Loose ends

12.

Now then, Isabel thought, turning her attention to Joe Morton, whose dream- replica still lingered motionlessly at the Crashdown's exit. A frozen ribbon of gray smoke hovered about the muzzle of his upraised pistol. Your turn, she silently informed the gunman.

If dreams were indeed the unconscious corridors connecting the minds of humanity, perhaps she could use Liz's nightmare as a conduit to Mortons own depraved dreamland? If nothing else, it was certainly worth a try.

"Run," she ordered Mortons petrified figure, jolting the fleeing gunman and his accomplice out of stasis. Gun in hand, looking back worriedly at the scene behind him, Morton dashed out of the diner and into the street, only a few paces behind the other man. Isabel followed right behind him.

She chased them down the sunlit sidewalk of Roswell's main drag, past the UFO Museum, the Mexican folk art museum, and the rest of the tourist traps that sustained the town's struggling economy. Strolling sightseers, many of them in town for the upcoming UFO Festival, ducked out of the way in alarm as the armed criminals barreled through assorted clusters of pedestrians, pursued, inexplicably, by a tall blond girl in blue jeans. Behind her, back by the Crashdown, brakes squealed and a police siren blared as Sheriff Valenti arrived too late to apprehend the gun-wielding strangers.

Morton and his bearded accomplice got away in real life, Isabel knew. But not this time, she vowed, determined to track Morton all the way back to his own trigger-happy psyche.

Two blocks from the crime scene, Morton and the other man darted into a gloomy- looking side alley which Isabel was almost positive didn't exist in the real town. She hesitated at the entrance of the alley, fearful of the unknown. Shadows, surprisingly dense and impenetrable for such a sunny afternoon, shrouded the alley in darkness, hiding what lay ahead from the clairvoyant alien teenager. She heard Morton's lumbering footsteps retreating down the alley, getting farther and farther away from her, and realized she had no choice. Chewing nervously on her lip, she braced herself mentally and plunged into the murky alley.

It was like stepping into another world. The sun disappeared as the scene shifted abruptly from day to night. The temperature dropped ten degrees or so, making Isabel shiver despite her blue turtleneck sweater. As her eyes adjusted to the dim light, she found herself jogging uneasily through a dirty, squalid alley that stretched between the soot-blackened walls of two anonymous concrete buildings. Obscene graffiti defaced the walls further, while the broken pavement was littered with discarded cigarette butts, beer cans, broken glass, and syringes. Greasy puddles, which Isabel took care to step around, reflected the slivers of harsh white light that escaped from broken windows a few stories above her. The alley stank of spoiled garbage, spilled booze, and urine. Rats scurried between dented metal trash cans and Dumpsters, while, all around her, Isabel heard raucous laughter, racing police sirens, and loud honky-tonk music. Somehow I don't think we're in Roswell anymore, she thought nervously, feeling like a modern-day Dorothy who had just landed anywhere but Oz.

She doubted, too, that she was still in Liz's dream, unless Liz Parker, honor student and founder of Roswell High's Future Scientists Club, was leading a double life straight out of a David Lynch movie. Where am I now, Isabel wondered uncomfortably, and do I really want to be here? Experiencing a failure of nerve, she paused and looked back the way she'd come. To her dismay, Roswell's safe, sun-drenched Main Street was nowhere to be seen, replaced by yet more of the grimy, disgusting alley, which now, impossibly, seemed to lead back only to more darkness, decay, and Dumpsters. Overturned trash cans, their rotting contents spilling onto the greasy pavement, served as barricades, blocking her escape route. Enormous rats, the size of porcupines, patrolled the scattered refuse, their black eyes glittering malevolently.

There was nowhere else to go but forward, she realized, after Morton. Straining her ears, she thought she still heard his ponderous footsteps ahead of her, farther down the slummy alley, and started after him again. Guess I have to see this through to the end, she thought less than enthusiastically, gingerly making her way through the garbage, broken glass, and stagnant, shining puddles of grease.

