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Severance raked his fingers through his hair Lydell Cooper’s final orders had been very specific He wasn’t to send the signal for another two hours But what if this had been the vanguard of a ht nal early it could mean that not all the virus had been attached to the feed lines of the laundry machines on all fifty cruise ships

He wanted to call his mentor, but this was a decision he felt he should make on his own Lydell was en route with Heidi and her sister, Hannah They wouldn’t arrive until after the virus was released He had had full control of the Responsivistover a family business, he knew that he was under a constant ot that Lydell could override any decision heor explanation

He had chafed at that a little, not that Cooper interfered h, he wished he had that safety net of being told what to do

What would it matter if they missed a couple of ships? Lydell’s calculations of the disease’s vector only called for forty shiploads of people in order to infect everyone on the planet The extra ten were insurance When questioned why some of the ships escaped infection, he could claim the dispersal devices failed And if they all worked, no one would ever know

“That’s it,” he said, slapping his thighs and getting to his feet

He strode into the ELF transmitter room A technician in a lab coat was bent over the controls “Can you send the signal now?”

“We aren’t scheduled to send it for another couple of hours”

“That isn’t what I asked” Now that his decision had been htiness had returned

“It will take me a few minutes to double-check the batteries The power plant is off-line because of the dae to the exhaust system”

“Do it”

Thean intercoon that Severance couldn’t follow

“It will just be another moment, Mr Severance”

THE RUSSIAN SATELLITE’S electronic brain marked time in minute fractions as it streaked over Europe at seventeen thousand miles per hour The trajectory had been calculated to the hundredth of an arc second, and when the satellite hit its nal was sent from the central processor to the launch tube There was no sound, in the vacuuas blasted the tungsten rod out of the tube It was pointed alan its fiery trip to earth, descending at a slight angle, as its builders had designed, so it could be confused with an inco the first molecules of the upper atmosphere created friction that merely warmed the rod The lower it fell, the lowed red, then yellow, and, finally, a brilliant white

The heat buildup was tre point of over three thousand degrees Celsius Observers on the ground could see the rod clearly, as it hurtled across Macedonia and the northern Greeksonic booms in its wake

THE DIGITAL CLOCK on the its Juan had avoided looking at it before Max’s rescue but now couldn’t tear his eyes off of it Max had refused treatment in the ht her kit up to the Op Center and orking on his injuries The seas were son was charging eastward at top speed