The Forge of God

QUID SUM, MISER! TUNC DICTUROS?

AP/Home Info Service, September 2, 1996: WASHINGTON, D. C. -Scientists are convening at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Conference to listen to speakers presenting papers on subjects ranging from “Lack of Proof for Supermassive Intergalactic Gravitational Lenses” to “Distribution of Wild Rodent Plague Through Ground Squirrel Fleas (Diamanus Montanus) in Southern California.” Yesterday, one of the most hotly debated papers was presented by Dr. Frank Drinkwater of Balliol College, Oxford University. Dr. Drinkwater maintains that there are no intelligent extraterrestrial civilizations. “If there were, we would certainly have seen their effects by now.” Dr. Drinkwater maintains that one civilization, creating self-reproducing planet-visiting spacecraft, would permeate the galaxy in less than a million years.

No conclusion was reached by conference scientists regarding the recent disappearance of Jupiter’s sixth moon, Europa. Professor Eugenie Cook of the University of Washington, Seattle, maintains that the moon has been displaced from its orbit by collision with a massive and heretofore unknown asteroid. Famed astronomer Fred Accord maintains that such a collision would have “shattered the moon, and we would still be able to see the orbiting fragments.” No such sightings have been reported. Many scientists remarked on public apathy over such an unprecedented event. After a month, the story of Europa has almost vanished from the media. Accord commented, “Obviously, more provincial difficulties, like the U. S. presidential election, loom larger. “.

Camped beside the mountain that should not have been there, wrapped in cold desert darkness, Edward Shaw could not sleep. He heard steady breathing from the still forms of his two companions, and marveled at their ease.

He had written in his notebook:

The mound is approximately five hundred meters long and half as wide, perhaps a hundred meters high, (apparently) the basaltic cinder cone of a dead volcano, covered with boulder- and cobble-sized chunks of dark black scoria and surrounded by fine white quartz sand. It is not on our maps nor in the 1991 Geosat directory. The flanks of the cone are steeper than the angle of repose, as much as fifty and sixty degrees. The weathering is haphazard at best — some parts open to the sun and rain are jet black, shiny, and other areas are only mildly rusty. There are no insects on the mound — specifically, lift any rock and you will not find a scorpion or millipede. There are no beer cans.

Edward, Brad Minelli, and Victor Reslaw had journeyed from Austin, Texas, to combine a little geology with a lot of camping and hiking across the early autumn desert. Edward was the eldest, thirty-three; he was also the shortest and in a close race with Reslaw to lose his hair the fastest. He stood five feet nine inches in his hiking boots, and his slender frame and boyish, inquisitive features made him seem a lot younger, despite the thinning hair. To see objects closer than two feet from his round nose, he wore gold wire-framed round-lensed glasses, a style he had adopted as an adolescent in the late seventies.

Edward lay on his back with his hands clasped behind his head and stared up at the clear steady immensity of the sky. Three days before, dark and gravid clouds had conspired in the flaming sunset to drop a true gully-washer into Death Valley. Their camp had been on high ground, but they had seen basketball-sized boulders slide and roll down freshly gouged channels.

The desert seemed once again innocent of water and change. All around the camp hung a silence more precious than any amount of gold. Not even the wind spoke.

He felt very large in the solitude, as if he might spread his fingers over half the land from horizon to horizon, and gather a mica coat of stars on his fingers. Conversely, in his largeness, he was also a little frightened. This inflated magnitude of self could easily be pricked and shrink to nothing, an illusion of comfort and warmth and high intellectual fever.

Not once in his six-year career as a professor of geology had he found a major error in the U.S. Geological Survey Death Valley charts. The Mojave Desert and Death Valley were the Mecca and Al Medina of western U.S. geologists; they had tramped over the regions for well over a century, drawn by the nakedness and shameless variety of the Earth. From its depths miners had hauled borax and talc and gypsum and other useful, unglamorous minerals. In some places, niter-lined caves wedged several hundred feet into the Earth. A spelunker need descend only twenty or thirty feet to feel the heat; creation still lay close under Death Valley.

There were hundreds of dead volcanoes, black or sullen red on the tan and gray and pink desert, between the resort at Furnace Creek and the small town of Shoshone, yet each one had been charted and was likely featured in some graduate research paper or another.

This mountain was an anomaly.

That was impossible.

Reslaw and Minelli had shrugged it off as an interesting if unique error on the maps; a misplacement, like the discovery of some new island in an archipelago, known to the natives but lost in a shuffle of navigators’ charts; a kind of Pitcairn of volcanic mounds.

But the cinder cone was too close to routes traveled at least once or twice a year. Edward knew that it had not been misplaced. He could not deceive himself as his friends did.

Neither could he posit any other explanation.

They walked once again around the base of the mound at midmorning. The sun was already high in the flat, still blue sky. It was going to be a hot day. Red-haired, stocky Reslaw sipped coffee from a green-enameled Thermos bottle, a serviceable antique purchased in a rock-and-junk shop in Shoshone; Edward chewed on a granola bar and sketched details in a small black cloth-bound notebook. Minelli trailed them, idly chipping at boulders with a rock pick, his loose, lanky form, unkempt black hair, and pale skin giving him the appearance of a misplaced urban scrounger.

He stopped ten yards behind Edward. “Hey,” he called out. “Did you see this?”

“What?”

“A hole.”

Edward turned back. Reslaw glanced back at them, shrugged, and continued around the mound to the north.

The hole was about a meter wide and slanted upward into the mass of the mound. Edward had not seen it because it began in deep shadow, under a ledge illuminated by the warm rays of the sun. “It’s not a flow tube. Look how smooth,” Minelli said. “No collapse, no patterns.”

“Bad geology,” Edward commented. If the mound is a fake, then this is the first mistake.

“Hm?”

“It’s not natural. Looks like some prospector got here before us.”

“Why dig a hole in a cinder cone?”

“Maybe it’s an Indian cave,” Edward offered lamely. The hole disturbed him.

“Indians with diamond drills? Not likely,” Minelli said with a faint edge of scorn. Edward ignored his tone and stepped on a lava boulder to get a better look up into the darkness. He pulled a flashlight from his belt and squeezed it to shine a beam into the depths. Smooth-bored matte-finish lava walls absorbed the light beyond eight or ten meters; to that point, the tunnel was straight and featureless, inclining upward at about thirty degrees.

“Do you smell something?” Minelli asked.

Edward sniffed. “Yeah. What is it?”

“I’m not sure…”

The odor was faint and smooth and sweet, slightly acrid. It did not encourage further investigation. “Like a lab smell,” Minelli said.

“That’s it,” Edward agreed. “Iodine. Crystalline iodine.”

“Right.”

Minelli’s forehead wrinkled in a mock fit of manic speculation. “Got it,” he said. “This is a junkie rock. A sanitary junkie cinder cone.”

Edward ignored him again. Minelli was infamous for a sense of humor so strange it hardly ever produced anything funny. “Needle mark,” Minelli explained in an undertone, realizing his failure. “You still think this isn’t a map mistake?”

“If you found a street in New York City, not on any map, wouldn’t you be suspicious?”

“I’d call up the mapmakers.”

“Yeah, well, this place is as crowded as New York City, as far as geologists are concerned.”

“All right,” Minelli conceded. “So it’s new. Just popped up out of nowhere.”

“That sounds pretty stupid, doesn’t it?” Edward said. “Your idea, not mine.”

Edward backed away from the hole and suppressed a shiver. A new mole and it won’t go away; a blemish that shouldn’t be here.

“What’s Reslaw doing?” Minelli asked. “Let’s find him.”

“This-a-way,” Edward said, pointing north. “We can still catch up.”

They heard Reslaw call out.

He had not gone far. At the northernmost point of the mound’s base, they found him squatting on top of a beetle-shaped lava boulder.

“Tell me I’m not seeing what I’m seeing,” he said, pointing to the shade below the rock. Minelli made a face and hurried ahead of Edward.

In the sand, two meters from the boulder, lay something that at first glance resembled a prehistoric flying creature, a pteranodon perhaps, wings folded, canted over to one side.

It was not mineral, Edward decided immediately; it certainly didn’t resemble any animal he had seen. That it might be a distorted plant, a peculiar variety of succulent or cactus, seemed the most likely explanation.

Minelli edged around the find, cautiously giving it a berth of several yards. Whatever it was, it was about the size of a man, bilaterally symmetric and motionless, dusty gray-green with touches of pastel flesh-pink. Minelli stopped his circling and simply gaped.

“I don’t think it’s alive,” Reslaw said.

“Did you touch it?” Minelli asked.

“Hell no.”

Edward kneeled before it. There was a definite logic to the thing; a kind of head two feet long and shaped rather like a bishop’s miter, or a flattened artillery shell, point down in the sand; a knobby pair of shoulder blades behind the fan-crest of the miter; short thin trunk and twisted legs in squat position behind that. Stubby six-digit feet or hands on the ends of the limbs.

