Continued From Part 1

"DO YOU FEEL anything strange now?" Paul Forrester asked his son.

Scott was perplexed. "No. I feel fine now. I don't know how to explain it exactly. It was like I blanked out for a second, and then I had that weird feeling. I thought you were trying to call me with the sphere."

Paul frowned and fingered his chin. "No, I'm sorry. It must have been something else. If it's okay, I'd like to use the sphere to probe your memories. That way, I can experience what you did. Can you try to relive it?"

Scott nodded. "Yeah, okay." He closed his eyes and tried to remember where he had been in the game and how he felt. Meanwhile, Paul took out his sphere. Its silver surface began to glow blue, transformed by the light within it.

Scott had been guiding the 'speeder through the Mothership's labyrinth of tunnels. He had been so excited, because he'd never been inside before. Then, that curious instant of distraction came. The 'speeder crashed and that odd feeling grabbed hold of him for a couple of seconds. Scott opened his eyes.

The light of Paul's sphere faded. "You're sure it wasn't something in the game that caused it?"

"Yeah, I'm sure."

Paul was quiet for a moment, then said, "I'm not sure what happened, Scott. Don't worry about it, but if it happens again let me know right away."

Scott nodded uncomfortably. "Yeah, I will."

"I'm going to get ready for bed now," Paul said. "I need more sleep. You should get some, too." He walked towards the bathroom.

Scott nodded and turned the TV on. He flipped through the channels. Suddenly, the words "SPECIAL REPORT" flashed on one of them and he left the dial there.

"Good evening, this is Dan Rather in New York. As you may know already, the President's press conference was cut short today, possibly by a crisis of some sort. Our sources tell us the President is meeting with his advisors at the White House, and that an emergency session of Congress has been called. Let's go now to our correspondent at the Capitol—"

Scott switched the TV off. A crisis in Washington? That couldn't possibly have anything to do with his strange feeling. Or could it? Scott's heart pounded and his breaths became short. He felt that yes, there was a connection, but he didn't know what it was. He started to call his dad, then changed his mind and didn't, deciding instead to wait until he was sure.

Marlin Hewitt, the Director of the Federal Security Agency, was the only one in the Cabinet room when Austin Jennings walked in. "Where's the President?" Hewitt asked.

"He's taking his blood pressure medication," Jennings said. "Do you know why he wants George Fox here?"

"They're old friends. Roommates at Harvard. George was the best man at his wedding. They still play a chess game now and then. And don't forget that little incident in Wisconsin."

Again, Jennings looked incredulous, but he also looked concerned. "Do you really think E.T.'s are involved in this?"

Hewitt shrugged. "I wouldn't bet money on it, not at this stage. But in a situation like this we can't afford to take any chances."

"There have been a lot of negative rumors circulating about Fox," Jennings said. "Any truth to them?"

Hewitt shrugged. "I don't think so. He's a bit fanatical, but he puts it to good use. A lot of people, both in the military and the FSA, just don't believe his assertion that there are real aliens here."

"But you believe him."

"Of course. I've seen the evidence at Peagrum. Look, about Fox. The President trusts his judgment and values his opinion, so we'd better do the same. If aliens are involved, Fox is our man. He knows more about the subject than anyone."

Jennings nodded, but still appeared to be uncomfortable with the whole idea.

The President walked in. "Where's George?" he asked, as he sat at the head of the Cabinet table.

"He's in Colorado, sir," Hewitt answered. "He's being flown here in an F-22A. He'll be here in about two hours."

The President nodded, then turned to Jennings. "What do the controllers at NASA think? What went wrong?"

"They're not sure, sir, but they think one of the main engines may have exploded. There was a problem with a fuel pump that delayed the launch, but it was replaced. Elmendorf is going to send an SR-71 up and try to take some pictures. Until then it's anyone's guess."

The President nodded. "What kind of men are we dealing with?"

Jennings opened a dossier. "The commander, Jarvis Nelson, is a civilian. He's forty-two years old; this is his sixth mission. He was a commercial airline pilot for fifteen years prior to his astronaut training. The pilot is Robert Michael Barnes, an Air Force Colonel. He's young—twenty-eight—and he's a bit of a renegade. But his encyclopedic knowledge of military hardware and procedures have made him a valuable asset on missions like this."

