"Do you feel well enough to talk?" I said, in spite of the dirty look Mellia gave me.

"Of course."

I sat on the side of the bed. "Where are we?" I asked as gently as possible. "What is this place?"

"The Dinosaur Beach Timecast station," the old girl said, looking just a little surprised.

"Maybe I should say when are we . . ."

"The station date is twelve thirty-two." Now she looked puzzled.

"But-" Mellia said.

"Meaning we haven"t made a Timejump after all," I told her, as smoothly as you can say something as preposterous as that.

"Then-we"ve jumped-somehow-to a secondary line!"

"Not necessarily. Who"s to say what"s primary and what"s secondary, after what we"ve been through?"

"Excuse me," the old lady said. "I get the impression from what you say that . . . that matters are not as well as might be hoped."

Mellia gave me a troubled look. I pa.s.sed it on to the old lady.

"It"s quite all right," she said. "You may speak freely to me . . .I understand that you are Timecast agents. That makes us colleagues." She smiled faintly.

"Field Agent Mellia Gayl, at your service," she said.

25.

I happened to be looking at Mellia-my Mellia; her face turned as pale as marble. She didn"t move, didn"t speak.

"And who are you, my dear?" the old lady said, almost gaily. She couldn"t see Mellia"s face. "I almost feel I know you."

"I"m Field Agent Ravel," I spoke up. "This is-Agent Lisa Kelly."

Mellia turned on me, but caught herself. I watched her smoothing her face out; it was an admirable piece of work.

"We"re happy to meet . . . a . . . a colleague, Agent Gayl," she said in a voice with all the color washed out of it.

"Oh, yes, I led a very active life at one time," the old lady said, lightly, smiling. "Life was exciting in those days, before . . . before the Collapse. We had such high ambitions, such a n.o.ble program. How we worked and planned! After each mission, we"d gather to study the big screen, to gauge the effects of our efforts, to congratulate or commiserate with each other. We had such hopes in those days."

"I"m sure you did," Mellia said in a lifeless whisper.

"After the official announcement, of course, things were different," the elderly Miss Gayl went on. "We still tried, of course; we hadn"t really accepted defeat, admitted it; but we knew. And then . . . the deterioration began. The chronodegradation. Little things, at first. The loss of familiar articles, the memory lapses, and the contradictions. We sensed life unraveling around us. Many of the personnel began dropping off, then. Some jumped out to what they hoped might be stable loci; others were lost in temporal distortion areas. Some simply-deserted, wandered away. I stayed on, of course. I always hoped-somehow-" She broke off abruptly. "But all that"s neither here nor there, of course-"

"No-please. Go on," young Mellia said.

"Why-there"s little more to tell. The time came when there were only a handful of us left at Central. We agreed it was impossible to attempt to keep the transmitters in operation any longer. We"d made no personnel retrieval for over a year, the equipment was chronodegrading at an accelerating rate, there was no way of knowing what additional damage we might be doing to the temporal fabric with our improperly tuned gear. So-we shut down. After that, matters swiftly deteriorated. Abnormal manifestations increased. Conditions became-difficult. We out-jumped, and found matters in an even worse state elsewhere-and elsewhen. I"m afraid we panicked. I know I did. I admit it now-though at the time I told myself I was searching for a configuration where I might attempt to rally stablizing forces-but that was mere rationalization. I jumped out-and out. At last-I arrived here. To me it seemed a haven of peace and stability. Empty, of course-but safe. For a while I was almost happy-until, of course, I discovered I was trapped." She looked up at me and smiled a frail smile.

"Twice I tried to escape," she whispered. "Each time-after horrifying experiences-I ended back here. Then I knew. I had entered a closed loop. I was caught-until someone came to set me free. So-I . . . settled down to wait." She gave me a look that made me feel as if I"d just kicked a cripple down the stairs.

"You seem to be familiar with the equipment," I said, just to fill the conversational gap.

"Oh, yes, I"ve had ample time to explore its capabilities. Its potential capabilities, that is to say. Under the circ.u.mstances, of course, only minimal environmental monitor functions are possible-such as the forecast vectors that indicated that one day help would come." The smile again, as if I was Lindy and I"d just flown an ocean, all for her.