Not a plant.

“Is it a corpse, maybe?” Minelli asked. “Wearing something, like a dog, you know, covered with clothes—”

“No,” Edward said. He couldn’t take his eyes away from the thing. He reached out to touch it, then reconsidered and slowly withdrew his fingers.

Reslaw climbed down from the boulder. “Scared me so bad I jumped,” he explained.

“Jesus Christ,” Minelli said. “What do we do?”

The snout of the miter lifted from the sand and three glassy eyes the color of fine old sherry emerged. The shock was so great that none of the three moved. Edward finally took a step back, almost reluctantly. The eyes in the miter-head followed him, then sank away again, and the head nodded back into the sand. A sound issued from the thing, muffled and indistinct.

“I think we should go,” Reslaw said.

“It’s sick,” Minelli said.

Edward looked for footprints, hidden strings, signs of a prank. He was already convinced this was no prank, but it was best to be sure before committing oneself to a ridiculous hypothesis.

Another muffled noise.

“It’s saying something,” Reslaw said.

“Or trying to,” Edward added.

“It isn’t really ugly, is it?” Minelli asked. “It’s kind of pretty.”

Edward hunkered down and approached the thing again, edging forward one booted foot at a time.

The thing lifted its head and said very clearly,”I am sorry, but there is bad news.”

“What?” Edward jerked, his voice cracking.

“God almighty,” Reslaw cried.

“I am sorry, but there is bad news.”

“Are you sick?” Edward asked.

“There is bad news,” it repeated.

“Can we help you?”

“Night. Bring night.” The voice had the whispering quality of wind-blown leaves, not unpleasant by itself, but chilling in context. A waft of iodine smell made Edward recoil, lips curled back.

“It’s morning,” Edward said. “Won’t be night for—”

“Shade,” Minelli said, his face expressing intense concern. “It wants to be in shade.”

“I’ll get the tent,” Reslaw said. He jumped down from the boulder and ran back to the camp. Minelli and Edward stared at each other, then at the thing canted over in the sand.

“We should get the hell out of here,” Minelli said.

“We’ll stay,” Edward said.

“Right.” Minelli’s expression changed from concern to puzzled curiosity. He might have been staring at a museum specimen in a bottle. “This is really, wonderfully ridiculous.”

“Bring night,” the thing pleaded.

Shoshone seemed little more than a truck stop on the highway, a caf6 and the rock shop, a post office and grocery store. Off the highway, however, a gravel road curved past a number of tree-shaded bungalows and a sprawling modern one-story house, then ran arrow-straight between venerable tamarisk trees and by a four-acre swamp to a hot-spring-fed pool and trailer court. The small town was home to some three hundred permanent residents, and at the peak of the tourist season — late September through early May — hosted an additional three hundred snowbirds and backpackers and the occasional team of geologists. Shoshone called itself the gateway to Death Valley, between Baker to the south and Furnace Creek to the north. To the east, across the Mojave, the Resting Spring, Nopah and Spring ranges, and the Nevada state line, was Las Vegas, the closest major city.

Reslaw, Minelli, and Edward brought the miter-headed creature into Shoshone after joining California state highway 127 some fifteen miles north of the town. It lay under moistened towels in the back of their Land Cruiser on the spread fabric of the tent, where once again it seemed dead.

“We should just go into Las Vegas,” Minelli said. He shared a front seat with Reslaw. Edward drove.

“I don’t think it would last,” Edward said.

“How can we find help for it here?”

“Well, if it really is dead, there’s a big meat locker in that grocery.”

“It doesn’t look any more dead than before it spoke,” Reslaw said, glancing back over the seat at the still form. It had four limbs, two on each side, but whether it stood or walked on all four, none of them knew.

“We’ve touched it,” Minelli said mournfully.

“Shut up,” Edward said.

“That cinder cone’s a spaceship, or a spaceship is buried underneath, obviously — “ Minelli blurted.

“Nothing’s obvious,” Reslaw said calmly.

“I saw that in It Came From Outer Space.”

“Does that look like a big eye floating on a tentacle?” Edward asked. He had seen the movie, too. Its memory did not reassure him.

“Meat locker,” Minelli responded, his hands trembling.

“There’s a phone. We can call ambulances in Las Vegas, or a helicopter. Maybe we can call Edwards or Goldstone and get the authorities out here,” Edward said, extending his actions.

“What’ll we tell them?” Reslaw asked. “They won’t believe the truth.”

“I’m thinking,” Edward said.

“Maybe we saw a jet plane go down,” Reslaw suggested.

Edward squinted dubiously.

“It spoke English,” Minelli commented, nodding.

None of them had mentioned that point in the hour and a half since they had hauled the creature away from the base of the cinder cone.

“Hell,” Edward said, “it’s been listening to us out there in space. Reruns of I Love Lucy.”

“Then why didn’t it say ‘Hey, Ricky!’?” Minelli asked, covering his fear with a manic grin.

Bad news. Like a mole that shouldn’t be there.

Edward pulled the truck into the service station, its heavy-duty tires tripping the service bell. A deeply tanned teenage boy in jeans bleached to nondescript pale gray and a Def Leppard T-shirt walked out of the garage attached to one side of the grocery and approached the Land Cruiser. Edward warned him back with his hands. “We need to use a phone,” he said.

“Pay phone right there,” the boy drawled suspiciously.

“Anybody got quarters?” Edward asked. Nobody did. “We need to use the store phone. This is an emergency.”

The boy saw the towel-shrouded shape through the Land Cruiser windows. “Somebody hurt?” he asked curiously.

“Stay back,” Minelli warned.

“Shut up, Minelli,” Reslaw whispered through gritted teeth.

“Yeah.”

“Dead?” the boy asked, one cheek jumping with a nervous tic.

Edward shrugged and entered the grocery. There, a short and very wide woman clerk in a muumuu adamantly refused to let him use the phone. “Look,” he explained. “I’ll pay for it with my credit card, my phone card,” he said.

“Shoa me the cahd,” she said.

A tall, slender, attractive black-haired woman came in, dressed in unfaded jeans and a white silk blouse. “What’s wrong, Esther?” she asked.

“Man’s givin’ us a royal payin,” Esther said. “Woan use the pay phone ahtside, but sayes he’s gaht a credit cahd—”

“Jesus, thanks, you’re right,” Edward said, glancing between them. “I’ll use my card on the pay phone.”

“Is it an emergency?” the black-haired woman asked.

“Yeah,” Edward said.

“Well, go ahead and use the store phone.”

Esther glared at her resentfully. Edward sidled behind the counter, the clerk moving deftly out of his way, and punched a button for an open line. Then he paused.

“Hospital?” the black-haired woman asked.

Edward shook his head, then nodded. “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe the Air Force.”

“You’ve seen an airplane go down?” the woman asked.

“Yeah,” Edward said, for the sake of simplicity.

The woman gave him an emergency hospital number and suggested he use directory assistance for the Air Force. But he did not dial the emergency number first. He dithered, glancing nervously around the store, wondering why he hadn’t planned a clear course of action earlier.

Goldstone, or Edwards, or maybe even Fort Irwin?

He asked directory assistance for the number of the base commander at Edwards. As the phone rang, Edward hunted for an excuse. Reslaw was right: telling the truth would get them nowhere.

“General Frohlich’s office, Lieutenant Blunt speaking.”

“Lieutenant, my name is Edward Shaw.” He tried to be as smooth and calm as a television reporter. “I and two of my friends — colleagues — have seen a jet go down about twenty miles north of Shoshone, which is where I’m calling from—”

The lieutenant became very interested immediately, and asked for details.

“I don’t know what kind of jet,” Edward continued, unable to keep a slight quiver from his voice. “It didn’t look like any I’m familiar with, except maybe…Well, one of us thinks it looked like a MiG we’ve seen in AvWeek.”

“A MiG?” The lieutenant’s tone became more skeptical. Edward’s culpable squint intensified. “Did you actually see the plane go down?”

“Yessir, and the wreckage. I don’t read Russian…But I think there were Cyrillic markings.”

“Are you positive about this? Please give me your name and proof of identity.”

Edward gave the lieutenant his name and the numbers on his license plate, driver’s license, and, for good measure, his MasterCard. “We think we know where the pilot is, but we didn’t find him.”

“The pilot is alive?”

“He was dangling on the end of a chute, Lieutenant. He seemed alive, but he went down in some rocks.”

“Where are you calling from?”

“Shoshone. The…I don’t know the name of the store.”

“Charles Morgan Company Market,” the black-haired woman said.

Edward repeated the name. “The town’s grocery store.”

“Can you lead us to where you saw the aircraft?” the lieutenant asked.

“Yessir.”

“And you realize the penalty for giving false information about an emergency of this sort?”

