The Forge of God

9

“You’re privileged, folks,” the new duty officer, a young, slender black woman in gray blouse and slacks, told her four isolated charges.

Ed Shaw sat up on his bunk and blinked.

“The President’s coming here this evening. He wants to talk with you and commend you all.”

“How long until we get out of here?” Stella Morgan asked, her voice hoarse. She cleared her throat and repeated her question.

“I have no idea, Miss Morgan. We have a message from your mother. It’s in your food drawer. We can relay any message from you to her that does not carry information as to your whereabouts or why you are here.”

“She’s putting on the pressure, isn’t she?” Minelli said. They had been discussing Stella’s mother, Bernice Morgan, a few hours earlier. By now, Stella was convinced, Mrs. Morgan would have marshaled half the lawyers in the state.

“She is indeed,” the duty officer said. “You’ve got quite a mother, Miss Morgan. We hope to get this all straightened out quickly. Labs are running tests around the clock. So far, we haven’t found any foreign biologicals on you or the Guest.”

Edward lay back on his bunk. “What’s the President going to do here?” he asked.

“He wants to talk to the four of you. That’s all we’ve been told.”

“And see the alien,” Minelli said. “Right?”

The duty officer smiled.

“When are you going to tell the press?” Reslaw asked.

“Lord, I wish we could do it right now. The Australians have told just about everything, and their case is even weirder than our own. They have robots coming out of their rocks.”

“What?” Edward sat on the edge of the bunk. “Is it on the news?”

“You should watch your TVs. There are newspapers in your food drawers now. Starting tomorrow, you’ll be getting CD machines. Infonet players. We don’t want you to be ignorant when the President gets here.”

Edward pulled open his food drawer, a stainless-steel tray that shuttled through the walls of the isolation unit, and pulled out a folded newspaper. There were no personal messages for him. His off-and-on girlfriend in Austin didn’t expect him back for a month or two; he hadn’t spoken to his mother in months. Edward began to regret his fancy-free life-style. He unfolded the newspaper and quickly scanned the headlines.

“Jesus, are you reading what I’m reading?” Reslaw asked.

“Yeah,” Edward said.

“They look like chrome-plated gourds.”

Edward flipped through the pages. The Australian Armed Forces had gone on alert. So had the United States Air Force and Navy. (Not the Army? Why not the Army?) Shuttle launches had been canceled, for reasons not clearly spelled out.

“Why robots?” Minelli asked after a few minutes of silence. “Why not more creatures?”

“Maybe they found out they can’t take the atmosphere and the heat,” Minelli suggested. “So they send remotes.”

That seemed to make the most sense. But if there were two disguised spacecraft — and why disguised? — then there could certainly be more.

“Maybe it’s an invasion,” Stella said. “We just don’t know it yet.”

Edward tried to recall the various science fiction scenarios he had read in books or seen in television and movies.

Motivations. No intelligent beings did things without motives. Edward had always sided with the scientists who thought Earth too puny and out of the way to be of interest to potential spacefarers. Of course, that was geocentrism in reverse. He wished he had read more on SETI, the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. Nearly all of his science reading was in geology now; he seldom read magazines like Scientific American or even Science unless he needed to catch up on relevant articles.

Like most experts, he had grown insular. Geology had been his life. Now he doubted whether he would ever again have a private life. Even if the four of them were released — and that question worried him more than he wanted to admit — they would all be public figures, celebrities. Their lives would change enormously.

He shut off the player and turned to the comics page of the Los Angeles Times. Then he lay back on the bunk and tried to sleep. He had slept enough. His anger was getting to the point where he didn’t think he could control it. What would he tell Crockerman? Would he rattle the bars of his cage and hoot miserably? That seemed the only appropriate response.

“But look at the big picture,” he murmured to himself, not caring whether anybody else heard. “This is history.”

“This is history!” Minelli yelled from his cell. “We’re history! Isn’t everybody thrilled?”

Edward heard Reslaw clapping slowly, resolutely. “I want to see my agent,” Minelli said.

10

Harry looked over the President’s itinerary — and their own, neatly appended with a plastic clip — and sighed. “The big time,” he said. “You’re used to it. I’m not. Stifling security and appointments timed by the minute.”

“I’ve grown accustomed to being away from it,” Arthur said. They shared a room in the Vandenberg Hilton, as the blocky, elongated, three-story concrete officer’s quarters had been dubbed by the shuttle pilots who generally occupied the austere rooms. Harry handed him the paper and shrugged.

“Mostly, I’m just tired,” he said, lying back and clasping his hands behind his neck. Arthur regarded him with some worry. “No, not because I’m ill,” Harry said testily. “It’s all this thinking. Coming to grips.”

“Tomorrow’s going to be very busy. Are you sure you’re up to it?” Arthur asked.

“I’m sure,”

“All right. Tonight we brief the President and whichever members of his staff and Cabinet he’s brought along, and then sit in on the President’s interviews with the Guest and the citizens.”

Harry grinned and shook his head, still dubious.

Arthur put the papers down on the table between their beds. “What will he do when he hears the story?”

“Christ, Art, you know the man better than I.”

“I never even met him before I was canned. When he was Veep, he stayed in the background. To me, he’s a riddle wrapped in an enigma. You read the papers; what do you think?”

“I think he’s a reasonably intelligent man who doesn’t belong in the White House. But then, I’m a radical from way back. I was a communist when I was three years old, remember. My father put me in red sweaters—”

“I’m serious. We have to soften the blow for him. And it will be a blow, however much he’s prepared by his staff. Seeing our Guest. Hearing from its own lips, or whatever…”

“That Earth is doomed. Lambs to the slaughter.”

It was Arthur’s turn to grin. The grin almost hurt. “No,” he said.

“You don’t believe it?”

Arthur stared up at the ceiling. “Don’t you feel something’s not right here?”

“Doom is never right,” Harry said.

“Questions. Lots and lots of questions. Why does this spacecraft allow ‘fleas’ to ride on its back and warn the populace before it can destroy their home?”

“Smugness. Absolute assurance of power. Assurance of our weakness.”

“When we have nuclear weapons, for Christ’s sake?” Arthur asked sharply. “A fighter pilot down in some jungle should show respect for the natives’ arrows.”

“It probably — it should have weapons and defenses we know nothing about.”

“Why hasn’t it used them?”

“Obviously, it used something to land huge rocks without being detected by radar or satellites.”

Arthur nodded agreement. “If what landed wasn’t something small, to start with…But that would contradict our Guest’s story.”

“All right,” Harry said, propping himself up against the wall with a pillow as a cushion. “It doesn’t make sense to me either. This Australian statement that their aliens have come in peace for all mankind. Same group of invaders? Apparently; same tactics. Bury themselves in a duck blind. One ship has ‘fleas,’ the other doesn’t. One ship has robot publicity agents. The other keeps silent.”

“We haven’t seen the complete text from the Australians.”

“No,” Harry admitted. “But they seem to have been candid so far. What’s the obvious answer?”

Arthur shrugged.

“Maybe the powers behind these ships are incredibly unorganized or inconsistent or just plain callous. Or there’s some sort of dispute within their organization.”

“Whether to eat the Earth or not.”

“Right,” Harry said.

“Do you think Crockerman will make this public?”

“No,” Harry said, fingers wrapped on his ample stomach. “He’d be crazy if he did. Think of the disruption. If he’s smart, he’s going to sit back and wait until the very last minute — he’s going to see how people react to the Good News spaceship.”

