Strangers

Maybe what this needs is the wild-ass, go-for-it, try-anything, gonzo, berserker commitment of an artist." He thrust his own large hands toward the detonator and shouted: "Come out of there you fucker!"
        With a snap of wires, the detonator leapt out of its niche in the bomb package and straight into Parker's hands.
        There were cries of relief and congratulations, but Brendan said, "The clock's still counting down."
        Eleven seconds.
        "Yeah, but it's not connected to the bomb any more," Parker said, grinning broadly.
        Alvarado said, "But there's a conventional explosive charge in the damn detonator."
        

        
        The detonator erupted out of the bomb, into Dom's hands. He saw the clock still counting, and he sensed it had to be stopped even though there was no longer a chance of a nuclear explosion. So he simply willed it to stop, and the lighted numerals froze at 0:03.
        

            
        Parker, unaccustomed to the role of magician, panicked at this secondary crisis. Certain his power was depleted, he chose a course of action perfectly in character. With a war cry to rival John Wayne in one of the Duke's old movies, Parker turned and threw the detonator toward the far wall of the cavern, as if lobbing a grenade. He knew he could not cast it clear to the other side of the chamber, but he hoped he could pitch it far enough. Even as it left his hand, he flung himself to the floor, as the others had already done.
        

        
        Dom was kissing Ginger when the explosion sounded overhead, and they both jumped. For an instant he thought Brendan had failed to disarm the other device, then realized a nuclear explosion would have brought the ceiling down on them.
        "The detonator," she said.
        "Come on," he said. "Let's see if anyone's hurt."
        The lift crawled upward. When they arrived at the second level, the main chamber was filled with scores of Depository staff members, all carrying guns and responding to the sound of battle.
        Holding Ginger's hand, Dom pushed through the crowd, toward the place where he had left Brendan with the first backpack nuke. He saw Faye, Sandy, and Ned. Then Brendan - alive, unhurt. Jorja, Marcie.
        Parker loomed on his right and gave both him and Ginger a bear hug. "You shoulda seen me, kids. If they'd had both me and Audie Murphy, World War 11 would've been over in about six months."
        "I'm beginning to see why Dom admires you so," Ginger said.
        Parker raised his eyebrows. "But of course, my dear! To know me is to love me."
        A sudden cry of alarm rose, which jolted Dom because he thought all danger was past. When he turned, he saw that Falkirk had dodged away from Jack and Ernie in the turmoil and had wrenched a revolver from one of the Thunder Hill staff. Everyone fell back from him.
        "For Christ's sake," Jack shouted, "it's over, Colonel. It's over, damn you."
        But Falkirk had no intention of resuming his private war. His gray translucent eyes shone with madness. "Yes," he said. "It's over, and I won't be changed like the rest of you. You won't get me." Before anyone could reach him, or before anyone could think to tear the weapon from his hands with telekinetic power, he thrust the barrel of the revolver into his mouth and pulled the trigger.
        With a cry of horror, Ginger looked away from the falling corpse, and Dom turned his head, too. It was not the bloody death itself that repelled but the stupid, pointless waste when, at last, humankind had within its grasp the secret of immortality.
        

    3.
        

    Transcendence
        
        As the staff of Thunder Hill filled the cavern, milling around the ship that most had never seen before, Ginger and Dom and the other witnesses followed Miles Bennell into the vessel.
        The interior was not dramatic, but as plain as the exterior, with none of the complex and powerful machinery that one expected in a craft capable of such a journey. Miles Bennell explained that the builders had advanced beyond machinery as humankind understood it, perhaps even beyond physics as humankind understood it. There was one long chamber within, and it was for the most part gray, drab, featureless. The warm golden luminosity which had filled the vessel on the night of July 6 - and which Brendan had remembered in his dreams - was not visible now. There was only a line of ordinary