"I'm willing, but I don't want too rough a road, not only for Anne Marie's sake but also because even though this is a good, solid Brazilian-made car, it doesn't have four-wheel drive," Solomon responded.

"These would be service and old military roads no longer in use. I do not know how rough they might be, but you should not need four-wheel drive for them. At any rate, we can take a look and you can make a decision from there."

The captain shrugged. "If your memory can get me to them, by all means," he said. He was a bit surprised. It had been Tony, after all, who had worried so much about Anne Marie's fragility that he hadn't been enthusiastic about the more civilized trip they had planned.

For a blind man who hadn't been in the area in twenty years, though, Tony was proving remarkably accurate.

"There should be a dirt road going up the side of the mountain on your right about two kilometers after that in-tersection," Tony told him. "It will have a sign markeddo not enter -military district road.Ignore it and go on up. It has not been used as more than a lover's rendezvous in more than a decade."

The captain was a bit suspicious at Tony's detailed recall. "How do you know all that?"

Tony smiled knowingly. "Well, I will tell you the secret. For a thousand cruzeiros the head porter was more than willing to suggest this and to write out the directions for Anne Marie. He has used the spot himself, you see. It is not likely, however, that there will be many up there tonight, or so he said, although he doubted we would be alone and suggested we use discretion with our lights."

"All right, I'll do what I can," the captain responded, chuckling. "Yep. There it is. Pretty imposing sign and the remains of a gate and gatehouse." He pulled off, slowed to a crawl, then went into second gear for the climb. It was steep, and he would not have liked to have met someone traveling in the opposite direction, but it was manageable. The climb also seemed interminable, and he kept a wary eye on the temperature gauge, which was climbing precip-itously, but just as he wondered what was going to happen when he boiled over before reaching the top, the road swung around and there was a pulloff. He took it and waited for the temperature to come down. "Hard to say how much farther the top is and how many switchbacks we might face," he explained. "I think we want to not only get up there but be able to get back down without having to coast." He looked at the dashboard clock. "It's a little after midnight.

What time did they say the big show was?"

"Sometime after two," Anne Marie told him.

"We'll make it," he a.s.sured them. "Plenty of time. How are you holding up?"

"I'll be all right. I had hoped to nap partway, but I was too excited earlier, and at the moment this drive is a bit too unnerving and too steep for any such thing. I'm afraid to close my eyes."

"Don't blame me," Solomon responded. "I'm not the one that came up with this place. All I can say is that there bet-ter be a nice view of a clear sky up there or I'm gonna be mightily p.i.s.sed off. Uh-pardon the language."

"Take no mind of me," Anne Marie responded. "I'm feeling a bit, well, you know, myself."

He started up again and, three switchbacks later, reached a level, debris-filled area that went back quite a ways. The headlights revealed it to be deserted.

The captain looked at the crumbling remains of buildings and gates and fences and frowned. "Did your porter tell you just what this place used to be for?" he asked.

"No," Tony admitted. "It would have to be either some-thing very secretive or something very mundane, such as a storage area for road-grading equipment-there are many rock slides through here, or there were in my day."

The captain took the minivan on a very slow circuit and stopped when the headlights illuminated a large concrete pad. "A helipad. That's what that is," he told them. "Either this provided a quick getaway for VIPs or it was used to spirit people out of the city in secret. You could take some-body out from a rooftop in Rio, bring him here, then trans-fer him to just about anywhere. The buildings seem too small for a real jail but perfectly adequate for some quiet interrogation with no prying eyes around."

"Oh, dear," muttered Anne Marie.

Tony just nodded. "As military governments go, the one that ruled here for more than a decade wasn't all that hor-rible, but particularly in the early days, they went after communists, labor union people, vocal opponents of the re-gime . . . It wasn't as bad as Argentina or even Uruguay, but the military mind is rather consistent, and security is al-ways the most zealous and secretive, particularly at the start of a military regime. It was because they were not totally fascist that the army is still held in some esteem here, and they were not overthrown-they finally admitted they hadn't the slightest idea how to run a large country and es-sentially quit. Still, there was probably much sadness here, and now it has become a lover's hideaway and a refuge for would-be stargazers. There is something very Brazilian in that."

"Well, we've got a fairly clear view from here except in the direction of the city," Solomon noted. "We still have a lot of light pollution but if there's anything to see in this area, we should see it."

"Try the radio," Tony suggested. "There is most certainly some coverage of it somewhere."