“Perhaps we should be bombing Death Valley right now.” Arthur stared at a painting over the nightstand between the two single beds. It showed four F-104 fighters climbing straight up over China Lake. “Cauterize the whole area. Act without thinking.”

“Make them madder than hell, right?” Harry said. “If they are being incredibly arrogant, then it means they have some assurance we can’t hurt them. Not even with nuclear weapons.”

Arthur sat in a straight-backed chair, facing away from the windows and the painting. High-tech fighters and bombers. Cruise missiles. Mobile laser defenses. Thermonuclear weapons. No better than stone axes.

“Captain Cook,” he said, and then gently bit his lower lip.

“Yes?” Harry encouraged.

“The Hawaiians managed to kill Captain Cook. His technology was at least a couple of hundred years more advanced than theirs. Still, they killed him.”

“What good did it do them?” Harry asked.

Arthur shook his head. “None, I guess. Some personal satisfaction, perhaps.”

President William D. Crockerman, sixty-three, was certainly one of the most distinguished-looking men in America. With his graying black hair, penetrating green eyes, sharply defined, almost aquiline nose, and lines of goodwill around his eyes and mouth, he might be equally the revered head of a corporation or some teenager’s favorite grandparent. On television or in person, he projected self-confidence and a trenchant wit. There could be no doubt that he took his job seriously, but not himself — this was the image portrayed, and it had won him election after election along his twenty-six-year career in public office. Crockerman had only lost one election: his first, as a mayoral candidate in Kansas City, Missouri.

He entered the Vandenberg isolation laboratory accompanied by two Secret Service agents, his national security advisor — a thin, middle-aged Boston gentleman named Carl McClennan — and his science advisor, David Rotterjack, soporifically calm and thirty-eight years of age. Arthur knew the tall, plump blond-haired Rotterjack well enough to respect his credentials without necessarily liking the man. Rotterjack had tended toward science administration, rather than doing science, in his days as director of several private biological research laboratories.

This entourage was ushered into the combination laboratory and viewing room by General Paul Fulton, Commander in Chief of Shuttle Launch Center 6, West Coast Shuttle Launch Operations. Fulton, fifty-three, had been a football player in his academy days, and still carried substantial muscle on his six-foot frame.

Arthur and Harry awaited them in the central laboratory, standing by the Guest’s covered window. Rotterjack introduced the President and McClennan to Harry and Arthur, and then introductions were made in a circle around the chairs. Crockerman and Rotterjack sat in the front row, with Harry and Arthur standing to one side.

“I hope you understand why I’m nervous,” Crockerman said, concentrating on Arthur. “I haven’t been hearing good things about this place.”

“Yes, sir,” Arthur said.

“These stories…these statements about what the Guest has been saying…Do you believe them?”

“We see no reason not to believe them, sir,” Arthur said. Harry nodded.

“You, Mr. Feinman, what do you think of the Australian bogey?”

“From what I’ve seen, Mr. President, it appears to be an almost exact analog of our own. Perhaps larger, because it’s contained within a larger rock.”

“But we haven’t the foggiest notion what’s in either of the rocks, do we?”

“No, sir,” Harry said.

“Can’t X-ray them, or set off blasts nearby and listen on the other side?”

Rotterjack grinned. “We’ve been discussing a number of sneaky ways to learn what’s inside. None of them seem appropriate.”

Arthur felt a twinge, but nodded. “I think discretion is best now.”

“What about the robots, the conflicting stories? Some folks in my generation are calling them ‘shmoos,’ did you know that, Mr. Gordon, Mr. Feinman?”

“The name occurred to us, sir.”

“Bringers of everything good. That’s what they’ve been telling Prime Minister Miller. I’ve spoken to him. He’s not necessarily convinced, or at least he doesn’t let us think he is, but…he saw no reason to keep everybody in the dark. It’s a different situation here, isn’t it?”

“Yes, sir,” Arthur said.

McClennan cleared his throat. “We can’t predict what kind of harm might come if we tell the world we have a bogey, and it says doomsday is here.”

“Carl takes a dim view of any plans to release the story. So we have four civilians locked up, and we have agents in Shoshone and Furnace Creek, and the rock is off limits.”

“The civilians are locked up for other reasons,” Arthur said. “We haven’t found any evidence of biological contamination, but we can’t afford to take chances.”

“The Guest appears to be free of biologicals, true?” Rotterjack asked.

“So far,” General Fulton said. “We’re still testing.”

“In short, it’s not happening the way we thought it might,” Crockerman said. “No distant messages in Puerto Rico, no hovering flying saucers, no cannon shells falling in the boondocks and octopuses crawling out.”

Arthur shook his head, smiling. Crockerman had a way of coercing respect and affection from those around him. The President cocked one thick dark eyebrow at Harry, then Arthur, then briefly at McClennan. “But it is happening.”

“Yessir,” Fulton said.

“Mrs. Crockerman told me this would be the most important meeting of my life. I know she’s right. But I am scared, gentlemen. I’ll need your help to get me through this. To get us through this. We are going to get through this, aren’t we?”

“Yes, sir,” Rotterjack said grimly.

Nobody else answered.

“I’m ready, General.” The President sat straight-backed in the chair and faced the dark window. Fulton nodded at the duty officer.

The curtain opened.

The Guest stood beside the table, apparently in the same position as when Arthur and Harry had left it the day before.

“Hello,” Crockerman said, his face ashen in the subdued room light. The Guest, with its light-sensitive vision, could see them perhaps more clearly than they saw it.

“Hello,” it replied.

“My name is William Crockerman. I’m President of the United States of America, the nation you’ve landed in. Do you have nations where you live?”

The Guest did not answer. Crockerman looked aside at Arthur. “Can he hear me?”

“Yes, Mr. President,” Arthur said.

“Do you have nations where you live?” Crockerman repeated.

“You must ask important questions. I am dying.”

The President flinched back. Fulton moved forward as if he were about to take charge, clear the room, and protect the Guest from any further strain, but Rotterjack put a hand on his chest and shook his head.

“Do you have a name?” the President asked.

“Not in your language. My name is chemical and goes before me among my own kind.”

“Do you have family within the ship?”

“We are family. All others of our kind are dead.”

Crockerman was sweating. His eyes locked on the Guest’s face, on the three golden-yellow eyes that stared at him without blinking. “You’ve told my colleagues, our scientists, that this ship is a weapon and will destroy the Earth.”

“It is not a weapon. It is a mother of new ships. It will eat your world and make new ships to travel elsewhere.”

“I don’t understand this. Can you explain?”

“Ask good questions,” the Guest demanded.

“What happened to your world?” Crockerman said without hesitating. He had already read a brief of Gordon and Feinman’s conversation with the Guest on this subject, but obviously wanted to hear it again, for himself.

“I cannot give the name of my world, or where it was in your sky. We have lost track of the time that has passed since we left. Memory of the world is dimmed by long cold sleeping. The first ships arrived and hid themselves within ice masses that filled the valleys of one continent. They took what they needed from these ice masses, and parts of them worked their way into the world. We did not know what was happening. In the last times, this ship, newly made, appeared in the middle of a city, and did not move. Plans were made as the planet trembled. We had been in space, even between planets, but there were no planets that attracted us, so we stayed on our world. We knew how to survive in space, even over long times, and we built a home within the ship, believing it would leave before the end. The ship did not prevent us. It left before the weapons made our world melted rock and gaseous water, and took us with it, inside. No others live that we are aware of.”