The alley had the kind of warped, irrational geography that only made sense in dreams. It twisted and turned without warning, leading Isabel through a confused, disorienting maze of broken pavement and dingy shadows. After several unnerving minutes of wandering through the maze, flinching every time a botde ratded or a rat scurried somewhere nearby, she wasn't sure if she was still looking for Morton or just for a way out of these fetid back streets. She remembered the brief, idyllic moment she had recreated for Liz back at the Crashdown, and wished fervently that she'd had the good sense to stay there. You owe me, Max, she thought, scowling.

Then, just when she'd pretty much convinced herself that this entire dreamwalk had been a dreadful mistake, she heard Morton snarling up ahead, not very far away. Holding her breath, she tiptoed up to the next curve in the alley and cautiously peeked around the corner. Trying hard not to touch anything, she gazed in alarm at the frightening drama unfolding before her eyes.

Morton had cornered the other man, who was even larger than the beefy gunman, in what appeared to be a dead end. A flickering red neon light, shining over the back entrance of the building to the right, cast a crimson glow over the tense confrontation, which had die biker backed up against a graffiti-covered brick wall, looking scared to death. The red neon made the sweat on his face glisten like blood. "Hold on, Joe!" he pleaded, his Adam's apple bobbing like the dopey antennae the waitresses wore at the Crashdown. "Don't do anything crazy, man! We're all on the same side, you know?"Morton loomed in front of the other man, his florid face only inches from his accomplice's, the muzzle of his pistol pressed up beneath the biker's bearded chin. "Shut up!" he barked savagely. "That was all your fault, back at that stupid sci-fi greasepit!" Isabel doubted that Liz or her parents would have appreciated Mortons sneering description of the family-owned diner. "What the hell did you think you were doing, going loco back there?"I just wanted my money," the muscular biker stammered. "I needed the cash now, you know. To cover my expenses." He squirmed against the unyielding brick wall. "I did my part, I hooked you up with that air force flyboy, the one with the expensive habits." Isabel guessed that was a reference to Lieutenant Ramirez, whom Morton apparently intended to bribe or blackmail. "All I wanted was the i money you promised me, that's all!"Morton jabbed the bigger man with his gun, forcing his chin up. "You would've got your money when your pilot \ buddy came through with the goods," he growled. Isabel frowned and dug her nails into her palms, frustrated by the gunman's overly cryptic references to whatever it was he J wanted from Ramirez, but Morton was too busy ragging on; the petrified biker to flesh out the details. "But not right away I'm still working on getting that pilot over a barrel. You can't rush this sort of thing. I need to give him more time to dig himself an even deeper hole, get him good and ready to do what he's told-or else."Yeah, right! Thats smart, Joe. I see what you mean." The big, bearded biker smiled weakly, trying to get Morton to put away his gun. He shrugged his apelike shoulders, in what he obviously hoped was an ingratiating manner. "I just wanted a little cash to tide me over, until you were ready to reel him in, you know?"So you almost blow the whole deal by blowing your top back at that space-case diner?" Morton snarled, outraged by the other man's stupidity. "Listen, jerk, you're playing in the major leagues now. My bosses have been trying for years to get their hands on this merchandise, and the last thing 1 need is some hotheaded punk messing things up, just when I'm about to make the biggest score of my life. You got that, butthead?"Hey, I didn't have to come to you with this deal," the bearded man reminded Morton defensively. He threw out his chest, attempting a show of bravado. "There are plenty of other people out there who'd pay good money for the dirt on that lieutenant."Morton nodded slowly, thinking it over. "You're right about that," he said craftily. "And the only thing I need less than a moronic screwup like you is competition where Ramirez is concerned." He looked the biker over coldly. "You're a security leak, mister, that needs plugging up."What-?" Comprehension heightened the panic in his bulging eyes. "No, wait, I-!"Blam! The pistol flared, and Isabel didn't look away in time as the gunshot blew away the top of the biker's head, splattering the dingy brown bricks with an explosion of blood and brains. Shocked by both the sudden blast and the bloodshed, Isabel thrust her knuckles into her mouth to keep from screaming and alerting Morton to her presence. She stared in numbing horror as the biker's body slid down slowly onto the pavement, leaving behind a gory trail on the crumbling brick wall.