"The screen you activated," I said, "I"ve never seen one just like it. Is it the one that, ah, foretells the future?"

"Screen?" she looked puzzled. Then recollection came; she gasped and sat up suddenly. "I must check-"

"No, no, you need to rest!" Mellia protested.

"Help me up, my dear. I must confirm the read-out!"

Mellia started to argue, but I caught her eye and together we helped our patient to her feet, along the corridor.

The lighted screen was still the same: a rectangle of green luminosity with a ragged edge that rippled and danced on the extreme right. The old lady gave a weak cry and clutched our hands.

"What is it?" MeIlia asked.

"The Maintrunk forecast carrier!" she quavered. "It"s gone-off the screen!"

"Maybe an adjustment-" I started.

"No! The reading is true," she said in a voice that suddenly had a faint echo of what had once been a snap of authority. "A terminal reading!"

"What does it mean?" Mellia asked in a soothing tone. "Surely it can"t be that serious-"

"It means we"ve come to the end of the temporal segment we"re occupying. That for us-time is coming to an end."

"You"re sure of this?" I asked.

"Quite sure."

"How long?"

"It may be hours, or minutes," the old Mellia said. "I think this is a contingency the makers of the equipment never antic.i.p.ated occurring." She gave me a calm, self-contained look. "If you have transfer capability to any secondary trunk, I suggest you use it without delay."

I shook my head. "No, we shot our final bolt getting here. We"re stranded."

"Of course. At infinity all lines converge at a point. Time ends; so must all else."

"What about the station transfer facilities?" Mellia asked. Agent Gayl shook her head.

"I tried; it"s fruitless. You"d endure needless horrors-for nothing."

"Still-"

"She"s right," I said. "There"ll be nothing for us there. We need another approach. All this equipment-isn"t there something here that can be used-converted, maybe-to crack us out of this dead end?"

"Perhaps-if one were technically trained," the old Mellia said vaguely. "But it"s far beyond my competence."

"We can recharge our personal fields," I said, and felt a sudden change in the atmosphere. So did Mellia-both of her. The screen flick-flick-flicked and died. The indicator lights faded, all across the panels. The background sounds dwindled into silence. The color of the air changed, became a dirty electric translucence. Tiny waves of color seemed to ripple across the surfaces of objects, like chromatic aberration in a cheap lens. A chill struck through the air as if someone had just opened a giant refrigerator door.

"It"s the end," the elderly Mellia said, quite calmly now. "Time ceases, all wave phenomena drop to a zero frequency, and thus become nonexistent-including that special form of energy we call matter. . . ."

"Just a minute," I said. "This is no natural phenomenon. Someone"s manipulating the chronocosm!"

"How do you know that?" Mellia asked.

"No time for conversation. Agent Gayl"-I took the old lady"s arm-"where were you when we arrived?"

Mellia started to protest, but the other Mellia answered promptly: "In the stasis vault."

"The mirrors?"

She nodded. "I was . . . ashamed to tell you. It seemed so . . . cowardly."

"Come on. I led the way across the big room, through the silence and the cold and the dead air, down the pa.s.sage to the hall of mirrors. The reflective surfaces were tarnished, but still intact.

"Quickly!" the old Mellia said. "The fields will break down at any moment!"

Sounds came from the direction of the big room: a crash as of falling masonry, curiously m.u.f.fled; a heavy rumbling. A slow cloud of smoke or dust bulged leisurely along the pa.s.sage. Yellow light glowed behind it.

"Inside-fast!" I said to Mellia.

"No-you and . . . Agent Gayl!"

"Don"t argue, girl!" I caught her in my arms, pushed her toward the mirror. Waves of dull color ran across it. Mellia struggled.

"Mr. Ravel-you must go-now!" the elder Mellia said, and turned quickly and walked back toward the advancing dust-roil. Mellia cried out; I thrust her through the mirror. Her cry cut off sharply.