Crockerman nodded once and folded his hands in his lap. “What was your world like?”

“Similar. More ice, a smaller star. Many like myself, not in form but in thought. Our kind was many-formed, some swimming in cold melt-seas, some like myself walking on ground, some flying, some living in ice. All thought alike. Thousands of long-times past, we had molded life to our own wishes, and lived happily. The air was rich and filled with smells of kin. Everywhere on the world, even in the far lands of thick ice, you could smell cousins and children.”

Arthur felt his throat catching. Crockerman’s cheek was wet with a single tear. He did not wipe it away.

“Did they tell you why your world was being destroyed?”

“They did not speak with us,” the Guest said. “We guessed the machines were eaters of worlds, and that they were not alive, just machines without smells, but with thoughts.”

“No robots came out to speak with you?”

“I have language difficulties.”

“Smaller machines,” Rotterjack prompted. “Talk with you, deceive you.”

“No smaller machines,” the Guest said.

Crockerman took a deep breath and closed his eyes for a moment. “Did you have children?” he asked.

“My kind were not allowed children. I had cousins.”

“Did you leave some sort of family behind?”

“Yes. Cousins and teachers. Ice brothers by command bonding.”

Crockerman shook his head. That meant nothing to him; indeed, it meant little to anybody in the room. Much of this would have to be sorted out later, with many more questions: — if the Guest lived long enough to answer all their questions.

“And you learned to speak our language by listening to radio broadcasts?”

“Yes. Your wasting drew the machines to you. We listened to what the machines were gathering.”

Harry scribbled furiously, his pencil making quick scratching noises on the notepad.

“Why didn’t you try to sabotage the machine — destroy it?” Rotterjack asked.

“Had we been able to do that, the machine would never have allowed us on board.”

“Arrogance,” Arthur said, his jaw tightening. “Incredible arrogance.”

“You’ve told us you were asleep, hibernating,” Rotterjack said. “How could you study our language and sleep at the same time?”

The Guest stood motionless, not answering. “It is done,” it finally replied.

“How many languages do you know?” Harry asked, pencil poised.

“I am speaker of English. Others, still within, speak Russian, Chinese, French.”

“These questions don’t seem terribly important,” Crockerman said quietly. “I feel as if a nightmare has come over us all. Who can I blame for this?” He glanced around the room, his eyes sharp, hawklike. “Nobody. I can’t simply announce we have visitors from other worlds, because people will want to see the visitors. After the Australian release, what we have here can only demoralize and confuse.”

“I’m not sure how long we can keep this a secret,” McClennan said.

“How can we hold this back from our people?” Crockerman seemed not to have heard anybody but the Guest. He stood and approached the glass, grimly concentrating on the Guest. “You’ve brought us the worst possible news. You say there’s nothing we can do. Your…civilization…must have been more advanced than ours. It died. This is a terrible message to bring. Why did you bother at all?”

“On some worlds, the contest might have been more equal,” the Guest said. “I am tired. I do not have much more time.”

General Fulton spoke in an undertone with McClennan and Rotterjack. Rotterjack approached the President and put a hand on his shoulder. “Mr. President, we are not the experts here. We can’t ask the right questions, and clearly there isn’t much time remaining. We should get out of the way and let the scientists do their work.”

Crockerman nodded, took a deep breath, and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, he seemed more composed. “Gentlemen, David is correct. Please get on with it. I’d like to speak to all of you before we go out to the site. Just one last question.” He turned back to the Guest. “Do you believe in God?”

Without a moment’s hesitation, the Guest replied, “We believe in punishment.”

Crockerman was visibly shaken. Mouth open slightly, he glanced at Harry and Arthur, then left the room on trembling legs, with McClennan, Rotterjack, and General Fulton following.

“What do you mean by that?” Harry asked after the door had closed. “Please expand on what you just said.”

“Detail is unimportant,” the Guest said. “The death of a world is judgment of its inadequacy. Death removes the unnecessary and the false. No more talk now. Rest.”

11

Bad news. Bad news.

Edward awoke from his dreaming doze and blinked at the off-white ceiling. He felt as if somebody very important to him had died. It took him a moment to orient to reality.

He had had a dream he couldn’t remember clearly now. His mind shuffled palm leaves over the sand to hide the tracks of the subconscious at play.

The duty officer had told them an hour before that nobody was sick, and no biologicals had been discovered in their blood or anywhere else. Not even on the Guest, which seemed as pure as the driven snow. Odd, that.

In any ecology Edward Shaw had heard of, which meant any Earth ecology, living things were always accompanied by parasitic or symbiotic organisms. On the skin, in the gut, within the bloodstream. Perhaps ecologies differed on other worlds. Perhaps the Guest’s people — wherever they came from — had advanced to the point of purity: only the primaries, the smart folks, left alive; no more little mutating beasties to cause illness.

Edward sat up and drew himself a glass of water from the lavatory sink. As he sipped, his eyes wandered to the window and the curtain beyond. Slowly but surely, he was losing the old Edward Shaw, and finding a new one: an ambiguous fellow, angry but not overtly so, afraid but not showing his fear, deeply pessimistic.

And then he remembered his dream.

He had been at his own funeral. The casket had been open and somebody had made a mistake, because within the box was the Guest. The minister, presiding in a purple robe with a huge medallion on his chest, had touched Edward on the shoulder and whispered into his ear,”This is Bad News indeed, don’t you think?”

He had never had dreams like that before.

The intercom signaled and he shouted,”No! Go away. I’m fine. Just go away. I’m not sick. I’m not dying.”

“That’s okay, Mr. Shaw.” It was Eunice, the slender black duty officer who seemed most sympathetic to Edward. “You go ahead and let it out if you want. I can’t shut off the tapes, but I’ll shut down my speaker for a while if you wish.”

Edward sobered immediately. “I’m all right, Eunice. Really. Just need to know when we’re going to get out of here.”

“I don’t know that myself, Mr. Shaw.”

“Right. I don’t blame you.” And he didn’t. Not Eunice, not the other duty officers, not the doctors or the scientists who had spoken to him. Not even Harry Feinman or Arthur Gordon. The tears were turning to laughter he could barely suppress.

“Still all right, Mr. Shaw?” Eunice asked.

“I’m a victim of coicumstance,’” Edward quoted Curly, the plump and shave-pated member of the Three Stooges. He punched the intercom button for Minelli’s room. When Minelli answered, Edward imitated Curly again, and Minelli did a perfect ”Whoop hoop ooop.” Reslaw joined in, and Stella laughed, until they sounded like a laboratory full of chimpanzees. And that was what they became, chittering and eeking and stomping the floor. “Hey, I’m scratching my armpits,” Minelli said. “I really am. Eunice will vouch for me. Maybe we can get the sympathy of Friends of the Animals or something.”

“Friends of Geologists,” Reslaw said.

“Friends of Liberal Businesswomen,” Stella added.

“Come on, you guys,” Eunice said.

At eight o’clock in the evening, Edward glanced at his face in the shaving mirror over the sink. “Here comes the Prez,” he murmured. “I won’t even vote for the man, but I’m primping like a schoolgirl.” They wouldn’t be shaking hands. Yet the President would look in upon Shaw and Minelli and Reslaw and Morgan, would see them — and that was enough. Edward smiled grimly, then checked his teeth for food specks.

