World Watch One was a hive of activity as its staff prepared it for assault status. Big Norse was running a hot check on exterior defense systems when a bulletin came in from Pinky Carruthers.

"World Watch One, notify Apache Group. Rawhide is down, Reno temporarily in command. Repeat, Rawhide down, Reno assumes command."

At the communications console, Big Norse's lips had parted and she was trying unsuccessfully to speak.

"Do you copy, World Watch?" Pinky's voice was hasty; they were going on a mission and there was no time for slackness.

"Roger. Reno commands," Big Norse said in a strangled, erratic voice. "Down" doesn't mean dead, she told herself. He just can't go on the strike. She was trying to breathe, noticed abstractedly that her hands were shaking.

Three seconds. Take three seconds and find out, she told herself. A terrible calm heat was taking possession of her gut now, because she was already sure. He wouldn't approve. She punched in the numbers for the front desk in the main house.

"This is World Watch. Request status of Rawhide," she said levelly. Her voice was back. Shock, she thought dispassionately. I'll be functional.

"Oh my God," came the reply. "Norse... Norse, I'm so sorry." It was Mrs. Johnson, a few years younger than herself, but vastly more worldly-wise. The first woman friend she'd really had. It was unmistakable even through the electronic distortion in the com lines that Mrs. J was crying. "Tommy and Reno are taking him down to cryo right now. Sam and Mac, too."

"Thanks," said Big Norse. Thanks?

"Norse, I know," Mrs. Johnson said urgently. "I'll see you as soon as I get back from D.C. Hold on, OK?"

Flyboy's in cryo, Big Norse remembered belatedly. She breathed deep. "Strap your best skates on, and give Widmark our regards," she said in the best voice she could muster.

"Give Whorfin mine," said Mrs. Johnson. "Burn it down for me." Grief gave her exhortation a ragged edge.

"Roger that," said Big Norse. "Will do." Her voice was affectless. Work. Work. Big Norse was observing as the seconds ticked by that she was frozen, remote, and perfectly capable of doing her job. But she didn't care anymore. The alien ship that had filled her heart with joy at the thought of contact, the sudden deadly threat to the planet's survival -- she just didn't care anymore.

Apache, who's that? Hollywood, call 46. Neon Highlander, call 82. The Argentine, out of town. Mustang Sally, call 43. Big Norse closed her eyes. Sally.

Mustang Sally had a lanky, graceful body, a big grin full of crooked teeth, and an air of inattention about her that masked absolute dependability. She had cloudy blue eyes, milky skin and a halo of pre-Raphaelite red hair that gave her the look of a character from Irish mythology, but her gifts as a number cruncher and her impeccable team discipline were purely modern. It was when Rawhide had become sure of this that he'd started smiling quietly at Sally's frequent "What? Huh?" replies. Very recently, he'd made Mustang Sally his deputy group leader, catching the mathematical intern so completely by surprise that she hadn't managed to say "What?" in time to make it look natural. Big Norse punched in 43.

"Sally, Big Norse in World Watch. Apache reports to Reno today. Rawhide's down, Sally." Down, crappy word. "Sally, he's dead."

"Oh no. No." There was a split second of silence. "Report to Reno, roger. Apache group has orders to fall in in twenty minutes." Mustang Sally's breaths were fast and shallow.

"Those orders stand. World Watch out." Big Norse bowed her head over the com console and offered a split second's prayer to whatever god Rawhide had liked to talk to. It's going to be like this, she thought. We'll do what we have to. There were many, many calls to be fielded, still some systems to hot check. She stayed at work.

~~~

Twenty minutes later the strike groups boarded and the bus rolled. They were going to a staging area, where Buckaroo would meet the Jet Car and go into Yoyodyne alone, 20 minutes ahead of the main force. The Black Lectroid ship had picked a geostationary orbit right overhead and communications were next to impossible. But by now, there wasn't much to be said.

Buckaroo came upstairs momentarily to call the White House. Mrs. J was enroute, personally flying the yellow record to the President. Buckaroo looked at Big Norse, and, in the middle of everything, spared a moment to check in with her.

He touched her shoulder. "Fast Eddie can relieve you," he murmured. It was half compassion, half a commander's concern that the most functional person be doing the job.

"No," Big Norse shook her head. "You need me." She was beyond any response but stating facts. She'd personally breadboarded the patchy but usable grid that was giving them audio/visual to the White House and the computer room at home, as well as the functioning uplink to the Lectroid ship. No one else would be able to figure this mess out, let alone keep it rigged and audible.

"Good," said Buckaroo. He squeezed her shoulder as he moved further into the command area. Big Norse went to work assembling a readable signal and got acknowledgement from Walter Reed that the President was coming on the line. She heard Buckaroo say, "Mr. President, I know your back is killing you..."

Big Norse's head dropped again. What he lost...

Perfect Tommy once sang a chorus of "Me and My Shadow" to tease the two of them. Buckaroo and all the Cavaliers were close, but Buckaroo and Rawhide didn't really need to talk. Rawhide knew whatever Buckaroo might need him to know at any given moment, and was all but prescient in taking care of details Buckaroo might not immediately think of. By the time Buckaroo would say, "Oh, we need to...," Rawhide would nod, "It's done." And if Buckaroo went off on a wild, brilliant tangent, Rawhide would be standing by, a vast reservoir of placid common sense, ready to reel Buckaroo in when necessary.

Peggy had said it years ago, Big Norse remembered. Mrs. J told her that when interviewed about how this unorthodox think tank worked, Peggy Simpson Banzai, blithe as always, answered, "Oh, Buckaroo makes the Institute possible, and Rawhide makes Buckaroo possible."

A variation in static tickled her ear, and she turned her attention to refining the signal. A Greyhound Scenicruiser wasn't the best possible earthstation for ground-to-orbit chitchat, but she did what she could. "World Watching, World Watching, John Bumblebee of Nova Police need speak Buckaroo Banzai," warbled her earpiece. Where did the aliens learn their English, from bootlegged Bob Marley tapes? Buckaroo's new recruit New Jersey, and Reno and Tommy were here, she realized, along with the Professor. She hadn't even noticed.

"Buckaroo, alien troop ship commander..." she started. Who on earth was the guy with the dreadlocks?

