The blackened blotch that marked Swelk's landing site dominated the view eastward from Krieger Ridge. Kyle had paced out the scar, and it was fifty yards wide at its narrowest. The only visible irregularities at the opposite end of the valley were three reddish patches that more suggested than presented themselves. Grass didn't grow well in those spots, and the clay-tinted earth peeked through.
In the Midwest, where Kyle had grown up, soil was black. Years after settling in Virginia, its red soil sometimes still caught his eye. These particular red areas, which together defined an acute isosceles triangle, had lodged themselves in his subconscious: they marked the landing site of the second F'thk lifeboat, that had followed Swelk. The three landing skids had borne the entire weight of the lifeboat, tamping down the ground underneath.
Kyle tore his eyes away from the photographic blow-up of the valley near his home. The time for speculation was past. It was time instead to see if he were imagining things.
Hammond Matthews jotted numbers onto a whiteboard. His annual winter beard, begun at Thanksgiving, was almost neat. By Easter, when he'd next shave, he would look like a mountain man . . . except for the white socks and sandals. Past and present lab directors were alone in the eavesdropper-proof confines of the shielded radiometrics lab.
Matt finished with a John-Hancockesque flourish. "The top number is a measurement: the weight of the charred remains of Swelk's lifeboat. Middle pair of numbers: upper and lower bounds of weight estimates for the F'thk lifeboat that followed her. The estimates derive from soil compression under the marks of the landing skids, just like you suggested. Measured wreckage weight falls nicely inside the bounds of that calculation, so the approximation method seems valid." Matt pantomimed a drum roll. "Last two numbers: the same range computation for the similarly configured compression marks in the pasture in Minnesota." He didn't bother stating the obvious: these numbers were also consistent with a landing by a F'thk lifeboat.
The result was only what Kyle had expected—and yet it was shocking in its implications. He crossed the room to the insulated carafe of coffee. Even a percolator or a hot pot would interfere with the lab's sensitive instruments. He was less interested in a refill than the opportunity to face away from his collaborator and good friend. Need-to-know sucked.
"Kyle, buddy?"
"Yeah." He studied his cup.
"Compared to what we do for a living, tracing whose property your samples came from wasn't much of a challenge. Neither was running a Web search on the name Andrew Wheaton. Can you guess what I'd like to know?"
Kyle turned. "How a F'thk lifeboat could land in Minnesota two months before the mother ship arrived. What the F'thk have to do with the Wheaton family disappearances. Why the F'thk would be snatching humans."
"Yes, to all of the above, although those questions are way beyond my pay grade." Matthews retrieved a paper scroll from a file-cabinet drawer, unrolling it across a desk. It was a world map, sprinkled with hand-drawn red circles. Most of the scribbles were in the US and Russia. "No, what I'm wondering is how many of these other UFO sightings in the past year also show evidence of F'thk presence."
With its window cracked to let out steam, the safehouse bathroom was freezing. Darlene showered quickly with the water turned to full heat. She ran out of hot water within minutes.
The bathroom mirror was covered with condensation when she got out. Unfortunately, the one outlet in the bedroom she'd adopted was nowhere near its mirror. Shivering in her robe, she used her hair dryer first to clear a spot on the befogged mirror and then on her hair. She gave up on the job as soon as she achieved nonsopping wet.
Hair damp and pulled back in a pony tail, she bounded down the stairs for a mug of hot tea to wrap her hands around. Guards were talking softly on the front porch as she rounded the corner to the kitchen.
Swelk was spread-eagled on the kitchen floor, her limbs quivering.
"Again? What happened?" Her only answer was the dipping of stalks: a shrug. Why the hell weren't the agents ever around when this happened? Darlene knelt beside the alien, all thoughts of the cold forgotten. Eventually, as the twitching subsided, Darlene helped Swelk back to her feet. "What can I do?"
"I was suddenly dizzy. I do not know why." Wobbly on two limbs, Swelk braced herself with the third against a cabinet. "What can be done? Nothing like this has ever happened to me."
"Are you eating enough? Would you know if something were missing from your diet?"
"My food is fine. At least my equipment tells me so." Swelk fell silent, and seemed to withdraw. "I do not know what is happening. When I sleep, I dream of falling. When awake, I sometimes do fall.
