Far Edge of Darkness

"What the—"

The world blew up in his face.

Fluorescent lab lights were not kind to Sue Firelli. Dan halted in the doorway, momentarily stu

"Dan." She tried to smile. "It's... been a while, hasn't it?"

He accepted her outstretched hand and squeezed it briefly. Her fingers trembled, like winter-bare twigs in his hand. Both were aware, Dan knew, not only of his bodyguard, but of the electronic ears secreted about the lab.

"You know how it is," Dan replied with forced nonchalance. "How's the work going?"

She compressed dry lips and shook her head. "Not well. My latest readings..." She shrugged helplessly. "I haven't been sleeping much."

She shoved a lab notebook at him, then abruptly sat down on a lab stool and leaned against the counter, eyes closed. For a moment, Sue Firelli looked closer to ninety than forty-six.

Dan was only partway through the page when the significance of her notations hit him.

"Holy—"

He bit back the rest of what he'd been about to say. Sue's face was—if possible—even more pinched and waxen than before.

She couldn't take much more of this. He set the notebook aside and rested a hand on her thin shoulder. "Sue, you've been working 'round the clock, haven't you?"

She nodded.

"When was the last time you fell asleep?"

She shrugged. "Last week?" she suggested helplessly. Her eyes reminded Dan of men he'd seen coming out of the jungles in Cambodia and Laos.

"I'm calling Frank."

"No!"

She jerked to her feet, then swayed and toppled toward him. Dan caught and steadied her. Naked panic was building in her eyes. "I have to keep monitoring—"

"Sue."

He tried to convey with his eyes what he couldn't say aloud. If Sue collapsed, Carreras' bloody work would continue, but their last chance to stop him might well collapse with her.

She opened her mouth, then closed it. Her shoulders slumped. "Okay," she whispered. "You're right. I'm no good to anybody this way." She tried to give him a wan smile. It was a heroic effort.

"Okay." Dan steered her toward a chair. "I'll call Frank. Meanwhile..." He glanced significantly toward the guard, then toward one of the known bugs. She followed his gaze and nodded. Dan said lightly, "I've got an assignment. From Upstairs."

She seemed to brace herself, reaching unsteadily for the nearest counter. Her fingers tightened down on the edge. "Yes?"

"We have a small problem in, uh, logistics and security. Something of a Gudekinstian problem."

Her eyes widened. She glanced toward the discarded notebook, with its clear evidence of slippage in the fabric of the time stream. Well, clear to a physicist, anyway. Thank God Carreras didn't really understand what was in Sue Firelli's notebooks.

It was very nearly his only weakness.

Sue licked her lips. "What, um, did you have in mind?"

"Firellian Transfer."

She started badly. Dan had to brace her in the chair. Sue looked like she desperately wanted to protest. Dan closed his hand over hers and gripped hard. She met his gaze.

"Trust me," he tried to say silently.

"Yes-s-s," she finally muttered, as though contemplating a physics problem, "that would be the logical solution to a Gudekinstian problem. I'll have to work out the math, program the variables."

"How long will you need?"

She managed a weak smile. "I may be dead on my feet, Dan Collins, but I'll be doing physics problems in my grave. When and where?"

He snagged an atlas from the pile of reference materials that had spilled over from her bookshelves. He flipped a couple of pages and opened it to the Pacific Basin. "Here." His fingertip rested on a tiny dot. Her eyes widened. "And here." He returned to Alaska, to the area where their base sat. He traced a number with his fingertip. She swayed. Squeezed shut her eyes. Then nodded. He said in as normal a tone as possible, "Set the primary for no less than a one-day margin. The timing ought to be obvious."

She nodded. Then said, "The Firellian Transfer is going to be dangerous. Really dangerous."

Their gazes met, held.

"Good luck." She looked like she was about to faint. She added hoarsely, "Go call Frank."

She sat down at her computer and called up esoteric files only she and Zac Hughes genuinely understood. Dan moved across the lab to the phone. It, too, was bugged. Probably every phone on base was bugged by now.

The line clicked as someone picked up in the infirmary.

"Valdez."

"Frank, I'm over at the lab, in Building Z. Dr. Firelli is ill. She hasn't slept since last week. When I came in, she was literally weaving on her feet. I'm worried."

Across the room, Nobel Laureate Susan Firelli glanced up. Her glare dared him to add just how seriously out on her feet she was. Dan had to admire her spunk. She was tough. He just hoped she was tough enough to get through this.

Then he hoped they would get through this. Those notations in her lab book still had him sweating. Much more slippage and the whole time stream would start to unravel, leaving them smack in the middle of anywhen, anywhere, and maybe even nowhere. Given those notations, Dan wasn't sure any further jumps would work properly, much less a triple-leg Firellian Transfer. The thought of Lucille and Da

Francisco Valdez' response was dry. "Order yourself a checkup while you're at it, Dan. You need one."

"Later."

"Yeah, sure. With you it's always later. But it better not be much later. I'll need security clearance to get in there. I've never been inside Building Z, Dan."

The phone line went dead. Frank's observation felt like an accusation. Well, maybe it was. Frank had to be damned suspicious by now. God, what am I getting him into, bringing him in here? And they know he's unsettled about McKee... . But Sue Firelli needed the best available and that was Frank. Dan dialed security and arranged for Frank to be admitted to the building. He then cradled the receiver and leaned his shoulder against the wall to watch Dr. Firelli. She was completely self-absorbed now that Dan had given her something concrete to do besides sit and watch the fabric of the universe unravel around their ears.

He'd felt so fortunate, securing Sue for his research team. If things had gone differently, he might have added her daughter, Janet, to the team in a few years. Janet was every bit as brilliant as her mother, although the daughter had chosen engineering instead of physics.

Dan had always wondered who Sue Firelli had chosen as the unsuspecting father of her child. Her method had been unorthodox, to say the least. Someone he didn't recall, now, had told him Sue's bishop had threatened excommunication when she told him it was none of his business who, how, or why. She was tough, all right. But Dan had to admit that it had worked out well for both mother and daughter. Janet Firelli was a senior at MIT this year, due to graduate with highest honors. Rumor had it she'd already been scouted by no less than Lawrence-Livermore Defense Labs and she hadn't even entered grad school yet.

Except she'd taken an indefinite leave from classes, due to a serious "illness in the family" which had begun four months ago. The only consolation Dan could find was that Janet and Lucille had adored one another the first time they'd met, last Labor Day Weekend, when Janet had flown up to spend the holiday with her mother and Dan's little family. If they had to be trapped together in hell... He wondered bleakly how Lucille and Da