to
save Freedom Station. He wore the scars in ruptured veins and arteries,
everywhere on his body, as if Lonny Hopkins had given him to a mad
tattoo artist. There were more scars in his lungs and in his sinus cavities. A
sixth exposure to vacuum would have his brains spewing through his nose.
of piano wire. Come on, baby. Steady down.
     Incredibly, she did. "Good girl," he muttered, then tongued the uplink
on his suit radio. "Big Momma, Big Momma. We've been hit." There was
nothing for it now but use up all the air they'd scooped, and anything else,
to light off the jets. Get back in orbit; out of the Well. When you're in orbit
you're halfway to anywhere! Get in orbit and pickup would be easy. He
toggled the switches.
     The rocket wouldn't light. The rocket wouldn't light. Air speed was
dropping steadily. The rocket wouldn't light. He suppressed the knot of
panic that twisted itself in his gut. Time enough afterward, if there was an
afterward. The scramjet alone was not enough to reach orbit again. It
wouldn't be long before Piranha would be moving too slowly to keep the jet
lit. She would become a glider.
     And not a terribly good glider.
     Alex swallowed. It looked awfully cold down below. And the rocket
wouldn't light.
     "Mayday," he said. "Mayday. Piranha has a problem." A part of his mind
was detached, admiring the cool way he reacted after that one moment of
terror.
     "This is Big Momma. What is your status?"
     Well, I'm just fine, Mary; and how are you? "We're going in, Mary. Tell my
family. It's all in my file directory. Access code word is dunvegan." He
glanced over at Gordon, but the teenager just shook his head. His face was
white through the plexiglass face shield. "And the Tanner family, too."
Gordon didn't have any children yet. He was the child. Damned near
unwanted child at that: a stilyagi, a JayDee on parole. Some parole! "Watch
where we land and get the message out. Tightbeam."
     The phones hissed for long seconds. "Sure, Alex. We have friends on
Earth. Maybe not many, but . . . We'll tell them. They'll take care of you.
Can you-—can you get her down?"
cement mixer.
   Not on the ice, baby. Not on the ice. Hang in there . . .
   "Do you really fly that well?" Gordon asked tightly.
   "I landed on Earth once before, Gordon. Who else do you know who can
say that?" Tom Corbett, Space Cadet. That's me. Disguised as a washed-up
day-care gopher, he is in reality Alex MacLeod, Hot Pilot. Lord, just let me
get us down in one piece.
   Fifteen miles up and the air was thick. Mach 3.5. The clouds below were
puffy with turbulence. Piranha was diving into a storm. He wondered
whether North Dakota was flat or mountainous.
   Naybe an ice landing would be all right. Ice was smooth, wasn't it? Or
was that only true in free fall? Piranha was hot from friction. She'd melt her
own runway across the glacier.
   Sure, but step outside afterward. Your eyeballs will freeze so cold they'll
shatter when you blink . . .
   The clouds closed in and he was flying by radar. Dropping. Dropping.
Lose velocity in the turns. Mach 2.5 and falling.
   Gordon couldn't lift his head against the acceleration. "At least we'll
have life support," he said suddenly. "Life support for four billion people,
my teacher told me. And it doesn't get really cold, right? Cold enough to
freeze water, but not carbon dioxide."
   Alex grunted. Cold enough to freeze water. Gordo, what is the human
body made of? Another turn. "Right," he said. Gordon wasn't a distraction.
He was just a voice. The last thing Alex wanted during his last moments
was dead silence. There would be enough of that afterward.
   Think positive, Alex boy. You'll live through the landing, so you can
freeze to death on the ice.
   Piranha shuddered as she dropped below Mach 1. The missile must
have left some holes, creating turbulence in the airstream. Then the
scramjet quit and she was diving at the ground. Ice crystals impacting on
battered the ship. She yawed and Alex fought with the stick. Once the ship
dipped suddenly and Alex fought a moment of pure panic. Don't lose it
now! Don't lose it now! The ground looked smooth on the radar. Gordon's
hands were on the dash, his elbows locked. It won't be too cold, Gordo. Not
cold enough to freeze carbon dioxide.
    It was the second best landing he had ever made. Second by a long, long
margin. Piranha hit the ice and skipped like a schoolgirl hit and skipped
again. There was probably a third or fourth skip, too; but Alex never knew.

   ***

   Soren Haroldsson had watched the flame from his steading. He was
wrapped in his fur parka, heavy boots, mittens like bowling balls, but still
he shivered. His breath was frosty steam in the evening air. He always took
a turn around the house before they battened down for the night checking
the gate, the wolf-traps, making sure none of the animals had been
accidentally left outside.
   It came just at dusk, a fiery stream low across the sky still large and
burning as it touched the ice and sent up clouds of steam. Not a shooting
star. Not a sky stone like he'd heard of. It had come in too shallow, too
controlled. A ship of some sort.
   Ah, surely it was Angels.
   He shook his swaddled fist at the sky. "Be damned, you air thieves!
We've got you now. Heh!" His breath froze on his graying blond mustache
and beard. Tomorrow he would saddle up Ozzie and ride into Casselton to
notify the authorities. They were probably hunting the Angels already; but
only a fool went riding at night, and Ozzie, at least, was no fool.
   Inside, bundled in the warmth of family and livestock, he told Lisbet
what he had seen and guessed. Haughty, technomaniac Angels down on
the Great Ice. Poetic justice, he said. Poetic, she replied and, smiling, quoted
from memory:
was turned down to 55, as the law required, and the last thing she wanted
was to get out into the chilly air. Her arm snaked out from beneath the
comforter, groped for the phone set and pulled it under the covers with
her. The plastic was cold, but she was bundled in flannel and felt it only in
her hands.
   "Dr. Hartley here." She winced. It was like holding an ice cube to her
ear.
   "Sherrine?"
   Not the University, after all. That really ticked her off. The 'danes who
signed her paycheck bought the right to wake her up, sometimes and for
some things; but ex-boyfriends did not. "Bob," she said, "do you know what
time it is?"
   "Certainly. Two-forty-three. Plus or minus three sigma."
   She sighed. Never ask a physicist a question like that. "What do you
want, Bob? And why can't it wait until morning?"
   "I need you, Sherrine. Now."
   "What? Look, Bob, that's all over." And why couldn't some men ever
believe that?
   "I'll be there in five minutes."
   "Bob!" But she was talking into a dead phone.
   She thought about staying put under the comforter. It wouldn't help.
Bob Needleton was persistent. He was quite capable of standing on her
doorstep all night, banging on the door until she opened. Sometimes that
sort of persistence was invaluable. In the lab, for instance. Other times it
was just a pain in the ass.
   Damn him. She was wearing heavy flannel socks, and she kept a pair of
wooly slippers under the sheets with her. She played contortionist for a
while finding them and putting them on. Then she slipped out of bed,
leaving the covers carefully in place so the bed would stay warm. A heavy
housecoat hung over the back of the chair next to the bed. She snuggled
into it and shivered her way to the bathroom.
he s coming out in the dead of night? The beanpole in the mirror did not
answer. Big nose. Big mouth. Not quite pretty. She could explain why Jake
left; but not why Bob wouldn't.

   She opened the door on the first knock and stood out of the way. The
wind was whipping the ground snow in swirling circles. Some of it blew in
the door as Bob entered. She slammed the door behind him. The snow on
the floor decided to wait a while before melting. "Okay. You're here," she
snapped. "There's no fire and no place to sit. The bed's the only warm place
and you know it. I didn't know you were this hard up. And, by the way, I
don't have any company, thanks for asking." If Bob couldn't figure out
from that speech that she was pissed, he'd never win the prize as Mr.
Perception.
   "I am that hard up," he said, moving closer. "Let's get it on."
   "Say what?" Bob had never been one for subtle technique, but this was
pushing it. She tried to step back but his hands gripped her arms. They
were cold as ice, even through the housecoat. "Bob!" He pulled her to him
and buried his face in her hair.
   "It's not what you think," he whispered. "We don't have time for this,
worse luck."
   "Bob!"
   "No, just bear with me. Let's go to your bedroom. I don't want you to
freeze."
   He led her to the back of the house and she slid under the covers
without inviting him in. He lay on top, still wearing his thick leather coat.
Whatever he had in mind, she realized, it wasn't sex. Not with her
housecoat, the comforter and his greatcoat playing chaperone.
   He kissed her hard and was whispering hoarsely in her ear before she
had a chance to react. "Angels down. A scoopship. It crashed."
   "Angels?" Was he crazy?
 We know.
    "We?"
    "The Worldcon's in Minneapolis-St. Paul this year-—"
    The World Science Fiction Convention. "I got, the invitation, but I didn't
dare go. If anyone saw me-—"
    "-—And it was just getting started when the call came down from
Freedom. Sherrine, they couldn't have picked a better time or place to crash
their scoopship. That's why I came to you. Your grandparents live near the
crash site."
    She wondered if there was a good time for crashing scoopships. "So?"
    "We're going to rescue them."
    "We? Who's we?"
    "The Con Committee, some of the fans-—"
    "But why tell me, Bob? I'm fafiated. It's been years since I've dared
associate with fen."
    Too many years, she thought. She had discovered science fiction in
childhood, at her neighborhood branch library. She still remembered that
first book: Star Man's Son, by Andre Norton. Fors had been persecuted
because he was different; but he nurtured a secret, a mutant power. Just the
sort of hero to appeal to an ugly-duckling little girl who would not act like
other little girls.
    SF had opened a whole new world to her. A galaxy, a universe of new
worlds. While the other little girls had played with Barbie dolls, Sherrine
played with Lummox and Poddy and Arkady and Susan Calvin. While
they went to the malls, she went to Trantor and the Witch World. While
they wondered what Look was In, she wondered about resource depletion
and nuclear war and genetic engineering. Escape literature, they called it.
She missed it terribly.
    "There is always one moment in childhood," Graham Greene had
written in The Power and the Glory, "when the door opens and lets the future
     Tis a Proud and Lonely Thing to Be a Fan, they used to say, laughing. It
had become a very lonely thing. The Establishment had always been hard
on science fiction. The government-funded Arts Councils would pass out
tax money to write obscure poetry for "little" magazines, but not to write
speculative fiction. "Sci-fi isn't literature." That wasn't censorship.
    Perversely, people went on buying science fiction without grants.
Writers even got rich without government funding. They couldn't kill us that
way!
    Then the Luddites and the Greens had come to power. She had watched
science fiction books slowly disappear from the library shelves, beginning
with the children's departments. (That wasn't censorship either. Libraries
couldn't buy every book, now could they? So they bought "realistic"
children's books funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, books
about death and divorce, and really important things like being overweight
or fitting in with the right school crowd.)
    Then came paper shortages, and paper allocations. The science fiction
sections in the chain stores grew smaller. ("You can't expect us to stock
books that aren't selling." And they can’t sell if you don't stock them.)
    Fantasy wasn't hurt so bad. Fantasy was about wizards and elves, and
being kind to the Earth, and harmony with nature, all things the Greens
loved. But science fiction was about science.
    Science fiction wasn't exactly outlawed. There was still Freedom of
Speech; still a Bill of Rights, even if it wasn't taught much in the schools-—
even if most kids graduated unable to read well enough to understand it.
But a person could get into a lot of unofficial trouble for reading SF or for
associating with known fen. She could lose her job, say. Not through
government persecution-—of course not-—but because of "reduction in
work force" or "poor job performance" or "uncooperative attitude" or
"politically incorrect" or a hundred other phrases. And if the neighbors
shunned her, and tradesmen wouldn't deal with her, and stores wouldn't
give her credit, who could blame them? Science fiction involved science;
was that attracted me to science fiction?
   He raised himself on one elbow, blinked at her change of subject, and
looked quickly around the room, as if suspecting bugs. "No, what?"
   "Not Fandom. I was reading the true quill long before I knew about
Fandom and cons and such. No, it was the feeling of hope."
   "Hope?"
   "Even in the most depressing dystopia, there's still the notion that the
future is something we build. It doesn't just happen. You can't predict the
future, but you can invent it. Build it. That is a hopeful idea, even when the
building collapses."
   Bob was silent for a moment. Then he nodded. "Yeah. Nobody's
building the future anymore, 'We live in an Age of Limited Choices.' " He
quoted the government line without cracking a smile. "Hell, you don't take
choices off a list. You make choices and add them to the list. Speaking of
which have you made your choice?"
   That electric tickle . . . "Are they even alive?"
   "So far. I understand it was some kind of miracle that they landed at all.
They're unconscious but not hurt bad. They're hooked up to some sort of
magical medical widget and the Angels overhead are monitoring. But if we
don't get them out soon, they'll freeze to death."
   She bit her lip. "And you think we can reach them in time?"
   Bob shrugged.
   "You want me to risk my life on the Ice, defy the government and
probably lose my job in a crazy, amateur effort to rescue two spacemen
who might easily be dead by the time we reach them."
   He scratched his beard. "Is that quixotic, or what?"
   "Quixotic. Give me four minutes."

   She found five more fen waiting outside by Bob's van. Three she knew
from an earlier life. She smiled and waved and they nodded warily.
beard.
    Even with the last drop of alkey sucked from the car's tank, the van had
less than a full tank. Thor climbed into the van and slid the door closed. He
still had the syphon. Sherrine poked her nose out of her coat.
    "Keeping the syphon?"
    His grin was lopsided and too wide. Siphoning alcohol . . . He held the
rubber hose up like an Appalachian snake handler. "We can't make it to
Mapleton and back on one tank. Might not be too smart to gas up at a
public station. 'Specially after we collect Rafe and Cabe."
    "Who?"
    "The Angels."
    "Oh. You know their names?"
    "Those are code names." That was Mike Glider, grinning on her right.
"Gotta have code names on a clandestine operation."
    "Sure you do; there are standards to keep up."
    She shook her head. Mike knew everything there was to know and had
opinions on the rest. He'd been a county agricultural agent since quitting
the IRS; but that was just cover for his true identity as Oral Historian of
Fandom. He was "tall and round and three hundred pound," in his own
words. If they froze on the Ice, he'd freeze last.
    Bob started the van and Sherrine felt that electric thrill surging deep and
strong. Real spacemen. Oh, God, to talk to them! Space stations. Moon
base. Angels down; fans to the rescue!
    She looked around at her companions. "Thor, you look like a Mormon
patriarch."
    "The beard's for warmth. I shave the mustache off so snot won't freeze
in it. Ever wonder why Eskimos don't grow more hair? Evolution in
action."
    "Hunh. No." Fans were a wellspring of minutiae, a peculiar mix of the
trivial and the practical. Try asking about Inuit tonsorial practices in a
muscle than fat. He was stronger than he looked. His black beard was wild
and bushy, wildly unlike Thor's silken, Nordic god look. "How is Jake
these days?" he asked.
   She dropped her eyes. "I wouldn't know."
   Bob put in his two cents. "Jake left her for a New Cookie five years ago."
   Thanks, Bob. You could hand out flyers! "Jake really did gafiate," she
explained. "I became a 'dane because I had to; but he really wanted to. He
kept making digs about 'sci-fi' and 'Buck Rogers stuff.' Trying to yank my
chain. So . . ." A shrug. "We drifted apart." And in the end they couldn't
even talk about it. The teasing turned into arguments; the arguments into
fights. Eventually she had to watch what she said around him because she
couldn't be sure that he wouldn't denounce her for fannishness to the
University. And wasn't that a hell of a basis for a marriage?
   Besides, that was certainly a better explanation for why he left than the
one she saw in the mirror every morning.
   "That's okay," said Bruce. "We couldn't have used him anyway."
   She pulled her parka hood tighter around her face. That was like Bruce,
to evaluate everything, even her personal life, in terms of its utility to the
current fanac. "You never did like Jake, did you?"
   He shook his head. "That's not right. But he had his chance, and he went
mundane."
   "So did I."
   Bruce wasn't embarrassed at all. "Like you said, it was different with
him."
   She let it drop and looked at the two strange faces. "Hi. I'm Sherrine
Hartley."
   "I know." The man sitting to her left was massively built and had a
shaggy mane of white hair circling his face. He looked like an elderly lion,
or an Old Testament patriarch. "Will Waxman, from L.A. Bob told us we
were stopping to pick you up." He dropped his hand onto the shoulder of
the man next to him. "And this is Steve Mews. He's a Mean Dude."
settled back into one. She loved car heaters. They were like blowtorches for
warming up. The alcohol they burned would have been burned anyway, to
move the car. In ten minutes she was warm and could stop huddling.
    "I've been fafiated for years," she said by way of conversation, "but I
keep hearing about the conventions. Weird ways. Cryptic notes in
electronic bulletin boards, things like that. I think you guys really love
playing undercover."
    Mike grinned. "The word do get around."
    "How's Worldcon?"
    "It's Minicon. That's a pun. Minne-sota; but also 'mini-' because there's
only fifty-four in attendance."
    "Forty-eight," she corrected him. "You guys are here."
    Mike couldn't just be clever; he had to know that you knew he was
clever. A grin and a raised forefinger: "Wrong! This is a special Con
Committee meeting, so we are still officially in attendance. In fact, counting
you, there are now fifty-five."
    "Anyhow," said Thor, "the Cruzcon was smaller. Only twelve people
showed up in 2008. We camped out in pup tents on the lawn of the old
Heinlein estate. So, if any con deserves the title Minicon—"
    "Oh, sure, if you want to be numerical about it. But 'mini—' wouldn't
pun with 'Santa Cruz' . . ."
    Sherrine laughed. They were heading for the Dakota Glacier with less
than a full tank of alcohol to rescue two downed spacemen from the
clutches of the government. All of them but Thor were putting their
mundane jobs on the line. And . . . and they were arguing about what to
name the convention! She had forgotten what it was like to be among fans.
Her gut relaxed like a fist unclenching after many years.
    "Who showed up?" she asked. "At the con. Anybody I knew?"
    Thor cocked his head. "It's been a while since you've been around. Let's
see. You know Chuck Umber. He's there; but he's not in on this. Too much
risk he might let something slip into his fanzine. You know Tom Degler
have less than zero attendance. Sherrine guessed he had forgotten which
side of the argument he was on.
    Thor shook his head. "I think there were twenty or so at the party in his
hotel room-—"
    "That was a con party, not the con itself-—"
    "-—before the cops busted us."
    "Minicon is still going," Bruce said, breaking in. "It has to be going. The
last thing we need is for the cops to find a broken convention and wonder
where we all went."
    "Hmm, yes." It was starting to hit her. She'd never been underground
before. Now . . . One hint and her job was done. A couple of slips and she'd
be a wanted woman. "Thor, you've been hiding out for a while-—"
    "Eight years." He sounded proud.
    "What's it like?"
    A shrug. "Not too bad, if you have friends. And if the 'danes aren't
hunting you too hard. There are folks in the midwest, farm country, who
are only too glad for a hand with the chores; room and board and no
questions asked. You try not to spend too much time in one place, though."
    "No," she said. "I suppose not."
    Bob glanced over his shoulder. "Having second thoughts?" he asked,
turning back to his driving.
    "Sure. And third and fourth." She took her mittens off and rubbed her
hands together. "So. What are the plans once we get there?"
    They all looked at her. "Plans?" said Mike in a simulated Mexican
accent. "We don' need no stinking plans."
    Sherrine snorted. Fans.

   They sailed west on I-94, headed for the Dakota Glacier. Bob drove
carefully, trading speed for certainty. On clear sections of the highway, he
floored it; where roadside clutter and shrubbery provided cover for police
cars, he slowed to a respectable sixty. After a while, the chatter died down
    Just past St. Joseph, Sherrine stopped singing and stared north through
the van's side window. One by one the others dropped out, their voices
dying in mid-chorus, until Mike was singing alone.
    " 'I wrote Dying Inside and you snubbed it! Son of Man's out of print
totally! You'll be sorry you didn't buy Nightwings! No more damn science
fiction for me!"
    Mike trailed off. Following their gaze, he twisted and looked over his
shoulder. "Great Ghu!" he said.
    "Yeah," Sherrine said quietly.
    The northern horizon glowed a pale, phosphorescent white, as if an
artist had drawn a chalk line across a blackboard.
    Steve hopped to the other side of the van and peered through the
window. "I didn't know it was this far south," he said.
    Mike peered out. "The Ice Line runs northwest from Milwaukee to
Regina. It doesn't come as close to the big cities because of the waste heat."
    The California fans had never seen the Ice. They stared in respectful
silence.
    Sherrine spoke up. "You can't live in the Twin Cities without feeling the
weight of the Great Ice somewhere over the horizon, flowing toward you
like crystal lava."
    "Three years ago," said Bob, "you couldn’t see it from the highway."
    "And last year," she added, "you could only see it in midwinter." The Ice
ebbed and flowed with the seasons, like tides on a hard, white ocean. But
some of the snow that fell each winter failed to melt the next summer. The
weight in the center of the pack forced the edges to flow outward, and the
Line moved a few more miles toward civilization. She began to shiver
uncontrollably, even though she was wearing a thick down coat and the car
heater was running full blast.
    Thor noticed and smiled. He blew a few plaintive notes on his whistle;
then declaimed:
shimmering horizon. After a while, he continued in a voice so soft she had
to strain to hear him.

   "But        if         it        had          to      perish     twice,
I      think          I           know           enough        of     hate
To         say             that            for        destruction      ice
Is                                  also                             great
And would suffice."

    The farther west they drove, the closer the Ice came to the highway.
What had begun as a distant white smear on the horizon crawled closer
and closer. She knew that the movement was an illusion, that the Ice was
not actually moving toward them. It was only that the highway and the Ice
Line were converging. Still, it was creepy to watch that slow, implacable
approach. Mike started singing "The White Cliffs of Dover," but no one
joined in, and he soon fell silent.
with its oversized tires was an ice breaker on a frozen sea. The snow made
eerie crackling sounds in the night as the van drove through it.
    Brandon was deserted. Everything in town was dark, except the few
streetlights. The moon reflecting off the crusted snow cast a dim, pearly
light over the blank houses. There was not so much as a porch light on.
Sherrine didn't suppose that Brandon had ever been very lively at
four-thirty in the morning, but this felt different. Not just sleepy, but
empty.
    Bob pulled into the General Mills station and honked the horn, but no
one responded. After a minute or so, Thor said the hell with it and climbed
outside. His boots broke through the crust and he sank into the snow to his
knees. He waded through the snow to the row of pumps. "Premium okay?"
he asked. He unhooked the hose and flipped the switch. "Power's still on."
When he squeezed the pump handle nothing happened.
    "Mechanism's frozen," he called out. He unscrewed the gas cap and
stuck the nozzle in. Then he stood there squeezing and releasing, squeezing
and releasing until the gasohol began to flow into the tank. Mike gave a
huzzah and he and Bruce slapped each other's hand.
    "Sherrine," Bob said, "there's a two-gallon Jerry can back there
somewhere. Pass it up, would you? We might as well get as much gas as
we can."
    She rummaged around under the greasy blanket and tool kit and came
up with a sturdy, red plastic container. She passed it up and Bob rolled
down the window and gave it to Thor.
    Thor climbed back inside a few minutes later. He handed the gas can to
Steve, who stowed it in the back.
    "Shouldn't we pay for the alcohol?" she asked.
    "Pay who?" said Thor, clapping his hands together. "This town is dead.
Everyone's gone. The Ice chased 'em out."
    "There's still power," she pointed out.
    Steve shrugged and untwisted himself from his lotus position. Like
Thor, he opened the sliding van door only wide enough to squeeze
through. There was plenty of residual heat inside the van from the heater
and from their bodies, and no need to waste it.
    She watched him try the door to the station. It was open. Steve hesitated
and glanced back at the van. Then he shrugged and disappeared inside. A
few minutes later he emerged juggling five more gas cans, which he filled
at the pump that Thor had unfrozen.

    When everyone was back inside and the cans strapped in place, Bob
started the engine and pulled back out onto the state road. Steve held his
hands palm out over the car heater vent. "Thor was right," he said. "The
town is abandoned. The gas station was stripped. All of the tools and most
of the stock is gone." Steve bounced as he talked, rocking on the balls of his
feet. "I found a couple of packing crates that had broken open. Empty;
contents salvaged. When folks left here, they left in good order. No panic.
No looting. I'll bet there's not a U-Haul or rental truck left in town."
    "Good." Will Waxman crossed his arms over his chest and settled back
against the quilted wall of the van. "That's the way it should be. A fighting
retreat, not a rout. I'll bet the station owner left the lights and pumps
running on purpose. For travelers like us."
    Sherrine didn't say anything. She stared out the back window as the
night swallowed the town. It was only Labor Day and already there was a
foot of snow on the ground. By midwinter Brandon would be half-buried.
By next winter it would be gone; and the shared memories that had given it
life would be gone with it. No more bake sales. No more Harvest Queens
or church socials. In a generation, its very name would be forgotten. As
gone as if it had never been, more forgotten than Lake Woebegon . . .
    "They took all their stuff with them," Steve continued. "But they didn't
bother to lock things up or turn things off."
were big enough would survive the summer and grow back into the glacier
come winter, as if the Ice were a living organism casting its seeds abroad.
    At Evansville, the Edge loomed close by the Interstate and she could see
the caverns and crevasses that made up the wall of ice. A playground of the
imagination. There were castles with battlements of crenels and merlons;
cathedrals of buttresses and spires. Wormholes bored by fantastic
creatures. Faerie pillars of gleaming crystal standing isolated like sentinels
on the prairie, yards in front of the tidal wave of ice. In other places, the
Edge was a gradual sloping ramp leading up to the frozen plateau above.
    Steve and Will were entranced by the sight; and even Sherrine and the
other hardened Northerners gazed in awe. It was one thing to live near the
Ice, to see it in pictures and photographs. It was another thing to look upon
it in all its cold and terrible beauty.
    "I never thought it would be like this," said Steve. "I expected-—I don’t
know. A solid wall. A slab of ice a mile thick sliding south. The boulder
fields I can understand; but why does it slope upwards like a ramp in
places?"
    "The Edge is only two, three hundred feet high," Mike told him. "But it
gets thicker toward the northeast. It's easily a mile thick over Ontario. Ice
melts under pressure. There's actually a thin film of pressurized water
underneath the ice. Acts like a lubricant. The bottom layers of the ice are
less rigid than the upper layers; so they crack and slide along sheer planes.
The top layers usually raft on the bottom layers; but if there's rotten snow
in between, the weight of the top layers can extrude the bottom layers like
toothpaste." He grinned.
    Sherrine listened to the byplay. Mike so loved playing the expert; but
she supposed most of what he said was nearly enough true to rely on.
Rotten snow. The Eskimos had dozens of different words for snow and ice
to describe its many different phases and properties. We'll have to learn them
all by and by.
others and stared through the windshield. She sucked in her breath, and
even Mike was uncharacteristically silent.
    A great half-completed arch of ice was poised over the westbound
lanes, like a tremendous wave frozen in the moment of breaking. "Shit,"
said Steve. It sounded like a prayer.
    "Sometimes," said Mike, finding his voice at last, "the upper layers slide
out over the bottom layers."
    Bob kept the engine running, but he opened the cab and stepped
outside. Sherrine followed. She pulled her parka hood closed as tightly as
she could and stood in the glare of the van's floods. The others huddled
around her. Beneath the hum of the engine the silence of the night was
broken by muted sounds. The ice snapped; it creaked like an ancient door.
A subsonic groan surrounded them, wrenched at their teeth. " 'The ice was
here, the ice was there, the ice was all around—' "
    "Onk?" Mike asked.
    Bob said, "The Ancient Mariner. Do you think the road to Fargo is still
open?"
    "Looks bad," Mike said.
    "What do you think?" asked Bruce, scowling at this latest obstacle to his
plans. "Can we make it through? How far does it go?"
    Bob whirled on him. "How far? All the way to Regina! How the hell
should I know? The people at AAA told me the road was open, but their
last report was a week old."
    A week old! Sherrine looked up at the star-studded night sky. The last
weather satellite had reentered years ago. She remembered sneaking
outside her parents' house in the middle of the night, bundled up against
the chill (oh, to be that warm again!) and watching for the spark that
marked its fall. The newsreaders played it up: the final remnant of
discredited Big Technology was no more. The fact that all low orbits
decayed from atmospheric friction and that all such satellites were
temporary was somehow supposed to prove the folly of "spending money
    As if to punctuate his remarks, the ice moaned and the sound of far off
thunder rolled in their ears. A cloud of ice crystals as fine as mist billowed
toward them out of the darkness. Somewhere farther down the road a part
of the frozen wave had broken off.
    She was starting to feel the cold. She gazed longingly at the van. The
others stood around, shuffling their feet and looking at each other. She
waited a moment longer. This has gone on long enough. "The eastbound lanes
are clear," she pointed out.
    Bruce looked shocked. "You want us to turn back?"
    She rolled her eyes up. "For Ghu's sake, no!" It took them a moment
longer to catch on, then Will began chuckling.
    "For a gang of taboo-shattering imagineers," he said, "we sure do let the
Accepted Customs of our tribe blinker us. Drive on the left side of the
road? What a revolutionary notion!"

    They drove more cautiously headed west in the eastbound lanes. Bob
put the flood lights on blinker so oncoming traffic would notice. Not that
he expected much oncoming traffic at six in the morning in rural
Minnesota, not along the edge of the glacier, but it never hurt to be careful.
A few miles farther on, Steve pointed silently out the side window at the
westbound lanes and they saw where the ice had collapsed across the
roadway, blocking it completely with landbergs. Bob and Bruce exchanged
glances and Bob hunched his shoulders over the steering wheel. Sherrine's
fingernails dug into her palms. Two Angels had been down on the Ice now
for four and a half hours.
    Past Elizabeth, the glacier had flowed entirely across the road, and the
Army Corps of Engineers had blasted and dug a channel right through it.
    Fargo Gap. Sherrine's heart beat slightly faster. A name of romance and
bravery and determination. Fargo Cap. Minneapolis's last link to the
ice-free West. Arc lights staged around the worksite made the area almost
as bright as daylight. Portable generators chugged and men and women
     Where do you think you re going, he said without preamble.
    "Fargo, officer." Bob could be very sincere and submissive when he
wanted to be. "Our friends here from California have never seen the Ice, so
we drove them up here from Minneapolis."
    Sherrine thought it was a pretty good story for having been made up on
the spot; but the trooper just shook his head. "Ice tourists. Now I've heard
everything." His face, what they could see of it, showed what he thought of
Californians who drove to the Ice for kicks. "You’re driving on the wrong
side of the highway," he said. She wondered if he thought they didn't know
that, and saw Mike bite his tongue to keep from making a smartass remark.
    Bob explained about the ice wave that had broken over the westbound
lanes and the trooper lowered his pad. "Ah, shit," he said without feeling.
He turned and called over his shoulder. "Captain!"
    A short, stocky man in an Engineer uniform broke away from a small
knot of people and trotted over. His name tag read Scithers, and he was
wearing a headset with a throat mike. The trooper had Bob repeat the
story. The captain listened carefully and nodded. Then he keyed his mike
and barked orders. Within minutes, a tank outfitted with a plow and
carrying a work gang on its skirts had rumbled east. A conscripted civilian
pickup truck followed, pulling a portable generator and work lights.
Scithers watched them out of sight. Then he sighed. "We've kept the Gap
open all summer," he said to no one in particular, "but this winter will kill
the road for good."
    The trooper didn't respond. He laid a hand on the door of the van. "You
might as well turn around," he said. "We're going to be evacuating Fargo in
the next couple weeks anyway."
    Sherrine felt her stomach go into free fall. We can't turn around. We can't!
The Angels were depending on them. But they couldn't tell the trooper
that.
    "Oh, let them through, trooper," said Scithers. "What the hell's the point
of keeping the Gap clear if we don't let people through?"
Freedom, he was at a temporary loss for words. And while normally
Sherrine might have enjoyed that, she didn't think a long, strained silence
would be too smart. So she spoke up. "My grandparents live near Fargo,"
she said. "They saw a fireball go down on the Ice and called me and told
me about it. As long as these guys were coming this way to sightsee, I
thought I'd tag along and see if I could pick up some souvenirs."
    The trooper rubbed a heavily gloved hand across his chin, and she
wondered why he didn't wear a beard like most men did these days. Dress
policy? "Yeah, we heard about it, too, at the barracks. Goddam Angels. A
couple of planes from Ellsworth flew over a few hours back; though I don't
know what they hoped to see at night. IR, maybe. Come daylight the
glacier'll be crawling with helicopters and search parties. No rush. Those
Angels will be froze dead by then."
    "Froze," she repeated.
    "And serves them right, too."
    She noticed Mikes jaw twitch an instant before he spoke. "Why?"
    Mike, she thought, don't let your mouth talk us into trouble. So far, they
were just a van load of jerks out joyriding. If the trooper began to suspect
that they were "Angel-loving technophiliacs," they would be in serious shit.
    "Why?" The trooper waved his arm at the glacier. "Because they started
this, asshole! They did it to us. Stealing our air until the Protective Blanket
was too thin to keep us warm."
    Captain Scithers nodded. "Damn right," he said. "All that air they took,
hundreds of tons-—" His voice was serious.
    Sherrine nodded her head as if she agreed. So did Steve and Will. Thor
said nothing, but he twisted his finger in his right ear as if to unplug it. She
prayed to Ghu that Mike would take the hint and keep quiet.
    Bob decided not to trust in Ghu. He put the van in gear. "We better get
going," he said over his shoulder, "if we're going to reach your
grandparents' house in time for breakfast. Thanks for your help, officer."
He gave a wave that was half-salute.
North?
    "The Corps has been fighting a losing battle trying to keep I-94 and I-29
open," Bruce responded. "He probably hasn't thought about anything else
but ice conditions for the last five years."
    Thor ran his fingers through his beard. "Must be one hell of a dinner
conversationalist."
    "I don't know," said Bob. "Some of the strange stories I've heard about
conditions on the Ice, he must have some weird tales to tell."
    And with that they entered Fargo Gap, the ice on both sides of the
highway rearing straight and high as canyon walls and sparkling with the
reflections of the work lights behind them.
had it. By that criterion he had at least come down in one piece.
    He tried to lift his head to see how Gordon was doing.
    He couldn't move. Paralyzed? A moment of panic washed over him as
he imagined himself lying here slowly freezing to death, unable to do
anything but wait. But, of course, it was only gravity. When he realized
that, he laughed out loud, which was a mistake, because his ribs hurt worse
than ever.
    What difference did it make why he was unable to move? Helpless was
helpless.
    He tried the suit radio. "Gordon?"
    Static for answer. Gordon must be dead or unconscious. In either case,
there was nothing he could do for him. Come to that, there wasn't much he
could do for himself. He tongued the uplink on his radio.
    "Big Momma? Piranha here."
    Hiss and crackle. Maybe the radio was broken. He tried again. "Big
Momma, do you read me?"
    Mary’s voice came through the noise. "Alex? Is that you?"
    Who did she think it was? . . . Churlish. "Big Momma, this is MacLeod, I
am conscious. I do not appear to be seriously injured except that I cannot
move. This must be due to gravity. Tanner does not respond, I say again,
Gordon does not respond. Can you give me a reading on Gordon?"
    "Roger your situation report, MacLeod. Alex, I'm glad to hear your
voice. Stand by one for report on Tanner."
    Alex waited while she scanned the medical monitors. Medi-probes were
a pain in the ass-—literally-—but they had their uses. He wondered if Mary
had been standing by in Mission Control the whole time he was
unconscious, and whether it had been from duty or something else. That's
right, Alex. Build yourself a few fantasies. You've got nothing else to do.
    "Tanner is all right I say again, no serious injuries," she said. "He's all
right, Alex. Unconscious, but his vital signs look good. I can't tell you about
     Rescue party? He started to sit up, but gravity and his ribs kept him
flat. He stifled a groan. "You mean you're coming to get us?"
    "No," said Mary. "You know better than that." He heard the chill
embarrassment in her voice. Some things weren't talked about. There was
an etiquette to being marooned.
    So much for fantasy, Alex thought. They say Love Conquers All; but it
doesn't conquer the fuel-to-thrust ratio or the law of diminishing returns.
Peace and Freedom were barely hanging on. There was nothing that could be
spared; least of all the rocket fuel needed to land and take off again, even if
there had been a ship capable of doing it. "I understand." He tried to keep
the bitterness out of his voice. It wasn't her fault he was here.
    It was not that they wouldn't come that bothered him. They wouldn't
come to get him if he were Lonny Hopkins himself. But Station Chief
Hopkins would never have been on a dip trip in the first place. You don't
send indispensable personnel on potentially one-way missions. Dippers
were folks the station could afford to lose. Good at what they did, but not
particularly useful at anything else. Janitors, gophers, day-care fathers,
stilyagi like Gordon. A brotherhood of mediocrity, he thought. The habitats
would still function without him. Even the variety of the gene pool, small
as it was, was unthreatened. Gordon and he had already made their
deposits at the sperm bank.
    "Then who is coming to get us?" he asked.
    "I told you we have friends on Earth. There's a team heading for you
right now. They have an illegal Navstar link, so they know your precise
bearing. The government search parties are still wandering around on the
Ice thirty kilometers to the northwest. They don't have you located, yet.
From what we can overhear of their radio traffic, they got a bum steer from
a local peasant who couldn't estimate distances properly. But it won't be
long before they expand their search pattern. With any kind of luck, we’ll
get you out of there before they read your position."
them come faster.
   He closed his eyes. Maybe if he slept, he could forget how much he
hurt. And how cold the cabin was growing. The space suit's heater ran on
batteries. A half hour wouldn't exhaust them; but he wasn't sure how long
he would need them. He decided to keep the heater on low. Just warm
enough to remind him how chilly it was.
   Lying there, he had the oddest sensation that Piranha was accelerating,
hard; but that her engines were located under the deck rather than aft. It
was gravity, of course. Gravity was acceleration and his body interpreted it
as movement because one kind of acceleration felt like any other.
   He reminded himself that Downers would say "up," not "forward."
Crazy planet. Still, he remembered what gravity had been like. He would
get used to it again. It would just take a little time.
   His eyes jerked open. Bedsheets?

   The second time, he was wakened by the muted sound of motors
outside the hull. Alex listened carefully, holding his breath. Yes, definitely
motors. He tongued the radio. "Big Momma?"
   "I'm here, Alex." Her voice came faintly through the spitting and
crackle. There was definitely something wrong with the radio. He prayed
that the comm would not fail.
   "I hear noises outside. Friendlies or government?"
   "It's the rescue party. I think they just spotted you. Look, Alex, one
thing.
   "What?"
   "Your rescuers. They may seem, well, a little strange at first. Just bear
with them. They're good folks. Considering how things stand on Earth
these days, they're risking a lot to help you."
   And beggars can’t be choosers. He hadn't known the space dwellers
had, any friends on Earth; let alone strange ones. "Roger. Out."
They re half buried in the ice! It turned back and waved again. It was an
effort to return the gesture, and after a moment Alex lay back and waited
for them to open the hatch. There was more banging and stomping over his
head. Strange, Mary had said. So far they didn't seem strange. No stranger
than anyone who could move about freely in this horrible gravity.

    Scoopship cabins were built for two people and Alex marvelled that so
many more had managed to crowd inside. It seemed as if they all wanted
to talk at once. They asked questions about the ship, about the habitats and
Luna City, about space travel. About everything. Finally, an older man
with bushy white hair and beard hollered and drove them out.
    "Let me apologize for my friends," he said as he crouched by Alex's side.
"They're a little excited at the idea of meeting you."
    "Me?" Alex was surprised. "Why should that excite anyone?"
    The other man raised his shaggy eyebrows. "Not many spacemen stop
here these days."
    "Spaceman. I was born on Earth. Kansas."
    The white-haired man grunted. "I don't think you're in Kansas anymore,
Toto. He set a black bag on the deck and opened it. Alex twisted his head to
look inside.
    "Are you a doctor?"
    "No, I'm a plumber. Lie still. Of course, I'm a doctor. Will Waxman,
M.D. We're not irresponsible, you know. We knew you might be hurt; so I
came along."
    "Sorry."
    "It was the house call that probably fooled you," he said, unfastening the
space suit.
    Alex watched him reach inside the bag and pull out a stethoscope. The
black bag didn't float away like Newton said it should. It stayed put.
Gravity field. He would have to remember that. Things wouldn't behave
naturally groundside. His reflexes would be all wrong. He wondered how
worry, though. Lungs aren t punctured. Well tape you up, and in a few
weeks you ought to be good as new."
    Alex grunted. Good news from all over. What the hell; he was due for
some good news. "Doc, how's Gordon? Have you looked at him yet?" The
stilyagi was his responsibility. He was the captain; and if it hadn't been for
his stupid pride, Gordon would be sitting warm and snug and conscious
back in Freedom.
    "Gordon? Ah, your copilot. I checked him first. Concussion. No broken
bones, no bleeding, no shock. Your people upstairs say there's nothing
wrong internally, but we'll be careful until we can get you to a clinic. How
does the arm feel?"
    "What? Oh, a little numb. Is it broken?"
    Waxman ran his hands down the left arm, squeezing gently. When he
reached the wrist, Alex sucked his breath in. Waxman nodded. "Sprain, I'd
say. We'll tape that, up, too. Sherrine, could you help me here with his
ribs?"
    A woman came around from behind the pilot's seat. Her parka was
unzipped and its hood was thrown back, revealing the loveliest woman
Alex had ever seen. Tall and thin, even under layers of sweaters, with
prominent, fragile bones. "Hi. Sherrine Hartley," she said in a low, throaty
voice.
    "Alex MacLeod." He managed to reach up to take her hand despite the
gravity. It was a hell of an effort, but worth it; but he couldn't hold it up
long. She patted his hand with a firm but gentle touch.
    "Welcome to Earth."
    "Meeting you makes it almost worth the trip."
    She blushed, as if unused to hearing such compliments. How could that
be, Alex wondered? A woman as tall and gangly as Sherrine must hear
them every day. He studied her as she helped the Doc tape him up. She
leaned close into his face as she ran the tape behind his back. How did men
the motors he had heard earlier. Both sledges and snowmobiles were
festooned with miscellaneous items of equipment and jerry cans exuding a
chemical smell.
    Sherrine was suited up now, hiding her figure. "That was a piece of
luck, wasn't it?" she said, pointing to the half-buried ship. "Thor figured
you'd be melted into the Ice; that's why we brought Pop—pop's snow
blower. The 'danes will never spot your ship unless they're right on top of
it. Even the landing path blends into the glare of the Ice if you're not
looking for it."
    "Danes?" Alex was startled. "We were nowhere near Greenland!"
    "No, not Danes. Apostrophe—danes, as in 'mundanes.' People with no
imagination. People who couldn't imagine space travel even after it had
happened. The 'danes have inherited the Earth."
    He sensed bitterness in her voice and gave her an appraising look while
her friends strapped him into a sledge. He was already wearing her
grandfather's parka. Now they wrapped him in blankets and covered him
over with a white bedsheet. A pair of wrap-around sunglasses cut the
intensely white glare.
    "What now?" Thor said. "Those suits. You going to wear them?"
    "No way," Bruce said. "One look at those and the dumbest cop would
know where we got them."
    "They're not easy to get out of," Alex said.
    "They are if we cut you out." Thor had a huge knife in his hand.
    Alex felt a moment of panic. His suit was not replaceable. Nor was
Gordon's. When the suits were gone they weren't space pilots any more.
    And so what? You can't go to space without a spaceship. We're not
going back, not now, not ever, so we don't need pressure suits.
    "All right. Be careful with Gordon-—"
    "We will," Doc said. "You worry about the gear. What are we taking,
what do we leave?"
    They wrapped them in blankets. Sherrine and Thor had to carry him to
the sled. He couldn't walk, and could barely stand. Gordon was still out.
They carried him over as well. Sherrine settled him onto the sled and put
on more blankets, then a white sheet. "Should I?" she asked.
    "Should you what?"
    "Like the way the 'danes run things."
    Alex tried to shrug under the blankets. "It's not my world; but they did
try to shoot me down."
    Mike Glider-—he called himself "Mycroft"-—loomed over him. "They
did more than try, Gabe—boy," he said. "They did it."
    "That they did." If I'd turned back, after the first missile-— But damn all, we
needed the nitrogen. "My name's Alex, not 'Gabe.' " Talking wasn't easy. The
air was cold, horribly cold.
    The fat man spread his arms out. "Code names. You're Gabriel; the kid
is Raphael. Two angels. Get it?" He took his place on the sledge runners.
    Alex wondered how any human being could become as fat as Mike.
Perhaps it was an adaptation to the ice age. Heat loss was proportional to
surface area; and the sphere had the lowest surface area to volume ratio of
any solid.
    "Saint Michael was an angel, too," he pointed out.
    Mike brightened. "Hey, that's right. Do you think I could go up with
you guys when they come to get you?"
    Alex didn't say anything. MacLeod's First Rule of Wilderness Survival:
Don't piss off your rescuers. But Lonny would never take someone like
Mike aboard. Whatever Mike's intellect and training, he was just too damn
big. It would take too many resources to fuel that much mass.
    They're not corning down for us anyway. We are here for keeps, and
Mike is a hell of a lot better adapted to local conditions than I am. "Where
to now?" he asked.
     Your grandparents sound like good folks.
    "They are. Gran was a plant geneticist before they outlawed it. Pop—
pop was a farmer. They still do a little bootleg bioengineering in their
basement. Developed a cold-resistant strain of wheat that let them bring in
a crop for three years after their neighbors went under. They had to stop
last year, though. Gran seeded a rust virus that killed off their crop."
    "What? Why? If they'd continued-—Sherrine, it's going to get a lot
colder before it ever gets warmer."
    She looked away; beat her mittens together. "Hungrier, too." Her voice
was hard and angry. "But their neighbors-—their good, kindly,
salt-of-the-earth neighbors were starting to talk about witchcraft. They
couldn't imagine any other reason why my grandparents' wheat thrived
while theirs died. Peasants always believe in witchcraft." She seated herself
on the snowmobile attached to his sledge. Her back was turned and he
could not see her face.
    Bruce Hyde, code-named "Robert," planted himself behind the other
sledge. "Everybody ready?" he asked. Doc Waxman took the second
snowmobile. Thor and Steve Mews, the black man, were on cross-country
skis. They adjusted their sunglasses and waved. Bruce checked his Navstar
transponder and circled his arm above his head. "Warp factor five, Mr.
Sulu!"
    The snowmobiles started with a roar. Searchers might find us hard to
see, Alex thought, but we sure as hell would be easy to hear.
    And, dammit, they would stick out for sure on an IR screen. Eight
warm-bodied needles in a very cold haystack. And the two snowmobile
engines would glow like spotlights.
    Alex tried to scan the skies for search planes, but found himself oddly
disoriented. The sky was white and the ground was white, and it was hard
to tell which was which. "White-out," Mike had called it. "Sky" was
"forward," the direction along the acceleration vector. Yet, the visual
cues-—the ice sliding past the sledge-—were at right angles to his sense of
    Sherrine nodded. None of them wanted to talk. It was too cold.
    He tongued his uplink. "Big Momma, this is Piranha." More hiss and
crackle. "Big Momma, this is Piranha." Sherrine looked the question at him.
He shook his head. "Big Momma, this is Piranha."
    "Piranha, da. Eto Mir. We relay you. Please to be standink by."
    He waited. Freedom would be below the horizon. Fortunately, there was
always something in the sky. The RCA communications satellites, capable
of relaying half the long-distance calls of the world, only the world didn't
want them anymore. Now this splendid system, capable of thousands of
simultaneous calls, served the space stations and the few people on Earth
who wanted to talk to them.
    "Alex, this is Mary. What is it?" Alex thought she sounded tired, and
who could blame her? She had been standing by in Mission Control ever
since the launch. She must have been catnapping right at the console.
Quickly and concisely, he told her of their IR visibility.
    "I don't know what we can do about that, Alex, except to keep you
posted on troop movements so you can avoid them. Their search planes
have been quartering steadily southeast toward your position."
    "Give them decoys."
    "Say again?"
    "Give them bogeys. I've got it scoped out. Have SUNSAT beam down a
few hotspots here and there around the glacier. If they're, looking for IR
targets, let's give 'em their heart's desire."
    Mary fell silent and Alex could sense her working through the
calculations. Power was the one thing besides people that the habitats
could spare. Space was full of power, supplied by a friendly, all-natural
nuclear fusion generator. All you had to do was catch it . . .
    SUNSAT did that. The U.S. government had nearly completed a
demonstration power satellite before the Congress changed their minds
and proxmired it. They'd needed the money for dairy farm subsidies or
corporate bailouts or something else real useful. The entire space budget,
Rectenna Farm on power demand and see how much we can divert.
    Alex could tell when Lonny entered the comm room from the way Mary
talked. When she was alone, he was Alex. When Lonny was there, he was
Piranha. Piranha non grata.
    "Winnipeg Rectenna is down, I say again, Winnipeg Rectenna will not
be operational for three days." Knocked out by an eco-terrorist bomb thirty
hours before Alex took the scoopship down. He'd read about it and
wondered if that was significant to his mission. It wouldn't be operational
yet. The bomb had done in some of the electronics.
    Winnipeg was the only human habitation still functioning that far
north, except along the ice-free Alaska Corridor. It had held out so long
because of the powersat ground station, built by the Canadian end of the
original staging corporation. They had heat and power in plenty, but they
couldn't hold the Ice at bay forever; there were too many tons encircling
them. And when Winnipe finally went under, would the U.S. take in the
survivors. It was well known in orbit that the Last of the Canadians were
also the last friends of the habitats, which did not make them popular in
the U.S.A.
    "Understood, Piranha. I will let you know."
    Alex cut contact. So far, Lonny Hopkins, Grand El Jefe and Lord High
Naff-naff of Freedom Station had not deigned to speak to him directly,
which was fine by Alex. Lonny had a grudge against him and, in all
fairness, if Mary had been his wife he might have felt the same way. But
Lonny had no quarrel with Gordon, nor with Gordon's family, who had
powerful connections on Peace; nor with the Earthlings who were helping
out. So, while Lonny might not go out of his way to help, he would not
stand in the way, either. Alex sighed. It wasn't so much that you could
depend on him to do the right thing; but Lonny was very careful not to do
the wrong thing.
    Good old Lon. No wonder he loved him so much.
      What s the bad news? Alex asked.
     "The search planes are moving west," said Sherrine. "Whether they
know it or not, they've cut us off from Pop—pop's farm. Damn! Another
half hour and we'd have been home."
     "Can we go around them somehow? Or head somewhere else?"
     She shook her head. "Bob and the van are waiting at the farm. If we go
somewhere else, how will he know where to find us?"
     Oh, that part is easy," Alex said. "Pick some coordinates-—does Bob
have a Navstar link too? No? Then pick a place that he'll know how to find.
I'll tell Big Momma; and Big Momma can tightbeam the contact person-—"
     "The Oregon Ghost."
     Whatever that meant. "And then this ghost can call Bob at your
grandparents' place."
     "That's easy?"
     Alex grinned. "Sure. Maybe not straightforward, but easy. There's a
difference."
     "All right. I'll tell the others." She pointed to the other sledge. "Your
friend's awake."
     Gordon was watching Alex from within his cocoon of blankets on the
other edge. Alex tried to grin, but his face was nearly frozen.
     "We live," Gordon said.
     "Da. How're you feeling?"
     "Not good," Gordon said. "These are droogs?"
     "Da. Good friends." And they can hear anything I say, so I can't tell him
Mission Control says they may be a trifle weird.
     "It was-—almost good landing," Gordon said. "I read once that any
landing you walk away from is good. But we do not walk."
     "Not just yet."
     "It is cold. I see why you laugh when I think that because it only freezes
water it is not cold. It is very cold." With an effort Gordon pulled a scarf
over his face.
   The conference ended and Mike and Sherrine returned to the sledge.
   "Problem?" he asked.
   "We have a place. I don't like it," Sherrine said. "But it's the only possible
one."
   Steve Mews and Thor set their goggles, dug their poles into the ice, and
whisked forth. Their job was to scout ahead for crevasses and other
obstacles. "So where to?" Alex asked Sherrine when she resumed her seat.
   "Brandon."
   "How far is that?"
   "About a hundred fifty kilometers across the Ice."
   Alex didn't say anything for a while, doing some arithmetic in his head.
About ten hours' travel, assuming a reasonable pace. He glanced at the sun,
wondering how many hours of daylight were left. It was already high in
the sky, and the earth seemed to be spinning awfully fast. When was sunset
for this latitude and season? He closed his eyes and tried to picture the
globe as he was used to seeing it. What was it like on the Ice at night? Cold.
Colder than it was already. "Don't fret," he said aloud. "It's only water ice."

    When Alex reestablished the link, Mary wasn't at the comm anymore. It
was a woman he did not know. Well, Mary had to crash sooner or later.
Lonny might have suggested that she was spending too much time
downlinking.
    Talk was cheap. The delta vee might cost too much for a rescue trip; but
the solar power for the comm links was practically free. He and Mary could
talk until Hell froze over; which, judging by his surroundings, would be
real soon now.
    He let Gordo handle the comm. Not that he was sulking over Mary's
absence, but he felt it was about time that the kid took a hand in his own
rescue. Alex listened in.
    "Skazhitye, Big Momma," he heard him say. "Team Leader 'Robert'
points out that, uh, Fargo Gap is uzkiy-—is a choke point, and sure to be
stakes, but still just a game.
    The decision to head for Brandon obviously pleased no one, but there
was little choice in the matter. As Bruce explained it, they could not return
to Mapleton; they could not risk running the road block at Fargo Gap; and
they could not easily set up a rendezvous with Bob Needleton short of a
landmark they all knew about. >From the glum expressions, they must
know they'd still be on the Ice after sunset. Alex wondered if they were
having second thoughts about the rescue.