"I wish there was some way I could help."
Swelk pointed upward. She could not get herself a drink without climbing onto the counter. It appeared she was too unsteady for the ascent. "If you would pour me a glass of water, and watch a movie with me, I would much appreciate it."
Inside what was, after all, a summer cabin, the howl of wind and the drumming of rain were loud. The storm, passing up Chesapeake Bay, was expected to become New England's first nor'easter of the season. No one had arrived at this crisis-team meeting by boat.
Whether because of the noise, or the inexplicable air of distraction from Fitzhugh and Bauer, Kyle found himself nearly shouting. "Guys, it's really quite clear-cut. We know from direct measurement what a Galactic lifeboat weighs. We know what indications it leaves behind at a landing site. There are five confirmed landing sites, each corresponding to an unexplained disappearance. The implication is that aliens kidnapped these people to figure out what makes us tick. What we're scared of. One more way to know how to push our buttons."
"Are all the sites in the US?" Britt polished his eyeglasses with his tie as he spoke.
"Yes, but that might be because we've only looked at suspected landings here. Scoping out prospects in Russia will take resources I don't have." Kyle looked pointedly at their CIA and DoD reps, but they avoided his gaze. Time again to suggest more information-sharing with the Russians? As he opened his mouth to propose it, Erin Fitzhugh's pager beeped.
"Hot shit!" yelled the CIA deputy director as she scanned the short text on the pager screen. Moments later, the general's pager burst into a short fanfare. Reading his own message, Ryan, too, broke into an out-of-character, ear-to-ear grin. They high-fived across the table.
"Good news?" asked Darlene dryly.
"Big time." Erin Fitzhugh interlaced her fingers and ostentatiously cracked her knuckles. "Big time. The Israeli Air Force just bombed the crap out of a hole deep in the Iranian desert."
Kyle's stomach lurched. Wasn't this just another step down the slippery slope to disaster? "War in the Middle East is somehow good? I thought our plan, such as it is, required keeping the visible tensions between us and the Russians."
"That's still the plan," said Bauer. "There's no chance of watching CNN out here, is there? Damn. Anyway, 'Hot shit,' as Erin so amusingly put it, is dead on. We were all but certain the Iranians had a surreptitious nuclear program. Our best evidence, though, was that they had only enough weapons-grade uranium for two or three bombs. There's radioactive fallout downwind of the air strike."
"So Iran is now probably nuke-free," Darlene filled in the blank. "With Israel's nuclear capability the world's worst-kept secret, the Iranians are much more likely to behave."
"Game, set, and match," agreed Fitzhugh.
Fine, then, it was good news (presumably cryptically conveyed) . . . but only to the extent of extinguishing one of the fuses the aliens kept trying to light. And how many deaths had even this single victory cost? "It's the Krulirim we have to stop. The landings and kidnappings all predate the F'thk broadcast announcement and the appearance of the mother ship. These landings and abductions before the arrival of the so-called F'thk . . . surely they substantiate Swelk's story."
Britt stood at a window, peering out over the Bay. The storm was receding. "Backs it up, yes. Proves it, no. You'd like me to conclude that because the F'thk arrived before we saw the mother ship that the mother ship cannot be real.
"You can't certify that the mother ship wasn't, for example, lurking behind the moon where we couldn't see it. You can't know that the mother ship didn't just arrive later than the F'thk, that the vessel we deal with wasn't a scout.
"The Israelis put out one fire for us. With good luck, and good planning, we can douse a few more." Britt turned toward the table, hands clasped behind his back. "I can tell you for a fact, the President will not sanction an action as desperate as an attack on starfaring aliens until he has absolute proof the mother ship doesn't exist . . . or absolutely no alternative."
With bad luck, they'd all soon glow in the dark. Kyle took a deep breath. "Understood. I believe there is a way to determine, once and for all, whether the mother ship is real. We'll have only one shot at the test, and—you won't like this—the experiment must involve the Russians."
As the silence stretched, he suddenly realized that Britt, Erin Fitzhugh, and Ryan Bauer were grinning. Britt gestured at Erin.
"Oh, we trust the Russians right now," she said. "Iran is a Russian client, and guess who gave us the lead to locate the Iranian nuclear-weapons factory."