Taken

Chapter One

Kate Keys continued the story of Artemis, a huge squirrel who lived in a gigantic oak tree in the middle of the forest. Jesse listened attentively, his face nearly motionless save for his large, expressive eyes. He was seven years old now, but in bed he still looked like an infant, perfectly formed and innocent, a storybook child.

She finished the story, closed the book, gave Jesse a good-night kiss, then rose and headed for the door.

“Mom…”

“Go to sleep, Jesse.”

He looked troubled, and Kate knew what the trouble was. His question didn’t surprise her.

“Mom, do you think Daddy ever thinks about us?”

Russell had been gone for five years, and Kate had no idea where he was. But she felt that she still knew Russell, knew his decency, and the love he’d had for his son. Wherever he was, whatever he might be doing, she was certain that he thought of Jesse all the time, dreamed one day of seeing him again, that from the depths of this madness that tormented him and had finally driven him away, he still reached for Jesse… and for her.

“Of course he does, honey,” she said. She wished she had more consoling words, something that would explain Russell to his son, explain the torturous look she’d seen in his eyes as he’d frantically searched for his old crew, then the sense of mission that had overwhelmed him, his determination to find Johnson. He’d gone in search of his copilot, she knew that much. She also knew that he’d found him, and that the man had all but died in Russell’s arms. She’d learned that much in her own efforts to find him. She could only imagine the pain of that moment, the baffled, animal fear that must have settled over Russell, the futility and the hopelessness. It didn’t surprise her that he’d vanished after that, willed himself to stay away from his family despite how much he loved them. She’d seen the way he felt about himself, the sense that he carried some dark seed within him, some dreadful trait or quality that imperiled those he loved, so that his only choice, bitter and painful though it was, had been to separate himself, simply go off, like a dying animal. She wanted to explain all this to Jesse, but couldn’t find the words. He was only seven, after all.

“Go to sleep, now, Jesse,” she told him gently as she closed the door.

Bill was at the kitchen table, thumbing through the evening paper when she came into the room.

“Jesse asleep?” Bill asked.

Kate walked to the window and peered out. “He’s asking about his father again.”

Bill put down the paper. “How about you, do you still miss him?”

Kate walked over to Bill and knelt beside him, her face very near his. “He ran out on us, Bill. And he never came back.” She touched his face. “But you were there, and you didn’t go anywhere.” She leaned forward and kissed him softly. “Don’t you think I know that?”

He nodded silently, accepting her assurance that she would never leave him, but she saw it in his eyes, the insecurity, his fear that Russell would turn up again one day and take her and Jesse away from him She knew that would never happen, but she also knew that in the dead of night, when the house creaked and the wind rattled the windowpanes, Jesse probably dreamed of just such a return, dreamed of sleeping in the warm protection of his father’s arms, of mending the broken circle that had once made his life whole, and that despite herself, despite the wonderful husband and father Bill had become, she sometimes dreamed it too.

Jesse heard the scratching first, soft but insistent, like fingers on a windowpane. He shifted beneath the covers, tried to press the noise from his mind, then rolled over and opened his eyes.

And he was there.

Artemis, the squirrel.

Jesse propped himself up in bed and stared into the gray, furry face. The squirrel didn’t move, but he felt drawn to it, summoned to follow it. He slid out of his bed, walked to the window and opened it.

Artemis drifted away from the window and hung in midair, smiling softly and with an eerie sense of beckoning, as if to say, Come with me.

Jesse climbed out of the window, and stood on the second-floor ledge, his cowboy pajamas billowing out in the chill autumn breeze. At the edge of the roof, he stood stiffly, arms plastered to his sides, a little cylinder of flesh high above the green lawn to which Artemis had now descended, a huge gray doll in the rippling grass.

For a moment their eyes locked. Then Artemis blinked slowly, and Jesse heard his silent command, Jump.

He jumped and Artemis swept forward and up into the air and caught him as he fell, the two of them spinning wildly in the warm summer darkness. He felt the furry arms around him, holding him protectively. Then he was on the ground, surrounded by a vast green lawn, Artemis leading him away, across miles and miles of green, time flowing in all directions, like a river overflowing its banks, the world a moving carpet beneath his bare feet, drawing him deeper and deeper into the entangling forest.

A giant oak stood out from the rest of the trees, and Jesse knew that this was Artemis’ home. A black mouth gaped at the center of the tree, the door to Artemis’ world.

“Can I?” Jesse asked.

He felt Artemis’ soft furry arms embrace him and lift him to the doorway, then through and inside it, where he waited until Artemis leaped in, the door closing behind him, sealing them inside.

At first it was dark, then shade by shade the black air brightened and brightened until it shimmered all around, a light that came from everywhere, as if everything gave off its own radiant glow.

He felt the tree lift, like the slow rise of a rocket as it pushed against the heavy gravity of earth, then rising faster and faster, streaking across the nightbound sky. The next thing he knew, he was standing on the blue road, two beams of light closing in upon him like the shining eyes of a ravenous animal until the brakes shrieked loudly and the tires squealed to a halt and he stood in the truck’s blinding beams, a little boy, alone, Artemis hidden somewhere behind the stars, no more than the memory of a warmth he’d once known.

Owen Crawford stood on a ladder, hanging Christmas decorations outside his house while Anne and his two sons, Eric and Sam, scurried about the yard, shooting at each other with toy ray guns.

“Hey, watch it,” Owen snapped when Sam crashed into Anne, knocking her against the ladder.

“Sorry,” Anne said meekly.

“Just be careful,” Owen told her sternly.

He returned to his work, though he took no joy in it. For what was Christmas, after all, but an enforced holiday, trivial and meaningless, perfect only for people who had nothing better to do than hang these ridiculous lights.

From the top of the ladder, he saw the staff car move down the tree-lined street and pull up to his curb. Thank God, Owen thought, I can get out of here.

“I have to go,” he said brusquely as he hurried toward the car, leaving Anne alone to watch the boys chase each other wildly across the neatly trimmed lawn.

They reached Groom Lake a few minutes later. As the car moved smoothly across the tarmac, Owen glanced at the latest military advance, a black bomber with swept-back wings, a plane no radar could detect.