    Alex knew that rivers were free-flowing streams of water propelled by
gravity rather than pressure. He had seen pictures. He could even close his
eyes and remember them. He had swum in one once, a majestically slow
stream with banks choked by trees, as close to weightlessness as he had
come in those days. But memory did not prepare him for the sight of the
Red River from atop the Dakota Glacier.
    Sherrine stopped the sledge at the head of a vast ramp of ice while Thor
and Steve probed ahead for crevasses. Mike pointed downward. "There she
is," he said. "The Red River of the North. It carries warmer water from the
south into New Lake Aggaziz. If it weren't for the river and the rectenna
farm, Winnipeg would be under the Ice by now."
    Alex looked where he pointed. The valley was partially filled in, with
ice and snow forming a broad shallow U. The river itself gleamed a perfect
silver, the sunlight dancing on it where it showed between the choking ice
floes. At first the river seemed merely large; but the nearby hills and ice
banks gradually brought it into scale in his mind. The largest free-flowing
stream he had seen in recent years was when the laundry basin in the
daycare center had plugged up and the rinse water overflowed. He'd
gotten three kinds of hell over it and spent a day and a half sponging loose
globules out of the air. What he saw now was vast beyond belief. Hundreds
of liters of water, at the very least!
wide open spaces.
    "Well, yes and no," Alex answered him. He kept his gaze fixed on the
panorama below him, forcing his mind to accept it. "Inside the habitats,
everything is cramped; outside, everything is so vast you can't even relate
to it. Life consists of things you can reach out and touch and things you
could never touch in a lifetime of reaching. Somehow this intermediate
scale seems much bigger.
    Sherrine laughed. "You should see the Mississippi."
    "He may," said Mike. "When the Great Ice builds up enough weight, it'll
tip the North American Plate and the Mississippi'll start running north. I'd
hate to be in California when that happens. The whole tectonic boundary'll
go at once." He dismounted from the sledge and trudged across the Ice to
where Bruce Hyde stood watching the skiers through a pair of binoculars.
    Alex turned to Sherrine. "Is he always like that?" he asked.
    "Mike? Sure. We call him the 'Round Mound of Profound.' " She was
perched tailor-fashion atop the snowmobile engine housing, taking
advantage of the break to warm herself from the engine heat. "He'll talk
about anything and everything. Sometimes he even knows what he's
talking about."
    Alex shook his head. "Why do you put up with it?"
    She gave him a look of surprise. "Fen are a tolerant bunch. You'd be
shocked at some of what we put up with. Besides, every now and then he
comes up with something useful."
    "So, were to now?" he asked. It was irritating to sit bundled in the sledge
while others took charge. He knew he should be used to that. MacLeod do
this. MacLeod do that. Don't forget to clean up. Help the kids put their toys away.
Try to be useful for a change. But piloting Piranha had wakened something.
For a short time he had been making the decisions. Poor ones maybe; but
his decisions.
    Sherrine twisted and faced the river valley. Directly east was the sheer
wall of another glacier, higher than the one they were on. "Over there," she
gone, too. It ll freeze and become just another tongue of the glacier.
    "So fast," she said. "It came on so fast. Positive feedback. Once it gets
started, it runs away before you know it's begun." She turned and looked at
him over her shoulder; gave a little shrug. "Sometimes it gets me down,
you know what I mean?"
    Bruce and Mike were walking back to the sledges, waving their arms.
Sherrine and Doc resumed their seats in the snowmobiles. "It's ironic, don't
you think," she asked him before starting the engine, "that the biggest
environmental disaster in history was caused by environmentalism?"
    ***
    The Valley was as quiet as a Christmas postcard scene. Everything was
shrouded in a blanket of light powdery snow. There were ghostly
hummocks from which protruded the odd chimney or tree branch. Steve
spotted an automobile embedded in the side wall of the glacier itself, its tail
end protruding several meters past ground level.
    Alex remembered reading about the mammoths found frozen in the
Siberian glaciers of an earlier ice age and wondered what future
generations would make of this relic when and if the Ice released its grip.
    Thor shucked his skis, climbed the ice wall, and pierced the car's gas
tank from underneath with an ice pick. Using a funnel attached to a syphon
hose, he refilled one of the depleted jerry cans with what gasohol remained
in the tank.
    So easy. With gravity to help, the fuel didn't have to be pumped; it just
streamed toward the Earth's center. But why were Sherrine's fists clenched
into tight balls while she watched Thor work?
    He asked. She said, "If he slips, he could break his neck."
    Right. It was just as well that he was strapped into the sledge. Free to
help, he'd be worse than useless. He'd be an embarrassment. Thirty years
of conditioned reflexes could not be forgotten overnight. If it had been him
scavenging the gasohol, he would have tried to jump over to the car and
stand on the ice wall. You can't stand on walls in a gravity field, Alex. The car
stretches had been engulfed by the Dakota Glacier just as the car had been.
Alex could see where another highway-—US 83-—had been cleared as an
alternate route wherever the interstate was impassable.
    "They don't spend as much effort on this road as they do on I-94, "Mike
explained. "There are only a couple of towns in the Valley still open"-—he
wave a mittened hand north-—"and only Winnipeg at the dead end."
    They halted at the riverbank. Sherrine turned off the snowmobile's
engine and stared at the turgid water choked with "pancake ice and
slush-—an open expanse of water even vaster than Alex had imagined
from the glacier overlook. The scale of the planet was just beginning to hit
him. It was huge; everything in it was immense. And it was convex. He
held on tightly to his boyhood memories. At one time he had regarded all
this as normal.
    He wondered how Gordon was taking it. The gravity and the scale were
completely new to him. When Alex glanced over at the other sledge, he
saw Doc Waxman was bent over Gordon. "Gordo?" Alex fumbled for a
moment with the tongue switch, then thought better of it. No point in
sending a beacon for someone to home in on. "Are you all right, Gordon?"
he shouted.
    "Nye khorosho, Alex. Leave me alone." He moaned.
    "Doc," Alex called out. "What's wrong with Gordon?"
    Waxman turned his bushy, white patriarch's beard toward him.
"Motion sickness," he said. "He threw up and it froze all over him. He'll be
fine once he gets used to things down here." He shook his head. "I've heard
of people getting motion sickness in free fall. First time I ever saw it work
the other way."
    No one ever died from motion sickness; they only wished they could.
Yes, Gordon would get over it, just as Alex already had. It was a matter of
synchronizing the sense of balance with visual perception. Gordon was
born in free fall and a constant acceleration frame screwed up his motion
cues a lot worse than it did Alex's. Like everyone else, he'd gone to
    Pins, Mike corrected him. Use the code names, like we agreed.
   Bruce gave him a look. "There ain't nobody here but us tribbles; so who
gives a-—"
   "And Gabe can call Big Momma and change the rendez-—"
   "The code name idea was stupid, anyway-—"
   Doe Waxman stepped between them. "This isn't helping us cross the
Red," he said.
   They both fell silent. Thor and Steve shuffled their skis back and forth
across the ice. "We can't stay here," Thor said. "We'll freeze." He looked
back the way we had come.
   Mike studied the river. "Maybe we could leap from floe to floe. You
know. Like Eliza crossing the ice in Uncle Tom's Cabin."
   "Why, Mike," said Bruce, "what a wonderful idea. Did you hear that,
Alex? You can leap from floe to floe."
   Alex smiled weakly. "I'm game, but I don't think the snowmobiles are
up to it."
   "Well, now, wait," said Mike. "Sure the plan has a hole in it, but-—"
   Sherrine: "Not just a hole, Mike. A black hole."
   Thor: "Yeah, the plan sucks."
   Mike stuck his chin out. "You have a better plan, maybe?"
   Steve Mews interrupted. "I do. Head north."
   They all looked at one another. "North," said Bruce. "You mean go to
Winnipeg? But that's a dead end."
   Steve clapped his mittens together. "Hey, maybe I'm wrong. I don't
know the local geography. But didn't that Engineer captain at Fargo tell us
that the Red was frozen north of Perley? Well, that's gotta be north of here,
right?"
   Alex never saw so many mouths hang open at once.
   The glaciers on both sides of the river growled and popped as they
flowed south-—an odd and disconcerting sound. Every snap made him
jerk, thinking it was the river ice breaking up beneath them. He had not
expected sounds. But then, he didn't suppose a mountain range of ice
could slide across the landscape in silence. He wondered whether, if the
glacier sounds were recorded and played back at high speed, they would
sound              like             a            rushing           river.
    That doesn t make sense, Mike said. How would he have known
what we were up to?"
   "He might have guessed from your questions about the Angels. One fan
knows another."
   Warmly wrapped and trundled by sledge, Alex chafed at his
helplessness while others did the work of rescue. "I'm just not used to being
so useless," he told Sherrline. Actually, I'm here because I was expendable. He
thought of telling her that, but he didn't want to.
   Sherrine laughed. "Alex, sitting in that sledge, you've done more to help
us than anyone standing up."
   The Angel flushed. "I'm a link to Freedom, that's all. They do the work."
   Sherrine shook her head. "Don't be modest." Was Alex serious, she
wondered, or was it just the usual macho self-deprecation? It seemed as if
the older space pilot never missed a chance to put himself down, since
putting himself down on Earth. And the kid spent most of his time in a
kind of sullen silence. And these were space heroes?
   Be fair, she chided herself. They were injured and in shock. Give them
time to recover.
   She said, "Who had Big Momma beam down the IR decoys? Who
arranged the rendezvous with Bob when we couldn't go back to Mapleton?
Who had the old Hubble pinpoint the best route up onto this glacier?"
   "It was a rough climb anyhow. Almost too steep for the snowmobiles."
   "It would have been rougher if we'd had to find our own way up, or just
climb straight up the sheer wall."
   Alex grunted. "We also serve who only lie and wait."
   She patted him on his shoulder. "That's the spirit. Don't worry. Steve
will have you on your feet in no time once we et off the Ice."
   "Steve?"
   "Steve's a bodybuilder. Didn't you notice his muscles?"
said, You re magical.
   "So are you!" She bent closer to his face. "Hey, guys, look at this!
Rainbow smoke rings."
   Soon, everyone was laughing and puffing rainbows into the air. Even
Gordon was smiling, for the first time since the crash. Steve tried to make
patterns in the air by moving his head around.
   "We're a lot higher here than on the Dakota," Mike announced. "Its so
cold that the moisture in our breath freezes as soon as we exhale. That
creates a cloud of millions of tiny ice particles." His own beard glistened
with frost as he spoke.
   Bruce made a snowball and threw it at Mike. Sherrine grinned and
made a rainbow ring. "A lot of my mundane friends," she said to Alex,
"think that explaining a phenomenon 'ruins the magic.' I think the
explanations just make it more magical than before. 'Danes live in a world
where everything happens on the surface; where everything is a
symptom-—like the rainbows. But a cloud of microscopic crystal prisms is
as magical as an unexplained rainbow any day."

   When they set out again, Bruce and Mike took the skis to give Steve and
Thor a rest. The tall, brawny Thor took over as Alex's sledge driver. He
seemed drawn and introspective. He was the only one who had not joined
in the rainbow making. His breath sparkled with colors the same as
everyone else's, but it didn't seem to delight him.
   After a few minutes of riding, Alex leaned his head back and studied
Thor's face. "Do you want to tell me what's wrong?" he asked.
   "Wrong?" Thor wouldn't meet his eyes.
   "You've been acting distracted ever since we left the Valley."
   The hum of the snowmobile motor and the hiss of the sledge runners
over the ice were the only, sounds, until Thor said, "There was a family in
that car."
   Alex remembered tail fins protruding from an ice wall. "People? Dead?"
be listening. He remembered thinking about mammoths earlier. He pitched
his voice low. "You didn't tell the others."
    "No. Would you a have?"
    "We should have done something."
    Thor nodded thoughtfully. "See if you can describe it."
    "I don't know. Dig them out. Bury them?" On Earth, he'd heard they
buried their dead. It seemed a waste of organics to Alex, but "custom is
king of all."
    "The glacier will bury them," said Thor. "The job's half done."
    "It doesn't seem right to just leave them there."
    "No, it doesn't. But what could we have done? Broken our necks trying
to et them out? What would we have dug the graves with inside the car, at
least they're safe from wolves. You know what bothers me the most?"
    "No, what?"
    "The accident must have happened ten, twelve years ago, when most of
these towns were evacuated. Hundreds of cars must have driven past. My
mother told me that this country once spent millions of dollars to free two
whales trapped in the Arctic ice. Why didn't anyone stop to help those
people back then? Those children might have still been alive!"
    Alex couldn't think of any way to answer him. It wasn't his planet. He
hadn't been there. He wondered what the evacuation had been like. A
panicked flight? A black, depressing recessional? A car skids off the gassy
roadway and plows into a snowbank. No one stops. No one cares enough
to stop. The country has turned its back on technology. Small is beautiful
but small is also poor; and the country could no longer afford to care.

   As the sun dropped toward the horizon, a curious green tint came over
everything. The ice and the clouds, perfect white but moments before,
glowed like emeralds. To the right, the sky itself was green from the
horizon halfway to the zenith. Sherrine and Doc stopped their
snowmobiles and everyone stared.
different when you got far enough onto the Ice. Nobody knows why.
    Mike was uncharacteristically silent. He muttered something about
static discharge, but neither too loudly nor too confidently. Finally, Bruce
shouted. "Come on! This isn't getting us any closer to Brandon." His voice
was harsh and had a ragged edge to it. When the others looked at him, he
turned his head and looked abruptly away.
    "Right," said Steve. "Doc, rev it up. It'll be dark soon." The other sledge
pulled out ahead and Sherrine fell into line behind.
    "Alex?"
    For a moment, Alex could not figure who had called him. Then he
realized that it was Gordon on the comm link. The kid was finally
communicating. He tongued his radio. "Yeah?"
    "How much farther must we go?"
    Alex shook his head; but Gordon couldn't see him from his sledge. "I
don't know. I've lost track. Should we be broadcasting?"
    "Is low power. Carries how far?"
    "Don't know. I guess it's all right. We're a long way from anything."
    "I think the one they call Robert is worried."
    "Yeah." Alex thought he knew why. Bruce had been keeping track of
their progress. The others might get distracted by rainbows and green
skies, but Bruce always kept the goal firmly in mind.
    "I'm cold," said Gordon. "But my readouts tell me it's only minus fifteen
degrees Celsius. That doesn't make any sense. Neg fifteen isn't very cold."
    "Ever hear of wind chill, Gordo?"
    "Wind chill. No, what is?"
    Oh, Gordo, Gordo. Of course he didn't know. The only wind in Freedom
was Lonny Hopkins making a speech. "Gordon, the human body cools by
convection, right? We dump excess heat into the surrounding air."
    "Yes? Is why we need radiators on the station."
    "Uh-huh." The main problem in the habitats was to keep from roasting.
No one ever heard of too cold. "Well, what if the air around your body was
     What?
    "Well, it doesn't help me feel any warmer, but at least when I freeze to
death, I'll know why."
    Okay, Gordo, be a snot. But he's right. We are not going to make it. It was too
cold, and Brandon was too far. The space suits, with their heaters, had been
left behind with the scoopship. They would have been incriminating, too
hard to dispose of; and the trip was supposed to have been a short one. The
suits wouldn't have saved them anyway. Sherrine and the others would
freeze; Gordon and Alex could wait on their backs until the batteries gave
out. Better that they all go together.
    It was getting colder and the wind was picking up. And it wasn't just
Gordo depending on him. There were these Downers as well. It was his
fault they were out here. Sure, he was going to freeze along with them; but
do passengers really feel better because the captain went down with his
ship? Soon enough, he and his friends would be frozen as solid as those
children in the car.
    "It's not a bad way to go," Thor said softly.
    Alex looked up. Thor knew. He had the most experience with the Ice,
and he knew.
    "You get sleepier and sleepier. Then you don't wake up," Thor said.
"They say it's even easier if you don't fight it."
    "And do you give up?"
    Thor shrugged. "I probably won't. But I won't last much longer than you
do."
    The glacier at night was as dark as the leeside of Freedom Station. But
Freedom Station could turn on the spotlights for EVA work. Alex didn't
think any of the rescue party had realized how dark it would be. They
hadn't expected to still be on the Ice come nightfall; so he couldn't blame
them for not brining any flashlights. They had only the two that Sherrine’s
grandfather kept in the kits strapped to each sledge, and a small trouble
light salvaged from Piranha. They didn't make much light; but, with them
    Sherrine looked around with a frown.
    "Alex-—"
    "Shut up, Gordon! Big Momma, Big Momma, this is Piranha. Mayday."
    ***
    Captain Lee Arteria relaxed in a chair well to the side of the meeting
room, the better to watch the proceedings. One should always have a clear
field of fire, just in case. Several of the other attendees threw repeated
glances in that direction. Arteria, returning their gazes, could almost read
their minds. Slim and fine-featured, pointed chin; short-cropped red hair;
noncommittal first name, and a grip like a Junkyard dog. Gay man or butch
woman? They couldn't tell. It made them uneasy.
    Arteria parted her lips in a thin faint smile. They were bothered less by
the thought that she might be skew than by not knowing the direction of
skew. They liked to put people in categories, even unorthodox categories. It
was more comfortable than dealing with individuals and their
idiosyncrasies. Deny them that and you put them at a disadvantage.
Arteria liked to leave it like that. It was always sound tactics to leave your
opponents at a disadvantage.
    "Can we take it then," said Ike Redden, "that the subjects have died on
the Ice?" Redden represented the INS on the Special Task Force. He was
also the chair. Inter-service wrangling and high-level compromise had left
the Immigration and Naturalization Service in nominal charge of the
search. The space stations had declared their independence almost a
generation ago; so their residents were, ipso facto, aliens. And illegal
immigration was, according to counsel, the most impeccable grounds for
apprehension of the stranded astronauts. Still, Arteria was sure that all the
task force members were looking for ways to bend the mission to their own
advantages.
    The State Police captain shook his head. "I don't see how they could
have gotten off the Ice before nightfall without being apprehended."
ambient. We may never find them.
     "They are not dead."
     Captain Arteria sighed quietly. Staff meetings were always tedious,
especially to the worker bees; but even tedium was better than listening to
Shirley Johnson. Redden sucked on his lips and exchanged glances with the
State Police and Air Force representatives. "Why do you say that, Johnson?"
he asked.
     "Ice is a crystal, and crystals focus the life power. Yes, yes, I know
people have frozen on the Ice in spite of that; but all sickness comes from
negative thinking. One must be open to the life-affirming powers of the
crystal."
     "The aliens are technophiles, pointed out Jheri Moorkith, the Green
representative, and therefore life-denying. However, I agree that they have
escaped. Why else would the techno-scientific elite in their artificial worlds
have beamed their death rays at the search teams?"
     "There were tracks in the snow," State Police admitted, "weren't there,
Captain Arteria?"
     "There certainly were." Arteria's voice was a husky contralto. No sexual
clues there, either. Nor clues of any sort. Arteria intended to participate as
little as possible in the conference. The Angels weren't any threat to the
United States, and tracking them down was using resources better
employed for something else.
     "The tracks came to the spaceship from the south. We lost them on the
hard ice," State Police continued. "But they were headed toward the
interior. There's no chance of finding tracks at night, but come morning
we'll start a search pattern around the projected route. The tracks looked
like dogsleds, though.
     Air Force spoke up. "One of our IR searches turned up a bogey to the
east, on the Minnesota Glacier; but close overflight positively identified it
as an Eskimo band. Those dogsled tracks are probably another band that
saw the ship come down and mushed over to investigate."
who? Given the timing involved, it had to have been impromptu. And, if
they had been caught-—
    People who would risk anything to rescue spacemen, instantly,
knowing the government would be searching, too. People who could head
straight for the spacecraft without aerial spotters. People who could call
down power beams from the stations.
    People who thought they could improvise a rescue on the Ice on the
spur of the moment and pull it off without getting caught.
    Fanac! It had to be fanac.
    And if you could think like a fan again, Arteria thought, you might
figure out where they'd show up next. She smiled wolfishly.
    ***
    The response was faint, almost lost in the hiss of static. "Da, we readink,
Piranha. Chto khochesh? What want?"
    "Thank God. Big Momma, it's cold here. We're going to freeze, all of us.
We need heat. Can you give us a microwave spotlight? Have SUNSAT lock
one of its projectors onto our transponder frequency and track us across the
ice."
    "Skazhite. One moment." Alex waited while Big Momma conferred-—
probably with the Peace Station chief and the SUNSAT engineer. Sherrine
asked him what he was doing and he told her. She and Thor exchanged
glances.
    "Is that possible?" she asked. "To beam enough microwave energy down
to keep us from freezing?"
    "Sure."
    "It won't be, uh, too much, will it?"
    Alex grinned. "I'll have them set it for thaw, not bake. Seriously, the
beam density is only twenty-three milliwatts per square centimeter at the
center of the rectenna farm. I figure if we keep it to a couple of milliwatts, it
will take the edge off the cold without cooking us. We'll have to take off
whatever rings or jewelry we're wearing, wrap them in cloth maybe pack
didn t make any plans. Thor grinned. Well, Ghu takes care of idiots, small
children, and fen. Who knows what the Great Roscoe has in store for us
next?"
    "Roscoe?" Alex asked, but they didn't hear him.
    Alex barely managed to confirm the beam density with the Angels
before losing contact completely. They must have been at the very fringe of
the scoopship relay's range. When he had completed the message, Alex
sighed and spat out the tongue switch. "Well, that's that, he said.
    "Do you think they got the message?" Sherrine asked. "About the
microwaves?"
    Alex's eyes were dull with exhaustion and the endless acceleration. "I
hope so. They're supposed to lock onto the transponder location and track
it all the way to Brandon. We should be warm as toast in a while. If not-—"
Shrugging would be too much effort.
    As they picked their way across the ice, Sherrine waited for evidence of
microwave warming. She worried about their equipment. The sledges
contained little metal. Her grandfather had made them of wood poles and
hide lashings. The two snowmobiles were largely fiberglass, but she
wondered what microwave heating would do to the metal engines.
Probably nothing. Engines run at high temperatures anyway. But suppose
they can't take it? Better than freezing. . .
    After a while, began to feel warm. Was it the microwaves? Or was it
only her anxiety? Or just the heat from the snowmobile engine? She saw a
crevasse that Mike had flagged and steered around it. Cans of gasohol. What
will microwave heat do to those?
    The moon rose, half full, over the eastern horizon, creating a startling
amount of light on the icy landscape. The crust of snow, reflecting the
moonlight, seemed to glow from within itself. She breathed out slowly and
saw the flickering rainbow of her breath. She was happy. Even if they died
here, it had still been worth the attempt.
     Yes. Alex? She kept her eye glued on Mike s back where he broke trail
ahead of her.
    "Could you take a blanket or two off me?"
    She turned around. "What? Oh!" Alex's face was dap with sweat. She
realized that she was perspiring heavily herself. She brought her
snowmobile to a halt just as Will stopped his and jumped off into the snow
and began stuffing ice in his mouth. Now what?
    "Fillings," Will mumbled. "Gold caps, teef." He settled back on his heels
and breathed a sigh of relief.
    "I'm sorry," Alex said. "The calculations must have been off slightly."
    "Can you do something about it?" Will asked. "It's like using hot coffee
for mouthwash."
    Thor rubbed his jaw and agreed. Mike, who had returned from the
point and overheard, grinned. "Makes me glad I have, plastic fillings. No
metal in my mouth."
    "Me neither," Sherrine agreed. "But I'm glad I'm not wearing braces
anymore." The others laughed.
    "Very funny," said Doc, chewing on a snowball. Thor and Bruce were
sucking in cold air. Sherrine winced. Whenever she did that, it hurt her
teeth.
    "No good," said Alex, spitting out his communicator once more. "Damn
thing's hot. I can't raise them. Either we're out of range or the radio finally
went kaput."
    "No big deal,' said Doc. "I'll just keep a mouth full of snow." He took off
his parka. "Meanwhile," he said, "it's a little warm for this."
    The layered look, Sherrine reflected as she removed her own parka had
its advantages. She unstrapped Alex and pulled a blanket off him.
Microwaves created heat by friction. They agitated the molecules of an
object, penetrating to a certain depth, depending on the material. When the
microwaves were shut off, the object continued to heat by conduction to
     Hey, guys, said Bruce. Don t look now, but we got company.
    Sherrine looked to the sky. "Oh, God-—"
    "No," said Bruce. "Not up there. Over here."
    She looked. Eskimos.
    In retrospect, it was probably something she should have expected.
Eskimos lived on the ice and the ice was flowing south, so why shouldn't
there be Inuit in Minnesota? She said as much to Mike about the small,
ragged band that had appeared suddenly in the ghost-light created by the
flashlights and the ice-reflected stars and moon. Mike shrugged, scratched
his beard and dug into his limitless store of miscellany.
    "Maybe," he said. "But the Inuit are a coastal folk. Except for the
caribou-hunting bands, they don't live inland. If anything, the Ice should
have driven them west along the coast into Alaska, not south into the heart
of the glacier."

    Krumangapik's face was a deep copper, creased into a permanent
squint. He had thrown back the hood of his parka showing
straight-cropped black hair. His own sledge and dog team waited nearby
with his partner and their families. Krumangapik grinned, showing the
gaps in his teeth.
    He smiled at Bruce and the others. The Angels, he wasn't sure of. He
kept giving them quick glances from the corners of his eyes.
    He said, "You must not thank for the meat. It is bad manners to thank."
    Bruce seemed flustered. "I didn't mean to give offense," he said.
    "It is our people's custom to thank for gifts," said Sherrine.
    Krumangapik did not look at her. Sherrine thought he wasn't sure if she
was a woman or not. By his standards, she was too thin to be female; but he
evidently had no wish to take chances. Bruce had facial hair and was
obvious the leader, so he spoke exclusively to Bruce.
   Mike and Steve looked thoughtfully at the skewers in their hands.
Sherrine hissed at them. "Not literally! If gift-giving makes slaves, you have
to disparage the gift." They looked relieved and Steve took a bite and
chewed.
   "It is really very good meat," he said. "Tasty. What is it, walrus?"
   "Dog," said Krumanepik. "But it was a very sick dog," he added hastily.
"Mangy. We have lost most of our team on this journey."
   Steve gave a journeyman grin. "Delicious," he said.

   Krumangapik's band had intended to camp, but when Bruce told them
that he was going to press on to Brandon, they elected to join up. "It is safer
to travel together," he said. "You carry the warmth with you; and the
sooner we get off this wretched ice, the better."
   "Get off the Ice?" Steve seemed surprised. "This is your world isn't it?
The land at the top of the world."
   Mala, the other hunter, laughed and the old man shook his head. "It is
ours because neither the Indians nor the whites want it. The legends say
that when we first came into this country, many ages ago, it was already
inhabited by those you call Indians. In the white man’s school, we learned
that these folk were called the Athabascans and the Crees. We fought
mightily to take the land from them. The grass ran red with their gore. Ah,
there were massacres to whet even the wildest fancy! Even today, to cry!
'Indians!' among the Greenlanders is enough to throw everyone into a
panic; even though the word has long lost its meaning there. But the
Indians were crueler and wiser in the ways of war than we; and, even
though the forests were spreading north, there was not room in them for
both peoples, and we retreated before them. Soon we came to a strange,
white land where the Indian would not follow. Life here became a contest
with death, but we learned that if we followed the proper customs, we
could live. Later, we found that Sila had arranged all this to harden us
against the day of our vengeance. Now, the ice is bringing us back again
    Even Mike was speechless.
    "Cannibals?" asked Bruce in a strained voice.
    "Yes. Two hunters named Minik and Mattak who accompanied us at
first from Baffinland. They were the strongest, so they always took bigger
portions of the food than they were entitled to. Every day as we crossed the
ice they grew more savage. Several days ago, while we were hunting,
Minik and Mattak returned to the camp and attacked the women and
children. Oomiliak, my son, fought well and lost an eye." He put an arm
around a small boy with an empty eyesocket who stood beside him. "But
his sister and mother were stabbed to death and dragged away to be eaten.
When Mala and I returned to camp and learned what had happened, we
tried to take vengeance, but the dogs were too weak to chase them across
the ice."
    Bruce swallowed and looked out into the surrounding night. "Where are
they now?"
    The old man shrugged. "Somewhere out there. Perhaps they are
following us. Or perhaps they have gone elsewhere." His face closed up
and he looked away, into the night.
    For a man, one of whose wives had been killed and eaten along with his
daughter, Sherrine thought Krumangapik was taking his loss remarkably
well. She wondered if Eskimos felt tragedy differently than other folk.
    And the Angels? Alex did not appear shocked at Krumangapik's casual
attitude. Why not?

   Bruce let the Eskimos take the point. They knew more about traveling
on the Ice and would be more aware of dangerous conditions, especially in
the dark. Sherrine thought Bruce was more than a little glad to have
someone else shoulder the responsibility for a while. Now and then he
consulted the transponder and sent word to Krumangapik to alter course.
The old Eskimo never revealed what he thought of these directions; but
dropped. The Eskimos shed their parkas and even their undergarments.
She noticed that all of them, hunters and women, wore long johns from
Sears. Krumangapik was not the unspoiled savage he liked to pretend.
Soon they were standing in the buff.
    The two women strung a clothesline between two light poles and hung
the discarded clothing to it with pins made of walrus bone. Sherrine had to
admit that the younger hunter, Mala, was rather well-hung. Naterk, his
wife, was-—Well, round. She had curves in places where other women did
not have places. Sherrine saw Alex and Gordon staring at the woman and
turned away. Sooner or later, she knew, they would run into a woman who
was not a stick; but they did not have to make such a spectacle of their
interest.
    Krumangapik invited them to air out their own clothing as well.
'Normally, we do this only in the igloo. It is usually not warm enough
outside. But with this wonderful heat-—" He raised his arms and turned
slowly, as if basking in the sun on Miami Beach.
    "Aren't you even a little chilly?" she asked.
    Krumangapik grinned his gap-toothed grin again. "Better to be chilly,"
he quote "and also be alone inside one's clothing."
    Then she noticed that the women were picking through the furs for lice.
It figured. There wouldn't be too many opportunities to change on the
glacier. They must spend a great many days wearing the same clothes.
    Sherrine looked at Thor, who looked at Mike, who looked at Steve, who
looked at Doc, who looked at Bruce. No one moved. Then Steve grinned
and pulled his sweater over his head. He cried, "Gentlebeings and sapients
all, how can you resist? How often do you get a chance to sunbathe on a
glacier?"
    They stripped down practically to the buff. Sherrine and Doc both drew
the line at shucking their underwear.
    Thor and Steve did not; but looking at them they seemed less a pair of
naked males than a pair of Greek statues, one in ivory, one in ebony. Nude,
hunting. Either that or you have to offer him your wife.
    Sherrine was arranging Alex atop a pile of discarded clothing. Alex was
trying to smile hard enough to mask the winces caused by the pain in his
ribs. She pulled the strap snug, but not tight.
    "Thor," she said, "don't even think it." And she whipped around with a
snowball in her hand and blasted him on the chest.
    Then all fandom was plunged into war. Even the Eskimos joined in. It
was such a relief to know that they would not freeze! Sherrine wondered if
she might even get a tan out of it. She was laughing and dancing and
dodging snowballs when the spotlight from the helicopter caught them
dead center.
    ***
    Lieutenant Gil Magruder studied the shapes dancing in the spotlight
below. There were two sleds piled high with clothing and blankets. Nestled
in the clothing, he saw two naked corpses, long dead of starvation by the
looks of them. Cavorting around them in some sort of ritualistic dance
were a dozen naked and near naked men and women, including at least
two children. When the light hit them, they froze in place and stared up at
the helicopter. Magruder pivoted the copter, keeping the beam centered.
    "Sergeant. What do you see down there?"
    Staff Sergeant Emil Poulenc looked and swallowed his gum. "It looks
like some kind of funeral, sir," he said in a Louisiana drawl. "Those are
Eskimos, aren't they? But-—"
    "But they're naked, aren't they, Sergeant. They're on the Ice at thirty
below and they're naked."
    "Well, that lady there, she has a brassiere and panties on."
    Magruder gave him a stare.
    "I mean, she's not completely naked." Poulenc's voice sounded wistful.
    "Sergeant, what possible difference can a pair of pink panties make at
thirty degrees below zero?"
    Poulenc scratched his chin. "Well, sir, since you put it that way."
highway toward the station, where Alex saw a man presumably Bob
Needleton-—sitting in a lawn chair reading a magazine beside a blazing
fire he had built in an oil drum. When he heard them coming, he folded the
magazine and stood up.
    "It's about time you got here," he said. If he thought there was
something extraordinary about a procession of naked people coming off
the glacier, he did not say. Instead he gave directions for loading the van.
    Alex and Gordon were trundled into the back of the van and laid out
flat on a pair of old mattresses. The last sight Alex saw before they slid the
door closed was a bunch of naked Eskimos dancing around the blazing oil
drum. It was probably a measure of how accustomed he had already
become to Earth, that the sight seemed perfectly natural. So far, all the
Earthlings he had met had behaved oddly.
    Maybe gravity pulled blood from the brain . . .
    Bob climbed into the pilot's seat. "That's that," he said. "Sherrine, honey,
your grandparents stayed behind in Mapleton just in case you managed to
get back there after all. As soon as we find a working telephone we'll call
and tell them you're okay and where to find their equipment. Your pal
Krumangapik agreed to wait here until they came by, if I would let him
have the fire I built in the oil drum." He started the engine. "I guess that
takes care of everything."
    "Not quite everything," Alex said. "It's going to get cold. We told
SUNSAT to turn off the beam when we got to Brandon."
    "Sigh," Thor said. "I suppose we'd be too easy to locate if we kept it. But
it was nice to be warm."
    There was a mad scramble in the back of the van as everyone hastened
to don clothes. Conditions were crowded with seven people in the back of
the van. Alex didn't mind the occasional elbow or knee as the others pulled
on sweaters and pants, because their body heat warmed the place nicely.
He supposed that was how Krumangapik and his friends could sit around
some pranayama. I want you to practice breathing.
    Alex wondered what it was that his lungs had been doing all his life. "I
already know how to breathe," he told him.
    "I don't want you to breathe from your diaphragm. I want you to
breathe from your little potbelly." He set his hand on Alex's stomach.
"Make your stomach go in and out, not your chest."
    Steve wasn't kidding. Alex looked at Gordon and Gordon looked at him
and he shrugged with his eyebrows. Didn't everyone breathe from their
stomachs? He studied the Earthlings surrounding him and, yes, it was
indeed their chests that rose and fell. He watched Sherrine's chest more
closely, just to make sure. Maybe their rib muscles were better developed.
Gravity again, he supposed.
    "That's very good!" Steve seemed genuinely surprised and delighted.
"Now I want you to breath using only your left nostril."
    He still wasn't kidding. Alex looked around the van, but Mike and
Sherrine and even Doc Waxman showed no reaction to Steve's bizarre
request; and Thor was trying to follow his directions.
    "Come on," Steve said in an encouraging voice. "Practice along with me.
In through the left nostril. Out through the mouth." When he breathed out
he chanted, "Om mane padme om."
    Hot damn! thought Alex. We're in the hands of crazy people. He had never
felt safer.
the official program had already started . . . but Bruce Hyde and the rest of
the Con Committee seemed to have vanished into thin air, all but one or
two and they weren't talking. Something was up . . . and even Crazy Eddie
seemed to be in on it.
    Chuck Umber had published fandom's most successful news magazine
for more than twenty years, in formats growing gradually more cryptic and
secretive for an audience growing gradually smaller. He'd always kept
secrets that had to be kept. He smuggled copies of Hocus to closet fans with
mundane jobs. He knew were Thor hid out.
    He was even pretty sure he knew where the Oregon Ghost was hiding.
What kind of secret was it that Edward Two Bats could be trusted with it
and Chuck Umber couldn't?
    He stalked down the first-floor hallway of the Fielding Mansion,
counting the doors as he went. Crazy Eddie had said to try the third door
on the right in the west wing. Ordinarily he rated Crazy Eddies reliability
as no better than that of a network newsreader; but so far he was the only
person who allowed as how he might have seen Bruce Hyde around the
mansion.
    He opened the third door and stepped inside. "Bruce?"
    A semicircle of femmefans twisted in their chairs to stare at him. They
were variously dressed in gossamer robes and chain mail bikinis, a sight in
which he might ordinarily have shown more interest. Instead, he looked
left and right around the room. He stuck his goatee out. "Is Bruce Hyde
here?"
    The panel moderator, with her short-cropped hair and 15th century
breast-and-back plate armor, looked like Joan of Arc as played by Ingrid
Bergman. She shook her head. "You want the Con Suite I think it's on the
third floor, south wing. This is a panel on medieval and barbarian
costuming. You're welcome to join us, if you want."
    "Uh, no, thank you." Chuck apologized for interrupting. He was
revising his estimate of Crazy Eddie's reliability.
    Arrgh. How about Bruce? He s the Chair. He s gotta be around
someplace."
    "Think I saw him. North wing. Second floor." Fang missed a swat on his
paddle and the tether ball Zigzagged crazily. He fumbled with it for a
moment, then tucked paddle and ball into the back pocket of his jeans.
"Library? Yeah, the library. I'm sure that was him."
    "Thanks, Fang. I owe you one." Chuck turned and strode off toward the
stairwell. Fang watched him walk out of sight. When Chuck was gone,
Fang rapped three times on the door beside him. Crazy Eddie stuck his
head out.
    Edward Two Bats was a lean, hawk-faced old man, at least part
Indian-—although from what tribe he had never said. He had been writing
science fiction forever, and movie scripts before that. He wore a allow
nylon~jacket and a red bandanna tied around one leg just above the knee.
His beard was stringy like a Chinese mandarin's.
    His voice was gentle. "Where d you send him?"
    "Library. North wing."
    Crazy Eddie ran his hand across his jaw. He had odd hands. The fingers
were bigger at the tips than at the knuckles. "Good," he said. "Good. Who's
waiting up there?"
    "Rowland Shew."
    Eddie gave Fang a sham look. "You didn't tell Shew about this, did you.
He isn't very reliable."
    Fang shrugged. "He's kept Throop hidden for donkey's years . . . I didn't
tell him anything. Too many in on it already. Shew's helping out because
Chuck gave him a bad review once."
    Crazy Eddie gazed toward the stairwell. "How long can we keep this
going?"
    "Not much longer. You know how sharp this crowd is. I feel bad about
giving Chuck the runaround. He should be in on it."
again at the femme and wondered if they were brother and sister. Who was
she?
    He searched through the back of his mind. Ah. A computer
programmer, hiding out, gafiated years ago, even dropped her
subscription to Hocus. He'd remember her name presently.
    As he turned to continue his mission, his arm was grasped by Chuck. a
thin man with long, wild brown hair.
    "Hi, Chuck. I'm Anthony J. Horowitz the Third," the man said.
"Remember me? I I've got two books out on the samizdat network. My
latest is a volume of critical essays, Vampire Unicorns from Planet Thraxisp.
And I have a novel, Living lnside. About the first spaceship to Venus.
Would you like to interview me for Hocus? I do wonderful interviews. And
I did Trash World. It's the ultimate synthesis between science fiction,
cyberpunk, and horror."
    The book or the interviews? Chuck shook his head. "Not now, Tony. I
don't have time."
    Horowitz said, not too forcefully, "Anthony, please. I gave up trying to
write as Tony . . ."
    Umber left Horowitz and entered the foyer by the main entrance. The
foyer had a floor of Mexican tile and was brightly lit through the tall
windows that flanked the front door. A great crystal chandelier hung from
the two-story cathedral ceiling. A three-foot model of the space shuttle
hung from the chandelier, and below that, an antique tin Buck Rogers
spaceship. Chuck smiled when he saw that touch. Sometimes dreams did
come true. If you made them.
    Three hallways branched off into the three wings of the mansion and a
grand staircase curved up to the balcony on the second floor. No question
about it, Chuck thought, the Tre-house was a fantastic place.
    Without Tremont J. Fielding-—3MJ as he was known to all trufans-—
and his sprawling mansion, Minicon might not have come off at all. A
public venue was naturally out of the question; and very few fen owned
suns and starwisp nebulas in wild colors spaceships, men in fishbowl
helmets and women in brass brassieres menaced by bugeyed monsters. It
was so beautiful Chuck wanted to cry.
   Much of the mansions treasure had been reduced to holograms.
Without a projector, they were not incriminating. What was on display
here were prints; but Chuck knew that Tremont would never have thrown
away the originals. He remembered what the place had been like in its
glory days, when everything was out, when you couldn’t look anywhere
without seeing another marvel. Original paintings. Movie posters for
long-forgotten B pictures. The little paperweight made from one of George
Pal's models for War of the Worlds. The Lensman costume. George Pal's pen.
   And once-—once Chuck had seen the original typewritten manuscript
for Fahrenheit 451. That would be well hidden now! He looked around, but
they hadn't put out the movie poster. Too dangerous-—but sometime over
the weekend they'd certainly show the film. Could that be the big secret?
But nobody would cause Chuck to miss that. Chuck was Heinlein's
Stranger in a Strange Land! He had two-thirds of the book memorized
perfectly, and could recite most of the rest.
   In that far corner had been the original Gort robot from The Day the
Earth Stood Still. A tyrannosaur model from King Kong was there now.
There had been so much. Now-—now they did their best, but the walls and
alcoves seemed empty and forlorn.
   And Thor was coming down the east wing, pushing a wheelchair.
Another crippled stranger. What was going on?
   Hey, Thor!" Chuck moved to intercept them.
   Thor froze in mid-stride. "Hi, Chuck."
   "Where have you been?"
   A blank look. "Here and there."
   "Haven't seen you."
   A shrug. "You know how it is. The Tre-house is a big place."
 Where are you from?
    "I came here from North Dakota."
    That explained the Swede look, Chuck thought. A lot of Scandinavians
had settled the upper Midwest. "I saw another guy in a wheelchair a few
minutes ado. Younger. Looked enough like you to be your brother."
    Gabe looked uncomfortable. He seemed to be breathin&, funny. "That
was Rafe. We were in a flying accident."
    "Oh. I'm sorry to hear that."
    Gabe shrugged philosophically. "With a little therapy, they tell me we
should be up and walking in no time."
    Chuck nodded. "That's good. So, you're a friend of Thor's, are you? I
haven't seen you around before. At cons, I mean. Fandom is a small world
these days."
    "It seems like a big world to me. I just dropped in recently."
    A neofan, then. Chuck grinned and gestured broadly. "And how do you
like things so far?"
    "Everything is very heavy."
    Chuck laughed. "Sercon," he explained. " 'Serious and constructive
activities.' Not 'heavy.' You'll have to learn the language if you're going to
stay with us. Don't worry. You'll find plenty to entertain you. Not every fan
activity is sercon." Chuck looked the question at Thor. Is this guy all right?
There had been a time when fandom had few secrets, but no more. Can we
trust him?
    "Gabe and his brother haven't been able to get to cons," Thor said. "Too
close to high tech. But they've lived in the future."
    Chuck smiled. Thor was an undergrounder. Thor knew a lot of people
who couldn't let fan sympathies show. And dell' Angelo wouldn't be their
real names, either. "You've known them a long time, then?"
    It was Thor's turn to grin. "Long enough."
    "Great." He put his hand on Gabe's shoulder. "Really good to meet you.
Have you met 3MJ yet?"
collection. His grin faded. Hope you don t have to, though.
    "Uh?" Gabe grunted.
    "Vaults. Hidden places," Thor said. "High tech priest holes."
    These guys must be as hot as Thor! Wish I"-—Chuck suppressed his
curiosity. It was hard to remember that there were some things he really
didn't need to know. He knew he'd never tell, but-—
    If the Feds could declare you homeless, they could help you. Help
included all kinds of things: psychotherapy, drugs, electrical brain
stimulus. Chuck had seen Henry Stiren after the Department of Welfare
caught him hitchhiking with a half-done manuscript in his day pack. He'd
been a hell of a promising writer before they helped him. Now he read
what he'd once written and asked people if they liked it, and when they
said they did, he cried.
    Chuck shuddered. "Well, I hope you don't have to see it, but if you do
get a chance to visit the collection, you'll see cyberpunk next to space opera;
hard core next to New Wave. Science fiction, fantasy and horror. This is as
close to its `national archives' as the Imagi-Nation comes. Thor, have you
seen Bruce Hyde around anywhere?"
    Thor stroked his beard. "Not lately. But I'm sure he's around
someplace."
    "Then I better be going. Someone thought he saw him upstairs in the
library. Glad to have met you, Gabe." He patted the invalid on the
shoulder. "Not many neofans drop in on us these days." And he hurried
off.
    ***
    Alex watched Chuck climb the stairs. "Can't we trust him?" he asked
Thor. The roly-poly man looked like a baby-faced Mephistopheles,
complete with goatee; but he had seemed pleasant enough.
    "Sure, we can trust him," said Thor. "But it's one more risk. He runs
Hocus Pocus, the biggest fanzine around. The authorities tolerate it because
     What did he mean by the Imagi Nation ?
    Thor released the brake on the wheelchair. "The danelaw is where the
mundanes rule. Downers, you called them. The Imagi-Nation is us."
    "I see." A small group, persecuted by its government, forced to hide its
treasures and meet in secret. Arguably crazy, every one of them he'd seen,
except for Sherrine. And they had risked everything, all their treasures, to
rescue him from the Ice. It would hardly be polite to let them know that
they were Downers, too.
    Alex said, "I'm starting to realize what Mary meant."
    "Eh?"
    "Mission control told us we had strange friends on Earth."
    "None stranger," Thor agreed.
    "Now I see what you're up against. It's like David facing Goliath."
    Thor grunted, disparagingly. "Big deal. Remember who won that fight?"
    "But why-—" He wanted to ask, why would someone like Sherrine do
it? These others he could understand. Thor, running away, looking for
some way to hit back. The others, some losers, none of them ding anything
important-—but Sherrine with her looks and brains could do anything. He
couldn't say any of that. "Why do you do it?"
    Thor shrugged his massive shoulders. What else can we do? We believe
in the future. We don't turn our backs on it, like the 'danes, and pretend
that everything will always be the way it is today. Have you ever read
science fiction?"
    Alex shook his head. "A little."
    "Well, you can see it in our stories. Mainstream literature is about Being.
For character studies, it's probably the best genre around; but nothing
happens, nothing changes. Imaginative literature is about Doing. About
making the future, not just bemoaning it. We'll all be living in the future by
and by. Some of us like to scout ahead."
    "You make it sound like more than just a hobby."
    "FIAWOL. Fandom is a way of life."
    Hmm?
   He turned around and looked at the Nordic god. "What was that?"
   Thor checked his watch. "They must be getting ready for the book
auction. Hunh. I didn't think they'd scheduled it this early in the program."
   "Book auction? Who were those lunatics?"
   They turned right, into the north wing. Thor said, "No no no. Lunarians.
A New York fan club. They raffle off books at the auction. Seth always
wins, so now they kill him at every con so he can't buy any tickets. Last
year, they made him `The Wicker Man.' "
   Alex didn't ask him what "The Wicker Man" was. He wasn't sure he
wanted to know.

    When they arrived at the meeting room, Alex saw Sherrine evicting a
group of young women dressed in outlandish robes and armor.
"Costumers," Thor told him, "preparing for the Masquerade." Neither the
fabric nor the chain mail concealed very much and he noticed Gordon
staring at the women with considerable interest. Alex stared, too.
    The women were not grotesquely fat; but they may have massed as
much as 60 kilos each. Parts of them bulged and hung in unusual ways.
Gravity, he supposed. Their breasts and hips were nearly as rounded as
those of the Eskimo women. They needed special clothing to hold their
breasts in place. Some wore their hair so long that it hung to their waists in
back.
    Only one, a woman dressed in armor, wore hers sensibly short. In fact,
if he pretended the armor was a space suit, she looked halfway normal. All
in all, he admitted, Earth women did have a vague, exotic appeal. But true
beauties like Sherrine were apparently rare down in the Well.
    "I'm sorry," Sherrine told the costumers. "There's been a program
change. Didn't you get the update? All costuming panels have been moved
to the north wing, third floor."
by ones and twos. Eve one behaved so furtively that Alex was sure they
would draw attention to themselves. Bruce arrived grinning. "This is the
one room," he announced, "where Chuck won't look for us."
    Soon most of the rescue party was present. Doc (Sherrine told him) was
a costumer himself and was busy on one of the panels; and Bob had to
make a guest appearance at his mundane job at the University. Two
strangers had joined them; Sherrine introduced them as Fang and Crazy
Eddie.
    Bruce rapped his chair arm with his knuckles. "Let's get this show on
the road. First order of business is: What do we do with our guests, now
that they are here?"
    Fang tilted his head back. "Excuse me, Bruce; but let's follow form. I'm
Con-Guest-of-Honor Chair, so I'd better lead this discussion."
    "Find your egoboo on your own time," said Bruce. "The Con Committee
rescued the Angels; so the Con Committee is in charge."
    Crazy Eddie frowned. He turned to Fang. "Besides, the Angels aren't
Guests of Honor, so your subcommittee's jurisdiction-—"
    "Sure they're GoH's," Mike interjected. "Who could be more honored at
a Worldcon than a pair of spacemen? And they are our guests, Ergo: Guests
of Honor."
    "Spoken like a faaan, said Edward Two Bats. "Can't you understand?
This is big. Bigger than Worldcon."
    His eyes lit up, as if he had had a vision of the Holy Grail. There was a
moment of hushed silence.
    Alex spoke into it. "Excuse me. Do Gordon and I have any say in this?"
    No, Fang replied after a moment's thought. "You aren't convention
members. You don't get a vote."
    "Say, that's right," said Mike. "They haven't paid the membership fee."
    `That's silly," said Thor. "I'll lend them the ten bucks."
    "We could DUFF them," Bruce suggested. "Plenty of money in the Down
Under Fan Fund.
    Alex sighed and closed his eyes. Do they ever settle anything? He
breathed in through his left nostril and out through-his right. It didn't help,
but he was fascinated to learn he could do it, and it seemed at least as
constructive as anything he was watching.
    "Look," Crazy Eddie said, "this is serious!"
    And yet-—things were being settled. It was always a pleasure to watch
a master craftsman at his job. Alex began to enjoy the way Bruce ran the
meeting. Bruce played the committee the way a jazzman played his sax.
    He played Mike and Fang against Eddie Two Bats and against each
other. He worked subtly and indirectly, only rarely resorting to direct
action. Bruce ran the show. Crazy Eddie tended to forget this every now
and then, but nobody made an issue of it. Alex made a whispered comment
to Sherrine.
    "Bruce is food at this."
    She said, Bruce is SMOF-Three."
    "A what?"
    "A SMOF is a Secret Master of Fandom. Fen are a quirky and individual
bunch and there aren't many who can handle them. Bruce is one. Benjamin
Orange is another. Thank goodness he isn't here. Could you imagine two
SMOFs at one con?"
    Incredibly enough, he could. My God, he thought. I actually understood
her.

