There was no answer.
Jimmie's mother came up the stairs. Her face was suddenly white. One hand was pressed over her heart.
"What—" she began.
Her husband was standing in their son's room. She had not known he was so old, so haggard, and so tired looking.
"Jimmie's gone," he whispered.
He barely managed to catch her as she fell.
Lee Garth's face was white, drawn, pinched. Bloodless. His hair was twisted and tangled, there was a stubble on his face.
He lifted blood-clotted eyes from the screen in front of him, the screen that had suddenly gone blank as he flipped a dial set in the control-studded table on which his hands rested.
Deep in the heart of the tower of steel and concrete a lion-roar went into silence.