A worldwide stampede to higher ground. Nadia stared at the screen, feeling stunned as the scale of the catastrophe became clearer to her. Coastal cities would be awash. Six meters! She found it very hard to imagine that any possible ice mass could be so large as to raise the sea level of all Earth’s oceans by even as much as one meter— but six! It was shocking proof, if one needed it, that the Earth was not so big after all. Or else that the West Antarctic ice sheet was huge. Well, it had covered about a third of a continent, and was, the reports said, some three kilometers thick. That was a lot of ice. Sax was saying something about the East Antarctic ice sheet, which apparently was not threatened. She shook her head to clear it of this nattering, concentrated on the news. Bangladesh would have to be entirely evacuated; that was three hundred million people, not to mention the other coastal cities of India, like Calcutta, Madras, Bombay. Then London, Copenhagen, Istanbul, Amsterdam, New York, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Miami, Rio, Buenos Aires, Sydney, Melbourne, Singapore, Hong Kong, Manila, Djakarta, Tokyo . . . and those were only the big ones. A lot of people lived on the coast, in a world already severely stressed by overpopulation and declining resources. And now all kinds of basic necessities were being drowned by salt water.

“Sax,” she said, “we should be helping them. Not just . . .”

“There is not that much we can do. And we can do that best if we’re free. First one, then the other.”

“You promise?”

“Yes,” he said, looking surprised. “I mean— I’ll do what I can.”

“That’s what I’m asking.” She thought it over. “You’ve got everything ready at your end?”

“Yes. We want to start with missile strikes against all surveillance and weapons satellites.”

“What about Kasei Vallis?”

“I’m dealing with it.”

“When do you want to start?”

“How about tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow!”

“I have to deal with Kasei very soon. Conditions are good right now.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Let’s try to launch tomorrow. No sense wasting time.”

“My God,” Nadia said, thinking hard. “We’re about to go behind the sun?”

“Yes.”

This position vis-à-vis Earth was mostly a symbolic matter these days, as communications were assured by a great number of asteroid relays; but it did mean that it would take months for even the fastest shuttles to get from Earth to Mars.

Nadia took a deep breath, let it out. She said, “Let’s go, then.”

“I was hoping you would say that. I’ll call them in Burroughs and give them the word.”

“We’ll meet in Underhill?” This was their current rendezvous point in case of emergency; Sax was in a refuge in Da Vinci Crater where a lot of his missile silos were located, so both of them could get to Underhill in a day.