"Wasn't there a disciplinary action of some kind?" Hewitt asked. "I seem to recall reading a memo or something."

Jennings nodded. "Sexual harassment charge. He was reprimanded. He's got a record, but it's all traffic-ticket level."

"Anything else unusual?" The President asked.

Jennings read the dossier for a moment. "He's been into Bethesda several times, but it's just minor stuff. Acne, that sort of thing."

The President nodded.

The Defense Secretary, Patrick Cavanaugh, burst into the room. "Now we're really screwed," he said in exasperation. He handed the President a sheet of paper. "Look at that."

The President's eyes swept the page. Then he let it fall to the table. "Oh my God."

"That's what I said," Cavanaugh replied, in his Texas drawl. He looked at Jennings and Hewitt. "The Soviets launched their shuttle five minutes ago."

"Damn," Hewitt said. He looked at the President. "As unpalatable as it may sound, sir, I think we need to consider the possibility of sabotage."

"I'm afraid you're right," the President said. His gaze fell to the sheet of paper. "The Soviets haven't said anything about a launch. It can't be a coincidence."

Cavanaugh looked at Hewitt. "How long has their shuttle been on the launch pad?"

"Almost a month. Their next mission was reportedly going to launch a Mars probe, but the window for that doesn't open for another two weeks."

"Mars probe," Cavanaugh snarled. "That's a load of crap. Can that thing rendezvous with ours?"

"Yes," Jennings answered. "It certainly could."

Hewitt's face turned grave. "Is this a reasonable scenario, gentlemen? With all the increased security, is such drastic sabotage a real possibility?"

"I couldn't rule it out," Jennings said. "But I couldn't tell you the relative likelihood of it, either. We know they've stolen most of the technology that went into the design of our shuttles. It's no accident theirs looks almost identical to ours. Security is tight at Canaveral, but for all we know a KGB mole has been hiding in deep cover all along, just waiting for a situation like this to come along. It shouldn't be too hard to check the personnel out. Only a very select group of people would have enough access to pull it off-one of the senior technicians, or maybe an astronaut."

The President nodded. "I take it, gentlemen, that you will all agree with me on one critical point: no matter what happens, the Inferno's cargo must not be allowed to fall into enemy hands—Soviet or otherwise."

Cavanaugh nodded vigorously. "That's unacceptable."

"If the Russians are responsible," Hewitt said, "we're in big trouble. Even if we remove the saboteur, it would take at least two weeks to launch a recovery mission."

The President was suddenly stricken by an appalling thought. "What about the crew?" he asked. "Any chance of rescue?"

"None, I'm afraid," Jennings said gravely. "And as unfortunate as it seems, I fear we must consider them expendable. The payload must be our primary consideration."

The President nodded reluctantly. "Yes, I'm afraid you're right." He wiped the sweat off his brow. He looked at Hewitt falteringly. "What do you think we should do?"

"We wait and watch. The pictures from the Blackbird should tell us a lot. We must be very cautious about what we say and do, gentlemen. If this situation gets out of hand it could go all the way. To World War Three."

Robert Barnes sat in his chair on the flight deck of the Inferno, pondering his fate and trying to decide what he should do next. He had taken the bodies of his dead colleagues down to the mid-deck, where they were at least out of sight, if not out of mind.

He marshalled the facts one by one. All his attempts to restore power to the orbiter had failed. Without at least one of the shuttle's Auxiliary Power Units functional, there was no hope for re-entry into the atmosphere and return to Earth. The last thing he could remember before he blacked out was igniting the main engines for the TES burn. He didn't know if the burn had actually started, but it probably hadn't. He peered out through the cockpit windows. The tank was still attached to the shuttle. Within a matter of hours, the residual propellant inside it would vaporize, pressurizing it. The pressure would eventually cause the tank to explode, destroying the orbiter in the process. One of his first jobs would be to separate the tank manually.

The availability of oxygen was another critical consideration. With the delivery systems inoperative, Rob had only a few hours' worth of breathable air in the cabin. The spacesuits on the mid-deck could keep him alive for much longer, but not for the days or weeks that it might take to mount a rescue. Things didn't look very encouraging. Even the toilet wouldn't work without power.

