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hovered worriedly about, asking questions that went unanswered.
    "I'm Agent Stone from the Defense Intelligence Agency." He pushed a very official-looking ID card under her nose. "We have reason to believe that your life might be in danger and have orders to take you under protective custody."
    Debra blinked in confusion. "What?"
    They didn't even stop to explain. One on either side, they hustled her out of the lecture hall through a back door, ignoring the howls of indignation from the Oxford people. She was in a dark car and speeding away from the curb before the reality of what had happened caught up with her.
     
     
    FRAN New York, New York
    19 DECEMBER 1995, 0442 LOCAL
    19 DECEMBER 1995, 0942 ZULU
     
    The computer screen cast an eerie glow across the hardwood floors of the large den. Francine Volkers was facing the screen but her eyes were unfocused--she didn't need to see the numbers portrayed, because she'd created them and they were indelibly etched in her mind. She took another sip of her coffee and sighed as a light went on in the guest bedroom. Her husband padded out, his bathrobe half thrown on.
    "Are you going to get any sleep?"
    Francine shook her head. For the past forty-eight hours she'd had to face her own numbers and she didn't like them one bit. She'd transmitted them as required on the secure modem as soon as the calculations were complete. Now she could do nothing but look at them.
    "No."
    Her husband cursed under his breath. Their marriage had been one of convenience for many years now and she was currently an irritant-upsetting the unspoken truce. "Jesus Christ, Fran! You've been sitting in front of that damn computer since I got home. The glow is coming right in my door."
    "Then shut your door." She was surprised he'd noticed how long it had been. He worked on Wall Street, crunching his own set of numbers and all he truly cared about was that they turned out in the black, and in at least six digits a month. The numbers had brought them together fifteen years earlier in college, but had subsequently taken them in radically different directions. His had ended on Wall Street. Hers had taken her to Columbia University, where she had helped pioneer the field of statistical projection. She took facts and figures, collated them into numbers a computer could read, and then tried to project out what the possibilities of various future events would be. Right now they read very poorly.
    A few years ago a group that had kept what they called a Doomsday Clock had moved the minute hand back from two minutes before midnight to almost fifteen minutes prior to midnight. The breakup of the Soviet Union and the worldwide cutback in military spending had been the impetus. Fran had disagreed with that move, but kept it to herself. Her own calculations would have edged the minute hand a shade closer to the dark hour. The loss of the relative stability of the Soviet Union and the formation of numerous splinter countries all armed with nuclear weapons certainly did not bode well for mankind in her mind or in her calculations. Nor did the world economic condition. The haves were teetering and the have-nots were getting angrier.
    She didn't even bother to look at her husband. "Go to bed, George. You need your rest so you can make money tomorrow, or should I say later today."
    A year before he would have retorted angrily to the dig, pointing out that his money paid for their exclusive Central Park West apartment. It was a sign of how low things had sunk between them that he simply turned and stalked back into the bedroom, slamming his door behind him. Fran was in her mid-thirties; a tall, slender woman whose dark hair was now streaked with gray-a sign of premature aging she refused to color. As a result of that and the creases around her eyes and mouth, she looked almost ten years older than she really was. It wasn't something to concern her. Such trivial matters bothered her little when weighed against what her numbers told