12

The Secretary of Defense, Otto Lehrman, arrived at seven-fifteen. After Crockerman had had a half hour alone with him and Rotterjack — sufficient time to gather his wits, Arthur surmised — they entered the laboratory around which the sealed cubicles were arranged, and onto which their windows all opened, a larger version of the central complex that held the Guest. Colonel Tuan Anh Phan stood before the isolation chambers’ control board.

Crockerman shook the doctor’s hand and slowly surveyed the laboratory. “One more civilian witness and they’d have had to double up with the military, right?” he asked Phan.

“Yes, sir,” Phan said. “We did not plan to incarcerate entire towns.” This was evidently a struggling attempt at humor, but the President was not in a bantering mood.

“Actually,” Crockerman said, “this isn’t funny in the least.”

“No, sir,” Phan said, crestfallen.

Arthur came to his rescue. “We couldn’t ask for better facilities, Mr. President,” he said. Crockerman had been behaving strangely since the meeting with the Guest. Arthur was worried; that conversation had upset them all on a deep psychological level, but Crockerman seemed to have taken it particularly to heart.

“Can they hear us?” Crockerman asked, nodding at the four steel shutters.

“Not yet, sir,” Phan said.

“Good. I’d like to get my thoughts in order, especially before I talk to Mrs. Morgan’s daughter. Otto, Mr. Lehrman here, was delayed by his duties in Europe, but Mr. Rotterjack has briefed him on what we’ve already heard.”

Lehrman took a shallow but obvious breath and nodded. Arthur had heard many things about Lehrman — his rise from microchip magnate to head of the President’s Industrial Relations Council, and only two months before, his confirmation as Secretary of Defense, replacing Hampton’s more hawkish appointee. He appeared to be a philosophical twin to Crockerman.

“I have a question for Mr. Gordon,” Lehrman said. He looked at Arthur and Harry, standing beside each other near the lab’s hooded microbiologicals workbench.

“Ask away,” Arthur said.

“When are you going to authorize a military investigation of the Furnace?”

“I don’t know,” Arthur said.

“That’s your area, Arthur,” the President said in an undertone. “You make the decision.”

“Nobody has put the issue to me before now,” Arthur said. “What sort of investigation did you have in mind?”

“I’d like to find the site’s weaknesses.”

“We don’t even know what it is,” Harry said.

Lehrman shook his head. “Everybody’s guessing it’s a disguised spaceship. Do you disagree?”

“I don’t agree or disagree. I simply don’t know,” Harry replied.

“Gentlemen,” Arthur said, “I think this isn’t quite the time. We should discuss this after the President has talked with the four witnesses and we’ve all seen the site together.”

Lehrman conceded this with a nod and gestured for them to continue. General Fulton entered the lab carrying a thick sheaf of papers in a manila folder and sat to one side, saying nothing.

“All right,” Crockerman said. “Let’s have a look at them.”

Eunice’s voice came over Edward’s intercom speaker: “Folks, you’re going to meet the President now.” With a hollow humming noise, the window cover slid down into the wall, revealing a transparent panel about two meters wide and one high. Through the thick double layers of glass, Edward saw President Crockerman, two men he didn’t recognize, and several other faces he knew vaguely from television.

“Excuse me for intruding, gentlemen and Ms. Morgan,” Crockerman said, bowing slightly. “I believe we know each other, even if we haven’t been introduced formally. This is Mr. Lehrman, my Secretary of Defense, and this is Mr. Rotterjack, my science advisor. Have you met Arthur Gordon and Harry Feinman? No? They’re in charge of the presidential task force investigating what you’ve discovered. I suspect you have a few complaints to pass on to me.”

“Pleased to meet you, sir,” Minelli said. Crockerman changed his angle. Edward realized they were all facing into the central laboratory. In the farthest window, at the opposite end of the curved wall, he could see Stella Morgan, face pale in the fluorescent lighting.

“I’d shake your hands if I could. This has been hard on all concerned, but especially hard on you.”

Edward mumbled something in agreement. “We don’t know what our situation is, Mr. President.”

“Well, I’ve been told you’re in no danger. You don’t have any…ah, space germs. I’ll level with you, in fact — you’re probably here more for security reasons than for your health.”

Edward could see why Crockerman was called the most charming of presidents since Ronald Reagan. His combination of dignified good looks and open manner — however illusory the latter was — might have made even Edward feel better.

“We’ve been worried about our families,” Stella said.

“I believe they’ve been informed that you are safe,” Crockerman said. “Haven’t they, General Fulton?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Ms. Morgan’s mother has been giving us fits, however,” Crockerman said.

“Good,” was Stella’s only comment.

“Mr. Shaw, we’ve also informed the University of Texas about you and your students.”

“We’re assistant professors, not students, Mr. President,” Reslaw said. “I haven’t received any mail from my family. Can you tell me why?”

Crockerman looked to Fulton for an answer. “You haven’t been sent any,” Fulton said. “We have no control over that.”

“I just wanted to stop by and tell you that you haven’t been forgotten, and you won’t be locked away forever. Colonel Phan informs me that if no germs are discovered within a few more weeks, there will be no reason to keep you here. And by that time…well, it’s difficult to say what will be secret and what won’t be.”

Harry glanced at Arthur, one eyebrow lifted.

“I have a question, sir,” Edward said.

“Yes?”

“The creature we found—”

“We’re calling it a Guest, you know,” Crockerman interrupted with a weak smile.

“Yes, sir. It said it had bad news. What did it mean by that? Have you communicated with it?”

Crockerman’s face became ashen. “I’m afraid I’m not allowed to tell you what’s happening with the Guest. That’s irritating, I know, but even I have to dance to the tune when the fiddler plays. Now I have a question for you. You were the first to find the rock, the cinder cone. What first struck you as odd about it? I need impressions.”

“Edward thought it was odd before we did,” Minelli said.

“I’ve never seen it,” Stella added.

“Mr. Shaw, what struck you most?”

“That it wasn’t on our maps, I guess,” Edward answered. “And after that, it was…barren. It looked new. No plants, no insects, no graffiti new or old. No beer cans.”

“No beer cans,” Crockerman said, nodding. “Thank you. Ms. Morgan, I plan on seeing your mother sometime soon. May I take any personal message to her? Something uncontroversial, of course.”

“No, thank you,” Stella said. Atta woman, Edward thought.

“You’ve given me something to think about,” Crockerman said after a moment’s silence. “How strong Americans are. I hope that doesn’t sound trite or political. I mean it. I need to think we’re strong right now. That’s very important to me. Thank you.” He waved at them, and turned to leave the laboratory. The curtains hummed back into place.

13

The sky over Death Valley was a leaden gray and the air still carried the chill of morning. The presidential helicopter landed at the temporary base set up by the Army three miles from the false cinder cone. Two four-wheel-drive trucks met the party and drove them slowly over the paved roads and unpaved Jeep trails, and then off the trails, lurching and growling around creosote bushes and mesquite and over salt grass, sand, chunks of lava, and desert-varnished rocks. The false cinder cone loomed a hundred yards beyond their stopping point, the edge of a bone-white desert wash that had been filled with water just ten days before. The perimeter of the mound was cordoned off by Army troops supervised by Lieutenant Colonel Albert Rogers from Army Intelligence. Rogers, short, wiry, swarthy-skinned, and gentle-eyed, met the presidential party of eight, including Gordon and Feinman, at the cordon perimeter.

“We’ve had no activity,” he reported. “We have our surveillance truck on the other side now, and a survey team on the top. There’s been no radiation of any sort beyond the kind of signature we expect from sun-heated rock. We’ve inserted sensors on poles up into the hole the three geologists found, but we haven’t sent anybody past the bend. Give us the order, and we will.”