In the staff room, he took his seat at the end of a long conference table where various scientists and military personnel sat around, chewing pencils and flipping through reports as they waited for him to speak. Dr. Kreutz sat in a chair at the back of the room, idly fastening and unfastening a Velcro strap, one of the “advances” that had been discovered in the craft, the only piece of information from which they’d been able to benefit after years of study.

“We took this craft apart more than ten years ago,” Owen said. “More than ten years and we still have no idea how it ran. No clue what its power source was or what the aerodynamics involved were.” He nodded toward Dr. Kreutz. “This is Dr. Kreutz,” he said. “He has agreed to come over to our program for an indefinite period of time.” He cast a merciless eye over the assembly. “As of now,” he said, “the rest of you are reassigned to other duties.” He smiled coldly. “In Iceland.”

The men around the table glanced at each other in shock and disbelief.

Dull and unimaginative, Owen thought contemptuously, mere slugs, men who lacked the passion of pursuit, who did one thing until they were told to do another, men who lacked the mettle of a true commitment. Not one of them deserved any further explanation.

And so he gave none, but simply rose and escorted Dr. Kreutz out of the room.

“There’s something you should know, Doctor,” Owen said as the two men headed toward a distant hangar. “I report directly to President Eisenhower, and he is not a patient man. I’ve let him believe a few of your technological advances were derived from our research. I hope when you meet the President, you won’t disabuse him of his impression.”

Dr. Kreutz chuckled. “And wind up reassigned to Iceland a week before Christmas? Certainly not.”

They stopped at the doors of the hangar.

“Let me see your little bird,” Dr. Kreutz said.

Owen swung open the doors and it stood in the shadowy light, the craft Owen had retrieved from the desert years before.

“The interior wasn’t damaged,” Owen told Dr. Kreutz. “It’s exactly as it was when we found it.”

They had now reached a small stepladder that rose to the open door of the craft. Kreutz mounted the stairs, followed by Owen.

For a time, Kreutz moved about the interior of the craft, noting its sleek design, the seats with their finger-pad controls, everything smoothed and buffed to a shimmering perfection.

“None of those white coats could figure anything out,” Owen said with a smirk. “For years they’ve scuttled around in here, but they never came up with anything.” He laughed. “For all their degrees, they couldn’t even find out how the damn thing was powered.”

Kreutz shrugged. “It is easy to see what baffled your researchers,” he said. “No instrument panel. No monitoring devices.”

“You’ll notice some kind of energy field,” Owen said. “In about six minutes your head will begin to ache. Twenty minutes later, you’ll have a cerebral hemorrhage.”

Kreutz nodded as if not at all surprised, then pressed his hand against the smooth interior wall. “You will never get this craft off the ground without an engine.”

“But there is no engine.”

Dr. Kreutz smiled as he nodded to the five empty seats. “Actually, there were five of them,” he said.

“The crew?” Owen asked incredulously. “The crew supplied the…”

“Power, yes,” Dr. Kreutz said. “The power of the mind. That’s the energy source you’re looking for.”

“We had one alive,” Owen said. “He had powers.” He told him the story of Dr. Goldin’s vision, then his death and the visitor’s, how alien and human blood had briefly swirled together on the laboratory floor.

Kreutz looked at Owen pointedly. “We have to find someone else with unimaginable power of mind.”

Jacob Clarke held a Lone Ranger lunch box to his ear, as if listening for the sounds inside, its tiniest vibration. A group of fifth graders watched silently,

“Oreos and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich,” Jacob said quietly.

Travis grinned mockingly. “Wrong,” he said. “My mom promised me a steak sandwich and a slice of pie.”

Jacob opened the box and there it was, exactly as he’d predicted, neatly wrapped and placed side by side, a packet of Oreos and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Travis’ eyes widened in angry disbelief. “How’d you do that?”

Jacob looked at Travis pointedly. “Your parents had a fight last night about your father being drunk. She used the steak on her eye, and besides, she didn’t feel much like making anything fancy this morning.”

Travis’ features turned stony. “You’re dead, brainiac,” he snarled.

Later that afternoon Travis and a few of his friends skidded their bikes to a halt, blocking Jacob’s way home.

“Tell me where you were, you little creep,” Travis demanded menacingly. “In the bushes outside my house?”

Jacob watched silently as Travis’ friends surrounded him.

“You’re gonna die,” Travis said.

Jacob backed away, tripping over the curb, and in an instant Travis was upon him, his knee pressing down on Jacob’s chest.

“Travis,” Jacob said quietly. “Look at me.”

Travis stared into Jacob’s eyes, his expression hard and threatening until suddenly it changed, and a look of sheer terror swept into his face. Jacob knew that Travis was seeing his own leg blown off on a hill near Da Nang, his screams now so loud and wretched his friends backed away in terror.

Jacob got to his feet, watching expressionlessly as Travis trembled before him, pale and stricken. He knew he could do more to this boy, but each time he used the power, some measure of strength drained from him, like a light slowly fading with each use. And so Jacob merely turned and made his way down the road, unblocked now, toward home, where he knew he’d find his mother doing the usual things, cooking, cleaning, different from other mothers only in the odd way she gazed at the sky at night, searching the stars with a curious urgency, like someone looking for a face in the crowd.

Russell Keys huddled inside the boxcar with four other hobos, half listening as one of them declared that rock and roll had died when Elvis went into the Army. Russell’s eyes were sunken, and he was rail-thin, the mere shadow of the man he’d once been. Life on the road was never kind, but it seemed to him that the ten years of his sojourn had taken a heavier toll upon him than it had upon the other men on the train. It was what he knew that withered him, a knowledge no one else could comprehend, but which locked him in a terrible solitude, made him the silent scarecrow he had become.

“The captain there’s not one for conversation,” one of the hobos said.

Russell drew his old duffle bag more tightly into his arms.

The hobo laughed mockingly. “You’d think that was a sack of gold, the way you hold on to it.”

Russell said nothing, but only continued to clutch the bag.

“Leave him alone, Dave,” another hobo said.

Dave shrugged. “I’m just trying to make a little friendly conversation.” His cracked lips curled down scornfully. “Man thinks he’s the only one with a past.”

That wasn’t true, Russell knew, though he said nothing. It was only that his past-as well as his present- was unlike any other man’s.

Dave stared at the bag. “So, what you got in there anyway?” He leaned forward and reached for the bag. “Lernme see.”

