construction camp to gather material. She'd learned something from
Vale and much from the engineers while Lockley had tried to think of
interesting facts himself. He'd failed. When he thought about her, he
thought about the fact that she was engaged to Vale. That was an
unhappy thought. Then he tried to stop thinking about her altogether.
But his mind somehow lingered on the subject.

At ten minutes to eight Lockley began to dress, wilderness fashion. He
began by putting on his hat. It had lain on the pile of garments by
his bed. Then he donned the rest of his garments in the exact reverse
of the order in which he'd removed them.

At 8:00 he had a small fire going. He had no premonition that anything
out of the ordinary was going to happen that day. This was still
before the first Alaskan report. At 8:10 he had bacon sizzling and a
small coffeepot almost enveloped by the flames. Events occurred and he
knew nothing at all about them. For example, the Military Information
Center had been warned of what was later privately called Operation
Terror while Lockley was still tranquilly cooking breakfast and
thinking--frowning a little--about Jill.

Naturally he knew nothing of emergency orders sending all planes
aloft. He wasn't informed about something reported in space and
apparently headed for an impact point at Boulder Lake. As the computed
impact time arrived, Lockley obliviously dumped coffee into his tin
coffeepot and put it back on the flames.

At 8:13 instead of 8:14--this information is from the tape
records--there was an extremely small earth shock recorded by the
Berkeley, California, seismograph. It was a very minor shock, about