“I appreciate your eagerness, Colonel,” Otto Lehrman said. “I appreciate your caution and discipline more.”

The President approached the cinder cone’s tall black north face, accompanied by two Secret Service agents. The Marine officer who carried the “football” — presidential wartime codes and emergency communications system in a briefcase — stayed by the truck.

Rotterjack dropped back a few paces to snap a series of pictures with a Hasselblad. Crockerman ignored him. The President seemed to ignore everybody and everything but the rock. Arthur worried about the expression on his face; tense yet slightly dreamy. A man informed of a death in the immediate family, Arthur thought.

“This is where the alien was found,” Colonel Rogers explained, pointing to a sandy depression in the shadow of a lava overhang. Crockerman walked around a big lava boulder and knelt beside the depression. He reached out to touch the sand, still marked by the Guest’s movements, but Arthur restrained him. “We’re still nervous about biologicals,” he explained.

“The four civilians,” Crockerman said, not completing his thought. “I met Stella Morgan’s granddaddy thirty years ago in Washington,” he mused. “A real country gentleman. Tough as nails, smart as a whip. I’d like to meet Bernice Morgan. Maybe I could reassure her…Can we arrange something for tomorrow?”

“We go to Furnace Creek Resort, after this, and tomorrow you’re meeting with General Young and Admiral Xavier.” Rotterjack looked over the President’s schedule. “That’s going to fill most of the morning. We’re to have you back at Vandenberg and aboard the Bird at two p.m.”

“Make a slot for Bernice Morgan,” Crockerman ordered. “No more arguments.”

“Yes, sir,” Rotterjack said, pulling out his mechanical pencil.

“They should be here with me, those three geologists,” the President said. He got to his feet and walked away from the overhang, brushing his hands on his pants. The Secret Service agents watched him closely, faces impassive. Crockerman turned to Harry, still clutching his black notebook, and then nodded at the cinder cone. “You know what my conference with Young and Xavier is all about.”

“Yes, Mr. President,” Harry said, matching Crocker-man’s steady gaze.

“They’re going to ask me if we should nuke this whole area.”

“I’m sure that’s going to be mentioned, Mr. President.”

“What do you think?”

Harry considered for a moment, eyebrows meeting. “The entire situation is an enigma to me, sir. Things don’t fit together.”

“Mr. Gordon, can we effectively retaliate against this?” He indicated the cinder cone.

“The Guest says we cannot. I tend to accept that statement for the time being, sir.”

“We keep calling him the Guest, with a capital G,” Crockerman said, coming to a halt about twenty yards from the formation, then turning to face south, examining the western curve. “How did that come about?”

“Hollywood’s absorbed just about every other name,” McClennan observed.

“Carl has been an avid watcher of television,” Crockerman explained candidly to Arthur,” before his duties made that impossible. He says it lets him keep in touch with the public pulse.”

“The name obviously evolved as a way to avoid other, more highly colored words,” McClennan said.

“The Guest told me he believes in God.”

Arthur chose not to correct the President.

“From what I understand,” Crockerman continued, his face drawn, eyes almost frantic above a forced calm, “the Guest’s world was found wanting, and eliminated.” He seemed to be searching the faces of Arthur and those nearest to him for sympathy or support. Arthur was too stunned to say anything. “If that’s the case, then the agency of our own destruction awaits us inside this mountain.”

“We must have more cooperation from Australia,” McClennan said, clenching one fist and shaking it in front of him.

“They’re telling quite a different story down there, aren’t they?” The President began walking back to the trucks. “I think I’ve seen enough. My eyes can’t squeeze truth out of rocks and sand.”

“Making tighter arrangements with Australia,” Rotterjack observed, “means telling them what we have here, and we’re not sure we can risk that yet.”

“There’s a possibility we’re not the only ones who have ‘bogeys,’” Harry said, giving the last word an almost comic emphasis.

Crockerman stopped and turned to face Harry. “Do you have any evidence for that?”

“None, sir. But we’ve asked for the NSA and some of our team to check it out.”

“How?”

“By comparing recent satellite photographs with past records.”

“More than two bogeys,” Crockerman said. “That would be something, wouldn’t it?”

14

Trevor Hicks slowed the rented white Chevrolet as he approached the small town of Shoshone — little more than a junction, according to the map. He saw a cinder-block U.S. post office flanked by tall tamarisk trees and beyond it, a stark sprawling white building housing a gas station and grocery store. On the opposite side of the highway was a coffee shop and attached to it, a spare building with neon beer advertisements in its two small square windows. A small sign spelled out “Crow Bar” in flickering light bulbs — a local tavern or pub, obviously. Hicks had always been partial to local pubs. This one, however, did not seem to be open.

He pulled into the post office’s gravel parking lot, hoping to ask someone if the coffee shop was worth a visit. He didn’t trust local American eateries any more than he liked most American beer, and he did not think the appearance of the coffee shop — or cafe, as it styled itself on an inconspicuous sign — was very encouraging.

It was almost five o’clock and the desert was already chilly. Twilight was an hour or so away and a mournful wind blew through the tamarisk trees beside the post office. His morning and afternoon had been frustrating — a rental car breakdown fifty miles outside Las Vegas, a ride in the tow truck, arranging for another car, and as a lagniappe, a heated conversation with his publisher’s publicist when he thought to call and explain his missed interview…Delay after delay. He stood near the car for a moment, wondering what sort of idiot he was, then chose the glass door on his right. As it happened, that led him into the local equivalent of a branch library — two tall shelves of books in a corner, with a child-sized reading table squatting before them. A counter stood opposite the shelves, and beyond it the furniture and apparatus — so a small plaque read — of the Charles Morgan Company. The door on the left led into a separate alcove that was the post office proper. The air of the office was institutional but friendly.

Beyond the counter, seated before an old desktop computer, was a stately woman of about seventy-five or eighty years, wearing jeans and a checked blouse, her white hair carelessly combed back. She spoke into a black phone receiver cradled between her neck and shoulder. Slowly, she swiveled on her chair to glance at Hicks, then raised one hand, requesting patience.

Hicks turned to examine the books in the library.

“No, Bonnie, not a word,” the woman said, her warm voice cracking slightly. “Not a word since the letter. I’m just about at my wits’ end, you know. Esther and Mike have quit. No. I’m doing fine, but things are kind of sliding here…”

The library held a fair selection of science books, including one of his own, an early popular work on communications satellites, long since out of date.

“It’s all crazy,” the woman said. “We used to worry about Gas Buggy, and all the radiation from the test site, and now this. They closed down our meat locker. It’s enough to scare the hell out of me. Frank came in with Tillie yesterday and they were so nice. They worried about Stella so much. Well, thank you for calling. I’ve got to start closing up now. Yes. Jack is in the warehouse and he’ll walk me down to the trailer park. Thanks. Goodbye.”

She replaced the phone and turned to Hicks. “Can I help you?”

“I didn’t mean to interrupt. I was wondering about the coffee shop across the street. Is it recommended?”

“I’m not the one to ask,” the woman said, standing.

“I’m sorry,” Hicks said politely. “Why?”

“Because I own the place,” she answered, smiling. She approached the counter and leaned on it. “I’m prejudiced. We serve good solid food there. Emphasis sometimes on the solid. You’re English, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“On your way to Las Vegas?”

“From, actually. Going to Furnace Creek.”