“Don’t touch it,” Russell warned.

Dave glared at Russell, his eyes red with rage. “Gimme that bag, Captain.” He drew a length of pipe from his pocket, and before Russell could move, brought it down hard on the side of his head.

Russell crumpled to the floor, blood dripping from his head.

Dave grabbed the bag and reached into it. “Nothing but a bunch of medals,” he said with a laugh. He looked at Russell. “You some kind of hero, way back when, Captain?” He lifted the pipe again. “Well, you ain’t much of one now.”

Suddenly a burst of light swept over Dave, freezing him in its brilliance. “Railroad guards,” he said. “Let’s get out of here.” He raced to the door and pulled it back, started to leap then stopped, the other hobos now behind him, staring down at the earth a hundred feet below, speechless and amazed, as the railroad car rocketed upward into the night.

The hobos stared at each other stunned, then rushed back from the open door as the light grew brighter and brighter.

From his place on the floor, Russell saw two creatures step out of the blinding radiance. They were coming into the railroad car, and he knew they were coming to get him. He heard his own scream slice the air, but they came on anyway, took his hand and drew him from the floor. He could feel their wiry fingers, the extra knotted joints, the terrible power they possessed, and against which he could do nothing but go with them into the excruciating light where, in a tiny glimpse of shadow, he saw a teenage boy hanging upside down above a table, like a lamb at slaughter, his eyes filled with terror, eyes that were incontestably familiar, and that seemed to recognize Russell, understand that he was a human being, helpless and alone, beyond the aid, or even the understanding, of his fellow men.

The speaker’s name was Quarrington, and from her seat in the convention hall, Sally listened closely as he claimed to have been in a flying saucer and thus could assure the world that creatures from outer space meant no harm.

Sally knew that this was true. The man she’d found in the shed had had plenty of chances to hurt her and her children, but he’d shown nothing but an overwhelming tenderness that still lingered in her memory.

“I’ve met them, too,” she said to Quarrington a few minutes later as he autographed his book, My Life Inside the Flying Saucers.

“Do you think they’ll be coming back?” Sally asked expectantly. “I mean, at some time in the future?”

Quarrington handed her the book with a dismissive shrug. “Our time and their time are not the same.”

Sally stepped away, aware that Quarrington had not taken her seriously. But then, why should he? She was just a waitress from a dusty little Texas town. He probably thought she was yet another lonely housewife who’d concocted a flying saucer story to get attention. Such women were out there, Sally knew. But she also knew that she was not one of them. She remembered the stranger, John, felt the gentleness of his caress. No, she told herself, she was not like other women at all. John had made sure of that. The burden of her life was that she knew absolutely that he’d been real. A man from another world had come to her, touched her, loved her… and left her with a son. The impossible and the fantastic had joined to create the single searing experience of her life. But it was an experience about which she could speak only to the likes of Quarrington, and these other people whose stories she sometimes believed and sometimes didn’t, and who sometimes believed her story, and sometimes didn’t, all of them brought together and at the same time separated by the sheer fantastical nature of their experience.

On the way out she looked at the other people in the line, all of them clutching Quarrington’s book to their chests as if it were a lost child they’d miraculously found. There was weariness in their eyes, a terrible isolation. Some of them were probably crazy, she thought, but which ones? It didn’t matter really, she decided. All of them bore the mark of the outcast, the scorned and the ridiculed. She bore that mark, too, and she knew that Jacob was doomed to bear it as well.

He was waiting motionlessly in the truck when Sally returned to the parking lot.

“You look tired,” she said. “You can sleep on the way home.”

He looked at her wearily, a little boy older than his years, burdened with a secret dread he couldn’t describe or even understand. She thought of the night of his conception, felt herself once again within John’s alien arms, and suddenly realized that Jacob was held in that same embrace, the two of them touched by the same presence, she to live on in memory and longing, endlessly in hope of John’s return, her son to live on in search of something else. She recalled a scene in Alice in Wonderland. In the scene, a lock rushes ceaselessly about, searching everywhere for what it calls “the key to me.”

For a moment she held Jacob in her gaze, longing now for the key to her son, so that she could give it to him, and by that gift, make him safe. But she knew that only John could do that, and that all she could do was try to find him, speak to him, beg him to come back just one more time, be, however briefly and in what blinding light, a father to his son.

Russell opened his eyes and winced at the hard white light that fell over him in a brilliant slant. He felt the wooden floor of the railway car beneath him, smelled the hotdogs a hobo named Hank was cooking over a homemade fire a few feet away.

“Breakfast. Compliments of Irish Dave and the others,” Hank said with a grin.

Russell struggled to his feet and staggered over to the fire, his head still aching from the beating Irish Dave had given him.

Hank reached into his pocket and took out a piece of fabric hung with medals. “Dave wanted you to have these back. Said to say he was sorry, and if he ever saw you again, which he hoped he didn’t, please forgive him.”

Russell took the medals, then glanced about, looking for the duffel bag. “I had a map,” he said.

“In the bag,” Hank told him.

Russell quickly rifled through the bag, found the map and brought it out into the light.

“Seems like you care more about that old map than you do your medals,” Hank said. He eyed the map Russell clutched tightly. “What is it, secret treasure?”

Russell shook his head. “It’s just a topographical map.”

“So what makes it so special?”

Russell didn’t know how to answer. He knew that if he told Hank what made the map special, he would be dismissed as just another hobo lunatic. And yet something rose in him despite the fear of once again being thought crazy. A need to tell, or perhaps only a need to communicate the desperate nature of his search to at least one other human being.

“I was a pilot in the war,” he began softly, like a broken man trying to explain himself, trace the dark and downward trajectory of his life, reveal the meaning of his rags. “Twenty-three missions. All with the same crew.”

Hank nodded toward the medals. “Guess you earned those the hard way.”

“Nine men,” Russell added. “All dead.” He stared at the medals. “Something like what happened last night. We were taken.”

He glanced up toward the sky. “Whatever they did to us, it killed my men. I know that for a fact. What I don’t know… what I can’t understand… why am I alive?”

Hank considered what he’d been told, took it seriously and turned it over in his mind. “Maybe the fact that you didn’t die, maybe that’s why they keep… taking you. Maybe they want to know what makes you special.”

