The youth approached him quickly, coat swishing around his ankles. An embarrassed grin crossed his face. He stopped two yards from Hicks and offered his hand, but Hicks shook his head angrily, refusing to touch him.

“What do you want from me?” he asked the boy.

Reuben tried to ignore Hicks’s discomfiture, “I’m pleased to meet you. You’re an author, and all, and I read…Well, forget that. I have to say some things to you, and then get back to work.” He shook his head ruefully. “They’re going to work all of us pretty hard. There’s not much time.”

“All of who?”

“I’d feel better talking where nobody will pay attention,” Reuben said, staring steadily at Hicks. “Please.”

“The coffee shop?”

“Fine. I’m hungry, too. Can I buy you lunch? I don’t have a lot of money, but I can get something cheap for both of us.”

Hicks shook his head. “If you convince me you’re on to something,” he said, “I’ll spot you lunch.”

Reuben led the way to the hotel cafeteria, emptying now as the lunch hour ended. They were led to a corner booth, and this seemed to satisfy the boy’s need for privacy.

“First,” Hicks said, “I have to ask: Are you armed?”

Reuben smiled and shook his head. “I had to come here as soon as I could, and I’m almost broke now as it is.”

“Have you ever been in a mental institution, or…associated with religious cults, flying-saucer cults?”

Again, no.

“Are you a Forge of Godder?”

“No.”

“Then tell me what you have to say.”

Reuben’s eyes crinkled and he leaned his head to one side, his mouth working, “I’m being given instructions by, I think they’re little machines. They were dropped all over the Earth a month ago. You know, like an invasion, but not to invade.”

Hicks rubbed his temple with a knuckle. “Go on. I’m listening.”

“They’re not the same…whatever you’d call the things that are going to destroy the Earth. It’s hard to put in words all the pictures they show me. They don’t show me everything, anyway. They asked me to just come to you and give you something, but I didn’t think that was fair. The way they came on to me wasn’t fair. I didn’t have any choice. So they say, in my head” — he pointed to his forehead with a long, powerful forefinger — “they say, all right, try it your way.”

“How do they oppose these enemies?”

“They seek them out wherever they go. They spread out between the … stars, I guess. Ships with nothing alive, not like you and me, inside them. Robots. They visit all the planets they can, around stars, and…They learn about these things that eat planets. And whenever they can, they destroy them.” Reuben’s face was dreamy now, his eyes focused on the water glass before him.

“So why haven’t they come forward sooner? It may be too late.”

“Right,” Reuben said, glancing up at Hicks. “That’s what they tell me. It’s too late to save the Earth. Almost everybody and everything is going to die.”

Despite his skepticism, these words hit Hicks hard, slowing his blood, making his shoulders slump.

“It’s awful. They came too late. They had to stop off at this moon, this place with water and ice — Europa. They converted it into hundreds of thousands, millions, of themselves, of ships to spread out. They use hydrogen in the water for energy. Fusion.

“It’s not just the Earth that’s being eaten. The asteroids, too. And really, there was more danger, I guess, of these planet-eaters getting away from the asteroids. Easier to move away from the sun. Something…Damn, I wish I knew more about what they’re showing me. They fought them in the asteroids. Now they can focus on Earth…The trouble is, they can’t explain all of it to me in words I understand! Why they chose me, I don’t know.”

“Go on.”

“They can’t save the Earth, but they can save some of it. Important animals and plants, germs, some people…They tell me maybe one or two thousand. Maybe more, depending on the odds.”

The waitress took their order, and Hicks leaned forward. “How?”

“Ships. Arks, like Noah’s,” Reuben said. “They’re being made right now, I guess.”

“All right. So far, so good,” Hicks said. Damn…he’s actually convincing me! “How do they speak to you?”

“I’m going to put my hand in my pocket and show you something,” Reuben said. “It’s not a gun. Don’t be afraid. Is that okay?”

Hicks hesitated, then nodded.

Reuben drew out the spider and put it on the table. It unfolded its legs and stood with the glowing green line on its “face” pointed at Hicks. “People are meeting up with these things all over, I guess,” Reuben said. “One of them got me. Scared the shit out of me, too. But now I can’t say I’m doing anything against my will. I almost feel like a hero.”

“What is it?” Hicks asked softly.

“No name,” Reuben said. He picked it up and secured it in his pocket again as the waitress approached. She laid their food on the table. Hicks paid no attention to his baked fish. Reuben brought the spider out again and laid it down between them. “Don’t touch it unless you agree, you know, to be part of all this. It sort of stings you, to talk.” The boy bit into his hamburger voraciously.

Stings? Hicks pulled back a scant inch farther from the table. “You’re from Ohio?” he finally managed to ask.

“Mm.” Reuben rocked his head back and forth in satisfaction. “God, it’s good to eat again. I haven’t eaten in two days.”

“They’re in Ohio?”

“They’re all over. Recruiting.”

“And now they want to recruit me. Why? Because…they heard me on the radio?”

“You’d have to talk to it, them,” Reuben said. “Like I said, they don’t tell me everything.”

The spider did not move. Doesn’t look like a toy. It’s so perfect, a jeweler’s fantasy.

“Why are they doing this?”

The boy shook his head, mouth full.

“Let me…well, at the risk of putting words into your mouth, let me see if I understand what you’re saying. There are two different kinds of machines in our solar system. Correct?”

Reuben nodded, mouth full again.

“One type wants to convert planets into more machines. We’ve been told that much. Now there’s an opposing type that is designed to destroy these machines?”

“Exactly,” Reuben said after swallowing. “Boy, they were right to pick you.”

“So we’re dealing with von Neumann probes, and probe killers.” He pointed to the spider. “How can these pretty toys destroy planet-eating machines?”

“They’re just a small part of the action,” Reuben said.

Hicks picked up his fork and flaked away a bite of fish. “Incredible,” he said.

“You got it. At least you’re learning about it the slow and easy way. Me, this thing nearly blew my mind.”

“What else do you know?”

“Well, I see things, pretty clear sometimes, really muddy sometimes. Some things have already happened, like the arrival of the machines that want to save us. They destroyed Jupiter’s moon, to, like, make more of themselves, and for energy. But the cavalry arrived a little late — just after the Indians occupied the fort.” He shrugged his shoulders. “After the bogeys came down on Earth. I suppose it’s stupid to make jokes, but it’s all crazy in my head, and I don’t want it to make me crazy. Some things I see haven’t happened yet, like, I see the Earth being blown into little rocks, more asteroids. And then these spaceships mining the rocks, eating them, making more machines.”

“What do the machines look like?”

“That’s not too clear,” Reuben said.

“How is the Earth going to be destroyed?”

Reuben paused and lifted a finger. “At least two ways. This is pretty clear, actually. I hope I can find the right words. There are things, bombs, whizzing around inside the Earth. I think we know about these, right?”

“Maybe,” Hicks said.

“And there are machines crawling deep in the ocean. Are there ditches in the ocean?”

“Trenches?”