“Might as well turn back. Everything’s sealed up that way. The highway’s closed. They’ll just turn you around.”

“I see. Any idea what’s happening?”

“What’s your name?” the woman asked.

“Hicks. Trevor Hicks.”

“I’m Bernice Morgan. I was just talking about my daughter. She’s being held by the federal government. Nobody can tell me why. She writes to say she’s well, but she can’t say anything about where she is, and I can’t talk to her. Isn’t that crazy?”

“Yes,” Hicks said, his neck hair prickling again.

“I’ve got lawyers all over the state and in Washington trying to find out what’s going on. They might think they’re tangling with some small-town yo-yos, but they’re not. My husband was a county supervisor. My father was a state senator. And here I am, talking your ear off. Trevor Hicks.” She paused, examining him more closely. “Are you the science writer?”

“Yes, actually,” Hicks said, pleased at being recognized twice in as many days.

“What brings you out this way?”

“A hunch.”

“Mind if I ask what sort of hunch?” Clearly, Bernice Morgan, for all her warm voice and hospitable manner, was a tough-minded woman.

“I suppose it could connect with your daughter,” he said, deciding to go for broke. “I’m following a very thin trail of clues to Death Valley. Something important has happened there — important enough to draw your President to Furnace Creek Resort.”

“Maybe Esther isn’t hysterical,” Mrs. Morgan mused.

“I’m sorry?”

“My store clerk. She says some men talked about a MiG crashing in the desert.”

Hicks’s heart fell. Was that all it was, then? Some sort of unusual defection? No connection with the Great Victoria Desert?

“And Mike, he’s a young fellow who worked in our service station, he says some men came to the store in a Land Cruiser and talked to my daughter. They had something covered up in the back. Mike sneaked a look when they took it around the rear and he thought it was something green — dead-looking, he said. Then the government comes in here and sprays this awful stuff all over the inside of my meat locker, closes it off, and says we can’t use it…We lost five hundred dollars in meat. They carted it away, said it was spoiled. Said the locker was contaminated with salmonella.”

Hicks’s intuition made his skin crawl. “Where were you when this happened?”

“In Baker visiting my brother.”

Bernice Morgan gave not the slightest impression of frailty, despite her years. Nor did she appear leathery or “grizzled.” She was the last sort of person Hicks expected to find in a small American desert town. But for her manner of speech, she might have been the elderly wife of an English lord.

“How long has your daughter been missing?”

“A week and a half.”

“And you’re certain she was taken by federal authorities?”

“Air Force types, I’ve been told.”

Hicks frowned. “Have you heard of anything odd in the area — around Furnace Creek Inn, perhaps?”

“Only that it’s closed off temporarily. I called about that, and nobody knows anything. The phone service went out this afternoon.”

“Do you think that’s where your daughter is?”

“It’s a possibility, isn’t it?”

He pursed his lips.

“I don’t think they’re holding her so she can talk to the President about business. Do you?” She raised a skeptical eyebrow.

An old, battered primer-gray Ford truck pulled off the road and into the parking lot with a spray of dust and gravel. Two young men in straw cowboy hats jumped from the back, while a third boy and a heavy-paunched, bearded man with oversized wire-framed MacArthur sunglasses stepped down from the driver’s seat. They all came through the glass door. The bearded man nodded at Hicks, then faced Mrs. Morgan. “We’ve been out and back. Road’s still closed. George is out there, like Richard said, but he doesn’t know what’s going on.”

“George is one of our highway patrol boys,” Mrs. Morgan explained to Hicks.

“Ron, here, thinks his Lisa is still in Furnace Creek,” the bearded man continued. A doe-eyed, thin young man nodded wearily. “We’re going to take the plane and fly over. Find out what the hell’s going on.”

“They’ve probably got the airstrip out there closed,” Mrs. Morgan said. “I’m not sure that’s smart, Mitch.”

“Smart, hell. I never let no government folks push me around before. Kidnapping and shutting down public roads for no good reason — it’s time somebody did something.” Mitch stared pointedly at Trevor Hicks, surveying his suede jacket, slacks, and running shoes. “Mister, we haven’t met.”

Mrs. Morgan did the favor. “Mitch, this is Mr. Trevor Hicks. Mr. Hicks, Mitch Morris. He’s our maintenance man and drives the propane truck.”

“Pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. Hicks,” Morris said in a formal tone. “You’re interested in this?”

“He’s a writer,” Bernice said. “Pretty well known, too.”

“I have an idea something is happening near Furnace Creek, something important enough to bring the President here.”

“President like from the White House?”

“The same.”

“He thinks Stella might be at Furnace Creek,” Mrs. Morgan said.

“All the more reason for us to fly over there and find out,” Morris said. “Frank Forrest has his Comanche ready to go. We have room for five. Mr. Hicks, are you interested in coming with us?”

Hicks realized he was becoming much too involved. Mrs. Morgan continued her protest about the risks, but Morris paid her only polite attention. His mind was made up.

There was no other way to see what was happening in Furnace Creek. He would be stopped on the highway as everybody else had been.

“There’s too many of us here, with a pilot, already,” Hicks said.

“Benny doesn’t fly,” Morris said. “He gets terrible airsick.”

Hicks took a shallow, spasmodic breath. “All right,” he said.

“It’s not far at all. A few minutes there and back.”

“I don’t like it. Don’t do this just for Stella,” Mrs. Morgan said. “I’m still trying other ways. Don’t get foolish and …”

“No heroics, no daring rescues,” Morris assured her. “Let’s go. Mr. Hicks…?”

“Yes,” Hicks said, following them out the glass door. Mrs. Morgan laid her hands on the counter top and watched them grimly as they climbed into the truck, Benny giving up his shotgun seat to Hicks and sitting in the back.

He had never done anything so stupid in his life. The Piper Comanche’s wheels pulled free of the runway and the twin-engine aircraft leaped into the air, leaving the weathered asphalt landing strip and corrugated metal hangar far behind and below.

Mitch Morris turned to regard Hicks and Ron Flagg in the back seat. Frank Forrest, in his mid-sixties and as burly as Morris, banked the plane sharply and brought them around to an easterly direction, then banked again before they had time to catch their breath. Morris hung on to Forrest’s seat with a huge, callused hand. “You all right?” he asked Hicks, with barely a glance at Ron.

“Fine,” Hicks said, swallowing an anonymous something in his gullet.

“You, Ron?”

“Ain’t flown much,” Flagg said, his skin pale and damp.

“Frank’s an expert. Flew Sabres during the war. Korean War. His daddy flew Buffaloes at Midway. That’s where he died, wasn’t it, Frank?”

“Goddamn planes were flying coffins,” Forrest said.

Hicks felt the Comanche shudder in an updraft from the low hills below. They were flying under five hundred feet. A cinder-covered hill near Shoshone passed below them with breathtaking closeness.

“I hope you don’t think we’re impetuous,” Morris said.

“Perish the idea,” Hicks returned, concentrating on his stomach.

“We owe a lot to Mrs. Morgan. We like Stella just fine, and Ron’s Lisa is a great girl. We want to make sure they’re okay, wherever they are. Not like they’ve been spirited off to the Nevada test site to be used as guinea pigs or something, y’know?”

Whether Morris was suggesting this or dismissing it as a possibility, Hicks couldn’t decide.

“So what do you think they’ve got in Furnace Creek?” Forrest asked. “Mike the garage boy says they’ve got a dead Russian pilot. That why you’re here — to scoop everybody on a dead Russian pilot?”