The old lady was gone, invisible beyond the obscuring cloud. I stepped to the other mirror; it felt like cold fog. It shimmered around me, cloying like impalpable gray gelatin, flashed like exploding gla.s.s. Darkness closed in.

For a moment I was aware of a sense of breathless expectancy, like the instant after the disaster becomes apparent and before the first shock arrives.

Then nothing.

26.

A yellow light was shining through the murk. I didn"t know how long it had been shining. It grew brighter, and a man appeared silhouetted against it, walking slowly forward, as if against resistance.

When he was six feet away, I saw my mistake.

Not a man. A Karg. The same one I"d killed twice and let get away a third time.

I couldn"t move a muscle, not even my eyes. I watched the Karg cross my field of vision. I wasn"t breathing; if my heart was beating, I couldn"t feel it. But I was conscious. That was something.

The Karg was moving with effort, but unconcernedly. He was dressed in a plain black skin suit with harness and attachments. He looked at an array of miniature meters strapped to his wrist-the underside-and made an adjustment. So far he had paid no more attention to me than as if I were a piece of bric-a-brac.

Now he came over to me and looked me over. His baby-blue eyes never quite met mine-not from embarra.s.sment, just indifference. Two other men-not Kargs-came into view. They ploughed their way up to him, conferred. The newcomers were carrying something that looked like bundled shingles. They came on across to me, moved around behind me, all this in total silence. Some time pa.s.sed-or maybe it didn"t. From the corner of my eye I saw movement. A panel slid into position to my left. It was dark green, gla.s.sy. Another appeared on my right. One of the men entered my field of vision, carrying a three-by-six sheet of thin material. He stood it on end; it stood by itself in mid-air without support. He pushed it in front of me and closed off my view. Light showed at its edges; then it snapped into place and left me in a darkness like the inside of a paint can.

With the visual reference gone, I lost my sense of orientation. I was upside down, spinning slowly-or not so slowly; I was a mile high, I was an inch high, I filled the universe, I didn"t exist- With a crash, sound returned to the world, along with gravity, pains all over like a form-fitting suit studded with needles, and suffocation. I dragged hard and got a breath in, feeling my heart start to thump and wheeze in its accustomed way. The roar faded without fading; it was just the impact of air molecules whanging against my eardrums, I realized: a background sound that was ordinarily filtered out automatically.

My knee b.u.mped the wall in front of me. I was bracing myself to give it a kick when it fell away and I stepped out into a big room with high purple-black walls, where three people waited for me with expressions that were more intent than welcoming.

One was a short, thick-fingered man in a gray smock, with thin hair, ruddy features, rubbery lips stretched back over large off-white teeth. Number two was a woman, fortyish, a little on the lean side, very starched and official in dark green. The third was the Karg, dressed now in a plain gray coverall.

Shorty stepped forward and thrust out a hand; he held it in a curiously awkward position, with the fingers spread and pointed down. I shook it once and he took it back and examined it carefully, as if he thought I might have left a mark.

"Welcome to Dinosaur Beach Station," the Karg said in a reasonable facsimile of a friendly voice. I looked around the room; we were the only occupants.

"Where are the two women?" I asked. The thick man looked blank and pulled at his rubbery lip. The female looked back at me as if it was all academic to her.

"Perhaps Dr. Javeh will wish to explain matters." She sounded as if she doubted it.

"I"m not interested in having a conversation with a machine," I said. "Who programs it? You?" I aimed this last at Rubber-lips.

"Whaaat?" he said, and looked at the woman; she looked at the Karg; it looked at me. I looked at all of them.

"Dr. Javeh is our Chief of Recoveries," the woman said quickly, as if glossing over a small social blunder on my part. "I"m Dr. Fresca; and this is Administrator Koska."

"There were two women with me, Dr. Fresca," I said. "Where are they?"

"I"m sure I have no idea; this is hardly my area of competence."

"Where are they, Koska?"

His lips worked, snapping from a smile to dismay and back. "As to that, I can only refer you to Dr. Javeh-"

"You take orders from this Karg?"

"I"m not familiar with that term." Stiffly; the smile gone.