Cradle

1

It was after two o’clock in the morning by the time the Florida Queen left the marina and headed out into the Gulf of Mexico. Carol and Troy stood together against the railing while Nick steered the boat through the harbor. “Well, angel,” Troy said, “it has already been an unbelievable experience, hasn’t it? And I must admit that I myself am a little nervous about what we’re going to find out at the dive site this time.”

“I thought you knew what was going to happen, Troy,” Carol replied, pointing at his bracelet. “Don’t they tell you everything?”

“They tell me a lot. And I’m getting better at understanding their messages. But how do I know if they’re telling the truth?”

“We have had the same problem with you at times,” Nick interjected from under the canopy. The boat was almost out in the open ocean. The lights from Key West were receding behind them. “In the final analysis, particularly when nothing makes sense anyway, it comes down to a question of trust. If I were to ask myself logically why I am going out into the Gulf of Mexico in the middle of the night to take lead and gold and information to some extraterrestrials who stopped here on the Earth to make repairs—”

Carol laughed and interrupted. “But there’s no logical way to discuss this entire series of events. Troy already pointed that out. We’re not operating on logic. And I don’t even think it’s a question of trust so much.” She paused and looked up at the stars. “It’s more like faith.”

Troy put his arm around Carol and smiled. “I agree with you, angel. After all, we don’t know shit. Only they know.”

Carol yawned. There was silence on the boat. Everyone was very tired. After the security men had surrounded Homer and Greta at the Miyako Gardens, the police had of course been called. They had arrived within ten minutes but it had seemed as if their questions were going to last forever. Carol, Nick, and Troy had each been required to file a separate written statement. Homer and Greta admitted nothing, despite the fact that the security men had taken two handguns from them and matching bullet fragments were found inside Troy’s car. Homer had phoned his lawyer and was expecting to be out on bail within four to six hours.

When the trio did finally reach the marina (they had to walk from the hotel because the police impounded Troy’s car as evidence) carrying the backpacks, Troy remembered that he had not yet connected the new navigation equipment. Maybe it was because Troy was tired or perhaps having his two friends watch him part of the time over his shoulder made him nervous; whatever the reason, Troy was very slow in installing and verifying the new navigation processor.

Meanwhile, Carol and Nick had been checking to ensure that there were three complete sets of diving apparatus onboard the boat. The diving gear the men had used earlier in the evening was still out at the base in the possession of the United States Navy. Nick thought he recalled putting enough extra equipment on the boat to handle the large party from Tampa that had originally chartered the Florida Queen for the weekend. He was correct, but one of the regulator systems did not function properly during the checkout and had to be exchanged for a spare.

During the walk from the hotel to the marina, Nick and Carol and Troy had come to the unanimous conclusion that they would all three keep the underwater rendezvous with the superalien spaceship. There was no other reasonable solution. The boat could certainly be safely anchored. And none of the three of them could bear to think of missing the climax to their adventure.

Nick entered the ocean coordinates of the dive site into the navigation processor and put the boat on autopilot. He saw Carol yawn again. It was infectious. As he opened his mouth for a long, relaxing yawn, Nick realized how exhausted he was. He walked around behind the canopy and found two light air mattresses in a jumbled pile of supplies. He started inflating one of them by blowing into a valve at the end.

Carol came around to the back of the boat when the first mattress was almost inflated. The light on top of the canopy gave her face a glow. She’s even beautiful when she’s tired, Nick thought. He motioned to the other mattress. Carol bent down to pick it up and started inflating it. And very capable. I’ve never met a woman who was so good at so many things.

Nick finished with his air mattress and laid it down on the bottom of the boat. Carol was tiring, so he helped her inflate the rest of her mattress. He grabbed some towels and wadded them up like pillows. “We all have to sleep some,” he said to her as an explanation. “Otherwise we’ll be punchy when we try to dive.”

Carol nodded and walked back to the edge of the canopy. “Is it all right with you if Nick and I take a short nap?” she said to Troy. He smiled his assent. “Wake one or both of us in an hour,” she continued, “if you want to use one of the air mattresses.” She turned around and started to leave. “Uh, Troy,” she asked, before she left the side of the canopy.

“Yes, angel?” he answered.

“Do you know where they came from?” She pointed at the sky. Not too many stars were visible because of the brightness of the gibbous moon. It was well past its zenith and already into its western descent.

Troy looked up at the heavens and thought for almost a minute. “No, angel,” he responded at length. “I think they’ve tried to tell me, maybe even twice, but I can’t understand what they’re saying. But I do know that they come from another star.”

Troy now walked over beside Carol and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “Sleep tight and don’t let the bedbugs bite,” he said. “And maybe you can ask them yourself after you wake up.”

Where do you come from? Carol was thinking. And why did you land here, in this place, at this time? She shaded her eyes from the glare of the moon and concentrated her attention on Sirius, the brightest true star in the sky. Do you have a home there, around another star? With mothers and fathers and brothers? Do you have love and oceans and mountains and music? And longing and loneliness and fear of death? For reasons she could not understand, tears found their way into Carol’s eyes. She dropped her gaze and walked back to the air mattresses. Nick was already stretched out on one of them. He was on his back and his eyes were closed. Carol lay down on the mattress beside him. She reached out and put her hand in his. He pulled her hand to his lips, kissed it softly, and dropped it on his chest.

Nick’s dream was confusing. He was in the main lobby of a huge open library with twenty floors of books. He could see the spiral staircases ascending to the stacks above him. “But you don’t understand,” he said to the clerk standing behind the long counter. “I must read all these books this weekend. Otherwise I won’t be ready for the test on Monday.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” the diffident clerk replied quietly after scanning Nick’s list a second time. “But all copies of these books are currently checked out.”

Nick started to panic. He looked up at the enormously high ceiling and the floors of shelved books above him. He saw Carol Dawson up on the third floor, leaning against the railing and reading a book. His panic subsided. She’ll know the material, he thought to himself in the dream. He raced over to the staircase and bounded up the two flights of curving stairs.

He was out of breath when he reached Carol. She was reading one of the books that had been on his list. “Oh, good,” he said between gasps, “I knew as soon as I saw you that there was no worry.”

She looked at him quizzically. Without warning she thrust her hand down into the top of his jeans and grabbed his penis. He responded immediately and leaned forward to kiss her. She shook her head and backed up. He pursued her, pushing her against the railing. She fought him. He pressed hard against her body and succeeded in kissing her. The railing gave way and they were falling, falling. He woke up before they hit the floor in the lobby of the library.

Nick shuddered himself awake. Carol was watching him intently. Her head was resting on her hands, propped up by her elbow. “Are you all right?” she asked as soon as he opened his eyes.

It took Nick a few seconds to acclimate after the vivid dream. His heart was still racing out of control. “I think so,” he said. Carol continued to stare at him. “Why are you looking at me like that?” he asked.

“Well,” she began, “I woke up because you were talking. I even thought I heard my name a couple of times. Maybe I imagined it. If you don’t mind my asking, do you often talk in your sleep?”

“I don’t know,” Nick answered. He laughed a little. “Nobody has ever mentioned it to me before.”

“Not even Monique?” Carol said. Her eyes did not leave Nick’s. She could tell that he was trying to decide what kind of answer to give to her question. You’re pushing again, a voice inside her said. Let the man do things at his own pace.

Nick looked away. “We did not sleep together that much,” he said softly. There was a long pause. “Besides,” he said, now turning back to Carol, “that was ten years ago. I was very young. And she was married to someone else.”

While they had been sleeping Troy had switched off the light on the top of the canopy. The only light on their faces now was the reflection from the moon. They continued to look at each other in silence. Nick had not said very much to Carol about Monique, but it had been more than he had ever told anyone else, including his parents. Carol knew how much of an effort it had been for him to answer her question honestly. She rolled over on her back again and extended her hand to Nick.

“So here we are, Mr. Williams. Two solitary voyagers on the sea of life. Both of us are now past thirty. Many of our friends and classmates have already settled down into that house in the suburbs with the two kids and a dog. Why not us? What’s different about us?”

The moon was accelerating its downward arc through the sky above them. As it descended, more stars could be seen on the opposite horizon. Nick thought he saw a shooting star. There would be no way to hide from feelings. Nick was jumping ahead of the conversation, imagining for the moment that he was going to be involved with Carol. She would not permit it. At least I would not have any doubts about where we stood.