Isabel had seen more death and violence in the past two years than any decent eighteen-year-old alien princess should ever behold-she had even been forced to kill in self-defense-but she still felt her stomach churn queasily, and she had to look away for a minute to keep from throwing up. Okay, she concluded, nauseous, I'm well and truly in Morton's head now, since he's the only one who would know about this murder, unless Liz Parker has a really gruesome imagination.

With a grunt of satisfaction, Morton stepped back from the grisly remains of his victim and, to Isabel's relief, put his handgun away. "That showed him," he congratulated himself smugly, before kneeling to rummage through the dead man's pockets. "Nobody shakes me down and gets away with it." He removed the biker's wallet, perhaps to make the killing look like a routine robbery, then kept searching until, grunting with satisfaction, he found a folded scrap of paper tucked in his victims back pocket. Morton's name and phone number? Isabel speculated. Or the lieutenant's? In any event, the meticulous killer set the scrap on fire with a lighted match, stomped the spent match beneath his boot, then scowled and spit on the ground by the dead man's body With a callous shrug, he stuffed the other man's wallet into his own back pocket. "So much for that loser," he muttered.

Leaving the biker's corpse bleeding on the pavement, Morton wiped his hands on his jeans and adjusted his cap. Then he swaggered over to the rusty metal door beneath the red neon light. Watching from around the corner, Isabel saw now that the fluorescent crimson letters spelled out the name of a bar: hanger 18.

She gulped nervously. According to popular UFO lore, and confirmed by Michael after his meeting with that old air force vet several months ago, Hanger 18 at the Roswell Army Air Field was where the authorities had originally stored the debris from the '47 Crash, including, briefly, before Nasedo rescued them from the inquisitive scalpels of the army scientists, the gestation pods holding the genetically-engineered fetuses of Max, Michael, Tess, and herself. Why that name? she worried anxiously. Why here, in this creepy back alley of Morton's mind? Seemingly untroubled by the pseudo-historical implications of the name, Morton knocked arrogantly on the rusty door. Moments later, the door opened just a crack, spilling a jagged shard of bluish light into the alley Isabel backed away from the light instinctively, but Morton wasn't looking in her direction. Instead he held a short, muttered conversation with someone on the other side of the door, who opened the door farther and let Morton in. Isabel heard loud music and harsh, strident laughter coming from within the building, until the door slammed shut, leaving her alone in the alley with a dead body and way too many rats.

She hesitated, uncertain what to do, where to go, next. More than anything else, she wanted to wake up, which would send her back to the motel room with Max and Alex, far from Morton's vile nightworld, but she also knew that she had not learned nearly enough yet about Morton's plot. What had the blackmailing gunman managed to extort out of Lieutenant Ramirez? She still had no idea.

Talk about a dreamwalk on the wild side! As much as she longed to exit this sordid nightmare, she realized she had to see what lay behind the flickering neon sign reading HANGAR 18.

Giving the grotesque corpse a wide berth, she crept up to the forbidding metal door. The fluorescent lights sput- tered and hummed, as though the glowing glass tubes were filled with angry hornets instead of ionized gas. Isabel summoned up all her courage and rapped upon the door, timidly at first, then louder and more forcefully. Let me in! she thought feverishly. The sooner she got inside, the sooner she could escape back to the waking world. Open up! She heard bolts being slid back and, moments later, the door opened a few inches. A sinister-looking guy, with greasy black hair and bad skin, leered at Isabel from the other side of a short length of chain that prevented the door from opening all the way. His leathery, mottled complexion hinted at too many years of drugs, booze, or both. Gaunt and emaciated, he wore a rumpled white tuxedo that hung slackly on his withered frame. "Yes?" he asked suspiciously, looking at Isabel as though she hardly belonged here. Can't argue with that, she thought.

"Er, can you let me in?" she asked, flashing an ingenuous smile. "I'm supposed to meet someone inside."Is that so?" Skeptical eyes looked her over, lingering longer than she liked on her chest and legs. His frayed, dilapidated white suit was nearly worn through at the knees and elbows. "How old are you? You got ID?"Terrific, she thought acidly. I'm getting carded in a dream. In real life, of course, her actual driver's license was sitting in her purse back at the motel, but it took only a moment's concentration to produce a reasonable facsimile in this dreamworld. She already knew what date to cite as her birth year; if truth be told, she had sometimes been known to "adjust" the date on her real driver's license using her powers. This was just a variation on the same trick.