    "The first order of business," said Bruce for the fourth time in an hour,
"is what do we do with the Angels."
    Alex seized the opportunity. "Now that we re members of this
committee-—"
    Fang cut him off. "Only of the Convention, not the committee. But of
course as guests you can-—"
    "This is serious," Crazy Eddie protested. His big eyes were nearly filled
with tears. "Can’t you understand that?"
    Bruce bellowed, QUIET! For an instant the room was shocked silent.
    "What's the problem anyway?" Thor asked. "We just keep them hidden
until the other Angels send a ship. Then we whisk them off to the
rendezvous."
    "Well, sure," said Steve. "But how do we keep them hidden? And
where? Here in Minneapolis? What if the pickup ship has to land in
Arizona? Can we get them there in time?"
    Alex glanced at Gordon, who bit his lip and lowered his eyes. No point
putting this he thought. He took a deep breath-from the stoma and through
the left nostril. "There won't be a pickup ship," he told the committee.
    Sherrine nodded to herself. Bruce's expression didn't change.
    "Why not?" Fang demanded.
    "They won't come down the Well."
    Everyone spoke at once. "Gravity well, Earth is deep in it." "Niven's
Belters called planets 'holes."' "Come off it, they'll come, these are
ANGELS'!' "I knew we needed contingency plans-—"
    Bruce made a whistle of his fingers. Into the silence that followed he
asked, "What do you mean? The Angels won't come to get you?"
    Alex looked around the circle of faces. Angels. A sulky adolescent
stilyagin and a construction worker who can’t go Out anymore. Maybe I
should have said to hell with it, work EVA until my brains pour out
through my nose. Why not?
    "It's impossible," he said.
    Sherrine nodded again, a tiny movement. "I thought so. Jesus, I'm
sorry."
    "But you're space pilots," Crazy Eddie said. "They need you-—"
    Gordon laughed. Everyone looked at him. "What's funny?" Fang
demanded.
    "Alex is hero. They would come for him, but there is no way."
    "They don't need me," Alex said. "And it doesn't matter anyway. There
is no way for them to come get us."
unstable. Major MacLeod brought a crew from Freedom . . . He sensed
incomprehension in the background murmur and the twisted frowns. "I
start over.
    "Flare on the sun. Too much energy floods day side of Earth. Top of air
becomes hot. Atmosphere inflates like vast balloon, reaches far into space,
wraps ghostly tendrils around Mir. Mir Space Station, made to fall free
through vacuum, begins to slow and drift closer to Earth.
    "Major MacLeod brought a crew from Freedom. They attached booster
rockets to lift Mir to higher orbit without disruption. With Mir safe, he had
to return to bolt rockets onto Freedom, because Freedom was dangered, too.
His suit blew out. Had to patch it and use it again. Pressure suit, it must fit
more closely than wife. Cannot borrow someone else's." Alex choked back
a laugh. Gordon never noticed. "Once, twice, five times his suit spewed air.
One can live through that, but not many times.
    "Now he cannot go outside again. Alex MacLeod cannot live in vacuum,
even short time will kill him."
    "But you flew the scoopship!"
    "Dipping takes a good pilot," Alex said. "I'm that. Paint stripes on a
brick, I can fly it." He liked the look that Sherrine gave him. But-—
"Dipping wants an expendable pilot. I'm that, too. Look, everyone knew we
might not come back."
    "So you're here for the duration," Bruce said.
    "Looks that way."
    Everyone was quiet. Alex looked from face to face. It was beginning to
sink in: This wasn't just a short jaunt. These . . . fans hadn't signed on for a
long haul. Pretty soon the novelty would wear off. Some already had
second thoughts. And I can't blame them.
    Sherrine put her hand on his arm. "So you volunteered knowing it
might be one way."
    He shook his head. "No, this is the first time like this. Usually nothing
happens to dippers."
     Look, I don t blame you, Alex started to say.
    Bruce cut him off. "We'll have to find you both a niche here on Earth.
Not going to be easy on you. We all read Heinlein's story."
    " 'It's Great to Be Back,' " Sherrine said. "Yes. It must be that way. Living
among the stars and then stranded on Earth."
    Mike said, "First thing you need is Social Security and driver's license."
    Gordon looked puzzled. "Driver license? For what, mass driver? Disk
drive?"
    Mike sighed. "Never mind."
    "Identity papers," Alex said.
    "Why do we need identity papers?" Gordon asked. "We are all droogs
here, no?"
    How they knew that "droog" meant "friend," Alex couldn't guess; but
Mike actually, smiled. "Sure, we're all droogs," he said. "Illegal droogs."
    "You need an ID," said Thor, "because 'the Land of the Free and the
Home of the Brave' has become 'the Land of the Fee and the Home of the
Slave.' "
    "Do you have ID?" Alex asked him.
    He smiled. "Sure. Three or four."
    "Phony?"
    "Free enterprise. They're the best kind."
    "Sherrine?" Bruce asked.
    "Risky. It was easier when I set things up for Thor. Now they have
programs to watch for hackers."
    "You probably wrote them," Steve said.
    "Well, Ted Marshall and I worked on the Bytehound program, and we
left a backdoor in, so I can probably manage it-—Sure. We can do it,
maybe, but it's going to take some time at my terminal and I have to get
hold of Ted."
    "He's not coming," Bruce said. "Thinks he's being watched."
    "It's important we don't give him away," Crazy Eddie said.
or Gordon, the IRS computer looks into the DMV computer and wonders
why they never paid taxes before." He looked at Alex.
    "But it can be done," Bruce said. "Just not easy anymore."
    Alex frowned. "Computers are high technology. I thought everyone
down here-—except you-—I thought most Downers hated technology."
    Thor laughed. "They hate it all right. Computers, too. But they still use
them."
    "For themselves," Steve said. "They don't like others having them."
    "Is illegal to own computer?" Gordon frowned.
    "How do-—how can people read what you write? Like poetry? Stories?"
    "It's illegal to own an unlicensed computer," Sherrine said. "But there
are a lot of licensed ones, and-—well, the licensing laws are hard to enforce.
So there are networks, and some private boards "
    "“There are still publishers," Bruce said. "A few good books get out. And
like Sherrine says, there are private boards-—"
    "Boards?"
    "Computer bulletin boards," Thor said.
    "People exchange files. Not so common as they used to be, now that the
phone system keeps crashing. But FAPA is still going," Sherrine said.
    "I was in line for full membership in the Cult until I had to drop for
missing deadlines," Fang said. "But Bruce is-—"
    And disks are harder to get," Mike said. "But I still manage to publish
File 880. . . "
    "He's won twelve Hugos," Fang said.
    For one glorious minute I thought I understood them-—
    Crazy Eddie raised his hand and waved it. "I've got an idea."
    Bruce looked worried, but nodded at him. "The Chair recognizes Eddie
Two Bats."
    Crazy Eddie stood and looked across his blade-like nose. "There are still
technophiles in Southern California," he said. "Enclaves clustered around
the old, defunct aerospace centers. I say we take the Angels there."
     So the question is how to get them to California, Bruce said.
   "The Angels have to go underground," Fang said. "Work off the books.
Doesn't pay so well as out front, but with no taxes you keep more, and
nobody checks ID and credit cards." He and Thor exchanged glances. "It
ain't so bad."
   For a moment Alex felt panic. Then he realized that they took the good
parts of Crazy Eddie's ideas and simply ignored the rest. And we don't have
many choices anyway. "You're used to living underground," Sherrine said.
"They're not. Look at them! No, I'll do something-—"
   "The Greens lynched a hacker in Chicago," Mike said carefully. "Last
month, but I think the boy's still ban&in&, from the old Water Tower. Of
course you know that."
   "That was Flash. Flash couldn't resist letting his friends know what he
did. So I'm more careful, that's all," Sherrine said.
   "No, we can't let you risk that," Alex said. " I mean-—"
   "Work underground, off books," Mike said. "Great. What can you do?"
   Alex grunted. "I fly spaceships."
   Bruce grinned. "Right. We'll send out your resume. But what did you do
between flights?"
   "I write poetry," Gordon said. "I would like to write science fiction."
   "So would everyone here," Steve said. "Do you know how many people
make a living writing science fiction? There weren't thirty in the whole
country, at peak. Now, none."
   "There's Harry Bean-—" someone said.
   "He's a whore. He writes for the Greens," Bruce said. "Odd jobs. Alex?
What can you do besides fly ships?"
   "Construction engineer." He looked at his emaciated limbs. "And if
Steve's right, I'll be able to do that again in about nine years."
   "He is also teacher," Gordon said.
     I m not sure I can do it, she said. Thor s right, they re paranoid about
child molesters. I'd have to build you a whole history, everything, traffic
tickets, education-—Look, it won't work. We can’t fit them in, and we can't
hide them." Fan and Thor started to object, but Sherrine overrode them.
"We've just been over that. Short term, sure; but sooner or later they'd be
discovered. No, there's only one option, and it took Crazy Eddie to find it.
We've got to find a way to get them back into space."
    "We?" said Bruce.
    "Sure, Fandom!"
    Mike beamed. "Of course. We'll get them high with illegal droogs."
     There s a Saturn Five in Houston. Fang asked, Will that do?
    Alex blinked and tried to sit up. "Saturn? Damn right." With a Saturn
we could reach the moon. But-—I didn't know there were any left."
    "There aren't," Bruce said. "NASA took a full man-rated Saturn and laid
it down as a monument. Alex, that bird will never fly again."
    "Oh."
    "It's right in front of the old Manned Space Center," Mike said. "Leetle
hard to work on without attracting attention."
    "Could steal it," Crazy Eddie said.
    Bruce closed his eyes. "Steal it, Eddie? Do you know how big those
suckers were?"
    "Three hundred and sixty three feet high. Weighed three kilotons."
    Bruce spoke patiently. "And you say we should steal it?"
    "If we could round up enough pickup trucks," Eddie Two Bats said
thoughtfully. "Of course it will be hard to stand it up again. I think we need
an engineer."
    "I see how it works," Alex said quietly to Sherrine.
    "How?"
    "It's Crazy Eddie's job to come up with nutty ideas, and Bruce's job to
chop him down. Do any of Eddie's notions ever work?"
    She shrugged.
    "I could cry."
    She frowned. "Over Crazy Eddie?"
    "No, the rocket. The Saturn Five was the most powerful rocket ever
built-—Sherrine, it was the most powerful machine ever made!"
    "A fire in the sky," she said. "I know the song."
    "And now it's a lawn ornament."
    "I'm sorry," she said. "Monument! They didn't want competition for the
shuttle. They even tried to burn the blueprints-—"
    "It wasn't your fault."
    The room had perhaps been a small ballroom when the house was new.
Now it looked crowded despite its size. There were windows along one
wall, with couches under them. The window sills were covered with
brick-a-brack, photos of people in odd costumes, strangely painted coffee
mugs, vases that held improbable plants. That fur rug, patterned in yellow
and orange, was neither the shape nor the colors of any of Earth’s life
forms. A grand piano stood down at one end of the room. It was covered
with photographs and paintings and drawings and plastic objects. Books
lined two of the walls, and the spaces between the large archways set into
the fourth wall.
    A large bear of a man with a sunburst of hair encircling his face stood
next to the grand piano, one hand resting on it. He was making a speech,
and his free hand waved in time with his words. Other people were
talking, too, which seemed impolite.
    The man stopped in midsentence when Sherrine and Thor wheeled the
Angels into the room. People looked around and opened a path, some of
those on the floor moving aside, some standing to move chairs, until Alex
and Gordon were moved right up front near the speaker. The others
moved back again. It looked choreographed.
    "See you," Thor said. He seemed in a hurry to leave.
    The speaker was in no hurry at all. He struck a pose, as if waiting for
something.
    Ritual? Alex wondered. Whatever. Pavana mukthvsan could be practiced
as easily in a wheelchair as elsewhere. Alex used both hands to bend his
right leg and tuck it into his crotch against the pubic bone. Then he folded
his left leg and laid it atop the right. He made circles of his thumbs and
index fingers and rested his hands on his knees. He breathed in slowly
through his left nostril, repeating the syllable yam six times. He wondered
when Steve would graduate him to siddhasan, or even padmasan. Anything
was better than the savasam "corpse position" he had practiced in the van
glasses. During the last seven hundred thousand years there have been
eight cycles of cooling and warming. The glaciers retreat, but always they
come back; and the warm, interglacial interludes last for only about ten
thousand years. Since Ice Age Thirty-Five ended fourteen thousand years
ago, the next one must have started four thousand years ago. Most of
human history has been lived in an ice age. So why did no one notice?"
    "It was too warm!" someone suggested.
    Lutenist beamed at him. "Just so. It's hard to convince a man in
Bermuda shorts that he's living in an ice age. But consider the halcyon,
interglacial world of 4500 BC!" He waved a forefinger in the air.
    "In Scandinavia the tree line was above 8000 feet." Three voices again
joined him, speaking in unison, as Lutenist continued. "And deciduous
trees grew all the way to the Arctic circle. The Sahara was a rain-watered,
grassy savannah crossed by mighty rivers and even mightier hunters. We
remember that age dimly as a Garden in Eden." Lutenist paused and
removed his glasses. He polished the lenses and set them back upon his
nose. He paused, sighed, and said, slowly, so that everyone in the room
could join in, "But then the sun went out."
    Gordon looked to Alex. "Shto govorit"? The man is mad, the sun has not
gone out."
    Lutenist beamed at Gordon. "Ah-—"
    "Fresh meat!" someone yelled.
    "Tell me, my young friend," Lutenist said. "What lights up the sun?"
    "Is trick? Fusion. Hydrogen to helium."
    "And when the fusion ends, what then?" Lutenist asked.
    "Uh-—but how can fusion end? There is plenty of hydrogen."
    "But it did end," Lutenist said. "And no one noticed." Bob Needleton
stuck his head in between Alex and Gordon. "Where have all the neutrinos
gone? Long time passing . . ." He gave Sherrine a quick kiss on the neck.
    "Hi, Pins," Alex said. "Welcome back."
     You see, when two protons fuse into a deuterium nucleus they yield a
neutrino. There are two ways that can happen, but. . . Well, the details
don't matter. Sometimes the deuterium hip-hops through beryllium into
lithium and spits out another neutrino, and there are a couple of other
reactions that also produce neutrinos; but that's about the gist of it. Fusion
spits neutrinos. Get it?"
    Gordon looked puzzled. "I get. So?"
    Bob held his hands out palms up. "The problem is we never found the
neutrinos. A Chlorine-37 detector should register a neutrino flux of eight
snew, but all they ever get is two snew."
    Gordon's frown deepened. "What's 'snew'?"
    Sherrine hid her face in her hands. Bob said, "I dunno, not much. What's
snew with you?"
    "Thank you for sharing that with us-—"
    "Sorry, I've never been able to resist that one. Snew is SNU, Solar
Neutrino Units. One snew is one neutrino event per 1036 atoms per second."
    There was a commotion at the other end of the room. A dozen fans,
maybe more, came in. "Is this the pro party?"
    Lutenist said. "I'm not through."
    A 1arge man in a bush jacket waved a salute with a bottle beer. "Go
right ahead, Greg. Don't mind us."
    "What's up?" Lutenist demanded.
    The man shruged "Con Committee said to come here, this will be the
'Meet the Pros' party."
    "Aw crap," Lutenist said. "This is my lecture!"
    "What's to lecture?" Needleton demanded. "It was all simple, and
known before 1980. The sun is not producing enough neutrinos. Ergo, it is
not fusing. Yet, according to the technetium levels in deep molybdenum
mines there were plenty of neutrinos passing through the Earth during
interglacial and preglacial periods."
weren t any the planet went through what was known as the Little Ice Age,
the Maunder Minimum." He paused dramatically. “And in the 1980s it
became certain that the planet was going into a new Maunder Minimum
period."
   "Yes, yes, we know this," Gordon said. "Sunspots are important to us.
But if so important to Earth, why do they not know cold is coming?"
   "Bastards did," the man in the bush jacket growled. "But they said
Global Warming."
   "Grants," Bob said. "There's money in climate studies. All the Ph.D.
theses. All that would go if things were so simple-—"
   A short blond woman, slender by local standards, came in with a large
tray. She carried it up to the piano as if thinking to set it down there,
looked at the clutter, turned helplessly-— "Ah. You're Gabe?"
   He smiled and nodded. She said, "Laurie. Hold this while we get a
table." She set the tray across the arms of his wheelchair and was gone.
   It was covered with small dishes, each with a couple of slices of
vegetables. Cucumber, carrot, a bit of lettuce, some cabbage. A stalk of
broccoli. Alex felt his mouth begin to water. Fresh vegetables! Of course the
people here would be used to them-—
   Bob Needleton stopped talking about neutrinos and stared at the tray.
He gave a long, low whistle. "Dibs on a carrot stick!"
   Gregory Lutenist said, "Broccoli for me. Now. It is important to realize
that the sun has always burned hotter or cooler during different eras of our
planet's history. Greenhouse or Icehouse."
   A fan spoke up. "Carrot for me, too. The dinosaurs lived during a
greenhouse era, didn't they?"
   A voice spoke from the doorway. "Pros get first choice. This is the Meet
the Readers Party, right?"
   Lutenist nodded as if there had been no interruption. "Dinosaurs, and
the Great Mammals, too. In fact, prior to the Pleistocene the world was
quite warm. Hippopotami wallowed in the Thames."
displayed on big green leaves. Where were they with that damn table?
    Badges were showing on various chests. Here were tiny oil paintings of
alien creatures and landscapes and starscapes, or wheel-shaped and
band-shaped artificial habitats infinitely more sophisticated than Mir and
Freedom. A few badges bore angular cartoon faces and elegant calligraphy:
CLOSET MUNDANE. KNOWS HARLAN ELLISON (evil smirk. HAS
READ MUCH OF DHALGREN (bewilderment).
    Lutenist continued. "Human history is so short that, living between the
hippopotamus and the polar bear, we thought those conditions were
'normal.'
    "After the sun went out, the interglacial ended and the world grew
colder and drier. The Saraha rivers dried up, one by one, until only the Nile
was left. By 1500 BC, the Scandinavian tree line had dropped to six
thousand feet, and broad-leaf trees had disappeared from the Arctic.
    "The weather changed. The North African coast was the breadbasket of
the Roman Empire. It began to dry up. Great migrations began, Huns,
Arabs, Navajos, Mongols. There were Viking colonies on Greenland, but
the Greenland Glacier began to move south, until it covered them all."
    "Tell you another one," the man in the bush jacket said.
    "Go ahead, Wade," Lutenist said.
    Sherrine looked around. "Wade Curtis. A pro."
    "Writer?" Gordon asked. She nodded.
    Curtis's voice boomed even in the large room. "In the American
Revolutionary War, Colonel Alexander Hamilton brought cannon captured
by Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga down to assist General Washington in
Haarlem Heights. He brought them across the ice on the frozen Hudson
River. By the twentieth century, the Hudson didn't freeze at all, let alone
hard enough to carry cannon on!"
    Lutenist smiled agreement. "Right! The Little Ice Age was coming to an
end! In fact, a warming trend had started around 1200, and lasted for eight
centuries. Anyone know why?"
valuable to abandon. So what did they do? He used and stared around the
audience.
    Several responded in unison. "They threw another log on the fire!"
    Lutenist beamed. "Exactly! They fought the cold with heat, soot and
CO2. Air pollution!"
    "Smudge pots," Curtis growled.
    Right, Lutenist shouted. "Smudge pots! Greenhouse effect!"
    "Pollution, poll-ooo-tion," someone sang.
    Everyone shouted. "Jenny! And Harry!"
    "The moonbeam's here!"
    Alex painfully twisted around to see. The two people who came in
through the archway were matched in clothes and height, but in nothing
else. The man was enormous, broad of shoulders, large of chest, and much
larger of belly. He wore a battered slouch hat, and an oil-stained denim
jacket. His boots clumped on the floor. Over one shoulder was slung a
huge guitar case. In his hands he carried two nylon bags that clinked as he
walked. He set the bags down and opened one, took out a jar, opened it
and sipped at the clear liquid. "Finest corn squeezin's Kansas ever
produced!" He handed the jar to Curtis.
    The woman called Jenny was as tall as Harry, but thin. Her skin might
have been leather. Her hair was long and straight, and dead silver-gray.
The eyes burned brightly out of the wrinkles. She carried a guitar, but she
wasn't playing it. "Don't drink the water, and don't breathe the air!" she sang.
    Mike got up from his place on the floor. "We'd given upon you two," he
said.
    "Bike broke down in Wyoming," Jenny said. "Had to sing for our
suppers. Some things you can't sing, though . . ."
    Harry struck a chord. "It's minus ten and counting, and time is passing
fast, it's minus ten and counting-—"
    "O God, don't," Curtis said. The room was still for a moment.
    "Yeah," Jenny said. "And you can't sing 'A Fire in the Sky'-—"
    I m no goddam Green, Jenny said.
   "Sorry." Curtis actually sounded apologetic. "Anyway-—"
   "Anyway, Adams," Harry said, "she knows who her friends are. So do I.
Have a jug of corn. Real moonbeams."
   "Jenny likes to feel wanted," Fang said. "She's not comfortable unless
she's wanted by the law."
   Jenny grinned, and sang,

   "Wanted fan in Luna City, wanted fan on Dune and Down,
   Wanted fan at Ophiuchus, wanted fan in Dydeetown.
   All across the sky they want me, am I flattered?
   Yes I am!
   If I could just reach orbit, then I'd be a wanted
   fan."

   ". . . and in the midst of the Thirty-Sixth Ice Age, we were lighting global
smudge pots. Wood-burning during the Middle Ages was so intensive that
the forests of Europe were actually smaller than in the twentieth century.
Coalburning, which began in the fifteenth century, saved the forests and
put even more gunk into the air. By the late nineteenth century, most
homes were heated by coal furnaces." Lutenist paused and rubbed his
hands together, as if imagining heat vents and radiators.
   A line had formed. Veggies disappeared as they moved past Alex.
Almost everyone who passed put something in Alex's mouth. Dark red
was miniature tomatoes; Alex feared the implications. The red-and-white
spheroid burned.
   Jenny sang,

   "Wanted fan for mining coal and wanted fan for
   drilling oil,
   I went very fast through Portland, hunted hard
environment. Household coal furnaces gave way to centralized electric
heating; and pollution was confined to the power plant areas, instead of
belching from every chimney in the city. The famous pea-soup fogs of
London disappeared."
    Lutenist smiled wanly. "But so did the warm, rainy British winters.
Heavy winters became the norm. In 1984 and '85 several campers froze to
death when a blizzard struck the Riviera. Atlanta, Georgia, had a week of
zero temperatures. Winter snow became common in the southlands.
Meanwhile, the Sahara resumed its southward march and Ukrainian grain
harvests became less and less reliable. Raindrops need tiny particles
around which to condense. So, when you eliminate air pollution, what
happens?"
    "Less rain!" cried the audience.
    "And less cloud cover means the ground loses heat faster. And that
means?"
    "The Great Ice!"
    "Ice day is a'comin'," Jenny and Harry sang softly. "Hey sinner man, where
you gonna run to-—" It made a nice background, now, for Gregory's litany.
    "Yes, my friends." Lutenist was walking back and forth in front of the
piano. "The elimination of air pollution did not start with the Greens. It
started with the Big Power Companies back in the fifties-—as a by-product
of their program of clean, centralized electrical power generation. But it
accelerated with the environmentalist movement. Soon, we were not
allowed to burn the leaves we raked off our yards. We had to bag them, in
plastic bags, of course! And have them hauled away by trucks to landfills
hundreds of miles away. The Green Laws became more and more stringent
at the same time that interest in and support for science was waning-—not
a coincidence, I might add. Even today, with the Great Ice and the Sahara
both sliding south, we are not allowed to throw another log on the fire!"
    "Damned good thing!" Jenny Trout shouted.
    Everyone looked at her.
    First things first. Without a ship, everything else was moot.
    Bob came into the lounge. Had he followed her? When he waved at her
and headed in her direction, she sighed.
    He was wearing his Rotsler badge. A cartoon face studied the SS
ROBERT K. NEEDLETON and thought, "Pretentious." The sharp nose
partly covered the letters. Bob dropped beside her on the sofa, just close
enough to be within her personal space, and put an arm on the back of the
sofa behind her. He leaned close to her ear. "Any ideas yet?"
    He certainly had ideas. A couple of fen sitting nearby grinned at her.
Oh, Ghu! she thought. After tonight, everyone will think we're back together.
    To some men, "no" meant "maybe" and "maybe" meant "yes." She hadn't
seen Bob in two months; now she couldn't get rid of him. He was
cheerfully impervious to her rebuffs; as if he were not programmed to
accept the data. Like Halley's Comet, no matter how shaken up he was at
each encounter, he kept coming back. Only he didn't wait seventy-six
years.
    Not that he was unattractive. He had been among her better lovers, back
in the days when she hung out with the spa set. And maybe she only
needed to get used to him again. He had known how to do things in a hot
tub that . . . For that matter, he knew how to talk with a woman, not simply
at her. He had been as interested in hearing about her computer work-—
about LISP and LAN's and baud rates-—as he was in telling her about his
physics. There was only one thing he seemed incapable of understanding.
    And that was endings.
    Bob was a romantic. Most men were. They thought that a relationship
had a beginning and a middle, but no end. Danny, the time traveler in The
Man Who Folded Himself, had made that mistake. He kept going back and
going back, trying to rekindle the romance with Donna; until finally he had
kindled disgust and revulsion in her. The secret was to quit while you were
at the top go out like a champion and not fade into an object of pity like a
has-been fighter who couldn't quit the ring.
hopefully.
   She slapped him backfingered on the arm. "Oh, you know what I mean.
He seems so lonely, cut off forever from his home and his friends."
   "It was his fault they were marooned, you know."
   "What?" She had raised her voice slightly and someone sitting in a
nearby chair shushed her. She lowered her voice and leaned closer to Bob.
Bob helped her do that. "What do you mean?"
   "He told me so himself." Bob whispered into her ear as if they were
necking; and she flashed back to three nights ago, when he had woken her
from the sleep of the innocent to recruit her into the Rescue Party. A good
cover, he had said, in case anyone was listening. Yeah, a damned good
cover. He probably thought of it himself. "This morning, when I brought
them breakfast . . . Doc had taken 'Gabe' into the washroom to, uh, well,
help him . . . you know."
   "Yeah. Go on."
   "Well, once we were alone, the kid let it all spill out. It seems that during
the missile attack, he shouted out a warning in Russian and Alex didn't
understand until too late; and that's why they were hit."
   "Oh, no! It must be terrible to have to live with that."
   Bob shrugged. "He's young. He'll get over it. That's the wonderful thing
about being young. The point is, the kid-—"
   She never learned what Bob's point was. Chuck Umber burst into the
room waving a folded-up newspaper in the air. "Angels down!" he
announced and flipped the lights on. "A scoopship went down on the Ice
yesterday!" He shut off the VCR player.
   "Hey!" someone shouted. "Turn the Phantom back on."
   "No, wait! Look at this." Chuck opened the paper to the front page and
held it up. AIR THIEVES CRASH ON ICE, screamed the headline. He had
a bundle of newspapers under his arm and began passing them out.
news. There was no mention of what had happened to the Angels. A
sidebar, entitled DEATH RAYS FROM OUTER SPACE, told of "beams of
deadly microwaves aimed at the search parties" and cautioned the reader
that "microwaves are a form of radiation, which causes cancer."
   Sherrine pointed. "Nice placement on the comma."
   Bob just shook his head. "You'd think they'd know the difference
between ionizing and non-ionizing radiation. They can't tell one type of
asbestos from the other, either."
   "Why do you think they don't know the difference?"
   He looked at her for a moment. Then he grunted, "You're a worse
pessimist than I am," and turned back to the reading. "The ‘danes really
think the microwaves were aimed at the search parties," he said. "They
don't see it as a decoy maneuver."
   A shadow fell across the paper. "What makes you think the microwaves
were decoys?"
   Sherrine looked up and saw Chuck Umber. Bob opened his mouth to
speak and thought better of it. Sherrine said, "Just listen, Chuck." She shook
the paper and folded it. " 'As is so often the case when people rely on
computers, none of the death rays actually struck the search parties.' " She
gave Chuck a twisted smile. "Chuck, they tell the public that computers are
unreliable-—"
   "Trust the Farce, Luke," Bob interjected.
   "-—but do you swallow that? If the Angels didn't hit anyone, it means
they weren't aiming at anyone. Can you think of any other reason why
they'd divert part of the power beam from Winnipeg?"
   Chuck pursed his lips and presently nodded. "If the targeting system
snafued . . . No, you're probably right. The microwaves were meant to hide
the scoopship's IR footprint. Damnation!" He ground one fist into his palm.
"I wish some of us had been there. We'd've gotten the Angels off the Ice
before the Government grabbed 'em."
have to say.
    The lounge quieted as the fans concentrated on the tube. The
impeccably groomed newsreader recited several items of war news.
Swedish marines had forced a landing on the Pomeranian coast; but their
Russo-Lithuanian allies had suffered a stunning defeat at Ukranian hands.
No one had used nukes, yet; but the world was holding its breath.
    Must be near the beginning of the headline cycle, Sherrine thought. She
felt mildly offended that the Angels were not the top story. Let's get to the
Angels. When the next story turned out to be a                presidential photo
opportunity, she almost screamed.
    Finally, the screen displayed a shot of Piranha embedded in the ice.
"This update on the forced landing of the air scooper from the space
habitats. Scoopships are built to steal air from the Earth and take it to the
space stations. Many experts blame the cold weather we are having on the
loss of this air. Air Defense forced the latest scoopship to land in North
Dakota."
    The scene moved past the anchorman to a long shot of the glacier
looking down the landing path toward the ship. "Experts now believe that
the spacemen escaped from the glacier using inappropriate technology."
    Bob snorted. "Inappropriate? It worked!"
    "Hush, and listen," said Sherrine.
    ". . . the efforts of the space stations to stop the search with death rays.
Meanwhile, the public should be on the lookout for possibly two illegal
aliens believed to be on the loose."
    Sherrine blinked at the artist's conception of spacemen. The spectrally thin
creatures in the sketch looked like famine victims who had been stretched
upon a rack. Someone in the room snickered. Others applauded.
    "The aliens are believed to be very tall because of the unnatural
environment they live in. But, because they live in zero gravity-—"
    "Free fall, damn it; not zero gravity!" That sounded like Wade Curtis.
a better story came along. It was hardly surprising that the government
had not sought out scientific opinion.
    Or had they? Hah! What if they'd asked a closet fan? For that matter the
scientists themselves, the pariahs of academe, might not volunteer to
educate the very people who shunned them. Sometimes you want an
opponent to go on sounding like a fool.
    S-s-sooo . . . She grinned and hugged Bob, who seemed surprised and
not unpleased. Why, the Angels were nearly home free! If people were
looking for emaciated supermen, they wouldn't look twice at Gabe and
Rafe.
    Harry and Jenny began a song.

   "In a tower of flame in Capsule Twelve,
   I was there.
   I know not where they laid my bones,
   it could be anywhere,
   but when fire and smoke had faded,
   the darkness left my sight,
   I found my soul in a spaceship's soul
   riding home on a trail of light.

   "For my wings are made of tungsten,
   and my flesh is glass and steel,
   I am the joy of Terra for the power that I wield.
   Once upon a lifetime, I died a pioneer,
   Now I sing within a spaceship's heart,
   Does anybody hear?"

    "Anyone having knowledge of the whereabouts of the air pirates should
call the police. Do not approach them, they are armed and dangerous."
    "We have to do something." A man's voice. Crying.
   I led the way and I lead the way
   to man's future in the sky.

   "For my wings are made of tungsten,
   my flesh of glass and steel,
   I am the joy of Terra for the power that I wield.
   Once upon a lifetime, I died a pioneer,
   Now I sing within a spaceship's heart,
   Does anybody hear? Does anybody hear?"

   The song faded out, and the room was quiet, except for Curtis, who
stared at the wall and muttered over and over, "God damn them. We were
so near. God damn them all."

   The room spouted a geyser of talk when the newsreader finished. Most
of the fen chattered excitedly to each other; but Sherrine noticed a few
thoughtful faces. Chuck Umber was busily scribbling in a pocket notebook.
Wade Curtis was sunk into himself, elbows on knees and chin in hands,
mouth slack, eyes hooded . . . eyes touched Sherrine's, wandered away,
wandered back. . .
   Drunk. Can't say I blame him.
   "Come on," said Bob, rising from the sofa and tugging her arm. "We've
got to tell the others."
   She pulled him back down. "I think they already know. Quiet. I want to
hear what gets said here."
   "This crowd? Why?"
   "Ideas. That's what fen are for."
   Someone in the room spoke through the din. "What are we going to do
about it?"
   The chatter died down. "Do? What can we do?"
 Whoever s got the Angels might have to hide them for a long time. The
fewer people who know who and where, the better."
    Chuck shook his head. "Not when the people are fen. I'm going to try
and reach the Oregon Ghost. He must know something."
    "Sure, Chuck. The Ghost runs his own fanzine. You think he'd let a
competitor in on whatever scoop he has?"
    Chuck stood up taller. "He will. Because this is the-—biggest thing to hit
fandom since Star Wars . . . or Apollo Thirteen. We've, got to transcend
factions and feuds and pull together."
    Harry and Jenny had started a song, singing softly as background as the
others talked. ". . . and he knew he might not make it, for it's never hard to
die, but he rode her into history, on a fire in the sky!"
    Wade Curtis uncurled and stretched and said, "They can't hide them."
    There was an instant hush when the writer spoke.
    Drunk or sober, the hard science fiction writers were supposed to know
everything. Fans laughed at them when they made mistakes, but always
listened . . . and Wade Curtis had a voice that filled every corner.
    "Whoever it is, they can't hide the Angels forever. Think it through. No,
there's only one thing to do, get the Angels back where they belong. God
damn NASA. Where we all belong. God damn them, they ate the dream.
For money. For money. The Angels belong up there. We have to send them
back."
    "That's crazy." "No Wades right." "Hell, he's drunk." "Wouldn't you be?"
"But how?" "They'll need a rocket." "Where can you find a rocket these
days?"
    Sherrine clenched Bob's upper arm so hard he winced. Yes! Yes, where
can you find a rocket? She leaned forward, to hear better.
    Wade laughed. "The nearest rocket I know of is Ron Cole's Titan."
    Chuck and some of the other older fen laughed, too. A younger fan
spoke up. "What Titan is that?"
    Chuck laughed. I remember that article, Wade. Boy, was Ron mad! He
tried to tell the papers that he did not have a nuclear warhead; but you
know how 'danes are. Rockets equals missiles equals weapons equals
nukes. Sometimes I wonder if Ron didn't go ahead and build a bomb just
for the hell of it. As long as everyone thought he had one . . . "
    "Building a warhead isn't as easy as the 'danes think. I don't care how
many TV movies they show with terrorists and mad scientists whipping
'em up in their garage. Uranium hexafloride isn't just radioactive, it's toxic
as hell. Refining U-235 is not something you can do in your garage; not
without an ample supply of disposable terrorists," Wade said wistfully.
    Chuck ran his fingers through his goatee. "Still, if anyone could do it,
Cole could. He always had something wonderful in his pocket. A
laboratory opal, a big chunk of artificial sapphire for armor, a couple of
strips of platinum-—"
    "Platinum?"
    "I never knew why. Some failed project. And once he typed a guy a
check on a sheet of soft gold. The first check bounced, see-—"
    "Not Ron," Wade insisted. "Not a bomb. He knows better. But I did hear
that he squirreled away a couple of tank cars of RP-1 and LOX. Just in case
he decided to take a trip." He shook his head. "Poor guy is mad as a hatter
these days. They kept booting him out of one museum after another. Didn't
like his technophile leanings. Is it still paranoia when they really are out to
get you?"
    "Where is he now?" asked Wolfson. Sherrine held her breath.
    Wade pursed his lips. "Ron and his Titan wound up in Chicago at the
Museum of Science and Industry. Don't know where his fuel trucks went,
maybe there. The LOX is long gone anyway, of course, but that's not so
hard to make . . ."
    Sherrine's heart pounded. Chicago! Why, that was just a short drive
across Wisconsin. So close! She tugged on Bob's arm. "Let's get up to the
room. We've got to tell the others."
government would be bragging, the ACLU would be protecting their rights
...
    Inuit? Maybe, but not for long. The Inuits lived a physical life, and the
Angels weren't going to be ready for that.
    Some third group. Someone with medical resources, because if they
didn't have medical resources the Angels would be dead already. Maybe
they were. Assume they weren't, see where that got you. Like in playing
bridge, decide what it takes to make the contract; then assume the cards did
fall that way, and go for it.
    Probably somebody here in this room knows. So close! But no, they'd
have told me, Wade thought.
    No. You're a goddam drunk, and sober you wouldn't trust a drunk with
anything this big. Why should they?
    He was distracted momentarily by two fans winding their way through
the crowd. Bob Needleton, he recognized. Physicist at U-Minn. The other
he recalled as a fafiated femmefan he had known years ago. Computer
whiz. "What's their big hurry?" he asked, nodding toward the two.
    Dick Wolfson grinned. "If you'd've seen them earlier, you wouldn't have
to ask. I didn't know Sherrine and Bob were back together. Haven't seen
her in years. "
    Dr. Sherrine Hartley, only Hartley wasn't really her name, it was her
first husband's. She'd been active in fandom once.
    "Hunh." Chuck Umber seemed miffed. "There are more important
issues at hand than that."
    "Yeah," said another fan. "Like how to let the Angels know about the
Titan."
    Wade fell silent while the other fen debated. It was all moot anyway.
Until they knew who had the Angels and how to contact them there was no
point in composing a message. Someone handed him a drink, and he
swallowed mechanically. Besides-—" It's the wrong message," he said, but
nobody heard.
and an eye socket. Between the necks was a thick bulge of bone. The
creature stood on three legs ending in clawed hooves, with the rear leg
attached to the spine by a complex hip joint. There was a small plaque
attached to it.
    Alex gripped the wheels of his chair and rolled himself across the room.
He squinted at the plaque.

   SIMPSON: RESEARCH AND DESIGN

   Contents: ONE MODEL OF PUPPETEER SKELETON
   (SPECIMEN A)

   THIS MODEL, BASED ON A RARE SPECIMEN TRADED
   FROM THE KZIN, SHOWS THE PUPPETEER JUST BEFORE
   THE EXTENDED PHASE OF A HIGH-SPEED LOPE . . .

    Alex shook his head. He could just imagine the consternation if, after
the fall of civilization, paleontologists of the future were to unearth this . . .
um . . . sculpture.
    "Do you like him?" Doc Waxman wheeled Gordon into the room and
parked him beside Alex. He was a gift from Speaker-to-Seafood."
    Alex thought he should be used to this sort of thing by now. "Whom?"
    "Nat Reynolds, the writer. It's a long story, involving a drunken
conversation with a lobster Savannah. I'll tell you about it someday." He
whistled cheerfully while he set up a tray with glasses and an ice bucket.
Alex couldn't help grinning. Doc was the most determinedly cheerful man
he had ever met. He was easily sixty; yet he had not hesitated to dash out
onto the glaciers with the younger fans, on what might easily have become
a fatal mission-of-mercy for two strangers. You had to like a man like that.
    "You should see my collection . . . Hi, Fang, Bruce. Come on in. You
should see my collection of fannish art. Or rather, you should have seen it.
containers and hid em in the, ah, bottom of the boat. He chortled. Won t
help in a thorough search; but it discourages the casual pest, now that
we're not supposed to treat the sewage anymore . . . Stop by when you get
the chance and we'll haul some pieces out to display."
    Alex grinned. "How can I turn down such an invitation?"
    "Easy," said Fang opening a can of beer with one hand. "We're sending
you back upstairs, remember? On a fire in the sky."
    Sure, thought Alex. "Have you found a rocket yet?"
    Fang scowled at his drink. "No, but . . ."
    "But we will," Bruce insisted. "Fen are nothing if not persistent. There
are stories. Rumors. We'll trace 'em down. One or another's bound to be
authentic. The Ghost may know something."
    The others came in by ones and twos. Mike. Edward Two Bats. Steve
was glowing, as if he had just finished a heavy workout, which Alex
thought was rather likely. Thor was wearing faded jeans, with his tin
whistle protruding from a back pocket. He had pulled his long, golden hair
back into a ponytail. Not too long ago, Alex knew, such hairstyles on men
were regarded as outré. Now they were becoming the norm. He wondered
if the sudden advent of long hair and beards during the sixties had been an
instinctive ecological response to the imminent ice age; like animals
growing heavier pelts just before a severe winter.
    "Got it," Mike announced. He searched the refreshment tray and came
up with a wine bottle.
    "Got what?" asked Bruce warily.
    "A way to get the Angels upstairs."
    The others waited. "Well?"
    "Bang Bang." He opened the bottle.
    Edward Two Bats looked at him. "Bang Bang?" Light dawned in his
ekes. "Oh, no. No."
    "Excuse me," said Alex, "but what the hell is Bang Bang?"
his ass better. I think there may be some difficulties with your plan, he
said.
    "Oh, sure. Details." Detail work, Alex could tell, was not Mike's forté.
    Bob and Sherrine arrived, out of breath and flushed. They paused in the
doorway, breathing, heavily and grinning from ear to ear. "We have a
ship," Bob gasped.
    Alex felt a shiver run through him. The others stiffened. A rocket ship?
They'd found one? But a ship was only half the battle. There was fueling
and guidance and . . . It was madness. So why should he be shaking?
    It was a fragile thing, this imaginary spacecraft, and Alex feared to
touch it. He asked, "What sort of bird is it? What kind of shape is it in?"
    "We overheard Wade Curtis down in the movie lounge." Sherrine sank
into a chair. "Thanks." She took the tea that Doc handed her. "They were
listening to the news and jabbering about it and ol' Wade, Ghu bless him,
he cut right to the heart of it. The Angels can't hide out indefinitely. And he
mentioned that Ron Cole had a rocket, and-—"
    Bruce snapped his fingers. "Cole! That's right! There were stories, years
and years ago. I didn't think they were true, though. Isn't he in
Washington, at the Smithsonian?"
    Sherrine shook her head. "No. The rocket is at the Museum of Science
and Industry in Chicago. And get this. Wade says Cole has fuel for it!"
    They all whooped except Alex. "How much fuel?" he insisted. "And
what kind of bird is it? It won't do us any good if it just farts on the launch
pad."
    Sherrine looked at him. "I don't know how much fuel. Wade said it was
a Titan Two. Does it matter?"
    "A Titan?" He exchanged glances with Bob and Bruce. "Titans were
smaller than the Saturns, weren't they?"
    Bob nodded. "A two-stage rocket with a thrust of . . . well, enough
oomph to put a Gemini into orbit. A Gemini held two men. Freedom's what .
or so, wasn t it? That should be doable from Freedom.
    "That's a good idea, Thor," said Sherrine.
    The muscular blond smiled. "Baseball," he said.
    "Baseball?"
    "The Angels can't handle grounders; but I figured anybody can catch a
pop fly."
    Mike laughed and shook his head.
    "What's so funny?" asked Bruce.
    "Certainly not Thor's joke," said Fang.
    Mike wiped his eyes. "It just hit me. Freedom orbits two hundred fifty
miles straight up, right? That's less than the distance from here to Chicago! We
have to travel farther to, get the rocket than we would travel in the rocket
itself."
    "There's a little more to it than that," Alex said. "Velocity matching is
tricky."
    "It's not the distance," Bob said. "It's the energy."
    Mike sobered instantly. "I know that." He stuffed his hands in his pants
pockets and wandered to the window. The blinds were open; and, outside,
stars dusted the icy sky. He stared at the twinkling lights. "I know that," he
said softly.
    With the pollution gone, the stars were so clear. You'd think that was
the point of the exercise.
    Bruce turned to Alex. "How about it? If Cole doesn't have enough fuel
to reach orbit, could the Angels at least rendezvous with a suborbital?"
    "They could," Alex agreed reluctantly, "if it were high enough and on
the right vector. It's trickier than just flinging it up, and it would cost
fuel-—but yeah. They can do it."
    He exchanged glances with Gordon. Would Lonny even bother: Good
ol' Lonny would weigh the cost of the fuel for the rendezvous versus the
benefit of getting two duds back; and, no matter how you sliced it, twice
zero did not make for a respectable return on investment.
tell      looking up from Earth s surface disoriented him but he was
surprised at how much the sight of it ached.
     He would have to go back. Have to. Or die trying. And no one was
going to come and fetch him. So he would have to do it himself.
     He looked at Gordon and saw the hope there. Gordon couldn't guess
how many hurdles remained. Just find the bird and light it.
     All right, he thought. Torch it off and I'll fly it. I owe it to the kid to take
him back.
     Bruce scowled. "We're just spinning our wheels here. We need a plan of
action." He ticked points off on his fingers. "Number One, is the Titan for
real? You know how fannish legends can build. For all we know, all Cole
ever had were the components."
     "Could still use those," said Edward Two Bats.
     Bruce blinked at him.
     "If we have to, we'll assemble the damned thing ourselves," he
explained.
     Bruce started to say something, then shrugged. "Second, we need fuel.
Does Ron actually have any, or is that just story, too? If so, how much of it
does he have and where is it and how do we load it aboard?"
     Thor grinned. He pulled a rubber hose from his pocket. "Same way we
fueled Bob's van."
     Alex had a mental picture: Crazy Eddie with a giant syphon drawing
off LOX from a convenient tank. Don't suck too hard on that hose . . .
     "Third," continued Bruce, "we need a launch site where we can erect the
Titan. And fourth, we need to get the Angels there, fuel the bird, and then
light it off without being noticed or caught by the authorities."
     Crazy Eddie rubbed his hands together. "Piece of cake," he said.
     ***
     Bed-time exercises, Alex thought. He bent way back with his arms
stretched out above his head so that his body formed a perfect bow. He
could see the ceiling of the third-floor room he and Gordon shared in the
his shoulders anymore. He wobbled and semaphored with his arms.
    "Steady," said Steve again putting a hand behind his shoulder blades.
"Now, I'm going to take you through a simplified soorya namaskar. You let
me know if anything overtaxes you. Now, exhale and bend all the way
forward until your hands touch the floor. It's okay if you bend your knees.
You, too, Gordon. That's right. No, in line with the feet. Good. Ordinarily,
I'd have you tuck your head between your knees, but . . . Now, hold that
position."
    "I think I'm being overtaxed," said Alex. His arms and legs felt like
bands of fire. His thigh muscles quivered.
    "No, not yet. You're fooling yourself. You're working out, and your
body says, 'That's enough, I can't take anymore.' But it's just trying to con
you. If you quit, the rest of the day you'll hear your body laughing at you."
    Alex's muscles were on fire, and the speech wasn't helping. He looked
at Gordon. The kid was holding the pose and grinning. Smart-ass. just
because he was younger . . . Alex kept staring at him until he saw the leg
muscles tremble. Then he gave Gordon a smirk in return.
    Steve took them through a series of twelve poses. Each one forced Alex
to extend a muscle group that he was unaccustomed to using. Getting
around at the bottom of the Well was certainly different from getting
around in orbit. Upstairs, when he kicked off a wall surface, or flexed to a
landing on another, he used those same leg muscles to oppose the same
body mass. But here he had to do so constantly, not just at kickoff and
touchdown. Just as if he were in the centrifuge or aboard an accelerating
ship.
    It was uncomfortable, but not exactly unpleasant. In fact, living in an
acceleration frame had its advantages. Drinking was easier, for one thing.
Objects stayed where you put them. And he always woke up in the same
place he went to sleep, even without using straps.
    That's the spirit! I'm a stranger in a strange land full of wonders and delights.
What was the point of being marooned if you couldn't enjoy it? He needed
word. They wondered at their world. Because when you did that,
everything was wonder-full.

    Later, after Steve had gone, Alex lay abed in the dark, breathing slowly
and naturally, imagining the prana from the air streaming into his body,
strengthening it. Prana was the universal energy, manifesting itself in
gravitation, electricity, nerve currents, thought. A kind of Hindu unified
field theory. It was nonsense, of course. There was no such energy, and
Steve knew it as well as Alex did.
    Still, the mind-body interface was a funny thing and nobody really
knew how it worked. As a metaphor, a mental focus, prana worked quite
well. He tried to imagine a ball of light in his body, with glowing strands
coming from his mouth and nostrils connecting with the sun and distant
stars. Images were the tools of the mind, and a practical person used
whatever tools came to hand. Sometimes what was important was not
what was true, but what you believed was true.
    Like cobbling together a spaceship and flying into space.
    Believing wouldn't make it happen; but not believing would make it not
happen. Everything starts as somebody's daydream.
    "Alex?"
    "What?" He turned his head. In the dark he could not see Gordon, but
he could sense the youngster's presence in the other bed.
    "About . . . About the dip trip . . ."
    "What? That again?" Couldn't the kid let it be? I'd like to have seen him
do better. "What about it?" he snapped.
    "I'm sorry I didn't speak English."
    ". . . When?"
    Gordon twisted around, painfully, to look at him. "When? In final
innocent carefree moment before missile shred Piranha's fin!"
couple of seconds to work with? What kind of acceleration is that to move a
mass like Piranha, with three tiny embarrassed fins and the scoop dragging
us, too?"
     Silence filled the blackness between them. Finally, Gordon spoke again.
"Alex, do you think this Titan business will work?"
     Alex crossed his arms behind his head and stared at the ceiling.
Blackness should have stars in it, he thought. "I don't know. If there is a
ship and if we can find fuel . . . What do you think?"
     He heard a heavy sigh in the darkness. "If we can rendezvous, no
problem. If they have to come and snatch us as we go past . . . They will not
do it."
     "No, I don't think they would."
     Gordon hesitated. "Maybe my family can . . ."
     "Maybe they could what? Overrule Lonny or Sergei? Not a chance. They
can count as well as we can. They've got enough fingers. Hell, you know
it's not the personal anger. Not a Floater in orbit would hesitate to risk his
life to save another. But when we use common resources, the entire station
is at risk, and we have to draw the line. Start making exceptions and where
do you stop? When everyone is dying because too much has been used
up?"
     He was beginning to sound unpleasantly like Lonny Hopkins. "No,
your folks will cry as you arc past"-—Which is more than anyone will do for
me-—" and they'll curse God that they can't come out and snag you; but
they won't jeopardize the station for no other gain than two more mouths
to feed."
     Alex remembered the old Eskimo on the glacier describing how his wife
and daughter had been killed and eaten by his erstwhile comrades. And he
hadn't chased after the cannibals and he hadn't wasted any tears. Old
Krumangapik hadn't been cruel or heartless. Alex had seen the pain in the
old man's eyes. But when you lived on the edge, you learned to cut your
    Alex shivered as he remembered. A duty to die.
    How long would it be before elderly Floaters took themselves to the
airlocks out of a similar sense of duty? Yes. That was how they would do it.
No injections, because they had to conserve the medicines. No slashed
wrists, no blood droplets to purge from the air system. They would climb
into the airlock, nude, so as not to lose the fabric of their clothing. They
would just turn on the pumps to evacuate the chamber. Alex remembered
dying such a death. Later, a detail would reenter the airlock and salvage
the valuable organics.
    Perhaps that was the most unfortunate consequence of the new era of
shortages, both in Orbit and down in the Well. That it forced them all,
Downer and Floater alike, to be unkind.
    "Is it right to string them along?"
    Alex jumped. He'd thought Gordon was asleep. "What do you mean,
Gordo?"
    "These Downers. Fandom. They're risking a lot to help us, aren't they?
Shouldn't we tell them they're wasting their time?"
    "Don't burn bridges, Gordo. There might be enough fuel to reach orbit
on our own."
    "Or no fuel at all. Meanwhile, she puts her neck at risk for us. Maybe we
should contact Big Momma for instructions."
    "No!" Alex spoke sharply. "No," he repeated more softly. "We'd have to
make contact through this Oregon
    Ghost character. If we do, the fans will know how iffy the whole scheme
is and then . . ."
    "And then?"
    "And then they might give the effort up. Do you want to be stuck down
here the rest of your life?"
    "No, but-—"
he said after a moment. Gravity.
    "Go to sleep, Gordo." Alex tried to roll over on his side. He almost made
it. Good news from all over.
closed and practiced the savasam pose. Go away, Steve, I m dead.
    But the man would not be put off. He shook Alex by the shoulder.
"Come on, you two. Discipline is the key. You've got to work at this every
day."
    Alex opened one eye. Steve stood between the two beds, legs akimbo
and hands balled on his hips. He reminded Alex of a coiled spring. If the
Downers could only find a way to tap Steve's energy, they could use it to
melt the glaciers.
    Beyond him, Alex saw Doc setting up two trays. Tall glasses of milk. A
high-calcium diet. "Whatever happened to privacy?" he asked.
    "Alex," said Gordon. "It snowed last night."
    He opened both eyes and turned to see Gordon standing (standing!)
with his hands braced on the window sill. His breath made little clouds in
the air and steamed the glass. Alex stifled a groan. If Gordon could do it . . .
He pushed the comforter and the blankets off his body. With that much
weight removed he felt as if he could float out of bed. Careful, Alex. Watch
those reflexes. Slowly, he swung his legs out over the edge of the bed and
pushed himself to a sitting position.
    "That's very good," said Steve, and Alex felt like one of his day-care
charges who had just gotten a star on his forehead.
    "They tell me it snows a little every night up here," said Doc. He
brought the milk over. Even during the summer. It's colder in California
than it used to be; but L.A. only gets snow a couple times a year. Here,
drink this. It's good for you."
    Alex took the glass with both hands and drank. Milk was good stuff.
Too bad they didn't have milk in the habitats. That mix-it-with-water
powder didn't count, and they would run out of it sooner or later. Sooner
or later they would run out of everything, including time. He clenched his
fists around the glass. He was probably better off on Earth. You could still
run out of things on Earth, you could still die; but the margin for error was
not nearly so thin.
    Doc looked up. What are we going to do, then?
    Mike shrugged. "Bruce wants to take Bob and me down to Chi to check
things out in person."
    Alex grunted and noticed how his breath smoked. It was not cold,
exactly; not like it had been on the glacier. But it was chilly. Pleasantly cool,
actually. More comfortable than the shirtsleeve warm habitats. There was
no problem dumping waste heat on this habitat! "Is it always this nippy in
the morning?" he asked. Yesterday, he had been too groggy from the van
ride to notice.
    Steve struck a pose. " ‘To conserve, we all should strive. Thermostats at
fifty-five,' " he quoted. "It'll warm up later. Body heat from fifth-odd fans."
    "Some of them very odd," said Mike. "Steve, who was that fellow who
used the thermostat law to commit murder? What was it . . . two, three
years ago?"
    "Don't recall his name anymore. Papers on the Coast didn't play it, up
very big. Massachusetts?"
    "Hyannis."
    "What are you two talking about?" Gordon demanded.
    "There was a rich old man and an impatient young heir," Mike
explained. "The old man had pneumonia. EPA said to turn our thermostats
down; so the nephew did it. He was just being a good citizen." He
scratched his beard thoughtfully. "He must have inherited enough money
to hire a good lawyer, because it never came to trial."
    "Government wouldn't want it to come to trial," said Steve.
"Good-intentioned laws aren't allowed to have bad spin-offs."
    Mike shrugged. "Whichever. The DA was really frosted, though."

   Steve led them through their asanas. Stretch. Bend. Rest. Stretch. Bend.
Rest. "I am your transcendental drill sergeant," Steve declaimed. "Meditate,
you slugs! Yam, two, three, four!" As Alex came out of the Eight-Pointed
Repose, he noticed that Doc was performing the asanas along with them.
admire the view. Then he noticed Gordon watching and scowled. Neither
of them were up to that sort of exercise; but Gordon would beat him to it.
    Sherrine set the tray on the lamp table. Mike tried to look over her
shoulder to see what she had brought. "The kitchen is a madhouse," she
said. "Ol' 3MJ is down there flipping flapjacks himself. But Shew and
Wolfson and Curtis and a couple of others are helping out, too.
    "Damn," Sherrine said.
    "What?" Steve asked.
    "Just remembering. Nat Reynolds used to make Irish coffee at
conventions. Long time ago. What happened to him?"
    "Exiled," Steve said. "After he got busted and they were all set to charge
him with subversion-—"
    "Subversion how" Alex asked. "I thought-—isn't the Constitution still in
effect?"
    "For most things," Mike said dryly. "There's freedom of speech for
politics and so forth. But no one has the right to deceive people. Back in the
'90s one of the Green organizations sued the publisher of a science fiction
book and won. Didn't cost the publisher much, but the author was held
liable as well. So after Reynolds wrote The Sun Guns-—
    "I read this," Gordon said. "About satellite power plants to stop the Ice?"
    "Yep, that’s it," Mike said. "Well, Friends of Man and the Earth sued
him. Class action suit for fifty million bucks for deceiving the people. Got a
preliminary judgment suppressing publication of the book. Reynolds
wouldn't take that and let the book be published anyway and that was
contempt of court, so then they wanted him on criminal charges."
    Sherrine shuddered. "And once you're a criminal, they can do anything
to you. Reeducation. Community service."
    "Well, they caught him, but he and his lawyers worked out a deal.
Reynolds gave up U.S. citizenship and was deported to Australia. The
Aussies always did like him. He didn't want to go, but he didn't really have
much choice."
     That s one of the things I missed while I was fafiated, Sherrine
continued.
    Mike looked puzzled. "What? Crowded kitchens?"
    "No, it's the way fans pitch in and help spontaneously. 3MJ didn't have
to ask a single person for assistance."
    Doc nodded. "They seen their duty and they done it."
    "Out in the danelaw, nobody helps out unless there's something in it for
them. I always had to watch my back at the University. You wouldn't
believe the bureaucratic in-fighting that goes on there, and the goddam
union laws-—"
    "I would," said Mike, wagging an impaled fragment of waffle. "That's
why I left the IRS. The grunts at the P.O.D.'s were okay. They were just
trying to do their jobs-—almost impossible, considering how convoluted
the law is-—but the political hacks . . ." He shook his head.
    Alex could sympathize with him. Lonny Hopkins was a son of a bitch;
but, to give the devil his due, he was a perfectly sincere son of a bitch. And
up there, you did your part or you died. If you screwed up, maybe you
killed someone whose relatives resented it, maybe you killed yourself,
maybe something else, but the margins were too thin for drones.
    Down here they were rich enough to support useless people, but there
were so many! All concerned about their own careers and perks in the
midst of the struggle for survival.
    "Fen are different," Doc said. "At least since the fringe fans gafiated.
That was one benefit of government intimidation. A lot of the cuttle fish are
gone." His voice took on an edge. "You know the ones I mean. The
exhibitionists. And the so-called fans who abused 3MJ's hospitality by
stealing his memorabilia. Nowadays the camaraderie is more like it was
during First Fandom. It's a smaller group, but closer knit."
    "The Few, the Proud, the Fen," said Mike.
    Steve nodded. "FIAWOL," he agreed.
    Alex held up his bowl. "More gruel, please."
     Hey! said Sherrine. They all looked at her and she spread her arms
apart. "Why not?"
    "Why not what?"
    She stood up and bounced to the center of the room. "If we're going to
loft a rocket we should pack it with gifts. As much as it will take. Not just
oatmeal, but . . . Oh, everything. Anything! Anything we've got down here
that the Angels need!"
    Doc raised his eyebrows. "That's a great idea, Sherri. It'll show the
Angels that they've still got a few friends down here. What sort of stuff do
your folks need, Alex?"
    "What do we need? What don't we need?" Alex wondered how well-
informed the fans were about conditions in the habitats. Not very, he
suspected. "Bacon and eggs. Meats of any sort. Milk. Carrots, broccoli,
everything you were serving at the Meet the Readers Party Hell, any
vegetable. You have foodstuffs down here that some of our folks have
never seen, let alone eaten."
    "Chitlins and collard greens?" asked Steve.
    "Sure."
    "You guys must really be desperate."
    "Have you ever lived on a diet of lettuce and mustard greens? Zucchini,
sometimes. We do grow vegetables, but there are never enough. You can't
eat spider plants! And some of our plant species have died off. We
synthesize a lot of vitamins, but nutritional deficiencies are one of our
biggest worries." Along with solar flares, nitrogen outgassing, shortages of
metals and plastics, and you name it. But let's not disillusion anyone.
    "Food, then," said Mike. "Geez, we should name the ship The Flying
Greengrocer."
    "Seeds, Mike," said Sherrine. "Not live plants. Call it Johnny Appleseed."
She went to the small lamp table and rummaged in its drawer, emerging
with a pencil and a small pad of note paper.
    He pushed himself out of his armchair and paced the room, rubbing his
fist with his hand. "You'll want plants to satisfy three needs," he continued,
thinking aloud. "Hot damn! Who would ever have thought that a county
agent and the space program . . . Well, okay, nutrition is one. You want
maximum food value for minimum energy input. Oxygen production and
CO2 scrubbing is another. And radiation hardening. So . . ." He paused
and rubbed his face. "I should sit down and put together a list, balancing all
three needs. But for a start . . . Sherrine, write these down: green leafy
vegetables and yellow vegetables. Sweet potatoes, carrots, spinach."
    "Why them?" asked Gordon.
    "They're great sources of vitamin A," Doc told him. "Important for bone
growth, and radiation resistance."
    "Tocopherol, vitamin E. That's good for radiation, too," said Steve.
    "Sure. We can include a couple of bulk bottles of concentrated
multivitamins."
    "And tomatoes," Mike added. "Rich in vitamin A and they're easy to
grow hydroponically."
    "We have some of those," Alex said. "But they went bad. Started making
people sick. We still grow tomatoes, but we make fertilizer out of them,
mulch for the moon rock soil."
    "Tomato seeds. Several varieties." Sherrine wrote rapidly. "You must
need hydroponic chemicals, too. Even with closed loop recovery, there
have to be losses. What do you need for that?"
    "Nitrogen, for one thing," Alex said.
    "Potassium nitrate," said Gordon. They all looked at him in surprise.
"Potassium nitrate," he repeated. "You know. Saltpeter."
    "Flower seeds," said Steve.
    Alex looked at him in surprise. "Can't eat flowers," he said.
    Steve shook his head. "Not for food. But as long as you need plants to
produce oxygen, some of them might as well be pretty."
ask until
     The room fell silent. "Until you believe in this," Sherrine said. "Don't get
their hopes up."
     "Something like that," Alex said. "I mean-—we're grateful, and you're
risking everything, and-—"
     "But it's pretty mad to talk about finding an old Titan, fueling it up, and
lighting it off," Doe said. "Of course it is. But-—" He held up a finger. The
others joined in unison as he said, "It's the Only Game in Town." Doc's eyes
lit. "Spices. Pepper. Thyme. Savory. Oregano. Sweet Basil. Dill-—parsley,
sage, rosemary, and thyme . . ."
     Alex's mouth watered. Mythical flavors from childhood. "Ketchup," he
remembered. "And mustard. Peanuts. Gordon, you have never tasted
peanut butter. And not just foodstuffs, either." As long as he was
daydreaming, why not daydream big. "We could use all sorts of materials.
Machine tools, too."
     "Plastics," said Gordon. "They can be shredded and remolded. Could
always use more."
     Alex shook his head. "Plastics would be too bulky to lift in useful
quantities. We need things that are small and valuable."
     "Don't rule anything out, yet," said Sherrine. "We're brainstorming."
     "Too bad you can't grow plastic from seeds," said Doe. "Like you can
plants."
     "But you can!" Mike said suddenly.
     "What?"
     "Well, not quite; but . . . There was an experimental field-—in Iowa?-—
where they grew plastic corn. Alcaligenes eutrophus is a bacterium that
produces a brittle polymer. Eighty percent of its dry weight is a naturally
grown plastic: PHB, poly-beta-hydroxybutyrate . . ."
     "Contains only natural ingredients!" declared Steve with a grin.
     "Researchers found they could coax the bug into producing a more
flexible plastic by adding a few organic acids to the glucose 'soup.' They
They were this close to cracking the sterility problem when the National
Scientific Research Advisory Board halted all testing."
    "It sounds fantastic," said Alex. "Where can you find this bug?"
    "A. eutrophus? In the hold of the Flying Dutchman. It's just a story that
agents pass around. The test plot was abandoned when genetic engineering
"was outlawed. Later, it was burned by a Green hit squad."
    Doc grunted. "Hunh. Burning plastic corn? I’ll bet it released a toxic
smoke cloud."
    "Sure. But that was the fault of the scientists, not the arsonists. They
burned one of the scientists, too."
    "My grandmother would know," said Sherrine.
    Heads turned.
    "My grandmother. She's a genetic engineer, remember? If anyone
knows where we could lay hands on a culture of this A. eutrophus, she
would."
    Alex felt a tingle in his limbs. They weren't just joking around any more.
They could make it work. Foodstuff. Seeds. Vitamins. Spices. Plasi-facient
bacteria, for crying out loud! They could actually make it happen. They knew
where to find the stuff. Or they knew people who knew. He glanced at
Gordon, who was looking straight at him, reading the hope in his eyes.
    Sure. Make the payload valuable enough and Lonny Hopkins himself
would fly out and grab it, Alex MacLeod and all.
    "How would you handle meat, though?" asked Doc. "No seeds. No
pills."
    "Small animals. Rabbits. They breed fast and they're relatively meaty for
their size."
    "Guinea pigs? The Incas used those."
    "Chickens."
    "Hold it. Hold it. This rocket is starting to sound like a Central
American bus."
    Good. Frozen sperm, then. Frozen ova, too. Mix em in vitro. Though
you'll still want to take a few females along, just in case. Ova are more
delicate than sperm."
   "Is diversity problem in sperm bank," said Gordon thoughtfully. "Gene
pool is limited."
   "Mars Needs Women!" shouted Mike. Sherrine looked up from her
notepad and blushed a deep crimson. Before she could say anything, Bruce
Hyde spoke from the doorway.
   "Do I want to know what this discussion is about?"
   Sherrine and the others told him, all talking at once. He looked at Alex.
"Will it work?"
   Alex shrugged. "Why fly an empty truck? As long as we have enough
fuel to lift the mass." And that would be a pretty problem! Trading altitude for
cargo. There had to enough cargo to make a rendezvous cost-effective. The
more, the better. But more cargo, less altitude; and Lonny would have to
use more fuel to match orbits, and . . . Where was the break-even point? It
was a question of minimizing the rendezvous costs while maximizing the
cargo value. A minimax problem. But it wouldn't do any good to try and
calculate an answer. Too many indeterminates-—Lonny would be making
his own decisions anyway.
   "Alex?" Steve was waving a hand at him.
   "I'm sorry. What did you say?"
   "I asked about spare parts and fittings," said Steve.
   "We can fabricate most of what we need," Alex told him, "if we have the
materials and the machine tools." Maintenance was the one activity in the
habitats that was absolutely crucial. "We can scavenge and salvage most
materials, although we're always short and more would always be
welcome; but machine tools and dies for the machine shop are essential.
Some of our blades and drill bits and molds have been reground or
resharpened until they're useless."
   "Machine tools would be small," said Mike, "but heavy."
or hydroponics chief Ginjer Hu fell sick, there would be medicine available.
"Essential personnel." If Alex MacLeod fell sick . . .
    And if he did climb back into orbit with a rocketful of goodies, would
his name move up the list? More to the point, how much could they
realistically take with them in a Titan, anyway? Brooding, Alex dropped
out of the brainstorming session.
    "Not only medicines," said Sherrine, "but other chemicals, too. 3MJ has
chlorine for his pool right here. He might let us have some."
    "Metals, too," said Gordon ". . . Nah. Too heavy. We would not lift
enough metal to matter."
    Bruce laughed. "What do you suppose the Titan is made of? If we can
loft it hard enough, we can put the booster into a recoverable orbit. Then
your people can mine it to their heart's content."