“When I was over at her house on Friday morning,” Nick finally replied to her question, “Amanda Winchester told me that I’m looking for a fantasy woman, someone absolutely perfect. And that mere mortals always come up short in my estimation.” He propped his head up and looked at Carol. “But I think it’s something else. I think maybe I’m not willing to make a commitment because of fear of rejection.”

Did I really say that? wondered Nick, shocked at himself. Instantly he felt as if he never should have shared the thought. His defenses began to build and he braced himself for a flippant or insensitive reply.

But it did not come. Instead Carol was quiet and thoughtful. At length she spoke. “My protection is different from yours,” she said. “I always play it safe. I pick men I admire and respect, intellectual pals if you will, but for whom I do not have any passion. When I meet a man who sets off the banjos and bells, I run the other way.”

Because I’m afraid, she thought. Afraid that I might love him as much as I did my father. And I could not survive if I were abandoned like that again.

She felt Nick’s hand on her cheek. He was caressing her gently. She reached up, took his hand, and squeezed it. He pulled himself up on his side where he could see her better. She could tell that he wanted to kiss her. She squeezed his hand again. Slowly, tentatively, he dropped his mouth on hers. It was a tender, adoring kiss, without pressure or overt passion, a subtle, artful question that could have been either the beginning of a love affair or the sole kiss exchanged between two people whose paths just happened to cross in life. Carol heard banjos and bells.

2

WINTERS stood on the deck by himself, smoking quietly. It was not a large boat, this converted trawler, but it was very fast. They had not left the dock until after four o’clock and they had almost caught up with their prey already. The commander rubbed his eyes and yawned. He was tired. He blew smoke out over the ocean. On the eastern horizon there was just a faint suggestion of dawn. To the west, in the direction of the moon, Winters thought he saw the dim light of another boat.

These young people must all be crazy, he thought to himself as he reflected back on the events of the evening. Why the hell did they leave? Did they push Todd down those stairs without his knowing it? It would have been so much easier if they had just stayed there until we returned.

He remembered the look on Lieutenant Ramirez’ face when he had interrupted the telephone conversation that Winters had been having with his wife, Betty. “Excuse me. Commander,” Ramirez had said. He had been out of breath. “You must come quickly Lieutenant Todd is injured and our prisoners have escaped.”

He had told his wife that he had no idea when he would be home and then joined Ramirez for the short walk back to the administration annex. On the way Winters had been thinking about Tiffani, about the difficulty he had had in explaining to the seventeen-year-old why he could not just drop everything and meet her at the party. “But you can work any day or night, Vernon,” she had said. “This is our only time to be together.” She had already drunk too much champagne. Later in the conversation, when Winters had made it clear to her that he almost certainly would not make it to the party at all, and that he would probably ask Melvin and Marc to take her home, Tiffani had become petulant and angry. She had stopped calling him Vernon. “All right, Commander,” she had said, “I guess I’ll see you at the theater on Tuesday night.”

The phone had clicked off and Winters had felt an ache tearing through his heart. Oh fuck, he had thought for a moment, I’ve blown it. He had imagined himself jumping in the car, forgetting Todd and Ramirez and the Panther missile, and driving over to the party to sweep Tiffani into his arms. But he had not done it. Despite his incredible longing, he was not able to pull himself away from his duty. If it was meant to be, he told himself consolingly, then those flames of passion will burn again. But even with his limited romantic experience Winters knew better. Timing is everything in a love affair. If momentum is lost at a critical moment, especially when the rhythm of the passion is heading for a climax, it will never be regained.

Ramirez had already called the doctor on the base and he had arrived at the annex just after the two officers. While they were standing there together, Ramirez had insisted to Winters that it must have been foul play, that Todd could not have fallen so hard unless he had either been pushed or thrown down the concrete steps. The lieutenant had begun to stir during the doctor’s examination. “He has a bad concussion,” the doctor had said after he first checked Todd’s eyes. “He’ll probably be all right but he’ll have a ferocious headache in the morning. Meanwhile, we’ll take him over to the infirmary and sew up that gash in his head.”

To Winters it didn’t make sense. While he was waiting patiently in an adjoining room for the doctors and nurses to finish the stitches in the lieutenant’s head, Winters tried to figure out what possible motive Nick and Carol and Troy could have had for attacking Todd and then escaping. The Dawson woman is smart and successful. Why would she do it? He wondered if perhaps the trio might have been involved in some kind of big drug transaction. That would at least explain all the gold. But Todd and Ramirez did not find any indication of drugs. So what the hell is happening?

Lieutenant Todd had been kept awake during the procedure in the emergency room. He had been given only a local anesthetic to reduce his pain. But he had not been very lucid in response to the doctor’s simple questions. “That sometimes happens with a concussion,” the medical officer had told Winters afterward. “He may not be very coherent for the next day or two.”

Nevertheless, around two o’clock, immediately after Todd’s head had been shaven, stitched, and bandaged, Commander Winters and Lieutenant Ramirez had decided to ask him about what had occurred at the annex. The commander could not accept Todd’s answer, even though the lieutenant repeated it twice verbatim. Todd had insisted that a six-foot carrot with vertical slits in its face had hidden in the bathroom and had jumped him while he was trying to take a piss. He had escaped that first assault, but the giant carrot had then followed him into the main room at the annex.

“And just how did this thing—”

“Carrot,” interrupted Todd.

“And how did this carrot attack you?” continued Winters. Jesus, he had thought, this man has cracked. One bump on he head and he has finally flipped.

“It’s hard to describe exactly,” Lieutenant Todd had answered slowly. “You see, it had four doodads hanging out of these vertical slits in its head. They were all mean looking—”

The doctor had come up and interrupted. “Gentlemen,” he had said with a perfect bedside smile, “my patient desperately needs rest. Surely some of these questions can wait until tomorrow.”

Commander Winters remembered an overpowering sense of bewilderment as he watched the gurney take Lieutenant Todd from the emergency operating room to the infirmary. As soon as Todd was out of earshot, the commander had turned to Lieutenant Ramirez. “And what do you make of all this, Lieutenant?”

“Commander, sir, I’m no medical expert…”

“I know that, Lieutenant. I don’t want your medical opinion. I want to know what you think about the, uh, carrot business.” Damn him, Winters had thought. Does he have so little imagination that he can’t even react to Todd’s story?

“Sir,” Ramirez had replied, “the carrot business is outside my experience.”

To say the least. Winters smiled to himself and flipped his cigarette into the water. He walked over to the little wheel-house and checked the navigator. They were only seven miles from the target boat and converging rapidly. He pulled back on the throttle and put the boat into neutral gear. Winters did not want to draw any closer to the Florida Queen until Ramirez and the other two seamen were awake and in position.

He estimated that it was still about forty minutes until sunrise. Winters laughed again about Ramirez’s unwillingness to venture a comment on Todd’s carrot story. But the young Latino is a good officer. His only mistake was following Todd. Winters remembered how quickly Ramirez had organized all the details of their current sortie, picking the high-tech converted trawler for speed and stealth, rousting the two bachelor seamen who worked for him in Intelligence, and establishing a special link between the base and the trawler so that the whereabouts of the Florida Queen would be known at all times.

“We must follow them. We really have no choice,” Lieutenant Ramirez had said firmly to Winters after they had verified that Nick’s boat had indeed left the Hemingway Marina just after two o’clock. “Otherwise there’s no way we could ever justify our having taken them into custody in the first place.”

Winters had reluctantly agreed and Ramirez had organized the chase. The commander had told the younger men to get some sleep while he formulated the plan. Which is simple. Okay, you guys, come with us and answer the questions or we’ll charge you under the sedition act of 1991. Now, after putting the boat in idle, Winters was ready to wake Ramirez and the other two men. He intended to apprehend Nick, Carol, and Troy as soon as it was daylight.

The wind around the boat changed direction and Winters stopped a minute to check the weather. He turned his face toward the moon. The air suddenly felt warmer, almost hot, and he was reminded of a night off the coast of Libya eight years earlier. The worst night of my life, he thought. For a few moments his resolve to carry out his plan wavered and he asked himself if he was about to make another mistake.