She handed the freshly-generated ID to the man behind the door, who inspected it dubiously before returning the card to her. "That'll do, I suppose," he declared, then scrutinized her again. A nasty grin revealed chipped, yellow teeth. "Now then, what's the password?"Password? Isabel was stumped momentarily, then realized that the correct answer had to be lurking somewhere in the psychic framework of this dream. Maybe if she just left herself open to the vibrations, the password would seep from Morton's mind into her own? She glanced up at the flickering red glow of the hangar 18 sign.

"1947," she guessed, free-associating.

"Try again," the yellow grin taunted her.

"Roswell?"You're getting closer," he teased, his smirking tone making her innocent guesses sound dirty.

"Area 51?"Closer…"Isabel racked her brain for more UFO lore. The correct password was on the tip of her tongue, she knew it. What was that other code name for the government's top secret UFO research program, the one mentioned in all those crazy pamphlets and TV specials? Max would know this, she thought, frustrated and wishing that she'd spent more time prowling that goofy UFO museum back home. It was something extremely appropriate, something like "Dreamland?"Bingo," the greasy scarecrow cackled, undoing the chain. "And the little lady wins admission to our humble establishment." The door swung outward and its revolting guardian stepped to one side. "Come on in."Isabel gulped and inched over the threshold, part of her devoudy wishing that she had never hit on the right password. The dingy vestibule just past the door was dark and musty and smelled of cigarette smoke. She eased past the scuzzy doorman, contorting her body so as to avoid brushing against him. Was everything in Morton's dream smelly and disgusting? Isabel had to wonder how he managed to sleep nights. Unless this is just how he likes things, she thought, sickened and repulsed by the notion that anyone, even a cold-blooded killer like Joe Morton, could feel at home in a seedy environment like this.

"Step right up, miss," die doorman directed her, snickering at her obvious discomfort. "Just through the curtain there." Isabel flinched, and her skin crawled, as an overly friendly hand patted her from behind. "Hope you find what you're looking for."Anxious to get away from the doorman's foul breath and dirty chuckles, Isabel ploughed blindly through a thick velvet curtain into… the bright, garishly- lighted interior of an enormous casino. Isabel blinked in bewilderment, taken back by the shocking, surreal disparity between the dank, musty vestibule and the sprawling, jam-packed, pleasure palace she had just rushed into. Flashing lights and candy-colored strips of neon outlined every angle and surface, while country-western music boomed from above, almost but not quite drowning out the clatter of rolling dice, the whir of spinning roulette wheels, and the constant ka-ching of innumerable slot machines. Showgirls wearing nothing but string bikinis, high heels, and tall, feathered headdresses promenaded through the crowd of jubilant high rollers, handing out free cigars and cocktails.

Giant, fifty-foot television screens, mounted high above the gaming area treated the paying customers to titan-size coverage of heavyweight boxing matches and high-stakes horse races. Drunken gamblers whooped it up, cheering every roll of the dice and spin of the roulette wheel. The overheated air smelled of cheap perfume, cigarettes, and spilled champagne.

So this is Morton's idea oj heaven? Isabel thought, aghast, her eyes and ears adjusting to the sheer sensory overload of the imaginary casino, which seemed three times larger on the inside than it did from outdoors. She couldn't believe that he was willing to blackmail and kill to attain such a tawdry vision of the good life. I'm not even from this planet, she thought, and I have better taste.

Given the colossal scale of the casino, she briefly despaired of ever finding Morton again. Looking down the long red carpet in front of her, however, she realized that she needn't have worried; Morton was, naturally enough, the undisputed center of attention, the strutting star of his own vulgar Vegas spectacle, presiding over a mob of breathless admirers and hangers-on at the biggest and snazziest of the roulette tables. He was even dressed for the part, having traded in the workaday clothes he'd worn on the day of the shooting for glitzier, more ostentatious attire. An ivory-colored, ten-gallon hat perched on his head, above a fringed buckskin jacket that hung open to accommodate Morton's protruding gut. An enormous silver belt buckle, the size of a showy brass door knocker, was studded with polished turquoise, as was the clasp of his bolo tie. A showy gold-plated watch glittered on one wrist, and he lit a grotesquely large cigar by setting a hundred-dollar bill on fire with a monogrammed silver lighter. Clinging to his arms on both sides, giggly bleached-blond bimbos, wearing rhinestone-studded dresses two sizes too small, oohed and aahed appreciatively at his extravagance. Isabel looked up to see that Morton's jowly face, smirking in smug self-satisfaction, now occupied every one of the fifty-foot television screens towering above her.