One thing Rob had in his favor was the fact that some of the best minds on Earth would be trying to figure out what had gone wrong and how to fix it. The best way to help them would be to check everything out. I shouldn't be up here sulking, Rob thought. There are plenty of things I could be doing.

He still didn't understand what had happened, and why Nelson and the two mission specialists were dead. And he still had that splitting headache, which made it very difficult to concentrate on anything. In a situation as extreme as this, though, there were only a few factors that needed to be taken into consideration. This was obviously a major failure, affecting the entire orbiter. The most likely cause was an explosion in one of the main engines. Such an explosion could destroy the APU's, paralyzing the craft. Hadn't Epstein said something about a fuel pump? But engine failure didn't explain the mysterious deaths or his blackout. Rob mentally went over the many "fault trees" he had reviewed in his training. The trees were diagrams which detailed everything that could go wrong in each shuttle system at various times throughout the mission. But that soon proved to be as fruitless as chasing a windmill. There were just too many possibilities and not enough evidence to decide between them.

"I need some facts," Rob whispered, as he watched the beautiful Earth turn beneath him. He unstrapped, grabbed his flashlight, and started a visual inspection.

"Goodnight, Scott," Paul said.

"Goodnight, Dad." Scott was still distressed by what had happened, enough so that he thought he'd have trouble sleeping. He remembered those awful weeks after his foster parents were killed in an accident he'd felt responsible for, when he'd had horrible nightmares every night. It was after one of those episodes that he unconsciously "called" his real father with his sphere. Now his dad was back on Earth to help him, this time in a clone of photographer Paul Forrester's dead and buried body. Those bad nights were over now. Scott's thoughts of guilt vanished when Paul showed him that it was a deer-not Scott-that had distracted his foster father, with the accident as a result. Being freed from that guilt lifted a tremendous burden from Scott.

After that his nights were peaceful, as was this one. Scott would have been surprised, if he was capable of being so. He fell asleep much faster and much easier than he expected to. Darkness folded around him, and around his dreams. Out of that darkness came a fuzzy blue glow. At first Scott thought it was the sphere, but then it slowly drifted into focus and he realized that it was the Earth.

"Oh my God," Rob gasped, all thoughts of engine failures swept utterly from his mind. For a moment he was in danger of being sick again, and it took all his willpower to maintain what sanity he had left. He was hyperventilating, sweating profusely, and his eyes were swollen with horror. He turned the flashlight's beam on the small orange canister again and his heart nearly leaped into his throat.

It was nerve gas. The Inferno had been sabotaged, booby trapped to shut itself down and kill its own crew. Rob could think of only one reason why: the cargo. NASA knew that it had lost contact with the shuttle, but they didn't know about the deaths. They'd go on assuming a catastrophic engine failure, or something similar, had happened.

A chilling thought crept back and forth inside Rob's mind, tormenting him. He should be just as dead as the others. He had survived the gas somehow, even though that should be impossible. His headache and the blackout, he suspected, were side effects of the toxin. He decided that being alive was the important thing. He could turn his survival into an advantage. The eventual recovery of the Inferno and its cargo hinged on the fate of the external tank. If it blew up, any chance of recovery was destroyed as well. He wasn't sure how long the tank would stay intact, but he probably only had a matter of hours. Without power, he couldn't trigger the explosives that would separate the tank from the orbiter. But he could do an EVA and manually detonate them. The force of the explosions would move the tank away from the shuttle and take it out of danger.

It would probably be the last thing he ever did. He had no illusions about being rescued. After the tank had been separated from the orbiter, he could rocket away and watch the Earth for awhile. Then, in a flash, he could slice his oxygen line, and in seconds it would all be over. The one thing he didn't want was a prolonged death, although his miraculous survival of the nerve gas was something disturbingly similar.

The video camera on board had its own light and batteries, so it could still be used. Rob positioned the flashlight on a metal cabinet and it adhered with a magnetic click. Then he taped the camera in place and started dictating his final farewell to his friends and family. He was extremely calm considering the circumstances, but he had to be. The only alternative was to plunge into madness.

The President, the Defense Secretary, and the National Security Advisor were on their feet talking by the door of the cabinet room when George Fox came in. "Hello Mr. President," Fox greeted.

"Good to see you, George. You know Patrick and Austin."

