"Not as of half an hour ago.' Then he added, "I would've gotten a call if they'd launched while I was riding out here."

"We should have this kloodge put together in another ten or twelve hours."

"Good."

"But there won't be any time to test it."

"Then it better work right the first time," Doug said.

He could sense Wicksen shaking his head inside his helmet. "Nothing works right the first time. Haven't you ever heard of Murphy's Law?"

Ignoring that, Doug asked, "How soon will you have the extra electrical power connected?"

Pointing past the mass driver's long metal track, Wicksen answered, "The extra men you assigned me are doing that now. You're going to have a temporary brown-out when we fire the gun."

"Better than having a nuclear explosion inside the crater," Doug said grimly.

Wicksen was silent for a long moment. Then he said, "Thanks for putting the construction crew to work for us."

"The numbers that the safety people ran on their computer said that four meters of regolith rubble should protect you from the radiation blast—if they got the yield from the bomb right."

"Whether it works or not, we all feel a lot better knowing we can sit in the shelter while we're running the gun. Thanks a lot."

"Nothing to it. The construction people have nothing else to do."

Turning back toward the mass driver, Wicksen made a wistful little sigh. "I sure wish we had time to test this beast."

"So do I," Doug said fervently. "So do I."

SAVANNAH

"But I must speak to Seigo Yamagata," said Ibrahim al-Rashid. "It is most urgent."

Rashid's office had once belonged to Joanna Brudnoy, when she had been chairman of Masterson Corporation's board of directors. Many was the time that she had summoned him into her sanctum and he had dutifully scurried to her in response. Once he had acceded to the chairmanship, however, Rashid had completely refurnished and redecorated the office. His desk was a sweeping, curving modernistic work of glass, his high-backed black leather chair custom-built to his measurements. The walls were adorned with tapestries from Persia and India, the windows were actually wall screens that could display any of thousands of scenes stored in his personal computer's memory.

One of those screens now showed the image of a young Japanese man in an open-neck white shirt and tastefully checkered sports jacket, sitting at a desk in an office panelled in what appeared to be teak.

"Seigo Yamagata is not available at present," he said in the homogenized American English of a television announcer. "I am Saito Yamagata, his eldest son. May I be of assistance to you?"

"I must speak to your father," Rashid demanded.

The younger Yamagata smiled gently and said, "I regret to tell you once again that he is not available."

Rashid felt as if he were talking to a brick wall. Or worse, a large soft pillow that absorbed his words without being moved by them in the slightest.