She couldn't believe her eyes. For this Liz Parker was almost killed? Some of Isabel's apprehension faded as she found herself looking forward to the prospect of bringing joe Morton down. Well see what a big man you are once you're safely behind bars, she thought venomously. Or maybe six feet under, Before heading in for a closer look, she took a second to consider her own costuming. While perfectly adequate for hiking through caves, the simple sweater and jeans combination she now wore seemed out-of-place amid the tacky glitz of the casino. Better switch to something less conspicuous, she decided, looking over the milling patrons of Morton's idealized gambling mecca. A scantily-clad showgirl, wearing only strategically-placed sequins and feathers, walked by at that moment and Isabel snorted huffily. Uh-huh, right, she thought, arching an elegant eyebrow. Like that's going to happen…

Unwilling to go quite that far to blend in, she contented herself to transforming her comfortable hiking garb to a stylish black sequined dress and high heels. Rearranging molecules in a dream was even easier than in real life, so it took next to no effort at all to spruce up her hair and makeup as well. Isabel checked her reflection in the polished silver casing of a nearby slot machine, nodded in approval, and marched confidently down the red carpet, casually joining the carefree crowd watching Morton try his hand at the roulette wheel. "Excuse me," she murmured, elbowing her way to the very edge of the gaming table, across from Morton.

On closer inspection, she was surprised to see that the spinning wheel had been done up to resemble a flying saucer. Silver glitter sparkled like Stardust on the rotating disk while a green papier-mache alien sat atop the hub of the wheel like the pilot of a cartoon spaceship. That looks nothing like Nasedo, she thought with a frown, disturbed to find alien imagery creeping into Morton's fantasies once again. Looking around, she now observed that the entire casino had an extraterrestrial motif, not unlike the campy, kooky decor of the Crashdown Cafe. Model rocketships and flying saucers hung from the ceiling. Painted ray-guns and bug-eyed monsters decorated the sides of the slot machines, while many of the strolling showgirls now looked like extras from Bar-barelh., complete with ftshbowl helmets, pointed ears, or silver antennae, just like the waitresses at the Crashdown wore.

Where did all this come from? Isabel wondered, somewhat baffled. Had she somehow missed all this sci-fi kitsch before, or had the casino just been completely redecorated by some tremor in Morton's sleeping consciousness? In dreams, almost anything was possible, she recalled, but why did the slumbering Morton, immersed in his private fantasyland, still have aliens on the brain? I don't like this, Isabel thought, chewing on her newly painted lips. Where's this space-age symbolism coming from? The spinning roulette wheel slowed to a halt, causing the rolling ball, which was painted to resemble the planet Earth, to bounce from wedge to wedge before coming to rest in Black Eighteen. A roar of approval rose from the crowd of awestruck spectators as Morton chortled triumphantly and, gripping his cigar between his jaws, scooped up an appallingly large pile of bright plastic chips into his corner. He magnanimously threw a handful of chips into the air and laughed as his adoring entourage scrambled madly after the flying chips, one of which landed directly in front of Isabel, who felt obliged to grab for it in order to avoid attracting attention. She snatched up the blue plastic disk, which bore a printed sticker reading $100, and smiled weakly across the table at Morton, trying to look appropriately avaricious. His gleaming, carnivorous eyes made contact with hers, and Isabel had to repress a shudder. "Do I know you?" Morton asked, winking lecherously Thankfully, the bimbos flanking Morton, unable to secure any of the flung $100 chips on their own, chose that moment to raise a fuss, pouting and complaining, and Morton had to look away from Isabel to appease them, eventually buying their smiles and sloppy kisses with a handful of chips for each of them. "Help yourselves, ladies. My ship has definitely come in, or should I say my flying saucer? Hah!" He took a deep puff on his cigar, then reached for a crystal goblet sitting at one corner of the table. He raised the glass to his lips, then scowled as he discovered it was empty "Ramirez!" he shouted, snapping his fingers.

