Patricia shrugged. "Okay. The corridor could be dimpled. Each dimple is a fluctuation in the corridor's space-time, marking some point of potential entry into another universe. The dimples should reflect a minor change in geometric constants like pi; maybe in physical constants as well. Wherever there's a dimple—or a potential for a dimple—we may also find time fluctuations."

"Does that mean the corridor is full of potential wells?"

"I think so. Only a few have been selected—tuned, as it were." She looked up at the roof of the tent, trying to find a way to explain what she saw in her head. "The dimples butt up against each other. There could be an infinite number of them. And a well opened in a dimple—potential or already tuned—could lead to another universe."

Takahashi shook his head. "This is getting entirely too weird."

"Yeah," Patricia said. "I'd like to hold off on more explanations until Garry returns."

"He's coming down any time now. He entered the bore hole a few hours ago," Carrolson said. She slapped her knee and stood up. "Which reminds me. We're having a dance tomorrow in the first chamber. All are invited. It's not exactly Garry's homecoming, but it will serve as such. We all need to let down our hair a little bit."

"I'm a good dancer," Wu said. "Foxtrot, twist, swim."

"Listen to him! You think we thirty years behind the times," Chang said.

"Forty," Wu corrected.

"And if we can peel Heineman away from his toy," Carrolson said, "I'll teach the old coot a few hot steps."

Lanier dropped the paper on his desk in the science team compound office and reached for the com button. He hesitated before pressing it.

He thought he had figured out why Hoffman had given him the name. "Ann," he said. "I want to see Rupert Takahashi in the compound as soon as possible."

He hoped he was doing what Hoffman had hinted he should do: defusing the bomb the Stone had become. . . .

Lance Corporal Thomas Oldfield, twenty-four, had spent the last six months on the Stone, and he regarded them as the most exciting time of his life, though in fact there wasn't much overt excitement. Most of the time he stood guard duty in the second chamber, just outside the tunnel to the first chamber. He spent many of his hours alternately keeping an eye on the road, the zero bridge and near city, and examining the distant curve of the opposite side. He was usually accompanied by at least one colleague, but today a special detail had been ordered to accompany a scientist into the first chamber from the subway terminal in the city, and now he was left alone. He didn't expect any trouble. In the entire time he had spent on the Stone, nothing untoward had happened. He had never even seen a boojum.

He didn't believe they existed.