Wanda was on the other bed, also under a sheet tent. The doctors had said that her burns covered about twenty per cent of her body, but she was out of danger now. Her face was almost unmarked, bearing only two small spots of red destruction. Most of her hair was gone.

"h.e.l.lo, Wanda."

Her eyes knew him, but his appearance brought no great reaction, of surprise or anything else. Her hands were under the tent, or he would have tried to touch one of them.

"Someone told me you helped to pull me out," she said after a little time.

"You were out of the house. I helped get you away from it before it fell." About all they had told her, he had been warned, was that there had been a fire - as if she didn't already have a firmer grasp than they did of that point. But she knew nothing as yet of the how or why, or that the world had changed with that fire and the events around it, or that her picture with Dan's and others involved was in the newspapers around the world, or that guards from several levels of government were alternately on duty outside her door. It would be another day or two before they started telling her all that.

"Does any of your family come to see you?"

"My mother's been in a couple times. Didn't have much to say."

Neither could Dan find much now. "They tell me this is one of the best places in the world to be if you're burned," he offered at last.

"I don't think there is a best place."

''Listen,'' he said eventually. ''One reason I came is to tell you I'm very sorry. Another thing is that you shouldn't worry about how any of this is to be paid for, or what you'll do for a job when you get out. I mean it. I've got like this super insurance policy," he suddenly invented. Special Act of Congress, appropriating funds, was the reality. "You won't have to worry a bit about any of that. Really.'' G.o.d, he thought suddenly, I hope she never comes to visit us, never just drops in.

"Your wife come home yet?"

After a while, he had to nod.

When he came out of the hospital with Nancy it was already getting dark. Above the expressway lights, Polaris at the celestial pole was barely visible, but higher in the sky both Mars and giant Antares were fiery bright and red.