Then he heard a trumpet blast, followed maybe four seconds later by a similar but quieter sound. Winters looked around him in the placid ocean. He saw nothing. Now he heard a group of trumpets and their echo, both sounds distinctly coming from the west. The commander strained his eyes in the direction of the moon. Silhouetted against its face he saw what appeared to be a group of snakes dancing out of the water. He went inside the wheelhouse to fetch a pair of binoculars.

By the time the commander returned to the railing a magnificent symphony surrounded him. Where is this incredible music coming from? he asked at first, before he succumbed completely to its mesmerizing beauty. He stood powerless against the railing, listening intently. The music was rich, emotional, full of evocative longing. Winters was swept away. not only into his own past where his deepest memories were stored, but also onto another planet in another era where proud and dignified serpents with blue necks called to their loved ones during their short annual mating rite.

He was spellbound. Tears were already flooding into his eyes when he at last mechanically lifted the binoculars and focused on the strange, sinuous shapes underneath the moon. The ghostlike images were completely transparent; the moonlight went right through them. As Winters watched what was a thousand necks dancing above the water, cavorting back and forth in perfect rhythm, and as he heard the music build toward the concluding crescendo of the Canthorean mating symphony, his tired eyes blurred and he swore that what he saw across the water in front of him, calling to him with a song of longing and desire, was an image of Tiffani Thomas. His heart was devastated by the combination of the music and the sight of her. Winters was aware of an intense sense of loss unparalleled in his life.

Yes, he said to himself as Tiffani continued to beckon in the distance, I’m coming. I’m sorry Tiffani darling. Tomorrow I will come to see you. We will… He stopped his interior monologue to wipe his eyes. The music had now entered the final crescendo. signaling the actual mating dance of the pairs of Canthorean serpents. Winters looked through his binoculars again. The image of Tiffani was gone. He adjusted his glasses. Joanna Carr came into focus, smiled briefly, and disappeared. A moment later the little Arab girl from the Virginia beach seemed to dance just under the moon. She was happy and gay. She too was gone in an instant.

The music was all around him. Bursts of sound, powerful, full, expressing pleasure no longer anticipated but now being experienced. He looked through his binoculars one more time. The moon was setting. As it fell into the ocean the image created against its illuminated disc by the dancing serpents was unmistakable. Winters clearly saw the faces of his wife, Betty, and his son, Hap. They were smiling at him together with a deep and abiding affection. They remained there in his vision until the moon sank completely into the ocean.

3

Carol struggled to adjust her diving equipment. “Do you need some help, angel?” Troy asked. He came over and stood beside her in the predawn dark. He was already fully prepared for the dive.

“I haven’t worn anything like this since my first set of scuba lessons,” she said, fidgeting uncomfortably with the old-fashioned gear.

Troy tightened the weight belt around her waist. “You’re scared, aren’t you, angel?” Carol didn’t answer right away. “Me too. My pulse rate must be twice normal.”

Carol’s equipment seemed to please her finally. “You know, Troy, even after the last three days my brain is having a hard time convincing the rest of me that all this is really happening. Imagine writing it down for someone to read. “As we were preparing to return to the alien spaceship…’ ”

“Hey, you guys, come here,” Nick called from the other side of the canopy. Carol and Troy walked around to the front of the boat. Nick was staring out across the ocean to the east. He handed a small pair of binoculars to Carol. “Do you see a light out there in the distance, just to the left of that island?”

Carol could barely make out the light. “Uh huh,” she said to Nick. “But so what? Isn’t it reasonable that somewhere out in the ocean there would be another boat?”

“Of course,” Nick answered. “But that light hasn’t moved for fifteen minutes. It’s just sitting there. Why would a fishing boat, or any other kind of boat, be—”

“Sh,” interrupted Troy. He put his fingers to his lips. “Listen,” he whispered, “I hear music.”

His companions stood quietly on the deck. Behind them the moon disappeared into the ocean. Above the gentle lapping of the waves all three of them could hear what sounded like the climax of a symphony, played by a full orchestra. They listened for thirty seconds. The music reached a peak, faded slightly, and then ceased abruptly.

“That was beautiful,” Carol remarked.

“And weird,” Nick said, walking over beside her. “Where the hell was it coming from? Is someone out there testing a new stereo system? My God, if the sound travels five or ten miles, it must be deafening up close.”

Troy was standing off to the side by himself. He was concentrating on something. Suddenly he turned to his companions. “I know this sounds crazy,” he said to Nick and Carol, “but I think the music was a signal for us to dive. Or perhaps a warning.”

“Great,” said Carol. “That’s what we need to reassure us. A warning of some kind. As if we’re not nervous enough.”

Nick put his arm around her. “Hey, lady,” he said, “don’t wimp out on us now. After all those brave comments about a once in a lifetime experience…”

“Really, let’s go,” Troy said impatiently. He looked anxious and very serious. “I’m definitely getting the message that we should dive now.”

Troy’s solemnity changed the mood of the trio. The three of them worked together in silence to secure the two buoyancy bags containing the lead, the gold, and the information discs. The eastern sky continued to brighten. It was only about fifteen minutes until sunrise.

While they were working, Carol noticed that Nick seemed a little distracted. Right before they left the boat she walked up beside him. “Are you all right?” she said quietly.

“Yes,” he answered. “I’m just trying to figure out if I’ve completely lost my mind. For eight years I have been thinking about what I would do if I ever had my full share of the treasure. Now I’m about to give it all away to some extra-terrestrials from God knows where.” He looked at her. “There’s enough gold here to last three people a long time.”

“I know,” she said, giving him a little hug. “I must admit that I’ve thought about it too. But in reality, part belongs to Amanda Winchester, part to Jake Lewis, most of it to the IRS…” She grinned. “And it’s only money. That’s nothing when you compare it to being the only humans to interact with visitors from another planet.”

“I hope you’re right,” he said. “I hope I don’t wake up tomorrow and feel as if I’ve made a terrible mistake. This entire episode has been so bizarre that I suspect my normal faculties aren’t working properly. We don’t even know for sure if these aliens are friendly…”

Carol pulled her diving mask over her face. “We’ll never have all the answers,” she said. She took his hand. “Let’s go, Nick.”

Troy was first into the water. Nick and Carol followed. It had been agreed before the dive that Carol would take the searchlight and lead the group. She was the most mobile of the threesome because each of the men was dragging a buoyancy bag. The trio had been concerned that they might have difficulty finding the ship and had discussed an elaborate set of contingency plans for locating it. They needn’t have worried. Thirty feet under the Florida Queen, in virtually the exact place where the fissure had been on Thursday, there was a light in the water. Carol pointed at it and the two men swam up behind her. As they drew closer, they saw that the light was coming from a rectangular area about ten feet high and twenty feet wide. They could not see anything except what looked like some kind of material or fabric with a soft light behind it.

Carol hesitated. Troy swam right on by her, into the lighted area, his buoyancy bag trailing behind him. Everything disappeared. Nick and Carol waited. Carol felt herself tightening up. Come on now, Dawson, she thought, it’s your turn. You’ve been here before. She took a deep breath and swam into the material. She felt something like plastic touch her face and then she was in a covered tunnel. A swift current was pulling her to the right. She went down a small water slide and was deposited in a shallow pool at the bottom. She clambered out of the pool and began removing her diving equipment.

Troy was standing on the floor about ten feet beyond the end of the pool. Next to him a warden had already taken the buoyancy bag, opened it, and adroitly separated the gold bars and the lead weights from the information discs. As Carol’s eyes adjusted to the dim light around her, she saw that the warden was now loading the gold on a small platform sitting on top of tank treads about a foot above the floor. Immediately thereafter, the warden placed the information discs and the lead weights on two other platforms. A carpet that had been lying inconspicuously over against the wall on the left then rose up, apparently activated the treads under the platforms, and directed them toward a nearby hallway leading out of the room.

Carol pulled off her mask and finished removing her diving gear. She was in a medium-sized room somewhat like the ones she and Troy had encountered at the beginning of her last dive. The curved wall partitions were colored black and white. There was a small window to the ocean next to the splash pool on her left. The ceilings were low and tight, only a couple of feet above her head, giving her a feeling of claustrophobia. So here I am again, she thought, Back in Wonderland. This time I will take plenty of pictures. She photographed the procession of the carpet and three platforms just as it disappeared from the room. She then changed lenses and took a dozen quick close-up pictures of the warden standing next to Troy. It had the same amoebalike central body as the one she had confronted the day before, but there were only five implements sticking out of its upper half. The warden had probably been customized for its particular job of taking the objects from the trio.

