The Kemp object. That attribution, he assured himself, would change shortly. Sand-Samshow object . . . Not a catchy name, but it would have to do. Yet . . . why? Why lay claim to the discovery of the bullet that might have everyone's name on it?

The elevator door opened and Samshow stepped out into a blare of noise. Oz glittered, silver and gray, glass-walled and high-ceilinged. Young people in elegant dress danced across the central floor, while drinkers and talkers sat and stood on the surrounding raised carpeted areas. The sweet smells of wine and Bourbon wafted from a passing waitress's tray.

Samshow winced at the noise and glanced around, looking for Sand or Kemp. Sand stood in a corner waving to catch his eye.

Their round table was barely a foot across, and five people were crowded around it: Kemp, Sand, two others he did not recognize, smiling as if they were old friends, and now himself. He shook hands as Sand introduced Jonathan V. Post, an acquaintance of Kemp's, dark and Levantine with a gray-shot curly beard, and Oscar Eglin-ton from the Nevada School of Mines. Post declaimed a brief and embarrassing poem on meeting the legendary Old Man of the Sea. When he was finished, he smiled broadly.

"Thank you," Samshow said, not very impressed. The waitress came and Post sacrificed his own Corona that Samshow might have a drink sooner.

He had once downed a case of Corona in two days while whale-watching at Scammon's Lagoon. That had been in 1952. Now more than one beer gave him heartburn.

"We have to fill you in, Walt," Sand said. "Kemp talked with seismologists in Brazil and Morocco. One of them is here—Jesús Ochoa. We have the nodal traces. October thirty-first. The disruptions and shock waves. There's been high surf in some very suspicious places, and seismic events like nobody's ever seen ..."

"Thirty-five south, forty-two west," Kemp said, with the same smug grin he had worn a week ago in Hawaii.

"He convinced me that was good enough evidence to talk to Washington. They referred me to Arthur Gordon—"

"The President isn't interested, apparently," Kemp said, his grin vanishing. "We couldn't even talk to the new national security advisor, what's his name ..."

"Patterson," said the muscular, dark-tanned Eglinton.

"But Gordon says he'll be here tonight to talk with us. There's going to be a lot to discuss. Post here has spoken to some physicists and space scientists. Chris Riley, Fred Hardin. Others. Asteroids are on their mind."

"You're all convinced we've got something appropriate, a true extraterrestrial bullet?"

"We have more than that," Kemp said, leaning forward. Sand put a hand on his arm, and Kemp nodded, falling back into his seat. Sand leaned over to Samshow as if to explain something delicate.