“I don’t think that’s what they have,” Hicks said.

“So what is it, then? What would bring ol’ Crockerman out here?”

Hicks thought for a moment about the possible unpleasant effects of discussing visitors from space with these men. He could almost sympathize with any government efforts to keep such things secret. Yet Australia was loaded with men like these: tough, resourceful, valiant, but not particularly imaginative or brilliant. Why would Australia trust public reaction, and not the United States?

“I’m not sure,” he said. “I’ve come out here on a hunch, pure and simple.”

“Hunches are never pure and simple,” Forrest shot back. “You’re a smart man. You’ve come out here for a reason.”

“Mrs. Morgan seems to think you’re important,” Morris said.

“Well…”

“You a doctor?” Flagg asked, looking as if he might need some medical assistance.

“I’m a writer. I have a Ph.D. in biological science, but I’m not an M.D.”

“We get all sorts of Ph.D.’s in Shoshone,” Morris said. “Geologists, archaeologists, ethnologists — study Indians, you know. Sometimes they come into the Crow Bar and sit down and we get into some real interesting conversations. We’re not just a bunch of desert rats.”

“Didn’t think you were,” Hicks responded. Oh?

“All right. Frank?”

“Coming up on Furnace Creek shortly.”

Hicks looked through the side window and saw tan and white sand and patches of scrub, HO-scale dirt roads and tracks. Then he saw the highway. Forrest banked the Comanche again. Hicks’s stomach kept its discipline, but Flagg moaned. “You got a bag?” he asked. “Please.”

“You can keep it down,” Morris assured him. “Hold up on the aerobatics, Frank.”

“There it is,” Forrest said. He inclined the plane so Hicks was staring practically straight down at a cluster of buildings spread among rust-brown rocks, copses of green trees and low hills. He could make out a golf course spreading lush green against the waste, a tiny airstrip and an asphalt parking lot filled with dark cars and trucks, and rising from the parking lot, a green two-seat Army Cobra helicopter.

“Shit,” Forrest said, pulling back sharply on the wheel. The plane’s engines screamed and the Comanche swung around like a leaf in a strong wind.

The helicopter intercepted them and kept pace with the Comanche no matter what twists and turns Forrest executed. Flagg threw up and his vomit struck the side windows and Hicks and seemed to have a life of its own, hobbling about between surfaces and air. Hicks wiped it away frantically with his hands. Morris yelled and cursed.

The Cobra quickly outmaneuvered them. A uniformed and helmeted copilot in the rear seat gestured for them to land.

“Where’s your radio?” Hicks demanded. “Turn it on. Let them talk with us.”

“Hell no,” Forrest said. “I’d have to acknowledge—”

“Goddammit, Frank, they’ll shoot us down if you don’t go where he says,” Morris said, beard curling up and then back with the aircraft’s motion.

The helicopter’s copilot meticulously pointed down to the road below. Green cars and camouflaged trucks raced along the highway.

“We’d better land,” Forrest agreed. He peeled away from the helicopter, descended with astonishing speed, pitched his Comanche nose-high, and brought the aircraft down with at least four hard jounces on the gray asphalt airstrip.

Quietly heaving without issue, Hicks tried to control himself. By the time they were surrounded by what he took to be Secret Service men — in gray suits and brown — and military police in dark blue uniforms, he had his nausea largely under control. Flagg had bumped his head and lay stunned in his seat.

“God damn,” Morris said, none the worse for wear.

15

Arthur, stooped even more than usual, walked down the inn’s flagstoned hallway, barely glancing at the adobe walls and black, white, and gray Navajo carpets hung above antique credenzas. He knocked on Harry’s door and stepped back, hands in pockets. Harry opened the door and swung his arm impatiently for him to come in. Then he returned to the bathroom to finish shaving. They were all joining the President for dinner in the resort’s spacious dining room within the hour.

“He’s not taking it well,” Arthur said.

“Crockerman? What did you expect.”

“Better than this.”

“We’re all staring down the barrel of a gun.”

Arthur glanced up at the bright open doorway of the bathroom. “How are you feeling?”

Harry came out lifting one ear to poke the razor beneath it, his face lined with remnants of shaving cream. “Well enough,” he said. “I have to leave in two days for treatment. Warned you.”

Arthur shook his head. “No problem. It’s scheduled. The President’s leaving day after tomorrow. Tomorrow he confers with Xavier and Young.”

“What’s next?”

“Negotiations with the Australians. They show us theirs, we show them ours.”

“Then what?”

Arthur shrugged. “Maybe our bogey is a liar.”

“If you ask me,” Harry said, “the—”

“I know. The whole thing stinks.”

“But Crockerman’s swallowed the message. It’s working on him. Young and Xavier will have seen the site…Ah, Lord.” Harry wiped his face with a towel. “This is not nearly as much fun as I thought it would be. Isn’t it a bitch? Life is always a bitch. We were so excited. Now it’s a nightmare.”

Arthur raised his hand. “Guess who was captured riding an airplane with three desert types?”

Harry blinked. “How the hell should I know?”

“Trevor Hicks.”

Harry stared. “You’re not serious.”

“The President is reading his novel now, which is trendy enough, and not quite pure coincidence. He obviously felt it was research material. The three desert types have been returned to Shoshone with a stiff reprimand and the loss of their plane and license. Hicks has been invited to dinner tonight.”

“That’s insane,” Harry said, turning off the bathroom light and picking up his dress shirt from the corner of the bed. “He’s a journalist.”

“Crockerman wants to talk things over with him. Get a second opinion.”

“He has a hundred opinions all around him.”

“I last met Hicks,” Arthur mused, “three years ago, at Cornell.”

“I’ve never met him,” Harry said. “I suppose I’d like to.”

“Now’s your chance.”

Arthur left his friend’s room a few minutes later, feeling worse than ever. He could not shake the sensibilities of a disappointed child. This had been a wonderful early Christmas present, bright and filled with hope for an unimaginable future, a future of humans interacting with other intelligences. Now, by Christmastime, the Earth might not even exist.

He took a deep breath and squared his shoulders, not for the first time hoping by physical effort to shake the gloom.

The waitresses and cooks behind the white walls and copper-paneled pillars of the dining room had come up with a formal repast of prime rib, wild rice, and Caesar salad, the salad greens a trifle wilted because of the halt in deliveries, but all else quite acceptable. Around a rectangular table assembled from four smaller tables sat the principals of the action at the “Furnace,” plus Trevor Hicks, who acted as if he were taking it all in stride.

I have stumbled into a jackpot, he thought as the President and the Secretary of Defense entered and took their seats. Two Secret Service agents ate at a small table near the doorway.

Crockerman nodded cordially at Hicks, seated beside the President and across from Lehrman.

“These people have really done a fine job, haven’t they?” the President said after the main course had been served and the dishes cleared. By a kind of silent and mutual decree, all talk during dinner had been of trivial things. Now coffee was brought out in an old, dented silver service, poured into the owner’s personal Wedgwood bone china cups, and served around the long table. Harry declined. Arthur loaded his coffee with two cubes of sugar.

“So you are acquainted with Mr. Feinman and Mr. Gordon,” Crockerman said as they sat back with cups in hand.

“I know them by reputation, and met Mr. Gordon once when he was in command of BETC,” Hicks said. He smiled and nodded at Arthur as if for the first time this evening.

“I’m sure our people have asked you what moved you to come to Furnace Creek Inn.”