Troy walked over beside her. “Where’s Nick?” he asked. My God, Carol thought as she turned around and looked back at the slide and splash pool. I almost forgot. She chastised herself for not having waited for Nick. After all, he’s never been down here…

Nick’s big body careened out of control against the sides of the slide and he hurtled into the splash pool. The heavy buoyancy bag came down behind him and hit him hard, just above the kidneys. He stumbled to his feet, fell down in the pool, and then stood up again. In his diving apparatus with the thin plastic material from the bag tied around his wrist, it was he who looked like the visitor from outer space.

Carol and Troy were laughing as Nick climbed out of the splash pool. “All right. Professor!” exclaimed Troy. He reached forward to give him a hand. “Good show. It’s a shame we don’t have that entry on tape.”

Nick removed his mouthpiece. He was out of breath. “Thanks a lot for waiting, team,” he stammered. He looked around him. “What is this place, anyway?”

The warden meanwhile had approached him from the side and was already tugging at the bag with one of its appendages. “Just a minute, weirdo,” Nick said, suppressing his fright. “Let me get my bearings first.”

The warden didn’t stop. A knifelike appendage cut the bag below where it was attached to Nick’s wrist. Next the warden took the entire bag, including its lead and gold contents, and somehow pushed it through its own semipermeable outer skin. The bag could be seen intact, adjacent to the rectangular control boxes, as the warden turned and hurried across the floor. It went through the same exit that the carpet and platforms had used earlier.

“You’re welcome,” Nick managed to say as he watched the strange creature disappear with the loot. He finished taking off his diving gear and walked over to Troy. “Okay, Jefferson, you’re the main man here. What do we do now?”

“Well, Professor,” he answered, “as far as I can tell, our job is finished. If you guys want, we can suit up again and jump through that window wall over there. We’d be back in the boat in less than five minutes. If I’ve read the messages right, these alien dudes will be ready to leave very shortly.”

“You mean that’s it? We’re done?” Carol asked. Troy nodded. “This is the most overrated experience since my first sexual encounter,” Carol commented.

Nick was walking across the room, moving directly away from the splash pool and his two friends. “Where are you going?” Troy asked.

“I paid a hefty admission price,” Nick replied. “I’m at least entitled to a tour.” Carol and Troy followed him. They crossed the empty room and walked through an exit between two wall partitions on the opposite side. They entered a short, dark, covered corridor. They could see light at the other end. They emerged into another room, this one circular and significantly larger. It had the high cathedral ceilings that Carol had liked so much on her last visit.

This room was not empty. Sitting in its middle facing them was a gigantic, enclosed, translucent cylinder, about twenty-five feet high altogether and ten feet in diameter at its base. A horde of orange pipes and purple cable sheaths attached the cylinder to a group of machines built into the wall behind it. There was a light green liquid filling the inside of the cylinder and eight gold metallic objects floating at different heights in the liquid. The objects were many different shapes. One looked like a starfish, another like a box, a third like a derby hat; the only thing the objects had in common was their gold metallic outer covering. Upon close inspection of the cylinder, thin membranes could be seen inside the liquid. These surfaces effectively partitioned the internal volume and gave each of the golden objects its own unique subvolume.

“All right, genius,” Nick said to Troy, after he stared at the cylinder for almost a full minute. “Explain what this is all about.” Carol was in a photographer’s paradise. She had nearly finished recording all hundred and twenty-eight pictures that could be stored on one minidisc. She had photographed the cylinder from all angles, including a close-up of each of the objects suspended in the liquid, and was now working on the machines behind it. She stopped taking pictures to listen to Troy’s reply.

“Well, Professor…” Troy started. His forehead was knitted as he tried to concentrate. “As far as I can make out from what they’ve been trying to tell me, this spaceship is on a mission to a dozen planets that are scattered in this part of the galaxy. On each planet the aliens leave one of those golden things you see in the cylinder. They contain tiny embryos or seeds that have been genetically engineered for survival on that specific planet.”

Carol walked over beside them. “So the ship goes from planet to planet, dropping off these packages containing seeds of some kind? Sort of a galactic Johnny Appleseed?”

“Sort of, angel, except that there are both animal and plant seeds inside the container. Plus advanced robots that nurture and educate the growing things until they reach maturity. Then the creatures can flourish on their own without help.”

“All in that one little package?” Nick asked. He looked again at the fascinating objects floating in the liquid in the cylinder. He loved the golden color. All of a sudden he thought of the trident. He imagined thousands of tiny swarming embryos inside its outer golden surface and in his mind’s eye he projected the growth of the swarm into the future. There was something fearsome about creatures genetically engineered to survive on the planet Earth. What if they are not friendly?

Nick’s heart sped up as he realized what had been bothering him, partly subconsciously, since he started believing Troy’s story about the aliens. Why did they stop on the Earth in the first place? What do they really want from us? His mind raced on. And if that trident contains beings destined for Earth that are extremely advanced, he thought, then it doesn’t matter if they are friendly. We will be finished sooner or later anyway.

Carol and Troy were talking in general terms about the way an advanced civilization might use seeds to colonize other planets. Nick wasn’t listening carefully. I can’t tell Troy or even Carol. If the aliens know what I’m thinking they will stop me. I’d better do it soon.

“Troy,” he heard Carol say as she began to take another set of pictures of the objects in the cylinder, “is it just co-incidence that the trident we found on Thursday looks so much like one of these seed packages?”

Nick did not wait for Troy to answer. “Excuse me,” he interrupted in a loud voice. “I forgot something very important. I must go back to the boat. Stay here and wait for me. I’ll be right back.”

He burst out of the room, down the corridor, and across the room with the low ceiling and the window on the ocean. Good, he said to himself, nothing is going to stop me. Without even pausing to put on his diving gear, Nick took a huge breath and dove through the window. He was afraid that his lungs were going to explode before he reached the surface. But he made it. He climbed up the ladder and onto the boat.

Nick went immediately to the bottom drawer underneath the racks of electronic equipment. He reached in and grabbed the golden trident. He could feel that the axis rod had thickened considerably. It was now nearly twice as thick as it had been the first time that he held it. Carol was right. Damnit, why didn’t I listen to her at the time? He pulled the object completely out of the drawer. The sun was just about to come up behind him. In the dawn light Nick could see that the trident had changed in several other ways. It was heavier. The individual tines on the fork end were much thicker and had almost grown together. In addition, there was an open hole into a soft, gooey interior on the north pole of the larger of the two spheres.

Nick examined it carefully. Suddenly he felt powerful arms wrap themselves around his chest and upper body, forcing him to drop the trident on the floor of the boat. “Now just hold steady,” he heard a lightly accented voice say, “and turn around slowly. We won’t hurt you if you cooperate.”

Nick turned around. Commander Winters and a tall, fat seaman that Nick had never seen before were standing in front of him in wetsuits. Lieutenant Ramirez was still holding him from behind. Ramirez gradually released Nick and bent down to pick up the trident. He handed it to Winters. “Thank you, Lieutenant,” Winters said. “Where are your companions, Williams?” he then asked Nick. “Down there with my missile?”

Nick didn’t say anything at first. Too much was happening too fast. He was having difficulty integrating Winters into his scenario for returning the trident to the spaceship. As soon as Nick had felt the changes in its outer surface, he had known for certain that the trident was one of the seed packages.

Winters was studying the trident. “And what’s the significance of this thing?” he said. “You guys have taken enough photographs of it.”

Nick was doing some calculations. If I am delayed here very long, then Carol and Troy will undoubtedly leave the ship. And the aliens will launch. He took a deep breath. My only chance is the truth.

“Commander Winters,” Nick began, “please listen very carefully to what I’m about to say. It will sound fantastic, even preposterous, but it’s all true. And if you will come with me, I can prove everything to you. The fate of the human race may well depend on what we do in the next five minutes.” He paused to organize his ideas.

For some reason Winters thought about the ridiculous carrot story that Todd had told him. But the earnestness he was seeing in Nick’s face persuaded him to continue to pay attention. “Go ahead, Williams,” he said.

“Carol Dawson and Troy Jefferson are right now onboard a super-advanced extraterrestrial spaceship that is directly under this boat. The alien vehicle is traveling from planet to planet depositing packages of embryonic beings that are genetically designed to survive on a particular planet. That golden thing in your hand is, in a sense, a cradle for creatures that may later flourish on the Earth. I must return it to the aliens before they leave or our descendants may not survive.”

