s eyes went wild. The Kuzaks had to hold him, while Mitch
Storey ran to phone Doc Miller. A shot quieted Diamond somewhat, and an
ambulance took him away.

That incident shook up the Bunch a little. A worse one came on a Tuesday
evening, when not everybody was at the shop.

The TV was on, showing the interior of the _Far Side_, one of those big,
comparatively luxurious tour bubbs that take rubbernecks that can afford
it on a swing around the Moon. The _Far Side_ was just coming into
orbit, where tending skip gliders would take off the passengers for
grounding at the New Mexico spaceport. Aboard the big bubb you could see
people moving about, or sitting with drinks on curved benches. A girl
was playing soft music on a tiny, lightweight piano.

There wasn't any sign of trouble except that the TV channel went dead
for a second, until a stand by commercial with singing cartoon figures
cut in.

But Frank Nelsen somehow put his hands to his head, as if to protect it.

Mitch Storey, with a big piece of stellene in his brown mitts, stood up
very straight.

Gimp, at a bench, handed a tiny capacitor to Eileen, and started
counting, slow and even. "One--two--three--four--five--"

"What's with you slobs?" Jig Hollins wanted to know.

"Dunno--we're nuts, maybe," Gimp answered. "Ten--eleven--twelve--"

Charlie Reynolds and Paul Hendricks were alert, too.

Then a big, white light trembled on the thin snow beyond the windows,
turning the whole night landscape into weird day. The tearing, crackling
roar was delayed. By the time the sound arrived, all of the stellene in
the _Far Side_ must have been consumed. It had no resistance to
atmospheric friction at five miles per second, or faster. There were
just the heavier metallic details left to fall and burn. Far off, there
was a thumping crash that seemed to make the ground sag and recover.

"Here we go!" Charlie Reynolds yelled.

In his and Hollins' cars, they got to the scene of the fragment's fall,
two miles out of town, by following a faint, fading glow. They were
almost the first to reach the spot. Tiflin and Ramos, who had been
working on their jobs, came with their boss, along with a trailing horde
of cars from town.

Flashlights probed into the hot impact pit in the open field, where the
frozen soil had seemed to splash like a liquid. Crumpled in the hole was
a lump of half-fused sheet steel, wadded up like paper. It was probably
part of the _Far Side_'s central hub.