After one of the most intense periods of public anxiety about security since 9/11, Americans are going back to work en masse Monday - without having experienced a major terrorist hit.

While a heightened state of alert remains in effect - and more than a dozen international airline flights have been canceled or delayed - the US has managed to make it through another tremulous holiday season without an attack on its soil.

True, one could come at any moment - and, government and terrorist experts predict, almost certainly will at some point. Yet for now a domestic Al Qaeda strike remains a possibility rather than a reality.

All of which raises the question: Why? Is Al Qaeda more of a paper tiger than people thought? Has it decided to focus on overseas targets instead? Is it just waiting for the right moment to hit here?

Experts cite several reasons for the relative quiescence:

• Better security everywhere, from airports to ballparks to nuclear plants.

• Intelligence gathering and analysis at home and abroad has improved dramatically since 9/11.

• Al Qaeda may well be content hitting overseas targets, where it can make both a political statement and inflict considerable damage on US interests, directly and indirectly. But don't think it won't try something in the US in the future.

"The war on terror is not static," says Bruce Hoffman, a terror expert at the RAND Corp. in Washington. "The arms race of the cold war is being played out on this level today."

It's not that Islamic extremists haven't been active. It's just that most of their attacks have been centered in the Middle East, often in Muslim countries allied with the US, including against nations in solidarity with America.

Last month, for instance, a series of car bombs rocked Istanbul, Turkey, where terrorists targeted the British Consulate, a bank, and a Jewish place of worship. In May, a triple suicide bombing left 35 dead, including eight Americans, at a residential complex in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf, a Washington ally in the war on terror, has been the subject of several recent assassination attempts.

Nor does the absence of an attack in the US mean there aren't consequences. The mere heightening of the security alert system to orange (high), as a result of intelligence suggesting a strike, can cost millions of dollars in extra police and baggage screeners across the country, not to mention the unease it causes Americans.

Nowhere has this been more evident than in the nation's air-travel system over the past two weeks. At least a dozen flights have been canceled or delayed - including ones from London, Paris, and Mexico to the US - amid the tightest international airline security in history. Several other planes were escorted by F-16 fighter jets as they entered US airspace. "I've never seen security at this level before," says John Lampl of British Airways. "Just when you think you've seen everything, something else happens. This is brand new and probably for very good reasons...."

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