In the skies over Oakland, California, a DC-10 and a 747 are about to collide. But in the far distant future, a time travel team is preparing to snatch the passengers, leaving prefabricated smoking bodies behind for the rescue teams to find. And in Washington D.C., an air disaster investigator named Smith is about to get a phone call that will change his life...and end the world as we know it. "Best novel I've read in months". -- New York Daily News The classic time travel thriller from John Varley, winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards for excellence in science fiction. In the skies over Oakland, California, a DC-10 and a 747 are about to collide. In Earth's unimaginably distant future, a time travel team is suiting up for a rescue mission across the centuries. And in the scorched grass of a California hillside, an air disaster investigator whose own life is coming apart at the seams is about to stumble across a horror that will change all of history . . . John Varley is the author of Slow Apocalypse , the Gaean Trilogy ( Titan , Wizard , and Demon ), Steel Beach , The Golden Globe , Red Thunder , Mammoth , Red Lightning , and Rolling Thunder . He has won both the Nebula and Hugo awards for his work.