"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 Nor