The tracking room was a broken anthill of activity, with orders being shouted and relayed, and the data display being continuously updated. The big screen told most of the story, with the chatter providing the sound track.

"One raider. That's all I see!" "I check that." "Velocity three thousand twenty-six kilometers per second." "Course?" "Flyover of the North American west coast. I'd say California." "He'll be there in ninety-five seconds." "Still no other tracks?" "Negative. He's running this thing alone."

Dykstra and Vander Kam watched with rapt attention from the railing. Dykstra had not missed the reference to California, but revealed his concern only in a soft, unconscious tapping of his cane against the floor.

"Demon Chaser missiles away!" "They won't catch him." "Sure they will-in an hour or so." "Earth's laser batteries will fry him before then." "Maybe."

"Does any of this make sense to you, Chris?" Rick asked.

"My guess is that this is a limited raid with narrow objectives. But I don't know what those might be."

"Uh oh. He's dropped three missiles." "Got it. Twenty seconds to impact. Initial track puts all of them in California." "The raider is blasting off-vector. Evasive maneuvers." "He's finished what he came here to do."

Dykstra and Vander Kam were watching the screen when it displayed California and three circles representing the missile impact sites. Dykstra let out a gasp.

"What's the matter, Chris?"

"I'm from California, Rick."

"Are you familiar with the areas hit?"

"Intimately. My home is on the west side of the Sierra Nevada."

"Near the impacts?"

"Under them."

They stayed a while longer. The view of California expanded to show the impact areas in detail. The warheads had leveled and incinerated hundreds of square kilometers of lakes and streams, fields and forests, and at least one house-Dykstra's house.

"Dr. James Christian Dykstra, report to Major Moore," came over the PA. Dykstra set off with heavy footsteps, leaning greatly on his cane.

* * * Alone in his suite, lights dimmed, Dykstra brooded. He'd lived in the house one year short of a century. He remembered the parties, the late nights spent talking to the brightest lights of the 21st century-scientists, authors, entertainers, and politicians. He relived that last chess game with his best friend, Jamie. He shed a tear over the image of Jennifer, saying good-bye to him from her deathbed.

His collection of rare chess sets was gone forever, all three hundred. His music collection now just random atoms.

Priceless works of art, gifts from admirers and friends, now just vapor.

Their monetary value was meaningless. Their sentimental value, incalculable.

But what he most regretted losing were the letters-hundreds of letters written to him over a period of

seven decades-from Jennifer.

They'd been together since before the Collapse. She'd loved him. At first it was a love he wouldn't return, not the way she wanted. After a while, that had ceased to matter.

Their souls had been linked. Jennifer had told him he'd been placed on the Earth for a purpose, and that

she had been placed there to be beside him, and that's all that mattered.

Her letters had been a comfort whenever she was away. After her death, he'd often pulled them out just to look at them, and relive precious moments.

Gone. All gone.

He cried.

Dykstra was awake by four in the morning. He didn't get up, though. He felt old. He rolled over and pulled the pillow under his face. Too warm, he pushed the covers away. Too cold, he drew them back.

Nothing helped-he was just a tired old man, unable to sleep.

Images still played through his mind, as they had earlier-scenes from the tracking room, the meeting

with Moore, and even of himself, crying pathetically.

He slipped away again.

He was jolted awake by the door buzzer.

"Huh? What? Oh, good lord, Richard Michaels was coming this morning." The clock said 8:01. Despite

the turmoil of the previous day, he kept the man waiting only an additional two minutes.

"Enter," Dykstra said as he left the bedroom.

The door slid open and a boyish young man entered, and stumbled, but caught himself before going over altogether. "Oh, I'm sorry, Mr. Michaels. The gravity is half standard in my rooms. I should have warned you."

"That's all right," Michaels said, gathering his composure. "I've been through a lot worse recently."

"Where have they been keeping you, Mr. Michaels?" Dykstra asked.

"I've been down Earthside, visiting VIPs at the regional capitols. They all want to hear about the aliens firsthand."

"I see," Dykstra said. "I wanted to meet with you because I need to understand the aliens better. Some aspects of their technology mystify me. Perhaps you can give me some insights into their personalities."

"I'll do my best," Michaels said.

"But first, one of the things we've been doing is trying to determine whether or not the aliens have FTL travel-"

"They must," Michaels interrupted. "First there wasn't anything on the scanners, including the Dykdar, and then there was. The ship just popped in out of nowhere. What else could it be?"

"It could be FTL, true. But it could also be advanced stealth technology, even against Dykstra wave scanning."

"I thought that was impossible."