"Yes, of course. Good evening, gentlemen." Fox shook hands with Cavanaugh and Jennings.

"Have you been briefed, George?" The President asked.

"Yes sir. I stopped by FSA Central first and Director Hewitt briefed me. He should be back with the photos from the Blackbird soon."

There was a polite knock on the door. "Come," the President said.

His secretary came in. "Sir, the Speaker is on the line. He wants to have a word with you."

"Tell him I'll call him back in a few minutes."

"Yes sir." She turned and left.

"Great," the President said. "Now I'll have to deal with Congress. What should I tell them?"

Jennings spoke up. "For now, let's give them a communications failure story. It could still be true, and I think we're much better off keeping the rest of it to ourselves until we know for sure what we're dealing with."

The President nodded and looked at his watch. "We don't have much time."

"The networks know something's going on, sir," Fox said. "And they know the shuttle took off. It won't take them long to put two and two together. Then we'll really be in a mess."

The President thought for a moment, then asked: "George, what's your opinion?"

"Well, I'm not sure what to think, sir. As you know, I've been out of the mainstream of the FSA for some time. I can't speculate any better than you can."

The President nodded. "Just the same, I'd like you to stick around. I'd appreciate the benefit of your experience. I just hope we don't need any expertise learned from your unusual calling."

Fox smiled a tight-lipped smile. "Yes sir."

Hewitt burst into the room with a an armload of large photographs, the pictures taken by the SR-71 Blackbird. "Here we are, gentlemen. It seems that the Inferno is indeed intact. No sign of engine failure. The tank is still attached. And NORAD reports that the Soviet shuttle is in an interception orbit."

There was a protracted silence as they considered the implications of that statement. All eyes came to rest on the President, and he seemed uncomfortably aware of their scrutiny. Finally he turned to Jennings. "Summon Mr. Golotsky as discreetly as possible. I'd like to have a private conference with him in my office."

"Yes sir," Jennings said. He left.

The President sat down. "Well gentlemen, let's see what their ambassador has to say. Then I'll have to deal with the Hill. And the public."

"You're sure you don't want me to stay?" Theo Caswell asked, for about the third time.

General Epstein shook his head. "Go on. If anything's going to happen, it'll happen at Edwards. Even if power to the orbiter's restored, they'll come right down. I just hope there'll be something for you to meet there."

Theo smiled. "That's right, sir. Think positive. They're tough hombres. It would take a lot more than an engine failure to do them in."

The General nodded. "It's a good crew. They'll do whatever they can to get her operational again. Have a good flight."

Approximately half of the nation's Senators were milling about in their chamber, uncertain of what to do. Rumors about the President's interrupted press conference abounded, but there were few facts. Even the Vice President didn't know what was going on. There was only so much that could be said about so little (although Senators excelled at that), so the tide of conversation gradually turned to more arcane matters like the President's budget.

After Rob had taped his swan song, he found the silence of the inert shuttle oppressive. The air in the cabin was getting fetid and the darkness wrapped around him like a suffocating blanket of black. He shivered involuntarily and realized it was getting cold. He decided there was no point in putting off the EVA, but found himself unable to shake his brooding. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw something move. He whirled around and yelped in surprise.

"Oh God," he gasped. "Now I know I'm hallucinating." There was a slender teenage boy floating weightlessly by the open hatch to the mid deck. He had tousled brown hair and his eyes were full of fear, like Rob's own.

"Where am I?" the kid asked.

"Oh great," Rob said. "A talking hallucination. Who are you?"

"Scott. Scott Hayden. Who are you?"

"NASA astronaut Robert Barnes, at your service. But you probably know that already. Aren't you a figment of my imagination or something?"

Scott shook his head, and the motion sent him drifting. "No." He looked around. "Where are we?"

"In space," Rob said. "The space shuttle Inferno, to be exact." With a gentle shove, Rob pushed away from his flight deck chair and floated to Scott. He squeezed Scott's arm. "Well, you feel real."

"I am real," Scott said. "But I don't know why I'm here." Scott drifted over to window, and gasped at the beauty of the Earth below. "I always wanted to make it into space."

"It looks like you made it," Rob said. "How did you get here?"

Scott looked confused. "I'm not sure. I was dreaming, I think."