The crowd of spectators and sycophants parted to reveal Lieutenant David Ramirez, in full dress uniform, standing at attention only a few feet away. Isabel's eyes widened as she spotted a black leather attache case resting upright on the red carpet next to Ramirez's black military boots. That has to be the case Max and Michael saw at Slaughter Canyon). she thought in excitement. The one with the unknown "merchandise."Excuse me." Slowly, inconspicuously, she started working her away around the circular table, toward the lieutenant and the briefcase. She almost left her $100 chip behind, but, at the last minute, remembered to hang onto it. "Excuseme, excuse me…"Get me some more whiskey!" Morton bellowed at Ramirez, as though he were a servant. The obnoxious gunman blew a mouthful of smoke into the lieutenant's face, then patted his own corpulent belly. "And get me a roast-beef sandwich while you're at it, with plenty of mayonnaise!" "Yes, sir!" Ramirez saluted Morton smartly, then executed a crisp about-face and started to march away, briefcase in hand. Nol Isabel thought in dismay, afraid that the dream- lieutenant would depart with the case before she could get close enough to follow him.

Turned out Morton wanted to keep an eye on the case, too. "Hold on!" he gruffly ordered the departing soldier. He pointed with his cigar at the floor by his feet. "Leave that here with me."Ramirez obediendy deposited the briefcase next to Morton before goose-stepping away to fetch the bullying killer's refreshments. Isabel took this as more evidence that, in the real world, Morton had some really prime dirt on the actual lieutenant. She was less interested, though, in what Morton had on Ramirez than in what was in the attache case, which she slowly but surely drew nearer to. Was there any chance that she could snatch the case with- out Morton noticing? That seemed unlikely, but she was at a loss for what else to try. What I really need, she realized, eyeing the mysterious case covetously, is a good distraction.

"Ohmigod, that's him! That's the man who shot me!"The shocked cry caught both Isabel and Morton by surprise. Spinning around, the dreamwalking teenager was amazed to see Liz, with her original brown hair and all, staring in horror at the high-living gunman. Behind her, Carlsbad Caverns's underground gift shop now appeared to occupy one corner of the casino. At first the dream-Liz seemed to be clad in the same outfit she had worn to the caves that morning, before Isabel gave her a molecular makeover, but then Isabel blinked and rubbed her eyes as Liz's casual attire was suddenly replaced by her Crashdown waitress uniform, complete with a gaping, bloody hole just above the silver apron. "There he is!" Liz shouted to all concerned, pointing accusingly at Morton. "That's him!"His cigar drooping from his lower lip, Morton glowered at Liz, his good mood replaced by anger with pathological speed. Snarling, he shoved his flunkies and bimbos aside, then reached into his buckskin jacket and drew out his pistol, which now looked as large as a bazooka. Fire erupted from the muzzle of the handgun and a cascade of hot lead slammed into the displaced gift shop, blowing apart shelf after shelf of souvenir plates, mugs, ashtrays, and snow globes. Gamblers and showgirls ran for cover, shrieking in fear, but every shot missed Liz, who continued to point an accusing finger at the gun-wielding felon, Obviously, Isabel realized, cringing at the repeated blasts from the oversize pistol, Morton's unconscious mind had finally made the connection between the brown-haired girl at the gift shop and the waitress he had shot at the Crashdown two years ago. This is just what Max was afraid of, she thought in dismay. Morton's figured out that Liz can expose him.

As distressing as this development was, Morton's maniacal attempt to blow away the dream-Iiz left the crucial briefcase momentarily unguarded. Seizing the opportunity, Isabel pushed her way through what was left of Morton's entourage, tossing a peroxide blonde to one side, and grabbed onto the handle of the attache case. Without missing a step, she yanked the case from the carpet and ran like mad away from the roulette table. Got itl she thought triumphantly.

