stopped in the door to Troy's cubicle.

"You going to work all night?" he asked.

Troy swung his feet down from his desk and snubbed out his cigarette. "Nope," he replied, "but I thought I'd finish reading this before I shoved off. After all, I haven't got a section chief waiting for me at home with a stop-watch in hand to make sure I report in on time. All I have waiting for me at the apartment is a good, cold highball."

Alec grinned: "See you in the morning, doctor."

Troy swung his feet back up onto the desk and went back to the Southern Cal report.

In the parking lot, Alec found his little sport jet and fired up. He eased into the line of cars filing out of the headquarters compound and shot into the stream of homeward-bound traffic on the state expressway. The torrent of vehicles was moving along at an almost steady seventy miles an hour. Alec worked his way into the middle lane since he would be crossing the entire city to reach his apartment complex on the north side. The expressway roar turned into a hollow thunder as it threaded its way for five miles under the high NorCom Thruway that carried high speed traffic across and around the city.

Troy finished reading the prospectus about an hour later and then he, too, left the office. He drove to a small restaurant near Coeur d'Alene for dinner and then, yawning and tired from the night in the mountains and the work of the past two days, headed for his small bachelor apartment on the east side of Spokane.

He watched the vidicast for a half hour and then mixed a nightcap, downed it, bathed and piled into bed. He was sound asleep by 2000.

Across the city, young Jimmy Patterson played with his father, howled and talked his mother out of taking a bath and was put to bed. Alec and Carol curled up on the divan to watch the same show Troy was viewing. At 2030 they, too, were in bed and asleep. The sounds of the city were deadened by the high insulation construction of the building. Possibly half of the nearly three million residents of Greater Spokane were asleep in their beds shortly after midnight, but the other half were either at work or play when the earthquake hit.

There were three distinct and violent temblors, lasting from one to four minutes. The great buildings of the metropolis swayed, glass shattered and fell amidst the screams of frightened thousands. But the city was built to withstand fringe nuclear destruction and the damage was relatively light. The shocks rocked the entire Northwest and were felt from British Columbia as far south as San Francisco and east to Salt Lake City.

In his bachelor apartment, Troy was sprawled on the edge of his bed when the first shock wave struck. The shuddering, stomach-churning wave tossed him to the floor and a picture dropped to smash against the floor.