   Later, when they were alone for a few minutes, Gordon looked at him
with widened eyes. "It cannot work, but they believe-—do you believe,
too?"
   Alex arranged the blanket around his legs. He smoothed the green paid
cloth, tucking the folds out of sight. Experimentally, he pulled on the
chair's wheels and was pleased to see that he could roll himself across the
room. As Doc had told him, the upper body strength would come first. It
was the muscles needed for standing and walking that needed the training.
That and replenishing the bone calcium. He looked at Gordon.
   "I think it could work. The essence of trade is 'Cheap here; dear there.'
Make the cargo valuable enough and get the rocket close enough and, yes,
it damn well could work." Gordon's blanket was a dull monochrome,
which secretly pleased Alex.
   "But, there are so many things that could go wrong . . ."
   Alex slashed the air with his hand. "Of course there are! Don't teach
your grandmother to suck eggs-—"
   "Sorry, Alex."
    Gordon pressed his lips together and looked away. Nichevo.
    "Damn right." Alex turned his wheelchair away. So, why was he being
so hard on the kid? Deep down, he knew that they were cut off from home
forever. This business with the Titan was just half-baked wish fulfillment.
What did the shrinks call it? Denial? Crash a scoopship, did you? Stupid
dipper fell into the Well? Hey, no problem. We'll just patch together an old
derelict missile; stuff it with a cornucopia of wonderful goods, and sail
home to triumph. Lonny Hopkins will be humiliated, and Mary will be so
enchanted that she will finally leave him and we will all live happily ever
after.
    "Ah, cheer up, Gordo," he said. "The damned rocket will probably blow
up on the launch pad anyway."
    "Blankets."
    He turned his head. "Hunh?"
    Gordon tugged at his lap warmer. "Blankets. Cloth. How many times
can you repatch worn-out shorts or halters?"
    "Oh. Sure, sure. Tell Sherrine when she comes back."
    "Alex?"
    "What?"
    "I didn't want to ask before, but what is corn on the cob?"
    A flicker of images like an old silent movie. Golden corn glistening with
melted butter. Picnic table spread on a bright summer's day. The merest of
chills in the air, the distant kiss of infant glaciers. Hot dogs on the barbecue.
Mom and Dad laughing to each other across the picnic table. The tangy
smell of baked beans.
    "Don't worry about it. We'll have a picnic and you'll see for yourself.
Spread a blanket and . . ." He stopped suddenly and studied his lap
blanket. Not just plaid. Light and dark green, with yellow and red
pinstripes. It was the MacLeod tartan. And Gordon Tanner's blanket was ...
a solid tan.
melt. It was sad, knowing that the pool was doomed, that no one would
ever laugh and splash in it again.
    "That wasn't what I meant."
    Sherrine folded her arms against the chill. "So?"
    "Lugging this crap all the way to Chicago. It's the kind of thing Crazy
Eddie would come up with."
    "Alex told us that the Angels need all sorts of chemicals. The space
stations aren't perfectly closed systems. You know that. They were never
designed for permanent, isolated habitation-—and there's no chlorine on
the moon. You're just jealous because you weren't there and you didn't
think of it." And why did Bob have to throw cold water on her idea? He
himself had pulled her into this.
    He leaned back against the van and stuffed his hands in his jacket
dockets. "We don't know yet if Cole even has a rocket," he said. "And if he
does, we can't just climb aboard and take off from downtown Chicago with
a bucket of chlorine powder aboard. So, we don't have to load up-—on
chlorine or anything else-—right now."
    She shrugged. "Where's the harm?"
    Bob rubbed his shoulders. "It's heavy."
    She didn't answer him. She huddled deeper in her coat, squinting at the
snow flurries stirred up by the wind. The breeze hummed like a tenor pipe
where it blew across the archway between the main building and the
garage and parking apron. Like a ghost, she thought. The Ghost of
Minneapolis Past.
    "Cold?" asked Bob.
    "No," she said.
    His mouth twitched and he stuck his hand back in his pocket. "Me
neither." After a few beats, he spoke again. "Is Bruce going to tell the rest of
the Con what's going on? I had to teach a thermo class this morning, so I
missed whatever you decided at the meeting. The traffic was tied up
spiritualism to the curriculum.
    "They already have those-—"
    "Not as equal time in the physics and chemistry departments."
    Sherrine whistled low.
    "Yep," Bob said. "The science departments are resisting-—we had a
meeting after my class-—but it's a question of marketing and sales. Of
putting warm bodies behind desks. We told the Dean that there was no
objective evidence for any of that crap. You know what he said?"
    The sky was a slate gray; the cloud deck, low and oppressive. Sherrine
stared up into the gloom. "No. What?"
    "He said that the alleged objectivity of materialist science was an
invention of heterosexual, white males, so we shouldn't use that as a basis
for judgment."
    She looked sharply into his face. For a change, he was not laughing.
"What did you tell him?"
    "Nothing."
    All the fire had done out of him, even the anger. Ominous. She said,
"And?"
    "I said nothing. It was like I'd been caught explaining something to a
door, or a telephone recording. I felt like such a fool."
    "That's why I love working with computers. They're logical. Rational.
They do exactly what you program them to do. And that forces you to be
logical, too." She shook her head. "But the anthropomorphic nonsense I
have to put up with from users . . ."
    "I thought you were happy in your little niche."
    She gave him a fierce look. "I was, damn you. I was happy! Thank you,
Robert K. Needleton, for prying me out into this cold, mean, miserable
world."
    "Do you want to go back?"
    She shook her head. "You can never go back. As long as you keep your
eyes shut tight, you can pretend whatever you like. But once you open
     Where?
   She looked back up into the sky and hummed softly. "And that was one
small step, and afire in the sky . . . "
   "Sorry, all those trains have been cancelled."
   "Except one."
   "Maybe." He placed one mittened hand on her shoulder. "Sherrine.
People like us, we should stay here and fight."
   "And lose."
   "Losing is better than running."
   She jerked her shoulder away from him. "I wasn't talking about
running." Yes, you were. "I'm not like you. I can’t laugh about it. I can't make
jokes. It depresses me. You'll be making wisecracks about crystal-heads
and proxmires until the day they hang you for technophilia-—"
   "They don't hand you for that. They send you to reeducation camps."
   "Whatever. But, for me . . . I can't go back; so I've got to go on."
   He nudged her with his elbow. "Here comes Chuck. You never did tell
me what you guys decided this morning. What do we tell the others?"
   "Oh. It's still a secret. Just us and the Ghost. What they don't know can't
get them in trouble." She straightened and stepped away from the van. "Hi,
Chuck."
   Chuck Umber was agitated. His beard jutted out. "The Con is busted,"
he said. "The cops are on their way."
   Sherrine stiffened. The police were coming? They would catch her here,
among fans. She would lose her job. She would . . . "How do you know?"
she asked.
   "Secret source."
   A closet fan in the police department. She remembered a civilian analyst
who'd been active before. Probably a secret Hocus subscriber-—
   "Look, you've got to leave now," Umber said. "There's still time before
they get here."
looking for something. This isn t just the cops, the Air Force is in it.
    Again she traded looks with Bob.
    "But I still don't know how the Air Force knew where to look," Umber
said. "Hey, get going! Now. And get the badge off, Bob!"
    The Rotsler cartoon badge. Bob dropped it in a pocket. "Don't have it on
you," Chuck said.
    Sherrine said, "How will we find our friends?"
    "I said don't worry," Chuck told her. "I've got it all scoped out. Always
map escape routes first thing. Head for River Road just south of the big
curve near the Bell Museum. Your friends will meet you there."
    "Can you get them out in time?"
    Chuck grinned. "Did I ever fail to get Hocus out on time? Then I won't
fail to get this issue out, either."
    She climbed into the passenger seat and Chuck slammed the door on
her. Bob started the van and they pulled out of the parking apron.
"Sherrine, where's your badge?"
    "My-—? Back at the apartment."
    "Good thing," Bob said. He pulled on the radio panel. It opened, and he
dropped his badge into the cluttered cavity.
    SHERRINE HARTLEY, her badge said, and the little William Rotsler
figure looked fondly up at the letters, thinking, "Infatuation Object." It
wasn't hidden in her apartment. She'd thought it too dangerous. She'd
thrown it away.
    The chlorine buckets in back rolled and thumped.
    Sherrine twisted in her seat and looked out the back window at Chuck.
He was already running back toward the Tre-house. She straightened and
stare through the windshield. Her hands were clenched in her lap.
    "What is it?" Bob asked.
    "Nothing," she said. She was thinking of all the times her issue of Hocus
had come late.
    ***
tail was split so she could walk. She seemed to swim along the corridor.
Much skin was showing, and much more implied. Her fine blond hair
bobbed and waved almost as if she were underwater.
    Priorities. Who had to run, who could stay? The nature people were
safe. The Greens didn't hate them, except for their association with
technophiles. The kids were all right, too young to worry the cops.
Students would get lectures, maybe some remedial reading on
Ecodisasters, but students could get away with a lot.
    People with mundane jobs were in trouble. Get them out first, since
even if they weren't arrested, they could lose their jobs. And the pros. Most
of them had judgments hanging over their heads. They could be sentenced
to "community service" for not paying their debts.
    Wolfson raised a circled thumb and forefinger. Good. All the pros were
hidden in the vaults below. So far no one had ever found those. Of course,
there's a first time for anything.
    OK. The people are safe. Now our treasures. Most of the high tech
posters were already gone, leaving the paintings of wizards and elves and
witches and fairies. Over there! A medal, stamped in aluminum from the
original Apollo 11 capsule and given to people who had worked on the
program! Priceless. He plucked it and put it in his pocket. None of this stuff
was worth dying for, but this-—The bell rang insistently. 3MJ took a deep
breath and opened it.
    There were at least a dozen cops, eight blues and several greens. Behind
them was a squad of Air Police at parade rest, and behind them were more
airmen with rifles. An Air Force captain was pointing to a group of
students who had run away. "Catch them and check their ID. You know
what we're looking for." The sergeant nodded grimly and led four men at
double time.
    Tremont pretended not to notice the Air Force and Greens and turned to
the leader of the local police. "Yes, Officer?" he said politely. The name
badge read Sergeant Pyle.
how do you know that, sir? asked Zaftig.
    3MJ spread his hands guilelessly. "I throw a great many parties, officer.
Charity affairs. All those bodies, it's an easy way to warm the house. As
you know, I'm a firm supporter of the Patrolman's Benevolent Association.
Hope you liked the party last month-—"
    "Yes, sir." Pyle frowned. "So?"
    "Like everyone else, I am concerned about pollution; especially noise
pollution from my many affairs. So the edge of my property is ringed with
sound meters that record the noise levels. I checked them earlier tonight,
and the decibel readings have been no higher than normal background
noise. Certainly not as high as they were during the PBA benefit last
month."
    "Sound meters," said Zaftig. The Green looked triumphant.
    "Yes. I rent them from the EPA through the local Nader franchise. I have
them calibrated there every two months." He turned to Pyle. "I'll be glad to
apologize to any neighbor who has been offended, but really, any
disturbance must have come from somewhere else. Is there anything else,
Sergeant?"
    Pyle sighed. "Yes, sir-—" He fished in his uniform pocket and pulled out
a second warrant and unfolded it carefully, then held it out for Tremont to
read. "All right, then. Suspicion of harboring dangerous fugitives."
    "Fugitives. May I ask who these fugitives are?"
    "Read it."
    Tremont adjusted his glasses. He took hold of the warrant in one hand
but the policeman refused to relinquish it. Tremont raised an eyebrow,
Spock-fashion.
    "Sorry, Mr. Fielding," Pyle muttered. "I've got to show it to you, but I
can't let you have it."
    "I see." Tremont took his time reading the warrant. The longer he
stalled, the better for everyone. "There's nothing about who the fugitives
are."
such an unsigned warrant. His computers, modems, files. Even his
printers. Suspicion of hacking. And private ownership of unregistered
modems had been legal back then.
   "Move aside," Zaftig said. "We'll be searching this place."
   Pyle looked at him. "He knows that."
   Tremont knew he had stalled long enough. He stepped away from the
door. "Very well, Officers. But please be careful. As you know, I have a
number of valuable and fragile objects d'art about the house."
   Zaftig smirked. "Yeah. I heard."
   Tremont sighed and resigned himself. There would certainly be
vandalism and pilferage. It was grand larceny that worried him.
Fortunately, most of the things he considered valuable would be thought
trash by the Greens.
   The Greens never had liked him, but then they didn't like anybody; they
reserved their affection for animals and birds and plants, constituencies
that couldn't vote them out of office. They'd steal what they could, and
destroy other stuff on general principles. The local police would try not to
cause much damage unless they found something truly criminal going on.
Tremont J. Fielding had worked for years to raise his standing in the
community. His charity balls and fund-raisers helped a lot. Still, he was a
known technophile. So were some of the police. But not the Greens, and
they had seized control of much of the bureaucracy.
   It was the Air Force that worried him. Why were they here? Just who
were these fugitives they wanted? He had a pretty good guess. The dell
'Angelo brothers. Wheel chairs, neofans made into instant guests: it had to
be them. What were they wanted for? He edged closer to the Air Force
people.
   It was clear that they were really in charge. They'd let the local cops
speak for them, but when it came to giving orders-—The Air Force captain
stepped forward.
    Spacemen. Dell Angelo. Angels. Of course. For a moment Tremont felt
hurt that the Con Committee hadn't told him. What difference would it
have made? They were welcome here, whatever the cost.
    The soldiers clattered up the stairs and fanned down the three wings.
Tremont could hear them stamping about overhead. He sighed, but did not
leave the foyer. The head cops-—Air Force blue, darker police blue, and
green-—huddled together and argued in fierce whispers. Tremont shook
his head as he watched them. Probably arguing about jurisdiction. He
could not overhear and did not want to appear nosy.
    Wolfson approached and, tugging at his sleeve, drew him aside.
Tremont bowed his head so Wolfson could whisper into his ear. "They're
all gone or in the hideaway, except, for the Lunarians and the two neos in
the wheelchairs. There wasn't enough room down below."
    Tremont raised his head and blinked rapidly. "Oh, dear." The Angels!
And no one had known to put them below first.
    "Shew and Curtis volunteered to give up their slots in the vault; but,
hell, Tremont, those guys are published. The cops have their names and
pictures on their list."
    Tremont touched his arm. "Don't worry. Tell the Lunarians to execute
Plan Two. They'll know what to do. Chuck Umber laid it all out before he
left."
    Wolfson licked his lips. He watched the police barking into their wrist
corns. "All right," he said. "I won't worry."
    ***
    When they hauled out the Pierson's puppeteer skeleton, Tremont kept
his face stoically composed; but inwardly his heart cracked as he wondered
what he would say to Will Waxman. The puppeteer was his prize
possession. Tremont pulled his cape closed and changed his grip on his
walking stick. Will knew the risks involved in attending a con. He would
buy Doc a drink the next time their paths crossed and they would both
shake their heads over their losses.
not all art is government subsidized. And the National Endowment for the
Arts had never given a grant to fantasy or science fiction art.
   "Some of the stuff you got here glorifies technology," the Green cop
insisted. As if Tremont did not already know it. "You don't want to glorify
technology, do you?"
   "Maybe he needs some education," another Green said. "Community
service."
   "Mr. Fielding is all right," a policeman said. "Good law and order man.
Come on, lay off."
   And I should leave it at that-—He couldn't. "Do you dislike all
technology? Such as the technology that made the cloth for your uniforms,
or developed the electric cars you drove here?"
   The Green looked surprised. "That's appropriate technology," he said.
   ***
   The foyer was empty again, except for the three head cops, when the
Lunarians made their move. Most of the searchers were still scattered
across the two upper floors, but Arteria and the two sergeants stood in a
cluster at the foot of the grand staircase taking reports from their squads
over their wrist coms. Those, too, were "appropriate." As were the guns
they carried.
   The rumble of casters caught their attention, and they turned just as Hal
Blandings and three other Lunarians emerged from the north wing
pushing a handcart with a large cardboard box on it. They headed straight
across the-—foyer toward the front door. Tremont was stunned. The sheer
audacity of it! Lunarian fanac always inspired a certain amount of awe
among the more circumspect fen. But this . . . He realized that his fingers
were crossed and quickly uncrossed them. When he saw the tip of the
snorkel protruding from the styrofoam, he held his breath. Did they have
both Angels in there?
   The three cops stared for a moment, then Zaftig shouted. "Hey, you
four!"
crossed to the east hallway. Since she was still wearing her mermaid
costume, every male eye in the foyer followed her progress-—except
Zaftig, who was reading the Lunarians their rights, and Arteria, who
evidently did not care for that sort of thing. Pyle took after her.
    "Sergeant Pyle!" Arteria snapped.
    Pyle muttered something about the Helms Law and kept going.
Tremont smiled thinly. Enforcing the obscenity statutes was tricky
business. The courts had imposed intricate guidelines. Pyle would no
doubt have to study the costume for a considerable time and from many
angles before he could decide what to do.
    Meanwhile, back at the front door, one of the Lunarians was showing
Zaftig a certificate proclaiming that the styrofoam in the box was 100
percent recycled material. So was the box. "Recycling! It's important! The
paper they use in some of those fast-food places, that's from trees! They cut
down trees for that! And we can recycle styrofoam. You know how much
energy it takes to recycle styrofoam? Not much. But trees, it takes a long
time to grow trees! Owls roost in trees! Trees are important. Sergeant, aren't
you for ecology?"
    The tip of the snorkel sank deeper into the chips.
    Zaftig sprang. "There's someone hiding in this box."
    Arteria stiffened and looked at Tremont. "Smuggling out a fugitive, are
you? That was a pretty clumsy maneuver."
    The way the AP captain said it, it sounded almost like a rebuke and
Tremont wanted to apologize. We didn't have time to be particularly clever.
Arteria walked to the carton just as Zaftig grabbed the end of the snorkel.
    Wolfson tapped his arm and pointed silently to the top of the staircase.
Tremont looked and saw Anthony Horowitz tiptoeing down. He scowled.
If there was no room in the cellars for Harry and Jenny, there sure wasn't
for a neopro like Horowitz. He'd been left to take his chances-—but Tony
might just make it. He must have evaded the AP's on the second floor. The
two cops in the foyer had their backs to the stairs and the west wing.
 Is the book auction over already?
    Zaftig grabbed him by the wrist. "Is this one of them?" he asked Arteria.
    The AP captain scowled. "Does this look like a 'spectrally thin
superman' to you?" A grunt of disgust, but before Arteria could turn away,
Horowitz had blocked the way.
    Horowitz stuck out his hand. "Hi, do you do interviews? I'm Tony
Horowitz. I'm an up-and-coming pro science fiction writer. I've got several
books out already, but I need to boost my circulation."
    "A sci-fi pro?" said Zaftig. He grinned. "I think your circulation just
dropped to zero. His eyes dropped then, and the grin went away.
    Horowitz smiled beatifically. "Yes, but think of the notoriety. Jailed
writers always sell more."
    Zaftig's eyes were locked on Horowitz's badge. A sly and dissolute
cartoon face, and HAVE SEX OUTSIDE MY SPECIES. The cop was unlikely
to recognize a literary reference and if he took it at face value . . . the law
wouldn't permit him to take it into consideration.
    With visible effort Zaftig wrenched his eyes off the badge. "You ain't no
writer. You do sci-fi."
    "We'll let The New York Times decide."
    Jenny and Harry came in from the kitchen. Jenny had found the maid's
uniform. When Tremont's wife was still alive he'd employed a housekeeper
who liked wearing uniforms because that way Tremont paid for her work
clothes. Now Jenny was wearing it, a conventional black and white
pinafore that looked ridiculous on someone of Jenny's age and bearing.
She'd even put on the silly bonnet.
    Harry was wearing his own clothes, except they were dirtier and more
torn than Tremont remembered.
    "I'm sorry, sir," Jenny said. "I'd let this poor man out the back door, but
the soldiers won't let me. Here, it's this way-—" She led Harry toward the
front door.
everyone but Tremont had their backs to the foyer. The north wing door
opened, and two wheelchairs rolled swiftly and silently down the ramp.
Thor and Fang pushed them into the west wing.
    Toward the carport.
    3MJ saluted with his walking stick. Fang waved back and vanished out
the door with the others. Then Tremont swung his stick up and rested it
jauntingly across his shoulder. He turned a military about-face and
watched the ruckus by the door. He smiled at the back of Arteria's head.
We had just enough time to be just clever enough.
    ***
    Sherrine rolled down the passenger window of the van and looked
behind, up River Road. From where the van was parked she could see the
Bell Museum of Natural History. The University buildings lined the left
side of the road, while the Mississippi-—this far upstream, a human-scale
river-—curved past on the right in a gentle crescent. Directly upstream, she
could see St. Anthony Falls. University students, bundled against the chill,
stood in knots along the roadside laughing and talking and swigging beer.
Ice patches glistened in the afternoon sun.
    "Roll the window up," said Bob. "You're wasting heat."
    "I don't see them yet." She faced forward and rolled the window back
up. Crossing her arms over her chest, she stuck her hands under her
armpits. Bob had turned the motor off; there was no heat. "It's not that cold,
anyway," she said.
    "Cold enough."
    "Where I was, it was so cold our breath turned colors." She cocked her
head and watched the side mirror. No one. The students were waiting for
something, but what? Not the Angels, surely.
    "Sherrine, someone had to stay with the van. We thought it would just
be a short run on and off the Ice. So-—"
    "You don't have to make excuses."
    "I'm not making excuses, dammit!"
way at all, she remembered. Not at all. Chuck had come running out with
the news and her first thoughts had been for herself; and for her job; and
that she mustn't be found here, among fans. It was Bob who had asked
about the Angels, when she was already halfway into the passenger's seat.
And now . . . What if she'd lost them? What if she'd lost them?
    Bob shrugged. "I trust Chuck. It's that convoluted, intricate mind of his.
He knew there wouldn't be time to find Alex and Gordon and load them
and their wheelchairs in the van and leave before the police arrived. It was
a near thing as it was. The roadblock on University Avenue would have
had them." He shook his head and looked stubborn. "No, we could not and
should not have taken them with us. Chuck has something else in mind.
Something to disguise the Angels' feeble condition in a way the police
won't question."
    "It's not that. It's . . ."
    "What?"
    She closed up. "Never mind." But it doesn't matter what I could have done
or should have done. It's what I didn't even think of doing. Damn it all, when
Bob had called that night, she should have stayed in bed.
    Like those students coming down River Road.
    She blinked and hunched forward, staring into the side-view mirror.
What the hell? She cranked down the window once more.
    "What is it?" asked Bob.
    "Look behind us." She popped the passenger door and jumped out. The
students who had been waiting along the roadside were lined up now,
cheering and clapping. Some of them were waving pennants with gophers
and Greek letters on them. Farther up the road she saw a fleet of beds, a
flotilla of four-posters and brass rails weaving toward her, white sheets
flapping like spinnakers.
    She went to the rear of the van for a better view. Bob joined her there.
"It's a bed race," he said.
local guide or no local guide? Chuck was from the Bay Area, he wouldn t
have known about this. So, should she go looking for them or should she
stay put?
    One of the beds hit an icy spot and skidded, forcing the bed next to it to
swerve. The other racers shouted epithets and laughed as they sprinted by.
Sherrine imagined the beds cartwheeling and bursting into flame like stock
cars going out of control. Then she realized that the two stray beds were
headed straight toward her. The students around her parted and fled.
    "Hey!" She grabbed Bob by the sleeve and yanked him aside. They
tumbled to the frosted grass together, rolling tipsy-topsy in a snarl of arms
and legs, and Bob naturally contrived to wind up on top. There was a crash
of metal and a few shouts. Plastic crunched and Bob leapt up, leaving her
prone.
    "That's my van!" he cried. "They smashed the tail light!"
    "Thanks for helping me up, Bob," she said.
    "What? Oh. Sorry." He hoisted her to her feet and watched while she
brushed herself off. "I always said I wanted to die jumping into bed with
you; but this wasn't quite what I had in mind. Damn, that light's broken.
Hey, you bloody vandals!"
    She laughed. When he gave her a look, she said, "I'm sorry. A hit-and-
run accident with a brass bed? What'll your insurance company say?"
    The race had passed by, with most of the spectators; but the two
wrecked beds and their crews remained. They were hunched over the beds,
tending to the occupants. "All right," Bob said to them, "what do you think
you're up to?"
    One of them turned around. It was Bruce. "We think we're making a
getaway. What do you think?"
    Sherrine's knees almost gave way. Alex grinned up from his place in
one of the beds. "Hi, pretty girl," he said. "Is that the way fraternity kids
talk?"
    "We are all droogs here," Gordon said.
    Gordon smiled weakly. I wish I was back in the scoopship, where it is
safer."
    Alex grimaced. "We crashed that one, too, remember?"
    Gordon's smile flickered. "Third time lucky?"
    "Come on," said Bruce. "Thor, Steve, Mike. Help me load them into the
van before someone comes back to find out what's going on."
    "You should have seen it," said Thor, as he and Mike lifted Gordon into
the side door. Fang and Eddie were inside, helping. "It was the slickest
fanac you'd ever hopemto see. Dick Wolfson and 3MJ orchestrated it like a
goddam ballet. With a little help from the Lunarians and Tony Horowitz
and Jenny."
    Mike chuckled as he helped Alex into the van. "It's like 3MJ always says.
"You've got to use your Imagi-Nation.' "
    Bruce nodded. "Or like Wallace Stevens wrote. ‘In the world of words
the imagination is one of the forces of nature.’ "
    Fang and Eddie hopped out of the van. "All secure," said Fang. "We
figure to stay here and dismantle the beds. Shlep the stuff back to the frat
house. You guys can put the Angels up for the night. Tomorrow we'll head
for Chi-town."
    Bob shook his head. "Whatever. You know you could have hurt Sherri
and me, ramming into the van eke that."
    "Yeah," said Mike. "Didn't you see us coming?"
    "Not until you were headed right for us."
    "No. You mean you didn't read the frat logo on our sail?"
    Bob's eyes went round in horror, even as he whipped around toward
the beds.
    Mike grabbed the edge of a sheet. He flapped it ("Olé!") and the breeze
lifted it from the bed and spread it out like a flag. Sherrine read the letters
and laughed. Of course, she should have known. Who else would belong to
the Psi Phi fraternity?
Wednesday and Friday; and the ticket prices were not completely out of
her range. But . . .
    She turned and looked into the back, where Alex and Gordon lay on air
mattresses, practicing their yoga under Steve's guidance. Flying the Angels
on a commercial flight would be risky. Eye-catching. Two gaunt, skinny
beanpoles who couldn't walk . . . Bob had suggested splitting them up to
make them less conspicuous, but Gordon had gone into a panic at the idea
and Alex had said no, definitely not, out of the question. Sherrine
wondered at that. The Angels hadn't seemed to be on friendly terms.
    At least they were speaking to each other again. But Gordon tended to
slip into morose silences that needed all of Steve's cheery prodding to
dissipate. Alex was no help there. Gordon's silences seemed to disgust him.
There was a hardness to Alex, a kind of intolerance for failure that was
almost Darwinian.
    She turned forward and resumed her study of the dreary Wisconsin
countryside. Oh, well. At least this time she got to sit in the shotgun seat;
and the van was not quite so crowded. Just Steve and the Angels and Thor
and Fang. And the running motor kept them warm.
    Wooden rail fences topped by barbed wire paralleled both sides of the
two-lane blacktop road. Beyond the fences, a jumble of kames, eskers, and
moraines; and nine thousand lakes strewn carelessly behind by yesteryear's
glaciers; soon to be gathered and scoured by today's. Sparse, wilted grass
sagged against the rolling dells of farm pastures. A corporal's guard of
bony cattle, rib-bound and yellow-faced, chewed with half a heart.
Someone had brought in a strain of Highland cattle, more ox than cow,
hairy like the yak, with huge horns. Their fur gave them advantages, but
they didn't look happy either. Their hooves kicked up dust from the bare
spots. Her eyes locked with one; and they stared at each other, human to
bovine, until the van had rolled past.
    The road was draftsman straight. The rural roads of Wisconsin had been
laid out by a maniac armed with T squares and straight edges. It stretched
farther behind.
    It made sense to assume that the Interstate Highways out of
Minneapolis would be watched; sure it made sense to take back roads. But
she was tired of watching the richest dairylands in the world turning into
desert; she was tired of watching patiently starving milch cows convert the
last of the northern prairie into cow pats and methane. Every year, more
and more water was locked into the Ice. The prairie lands at the foot of the
glaciers were becoming scrub desert. Like West Texas, only cold.
    "Cornish game hens," Fang said suddenly.
    Her head came up. "What?"
    "Alex! How about Cornish game hens? For the ship. They're small, but
they're great eating."
    The Angel grunted. "They sound delicious."
    "They taste like chicken."
    Sherrine heard the wistful humor in the older man's voice. "I'm sure
they do."
    "Say, Alex," said Thor. "Don't just take female animals up with you.
Take pregnant female animals. Embryos don't weigh anything and you get
two critters for the mass of one."
    Bob braked suddenly and Sherrine jerked into her harness and then
bounced against the headrest. Steve, who had been sitting lotus-fashion in
the back, caught himself on the back of her seat. "What the hell?"
    "What happened?" asked Alex.
    Sherrine turned. "Are you guys all right?"
    "I'm sorry," said Bob. "The bridge is out."
    Sherrine followed his finger. The road bed crossed a crumbling concrete
slab. Holes gaped in the paving and corroded reinforcing bars showed
through. The bridge abutments looked as if they had come loose from the
earth embankment. Off to the left the dirt had been chewed into muddy
ruts by truck tires. Matching ruts corrugated the farther bank. "Doesn't look
like anyone has used that bridge for a while," Sherrine said.
he jumped across one gaping hole to the other side, and Sherrine held her
breath, afraid that he might fall through.
    Thor said, "It looks bombed. Maybe we've driven into a war?"
    "No. Spalling," Fang called back. "Worst case of spalling I ever saw."
    "What causes it?"
    "Water and salt get down cracks in the concrete. The salt corrodes the
steel reinforcing rods. Then the water freezes and expands. Concrete
chunks pop right out of the road surface."
    And the freezing season has grown a lot longer, Sherrine thought, and
they salt the roads a lot more.
    Fang danced back to the bank where Thor waited. "So what do we do?"
asked Thor. Fang looked at Bob.
    Bob said, "Drive across the ford."
    Fang ran one of his outsize fingers along his nose. "Maybe. But if we try
to cross and get stuck, we won't be up the creek, we'll be in it."
    Bob worked his lips; then he sighed. "Yeah, you're right. Jesus, can you
imagine being stuck out here in, the middle of nowhere? It's so empty. I
haven't seen a soul for the last score of miles."
    "Don't you believe it," said Thor. "There were eyes in every one of those
farmhouses watching us as we went past. They don't like or trust strangers
out here. If you ain't white and Protestant, you ain't shit. Sorry, Steve."
    Stephen Mews was standing by the opened side door of the van. He
shrugged. "It isn't exactly news to me."
    Sherrine waited, shivering. It was worse than that. This was Proxmire
country. These were the people who had elected and reelected the nation's
premier technophobe to the Senate, where he could give his Golden Fleece
Award every month to some especially vulnerable example of scientific
research.
    Most of the targets he had drawn bead on had cost less than a single
Washington bureaucrat. So how would these people react to a band of
technophiles travelling in their midst? The Senator had always voted for
shook his head. Ah, sightseeing, I don t mind. It s the blizzard that bothers
me." He pointed skyward with his chin.
     Sherrine jerked her eyes upward. Black clouds huddled on the northern
horizon. The wind blew cold and from the north. There was a taste of ice in
the air.
     Yeah, she thought. Thor and Fang have no jobs. They didn't have to call
in and take vacation days. They could have trucked the Angels themselves,
if Bob would lend them his van. But that sunuvabitch, Bob, he had to go
and volunteer to do the driving. She dropped into her seat and pulled the
door shut with a slam. Was she in a contest with Bob to see who would
take the most risks?
     She stole another glance at the northern clouds while Bob made a
U-turn on the county road. Risky business, she thought. I sure hope I’m back at
my desk next week. Not that she didn't have more vacation days coming, but
. . . Risky business, she thought again, but at least they don't know I'm involved
with the Angels.
     ***
     The INS was late for the meeting and Lee Arteria spent the time waiting
by doodling on the scratch pad. All the seats around the table had scratch
pads and pencils in front of them. Arteria had never seen anything useful
recorded on one. The pencil traced a light circle, slightly oblate. Arteria
studied it, grinned and added two smaller circles on the sides. Chipmunk
cheeks. A tiny pout of a mouth. Two large, little kid eyes, with eyebrows
twisted to give the caricature a credulous look. Not too bad for a quick
sketch. Sometimes Arteria missed the art world.
     "Not bad," said Jheri Moorkith over her shoulder. He stole a glance at
Shirley Johnson, then whispered, "But maybe make her a trifle plumper."
     And you're next. Moorkith was a good-looking man, square-jawed,
square-shouldered. Arteria would have sketched him as a Flash
Gordon-style hero . . . but her sketches never came out flattering, somehow.
credit report.
    "That's illegal, too." But he wants me to know he can do it.
    "Yeah. The box where it asked for sex. You wrote ‘Yes.’ "
    Arteria grunted and half-swiveled the chair to get a better look at
Moorkith. "So?"
    "So, why didn't you put down the right answer?"
    "I did."
    "You did."
    "Think about it."
    He frowned. "Oh. But did you mean Yes, I have a sex. Or, Yes, I want
sex?"
    "Whichever way you want to take it."
    Moorkith paused and stepped back. He licked his lip. Arteria knew
what he was thinking: Do I make the pass? What if I guess wrong and she's a
he? Or he's a she. Arteia had no idea which way Moorkith swung, and so
had no idea which alternative intimidated him.
    Which way would he jump? Lee Arteria sent no signals; but she never
bluffed.
    He hadn't made his move when INS arrived. Ah, well. He who hesitates is
lost.

   "We don't even know if the spacemen were in Minneapolis," Ike Redden
insisted. "All you did Captain Arteria, was bust a few sci-fi crazies holding
an illegal meeting."
   "Strictly speaking, Mr. Redden," Arteria responded, "the meeting itself
was not illegal. The warrant was for harboring fugitives."
   "Sci-fi nuts," said Moorkith. "Technophiles. It should be illegal."
   "Nevertheless, there is the First Amendment."
   "You tell him," said the Army rep.
   "Maybe we need another exception. After all, Flag-burning and
disrespectful singing of the Anthem are not covered by the First. The
    What must it be like to mold your entire life around bureaucratic ladder
climbing? To interpret every issue in terms of attaboys and awshits on your
performance appraisal? Couldn’t Redden see that there were principles at
stake here? At least Moorkith had principles. Wrongheaded, but principles.
    "The spacemen must be in Minneapolis," insisted the State Police
commander. "It's the only big city reachable from the crash site. They had
to head there. They would be too conspicuous in a small town. Our man at
Fargo Gap told us that a van from Minneapolis drove through there the
night of the crash, and they were asking about the air scooper."
    Army frowned. "The same night? How did they know about it?"
    "There was a girl with them. She claimed that her grandparents lived
nearby. They'd seen it come down and phoned her."
    "You think they were technophile subversives going to pick up the
spacemen?"
    State Police hesitated. "It seems likely," he admitted and hastily added:
"In hindsight."
    "Got an ID on the girl?" Arteria asked.
    "No. We might have, but it wasn't our detail. One of your people was in
charge."
    "Who?"
    "An engineer captain named Scithers."
    Scithers. That explains some things.
    "Didn't you search the van," asked Moorkith, "when they came back?
You had roadblocks up by then, surely."
    State Police bristled at the implied insult. "Once we were informed that
the spacemen were not in their vessel, we had to take that into account, yes.
A maroon van did leave North Dakota, but there was just one man in it. It
may not have been the same van."
    Redden looked at the ceiling. "Two maroon vans travelling Fargo Gap
in opposite directions the same night," he said to no one in particular.
who crossed over from Canada. We found them in Brandon, looting. He
turned to State Police. "But this van. You claim that a whole load of them
went west through the Gap but only one came back?"
    "That's what the trooper remembers. He was almost sure it was the
same van."
    "Almost sure," said Moorkith with a smirk.
    Redden held up a hand to forestall any argument. "And they asked
about the air scooper. We should follow up on it. Lord knows, we have few
enough leads. Have you identified the van, yet?"
    The State Police captain shook his head. "Just the color-—maroon. The
license plate was a fake. Belonged to a car registered in Brandon."
    "Fake. Why didn't you arrest him, then?" Moorkith demanded.
    "The computer was down. No way to check it until too late."
    "Computer was down," Arteria mused. But lots of citizens switched
plates. Too many nitpicking regulations, like an eternal swarm of
mosquitos. The police had nearly stopped noticing.
    "What about the girl?" Redden asked.
    "Okay, what about the girl?"
    Redden gave an exasperated sigh, and looked again at the ceiling, as if
he expected to find allies there. "Are you checking for grandparents near
the crash site?"
    State Police set his jaw. "No, sir. That's in North Dakota."
    "Fuck North Dakota. What is this, a state's rights convention? This is a
national security matter. If we don't show some results soon, the task will
be taken out of our hands."
    And that won't look good on your record, will it? Whoever found the
downed spacemen would shine like a star in this crowd.
    Not the Minnesota State Police. The search would be outside his
balliwick. It probably was already, but these fools didn't see it yet . . .
    Wait, now. Army, across the table from Arteria, was smiling like the cat
that ate the 500 pound canary. He's on to something; or he thinks he is.
     Better check it, against all residents of Minneapolis, said Moorkith. Its
a granddaughter, remember And she wasn't driving the van."
    Redden shook his head. "I've got a better idea. Our people will cross-
check Fargo residents against the 'suspicious background' files."
    "Why?"
    He gave them a superior smile. "Someone passed the word to
Minneapolis about the air scooper crashing. Why would a good citizen leak
a national security issue."
    "Maybe they didn't know it was national security?" suggested Army.
    "It was out of the ordinary. It's always safest to assume that such things
involve national security unless the government says otherwise."
    "Say," State Police brightened. "Why not check long-distance telephone
calls between Fargo and Minneapolis?"
    Arteria listened passively and continued doodling. Everyone had a
channel to try. Everyone had an angle that might give results. Hell, who
knew? Maybe Shirley Johnson's avatar would pass the word. They would
find out who had the spacemen. And everyone would try to keep it a secret
from everyone else, so they would not have to share credit. That's what
teamwork was all about.
    Redden would try to hunt from his desk. He would wait for printouts
and summaries to be brought to him. No one ever found anything by
tracking paperwork but more paper. He would only find the "Angels" by
piggy-backing on someone else. Someone who did the grunt work of
questioning witnesses and following clues.
    That'll be me. Or the FBI.
    The Worldcon had seemed a good bet. Hell, it was a good bet. The
spacemen were there; they were smuggled out under our noses. That man,
Tremont Fielding, he knew. I could see it in the way he looked at me. But
where had they gone?
    Not west; not back to the crash site. There was no percentage in that.
Not north, either. Fans were bright, if feckless. So, east? Into Wisconsin?
Bob was hunched over his wheel, peering into the gathering gloom.
    They were in the hill country below Prairie du Chien now, after hours of
racing the snow clouds south. The snow clouds were winning. The roads in
this part of the state were twistier; the farms were tucked into dells and
hollows. Property values had boomed after it became known that this
corner of Wisconsin had been free of glaciers the last time around.
    Steve and the Angels were staring delightedly out the side window.
Steve had never seen a storm like this in California; and the Angels had
never seen snow falling. Sherrine chatted brightly with them, as if there
were nothing to worry about.
    Thor leaned over the seat between her and Bob. "Turn right up ahead,"
he said. "There's a farm down that road where I did some work last spring."
    "So what? You want to make a social call? The Interstate's to the left."
    "The hell with you, Bob. I want us to get to shelter, now. "
    "Shelter?"
    "Yeah. It's snowing. Or haven't you noticed?"
    "I noticed."
    "So. Do you know what a plains blizzard can be like when the black
clouds roll down from the northlands? They call it a 'norther' around here.
Temperatures can crash forty degrees in the blink of an eye; snow drifts
man-high in heartbeats. Damn it, Bob, you know what a blizzard can be
like in Minneapolis; imagine what can happen out here in the country,
beyond the heat sink. I've heard tales about cattle suffocated when the
wind blew the snow up their nostrils so hard and fast they couldn't
breathe. Farmers don't joke about shit like that."
    Bob rubbed the steering wheel with his mittens. He glanced at Sherrine.
Then he looked back at Thor. "Are you trying to scare me?"
    "Yeah."
    He nodded. "Which way is this farm? And how do you know they'll
take us in?"
it s better to play it safe and find a way station where we can hole up.
     "Is that safe? The authorities are hunting Angels . . ."
     "Look, Alex. Gordon. A blizzard can be fatal. We used to have weather
satellites that gave us advance warning. Now, folks get caught by surprise.
Like Thor said, you don't want to get caught outdoors in a norther. And
neither do the cops!"
     The snow began falling faster, piling up on the windshield, melting
from the heat of the van, and freezing into an impenetrable slush faster
than the wipers could handle. The countryside was a blur in the icy lens.
Bob turned right and Sherrine felt the wheels go off the road. Bob put a van
into first and recovered. He rolled down his window and scraped at the ice
with his glove. The wind spray-painted his beard with snow.
     If we can make it in time, she thought. And if they'll take us in.
     ***
     Ike Redden held the telephone away from his head and stared at it.
Then he put it back against his ear. "What do you mean, you can't get north
of Lancaster? A blizzard? Impossible. This is September. How do you
know? I see. A truck pulled into Patch Grove with snow on its roof. No,
you can't argue with evidence like that." Wherever the hell Patch Grove is. He
glanced at the Air Force Intelligence captain fiddling with a pen on the
other side of the desk and shrugged helplessly.
     "Yes, I understand," he said into the phone. "But we received a report
about a maroon van with Minnesota plates somewhere in your vicinity,
and we thought-—No, I'm afraid I can't. Yes, we're asking all the counties,
on both sides of the River. Certainly. I'm sure you will do your best. Thank
you." He hung up and leaned back in his seat. "County sheriffs," he said to
no one in particular.
     "Do you plan to check out every van in Minnesota and Wisconsin?" Lee
Arteria asked idly.
     "I suppose you have a better lead, Captain?" Arteria smiled but said
nothing and Redden made a steeple of his fingers. Does that mean the Air
check through the technophile file . . . Reden blinked and looked puzzled.
"Techno-—phile-—file," he repeated slowly. "The Greens are supposed to
keep it up to date for the House Un-American Activities Committee, but . . .
It's just an alphabetical listing of names. They have to re-sort it by
addresses and then merge it with another file or something. I don't know
anything about computers." He waved his hand airily, as if he were
bragging about an accomplishment. "A team of GS-5's could have gone
through the list by hand by now." He took another report from his in-
basket and studied it. Another goddamned van. This one on US 52 near
Rochester. But it was blue and its occupants had checked out.
    Arteria grunted humorlessly, stood and stretched. The side wall of the
office was taken up by a large-scale map of the upper Midwest. Arteria
studied it carefully, running a finger from Fargo to Minneapolis and
beyond. "Where was that van spotted?"
    "Which one? We've had two dozen reports."
    "The last one; where you put a bug up that badger sheriff's ass."
    "Oh. Crawford County."
    Arteria traced a route. "And heading southeast?"
    Redden frowned. "On 18. Is that significant?"
    Arteria straightened. "Probably not."
    Meaning it probably is, Redden thought. What was Arteria's lead? Damn
it, didn't the Air Force believe in teamwork? Everyone was concerned
about getting credit for the arrest. That Army colonel, he had something
going on the side, too. Some connection with Winnipeg. This was supposed
to be a Team effort; the Team would share the credit. And Redden was
chairman of the Team.
    Well, Ms. Arteria, we'll see just how smart you think you are. "If they went
that direction," he said, "they drove straight into a blizzard. If we can
believe the hicks. Probably just a light dusting. You know how the
squareheads like to yank our chains."
looked around. There were several vans and trucks clustered around the
white, clapboard church. St. Olaf in the Fields. He turned up his fur collar.
"Come on. Let's check this out."
    The snow was two-, three-feet deep. Even with the snowshoes he found
it rough going. His feet broke through the crust and he sank several inches
into the cold, wet powder beneath. It must have been a hell of a storm this
end of the county. It was melting now; but it would never melt all the way.
Not 'till spring. If then. He glanced behind to see his partner following in
his footsteps.
    They were met at the door of the church by a crusty old man in a
red-checkered lumberman's cap. He was racking a pair of cross-country
skis against the side of the church. "Yes, deputies," he said. "Can I help
you?"
    "We'll see, old timer." Atwood nodded toward the church. "What's
going on in there? It isn't Sunday."
    "Nope. Funeral. We hold a few of those after it snows." He worked his
jaws, as if he were chewing tobacco and was wondering where to spit. "We
don't get much heating oil in these parts anymore," he went on. "Not like
you folks in the cities, where the newspapers and teevee cameras are. So
when it freezes here . . ." And again there was a drawn out, introspective
silence and when he resumed speaking, it was in a lower, quieter voice.
"When it freezes hereabouts, why we've all got to huddle right quick. Some
folks don't make it in time. This time it was a feller did some chores for me.
He and a couple of his friends."
    "I see. Do you mind if we check it out, Mr . . . ?"
    "Wallace. Enoch Wallace." The old man held out a heavily bundled mitt
and the deputy touched it briefly with his own. "It's God's house, aina? All
are welcome." He held the door open for them.
    The deputies stamped the snow off their snowshoes in the narthex.
There was a thin layer of snow on the wooden floor, unmelted and trod
hard by a great many boots. They unstrapped their snowshoes and hung
gets warm again outdoors. Those on the outside of the huddle are
generally a bit colder; and those on the inside have got to be mighty
tolerant of body odor. You don't get much sleep, but you don't freeze,
neither."
    "Jesus Christ. What do you do during the winter?" Atwood's partner
was a young kid new to the force. A town boy. He would see enough
before the winter was over.
    Wallace seemed not to mind the swearing, even standing in the narthex
of a church. "We huddle all winter, deputy," he said with flint in his voice.
"Every man-jack, woman and child in the township. We come right here t'
St. Olaf's and we huddle."
    "Like hibernating bears?"
    The old man's eyes were hard as coal. "We don't quite hibernate. Come
spring we're mighty thin. And some of us are ready to do murder and
some are ready to get married, but mostly we're still alive." He opened the
door to the nave. "Mostly," he repeated. "My handyman and some friends
of his got caught in the open by Friday's storm. They didn't all make it."
    Wallace preceded them into the church. Atwood grabbed his partner's
arm before following. "Look, Bill. About huddling all winter. You don't
have to say anything back in town. It would only get folks distressed. The
townies complain about the thermostat law; but these farm folk, they
would be glad to turn their thermostats up to fifty-five."
    "But, Jesus, Andy. We should do something for them."
    "There's one thing we could do."
    "What's that?"
    "Drill for oil."
    Bill waited to see if he were joking. Then he blurted, "But that's
inappropriate technology."
    Atwood followed Wallace into the church. "Yeah."
here.
    "What about the van with the Minnesota plates?" Bill whispered.
    "Heh. The border isn't that far. You can see Minnesota from the bluffs.
Families have got relatives on both sides of the river. You see anybody here
who's seven feet tall?"
    Atwood winced as Bill gripped his arm tight. He saw his partner
pointing surreptitiously at belt level so the mourners could not see.
Pointing at the coffins. Atwood sucked in his breath. One of the coffins was
easily long enough to hold a seven footer. He stepped over to it and ran his
hand along the plain pine wood top. Looking up, he located Wallace.
    "Look, I really hate to ask you this, Mr. Wallace; but I'm afraid you'll
have to open this up. National security."
    "National security?" The old man seemed amused. Atwood wondered if
he would ask to see a warrant. Folks seldom did anymore.
    "I can't tell you any more than that, sir." He smiled apologetically and
scratched his beard. "They didn't tell me much more. This one isn't your
handyman, is it?"
    Wallace shook his head. "One of his friends, from out of state."
    Atwood nodded. "Then you can't vouch for his identity."
    Wallace gazed silently at the coffin. "The lumber of the world," he said.
    "Eh?"
    The old man looked at him. "The dead are the lumber of the world.
Their bones are the ribbing and shoring that hold it up."
    Atwood waited while Wallace located a claw hammer. He could feel the
eyes of the mourners on his back. Watching with a dull anger. Atwood
gritted his teeth. It was a lousy duty to pull.
    The nails groaned as they came out of the coffin lid. Atwood
remembered tales of elaborate, plush-lined coffins of shiny mahogany.
There were special people, funeral directors, whose sole job was to manage
an elaborate and impressive funeral display. Today there were just too
He brushed his hands vigorously, although he hadn t touched anything.
"Come on, Bill. We've bothered these people enough."
    Wallace did not follow them out. In the narthex, they pulled on their
outdoor gear, strapped the snowshoes to their feet. "Was that one of them?"
Bill asked. "The corpse?"
    Atwood shrugged. "He was tall enough and skinny enough to fit the
profile."
    "Aren't there supposed to be two of them? And what about the people
who are supposed to be helping them escape?"
    Escape to where? he wondered. "We'll pass the van's VIN along and let
Minnesota check it out. But you heard what Wallace said. His handyman
and a couple of friends. You saw the frostbite, didn't you? Jesus. No
heating oil. No gas. They've been written off by the government. They've
got to move south or die, and they're too stubborn to move. You wanted to
do something for them, Bill? Then let them bury each other in peace."
    ***
    The six pallbearers watched the deputies leave. The whole time the long
coffin had been searched, they had held the shorter coffin aloft. Alex was
growing tired. His arms ached from hanging onto the coffin handles and he
was sure the four men holding the corners were just as tired. After all, they
were bearing his weight and Gordon's and the coffin's, too.
    "They're gone," said Wallace's wife at the back of the church.
    Alex sighed and relaxed. He slumped gratefully to the floor. Thor, Bob,
Fang and Steve lowered the coffin to its cart. Bob groaned and rubbed his
shoulders. "I thought they'd never leave."
    Gordon, leaning on the middle handle on the other side, had to be pried
loose, his grip had grown so tight. They led him to one of the pews and let
him stretch out.
    Alex pushed himself to a crawling position. Sherrine left her pew and
helped him back upright. Then he walked in slow, careful steps to the
nearest pew and dropped into the hard, wooden seat. He kneaded his thigh
mastery of such complex skills? He had walked as a child, but could not
remember the learning of it. He would look on pedestrians in the future
with a certain amount of awe.
    "It was good of you to take us in like that," Alex told the farmer.
    Wallace grunted. "Seven warm bodies during a norther? My wife and I
would have froze to death without you. Like poor Jed and his friends."
    Alex glanced at the coffins. "Yeah."
    Enoch had been waiting for the handyman and his friends to come to
his huddling place when Thor appeared on his front porch. After the storm
had subsided, they had all gone out looking and found the bodies only a
few hundred meters from the farmhouse. Judging from the tracks that had
not filled in with snow it appeared that the three had been walking in a
circle. "It happens," Enoch had said. "When the wind blows the snow up,
everything whites out and you lose all your sense of direction. Thor, who
had known the handyman, had insisted on staying for the funeral.
    "What next?" asked Alex.
    "On to Chicago," Bob told him.
    Wallace shook his head. "That deputy copied down your license plate.
Just routine, I suppose. But, if I were engaged in anything a shade less than
perfectly normal-—not that I am, mind you, or that I suggest that anyone
else is-—I might be a touch wary of driving that vehicle over the roads.
Folks don't travel so much these days, what with fuel so hard to get. So
anyone far enough from home might strike the government as suspicious."
    Bob frowned and ran a hand though his beard. "You're right." He
looked at Sherrine, then back at Wallace. "What should we do?"
    Wallace smiled. "Why don't you folks follow me over to Hiram's shop.
We'll see if he can tinker something up.
    They followed him outside into the brut, frozen sunlight. Alex found
himself walking beside Wallace. Sherri supported him on one side, but
mostly he carried his own mass. He walked like a two-year old and felt like
flesh. In a good year, we get nothing to eat but cheese and beef. Cook the
beef good. No antibiotics. If you could lay your hands on a supply of good
medicine for cows it would be worth its weight in cheese."
    Alex chuckled politely. But why would cheese be valuable in
Wisconsin? He would have felt stupid asking. Instead he asked, "What do
you do in a bad year?"
    Wallace grunted and his voice hardened. "In a bad year we starve."
    ***
    Sherrine found she could not let go of her suspicions. Granted, Wallace
had saved them from the storm, and he had helped them fool the sheriff's
deputies, too; but that might have been from a sense of duty. After all, their
body heat had helped save Wallace and his wife, as well; and the country
folk had no great love for a government that had effectively abandoned
them. Still . . .
    They followed Wallace's pickup down the country lanes behind
Millville. Sherrine sat in the back with Alex and the others. The road
undulated through the rumpled hills, whose trees, fooled by the glaciers,
were rusted and yellow. An oddly disorienting layer of fallen leaves lay
atop the snow, as if the seasons had gotten jumbled by the storm. Some
trees stood blizzard-stripped, stark and wintry against the sky. They came
out onto a high bluff from which she could see the confluence of the
Wisconsin and Mississippi. The rivers sparkled in the sunlight. They
flowed sluggishly, with so many of their sources locked into ice.
    It was only when Wallace honked and pointed to the driveway of the
ramshackle building that Sherrine relaxed. There was a hand-painted sign
nailed to a post by the roadside. Bright red letters on a large plywood
panel:

   BIG FRONT YARD SALE
   HIRAM TAINE, TINKER
she said. I used to read science fiction books like this under my blankets
with a light. Always with an ear cocked for the sound of my parents
coming."
    "Did they ever catch you?" asked Gordon.
    "Oh, sure. I got a lecture the first time. The second time, they spanked
me. They never caught me again. Maybe they got tired of watching. I
always looked forward to the summers, though, when they'd send me to
Gram's farm. Pop-pop kept two cartons full of old paperbacks hidden in a
corner of the root cellar. I could read them in daylight."
    Gordon laughed. "It sounds like fun."
    "Yeah, lots of fun," said Alex. "How long are we going to be stuck here?"
    Bob shrugged and the blankets shrugged with him. "I don't know."
    "Relax," said Fang. "Here. It's cheddar."
    It was a half-found wedge. Alex felt his throat close. "No thanks," he
said. I'm going to be heartily sick of cheese by the time we get to Chicago."
    "Cheese is fermented milk curd," Fang volunteered. "The Orientals think
of it as 'rotten milk.' "
    Sherrine turned to him. "Thank you for sharing that thought with us."
    "Well," said Thor. "Where there's a curd, there's a whey."
    "Seriously," Alex insisted. "How long will we be stuck inside this
trailer?" Surrounded by cheese. Encastled by cheesy ramparts. Breathing
cheese with every breath. Sure, it saved gas on the van; sure, it hid them
from the sheriffs deputies; but it seemed as if he had been buried in a tomb
of . . . of fermented curds.
    Fang nibbled on the wedge, looking for all the world like an oversized
mouse. "How long?" he said. "Hard to say. The trailer takes the back roads
to avoid the monties."
    "The Mounties?"
    "Monties . . . Montereys. They high jack cheese."
    Gordon cocked his head. "High-jack cheese? Poche-—Why would
anyone do that?"
    Thor laughed. I ve heard that. What would you do for a wallet?
    "No, no," said Fang. "You put the cheese in a larder-—"
    "Fort Cheddar!"
    "-—and issue certificates—"
    "Backed by the full faith and credit of-—"
    "Issue certificates," Fang repeated more loudly. "Pay to the bearer on
demand, so many pounds of cheese. Pound notes!"
    "Would a Swiss cheese pound note be worth more than a cheddar?"
    "Sure, you know how reliable those Swiss cheese bankers are . . ."
    "How many Gorgonzolas to a Colby?" asked Steve. "What's the
exchange rate?"
    "Excuse me, sir," said Sherrine to Thor, "but do you have change for a
Roquefort?"
    "Keep your stinking money."
    "Hey," said Bob laughing. "At least the money would be backed by
something."
    "Maybe," Thor ventured, "they could use jellies and jams . . . backed by
the Federal Preserve Bank."
    Alex simply could not believe it. Van and all they were riding in a back
of a cheese-filled eighteen-wheeler trailer, rolling through territory infested
by highway bandits, and his companions made . . . cheesy jokes. "It seems
to me," he said, "that this is an awfully risky way to escape Wisconsin."
    The others looked at him with their mouths half-open in smiles, waiting
for his punch line. Alex plowed resolutely on. "I mean the montereys.
They're real?"
    "Sure, but. . ."
    "Alex," said Sherrine. "The police are looking for a van."
    "Hiram Taine gave us new plates and painted us orange."
    "All the more reason not to risk being stopped."
    "Besides," interjected Thor, "there's something I've always wanted to
say."
enough gas for the van to drive out on our own. The farmers there have
been saving fuel for a long time to send just this one truck out and back.
They made a tremendous sacrifice by putting us back here instead of the
same volume in cheese."
    "It's not that, Sherrine. It's . . ."
    "It's what?"
    Alex sighed and she leaned closer. He could smell the sweetness of her
breath. "It's . . ." What was bugging him? Was it that the optimism he had
felt at the Tre-house had leached out of him? That his resolution to enjoy
his exile had foundered against huddling places and blizzards and
crumbling roads and funerals? He jerked his head toward the other fans.
"Don't they realize the gravity of our situation?" he whispered to her.
    She whispered back, "You fight gravity with levity."

