"You're my son, your momma's son, always. You remember that. Make us proud."

"Yes, sir." Reuben went to the bed and hugged his father and was surprised again at how light and frail he seemed. Years past, his father had loomed a muscled giant in Reuben's eyes.

"Good luck," his father said.

Reuben pulled the overcoat around him and stepped out into the early morning frost, his boots crunching and slipping on the glazed steps. In one deep side pocket, the metal spider lay curled tight as an untried puzzle. In the other jingled two hundred dollars in change and bills.

"Good-bye, Momma," he whispered at the locked door.

Chapter 36

36

The afternoon had been tiring and the early evening showed signs of being even more strenuous. Samshow had already attended the public presentation of two papers in rooms filled half with geologists and half with TV correspondents and camera crews, ever hopeful of finding new revelations. What they got for the most part were technical presentations on resources discovery, migration of metallic ores in deep crust, and discussions of pinpointing Middle Eastern underground nuclear tests.

Samshow had left the last presentation and wandered into the spacious white-tiled men's rest room of the St. Francis.

He glanced up at his image in the mirror. Two young men in business suits, hair trimmed short, faces shaved so clean they might have been beardless adolescents, took positions at the urinals.

"This oxygen reading bothers the hell out of me," said one.

"Not just you," said the other.

"There's no place for it to come from. Increase by one percent." He shook his head as he zipped up. "More of that, and we'll all be drunk."

He rejoined Kemp and Post and they walked to the elevator, squeezing in beside four bewildered elderly tourists and two middle-aged geologists dressed in jeans and old sweaters. Arthur Gordon had arrived too late on Saturday to attend their first scheduled meeting. He had invited them to come to his room at seven, to talk and perhaps join him for late dinner after.

The hotel room was small. Post and Kemp sat on the bed, leaving the two guest chairs for Samshow and Gordon. Arthur shook Samshow's hand firmly and offered ice water. As he poured the glass in the bathroom, he asked, "Is there any consensus on this object supposed to be burrowing through the crust?"

He returned and handed Samshow the glass.

"None," Post said. Samshow agreed with a small nod.

"Maybe there's no consensus, but nobody doubts that something's there," Kemp said.

"Are you convinced your meteor sighting and the seismic traces are connected?" Arthur asked Samshow.

"I suppose I am," Samshow replied. "The South American traces we predicted did occur."

"And the object is still making noise."

"I talked with my company stations in Manila and Adak this morning," Kemp said. "Still grumbling like an old bear."

"Are the sounds weakening at all?"