“Up there,” Marty said, pointing. “It’s not doing anything now,” he protested.

“It’s awful cold out here.” Francine looked at Arthur with an unexpressed question on her face. Arthur examined the sky intently.

“There,” Marty said.

For the merest instant, a new star joined the panoply. A few seconds later, Arthur spotted another, much brighter, a couple of degrees away. The sparkles were all within a few degrees of the plane of the ecliptic. “Oh, Christ,” he muttered. “What now?”

“Is this something important?” Francine asked.

“Daddy,” Marty said nervously, glancing at his parents, alarmed by the tone of their voices.

“I don’t know. I don’t think so. Maybe it’s a meteor shower.” But the sparkles were not meteors. He was sure of that much. There was one person he could call who might know — Chris Riley. Always Riley, a still point in the moving world.

In the darkened den, he dialed Riley’s home phone. On the first attempt, it was busy. A few moments later, Riley answered, breathless.

“Chris, hello. This is Gordon, Arthur Gordon.”

“My man. Just the man.” Riley paused to catch his breath. “I hear you set up a meeting with Kemp and Samshow. I’d like to be there, but it’s getting real busy here. I’ve been running out to the telescope and back. I should get a phone out there.”

“What’s happening?”

“Have you seen it? All through the plane of the ecliptic — asteroids. They’re blowing up like firecrackers! Since dusk, apparently. I just got confirmation from Mount Laguna and somebody left a message a few minutes ago from Pic du Midi in France. The asteroid belt looks like a battlefield.”

“Damn,” Arthur said. He glanced over his shoulder and saw Marty and Francine standing in the doorway, Marty with his arms wrapped tight around his mother’s waist.

“When is this task force going to come clean?” Riley asked. “Lots of people are really angry, Arthur. The President shoots his mouth off, and nobody else is talking.”

“We can’t be sure this is connected.”

“Arthur! For God’s sake! Asteroids are blowing up! How the hell could it not be connected?”

“You’re right,” Arthur said. “I’m flying to San Francisco tomorrow. How many sparkles so far?”

“Since I’ve been watching, at least a hundred. Got to run now.”

Arthur said good-bye and hung up. Marty was owl-eyed, Francine only slightly more restrained. “It’s all right,” he said.

“Is it starting?” she asked. Marty began to whimper. Arthur had not heard his son whimper in recent memory — months, a year.

“No. I don’t think so. This is far away, in the asteroids.”

“Are they sure it’s not shooting stars?” Marty asked, a very adult rationalization.

“No. Asteroids. They’re out beyond Mars, most of them between Mars and Jupiter.”

“Why out there?” Francine asked.

Arthur could only shake his head.

33

Minelli had spent the night lying in a lounger by the broad picture windows. He was there now, head lolling, snoring softly. Edward tightened the knot on the bathrobe he had borrowed from Stella and walked past the lounger to stand by the glass. Beyond a concrete patio and a dried-up L-shaped ornamental fishpond, frost whitened several acres of winter-yellow grass.

Coming here had been a good idea. Shoshone was peaceful, isolated without being cut off. For a few days at least, they could rest, until the crowds of reporters found them again. The few townspeople aware of their return were making sure nobody knew where they were. They spent most of the day indoors, and only Bernice answered the phone.

He heard Minelli stir behind him.

“You missed the show,” Minelli said.

“Show?”

“All night long. Like a parade of lightning bugs.”

Edward raised an eyebrow.

“No joking, and I’m not crazy. Out over the mountains, all night long. Clear as a bell. The sky twinkled.”

“Meteors?”

“I’ve seen meteors, and these wasn’t them.”

“End of the world, no doubt,” Edward said.

“No doubt,” Minelli echoed.

“How are you feeling?”

“Rested. Better. I must have given everybody a bad time back there.”

“They gave us a bad time,” Edward corrected. “I was feeling a little nuts myself.”

“Nuts.” Minelli shook his head and cocked a dubious glance at Edward. “Where’s Reslaw?”

“Still sleeping.” He and Reslaw had shared a middle bedroom.

“These folks are real nice. I wish I’d had a mother like Bernice.”

Edward nodded. “Are we going to stay here,” he asked, “and keep imposing, or are we going back to Texas?”

“We’re going to have to face the music eventually,” Minelli said philosophically. “The press awaits. I watched television a little last night. The whole country’s gone nuts. Quietly, mind you, but nuts all the same.”

“I don’t blame them.”

The phone rang.

“What time is it?” Minelli asked. Edward glanced at his watch.

“Seven-thirty.”

On the second ring, the phone was silent.

They stared at it apprehensively. “Bernice must have answered it in the back bedroom,” Minelli said.

A few minutes later, Stella came out, followed by her mother, both unselfconsciously attired in flannel pajamas and flower-print robes. Bernice smiled at them. “Breakfast, gentlemen? It’s going to be a long day.”

“That was CBS,” Stella said. “They keep sniffing.”

“We can only fool them so long,” Bernice said.

Edward looked across the quiet, frosty field. A pickup truck parked just off the highway held two men in brown coats and cowboy hats — locals sworn to keep “snoops” from setting up cameras and interfering with the Morgan family’s privacy. Even at a hundred yards’ distance, they looked formidable.

Stella shook her head. “I don’t know what to say. We didn’t do anything important. I didn’t, anyway. You found the rock.”

Edward shrugged. “What’s to say about that?”

Reslaw, dressed in jeans and a blue-and-white-striped long-sleeved shirt, walked out of the hallway, past the entrance alcove and the baby grand piano in an adjacent corner. “Somebody ask about breakfast?”

“Coming up,” Mrs. Morgan said.

“You know,” Edward said, “it was probably a bad idea to come here. For you two. We all need our rest, but your mother has been through a lot.”

Bernice Morgan walked stiffly into the kitchen. “It was exhilarating, really,” she said. “I haven’t had a fight like that in years.”

“Besides, she got to talk to the President,” Stella said, grinning.

“Makes me ashamed to be a Democrat,” she said. “Mike and the boys are keeping a watch. I just have to make sure they don’t get too zealous. You stay as long as you want.”

“Please stay,” Stella said, looking at Edward. “I have to talk. To all of you. I’m still confused. We should help each other out.”

“What about the fireworks?” Minelli asked. “Maybe there’s something on the news now.”

He stretched and swung his legs off the lounger, then stood and walked across the linoleum floor and wide Navajo rugs to the living room, a few steps from the marble-top pedestal table in the open dining area. He sat in front of the television. Slowly, as if it might be hot, he turned it on, then backed up, licking his lips. Edward watched him with concern.

“Just cartoons,” Minelli said quietly. Without changing channels, he lay back to watch, as if he had forgotten his original purpose. Edward walked over and changed channels for him, looking for news. On the twenty-four-hour News Network, an announcer was finishing a story on conflict between the Dominican Republic and Haiti.

“Nothing,” Minelli said pessimistically. “Maybe I was seeing things.”

Then, “Astronomers in France and California have offered varied explanations for last night’s unprecedented meteor activity in the solar system’s asteroid belt. Seen throughout the Western Hemisphere, clearly visible to the naked eye in areas with clear skies, bright explosions flashed throughout the ecliptic, the plane occupied by the Earth’s orbit and the orbits of most of the sun’s planets. Speaking from his phone in Los Angeles, presidential task force advisor Harold Feinman said it might take days to analyze data and learn what had actually happened deep in space, beyond the orbit of Mars. When asked if there was any connection between the meteor activity and the alleged spacecraft and aliens on Earth, Feinman declined to comment.”