    Later, as they dozed under the blankets, Alex was jarred awake. He
raised himself on his elbows, momentarily delighted that he could raise
himself on his elbows, and looked around. Not that he could see anything.
Under a pile of blankets inside a van that was chocked up inside a trailer. It
gave the word "dark" new meaning. He lay still and listened. The familiar
grumble of the motor and the gentle rocking and bouncing were missing.
    The truck had stopped.
    "What is it?" Sherrine's voice sleepy beside him. He flashed a
momentary fancy that they shared a bunk together, somewhere hidden
from their five chaperones.
    "Nothing," he said. "The truck stopped, is all. Rest break, maybe."
    "Oh, good. I could use a rest break myself. Should we get out, do you
think?"
    "Wait." Doors slammed and the engine roared to life. "Changing drivers,
I guess." First gear ground and caught. "The two guys up front must have
switched seats."
It was several pages long. Eight by fourteen inch computer pages. Names
and addresses ranked in severe columns. Not even alphabetized! Maybe it
was sorted by address? No, there was no logical order to the sequence at
all. A random dump. Maybe no one on Moorkith's staff knew how to run a
sort.
    That seemed likely. Computers might be necessary, but they were a
necessary evil. Learn too much about them and you might be seduced into
technophilia. Besides, competency was elitist. It was easy to imagine
Moorkith's people gingerly pressing buttons and leaping back lest they be
defiled by the touch.
    "This is a lot of subversives for a small area like Fargo." The state
policewoman was a new member of the Team, representing North Dakota.
Arteria supposed that the various state jurisdictions had decided to pool
their resources so they would not be left off the Team and miss out on the
collar.
    "I wouldn't know," said Moorkith. "But I believe it would be wise to
investigate each lead for possible connections with Minneapolis
technophiles."
    Arteria stifled a grin. Pompous ass. They would be a long time checking
out some of these leads. Verne, Jules. Gernsback, Hugo. Wells, Herbert
George. Even Jefferson, Tom and Carver, G.W. Technophiles, all. Had
Moorkith even looked at the printout before distributing it? No, he simply
assumed it was correct. For someone who professed to disparage
technology, he had a naive and trusting attitude toward it.
    How long had Moorkith's database been compromised? Arteria would
dearly have loved to know. A hack years old would have nothing to do
with the current mission. A recent hack might be intended to muddy the
search for the spacemen. In either case, the choice of phony names pointed
straight toward fandom.
    Arteria smiled. So far, no one else seemed to have noticed a fannish
flavor to this mission. They might suspect sci-fi fans on general principle-—
release us inside a warehouse before they drove the trailer to the cheese
market."
    Bob scratched his beard. "Maybe there's been a change in plans."
    "Don't like it," said Fang shaking his head.
    "What should we do?" asked Gordon.
    "Can't run. Can't hide. Might as well enjoy the view."
    The forklift pulled the cheese pallet from in front of them. A gang of
men in heavy flannel shirts was counting and stacking the cheese wheels.
They froze suddenly and stared at the trailer. The leader of the stevedores
looked up from his clipboard and an unlit stogie fell from his lips. "Who
the hell are you?" he demanded.
    Thor studied the skyline. Gray, sooty clouds lowered over squat, blocky
buildings. In the distance, twin spires of black smoke twisted skyward. He
shook his head. "We're not in Chicago, gang."

    "Welcome to Kilbourntown, gentlemen and lady." The Alderman graced
them with a benign smile from atop his fur-lined throne. He was nearly as
wide as he was tall. He wore a tawny-and-white cloak of fox skins. Aides
and servants hovered around him like launch debris around a satellite. A
number of the men wore sidearms and crossed bandoleers, but Alex also
spotted swords here and there. A young girl, scantily clad, lounged
insolently on the steps below the dais. Body odor was a miasma in the
room.
    Like a barbarian court, Alex thought. He stood wobble-kneed with his
friends, still unsure if they were prisoners or not.
    Thor gave him his elbow to hang onto. "Great Ghu," he whispered out
of the side of his mouth, "we're in Hyperborea. Where's Conan?"
    The Alderman lifted a huge, carved stein toward them. "Have a beer,"
he said formally.
    It was a signal. His aides rushed to hand out smaller steins to the
travelers. Alex studied his stein doubtfully. Scenes of Teutonic pastoralism
    The Alderman nodded his smiling head. It tastes like horse piss,
doesn't it? Oh, one thing. You're new here, so I'll let you get by just this
once. But please, do not speak to me unless first spoken to." The voice
twisted up at the end, almost like a question. The smile was still there. The
jolly eyes still twinkled. Alex felt sweat in his armpits and groin. I've never
been threatened so politely.
    Alex had already opened his jacket. Now he loosened his shirt collar, as
well. This was the first time he had felt really warm since the trek across
the Ice. Was it really warm in the Alderman's palace-—a.k.a. the old
Federal Building on Wisconsin Avenue-—or was he just nervous about
their circumstances? Then he remembered that the stevedores at the
loading dock had been working in no more than flannel shirtsleeves.
    Odd. Hadn't Thor told him that Milwaukee was closer to the ice fields
than any other major city, save Winnipeg? Something about the Lake Effect
and the Jet Stream.
    Setting his stein down on the tray proffered by his butler, the Alderman
gusted a huge sigh and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. He made staccato
pointing motions with his hand and the other servants collected the
remaining steins. Alex surrendered his willingly; but Fang held onto his
and took a second pull from it before releasing the handle. The Alderman
shook his head. "You're either a brave old cuss or you got no taste at all."
He rubbed his hands together. "Now, to business. Who the hell are you and
what were you doing in the cheeser?"
    Sherrine exchanged lances with Bob and took a step forward. "May I
speak?"
    The Alderman raised his eyebrows. "I asked a question, didn't I?"
    "I meant, may I make a request?"
    The Alderman raised his chin and stroked it slowly with his thumb.
"Sure. Why not? I might even grant it, even though you ain't registered
voters."
told Sherrine.
   "Don't be chivalric. Don't push yourself beyond what Steve tells you."
   Alex settled himself into the chair. He glanced at Gordon. "Let them
handle this," he said.
   "I was planning to," Gordon responded.
   The Alderman smiled his humors smile again. "Now. About your
presence in the cheeser."
   "We-—" Sherrine glanced at Bob, who shrugged.
   "Go ahead."
   "We were stuck in western Wisconsin, your honor. Some friends helped
us save gas by letting us piggyback on the cheese delivery."
   "That's a real expensive favor. I'm short a couple hundred kilos
American because of you."
   "There was a blizzard, your honor," Thor explained. "We saved the
farmer's life."
   "A square-head's life ain't worth his volume in cheese. But he might not
know that." He stroked his chin again with his thumb. "You sure you ain't
from Juneautown? Nah, I guess not," he answered himself. "If you was
playing Trojan horse it woulda been a stupid stunt; and stupid ain't one of
Alderman Wlodarczyck's sterling qualities." He shrugged his arms out
wide and slapped them down on the arms of his throne.
   "But I'm still out the cheese. So what do I do?"
   Alex suspected the question was rhetorical; but Thor spoke up anyway.
   "I thought the shipment was going to Chicago. Your honor. Did they
put us on the wrong truck?"
   The courtiers laughed. Even the waiters permitted themselves a
supercilious snigger. The Alderman's smile turned tolerant.
   "Did I say something funny, your honor?"
   "Ah, those square-heads don't know nothing about economics. Sure,
they was sending their cheese by Chi-town; but they coulda got a better
deal here. So we did 'em a favor."
   An honest man beset by greedy neighbors. Was it simply hypocrisy?
Self-deception? Or the lack of any moral code but relativity?
   Or was it not so simple as that? The Alderman and his cronies were
arrogant bandits at their center of power. But did the smiles seem forced?
Did the eyes glitter with a hint of fear? The Ice was sliding down the west
side of the Lake faster than anywhere else on the planet. Places like Fox
Point and Brown Deer were already engulfed, according to Thor.
   Then why was it so warm here?
   Milwaukee was no longer a city: the two sides of the river had become
separate waning towns. Maybe Alderman Strauss was just an old-time, city
machine politician desperately fending off disaster from his bailiwick,
knowing all the while that it was hopeless. The pressure of that sort of
burden could deform a soul past its yield point, maybe even past its
breaking point.
   Look what it's done to Lonny Hopkins. And that was an odd notion,
because it was the first sympathetic thought he had had about the station
commander in a long, long time.
   All right, Alex. What would you do if you were sitting on a plundered
restaurant chair, wearing a cloak of animal skins, watching your beloved
community be swallowed slowly by glaciers? Anything it took, right?
There was nothing like disaster to focus one's loyalties.
   "But the farmers, your honor," Sherrine insisted.
   Back off, Sherri, he wanted to tell her. These are desperate, ruthless men
and women. They aren't stealing cheese for fun. They are trying to save
themselves and their families.
   "Hey," the Alderman shrugged magnanimously. "They'll get their
payment. We ain't thieves. They got more cheese than they know what to
do with it. We got beer coming out our-—" He grinned. "Well, coming out,
anyway. So we'll load up their stinking cheese wagon with enough barrels
we figure equals the cheese and send it back by them. Value for value. We
   The guard who took them to their new duties was full of enthusiasm
and civic pride. If it hadn't been for the short sword at his belt and the
crossbow on his back, Alex would have thought him a member of the
chamber of commerce. Or maybe he was.
   "Ain't the Alderman a piece of work?" he bragged. "I was in the fight
when Juneautown burned the Clybourn Street bridge. He was all over the
battlefield, rallying the men, leading that last charge to tear down the
barricade. A damn shame we lost the battle; but you can't say the
Alderman lost his nerve." The guard shook his head. "That harbor belongs
to all of Milwaukee, not just the east siders. It ain't right that they keep us
out. Same goes for the old City Hall. Juneautown thinks they're hot shit."
   The horse cart pulled up at Zeidler Park and the guard ordered them all
out. The park was enclosed in an immense plastic tent shored up by a
wooden framework. The plastic was translucent, and through it Alex could
make out the dim, distorted shapes of people and plants. He climbed down
from the cart with the others and stumbled toward the tent. Despite
support from Thor and Fang on either arm, each step sent a lance of fire up
Alex's thighs.
   "Hey Hobie!" the guard called out. "Got some new temps for you!"
   Glancing up, Alex noticed again how gray the cloud deck was that hung
over Milwaukee. And the twin plumes of black smoke to the north.
"Guard," he asked, "are those fires?"
   "Hunh? Oh, sure. That's how we get our steam heat. We're burning
buildings down. So does Juneautown; but it was our idea first. Most
everything north of Capitol Avenue is one now."
   "What do you do when you run out of city?"
   The guard blinked at him. "There are other cities, aina?"

   Hobie was the head farmer for Zeidler Park Farm. Once inside the huge,
low tent, Alex was assaulted by the warm, moist scent of compost and
    There had been a popular joke on Freedom, started by a man named
Calder. Looking down from space, he had said, the dominant life forms on
Earth were obviously the cereals and other grasses. They occupied all the
most desirable and fertile land; and they had tamed insects and animals to
care for them. In particular, they had domesticated the bipeds to nurture
and cultivate them and to save and plant their seed. Now, watching the
farmers, Alex could easily imagine that they were worshiping and
genuflecting before their masters.
    Hobie looked them over. "New temps," he said. "Heh, heh."
    "That's right," said Bob. "Just until we pay off the fine."
    "And what fine is that, sonny?"
    "Well, we were in the back of a cheese truck and . . ."
    Hobie cackled. "Heh, heh, heh. In a cheeser, was you? And you gotta
pay the Boss back for the cheese he couldn't steal because you, was back
there instead? Heh, heh."
    Bob scowled. "What's funny?"
    "Well, you may be here a while."
    "That's slavery," Bob pointed out without any real surprise.
    Hobie affected a look of astonishment. "Why, so it is, sonny!" He leaned
forward confidentially and added, "You want we should go tell the Boss?
Maybe he'll stop it oncet he knows how illegal it all is. Heh."
    Bob's face sagged. He turned to Sherrine and put his arm around her.
"I'm sorry I got you mixed up in this," he said. "I truly am."
    Sherrine leaned against him. "I'm a big girl. I make my own decisions.
But come Monday when I don't show up for work . . ."
    "What?"
    She shrugged. "They'll probably start looking for me; but who would
ever think to look here?"
    Gordon said, "I would like to sit down."
    "Ain't too much sitting down here, sonny," Hobie told him. "Lots of
bending and squatting though. Heh." Fang and Steve helped Gordon
growin things. They re much better at burning stuff down. So any farmers
they catch they hamstring so we don't try to run away." The telephone on
the desk rang and, as if to demonstrate his last remark, Hobie went to
answer it. He walked with a curious shuffling gait, almost dragging his left
foot. Sherrine shoved her fist in her mouth and even Fang looked ill. Hobie
picked up the receiver. He looked at the group.
    "Ah, don't look so sad. It don't bother me no more. They just cut the one
leg. They don't want us to be cripples."
    The milk of human kindness, thought Alex. Great Ghu, he had just begun
to gain the use of his legs. Was this barbaric chieftain going to take them
away again?
    "Yes, Edna?" Hobie spoke into the receiver. He lowered himself into an
old swivel chair. The padding was old and ragged and the ticking stuck out
from ripped seams. "Okay, put 'er through . . . Hey, Terri, you old bug
stomper, what's up? Yeah. Yeah, they're here; they just got here. You need
to what? Well, that's a new one on me. Naw, they don't look lousy to me;
but if you say so, I'll send 'em right over." He hooked the phone and stared
at it, pulling his lip. "Terri says you gotta come over by her place for
delousing. Says she heard tell of the typhus over by Greenfield and West
Allis. Your truck come through that way, so she's gotta check you out. The
drivers have already been dusted. Now it's your turn."
    And so back into the wagon. Go here; no, go there. Autocrats usually
gave "efficiency" as the reason for centralizing the decision making. Good
ol’ Lonny sure enough did; and Alex was sure that Alderman Strauss did,
too. But why did the underlings always have to cut and paste to make
things work?

   Terri Whitehead ran a pest control operation from a building alongside
the Milwaukee River. As the guard said driving them over, you could
wave to the guard on the Juneautown side and they could count how many
fingers you used. The guard let the horse go at a walk. "You ain't in no
cleaned up the atmosphere.
   Bob gestured with his head. "Take a look around you," he whispered.
"Wisconsin has been devastated by the Ice more than any other state,
except maybe Michigan. Yet Milwaukee is almost a tropic oasis. Why?
Because, whether they admit it to themselves or not, the locals are trying to
restore the Greenhouse Effect. They threw another log on the fire."
   Steve had been listening quietly to Bob's whispered lecture. He leaned
over to Alex an said sotto voce: Burn a log and see it through, with heat and
soot and CO2!"
   "We're here," announced Sherrine. "And-—" She stopped abruptly.
   "And what?" Bob asked, twisting to his feet. He stood silently for a
moment, swallowing laughter.
   Alex grabbed the side of the buckboard and pulled himself to his knees.
They were hitched before a wide storefront with double-paned plate glass
windows. A wooden sign nailed above the entrance was painted in bright
red and gold letters:

   YNGVI'S DE-LOUSING AND PEST CONTROL CENTER

   The guard finished hitching the horse to the rail and scowled at them.
"All right, why's everyone grinning?"
   My question exactly, thought Alex.

   Terri Whitehead was a short, muscular woman with long, black hair
and owlish glasses. She wore jeans and a man's dress shirt with rolled up
sleeves, and elbow-length gloves. When she spoke, it was in a husky
contralto.
   She took care of the guard first. "Because you may have picked up lice
from being around the new temps. She made him take off all his clothing
and dusted it with malathion powder. Searched through his underwear,
and recoiled in horror.
     Jesus, Doc
    "You'll be all right. One thing, if you itch, don't scratch. Don't crush lice.
That's really bad. Just wash them off. Then powder yourself. As for your
clothes, change clothes. Take your old ones where they're doing a fire and
get 'em good and hot, then smoke them good. Real good.
    "Yeah, I will, but, Doc-—"
    "You're all right now. I can tell. You don't have it. Get going before you
do."
    "What about them?"
    She laughed and was suddenly holding a pistol, quite casually. "No
problem. Now get going."
    "Yes, ma'am."
    By this time Alex could feel tiny life forms crawling over his body
looking for blood to drink. He kept his hands rigidly by his side. Life under
Lonny Hopkins had its drawbacks; but at least lice wasn't one of them.
    When Terri faced them, she was laughing. "Yngvi is a louse," she said.
    "FIAWOL," Bob replied.
    "FIJAGH," she responded. Then she and Sherrine and Bob and the other
fans joined in a happy embrace.
    Sherrine said, "A sensitive fannish face! I knew-—"
    "There isn't time," Terri told them. "We have maybe an hour before they
send another guard. Follow me." She led them to the back of the building
and out the rear door. "Don't worry about the typhus, she said. "That was
just to get you over here. It's a good thing you have that transponder, Bob.
The Ghost knew right were you were." She paused and looked at them.
"You guys must be awfully important." No one said anything and she
shrugged. "None of my business, right? Come on, this way."
    A path led across the ragged yard to the river bank, where a small
sailboat bobbed at a decaying, wooden wharf. "Seamus will take you from
here. Seamus deBaol. You may remember him. He used to publish a line of
    But you won t come, then?
   "This is my home," she said. "Such as it is. What if other fen find
themselves in need of help someday?"
   Sherrine hugged her. "It must be awful, living life undercover like that.
Aren't you afraid of exposure?"
   Terri grinned. "That's why I stay under the covers. Being a fan was a lot
simpler in the old days; now we've all got new destinies to pursue. Here."
She handed them a paper sack. "You'll need money. Take this. It's filled
with cheese. Sorry, no apple pie. 'The best of all physicians is apple pie and
cheese.' Quick, now. Into the boat. Seamus, hurry! You've still got to tie me
up."
   The short, bearded man grinned at them as he jogged past up to the
house. "Some parts of this job, I like."

   It was a gaff rigged catboat with plenty of room aboard. The mast was
stepped well forward and wore a single quadrilateral sail.
   The boat pushed off from shore, and the sail caught the wind. It heeled
dangerously, then settled on course. They huddled in the bottom of the
boat, out of the chill wind, and Alex managed to be next to Sherrine.
   "How did you know she was a friend?"
   "The sign. ‘Yngvi is a louse’-well, it's a quote from an old fantasy, and it
got to be sort of a catch phrase among fans. As soon as I saw ‘Yngvi
DeLousing . . .’ "
   Alex nodded. "I see. FIAWOL I know, but what means that other one?"
   She grinned. "FIJAGH. Fandom Is Just A Goddamn Hobby.
   ***
   The Museum of Science and Industry was located on the shore of Lake
Michigan in Jackson Park on Chicago's south side. Seamus maneuvered the
catboat to a spit of land just north of the museum and ran the bow
aground. "Are you sure you want off here?" he asked.
   "Yes," Sherrine told him. "We are supposed to meet someone."
him back into a state of near weightlessness. Now the earth heaved to and
fro as if tossed by waves.
    Seamus waved to them as he cast off. The wind was off the lake, abeam
to his course both coming and going. "Sailor's wind," he called. "Good
luck."
    "FIAWOL," Alex said tentatively.
    "Don't you just know it," Seamus called. He hauled in the sheets and the
boat moved rapidly away.

    Bob and Sherrine disappeared and reappeared a short while later with a
pair of wheelchairs with C.M.S.A.T. stenciled in yellow ink across the back.
"Here you go, guys," Sherrine said. "You wouldn't believe what they
wanted for a deposit on these things."
    Bob led the way to the front of the building. The façade consisted of tall,
fluted columns with voluted capitals. Statues of the Muses gazed serenely
down. "It's a huge building," he said. "Covers five and a half hectares. It
was built originally for the 1893 World Colombian Exposition; then rebuilt
in the 1930s as the museum."
    "Where would this Cole character have his Titan?" asked Alex.
    "There used to be a wing, called the Henry Crown Space Center. It had
Schirra's Aurora Seven Mercury capsule and the Apollo Eight, the first craft
to orbit the moon. The Titan is probably back there. I figured maybe we
could mount the Apollo on the Titan somehow. It seats three."
    "Which means," Sherrine interjected, "that you could even take a friend
with you. No, guess not. Seeds and stuff-—"
    "The Titan was rigged for a Gemini," said Bob, "but I figured we should
be able to . . ." His voice trailed off. Alex suspected that Bob was just
beginning to appreciate the magnitude of the proposed rescue. As long as it
was blue sky dream, there were no problems; but the closer they came, the
more the difficult details emerged.
footnote explaining that science did not mean only materialist science.
   Now, what might "non-materialist science" be? Alex wondered. Plasma
physics?
   "Here it is." Bob pointed. "I'll be damned. It's still in the same old spot.
Henry Crown Space Center. What does it say in the description?" He bent
closer. "This exhibit has been preserved as it was in the past as an example
of Big Technology. Astonishing as it may seem, billions of dollars were
once spent in outer space rather than here on Earth. See the actual capsules
that were used to give a few military pilots joyrides at taxpayer expense."
   "I don't understand, Bob," Alex said. "How could they spend money in
space? There were no stores there back in those days.”
   "That’s not what they meant, Gabe," Bob replied.
   Thor spoke gently. “They meant that the money was spent on the space
program rather than on Earthly problems."
   Sherrine burst out, "They got so much from the space program!
Fireproofing. Weather forecasting. Dammit, these"-—she kicked Alex's
wheelchair-—" lightweight wheelchairs we're pushing around. Sorry."
   Alex started to laugh. Sherrine said, "Sorry. My God, it's been so long
since I could say this kind of thing!"
   "Did these chairs really-—"
   "Waste-water treatments. Medical instruments. Most people had no idea
that any of that came out of the space program. Or for that matter, that it
even existed. A new design lightweight wheelchair doesn't make the kind
of headlines that a scrubbed launch or a flawed mirror makes, even if the
structural analysis techniques and composite materials used to make the
damn thing were aerospace from the beginning. What is everyone grinning
at?"
   "Welcome back," Steve said.
   "Thanks. Oh, Bob, there was nobody to talk to."
   Steve said, "All that stuff was just ‘spin-off,’ you know. Science happens
because one day a scientist wakes up and says, ‘Today I'm going to invent
spirit, focusing the mind, tapping into psychic powers, and using chakras
and colors."
    Another exhibit was entitled "Origins of the Earth." There were seven
panels, one for each day. One large poster read "The Speed of Light: A Test
of Faith?" and explained how light created "already on the way" could give
the impression of a universe much larger and older an it really was.
    There was a Green exhibit on alternate energy sources. Windmills,
passive solar. Biomass. "Biomass?"
    Bob said, "Burn wheat and corn. Real efficient. Well, at least they don't
have an exhibit on generating energy by squeezing crystals."
    "Why the grin, Alex?" Thor asked as they entered a stairwell and turned
right into a dimly lit corridor. A faded sign on the wall read, "This way to
Henry Crown Space Center."
    Alex chuckled. "We grow perfect crystals in our electronics lab in
Freedom. I could be rich if I had brought a handful with me."
    The Crown Center was housed in a separate wing that could be reached
only through a long, narrow corridor. A homeless pair huddled in a niche
near the doorway. They were bundled up in torn blankets that covered
everything but their eyes.
    "Hey, man, you got any change?"
    No one looked at them. Eye contact might humanize them . . .
    Half the lights in the hallway were out and the edges at the floor and
ceiling were thick with nitre and cobwebs. This was a part of the building
long-—and deliberately-—neglected.
    The center itself was dimly lit. The two space capsules were shadowy
shapes suspended from the ceiling. A couple of teenaged boys who had
found their way in were standing beneath the Mercury capsule. ". . . and all
they ever brought back was a bung of dumb moon rocks," Alex heard the
one tell his companion. He turned to them as he was wheeled past.
    "Did you ever ask what those rocks were made of?" he asked.
    The two kids gave him a wary look. "Rocks is rocks," the older said.
be careful, you come back here, the younger one called. Or the spook ll
get you!"
    "All right," said Bob when they were gone. "Let's spread out and see if
we can find Cole."
    They split into groups and explored the corners of the hall. Alex saw a
shuttle simulator, now padlocked. A sign told how much taxpayer money
had been spent so astronauts could play computer games."
    "Over here!" Sherrine shouted. "The Titan!"
    They converged on her voice. A tall cylinder stood in an ill-lit corner of
the room, a majestic shadow among the shadows. "I can't believe it," Bob
said, his head tilted back to seek its top. "We actually found it!"
    Fang approached the behemoth in awe and fear. He ran his hand over
its skin. He looked at his hand. He studied the ill-lit surface a few moments
more, and said, "I'm going to be sick."
    Alex yanked on his chair's wheels and rolled up to the artifact. Closer
now, he could see rust sots, popped welds, holes where fittings should
have been. There were no main thrusters mounted at the base.
    Alex noticed a dark horizontal line running across the booster about
halfway up His own belly lurched and tried to turn over. The bird had
been cut in half, he realized. Cut in half, to transport it or to get it through a
door. He remembered that Bob had described Cole's rocket as a kind of
Flying Dutchman, wandering from museum to museum.
    This ship would never fly. It never could have flown.
    I never thought it could. Never in a million years. Then why was he so
disappointed? Why was he biting his lip so hard that he could taste blood?
He heard a sob to his right and turned in time to see Gordon stagger out of
his wheelchair and lean against the Titan. His arms stretched out to
embrace it and he placed his cheek against its cool skin. Tears had pooled
in his eyes.
    "It won't work, Alex, will it? It won't fly. We'll be marooned down here
forever. Crushed and tripping and staggering like drunken fools until they
saying something that Alex refused to hear. We are stuck down here,
Gordo," he persisted. "Stuck. Forever. It doesn't matter whose fault-—"
   "Quiet, there! Quiet, I say!"
   The sudden voice came from above. Alex looked up with the rest and
saw wild hair and a long New Englander face, party white in the uncertain
fluorescent light, staring down at them from an opening high up in the
Titan. The face showed nothing. He said, "Get away from that. It's not
yours."
   Nobody moved.
   A knotted rope snaked down from above and the tall, thin man came
down hand over hand. He landed too hard, staggered, recovered. He took
his place before the Titan, in no evident hurry.
   "I bought the parts and put it together and held it together for forty
years. You're not going to hurt it."
   Thor stepped up to him and reached for his arm. "Ron? Ron Cole? Is
that you?" His hand stopped, because that was a gun in Cole's hand.
   The creature looked at him. "Yes." He squinted at Thor's face. "I know
you. Don't I?" His other hand stroked the discolored flank of the Titan. He
held the gun with evident negligence, but it was still pointed at Thor's
belly.
   "They took away her boosters, they did. Her boosters. Too dangerous,
they said. Hah! What did they know? Without the fuel . . ." His lips
clamped into a straight line.
   Thor had backed away a bit. "What fuel is that, Ron?"
   Cole backed against the Titan, shaking his head. "No, no. Things are
seldom as they seem; skim milk masque . . . masquerades as cream." He
nodded his head wisely. His gun hand drooped.
   "Ron, what happened to you?" Thor demanded.
   "Heh. One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest-—"
   "Electro shock," Fang said. "And drugs. They must have helped him, in
one of the mental health centers."
The shining vision of the old Titan had gone before them like a pillar of fire
in the desert night. And at the end, they had found only junk and an old
man who had been helped by mental health professionals.
    No one said anything. Bob studied the Titan, checking out every part of
it; as if he could will it into flight worthiness, as if he could somehow find
something they had overlooked that would make everything all right.
Steve consoled Thor, while Sherrine comforted a weeping Gordon. Even
Fang seemed bereft of ideas.
    Alex watched Gordon cry. Thor had lost his friend. Sherrine had lost
her job; or would when she failed to show up for work in the morning. Bob
had lost his van, and probably his job, too. But Gordon cried
uncontrollably. Okay, for Gordo this is a totally alien planet. I could acclimate
myself. I was born here. I loved Kansas; I cried when my parents took me up. I
could learn to love it here again. I could convince myself that I was only coming
home again.
    The Titan had given their sojourn a purpose. They had had a goal, as
quixotic as that goal had been. Now, they had nothing.
they had clothes on under them. The pair seemed to be hustling a girl in
her teens. The girl tried to move away from them, but the pair followed,
evidently begging.
    The pantomime dance was curving them toward the rocket. Cole eyed
the three warily and took a tentative step to place himself between them
and it.
    One of the blanketed figures began to sing, very softly. The other joined
in, then the girl they had been begging from. Even as close as they were,
they could barely be heard.

   "Star fire! Star fire!
   It's singing in my blood, I know it well!
   We can know the promise of the stars.
   Star fire! Star fire!
   The promise of the universe is ours-—"

   "Harry?" Bob said quietly.
   "Nobody else," Harry said. "Been waiting for you. 'Lo, Ron."
   " 'Lo, Harry," Cole said. "Wade send you?"
   "Yup. Says it's getting on for time to move on."
   Some of the mad glint faded from Cole's eyes.
   "Harry, what are you doing here?" Bob demanded.
   "Better yet, what are you talking about?" Sherrine said.
   "Shh," Jenny said. "Come on where we can talk." She eyed the two
spacemen. "Huh. You're walking now! You had me fooled."
   "Not me," Harry said. "I guessed in Minneapolis. Come on-—"
   Thor looked at Harry and shook his head. "Same old bullshit. Like hell
you guessed." He looked suspiciously at the girl who had come in with
Harry and Jenny. "Who's this?"
   She had dark hair, soft brown eyes, exotic features. Sherrine thought
that with a little makeup and some attention to her hair she would be
it s time. Said you d know what I meant.
     Ron Cole nodded slowly. "And past time. You'll be back?"
     "Tomorrow," Harry promised. "Maybe tonight."
     "Let's get out of here," Thor said. Outside he turned to Harry, "You get
picked up as homeless-—"
     "Lots," Harry said.
     "But you're no crazier than you ever were. Why?" He stabbed an arm
back toward the dim lit space center. "Why the hell did they do that to
Ron? And not you."
     Harry shrugged. "He was interesting."
     "Interesting?"
     "Yeah," Jenny said. "The last thing you want to be is different. Those
mental health centers are filled up with graduate students, all just alike, no
future, unless they can find an interesting case to write a thesis about."
     "Ron couldn't be ordinary, no matter how hard he tried," Thor said.
"Yeah. I see."
     Harry said, "Some of us hide it better than others."
     ***
     Captain Lee Arteria opened the folder and removed the single sheet of
paper it contained. Do all files start as innocuously as this? One sheet; but
destined to multiply, like a bacterial colony. Trees die so that we may keep
dossiers.
     Arteria looked up and caught the eye of Captain Machtley, the North
Dakota liaison. The State Police agencies, fearful of being left out in the cold
in the pursuit of the spacemen, had agreed to be coordinated through
Arteria's Air Police.
     "Why don't you fill us in on what this says, Captain?"
     Machtley cleared her throat. "Her name is Sherrine Hartley. She lives in
Minneapolis, but her grandparents live near the crash site; and the
telephone company's records show that she called them the night of the
crash."
   Lee was unconvinced. The Legion of Doom has been sparring with the
phone company since Day One. It might not be related."
   "We would never have found the grandparents," Machtley insisted, "if
we hadn't gone door to door. It was a neighbor who told us about the
granddaughter in Minneapolis."
   Arteria smiled. "I've always said that good old-fashioned police legwork
beats these computerize searches for useful results. Moorkith and his Green
Police are going nuts trying to straighten out their records. They're too
damn lazy to hit the bricks."
   "Don't forget the Motor Vehicle data banks," said Captain Conte, the
Minnesota liaison. "They were scrambled, too. Remember when we tried to
ID the maroon van?"
   Machtley nodded. "That's an interesting point. Hartley's grandparents
would have been on Moorkith's un-Green list, too; if it hadn't been hacked
up. They are not the milk and cookie type at all. The old lady is a former
gene-tamperer."
   There was a general stirring around the table. "You're right," Arteria
said. "Gene tampering does not sound good at all."
   "It violates God's law," put in Captain Traxler, the Wisconsin liaison.
"And it harms the ecology. Satan's work."
   "We've started checking up on the Hartley woman," said Conte. "She
was once reported as active in the science fiction underground."
   Aha. "By whom?"
   "Her ex-husband."
   "Ex-husband. Was the report substantiated, or was it just a messy
divorce?"
   Conte shook his head. "Nothing was proven; and the records say she's
kept her nose clean the last few years. But still, where there's smoke, there's
usually fire."
   Oh, well, thought Lee Artena, we never needed a Fourth Amendment,
anyway. Start making exceptions in the need for probable cause and where
Arteria leaned back in the chair and contemplated the ceiling. I don t think
there is any reason to let the Green Police or the INS into this quite yet.
Let's wait until we have more to show before we let them share the credit."
    The grins of the other captains showed that they knew quite well how to
share credit.
    ***
    Oliver Brown had the entire fourth floor of an older apartment building.
There was no elevator. They carried the Angels up the stairs using sheets
for hammocks.
    The building looked old and run down, but the apartment was light and
clean. Books were stacked everywhere, in book cases, in piles on the floor,
on every flat surface.
    Violetta introduced her father. He was a little taller than Sherrine,
portly, with dark hair and a distracted expression. He tend to mutter to
himself when he wasn't talking. Like Samuel Johnson, Sherrine thought. He
ushered them through the living room to another room piled high with
even more books.
    Bruce and Mike were there.
    "I see Harry found you," Bruce said.
    "Yes. He said Wade Curtis sent him," Bob said.
    "I work for Wade," Harry said.
    "Doing what?"
    "Gopher. Booklegger. Postman. Whatever needs doing." Harry grinned.
"He said go hang around Ron Cole and see if anyone from Minicon shows
up."
    "But why-—"
    "He guessed?" Sherrine asked.
    "Suspected," Jenny said. "He said maybe someone would come looking
for a rocket ship."
Only you didn t come, and they couldn t wait for you at the museum.
    Mike patted his ample bulk. "Too conspicuous."
    "What happened to you?" Bruce asked.
    "Long story," Fang said.
    "So Jenny and I moved in," Harry said. He fished into his pockets and
held out a handful of change and a couple of bills. "Not too bad a location.
Some people still care. A little."
    They heard footsteps outside. Violetta opened the apartment door. "Hi,
Mom."
    Mrs. Brown was bundled up against the cold so that she looked larger
than her husband. She looked at the crowd sprawled around her living
room and smiled thinly. "More of your godfather's friends?" she asked
Violetta. "Glad to meet you, but I'm afraid I can't feed you all. We-—!" She
hesitated.
    "Helga works at the university clinic," Oliver Brown said. "And I write
science fiction. She doesn't get paid much but it's more than I make. What
she's too embarrassed to say is that we can't afford to feed you."
    "Will this help?" Sherrine handed her bag of cheese to Helga Brown.
    "Cheese? Wisconsin cheese? Ollie! It's real, the real thing-But there's too
much! I can trade this for a lot-—"
    "Go see what you can get for half of it," Oliver said. "Violetta, go with
your mother."
    "Maybe I better go, too," Harry said. "Tough neighborhood-—"
    "You have to tell your story," Violetta said. "IT get Roland. My
boyfriend, he lives next door. He'll come with us."
    "Fan?" Bob asked.
    Violetta laughed. "My father is Oliver Brown, my mother is Helga
Brown, my godfather is Wade Curtis. You figure it out."

   "All right," Thor said. "Just what the hell is going on? We've chased all
across Wisconsin. Lived through a blizzard, almost got enslaved by a crazy
    Bruce asked, Letter for whom?
    "Maybe you." Harry took off his left boot. "Wade said I should give it
to-—I should give it to somebody I thought he'd trust." The inner lining
wasn't properly sewn to the boot shell. Harry reached between the two
leathers and took out a dirty envelope.
    "What does it say."
    Harry said, "It's sealed." The hurt barely showed. "Wade said I should
burn this if nobody from Minicon showed up looking for Cole, but if
anybody did, give it to somebody with judgment." He looked around the
group. Finally he held the paper out to Oliver Brown. "Reckon he trusts
you."
    Oliver took the paper. "What Harry is carefully not saying is that Wade
and I are still collaborating on a book. Harry brought me two new chapters
yesterday."
    He went over to his desk and got a letter opener. He was maddeningly
slow, and Sherrine wanted to scream as he smoothed out the envelope's
wrinkles, then carefully inserted the letter opener and slit the paper. There
was a single sheet inside, and he took it out slowly.
    I haven't seen Wade, haven't seen Wade for years," Oliver muttered.
"Afraid it will cost Helga her job. If they knew. But they do know. They
have to. May be they don't, though." He spread the paper out and began to
read. "Ah. Hmm. Mmmh hmmmh. Yes. Yes."
    "For God's sake!" Bob shouted. "What?"
    "I'll read it," Oliver said. He cleared his throat. " ’King David is in the
high desert. It's a Doherty project. My wings are made of tungsten, my
flesh of glass and steel.
    Explorers-—' "
    "That's a song," Sherrine said.
    Brown looked up. In the silence Harry sang, "I am the joy of Terra for
the power that I wield-—"
    Oliver nodded. I hope it means something to you.
    "We were hoping it would mean something to you," Mike said. "Harry,
he thought we'd understand this"
    "Thought it was important enough to send me here with it," Harry said.
    Which might mean he wanted you out of the way? Sherrine rejected that
with a violent headshake. "Start with what we know. He thought someone
from the Con would be here. Why? Nobody's come here for years.
Because-—because he'd talked about Ron Cole's Titan at the Con."
    Mike: "Someone might have overheard-—"
    Bruce: "-—and told the Angels!"
    "So it's a message for us," Sherrine said. "Why in code?"
    "Drunk," Thor said.
    "What if Harry got picked up?" Fang suggested.
    "No, I was carrying a manuscript for Oliver," Harry said. His big
shoulders rolled, free of that weight. "They'd have sent me to mental health
for that, letter or no."
    "He wasn't protecting Harry and me," Jenny said. "What, then?"
    "Who the hell cares what he thinks?" Thor demanded. He looked to
Fang. "Maybe it's time to move on."
    "No, it's time for the merry soul to move on," Mike said. "That's Cole, of
course. Not that it would be so obvious if we hadn't just seen him."
    "Skim milk-—Cole said that, too," Sherrine said. "Harry, you had a
message for Cole!"
    "And what were you supposed to do once you'd found us all and
delivered the messages?" Bruce asked.
    "I can tell you exactly what he said," Harry said. He looked
uncomfortable.
    "What?" Bruce said.
    Harry looked out the window.
    "Want me to tell them?" Jenny asked.
did.
    "Great," Thor said. "So we have this nonsense from a drunk writer, and
a messenger he doesn't trust with his drunken ravings, and we're supposed
to get all excited."
    Fang said, "Thor, it's a puzzle."
    "Wade always did drink a lot," Oliver Brown said. "But he turned out
the stories. He used to be in the space program you know. Other things.
Were you ever in his study before they burned it down? Big place. Books.
And a signed picture of Voyager-—Hey!"
    "What?" Bruce demanded.
    " ‘See what free men can do.’ That was the inscription on the photo. By,
by the man who built it-Dick Rhutan! Who flew Voyager around the world
on one tank of gas. That Voyager."
    "Rhutan. Voyager. King David in the desert!" Mike said.
    "Mike?"
    "King David's Spaceship! It's a book title. And the Rhutan brothers were
working on a spaceship. A spaceship called-—" He paused dramatically,
holding a wide grin. "Wait for it. It was called Phoenix. They were working
on it in the Mojave desert."
    "Be damned," Bruce muttered. "That was that thing that looked like an
inverted styrofoam cup-—"
    "Single stage to orbit, vertical take off and landing," Oliver Brown said.
"SSTO VTOL."
    Mike was frowning. "Sure, we all saw the briefing at a Worldcon. Long
time ago. Nolacon? Somewhere in there. Wait a minute and I'll come up
with the name of the guy who was in charge of the Phoenix project."
    "Hudson," Oliver Brown said. "An old friend of Wade's."
    "Hudson. An explorer in the desert," Mike said. "Yup. Well, there's no
question what Wade was talking about. Phoenix."
    "A spaceship. Where have I heard this before?" asked Alex. But his
blood was beginning to sing . Again.
     Not to orbit, Steve said. The Phoenix was just too heavy. Hudson had
to make too many compromises. But it could have gone around the world,
like Voyager, if NASA hadn't stopped him."
    Thor said, "Like the Spruce Goose? There's always a reason why it didn't
work."
    Steve's muscles were bunching. Thor was getting to him, though he may
not have been aware of it. "NASA said it had to do with flight safety. Gary
Hudson got to take the Phoenix straight up fifty miles and dump most of
his fuel and come straight back down. Then the budget cuts came, and the
Green Initiatives passed, and the Greens got in control."
    "So where is this Phoenix now?" Alex demanded.
    "In a hangar on what used to be Edwards Air Force Base in California.
It's been preserved as a reminder of Big Bad Science, just like the Space
Center here. Actually, I think the military may have had ideas they could
use it. They didn't have the money to fix it, but they never throw anything
away either. It's out there ‘as a monument.’ People are supposed to go out
and be scandalized; but . . . When I was there, a lot of the tourists had tears
in their eyes."
    "Probably for all the money that was wasted," said Fang sarcastically.
    Steve nodded. "Truer than you think. I shed a few myself at the waste.
That's where I met Hudson. They've got him conducting the tour."
    Bruce jumped. "Himself? Why-—"
    "I thought the Single Stage Experimental Lifter was never finished,"
Thor said belligerently. "They proxmired the whole space program. They
even outlawed private ventures, like Hudson's."
    "That's what Gary said when I took the tour," Steve agreed. "SSX
Phoenix was never finished. Just flew the once. Never fly again, he said.
Over and over. One thing, though."
    "What's that?" asked Bob.
    Steve sighed and smiled dreamily. "It seats ten."
seats ten!

    "I do not believe it," Gordon said. "It is one more goose to chase. A
chimera."
    "Me, either," Thor said. "People, it's been fun, but I am not chasing off to
California after another rocket ship."
    "So what do we do with the Angels?" Bruce asked.
    Thor shrugged. "Not my problem. The Con's over. You're Chairman.
You take care of the pass-on. You don't need Fang and me for that. Time
for us to move on-—"
    Fang said, "Guests are my responsibility."
    Thor shrugged. "Suit yourself."
    "We all have places to be," Bruce said. "Except you and Fang. Steve, how
are you getting back to California?"
    "Amtrack. I have a ticket. Don't think I can get anymore. Maybe they'll
be watching the stations anyway."
    Harry had been uncharacteristically quiet. "Jenny and me, were headed
that way. Maybe we could steal another bike-—"
    "We have a little money," Bruce said.
    "Yeah, but-—" Harry shook his head. "It's a rough trip, riding double.
Don't think the Angels would make it."
    Gordon laughed. "Nor do I, Harry!"
    "It's all crazy anyway," Alex said. "You know where there is a ship.
Single stage to orbit, seats ten. Assume it works, that unlike that ancient
Titan, it has been well maintained. I don't believe it, but assume that. It will
need-I'm guessing-half a million pounds of fuel? Liquid oxygen and liquid
hydrogen. They don't leave that stuff lying around."
    There was no answer.
    "Fine. You don't have the foggiest notion of how to get the fuel, or how
to move it if you did-—"
    "Details," Mike said.
damn
    "Then we have to get you back to Minneapolis. Fast," Bruce said. "That
needs working on. Meanwhile, can they hide here? Oliver?"
    Brown nodded eagerly. "I would be honored. I suppose you won't mind
telling me about life in space?"
    "OK," Bruce said.
    But what if I don't want to go back? Oh, that's crazy. Let them find a
way. I go home, I go back to my job. I get Ted on-line and we work out the
ID. And I go back to work, doing what I always did, my neat career and I
have some memories.
    "Sherrine's not the only hacker in fandom," Steve said conversationally.
    They all looked at her. "Yes, of course," she said. "There's Ted Marshall.
And-—"
    "And?" Mike demanded.
    "RMS himself," Sherrine said. "Nobody knows anything but his initials.
Ever hear of emacs?"
    "The programmer's editor? Sure, I use it," Bob said.
    "He wrote it."
    "Could he arrange fake ID for the Angels?" Bruce asked.
    Sherrine nodded. "If it can be hacked, he can hack it."
    "Would he?"
    "For space pilots? Oh, yes."
    "Why don't we know him?" Mike asked.
    "Oh, RMS has been wanted forever," Sherrine said. "Since before the
Greens took over! He used to come to Worldcons, but-—well, he doesn't
stand out in a crowd. Doesn't want to."
    "So how do you contact this RMS?" Bruce asked.
    Sherrine shrugged. "A million ways. It's just a question of getting the
word out on the net. The Legion of Doom will see it and-—"
    "I used to think I understood you people," Alex said. "Legion of
Doom-—"
     So what do we do now? Bruce said.
    "Don't know about you," Harry said. "I've got a message for the merry
soul."
    "Then what?" Alex demanded. "Why should we care what that crazy
man says?"
    "He was one hell of a man, once," Thor said.
    "A hell of a man who got his brains burned out," Alex said. Strain in his
muscles was making him irritable. "So what happens? He tells us another
story, and we end up in another stupid chase across the country, more
crazy aldermen, cheese trucks, people with guns-—"
    "Alex, it was not so bad," Gordon said.
    "What?"
    Gordon shook his head. "Was not fun, then; but think of the stories we
tell now. Bed races. Dancing on ice."
    Oliver Brown chuckled. "Sure you're not a writer?"
    "I wish to be. I have written . . . minor things. But it was not survival-
oriented task, so . . ."
    Harry shrugged. "I don't know what will happen. Not my job to know
what will happen. I know what I was told to do."
    "Resent what Wade said, don't you?" Jenny said.
    Harry glared at her.
    "True, though," she said. "Everybody knows it. Deep down, you do."
    Harry tried to grin. "You didn't have to say it."
    "Sure we did. I'm still with you, eh? You must do something right-—"
She caught herself. "Anyway, we got our job straight. Go tell Cole it's time
to see what free men can do-—oops."
    "Yes?" Bruce prompted.
    "Without the Angels, why is it time?"
    Bruce nodded to himself. "All right, we should all go see Cole."
    "Not me," Thor said. "You guys carry them. I'm not going back there."
    "That does present a problem," Mike said.
   The wind blew cold sleet into Captain Lee Arteria s face, stinging her
exposed skin with a thousand tiny needles. The Minnesota troopers and
the Minneapolis police formed a cordon around the small, one-bedroom
house. Neighboring houses winked in the dusk as their inhabitants pulled
window shades aside for a glimpse of the goings on. One or two neighbors
had bundled up and come out onto their porches. They stood there with
their arms thrust under their armpits, bouncing up and down in nervous
anticipation.
   Lee Arteria had never liked spectators.
   A glance into the pulpy sky showed that the storm had hours yet to run.
Arteria called to the squad on the Hartley porch. "No answer?"
   A pantomime shake of the head.
   "Then break the door in, Sergeant Pyle." The policeman hesitated, and
Arteria shouted, "Its fucking cold out here."
   Pyle nodded and raised a boot. Two well-aimed kicks broke the latch
and the door swung in and banged against the back wall. Arteria crowded
into the hallway with the others.
   "Shit," said one of the state troopers. "It ain't that much warmer in here."
   Conte stood by Arteria's elbow. "Are you criticizing the thermostat law,
Trooper?"
   "Uh, no, Captain."
   "All right. Spread out and search the place."
   "What are we looking for?"
   Arteria threw back the military parka's enormous, furlined cowl and
gave the trooper a grim smile. "You'll know when you find it."

   A search did not turn up much. One of the city police located a
photograph of Hartley and handed it to Pyle, who showed it to Conte and
Arteria. "Horsey looking, ain't she? You'd want to brown bag a date like
that."
     Wait, said Arteria as the man turned to go. If it is Hartley, have him
get copies of the photograph made for distribution."
    Lee went from room to room looking for inspiration. Nothing was
conspicuously missing from the closet. The toothbrush still hung in its rack
above the sink. One toothbrush only. An ice-coated pool of water stood in
the sink. A housecoat thrown across the bed. Wherever Sherrine Hartley
had gone, she had left in a hurry and had expected to return soon.
    That fits. Angels down. Fans to the rescue. She picked up the housecoat. It
was quilted; down-filled. Whatever happened to flimsy negligees? Arteria
had always liked those. Now you couldn’t find them anywhere. Victims of
the new, chillier age. Besides, judging from her picture, Hartley had never
been the type to wear risqué nighties.
    Or was she? Aah, who ever knew? Lee dropped the housecoat onto the
unmade bed. What are we doing here, pawing through some poor woman's
personal things and laughing? The people at the University had described her
as a loner, a misfit. A talented programmer, they granted, but, really, a
nerdette, lacking in the social graces.
    And didn't I know a lot of those, boys and girls both, once upon a time?
This could be my room, if I'd stayed where-—Bit late for that, now. Or is it?
How long before one of the searchera found-—
    The thought was hardly born when a city policewoman, her hands trust
deep underneath the mattress, shouted in triumph. She pulled out three
tattered, dog-eared paperback books, looked at the covers, and handed
them over to Pyle with a smirk. "She's one of them, all right."
    The books were The Sixth Winter, The Man Who Awoke, and
Fahrenheit 451.
    "Look at this crap, would you," Conte said in disgust. "With all the
problems here on Earth, why would anybody waste their time with this
escapist stuff? We oughta take these and throw them right into the trash
can."
but he was interrupted by the arrival of Jheri Moorkith and the Green
Police.

    "Bureaucracy," said Moorkith, shaking his head. "Would you believe it?
I never received your memo announcing this raid."
    Arteria shrugged. Okay, let's play head games. First you dribble crane
around the floor; then I'll dribble yours. "It's probably lost somewhere in the
interdepartmental mail. The courier will find it stuck in the bottom of his
pouch tomorrow."
    "Well, no matter." Moorkith dismissed the breach of protocol with a
wave of the hand. "I'm here now. What's going down?"
    Arteria hated civilians who tried to talk like cops. They always got it
wrong anyway. Conte flashed a sympathetic smirk. I'm glad he's your
problem.
    "We're checking on a possible lead. The details were in the memo-—"
    Arteria was interrupted by the return of the state trooper with the
photograph. "Good news, Captain," he said, reporting to Conte. "We've got
a definite make on Hartley. Neighbor lady on the west says the fellow in
the picture with her is an ex-boyfriend named Robert Needle-—or
something like that. A university prof. Get this: he's a materialist scientist.
He used to hang out with her a lot. We're running a make on him now. But,
get this, the neighbor says he drives a maroon van. And he showed up here
about two in the morning the night the air thieves went down."
    Moorkith sucked in his breath and traded triumphant looks with Conte
and Arteria. "I think we're onto something here." He took the photograph
from the trooper and studied it.
    We? "How can the witness be sure about that early morning business?"
Arteria asked.
    "She says she sleeps light and the noise of the van woke her up. Me, I
think she's a nosy old biddy who likes to spy on her neighbors. But what
the hell, a lead's a lead, night?"
fantasy. And the SCA.
   Alex shook his head. "SCA?"
   "Sorry. Society for Creative Anachronism. The Current Middle Ages. I
was king, once."
   "I think I will let Alex explain later," Gordon said. "May I read now?"
   "Certainly," Oliver said. "What would you like?"
   Gordon grinned and swept his hand to indicate the disorderly piles of
books everywhere. "I think I will find something-—I will remember where,
and put back there."
   "Thank you. Use my big chair if you like, the light's good there; very
good, it's a comfortable place. Alex, you look tired."
   "Heh. Considering that I weigh almost a hundred kilos-—"
   Oliver patted his ample bunk. "Alas, so do I. So do I, but I am more
accustomed to it. Perhaps you would like to rest in the spare room?"
   "Yes, please."
   Oliver led the way. "I'm afraid it will be a bit cold," he said. "We don't
heat this room. Hydrogen is scarce." He ushered Alex through the door.
   "Hydrogen?"
   "Yes, the Greens like to use hydrogen. They pipe it through the old
natural gas lines. Alas, much leaks, and is wasted, and since they shut
down most of the power plants there is little electricity to make hydrogen."
   "But they do make it?"
   "Oh, yes. Here we are. As I said, the room is cold. I'll get you a blanket."
   The room was cluttered as well as cold. In the habitats, a space this
cluttered would be a death trap: masses could crush a man from any
direction. Here, gravity . . . then again, gravity was part of the problem.
Loose objects had to rest all against the same surface.
   There were the inevitable book cases, but here odd tapestries hung on
one wall. They showed scenes of dogs chasing deer. Two large steel swords
hung in the corner, and below them were two almost identical swords
    Oliver piled the stuff from the couch onto a chair. We don t go often
now," he said. "I am afraid someone will get drunk and forget that the
Greens are listening." He handed Alex a heavy wool cloak. "Use this as a
blanket. I'll call you for dinner."
    The window looked out onto gray, mean streets. Other apartment
buildings, identical save for their graffiti, lined both sides of the block. The
cars were old and in disrepair. One was up on blocks; another, stripped.
Street lights flickered uncertainly, then brightened in the growing dusk.
Alex looked to the sky, but found it overcast with low-hung, gray clouds. A
solitary figure, heavily bundled, walked quickly down the street on the
opposite side. He-—or she-—clutched a cane not needed for walking, and
glanced warily left, right, behind.
    Get used to it, Alex, my boy. From now on this is home.
    Maybe not. Phoenix! He remembered the program. A low-cost system,
not merely reusable but savable. It could get to orbit even with one engine
out. Ran on liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen.
    They make hydrogen. If they make hydrogen, they must have oxygen as
well. But-—
    There was a tap at the door. "Come in."
    Gordon came in, frowned at the costumes, swords, and tapestries. "I
thought perhaps you might want company."
    Gordon found a pair of cushions and lowered himself to the floor,
slowly, carefully. "It is tiring, standing upright so long. But, every day
grows easier. Perhaps I will like it here. The people are . . . interesting."
    Alex smiled and sat on the bed beside Gordon. "Remember what they
do to interesting people."
    "Is criminal. Alex, is no objective evidence for the effectiveness of
psychoanalysis. Just replaces conscience, original sin and confessor with
superego, id and analyst. In Stalinist times, was used in same way to deal
with dissidents. Our way is so obviously right and good that if you
disagree you must be crazy."
     Yet, you were born here. This was your home.
    A shrug. "That was a long time ago."
    "And if we go back? Colonies are doomed. We all know this."
    Alex looked around the room.
    "You think they listen?"
    "No. If these people are listening without permission it would be more
than-—no. But don't say that where they can hear, Gordon."
    "Is pravda, though. More than pravda. Is true."
    Alex nodded slowly. "Yeah, I suppose it is, over the long haul. We're
running out of everything. The resource base is too small." He laughed
bitterly. "Ninety percent of the resources available to the human race, easily
available, aren't on Earth, and we have them. But the resource base is too
small. Not enough people, not enough chlorine, nitrogen-—"
    "Dr. Lichinsky says give him few more years, he will make chlorine and
nitrogen."
    "Fusion synthesis. Yeah. And his people have been saying they'd have
that Real Soon Now since before you were born, Gordo. Face it, even with
chlorine and nitrogen and more genetic materials, there are just too damn
few of us!"
    "Yet you are eager to return."
    "Hell yes! I fought to make Freedom a home. Home is the place you
would die to save. And that's not the bottom of the Well. Not that it
matters. We can't go back."
    "I think this, too," Gordon said. "But-—is not so bad."
    "Yeah, yeah," Alex said. "But dammit, the Downers are on a downward
spiral, too. They turned their back on the future, and now they've got no
more chance than the habitats! Every decade, every year, they're less able
to cope. It won't be long before conditions will be like that song, 'Black
powder and alcohol. When your states and cities fall-—' "
    "Orbital decay."
    "Eh?"
best chance for going underground, anyway.
    "And when Phoenix fails to rise from her ashes, you will chase after the
next rumor and the next."
    "At least I'll still be trying. What else is there to do?"
    ***
    Ron Cole sat in a large stuffed chair in the oversized living room. He
looked somehow out of place, and kept casting nervous glances left and
right. Jerky movements, like a bird's. Then he sprang from the chair and
shoved it into a corner of the wall. After that he sat slightly more at ease,
though he still seemed to twitch nervously.
    "Is it still paranoia," Thor whispered to Alex, "when they really are out
to get you?"
    Cole's eyes danced from face to face around the room, lingering briefly
on each. He frowned slightly when he locked gazes with Alex; and nibbled
on his lower lip over Harry. "Oliver," he said plaintively, "there are too
many."
    Helga and Violetta had already returned with several bags of snack
foods that they had bartered from the grocery store for the Wisconsin
cheese. They broke open bags of chips and trail mix into large bowls and
hand them out. Alex raised his eyebrows.
    "So much in trade?" he asked her.
    "Oh, people will pay far more for the cheese than it is worth," Helga
explained. "I suppose that, as long as a single slice can make it out of
'America's Dairyland,' people can tell themselves that things, aren't all that
bad and they'll return to normal someday."
    "Nostalgia has value, doesn't it?" said Sherrine. "Don't we have our own
nostalgia? For the way the future was."
    " ’A Fire in the Sky’. . ." said Bob.
    "And we all want a slice of that future, too," said Mike with a grin.
    "The Phoenix," said Bruce.
someone like Cole?
    "You know Harry," said Oliver.
    Cole made a face. "Yes. I knew Harry. Know Harry. Oh, thank you."
    Violetta had come by with a tray of glasses. Cole took one and sipped it.
"Oh my, yes. What is it?"
    "Dandelion wine."
    Cole licked his lips. He looked sly. "I know where you can get some
peach brandy."
    "Yes, Ron," said Helga from the kitchen door. "We know. You sell it to
us. Harry?"
    "Yes, ma'am?"
    "Could you help me out in the kitchen for a minute. I'm cutting up the
rest of the cheese for hors d'oeuvres."
    Harry looked briefly angry, then looked sidelong at Ron Cole. "Yeah,
sure."
    Jenny took his arm. "Come on. They don't need us here." She led him
from the room. At the doorway, she turned. "It really does hurt his feelings,
you know. He's not as tough as he likes to act."
    Oliver shifted in his seat. "Sure. But, Christ, Jenny, you know him better
than any of us. I sent him out for beer once and . . ."
    "And the store was closed, so Harry broke a window. I know. He likes
to tell that story."
    Alex frowned. "He smashed a store window to steal some beer? That
doesn't sound-—"
    "No, he left money for it."
    Thor was sitting on the floor with his back to the opposite wall. He rose
smoothly and dusted himself. "I guess I'll take a long walk."
    Steve said, "Hey, Thor . . ." And Fang reached out and touched the
golden giant's arm.
    "Sorry, Steve. Fang. But I haven't stayed loose this long by hanging
around a bull's-eye. Neither have you."
    Nader s Raiders want my freedom, OSHA wants my
   scalp and hair,
   If I'm wanted in Wisconsin, be damned sure I
   won't be there!
   If the E-P-A still wants me, I'll avoid them if I
   can.
   They're burning down the cities, so I'll be a
   wanted fan."

