A rock! Throw a rock!
Something big: to throw: quick! Huge, heavy--

* * * * *

Forgotten, the advancing mutants. With every unit and sub unit and
compartment and section of his mind, pouring out every available degree
of telepathic power, dropping the shielding, concentrating above
everything else, he seized the Washington Monument. It shook; it wobbled
unsteadily; it wrenched free.

Calvin, delighted, was helping him.

_Walt!_ he cried. _We'll play games! We'll throw it!_

It was off the ground. It poised uncertainly. It moved upward. Slowly at
first, like a rocket: faster and faster, dwindling from Earth, becoming
a vanishing pinpoint like a black, daylight star.

Calvin pulled it in with childish joy. _It's_ big! he cried proudly.

It was aimed on target.

Calvin was no longer in Walt's mind.

With a last, exhausting burst of thought, he increased its already
terrific speed. The laboratory still stood. The mutants had not realized
his shielding was down. He restored it, weakened and quivering.

And they were upon him. He fought them off with his fists and elbows. He
dared not displace, lest the shielding should crumble entirely. A few
minutes more; if I can just gain a few minutes more, he thought.

He was down. He jerked his head out of the way of a foot. He caught a
leg and twisted.

Fingers tore at his throat. He caught someone with a savage and
satisfying kick.

Out in space, beyond the orbit of the moon, Fierut detected the
Washington Monument on his warning device. It was coming too fast to
deflect. He tried.

A heartbeat later, it ripped into the steel of the space station. It
crumbled and shattered and sprayed marble, and huge fragments erupted
from the opposite side. The space station became visible. There was a
great, ragged, tunneling hole from rim to rim. Escaping air spewed
wreckage into space. Parts of demolished machinery whirled away. In a
yet-sealed compartment, a power system exploded with a great, blinding,
soundless flash. Chunks of steel debris, vast shrapnel, blossomed in all
directions.

The space station, its orbit altered, twisted away, a gutted, lifeless
derelict.

Walt's shielding collapsed. His mutant bridge opened; his mutant powers
vanished. He screamed for help.

He saw General Tibbets slam a pistol butt against Willy's suddenly
unprotected skull.

* * * * *

Five minutes later, in the laboratory, a