"Oh really? You just dreamed yourself up here? Can you dream us out of here?"

"I don't think so," Scott replied. "It's more complicated than that." He paused. How could he explain without telling everything? He couldn't. "I think I know why I'm here, but it'll take me a while to explain. And you might not believe it."

"Heck, if I can believe you're here, I can believe just about anything."

Scott smiled. He told Rob the whole story, haltingly at first. Rob interrupted with an occasional question, but for the most part he just let Scott ramble.

"...ever since then we've just been trying to avoid Fox and look for my mom," Scott concluded. He pulled his sphere out of his pocket. "See, this is the sphere." He looked at it and it began to glow, filling the cabin with a soft blue radiance.

Rob chuckled. "Oh, this is just great. You know, I had a class at NASA that was all about what to do in the unlikely event that we ran into aliens. We all laughed; thought it was funny. I never expected it would be anything like this. You don't even look threatening."

"I'm not. What's wrong? How come all the lights are out?"

"Here, I'll show you." Scott followed Rob down onto the mid deck. Rob showed him the nerve gas canister and the bodies. Their morbid countenances, illuminated by the sphere's eerie glow, were a chilling sight.

"CYA?" Scott said, reading the label on the innocent-looking orange canister. "What's that?"

"Nerve gas. It was used in the Iran-Iraq war. It's made in Libya. Those commies booby-trapped this baby, but they made a mistake. I'm still alive."

"Sabotage?" Scott said disbelievingly.

"Yep." Rob suddenly thought of something. He slapped his hand against the side of his head. "My God!"

"What?" Scott said. "What's wrong."

"Sorry, didn't mean to startle you. But I just remembered something about the Russian shuttle being on the launch pad."

"Is that who did this? The Russians?"

"Probably," Rob said.

"Why?"

Rob mused for a moment, trying to decide wether or not he should say anything about the Inferno's secret payload. Finally he made up his mind. "You want to know why? I'll show you." He drifted up to the windows that looked over the cargo bay.

Scott joined him. "I heard something on the radio about a secret mission. Is that what this is?"

"It's what this was," Rob answered. He nodded out the window. "See that thing? It's a satellite."

Scott still didn't understand. "A satellite? Why would that make the Russians sabotage a shuttle and kill people? Is it some kind of spy satellite?"

"Not exactly. This is no ordinary satellite. Have you ever played the video game SKYHUNTER?"

Scott nodded enthusiastically. "Yeah, it's the greatest."

"I own one," Rob said. "But this is the real Skyhunter. It's a killer satellite."

Realization dawned on Scott's face. "Oh, I see. It hunts down and destroys other satellites, right?"

"Yeah, but that's not all. It can hunt down missiles and spacecraft, too. It was originally built to take out Russian Early Warning satellites, but now we're more concerned about anti-satellite weapons on their side."

"Early warning?" Scott repeated.

"Yeah. It's a special kind of satellite that can detect missile launchings. You see, if we destroy their satellites at an opportune moment, say during a solar flare, we can launch our missiles and they won't be able to detect them until it's too late. We hit their silos and take out their missiles before they have a chance to launch them in retaliation. That greatly limits the amount of damage they can inflict on us."

Scott looked concerned. "Isn't that unethical?"

Rob laughed in derision. "Since when was war ethical? It's a violation of treaty, if that's what you mean."

Scott nodded. "Is it one of those Star Wars things?"

"No. Those are defensive weapons. This is an offensive weapon. It's designed to strike first."

"That is offensive," Scott remarked.

Sergei Golotsky, the ambassador from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, was not a man of idle conversation. He showed no reaction as the President explained to him that he believed that the Inferno had been sabotaged. "We have ample reason to believe your government is responsible for this action," he concluded.

"Preposterous," Golotsky said, speaking for the first time. "We are socialists, not terrorists, Mr. President. Do you mean to tell me you have interrupted my evening just to deliver this ridiculous insult?"

The President folded his arms so his fingertips were touching. "I didn't summon you to play games, Mr. Golotsky. I know exactly what your government wants and it's not going to get it. If your cosmonauts so much as come within a hundred miles of the Inferno, it will be considered an act of war."

"If you'll excuse me," Golotsky said, in his modulated accent, "I'll return to my embassy and consult with the President."

