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better offer—Howard had called.
    He had been investigated, approved, entered onto the DOD payroll; he had shown up three days ago and toured a part of the facility . . . but no one had explained its essential purpose, the fundamental reason for these endless rooms, computers, concrete bunkers and steel doors. Even his uncle had remained aloof, had smiled distantly: it will all be clear in time .
    He came over the rise and saw the buildings gilded with blue light; saw the smoke rising from the central bunker. Worse, he saw a fire department ladder truck and chase car inching down the access road, the image fluid and indistinct.
    He could not imagine what this veil of light might mean. He knew only that it represented some disaster, some tragedy of a bizarre and peculiar kind. No one was moving in the complex, at least no one out in the open. The facility had its own fire control team, but it wasn’t anywhere near the smoldering central bunker—at least, as far as Howard could tell. The blue light made his head swim.
    Maybe they were all dead. Including his uncle, he thought. Alan Stern had been at the center of this project, that much had been obvious; Stern had been its lord, its shaman, its guiding presence. If the accident was lethal it would have taken Stern first of all. All this fluorescence suggested some kind of radiation, though nothing Howard could pin down—something powerful enough to kick photons out of the air. He knew there was radioactive material at the facility. He had seen the warning labels on the closed bunkers. They had given him a film badge as soon as he passed the gate.
    That was why he’d chased the Two Rivers VFD all the way out here. He didn’t think small-town volunteer firemen were trained or equipped to fight radioactive fires. Most likely they weren’t even aware of the danger. They might blunder into an event more deadly than they could guess. So Howard had jumped into his car and rushed after, meaning to warn them—still meaning to.
    But he saw the trucks hesitate and stop, then reverse, wobble, retreat.
    He drove down the hillside to meet them.
    Assistant Chief Haldane saw the civilian automobile come over the rise, but he was too dazed to worry about it. He had climbed out of his car, vomited once into the young weeds by the side of the road, then sat on a wedge of natural granite with his head in his hands and his stomach still churning.
    He didn’t want to see anyone, didn’t want to speak to anyone. What mattered was that he was beyond the border of blue light, that he had found his way back into the world of sanity. His relief was immense. He took deep, cleansing gulps of air. Pretty soon he would be back in his sane house in the sane town of Two Rivers and this nightmare would be over. All these buildings could burn to the ground as far as he was concerned—the better if they did.
    “Chief?”
    He spat on the ground to clear the taste of puke from his mouth. Then he looked up. Standing before him in blue jeans and a pressed cotton shirt was a civilian, presumably the man from the automobile—more like a boy, though, Haldane thought, with his pink skin and his bug-eye glasses. Haldane didn’t speak, only waited for this apparition to justify its presence.
    “I’m Howard Poole,” the civilian said. “I work at the facility. Or I was supposed to—I would be, if this hadn’t happened. I came because I thought, if you were fighting the fire, you might not know—there might be some radioactivity in there, some particulate matter in the smoke.”
    Poole seemed exquisitely uneasy. “Particulate matter,” Haldane said. “Well, thank you, Mr. Poole, but I don’t believe particulate matter is our problem right now.”
    “I saw you turn back.”
    “Yessir,” Haldane said. “That we did.”
    “May I ask why?”
    Some of the firefighters had shaken off their queasiness and gathered behind Poole. Chris Shank was there, and Tom Stubbs, both looking demoralized and numb