From the evidence of a slow turning of the dial, the "coverage" was mostly Brazilian music, the only obvious tie-in being a cla.s.sical station playingThe Planets. At the half hour, though, after the general world news headlines and local stories, the announcer said, "And finally, through-out the region, thousands of people are up in the hills or on rooftops or out at sea awaiting the arrival of what scientists say will be the most spectacular meteor display in centuries. If you are still up and listening to me, you should delay go-ing to sleep another three-quarters of an hour and go out-side and find a clear view to the northeast. Scientists tracking the meteor state that it should land somewhere in the remote upper Amazon basin, possibly near the Peruvian border, but it should be quite low over Rio when it arrives at approximately two-fifteen local time. Authorities state that the meteor will probably look much like a huge burn-ing moon, but traveling very fast. Nothing is expected to strike Rio or anywhere within a thousand kilometers of the city, but as a precaution, police and fire teams are on the alert. Remain tuned to this station for updates."

"I'm not at all sure I like that last business," Anne Marie commented. "It sounds like they aren't b.l.o.o.d.y well sure of anything."

"Hundreds of meteors strike the Earth every single day," the captain reminded her. "Most are very small, and most fall into the ocean, but getting hit by one is not exactly the sort of thing sane people worry about. This one is unusual because it's so large, because it's going to strike land, and most of all because it was spotted early, so we know it's coming. But your odds of winning the Irish Sweepstakes three years in a row are far greater than the odds that even a splinter of this meteor will strike where you are.

All that was, as he said, just precaution. You can never predict these things a hundred percent, and if it breaks up, pieces of it might fall in the region. Even then, it'll just make a more spectacular show for us to see-but it'll also mean even less damage to the world when the main body hits."

"Is that true?" Anne Marie asked. "Can the thing really do damage to the world? I realize I shouldn't like to be under it when it crashes, but-the world?"

"One of them killed the dinosaurs," Solomon said. "The whole climate of the planet was changed because so much dust and debris was kicked up high enough that it gave us twilight for several years.

The plants died, the swamps dried up, things grew too cold, and the giant creatures couldn't eat or adapt to it."

"But that is just a theory, is it not?" Tony put in.

The captain was silent for a moment, staring off into s.p.a.ce. "Yes, just a theory," he responded. "But the right one."

Anne Marie stared at the strange little man in the dark-ness and frowned. "Indeed? And how can you know that?"

Because it was a pain in the a.s.s, even with the greatest computers in creation, to figure out just the exact spot to aim it where it would do exactly that, he thought to himself. Aloud, in a lighter tone, he said, "Well, I told you I was older than I looked."

They weren't sure whether to laugh or edge away from him at that, but since he had the car and the keys, a nervous laugh seemed the most prudent choice.

The captain got a blanket out of the car and spread it on the ground, then went back and got out a small hamper and a cooler. He then helped Tony get Anne Marie's wheelchair set up and her into it.

"Some light snacks, sinful sweets," the captain told them. "And some good wine, although in case you couldn't or wouldn't drink, some fruit punch as well."

The stars were out, not as many as would be visible far-ther out from the city but far more than could be seen in Rio itself. There was a quarter moon at this season, but it was a late moonrise and had not yet shown itself, nor would it until almost an hour after the meteor arrived. That much luck was with them.

The captain amazed them with his knowledge of the stars and constellations. There didn't seem to be a single one he couldn't name, or tell its distance from Earth and details about its composition.

"You know more than most astronomers could keep in their heads, I think," Tony noted, unable to see the stars but nonetheless fascinated by the tour. "This is from navigating a ship?"

"From navigating alot of ships, and of different types," the captain responded.

"Do you think there is other life out there?" Anne Marie asked him. "Strange creatures, alien civilizations, all that sort of thing?"

"Oh, yes," he answered confidently. "A vast number. The hugeness of the cosmos is beyond anyone's compre-hension. Some of them may already have s.p.a.ceships and be in contact or even commerce with one another."

"You mean in this solar system?" Tony responded. "I would doubt it."

"No, no, there's nothing else in our solar system worth mentioning. I mean beyond.Far beyond.

Thousands and millions of light-years, in this galaxy and many others."

"You are a romantic, Captain," Tony said skeptically. "What you say about other creatures and civilizations might well be true, but those same distances would prohibit con-tact. The speed of light alone says no."