“Yessir, I do.”

Both women regarded him with wide eyes.

“A MiG?” the slim, black-haired woman asked after he hung up. She sounded incredulous.

“Listen,” Edward said. “I lied to them. But I’m not going to lie to you. We might need your meat locker.”

Esther looked as if she might faint. “What’s happenin’ heah?” she asked. “Stella? What’s this awl abauht?” Her drawl had thickened and her face was sweaty and pasty.

“Just you,” Edward said to Stella.

She examined him shrewdly and pointed to his belt and rock hammer, still slung in its leather holder. “You’re a rock hound?”

“A geologist,” he said.

“Where?”

“University of Texas,” he said.

“Do you know Harvey Bridge from—”

“U.C. Davis. Sure.”

“He comes here in the winter…” She seemed markedly less skeptical. “Esther, go get the sheriff. He’s at the caf6 talking to Ed.”

“I don’t think we should let everybody in on this,” Edward suggested. Bad feeling.

“Not even the sheriff?”

He glanced at the ceiling. “I don’t know…”

“Okay, then, Esther, just go home. If you don’t hear from me in a half an hour, go get the sheriff and give him this man’s description.” She nodded at Edward.

“You’ll be okay heah?” Esther asked, short thick fingers rapping delicately on the counter.

“I’ll be fine. Go home.”

The store had only one customer, a young kid looking at the paperback and magazine rack. With both Stella and Edward staring at him, he soon moved out through the door, shrugging his shoulders and rubbing his neck.

“Now, what’s going on?” Stella asked.

Edward instructed Minelli to drive the Land Cruiser around to the back of the store. He motioned for Stella to follow him through the rear door. “We’ll need a cool dark place,” he told her as they waited.

“I’d like to know what’s happening,” she repeated, her jaw firm, head inclined slightly to one side. The way she stood, feet planted solidly on the linoleum and hands on her hips, told Edward as plain as words she would stand for no more evasion.

“There’s a new cinder cone out there,” he said. Minelli parked the vehicle near the door. Talking rapidly to keep his story from crashing into splinters, Edward opened the Land Cruiser’s back gate, pulling aside the tent and moist towels. “I mean, not fresh…Just new. Not on any charts. It shouldn’t be there. We found this next to it.”

The miter-head lifted slightly, and the three sherry-colored eyes emerged to stare at the three of them. Reslaw stood by the store’s far corner, keeping a lookout for gawkers.

To her credit, Stella did not scream or even grow pale. She actually leaned in closer. “It’s not a fake,” she said, as quickly convinced as he had been.

“No, ma’am.”

“Poor thing…What is it?”

Edward suggested she stand back. They unloaded it and carried it through the delivery door into the refrigerated meat locker.

East Coast News Network interview with Terence Jacobi, lead singer for the Hardwires, September 30, 1996:

ECNN: Mr. Jacobi, your group’s music has consistently preached — so to speak — the coming of the Apocalypse, from a rather radical Christian perspective. With two songs in the Top 40 and three records totaling ten million sales, you’ve obviously hit a nerve with the younger generation. How do you explain your music’ s popularity?

Jacobi (Laughing, then snorting and blowing his nose): Everybody knows, between the ages of fourteen and twenty-two, you’ve got only two best friends: your left hand and Christ. The whole world’s out to get you. Maybe if the world went away, if God wiped the slate clean, we could get on with just being ourselves. God’ s a righteous God. He will send his angels to Earth to warn us. We believe that, and it shows in our music.

Harry Feinman stood near the back of the boat untangling line from the spindle of his reel. Arthur let the boat drift with the slow-moving water. He dropped anchor a dozen yards south of the big leaning pine that marked the deep, watery hollow where, it was rumored, fishermen had pulled in so many big ones the past few years. Marty played with the minnows in the bait bucket and opened the cardboard containers full of dirt and worms. The sun was a dazzle outlined by thin high clouds; the air smelled of the river, a fresh, pungent greenness, and of coolness, of the early fall. In the calm backwater of the hollow, orange and brown leaves had collected in a flat, undulating clump.

“Do I have to bait my own hook?” Marty asked.

“That’s part of the game,” Harry said. Harry Feinman was stocky and muscular, six inches shorter than Arthur, with premature ash-gray hair receding on all fronts but his neck, where it ventured as stiff fuzz below the collar of his black leather jacket. His face was beefy, friendly, with small piercing eyes and heavy dark eyebrows. He reeled in loose nylon vigorously and propped the pole between the bait can and a tackle box. “You don’t earn your fish without doing the whole thing.”

Arthur winked at Marty’s dubious glance.

“Might hurt the worms,” Marty said.

“I honestly don’t know whether they feel pain or not,” Harry said. “They might. But that’s the way of things.”

“Is that the way of things, Dad?” Marty asked Arthur.

“I suppose it is.” In all the time they had spent living by the river, Arthur had never taken Marty fishing.

“Your dad’s here to break things easy to you, Marty. I’m not. Fishing is serious business. It’s a ritual.”

Marty knew about rituals. “That means we’re supposed to do something a certain way so we won’t feel guilty,” he said.

“You got it,” Harry said.

Marty put on the vacant look that meant he was hatching an idea. “Peggy getting married…is that a ritual, because they’re going to have sex? And they might be guilty?”

In the morning, Francine and Martin would drive to Eugene to attend her niece’s wedding. Arthur would have accompanied them, but now there were far more important things.

Arthur raised his eyebrows at Harry. “You’ve done all the talking so far,” he said.

“He’s your son, fellah.”

“Getting married is celebration. It’s a ritual, but it’s joyous. Not at all like baiting a hook.”

Harry grinned. “Nobody’s guilty about having sex anymore.”

Marty nodded, satisfied, and took a hooked line from Arthur. Arthur gingerly pulled a worm out of the carton and handed it to his son. “Twist it around and hook it several times.”

“Blecchh,” Martin said, doing as he was told. “Worm blood is yellow,” he added. “Squishy.”

They fished in the hollow for an hour without luck. By nine-thirty, Martin was ready to put the pole down and eat a sandwich. “All right. Wash your hands in the river,” Arthur told him. “Worm juice, remember.”

“Bleechh.” Marty bent over the gunwale to immerse his hands.

Harry leaned back, letting his knees grip the pole, and locked his hands behind his neck, grinning broadly. “We haven’t done this in years.”

“I don’t miss fishing much,” Arthur said.

“Sissy.”

“Dad’s not a sissy,” Marty insisted.

“You tell him,” Arthur encouraged.

“Fishing’s gross,” Marty said.

“Like father, like son,” Harry lamented.

Harry’s floppy fisherman’s cap cast a shadow over his eyes. Arthur suddenly remembered the dream, with Harry’s head a full moon, and shuddered. The wind rose cool and damp in the tree shadows of the hollow with a beautiful, mourning sigh.

Marty ate his sandwich, oblivious.

October 4

Beyond the wide picture windows and a curtain of tall pines, the river eddied quiet and green around a slight bend. To the west, white clouds rolled inland, their bottoms heavy and gray.

In the kitchen, amid hanging copper pots and pans, Arthur cracked eggs into an iron skillet on the broad gas stove.

“We’ve known each other for thirty years,” he said, bringing out two plates of scrambled eggs and sausage and laying one on the thick oak table before his friend. “We don’t see nearly enough of each other.”

“That’s why we’ve been friends for so long.” Harry tapped the end of his fork lightly on the tabletop. “This air,” he said. “Makes me feel like thirty years ago was when I last ate. What a refuge.”

“You’re cramping my sentimentality,” Arthur said, returning to the kitchen for a pitcher of orange juice.

“The sausages…?”

“Hebrew National.”

“God bless.” Harry dug into the fluffy yellow pile on the round stoneware plate. Arthur sat down across from him.

“How do you ever get any work done here? I prefer concrete cells. Helps the concentration.”

“You slept well.”

“I snore, Arthur, whether I sleep well or not.”

Arthur smiled. “And you call yourself an outdoors-man, a fisherman.” He cut the tip from a sausage and lifted it to his mouth. “Between consulting and reeducating myself, I’ve been trying to write a book about the Hampton administration. Haven’t even seriously started on chapter one. I’m not sure how to describe what happened. What a wonderful tragic comedy it all was.”

“Hampton gave science more credibility than any President since…Well,” Harry said,”since.” He lifted one hand and splayed his fingers.

“I’m hoping Crockerman—”

“That name. A president.”

“May not be so bad. He’s part of the reason I invited you out here.”

Harry raised a bushy eyebrow. The two were as much a contrast as any classic comedy team — Arthur tall and slightly stooped, his brown hair naturally tousled; Harry of medium height and stocky to the edge of plumpness in his middle years, with a high forehead and a friendly, wide-eyed expression that made him seem older than he was. “I told Ithaca.” Ithaca, the lovely, classically proportioned wife, whom Arthur hadn’t seen in six years, was a decade younger than Harry.