    It twitched nerves. Oliver said, "Whatever happened to escapist
literature? Ron, tell us about Phoenix!"
    "Phoenix. A fire in the sky," Ron Cole said. "It flew once, you know. I
was there. Gary was sure it could circle the Earth. They wouldn't let it fly
all the way, though. They kept her chained. Not everyone wanted her
chained, though." His voice had become nearly normal, and Oliver leaned
back, more relaxed now.
    "It was politics. NASA and the military," Cole said. "The cost per pound
of payload to low earth orbit was five to ten kilobucks. Those were the
official numbers. The real cost-well! NASA got five billion a year and they
were lucky to get a launch every two months. If Gary could fly to orbit for
a few million dollars instead of billions, NASA would look ridiculous."
    "I remember," Alex said.
    "But the Air Force was going to build it, part of the strategic defense
system, but then the Russians gave up their empire, and the Air Force
wasn't worried anymore that someone would seize the high ground on
them. So they killed the program, but they hate to throw anything away.
Pack rats, they are. So they decommissioned her and set her up on a public
part of Edwards, so technically they still have some jurisdiction."
    Alex leaned forward. "How did they decommission her?"
    Cole chuckled. "They unplugged her. Heh, heh."
    Bruce frowned. "What does that mean?"
    Alex smiled thinly. About 200,000 lines of code, to judge by the birds
I've flown? That's 100,000 lines apiece. At 100 lines a day, that would be
three years' work."
    "That's right," said Mike. "ROM wasn't built in a day."
    Sherrine slumped. "Oh."
    "Strike one," said Alex, holding up a finger. "Is there anything else, Dr.
Cole?"
    "There's the IMU, of course. They took that out. Couldn't leave that in."
    "What's an IMU?" asked Fang.
    "It's an inertial platform," Bob explained. "It would be about so big . . .
His hands cut a figure in the air. "Maybe a little bigger than a shoebox."
    "I don't suppose you have one on you?" Alex asked Cole.
    Cole looked at his hands, as if he expected to find an IMU there. "No.
That I don't have."
    "Strike two." Alex held up a second finger.
    "And of course," Cole continued, "there's no fuel."
    "Strike three, and we're out." He turned to Gordon. "All I asked for was
a chance. But there's no chance here."
    Cole blinked rapidly. "Oh, but none of those are insuperable obstacles.
No, indeed. Not insuperable, at all."
    Oliver Brown nodded slowly. "You don't have the IMU. What is it you
have, Ron?"
    Cole looked sly. "Well-—"
    "ROMs. He gave you a copy. For safekeeping," Oliver insisted.
    "Yes, yes, you know us both, of course you know that. Yes. I have them,
back at the museum. Wrapped in foil. I have them, safe, safe. We thought
we thought once I would go with Gary, but not now, not now. Now I
would be a burden."
    "Unstrike," Mike Glider said. He held up three fingers, and folded one
down. "Now what about the-—IMU?"
     That sounds simple enough, said Fang. Just straightforward B&E and
a little burglary. Harry!" he called.
    Harry stuck his head in from the kitchen. "Yo."
    "You know those things at Bob's university?"
    "Look like file cabinets with a big combination lock," Needleton said.
    "Sure," Harry said.
    "Can you open one?"
    "Take about half an hour if you don't mind noise.
    Couple of hours if any body's listening."
    Mike Glider folded down another finger. Two." "And the fuel?" Alex
demanded. "Where are we going to find a half million pounds of liquid
oxygen and liquid hydrogen?"
    They quieted down. Sherrine seemed crestfallen. Bob and Oliver,
somber and thoughtful. Steve, folded into a lotus on the floor, vibrated
with nervous energy. "Shit," said Fang. "That's a stopper all right."
    Cole looked puzzled. "But that's the easy part," he said. "You make the
fuel."

    Alex strained to hear Cole through the resulting babble. The man kept
talking in the same low tone of voice despite the noise around him. Finally
Bruce put two fingers in his mouth and whistled.
    " . . hydrogenation of fats; and of course, there's the TV industry."
    Silence.
    "Would you mind, repeating that, Ron?" said Oliver. "We didn't get it
all."
    Cole squeezed up his face. "I was simply explaining why, in spite of
government craziness and propaganda, there are still plants making
hydrogen. The Greens may not like industry, especially the chemical
industry; but hydrogen is politically correct. When you burn it, the ash is
water vapor. There are things that they want to have-—that they need to
have. Like television. You can't make television sets without hydrogen."
     Wait a minute, Alex said. A hydrogen pipe? Liquid hydrogen?
    "No, no," Cole said. "Just hydrogen. But you compress it, and it will
liquify. It is not that difficult."
    "And the oxygen? LOX?"
    Cole shrugged. "Liquify air, and boil off everything else. It is really very
simple." He spread his hang smiled at them. "And there you have it."
    In spreading his hands, Cole revealed two bright glassy marbles. Go on
pointed at them. "Shto eto?" he asked.
    "Hmm? Oh, my family jewels. I made them. A long time ago-—
carbon-12 diamonds." Cole stared at them morosely. "It was my idea, but
the big companies took the idea away from me. They make good lasers,
you know; but I kept these because they were beautiful."
    "All right," said Alex, still not quite believing it. "There are chemical
plants operating that make hydrogen-—"
    "They're small, too. Ten to twenty people."
    "And pipe it through the desert. And the LOX you get by compressing
air and letting the 02 boil off. Fine. But a half million pounds-—"
    Cole shook his head emphatically. "That's the total, not all of that is
hydrogen. What you need is 66,500 pounds of hydrogen. It's bulky, but
well, there are ways."
    "And the oxygen?" Gordon asked.
    "Most of the ship is oxygen," Alex said.
    "All right, I bite," Fang said. "How do you liquify air?"
    "Turbo expander," Cole said. "Four hundred thousand pounds of
oxygen, make it on the spot."
    "Where do we get a-—turbo expander?" Bruce asked.
    Cole shrugged. "I don't know. I haven't cared since they-—since they
ruined my ship. But Gary will know. Oh yes, Gary will know."
    Mike Glider folded his index forger halfway. "Only half a strike left."
    Alex found himself nodding, nodding. Half a strike. "Now I'm lost. A-—
turbo expander. What powers that?"
    The door on the abandoned warehouse bore a stenciled sign reading
Private Property-—Museum of Science and Appropriate Technology. Rust
speckled the metal siding; grass and weeds had punched through the
cracks and edges of the concrete truck apron. The shattered windows had
been boarded over and covered with graffiti boasting of long-vanished
gangs. The cold wind blew off the lake and crystal patches of gray frost
nestled unmelted in the shadows.
    Cole bent over the padlock and worried it with a key. "This leads back
into the bluff underneath the museum. It forms a subbasement where they
used to bring exhibits in and out. Hardly used anymore. No sir. Hardly
used."
    Alex, Bob, Sherrine and Oliver stood behind him, casting occasional
wary glances around the open area by the lake and at the museum.
    "Ah." Cole grunted in satisfaction and the chain fell away. The doors
pulled smoothly up and clicked into place with a satisfying snap. Behind
them, two gleaming Peterbilt tractors reared high and proud. The
headlights and grillwork had been polished to a sparkle that coruscated
from the quiet sun overhead.
    "There they are," Cole announced. "Larry and Curly."
    Alex stepped into the warehouse. He ran his hand along the bright, cold
grillwork. Each tractor was hitched to a long, silver, cylindrical tanker. The
logo painted on the side read:

   MILKHEIM
   LOW-FAT MILK

   "These will hold liquid gasses?"
   Cole's head bobbed. "Twelve thousand gallons each. I got them war
surplus for practically nothing. For peaches . . ." He laughed. "They are
the IMU. You know where to find fuel and you ve got the trucks to move it.
So, tell me one thing, Ron. Why didn't Phoenix fly a long time ago?"
   Good question, thought Alex.
   Cole pointed to Alex. "Because we were waiting for him."
   "What?"
   "How could you know our scoopship would-—"
   "Wait!" Oliver held up his hands. "Wait. Ron? Ron, it's all right. It's been
years and years. Most of us forgot Phoenix ever existed. How did you know
Alex was coming?"
   "Know Alex was coming? No, that's silly. Alex? Couldn't know.
Couldn't know. But we needed Angels to make it fly. Angels to bear her up
into heaven, lest she dash her foot upon a stone."
   Alex rubbed a hand over his face. Oh, dear God . . .
   "You see, she won't reach orbit on her own. Gary told me that. Long
ago. Before. She's a heavy-duty ship, designed for flight tests. And maybe
Gary cut the design too close. She can get to elliptical orbit, but it won't be
stable." He turned watery eyes on Alex. "And up to now there's been no
way to change that. But you can."

    "What in the world is this?" asked Sherrine. She called from the back of
the cavernous garage. Alex and the others followed her voice to a dark
corner behind the trucks where an immense and convoluted structure of
piping stood hissing. Out of one end, small dark droplets of liquid fell into
a holding tank. Oliver started to laugh.
    "So this is it!" he said.
    Cole bounced up and down from his knees, holding a finger over his
lips. "Shhhh!"
    "What is it?" Sherrine repeated.
    Bob frowned at the structure. "It looks familiar. I've seen it somewhere."
He started to hold his finger under the dripping liquid, but pulled back.
Who knew what that stuff was?
California? Or is that another detail?
    "Some details are important," Cole said. He pointed to stacks of
55-gallon drums racked against the far wall opposite the still. "Shemp."
    Alex blinked. "Shemp?"
    "Fourth truck," Cole told him. "Sold it before I sold Moe. Full of JP-4.
Kerosene. Heating oil-—"
    Oliver nodded. "People pay a lot for heating oil and they don't ask
questions."
    Alex blew a cloud of breath into the chill air. "No, I don't suppose they
do." He had a sudden, wild image of Cole, his eyes glowing crazy,
careening Moe around the streets of Chicago, making clandestine midnight
deliveries of black market heating oil. It was a hell of a planet.
    ***
    Bruce was a SMOF. He made a list. SMOFs always make lists.
    Sherrine sat on the floor next to Steve, with her knees drawn up under
her chin and wondered if she would ever see Gordon and Alex again. She
pictured Phoenix soaring skyward on a pillar of fire. God, to be there! But
she would be back home, and would hear about it only on the news (if they
dared run it on the news) and she would smile a secret smile that her
coworkers would never understand.
    "First," said Bruce, "we need identity papers for the Angels, in case
Phoenix doesn't work out. Sherrine, Mike, Bob and I will be returning to
Minneapolis. Sherrine, you'll link up with Tom Marshall and get that ball
rolling. Okay?"
    Back to Minneapolis. Sherrie nodded. "Sure." Back to the old terminal. It
would be tricky, working things out of the University computer center,
setting it up so they couldn't trace back to her.
    Bruce checked off something on his list. "Good. I'll have The Ghost set
up the Great Scavenger Hunt." He looked at Alex. "Fans will come up with
stuff we never thought of. You'll have your cornucopia."
    Bruce checked off another item on the list. "Mike."
list and licked the point of his pencil. Steve. You ve got to get back to
California, right?"
    Steve, meditating in a full lotus on the floor, answered without opening
his eyes. "Right."
    "Could you be our point man for the first option? Head up to Edwards
and talk to Gary. Get the full picture. Fill him in on what's happening. Find
out if he'll volunteer his bird."
    "He'll volunteer, all right. I only met him the once; but the one thing in
life he wants more than anything else is to fly that bucket."
    Harry popped the lid of a beer can. "Odds are that Wade has already
filled him in."
    "Sure, but Wade doesn't know everything. Steve, it can't hurt to make
sure."
    Steve opened his eyes. "I know that. My dojo can stay closed another
few days."
    "We're not asking you to go underground," said Bruce, checking another
item off the list. "Oliver will hide the Angels until everything is ready."
    Oliver bowed. "My honor."
    "Especially Gordon," added Violetta, giving the younger Angel a broad
smile. "You can make Roland jealous."
    Gordon said, "Well, uh . . ."
    "Check," said Bruce. "Next item is to get the trucks-—"
    "Larry and Curly," said Cole.
    "-—to California. We need drivers." He looked at Thor, Fang and Harry.
    "I told you already," Thor said. "Count me out."
    Harry shrugged. "I can take one, but the bike will be more useful. You'll
need scouts, and Jenny and I do that best."
    Fang raised his hand and waved it back and forth. "I want Larry."
    Bruce blinked. "Why Larry in particular?"
    "Because I always liked him. The Forgotten Stooge. He never got the
credit he deserved."
     Sure. I m in good shape, I have a Ph.D in physics, and the rocket
seats-—what? More than two."
    "More than two, da," Gordon said. "But-—"
    "He's saying don't burn your bridges," Alex said. "Commander Hopkins
may not want another physicist. Even if this Phoenix works, which isn't all
that damn clear to me."
    "I know that," Bob said. "I didn't quit. On the way here I called the
University and told them I have typhus.
    "Typhus?" Thor said.
    "Why not?"
    Damn you, Sherrine thought. And I’ll be back at my computer
console-—
    Bruce tugged on his beard. "Okay, then. Bob and Fang drive. Harry and
Jenny scout ahead. Steve takes the train to coordinate with Hudson. Now
what about Dr. Cole? Ron, what do you want to do? Stay here?"
    "It may not be safe," Cole said. "It has been getting worse every year.
Another year, two at most No, there is no reason for me to stay here now."
    "Want to go to California?"
    "No. It would be too painful," Cole said. "You may have the tank trucks.
I have another, a six-wheeler. If you will help me load my still on it, I will
be all right."
    "I'll help," Thor said. "Ron, if you like, I'll go with you. "
    Cole looked at him. "I remember you. Yes, I would like that. Thank
you."
    Sherrine took a deep breath. "I'm going, too," she announced.
    "What?" said Bob. "Now, wait. You can't take that chance."
    "You are."
    Bruce brandished his list. "You've got to go back to Minneapolis to
coordinate the Angels' new IDs," he said.
    She shook her head. She had been wondering for days whether she was
risking her job-—whatever security she could count on in poor, doomed
had.
   She must have looked badly shaken up when she left the phone booth
because Harry, who had escorted her there, looked concerned. "What's
wrong, Sherry?"
   "I-—" She shook her head. "Take me back, Harry."
   Back in the Brown apartment, she handed Mike a slip of paper with a
name and phone number. Then she turned to Bob and fell into his arms.
"Oh, Bob. We made the right choice, after all." Tears ran down her cheeks.
When had she started crying, for Ghu's sake? She didn't like to cry.
   "What do you mean?" Bob asked.
   "I mean they know about us!"
   "Who?"
   Bruce rose from his chair. "Who knows what?"
   "The police. Gram said they came to her house asking questions. About
me. About a maroon van. I-—I-—" She paused, took a deep breath. "I made
some other calls. Tremont says they've got my house staked out and they're
asking about Bob around the University."
   Bob stepped away from her. He looked a little gray.
   Sherrine touched his arm. "We'd both already decided we weren't going
back."
   "I know. It's just . . ."
   "What?"
   "Now we can't go back. It's different when somebody's following you
around burning bridges."
   Bruce and Mike exchanged glances. "What about the rest of us? Doc
Waxman?"
   She shook her head. "I don't know. But why would they have any clues
that point to you guys?"
   Mike let out his breath and Sherrine knew that she should be relieved
for his sake, as well; but she was simply angry that he was happy to be off
the hook.
    "Gather round," Bruce said. He sat in front of Oliver Brown's fireplace
and tapped the paper against his hand. "I've got a list."
    "Why am I not surprised?" Mike asked.
    "List?" Harry asked.
    "Things we have to do. First thing: Mike, you're the only one who has
any right to be at that research place, the one with the bacteria."
    "Well, yes . . ."
    "It's not far out of our way," Bruce said. "We go there, make sure
everything's all right, and Belinda Jenks will meet us in her car and get us
back to Minneapolis. The rest of you will go on to St. Louis. The St. Louis
people will get you aimed west."
    "Right. We're off then," Harry said. "We'll be sure everything's all right."
    "What if it isn't?" Mike asked. "What can you do?"
    "We can warn you," Harry said.
    "How? Telephone?"
    Jenny sniffed. "We'll get you the word. If we have to make enough noise
that everyone in the country knows-—" She patted her oversized handbag.
    "Yeah, well that makes sense," Mike said. "But-—" He took Harry aside.
"Harry, take this. It's a thousand."
    "I don't need-—"
    Mike's voice was low but intense. "Harry, you never ask until you need
it right now. This time-—just take the money, Harry. Think of it as default
option money. It's your last gasp. When you run low on funds and Jenny's
ready to rob some poor schlub at gunpoint, use the damn money instead."
    Harry hadn't taken it. Mike said, "You know her, Harry. Any excuse.
"Bring it down, bring it down-—"
    "Yeah." Harry took the money and had it in his boot with a minimum of
motion.
now. There is serious business afoot.>
     -—That's why I'm here, you pitiful Primary Ego. This is too serious for
me to sit back and watch you screw things up. Did you think I would stay
down there amusing myself by burning those old copies of The Intergalactic
Reporter-—?
     <What?! How dare you burn my collection of fanzines? What would
Carol Kovacs say if she knew?>
     -—Well, an imp has to keep itself warm somehow. If you would heat
the dungeon I wouldn't have had to ignite that stack of Lan's Lanterns last
week-—
     °Shriek°
     -—Or the FOSFAXs or Mimosas. They're getting dry and crumbly. Make
good tinder
     <All right, Alter. Make your point, if you have one.>
     -—Point? Point? Oh, very well. Friends, don't trust The Ghost. His
minds aren't what they used to be. Send your contributions to the usual
places. DUFF, SKIFFY, TAFF, they're all in this. The final drawing hasn't
been scheduled yet; but the big prize is still the Trip of a Lifetime.
Remember, two Grand Prize winners have already been chosen, but don't
let that stop you from giving them the boost they need. They're feeling a
little Down.>
     <Thank you, Alter. Now get back to your dungeon, like a good little
Ego.>
     -—Don't count on it, Ghost. I'm the Prime Self now. Remember? The
fans voted for me in Galaxy years ago. Me, not you, Ghost. Eh? No! Not the
Spell! Not the Spell! Arrgh!-—
     <logoff>
     ***
     <Like what?> Anonymous note on electronic bulletin board.
ear. Go for it.
   Captain Doom nodded to his three companions. He grabbed a section of
chain-link fence while Mark and Lisha Hartz worked their wire cutters in
unison. Then he lifted the loose flap like a trap door. He clapped the third
fan on the shoulder. "Chain up! We're going in."
   Andy ducked swiftly forward with a shovel in his hand. Captain Doom
began counting in his head. "One one-thousand; two one-thousand; three
one-thousand . . ." Then he tapped Mark and Lisha, who dropped their bolt
cutters, grabbed plastic sacks, and scurried through the hole in the fence.
   While his teammates were gone Captain Doom tied twisties to the cut
sides of the fence flap. Then he waited. When his mental count reached
three minutes the bag carriers slip back through the fence, followed in
another minute by Andy with the shovel. The four plastic sacks bulged and
Captain Doom caught a whiff of the contents. "Better double-bag that," he
said. "It's a long ride back."
   His three companions nodded and slipped away into the darkness. As
he fastened the loose fence section back in place with the twisties, Captain
Doom triggered his throat mike. "Captain Doom to SMOF-One. Mission
accomplished. Have the deodorizers ready."
   Captain Doom rejoined the others. Benjamin Orange stood by the open
back doors of the panel truck they had come in. Doom's teammates and
two other teams were already seated inside the truck, wiping greasepaint
from their faces. Orange was garbed in slacks and dress shirt and sported a
prominent bow tie in the Black Watch tartan. He wore a headset and throat
mike that left his hands free for a clipboard and checklist. SMOFs always
made lists.
   "Can you hear me, Team Gamma? Can you hear me?" He glanced up as
Captain Doom approached. "How'd the worm farm go?"
   "It went like clockwork, Orange."
   "Good." The SMOF nodded. "Good. Wait." He put a hand to his
earphone. "Ah, there you are, Henry. I can hear you now. Have you got the
     Big enough.
    "You've got too much there, miss. They'll choke each other out."
    Winnie sighed. Why did men assume that, because she looked like a
covergirl, she did not have a brain in her head? "I know what I'm doing."
    "If you'd like a little advice on gardening, I get off at five."
    "That's very generous. My husband and I will be glad to have your
help." Husbands were useful, she reflected, as the clerk suddenly busied
himself with his job. One of these days she would have to get one.
    ***
    Thor waited by the checkout lane at the supermarket, holding a place in
line while Fang scurried back and forth with small purchases. That earned
him a glare from the lumpy, dough-faced woman who was next in line.
Probably upset because, due to Fang's ploy, she was one place behind her
rightful place in line. Thor considered letting her go ahead; decided against
it. Her shopping basket was piled so high that by the time she was through
at the cash register the glaciers would be in the parking lot.
    The doughy woman gave him one last glare before, rustling the pages
with a flourish, she dived behind the anonymity of a checkout tabloid. This
one, called the international Global Celebrity Tattle-Tail, featured a lurid
headline in 72-point type:

   "ICE NUDES ON GLACIER!!!"

   It was accompanied by a rather fuzzy photograph of a nude woman in
unidentifiable surroundings. The remainder of the headlines lined the
margin of the front page like wallflowers at a school dance. One of them
proclaimed a new "Thermal Diet" to help keep one warm and comfortable
during the colder winters. From what he could glean, it involved a
considerable amount of curry and jalapeño peppers.
   The woman caught him reading the front page and, with a sniff of
righteous indignation, folded it over and returned it to its rack. Thor
was sticking with it. He d be setting out in Larry as soon as they bought the
supplies.
    But someone had to watch over Ron Cole. And the fewer people
hanging around the Angels the better. And the Phoenix would never fly
anyway.
    See what free men-—
    Thor sighed unhappily. He had really believed in the Cole legend. A
naive belief, he saw now. His parents had always been after him to "be
realistic." Especially after catching him with "that" literature. So he had
always associated realism with a world where dreaming was suspect.
    Ninety-nine out of a hundred dreams came crashing down around you.
But if life always fell short of your expectations, that was no argument for
lowering them. There was always the hundredth dream.
    The shopper in front of him finished her check through and Fang
returned to line with a jumbo jar of multivitamins just in time. Madam
Doughball pointedly did not move aside for Fang, but that didn't stop the
crusty old guy. He lobbed it.
    Now, there was someone who had the Talent. Fang could dream
realistically. The Titan had not fazed him at all. An option had failed to pan
out; there were other options.
    Fang watched the tally carefully. Programming skills were deteriorating
and scanners had been known to commit egregious errors as a result. But
all Thor could see in his mind's eye was the magnificent ascent of Phoenix
from her desert home. With ten berths in her crew cabin module. Eight of
them up for grabs. He wondered if any of the others had had the same
dream he had.
    But it wasn't realistic.
    ***
    Riding in the cab of an eighteen-wheeler tank truck southbound on I-55
for the Gateway City, with the pavement humming beneath their tires and
off-highway neonlit diners flashing past in the darkness, Sherrine had a
sleeping quarters not much roomier than the back of the Peterbilt.
    They passed the turn-off for Winnemucca, which made her think of
Cordwainer Bird. Bird had taken the National Endowment for the Arts
advance for The Very, Very Last Dangerous Visions; Really. And This Time I'm
Not Foolin' and vanished without a trace. Rumor speculated that he was
preparing the ultimate diatribe; the one that would rock the Establishment
to its very foundation.
    There were stories about Bird. Some of them were true.
    I wonder if Bob misses his van. Foolish question. Of course he did. He had
had that van a long time and had kept it in careful condition. It was
comfortable, like an old slipper. Lots of memories there.
    Lots. The quilts and blankets in the back of the van were not entirely
meant for insulation. Sherrine gave Bob a sidelong glance. She was not
opposed to marriage, in principle. Not for sex, although the new laws
made it safer that way, but for the comradeship. She had even tried it once,
and it had been the happiest three years of her life . . . though the marriage
had lasted five.
    Whatever had become of Jake? Had his liaison with Heather lasted? The
Cookie had struck her as one who enjoyed the chase more than the prize.
Suppose, after dumping his wife for a better looker, Jake had been dumped
in turn for a more virile stud?
    Or else Jake and Heather were living a life of connubial bliss in a
suburban bungalow somewhere, with a miniature Jake and Heather
scampering around them.
    Well, well. How little we know ourselves. She had not thought about Jake in
a long, long time. Yet, the recollection still drove her heart to flutter. Not
the end-Jake, but the early Jake. He with the wide, smiling mouth and the
perpetually shadowed jaw and the audacity to wander through the
timescape of undreamed lands. Somehow, beneath the bitterness, beneath
the anger, there was . . . not love, but the shadow of a love that once was.
Vukovich had said after winning his second strait Indy 500? There s no
secret. You just press the accelerator to the floor and keep turning left."
    "What did you-—?"
    "Did I say that out loud? Sorry, Gordon. Back to sleep."
    "Can you drive and talk?"
    "Sure, Gordon. How are you holding up?"
    "I was asked, ‘Am I still having fun?’ I am. You?"
    "I haven't had time to stop and think since Bob rousted me out of bed to
pull Angels off the Ice." She remembered the comfort and security of the
computer room with a longing that shocked her. There was an animal
contentment to living only in the present, snug under the covers and
comforters, giving no thought to the future.
    The future was a sneaky tense that crept up a day at a time, each
tomorrow just a little different from the last, until one day you looked back
along the path you had traveled and saw how very, very far you had come
from your roots. Safe and secure; but with your dreams cauterized. In the
bright light of day, she could see that that path of accumulated tomorrows
was a smooth and slippery one that led down, down, down. The bottom of
a Well was the point of minimum energy; which was why it was so easy to
rest there unmoving.
    To move, however . . . Ah, that was another matter entirely. There were
other paths, other tomorrows. One could choose among them. And she had
made her choice.
    And having made that choice, having left behind everything in her life
but a change of clothes—"Yeah. Yes, Gordon, I'm still having fun."
    But both Angels were asleep, slumped into each other as if boneless.
    Sherrine felt more at peace than she had had at any time since Jake had
left. Yet, all the psychologists would agree that she should be feeling
terrible tensions and insecurity. A body at rest tends to remain at rest, unless
acted upon by an outside force. She had never thought of Newton as a
psychologist before.
Yes, you can pay when you pick them up.
    ***
    The clapboard building was falling apart. The porch roof sagged, and
the windows were boarded up. Shutters and sidings loose and brittle with
time ratted in the prairie wind. Behind the building, black and rotted husks
dotted a weed grown field. Mike Glider gingerly got out of the truck and
looked around. "Harry?"
    "Here." Harry and Jenny came down from the decaying porch.
    "I thought this was the place," Mike said. "Now I'm not so sure."
    "This is it," Harry said. He held up a piece of broken board. IOWA
STATE COLLEGE AGRICULTURAL RESEA-—The end of the sign was
charred black.
    "Sure is run down," Bruce said.
    Mike nodded. "Yeah, but it was once the pride of the Agricultural
Service. They did a lot of good work here."
    "Closed by court order," Harry said.
    "Worse than that," Mike said. "They didn't even wait. A Green flying
squad burned the main building out. Killed four of the research staff-—and
got off as justifiable manslaughter."
    "Wasn't the only place that happened," Harry said. "The big pogrom-—
lot of scientists killed that year. Okay, what's next?"
    "We get shovels," Mike said. "They buried the bacterial cultures out in
the cornfield when they heard the mob was coming."
    "I better watch the bike," Harry said.
    "It's all right, I can see it," Jenny said.
    Harry shrugged. "Okay." He looked around at the wasted fields.
"Shovels. Dig where?"
    "They faxed me a map," Mike said. He grabbed the doorknob and shook
it. The door would not budge. "They used student labor during the school
year; then used volunteers so they could continue working the land"-—
scattered about the floor, stained with rodent droppings and the leak of
rain through the roof.
   "God damn them," Mike said reverently. "They did good work here.
Milk. We had a way to synthesize hormones. Natural hormones, what
cows make themselves. Give the cows more and get half again as much
milk. Only they wouldn't let us use it."
   "With people starving?" Jenny demanded. "How long has that been
going on."
   "They discovered how to do it back before the turn of the century," Mike
said. "In 1987."
   "But-—why-—"
   "They're still testing to see if it's safe. That's what the Greens said. The
dairy corporations didn't fight very hard. The last thing they need is cheap
milk. Oversupply, they called it."
   He found Bruce at the back door of the building. The door was hanging
loose on its hinges, and the jamb around the latch was broken and
splintered. Bruce pointed to the shattered door. "When Harry said he came
trough the back door-—"
   "He's got a helluva knock, doesn't he?"
   Harry approached them from the farther hallway carrying two shovels
over his shoulder. " I found a store room," he announced. He gave one
shovel to Bruce; the other, to Mike. "And there were just enough shovels."
   ***
   <logon>
   <SMOF-One: Bull semen!!!??? The Ghost>
   <logoff>
   ***
   The plant manager spoke in such a broad Texan accent that you would
never guess he was not originally from Texas. Just as some people were
"more Catholic than the Pope," Ron Ellick reflected, others were more
Texan than the Texans. Johns even kept a stuffed rattlesnake in his office. It
    Right. Pollution laws won t let anyone drill for all anymore. So, less
fuel for the airlines. And they cut back on the number of flights because it
might damage the ozone layer. So fewer planes are being built." Johns
shrugged. "Bunch of guano, if you ask me. But I'm an interested party. The
aerospace people were our biggest customers. Now all we get are
maintenance and spares orders. There's an example, on that pallet. See
where Mitch is gluing the details in place? Now, what does that remind
you of?"
   "A bee's honeycomb."
   Johns nodded. "Right. We call it structural honeycomb. That there is
part of the nose assembly for a 737b."
   Ron Ellick studied the part dutifully. He had flown from Minneapolis to
Philadelphia, courtesy of 3MJ, on an old 737b. He wasn't sure he wanted to
know how much of it was held together with glue. "You work on some
mighty big parts, Johnny. Awkward shapes. Must be a problem handling
the stuff."
   "Oh, not the raw material you were asking about. That comes in blocks.
Come on, let me show you."
   Johns led him to an area of the plant filled with shelving. Each shelf
held a stack of what looked like solid oblong blocks. "The way the
industry's been ruined, we have enough honeycomb in stock here to last a
generation." Johns shook his head sadly. "Anyhow, the stuff was shipped
collapsed into blocks like this. Easier to handle. We set the blocks on an
extender, put hooks in each end, and stretch 'em open like an accordion."
He pointed to another machine which to Ellick looked like a rack from a
medieval torture chamber. His mind toyed with the notion: a modern day
horror story . . ..
   "So the original honeycomb block," Johns went on, "takes up hardly any
room at all. Ginny, show Ed here what happens when you put a block in
water." He nudged Ron Ellick with his elbow. "Watch this."
    Ron Ellick nodded. Or off the face of the earth, either. How much for the
blocks?"
    Johns rubbed his chin and looked thoughtful. "The aluminum kind or
the-—"
    "Each."
    Johns cited a list of prices from memory. Ron Ellick wrote them down
on a notepad. "OK, Johnny, I'll talk to my people. You can ship it to
California?"
    Johns nodded. "Son, the way the market is right now, I'll carry it to
California."
    ***
    <logon>
    <I have caught the bug. MYCROFT.>
    <logoff>
    ***
    Ted Marshall was a young man, round of face and soft of muscle. At 5'
11" and 160 pounds, he gave the odd impression of being both skinny and
overweight. He had an aversion to athletics of any sort. Every morning he
watched a run of joggers pound by his home, lifting them up and putting
them down; a peculiarly elaborate form of self-torture. In high school, he
had taken remedial gym.
    He held the chip up to the light and looked at it. "How many books
does it hold?"
    "About five hundred," said Will Waxman. The old man with the bushy
patriarch's beard laid four more on the table. "This is almost my entire
library. The last one, there? That's the Encyclopaedia Britannica."
    Ted grunted and laid the first chip down. All five had been modified to
look like Nintendo "Game Boy" cartridges. "Cyberbooks. And you want to
know if I can duplicate them?"
    Will Waxman nodded. "And the reader." He set a Sony Bookman on the
table between them. "Maybe a dozen of each?"
   Ted did so and smiled when he saw the title page appear on the screen.
He glanced at the other cartridges. "This must be a lot of fun when you're
browsing through the encyclopedia."
   "Flying tough the encyclopedia," Will corrected him, "like a stone from
David's sling skipping over the water. No, more like jaunting in Bester's
The Stars My Destination or the stepping discs in Niven's Ringworld. Did you
ever hear Philip José Farmer's definition of a dullard?"
   Ted shook his head. "No."
   Will grinned. "Someone who looks a thing up in the encyclopedia, turns
directly to the entry, reads it, and then closes the book."
   Ted laughed. "It's a damn shame they banned these things. The trade
problem-—"
   "Trade friction had nothing to do with it." Will took the Bookman from
Ted, saw that it was open to Pebble in the Sky and flipped through the
electronic pages. "Can you imagine any gadget better designed to seduce
the Video Generation into reading?"
   Ted frowned. "Nah. Conspiracy theories are fun, but it's usually just
ineptitude or-—"
   "A well-read, educated public is more difficult to lead around by the
nose ring." Will leaned across the table. "Can you duplicate the chips and
the reader, Ted? I need to know."
   Ted Marshall shook his head. "No, I can't. The programming? No
problem. But the chips themselves . . . I'm not a hardware man."
   The old man sighed. "I was hoping to keep my originals. Oh, well."
   Ted held out a placating hand. "Hold on, Will. I don't know how to
duplicate the hardware, but I know someone who knows someone."
   Free-lance electrosmithing was almost as incriminating as free-lance
programming. Will didn't ask further. Ted Marshall made the Bookman
and its chips vanish. "I'll see what I can do. You won't mind if I make
copies for myself, will you?"
   "Of course not."
stooping over to peer into the cage. The oversize rodent inside laid her ears
back and sniffed. The Gnawing incisors lay bucktoothed over the lower lip.
Yes, aren't you cute." And plump, too. Rabbits gave good meat per volume.
So did guinea pigs.
   "May I help you?" The pet store manager had come up behind her.
   Adrienne rose and turned. "Yes, you may." She had the commanding
presence of the queen of Olympus. A white streak accented her otherwise
black hair, as lightning does the night sky. "How much are the rabbits and
the guinea pigs? The manager told her and she nodded. She pulled a
checkbook from her handbag. "And do you give quantity discounts?"
   ***
   When they came to the Interstate bridge over the Mississippi, they
slowed, and Harry and Jenny came by on the motorcycle. Harry held up
his hand, thumb and forefinger in a circle.
   "All clear," Bob said. "At least from outside."
   Alex could see the St. Louis waterfront laid out below him. Many of the
docks and wharfs along the river stood dry and inaccessible, since so much
of the river's source water was locked up in northern ice. Starved as she
was, though, the Mississippi was still a mighty stream; and tug barges and
riverboats crowded her like a Manhattan street. The Missouri, which
entered a few miles upstream, was still running near strength wind and
rain patterns having so far kept her watershed nearly ice-fee.
   Even so, Alex noticed two barges aground o a mud bar near the East St.
Louis side of the river. Grain barges from the north, Bob told him. Files of
people, ant-mall in the distance, marched on and off the barges, balancing
baskets full of grain on their heads. He wondered how much of the cargo
they could salvage before rats and rot did for the rest.
   Gordon, sitting between them, suddenly perked, up and pointed
through the windshield. "What is that?" he asked.
   "That is the Gateway Arch," said Bob, taking the exit onto Memorial
Drive. "Our destination."
sonnet form. Requires craft and artistry.
   Alex noticed Gordon's lips move and grunted. The stilyagin was
probably trying to compose a poem on the spot. It was that sort of
distraction that got him put on probation, then on the dip trip.
   But Gordon was right about its beauty. In orbit Alex would not have
wondered twice about the Arch. Such construction would have been easy,
given the mass . . . which is never given, in orbit. That's why we need
Moonbase so badly. All that free mass! But in a gravity field . . . how did they
keep it up? Its soaring lines seemed to defy gravity. He tried to imagine the
forces acting on the arch. The downward vectors must be translated into
vectors along the length of the arch itself. A neat problem in basic physics.
It was a fascinating planet. His eyes travelled along the sleek parabola
until, in an odd echo to his thoughts, he saw what looked like vector
arrows pointing down from the top of the Arch. As he watched, the
arrowheads swayed slightly in the wind.
   "What are those?"
   Bob squinted through the windshield. "Beats me." He reached back over
his shoulder and rapped on the back of the cab. "Coming up on the Arch,"
he said.
   The panel separating the sleeping cubicle from the cab slid back and
Sherrine stuck her face through. "The fan club meets in the underground
museum, right?"
   "That's what Violetta said. They'll give us a place to spend the night."
He pulled to the side of the street and turned on his blinkers. A car and two
horse carts drove around him. "All clear," he announced.
   Alex heard the door to the sleeping cubicle open and shut. He squirmed
a bit in his seat; then he gripped his cane, unlatched the passenger door
and slid to the sidewalk.
   "Hey," said Bob, "where are you going?"
   "With Sherrine," he answered. He flourished his cane. "For the practice.
And just in case."
seen after Mary had . . . had betrayed him? Now there was a thought!
    Betrayed you how, Alex? Because she didn't order you back upstairs after
that first missile attack? Because she left it up to your own stupid pride? If
anyone betrayed you, Alex, it was yourself.
    A sudden horn jolted him from his reverie. Two men in a horse jitney
shook their fists at him as they pulled around. As if they hadn't the whole
street to themselves, Alex thought sourly.
    Sherrine said, "Alex? What's up?"
    "You don't want me with you?"
    Her lips parted to answer him, then she shook her head. "Come on,
then. I think the entrance to the old museum is over this way." Alex
wondered what she had been about to say. He thought he could make a
reasonable guess. Couldn't stick to the flight plan, could you, Alex? And
why? To moon along after a woman who . . . He wanted to say that he
found her attractive; that he admired the way she had abandoned her
career and freedom to help him; that he wanted to get to know her better.
But the words stuck awkwardly in his throat. Held down by gravity.
    She led him down a concrete ramp festooned with gaily-colored graffiti
and handbills. One large poster, plastered overtop the others, announced a
closed-circuit TV address by Emil Poulenc, "Discoverer of the Ice Folk."
Whatever that meant. The sun was high in the sky, brushing the shadows
from the ramp. Four odd, circular shadows wavered like black spotlights
on the paving stones.
    Why can't I ever pick a woman who'll choose me back?
    Sherrine knocked three times on the boarded-up doors at the bottom of
the ramp. A face like a side of beef peered down at her from behind a
plywood partition, too high up. With a bit of a stutter she said, "We're
knights of Saint Fantony."
    His face showed nothing. "Here for the High Crusade?"
    "To win victory or sleep with the Angels. By order of Duke Roland."
    "Duke Roland" was Oliver Brown.
    Sherrine stared at Hugh. They hanged them for that? Because they were
convicted of being nuclear physicists?"
    The young man shook his head. "They weren't convicted. We think they
were four of the people who ran the museum here. The place was empty
after that, and we moved in." Hugh had led them inside. Alex saw a flash
of silver at his left hand, then jumped as a huge hominid shadow caught
the corner of his eye.
    Hugh had a knife in his left hand. He'd had it ready while his right
immobilized Alex, while the giant doorman guarded him from overhead.
"Duke Roland says you're to be trusted. I trust my senses when I can. Alex,
how do you take a shower in free fall?"
    Alex said, "It takes forever to get wet and forever to get dry. Wherever
water is, it wants to stay. We don't have enough water anyway. Mostly
we-—Hugh, how would a Downer know if I was lying?"
    "This Downer was a physics teacher at KC High. Milady, I might grant
you're an angel, but not an astronaut."
    Sherrine smiled and colored. "No. I was one of the rescuers."
    "I see." Hugh's arm swept in a circle. "Well, welcome all!" Others came
from out of the shadows beyond the entryway. Many people, some in
armor. "You have friends?"
    "Yes. I'll go for them," Sherrine said, but she didn't move at once. "Hugh,
if the locals are hanging scientists, are you safe here?"
    Hugh's face closed like a wall . . . and then he said, "We are safe indeed.
I am Duke Hugh Bloodcup because I was King Hugh of the Middle
Kingdom six years ago. The locals-—the Downers-they hanged four
scientists here, once. But when others came to disturb us, we buried those
bodies and replaced them. The locals see four bodies hanging from the
Arch. They never think to examine them, to see if they've been cycled. But
there are rumors enough to protect us, and if they won't-—"
    "Yes. I see. Your Grace, Alex MacLeod will need to sit even in your
presence-—"
wouldn t you agree, ma am?
   "True."
   "Someone must be hiding the spacemen, or we would have found them
by now."
   "But sci-fi fans? Really, Lieutenant. Could a bunch of nerds and geeks
have slipped the aliens past the search parties on the Ice? With virtually no
notice, mind you." She grinned. "Maybe the Ice Folk have them."
   Billings made a face. "Ice Folk. Supermarket tabloid nonsense. A newly
evolved race of humans who can live naked on the Ice? And there's that
Sherrine Hartley. She never reported back to work. And her boyfriend with
the maroon van called in to report he has typhus. Typhus! And vanished.
Captain Arteria, this other fannish activity must be related to the
spacemen, too."
   "Cornish game hens, Lieutenant? How will that help hide the fugitives?"
   "I don't know, ma'am. They might be stocking a hidden hideaway with
food."
   "Bull semen, Lieutenant? Earthworms?" Arteria leaned forward, hands
placed flat upon the desk. "Dung?"
   Billings turned red. "Maybe they're hiding on a ranch or a farm."
   "Could be, actually. Anyway, you've convinced me. Something's up. Get
reports on all unusual activity by known or suspected fans. Let's get 'em!"
   "Yes, ma'am!"

   Lee Arteria thumbed idly through the file folders. They're up to
something. But what? Fans were technophiles, so they were watched; but
they were mostly flakes, so the effort was sporadic and incomplete. And
they kept trying to recruit the cops, lecturing them, giving them reading
material, driving them crazy.
   More fanac would surface presently. Bull semen, earthworms, dung,
game hens? Worse than the Stardust Motel Westercon Banquet! Bouncing
potatoes, bouncing potatoes-—A known fan in Portland bought rabbits. One
SCA people were deferential to their aristocracy. The place was used by
fans; but it was an SCA fief.
    The museum was a large, low-ceilinged space broken up by partitions
and display cases into quasi-rooms ill-lit by kerosene lanterns and candles.
Men practiced with padded weapons in cleared spaces. Women showed
each other intricate ways of making cloth with their fingers. Men, women,
children huddle around the light sources, reading tattered old books;
talking and arguing with animated gestures; or, in a few cases, writing
intently on smudged tablets of lined paper.
    Two knights brought Gordon inside, one at each elbow, and helped him
to a chair. He was pale with effort . . . no, Gordon was stronger than that
now. Pale with shock. He'd walked under four corpses.
    Alex said, "Still think the Well is worth saving, tovaritch?"
    Gordon nodded. "Desperately so."
    "Where's Sherrine?"
    "Helping Pins with docking maneuvers. A squire has shown them
where to hide the truck. Why, are you lonely, Alex?"
    "We're to meet the King all together. Never mind, that must be them."
There was activity at the door. Passwords were exchanged, while the silent
giant Fafhrd took his defense position. Duke Hugh ushered them in:
Sherrine, Bob Needleton, Harry Czescu and Jenny Trout. Gordon and Alex
stood to join them. Duke Hugh whispered instructions before they were
led to meet the King.
    The procession was short. All eyes were on them. Alex enjoyed having
Sherrine on his arm, though she was supporting him. The King was a large
young man whose nose had once been smashed flat against his face. It was
fun to watch him try to balance hero worship against his royal dignity.
Still, he was the man who had beaten every other fighter in St. Louis; that
was how you got to be King. The four bowed, with Sherrine and Bob
supporting the Angels.
   If it weren t for fucking NASA we d at least have
   walked on Mars.
   If I never can make orbit, then I’ll never reach
   the stars."

   Never can make orbit . . . Harry and Jenny were singing to Alex's soul.
Alex wasn't in the mood for that much gloom. He moved away, toward
laughter.
   Jenny's voice followed him. "How's this, Majesty?"

   "Wanted fan for mining coal and wanted fan for
   building nukes;
   Wanted fan by William Proxmire and a maddened
   horde of kooks.
   Washington, D.C., still wants me 'cause I tried
   to build a dam.
   If they're tearing down the cities I’ll help any
   way I can."

    "Yeah, Jenny, I know you would . . ."
    Gordon gravitated to one of the fans who was writing furiously on a
legal pad. He stood a little aside so as not to distract the woman; but Alex
could see that she was aware of the Angel's hovering presence.
    Alex wandered among mannequins dressed in the style of mountain
man, Plains Indian, cowboy. They stood ghostly sentinel amid prairie
dioramas and reconstructed Conestogas. Sunbonnets and calico and
flintlocks. A moldboard plow. A la riata coiled to loop over a steer's horns.
Chaps and Stetson hat. Buckskin shirt and leggings done up with beads
and quillwork. A birchbark canoe bearing a coureur de bois. The opened
diary of a woman who had crossed the Plains in an 1840's wagon train.
Alex tried to read what was written there, but the light was too dim.
one that went up with the last shuttle?
    Alex nodded. Noblesse oblige. "We couldn't live without it. And the other
one. I've heard the story, of how the pilots and a friend in Mission Control
brought the first tank to orbit. It was supposed to splash, but the pilots
pulled the circuit breakers for the separation charge igniters."
    Buz nodded. "The astronauts and cosmonauts had already decided to
try to build a civilization. They had to have the tanks for living space."
    "You were in on that?" Alex asked.
    "A little," Jenn said. "They couldn't do that but once, though. Then
came-—"
    "The Last Shuttle," Buz said.
    "Yeah. I was in it," Alex said.
    "We know," Jenn said. "How are Ian and Alicia?"
    "You knew them?"
    "Yes."
    "Dad was killed in a blowout nine years ago," Alex said. "Mother died
last year. Heart."
    "Oh. I'm sorry," Jenn said. She turned to her husband. "They had twenty
years together. Up there."
    "And we're still here," Buz said. He turned to Alex. "It was Ian and
Alicia or us," he said. "When the astronauts decided to take the last shuttle
up. The space program was winding down, and we thought it would be
important to get more people into the habitats. Peace and Freedom.
Cooperation between U.S. and Russia. Symbols of peace and progress.
They already had a shuttle tank in orbit, and we wanted to send another,
but mostly we wanted to send up families. Jenn and I were candidates. So
were Ian and Alicia, and you, only you didn't know it. You were about six,
as I recall, and your mother was small, so the two of you weighed less than
I do."
Engineers. They d heard the space program was being closed down, and
thought-—they thought that if there were families in space, Americans as
well as Russians, it would shame the government into supporting them. So
they all volunteered to go. They thought there would be other ships. The
NASA ground crew swore they'd stay on the job, refurbish the ship and
send her back up with supplies. It wasn't supposed to be the last one."
   "Some group had tried to get a court order to stop the launch," Jenn
said. "Said there was a chance that a bad launch could fall on pleasure
boats out in the ocean. Then they sent most of their membership down to
man a fleet downrange of the pads."
   Their audience had formed up in a circle. The younger fans were wide-
eyed. A man in medievals, a troubadours outfit, with a lute slung across his
shoulder, was jotting notes. Older fans, hanging farther back, showed a
blacker mood. It wasn't just a yarn to them. They remembered.
   "That was Earth First," Buz said.
   Jenn snorted. "You mean Earth Only."
   "Earth Last," another muttered. "Bastards."
   "Nobody worried about their court order," Alex said. "But then the
word leaked out that the launch was on, and a mob gathered around the
perimeter. They tried to tear down the fences, but there was another group,
the L-5 Society, supporters, trying to protect the ship. Not enough of them.
There was fighting. Mom wouldn't let me watch. She had a death grip on
me until she could get us aboard."
   Alex noticed he was rubbing his arm, and stopped. "We squeezed into
one couch. Everything was going wrong, Dad said half the control board
was red, but they launched anyway. I remember the acceleration. Mother
was holding onto me, the couch wasn't big enough, other kids were
screaming, but Dad was grinning like a thief; I'll never forget his face. Or
Mother's. "
   "On the way up there was a clonk and a lurch. Didn't feel any worse
than what was happening till I saw Dad's face. Scared. Snarling with fear."
    The fighting in Mission Control was hand to hand, Buz said. Long,
hard muscles were jumping in the old man's arms. He'd learned to fight . . .
but afterward, Alex thought. "The mob had baseball bats. Two had
handguns. Some of the ground crew held them at the door until they took
bullets and went down." He turned to the woman beside him and took her
gnarled hand in his and stroked it. "The mob swelled inside, swinging bats
and smashing panels. The crew held on, nobody left, nobody left a console
until Enterprise Two was up." He sighed and looked at the floor. "The police
showed up then; but it was too late to save anything."
   "The MP's were pissed," said Jenn. "They'd been ordered to stand down
because the organizers had assured everyone that the 'demonstration'
would be peaceful; and an MP cordon would have been 'too provocative.'
Not that the politicians needed much assurance. California and Florida
both had Green governors."
   "Skazhitye," said Gordon. "But how do you know so much about it?"
   The elderly couple glanced at each other. Jenn said, "Jim here was
Launch Control and SBR Separation. I was Flight Path Planning and RSO."
   "You-—" Alex felt a lump rise in his throat. Buz's voice-—a younger
Buz's voice-—had been the last words from Earth he had heard, fed
through the speakers into the passenger cabin in the silence after the
engines shut down. Good luck, Enterprise. Our dreams are going with you.
Alex took a step toward them and they rose from their chairs. A moment's
awkward hesitation gave way to an embrace. Alex's cheeks were hot with
tears.
   "You knew, didn't you," he said, hugging the old woman. "You knew it
would be the Last Shuttle up."
   She said nothing, but he could feel her head nodding. "We knew we'd
never see another," said Buz. "Not in our lifetimes. But we're still the lucky
ones. Come."
   He led them through the exhibits, past the trappers, the cowboys, the
sod busters. Pioneers, Alex thought. Pioneers all.
   Geiorgi Dobrovolsky
   Viktor Patsayeb
   860128 Francis R. Scobee
   Michael T. Smith
   Jubith A. Resnik
   Ronald C. McNair
   Ellison S. Onizuka
   Gregory B. Forbis
   CHrista McAuliffe

   Alex woke groggy on a museum bench.
   Gordon sat in a plastic shell of a chair hunched over a scarred and
warped desk. He was staring off into space with his mouth half-open.
Writing a love poem? Sure. And to whom, Alex thought he could guess.
Shoeless, he padded up silently behind Gordon and read over his shoulder:
   The scoopship's cabin was a sounding box for vibrations far below the
ears' grasp; as, high over the northern hemisphere, her hull began to sing a
bass dirge. My bones could feel . . .
   Gordon jerked suddenly and turned in his seat. "Alex, I did not hear
you come." He covered the tablet with his forearm.
   Alex grinned. "Does the hero get the girl?"
   Gordon flushed a deeper crimson. "It is not that kind of story. Are no
heroes. It is story about belonging; about one's place in the world. About
being at home."
   Alex's eyes flicked toward the hidden sky.
   "No, Alyosha. Not home like that. Not accident of birth. Home is where,
when you have to go there, they have to take you in. Sometimes you find it
in places you don't expect."
   "That's fine, Gordon." Gordon did have a way of putting words
together. Not just a subsonic hum, but a "dirge." The hum and the
sweetness of flight-—yet with a touch of ominous anticipation. When Alex
 Nyet. I cannot assert myself. The time is not right. He turned and looked
again at Alex. "What if she does not care for me?"
    Alex almost laughed. "Is that what you wanted to ask me about? You
want her, but does she want you? How would I know? Ask Bob. She
doesn't confide her love life to me." Alex forced the words out between his
teeth, surprised at how much they hurt. "Things are a lot looser down here
in the Well, you know."
    Gordon looked at him strangely. "I thought you . . ."
    "You thought I what?"
    Gordon shook his head. "Nichevo."
    Alex shrugged and tried to recover his broken sleep. What was with
Gordon, anyhow? Lost on frozen Earth, the authorities searching for him,
and there he sat writing fiction in the middle of the night. A novel no one
would read.
    ***
    Sherrine drove the rig while Bob slept in the back. The hill country of
southwest Missouri, trees shorn prematurely of their leaves, swept past on
both sides of the nearly abandoned interstate. The setting sun nagged at the
edges of her vision, not quite dead ahead and too low for the visor to help,
painting the pastel clouds that hugged the horizon. She kept her speed
down; from fear of the cops, but also because she had to watch each
overpass as she came upon it.
    Here the Ice was only a distant whisper beyond the horizon, borne on
summer breezes that had become
    crisp and cool. The fall came earlier, and the winter blizzards were more
frequent.
    And none of the overpasses had quite collapsed. But they were
shedding. What had Fang called it? Spalling? Sometimes she had to steer
the truck around chunks of concrete lying in the roadway under an
overpass; and she sweated when she drove across a bridge. The dreadful
Kipling. The fans had made him a gift of it.
    He closed it now, because it had grown too dark to read. Gordon gazed
out the windshield into the gathering dusk, where sunset stained the
western horizon. He whispered so as not to wake Alex. "I saw nothing like
this in Freedom. Always we see sunsets from above."
    Sherrine was glad of conversation. Driving in silence disembodied you.
It was talk that made you real. "I've seen the old pictures, looking down on
the Earth. They made my heart ache."
    "Each place has its own beauties. We can learn to love the one, and still
yearn for the other."
    "What were you reading?"
    "A story. A character sketch. 'Lispeth.' It tells of Indian hill country girl
raised by English missionaries. She wears English dress and acts in English
manner. When a young official of the Raj passes through, she falls in love.
He swears he will return and marry her; but he never has such an intention
and abandons her without a thought. Finally she realizes truth. So she
gives up the mission and returns to her village and her gods and becomes
peasant wife."
    "A sad story."
    "A tragedy." She could hear his smile in the dark. "I am half-Russian.
We are not happy without a tragedy. Kipling saw the tragedy of India.
Lispeth thought she was English, but the English never did."
    "I haven't read much Kipling. His books are hard to find these days."
    "Oh, but you must. I will lend you mine. Kipling. And Dickens. And
London. And Twain. Wonderful writers. I have. . . . No. I have only this
one book now. Real book, of real paper. Still, you may borrow it."
    Sherrine smiled to herself. "You like to read."
    "Yes. Yes. Though much I do not understand. References. Shared
assumptions of Downers. I read Austen one time; but her world is like
alien planet. Still, I laugh and cry with her characters."
Crime and Punishment. Characters, even central characters like Karenina
only illustrate the Idea. Very hard for each people to read the other kind.
But my mnatushka said it was important I live in two worlds, the Rodina and
the West. A new society is evolving in the habitats. Western optimism and
Russian gloom.
    Sherrine laughed. "It sounds . . . appropriate. It needs a new literature,
then. A synthesis. Floater literature."
    "Perhaps. Gloomy optimism. Optimistic gloom. I have tried . . . "
Silence.
    "Light-hearted pessimism. Mark Twain?" She turned on her headlights.
Had Gordon said-—"You've tried to write something?" Scratch any eager
reader and you'll find a wannabee writer.
    "Nichevo. Story fragments. A few poems. Such things are not
survivalrelated activity. I must steal time to do them. So they are not very
good. Nothing good enough for you to hear."
    "Have you ever read a fanzine? No, really. I read some pretty awful
stuff in my grandfather's old pulps. Go ahead. Recite one of your poems for
me."
    Next to him, Alex stirred shifted positions.
    "No, I cannot," Gordon whispered.
    She took a hand from the steering wheel and laid it on his arm. "Please?"
    "I . . . If you will not laugh?"
    "I won't laugh. I promise."
    "I hold you to promise." Gordon coughed into his fist, straightened in
the seat. He looked off into the black distance, not meeting her eyes, and
spoke gently:

   "Lying softly, white as snow is snow,
   With delicate beauty, borne delightful to the eye,
   Reflected in the silver, skydropped moon:
   Her face, upturned and smiled on by the stars.
    Your girlfriend. The one you wrote the poem to.
   "She is. Very beautiful."
   Aha! "Have you, ever recited for her?"
   "Yeah-da. I did." Sherrine smiled broadly out the windshield. Gordon
was caught on that cusp where he wanted to keep his love a deep, delicious
secret and shout it to the world at the same time. She had been caught there
once before. She and Jake. A long time ago, but she could remember the
wonderful glow. With Bob it had been different fun, good times, a lot of
laughs; but she had never glowed. "What did she say?"
   "She said my poem was lovely."
   "Well, that's a pretty tepid response to a love poem."
   A long pause, then, "Ah. I had forgotten."
   "Forgotten what?"
   "You do not live in such close quarters as we do. You do not have to be
so careful to avoid offense or to rub against your neighbor's feelings. So
few of us, and still there has been murder, because we cannot escape from
one another. One does not speak of love until one is sure."
   "Then how can you ever be sure?"
   He may have shrugged in the dark, but he did not answer. Sherrine
returned her attention to the road. She kept it at thirty and slowed for every
shadow in the road. Some shadows were hard and rigid. Approaching
bridges, she crawled.
   Ten minutes or an hour later, something went click in her head.
   Oh, no. He means me!
   It had been obvious for some time that both Angels lusted after her.
Lord knew why. Tall and skinny was the Angel ideal, but . . . Lust she
could deal with. A little recreational workout; fun for everyone and no
hard feelings. It was impossible to sit between two horny males-—three,
counting Bob, who was in a perpetual state of rut without picking up the
pheromones. She was more than a little horny herself.
distorted by the convex shape, stared back. He loves me? The truck had a lot
of inertia; a lot of momentum.
    Gordon said, "You are offended."
    "No!" She paused; spoke again. "No, I'm not. I'm flattered. It has been a
long time since anyone loved me."
    Gordon seemed appalled. "Shto govorish? How can that be? There is
Bob-—"
    "He only thinks he's in-—"
    "And Alex."
    The cab was silent except for the older Angel's deep, regular breathing.
    "Alex."
    "Yeah-da. You do not see it? He is Earthborn American: more direct
than most, but still a Floater. Still, even he may have been too oblique for
you. Alex loves you; though he writes no poems. Is why I have hesitated so
long to speak. He is my captain, and-—and I wish to be fair." He shook his
head again. "Life is complicated for my generation. If I was all Russian or
all American, there would be no dilemma."
    "Fair! And he treats you so badly. I mean, I like Alex, too; but he's so
stern and unforgiving. Especially over the crash."
    Gordon nodded slowly. "That is true."
    "And it wasn't really your fault."
    "My fault? Oh, no. It is himself he cannot forgive. He was hero once.
Now he feels neglected. After the first missile we could have aborted to
orbit. Alex chose not to. Because he wished again to be the hero, da? Now
he feels shame. He feels he has failed Freedom; has failed Mary Hopkins;
has failed me."
    "How would you like some advice, Doctor Freud?" The voice was low
and thick with sleep. Sherrine twisted her head to look past Gordon. Alex's
eyes shone in the dim, reflected light. The cab fell silent. The tires hummed
on the roadway.
waiting, their weapons held at a casual order arms. The Alderman s court
cast wary eyes at their visitors and kept their hands away from their own
motley collection of hunting rifles and bows. Bows! Outside, the shoop-shoop
of helicopter blades interrupted the silence. "Well?" Arteria put an edge of
menace into the question.
    The Alderman looked up from the photographs he had been given. He
licked his lips and looked around at his ward heelers. The ward heelers
would not meet his eyes.
    "Yeah. Sure." Alderman Strauss stuck his chin out. "They was here.
What about it?"
    "I'm glad to hear you say that, Alderman. It confirms what we learned
from the truck drivers and your own stevedores." Though those farmers in
Millville were certainly tight-lipped. HAH! "Big Front Yard Sale." And that
van the Kilbournetowners confiscated . . . Lieutenant Billings says it's
maroon under the new paint job. Thank God I saw that deputy's report on
the funeral in Millville. The engine's VIN had matched a van owned by
Robert K. Needleton of Minneapolis, a materialist science professor at U.
Minn. Called in sick, with typhus. Whereabouts unknown.
    "Now, where did they go when they left here?" God, we should clean
out this nest of barbarians, too. Why haven't they been evacuated south? If
the government knew how far they've fallen under the cloak of anarchy . . .
The Green Weenies would love to arrest an entire city for air pollution.
Unless they don't care, or don't dare let the rest of the country know what's
happened here.
    Arteria studied the bitter and edgy men and women clustered around
the Alderman's throne; smelled the ripe smell of fear. Sure. Move them
south. And when conditions to the south worsen, too, move them farther
south. I'm glad it's not my job to do anything about it. Maybe they've got
the right idea. Stay and fight. Like Scithers and his engineer cadre at Fargo
Gap.
relaxing, not quite turning their backs.
    "Hey!" The Alderman's voice stopped them and Arteria lifted a
questioning eyebrow.
    "You're from the government, aina?" The Alderman was out of his seat
and the arrogance and contempt had dropped from his face. "When's the
government gonna come and help us out of this? I've got people dying up
here!"
    Arteria said nothing for a long moment. He still believes in government
bailouts. What can I tell him? That the government is too busy chasing
polluters and nuclear scientists and secular humanists? And people who
cut wood without permission. That the government can't afford it any
more and wouldn't know how, anyway?
    A curt nod. "I'll let them know the way things stand. Things are tough
all across the northern tier."
    The Alderman licked his lips. "Yeah. Sure." He looked around at his
cronies. "Things must be a lot worse other places, right? Otherwise they'da
gotten to us by now."
    Arteria wouldn't meet his eyes. A crafty machine politician. He wasn't
fooled. It was the Titanic all over again. Not enough lifeboats to go around.

