Rainbows wheeled through the clouds it made. This far aloft, the noise was no more than a monstrous millstone grinding. Nomura could clearly hear Feliz’s voice out of his receiver, as she stopped her vehicle and lifted an arm. “Hold. I want a few more takes before we go on.”

“Haven’t you enough?” he asked.

Her words softened. “How can we get enough of a miracle?”

His heart jumped. She’s not a she-soldier, born to lord it over a ruck of underlings. In spite of her early life and ways, she isn’t. She feels the dread, the beauty, yes, the sense of God at work—

A wry grin at himself: She’d better!

After all, her task was to make a full-sensory record of the whole thing, from its beginning until that day when a hundred years hence, the basin was full and the sea lapped calm where Odysseus would sail. It would take months of her lifespan. (And mine, please, mine.) Everybody in the corps wanted to experience this stupendousness; the hope of adventure was practically required for recruitment. But it wasn’t feasible for many to come so far downstairs, crowding into so narrow a time-slot. Most would have to do it vicariously. Their chiefs would not have picked someone who was not a considerable artist, to live it on their behalf and pass it on to them. Nomura remembered his astonishment when he was assigned to assist her. Short-handed as it was, could the Patrol afford artists ?

Well, after he answered a cryptic advertisement and took several puzzling tests and learned about intertemporal traffic, he had wondered if police and rescue work were possible and been told that, usually, they were.