For a long while, no one said anything. The Philadelphia docks were looming up before us. Walker stirred suddenly.

“What are we going to tell his grandfather?”

“Alexander King set the rules for his precious game,” said Honey. “And he was the one who pushed his grandson into the game in the first place.”

“I shall miss Peter,” said Walker. “Or at any rate, I shall miss his exceedingly useful phone camera. I mean, without it, we have no direct proof of what happened to the USS Eldridge.”

“Then it’s just as well I had the foresight to pick Peter’s pocket on our way back to the boat,” I said, holding up the phone camera.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Blood and Horror

It all went bad so quickly.

We arrived at our last destination in a blaze of bright sunshine to the sound of happy laughter. We were standing in the middle of a crowded main street, surrounded by people strolling back and It forth, chatting pleasantly to each other and paying the three of us no attention at all. Which was . . . odd. The air was hot and dry, and the people passing by stirred up low clouds of dust from the sidewalks. But everyone seemed to be in a good mood and well under the influence of the holiday spirit. Walker and Honey and I waited for a while to see if Peter might teleport in to join us, but he didn’t.

“Very well,” Walker said finally. “Where are we this time?”

Honey indicated a large sign on the other side of the street, and we all studied it in silence. Underneath a bright and cheerful cartoon of a Gray alien leaning out the top of a flying saucer was the oversized greeting WELCOME TO ROSWELL! THE UFO TOWN!

“Oh, no,” said Walker.

“The first person to use phrases like Out of this world, or Far out! gets a severe slapping,” said Honey.

“Oh, come on,” I said. “This is it? Really? The climax and finale of the great game? Bloody Roswell? It’s a joke! There’s no mystery here, and never was; just a tall tale that got out of control. My family has been monitoring alien visitors to this world for hundreds of years; if anything had actually happened here, I’d know about it.”

“There must be something here worth investigating, or Alexander King wouldn’t have sent us,” said Honey just a bit doubtfully.

“Interesting,” murmured Walker. “We appeared here out of nowhere, right in the middle of a busy shopping centre, but so far no one has batted an eye. In fact, no one is paying us any attention at all, except to walk around us. So either this particular crowd has a lot on its mind, or . . .”

“Or what?” said Honey.

“Damned if I know,” said Walker. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say someone was running an avoidance field . . .”

“No one knew we were coming here,” said Honey.

“Alexander King knew,” I said. “Maybe he’s trying to help.”

“He never helped before,” said Walker. “What could there be in Roswell that the Independent Agent thought we might finally need assistance?”

“Roswell,” I said disgustedly. “When my family finds out I was here, they’ll laugh themselves sick.”

“I take it we all know the basis of the legend?” said Honey. “In 1947, just outside the small town of Roswell, New Mexico, a farmer found strange metallic objects scattered across his field. He couldn’t identify them, so he notified the authorities. On July 8, the local air force base informed the local newspaper that they were the remains of a crashed flying saucer. The local radio station wasted no time in spreading the news to an excited world . . . at which point the air force slammed on the brakes and went into reverse. Swore blind it was just the remains of a crashed weather balloon. End of story.”

“Except,” I said, not to be left out, “thirty years later, people started saying it was all a cover-up. The air force admitted the weather balloon stuff was a lie, but all the explanations they’ve come up with since have proved equally flawed. All of which had probably nothing to do with flying saucers and a hell of a lot more to do with the fact that the 509th Bomb Group was stationed just outside Roswell: the only bombing command authorised to carry nuclear bombs at that time. Hardly surprising they didn’t want the world’s attention anywhere near them. Especially if they were carrying out missions the public weren’t supposed to know about.”

“It is interesting how the legend has continued to change and mutate down the years,” said Walker. “Everything from crashed UFOs with alien bodies scattered all over the mesa, to alien autopsy films, to a really screwed-up First Contact. The last version I heard talked about was the direct downloading of an alien consciousness from a higher dimension. Absurd.”

“Oh, sure,” I said. “Utterly absurd.”

“I saw that alien autopsy film,” said Honey. “Never saw anything so obviously fake-looking in my life.”

“Right,” I said. “Alien autopsies don’t look anything like that.”

Walker and Honey looked at me for a long moment.

“Moving on,” said Walker, turning to Honey. “You’d know, if anyone, what’s going on here, so . . . What’s going on here?”

“Not a damned thing, as far as I know,” said Honey. “Though admittedly, if anything really important was under way here, it would all be discussed on a much higher level than I have access to. I know what I need to know, but I don’t need to know everything. On the other hand . . . you’re right, Eddie. People like us . . . If there was anything to the legend, we’d have heard something . . .”

“So why are we here?” I said. “What mystery are we supposed to investigate?”

“Beats the hell out of me,” said Honey.

“Why don’t you use that frankly rather disturbing computer implant in your head and phone home?” said Walker. “Ask your higher echelons at Langley if anything of interest has happened here recently.”

Honey’s face went blank for a moment, and then she scowled heavily. “The signal’s jammed. Again . . . I can’t get through. Eddie?”

I reached out to my family through my torc . . . and there was nobody there.

“You too?” said Honey. “Cut off again? That shouldn’t be possible.”

“Can’t be a coincidence,” I said. “Someone here doesn’t want us talking with anyone outside Roswell. Someone . . . or something.”

“Maybe something’s due to happen here,” said Honey. “Something important or significant, and somebody doesn’t want to risk us calling in reinforcements.”

“The nearest Drood field agent is in Texas,” I said. “Do your people have anyone useful any closer than that?”

“Not that I know of. Besides, this would be FBI business, and the Company has never got on well with the Bureau.”

“Why don’t you try Peter’s mobile phone?” Walker said reasonably. “See if it’s just the two of you who’ve been jammed, or whether it’s more general.”

I tried Peter’s phone. Couldn’t get a signal. We walked down the street till we found a public pay phone and tried that. Nothing but dead air; not even a hiss of static. I put the phone back, and we looked at one another.

“I would be willing to wager good money that the whole town is like this,” said Walker. “Someone (or something; yes, Eddie) has gone to great lengths to isolate Roswell from the outside world. So why hasn’t anyone else here noticed? Why has no one raised a fuss?”

“Look around you,” said Honey. “Roswell is a tourist town. Most of these people are tourists. Probably haven’t a clue anything unusual is going on.”

“And the local people?” said Walker.

“That’s what makes this interesting,” I said. “They might be keeping quiet so as not to scare off the tourists, or . . . Actually, I don’t have an or. Something’s definitely happening here, and we need to investigate.”

“I don’t know . . .” Honey looked around her, her face cold and thoughtful. “What if all of this . . . is just a distraction? The Independent Agent sent us here to solve the mystery of Roswell. We go back without that specific information, we could forfeit the prize. And I have come too far, and been through too much, to miss out on that now.”