Dougal Dixon, After Man, St. Martin's Press, New York, 1981. Christopher Scotese and Alfred Ziegler, as described in "The Shape of Tomorrow," by Dennis Overbye, Discover. November, 1982, pp. 20-25. ONE On the day of the big rescue, Wil Brierson took a walk on the beach. Surely this was one afternoon when it would be totally empty. The sky was clear, but the usual sea mist kept visibility to a few kilome- ters. The beach, the low dunes, the sea-all were closed in by faint haze that seemed centered on his viewpoint. Wil moped along just beyond the waves, where the water soaked the sand flat and cool. His ninety-kilo tread left perfect barefoot images trailing behind. Wil ignored the sea birds that skirled about. He walked head down, watching the water ooze up around his toes at every step. A humid breeze carried the smell of seaweed, sharp and pleasant. Every half minute the waves peaked and clear sea water flooded around his ankles. Except during storms, this was all the "surf" one ever saw oil the Inland Sea. Walking like this, he could almost imagine that he was back by Lake Michigan, so long ago. Every summer, he and Vir- ginia had camped on the lakeshore. Almost, he could imagine that he was returning from a noontime stroll on sonic very muggy Michigan day, and must have noticed him by now. In past weeks, they would have disap- peared into the sea at the first sight of human or machine. Now they stayed ashore. As he approached, the younger ones waddled toward him. Wil went to one knee and they crowded round, their webbed fingers searching curiously at his pockets. One removed a data card. Wil grinned, tugged the card from the monkey's grasp. "Aha! A pickpocket. You're under arrest!" "Forever the policeman, eh, Inspector?" The voice was feminine, the tone light. It came from somewhere over his head. Wil leaned back. A re- mote-controlled flier hung just a few meters above him. He grinned. "Just keeping in practice. Is that you, Marta? 1 thought you were preparing for this evening's `festivities.' " "I am. And part of the preparation is to get foolish people off the beach. The fireworks won't wait till night." "What?" "That Steve Fraley-he's making a big scene, trying to argue Yelén into postponing the rescue. She's decided to do it a little early, just to let Steve know who's boss." Marta laughed. Wil couldn't tell if her amusement was directed at Yelén Korolev's irritation or at Fraley. "So please to move your tail, sir. I have some other people to harass yet. I expect you back in town before this flier." "Yes, ma'am!" Wil gave a mock salute and turned to jog back the way wondered briefly how far Marta would have to chase them to get them 2 into a safe area. He knew she was equal parts soft-heartedness and practicality. She'd never scare the animals away from the beach unless there was some chance they could make it to safe haven. Wil smiled to himself. He wouldn't be surprised if Marta had chosen the season and the day of the blow-off to minimize deaths to wildlife. Three minutes later, Brierson was near the top of the rickety stairs that led to the monorail. He looked down and saw that lie hadn't been the only person on the beach. Someone was strolling toward the base of the stair- way. Over half a million centuries, the Korolevs had rescued or recruited quite a collection of weirds, but at least they all looked fairly normal. This . person . . . was different. The stranger carried a variable parasol, and was naked except for a loincloth and shoulder purse. His skin was pale, pasty. As he started up the stairs, the parasol tilted back to reveal a hair- less, egglike head. And Wil saw that the stranger might just as well be a she (or an it). The creature was short and slender, its movements delicate. There were faint swellings around its nipples. Brierson waved hesitantly; it was good policy to meet all the new neigh- inhabitants. Wil's Indian friends wanted to call it Newest Delhi. The gov- ernment (in irrevocable exile) of New Mexico wanted to call it New Albu- querque. Optimists liked Second Chance, pessimists Last Chance. For megalomaniacs it was the Great Urb. Whatever its name, the town nestled in the foothills of the Indonesian Alps, high enough so that equatorial heat and humidity was moderated to an almost uniform pleasantness. Here the Korolevs and their friends had finally assembled the rest Town Korolev was built on a scale to accommodate thousands. At the moment the population was less than two hundred, every living human being. They needed more; Yelén Korolev knew where to get one hundred more. She was determined to rescue them. Steven Fraley, President of the Republic of New Mexico, was deter- mined that those hundred remain unrescued. He was still arguing the case when Brierson arrived. ". . . and you don't appreciate the history of our era, madam. The Peacers came near to exterminating the human race. Sure, saving this group will get you a few more warm bodies, but you risk the survival of our whole colony, of the entire human race, in doing so." Yelén Korolev looked calm, but