for a moment, cudyk did not understand, then he felt his abdominal muscles contract like a fist. "they couldn't," he said hoarsely. "it would explode before it got past the outer layers."

"under faster-than-light drive?" seu asked. "i did some figuring. at 1000 c, it would take the bomb about two point six thousandths of a second to travel from the surface to the center of an average g-class star. i think that is a short enough interval, but maybe it isn't. maybe they have also found some way to increase the efficiency of the standard galactic drive for short periods. anyway, does it matter?" he looked at cudyk again. "i have seen the pictures. i saw it happen."

cudyk's throat was dry. "which stars?" he said.

"t?rkas. rud-uri. that's the oladi sun. and gerzión. those three, so far."

cudyk's fingers were nervously caressing the smooth metal of his wristwatch. he looked down at it suddenly, remembering that the oladsa had made it. and now they were gone, all but their colonies and travelers on other worlds, and those who had been in space at the time. all those spidery, meticulous people, with their million-year-old culture and their cities of carved opal, wiped out as a man would swat a fly.

seu took another drink. his face flushed, and drops of sweat stood out on his forehead and cheeks.

he said, "they'll have to learn to kill, now. there isn't any alternative. they intercepted one of the new earth ships and sprayed it with the stasis field. it didn't work; the ship got away. they'll have to learn to kill. do you know what that means?"

"yes."

seu drank again. his face was fiery red, now, and he was gasping for breath. "i can't get drunk," he said bitterly. "toxic reaction. i thought i'd try once more, but it's no good. laszlo, look out, i'm going to be sick."

cudyk led him to the lavatory. when he came out, the chinese was weak and waxen-pale. cudyk tried to persuade him to rest on the bed, but he refused. "i've got to get back to my office," he said. "been gone too long already. help me down the stairs, will you, laszlo?"

cudyk walked him as far as brasil and washington, where two of seu's young men took over with voluble expressions of gratitude. cudyk watched the group until it disappeared into the town hall.

he could feel nothing but an arid depression. even the horror at rack's mass-murders, even his pity for seu was blunted, sealed off at the back of his mind. the lives of saints, cudyk remembered, spoke of "boundless compassion", "infinite pity"; but an ordinary man had a limited supply. when it was used up, you were empty and impotent, a canceled sign in the human equation.

half instinctively, half by choice, cudyk had chosen his friends among the strongest and most patient, the wise and cynical: the survivors. but he had leaned too much on their strength, he realized now. he had seen seu crumble; and he felt as if a crutch had broken under his weight.

that evening he opened his shutters and looked out at the sky. the familiar constellations were there, unchanged. the light of the nearest star took more than three years to reach palumbar. but in his mind's eye one glittering pinpoint exploded suddenly into a dreadful blossom of radiance; then another; then a third. and he saw the blackened corpses of planets swinging around each, murdered by that single flash of incredible heat.

during the night he dreamed of a black wasteland, and of rack standing motionless in the center of it, brooding, with his cold grey face turned to the stars.