"Christopher, what a surprise," he said affably.

"Art, I hope I'm the first." Riley's voice was a higher tenor than usual.

"Try me."

"Have you heard about Europa?"

"Europe?"

"Europa. Jupiter's sixth moon."

"What about it?"

"It's gone."

"I beg your pardon?"

"There's been a search on at Mount Wilson and Mauna Kea. The Galileo's still going strong out there, but it hasn't been aimed at Europa for weeks. JPL turned the cameras to where Europa should be, but there's nothing big enough to photograph. If it were there, it would come out of occultation again in about ten minutes. But nobody expects to see it. Calls from amateurs have been flooding JPL and Mount Palomar for sixteen hours."

Arthur couldn't shift gears fast enough to think how to react. "I'm sorry ... ?"

"It's not painted black, it's not hiding, it's just gone. Nobody saw it go, either."

Riley was a rotund, crew-cut, plaid sports-coated kind of scientist, shy in person but not on the phone, deeply conservative. He had always been critically deficient in the humor department. He had never pulled Arthur's leg on anything.

"What do they think happened?"

"Nobody knows," Riley said. "Nobody's even venturing a guess. There's going to be a press conference here in Pasadena tomorrow."

Arthur pinched his cheek speculatively. "Did it explode? Something hit it?"

"Can't say, can we?" He could almost hear Chris's smile in his voice. Riley did not smile unless he was faced with a truly bizarre problem. "No data. I've got about seventy other people to call now. Keep in touch, Arthur."

"Thanks, Chris." He hung up, still pinching his cheek. The smoothness of the moment by the river had passed. He stood by the phone for a moment, frowning, then walked into the master bedroom.

Francine reached high to rummage through the top shelf of the bedroom closet, Marty and Becky at her heels.

In their seventeen years together, his wife had moved over the line from voluptuous to zoftig to plump. The physical contrast between Arthur and Francine, all curves and fulfilling grace, was obvious; equally obvious was the fact that what others saw in them, they did not see in each other. She tended to wear folk art print dresses, and much of her wardrobe was a stylish acquiescence to matronliness.

Yet in his thoughts, she was eternally as he had first seen her, walking up sunny white-sanded Newport Beach in southern California, wearing a brief one-piece black swimsuit, her long black hair loose in the breeze. She had been the sexiest woman he had ever known, and she still was.

She pulled down the bulbous canvas Astroscan bag. Bending over, she rummaged for the box of eyepieces under a pile of shoes. "What did Chris want?" she asked.

"Europa's disappeared," Arthur said.

"Europe?" Francine smiled over her shoulder and straightened, passing the bag to him.

"Europa. Sixth moon of Jupiter."

"Oh. How?"

Arthur made a face and shrugged. He took the telescope and its painted gray metal base and carried them outside, Gauge snorting at his heels.