resounding crash, spraying plastic cutlery and little packets of mustard, ketchup, and relish everywhere.
"Quickly!" he cried. "We can't be here! It's going to happen soon - at any moment, I believe - and we can't be here when it does! I don't think it's safe!"
"What isn't sa - " Bethany began, but then Albert put his arm around her shoulders and hustled her after Bob, a lunatic tour-guide who had already bolted for the cafeteria door.
They ran out, following him as he dashed for the United boarding lobby again. Now the echoing rattle of their footfalls was almost lost in the powerful hum which filled the deserted terminal, echoing and reechoing in the many throats of its spoked corridors.
Brian could hear that single vast vote beginning to break up. It was not shattering, not even really changing, he thought, but focussing, the way the sound of the langoliers had focussed as they approached Bangor.
As they re-entered the boarding lounge, he saw an ethereal light begin to skate over the empty chairs, the dark ARRIVALS and DEPARTURES TV monitors and the boarding desks. Red followed blue; yellow followed red; green followed yellow. Some rich and exotic expectation seemed to fill the air. A shiver chased through him; he felt all his body-hair stir and try to stand up. A clear assurance filled him like a morning sunray: We are on the verge of something - some great and amazing thing.
"Over here!" Bob shouted. He led them toward the wall beside the jetway through which they had entered. This was a passengers-only area, guarded by a red velvet rope. Bob jumped it as easily as the high-school hurdler he might once have been. "Against the wall!"
"Up against the wall, motherfuckers!" Albert cried through a spasm of sudden, uncontrollable laughter.
He and the rest joined Bob, pressing against the wall like suspects in a police line-up. In the deserted circular lounge which now lay before them, the colors flared for a moment... and then began to fade out. The sound, however, continued to deepen and become more real. Brian thought he could now hear voices in that sound, and footsteps, even a few fussing babies.
"I don't know what it is, but it's wonderful!" Laurel cried. She was halflaughing, half-weeping. "I love it!"
"I hope we're safe here," Bob said. He had to raise his voice to be heard. "I think we will be. We're out of the main traffic areas."
"What's going to happen?" Brian asked. "What do you know?"
"When we went through the time-rip headed cast, we travelled back in time!" Bob shouted. "We went into the past! Perhaps as little as fifteen minutes... do you remember me telling you that?"
Brian nodded, and Albert's face suddenly lit up.
"This time it brought us into the future!" Albert cried. "That's it, isn't it? This time the rip brought us into the future!"
"I believe so, yes!" Bob yelled back. He was grinning helplessly. "And instead of arriving in a dead world - a world which had moved on without us - we have arrived in a world waiting to be born! A world as fresh and new as a rose on the verge of opening! That is what is happening now, I believe. That is what we hear, and what we sense... what has filled us with such marvellous, helpless joy. I believe we are about to see and experience something which no living man or woman has ever witnessed before. We have seen the death of the world; now I believe we are going to see it born. I believe that the present is on the verge of catching up to us."
As the colors had flared and faded, so now the deep, reverberating quality of the sound suddenly dropped. At the same time, the voices which had been within it grew louder, clearer. Laurel realized she could make out words, even whole phrases.
" - have to call her before she decides - "
" - I really don't think the option is a viable - "
" - home and dry if we can just turn this thing over to the parent company - "
That one passed directly before them through the emptiness on the other side of the velvet rope.
Brian Engle felt a kind of ecstasy rise within him, suffusing him in a glow of wonder and happiness. He took Laurel's hand and grinned at her as she clasped it and then squeezed it fiercely. Beside them, Albert