Special, Russell thought, and felt some distant piece of an even more distant puzzle fall softly into place. In what way was he special, he wondered. He considered his life, but found nothing particularly special about it.

He had grown up a small-town American boy, then gone off to war, fought… survived. The word caught in his mind. Hank was right. Out of all his crew, he alone had survived… being taken. If that were what made him special, then it was something in his makeup, he reasoned, sheer physical stamina, perhaps, or an unexpected form of immunity, some characteristic he’d inherited from his parents and which he might have passed on to…

A chill passed over him.

To Jesse.

Russell saw the carolers through a concealing veil of snow, and the strangeness of the scene, himself hidden behind the great oak on Kate’s front lawn on Christmas Eve while carolers moved freely down the wintry street, once again reminded him of the terrible journey of his life, the loneliness which now enclosed him and set him apart and made him a creature of the shadows.

He waited for the carolers to leave, then made his way to the front door, knocked softly and waited.

The boy who opened the door was thirteen, and he saw himself in the boy’s large eyes, the angle of his jaw, the width of his shoulder.

“Jesse,” he said.

Suddenly Bill appeared at the door.

“Hello, Russell,” he said evenly. He placed his hands on Jesse’s shoulder and turned him back toward the inside of the house. “Your mother needs you in the living room, son.”

Jesse obeyed instantly, and the two men faced each other alone.

“You’re not welcome here, Russell,” Bill told him.

“I have something to tell Jesse,” Russell said urgently.

“You lost that right a long time ago,” Bill said. He looked at Russell’s worn-out clothes and scraggly beard and seemed to see the vagrant life he’d lived, a bum among bums, homeless and bedraggled. “You can stay at the station,” he said. “I’ll call ahead so…”

“Jesse is in danger,” Russell interrupted. “I need to talk to him.”

Bill stepped back from the door and steadied himself, as if he expected Russell to charge him. “That’s not going to happen,” he said, then abruptly closed the door.

For a moment, Russell stood, facing the closed door, unable to leave, yet knowing that he had to leave. He had tried to act openly and honestly to save his son. Now that way was closed to him, and Jesse was still in danger, and he alone knew the real nature of that danger, that the ones who’d taken him had also come to take his son. He had to be protected from them, hidden from them, taken somewhere from which he could not be… taken.

Russell stepped away from the door and made his way through a lightly falling snow, his mind already searching for a plan.

Chapter Two

Russell peered at his son, and remembered the look in Jesse’s eyes when he’d stepped into his path a few hours before. His son had been in the woods near his house, gathering sticks for a snowman. Watching him, Russell had known that this was his only chance to save him. The odd thing was that Jesse had seemed to sense why his father had come for him, and gone with him immediately and without question.

Now they were father and son again, both on the run, hobos together, huddled in a boxcar.

“What are you looking at?” Jesse asked.

“You look like your mother.”

“Everyone says I look more like you.”

Russell reached into his pocket and drew out the medals. “I want you to have these.”

Jesse took them from his hand and stared at them in amazement. “Your war medals.”

Russell indicated the silver star. “I got that after my last mission.”

“The one where you got shot down and captured and saved your whole crew?”

“Yes,” Russell said softly. He could see that something in his tone, the overarching sadness, had registered with his son.

“Mom said it was the war that made you go away,” Jesse said.

“But you know it wasn’t that, don’t you?”

Jesse nodded very slowly. He seemed to be thinking about all the things Russell had told him during the last few hours. His eyes roamed the interior of the railroad car. “Is this what you’ve been doing all this time? Is this where you live?”

“I live where I can,” Russell answered. “What was happening to me… I didn’t want to bring it home to you and your mother.”

Again, Jesse seemed to go deep inside himself. “Who are they?” he asked finally.

“I don’t know, son.”

“Can you keep them from coming back for me again?”

“I don’t know that either,” Russell answered, drawing his son into his arms. “I’m sure as hell going to try.”

Jacob parted the curtains and looked out the window as a brand-new Buick Special pulled into the driveway, Tom at the wheel, Becky on the passenger side.

He waited for them to come inside, his eyes utterly still, like two small stones at the bottom of an impossibly deep lake.

“Hey, little brother,” Tom said happily as he came through the door.

Jacob nodded silently.

Becky leaned over and kissed him.

“Where’s Mom?” she asked.

“She’s in the shed,” Jacob answered.

“What’s she doing in the shed?” Tom asked.

“She’s working on something.”

“On Christmas Day?” Becky asked. She glanced at Tom, then the two of them walked out of the house and made their way toward the shed.

Sally saw them coming across the lawn as she stepped out of the shed. “You’re early. I thought you weren’t going to be here till evening,” she said as they rushed up to kiss her.

“Mom, it’s almost five o’clock,” Tom said.

Sally shrugged. “How did that happen?”

Tom looked at her suspiciously. “What were you doing in the shed?” he asked.

“Oh, nothing,” Sally answered dismissively. “Come, let’s get to the house.”

In the house, Tom and Jacob headed for the living room while Sally and Becky prepared dinner in the kitchen.

“You know, with all the money Tom’s made,” Becky said. “We could put Jacob in a school where he…”

“Jacob’s fine here with me,” Sally interrupted.

But Becky continued, undeterred. “There’s one in Montana. For children who are… different.”

“Jacob is fine,” Sally repeated.

Becky looked at her pointedly. “When’s the last time Jacob smiled, Mom? Or laughed? Or cried?”

“He is just not that kind of kid, that’s all.”

“But Mom…”

Sally squared her shoulders and faced Becky determinedly. “There is nothing wrong with Jacob, and he is fine here with me,” she said, turning to pull the turkey TV dinners out of the oven, and thus ending the conversation.

“There it is,” Dr. Kreutz said.

Owen watched the bus as it made its way across the tarmac. He knew who was inside, Mavis and Gladys Erenberg, twin sisters he’d tested again and again and each time found that indeed they did have “powers.” Now it was time to test those powers.

The bus drew to a halt and Marty stepped out, turned and lifted his hand first to Mavis, then to Gladys Erenberg.

They looked ordinary to Owen, just a couple of middle-aged women dressed in cheap clothes. And yet they’d been able to read each other’s mind, one able to draw a picture of whatever the other one was looking at, even though separated by thick concrete walls. Still, in the end, they were only… specimens.