“What did you tell her?”

“I told her you used the tone of voice that means you have some job for me.”

Arthur nodded. “I do. The bureau is being revived. In a way.”

“Crockerman’s reviving Betsy?”

“Not as such.” The Bureau of Extraterrestrial Communication — BETC or “Betsy” for short — had been Arthur’s last hurrah in Washington. He had served as science advisor and Secretary of BETC for three years under Hampton, who had appointed him after the Arecibo Incident in 1992. That had turned out to be a false alarm, but Hampton had kept Arthur on until his assassination in Mexico City in August of 1994. Vice President William Crockerman had been sworn in on a train in New Mexico, and had immediately moved to place his own stamp on the White House, replacing most of the Cabinet with his own choices. Three months after the swearing-in, the new chief of staff, Irwin Schwartz, had told Arthur, “No little green men, no lost ships off Bermuda…might as well go home, Mr. Gordon.”

“Is he going to make you science advisor?” Harry asked. “Kick out that idiot Rotterjack?”

Arthur shook his head, grinning. “He’s forming a special presidential task force.”

“Australia,” Harry said, nodding sagely. He put down his glass of orange juice without taking a sip, braced as if for an assault, his eyes fixed on the salt and pepper shakers in the center of the table. “Great Victoria Desert.”

Arthur was not surprised. “How much do you know?” he asked.

“I know it was found by opal prospectors and that it’s not supposed to be there. I know that it could be a virtual duplicate of Ayers Rock.”

“That last part isn’t quite true. It differs substantially. But you’re right. It’s recent, and it shouldn’t be there.” Arthur was relieved to know that Harry hadn’t heard of the incident much closer to home.

“What do we have to do with it?”

“Australia is finally asking for advice. The Prime Minister is going public with a report in three days or less. He’s under some pressure.”

“Little green men?”

“I can’t even comment on that until I’ve asked you the questions, Harry.”

“Then ask,” Harry said, still braced.

“The President has put me in charge of the civilian science investigation team. We work with the military and with State. You’re my first choice.”

“I’m a biochemist. That means…”

Arthur shook his head slowly. “Hear me out, Harry. I need you for biochemistry, and as my second-in-command. I’m pushing for Warren from Kent State for geology, and Abante from Malibu for physics. They’ve agreed, but they have to go through political examination.”

“You think I’d pass Crockerman’s political pop quiz?” Harry asked.

“You will if I insist, and I will.”

“You need a biochemist…really?”

“That’s the rumor,” Arthur said, his grin widening.

“It would be lovely.” Harry pushed his chair back with only half his eggs and one sausage eaten. “Old friends, working together again. Ithaca would agree. Hell, even if she didn’t…but…”

“There will never be another chance like this;” Arthur said, emphasizing each word as if he were putting some essential point across to a dunderhead student.

Harry wrinkled his forehead, staring up at Arthur. “Dupres at King’s College?”

“I’ve asked for him. He hasn’t answered yet. We may not be able to get extranationals on the team.”

“I wouldn’t turn you down lightly,” Harry said. Arthur saw his friend’s eyes were red. He appeared close to tears. “You need somebody reliable.”

“What does that mean?”

Harry looked out the window, hand tensing on a fork handle, relaxing. “I just told Ithaca three weeks ago.”

Arthur’s face became placid, clear of all the excitement he had exhibited seconds before. “Yes?”

“Chronic leukemia. I’ve got it. It has me.”

Arthur blinked twice. Harry would not look straight at him.

“It’s not good. In a few months, I’ll be spending most of my time fighting this. I can’t see how I’ll be anything but a hindrance.”

“Terminal?” Arthur asked.

“My doctors say perhaps not. But I’ve been reading.” He shrugged.

“These new treatments—”

“Very promising. I have hope. But you must see…” Harry turned his bright gaze on Arthur. “This thing’s as big as Ayers Rock, and it’s been there how long?”

“No more than six months. Survey satellites mapped that area just over six months ago and it wasn’t there.”

Harry grinned broadly. “That’s wonderful. That’s truly wonderful. What the hell is it, Arthur?”

“A piece of Europa, perhaps?” Arthur’s voice was far away. His friend still wouldn’t meet his gaze.

Harry laughed out loud and flung his napkin on the table. “I’ll not be sad and weepy. Not with this.”

Arthur’s throat tightened. He had practically grown up with Harry. They had known each other for thirty years. He couldn’t possibly be dying. Arthur coughed. “We’ll become adults with this one, Harry. The whole human race. I need you very much—”

“Can you take on a might-be invalid?” Now their eyes met, and this time Arthur glanced away, shoulders stiff. With an effort, he looked back. “You’ll make it, Harry.”

“Lord, speak of will to live.”

“Join the team.”

Harry wiped his eyes with the forefinger of his right hand. “Travel? I mean, much—”

“At first, but you can stay in Los Angeles if you wish, later.”

“I’ll need that. The treatment is at UCLA.”

Arthur offered his hand. “You’ll make it.”

“After this, maybe it won’t be so bad,” Harry said. He took the offered hand and squeezed it firmly.

“What?”

“Dying. What a thing to see…Little green men, Arthur?”

“Are you with us?”

“You know I am.”

“Then you get the big picture. It’s not just Australia. There’s something in the Mojave Desert, Death Valley, between a resort called Furnace Creek and a little town called Shoshone. It resembles a cinder cone. It’s new. It doesn’t belong there.”

Harry grinned like a little boy. “Wonderful.”

“And yes, there’s an LGM.”

“Where?”

“For the moment, Vandenberg Air Force Base.”

Harry glanced at the ceiling and lifted both arms, tears spilling from his eyes. “Thank you, Lord.”

WorldNet USA Earthpulse, Octobers, 1996: Almost all’s well with the world today. No earthquakes, no typhoons, no hurricanes approaching land. Frankly, we’d say today was bright and glorious, but for early light snows in the northeastern United States, rain by tonight in the Pacific Northwest, and the confirmation last week that the ever-popular El Nino has returned to the South Pacific . Australians are bracing for another long drought in the face of this climactic scourge.

When Trevor Hicks told Shelly Terhune, his publicist, that the morning interview with KGB was on, she paused, snickered, and said, “Vicky won’t like you turning traitor.” Vicky Jackson was his editor at Knopf.

“Tell her it’s FM, Shelly. I’m going to be squeezed between the surf report and the morning news.”

“The KGB do a surf report?”

“Look, it was on your list of stations,” he said, mock-exasperated. “I’m not responsible.”

“All right, let me look,” Shelly said. “KGB-FM. You’re right. You’ve confirmed the slot?”

“The news manager says ten or fifteen minutes, but I’m sure it’ll end up about thirty seconds.”

“At least you’ll reach the surfers. Maybe they haven’t heard of you.”

“If they haven’t, it’s not for want of your trying.” He tried to put on a petulant tone. He was in fact quite tired; he was sixty-eight years old, after all, and while comparatively hale and hearty, Hicks was not used to such a schedule anymore. Ten years ago, he could have done it standing on his head.

“Now, now. Tomorrow we have you set up for that morning TV talk show.”

“Confirmed, tomorrow morning. Live so they can’t edit.”

“Don’t say anything rude,” Shelly admonished him. This was hardly necessary. Trevor Hicks gave some of the most polite and erudite interviews imaginable. His public image was bright and stylishly rumpled; he resembled both Albert Einstein and a middle-aged Bertrand Russell; what he had to say was consensus technocracy, hardly controversial and always good for a short news item. He had founded the British chapter of the Trojans Society, devoted to space exploration and the construction of huge orbiting space habitats; he was a forty-seven-year member of the British Interplanetary Society; he had written twenty-three books, the most recent being Starhome, a novel about first contact; and last but not least, he was the most public spokesman in the so-called “civilian sector” for manned exploration of space. His was not quite a household name, but he was one of the most respected science journalists in the world. Despite spending twelve years in the United States, he had not lost his English accent. In short, for both radio and television he was a natural. Shelly had taken advantage of this by booking him on a generic “whirlwind” tour of seventeen cities in four weeks.

This week, he was in San Diego. He had not been in San Diego since 1954, when he had covered the flight trials of the first jet fighter seaplane, the Sea Dart, in San Diego Bay. The city had changed greatly since then; it was no longer a sleepy Navy town. He had been booked in the new and stylish Hotel Inter-Continental, on the harbor, and from his tenth-story window could see the entire bay.

In those years, he had been a wire service reporter with Reuters, concentrating on science stories whenever possible. The world, however, had seemed to fall into a deep and troubled sleep in the 1950s. Few of his science stories had received much attention. Science was equated with H-bombs; politics was the sexier and more easily encompassed subject of the time. Then he had flown to Moscow to cover an agricultural conference, as part of the background for a planned book on the Russian biologist Lysenko and the Stalinist cult of Lysenkoism. That had been in late September.