But the theft had not gone unnoticed. "Hey! What the-?" Morton exclaimed angrily. Forgetting Iiz for the moment, he hollered and aimed his massive artillery at Isabel. "Come back with that, you bitch!"The pistol boomed and a slot machine exploded only a few inches away from Isabel, showering silver dollars in all directions. Isabel's heart missed a beat, and she dropped her $100 chip, but she kept on running, trying to put as much of the casino as possible between her and Morton. The high heels slowed her down, so she kicked them off as she ran, preferring to sprint barefoot upon the springy red carpet. She ducked to the right, down a corridor of clattering one- armed bandits, all of which seemed to feature spinning UFOs and oval-eyed E.T.s instead of lemons and jokers and such.

Morton chased behind her, firing his gun wildly. Bullets smashed into gamblers and gaming tables alike, turning the lavish casino into a scene of bloody pandemonium. Frightened screams rilled Isabel's ears, yet, bizarrely, no police officers or security guards made any attempt to stop the amok gunman from chasing an apparently unarmed high school girl through the crowded edifice. Sometimes dreams can be just too darn weird, she thought irritably.

Fortunately, the alien teen wasn't nearly as defenseless as she looked, not as long as she still possessed her special powers. Halting long enough to spin around and look back the way she had come, she raised her open palm and concentrated. An entire row of slot machines, jolted by an unseen telekinetic force, toppled forward, blocking Morton's path. Then, to retard his progress even further, she concentrated again, transmuting a stretch of velvety red carpet into gooey black sludge instead. She watched, with a smirk of satisfaction, as Mortons expensive-looking snakeskin cowboy boots bogged down in the thick, viscous muck. "What?" he growled in frustration. "Where did all this goddamn goo come from?"Good, Isabel congratulated herself. That buys me a little time. Darting out of range of Morton's pistol, she hurriedly looked around for someplace where she could inspect the stolen briefcase in privacy. Her gaze immediately fell upon the entrance to the ladies' room, which was identified as such by the silhouette of a space woman wearing a fishbowl helmet and Judy Jetson skirt. Perfect, she decided.

The rest room was conveniently empty, except for a coin-operated robot dispensing toiletries, so Isabel wasted no time throwing the briefcase down on the counter by the sinks and tugging at its lid. The case was locked, of course, but that was no problem; a single touch of her fingertip undid the lock, which came Open widi a click. Taking hold of the sides of the lid with both hands, she paused in hushed anticipation for only a single heartbeat. Okay, she thought gravely, let's see what the big deal is.

She lifted the lid and a blinding silver glare escaped from inside the case, forcing Isabel to blink and look away, her eyes watering. The unearthly glow faded after a moment, though, and she cautiously shifted her gaze back toward the case's exposed interior, eager to see what the initial burst of light had concealed.

To her surprise, she saw that the bottom of the case had turned into a kind of window, through which she saw a gleaming silver saucer cruising through space toward a bright blue sphere that she quickly identified as the planet Earth. A frown twisted her lips as, mystified and disappointed, she tried to make sense of what she was seeing. This can't possibly be the literal contents of the case! she theorized in a rush, based on equally surreal experiences on other dreamwalks. More like some freaky symbolic metaphor.

Before her bewildered brown eyes, the spinning saucer entered Earth's atmosphere, glowing brightly red as some sort of protective aura shielded the alien spacecraft from the searing heat of entry. The saucer sped downward, approaching the surface of the planet at a precipitous angle, and Isabel gasped out loud as she swiftly guessed what she was witnessing. She recognized the blue skies and arid terrain of southeastern New Mexico only seconds before the shining saucer collided violently with the ground, throwing up a cloud of flying dust and debris. I knew it, she thought, her appalled eyes aflame with realization. It's the Crash! A lump formed in her throat as she waited for the smoke and dust to settle, revealing all that was left of the space-faring vessel after it disintegrated on impact. Part of her didn't want to see the twisted wreckage and broken, inhuman bodies, but she couldn't look away either. This was, after all, the same fateful accident that had stranded her and Max and the others on a planet where they could never truly fit in. Is this what the Crash really looked like, she wondered, or just how Morton imagines it? There was no way to know for sure, but the inexplicable, eyewitness coverage of the alien craft's earthshaking demise stirred powerful emotions in Isabel, so that she was completely caught off guard when the door banged open and Joe Morton barged into the ladies' room, tracking sticky black tar onto the tile floor. "There you are!" he snarled, thrusting his immense gun in Isabel's face while his free hand slammed the lid of the briefcase shut. "Who the hell are you anyway?" he demanded, standing so close to Isabel that she could see the tobacco stains on his teeth. He grabbed onto her arm and shook her roughly. "Who are you working for?"Heat radiated from the red-hot muzzle of Morton's firearm. The smoky smell of gunpowder, like Fourth of July fireworks, filled her nostrils. She heard the gun cock ominously Okay, she decided. Enough is enough. Briefcase or no briefcase, I'm getting the heck out of here.