Now they were moving toward the real purpose of Owen’s study. He knew that the first sight of the spacecraft might alarm them, and he noticed that Mavis hesitated slightly as she approached, but Marty stepped over quickly, assured her that everything was fine, that it was all perfectly safe, just anothei test.

The sisters disappeared into the interior of the craft. Owen looked at his watch. Within seconds they’d be strapped into seats only aliens had occupied before. He waited, glanced at his watch again as Marty took his position beside him.

Seven-thirty. Within minutes he would have a finding.

And so he waited, sweat accumulating on his brow, while Dr. Kreutz stood beside him, his gaze fixed on the craft.

Twenty minutes passed, and Marty glanced fretfully at Dr. Kreutz.

“Give it another five minutes,” the doctor told him.

Marty looked helplessly at Owen. “Sir, that will kill them.”

Owen’s voice was as hard as the man he had become. “They were dead the second they set foot on this base.”

Eight o’clock, and nothing, no sense that the Erenberg sisters had demonstrated any capacity to power the craft. It stood as it always stood, silent and motionless, as if waiting for the code Owen could not yet supply, or some secret order he could not give.

Owen looked at Dr. Kreutz and as if in obedience to a silent command, the doctor stepped up beside him and the two men made their way toward the craft. The door opened as they approached it and they went inside. Nothing they saw surprised them.

The Erenberg sisters rested faceup in the alien seats into which they had been strapped. Their eyes were closed and their bodies remained motionless. They might have been sleeping calmly, save for the blood that had drained from their noses and mouths and accumulated on the identical gray coat dresses they’d selected for the occasion.

“Have this mess cleaned up and the ship put away,” Owen ordered. He turned and saw Howard rushing toward him, a field telephone in his hand.

“It’s the White House,” Howard said.

Owen took the phone, and flashed the bright smile that had served him long and well, but which now bore a faint, demonic crook. “Colonel Crawford here,” he said. “And a Merry Christmas to you, Mr. President.”

The house was dark as Owen entered it. He could smell the lingering aroma of the Christmas dinner he’d failed to attend. In the living room, the last embers of a Yule log glowed faintly in the hearth. Christmas paper, torn from Sam and Eric’s presents littered the room. His boots crushed it as he made his way across the room.

“We waited a long time, Owen.”

Anne stood in the doorway, dressed in a nightgown, though clearly she had not gone to bed.

“I’m sorry,” Owen told her. “Something came up.”

Anne took a deep breath. “You gave them both the Lionel train set. You gave Sam the Space Patrol board game and the Leave it to Beaver lunch box. Eric got the Leave it to Beaver board game and the Space Patrol lunch box.”

“What did I give you?” Owen said with a cold smile.

“A lot more than I bargained for,” Anne answered sharply as she turned and left the room.

Owen walked to his office and stared out into the night. A light snow was falling, but its beauty did nothing to lift his mood. The Erenberg sisters had died for nothing, but that was not the point. The real problem was that for all the power they had demonstrated, it had been nothing compared to the power that had destroyed them, literally within minutes, as they sat inside the craft. That was a power beyond anything human, Owen thought, and until he found something within the human world to match that power, the craft would sit motionless inside the darkness of the hangar, as heavy and unliftable as his dream of making a mark in the world.

He walked to the safe, dialed the combination and took out the artifact Sue had given him years before. This was the only proof he had that he could call his own. He stared at the markings, but they remained indecipherable. Somewhere in the stars, there were creatures who could read it, but for all he knew, they would never return to earth unless they were lured back, or unless he found a power as great as theirs, and with that power force them to return. In the end it all came down to that one thing, he thought, his fingers moving delicately over the artifact. It all came down to Power.

“A little more to the right,” Tom said. “This is kind of mean, Tom,” Becky said as Tom retrieved his mother’s copy of My Life Inside the Flying Saucers from the ground at his feet. “Mom believes this kind of crap. She takes Jacob to these conventions. If we can show her how easy it is to fake…” He dropped the book, took the Brownie camera from his pocket and lifted it to his eye. “Okay, swing.”

Becky swung a fishing rod to the right and the hubcap that dangled from the end of the fishing line took wobbly flight. “But Tom,” she interjected. “You were with me. We saw those lights in the sky.”

“There was an article on them in Popular Science. Do you know what they were?” Tom asked. “The reflection of streetlamps on the breasts of a flock of plover birds.” He shook his head. “Becky, we were little kids. We saw what we wanted to see.” He snapped the picture, then pocketed the camera, clearly pleased with the plan he’d just implemented.

“So we show Mom her hero is a fraud,” Becky said. “Then what… we leave her with nothing?”

Tom glanced over to the front porch. Jacob stood there, his face expressionless.

“Hey, Jacob,” Tom said, taken aback by his brother’s sudden appearance.

“I don’t want to go away to school,” Jacob said. “If I go, who will take care of Mom?”

Becky walked over to Jacob and knelt beside him. “Jacob, you’ve got to try to understand… you’ve got a gift, an insight into…”

“I got it from my father,” Jacob said stiffly, his voice in the usual monotone, despite the odd thing he’d said.

“Jacob, you need to be in a place where people understand you…” She stopped and glanced across the lawn to where Sally waved to her from the entrance of the shed.

“Hey, kids,” Sally called. “It’s finished.”

Tom and Becky glanced at each other apprehensively, then walked to the shed where Sally swung open the door with a cheerful sense of accomplishment.

“I call it a contactor,” she asked. “What do you think?”

Tom stared at what appeared to be some kind of Buck Rogers contraption made of tinfoil and bristling with antennae.

“It’s like a radio,” Sally announced. “I can send messages into space.”

“Why do you want to send a message into space?” Becky asked.

“I miss Jacob’s father,” Sally answered. “I want to tell him that we’re all right and ask him to come get us.” She glanced into the night sky. For years she had kept it all to herself, the strange man she’d found in the shed, his odd power to see into her soul, the sympathy and generosity he had offered her, and the love she had given him in return. “I want him to know that we’re ready to go with him.”

“Go where?” Tom asked.

Sally continued to search the star-spattered sky. “Home,” she said.

The light awakened him, and startled by its blinding radiance, he knew that they had come for him… or Jesse.

