"Sorry to keep you waiting," I said to her.

"The phone rang while you were out of the office," Sadassa said. "I didn't think I should answer it."

"It'll ring again," I said.

The phone rang. I picked it up and said hello. It was Phil; he had heard the news on the radio. Like Rachel, he was highly excited.

"I read about it in the Times," I informed him.

"Did the Times article mention that it broadcasts on the same frequencies our FM and TV sound travels on?" Phil said. The scientist I heard commenting, from some US space laboratory, says that virtually rules out the possibility that it's one of our own satellites since ours don't broadcast on commercial frequencies. Listen, Nick; he said its signals would interfere with FM and TV reception so we might have to destroy it. But what I was thinking -remember when you heard that weird shit on your radio at night, as if it were talking to you? And we conjectured about a satellite override? Nick, this may be it! This thing when it transmits might very well override. And the scientist said, the one I heard commenting, that it doesn't broadcast in the strict sense of the word, that it's narrow tight beams, directed; „broadcast" means in all directions, everywhere equally. This satellite's signals don't propagate in all -"

"Phil," I broke in, "I've got somebody with me right now. Can I get back to you tonight?"

"Sure," Phil said, mollified. "But you know, Nick, this could explain it; it really could. You're transducing these unusual alien signals."

"Catch you later, Phil," I said, and hung up. I did not want to discuss it in front of Sadassa Silvia. Or anyone else, for that matter. Although, I thought, I may be discussing it with Ms Silvia one of these days, when the time is right; when I've sounded her out sufficiently beforehand.

Sadassa said, "Was it the article in the Times about „prisons are a source of wealth"? That pitch for slave labor under the guise of psychological rehabilitation? „Convicts need not be indoors, wasting years of their lives in idleness, rather, th^y could - „ Let's see, how did they put it? „Convicts could work out under the warm sun in labor groups rebuilding slums, contributing to urban renewal, and hippies could make their contribution to society, side by side with them and also the youth who can't get jobs. ..." I felt like writing in to say, „And when they die of overwork and starvation they can contribute their bodies in giant ovens, and we can melt them down into useful bars of soap.""

"No," I said, "it wasn't that article." The alien satellite, then?" Presently I nodded. Sadassa said, "It's a fake. Or rather, it's one of ours and we won't admit it. It's a propaganda satellite we use to beam down subliminal material to the Soviet people. That's why it broadcasts on commercial FM and TV frequencies and alters its transmission frequency at random intervals. The Soviet people get eighth-of-a-second stills of happy Americans eating all the food they want, shit like that. The Russians know it and we know it. They beam down to us from unauthorized satellites and we do the same to them. They're going to shoot it down; that's what they're up to. I don't blame them."

It sounded convincing, except that it scarcely explained why the Soviet Union's foremost astrophysicist would make the announcement he had made - Moyashka had put his vast reputation on the line again, claiming the satellite to be extraterrestrial in origin. It seemed doubtful that a man of his probity would become embroiled in a strictly political matter.

"Do you really think a famous scientist like Georgi Moyashka would - " I began, but Sadassa, irr her gentle but strict little voice, interrupted imperturbably.

"He does what they tell him. AH Soviet scientists do and say what they're told. Ever since Topchiev purged the Soviet Academy of Sciences back in the fifties. He was the Party hatchetman in the Academy, then, its official secretary; he personally sent to prison hundreds of the USSR's top scientists. That's why their space program is so chunky, so far behind ours. They haven't even managed to miniaturize their components. They have no microcircuitry at all."

"Well," I said, nonplussed. "But in some areas - "

"Big booster rockets," Sadassa agreed. "They're still using tubes! The average stereo built in Japan is more advanced than the components used in a Soviet missile."

"Let's get down to the business of your job," I said.

"All right." She nodded sensibly.

"We can't pay you very much," I said. "But the work should be interesting."

"I don't need much," Sadassa said. "How much is much?"

I wrote down a figure and turned it to show her.

"That certainly isn't much," she said. Tor how many hours a week?"

"Thirty hours," I said.

"I guess I could work that into my schedule."

Exasperated, I said, "I don't think you're being realistic. For that few hours it's good pay, and you're unskilled. This isn't typing and filing; this is creative work. I'd have to train you. I think it's a good deal. You should be glad to get it."

"What about publishing my lyrics? And using them?"

"We'll use them. If they're good enough."

"I brought some along." She opened her purse and brought out an envelope. "Here."

Opening the envelope I removed four pieces of" paper on which she had written verses in blue fountain-pen ink. Her handwriting was legible but shaky, the aftereffects of her illness.

I read over the poems - they were poems, not lyrics -but my mind was on what she had just said. The Soviet Union was going to do what? Shoot the satellite down? What, then, would become of me? Where would my help come from?

"I'm sorry," I said, "I'm having trouble concentrating. They're very good." I said it reflexively, without conviction; maybe they were good, maybe not. All I could think of was the dreary, heartbreaking thing she had told me, her conjecture about Soviet intentions. It seemed obvious, now that she had uttered it. Of course they weren't merely going to shoot it down. They weren't going to allow an extraterrestrial vehicle, an intruder into our buttoned-down world, to beam split-second subliminal communications to our people, overriding our own managed TV and FM transmissions. Adding God-knew-what information we weren't supposed to know, Radio Free Alpha Centauri, I said to myself bitterly. Radio Free Albemuth, as I had come to call it. How long are you going to last now that you've been found out? They can't get you with a missile; they will launch a satellite with an H-warhead and simply detonate you in the general blast. No more tight-beamed messages. And, I thought, no more dreams for me.

"Can I take these poems home?" I asked Sadassa. "And read them more leisurely?"

"Of course," she said. "Hey," she said suddenly, "what upset you? The poem about my lymphoma? Was that it? Most people are upset by that ... I wrote it when I was so sick; you can tell by the content. I didn't expect to live."

"Yeah," I said. "That's what did it."

"I shouldn't have shown that to you."

"It's a very powerful poem," I said. "I'm not sure, frankly, how a poem about someone having cancer could be adapted to use as lyrics for a song. It certainly would be a first." We both tried to smile; neither of us made it.

The others aren't so heavy," Sadassa said; she reached out and patted me on the hand. "Maybe you could use one of them."

"I'm sure we can," I said. What a charming, unhappy girl, I thought, struggling against such odds.

I changed my mind and did not ask Sadassa Silvia out for dinner; instead I took off early and drove directly back down to Orange County and home. My mind remained on the new item, on what Sadassa had said - the whole situation frightened and appalled me.

Put very simply, I had come to regard Valis and the AI operators along the communications network as divine, which meant they were not subject to mortal death. One does not blow up God. Here, however, were my wife and my best friend nattering at me that the source of my divine help had been pinpointed: satellite orbiting Earth, beaming down information, and caught in the act now by the USSR's leading astrophysicist, their great scientific sleuth - Earth's cosmic cop, armed with radio telescopes, countersatellites with warheads, and God knew what else. As thrilling as the thought was - that an extraterrestrial intelligence from another star system had put one of their vehicles into orbit around our planet and was beaming down covert information to us - it reduced something limitless to a finite reality, vulnerable to ordinary hazards. The entity I had assumed to be omniscient and omnipotent was about to be shot out of the sky. And with it, I realized, went the possibility of deposing Ferris Fremont. When the Soviets, no doubt operating in conjunction with our more sophisticated tracking stations, brought down the ETI satellite, the hopes of free men in both nations died.