Commander Winters looked at Nick as if he had lost his mind. The commander started to say something. “No,” Nick interrupted. “Hear me out. The spacecraft also stopped here because it needed some repairs. At one time we thought it might have found your missile. That’s partially how we got involved in the first place. We didn’t know about the creatures in the cradle. So we were trying to help. One of the things the aliens needed for their repairs was gold. You see, they only had three days—”

“Jesus K. Christ!” Winters shouted at Nick. “Do you really expect me to believe this crap? This is the looniest, most farfetched story I have ever heard in my entire life. You’re nuts. Cradles, aliens who need gold for repairs… I suppose next you’ll be telling me that they are six feet tall and look like carrots—” “And have four vertical slits in their faces?” Nick added.

Winters glanced around. “You told him?” he said to Lieutenant Ramirez. Ramirez shook his head back and forth.

“No,” Nick continued abruptly as the commander looked completely confused. “The carrot thing wasn’t an alien, at least not one of the superaliens who made the ship. The carrot was a holographic projection…”

The perplexed Commander Winters waved his hands.” I’m not listening to any more of this nonsense, Williams. At least not here. What I want to know is what you and your friends know about the location of the missile. Now will you come with us over to our boat of your own free will, or do we have to tie you up?”

At that moment, six feet above them, a ten-legged, black, spiderlike creature with a body about four inches in diameter walked unnoticed to the edge of the canopy. It extended three antennae in their direction and then leaped off the side, landing on the back of Lieutenant Ramirez’ neck. “Aieee,” screamed the lieutenant during the pause in the conversation. He fell down on his knees behind Nick and grasped at the black thing that was trying to take a sample chunk out of his neck. For a second nobody moved. Then Nick grabbed a large pair of pliers from the counter and thwacked the black thing once, twice, and even a third time before it released its grip on Ramirez’ neck.

All four men watched it fall to the deck, scuttle rapidly over to the cradle that Commander Winters had put down so that he could assist Ramirez, shrink its size by a factor of ten, and disappear into the cradle through the soft gooey opening on the top of the sphere. Within seconds the goo hardened and all the external surfaces of the cradle were again rigid.

Winters was flabbergasted. Ramirez crossed himself. The seaman looked as if he were about to faint. “I swear to you that my story is true, Commander,” Nick said calmly. “All you have to do is come down with me and see for yourself. I left my diving gear down there so that I could hurry up here to retrieve this thing. We can go together with my last working tank and share the air supply.”

Winters’ head was spinning. The ten-legged spider was the straw that broke the camel’s back. He felt that he had now entered the Twilight Zone. I have never seen or heard anything even remotely like this before in my life, Winters thought. And only half an hour ago I had wild hallucinations with musical accompaniment. Maybe I am the one losing touch with reality. Lieutenant Ramirez was still on his knees. It looked as if he were praying. Or maybe this is finally my sign from God.

“All right, Williams,” the commander was surprised to hear himself say. “I’ll go with you. But my men will wait here on your boat for our return.”

Nick picked up the trident and raced around the canopy to prepare the diving equipment.

It took Carol and Troy a few seconds to react to Nick’s abrupt departure. “That was strange,” Carol said finally. “What do you suppose he forgot?”

“I have no idea,” Troy shrugged. “But I hope he hurries back. I don’t think it’s very long until launch. And I’m sure they will throw us out before then.”

Carol thought for a moment and then turned back to look at the cylinder. “You know, Troy, those golden things are exactly like the trident on the outside. Did you say—”

“I didn’t answer you before, angel,” Troy interrupted. “But yes, you’re right. It is the same material. I hadn’t realized until we came down here today that what we picked up on that first dive was the seed package for Earth. They may have tried to tell me before; maybe I just didn’t understand them.”

Carol was fascinated. She walked over and put her face against the cylinder wall. It felt more like glass than plastic. “So maybe I was right when I thought it was heavier and thicker…” she said, as much to herself as to Troy. “And inside that trident are seeds for better plants and animals?” Troy nodded his head in response.

There was now some motion inside the cylinder. The thin membranes separating the subvolumes were growing what appeared to be guidewires that were wrapping themselves around the individual golden objects. Carol reloaded her camera with a new disc and ran around the outside of the cylinder, stopping in the best positions to photograph the process. Troy looked down at his bracelet. “There’s no doubt about it, angel. These ETs are definitely preparing to launch. Maybe we should go.”

’We’ll wait as long as we can,” Carol shouted from across the room. “These photographs will he priceless.” They both could now hear weird noises behind the walls. The noises were not loud, but they were distracting because they were erratic and so totally alien. Troy paced nervously as he listened to the gamut of sounds. Carol walked over beside him. “Besides,” she said, “Nick asked us to wait for him.”

“That’s great,” Troy answered, “as long as they wait as well.” He seemed uncharacteristically nervous. “I don’t want to be onboard when these guys leave the Earth.”

“Hey there, Mr. Jefferson,” Carol said, you are supposed to he the calm one. Relax. You just said yourself that you think they’ll throw us out before they leave.” She paused and looked searchingly at Troy. “What do you know that I don’t?”

Troy turned away from her and started walking toward the exit. Carol ran after him and grabbed his arm. “What is it, Troy?” she said. “What’s wrong?”

“Look, angel,” he replied, not looking directly at her, “I just figured it out myself a minute ago. And I’m still not sure what it means. I hope I haven’t made a terrible—”

“What are you talking about?” she interrupted him. “You’re not making any sense.”

“The Earth package,” he blurted out. “It has human seeds in it too. Along with the trees and insects and grasses and birds.”

Carol stood facing Troy, trying to understand what was bothering him so much. “When they came here a long long time ago,” he said, his face wrinkled with concern, “they took specimens of the different species and returned them to their home world. Where they were improved by genetic engineering and prepared for their eventual return to the Earth. Some of those specimens were human beings.”

Carol’s heart quickened as she realized what Troy was telling her. So that’s it, she said to herself. There are superhumans inside that package we’ve found. Not just better flowers and better bugs, but better people as well. But unlike Troy, Carol’s immediate reaction was not fear. She was overwhelmed by curiosity.

“Can I see them?” she asked excitedly. Troy didn’t understand. “The superhumans, or whatever you want to call them… ,” she continued, “can I see them?”

Troy shook his head. “They’re just tiny zygotes, angel. More than a billion would fit in your hand. You wouldn’t be able to see anything.”

Carol was not dissuaded.” But these guys have such amazing technological ability. Maybe they can…” She stopped. “Wait a minute, Troy. Remember that carrot on the base? It was a holographic projection and must have come somehow out of the information base on this spacecraft.”

Carol walked away from Troy into the middle of the room. She raised her arms and looked up at the ceiling thirty feet above her. “Okay, you guys, whoever you are,” she invoked in a loud voice. “Now there’s something that I want. We risked our ass to get what you needed for your repairs. You can at least reciprocate. I want to see what we might look like someday…”

To their left, not too far from one of the large blocky machines connected to the cylinder, two of the wall partitions moved apart to form a hallway. They could see light at the other end. “Come on,” an exultant Carol called to Troy, who was again smiling and admiring her assertiveness, “let’s go see what our superaliens have created for us now.”

At the end of the short corridor, there was a softly lit square room about twenty feet on a side. Against the opposite wall, illuminated by a blue light that gave the entire tableau a surrealistic appearance, eight children were standing around a large, glowing model of the Earth. As Carol and Troy approached, they recognized that what they were seeing was not real, that it was simply a complex sequence of images projected into the air in front of them. But the diaphanous picture contained such rich detail that it was easy to forget it was just a projection.

The children were four or five years old. All were wearing only a thin white loincloth that covered their genitals. There were four girls and four boys. Two of them were black, two were Caucasian with blue eyes and blonde hair, two were Oriental, and the final boy and girl, definitely twins, looked like a mixture of all humanity What Carol immediately noticed was their eyes. All eight children had large, piercing eyes of brilliant intensity that were focused on the glowing Earth in front of them.