“It’s an ill-kept secret that something extraordinary is happening here,” Hicks said. “I was working on a hunch.”

The President gave another of his weak, almost discouraged smiles, and shook his head.

“I am amazed I was brought here,” Hicks continued, “after the way we were initially treated. And I am truly astounded to find you here, Mr. President, even though I had deduced you would be, by a chain of reasoning I’ve already described to your Army and Secret Service agents. Let us say, I am astounded to find my hunch proving out. What is happening here?”

“I’m not sure we can tell you that. I’m not sure why I’ve invited you to dinner, Mr. Hicks, and no doubt the other gentlemen here are even more unsure than I. Mr. Gordon? Do you object to the presence of a writer, a reporter?”

“I am curious. I do not object.”

“Because I think we are all out of our depth,” Crocker-man said. “I would like to solicit outside opinions.”

Harry winked without humor at Arthur.

“I am in the dark, sir,” Hicks said.

“Why do you think we are here?”

“I have heard — never mind how, I will not tell — that there is a bogey here. I presume it has something to do with the Australian discovery in the Great Victoria Desert.”

McClennan shaded his eyes with one hand and shook his head. “The unscrambled transmission from Air Force One. This has happened before. They should all be shot.”

Crockerman dismissed this with a wave of his hand. He pulled a cigar from his pocket, then asked by an inclination of eyebrows whether anyone would share his vice. Politely, all around the table declined. He clipped the cigar and lit it with an antique silver Zippo. “I trust you’ve been cleared to enter military bases and research laboratories.”

“Yes,” Hicks said.

“You’re not a United States citizen, however.”

“No, Mr. President.”

“Is he a security risk, Carl?” Crockerman asked McClennan.

The national security advisor shook his head, lips pursed. “Other than being a foreign national, he’s got a good record.”

Lehrman leaned forward and said, “Mr. President, I believe this conversation should end now. Mr. Hicks has no formal clearance, and—”

“Dammit, Otto, he’s an intelligent man. I’m interested in his opinion.”

“Sir, we can find and clear all sorts of experts for you to talk to,” McClennan said. “This sort of thing is counterproductive.”

Crockerman slowly looked up at McClennan, lips drawn tight. “How much time do we have until this machine starts dismantling the Earth?”

McClennan’s face reddened. “Nobody knows, Mr. President,” he said.

Hicks stiffened his back and glanced around the table. “Excuse me,” he said, “but—”

“Then, Carl,” Crockerman continued, “isn’t the time-consuming, formal way of doing things counterproductive?”

McClennan stared pleadingly at Lehrman. The Defense Secretary held up both hands. “You’re the boss, sir,” he said.

“Within limits, I am,” Crockerman affirmed peevishly. “I have chosen to bring Mr. Hicks into our confidence.”

“Mr. Hicks, if I may say so, is a media celebrity,” Rotterjack said. “He has done no research, and his qualifications are purely as a journalist and a writer. I am amazed, sir, that you would extend this kind of privilege to a journalist.”

Hicks, eyes narrow, said nothing. The President’s gentle, dreaming smile returned.

“Are you finished, David?”

“I may very well be, sir. I agree with Carl and Otto. This is highly irregular and dangerous.”

“I asked if you were finished.”

“Yes.”

“Then allow me to repeat myself. I have decided to take Mr. Hicks into our confidence. I assume his security clearance will be processed immediately?”

McClennan did not meet the President’s eyes. “I’ll get it started.”

“Fine. Mr. Gordon, Mr. Feinman, I am not expressing any doubts about your capabilities. Do you object to Mr. Hicks?”

“No, sir,” Arthur said.

“I have nothing against journalists or writers,” Harry said. “However wrong Mr. Hicks’s novel has turned out to be.”

“Fine.” Crockerman mused for a moment, then nodded and said, “I believed we turned down Arthur’s request for a Mr. Dupres, simply because he is a foreign national. I hope none of you mind a little inconsistency now…

“We do indeed have a bogey, Mr. Hicks. It released an extraterrestrial visitor we call the Guest. The Guest is a living being, not a robot or a machine, and it tells us it rode a spaceship from its world to this one. But — “ The President told Hicks most of the story, including his version of the Guest’s dire warning. Again, nobody corrected him.

Hicks listened intently, his face white. When Crockerman finished, puffing at the cigar and blowing out an expanding globule of smoke, Hicks leaned forward, placing his elbows on the table. “I’ll be damned,” he said, his voice low and deliberately casual.

“So will we all if we don’t decide what to do, and soon,” Crockerman said. All others kept their counsel. This was the President’s show, and few if any were happy with it.

“You’re speaking with the Australians. They know about this, of course,” Hicks said.

“They haven’t been told yet,” Crockerman said. “We’re worried about the effect the news might have on our people if it leaks.”

“Of course,” Hicks said. “I … don’t know quite what to make of it myself. I seemed to have stepped into a real hornet’s nest, haven’t I?”

Crockerman stubbed out his cigar half smoked. “I’ll be returning to Washington tomorrow morning. Mr. Hicks, I’d like you to come with me. Mr. Gordon, you also. Mr. Feinman, I understand you won’t be able to accompany us. You have an important medical appointment in Los Angeles.”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

“Then if you will, after your treatment — and my sincere good wishes go with you there — I would like you to recommend a group of scientists to meet with the Guest, conduct further interrogations — that doesn’t sound good, does it? Ask more questions. This team will be our liaison with the Australian scientists. Carl, I’d like you to arrange with the Australians for one of their investigators to be flown to Vandenberg and sit in on these sessions.”

“Are we sharing with the Australians, sir?” Rotterjack asked.

“I think that’s the only rational approach.”

“And if they’re reluctant to go along with our stance on security?”

“We’ll climb that wall when we come to it.”

A tired-looking young man in a gray suit entered the dining hall and approached Rotterjack. He handed the science advisor a slip of paper and stood back, eyes darting nervously around the table. Rotterjack read the paper, the lines around his mouth and on his forehead deepening.

“Colonel Phan sends us a message,” he said. “The Guest died at eighteen hundred hours this evening. Phan is conducting an autopsy at midnight. Mr. Feinman and Mr. Gordon are requested to attend.”

Silence around the table.

“Mr. Gordon, you are free to do so, and then please come to Washington as soon as you can,” Crockerman said. He put his napkin next to his plate, backed his chair • away from the head of the table, and stood. He appeared very old in the dining room’s subdued light. “I’m retiring early tonight. This day has been exhausting, and there is much to think about. David, Carl, please make sure Mr. Hicks is comfortable.”

“Yes, sir,” McClennan said.

“And Carl, make sure the staff here realizes how much we appreciate their service and the hardship.”

“Yes, sir.”

AAP/UKNet, Octobers, 1996; Woomera, Local Church of New Australia:

The Reverend Brian Caldecott has proclaimed the Australian extraterrestrials to be “patent frauds.” Caldecott, long known for his fiery harangues against all forms of government, and for leading his disciples in a return to “the Garden of Eden,” which he claims was once located near Alice Springs, came to Woomera in a caravan of thirty white Mercedes-Benzes to hold a tent rally this evening. “These ‘aliens’ are the Country Party’s attempt to mislead the citizens of the world, and to make the Australian Government, under Prime Minister Stanley Miller, the center of a world government, which I of course deplore.” Caldecott’s crusade suffered a public relations setback last year when it was discovered he was married to three women. The Church of New Australia promptly declared bigamy to be a religious principle, stirring a legal stew as yet unsettled.