Wu asked her to dance and proved to be a capable partner. She then sat out the rest of the festivities. Lanier rejoined her during a break; he had been dancing rather feverishly with a number of partners, Farley and Chang among them.

"Enjoying yourself?" he asked.

She nodded. Then she said, "No, not really."

"Neither am I, if the truth be known."

"You're a good dancer, though," Patricia said.

Lanier shrugged. "Have to stop thinking sometime, right?"

She couldn't agree with that. There was so little time. "I have to talk to you," she said.

"On recreation time?"

"Is here okay?" she asked, simultaneously. The noise was loud enough that they could hardly be overheard.

"As good a place as any, I suppose," Lanier said. He looked around for Takahashi; he was on the opposite side of the dance quad, nowhere near the Russians.

She nodded and again her eyes filled with tears. Because he had said something nice to her, now she would open up and express her worst fears, her darkest opinions. "I've tried to calculate how big a snap the corridor's creation would have given the Stone."

"How big?" Lanier asked, keeping an eye on people passing close enough to hear.

"Not very big," she said. "It's a complicated question. But not big at all."

"We're on, then?"

Her throat tightened. "It's possible. Is that why you really wanted me on the Stone? Just to say that?"

He shook his head. "Hoffman wanted you here. She told me I was responsible for you. I just put you to work." He reached into his pocket and brought out an envelope, opening it and withdrawing two letters. "I haven't been able to give you these before. No, amend that. It slipped my mind until now. I brought them back with me on the shuttle."

She took the letters from his hand and looked at them. One was from her parents, the other from Paul. "May I write back?" she asked.

"Say anything you like," he said. "Within reason."

The postmarks were a week old.

A week passed. The day scheduled for Armageddon passed.

Patricia stayed in her quarters, working harder than ever with the resources left to her.

She could not change her initial opinion.

Each day, then, was a victory, with reality showing her how wrong she could be.

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty

Lanier exited the elevator and took hold of the cable, maneuvering into the cart. The slightly built driver—a woman in air force blue coveralls—moved the cart off its normal route and followed a track into Kirchner's staging and practice area. Lanier had been there only twice before, each time to meet with the admiral. He clung to the cart handgrips and tried to prepare an answer for the questions he knew would be asked.

Hoffman had hinted in her last communication that the information she had given him had finally reached the Joint Chiefs. That meant Kirchner and Gerhardt had it now.