“The continents of this planet,” the little black boy was saying, “were once tied together in a single gigantic land mass that stretched from pole to pole. This was relatively recently, only about two hundred million years ago. Since that time the motion of the plates on which the individual land masses rest has completely changed the configuration of the surface. Here, for example, you can see the Indian sub continent tearing away from Antarctica a hundred million years ago and moving across the ocean toward an eventual collision with Asia. It was this collision and the subsequent plate interaction that lifted the Himalayas, the highest mountains on the planet, to their current height.”

As the little boy was talking, the electronic model Earth in front of him demonstrated the continental changes that he was describing. “But what is the mechanism that causes these plates and land masses to move with respect to each other?” the tiny blonde-haired girl asked.

“Psst,” Carol whispered in Troy’s ear. “How come they are speaking English and know all this Earth geography?” Troy looked at her as if he were disappointed and made a circular motion with his hands. Of course, Carol said to herself, they’ve already processed the discs.

“…then this activity results in material being thrust upward from the mantle below the Earth’s crust. Eventually the continents are pushed apart. Any other questions?” The black boy was smiling. He pointed at the model in front of him. “Here’s what will happen to the land masses in the next fifty million years or so. The Americas will continue to move to the West, away from Africa and Europe, making the South Atlantic a much larger ocean. The Persian Gulf will close altogether, Australia will drive north toward the equator and press against Asia, and both Baja California and the area around Los Angeles will split off from North America to drift northward in the Pacific Ocean. By fifty million years from now Los Angeles will start sliding into the Aleutian Islands.”

All of the children watched the changing globe with complete attention. When the continents on the surface of the model stopped moving, the Oriental boy stepped slightly out from the group. “We have seen this continental drift phenomenon that Brian has been describing on half a dozen other planets, all of them bodies mostly covered by a liquid. Tomorrow Sherry will lead a more detailed discussion about the forces inside a planet that cause the sea floor to spread in the first place.”

A projected image of a warden entered the scene from the left and removed both the Earth globe and several other unidentified props. The small boy waited patiently for the warden to complete his task and then continued, “Darla and David now want to share with us a project they have been working on for several days. They will play the music while Miranda and Justin perform the dance they choreographed.”

The mixed twins turned eagerly to their classmates. The girl spoke out. “When we first learned about adult love and the changes that we all can expect after we pass puberty, David and I tried to envision what it would be like to find a new desire even stronger than those we already know. Our joint vision became a short musical composition and a dance. We call it ‘The Dance of Love.’ ”

The two children sat down away from the group, almost at the side of the image, and began moving their fingers rapidly as if they were typing on the floor. A light synthesized melody, pleasant and spirited, filled the room. The blond boy and the Oriental girl began to dance in the center of the group. At first in the dance, the two were totally separate, unaware of each other, each child completely absorbed in his own activities. The boy knelt down to pick a beautiful flower, its red and white coloring shimmering in the holographic projection. The girl bounced a large bright blue ball as she danced. After a while the little girl noticed the boy and approached him, somewhat tentatively, offering to share the ball. The boy played ball with her but ignored everything except the game.

This is magic, thought Carol as she watched the children’s images moving with grace and deft precision in front of her. These children are wonderful. But they can’t be real. They are too orderly, too self-contained. Where is the tension, the strife? But despite her questions she was profoundly moved by the scene she was witnessing. The children were acting in concert, as a group, flowing in harmony from activity to activity. Their body language was open and unafraid. No neuroses were blocking their learning process.

The dance continued. The music deepened as the boy began to pay attention to his partner and she began arranging her hair with his favorite flowers for their brief encounters. The body movements changed as well, the sprightly, exuberant bounces of the initial stages giving way to subtly suggestive motions designed to awaken and then tease the budding libido. The tiny dancers touched, moved away, and came back together in an embrace.

Carol was entranced. How would my life have been different, she wondered, if I had known all this at the age of five? She remembered her rich friend at soccer camp, Jessica from Laguna Beach, whom she had seen occasionally in subsequent years. Jessica was always ahead, always had to be first. She had had sex with boys before I even started my period. And look what happened to her. Three marriages, three divorces, just thirty years old.

Carol tried to stop her mind from drifting so that she could pay complete attention to the dance. Suddenly she remembered her camera. She had just taken her first pictures of the children when she heard a noise behind her. Nick was coming toward them through the corridor. And he was carrying the trident in his hand.

Nick started to say something but Troy hushed him by putting his finger against his own lips and pointing at the dance in progress. The tempo had now changed. The two mixed children had somehow put the music on automatic (it seemed to be repeating some of the early verses, but with additional instruments in a more complex pattern) and joined the blond boy and the Oriental girl in the dance. Carol’s first impression before Nick spoke out loud was that the dance was now exploring friendships between the paired couple and other people.

“What’s this all about?” Nick said. The moment he spoke the entire projected tableau vanished. All of the children, the dance, and the music disappeared in an instant. Carol was surprised to find that she was disappointed and even a little angry. “Now you’ve blown it,” she said.

Nick looked at his companions’ stern faces. “Jesus,” he said, holding up the cradle, “such a greeting. I bust my butt to go retrieve this damn thing and you guys are pissed when I come back because I interrupt a movie of some kind.”

“For your information, Mr. Williams,” Carol replied, “what we were watching was no ordinary movie. In fact, those kids in that dance are the same species as the ones in your trident.” Nick looked at her skeptically. “Tell him, Troy.”

“She’s right, Professor,” Troy said. “We just figured it out while you were gone. That thing you’re carrying is the seed package for Earth. Some of the zygotes in there are what Carol calls superhumans. Genetically engineered humans with more capability than you or me. Like the kids we just saw.”

Nick lifted the cradle to eye level. “I had figured out myself that this thing was a seed package. But what’s this shit about human seeds?” He glanced at Troy. “You’re serious, aren’t you?” Troy nodded his head. Troy nodded. All three of them stared intently at the object in front of them. Carol kept glancing back and forth from the trident to where the image of the superchildren had been. “It still doesn’t seem possible,” Nick added, “but then nothing else has for the last—”

“So what did you forget, Nick?” Carol interrupted. “And why did you bring that thing back?” There was no immediate response from Nick. “By the way,” she smiled, “you missed the show of a lifetime.”

“The trident was what I forgot,” Nick answered. “It occurred to me, while I was studying the gold objects in the cylinder, that our trident might be a seed package. And I was worried that it might be dangerous…”

The sudden sound of organ music flooding down the corridor from the large room behind them stopped their conversation. Nick and Carol looked at Troy. He put the bracelet up to his ear as if he were listening to it and cracked a large grin. “I think that’s the five-minute warning,” Troy said. “We’d better make our last touchdown and clear out of here.”

The trio turned and walked back down the corridor to the room with the cylinder. When they arrived. Carol and Troy were astonished to see a figure in a blue and white wetsuit on the opposite side of the room. He was kneeling reverently right next to the cylinder.

“Oh, yeah.” said Nick with a nervous laugh, “I forgot to tell you. Commander Winters came back with me…”

Commander Winters had felt quite comfortable in the water even though he had not been down on a dive in five years. Nick had gone freestyle, swimming right beside the commander and using the emergency mouthpiece connected to the air supply on Winters’ back. Despite his sense of urgency, Nick had remembered that Winters was basically a novice again and had not rushed the first part of the dive. But when Winters had refused several times to follow Nick up close to the light in the ocean, Nick had become exasperated.

Nick had then taken a final deep breath from the ancillary mouthpiece and grabbed Winters by the shoulders. With gestures, he had explained to the commander that he, Nick, was going to go through the plastic stuff or whatever it was in front of the light and that Winters could either follow him or not. The commander had reluctantly given Nick his hand. Nick turned around immediately and pulled Winters into and through the membrane that separated the alien spaceship from the ocean.

Winters had been completely terrified during his tumble on the water slide inside the vehicle. As a result he had lost his bearings and had had great difficulty standing up after he landed in the splash pool. Nick was already out of the pool and anxious to find his friends. “Look,” Nick had said, as soon as he could get the commander’s attention, “I’m going to leave you now for a few minutes.” He had pointed at the exit on the opposite of the room. “We’ll be in the big room with the high ceilings just on the other side of that wall.” Then he had left carrying the strange golden object from the boat.