~~~

In less than two hours, it was over. In the bus, Big Norse started receiving feed from the Lectroid ship that must have been tapped off Whorfin's ship. She could hear Whorfin's cursing and Buckaroo's desperate scramble to pilot the jettisoned thermopod. She ripped off her headphones in pain when the gain jumped wildly with a screech as something blew. What, what? Trying to hear through her deafness, she caught a scrap of conversation between Buckaroo and the dreadlock guy, and was the first to know the earth was going to see another sunrise after all.

"...somebody's personal parachute," Buckaroo was saying.

"John Emdall will be glad," said the Rastafarian's voice. "She does not like to destroy civilizations, even very backward ones."

"You tell John Emdall this globe is just getting started," Buckaroo said. "If you'll excuse me, I think I'll walk from here."

Concentrating hard on her headphones, Big Norse practically leaped out of her chair when New Jersey tapped on her shoulder from behind. "Where's the first aid kit?" he shouted. "Now, now, now!" Behind him, Pinky and one of the Rugsuckers were trundling a very unconscious Penny Priddy up the narrow spiral of the stairs.

~~~

Silence from the Lectroid ship. Big Norse notified the White House immediately that it should stand down its defensive posture, that the alien threat was removed. Had they ever really understood what was happening? And she could stand down, too.

"Ed, take com, OK? I'm going downstairs."

It's over and I can relax. The very last thing I want to do, relax. She pulled a 7-Up out of the machine and went downstairs anyway, sitting in the back row of the bus seats, looking at the chrome cowboy without really focusing. Members of both the Apache and Chaparral strike teams came and went, she felt Fred power the bus up and drive it home, and people unloaded themselves in front of the main house. Big Norse knew she didn't have any duties at the moment. Among the duties she didn't have was ever getting out of that chair again.

It might have been hours after the bus got in, or just minutes, when Buckaroo came to sit next to her. Like all the strike force survivors, he was grimy and tired-looking, and grease from his palm blackened her fingers as Buckaroo took her hand.

She spoke first, somehow wanting to cut off what he might say. "I heard about Sally." Mustang Sally wasn't coming back from the raid. Buckaroo nodded understanding, both of the information and the impulse that prompted it.

"He died saving me," Buckaroo said gently.

Big Norse nodded. Of course. You were his main vulnerable point. Could she be bitter?

Big Norse was not given to staring, but now she examined Buckaroo Banzai's face as minutely as a puzzle or an artwork she might never see again. A taut, curving jawline that rose at the angle of an exponential sequence to join neat, shellshaped ears; a mouth like a strung bow. Delicate nose and eyebrows and cheekbones, framed by heavy, slightly curled hair that had inherited an Oriental shade of black from his father. Eyes that were blue like highly polished metal. Blue eyes.

She thought of her first days at the Institute, still less than a year ago, struggling with English and relieved to find in Mustang Sally someone with whom she could communicate in numbers and in Rawhide someone who could talk to her with music. Even then, she had seen that her piano teacher and his boss were in tune with each other all way down to their bone marrow. Aside from everything else, they always just enjoyed being around each other. They could be making music or sparring or debating some aspect of particle physics, it didn't matter. You could see it anytime. To look at Buckaroo Banzai was to look at what Rawhide had loved enough to die for.

Buckaroo looked back, also seeing the face of someone Rawhide loved, or had been coming to love. The years hadn't had a chance to write much on her face; she was a big, fresh-looking girl with long braids and a powerful grey-blue gaze. She'd come to the Institute straight from an accelerated doctoral program; tall enough to look Rawhide almost in the eyes, she had that same matter of fact candor. It wasn't something Rawhide would have spelled out, but he'd found a lot of time for Big Norse.

They stared at each other in this silence for a long minute, each seeking out the image of Rawhide to be found in the other. The young woman's mouth opened, and her expression took on a sparkle of tears.

"I love his eyes," Big Norse said helplessly. Present tense.

"Me too." Buckaroo smiled sadly and pulled Big Norse into an awkward embrace across the armrest of the Scenicruiser seat. He stroked her hair, streaking black into the buttery yellow.

Big Norse reached up to take his hand and pulled away from him. Buckaroo's face, always austere, was now drawn drum-tight with fatigue and sadness. The hand she held felt slack, debilitated.

Big Norse rubbed her fingers across Buckaroo's, then touched his face softly, inadvertently adding a small smudge. What could she offer? A fact.

"You know how much he would have hated it, the other way around," she said. Rawhide never spoke anything but the truth, and it was a good legacy.

~ 30 ~