The conference had dragged on for five excruciatingly dull days, with no meat for his book and worse, no stories to convince Reuters he even had a clue as to why he was there, On the last day of the conference, news of the launch of the world’s first artificial moon, a 184-pound silvery metal ball called Sputnik, had come just in time to save his career. Sputnik had returned science to the forefront of world journalism. Trevor Hicks had suddenly found his focus: space. He had buried his book on Lysenkoism and forged ahead without a backward glance.

He had shed a wife — there really was no kinder word for it — in 1965, and had lived with and broken up with three women since. Currently, he was a confirmed bachelor, though he had fancied the reporter from National Geographic he had met at the Galileo flyby celebration in Pasadena last year. She had not fancied him.

Trevor Hicks was not just accumulating a greater store of historical memories; he was growing old. His hair was solidly gray. He kept in shape as best he could, but…

He drew the draperies on the bay and the glittering, Disneylandish conglomeration of shops and restaurants called Seaport Village.

His portable computer sat silent on the room’s maple-veneer desk, its unfolded screen filled with black characters on a cream background. The screen looked remarkably like a framed sheet of typing paper. Hicks sat on the chair and gnawed a callus on the first knuckle of his middle finger. He had gained that callus, he thought idly, from thousands of hours with pencil in hand, taking notes that he could now just as easily type on the lap-sized computer. Many younger reporters did not have calluses on their middle fingers.

“That’s it,” he said, turning the machine off and pushing the chair back. “Nothing for it. Chuck it.” He closed the screen and put on his shoes. The evening before, he had seen an old sailing ship and a maritime museum on the wharf, just a short hike.

Whistling, he locked the hotel room behind him and walked on powerful short legs down the hallway.

“What do you expect mankind to find in space, Mr. Hicks?” asked the news manager, a young, bushy-haired man in his late twenties. The microphone on its tilting arm and spring suspension poked up under Hicks’s nose, forcing him to lift his chin slightly to speak. Hicks dared not adjust it now; it was live. The interview was being taped on an ancient black and gray reel-to-reel deck behind the news manager.

“The war for resources is hotting up,” Hicks said. More romance than that. “The sky is full of metals, iron and nickel and even platinum and gold…Flying mountains called asteroids. We can bring those mountains to Earth and mine them in orbit. Some of them are almost pure metal.”

“But what would convince, say, a teenage boy or girl to study for a career in space?”

“They have a choice,” Hicks said, still cold to the microphone and the interviewer, his mind elsewhere. Call it a reporter’s instinct, but he had been feeling uneasy for days. “They can elect to stay on Earth and live an existence, a life, very little different from the lives their parents led, or they can try their wings on the high frontier. I don’t need to convince the young folks out there who are really going into space in the next ten or twenty years. They know already.”

“Preaching to the choir?” the news manager asked.

“Rather,” Hicks said. Space was no longer controversial. Hardly the sort of topic likely to get much air time on a rock-and-surf radio station.

“Did fears of ‘preaching to the choir’ lead you to write your novel, perhaps in hopes of finding a wider audience?”

“I beg pardon?”

“An audience beyond science books. Dabbling in science fiction.”

“Not dabbling. I’ve read science fiction since I was a lad in Somerset. Arthur Clarke was born in Somerset, you know. But to answer your question: no. My novel is not written for the masses, more’s the pity. Anyone who enjoys a solid novel should enjoy mine, but I must warn them” — oh, Lord, Hicks thought — not just cold; bloody well frozen — “it’s technical. No ignoramuses admitted. Dust jacket locks tight on their approach.”

The manager laughed politely. “I enjoyed it,” he said, ‘and I suppose that means I’m not an ignoramus.”

“Certainly not,” Hicks allowed.

“Of course you’ve heard of the Australian reports—”

“No. Sorry.”

“They’ve been coming in all day.”

“Yes, well, it’s only ten o’clock in the morning and I slept late.” His neck hair was standing on end. He regarded the news manager steadily, eyes slightly protruding.

“I was hoping we could get a comment from you, an expert on extraterrestrial phenomena.”

“Tell me, and I’ll comment.”

“The details are sketchy now, but apparently the Australian government is asking for advice on dealing with the presence of an alien spacecraft on their soil.”

“Pull the other one,” Hicks said reflexively.

“That’s what’s been reported.”

“Sounds loony.”

The manager’s face reddened. “I only bring the news, I , don’t make it.”

“I have been waiting all my life for a chance to report on a true extraterrestrial encounter. Call me a romantic, but I’ve always held out hope as to the possibility of such an encounter. I have always been disappointed.”

“You think the report’s a hoax?”

“I don’t know anything about it.”

“But if there were alien visitors, you’d be among the first to go talk with them?”

“I’d invite them home to meet my mum. My mother.”

“You’d welcome them in your house?”

“Certainly,” Hicks said, feeling himself warming. Now he could show his true wit and style.

“Thank you, Mr. Hicks.” The manager addressed his microphone now, cutting Hicks out. “Trevor Hicks is a scientist and a science reporter whose most recent book is a novel, Star home, dealing with the always-fascinating subjects of space colonization and first contact with extraterrestrial beings. Coming next on ‘90’s News: another attempt to capture drift sand in Pacific Beach, and the birth of a gray whale at Sea World.”

“May I see these Australian reports?” Hicks asked when the news manager had finished. He thumbed through the thin sheaf of wire service printouts. They were sketchy at best. A new Ayers Rock in the middle of the Great Victoria Desert. Geologists investigating. Anomalous formation.

“Remarkable,” he said, returning the sheaf to the news manager. “Thank you.”

“Anytime,” the manager said, opening the door.

A bright yellow cab awaited him in the station parking lot. Hicks climbed into the back seat, neck hair still prickling. “Can you find a newsstand?” he asked the driver.

“Newsstand? Not in Clairemont Mesa.”

“I need a paper. A good paper. Morning edition.”

“I know a place on Adams Avenue that sells the New York Times, but it’s going to be yesterday’s.”

Hicks blinked and shook his head. His technological reflexes were slow. “To the Inter-Continental, then,” he said. Large parts of his brain still lived twenty years in the past. On his desk in the hotel was a device that could get him all the news he needed: his computer. With its built-in modem, he could access a dozen big newsnets within the hour. He could also peek into a few esoteric space bulletin boards for information the newspapers might not deem reliable enough to print. And there was always the enigmatic Regulus. Hicks hadn’t accessed Regulus during his periodic ramblings through the boards and nets, but he had been given the number and ID code by a friend, Chris Riley at Cal Tech.

Regulus, Riley had told him, knew unholy things about space and technology.

To hell with promoting a book. Hicks hadn’t felt this charged since 1969, when he had covered the lunar landing for New Scientist.

Arthur lay in bed, arms folded behind his head. Francine sat against bunched pillows beside him. She and Martin had returned the day before, to find him preoccupied with deep secrets. A preliminary task force scheduling and planning book was spread open but unread in his lap.

He was assessing a life without Harry. It seemed bleak, even when charged with mystery and events of more than historic significance.

Francine, black hair loose around her shoulders, glanced at her husband every few minutes, but did not interrupt his reverie. Arthur intercepted these glances without reacting. He almost wished she would ask.

He had spent all of his adult life knowing that Harry was available for discussion, by phone or letter; available for visits on a day’s notice, whenever they weren’t both too involved in work. They had matured together, double-dated (quaintly enough); Harry had approved wholeheartedly of Francine when a much younger Arthur had introduced them. “I’ll marry her if you don’t,” Harry had said, only half joking. Together, for ten years, Francine and Arthur had arranged meeting after meeting of various eligible and sensible women and Harry, but Harry had always politely drifted away from these good matches. It had surprised everybody when he met and married Ithaca Springer in New York in 1983. The marriage, against all predictions, had prospered. Young socialite banker’s daughter and scientist; not a likely success story, yet Ithaca had proved remarkably adept at keeping up with the rudiments of her husband’s work, and had brought Harry a most useful dowry: loving, persistent training in the social graces.

Both had kept a stubborn independence, but Arthur had sensed early on that Harry could no longer do without Ithaca. How would Ithaca get along without Harry?

Arthur hadn’t told Francine yet. Somehow, the news seemed Harry’s property, to be dispensed with his permission alone, but that prohibition was silly and Arthur’s wall of resistance was wearing thin.

Tomorrow morning he would fly to Vandenberg and be introduced to the “evidence.” That would be the biggest moment of his life, bar none, and yet here he was on the edge of tears.

His best friend might be dead within a year.

“Shit,” he said softly.

“All right,” Francine said, putting down her own book and rolling to lay her head on his shoulder. He closed the notebook and stroked her forehead. She wound her fingers through the thick salt-and-pepper patch of hair on his chest. “Are you going to tell me? Or is it more security stuff?”