“Jesse!” Russell cried as he bolted up from his place on the floor of the boxcar. “Jesse!”

A figure stepped into the light, blocking his path.

“Hold it right there, Russell.”

He could see Bill’s stern face, rock-hard and determined. “Where’s Jesse?” Bill demanded. “What the hell have you done with Jesse?”

Over Bill’s shoulder, Russell saw the line of police cars, their lights beaming brightly in the darkness that surrounded the boxcar. Scores of police officers had taken up positions among the cars, all of them poised to fire, a hundred guns aimed at him.

“Where’s Jesse!” Bill cried.

Russell glanced about the empty boxcar searching. “He’s… gone.”

Bill glared at him. “You’re going to jail, Russell,” he said. “And you’re going to stay there until you tell me what you did to Jesse.”

But Russell knew he couldn’t tell him, and later, as he sat in a holding cell, his mind searched for some explanation of what had happened to his son. If they had taken him, they had done it differently, taken him without the shocking light and the numbing noise and the paralyzing terror.

“Russell.”

He looked over to where Kate stood outside his cell.

He got to his feet. “Kate, you have to believe me. I came back to save Jesse, not to…”

“Save him? What are you talking about?”

“They’re done with me, Kate,” Russell told her. “I was too weak and so when they first took me…”

“I don’t want to hear this,” Kate snapped. “What did you do with Jesse?” She glared at him for a moment, then her face softened and she began to cry.

“They took him,” Russell told her gently. “I think they want to know if he’s… ready.”

“Ready for what?” Kate asked.

In his mind, Russell suddenly saw Jesse hanging upside down, his body paled by the harsh lights of the craft, a single tear coursing down his cheek. And he knew that this had actually happened, that Jesse had already been taken. He shook his head brokenly. “That’s something I still don’t know,” he said.

Sally loaded her contactor into the back of her truck while Becky and Tom looked on disapprovingly. A cold wind blew over the flat Texas landscape, but her mind was on the stars.

“Mom,” Becky began cautiously, “we don’t think Jacob should go with you to this… what… this New Year’s Eve party you’re…”

Sally continued loading. “You don’t think he should be exposed to all these crazy people.”

“That’s right,” Tom said without hesitation.

Sally continued to load the truck. “You’re not going to sneak Jacob off while I’m gone, are you Tom?”

“Of course not,” Tom answered exasperatedly. “We’re going to just stay here and do card tricks, I promise.”

Sally laughed. “The poor kid. He’d be better off with the loonies who think they’re going to Venus.” She stopped loading and looked Tom dead in the eyes. “Okay,” she said. “He can stay.”

Tom smiled with relief. “I’ll go tell him.”

Sally glanced to where Jacob stood on the front porch. She could see it in his eyes. “I’m sure he already knows,” she said.

Owen sat at his desk, reviewing the data while Marty and Howard waited.

“So, there were about two hundred sightings in central Illinois on Christmas Day,” Owen said as he glanced up from the folder. “But it’s all nutty. A guy sees six hundred yellow discs hovering over Duluth. A woman believes television broadcasts are from outer space.” He closed the folder. “You’re not helping me.”

“We have the surveillance photos in from the Quarrington lecture in Amarillo,” Marty said with a slight laugh. “The guy’ll say anything we tell him to say. Trips to Venus. ‘Space brothers.’ ”

Howard turned on the slide projector. The first picture showed the audience at the Amarillo convention. “These people call themselves ‘contactees.’ A bunch of them have built machines to talk to their ‘space brothers.’ They’re getting together on New Year’s Eve.”

Howard continued moving through the slides, faces of old people, middle-aged people, even children. Most were dressed casually. Some looked certifiably insane, while others could not have appeared more normal. Owen studied the slides, concentrating on the faces as Marty and Howard continued with their jokes.

“Maybe we could borrow one of their machines and call a spaceman,” Marty said with a chuckle. “Ask him to come fly the ship for Ike.”

Suddenly, one of the pictures drew Owen’s attention. “Maybe we don’t need to call anyone,” he said. “Go back one.”

Marty instantly obeyed.

Owen leaned forward and peered at the slide of a woman whose face he recognized. A young boy was sitting next to her. Ah, Sally, he thought, looking for your lost love.

Chapter Three

A hush moved over the crowd the moment Quarring-ton stepped onto the stage. All movement stopped, and even the newspaper reporters, only seconds before so boisterous, fell silent.

For a moment, Quarrington’s gaze moved over the assembly. He seemed to see each face in turn, judge it according to some unfathomable system of measure, pick one face from the multitude of faces, then speak to all as if he spoke only to that one.

“Those of you who have contactor devices,” he said, “turn them on.”

The people in the audience sprang into action, pulling levers and turning dials and adjusting antennae, their movements the only sound the area seemed capable of holding.

Some of the machines appeared enormously complex, bristling with tubes and spidery coils, but as he approached, Owen noticed that Sally’s contactor had only a single toggle switch and a set of rabbit ears.

“That’s a sophisticated-looking device,” he said when he reached her.

She turned toward him and he saw that she didn’t recognize him, but that didn’t surprise him. The civilian clothes were part of the ruse, after all, a necessary element of the story he’d concocted as he’d made the long drive to this absurd gathering of kooks.

He gave her his winning smile. “How does it work?”

“I built it from a plan in Fate magazine,” Sally answered. “The antennae are supposed to broadcast my brain waves out into space.”

“How do they do that?”

“You had a choice. You could either buy this thing that looked like a salad bowl or you could use a metal bucket.” She smiled, then noted the man’s serious expression. “I’m kidding.” She nodded toward the contactor. “There’s a radio transmitter built into the machine, and a microphone.” She shrugged. “I just talk and hope for the best.”

Owen’s smile remained in place, as if pasted to his lips.

“You don’t remember me, do you?”

Sally shook her head.

Owen let the smile dim. “Your machine, it’s to send a message to that… friend you found in your shed.”

Sally’s eyes sparked suddenly. “You were…”

“With the Army,” Owen said. “I came to see you once. I lost my job because of your friend. I filed a report that said he was a ‘visitor’ who’d returned to his planet. I was only telling the truth, but it cost me my job… and my marriage.” The smile returned, softer now, beguiling. “I was never a believer. Until I saw the lights.” His eyes caught on the lone star earring that hung from Sally’s neck. “I like your pendant.”

