"Home Plate Home Plate Home Plate—"

He had been around fifty times; he had counted. It had taken one hundred hours; he had counted. He had transmitted steadily since the twentieth time, in the few languages he knew beside his own, for sixty hours; he had counted.

He had only a whisper for a voice now, and only aching places where his ears were.

But it didn't matter. It didn't matter.

"Home Plate, this Mrs. Grundy—

"Can anyone read me? Does anyone read me down there?

"Kann jedermann mich hören? Antworten-Sie, bitte....

"Repondez, repondez si vous m'entendrez....

"Damn you can't you hear me CAN'T YOU HEAR ME?"

He'd tried to keep track of the time.

He thought it had been a month; maybe more, but a month anyway.

And now the blue was solid over Earth, over all of it. There were still little swirls, little eddies of it here and there, but most of it—already, most of it had settled like a fixed shell, like the quiescent surface of a stagnant pool.

And somehow he'd accepted it.

They were all dead down there.

Cobalt blue had killed them all, killed them all....

Funny. It had a rhythm to it. Cobalt blue had killed them all, killed them all, Cobalt bombs had killed them all—

STOP IT!

But if they were all dead....

And if he were not dead....

Then he was the last human being left alive.

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