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“just like a real person.”
    The crackling wood made him think of the prehistoric hunters, Cro-Magnon warriors who had tracked herds like this using spears and pits and cliffs to kill the giant animals for food, fur, and ivory.
    Like the restored bison on the Great Plains, Helen’s dream-experiment might turn out to be so wildly successful that large numbers of these once-extinct creatures could roam the open Montana range. They might wander north into Saskatchewan and Alberta, heading up toward the subarctic regions for which their huge bodies were designed.
    He had been so focused on working one generation after another, converging toward a full-blood woolly mammoth, that he had not let his mind wander far into future possibilities.
    “Maybe one day we’ll have a large herd of mammoths that breed true and reproduce in the wild.” He ran fingers over Helen’s hair, recalling Kinsman’s concern (one of his few legitimate ones) about the impact a sizable group of such huge grazers would have on the landscape and environment. What if they had to thin the herd? “Can you imagine if we had enough of them that we could even sponsor a good old-fashioned mammoth hunt?”
    Cassie, very protective of the animals, glared across the fire at him. “What! Use guns on my mammoths?” She had been working here only two years, but the mammoths were hers . “Not unless you play fair.” The girl’s firm lips curled into a devilish grin on her freckled face. “Dress your big-game hunters in furs, then send them out with stone axes and sapling spears. Pleistocene rules. I don’t think you’d get many takers.”
    “Not me,” Helen said. “Not for all the testosterone in the world.”
    Alex returned a noncommittal smile. He did not argue, but he knew both women were wrong. Over the years, he had encountered any number of too rich, too bored, dot-com millionaires or genetics patent holders—people who had delusions of immortality and an overblown sense of necessary machismo.
    Even with Pleistocene rules, Alex knew he could find plenty of takers.…
    O O O
    As he bedded down next to Helen, the moon continued to rise, spilling silver light. Even here, as isolated as one could be in the continental U.S., he felt as if he were under a spotlight. He couldn’t sleep, and he knew Helen was awake and thinking beside him.
    Below, the mammoths sounded restless. Snuffles and loud snorts rippled through the big animals. Most of them seemed awake. On the other side of the fire, young Cassie sat alone, her knees drawn up to her chin as she stared down into the valley, reflecting the animals’ uneasiness.
    Alex couldn’t imagine what possible threats or predators could worry the gigantic prehistoric beasts this deep within ranch property. “Are they like this every night?”
    Impishly, Cassie raised her eyebrows. “I do have quarters of my own back in the complex, Dr. Pierce. Sleeping outdoors is a treat for me, too.”
    A bright meteor streaked overhead, low and horizontal, like a rocket on the Fourth of July. It came over the line of trees on the ridge, flying hot, traveling with a speed and deadly accuracy that surpassed any shooting star.
    Make a wish …
    Helen was already on her feet, leaping out of the blankets on the damp ground. “It’s heading toward the lab complex!”
    The trail of fire faded into orange against midnight blue, and the incandescent arrow struck the valley behind them with a bright flash. The main Helyx compound. A muffled whump .
    As Alex lurched to his feet, the implanted pager tingled again. “Boss, we’ve been hit down here. Somebody sent in a mini-cruise, I’d say. Hit the pines close to the Hospital … still trying to assess the damage.”
    “A mini-what?” Alex subvocalized, and his words went back to Ralph.
    “Backpack-sized cruise missile, Boss. Short-range, with a nose full of high explosive. A man can carry one a fair way, then launch it from a rack.”
    Helen was already racing for her