    Outside at the command chopper Arteria contacted Redden on the
radio. "Your reports seem to have been correct, sir. That's right. We found
the van. We can confirm Needleton as well as the Hartley woman. Plus
four other males, three Caucasian and one black." Two of them were tall and
skinny and having trouble walking. Things were getting interesting. "There's a
lead here I want to follow up on. No, sir, I don't need anything more. I'll go
solo on this."
    Arteria rang off and handed the set back to the tech sergeant. The
sergeant looked worried. "Do you think that's wise, Captain? You could
send one of the troops, instead."
    "No, Sergeant, this is something I've got to do personally."
    The sergeant saluted and dogtrotted off to find the platoon
commanders. Arteria smiled a slow smile. Solo and in civilian clothes. That
was the best way. No committees to second guess and hamper you. Just
your own wits and reactions. Follow the clues wherever they led, without a
lot of silly debate. Redden and the military brass would want periodic
reports; but that was no problem. Moorkith would be worried that he
wasn't getting all the skinny; let him stew. If the others wanted the credit of
finding the Angels first, they would have to do the same thing. Get off their
asses and scour the highways and byways. Especially, the fannish byways.
    And who better to scour those byways than a gafiated fan?

   Lee parked outside Yngvi's De-Lousing. Her car was plain back, with
civilian license plates from Ohio, because this wasn't the first time she'd
needed to look like a civilian. She went up to the door and waited to see a
sensitive fannish face.
   "FIAWOL," Arteria said.
   Terri Whitehead gave her a blank look. "What?"
   "FIAWOL, and it's damned well true of you if not me."
   "I don't know-—"
   "Look, I don't have a lot of time," Arteria said. "Yngvi is a louse, but
throwing a handful of rotten snow at me isn't going to get rid of me."
   "Who are you?" Terri asked grimly. "The only people here are the
Alderman's slaves-—and police. And you?"
   "Air Force," Arteria said. "I'm in charge of finding the Angels."
   "Angels?"
   "Look, Dr. Whitehead, if I wanted you in jail I'd have come with a squad
and taken you away." Lee took a photograph from her jacket pocket. "Here.
Sherrine Hartley and Bob Needleton. They were here. Incidentally, Dr.
Needleton called in to his university claiming he had typhus. I suppose he
got that idea from you. Ideas are contagious."
   "I-—"
right. But you re police now.
   "Air Force," Lee said. "Air Police. Office of Special Investigations. Yes.
Look, Dr. Whitehead, this is it: you tell me where they went, or-—"
   "Or?"
   "Or I walk out of here, of course, and keep looking on my own. You're
safe no matter what you do. But you won't know who finds them."
   "What will you do with them?"
   Lee shook her head. "I won't kid you. I don't know myself. Let me point
out that I can always find them. I can go back and take the Tre-house apart.
Somebody there knows. Save your friends a lot of trouble, Terri. Where'd
they go?"
   "I won't tell you."
   Lee shrugged. "Ok but you're making a lot of trouble for 3MJ, and the
result will be the same no matter what. I sort of like the old boy, but-—
anyway, good luck." She turned to go.
   "Wait."
   "Yes?"
   "Damn you. Leave the others alone. Chicago. They wanted to go to
Chicago, so we took them there. To the museum. The big one, Science and
Industry."
   "Museum. Right. Thank you. Now we've got one more problem. You'll
want to call them. I'm afraid I can't let you do that, so a couple of my troops
will sit with you for the rest of the day. You're not under arrest unless you
want to be, but you're incommunicado for a few hours." Lee went toward
her car, stopped, looked back. "FIJAGH," she said.
    Orange is a Taurus, of course. (Boeuf l Orange!) But what of the rest of
the zodiac? What's your sign There is Pisces, after all. How many fish swim
in the ocean of night? Or Sagittarius. No, I'm not sure what that means,
either. But it must mean something! Tap into your cosmic connection and
feel the vibes of the universe. I'm sure you'll come up with something
useful. Let's see . . . Aquarius is obvious; a bit too obvious, I'm afraid. As
for Gemini, they had better quit cloning around. And Aries has taken it on
the lamb. Honestly. I wouldn't try to pull the wool over your eyes.
    We all know how important the Sweepstakes is, so I know you’ll all
send your entries in promptly.
    Now, the next article on surrealistic housekeeping is one you have all
been asking for. How do you keep watches from melting on the arms and
backs of your sofas and chairs? Why, it is simplicity itself, provided, of
course, that you have enough lace Dalis . . .
    ***
    Ike Redden threw the printout down in disgust. "All right," he said to
Moorkith. "You tell me what it means!"
    "Captain Arteria seems to understand this stuff," Moorkith said.
    "She's on a special assignment," Redden said.
    She! "Where?"
    "Damned if I know," Redden said. "But she gets results."
    ***
    There was a TV in the lobby of the Museum of Science and Appropriate
Technology. Lee Arteria was just showing her credentials to the manager
when the newscaster said, "More on the ice nudes, from Winnipeg. Gerald
Cornelius and Anthony Rogers were found on foot on the Fargo highway,
both suffering from frostbite. They told police of being rescued from their
wrecked truck by a tribe of naked and near-naked savages."
    All of Lee Arteria's assumptions came crashing down around her ears.
They'd done it again, they'd moved the Angels out of the United States
   And to hell with them. Lee Arteria was after bigger game.

    She looked around the empty garage. "Milkheim Low Fat Milk," she
said, and noted it in her casebook. "You're sure about this?"
    The maintenance mechanic nodded enthusiastically. "Yes, ma'am, that's
what they had painted on them. 'Milkheim.' Means 'Milk Home' in
German. Now Mr. Cole, he called them trucks by names, a name for each
one of 'em. One of them was Larry, and I disremember the other, but when
there was three, one of them was Moe, I remembers that. Set a big store by
those trucks, Mr. Cole did. Always taking care of 'em, giving me money to
look after them, keep them ready to run, but he never took 'em noplace."
    "Tell me about Cole," Arteria said.
    He eyed her suspiciously. "What call you got to be asking about Mr.
Cole?" he demanded. "He's a nice man. Touched in the head some, yes,
ma'am, some people thought he was plumb crazy, but he's a nice man, no
trouble at all if'n you, didn't mess around with his trucks. Or his rocket
ship."
    "Rocket ship." Lee smiled. "We just want to help Mr. Cole. Dr. Cole,
actually. He was very famous once, did you know that? He has earned a
pension from the National Science Foundation, but there was something
wrong with the paperwork."
    Joe Jefferson nodded sourly. He understood mistakes in paperwork.
    "So all I need is his signature, and he can collect his pension," Lee said.
"It's not a lot of money, but I bet he can use it. Is he around?"
    "No, ma'am, leastways I haven't seen him. He used to sleep in that
rocket, but a couple of days ago a lot of people come here and took them
trucks away, and his. . . and some other stuff that belonged to Mr. Cole,
and I ain't seen him since."
    "A lot of people," Arteria said. She smiled. "Tell me about them."
     Fang guided the milk truck through the interchange and onto I-25
South. The Denver skyline glittered before him: tall, boxy, glass towers cut
at strange angles. Fang squinted his eyes and tried to imagine that they
were a growth of immense quartz crystals set in the midst of the High
Plains. By aliens. Uh-huh: aliens. After cutting their teeth on Great
Pyramids and Easter Island self-portraits, the space gods had finally hit
their stride with this immense crystalline structure. White quartz, black
quartz. Quartz as clear as glass; opaque, stony quartz.
     Suppose someone discovered Denver's alien origin, and the aliens were
still around! Disguised as real estate developers. Good. That was good. Who
was in a better position to "grow" a crystal city than its developers? Come
to think of it, who was more alien? What hidden purposes did they have
behind their weirdly shaped erections?
     Okay. The aliens are metaphors for mindless, runaway development.
That made the story literary. So, the aliens realize they've been found. What
do they do?
     They capture Our Heroes and turn them into bug juice. Alien Cliché
number one, vintage 1950.
     They capture Our Heroes and take them on a tour of the universe and
invite them to join the galactic confederation. Alien Cliché number two,
vintage 1980.
     Damn Hollywood. No matter what kind of aliens you had, they were
already used up.
     No, wait. Remember Nancy Kress's "People Like Us?" That's it. The
aliens are neither benign nor malevolent. They do what they do for their
own reasons . . . like the aliens who built Clarke's Rama. Like the Europeans
coming to America. The Spaniards came for gold; the Incas were just in the
way. The destruction of the Amerind societies was simply a spin-off of
Europeans doing European things for European reasons.
     Good title: "Spin-off."
      Only ten hours, Officer. Really.
     "All right. We're strict on that in Colorado." He walked back to his
cruiser.
     Fang let out a deep breath. I am sleepy, he thought. And there's sure no
hurry, they don't want me to be in Albuquerque until tomorrow afternoon.
I'll get that light fixed and catch some z's. He was careful to accelerate
smoothly and level out, his speed just at the limit. After a while the cruiser
passed him and went on ahead, leaving him to his thoughts.
     So, it's the same with the aliens who are building Denver-—and all the
other strange glass-box downtowns. Aliens doing alien things for alien
reasons. Only human egocentrism would suppose that they came to
conquer or assist us.
     So Our Heroes discover the aliens and the aliens don't do anything.
Who would believe it anyway? They don't even bother to capture the
protagonists and tell them . . . No, wait. The reader has to know what's
coming down, so someone's got to explain. Unless he sent the story to Ted
Bistrop at Fantasy & . . . Nothing was ever explained in the stories he
published.
     ***
     The fax machine was built into the car's dashboard. It startled Arteria
with its "wheep, wheep."

  PETERBILT 18-WHEELER TANKER MARKED MILKHEIM LOW FAT
MILK PROCEEDING SOUTH ON I-25 AT DENVER. DRIVER OLD FART
WITH BEARD. COLORADO STATE HIGHWAY POLICE OBSERVED
MINOR SAFETY VIOLATION. NO CITATION ISSUED.
  BILLINGS.

  Denver. What in hell do they want with a truck full of rocket fuel in
Denver? Whatever it is, I've got some driving to do if I'm going to catch up.
admit.
   Now I can never go to space. I catch criminals.
   It was a job she mostly liked. She was good at it, good at solving
puzzles, and she liked the power that being an OSI Special Agent aye her.
Twitching the nerves of the mundanes, she liked that, too.
   Not Denver! West of there. Edwards! It came as a sudden flash, as things
often did for her, and it took her several minutes to construct what her
subconscious had leaped past. Angels Down. Fans to the Rescue. What to
do with Angels. Send them back to Heaven. How? Dr. Cole's broken Titan,
but that wouldn't do it. What would? What was left?
   What was left was the only working rocket ship in the United States.
Phoenix, sitting on Thunder Ridge at Edwards Air Force Base.
   ***
   Morning in the desert.
   Alex watched the sun come up across Bob's shoulder, teasing streamers
of fog from the sluggish Washita River that ran parallel to the highway.
The fog slithered across the barren, dusty ground and wrapped itself
around the sparse stands of Lone Pine and scrub grass that dotted the
otherwise empty land. The pale light of dawn created a wash of white,
green and brown; a weird, alien vista of mist and grass and sand.
   "What do you think of it?" Bob asked. "Quite a sight."
   Alex shook his head. "I was just getting used to the green."
   "Oh, this part of Oklahoma used to be green, I'm told. You didn't see
real hardpan desert until you hit west Texas. Now there's no rain and in a
few years there won't be a speck of green left hereabouts."
   Alex looked at the sleeping form beside him. "I should wake Gordon
up. He could write a poem about it."
   There must have been something in his voice, because Bob gave him an
odd look. "You have something against poetry? "
   Alex shook his head. "Never mind. It's not important." Bob said nothing.
Finally, to fill the silence, Alex continued. "Gordon is irresponsible." He
     Look, Bob, I haven t said this before because . . . well, because. But the
only people they assign to dip trips are the expendables, like Gordon."
    "And yourself?"
    "Yeah-da. Me, too. Nothing more useless than yesterday's hero. I'm no
good for outside work anymore. I can't even work in the command module
because I get the shakes whenever-—oh, hell. I don't want your, pity. It's
probably just as well that I'm stuck down here."
    "Don't be too sure of that. Being stuck."
    "No, Bob, don't mistake my orbit. I want to get back upstairs more than
anything I've ever wanted. Almost anything. Not adventure; not glory. I'm
just homesick. Freedom's my hometown, and I miss it. But I really don't
expect it to happen. And if it doesn't . . . Well, I can make a life for myself
down here."
    "Hanging around the docks," Bob said with a half-smile.
    "What?"
    "Never mind. Don't dismiss Phoenix out of hand, though."
    "I haven't. But there's more to a successful launch than stealing a ship
and taking off. Damn, I know what's involved. Maybe this Hudson
character does have the ROMs. Maybe the IMU isn't locked up so tight as
all that. But eighty-eight thousand liters of liquid hydrogen?"
    "You want-—"
    "Forty-four thousand liters of LOX? Someone will notice!"
    Bob shrugged. "You want me to tell you it's all worked
    out. That we've got a plan? We don't. But, hell, we've got something
better than a plan."
    Alex didn't ask him what that was.
    ***
    The fax wheeped again.

  REDDEN AWARE OF MILKHEIM REQUEST AND REPORTS. PLEASE
PHONE ME ON SECURE LINE SOONEST.
    The fans own a church?         Albuquerque, fine. And he s intercepting
reports about the trucks."
   "Yes, ma'am."
   Lee thought for a moment. "All right. Quietly cancel our request for
information on those trucks. Do it in a way that makes it look like we're
embarrassed about asking. Then see what you can find out about that
church. I'm nearly to Sante Fe, I'll get on to Albuquerque. Ask around and
get me a clue. Any clue. But don't let them know I'm out here."
   "Well-—"
   "I'm pretty sure I know where they're taking those Angels," Arteria said.
"And why all the odd purchases. You were right, Billings, it's fans. Now if
we do this my way, the Air Force will get all the credit. That means you
and me."
   "Yes, ma'am." He sounded enthusiastic.
   "When you've got the other stuff done, get my chopper and our crew
and take it to George Air Force Base in the Mojave. OSI official
investigation."
   "George Air Force Base. Bring your helicopter and crew, and come
myself. That place is like the back side of the moon, Captain."
   "I know."
   "All right, ma'am."
   "Good man. I'll meet you there."

   A fannish church in Albuquerque. There were a lot of fans in New
Mexico. Fair number of writers, too. But a church? With luck Billings
would find out something.
   Lee Arteria drove steadily. She was just passing through Sante Fe when
the fax began. "Wheep! Wheep!"

  UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD OF THE WAY. FORMERLY CHURCH
OF SCIENTOLOGY. NORTHEAST AREA ALBUQUERQUE BASE OF
need is to get them to Edwards. Once on an Air Force Base, they re mine.
All mine.
    Which means I ought to do something about this trap . . .
    ***
    Sherrine was almost tired enough to pull Bob out of the bunk alcove.
She kept driving because they were already in Albuquerque. The church
couldn't be far. A pew would make a hard bed, but a long one. Sherrine was
looking forward to that. So, she guessed, were the Angels.
    The roar of the huge motor changed timbre. Trouble? Something else?
Numb in the ears and the mind, she still recognized the sound just before
six motorcycles roared up into her rear-view mirror.
    She held the truck steady. This ship-on-wheels must be terrifying to a
cyclist.
    They drove past. All but one. Harry Czescu (why had Harry joined a
covey of strange bikers?). He was waving her over, arm windmilling in
seeming terror.
    There was no place to pull over. At a Y-intersection she angled right, no
longer headed for the Universal Brotherhood of the Way. Still looking . . .
but Harry was motioning her forward, to follow him.
    Sherrine called, "Who's awake?"
    "Yeah-da."
    "Alex, get Bob up. Shake him if he's settled." Like salad dressing . . .
    Harry led and she followed. Onto the I-40 freeway and onward, west.
Flagstaff was three hundred and forty miles away. She'd need fuel much
sooner than that.
    "Sherrine? What?"
    "Harry's got us back on the I-40."
    Bob rubbed his eyes. "He wouldn't do that lightly. What happened
exactly?"
The Angels were sliding out, too, slithering down to the dirt, distrusting
gravity.
    Harry pulled into the cloud of dust, bringing more. "It's a trap! We've
got to keep moving!"
    "What about Fang? And Jenny?"
    "I left Jenny on watch in case I missed you. I'll have to go back for her. I
found Fang sleeping it off while he waited for dark. Jesus. I think I lucked
out. After I saw the church, I found a bunch of bikers and pulled into the
middle of them. They got me close to Fang. I gave him the word, and then I
caught up with the bikes." Harry patted the metal flank of his motorcycle.
"Goood boy. I don't know if I was followed or not. But someone knows
we're here, and someone else must have-—Jesus, we've got to get-—"
    Bob's voice was soothing. "We can't outrun anything except on the
straightaway. So why don't you tell us about this trap?"
    Harry's head sagged. Then his body followed. He was doing a back
stretch, hanging from the hip bones. He came up, rolling for full effect.
"That's better. Yeah. The church looked fine. I went past it, figuring to park
a decent distance away, and I saw the billboard. I saw just enough that I
pulled into a Taco Bell and Jenny and I took a pew near a window so we
could study it. Here."
    He handed across a notepad. The printing was Jenny's:

  SERMON BY THE REVEREND NEHEMIAH SCUDDER IF THIS GOES
ON

   "Uh . . . huh."
   "What is it?"
   The crushing power in an Angel's hand was always a shock. Bob said,
"Literary reference, Gordon. Robert Heinlein, 'If This Goes On . . . ,' in
which the Reverend Nehemiah Scudder turns the United States into a
66. Then to asphalt, then gravel: the roads grew narrower and harder to
drive. Why were they being led here in eighteen-wheeler trucks?
    Bob had to fight the wheel because of potholes. It was midafternoon; he
had been driving since dawn, and he was puffing from fatigue and the thin
air. Sherrine knew that she didn't have the strength in the arms to spell
him.
    Motel up ahead: long two-story buildings with porches. A more
compact, more ornate structure must be Registration. A few bulbs in the
signs were dark. There weren't many cars. The drive-in next door was
dead. Nobody had bothered to change the letters on the marquee:

   SCI FI RILLER
   OCTO SSY

   "The city must have moved a highway on them," Bob said. He was
driving dead slow now, hunched like an ape over the wheel. "In Flagstaff
they're always doing that. It's slow death for a motel. Or a drive-in." He
pulled between paired pillars into the driveway.
   "Octocon," Sherrine said, "used to be in Santa Cruz."
   Two men were running to meet them . . . then a dozen. More. The first
were guiding the truck. Bob was muttering to himself as he followed them
toward one of the long, windowed buildings . . . with a face missing at the
narrow end. They guided Curly into the opening, into a shell two stories
high.
   "Crazy. Do you suppose they never finished it?"
   "Smuggling. The customers weren't stopping anymore and import
duties kept going up. I'm guessing, of course," Sherrine said. "Pull up to the
end. They re lowering some kind of false front behind us."
   ***
   It was not a big con. Four long buildings enclosed brown lawn and a
pool. They had taken over just one of the buildings; they stayed clear of the
nobody s been asking about tall supermen.
   The rooms were all bedrooms, all the same size; but doors could be
opened between. Three upstairs rooms were the Con Suite, and that was
where everyone was eating.
   There was a punch bowl filled with a pinkish liquid of uncertain
genealogy. Several bottles of homemade wine lined the windowsills. Tables
pushed against the walls had bowls of popcorn and corn chips and various
dips, and a vat of soup sat on the floor. There was great variety to the food,
and a flavor of panic and improvisation.
   "I'm sorry there isn't more," Buck Coulson apologized. "Times are tight.
Be sure to keep your glass handy so you don't accidentally use someone
else's."
   Numbers were hard to gauge because the convention was so broken up,
but Alex hadn't counted more than thirty people.
   He was half-reclined in a chair and footstool, delighting in his ability to
sprawl. Sprawling was wonderful after scores of hours of being wedged
into a bouncing truck cabin. He eavesdropped with half his attention, and
watched the women.
   Sherrine was asking Tom Degler, "You worked up a convention just for
us?"
   "We don't need a good excuse. A bad one is fine." Degler's face was
surrounded by a sunburst of bright, red hair; full beard, hair tied up in
back with a rubber band. His legs, which Alex could see between the knee
socks and shorts that he wore, were also hairy. Perfectly adapted to an ice age,
Alex thought.
   "Fast work," Sherrine said.
   "Well, but you're still carrying the Navstar transponder, right? And you
had to have a place to rest. It's a long drive across Oklahoma and the
panhandle. Ever since they caught S. B. O'Rafferty, there's been no safe
house on that leg of the Fanway."
welcoming party. He looked around the Con Suite, a bedroom with the
beds removed, a few chairs, fans sitting on the carpet. "This is all that's left
of Suncon and Bubonicon and the others. Slim pickings, eh?"
    "Worldcon wasn't much bigger," Sherrine told him.
    "Speaking of Worldcon," said Barbara Dinsby, "did you hear? Tony
Horowitz got himself arrested to distract the cops during your getaway."
Dinsby was a thin woman with long, dark red hair. She wore no makeup
and tended to lean toward you when she spoke. Alex considered her the
second prettiest woman present. According to Degler she already had
several stories on the samizdat network, one of them critically praised.
    Bob raised his eyebrows. "Horowitz?"
    "Sure. When the chips are down, we all play on the same side."
    "Did he make bail?" asked Sherrine.
    "Tremont took care of everything. And Tony's book sales have tripled.
Everyone on the Network has been downloading his manuscripts; and half
the pros are lining up for his shared world project."
    Sherrine craned her neck. "So, Tom. Who'd you snag for Guests of
Honor?"
    Degler beamed. "Well, you, actually."
    "What?"
    "Sure. Are there any fans more worthy than you and Pins, here?"
    Alex ginned at Sherrine's sudden discomfiture. "Don't fight it," he said.
And, in a more serious voice, he added, "You deserve it."
    "But . . . "
    Degler put his hand on Alex's thin shoulder. "Gabe and Rafe, of course,
are the Pro GoH's."
    Alex looked at him. "Now, wait a-—"
    "What do we have to do?" asked Gordon.
    "Not much," Degler told him. Just mingle with the guests; talk to them.
You get a "free con membership . . ."
    "Spasebo."
spaceman! You could get up there in the pulpit and preach from the
Albuquerque phone directory and still get a standing ovation."

    Indeed, he could. As the fans milled around his chair, Alex discovered
that anything he said was soaked up by his eager listeners. The little-orbit-
to-orbit "broomsticks" that they rode between the stations? Fascinating.
(And five minutes later he heard two fans blocking out a story about
witches in space.) The details of hydroponic farming? Endlessly interesting.
Especially the painstaking attention to detail that Ginjer Hu demanded.
    Filkers were gearing up out by the pool; the laughter was louder than
the singing.
    Sherrine settled onto the narrow arm of his chair. "Comfy?"
    "Very. Next best thing to floating."
    "So let's float?"
    He peered up at her elvish I've got-a-secret smile. He said, If you have
antigravity, we've chased our tails a long way for your amusement."
    She laughed like bubble-wrap popping. "Alex, it's possible to float in
water. The Dinsby just took Gordon out to the spa-—""
    "Yeah, water."
    "I forget how much water there is. We walked across a frozen river, I've
seen the damn Mississippi, I don't know why it keeps hitting me like
this-—"
    "But if Gordon and Barbara Dinsby are out there, every horny male and
curious fan is going to be stripping down, too, so if you want to float-—"
    "Lead me."
    It was turning chilly. There was a stack of towels on a webbed recliner.
The pool had long been empty, but the spa was bubbling and steaming. It
was eight feet across, circular, with people-sized indentations in the rim.
Gordon and the red-haired woman were already in, and nestled
comfortably close. In the dark around them, fans were stripping down.
and a short woman moved up behind him. A circle scratch.
   Sherrine, entirely naked and entirely lovely, slid into the water ahead of
Gordon. Gordon's hands rose in the air; his fingers flexed like a pianist's.
Sherrine waved imperiously to Alex, and Alex slid in ahead of her.
   She spoke against his ear, a warm breath within the steam and roar of
bubbles: "Scratch or massage?"
   Decisions, decisions.

    The huckster was a skinny gent with an unruly mop of salt-and-pepper
hair; somewhat elderly, but with a twinkle in his eye. He wore a colorful,
billowing shirt and stood behind a table stacked high with books from
which he importuned passing fans. He wasn't getting much action. They
were all wet from the spa, and the night was driving them in.
    "Hi," he said to Alex, "I'm Thurlow Helvetian. May I shamelessly try to
sell you a book?"
    "You can try," Alex allowed as he paused at the table. He was bundled
up now, and nearly dry, and still warm. "You'd have better luck with
Gordon. I'm not much of a reader. Then again, Gordon's still in the spa."
    Helvetian nodded to himself. "Start slow." He rummaged about on the
table and emerged triumphantly with a cloth-bound volume. "Here. A
Night on the Town. This is a fair sampler of my work. All short stories, so
you get it in small doses."
    Alex studied the book. The cover bore a stamp: Certified Elf-Free!
"Fantasy."
    "Rational fantasy," Helvetian assured him. "Fantasy with rivets. It
means getting the details right, making sure it all hangs together logically."
    "My matushka once said-—" Alex turned and saw that Gordon had come
up behind him. Gordon was surrounded by a group of five femmefans,
including Barbara and Sherrine. "My matushka once said that the secret of
realism was to describe the thumb so well that the reader thinks he has
seen the entire hand."
out between you. Thurlow, you re not going to miss the GoH speeches, are
you?"
   "I didn't used to go to the program items . . ."
   The Angels looked at each other. Neither had anything planned.
Neither wanted to go first.
   "Together," Gordon said.

    "Mir was old. A tested, fully manned space station, more than the
United States ever had, but old," Gordon said. "We had a Buryat shuttle up
when everything stopped, but that was useless, not much more than a
missile without guidance. We made it part of the habitat and rifled it for
parts. There was not much on the moon, but we could work with what
there was because of all that lovely working mass free for the taking-—"
    "And oxygen. There's infinite oxygen in lunar rock."
    "So we had Moonbase. We even expanded a little. And in orbit, Mir and
two shuttle tanks from which to make Freedom. One shuttle, ruined. And
three NASPS."
    The room was filled with rows of chairs. Behind them there was still
standing room; the balcony doors were opened wide.
    These thirty people were more than he could have gathered aboard
Freedom, without leaving crucial functions untended. All these solemn eyes
...
    "Now, each of the NASPS is different," Alex said, "and neither of them
could carry cargo, because each was an, experimental hypersonic ramjet
airplane. Piranha couldn’t even reach orbit without an auxiliary tank at
takeoff!"
    "And of course these were no longer available."
    "You get a bubble for two and the rest is fuel tank and motors. So
landing it and coming back to orbit-—"
    Gordon was really enjoying himself. Nobody in Mir or Freedom had ever
looked at him like this. He said, "You would do only for the joy of it, and it
her hull began to sing a bass dirge. My bones could feel . . .

    "I've lost track of my cup," Alex said.
    "In the old days," Sherrine whispered in Alex's ear, "there would have
been plastic or styrofoam cups."
    "Nonbiodegradable plastic or styrofoam cups," said Degler, appearing
out of nowhere.
    “Bullshit," said Sherrine. "Plastics are recyclable. Shred it and melt it and
make more. The fact that no one bothered gave plastic a bad rep."
    "Well, not quite," Degler said, fingering his beard and grinning. "There
are EPA rules that forbid the recycling of certain plastics. The styrofoam
used by fast-food chains was chemically recyclable; but the EPA forbade it
because"-—he gave an exaggerated shudder-—"because it had once
touched food."
    "Yeah, and they replaced the stuff with coated paper, that was also
nonbiodegradable and nonrecyclable. So the rules had zero impact on the
environment and the landfills . . . And why are you laughing, Tom?"
    "What if it was on purpose?"
    "What do you mean? "
    Alex noticed that a small crowd had gathered around them, listening
intently to what Degler had to say. He saw Bob Needleton and Barbara
Dinsby and the huckster, Thurlow Helvetian; Gordon's head topping them
all. We really do stand out in a crowd. Gordon had been letting his beard grow
ever since St. Louis, but it was not much to speak of yet. Sherrine had
called it a beatnik beard, whatever that meant.
    Dealer glanced left and right, and leaned forward. Everyone else
instinctively leaned toward him. "I meant, what if it was on purpose? There
was a company in California that bought chemical wastes from other
companies; processed the waste and broke it down; and sold the end
products as feed stock. Closed loop recycling. The state EPA shut them
down."
     Exactly, said Degler. So why do so many environmental regulations
wind up, harming the environment? I say, what if it's on purpose?"
    "Can't be," said someone in the crowd. "What purpose?"
    "Yeah, who would gain?"
    "The Babbage Society? "
    "No, the Greens. The Greens would gain job security," said someone else.
    "Job security how? They're pledged to clean things up."
    "No they aren't," said Tom Degler with a grin. "They're pledged to
advocate rules whose apparent purpose is to make someone else clean
things up.”
    "That's right. There's a difference. The rules only require actions, not
results."
    "I have a question," said an elderly fan. "Why did the Greens become so
popular back in the '90s, which was after the worst pollution had been
already cleaned up? None of you kids remembers the old days, when coal
smoke blanketed every city and the Cuyahoga River caught fire."
    Alex had finally figured out why Degler grinned all the time. He was
watching funny pictures inside his head. "This is your hobby, isn't it?"
    Degler grinned at him. "What is?"
    "Throwing out wild ideas and watching people play with them."
    "No, this is my profession. Dropping seed crystals in a supersaturated
solution. Plumbing is my hobby."

   Chairman Buck Coulson produced a giant cake covered with chocolate
frosting, baked in the shape of a manhole cover. He presented it to Degler
as Con Chair. Degler wiped a tear from his eye. "I'm touched, folks. I am
truly touched."
   "Hell, Tom," said Bob. "We've known that for years."
   "Okay!" said Buck rubbing his hands. "That's three uses." He pulled a
scrap of paper from his pocket and made a note.
    Have some bhlog? She held her glass up to him.
   "No, thanks. I had one. It ripped the top of my head off. What's in that
stuff?"
   "Oh, I don't know. No one does. It's a closely guarded secret known to
no one." Sherrine giggled again.
   "You're drunk."
   She pressed a finer against her lip. "Shhhhh. Maybe no one will notice."
She drank the rest of her bhlog. Then she pointed at the cake.
"Chocolate-covered manhole covers are, is the only idea Tom ever threw
out that never went anywhere. What can you say about chocolatecovered
manhole covers?"
   Alex smiled. "Not much."
   "A cake for Tom, that's three. A source of food on an alien planet, that
was first."
   "What was the second?"
   Her diction became careful and solemn. "The American Dental
Association thinks they are bad for children's teeth."

    It must have been almost one in the morning. There was only a handful
of fans still lolling about in the Video Room. Sherrine sat tailor fashion near
the door, talking tete-á-tete with Dinsby. The others had wandered off.
Some were dozing on the floor. Buck grew sufficiently bored to turn on the
TV. He sat splayed in the sofa changing channels at random with his
phaser. Tom Degler snored beside him.
    Slouched in the armchair with his head buzzing, Alex let his mind drift
with the TV. Buck would not stay on one channel long enough for anything
to make sense. If, after five glasses of bhlog, anything could make sense.
    "For relief of hemorrhoids," the TV declared, "use-—°!°-—the President
of the United States-—°!°-—couldn't imagine anything more exciting-—
°!°-—building value in every step of design and construction-—°!°-—don't
miss all the action-—°!°-—with Barbie-—°!°-—But what if lance discovers
          seeing them should contact the State Police. Captain Lee Arteria of
the U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations is leading the pursuit.
Outdoor shot of a hard-looking officer in fatigues. "We're piecing the
evidence together, Heather," Arteria told the newser. "There are several
promising lines of inquiry-—"
    Alex grabbed the phaser from Coulson's hands and stabbed at the
buttons until the screen went black.
    Bob spoke without turning from the screen. "The backdrop. It was the
Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago."
    Coulson frowned. "Arteria looks familiar. I've seen him somewhere
before. At a con? Art show?" He shook his head. "A long time ago."
    Had Sherrine seen this? Alex twisted and looked by the door. Barbara
and Sherrine were gone. But they were there earlier.
    He left the Video Room and wandered down the corridor. An open
room door showed fans carpeting the beds and floor. Other doors were
closed and silent. The Con was shutting down for the night.
    Downstairs in one of the function rooms, he found Dinsby in a circle of
femmefans surrounding Gordon.
    " . . . syllables, accents or feet," Gordon was saying.
    "But English stresses are too strong for syllabic poetry, which is why
haiku does not work in English. Accentual poetry is the native English
structure. As in Beowulf, which has four beats per line with central pause.
Is also the limerick like you hear in nursery rhymes and rap. But accent
structure can degenerate into mere broken prose,' like free verse, which is
basic form used for advertising copy. Was Chaucer who invented the foot,
which combines accent and syllable-— "Yes, Alex, what is it?"
    Alex put a hand on a table to steady himself. "I'm looking for Sherrine.
Have you seen her?"
    "She was with me earlier," Dinsby said. "I came out here for the
midnight poetry panel. I saw her leave the room party a few minutes ago. I
think she went outside." She pointed to the side door on the right.
chasing you.
   "You saw the news clip, then."
   She said nothing, but Alex could sense her nod. "I won't make a very
good 'wanted fan,' will I? If they showed Fang or Crazy Eddie on national
TV with everyone in the country asked to turn them in . . . they'd throw a
party."
   "They think they can't be caught. They have faith in their own wits."
   "I'm in real trouble, then. My instincts are no damned good."
   "Your instincts are the best."
   "I'm drunk, and I'm depressed, and I'm cold."
   Alex didn't think he could do much about the first two complaints. He
put his arm around her. "Do you want to go back inside? It's warmer
there."
   He could feel her shake her head. "No. I'm fine now." She snuggled
against him. "Who would have thought it could get so chilly in the desert?"
   Alex pointed to the sky with his left hand. "No clouds. The ground
radiates its heat into open space. I bet you could make ice that way."
   "You can."
   "Ah."
   "Look at the moon," she said. It was three-quarters full and just kissing
the horizon, swollen by the lens of air. "It's beautiful, isn't it?"
   "Not so beautiful as the Earth, looking back."
   "Have you ever been there? To the moon."
   "No." And now he could never go. Alex can't go out and play because
he might get a nosebleed. I don’t even have a suit anymore.
   "I'd like to go there. I've always wanted to go there. Ever since I read
Space Captives of the Golden Men. I forget who wrote it. A juvenile. These
kids are kidnapped by Martians-—we could still imagine Martians in those
days-—and taken to the moon; and I've always wanted to be . . . to be. . ."
     Then forget your damned courtship rites and your damned propriety.
You're in Faerie now. All the habitat rules are suspended."
    "Except cold!" he laughed.
    She grabbed him and ran her hands down his body. The moon had set
and the desert night was as black as death. The galactic spiral was a
garland draped across the sky. They fumbled under their clothing,
exploring each other; never quite exposed to the night cold and growing
warm enough with the effort. Alex discovered that if you were careful and
if you wanted something badly enough, you could accomplish anything.
None of it was planned.
    It was better than a plan.
nurse! Sometimes I wonder what a frail old geriatric patient thinks when
he sees, or she sees, Rosey Grier bearing down on her with a bedpan and a
mucking great hypodermic. You get me doing that black-belt stuff and
they'll arrest me for breathing."
    The house was huge, a six-bedroom mansion built in the 1920s during
the Hollywood era. It hadn't been painted in years, and now stood almost
isolated. There were houses on both sides of it but they'd sunk even further
into decay, not quite abandoned, but inhabited by people who just didn't
give a damn. Mews led Long up the driveway to the garage in back. There
were other bicycles there. The garage was dimly lit by a single electric bulb.
    "Big place," Long said. "I knew Los Angeles fans had a clubhouse, but
this is something!"
    "Heh, heh. You don't know the half of it." Steve swept his hand around.
"There was a freeway going through. The Greens got that stopped, but the
whole area had already been condemned. Nobody can get permits to build
here, or to tear anything down either. It’s all pretty stupid, but it's good for
LASFS. Glen Bailey knew it first because he's a Green."
    Long shied off a bit. "You've got a tame Green?"
    "Glennie's not tame. But he's definitely one of ours, and he got us this
house. They're paying us a caretaker fee to keep the druggies out!” He
grinned. "Of course, they aren't paying the Los Angeles Science Fantasy
Society, Inc. They're paying the LA Safety First Society. The checks still
read LASFS."
    "You're still incorporated?"
    "No, they yanked our Inc. ‘Not in the public interest.’ I keep forgetting."
    There were more lights at the big house. Steve led the way to the back
door and knocked, then stood in the dim pool of light from the porch lamp.
After a moment the door opened. " 'Lo, Steve," a large elderly woman said.
    " 'Lo, June. This is George Long."
    "I know George," she said. "You're a long way from NESFA."
plaster. Most of the splendor was in decay, but here and there someone had
worked to restore it.
    The upstairs room was locked. Steve knocked and waited. Finally the
door was opened by a tall man with stringy gray hair and bad teeth. He
stood in the doorway. "Steve."
    "I need to get on-line."
    Merlin Null, LASFS Senior Committeeman, frowned at Mews. "The
rules are, you tell me, and I do it if I think it's safe."
    "Merlin, this is Stone from Heaven business."
    Null thought about it. "Have to check." He came out into the hall,
carefully locking the door behind him, and led the way down the hall to
another room.
    C.C. Miller, often called Cissy for reasons no one remembered, was
Chairman of the LASFS. He sat at a table in the old butlers pantry making a
list. Miller was a large, round man, gray haired as most LASFASians were.
His wife, Ginny, looked half his age, but she always had.
    "Steve wants me to log him on," Null said.
    Miller nodded knowingly. "It's all right. Steve, when you get done,
we've got a package for you."
    "Package?"
    "Fan Express," Miller said. "From Curtis. Address ‘Bottle Shop Keeper,
care of Steve Mews.’ I gather he wants you to deliver it."
    "That figures. See you in a minute."
    Back inside the locked computer room there were three people at a
poker table. Hands had been dealt, and there were poker chips in front of
the players. No one really cared much about illegal gambling, but it was a
cover for the locked door.
    Null locked the door again, then opened a cabinet. Inside were more
poker chips and cards. Null reached past them to open the back of the
cabinet, exposing a computer console. Null pulled it out. "OK, what?"
    "FAPANET," Steve said. "I need to get on."
    That s it? Null asked.
   "That's a lot," Steve said. "Now I need to see C.C. again. I'm going to
need some help. Starting with a car and somebody to drive."

    The drive from Los Angeles through Mojave took nearly three hours in
C.C. Miller's underpowered car. Interstate 5, the main north-south
California artery, was still maintained, but when they turned off into the
Antelope Valley and headed toward Palmdale the decay in America's
infrastructure was obvious.
    They crossed the San Andreas Fault line. "Lucky so far," Miller said.
"We've been expecting The Big One for years . . ."
    "They said at Minicon that the Ice would definitely trigger it," Steve
said. "Guess that would close the highway for good."
    Palmdale was half-deserted. They passed a stand of dead trees and
grapevines. "Can't say I disagree with the Greens on that one," Steve said.
"Sucking water out of Sacramento to grow Christmas trees and grapes in
the desert never did make sense."
    "It would if you had enough electricity to make the fresh water," C.C.
Miller said. "But, hell, that's science fiction."
    They drove through Mojave, past the faded signs proudly announcing
Phoenix and Voyager. Now Mojave was a small road town, as it had once
been. They turned east.
    A sign told them it was twenty-five miles to the turnoff to the Thunder
Ridge Air Force Museum.

   There had once been a fence and guard post at the North Entrance to
Edwards AFB, but the guardhouse was boarded up, and the fence had been
knocked down by tumbleweeds piling against it. There had been some
maintenance, though. The blacktop road up the ridge from Highway 58
had potholes, but Steve didn't think it was much worse than 58 itself, and
58 still had traffic, if you could call a truck every five minutes traffic. The
    Gary Hudson was tall and thin, graying a bit. He wore a silver tan shirt
and a desert hat, and looked a bit like the old films of Indiana Jones when
he wasn't carrying a bullwhip and pistol. He came out of the office and
watched as C.C. and Steve got out of their car.
    "Museum's only open Friday and Saturday," he said. "Sorry, it's a long
trip, maybe I can show you a little anyway." He waved toward a big
corrugated aluminum structure. "The bird's in that hangar."
    "We'd love to see it," Steve said. "Thanks."
    Hudson led the way over in silence. The wind whistled off the Mojave
Desert and howled around them, rattling the corrugated metal of the
hangar building. They went in through the small, people door set in the
enormous hangar door. It was almost as loud inside as out, but it was a
relief to be out of the wind.
    It was gloomy inside. Hudson gave them a moment to let their eyes
adjust. The roof was eighty feet or more above them, held up by a network
of girders that looked needlessly complicated just to hold up a roof.
    Phoenix stood in the center of the enormous room. It looked like a giant
ice cream cone, sixty feet high, standing on its big end. At the slightly
rounded base it was half as big across as it was high. It stood alone, with no
scaffolding around it.
    Hudson threw a switch, and banks of spotlights came on.
    The nose was rounded. Holes a foot and a half across ringed the base:
not one big rocket motor, but a couple of dozen little ones. There was a
small door, high up. The hull was grimy enough to need hosing down, but
it didn't seem to have been cut in half or anything. The damn thing even
had windows.
    Steve stared up at it. Beside him C.C. said, "Your big mistake was,
rockets are supposed to be phallic symbols."
    Hudson nodded. "Wrong shape. Too short, too. The tailfin on a 747
stood taller than Phoenix."
    "Yeah, oh, well, the shuttle wasn't any better-—"
    Mews nodded. You must not get many people here.
    "Not many black people," Hudson said. "And you cried then, too."
    "Oh."
    "Can I show you anything else?"
    "Yes. What I'd like to see is outside," Mews said. He led the way away
from the building, away from where Phoenix stood under the tin-roofed
hangar. Away from the fuel tanks. Off past the parking lot.
    Hudson frowned but followed as Steve went out to an empty area. "Safe
to talk here?" Steve asked.
    Hudson nodded. "Safe everywhere. No bugs here, if there ever were
any. Things deteriorate, and nobody cares about a dead bird anyway. She'll
never fly again. Talk about what?"
    "She sure looks dead." Steve sighed. "But I've got a package for you.
Wade Curtis says to tell you it's a Doherty Project."
    Gary Hudson's face went quite slack. He shied back a bit from the small
parcel Mews pulled from his jacket pocket. "Doherty Project."
    "Absolutely."
    Hudson took the package and opened it. Inside was a half-pint bottle of
clear liquid. "Moonbeams?"
    "Seawater," Steve said "And we took that shipping tag off a compressed
air cylinder. It has a poem written on it. It's to be pinned to the ground with
a knife."
    Hudson stared out across the desert. "For Mare Imbrium," he said
slowly. "Yeah. All right, you're real. At least you sure come from Curtis.
Like a ghost after all these years. Now what's up?"
    "Angels down. You heard about it."
    "Sure. So?"
    "We rescued them."
    "Where? Where are they?"
around the facility. Can we work alone here?
    "Until Friday," Gary said. "And I can close the gate then, if there's good
reason."
    Harry had a small radio, the kind that used to be sold in pairs as
children's toys. He extended the antenna. "Gabriel, this is Rover. All clear."
He listened for a second and grinned. "OK. Now, do you have a beer? It's
been days. I mean literally."
    The tanker trucks wound slowly up the hill. Hudson watched with
binoculars. "They look full," he said.
    "They are full," Harry said. "One diesel fuel, one JP-4. Enough to make
the hydrogen and LOX-—"
    "For a bird that will never fly," Hudson said.
    "Oh, bullshit," Harry said. "You haven't been saying that so long you
believe it, have you?"
    "Harry-—"
    Harry shrugged. "Okay, but you're scaring the kids. Look at Steve. He's
turning white."
    "I am not."
    "Get that man a mirror!"
    "Harry, there's no launching pad, nothing."
    "Sure," Harry said. "Gary, one thing, you better let the Angels in on this
right away. When they finally set eyes on Cole's Titan, they were ready for
self-immolation."
    Hudson was sweating, and it wasn't the heat. "Harry, why don't I just
put up a neon sign?"
    "It's gonna get conspicuous anyway, isn't it?"
    "This is just what I've been avoiding for fifteen years. More. Some of the
Air Force types like to daydream, but a real launch? If they see . . ."
    "You're gonna be conspicuous. That's all. What can you do that won't
show right away? Making fuel is noisy. Your grocery bill is gonna go up.
You'll have to wheel the beast out-—"
If that rocket works I am by damn going. I have earned a place. I thought of
the rescue!
    Harry was waiting at the turnoff into Edwards. He waved them on,
then passed both trucks to lead the way. Bob was glad that the road was
twisty and full of holes. He welcomed the distraction.
    ***
    Lee Arteria drove past the turnoff into Edwards and went on for
another mile before stopping. Even then she stayed well inside her car, so
that the sun wouldn't flash off the binoculars. She watched as the trucks
ground slowly up the hill.
    So far so good. And Moorkith was still looking for the Angels down by
the Mexican border, certain that they were being smuggled out of the
country. Arteria grinned wolfishly. It's too late, Moorkith, my lad. They're
on Air Force property now. They're mine.
    ***
    Gary Hudson shook hands with Alex, then Gordon. He prolonged his
grip on Gordon's hand. "Weak arm, strong grip. Do you have any trouble
standing?"
    Gordon grinned broadly. "Stronger every day. Steve has-—"
    Hudson pulled his arm to the right and back. Gordon fell over.
    Hudson's left arm caught Gordon's elbow and pulled him back upright.
Nobody laughed at Gordon's gaping astonishment.
    Hudson said, "Sorry. I had to know. So. It's decision time."
    "What's to decide?" Harry said. "They need to go to orbit, and you have
the only rocket ship that will get them there."
    "Harry-—" Miller said.
    "He's right," Fang said. "God damn."
    "So I just fire it up and go," Gary said. "So simple. Why didn't I think of
that?"
    Gordon asked, "is it real? Will it fly?"
    Landing legs? Sorry, Alex said. Of course it has to land. I m too used
dippers."
   "Sure. Phoenix comes down on its own tail fire, just like all the old
Analog covers, just like the LEM. I made the legs so slender it won't stand
up unless the fuel tanks are dead empty. But they still have to take a recoil,
and my stockholders wanted them beefed up." Hudson's bony shoulders
rose and fell. "Everything got just a little heavier.
   "But, dammit! I'd have put a bigger cabin on the real thing. It'd fire
passengers halfway around the world in under two hours. Every president
of every company or country would want one. And with the zero stage it
could have reached geosynchronous orbit, and that would have been . . ."
   Nobody had said anything about a "zero stage." Alex was about to
comment when Hudson went on. "The zero stage would have been cheap
as dirt. Same fuel and oxygen tanks, same pump system, same legs-—
because of course it lands independently! Half again as many motors and
no heat shield. You could serve a dozen Phoenixes with two lousy Zeros
because they recycle so fast."
   "So where is our zero stage?"
   "It paid the lawyers for awhile, and then I was bankrupt. The Greens
sued me. Poking holes in the ozone layer, yada yada." Hudson shook his
head violently. "Sorry. Way off the subject. You want to know what you
need now."
   C.C. said, "Yeah. You can't get to orbit?"
   "I can barely get into an elliptical orbit with the low end eighty miles up.
The atmosphere pulls it down fast. But another ship could rendezvous and
boost it the rest of the way. That must be what you were planning with the
Titan, wasn't it?"
   "Yeah. What else do we need?"
   "Quite a lot-—"
   "Will these help?" Bob Needleton held out a package wrapped in foil.
"Cole said these are the ROMs."
tightly onto Gordon s hand.
    Hudson sighed. "Yeah, sure." He led them into the hangar and turned
on the lights.
    "God, that's beautiful," Jenny said. "Beautiful. Starfire!"
    Alex walked slowly over to the ship. He ran his hands along the sides,
then stooped to look up into the engine chambers. When he stood again his
face had changed.
    "You can fly it, Alex?" Gordon asked.
    "It doesn't need a pilot," Alex said. "It's up to Mr. Hudson, I think. But
it's clear someone has been taking care of this ship. He looked up at the
roof scaffolding. "Does that open?"
    "Just once," Gary said.
    "Once is all we need," Alex said. He looked straight at Hudson.
"Commander Hopkins-—our leader in the habitats-—I'll start over. We
thought it would be pointless to say anything to Lonny Hopkins about
spaceships. Now . . . does he have a decision to make? Do I call him? I
wouldn't want to unless this was all real."
    "Let me think about it," Gary said.
    "Don't think too long," C.C. Miller said.
    Gary frowned at him.
    "We heard from Ted Johnstone in Phoenix. He works for the Highway
Department. The police are looking for milk trucks. They're being real quiet
about it, but they're looking."
    "Oh, shit," Fang said.
    "The church," Harry said. "That's-—"
    "That's fine," Jenny said. "So first thing is we get the damn trucks under
cover, right? Looks like there's room in here."
    "Actually, there's a garage made for tanker trucks," Gary said. "I'll show
you." He turned toward the door, then turned back. "Hell, I don't know
why I'm stalling. I've been waiting for this all my life. Major MacLeod, you
can tell your boss that with any luck we'll be launching you within a week."
pointed and lectured. We were set for up to a month in orbit. A lot of this
could come out, because we don't need that much oxygen. I could have got
another couple of seats in. Of course I don't have the seats, but that's no
sweat. Glue in an exercise mat and two, pillows for knees and head, that's
all it would take. It's a matter of what cargo you're willing to give up."
    "Four." Gordon scowled. "I should be reassured that it will not shrink by
more yet."
    Alex said, "After Chicago, after Titan, I wouldn't have believed this
much. Gordon, by God, we can get home again!"
    "Da."
    The stilyagin's enthusiasm left something to be desired. No seat for
Barbara? Others must stay, too . . . but Gordon wouldn't meet Alex's eyes.