Winters was left alone. He carefully pulled himself out on the side of the splash pool and methodically stacked his equipment alongside all the rest of the diving gear. He looked around the room, noting the curves in the black and white partitions. He too felt the closeness of the ceiling. Now according to Williams, the commander thought to himself, I’m in part of an alien spaceship that has temporarily stopped on Earth. So far, except for that clever one-way entrance that I did not have time to analyze, I see no evidence of extraterrestrial origin…

Comforted by his logic, he eased across the room toward the opposite wall and into the dark corridor. But his newfound sense of comfort was totally destroyed when he walked into the room dominated by the enormous cylinder with the golden objects floating in the light green liquid. He arched his back and stared at the vaulted, cathedral ceilings far above his head. He then approached the cylinder.

For Winters, the connection between the trident that Nick had been holding and the objects inside the cylinder was instantaneous. Those must be more seed packages, destined for other worlds. Winters thought, his crisp logic disappearing in a quick leap of faith. With six-root carrots and who knows what else to populate a few of the billions of worlds in our galaxy alone.

The commander walked around the cylinder as if he were in a dream. His mind continually replayed both what Nick had told him right before they descended and the amazing scene he had witnessed when the spiderlike creature had shrunk up and jumped into the golden object. So it’s all true. All those things the scientists have been saying about the possibility of vast hordes of living creatures out there among the stars. He stopped for a moment, partially listening to the strange noises behind the walls. And we are only a few of God’s many many children.

Organ music, similar in timbre to that which Carol had heard when she had finished playing “Silent Night,” but with a different tune, began to sound in the distant reaches of the ceiling above him. It reminded Winters of church music. His reaction was instinctual. He knelt down in front of the cylinder and clasped his hands together in prayer.

The music swelled in the room. What Winters heard in his head was the introduction to the Doxology. the short hymn that he had heard every single Sunday for eighteen years in the Presbyterian church in Columbus, Indiana. In his mind’s eye he was thirteen years old again and sitting next to Betty in his choir robes. He smiled at her and they stood up together.

Praise God from whom all blessings flow.

The choir sang the first phrase of the hymn and Winters’ brain was bombarded by a montage of memories from his early teens and before, a suite of epiphanic images of his innocent and unknowing closeness with a parental God, one who was in the wall behind his bed or just over his rooftop or at most in the summer afternoon clouds above Columbus. Here was an eight-year-old boy praying that his father would not find out that it was he who had set fire to the vacant lot across from the Smith mansion. Another time, at ten, the little Vernon wept bitter tears as he held his dead cocker spaniel Runtie in his arms and begged the omniscient God to accept his dead dog’s soul into heaven.

The night before the Easter pageant, the first time that Vernon had portrayed Him in His final hours, dragging the cross to Calvary, eleven-year-old Vernon had been unable to sleep. As the night was passing by the boy began to panic, began to fear that he would freeze up and forget his lines. But then he had known what to do. He had reached under his pillow and found the little New Testament that always stayed there, day and night. He had opened it to Matthew 28. “Go ye therefore,” it had said, “baptizing all nations…”

That had been enough. Then Vernon had prayed for sleep. His friendly, fatherly God had sent the little boy an image of himself delivering a spellbinding performance in the pageant the next day. Comforted by that picture, he had fallen asleep.

Praise Him all creatures here below.

With the second phrase of the hymn resounding in his ears the venue for Winters’ mental montage changed to Annapolis Maryland. He was a young man now, in the last two years of his university work at the Naval Academy. The pictures that flooded his brain were all taken at the same place, outside the beautiful little Protestant chapel in the middle of the campus. He was either walking in or walking out. He went in the snow, in the rain, and in the late summer heat. He would fulfill his pledge. He had made a bargain with God, a business deal as it were, you do your part and I’ll do mine. It was no longer a one-sided relationship. Now, life had taught the serious young midshipman from Indiana that it was necessary to offer this God something in order to guarantee His compliance with the deal.

For two years Vernon went regularly to the chapel, twice a week at least. He did not really worship there; he corresponded with a worldly God, one that read the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. They discussed things. Vernon reminded Him that he was steadfastly upholding his end of the deal and thanked Him for keeping His part of the bargain. But never once did they talk about Joanna Carr. She didn’t matter. The whole affair was between Midshipman Vernon Winters and God.

Praise Him above ye heavenly host.

The commander had unconsciously bowed his head almost to the floor by the time he heard the third phrase of the hymn. In his heart he knew the next stops on this spiritual journey. He was off the coast of Libya first, praying those horrible words requesting death and destruction for Gaddafi’s family. God had changed as Lieutenant Winters had matured. He was now an executive, a president of something larger than a nation, an admiral, a judge, somewhat remote, but still accessible in time of real need.

However, he had lost his all-forgiving nature. He had become stern and judgmental. Killing a small Arab girl wasn’t like burning down the vacant lot across from the Smith mansion. Winters’ God now held him personally accountable for all his actions. And there were some sins almost beyond forgiveness, some deeds so heinous that one might wait for weeks, months, or even years in the anterooms of His court before He would consent to hear your plea for mercy and expiation.

Again the commander remembered his desperate search for Him after that awful evening when he had sat on the couch beside his wife and watched the videotaped newsreels of the Libya bombing. She had been so proud of him. She had taped every segment of CBS news that had covered the North African engagement and then surprised him with a complete showing the day after he returned to Norfolk. It was only then that the full horror of what he had done had struck Winters. Struggling not to vomit as the camera had shown the gruesome result of those missiles that had been fired from his planes, Winters had stumbled out into the night air, alone, and wandered until daybreak.

He had been looking for Him. A dozen times in the next three years this rite would repeat itself and he would wander again, all night, alternately praying and walking, hoping for some sign that He had listened to the commander’s prayers. The stars and moon above him on those nights had been magnificent. But they could not grant forgiveness, could not give surcease to his troubled soul.

Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

And so God became blackness, a void, for Commander Winters. On those rare occasions afterward when he would pray, there was no longer any mental image of God, no picture of Him at all in his mind. There was just blackness, darkness, emptiness. Until this moment. As he knelt there outside the cylinder, heard the final phrase of the Doxology, and prayed to God to forgive him his doubts, his longings for Tiffani Thomas, and his general lack of direction, there was an explosion of light in Winters mind’s eye. God was speaking to him! God had at last given him a sign!

It was not the sign that Winters had been seeking, not evidence that He had finally forgiven the commander and accepted his penance, but something much much better. The explosion of light in Winter’s mind was a star, a solar furnace forging helium out of hydrogen. As his mental camera backed away rapidly, Winters could see planets around that star and signs of intelligence on a few of the planets. There were other stars and other planets in the distance. Billions of stars in this galaxy alone and, after the mammoth voids between the galaxies, more huge collections of stars and planets and living creatures stretching incomprehensible distances in all directions.

Winters’ body shook with joy and his eyes flooded with tears when he realized how completely God had answered his prayers. It would not have been enough for Him to simply reveal to Winters that he was forgiven. No, this Lord of everything imaginable, whose domain embraced chemicals risen to consciousness on millions of worlds in a vast and uncountable universe, this God who was truly omnipotent and ubiquitous, had gone way beyond his prayers. He had shown Winters the unity in everything. He had not limited Himself just to the affairs of one individual on a small and insignificant blue planet orbiting an ordinary yellow sun in one of the spiral arms of the Milky Way Galaxy; he had also shown Winters how that species and its pool of intelligence and spirituality was connected to every part of every atom in His grand dominion.

As Nick walked across the room toward Commander Winters, the intermittent noises behind the walls increased in amplitude and frequency. Around on the far side of the cylinder, next to one of the larger support machines, a door opened and two carpets, moving inchworm style, came into the room. They were immediately followed by two wardens and four platforms on treads. The platforms were carrying stacks of building materials. Each of the wardens led two platforms to a corner of the room, where they started constructing secure anchor stanchions for the cylinder.

The two carpets confronted Nick in the center of the room. They stood up on end and leaned in the direction of the exit toward the ocean. “They’re telling us it’s time to go,” Carol said as she and Troy came up beside Nick.

“I understand that,” Nick replied. “But I’m not yet ready to leave.” He turned to Troy. “Does this game have an X key at all?” he asked. “I could use a time out.”

Troy laughed. “I don’t think so, Professor. And there’s no way we can save the game and try again.”

Nick looked as if he were in deep thought. The carpets continued to beckon. “Come on, Nick,” Carol grabbed him by the arm. “Let’s go before they get angry.”

Suddenly Nick advanced toward one of the carpets and extended the golden cradle. “Here,” he said, “take this and put it with the rest of them, up there, in the cylinder where it belongs.” The carpet recoiled and twisted its top from side to side. Then it pulled its two vertical sides together and pointed at Nick.

