'He won't be gone long,' assured Joe. 'Remember, this is time travel. He'll return only seconds after he leaves.'
Greighton took his cue from Joe. 'I'd never abandon you, Sara. I promise.'
'That's bull!' said Rick hotly.
'You don't know shit!' said Joe. 'Don't scare the lady. You've made enough trouble already. Come on, Peter. Come on, John. There's no point in drawing this out.'
John kissed Sara, then pushed himself away from her arms. 'Good-bye, Sara. I'll be back soon. Good-bye, Constance.'
'Good-bye, Daddy.'
Joe led the two men into the storage room in Green's quarters. Pulling the dresser aside, he kicked in the plas-ter wall to reveal a passageway. All three men disap-peared into it.
'Would you please tell me what's happening?' said James in an exasperated voice.
'A giant meteor will hit the Earth this morning,' said Rick. 'If you believe Joe, we'll be long gone when it happens. I believe we're going to die.'
'Rick's right,' said Con flatly.
'How can you doubt your father?' said Sara angrily. 'He promised to come back.'
'He abandoned my mother. He abandoned me. What makes you different?'
'You've never appreciated him! Never understood him!'
'I understand him, all right! He's leaving you to die!'
'He is not!' screamed Sara. She strode up to Con and slapped her across the face. 'You spoiled, ungrateful brat!'
Con burst into angry tears as James separated Sara from her. 'Ladies, ladies,' he said, 'you must remain calm.'
Sara turned her back to Con and stared expectantly at the door. Con pointedly ignored her. Assured there would be no more fighting, James turned to Rick. 'Okay, Rick,' he said, 'I'll assume you're right and we're here when this thing happens. What can we expect?'
'The meteor will hit the ocean about twelve hundred miles to the south. At the impact site, the temperature will be hundreds of thousands degrees. Everything will be vaporized and rise in a plume miles above the earth. That's what we'll see first. Debris will fall back and burn as it hits the atmosphere to form an expanding ring of fire. To the south, everything will burst into flame. Up here, huge fires will burn too. The Earth's crust will rip-ple like the surface of a pond. If we survive that, a tsu-nami will arrive in a couple of hours. It will tower over the island.'
'There's nothing to be done?'
'Can you fly the plane?'
'No,' said James, 'only Joe can.'
'Then we're stuck.'
'How much time do we have left?'
'There's a clock counting down the minutes in Con's quarters. It works on a decimal system, but I can figure it out.'
Rick walked over to the pulsating red symbols on Con's wall. James and Con followed. The row of zeroes had advanced:
'If there are ten hours in their day,' said Rick, 'and a hundred minutes in their hour, then, they have a thousand minutes in their day instead of our 1440. One of their minutes is approximately 1.4 of ours. Ninety-one times 1.4 equals 127. About two hours.'
'Two hours and seven minutes,' said Con.
'Not much time,' said James.