Wil knew her well enough to recognize the signs of an impending explosion: there were rosy patches on her cheeks, yet her features were otherwise even paler than usual. She ran a hand through her blond hair. "Mr. Fraley, I really do know the history of your era. Remember that almost all of us-no matter what our present age and experience-have our childhoods within a couple hundred years of one an- other. The Peace Authority"-her lips twitched in a quick smile at the name- "may have started the general war of 1997. They may even be responsible for the terrible plagues of the early twenty-first century. But as governments go, they were relatively benign. This group in Kampuchea" -she waved toward the north-"went into stasis in 2048, when the Peacers were over- That base was their secret ace in the hole. If they hadn't screwed up their stasis, they'd've come out in 2100 and blown us away. And you probably wouldn't even have been born-" Yelén cut into the torrent. "Hell-bombs? Popguns. Even you know that. Mr. Fraley, getting another hundred people into our colony will make our settlement just big enough to survive. Marta and I haven't spent our lives setting this up just to see it die like the undermanned attempts of the past. The only reason we postponed the founding of Korolev till megayear fifty was so we could rescue those Peacers when their bobble bursts." She turned to her partner. "Is everybody accounted for?" Marta Korolev had sat through the argument in silence, her dark features relaxed, her eyes closed. Her headband put her in communication with the estate's autonomous devices. No doubt she had managed a half dozen fliers during the last half hour, scouring the countryside for any truant colonists the Korolev satellites had spotted. Now she opened her eyes. "Everybody's accounted for and safe. In fact"-she caught sight of Wil standing at the back of the amphitheater and grinned - "almost everyone is here on the castle grounds. I think we can provide you people with quite a show this afternoon." She either hadn't followed or-more likely-had chosen to ignore tence of the Inland Sea. Even on the rare, clear day when the sea mists lifted, the Kampuchean Alps were hidden beyond the horizon. Neverthe- less, the rescue should be visible; he was a bit surprised that 5 vaguely on Angkor Wat-had been built half a thousand years earlier, then left for mountain rains to wear at, for moss to cover, for trees to penetrate. Afterwards, construction robots hid all the subtle machinery of late twenty- second-century technology within the "ruins." Will respected that technol- ogy. Here was a place where no sparrow could fall unremarked. The own- ers were as safe from a quiet knife in the back as from a ballistic missile attack. "As Mr. Fraley says, the Peacer bobble was supposed to be a secret. It was originally underground. It is much further underground now-somebody blundered. What was to be a fifty-year jump became something . . . longer. As near as we can figure, their bobble should burst sometime in the next few thousand years; they've been in stasis fifty million years. During that time, continents drifted and new rifts formed. Parts of Kampuchea slid deep beneath new mountains." The display behind her lit with a multicolored transect of the Kampuchean Alps. The surface crust appeared as blue, shading into yellow and orange at the greater depths. Right at the margin of orange and magma red was a tiny black disk-the Peacer bobble, afloat against the ceiling of hell. Inside the bobble, time was stopped. Those within were as they'd been at that instant of a near-forgotten war when the losers decided to escape to the future. No force could affect a bobble's contents; no force could affect The Korolevs proposed to raise the bobble to the surface, where it would be safe for the few remaining millennia of its duration. Yelén waved at the display. "This was taken just before we started the operation. Here's the ongoing view." The picture flickered. The red magma boundary had risen thousands of meters above the bobble. Pinheads of white light flashed in the orange and yellow that represented the solid crust. In the place of each of those lights, red blossomed and spread, almost-Wil winced at the thought-like blood from a stab wound. "Each of those sparkles is a hundred-megaton bomb. In the last few seconds, we've released more energy than all mankind's wars put together." The red spread as the wounds coalesced into a vast hemorrhage in the bosom of Kampuchea. The magma was still twenty kilometers below ground level. The bombs were timed so there was a constant sparkling just above the highest level of red, bringing the melt closer and closer to the surface. At the bottom of the display, the Peacer bobble floated, serene and untouched. On this scale, its motion towards the surface was imper- ceptible. Wil pulled his attention from the display and looked beyond the amphi- theater. There was no change: the northern horizon was still haze and pale blue. The rescue site was fifteen hundred kilometers away, but even so,