The sound of Tim Belanger’s voice came faintly through the window, something about the lights going off, anybody know where the fuse box was?

Eight screws, four to a side. Tyler drove the fifth, the sixth, the seventh, sweating.

Footsteps sounded in the hallway.

He fumbled the last sheet-metal screw into its hole. The screwdriver didn’t want to find the slot in the screwhead. When it did, the screw sheered sideways. “Shit,” Tyler whispered.

Don’t curse, Sissy scolded him.

There was a knock at the door. Joey’s voice: “Colonel? You still in there?”

Three twists of the wrist to drive the screw home. A couple of seconds to clear Joey’s toolbox off the table. Couple more to yank the chair away from the doorknob.

“Dark as a bitch in here. Sorry.” He let Joey in.

Joey sniffed the air. “What’s that stink?”

“Had some trouble with the radio,” Colonel Tyler said.

“Thing’s totally fucked,” Joey said when he had examined the molten interior. “Transformer must have shorted. Though I don’t know how it could of.”

He offered to drive into Cheyenne and get a replacement. “Fine,” Tyler said. “But not yet.” How come, Joey wanted to know.

“I’m calling a meeting tonight. It’s important, and I need you there. As a vote and as sergeant-at-arms.”

“I could be back by dark.”

“I don’t want to risk it.” Tyler drew himself up. “Let it ride, Mr. Commoner. Take my word on this.” Joey nodded.

Good soldier, Tyler thought.

Matt was compiling a pharmaceutical wish list to transmit to the Ohio people—he didn’t know about the radio problem yet—when he heard Abby’s anguished voice from the parking lot.

He hurried out of his camper into the rough circle of trucks and RVs, knowing what the problem was and dreading it.

Tom Kindle had climbed into the cab of his lumbering RV and was cranking the motor. Abby had stepped out of her own camper. She wore a denim skirt and a loose blouse and carried a hairbrush in one hand. Her feet were bare and she’d been crying. She ran a few steps across the hot, midday tarmac toward Kindle’s vehicle.

“You CANT!” Stopping when it was obvious that he could and was. “OOOOH!”

She threw the hairbrush. Her hard overhand toss sent it pinwheeling at Kindle’s camper; it rang the side panel like a bell.

Kindle leaned out the driver’s window and gave her an apologetic wave.

“YOU COWARD! YOU SELFISH OLD COWARDl”

The camper rolled out onto the highway and began to pick up speed.

Matt took Abby by the shoulders. She pulled away and looked at him bitterly. “Matt, why did you let him do this? We need him!”

“Abby, Abby! I know. But he had his mind set on it. I couldn’t stop him. I don’t think anybody ever stopped Tom Kindle from doing what he wanted—do you?”

She sagged toward him. “I know, but… oh, shit, Matt! Why now?”

He didn’t know how to console her. He had lost too much of his own. But he held her while she cried.

Joey Commoner came running from the truckstop, Tyler and Jacopetti a short distance behind.

Joey cupped a hand over his eyes and watched Kindle’s camper disappearing down the highway. Then he looked at Abby. Figuring it out.

“Son of a bitch,” Joey said. “He’s fucking AWOL!”

Abby regarded Joey as if he’d descended from Mars.

“Calm down,” Colonel Tyler said, to no one in particular.

“Sir,” Joey said, “he didn’t ask permission to go somewhere!”

“Quiet,” Tyler said. In the sunlight, the Colonel was silver-haired, imperial. His eyes lingered a moment on Matt. “We’ll discuss it at the meeting tonight.”

Matt cleared his throat. “Thought you didn’t believe in meetings.”

“Special occasion,” Tyler said.

Tyler put his motion to the Committee before everybody was finished sitting down.

The meeting was held in the truckstop restaurant under a bank of fly-spotted fluorescent lights. Tyler stood against a window with the dark behind him and tapped a knuckle against the glass for attention.

“News over the radio,” he said. “We’ve got some heavy weather across the state border along the Platte. Ohio thinks we ought to stay put for a while, and I agree—but I want a vote to make it official.”

He paused to let this sink in. Everybody was still a little dazed by the departure of Tom Kindle, wary of another crisis.

Matt Wheeler said, “I thought the radio blew up.”

“Call came early this morning, Dr. Wheeler.”

“Did it? Who took it?”

“I did.”

“Did anybody else hear this call?”

“I’m sorry, Dr. Wheeler. I didn’t feel it was necessary to have a witness.” Jacopetti laughed out loud.

Wheeler said, “It would be nice to be able to confirm the message, Colonel Tyler.”

“Mr. Commoner offered to find a replacement for the radio. I’m sure we’ll be up and running in due time. Until then, let’s keep a lid on the paranoia, shall we?”

Abby raised her hand: “A truckstop is hardly a place to spend time.…”

“Agreed. In the morning, we can take a look at the farmhouse to the south of here. I’m sure it’ll be more comfortable.”

Tyler registered, but didn’t understand, the sudden look of concern from the boy, William.

Wheeler again: “Maybe we ought to keep moving—we can always find shelter if the weather turns bad.”

Suspicious son of a bitch refused to drop the issue.

“After what happened to Buchanan,” Tyler said, “I don’t think we want to take any chances with a storm, do you? And there’s another consideration. One of our company chose to leave us today. A particular friend of yours, Dr. Wheeler. All things considered, maybe we should stay in the neighborhood long enough to give Mr. Kindle a chance to change his mind. If he elects to come back to camp, at least he’ll know where to find us.”

This hit home with Abby Cushman, a potential swing vote; she folded her hands in her lap.

“All in favor of staying,” Tyler said. “Show of hands.”

It was an easy majority.

Chapter 31

Night Lights

They filed from the restaurant, subdued and silent, until Tim Belanger stabbed a finger at the sky: “Hey—anybody notice something?”

Tyler looked up. “The Artifact,” he said, and calmly checked his watch. “It should have risen by now.”

By Christ, Matt thought, for once the bastard’s right. That ugly alien moon was overdue.

Missing. Gone.

“Dear God,” Abby said. “What now?”

There was nothing in the sky but a bright wash of stars—no Artifact but the second one still grounded on the southern horizon.

The Earth was alone again. Matt had wanted it so badly, for so long, he hadn’t allowed himself even to consider the possibility. It was the kind of desire you could choke on.

But here, mute testimony, was an empty Wyoming sky.

Too late, he thought bitterly. If they left, they left because their work was finished.

The starlight on the second and motionless Artifact, the so-called human Artifact, was cold and merciless. In scale and design, Matt thought, that object was wholly inhuman, no matter who owned it or what went on inside.

“The aliens are gone?” Abby asked, and Matt said, his voice a whisper, “Why not? We have our own aliens now.”

It was an auspice that couldn’t be read, an indecipherable portent, and they went to bed weary of miracles.

Deep in the cold Wyoming springtime dark, sooner or later, each of them slept…

Except one old woman, one ageless boy.

“William?”