“We'll catch them,” Bobbi said. “Don't worry.”

They were at the farm fifteen minutes later. Bobbi pulled her truck in behind Allison's Nova and Archinbourg's Cadillac. She looked at the group of men and thought how much like the nights they had met out here this was… the ones who were to be made

(to “become” first)

especially strong. But Hazel wasn't here and Beach was; Joe Summerfield and Adley McKeen had never been inside the shed either.

“Get the guns,” she told Jud. “Joe, you help. Remember-no shooting unless you have to, and don't shoot the cop, no matter what.”

She looked toward the porch and saw Gard lying there on his back. Gard's mouth was open and he was breathing in slow, rusty snores. Bobbi's eyes softened. There were plenty of people in Haven-Dick Allison and Newt Berringer probably chief among them-who thought she should long since have gotten rid of Gard. Nothing had been said out loud, but in Haven you no longer had to say things out loud. Bobbi knew if she put a bullet through Gard's head, there would be a whole platoon of willing workers out here an hour later to help bury him. They didn't like Gard because the plate in his head made him immune to the “becoming.” And it made him hard to read. But he was her brake. And even that was crap. The truth was simpler yet: she still loved him. She was still human enough for that.

And they would all have to admit that, drunk or not, when they had needed a warning, Gard had given it.

Jud and Joe Summerfield came back with the rifles. There were six of them, varied calibers. Bobbi saw that five went to people she could trust completely. She gave the sixth, a. 22, to Beach, who would complain if he didn't get a shooting iron.

Occupied with the ritual of guns, none of them saw that Gardener had half-opened his bloodshot eyes and was looking at them. No one heard his thoughts; he had learned how to seal them off.

“Let's go,” Bobbi said. “And remember: I want that cop.”

They moved out in a group.

Ev and Butch stood well back from the edge of what was now a ragged slash running better than three hundred yards from right to left and yawning sixty feet across at its widest point. Anderson's old mongrel of a truck stood off to one side, looking tired and used. Next to it was the souped-up payloader with its giant screwdriver snout. There were other tools in a lean-to of peeled logs. Ev saw a chainfall on one side, a chipper on the other. There was a big pile of sodden sawdust below the mouth of the chipper's exhaust-vent. There were cans of gasoline in the lean-to, and a black drum labeled DIESEL. When Ev had first heard those noises in the woods, he had thought New England Paper must be doing some logging, but this was no logging operation. This was an excavation.

That dish. That monstrous dish glittering in the sun.

The eye could not stay away; it was drawn back again and again. Gardener and Bobbi had removed a lot more hillside. Ninety feet of polished silver-gray metal now jutted out of the earth and into the green-gold sunlight. If they had looked into the slash, they would have seen another forty feet or better.

Neither of them went close enough to look.

“Holy Jesus,” Dugan said hoarsely. The gold cup bobbed on his face, and above its rim his blue eyes bulged wildly. “Holy Jesus, it's a spaceship. Is it ours or is it Russian, do you think? Holy Jesus Christ, it's as big as the Queen Mary, that ain't Russian, that ain't… ain't…”

He fell silent again. In spite of the oxygen, his headache was coming back.

Ev raised the disc camera and clicked off seven shots as fast as his finger could push the camera's button. Then he moved twenty feet to the left and took another five, standing by the chipper.

“Move to the right!” he said to Dugan.

“Huh?”

“Your right! I want you in these last three, for perspective.”

“Forget it, Pop!” Even muffled by the cup, there was a shrill note of hysteria in Dugan's voice.

“Four steps will do it.”

Dugan moved four very small steps to the right. Ev raised the disc camera again -a Father's Day present from Bryant and Marie-and clicked off the final three shots. Dugan was a very big man, but that ship in the earth reduced him to the size of a pygmy.

“Okay,” Ev said, and Dugan stepped quickly back to where he had been. He walked with mincing, tentative steps, looking at the great round object as he went.

Ev wondered if the pictures would turn out. His hands had been shaking. And the ship-for it certainly was some sort of spaceship-might be putting out radiation that would fog the film.

Even if it does come out, who's gonna believe it? Who, in a world where kids go off to the movies every damn Saturday and see things like Star Wars?

“I want to get out of here,” Dugan said.

Ev looked at the ship a moment longer, wondering if David was in there, imprisoned, wandering through unknowable corridors or passing through doorways cut for no human shape, starving in the darkness. No… if he was in there, he would have starved a long time ago. Starved, or died of thirst.

Then he slipped the small camera in his pants pocket, walked back to Dugan, and picked up the flare gun. “Ayuh, I guess-”

He broke off, looking in the direction of the Cherokee. There was a line of men -and one woman-standing in the trees, some armed. Ev recognized all of them… and none of them.

Bobbi started down the slope toward the two men. The others followed.

“Hello, Ev,” Bobbi said pleasantly enough.

Dugan raised the. 45, wishing bitterly for the familiar feel of his service. 357. “Stop,” he said. He didn't like the way the gold cup muffled the word, robbed it of authority. He pulled the air mask down. “All of you. Those of you with rifles, put them down. You're all under arrest.”

“You're outgunned, Butch,” Newt Berringer said pleasantly.

“Damned tooting!” Beach growled. Dick Allison frowned at him.

“You better put y'mask on again, Butch,” Adley McKeen said with a lazy, mocking smile. “I think you're losing it.”

Butch had begun to feel woozy as soon as he pulled the mask off. Hearing the steady whisper of their thoughts made it worse. He pulled it up, wondering how much air could be left in the flat-pack.

“Put it down,” Bobbi said. “And you put down the flare-gun, Ev. No one wants to hurt you two.”

“Where's David?” Ev asked roughly. “I want him, you bitch.”

“He's on Altair-4 with Robby the Robot and Dr Mobius,” Kyle Archinbourg said with a titter. “He's picknicking amid the Krell memory-banks.”

“Shut up,” Bobbi said. She suddenly felt confused, ashamed of herself, unsure. Bitch? Was that what the old man had called her? A bitch? She found herself wanting to tell him that he was confused-she wasn't the bitch. That was her sister Anne.

A sudden, confused image came to her-the old man's distress, Gard's distress, even her own, all mingled. She was distracted. While she was, Ev Hillman raised the flare-pistol and fired. If Dugan had done it, they would have read his intention before he could have acted, but the old man was different.

There was a hollow fuddd! and a whoosh. Beach Jernigan exploded into white flame and staggered backward, the. 22 flying out of his hands. His eyes filmed, simmered, then burst as they filled with burning phosphorus. His cheeks began to run. He opened his mouth and began to claw at his chest as the superheated air he drew in expanded and ruptured his lungs. This all happened in a space of seconds.

The line of men wavered and lost coherency as they stumbled backward, their faces blank with terror. They were hearing Beach Jernigan die inside their heads.