“Not security,” he said. He ached to tell her about that. Perhaps in a few weeks he could. News was leaking rapidly; he suspected that soon even the Death Valley find would be public knowledge. Everybody was too excited.

“What, then?”

“Harry.”

“Well, what about him?”

The tears started to come.

“What’s wrong with Harry?” Francine asked.

“He has cancer. Leukemia. He’s working with me on…this project, but he might not see it through to the end.”

“Jesus,” Francine said, laying her palm flat on his chest. “Isn’t he getting treatment?”

“Of course. He just doesn’t think it will save him.”

“Five more years. We keep on hearing five more years, and it won’t be a killer anymore.”

“He doesn’t have five years. He may not have one.”

Francine hugged him closer and they lay together in silence for a moment. “How do you feel?” she finally asked.

“About Harry? It makes me feel…”He thought for a moment, frowning. “I don’t know.”

“Betrayed?” she asked softly.

“No. We’ve always been very independent friends. Harry doesn’t owe me anything, and I don’t owe him anything. Except the friendship, and…”

“Being there.”

“Yeah. Now he’s not going to be there.”

“You don’t know that.”

“He does. You should have seen him.”

“He looks bad?”

“No. He looks pretty good, actually.” Arthur tried to imagine one’s entire body a battleground, with cancer spreading from point to point, or through the blood, unchecked, a kind of biological madness, a genetic suicide aided by mindless, lifeless clumps of protein and nucleic acid. He hated all errant microscopic things with a sudden passion. Why could not God have designed human bodies with seamless efficiency, that they might face the challenge of everyday life feeling at the very least internally secure?

“How was the visit?” Francine asked.

“We had a good couple of days. We’ll see each other tomorrow, too, and that’s all I can tell you.”

“A week, two weeks?”

“I’ll call if it’s longer than a week.”

“Sounds like something big.”

“I’ll tell you just one more thing,” he said, aching with greater intensity to reveal it all, to share this incredible news with the person he loved most on Earth. (Or did he love Francine less than Harry? Different love. Different niches.)

“Don’t spill the beans,” she warned him, smiling slightly.

“No beans, no cats, just this. If it wasn’t for Harry, right now I’d be the happiest man on Earth.”

“Jesus,” she said again. “Must be something.”

He wiped his eyes with a corner of the flannel bed sheet. “Yup.”

Edward Shaw swirled the spoon in the cup of coffee and stared at the glass port mounted at head level in the sealed chamber door. He had slept soundly during the night. The chamber was as quiet as the desert. The clean white walls and hotel-style furniture made it reasonably comfortable. He could request books and watch anything he wished on the TV in one corner: two hundred channels, the chamber supervisor informed him.

By intercom, he could speak with Reslaw or Minelli or Stella Morgan, the black-haired woman who had given him permission to call from the grocery store in Shoshone, seven days before. In other rooms, Minelli had told him, were the four Air Force enlisted men who had investigated his call and seen the creature. All of them were undergoing long-term observation. They might be “in stir” for a year or more, depending on…Depending on what, Edward was not sure. But he should have known the creature would mean enormous trouble for all of them.

The threat of extraterrestrial diseases was sufficiently convincing that they had submitted to the rigorous two-day round of medical tests with few complaints. The days since had been spent in comparative boredom. Apparently, nobody was quite sure what their status was, how they should be treated or what they should be told. Nobody had answered Edward’s most urgent question: What had happened to the creature?

Four days ago, as they were being led to the sealed chambers by men in white isolation suits, Stella Morgan had turned to Edward and asked, conspiratorially, “Do you know Morse code? We can tap out messages. We’re going to be here for a long time.”

“I don’t know any code,” Edward had answered.

“It’s okay,” an attendant had said from behind his transparent visor. “You’ll have commlink.”

“Can I call my lawyer?” Stella had asked.

No answer. A shrug of heavily protected shoulders.

“We’re pariahs,” Morgan had concluded.

Breakfast was served at nine o’clock. The food was selected and bland. Edward ate all of it, at the recommendation of the duty officer, an attractive woman in a dark blue uniform with short, bobbed hair. “Any drugs in it?” He had asked the question before; he was becoming boring, even to himself.

“Please don’t be paranoid,” she said.

“Do you people really know what you’re doing?” Edward asked. “Or what’s going to happen to us?”

She smiled vaguely, glanced to one side, then shook her head no. “But nobody’s in any danger.”

“What if I start growing fungus up my arm?”

“I saw that one,” the duty officer said. “The astronaut turns into a blob. What was its name?”

“The Creeping Unknown, I think,” Edward said.

“Yeah. ‘Creeping’ or ‘Crawling.’”

“Goddammit, what will you do if we actually get sick?” Edward asked.

“Take care of you. That’s why you’re here.” She didn’t sound convinced. Edward’s intercom panel buzzed and he pushed the tiny red button below a blinking light. There were eight lights and eight buttons in two corresponding rows on the panel, three of them live.

“Yeah?”

“This is Minelli. You owe us another apology. The food here is terrible. Why did you have to call the Air Force?”

“I thought they’d know what to do.”

“Do they?”

“Apparently.”

“They going to shoot us up on a shuttle?”

“I doubt it,” Edward said.

“I wish I’d majored in biology or medicine or something. Then I might have some idea what they’re planning.”

Edward wondered aloud whether they had isolated all of Shoshone, blocking off the highway and the desert around the cinder cone.

“Maybe they’ve put a fence around California,” Minelli suggested. “And maybe that’s not enough. All of the West Coast. They’re building a wall across the plains, not letting fruits and vegetables through.”

The intercom system was wired so they could all talk at once or privately. They could not exclude the watch or the chamber duty officers. Reslaw joined them. “There’s only four of us, plus the four investigators — they didn’t isolate that clerk, what’s her name.”

“Esther,” Edward said. “Or the kid at the service station.”

“That must mean they’re holding only those people who might have touched it, or came close enough to breathe microbes in the air.”

Morgan joined in. “So what are we going to do?” she asked.

Nobody answered.

“I’ll bet my mother is frantic.”

None of them had been allowed to make calls out.

“You own the store?” Edward asked. “I’ve been wanting to thank you …”

“For letting you call? Really smart of me, wasn’t it? My family owns the store, the cafe, the trailer court, propane distributorship, beer distributorship. It’s not going to be easy keeping this quiet. I hope she’s okay. God, I hope she hasn’t been arrested. She’s probably called our lawyer already. I sound just like a spoiled rich kid, don’t I? ‘Wait’ll my mommy hears about this.’” She laughed.

“Well, who else here has connections?” Edward asked.

“We’re supposed to be gone for two more weeks,” Reslaw said. “None of us is married. Are you…Stella?”

“No,” she said.

“There it is,” Minelli concluded. “You’re our only hope, Stella.”

“Don’t be so glum,” the chamber supervisor intruded. He was in his mid-twenties, a first lieutenant.

“Are we being bugged?” Edward asked, angrier than he had any real right to be.

“Of course,” the supervisor replied. “I’m listening. Everything’s being recorded on audio and video.”

“Are you running security checks on us?” Stella asked.

“I’m sure they are.”

“Damn,” she said. “Count me out, guys. I was a student radical.”

Edward cut through his anger and frustration and forced a laugh. “You and me both. Minelli?”

“Radical? Hell, no. First time I voted it was for Hampton.”

“Traitor,” Reslaw said.

“Speak not ill of the dead,” Edward cautioned. “Hell, he was good for science. He boosted the space program.”

“And cut the hell out of domestic spending,” Morgan added. “Crockerman’s no better.”

“Maybe we’ll meet the President,” Minelli said. “Get on TV.”

“We’re going to be here for the rest of our lives,” Reslaw predicted with Vincent Price intonation. Edward couldn’t tell whether he was being serious or melodramatic.

“Who’s the oldest?” Edward asked, deliberately asserting leadership and moving them on to less timely subjects. “I’m thirty-three.”

“Thirty,” Minelli said.

“Twenty-nine,” Reslaw said.

“Then I’m the oldest,” Stella said.

“How old are you?” Edward asked.

“None of your business.”

“They know,” Reslaw said. “Let’s ask.”

“Don’t you dare,” Morgan warned, laughing.

All right, Edward thought, we’re in good spirits, or as good as can be expected. We’re not being tortured, beyond a few pinpricks. No sense learning everything about each other right away. We might be here for a long time.

“Hey,” Minelli shrieked. “Supervisor! Supervisor! My face…My face. There’s something growing on it.”

Edward felt his pulse quicken. Nobody spoke.

“Oh, thank God,” Minelli said a few moments later, milking the situation for all it was worth. “Just a beard. Hey! I need my electric razor.”

“Mr. Minelli,” the supervisor said, “no more of that, please.”

