She nodded. "You'll sweep away his life work with a few words and a few sheets of paper."

"My own work, too."

"Oh, but won't you understand? You're young. I'm young. Youth loves to shatter the old idols. It feasts on the broken shards of destruction. It destroys the old ideas to make way for its own. But he's not young like us. He has only his past work to live on. If you shatter that, he'll have nothing left but a futile resentment. I'll be pent up with a broken old man who'll destroy me along with himself. Darling, I'm not saying you're wrong—I'm only asking you to wait a little."

She was crying openly now. The boy took her by the arm and led her to the crusted window. She turned her face away from the light—away from him. The boy said: "He was my teacher. I worship him. What I'm doing now may seem like treachery, but it's only treachery to his old age. I'm keeping faith with what he was thirty years ago—with the man who would have done the same thing to his teacher."

She cried: "But are you keeping faith with me? You, who will have all the joy of destroying and none of the tedious sweeping away the pieces. What of my life and all the weary years to come when I must coddle him and soothe him and lead him through the madness of forgetting what you've done to him?"

"You'll spend your life with me. I break no faith with you, Barbara."

She laughed bitterly. "How easily you evade reality. I shall spend my life with you—and in that short sentence, poof!"—she flicked her hand—"you dismiss everything. Where will he live? Alone? With us? Where?"

"That can be arranged."

"You're so stubborn, so pig-headed in your smug, righteous truth-seeking. Steven—for the very last time—please. Wait until he's gone. A few years, that's all. Leave him in peace. Leave us in peace."

He shook his head and started toward the oaken doors. "A few years waiting to salvage the pride of an old man, a few more catastrophies, a few more thousand lives lost—it doesn't add up."

She sagged against the window, silhouetted before the riot of color, and watched him cross to the doors. All the tears seemed drained out of her. She was so limp I thought she would fall to the floor at any instant. And then, as I watched her, I saw her stiffen and I realized that another figure had entered the foyer and was rushing toward the boy. It was an oldish man, bald and with an ageless face of carved ivory. He was tall and terribly thin. His eyes were little pits of embers.

He called: "Steven!"

The boy stopped and turned.

"Steven, I want to talk to you."

"It's no use, sir!"

"You're headstrong, Steven. You pit a few years' research against my work of a lifetime. Once I respected you. I thought you would carry on for me as I've carried on for the generations that came before me."

"I am, sir."

"You are not." The old man clutched at the boy's tunic and spoke intensely. "You betray all of us. You will cut short a line of research that promises the salvation of humanity. In five minutes you will wipe out five centuries of work. You owe it to those who slaved before us not to let their sweat go in vain."

The boy said: "I have a debt also to those who may die."

"You think too much of death, too little of life. What if a thousand more are killed—ten thousand—in the end it will be worth it."

"It will never be worth it. There will never be an end. The theory has always been wrong, faultily premised."

"You fool!" the old man cried. "You damned, blasted young fool. You can't go in there!"

"I'm going, sir. Let go."

"I won't let you go in."

The boy pulled his arm free and reached for the doorknob. The old man seized him again and yanked him off balance. The boy muttered angrily, set himself and thrust the old man back. There was a flailing blur of motion and a cry from the girl. She left the window, ran across the room and thrust herself between the two. And in that instant she screamed again and stepped back. The boy sagged gently to the floor, his mouth opened to an O of astonishment. He tried to speak and then relaxed. The girl dropped to her knees alongside him and tried to get his head on her lap. Then she stopped.

That was all. No shot or anything. I caught a glimpse of a metallic barrel in the old man's hand as he hovered frantically over the dead boy. He cried: "I only meant to—I—" and kept on whimpering.

After a while the girl turned her head as though it weighed a ton, and looked up. Her face was suddenly frostbitten. In dull tones she said: "Go away, father."

The old man said: "I only—" His lips continued to twitch, but he made no sound.

The girl picked up the portfolio and got to her feet. Without glancing again at her father, she opened the doors, stepped in and closed them behind her with a soft click. The debating voices broke off at the sight of her. She walked to the head of the table, set the portfolio down, opened it and took out a sheaf of type-script. Then she looked at the amazed men who were seated around the table gaping at her.

She said: "I regret to inform the stabilizers that Mr. Steven Wilder has been unavoidably detained. As his fiancée and co-worker, however, I have been delegated to carry on his mission and present his evidence to the committee—" She paused and went rigid, fighting for con............