"A drop? Sounds more like a whole bottle." Her voice chilled, and there was more than a trace left of the old, unreformed Angelina, the most ruthless and deadly crook in the galaxy before the Corps medics straightened out the knots in her brain. "I suggest you hang up. Get a drive-right pill, then call me back as soon as you are sober." She reached out for the disconnect button.

"Don't! I am cold sober and wish I weren't. This is an emergency, red. A top priority. Get over here now as absolutely fast as you can and bring the twins."

"Of course." She was on her feet instantly, ready to go. "Where are you?"

"The location of this lab, quick!" I said, turning to Professor Coypu.

"Level one-hundred and twelve. Room thirty."

"Did you get that," I said, turning back to the screen.

Which was blank.

"Angelina…."

I jabbed the disconnect, tapped her code on the keys. The screen lit up. With the message "This is an unconnected number." Then I ran for the door. Someone clutched at my shoulder, but I brushed him aside, grabbed the door and flung it open.

There was nothing outside. A formless, colorless nothing that did strange things to my brain when I looked at it. Then the door was pulled from my hand and slammed shut, and Coypu stood with his back to it, breathing heavily, his features twisted by the same unnamable sensations I had felt.

"Gone," he said hoarsely. "The corridor, the entire station, all the buildings, everything. Gone. Just this laboratory left, locked here by the time-fixator. The Special Corps no longer exists; no one in the galaxy has even a memory of us. When the time-fixator goes we go as well."

"Angelina, where is she, where are they all?"

"They were never born, never existed."

"But I can remember her, all of them."

"That is what we count upon. As long as there is one person alive with memories of us, of the Corps, we stand a microscopic chance of eventual survival. Someone must stop the time attack. If not for the Corps, for the sake of civilization. History is now being rewritten. But not forever if we can counterattack."