"So is FTL. Or so I thought. I've seen enough 'impossible' things in the past month to make me leery of that word. But apart from stealth, they might also have come in at very near to lightspeed, say ninety-nine point nine percent, then done the equivalent of a quantum transition to a lower velocity state. It would look much the same as a magical transition from FTL to sublight."

"Quantum velocity states?" Michaels looked bewildered.

"A speculative technology that didn't pan out in the details. But the point is, there are lots of possibilities to explain what you saw that don't require FTL drive. Unfortunately, your memory is the only record we have of the event-we never could get the data out of your ship's log."

"Tell me, Dr. Dykstra, do you think they really have FTL drive, or will it turn out to be one of the less exciting possibilities?"

"Before I answer, first tell me if you're familiar with the work of Arie Hague."

"Hague? Isn't he the one who rediscovered the discontinuity in the full expression of your gravity equations?"

Dykstra laughed at the man's diplomacy. "You phrased that just right. Well, for our sun, the gravity equations theoretically break down on a shell roughly fifty-seven point four astronomical units in radius. It's called the Hague Limit. I've always believed that the limit has no physical meaning, mainly because it implies the possibility of FTL travel and thus the usual causality paradoxes.

"So to answer your question, if the aliens do have FTL travel, then Hague is right and I was wrong to ignore the discontinuity. For reasons of professional pride, I'd like to say that I don't believe in an alien FTL drive."

"I sense a 'but' in there," Michaels said.

"But . . ." Dykstra said, "to use an expression one of my old college friends was fond of, FTL travel would be 'nifty as tits.' "

They both laughed. "So . . ." Michaels finally said, "your bottom line is that you just don't know."

"Correct. However, I am sure of one thing, and I don't know if even Hague has figured this out yet. But if the aliens do have FTL drive, then they can't use it inside the Hague Limit. The physics of why that must be so is a little hairy, but I'm certain of it."

Dykstra asked Michaels what he wanted to drink, then discovered the man hadn't had breakfast, and set the autochef to preparing a suitable repast. After a swig of orange juice to wash down his last bit of toast, Dykstra said, "But how did you feel when you first encountered the aliens? I mean, what was your impression of them, apart from the situation?"

"I happen to be one of those people who can't abide spiders. Ants, beetles, other bugs don't bother me," Michaels said. "But spiders . . . I think Satan himself invented spiders."

Dykstra listened. He'd had a pet tarantula that must be crispy critters now, but he didn't mention it. Michaels obviously hadn't been told of his recent loss.

Michaels continued. "After the aliens blasted their way in, I got a good look at them when they came into the corridor. The backward bending elbows and knees were funky enough, but what struck me wasn't the way they looked. It was that I felt like I was up against big spiders, things that were so utterly different . . . ." He trailed off.

"You're stuck because you were going to say they were so utterly alien, and that's a bit redundant,"

Dykstra said.

"Right. I mean, put me in a corral with a horse, or a cow, or even in a zoo with an elephant, and there's still this sense of common ground. I can empathize with an animal. Even dolphins, and they come from an entirely different environment.

"But the aliens were like spiders-who can empathize with a spider? They walked on two feet, they had technology, they flew spaceships. But as they stalked my ship, when I was killing that one, even when the other one ran away like a bat out of hell, it just didn't feel like humans have anything in common with them at all.

"I know this is subjective-"

"That's all right," Dykstra said. "I'm finding this very valuable. There are aspects to their technology that make me feel much the same way that you're describing."

Michaels sat quietly for a minute, just staring at the wall. "Dr. Dykstra, you're a religious man, right? I

seem to remember something from your biography about you and the Calvinist Reformed Church."

More memories flooded Dykstra's mind, most pleasant, some unwelcome. Whole chapters of his life had been devoted to that church. The story of his life made a very long book. "Yes, I'm a religious man."

"I'm not," Michaels said. "I'm a lazy agnostic. I was always just live and let live on the subject."

"Have the aliens affected your thinking?"

"Maybe. Because the best way I can think of to describe them involves a religious idea."

"That being?"

"The soul, Dr. Dykstra. I'm not much of a philosopher, let alone a theologian. But as the only man who's

actually met the aliens face to face, I think I have a right to an opinion. And I don't think the aliens have souls."

Nachtegall's left hand was bandaged, and tubes ran into the dressing from a portable med unit strapped around his arm. "What happened to your hand?" Dykstra asked. The lieutenant, sitting on Dykstra's couch, had gotten in late yesterday.

"The original is somewhere in the Belt. This one," he raised the globe of bandage, "is a cloned replacement they attached last night. I'll be good as new in a few days."

"How did you lose it?"

"Getting Hague out of that dungeon they had him in. All right, so it wasn't a dungeon, but I don't think

he could come and go as he pleased." Nachtegall got a strange look on his face. "Not that he ever would have wanted to. Have you met him yet?"