"Well, thatis something of a stopper," Solomon admit-ted, "but not as much as you'd think. Gravity bends s.p.a.ce, light, even time itself, and it's but one of a great many forces at work. If a ship could be built to withstand those forces and make use of them, both s.p.a.ce and time might be bent, reducing a journey of many centuries to a matter of days or weeks. They once said that heavier-than-air craft could never fly under their own power, and for many years it was believed that the sound barrier was so absolute, its vibrations would tear an airplane apart.Nothing is im-possible-absolutely nothing. It just takes a lot of time, work, ingenuity, and guts to eventually figure a way to cheat."

Tony shook his head. "My education was as an engineer, and I know about solving such things, but I believe that practical interstellar flight is just outside the rules of G.o.d."

"Well said, sir! You sound like a medieval pope!"

"Oh, stop arguing, you two!" Anne Marie scolded. "I don't care if it's possible or not, since even if it is, none of us will live to see it, but it is fun to imagine. I wonder what sort of creatures thereare out there."

Captain Solomon looked at the stars. "Oz, and Olympus, and Fairyland, and a hundred other lands not quite imag-ined here on Earth. If you like, play a game. Suppose you could wish yourself up there, become one of those other creatures-what sort of creature might you like to be?"

She laughed. "I'm not much good at imaginingcrea-tures, and most of the ones on the telly are pretty slimy."

"Well, there'll be slimy ones, of course. But, if you can't think of some creature out of whole cloth, pick one out of mythology or cla.s.sical fantasy."

"Umph!It's so difficult to do! I suppose I should fall back on the obvious, as my therapists would say in the old days. Lying there, unable to move for so long, I used to dream of being a racehorse. Isn'tthat a silly thought, even if an obvious fantasy for me? Anne Marie, interplanetary racehorse!"

"Well, be a centaur, then, or is that 'centauress'?" the captain responded in a light mood.Iknew another centauress once, but I can't even remember her name . . .

"What about you, Tony?" Anne Marie prompted. "What sort of creature wouldyou be? How about an eagle? Flying about, and with remarkable eyesight as well."

"Possibly," Tony responded, sounding a bit irritated with the game but nonetheless going along for Anne Marie's sake since she was getting such a kick out of it. "But, and I am being fully honest here, if such a thing were possible, then I should like to be whatever you were." And he meant it, too. The captain could feel the love that was there and was almost consumed with envy for this unfortunate blind and crippled pair of mortals.

"How sweet, my darling," she said with a smile. "But what of you, Captain? We haven't heard your own choice."

"I'm afraid I have grave limits on that part of my imag-ination," he answered seriously. "I can think of myself only as Gilgamesh, or the Wandering Jew. Always the same, never changing, walking through the world but unable to fully become a part of it."

"I believe I'd like that," Tony said. "Never changing, never aging, and never beyond repair, as it were.

Watching the ages come and go, empires rise and fall, and great events as they occur. Yes, I might find that quite enticing."

"No, you wouldn't," the captain came back a bit sharply. "Suppose you had to do it without Anne Marie? Withoutanybody to share it with? Watching everyone you knew or liked grow old and sick and then die, watching as many horrors as great things and being unable to do more than bear witness to them? Always alone, without even anyone to talk about it with or share experiences with on an equal basis? Is that a blessing or the worst of curses? You tell me."

"Without Anne Marie? Hmmm . . . I think I see what you mean. But I would insist on Anne Marie as well!"

"I'm not so certain of that myself," she put in. "I mean, after centuries together I'd expect even the most loving of people to get rather sick of one another."

Both men were startled by her comment, Tony because he could not conceive of such a thing and the captain for far different reasons.

Was that ultimately what it was? Did I need her so much that I failed to realize that I could be a pretty boring and predictable stick-in-the-mud that might eventually drive anybody nuts? Could it be as simple as that?

"You might grow sick ofme ?"Tony asked her, genu-inely a little upset.

"Don't worry, darling, I'll give you a few thousand years or so," she answered playfully. She paused for a moment, sensing that her response had really bothered him. "Oh, come off it, Latin lover! It's just a silly game to pa.s.s the time!"

The captain turned and looked back toward the northeast. "Sorry I caused any problems. As Anne Marie said, it's just a ga-Holy smoke !"

Anne Marie suddenly looked up in the same direction and gasped. "Tony!The whole sky is lighting up!

It's like the sun's about to rise!"

