Through her tears, she saw movement on the concourse: a man in civilian clothes crossing from right to left. Her mind registered the movement with only partial awareness: _man stops, points_. She was suddenly alert, tears gone, following the direction of the civilian's extended right arm, hearing his voice shout: "Hey! Look at that!" A thin needle of an aircraft stitched a hurtling line across the watery desert sky. It banked, arrowed toward the spaceship. Behind it roared an airforce jet--delta wings vibrating, sun flashing off polished metal. Tracers laced out toward the airship. _Someone's attacking the spaceship!_ she thought. _It's a Russian ICBM!_ But the needle braked abruptly, impossibly, over the spaceship. Behind it, the airforce jet's engine died, and there was only the eerie whistling of air burning across its wings. Gently, the needle lowered itself into a fold of the spaceship. _It's one of theirs--the Galactics'_ she realized. _Why is it coming here now? Do they suspect attack? Is that some kind of reinforcement?_ Deprived of its power, the jet staggered, skimmed out to a dust-geyser, belly-landing in the alkali flats. Sirens screamed as emergency vehicles raced toward it. The confused sounds gave Francine a sudden feeling of nausea. She took a deep breath, and stepped down to the concourse, moving without conscious determination, her thoughts in a turmoil. The grating sand beneath her feet was like an emery surface rubbing her nerves. She was acutely conscious of an acrid, burning odor, and she realized with a sudden stab of alarm that her security guard still waited behind her on the steps of the administration building. Vaguely, she heard voices babbling in the building doorways on both sides of the concourse--people coming out to stare at the spaceship and off across the flats where red trucks clustered around the jet. A pebble had worked its way into her right shoe. Her mind registered it, rejected an urge to stop and remove the irritant. An idea was trying to surface in her mind. Momentarily, she was distracted by a bee humming across her path. Quite inanely her mind dwelt on the thought that the insect was too commonplace for this moment. A mental drunkenness made her giddy. She felt both elated and terrified. _Danger! Yes: terrible danger_, she thought. _Obliteration for the entire human race. But something_ * * * * * An explosion rocked the concourse, threw her stumbling to her hands and knees. Sand burned against her palms. Dumb instinct brought her back to her feet. Another explosion--farther away to the right, behind the buildings. Bitter smoke swept across the concourse. Abruptly, men lurched from behind the buildings on the right, slogging through the sand toward the spaceship. Civilians! Possibly--and yet they moved with the purposeful unity of soldiers.