“We should have warned you about him,” Reslaw said.

“I’m known to be something of an asshole,” Minelli explained. “Just in case you might be having second thoughts about keeping me here.”

AAP/NBS WorldNet, Woomera, South Australia, October?, 1996 (Octobers, USA): Despite Prime Minister Stanley Miller’s decision to “go public” with news of extraterrestrial visitors in South Australia, scientists at the site have heretofore released very little information. What is known is this: The object discovered by opal prospectors in the Great Victoria Desert is less than eighty miles from Ayers Rock, just over the border into South Australia. It lies some 210 miles due south of Alice Springs. Its appearance has been disguised to resemble the three great granite tors of the region, Ayers Rock and the Olgas, although it is apparently smaller than these well-known formations. The Department of Defense has surrounded the site with some 90 miles of razor wire in three concentric circles. Current investigations are being carried out by scientists from the Ministry of Science and the Australian Academy of Science. Help has been offered by officials at the Australian Space Research Center at Woomera and NASA’s Island Lagoon tracking facility, although scientific and military cooperation with other nations is by no means certain at present.

The dark gray Mercedes bus took Arthur Gordon and Harry Feinman from the small Air Force passenger jet through a heavily guarded gate into the Vandenberg Space Operations Center. Through the window, over a concrete hill about a mile north, Arthur could see the top half of a space shuttle and its mated rust-orange external tank and white booster rockets poised beside a massive steel gantry.

“I didn’t know you were prepared for this sort of thing, I mean, to bring specimens here,” Arthur said to the blue-uniformed officer sitting beside him, Colonel Morton Hall. Hall was about Arthur’s age, slightly shorter, husky and trim, with a narrow mustache and an air of quiet patience.

“We aren’t, speaking frankly,” Hall said.

Harry, seated in front of them next to a black-haired lieutenant named Sanborn, turned and peered around the neck rest. Each member of the civilian group was accompanied by an officer. “Then why is everything here?” Harry asked.

“Because we’re the closest, and we can improvise,” Hall said. “We have some isolation facilities here.”

“What are they used for, under normal circumstances?” Harry asked. He glanced at Arthur with an expression between roguishness and pique.

“I’m not at liberty to discuss that,” Hall said, smiling slightly.

“It’s what I thought,” Harry said to Arthur. “Yes, indeed.” He nodded and faced forward.

“What were you thinking, Mr. Feinman?” Colonel Hall asked, still smiling, albeit more tightly.

“We’re moving biological weapons research into space,” Harry said tersely. “Automated modules controlled from Earth. Bring them back here, and they’ll have to be isolated. Son of a bitch.”

Hall’s smile flickered but, to his credit, did not vanish completely. He had sprung his own trap. “I see,” he said.

“We all have the highest clearances and presidential authorization,” Arthur reminded him. “I doubt that there’s anything we can be kept from knowing, if we press hard enough.”

“I hope you appreciate our position here, Mr. Gordon, Mr. Feinman,” Hall said. “This whole thing was tossed into our laps just a week ago. We haven’t straightened out all of our security procedures, and it’ll be some time before we decide who needs to know what.”

“I would think this takes priority over practically everything,” Arthur said.

“We’re still not sure what we have here,” Colonel Hall admitted. “Perhaps you gentlemen can help us clear up our priorities.”

Arthur grimaced. “Now the ball’s in our court,” he said. “Touché, Colonel.”

“Better your court than mine,” Hall said. “This whole thing has been an administrative nightmare. We have four civilians and four of our own men in isolation. We have no warrants for arrest or any other formal papers, and there is no — well, you can imagine. We can only stretch national security so far.”

“And the LGM?” Harry asked, turning back again.

“He’s — it’s — our star attraction. You’ll see it first, then we’ll interview the men who found it.”

“’It,’” Arthur said. “We’ll have to find a less ominous name for that soon, certainly before ‘it’ becomes common knowledge.”

“We’ve been calling it the Guest, with a capital g,” Hall said. “It almost goes without saying, we’d like to avoid any leaks.”

“Not likely to avoid it for long, with the Australians having gone public,” Harry said.

Hall nodded, facing up to practicalities. “We still don’t know whether they have what we have.”

“What we have, the Russians probably already know about,” Harry said.

“Don’t be cynical, Harry,” Arthur admonished.

“Sorry.” Harry grinned boyishly at the officer beside him, Lieutenant Sanborn, and then at Hall. “But am I wrong?”

“I hope you are, sir,” Sanborn said.

On a concrete apron a mile and a half from the shuttle runway stood an implacable concrete building with inward-sloping walls, covering about two acres of ground. The tops of the walls rose three stories above the surrounding plain of concrete and asphalt. “Looks like a bunker,” Harry said as the bus approached a ramp inclining below ground level. “Built to withstand nuclear strike?”

“That’s not really a priority here, sir,” Lieutenant Sanborn said. “It would be next to impossible to harden the launch sites and runway.”

“This is the Experiment Receiving Lab,” Colonel Hall explained. “ERL for short. ERL holds our civilian guests and the specimen.”

In a broad garage below ground level, the bus parked beside a rubber-buffered concrete loading dock. The front passenger door opened with a hiss and their escorts led Harry and Arthur out of the bus, across the dock, and into a long, pastel green hallway lined with sky-blue blank-faced doors. Each door was described by numbers and cryptic acronyms on an engraved plastic plaque mounted in a small steel holder. Somewhere, air conditioners hummed quietly. The air smelled faintly of antiseptic and new electronics.

The hall opened into a reception area equipped with two long brown vinyl-upholstered couches and several plastic chairs spaced around a table covered with magazines — scientific journals, Time and Newsweek, and a lone National Geographic. A young alert-looking major sat behind a desk equipped with a computer terminal and a card identification box. One by one, the major cleared all four of them and then punched a code into the keypad lock of a broad double door behind his desk. The door opened with a sucking hiss.

“The inner sanctum,” Hall said.

“Where is it?” Harry asked.

“About forty feet from where we are right now,” Hall said.

“And the civilians?”

“About the same distance, on the other side.”

They entered a half-circular room equipped with more plastic chairs, a small wash-up area and lab table, and three shuttered windows mounted in the long curved wall. Harry stood by the bare lab table and rubbed his hand along the shiny black plastic top, examining his fingers briefly for dust — the gesture a professor might make in a classroom. Arthur’s mouth twitched in a brief smile. Harry caught the twitch and lifted his eyebrows: So?

“Our Guest is behind the middle window,” Hall said. He spoke into an intercom mounted to the left of the middle window. “Our inspectors are here. Is Colonel Phan ready?”

“I am ready,” a soft, almost feminine voice replied over a speaker.

“Then let’s get started.”

The shutters, mounted on their side of the window, clacked and began to rise. The first layer of glass behind was curtained in black. “This is not a one-way mirror or anything fancy,” Hall said. “We’re not concealing our appearance from the Guest.”

“Interesting,” Harry said.

“The Guest has requested a particular environment, and we’ve done our best to meet its requirements,” Lieutenant Sanborn said. “It is most comfortable in conditions of semidarkness, at a temperature of about fifteen degrees Celsius. It seems to enjoy a dry atmosphere with approximately the same mix of gases found in our own air. We believe it exited its normal environment at about six o’clock on the morning of the twenty-ninth of September to explore…well, frankly, we don’t know why it left, but it was caught by daylight and apparently succumbed to the glare and heat by about nine-thirty.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Harry said. “Why would it leave its…environment…without protection? Why not make all the necessary precautions and plan the first excursion carefully?”

“We don’t know,” Colonel Hall said. “We have not interrogated the Guest or caused it any undue strain. We supply it with whatever it requests.”

“It makes its requests in English?” Arthur asked.

“Yes, in quite passable English.”

Arthur shook his head in disbelief. “Has anyone called Duncan Lunan?”

“We haven’t ‘called’ anybody but people with an immediate need to know,” Hall said. “Who is Duncan Lunan?”

“A Scottish astronomer,” Arthur explained. “He made a fair mess of a controversy about twenty-three years ago when he claimed to have evidence of an alien space probe orbiting near the Earth. A probe he thought might be from Epsilon Bootis. His evidence consisted of patterns of anomalous returned radio signals that seemed to have been bounced from an object in space. Like a great many pioneers, he had to face disappointment and recant, after a fashion.”

“No, sir,” Hall said, again with his enigmatic smile. “We haven’t spoken to Mr. Lunan.”

“Pity. I can think of a hundred scientists who should be here,” Arthur said.

“Eventually, perhaps,” Hall allowed. “Not right now.”

“No. Of course not. Well?” Arthur gestured at the dark window.

“Colonel Phan will give us a direct view in a few minutes.”

“Who is Colonel Phan?” Harry asked.

