This was the big one, the project toward which Cowles had angled for over a decade, the beginning of the largest venture in mankind’s history. And Griffin was part of it… if only as the security man who would keep these multinational billionaires from murdering each other. The 1,333 men and women taking their slow trips into the heart of the primordial solar system would be much more a part of it, if they chose.

And if they didn’t, there would be no Barsoom Project.

And if there were no Barsoom Project, then… very soon, by geological time, there might be no life on Earth.

The turgid protostellar whirl was clearing now. Sunlight boiled away the nearer comets, leaving residues that would become asteroids; boiled the atmospheres from even the closer planets. The planets flashed and flamed from time to time as smaller bodies smashed into them. The viewpoint moved toward one such body, a glowing, cratered, lumpy sphere that grew clearer as its atmosphere dissipated.

Griffin wrenched his mind out of the illusion and brushed the controls before him in the cart. Of the hundred and fifty computer-driven carts gliding through an embryonic cosmos, he and

Marty had the only cart equipped with manual override. In case of emergency, he could reach another cart within moments. There was no reason to expect any such emergency, but…

He whispered to Marty, “Let’s peek in on them.” Marty nodded-he still had a death-grip on Alex’s elbow-and Alex rattle-tapped instructions to the heat-sensitive vidplate before him.

It lit. It became a quad splitscreen, and in each quadrant a cart appeared. Each cart seated ten visiting dignitaries. At upper-left were intense, serious visitors from the United Kingdom. Only one, a rotund woman in her fifties, was smiling broadly, clapping with childish glee.