With a deep sigh, Rick abandoned his attempt to mol-lify Con. Instead, he turned his attention to the landscape below. They had just reached the coast and were flying over cypresses. Rick tried to memorize the sight of trees bathed in sunlight. It might be the last time he saw either. JOHN GREIGHTON'S DISCOMFORT from being in a trans-parent aircraft gradually lessened as his annoyance grew. The flight had lasted far too long. The mountains and the inland sea had been left miles behind as they sped south-ward at breathtaking speed. They had traveled over water in a straight line, but, from their high altitude, a coastline was always visible to the west. Now the landform in the distance was a broad peninsula, and Greighton could see a sliver of ocean on the far side. Finally, after almost two hours of travel, the time machine slowed to a stop and hung suspended in the air. 'It's about time!' he said.
Green did not answer. He had been strangely silent through most of their journey. Greighton turned toward his companion and noticed for the first time that Green was staring almost straight up. He had a dumbstruck ex- pression, and Greighton gazed upward to see what he was watching. There was a different moon in the blue sky. It was pocked with craters like the old one, but it was not round. Its irregular shape seemed to change as he watched. Greighton realized that it was slowly tumbling in space. That accounted for some of the object's changes, but not all of them. It was steadily growing larger. Soon it was bigger than the old moon and brighter, too.
'That kid was telling the truth,' said Greighton. 'You had no idea about this, did you?' Green didn't answer.
A chill passed through Greighton. It was physical as well as emotional—the cabin was growing cold. His breath condensed when he exhaled, and frost began to form on the clear wall in front on him.
'Pete, can't you do something? We should go!'
Green remained dumb. Greighton grabbed him and shook him violently. 'Goddamn it, Pete! Listen to me! We've got to go!'
Green looked at him with frightened eyes before glanc-ing at the control panel. 'Didn't you listen?' he said. 'I can't make it work.' The despair in Green's voice terri-fied Greighton. Green returned his attention to the meteor above, while Greighton examined the panel, trying to fig-ure it out. He soon gave up. It was hopeless; nothing written beneath the controls made the slightest sense. The flashing red symbols seemed to taunt him in their ur-gency. They were the only things on the panel that were remotely comprehensible. They looked like an almost complete row of zeroes.
FOLLOWING THE RIVER upland, Joe was watching iden-tical numbers. 'We have about five minutes to find a landing site.' He scanned the mile-wide valley beneath them. Nestled among rolling foothills, it was filled with lushly green, but scrubby, vegetation. A shallow river, scarcely larger than a broad creek, meandered across its floor. The only sizable trees were clustered near the riv-erbank.
'I wish the ground was more open,' said Rick.
'This is the best we've found so far,' said Joe. 'Be-sides, it all looks pretty green.'
'It's going to dry out real fast,' said Rick. 'But I guess we don't have much of a choice.'
'No we don't,' said Joe.
'Settle down close to the river in the most open spot you can find.' Joe banked the plane and brought it to a hover over a slight rise about thirty yards from the river's bank. The plane's long silver wings withdrew into the tips of the black stubby ones. Then the aircraft descended vertically until it rested on the ground. Fern fronds swallowed the lower half of the plane. Joe shut off the engines. Every-thing was peaceful. The only sounds were the soft rustle of leaves, an occasional birdcall, and the music of water rippling over stones.
'What do we do now?' asked Con.
'Wait,' said Rick. 'Wait and pray.'
JAMES NEVILLE FELT drawn to the sea. It reminded him of the plains of Africa. Although it was different from his boyhood home in every physical aspect, it felt the same. It made him aware of his insignificance. Practicing a profession where cold food or warm wine assumed the proportions of disaster, this perspective gave him com-fort. In the end, nothing mattered. A man's dust was equally at home on the savanna or at the seashore.
PETER GREEN SCRAPED the frost from the cabin wall with his fingernails. It was so cold in the time machine, his fingers stung as if they had been struck by a hammer. It didn't matter. Despite his horror, he had to see. The meteor was so close that he could make out its rough and pocked surface. It seemed very bright and very near. Al-though it was no longer directly overhead, Green knew it would hit close by.
The surface of the meteor glowed red as it entered the atmosphere. The red intensified and became orange, then yellow, then white. While the transition took only sec-onds, Green's racing mind perceived it in slow motion. He had time to experience it all. He saw the ocean lit as if by a spotlight. He saw a glowing mountain of rock, taller than Mount Everest, fill the horizon. He saw a flash of brilliant light as meteor struck the earth and velocity and mass converted into the energy of millions of hydro-gen bombs. He saw the frost on the time machine in-stantly vaporized as light of excruciating intensity flooded in. Then Peter Green saw nothing but darkness.
John Greighton saw the light though closed eyelids and the hands that covered his face. He could see the shadow of his finger bones while his hands blistered. He was still covering his face when the time machine jerked violently, as if struck by a giant sledgehammer, and was sent spin-ning through the air. He smashed his head against a wall and blacked out.
