Wilson turned the radio to a whisper, went back to the phone and dialed.

The White House switchboard answered.

"That you, Della? This is Steve. Where is the President?"

"He's taking a nap."

"Could you get someone to wake him? Tell him to turn on the radio. I am coming in."

"But, Steve, what is going on? What is…"

He broke the connection, dialed another number. After a time, Judy came on the line.

"Is there something wrong, Steve? I was just finishing packing the picnic basket. Don't tell me…"

"No picnic today, sweetheart. We're going back to work."

"On Sunday!"

"Why not on Sunday? We have problems. I'll be right along. Be outside, waiting for me."

"Damn," she said. "There goes my plan. I had planned to make you, right out in the open, on the grass, underneath the trees."

"I shall torture myself all day," said Wilson, "thinking what I missed."

"All right, Steve," she said. "I'll be outside waiting on the curb."

He turned up the radio."… fleeing from the future. From something that happened in their future. Fleeing back to us, to this particular moment. There is, of course, no such thing as time travel, but there are all these people and they must have come from somewhere.

3

Samuel J. Henderson stood at the window, looking out across the rose garden, bright in the summer sun.

Why the hell, he wondered, did everything have to happen on Sunday, when, everyone was scattered and it took no end of trouble to get hold of them? It had been on another Sunday that China had exploded and on still another that Chile had gone down the drain and here it was again-whatever this might be.