Trent ran for his pickup. It wasn’t provisioned for a trip. but he and Donna might at least be able to survive long enough to call for help if they couldn’t get out of the jump field in time.

He got three steps before the bank robber pushed the button. There was a clap of thunder loud enough lo make his ears ring, and a gale of wind snatched off his hat and slapped him backward. It didn’t just knock him off his feet, but whisked him like a leaf into the air, blowing him head over heels across the maybe ten feet of parking lot that was left and carrying him right out over the huge crater that had been carved into the ground.

A blizzard of papers met him from the other side. Pens and pencils pelted him, and he did a little mid-air dance with a desk chair before they both hit the ground and tumbled to the bottom of the crater.

The guy in the van had set his jump field pretty light after all: it was only fifteen feet deep or so, and it had only taken that much of a bite out of the bank, too. The part of the building that wasn’t halfway lo the Moon by now groaned under the sudden shift in load, but it didn’t collapse into the pit, Trent didn’t know why not; part of it actually hung out over the hole.

Water poured in from half a dozen severed lines, and it was cold. Trent rescued his hat before it got soaked and shoved it back on his head, then tried to climb up the side of the crater, but he could only gel a few feet before it grew too steep. The surface was slick as glass, sliced smooth down to the molecular level by the jump field. He could dig his fingers into it, but it just crumbled when he tried to climb.