Then, as he passed through the door, something washed over him. It was a mental picture of the sky turning horrendously red, the buildings bursting into flames. All Earth was being destroyed, by a nova! The sun had flared, heating the inner planets, and causing firestorms to incinerate everything. With horror, he knew he was going to die—along with all the rest of his species.
Quaid blinked. The world was normal again. It had been a seizure of imagination, probably triggered by the news item about the mysterious novas. It couldn’t happen here, of course; the sun was not the type.
Or was it? The astronomers admitted that stars were going nova that had no business doing it. The astronomers obviously didn’t know stars as well as they thought they did! How well did they know the sun?
No, it was too crazy. He dismissed it, and headed for the elevators.
CHAPTER 4
Work
Quaid found himself in the commuter stream he had seen from his window. He hated this, without being certain why; there was nothing inherently wrong about the densely populated foot runnels. Maybe it was just that his dream of Mars lent him an appreciation for the deserted open terrain, where even one other person in sight was significant, especially if it was a lovely woman in a space suit. Here he was constantly jostled by the thronging mass of humanity, breathing the used air of those around him and smelling the industrial pollution that was chronic at these lower levels, no matter what the local publicity ads claimed. Mars, at least, was clean; there was nothing there but red dust and jumbled stones. On Mars, a man could stretch out his arms without banging the snotty nose of the man next to him.
He descended the long escalator which at this hour resembled a rushing waterfall of heads, backs, and shoulders sliding toward the lower levels of the subway station.