“He’s an expert in space medicine from Colorado Springs,” Hall said. “We couldn’t find anyone better qualified on such short notice, although I doubt we could find a better man for the job even if we searched all year.”

“You didn’t ask us,” Harry said. Arthur nudged him gently in the arm.

The lights in the viewing room dimmed. “I hope someone’s making videotapes of our Guest,” Harry whispered pointedly to Arthur as they pulled their seats close to the window.

“We have a digital recorder and three high-resolution cameras working around the clock,” Lieutenant Sanborn explained.

“All right,” Harry said.

Harry was obviously nervous. For his own part, Arthur felt both alert and vaguely anesthetized. He could not quite accept that an age-old question had been answered affirmatively, and that they were about to see the answer.

The black curtain drew aside. Beyond another thick pane of glass framed in stainless steel, they saw a small, dimly lighted, almost empty square room, watery green in color. In the middle of the room was a low platform draped with what appeared to be blankets. A plastic beaker of clear water sat in one corner. In the right-hand corner nearest their window was a meter-tall transparent cylinder, open at the top. Arthur took all this in before focusing on what lay under the blankets on the low table.

The Guest moved, raised a forward limb — clearly a kind of arm, with a three-fingered hand, each finger divided in two above the middle joint — and then sat up slowly, the blanket falling free of its wedge-shaped head. The long “nose” of its head pointed at them and the golden brown eyes emerged from the blunt end, withdrew, emerged. Arthur, mouth dry, tried to see the being as a whole, but for the moment could only concentrate on whether the eyes were lidded, or actually withdrew within “pools” of pale gray-green flesh.

“Can we speak to it?” Harry asked Hall over his shoulder.

“There’s two-way communication with the room.”

Harry sat in a seat near the window. “Hello. Can you hear us?”

“Yes,” the Guest said. Its voice was sibilant and weak but clearly understandable. It lowered itself to the floor and stood uncertainly beside the low table. Its lower limbs — legs — were jointed in reverse, yet not like a dog’s or horse’s hind legs, where the “knee” is the analog of a human wrist. The Guest’s articulation was quite original, each joint actually reversed, with the limb’s lower half dropping smoothly, gracefully, to split into three thick extensions, the tip of each extension splayed into two broad “toes.” The legs made up much of its height, its rhinoceros-hide “trunk” occupying only about half a meter of its full meter and a half. The end of the long head, thrust forward on a thick, short neck, dropped a few centimeters below the juncture of legs and trunk. The arms rose from each side of the trunk like the folded manipulators of a mantis.

Harry scowled and shook his head, temporarily unable to speak. He waved a hand in front of his mouth, glancing at Arthur, and coughed.

“We don’t know quite what to say to you,” Arthur finally managed. “We’ve been waiting a long time for someone to visit the Earth from space.”

“Yes.” The Guest’s head swung back and forth, the jewel-bright, moist, sherry-colored eyes fully revealed. “I wish I could bring better words on such an important occasion.”

“What…ah, what words do you bring?” Harry asked.

“Are you related?” the Guest asked in turn.

“I’m sorry — related?”

“There is a question about my communication?”

“We are not of the same family — not siblings, brother or father and son or…whatever,” Arthur said.

“You have a social relationship.”

“He’s my boss,” Harry said, pointing to Arthur. “My hierarchical superior. We’re friends, also.”

“And you are not the same individuals in different form as the individuals behind you?”

“No,” Harry said.

“Your forms are steady.”

“Yes.”

“Then…” The Guest made a sharp, high-pitched whistling noise, and the long crest above the level of the shoulders appeared to inflate slightly. Arthur could not see a mouth or nose near the eyes, and surmised such openings might be on the head below the neck and facing the chest, in the area corresponding — if such correspondences were at all useful — to a long “chin.” “I will relate my bad news to you, as well. Are you placed highly in your group, your society?”

“Not the highest, but yes, we are highly placed,” Harry said.

“The news I bring is not happy. It may be unhappy for all of you. This I have not spoken before in detail.” Again the whistling noise. The head lifted and Arthur spotted slitlike openings on the underside. “If you have the ability to leave, you will wish to do so soon. A disease has entered your system of planets. There is little time left for your world.”

Harry pulled his chair a few inches forward, and the Guest, with an awkward sidling motion, came closer to the thick glass. Then it sat on the floor, leaving only its upper arms and long head visible. The three eyes pointed steadily at Harry, as if wishing to establish some unbreakable and facile rapport, or as if commiserating…

“Our world is doomed?” Harry asked, somehow avoiding all melodrama, giving the last word a perfectly straightforward and unstrained emphasis.

“Unless I sadly misknow your abilities, yes. This is bad news.”

“It does seem so,” Harry said. “What is the cause of this disease? Are you part of an army of conquest?”

“Conquest…Uncertain. Army?”

“Organized group of soldiers, fighters, destroyers and occupiers. Invaders.”

The Guest was silent and still for a few minutes. It might have been a statue but for the almost invisible throbbing of its upper crest. “I am a parasite, a happen-by voyager.”

“Explain that, please.”

“I am a flea, not a soldier or a builder. My world is dead and eaten. I travel here within a child of a machine that eats worlds.”

“You’ve come on a spaceship?”

“Not my own. Not ours.” The emphasis there was striking.

“Whose, then?” Harry pursued.

“Its forebears made by very distant people. It controls itself. It eats and reproduces.”

Arthur trembled with confusion and fear and a deep anger he could not explain. “I don’t understand,” he said, blocking Harry’s next words.

“It is a traveler that destroys and makes the stars safe for its builders. It gathers information, learns, and then eats worlds and makes new younger forms of itself. Is this clear?”

“Yes, but why are you here?” Arthur almost shouted.

“Shh,” Harry said, holding up one hand. “It just said that. It’s hitched a ride. It’s a flea.”

“You didn’t build the rock, the spaceship or whatever it is, in the desert? That’s not your vehicle?” Colonel Hall asked. Obviously, they had heard none of this before. Young Lieutenant Sanborn was visibly shaken.

“Not our vehicle,” the Guest affirmed. “It is powerful enough not to fear our presence. We cannot hurt it. We sacrifice…” Again it whistled. “We survive only to warn of the death our kind has met.”

“Where are the pilots, the soldiers?” Harry asked.

“The machine does not live as we do,” the Guest said.

“It’s a robot, automatic?”

“It is a machine.”

Harry pushed his chair back and rubbed his face vigorously with both hands. The Guest appeared to observe this closely, but otherwise did not change position.

“We have a couple of names for that kind of machine,” Arthur said, facing Colonel Hall. “It sounds like a von Neumann device. Self-replicating, without outside instructions. Frank Drinkwater thinks the lack of such machines proves there is no intelligent life besides our own in the galaxy.”

“Playing devil’s advocate, no doubt,” Harry said, still massaging the bridge of his nose. “What scientist would want to prove intelligence was unique?”

Colonel Hall regarded the Guest with an expression of mild pain. “It’s saying we should be on war alert?”

“It’s saying…” Harry began angrily, and then controlled his tone, “it’s saying we haven’t got the chance of an ice cube in hell. Art, you read more science fiction than I do. Who was that fellow—”

“Saberhagen. Fred Saberhagen. He called them ‘Berserkers.’”

“I am not being spoken with,” the Guest said. “Have you become aware of the results of this information?”

“I think so,” Arthur replied. They had not asked a perfectly obvious question. Perhaps they didn’t want to know. He appraised the Guest in the silence that fell over them. “How long do we have?”

“I do not know. Perhaps less than an orbit.”

Harry winced. Colonel Hall simply gaped.

“How long ago did your — did the ship land?” Arthur continued.

The Guest made a small hissing sound and turned away. “I do not know,” it replied. “We have not been aware.”

Arthur did not hesitate to ask the next question. “Did the ship stop by a planet in our solar system? Did it destroy a moon?”

“I don’t know.”

A short, powerfully built Asiatic man with close-trimmed black hair, dark pockmarked skin, and broad cheekbones entered the room. Arthur slapped his hands on his knees and glared at him.

“I beg your pardon, gentlemen,” he said.

Sanborn cleared his throat. “This is Colonel Tuan Anh Phan.” He introduced Arthur and Harry.

Phan greeted each with a reserved nod. “I’ve just been informed that the Australians are releasing news photos and motion pictures. I believe this is important. Their visitors are not like our own.”

InfoNet Political News Forum, October 6, 1996, Frank Topp, commentator: President Crockerman’s rating in the World-News public opinion polls has been a rocksteady 60 to 65 percent approval since June, with no signs of change as Election Day approaches. Political pundits in Washington doubt that anything can derail the President ‘ s easy victory in November, not even the hundred-billion-dollar trade imbalance between the Eastern Pacific Rim nations and Uncle Sam…or the enigmatic situation in Australia. I, for one, am not even wearing campaign buttons. It’s going to be a dull election.