has elapsed, the radius of the ball of fire is some 45 feet, and the
temperature is then in the vicinity of 300,000 degrees Centigrade.
At this instant, the luminosity, as observed at a distance of
100,000 yards (5.7 miles), is approximately 100 times that of the
sun as seen at the earth's surface ... the ball of fire expands very
rapidly to its maximum radius of 450 feet within less than a second
from the explosion.

--Los Alamos

TIME TO THINK

Brother, that was all we needed to make everybody but Kaby and the two
ETs start yelping at once, me included. It may seem strange that Change
People, able to whiz through time and space and roust around outside the
cosmos and knowing at least by hearsay of weapons a billion years in the
future, like the Mindbomb, should panic at being shut in with a little
primitive mid-20th Century gadget. Well, they feel the same as atomic
scientists would feel if a Bengal tiger were brought into their
laboratory, neither more nor less scared.

I'm a moron at physics, but I do know the Fireball is bigger than the
Place. Remember that, besides the bomb, we'd recently been presented
with a lot of other fears we hadn't had time to cope with, especially
the business of the Snakes having learned how to get at our Places and
melt the Maintainers and collapse them. Not to mention the general
impression--first Saint Petersburg, then Crete--that the whole Change
War was going against the Spiders.

Yet, in a free corner of my mind, I was shocked at how badly we were all
panicking. It made me admit what I didn't like to: that we were all in
pretty much the same state as Doc, except that the bottle didn't happen
to be our out.

And had the rest of us been controlling our drinking so well lately?

Maud yelled, "Jettison it!" and pulled away from the satyr and ran from
the bronze chest. Beau, harking back to what they'd thought of doing in
the Express Room when it was too late, hissed, "Sirs, we must
Introvert," and vaulted over the piano bench and legged it for the
control divan. Erich seconded him with a white-faced "_Gott in Himmel,
ja!_" from beside the surly, forgotten Countess, holding, by its slim
stem, an empty, rose-stained wine glass.

I felt my mind flinch, because Introverting a Place is several degrees
worse than foxholing. It's supposed not only to keep the Door tight
shut, but also to lock it