Sixty-OneEighteen and a half hours before deadline the four land in Austin. The weather has turned, turned frighteningly bad with severe thunderstorm warnings posted for the entire region. Texas thunderstorms.
When Machuzak, Archangelsky, Matsushima and D’Abro march through the Gates of Hell, they must part the crowds that have gathered there. By now it is everyone. Secretaries, technicians, engineers, physicists, cafeteria personnel, cleaning ladies. Reporters too, living and not, have sprouted up cactuslike at each step with lights and microphones, all casting at the arrivals the same question, which they cannot decipher.
Farther on, the visitors’ gallery is no less swamped. People sit atop one another’s shoulders, climb over the ledges, determined to get the best possible view through