Sally’s hand reached up to the pendant. She touched it softly. “It’s an earring actually. My grandmother’s.”

Owen continued to peer at the earring. “Where’s the other one?” he asked.

“I gave it away,” Sally answered.

Owen’s eyes lifted toward her tenderly. “So now it really is a lone star,” he said. He glanced around the area, watching the contactors as they struggled with their machines. “If your machine worked, what would you say to him?”

For a moment she hesitated, but he saw that she was the type of woman who told the truth, no matter what the cost.

“That I miss him,” Sally said. “And that there’s something he should know about.” She reached into her wallet and pulled out three photographs. “This is Tom and this is Becky. They’re mine by my late and not at all lamented husband.” She turned to the next photograph. “And this is Jacob.”

Owen looked at her pointedly, making certain that she could see that he knew who Jacob’s father was. “I’d like to meet Jacob.” He offered his hand and noticed that she took it very gently. “By the way,” he added, “my name is Owen.”

They talked on for a few minutes, and with each passing second Owen felt the hook sink deeper into Sally. She was a lonely woman who’d lived a lonely life, a woman who’d fallen in love with an alien, borne his child, and now sought this vanished father in the sky.

An hour later, he stood at the door of her motel room. Her gaze had changed by then, and he knew that there was an element of desire in it, and a need for love, to be touched in a way she had not been touched in years.

“It was nice running into you again after all these years,” Owen told her.

“Maybe we’ll… see each other again at one of these get-togethers.”

“I hope so.”

Sally laughed lightly. “Although to tell you the truth, I’m getting a little tired of the great Dr. Quarrington and his many trips to Venus.”

“With Renuthia?” Owen added with a smile.

They both laughed softly, then Owen said, “You heading home in the morning?”

Sally nodded.

“I hope we do,” Owen said, his eyes upon her softly.

“Do what?”

“See each other again.”

“I’d like that,” Sally said, then reached for her key.

Owen turned away, but her voice drew him back.

“Owen?”

He faced her again.

“You said that filing that report cost you your marriage,” Sally said. “I think your wife must have been a very foolish woman to let you go.”

Owen smiled as she closed the door gently behind her, then walked to Sally’s truck and removed the distributor cap. He knew that in the morning, she’d be unable to start the truck, and would come to him for help. Then he would generously suggest that he drive her back to Lubbock.

The plan worked as Owen knew it would, and they arrived in Lubbock the next day. As they pulled into the yard, Owen saw a woman hanging sheets on a clothesline while a man tossed a football to a boy who looked over at him suddenly, his eyes wary and curiously afraid.

The dread was still in Jacob’s eyes a few hours later when they gathered around the dinner table. Sally talked about her work, how someone named Tyler was thinking of selling the diner where she worked. Tom and Becky asked a few questions, but none Owen couldn’t easily answer. But Jacob said nothing, and noting his silence, Owen knew absolutely that this boy knew why he’d come and what he intended to do.

Still it was important to keep to the plan, and so, after the others had gone to bed, he lingered with Sally until the hour grew late and he finally rose to leave.

“I’d better get into town,” he said. “I need to find a motel room.”

He stopped, as if a thought had just occurred to him, then said, “This Mr. Tyler. Think he’d sell his restaurant to me? I’m looking for an… opportunity.”

Sally laughed. “Well, if he does sell it to you, change the chicken recipe. Tyler makes the worst fried chicken in west Texas.” The laughter trailed off and Owen saw the long years of her loneliness reflected in her eyes. “You don’t need to go into town,” she told him.

Owen moved toward her, but she gently pushed him away. “I’ll change the bedding in the spare room,” she said, then disappeared up the stairs.

He could hear her above him, leaned back and drew in a long breath, proud of what he’d accomplished. He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them to find Jacob standing a few feet away.

“I’m never gonna fly your saucer,” Jacob said.

Owen gave no indication that he had the slightest idea what Jacob was talking about. Instead he only smiled quietly. Oh yes you are, he thought.

Anne sat stiffly in the living room while Sam and Eric frolicked around her, punching at each other and tumbling to the floor. She didn’t bother to stop them. Her mind was on something much larger than her children’s play. Owen was gone. He had been gone for days. This had happened before, but this time the absence had gone without a call either from Owen himself or Marty or Howard or anyone who might know where her husband was or what he was doing.

She reached for the phone, then drew back. You’re an Army wife, she told herself, and an Army brat, and you should hold firm and keep silent, and never, never, ask questions.

Sam and Eric scurried into the room, then back out of it, but Anne paid no attention. There were questions she had to ask now, she realized, things she had to know.

She picked up the phone and made the call.

“Marty, Anne Crawford,” she said. “There’s been a terrible accident. Sam fell off the roof. He broke his neck… I have to get in touch with Owen. I know he’s not in Washington. Where is he, Marty?”

She could sense Marty’s hesitation. It lasted three seconds, then he spoke.

“ Lubbock,” he said. “ Lubbock, Texas.”

They came over a rise, and it lay before them, a bare patch of earth, almost perfectly round, with nothing touched at the rim of the circle, not so much as a singed blade of grass.

“I found this two days after he left,” Sally told Owen. “Nothing’s grown here since.” She shook her head. “My heart’s sort of like the ground here.” She looked at him tenderly. “You need to know that if you stay.”

Owen lifted his gaze from the bare ground and settled it on Sally. “I come from a long line of farmers. We can grow corn in a field where grass won’t grow.” He smiled and drew her into his arms. “I’m not going anywhere, Sally,” he told her. “You’re the sun and the moon to me.”

They kissed, and Owen felt her surrender to him briefly, then return to herself, her features clearly troubled.

“Jacob,” she said.

“He doesn’t like me, does he?” Owen asked.

“No.”

Owen kissed her again, then said, “Maybe I should take him fishing on the lake. Just the two of us. We could get to know each other.”

“I don’t think he’ll want to do that,” Sally said.

“Maybe I can persuade him,” Owen said.

When they returned to the house a few minutes later, Sally decided to take down the Christmas lights. Jacob held the ladder as she unstrung the last of the lights.

“Hold tight to the ladder, son,” Owen said softly, suddenly behind him.

Jacob looked at him silently.