“I don’t need a bracelet to interpret that gesture,” Troy remarked. “The carpet is plainly telling you to take the trident back to your boat.”

Nick nodded his head and was quiet for a moment. “Is this the only one?” he asked Troy. Troy didn’t understand the question. “Is this the only seed package for Earth?”

“I think so,” Troy answered after a moment’s hesitation. He looked at Nick with a puzzled expression.

Meanwhile the activity level in the room had increased substantially. As Commander Winters ambled toward the trio in the middle of the hubbub, the wardens and platforms were actively building in the corners, moving equipment could be heard behind the walls, and the organ music was growing louder and slightly ominous. In addition, a giant sock or cover of some kind, lined with a soft, pliant material, had unfurled above them in the ceiling and was descending slowly over the cylinder. Commander Winters stared around the room with undisguised astonishment. Still serenely content in his heart from the beauty and intensity of his epiphany, he was not paying much attention to the conversation beside him.

“They must take this thing with them,” Nick was saying earnestly to Carol and Troy. “Don’t you see? It’s even more important now that I know there are human seedlings inside. Our children won’t have a chance.”

“But they were so beautiful, so smart,” Carol said. “You didn’t see them like we did. I can’t believe those children would ever hurt anybody or anything.”

They wouldn’t mean to destroy us,” Nick argued. “It would just happen.”

The carpets were starting to jump up and down. “I know, I know,” Nick said as he again extended the cradle toward them. “You want us to go. But first, please listen to me. We’ve helped you, now I’m asking that you help us. I’m afraid of what might be in this package, afraid that it might upset the delicate stability of our planet. Our progress as a species has been slow, in fits and starts, with almost as many backward steps as forward. Whatever is here could threaten our future development. Or maybe even halt it altogether.”

The activity in the room continued unabated. There was no noticeable reaction to Nick’s speech from the impatient carpets, who were now taking turns walking over to the exit in case the dumb humans still did not understand their message. Nick looked entreatingly at Carol. She returned his gaze and smiled. After a few seconds she came over and took his hand. Their eyes met for a brief moment as she started talking and Nick saw a new expression, something approaching admiration, in her glance.

“He’s right, you know,” Carol said in the direction of the pair of carpets. “You haven’t thought carefully enough about the outcome of this mission of yours. Sooner or later your special embryos and the humans already on this planet will interact and there will be a catastrophe. If the seed package is found early in the development of your superhumans, I am certain the Earthlings will feel compelled to destroy it. What possible other reaction could they have? The magnitude of the threat may not be fully known, but it is easy to recognize that creatures genetically engineered by superaliens could pose a gigantic problem for the native species of this planet.”

Troy was standing just behind Nick and Carol, listening attentively to what she was saying. Around him the preparations for launch continued. The wardens and platforms had finished constructing and installing the two pairs of stanchions that would be connected to the cylinder during launch to minimize vibrations. The golden cradles in the cylinder could no longer be seen; the cover had descended almost to the floor.

“…So unless you take this golden package back with you, perhaps to place it on another world which does not yet have intelligence, there will be unnecessary death. Either your seedlings will perish before maturity or the native humans like us will eventually be swallowed up, if not killed outright, by the more capable beings you have engineered. That hardly seems to be a fair reward for our effort on your behalf.”

Carol stopped to watch four strange cords extend themselves from the top and near the bottom of the cylinder, wriggle through the air, and end up attached to the stanchions in the corners of the room. The carpets were becoming increasingly agitated. The two wardens finished supervising their prelaunch procedures. They turned abruptly toward the four human beings and moved in their direction.

Carol tightened her hold on Nick’s hand. “Perhaps it’s true that our natural development is a slow and not altogether satisfactory process,” she continued, fear creeping into her voice as the dreaded wardens quickly approached them, “and it’s certainly true that we humans here make mistakes, both as individuals and as groups. However, you can’t overlook the fact that this imperfect process produced us, and we had enough foresight or compassion or whatever you want to call it—”

“Hold it,” shouted Troy. He seized the cradle from Nick’s hand and jumped directly into the path of one of the menacing wardens. He was only inches away from two whirling, threatening rods with cutting implements on the end. “Hold it,” he shouted again. Miraculously, all activity ceased. The carpets and wardens stood still, the noises in the wall stopped, even the organ music was silenced. “Of all of us,” Troy said in a loud voice, his head tilted back and aimed at the ceiling, “I have the most knowledge of what your mission is all about. And the most to lose by recommending that you abandon this part of it. But I agree with my friends.”

Troy removed his bracelet and then dramatically jammed both the bracelet and the cradle inside the warden. He felt as if he were plunging his hand into a bowl of hot bread dough. He released both objects and withdrew his hand. The warden didn’t move. The bracelet and the cradle remained where Troy left them inside the warden’s body.

“From the very beginning I realized that the bracelet you gave me enabled me to have special powers, talents that were not naturally mine. I understood, without knowing the specifics, that there would be a substantial and continuing reward for my helping you. And I thought that finally, finally, Troy Jefferson would be somebody special in this world.”

Troy walked past the amazed Commander Winters, who was following the proceedings with a peaceful detachment, and came up beside Nick and Carol. It was absolutely quiet in the room. “When my brother, Jamie, was killed,” he began again softly, “I swore that I would do whatever was necessary to leave my imprint on society. During those two years that I wandered all over the country, I spent most of my time daydreaming. My dreams all had the same conclusion. I would discover something new and earthshaking and become both rich and famous overnight.”

Troy gave Carol a quick kiss and winked. “I love you, angel,” he said. “And you too, Professor.” Troy then turned around and faced the covered cylinder. “When I left here on Thursday afternoon, I was so excited I couldn’t contain myself. I kept saying, ‘Shit, Jefferson, here it is. You are going to be the most important man in the history of the fucking world.’ ”

Troy paused. “But I have learned something very important these last three days,” he said, “something that most of us probably never consider. It is that the process is more important than the end result. It is what you learn while you’re dreaming or scheming or working toward a goal that is essential and valuable, not the achievement of the goal itself. And that’s why you guys must now do what my friends have asked.

“I know that you ETs have tried to explain to me in these last several minutes, through the bracelet that you offered me for life, that the new humans you are depositing here will lead us primitive beings into a bold and wonderful era. That may be true. And I agree that we could use some help, that our species is full of prejudice and selfishness and all kinds of other problems. But you cannot simply give us the answers. Without the benefit of the struggle to improve ourselves, without the process of overcoming our own weaknesses, there will be no fundamental change in us old humans. We will not become better. We will become second-class citizens, acolytes in a future of your vision and design. So take your perfect humans away and let us make it on our own. We deserve the chance.”

There was no movement in the room for several seconds after Troy finished. Then the warden in front of him jerked sideways and began to move. Troy braced for an attack. But the warden moved in the direction of the exit next to the cylinder. The bracelet and cradle could still be seen inside its body.

“All right, team,” Troy shouted happily. Nick and Carol hugged. Troy took Commander Winters by the hand. As they were leaving, the four of them turned around one last time to look at the large chamber. In this final view, each one of them saw the room in terms of his own amazing experiences. The noises had begun again behind the walls. And the carpets, platforms, and wardens were filing out of the room through the door beside the covered cylinder.

They had only been onboard the boat for three or four minutes when the water underneath them suddenly became very turbulent. They were strangely quiet, all four of them. A frustrated Lieutenant Ramirez paced about the deck, trying to get someone to tell him what had happened under the water. Even Commander Winters virtually ignored the lieutenant and just shook his head or gave simple answers to all his questions.

They were certain that the spaceship was about to launch. They didn’t realize that it would glide gently away from their area first, so that it would not submerge them with a giant wave, before breaking the water and heading into the sky. The water stayed agitated for several minutes. All of them scanned the ocean for a sign of the vehicle.

“Look,” yelled Commander Winters excitedly, pointing at a giant silver bird lifting into the sky about forty-five degrees away from the early morning sun. Its rise was initially slow, but as it rose it accelerated rapidly. Nick and Carol and Troy clasped hands tightly as they watched the awesome spectacle. Winters came over and stood beside the trio. After thirty seconds the craft had disappeared above the clouds. There was never any sound.

“Fantastic,” said Commander Winters.