But it was thirteen minutes after two in the morning.

Rockfall: Rio

IN SPITE OF MANY PREDICTIONS TO THE CONTRARY, IT WASquite clear to astronomers that as the meteor dug into the atmosphere, it was coming apart. Not enough to keep a large ma.s.s from striking fairly close to where they had pre-dicted but enough so that pieces, some fairly large, would shower down along the route inland. This had been feared but was not completely unexpected.

It began while still well over the Atlantic, a brilliant, shining fireball that turned darkness into eerie twilight while providing a surprisingly multicolored display in its wake for those watching openmouthed on ships at sea and from monitoring aircraft. This caused a lot of attention but little concern; the ocean was vast and swallowed whole the splinters that managed to make it all the way to the surface.

As the meteor approached the continent, however, it was lower in the sky and slowing slightly, although its speed was still so great that observers on the ground saw the fire-ball flash past in the s.p.a.ce of but a few seconds.

To the captain and Anne Marie, sitting atop the hill not many kilometers from Rio, it was an eerie, awesome sight nonetheless. The meteor approached from over the horizon, illuminating the eastern sky like the coming of dawn, slowly obliterating the stars, and overwhelming even the glow of the city lights.

When it suddenly appeared, much lower on the horizon than they had expected, it was a min-iature sun, a ma.s.sive fireball that seemed several times the size of a full moon. Even the captain had to admit that he'd never in his incredibly long life seen anything quite like it before.

It came with blinding speed almost directly over them, and at just about that moment the captain, who'd gotten to his feet without even realizing it as he gaped at the sight, suddenly reeled, cried out, and dropped to his knees.

The sensation was momentary but powerful: a sudden loss of orientation and a pervasive, cold, desolate emptiness that struck to the core of his soul, as if someone had just walked across his grave . . .

At the same moment there was a series of thunderous ex-plosions that echoed all around them and a brief but violent wind that came out of nowhere and struck with surprising force.

"Wha-what's happening?" Tony cried."What's happen-ing! Anne Marie!"

"I'm all right!" she shouted to him, although already the wind and explosions seemed to be dying down, vanishing into pale echoes as if they had never been there. "Oh, good lord! There are streamers-sparkling things, hundreds-no, thousands of them, falling all over. Reds, yellows, greens, golds, pure white-incredible! Captain, can you-" For the first time she looked over and saw Solomon bent over dou-ble, looking agonized."Captain! Are you all right?"

The captain gulped down several deep breaths. "Yes, yes! I'm all right. It was-strange. I've never felt anything like that before. Never. It's fading now. Did you feel it?"

"Only the wind."

He was getting some self-control back but was clearly still shaken. "That was just the fireball sucking up some of the air in its wake. It must have come almost directly over us. The explosions were sonic booms.

It's still goingvery fast, unless it's already crashed by now." He looked out at the spectacular fireworks display still raining down all around them. "Some of those arebig ! I think I can see smoke in the direction of the city!"

There was a sudden, jarring explosion very close by, an explosion so near that the ground trembled and Anne Ma-rie's wheelchair began to vibrate, almost tipping over. The captain again fell, this time from the tremors.

"What now? Earthquake?" Tony asked, frustrated that he could see nothing.

"I don't think so," the captain responded. "I think a big chunk came down pretty d.a.m.ned close to us."

He picked himself up off the ground and wiped off some dirt. "Every-body okay?"

"Yes-I think so," Anne Marie responded. "Oh, my! This was quite the adventure, after all. I doubt if I will ever forget this. I'mso glad we came!"

The captain began looking around and immediately saw a reddish-orange glow from the direction of the road below-the road they'd used to get there.

"You two stay here and try to relax," he told them. "I'm going to walk over and see just what hit and where." He had visions of landslides that might possibly trap them atop the mountain, but he didn't want to alarm his companions until he knew just what the situation was.

He was also still somewhat shaken by that terrible para-lyzing sensation he'd had as the meteor had pa.s.sed over-head. Nothing, but nothing, had ever felt like that before.

It had felt like death.

Not the warm, dark cessation of life he'd imagined but cold, terribly lonely, empty, corrupt-the cold of decompo-sition and the grave.

He reached the point where the road started down, but he didn't have to walk far along it to discover what had hit and where. Nowonder the earth had shaken! He couldn't imagine why it hadn't knocked them off the hilltop and top-pled the car, for all the good the car was going to do now.