“Accidents come out of nowhere,” Owen added significantly. “There’s always a tragedy around the corner.”

“Mr. Crawford and I were talking about the two of you getting to know each other,” Sally said as she came down the ladder, her hands filled with a string of lights. “He’s offered to take you fishing.”

Jacob looked at Owen warily.

“There’s nothing like a day on a lake for getting acquainted,” Owen said. “And I’m sure your mother will be fine here without us.” He smiled, but he knew his threat had hit home.

They left later that same afternoon. The sun was bright as they made their way toward the lake.

Owen peered out at the open road while Jacob sat beside him, silent, but full of dark apprehension, like a kid waiting in an open field as the twisting cloud draws near.

Sally flipped a piece of breaded steak into a pan of hot oil, the sizzle so loud she barely heard the knock at the front door.

She wiped her hands on her apron and walked to the door. A woman stood before her, well dressed, but curiously desolate. “I’m Anne Crawford,” the woman said. “I’m looking for Owen.”

“Owen?” Sally asked.

“Owen Crawford,” Anne said coolly. “He’s in Army Intelligence. I’m his wife.”

“Wife?” Sally asked, her fear spiking now.

“Yes,” Anne replied stiffly. “Where is he?”

Sally felt all her hope turn to dread. “With my son,” she whispered.

On the way to the lake, Owen decided to end all pretense with this kid. He knew everything anyway, so what was the point.

He turned to him sharply. “It’ll go easier for your mom if you help me out.”

Jacob stared straight ahead, his hands in his lap. “Are you going to dissect me when it’s over?”

So he really does know everything, Owen thought, knows specifically his use. “That depends on how much you tell us without being cut open.”

Jacob’s face remained expressionless. “It doesn’t end with me,” he said. His eyes remained fixed on the road ahead. “I’m not the only one.”

Kate lay awake in her bed, thinking of Jesse. She could feel him around her, all but hear his breathing in his adjoining bedroom. She knew he wasn’t there, and yet his presence hung in the air around her, palpable as his slender arms.

She pulled herself from the bed and walked down the corridor to her son’s room. His things lay in piles, just as he’d left them the day his father took him. But where had he been taken? What had Russell done? She imagined the most dreadful possibilities, and with each one, sank deeper into her loss, a misery that was almost suffocating.

She sat down on Jesse’s bed, half-expecting to feel the rustle of his body as he snuggled closer. She looked at his closet, his desk, the bookshelf, and finally at the book she’d read to him when he was younger, The Adventures of Artemis P. Fonswick.

She smiled at the cover, Artemis standing at the doorway of his tree house.

Something broke the silence, a faint scratching at the window. She rose, walked to the window and looked out into the night. She could feel something calling to her, beckoning her out of the house and into the yard. She headed down the stairs and out into the ebony air of the backyard. The great tree at the end of it appeared to motion for her, urging her forward.

She stepped around the dark trunk and he looked up, his eyes widening in wild relief.

Jesse!

Bill unlocked the door and entered the cell.

“They told me Jesse was home,” Russell said as he got to his feet. “Is he all right?”

“No thanks to you,” Bill said dryly.

Russell grabbed Bill’s arm. “Did he say what happened?”

Bill drew his arm from Russell’s grasp. “Just that you fell asleep and he wandered off into the woods.” He looked at Russell sternly. “I wanted to hold you for kidnapping, but Kate wants me to let you go.”

“As long as Jesse’s all right,” Russell said softly.

The blow came from out of nowhere, and he felt his stomach cave in around Bill’s clenched fist.

“Don’t come back here,” Bill warned. “Ever.”

Owen kept his eyes on Jacob as he dropped the coins into the diner’s only pay phone. He was sitting alone in the booth, staring out at the desert, his eyes curiously lightless, his body as motionless as if he were already dead.

“Marty, we should be there by tonight,” he said.

Marty’s voice was strained. “Your wife called,” he said. “She told me Sam had gotten hurt and she needed to know where you were.”

“And you told her?”

“I thought she needed to…”

“Listen to me,” Owen snarled. “Get over to my house and see if the kids are okay. If they are, start shopping for a very warm jacket.”

He slammed the phone into its cradle and strode back to the booth.

Jacob was still staring out the diner window, the hamburger and fries untouched on his plate.

“You should eat something,” Owen told him. “You’re going to need your strength.”

Jacob slowly turned his eyes on Owen. “Mr. Crawford,” he said. “Look at me.”

Seconds later, Jacob could still hear the man screaming as he left the diner and began to make his way back home. He knew the man in the diner would never look for him again, never want to look in his eyes, see what he had seen there. One thing was certain, he was safe from Owen Crawford, and he always would be.

And so he walked determinedly along the side of the road until, later that afternoon, he saw his brother’s car slow as it approached him, then Becky’s welcoming smile.

“Oh, Jacob,” she said and she rushed toward him. “We were so worried.”

It was night before they reached Lubbock. Sally rushed out of the house and gathered Jacob into her arms, kissed him over and over, holding him tightly all the while. Then released him and told him to go inside.

He did as he was told, but even from inside the house he could hear his mother’s frantic whisper.

“Jacob can’t stay here,” she told Tom desperately. “I want him to go to that school.”

Tom nodded. “All right,” he said.

She walked back into the house, took Jacob by the hand and led him back out to where Tom and Becky waited by the car.

“You have to go, Jacob,” she said. She opened the door of Tom’s car and ushered him inside.

“I want you to have this,” she told him. She placed the lone star pendant around his neck. “Keep this safe for me, will you?” She touched his hair. “Will you think about me once in a while?”

He saw how much she loved him, and with what cost she was giving him up. Very slowly, a smile broke over his face. “Every day and twice on Sundays,” he said.

The driver pulled over and Russell gathered up his duffel bag.

“You sure you want to be dumped off like this?” the driver asked. “All you can see out here is the stars.”

“That’s the idea,” Russell said as he opened the door and stepped out into the night.

He walked away from the truck without looking back, turned off the road and headed out into an open field. He lowered the duffel bag, opened it and drew out a sextant and his topographical map. Then he spread the map out across the ground, plotting a course, then another and another, his rage building with each failed attempt until there was nothing left but rage, and he stood up and faced the sky, his head raised defiantly. “Take me,” he cried. “Take me, but leave my son alone.”