    They sat in the large workroom outside Hudson's office. In better times
a dozen engineers would have sat at the desks and drafting tables there.
C.C. Miller had his notebook and was ready to make a list. "All right. Dr.
Hudson, what do we have to do now?"
    "Details," Gary said. "First things first. We clean out the tanks. The
hydrogen tank won’t need a lot of work, but there's a fair amount of work
to clean the oxygen tank. We'll need alcohol."
    "Alcohol," Miller said. "What kind?"
    "Anything would work, but since there will be people working in that
tank, we'll want ethanol so we don't poison them."
    C.C. wrote it down on his list.
    "How much alcohol?" Harry asked.
    "Gallons."
    "Gallons." Harry shook his head. "All right. I'll see what I can do." He
grinned. "Going to be the first time I ever convinced LASFS that they ought
to buy me enough to drink. God knows I've tried."
    "How many people do we need?" C.C. Miller asked. "To clean the tanks,
other stuff?"
to eat? Nobody gets in without a bag of groceries per. Nobody will do that
twice. Fans can't afford it."
    Hudson nodded reluctantly.
    "After we clean the tanks," Alex said. "What then?"
    "We have to get hydrogen. That's not hard, the pipeline's already in
place, we just tap it off the main pipeline into Mojave. We'll have to go turn
it on, but the valve's not guarded."
    "Won't anyone notice?" Sherrine asked.
    "Not for a couple of weeks," Gary said. "And by then with any luck-—"
    "Right," Miller said. "What happens after the hydrogen's flowing?"
    "Compression," Hudson said. "We run the turbo compressor and liquify
the hydrogen. Takes about three days. Make it four to be sure."
    "What about the LOX?" Harry asked.
    "That takes about three days, too, but it's quieter," Hudson said. "That
takes a diesel engine. The hydrogen compressor is run by a jet engine."
    "Jet engine," Sherrine said. "Aren't they noisy?"
    "A little," Hudson said. "Hell, a lot."
    "So we have to run a jet engine for three days," Miller said. "Don't you
think someone will notice?"
    "I've thought about that for ten years," Hudson said. "I've got a cover
story. This is a research facility as well as a museum. We'll say we're doing
hydrogen energy research. I can double-talk it. I've even got a grant request
to show around. It should work-—"
    "And if it doesn't work, we're all dead," Alex said.
    "Would it help if we had a high ranking Green space cadet up here?"
Miller asked.
    "Green space cadet? Contradiction in terms," Hudson said.
    C.C. Miller grinned. "That's what you think. OK, what comes after you
make the fuel?"
    "We need the IMU," Hudson said. "I know where it is."
    "You're sure?"
    Launch, Gary said. And I get to find out what free fall feels like.
   "You're going then," Miller said. He made another note.
   "Hell yes I'm going," Gary said. "I've waited all my life. Not to mention
what they’ll do to me for stealing my own ship. I'd take Annie, too, but
she's in New York. Laid up for two weeks with a cracked ankle. Lousy
timing."
   Makes sense." C.C. wrote rapidly. "So. There's you, and the two Angels.
Say about seven hundred pounds. How much more can we lift?"
   "Four thousand pounds," Gary said.
   "Hah. One seat open, and still room for supplies."
   Alex shook his head. "Before you start filling those seats, you better let
me talk to Commander Hopkins. He's going to have something to say
about that."

   "Big Daddy, this is Piranha. Big Daddy, this is Piranha."
   "Da, Piranha, we relay you. Be standink by."
   "Alex! Are you all right?"
   "Better than all right, Mary. Is the Commander there?"
   "I'm here, MacLeod. What's your situation?"
   "Damned good, that's what my situation is," Alex said. "I feel like
singing, that's what."
   "Are you drunk?"
   "No, sir, not drunk. Not on booze, anyway. Commander, we have a
spacecraft."
   There was a long pause. "The transponder says you're in the Mojave
Desert. Phoenix?"
   "Yes, sir. Phoenix. We can-—Gary Hudson says we can lift off in about
five days. With cargo. About two tons of cargo. Seeds, computer chips,
vegetables, minerals-—you name it, they seem to have found it for us."
   "Hudson. Gary Hudson. He's still alive?"
   "Yes, sir, alive and in charge. You know him?"
    Alex had set up the radio in Hudson s office. He motioned Hudson in
and took off the headset. "He wants to talk to you. Commander, this is
Gary Hudson. Gary, Commander Lonny Hopkins."
    "Hello, Commander." Hudson put on the headset. "Yes. Yes, sir, it's the
old Phoenix, and I believe she'll work, but it's going to be close. We'll get
into an elliptical orbit, but there's not enough fuel to rendezvous. You'll
have to come get us."
    Alex listened for a moment, then felt useless. Maybe they wouldn't want
him to listen? I'd far rather have Hudson than you. It made sense, but it still
hurt. He went out into the main engineering bay. The others were grinning
like crazy, but their faces fell when they saw Alex's expression.
    "What did he say?" Gordon asked. "It is impossible after all?"
    "Huh? No, as far as I know everything's fine. Last I heard they were
talking details, but it didn't sound like anything was a showstopper."
    "Then what is eating you?" Sherrine asked. "We're here! It's working!"
Her expression didn't match her words. She looked almost as down as Alex
did.
    "It's-—"
    "Alex," Hudson called. "Your turn again."

    "Yes, sir," Alex said. "Of course I can't tell without really inspecting the
ship, but everything looks all right. Gary started the diesel compressor, and
that works. We don’t want to fire up the jet turbo expander until the
hydrogen is flowing, but the unit's in place. I'd say it's just the way Hudson
explained it, we make the fuel, steal an IMU, and go. About five days."
    "All right," Hopkins said. "And meanwhile there's all that cargo." There
was no video link but Alex could see Hopkins rubbing his hands together.
"And the ship! The ship!-—OK. Now for passengers. I'm told it seats four. I
don't have to tell you that we don't really need more drones up here.
Hudson's fine. Hudson's wonderful. Gordon's people will be very pleased
to get him back. That's two. But then there's a problem."
because, although you don t seem to have noticed it, I have: that ship can
land and take off again. We can send it back down for more supplies."
     Son of a bitch, Alex thought. Of course it can. We were so concerned
with getting up there-—" Yes. I see that."
     "So someone will coordinate with the ground people. You seem to
understand them, and there’s nothing else for you to do between flights, so
it's you. Only I don't want you hanging around Mary while you do it. She's
pregnant, you know."
     "No. I didn't know."
     "It may be yours. It's not mine."
     "Shut up. I've been sterile since the Lunar reactor flared. I was impotent
for a while, too. Now I'm still sterile, but I'm not impotent. And you will
stay away from Mary. I want to be sure of that. Bring your own woman,
MacLeod."
     "So I'm in."
     "Yes. Smile?"
     Sherrine considered that. "I'll come, of course. But you get to tell Bob."
     "Sherrine, there's room for five, or six, or whoever we have to take. It's a
trade, passenger for cargo-—"
     "Sure."
     "We'll get him aboard. But without you, I don't go. And I'm on record, I
could live with that. Would you live with me on the ground? Marry me?"
     "I'll come."
     "Why aren't we smiling?"
     Sherrine lunged. Alex thought the impact would knock him backward,
but she caught her mass and his, too. What muscles she had! And she felt
so good. Why hadn't they been doing this ever since Flagstaff? And she
buried her face in his throat and said, "It's, I wanted, damn. Four seats.
Would you have asked me anyway?"
     "When I got up the nerve."
    Vehicles came: vans and campers, six to ten passengers each. Numerous
grocery bags went into the concrete buildings. Nothing heavy. The tanker
trucks had vanished into a garage; they certainly hadn't come down the hill
again. Vehicles came and went. Some stayed.
    Lot of manpower there. What work would need all those hands? Most
of it must be going on in the hangar. Meanwhile, a city of tents and
campers was going up on the desert.
    It had been like this in the days when the shuttle landed. Much larger
crowds then, of course. Several square miles of Nature's own parking lot,
with guides to set them in rows. Campers, tents, a line of huckster tent-
booths selling food, drink, badges and patches, photos and paintings,
commemorative mugs and T-shirts. At night, little coal fires, music,
sometimes a whiff of marijuana; tiny parties and profound silences, while
hundreds of thousands of people waited for dawn.
    Everybody else always saw it first. Then there it was, nose pointed way
down, the world's boxiest glider. You'd hear BooBoom, a double sonic boom
from the nose and the awkward bulge at the tail.
    Afterward the Air Force raked up their several square miles of garbage
and ran a roller over the black spots where fires had been, and it was as if
the crowds had never been.
    Twenty to thirty of them, now; no more. No spacecraft would be
landing tomorrow. Were they singing? Did they tell old stories? Lee Arteria
the outsider, the watcher, watched and wondered what she was waiting
for.

   Wheep! Wheep! Wheep! Captain Lee Arteria tore off the fax sheet and
spread it.

   WE'RE HERE AT GEORGE AFB. TWO SQUADS AIR POLICE, TWO
PILOTS, YOUR HELICOPTER AND ME. STANDING BY FOR ORDERS.
consternation when she landed!
    So far there were no decisions to make. The astronauts-—she was quite
certain that was who they were-—had made no attempt to leave the base.
Everyone else could be identified and tracked down.
    So what are you waiting for, dear? Lee Arteria had always liked the chase
better than the kill; but this was different, very different.
    The motorcycle started, was coming down the hill now. Two people on
it. The usual overweight bearded driver. No guitars. It was just dusk, not
much light, and they were moving too fast for her to see the face of the
rider, who was wearing a helmet anyway, but it clearly wasn't the thin
older woman who usually rode back there.
    There was a tool kit strapped to the luggage carrier. The motorcycle
reached the bottom of the hill, but instead of turning north onto Rocket Site
Road-—on her new, map it was labeled Ecology Ruin Drive-—the
motorcycle turned west. That road led around Rogers Dry Lake and down
to the south entrance of the base, into the area still guarded by the Air
Force. What in the world would they be doing there? They'd need
papers-—
    When the road turned southwest, the motorcycle continued due west. It
passed just under Arteria's hill and continued out across the dry lake.
Curiouser arid curiouser-—
    . . . Night was falling fast now. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea.
What in hell can they be planning?
    She got out her best night glasses. There was just enough moonlight to
let the big binoculars follow the unlighted motorcycle across the lake-—
    They stopped about a quarter of a mile from the fence, left the bike, and
went on foot to the fence.
    Not quite to the main fence. To a smaller fenced compound outside the
main base. The two figures huddled near the fence on the far side from the
base. No one was likely to see them-—no one not watching them in the first
place, anyway. In a few minutes they were inside the fence and alongside
   HYDROGEN PIPELINE VALVE CONTROL BUILDING

   A main hydrogen pipeline led down from the north, across Edwards,
and on toward Los Angeles. Two smaller lines branched off at Edwards.
One went from the valve building into Dryden. The other went around the
dry lake and up to Thunder Ridge.
   ***
   "Slicker'n ary weasel," Harry said. "Got in, broke the lock, turned on the
valve, and epoxied the lock back so nobody'll notice even if they look."
   "They can find the hole in the fence," C.C. Miller said.
   Bob Needleton said, "We did a pretty good job of restoring the fence,
too. It's like the lock, if they know to look they'll find it, but that's the only
way. The real question is, is the hydrogen coming through?"
   "There's pressure," Hudson said. "We're bleeding out air now, but if
there's pressure, we'll have hydrogen by morning. OK. Well done.
Tomorrow comes the real work."

   Harry was weeping. "Shame," he said. "Goddam shame." He crawled
out of the tank, painfully, like the first fish that tried to conquer the land.
He was wearing white coveralls, white socks, and a big white painter's hat.
His face and beard were nearly covered by white cloths, and he wore white
gloves. He stood up in the sunlight, leaning heavily on Jenny Trout, and
blubbered. "Goddam crying shame."
   "How horrible. All that scotch." Fangs voice echoed like a thousand
metal ghosts. His head popped out of the opening, swathed in white like
Harry's and smiling a goofy smile. "Liter . . . rary reference."
   "It’s in a good cause," Hudson said. "Harry, you're supposed to clean
that tank, not drink the solvent."
   "I didn't drink one damn thing. Not one," Harry blubbered. "Poor
LASFS. Nothing to drink anymore. All they had."
    The noise began at noon, the high-pitched scream of a jet engine.
Arteria's camp was fully three miles from Thunder Ridge, but it was still
noisy. She swept her binoculars over the area. The fans had clustered
around one of the big cylindrical tanks, had opened it up and gone inside
two and three at a time. They came out staggering. Now they had the tank
sealed off and they'd started the big jet engine on a stand next to the other
partially buried tank. Other fans were carrying things into the big hangar
that housed the rocket Arteria had never seen.
    There was other machinery running, too. A big diesel engine belched
smoke on startup, and still put fumes into the air. That one seemed to be
attached to the larger of the two fuel cylinders. After a while the lines from
the diesel began to smoke.
    Not smoke. Condensation, even in this dry air. LOX! They're making
LOX, which would explain their working on the tank, cleaning it out. LOX,
and hydrogen.
    Lee had never seen anyone liquefy gasses, but it was clear that's what
they were doing. They must be entirely crazy-—like the Jonestown
massacre, whole communities do go mad, and this little clump of madmen
must think-—but why did they think they could-—
    The anticipation grows, in the crew that waits below, in the silent burst
of stars before the dawn.
    Starfire! Starfire! We can know the promise of the stars . . .
    Unless I stop it. I'm supposed to stop it.
    She was still watching when the Green Police car drove onto the base.
    ***
    The car glowed iridescent green like a bottlefly. It wound up the side of
the hill toward Thunder Ridge. Harry dove into his saddlebags and came
up with a pistol. Jenny produced one from her boot.
    "No, dammit," C.C. Miller said. "Put the damn hardware away." He had
to shout, almost to scream, to be heard over the sound of the compressor.
     Meet them on their own territory. At their car. It s supposed to be
reassuring," Miller said.
    The Green car pulled up and two men got out. C.C. Miller waved to one
of them, a short man with a beard so black that it looked dyed. "Hello,
Glen!"
    "Hello. This is official. Captain Hartwell, Green Police. Dan, this is C.C.
Miller. That's Gary Hudson. He's in charge here."
    Hartwell was tall and thin. His look was grim as he stared at the let
engine. "What is this?" he shouted.
    Hudson indicated the office area. "It's quieter in there." He led them
inside. With the door and windows closed they could almost talk.
    "All right," Hartwell said. "What's going on?"
    "Hydrogen economy experiments," Hudson said. "We're liquefying
hydrogen and oxygen. Then well burn them. If we can increase the
efficiency of hydrogen burning by ten percent, we can save enormous
amounts of energy. Just enormous. And with the winters getting longer,
and everything colder-—"
    "You mean the glaciers coming," Hartwell said.
    "Well, yes, but I wasn't sure you guys believed in them," Hudson said.
"I've talked to some-—"
    "Some fuggheaded Green Police," Hartwell said. "Yeah, but you can't
judge us by them! Niven's law. No cause is so noble that it won't attract
fuggheads."
    "Well-—yes," Hudson said. "But wouldn't expect you to believe that
either."
    "We're not all fools," Hartwell said. "Man, that noise pollution is savage,
and the smoke isn't much better. If you can really justify this you'd better
tell me, quick, because someone is sure as hell going to notice."
    ***
    Just as well I didn't move, Captain Arteria thought. The Greens Cat
there even faster than I’d have guessed. They'd have beat me in.
nearly reached them. C.C. yelled above the jet roar, Where s your friend,
Glen?"
    "Hudson's still lecturing Hartwell. Some fur haters called in a violation
in the Mojave, so I grabbed him and came. Hartwell was never in fandom,
he just used to read the stuff, so I've got no strings on him, but he kind of
caught the bug. He’d wipe out all the polluting factorties if we have to, but
he'd rather put them in orbit and on the moon where they can't hurt
anything and turn the Earth into a park like the good guys wanted to do in
Spirals and-—"
    C.C. held, up both hands. "Okay, okay. Sherrine, what were you-—"
    "The bumper sticker," she said.
    "So?"
    "It looks . . . All right, the Great Alaska Oil Spill. I was in grade school,"
Sherrine said. "I remember my father shouting at the television and cutting
his Exxon credit card into strips. He shouted in my face about greed and
profit. The Sound was going to be polluted for years. So the next summer I
asked him why the TV people didn't go back to Alaska and show people
how polluted it still was. Daddy gave me a funny look and never
mentioned it again. The Greatest Oil Spill in History, and it wasn't worth a
one-year"later follow-up."
    Glen was still looking at her. She said, "Then Saddam Hussein covered
the Persian Gulf with oil and made it all moot. So our bumper sticker looks
fairly silly, doesn't it, Inspector? And in ten minutes an Earth First police
van is going to be up here and on our asses-—"
    C.C. was shaking his head and smiling while Inspector Bailey said, "You
don't get it. Hussein doesn't listen. I mean he's dead, of course, but he
didn't listen any better when he was alive, let alone to infidels from Satan's
own United States. Why would anyone be yodeling in Iraq's ear when they
don't listen? Corporations listen. McDonald's switched from paper to
plastic even when it would hurt the environment, because the Greens told
them to. Remember the boycotts against South Africa? The Soviets made
twenty, spilled out of the van and pointed and jabbered. Noise! Smoke!
See? See? Three uniformed Earth First cops, two women and a man,
followed them out more slowly. Glen walked up to join them.
    Sherrine said, "Those kids must be the ones who turned us in."
    "Sherrine, I don't want to be recognized, but one of us should be there,"
C.C. said. "We don't want them thinking Glen's a flake."
    "Perish the thought!"
    "It's not like that. He's bright, but there's a glitch in his programming.
Too much LDS in the sixties, like Mister Spock." Sherrine laughed, but C.C.
went on earnestly. "He can't stop talking by himself. He has to be stopped."
    Glen talked. The Earth Firsters nodded. The boy and girl listened, ready
to offer what they knew.
    Hudson and Hartwell came out of Hudson's office and sauntered
toward the Earth First van.
    The kids had moved closer to the compressors. The noise was
horrendous, and the girl had put her hands over her ears as she stared at
the spinning jet turbine. Sherrine watched as the girl moved around toward
the front of the engine. The anger area was clearly marked off with a low
rope barrier, but it would be easy to step over it. "Hey!" Sherrine screamed
and ran toward the girl. "Stop!" The screen over the jet intake would keep
out birds, but it might not be strong enough to hold a one-hundred-pound
girl. Talk about mixed emotions! Sherrine thought.
    The boy had moved closer to the exhaust, and now stood with his nose
wrinkled as he held his hands over his ears. Eager to be offended. When he
saw Hudson and the others gather near the police van, he got the girl and
led her over. Good. They did not need an injured civilian.
    An Earth First cop talked while Glen smiled and nodded.
    Sherrine strolled up; but what would she say? How do you talk about
hydrogen? The ashes are water vapor, utterly pollution free, and what else
is there? Now Glen was talking again. "So, Michael. You were on your way
from Las Vegas to L.A. for a, what, a demonstration?"
whimpering about global warming, and it s still murder today!
    "I don't question that, but it seems to me," Glen said to the speaker, "that
all of your targets are women. Isn't that sexist? I mean, men wear fur, too,
not often, but-—"
    An Earth First policewoman said, "He has a point, kid. Sexism is
politically incorrect, too. I think you need to target an equal number of fur-
wearing males."
    Now Barb was glaring at Michael. The boy said, "Uh . . ."
    "And why just fur?" said Glen. "Leather is the skin of a dead animal,
too!"
    Earth First glanced down at their boots. So did both of the kids. Sherrine
hadn't had to say anything at all. Glen let them argue-—fur versus leather,
wild free beasts versus beasts held prisoner until their deaths, hide and
meat versus fur alone. The teens' respect for uniforms was fading. The cops
were getting angry.
    Glen said, "What we could do is, we should station teams outside biker
bars and throw dye on leather-clad men as they come out."
    The jet motor roared in a sudden silence.
    "That would be more correct," the girl called Barb bellowed. "We'd
include men as well as women. And it would show that we care as deeply
about homely cows and other leather-producing animals as we care about
cute, furry rabbits and minks."
    Michael said, "Barb-—"
    Oh, that would be fun, Sherrine thought. Glen was right: the attacks on
fur-bearing upper-class women were sexist. Let's see what leather-clad
bikers do when Michael and Barb spit on their jackets. Sherrine was trying
to swallow a grin . . . and Earth First turned to face Hudson and Hartwell
with evident relief.
    ***
    Nobody seemed to be under arrest. Just a shouting match. Lee Arteria
still didn't see that her presence could swing events one way or another.
come to see Phoenix first, and what they saw must have looked like a
working spacecraft. Crazy amateurs . . . but they had Gary Hudson to tell
them whether Phoenix was in any way crippled, and they'd judged Hudson
sane.
   They were planning to launch.
   They were still gathering. The grandest gathering of pro-technology
buffs ever to pour jet-engine roar and hot kerosene exhaust into clean
desert air was still gathering. Fuel and oxydizer, the stranded dipper pilots
as passengers, maybe Hudson himself as pilot . . . what else did they need?
Cargo? That's what the fans were up to, all that weird stuff! Cargo for the space
habitats! There had been a lot of stuff, boxes, paper bags, at least one cooler.
Course programming: they must have that solved. Copies of the programs
stored away. So. What else would they need to launch?
   Lee Arteria smiled. Yes!

   BILLINGS, TELL COLONEL MURPHY THAT WE'RE ABOUT
   TO MAKE THE MOST IMPORTANT ARREST OF THE DECADE.
   BOTH SPACEMEN PLUS THE WHOLE NETWORK THAT
SMUGGLED THEM ACROSS THE COUNTRY. USAF AND OSI WILL
GET EVERY BIT OF THE CREDIT.
   TELL HIM TO HANG ON FOR THREE MORE DAYS AND WE'RE
SET. THIS WILL GET HIM A BRIGADIER'S STARS. NOT TO MENTION
PROMOTIONS FOR YOU AND ME.
   ARTERIA
   ***
   They only turned on the lights in the hangar when they had to, and
never at night. The lighted windows must be visible for tens of miles. It
was near dusk, and the daylight through the windows was dimming, but
Harry Czescu and Bob Needleton continued to move cargo. "Sarge"
Workman helped for awhile, but he was the only jet mechanic they had,
cages would come out just before they closed up the Phoenix. Or maybe not.
The cages stank, but after all, organics were organics . . .
   Another load in place. Back out, and down to ground level. Harry lit a
cigarette. He was just about the only one on Thunder Ridge who smoked.
He took two puffs and inched off the end, put the butt back in the package.
"OK, do we want to glue the mat in now? Or wait?"
   Bob didn't answer.
   "Lighten up, Pins. Nobody thinks-—" Harry looked up. "Hi, Sherry, C.C.
Alex, they brought you an exercise mat."
   "Hi, Harry." C.C. rubbed his hands together briskly. "Okay. What can
we give up? Alex, those mice are gengineered to produce juvenile growth
hormones. That'd let the Angels grow their bones back, right?"
   "That's what I'm told," Alex said.
   "You need the seeds a lot, the guinea pigs and guinea hens and rabbits
not as much. The diet supplements, of course. No bull semen, to
bowdlerize a phrase. Sausage packed in dry ice?"
   "Sausage, no. Eat it before we take off, if it's that good and won't keep.
Dry ice, hell no. Carbon we want, but oxygen comes almost free from lunar
rock. Did anyone think of sending lamp black?"
   C.C. ran his eyes down the list. "I don't think so. I'll see what we can get
when. How badly do you want these metals? And the honeycomb blocks?
They re heavy."
   "It's not really my department, C.C."
   "Alex, you and Gordon are the only ones who can make these choices.
And five passengers . . . Where the hell is Gordon?"
   Alex waved toward the shadows where he had seen Gordon with Jenny
Trout. "I told him we needed him, but-—"
   Bob Needleton said, "I confess I do not see why the fifth wheel has to be
me." His ears and nose were noticeably pink.
   Alex said, "Gordon. Sherrine. Hudson. Me. You. Shall I take the exercise
mat?"
stay. I won t.
   Bob looked at Sherrine. "All right-—"
   "He already told me."
   "I didn't ask, Sherry. But why not six? Gordon's got a woman, too. What
are we going to give up for Barbara? Dammit, where the hell is Gordon?"
   Two voices echoed oddly, as if the entire hangar space had answered-—
—"

   "Wanted fan on Chthon and Sparta and the Hub's ten million stars,
   Wanted fan for singing silly in a thousand spaceport bars.
   If it's what we really want, we'll build a starship when we can;
   If I could just make orbit then I'd be a wanted fan."

   "Enough of this," Alex said. "Excuse me." He walked toward were Jenny
and Gordon were leafing through notes, nodding, singing:

   "Wanted fan for building spacecraft, wanted fan
   for dipping air,
   Sending microwave transmissions, building
   habitats up there.
   Oh the glacier caught us last time; next time
   we'll try to land!
   And when Ice is conquered, it will be by wanted
   fans!"

   Jenny said "Gordon, that's nice. A little premature, maybe, hi, Alex,
even a little overoptimistic-—"
   "Hi, Jenny. Gordon, we're deciding your fate while you play. This is
how you came here in the first place, remember?"
   "And this is why I stay," Gordon said. "That verse I wrote for you, Alex.
And when the stars are conquered, it will be by wanted fans!"
disaster. Lonny couldn t be voted dog catcher. So you don t have to come,
but why don't you come anyway? Please?"
    Sherrine smiled. "Okay."
    "Stop toying with my affections and give me a straight answer.”
    "I'll come if I have to sit in your lap. Now we need to finish loading.
Alex, didn't you say you didn't want the plastic corn?"
    "Yeah. I appreciate the work that went into getting it, but we don't need
plastic that much and we've got better use for the soil, and it doesn't even
breed!"
    "Well, it was here. Some dedicated fan sneaked it aboard."
    "Damn. We'd better find it before it gets buried."
    They climbed the scaffold. Sherrine asked, "How do you make love in
free fall?"
    Alex laughed. "Superbly. It takes a tether."
    They eeled into the cabin. "Look inside things," Sherrine said.
    "Yeah. Sherrine, this could be your last chance to make love in a gravity
field."
    "Mmm."
    "We could even find a, what did we call those things, they were soft and
you spread a sheet over them-—" You're kidding, right? Bed."
    "Bed."
    ***
    Hudson laid out a map of the Dryden Research Center portion of
Edwards Air Force Base and pointed to a building. "In there. Room G-44.
There are three security containers in the room, and the IMU is in the
lowest drawer of the middle one."
    "And you're sure?" Bob Needleton asked.
    "Yes, of course I'm sure. Actually, there are five of the damned things,
but that's where they keep one of them, the one that's been tested most
recently."
    "And when was that?" Sherrine asked.
     Feeley?
    "Yeah, the troops call him Touchy Feeley, of course. He's a Green."
    "And brain dead, I suppose," Miller said.
    "He's not brain dead, he's soul dead. Everything's kept in order, though,
all the lab tools put away every day, all the reports filed on time."
    "Hell of a way to run a lab," Needleton said. "But I suppose it's as well.
Makes it likely your IMU will be right where it belongs." He studied the
map. "Harry, it looks like we can go in from the hydrogen valve
compound. Get inside there, and then open a new hole into the main base.
Fang, you've been watching the base, did you ever see patrols at night?"
    "Nothing," Fang said. "Guards at the gates, some people in the
operations building, some night crew at the flight line. Nothing else."
    "Not much to guard anymore," Hudson said. "One time, they had the
hottest airplanes and pilots in the world here. Spaceships, too. Now-—"
    "Yeah," Needleton said. "OK, Harry, I guess we're set. Let's do it."

     They laid the bike on its side next to a mesquite bush and walked the
rest of the way to the fence. The twisties holding the fence together hadn't
been disturbed in the three days since they'd broken in to start the flow of
hydrogen. Thunder Ridge was fifteen miles away, and the sounds of the
compressor and turbo expander were lost in the howl of the desert wind.
     "Damn moon," Harry muttered. "I like moonlight, but there's too damn
much of it."
     Nearly full, Bob Needleton thought.
     By God! Ten hours! Dawn tomorrow, and I'm up and out of here, off
this Earth. If my heart doesn't pound so damn hard it wakes up the guards
. . . Sherrine would be going, too, but not the way he'd thought. Oh, well. I
get the best consolation prize there is. Free trip, too. Four seats, and one's
mine!
     The Hydrogen Valve building had its own fence, but there was a gate
from that area into the main Dryden compound. Harry inspected the gate
   A bank of three security cabinets stood against one wall. Harry went
over and rubbed his hands in anticipation. "The middle one," he said. He
ostentatiously took out a nail file and began to rub it over his fingertips.
"No sandpaper-—"
   "Harry, damn it, get on with it," Needleton whispered. "Right." Harry
opened the tool kit and took out a drill, pliers, crowbar. "Well-—here
goes-—but you know, just in case-—"
   "What?"
   Harry pulled on the drawer. It opened.
   "Like I said, just in case. And there's your gizmo, I think." He lifted' out
a plastic box and set it on the desk. "Let's see-—"
   "Harry, be careful, don't drop it-—"
   "Not me. Yep." He took out a smaller box that had been nested in foam
packing. "And here we are. One IMU-—"
   The room lights came on.
   "Harry, damn you-—" Needleton shouted.
   "Me?"
   "Hello-o!"
   They turned. An Air Force captain in combat fatigues stood at the door.
The captain's submachine gun didn't quite point at either Harry or
Needleton.
   "Oh, shit," Harry said.
   "Now what?" Needleton said. He eyed the distance to the gun. There
were two desks in the way. He glanced at Harry, who nodded slightly.
   "Death will not release you," the captain intoned. The submachine gun
was pointing straight at Harry's navel.
     Jenny, for God s sake put that gun away! Sherrine said. Gary!
    C.C. Miller came running out of the office. "Jenny, for God's sake,
shooting people isn't the answer to everything!"
    "Cissy, sometimes it is!"
    "Not this time," Gary Hudson said. "Look, if you start a firefight there'll
be a hundred Air Police up here long before any possible launch window."
He stared moodily at the approaching headlights. "Whatever we do, it has
to be done quietly."
    "Oh. Okay." Jenny put the gun back in her boot.
    Miller edged closer to Fang and spoke in a low urgent voice. "Stay with
her, just in case."
    "We can’t just give up now!"
    "No, and we won’t," Miller said. "But there're more ways to futter a cat
than just to stuff its head in a sea boot."
    "Eh?"
    "Ted Sturgeon's other law. Just go wait with Jenny."

   The car was a small gray sedan, totally inconspicuous if you didn't
notice that it had six antennas. It pulled up in the pool of light in front of
the office, and Bob Needleton got out on the driver's side. He was moving
slowly, carefully. Harry got out of the passenger's side, moving e same
way, as if they were underwater.
   "What the hell is going on?" Gary Hudson demanded. Somebody slid
out of the back seat, lithe and quick like a striking shark.
   Bob Needleton said, carefully, "Gary Hudson, this is Captain, Lee
Arteria, U.S.A.F. Office of Special Investigations."
   "Oh, shit-——"
   "Death will not release you." Captain Arteria's voice carried even over
the roar of the let engine. Headlights glowed on the intruder's blue uniform
and compact machine gun and sharp white smile. The Air Police captain
     She s a LASFS member, Miller said.
    "Or was," Bob Needleton said.
    Lee Arteria said, "Nobody leaves the LASFS. Death did not release me,
nor fafiation. It took me a while to figure that out."
    "Which is all very well, but where is the IMU?" Hudson said.
    "I have it here." Arteria handed across a box. She held her weapon like a
prosthetic attachment. Hudson took the box while trying to evade the
machine gun's snout.
    "And you better get it installed fast." Arteria glanced at her watch. "It's
twenty-three forty-two now. By oh-eight-hundred, oh-eight-thirty tops, this
place will be crawling with police. OSI, blues, Greens, Army, Immigration
agents, Post Office inspectors for all I know."
    "Yes. OK." Gary Hudson held the box gingerly, like a hot potato. Small
wonder, Alex thought, considering what-—who-—had come attached to it.
"Okay. And, Alex, you'd better tell Jenny to stand down."
    Alex went.
    The hangar was larger from inside than it had looked from across the
ride. Phoenix stood proudly, enshrouded by scaffolds now. They turned on
all the lights. That was safer than using flashlights. Furtive lights might be
investigated immediately. Working lights could wait until morning.
    "God, it's beautiful," Lee said.
    "Not as beautiful as when she flies," Hudson said.
    "It really will work, then."
    Hudson gave her a sour look. "I don't want to seem ungrateful, but
you're about the hundredth person to ask that. Yes, Phoenix is ready. More
precisely, I'm enough convinced that it will work that I'm going up with it."
    Hudson took the IMU and climbed up into the well above one of the
landing legs. The opening was barely large enough to admit him. A few
moments later he came out far enough to take a wrench out of his pocket,
then climbed back in. Finally he emerged with a big grin.
    "All's well?" Lee Arteria asked.
    All s well? Lee asked.
   "Like a charm." He typed more commands. "There. I've got it in a test
loop, but I don't expect any problems."
   "And you can launch when?" Lee asked.
   "In about ten minutes, or at oh-six-forty. We won't be ready in ten
minutes."
   "Six and a half hours," Lee said.
   ***
   Jheri Moorkith was trying to be polite. After all, this was an Air Force
Base, and he was talking to Air Force officers. It wasn't easy, though.
   "Dammit, she lied to me," Moorkith said.
   "How?" Lieutenant Billings asked.
   "She said that message on the sermon board, 'Sermon by Nehemiah
Scudder,' would lure them in."
   "And it didn't. What makes you think they went anywhere near your
church?" Colonel Murphy demanded.
   "We know they went through Denver, and they crossed the California
border at Needles four days ago. Four days! And you've known it all this
time, and didn't tell me!"
   "I sent you a memo," Billings said.
   "Through channels," Moorkith said through his teeth. "Yeah, and we all
know how that game is played. All right, but it's played out now. I have a
directive here from the National Security Council putting me in charge of
finding these enemies. Do you acknowledge my authority?'
   Murphy braced. "Yes, sir." He didn't pretend to like it.
   "Good. Where is Captain Arteria?"
   "We don't know exactly," Billings said. "She's communicating through
the Mount Emma relay station. That serves the entire Mojave Desert. She
could be anywhere out there, but for all I know she's here in Victorville.
This is where she told me to wait for orders."
  BOSS IT S GETTING STICKY. MOORKITH IS HERE WITH FULL
AUTHORITY FROM THE NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL TO TAKE
CHARGE. THE CALIFORNIA HIGHWAY PATROL TOLD HIM TWO
MILKHEIM TRUCKS CROSSED THE BORDER AT NEEDLES FOUR
DAYS AGO. MOORKITH IS UPSET. MOORKITH IS VERY UPSET.
MOORKITH IS FURIOUS. HE'S SCREAMING AT COLONEL MURPHY.
THE COLONEL IS SCREAMING AT ME.
  DIRECT ORDER FROM COLONEL MURPHY: CAPTAIN ARTERIA,
YOU WILL REPORT YOUR LOCATION AND CIRCUMSTANCES
IMMEDIATELY. MURPHY.
  COLONEL MURPHY SAYS I HAVE ONE HOUR TO FIND OUT
WHERE YOU ARE AND GET A FULL REPORT AND THEN HE'S
SENDING THE AP'S LOOKING FOR YOU.
  HE SAYS THAT BUT I THINK HE SENT THEM OUT ALREADY.
  I HOPE YOU KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING BECAUSE ITS
GETTING HOTTER THAN HELL AROUND HERE.
  BILLINGS

   Miller read it, then handed it to Bob Needleton. They all stood in a
group around Lee's car, reading in the light from the office windows
behind them.
   "That does look sticky," Bob Needleton said.
   "It is sticky," Lee said. "Up to now I might just get away with saying you
overpowered me. I'd look like an idiot letting you and Harry get my piece
away from me after the way you telegraphed your moves, but I could talk
my way out of a court martial. Now I have direct orders to tell my colonel
where I am and what I'm doing. That's not a game anymore. That's
Leavenworth."
   "So what will you do?" Miller asked.'
sergeant where you left the trucks. Get away from there fast. Keep going on
north to wherever you want to hide. Meanwhile, I've got the Air Police
watching Cajon Pass to San Bernardino. About the time they get that
covered, they'll get the tip about the trucks in Taft. Go on, move! This
ought to buy us a few hours."
     Hudson nodded warily.
     C.C. said, "Sarge, Mark, a truck each. Bjo, you've got a hydrogen car?
Fuel up and follow them and keep moving. Sarge, you're in charge."
     "Right."
     Lee Arteria stood up briskly, The gun had never left her side. "Now as
to my price."
     "So what's your price?" There was something in Bob Needleton's voice
that said he already knew. What had passed between them in the car on the
way here?
     "I'm going up," Lee Arteria said.
     Hudson shook his head emphatically. "We don't have time to repack.
It's packed for four and we're only six hours from liftoff-—"
     "Your seat, Pins."
     Needleton said, "Captain, I never said I wasn't going."
     "I heard what you told me, coming here. You're staying to teach, you're
staying to fight, you're giving up and leaving, you're not sure what you'll
do up there, you'll be locked in a can with the woman who kicked you out
and the man who took her. You're in a quantum state, Pins. Well, I'm
flipping you over."
     Arteria was moving forward; Bob Needleton was backing up. He didn't
seem to be aware of it. His jaw thrust out mutinously. "If I give up my seat
it'll be to something that's needed up there. What are you doing?"
     Arteria was opening zippers. She was wearing lots of zippers. She said,
"I've done too much to cover for you. I go up, or I go to Leavenworth. I
caught you people! Fair and square, and then I covered for you."
hat. Bob Needleton watched in horror, retreating, and nobody else moved.
    "Maybe it's a bluff. Maybe you, couldn't alert your squad because you
waited too long." Bob's threat might have been more effective if he weren't
backing up toward the Operations Planning Room.
    "Every cop on Earth knows my face." Handcuffs, a mace delivery
system, a horrifying armory. And her pants. Blouse. "They're all going to
think . . . know I betrayed them."
    She looked quite dangerous, Alex thought. She had muscles . . .
smoother than Steve's, but powerfully differentiated. She looked to Alex
like an alien life form, and more female every second.
    Arteria was almost nose to nose with Bob Needleton. He'd backed up
against a flat surface. She wasn't wearing anything at all now. She said,
"What about a woman of childbearing age?"
    "Okay," Bob said, "you're a woman."
    "Open the door," she said.
    "Door?" Needleton became aware of the flat surface behind him. He
found a doorknob and turned it and backed through.
    Lee Arteria said, "I'll be taking your seed with me."
    "I don't, uh-—"
    "I didn't ask."
    Slam.
    Gordon was smiling broadly. "Wonderful! Just like `God's Little Acre.' "
    "Shouldn't we be trying to rescue him?" Sherrine looked at the stunned
faces around her.
    ***
    Hudson climbed out of Phoenix and gathered the others around him at
the ship's base.
    "All right," he said. "It's set. We launch at oh-six-forty-four on the dot.
Commander Hopkins has the rendezvous set. He'll go when we report
success."
    "Who do you need here for the launch?" Miller asked.
who right now sympathize will be gunning for me. I have to come back to
Earth to get Annie! No, thanks, Harry."
    "No last stand?" Jenny said.
    "No."
    "Imagine my relief," Harry said. "Look, we'll be going out last, right? I'll
take a coil of that stainless steel wire and close off the gates. We can drop
broken glass on the road up, too."
    "Well, that's all right," Hudson said. "But nobody gets hurt!"
    "Except maybe us," Jenny said.
    "If that's what it takes to get this ship up-—"
    "Yeah, Harry," Jenny said. She put the pistol back in her boot. "Where's
that wire?"
    "Now. One more thing," Hudson asked. "Where's Arteria?"
    Everyone looked at each other. "She's still-—" "She's with Needleton-—"
    "It would help to know her weight," Hudson said. "Harry, go ask."
    "Well, all right-—" Harry walked across the square from the hangar to
the engineering building, and stood on the porch outside the closed door to
the Operations Planning Room.
    He stood there a while, then came back. "Actually, you won't be very far
off if you say a hundred and fifty pounds."

    Gary Hudson activated the speaker system. It wouldn't matter now,
voices wouldn't add to the noise of the turbo expander. "MINUS EIGHTY
MINUTES AND COUNTING," the computer said. Damn, it feels good to hear
that again!
    The door to the Operations Planning Room opened, and Lee Arteria
came out wearing the silk kimono that Hudson kept in the shower in his
office suite. "Yours, Hudson? I like your taste," she said. "But someone
seems to have moved my clothes."
    "Next room. You won't need all the weapons, you know."
    "I don't need any, do I?"
    OK, you convinced me. I gather you already convinced Dr. Needleton.
   "Let's say he's no longer objecting."
   ***
   "All right, the hour's up. Where is she?" Moorkith demanded.
   Colonel Murphy looked embarrassed. "She ordered the helicopter to
meet her at an area above Cajon Pass, but the place was empty when they
got there. We're searching the area."
   "Searching the area."
   "Yes, Mr. Moorkith. She may be hurt, or taken prisoner."
   "I don't believe one word of that," Moorkith said. "And neither do you.
She's gone over. Helping them! That's what's happened. Now, Colonel,
unless you want to explain all this to the Secretary of Defense, you will
cooperate with me."
   "What do you want me to do?"
   "I want you to think! What could have persuaded her to help the
Angels? She must know they'd be caught."
   Lieutenant Billings had been listening quietly. Now he drew in his
breath sharply.
   Moorkith looked at him. "Well, Lieutenant?"
   "Nothing, sir. Just a thought."
   "Out with it," Moorkith said.
   Billings shook his head. "Sir, it was nothing-—"
   "Tell us," Colonel Murphy said.
   "Maybe they won't get caught, sir."
   Murphy frowned. "Billings, there's no way! There's no place in this
country, on this continent-—oh.
   "What in hell are you talking about, Colonel?" Moorkith demanded.
   "Nothing, sir."
   "God damn you people! You know something, you know something-—"
He stopped and looked thoughtful. "So. Not on this continent. Not on this
    MINUS FIFTY MINUTES AND COUNTING. TAKE YOUR LAUNCH
STATIONS. CLEAR THE BASE AREA. CLEAR THE BASE AREA."
   Bob Needleton was buttoning his shirt as he came out of the Ops
Planning Room. Everyone carefully looked away as he came out onto the
porch. "Where is she?" he asked.
   "Getting aboard," Harry said. "Uh-—you're not going to make trouble?"
   "Huh? No. She goes. I'll be staying here to fight the danelaw."
   He went down to the Phoenix hangar. The roof was open now, open to
the stars burning brightly in the high desert. The moon was just going
down, and there was the faintest tinge of dawn to the east, but straight
above was cold and dark and clear.
   Sherrine and Arteria were climbing up the scaffolding. Hudson and
Alex stood at the top, sixty feet above.
   "Go with God," Gordon shouted.
   "Yo!"
   Bob Needleton waved. "Good-bye, Sherrine. Captain Arteria . . . Lee.
Name them after the kids in Doc Smith's Children of the Lens. Guys, I'm
hungry."
   "There's food left over," Harry said. "Look we've all got our escape
assignments. You're to go in Lee's car. They thought that would be
appropriate. If you're-—Sandy here will drive, he knows the area."
   Hudson got into the ship.
   "CLEAR THE BASE AREA."
   "Guess that's it, then," Bob Needleton said. "Seems like an-—I guess it's
over. From the Ice to the Desert." He stood at the door to the hangar,
reluctant to leave, until Harry pulled him away.
   They reached the car. Sandy Sanders was already in the driver's seat.
   Wheep! Wheep!
   The fax machine startled them.
YOUR HELICOPTER, DESTINATION EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE,
REPEAT, DESTINATION EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE.

   "Holy shit," Needleton said. "How do we tell Hudson?"
   "Cissy and Gordon are still in the blockhouse," Harry said. He looked at
his watch. "I think they are."
   "Harry, run this over," Bob said. "Have him read it to Hudson.”
   "Then what?" Sandy asked.
   "Then nothing," Harry said. "Hudson ordered us not to fight, and it
don't matter anyway. We can't fight a chopper. Can't even mess up the
landing areas, there are too many up here. Get Bob out of here, Sandy."
   Sandy looked to Needleton. Bob nodded. "Let's go," he said. "Who
knows, if enough of us run away, maybe they'll chase us. Let's go."

    Miller read the fax and shook his head. "I've got a bad feeling about
this-—" He punched the intercom button. "Phoenix, we have a problem."
He read the fax.
    There was a long pause.
    "Okay, we got it," Hudson said. "Not that there's much we can do. We
wait. Know any prayers?"
    "Edwards," Lee Arteria said. "Moorkith said Edwards, so that's where
they're taking him! I know Murphy, if they were coming to Thunder Ridge
he'd have said Thunder Ridge. I think we're going to make it!"
    "Cutting it damned close," Hudson said. "Miller, get your people out of
here. We may be able to shave a few minutes off the launch time. I'll talk to
Commander Hopkins. You people, get out. Now! Go!"

  "MINUS TWENTY MINUTES AND COUNTING," the computer said.
  "And who do you think it's talking to?" Sherrine asked.
  "No one, I hope," Gary said. “But you never know about fans. And
Harry."
     Not you, but Air Police helicopter has landed at Edwards main base.
    "Eighteen miles from here," Hudson muttered. "Ten minutes flight-—"
    "Five," Arteria said.
    "And they'll hear the compressor," Hudson said.
    "I don't think so," Arteria said. "We drove a good halfway here before
we heard it-—but you can see the lights up here with no trouble at all."
    "Oh, shit," Hudson said.
    "MINUS FIFTEEN MINUTES AND COUNTING."
    ***
    "All right, now where is this Phoenix?" Moorkith demanded.
    "Phoenix, sir?" the operations sergeant asked. The name tag on his
coverall said "MacDaniel." "It's in a museum up on Thunder Ridge."
    "Thunder Ridge? Where's that?"
    The sergeant pointed. "You see them lights up there across the lake?
That's Thunder Ridge."
    Moorkith turned to Billings. "What in the hell are you up to?"
    "Sir? You asked to be taken to Edwards. We're at Edwards."
    "God damn you, you knew I wanted to get to the Phoenix!"
    Billings kept a straight face. "Sir, you told Colonel Murphy I was to take
you to Edwards. I took you to Edwards. I assume you want to clear this
activity on U.S. Air Force property with the base commander. Sir."
    "And where is he?" Moorkith demanded.
    The operations sergeant looked at Billings, then back at Moorkith. "Sir,
he's in Rosamond. He doesn’t live on base."
    "Then who the hell is in charge here?"
    "Sir, that would be the Officer of the Day, Major Cobb."
    "And where is he?"
    "In the Operations Office, sir."
    "You bastards are going to give me a runaround all night, aren't you?"
Moorkith demanded. "You're all in this together. You're finished, Billings,
you and Murphy and Arteria, you're all finished!"
use it to get up on that ridge and stop that launch or you can stuff it up
your ass. Either way, Billings, either way, you are finished. Done. Do you
understand me?"
    "Well, not quite, sir. Now I suppose it's pretty astonishing that a bunch
of Air Force people would have an interest in space-—"
    "And you can quit stalling, too," Moorkith said. "All right you men. Get
in the car. I'll drive. Sergeant, open the fucking gate, and don't give me any
problems about that."
    Sergeant MacDaniel shrugged. "Yes, sir. Give me a moment to get the
keys."
    ***
    Inspector Glen Bailey drove the Green Police car through Mojave and
east on Highway 58, keeping his eyes on Thunder Ridge more than on the
road. Any moment now, he thought. Any moment.
    As he drove he sang softly to himself.

   "And the Earth is clean as a springtime dream,
   No factory smokes appear,
   For they've left the land to the gardener's hand,
   And they all are orbiting here . . ."

    ***
    Bob Needleton looked at his watch. "Stop," he said. Sandy pulled over
to the edge of the road. Needleton got out and leaned on the car. He looked
south, to Thunder Ridge, and waited. It was just before dawn, a few stars
left in the west, none in the east, but it was still dark on the ground. Not
quite dawn, Needleton thought. Not by Mohammed's definition, can't tell a
black thread from a white one-—
    There was a flash on Thunder Ridge. Then another, even brighter.
with that?
    "I don't care how you do it, open that gate!"
    Two blows of the hammer smashed the lock, but the gate still wouldn't
open. "It's wired shut," Sergeant Lincoln said. "Joey, get me the bolt cutters
out of the trunk."
    There was a bright flash from the hangar. The corrugated aluminum
walls shook, and there was thunder.
    "Hurry!" Moorkith screamed.
    The hangar walls fell outward. Phoenix began to rise, slowly,
majestically. Moorkith turned to face the Air Policemen, who were staring
at the slowly rising rocket. "Shoot it!" Moorkith ordered.
    "Shoot it?" Sergeant Lincoln asked.
    "Yes! Shoot! Shoot! Damn you, I order you, shoot it!"
    "Sir-—"
    "Give me that damn gun!"
    Malcolm Lincoln never took his eyes off the ship as he unslung the
submachine gun. Then, exactly as he’d been taught, he slipped the clip
loose and opened the bolt. He handed the empty weapon to Moorkith.
    Jheri Moorkith fumbled with the cartridge clip. He saw nothing as
Phoenix rose.
    Sergeant Malcolm Lincoln watched with a faraway look as Phoenix flew
upward, faster now. Thunder washed across him, and his ears hurt but
Lincoln was grinning like a thief. As the rocket climbed she caught the
growing light of dawn, but the jets were brighter than the dawn as Phoenix
rode a fire into the sky.
Gullwhale Crossing, a videofanzine published by Chuck Umber. Rick Foss,
what are we doing here?"
    Foss was a lean, bearded man with a mad smile and an absurd hat. "We
are here to hold Cruisecon, the first World Science Fiction Convention ever
to be held at sea."
    "And how did this come about?"
    "Nice timing. I notice we're coming about. Well, Gullwhale was a Green
research project, expensive even by NASA standards, but clean as clean can
be. What she couldn't do," Rick Foss said, "was make money. Between the
U.S. environmental regulations and the unsteadiness of the wind, nobody
wanted to risk sending cargo that way."
    "So we got her cheap," Chuck said.
    Rick grinned. "I got her damn near free. This is her shakedown as a
passenger resort cruise ship."
    "Hotel bill and food all in the convention registration fee. Quite a coup
Rick."
    "I didn't tell them it was a science fiction convention, of course. I just
guaranteed to fill the ship up with people who don't mind being a week
late so long as it doesn't cost them any more. But we're not in U.S. waters
now-—"
    From the rail Poul Dickson shouted, "Ach, ja, now ve can sing ze old
songs!"
    A heavy-set black man stuck his head out of a doorway. "Land ho!"
    Chuck swung the camera around to catch him. "Ken, shouldn't you be
up in a crow's nest?"
    Ken patted his ample bulk. "It'd never hold me. We've got Grenada on
radar. We're still two hours away, but you should think about wrapping it
up."
    Rick grinned mysteriously. "I may have another surprise for you,
Chuck."
    I wanted to cross the glacier again, Glider said. He held newsprint
from the National Enquirer under his chin, for the camera, under a wide
toothy smile. The headline said:

   ICE NUDES ORGY ON GLACIER!

    Bruce said, "We took the same track as before, with the Angels' death
beam toned down a little-—"
    "How many of you?"
    "-—So we could-—Huh?" Bruce laughed. "No, no, just me and Mike,
fully dressed. We crossed to Fargo and went straight to the local TV
station-—"
    "Hide in plain sight," Mike said.
    "-—and told them about joining the mating rituals of a tribe of naked
semi-humans with pale blue skin. Don't look so disappointed, Chuck."

   "We all got away clean after the launch. Maybe everyone got an extra
day or two because of Moorkith," Glen Bailey said. "You remember how it
looked when Phoenix went up?"
   Harry Czescu nodded briskly. "I kept thinking, 'Ours always blow up.
Ours always blow up.' But it was going smooth as silk-—"
   "Remember the vapor trail, sprawled all over the sky? They used to call
that ‘frozen lightning,’ the Germans did, I mean. It's in Willy Ley's books,"
Bailey said. "In the thirties they thought their rockets were going wild-—"
   "It's just stratospheric winds blowing the vapor trail around,” Mike
Glider said, sticking his head into camera view. Umber scowled.
   "Yeah, but it looks like something spun by a spider on LSD. The Green
bigshot cop, Moorkith, he saw the frozen lightning and thought the Phoenix
must have crashed. He was searching the desert for Phoenix while the
whole gang drove away."
it. If the Angels don t want it, I think we ll just leave it in Grenada.
     "You mean it's aboard?"
     "Oh, yeah. We sold the bull semen, but we've still got the plastic corn
and acorns and honeycomb and powdered chlorine and five cartons of
earthworms, and there's a package I don't know what's in it but it wants
out BAD . . ."
     "Gordon, nobody spotted you?"
     "I could walk, even then,” Gordon said. He got out of his deck chair and
spread his arms and bowed. His head nearly brushed the floor.
     C.C. Miller said, "Today I could hide him on a basketball team."
     "What have you been doing since, Gordon?"
     "Your viewers, they know. I publish Wind Chill in sections. Now Baen
Books, they want it. I can publish because I won't be on Earth."
     "You're going up?"
     "Sure. Alex say my family ready to skin him if he can't produce me, so I
go with Annie. Bring a copy of Wind Chill, tell everyone-—"
     There was a sharp sound, loud above the wind, and a sharp crack!
"Hold it," Chuck said, and he swung the camera around. "It was-—got it."
     High in the sky over Grenada, a dot, descending.
     "Comes down just like a falling safe, only faster," Chuck said rapidly.
"Those rockets should be lighting any . . . any minute now . . . it's broad
daylight so they won't be too conspicuous . . . shit fire, will you light?"
     "Phoenix is slowing," Gordon said. "Rockets must be lit. See? Slowing."
     "Yeah. Sorry. Ni . . . ice."
     The cone had settled behind trees.
     Umber laughed. "Your faces! The rocket was too far away to show
much, but you watching it land, that's something. Okay, Gordon, you
published autobiographical material, but there's a novel, too, isn't there?"
     "I am working on it. Should finish, how do you say it, Real Soon Now."
     "He did a verse for the song, too," Harry said.
     "Song?"
All      across     the      sky     they     want     me,   am   I   fattered?
Yes                                         I                               am!
If I could just reach orbit, then I'd be a wanted fan.

   "Wanted fan for mining coal and wanted fan for drilling oil,
I went very fast through Portland, hunted hard like Gully Foyle.
Built    reactors      in     Seattle     against     every man's advice,
Couldn't do that in Alaska, Fonda says it isn't nice.

     "Wanted fan for plain sedition, like the singing of this tune.
If NASA hadn't failed us wed have cities on the moon.
If it weren't for fucking NASA we'd at least have walked on Mars.
     And if I can't make orbit, then I'll never reach the stars.

   "Nader's Raiders want my freedom, OSHA wants my scalp and hair,
If I'm wanted in Wisconsin, be damned sure I won't be there!
If the E-P-A still wants me, I'll avoid them if I can.
They're tearing down the cities, so I'll be a wanted fan!

     "Wanted fan on Chthon and Sparta and the Hub's ten million stars,
Wanted fan for singing silly in a thousand spaceport bars.
If it's what we really want, we'll build a starship when we can;
     If I could just make orbit then I'd be a wanted fan.

   "Wanted fan for building spacecraft, wanted fan for dipping air,
Sending   microwave       transmissions,      building    habitats up there.
Oh the glacier got us last time, next time we'll try to land!
And when the Ice is conquered, it'll be by wanted fans.
And when the stars are conquered, it'll be by wanted fans!"

   The End
much more. The operational costs of any system depend on how much you
use, it but given the low-cost regime Phoenix works in, it should be used a
lot.
     Of course airlines have about one hundred fifteen employees per
airplane; but most airlines need to sell tickets. The SR-71 program (which
didn't) ran with about forty employees per airplane. NASA, with four
spacecraft, has over twenty thousand people employed to support shuttle
operations. This may explain why Phoenix, which wouldn’t need more than
fifty people to operate, would charge less than one percent of what NASA
charges to put cargo in orbit.
     Item: Despite all the talk of global warming, there is just as much
scientific evidence for the coming Ice Age. Experiments have failed to
detect solar neutrinos in the quantities expected, and astronomers tell us
that we are going into a new period of minimum solar activity. The last
such prolonged period was known as the "Maunder Minimum," and
coincided with what has come to be known as "The Little Ice Age."
Moreover, archeologic evidence shows that in the last Ice Age, Britain went
from a climate a bit warmer than it enjoys now to being under sheet
glaciers in considerably less than a century.
     ***
     Of course our story is fiction. Many of the characters are fictional, too.
But some are based on composites of real people; some are real people with
their names changed; and some appear here under their own names. A few
have even paid to be in the book! We allowed certain fan charities to
auction off the right to play themselves in Fallen Angels. Because the book
takes pace in an indefinite future we have made free use of an author's
right to change details of age, or occupation, or city of residence.
     Readers who find the action of the book surprising must consider that
we have, if anything, tamed down the reactions of organized science fiction
fandom had there really been a downed spaceship in a society that hates
science and technology.
    There are many literary references in Fallen Angels. A few are explained
in the text; others are left for the delight of readers familiar with science
fiction and fan publications.
    One is worth explaining here. In Robert A. Heinlein's early work
"Requiem," the hero dies in a successful voyage to the moon. He is buried
on the lunar surface by companions who have no grave marker other than
a shipping tag for a compressed air cylinder. When Mr. Heinlein died, he
was, according to his instructions, cremated and his ashes scattered at sea
from a U.S. Navy warship. Some of us feel it would be appropriate to
honor him by placing a pint of seawater and a suitably inscribed shipping
tag on Mare Imbrium. The poem to be inscribed is R. L. Stevenson's
"Requiem."

   Acknowledgments

    Acknowledgment of everyone who has, either directly by commenting
on the manuscript, or indirectly through his or her life and example,
contributed to this book would require a volume a great deal longer than
the book itself. We therefore apologize now for taking the easy way out: as
you might suspect, this section is being written the night before the final
manuscript is due.
    The song "The Phoenix" is copyright 1983, by Julia Ecklar, and is used
by permission of Julia Ecklar. The song "Starfire" is copyright 1983, by
Cynthia McQuillan, and used with her permission. Both songs and many
others much worth listening to are performed on tapes sometimes available
at science fiction conventions. Excerpts from the songs "Black Powder and
Alcohol" and "Bring It Down" are used with permission of Leslie Fish, and
are available on her tape Firestorm.
    We do want to acknowledge the special help of Gary Hudson, President
of Pacific American Launch Systems, Inc., who generously helped us get
Phoenix right. We only wish that we had the money to let him build the
Michael Flynn
Hollywood, California,
and Edison, New Jersey, 1991