"Yes," the President said, with a cold, threatening gaze. "You do that."

"Look at this," Scott said. A picture was forming in the depths of the sphere. He and Robert peered down into it and found themselves looking at...Scott!

"It's you!" Rob exclaimed. "Look, you are asleep!"

"But if that's me," Scott protested, "who am I?"

"Maybe your alien half can exist independently from your human half," Rob speculated. "Have you ever had an out-of-body experience before?"

"No. I've been perfectly happy inside my body."

Rob smiled. "Don't leave home without it! Well, it looks like you did this time." He touched Scott's arm again. "But I don't know what this is. It feels like a body to me. Maybe we're in a parallel universe or something."

"Yeah," Scott said absently. "Hey, it's the shuttle!"

Rob looked back into the sphere. The picture had changed. "No, that's not the Inferno. The shape is a little different." The ghostly apparition moved "closer" as though it was passing them. "It's the Buran," Rob said. "See the hammer and sickle on the front? It's the Russian shuttle."

"Buran?" Scott said.

"Yeah. Buran means 'Snowstorm' in Russian." He looked at his watch; it had been almost three hours since the launch. "We'd better get ready."

"Ready for what?"

"They'll be coming here. I think they want the Skyhunter. Damn! I wish we could launch it. We could blow them apart with it."

They went back up to the flight deck. "That thing's pretty nifty," Rob said, nodding towards the sphere. "Too bad we all don't have one."

"Are you kidding? They'd only be used for violence and destruction."

"Yeah, you're probably right. You're a real pacifist-type, aren't you?"

"I don't think you have to bop people on the head to prove your point," Scott said, "not to mention sabotage and murder. What do you plan to do?"

"Make sure they don't get it," Rob said. "But I am going to make sure they do get what's coming to them."

"What do you mean by that?"

Rob smiled, remembering fond memories. "Two missions ago, I was working on the Freedom space station with my buddy Theo." Ah, Theo. Will I ever see him again? Rob wondered. He forced himself back to the subject. "Anyway, we taped coke cans to the girders and shot them with a .357 combat magnum I smuggled on board. It's in my locker."

Scott was horrified when he realized what Rob intended to do. "No! No killing. No head bopping, either."

"Why not?" Rob said vehemently. "You saw the bodies. They were gassed to death, man. I won't be doing anything they didn't do."

Scott was appalled by such brutal logic. "No. I'm not going to kill anyone and neither are you."

Rob almost said "what's to stop me," but then he remembered the sphere.

"I know how you feel, Rob," Scott said. "You think they're faceless servants of an 'evil empire' or something. If you think the Soviet Union is bad, let me tell you what I think of our government! I've been on the run from agents of our own government all my life. A government that claims it's for the people, by the people. I know what hate feels like. But you can't let it make decisions for you. If you do that you'll always be a prisoner of the darkness, never to know truth and light. You can't fight against anything, man. If you do it just gives more energy to the thing you're fighting against. It's called 'adding fuel to the fire.'" He paused. "If we're going to destroy anything, it'll be that satellite."

"The Skyhunter? Why?"

"That thing is an abomination," Scott said, his voice laced with disgust. "None of this would have happened without it. This mission was sabotaged because it was meant to deploy a forbidden weapon that can only be used offensively. Think about it, Rob. Would you sabotage their shuttle if they were trying to launch a weapon like that?"

Rob was quiet for a moment. "Yeah, I suppose I would," he admitted. For the first time, Scott noticed and change in the astronaut's face. His expression had become softer, less intent on revenge. "It's preemptive, though. We think they may already have something like it." He paused for a moment. "I have to admit, it's hard to think of those damn commies as people with faces and names."

"And hopes and fears," Scott added. "This whole world's a hostage to fear. You've been hurt, man. You have a right to feel angry, a right to want revenge. It's okay to feel those things. But after you do, let them go. If you don't, you're only going to hurt yourself more."

Rob looked at Scott thoughtfully. "You're awfully smart for a kid," he said. His expression had changed again, and Scott could sense why. Rob was becoming more intrigued by Scott's half-alien nature.

Uncomfortably aware of Rob's interest, Scott brushed it aside with a quiet "Yeah, well I've been through a lot."

