I had gone back to school. They had reorganized the State University system and you could get study credits for working on a campus reclamation team, saving and preserving the state of human knowledge as it existed before the plagues. It seemed in those first hectic months that everyone was an official of some kind or other. I even held a title or two. For a while, I was Western Regional Director of the Fantasy Programmers' Association-I only did it because the president of the organization insisted. She said I owed it to my father's memory as an author. I said, "That's hitting below the belt, Mom," but I took the job. My sole responsibility was to sit down with a lawyer and witness a stack of documents. We were claiming the copyrights of those authors who had not survived and for whom no surviving kin could be located. The organization was becoming the collective executor of a lost art form, because no one had the time for large-scale fantasy games anymore.

Halfway through the spring semester, I was drafted-really drafted, not labor-requisitioned.

The army was one of the few institutions that was structured to cope with massive losses of manpower without loss of structure; its skills were basic, widespread and nonspecialized. Therefore, it was the army that managed the process of survival. The army reestablished communications and maintained them. The army took charge of resources and utilities, protecting and allocating them until local governments were again able to assume the responsibilities of control. The army distributed food and clothing and medical aid. The army contained the plague districts until decontamination teams could be sent in-and as ugly as that latter task was, they handled it with as much compassion as was possible under the circumstances. It was the army that carried the country through the worst of it.

But that wasn't the army that I was drafted into.

Let me say this: I hadn't believed in Chtorrans any more than anybody else.

Nobody I knew had ever seen a Chtorran. No reputable authority had ever come forward with any proof more solid than a blurred photo, and the whole thing sounded like another Loch Ness monster or Bigfoot or Yeti. If anyone in the government knew anything, they weren't saying-only that the reports were "under investigation."

"Actually, the truth should be obvious," one of the coordinators-they didn't call them instructors if they didn't have a degree -at the university had said. "It's the technique of the `big lie' all over again. By creating the threat of an enemy from outer space, we get to be territorial. We'll be so busy defending our turf, we won't have time to feel despair. That kind of thing is the perfect distraction with which to rebuild the morale of the country.

That was his theory. Everybody had an opinion-everybody always does.

And then my draft notice arrived. Almost two years late, but still just as binding. Congress had amended the draft act just for us survivors.

I appealed, of course. So they gave me a special classification. "Civilian Personnel, Attached." They were doing that a lot.

I was still in the army

-and then Duke shot a little girl. And I knew the Chtorrans were real.

The human race, what there was left of us, was at war with invaders from space. And I was one of the few people who knew it. The rest of them didn't believe it-and they wouldn't believe it until the day the Chtorrans moved into their towns and started eating.

Like Show Low, Arizona.

TEN

WE LEFT the jeeps at an abandoned Texaco station and hiked across the hills-and that flamethrower was heavy. According to the specifications in the manual, fully loaded and charged, tanks and all, it should have weighed no more than 19.64 kilosbut somewhere along the way we lost the decimal point, and Duke wouldn't let me go back and look for it.

So I shut up and climbed.

Eventually-even with Tillie the Ten-Ton Torch on my back -we reached the valley where we had spotted the worms less than a week before. Duke's timing was just right; we arrived at the hottest part of the day, about two in the afternoon. The sweat had turned the inside of my clothing clammy, and the harness for the torch was already chafing.

The sun was a yellow glare in a glassy sky, but the valley seemed dark and still. The grass was brown and dessicated and there was a light piney haze hanging over the woods; it looked like smog, but there hadn't been any smog since the plagues. This grayishblue haze was only natural hydrocarbons, a byproduct of the trees' own breathing. Just looking at it I could feel the pressure in my lungs.

The plan was simple: Shorty and his team would go down on the right flank, Larry and his would take the left, Duke would take the center. I was with Duke's squad.

We waited on the crest of the ridge while Shorty and Larry moved to their positions with their men. Meanwhile, Duke studied the Chtorran igloo. There was no sign of life; but then we hadn't expected any, didn't want any. If we had guessed correctly, all three of the worms would be lying torpid within.

When the binoculars were passed to me, I studied the corral in particular. There weren't any humans in it, but there was something-no, there were a lot of somethings. They were black and shiny, and covered the ground like a lumpy carpet. They were heaving and shifting restlessly, but what they were I couldn't make out at this distance.

Shorty signaled then that he was did Larry.

"Okay," said Duke. "Let's go."

My stomach lurched in response. This was it. I switched on my helmet camera, hefted the torch and moved. From this moment on, everything I saw and everything I heard would be recorded for the log. "Remember," Duke had said, "don't look down if you have to take a leak-or you'll never hear the end of it."

We topped the ridge without any attempt to conceal ourselves and started moving down the slope. I suddenly felt very naked and alone. My heart was thudding in my chest. "Oh boy . . ." I said. It came out a croak.

And then remembered the recorder! I caught myself, took three deep breaths and followed Duke. Was anybody else this scared? They didn't show it. They looked grim.

This side of the valley was rocky and treeless; it was the other side that was dangerous. Duke signaled and I stopped. We waited for the others to take the lead. Count to ten. Another signal and we advanced. We were going leapfrog fashion; two men would move while the other two kept lookout, then the first two would watch while the second two advanced. All three groups moved forward this way. I kept my torch charged and ready; so did Duke, but the climb down the hill was slow and uneventful. And painful.

Nothing moved in the woods opposite. Nothing moved in the valley. And certainly nothing moved near the igloo-we watched, ready, and a moment later so that the hardest. Everything was still. We approached cautiously, three groups of four men each, spaced about a hundred meters apart.

Where the ground leveled off, we paused. Duke sniffed the air and studied the forest beyond the chunky dome. Nothing. Still, he looked worried.

He motioned Larry's team forward. They had the Mobe IV with them-they called it "Shlep." The dry grass crunched under its treads. We waited till they were about a hundred meters forward, then followed. After a bit, Shorty and his men took up their position to the rear.

It seemed to me that the three groups were spread too far apart. Maybe Duke thought he was being careful by having us stretched across more territory; it'd be harder for the worms to overpower or surprise us. On the other hand, though, maybe he was being a little reckless too. Our combined torch ranges overlapped, but not by very much; we couldn't come to each other's aid as fast.