"Spill it, you witch!" Morton barked at her, spraying saliva in her face. His beefy fingers dug painfully into her arm. "Who are you, and how did you pull that stunt back there, with the tar and the slots? Tell me, you thieving slut."In your dreams," Isabel replied. She spit directly into his fuming, beet-red face, and he pulled the trigger at trie very split second that she- -woke up back at the motel room, the deafening boom of Morton's gun still ringing in her ears. She sat up in bed, shaking and soaked in sweat, provoking gasps from both Max and Alex, who hurried to her side instantly. "Iz! Are you okay?" they asked almost simultaneously.

She nodded woozily, too breathless to speak right away. Tremors shook her from head to toe, and her own blood pounded in her ears, making her dizzy. "Just give me a minute," she murmured finally, as she struggled to readjust to reality. Exhaustion, both emotional and physical, washed over her body, which felt as though it had actually run for its life across the length of the imaginary casino. Despite the air-conditioning, the room felt unbearably hot and stuffy, so she peeled off her heavy sweater. That's a little better, she thought, although the short-sleeved silk blouse underneath felt soiled and sticky with sweat.

Glancing at the clock radio by the bed, she was startled to see that less than thirty minutes had passed since she had first lowered her head onto the cheap motel pillow. Is that all? she marveled; it felt as if she had been stalking Joe Morton for half the night.

"What happened?" Max asked insistently, kneeling beside the bed next to her, his dark, serious eyes searching her face for clues to what had transpired during her exploratory dreamwalk. "What did you see?"Isabel started to answer, but her mouth was as dry as the desert. "A glass of water, please," she croaked pitifully, mas- saging her throat, "with maybe a couple drops of Tabasco in it?"Alex sprang at once to secure her tonic. "I'm on it!" he announced eagerly, while Max stayed to watch over Isabel, waiting tensely until Alex returned from the bathroom with a glass of clear water faintly tinged with red. Isabel reached gratefully for the cup, but was startled when Alex reacted with shock and surprise. "Isabel!" he blurted, eyes wide with dismay. "Your arm!"She followed his own horrified gaze to where five ugly purple bruises defaced the toned white flesh of her upper arm, exactly where Joe Mortons brutal fingers had squeezed her arm so mercilessly. "Oh, that," she said archly, regarding the telltale bruises with icy disdain. "Nothing to worry about. Just a little souvenir from our friend with the gun, not to mention anger-management issues."Here, let me fix that," Max offered. His fingertips brushed over her arm, removing the bruises by healing the injured tissues beneath her skin.

"Thanks," Isabel murmured. She sipped the Tabasco-flavored tap water, which soothed her throat and helped steady her nerves. Slowly, haltingly, she told her brother and her (sort of) boyfriend everything that she had experienced while exploring Morton's memorably nasty dreamscape, while also trying to interpret the dream's occasionally surreal symbolism. She didn't understand everything she'd seen and felt in the dank alley and lurid casino, but a few things seemed obvious.

"Whatever he's got in that briefcase," she said with utter certainty, "it has something to do with the Crash." In her memory, the soaring UFO once again dived into the unforgiving Earth, and she started to choke up. Another gulp of cool water was required before she could deliver one more piece of bad news. "And that's not all, Max," she said, swallowing hard because she knew that her brother wasn't going to like what she was about to tell him. "Morton bows. He knows about Liz!"