"There's no doubt about it, sir," Marlin Hewitt said. "The Buran will rendezvous with the Inferno in less than two hours."

"We have to let the Russians know we mean business," the President said, resignedly.

"What are you going to do?"

"What I have to do. We're going to Andrews."

Hewitt looked crestfallen. "Yes sir. What about your wife?"

"She's still in California. She doesn't know yet."

"Maybe it's better that way," Hewitt said. "I hate to think about what might happen."

"Then don't," The President answered. "That's my worry. If we go over the brink it's on my head, not yours."

Rob felt the hair on the side of his head stir, as if caressed by a breeze. But then he realized there couldn't possibly be any breezes in the cabin of a dead shuttlecraft. He looked at his watch again. He was breathing just fine, but even by his most generous estimation the oxygen in the cabin should have run out at least an hour ago. Then he was suddenly struck by a chilling thought: dead people didn't need to breathe. He jolted.

"What's the matter now?" Scott asked.

Rob broke out laughing. "Oh, what irony. Here all the time I've been thinking I'm alive. No wonder you showed up here. I'm dead."

Scott shook his head. "You're not dead, Rob. Those other guys, now they're dead." His voice betrayed the fact that he was troubled by Rob's suddenly erratic behavior.

"Then how come I'm still breathing?"

"The sphere is making oxygen." Scott's face creased with concern. "Don't freak out on me like that, man. I can't get us out of this alone."

Rob leaned close to Scott; his eyes were frightfully lucid. "Oh no, I shouldn't go crazy just because my shipmates were gassed to death and I'm marooned in a dead shuttle with a half-alien kid who teleported himself here in a dream." He laughed and looked at Scott again, but his eyes were calmer now. "Sorry. Yeah, I know what you're thinking. I'm flipping out. Maybe I am." He paused for a moment, then continued in an much quieter voice. "Okay, if I'm not dead, tell me this: why am I alive?"

Scott shrugged. "Same reason I'm here, I guess." He squeezed Rob's shoulder supportively. "We're in this together, man. But you're the one that has to call the shots." He drifted up to the flight deck windows. "It's so beautiful," he said, as he watched the Earth below. "And so fragile."

"We can sightsee later," Rob said. "Let's get to work before I really do go crazy."

"How many times have you been up here?" Scott asked, still transfixed by the panorama below.

"Five times, including this one." He chuckled. "Yeah, I remember. The first time up, I couldn't keep my eyes off it either. You get used to it, but it's always just as incredible, no matter how many times you see it."

"Just think," Scott said. "It would be so awesome if everyone could see it like this. It's one world. No borders, no wars, no injustice. Just a tiny blue world drifting through the night."

Rob laughed out loud all of the sudden. "Now what's so funny?" Scott asked, almost indignantly.

"You," Rob answered. "Think about it. You've never been in space until now. Some alien."

Scott nodded and laughed.

"It is highly unfortunate we were forced to take such a regrettable action," General Josef S. Orlov said to his staff, in a closed-door meeting at the Soviet Defense Ministry. "But I think you will all agree that we had no other choice. The Americans have forced this action on us. They'll be madder than hornets when they find out what happened. And they will find out, if they haven't already."

The others all nodded, concurring. Mikhail Tylovitch, the youngest member of the committee, ventured a question. "Suppose the nerve gas fails to work. Then what will our cosmonauts do?"

"The situation is unlikely, but adequate precautions have been taken. When our cosmonauts board the Inferno they will be fully armed."

"And our ICBM's?" Tylovitch queried.

"Of course, they cannot be launched without the codes in the President's briefcase, but our comrades at the KGB are taking care of that problem now."

"Suppose the President resists?"

Orlov smiled grimly. "Then he might, shall we say, be the victim of an unfortunate 'accident.'"

General Vladmir Peredenkov was enjoying some vodka and Belgian truffles when he was interrupted by his immediate subordinate. "Sorry to intrude, General," the man said, after he saluted sharply.

"No need to be. What have you got?"

"The Americans have gone on full nuclear alert."

Peredenkov's eyebrows went up. "Oh really? Well then, I would suggest that we do the same."

"Yes sir." The man saluted again and left. The General ate the rest of his truffle before going to the strategy room. If the world should happen to perish tonight, he thought, it would be criminal not to finish such an exquisite delicacy.

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