“Better not,” she said sharply. “Remember what happened before.”

“Leave me alone,” Gardener said. He pushed Bobbi's hand aside and touched that groove. There was music in his head, but it was muffled and quickly faded. He thought he could feel his teeth vibrating rapidly in their sockets and suspected he would lose more of them tonight. Didn't matter. He wanted to touch it; he would touch it. This was the way in; this was the closest they had been to the Tommyknockers and their secrets, their first real sign that this ridiculous thing wasn't just solid through and through (the thought had occurred to him; what a cosmic joke that would have been). Touching it was like touching starlight made solid.

“It's the hatch,” Bobbi said. “I knew it was here!”

Gardener grinned at her. “We did it, Bobbi.”

“Yeah, we did it. Thank God you came back, Gard!”

Bobbi hugged him… and when Gardener felt the jellylike movement of her breasts and torso, he felt sick revulsion rise in him. Starlight? Maybe the stars were touching him, right now.

It was a thought he was quick to conceal, and he thought that he did conceal it, that Bobbi got none of it.

That's one for me, he thought. “How big do you think it is?”

“I'm not sure. I think we might be able to clear it today. It's best if we do. Time's gotten short, Gard.”

“How do you mean?”

“The air over Haven has changed. This did it.” Bobbi rapped her knuckles on the hull of the ship. There was a dim, bell-like note.

“I know.”

“It makes people sick to come in. You saw the way Anne was.”

“Yes.”

“She was protected to some degree by her dental work. I know that sounds crazy, but it's true. Still, she left in a hell of a hurry.”

Oh? Did she?

“If that was all-the air poisoning people who came into town-that would be bad enough. But we can't leave anymore, Gard.”

“Can't-?”

“No. I think you could. You might feel sickish for a few days, but you could leave. It would kill me, and very quickly. And something else: we've had a long siege of hot, still weather. If the weather changes-if the wind blows hard enough-it's going to blow our biosphere right out over the Atlantic Ocean. We'll be like a bunch of tropical fish just after someone pulled the plug on the tank and killed the rebreather. We'll die.”

Gard shook his head. “The weather changed the day you went to that woman's funeral, Bobbi. I remember. It was clear and breezy. That was what was so weird about you catching a sunstroke after all that hot and muggy.”

“Things have changed. The “becoming” has speeded up.”

Would they all die? Gardener wondered. ALL of them? Or just you and your special pals, Bobbi? The ones that have to wear makeup now?

“I hear doubt in your head, Gard,” Bobbi said. She sounded halfexasperated, half-amused.

“What I doubt is that any of this can be happening at all,” Gardener said. “Fuck it. Come on. Dig, babe.”

They took turns with a pick. One of them would use it for fifteen minutes or so, and then both would clear away the rubble. By three that afternoon Gard saw a circular groove that looked about six feet in diameter. Like a manhole cover. And here, at last, was a symbol. He looked at it, wonderingly, and at last he had to touch it. The blast of music in his head was louder this time, as if in weary protest, or in weary warning-a warning to get away from this thing before its protection lapsed entirely. But he needed to touch it, confirm it.

Running his fingers over this almost Chinese symbol, he thought: A creature who lived under the glow of a different sun conceived this mark. What does it mean? NO TRESPASSING? WE CAME IN PEACE? Or is it maybe a plague-symbol, an alien version Of ABANDON HOPE, ALL YE WHO ENTER IN HERE?

It was pressed into the metal of the ship like a bas-relief. Merely touching it brought on a species of superstitious dread he had never felt before; he would have laughed if, six weeks ago, someone had told him he might feel this way-like a caveman watching an eclipse of the sun or a medieval peasant watching the arrival of what would eventually become known as Halley's Comet.

A creature who lived under the glow of a different sun conceived this mark. I, James Eric Gardener, born in Portland, Maine, United States of America, Western Hemisphere of the World, am touching a symbol made and struck by God only knows what sort of being across a black distance of light-years. My God, my God, I am touching a different mind!

He had, of course, been touching different minds for some time now, but this was not the same… not the same at all.

Are we really going in? He was aware that his nose was bleeding again “ but not even that could make him take his hand away from that symbol; he trailed the pads of his fingers restlessly back and forth across its smooth, unknowable surface.

More accurately, are you going to try to go in there? Are you, even though you know it may-probably will-kill you? You get a jolt every time you touch the thing; what's going to happen if you're foolish enough to go inside? It will probably set up a harmonic vibration in that damned steel plate of yours that will blow your head apart like a stick of dynamite in a rotten turnip.

Awfully concerned about your welfare for a man who was on the verge of suicide not very long ago, aren't you, goodbuddy? he thought, and had to grin in spite of himself. He drew his fingers away from the shape of the symbol, flicking them absently to get rid of the tingle like a man trying to shake off a good-sized booger. Go on and go for it. What the fuck, if you're gonna step out anyway, having your brains vibrated to death inside of a flying saucer is a more exotic way to go than most.

Gard laughed aloud. It was a strange sound at the bottom of that deep slit in the ground.

“What's funny?” Bobbi asked quietly. “What's funny, Gard?”

Laughing harder, Gardener said: “Everything. This is… something else. I guess it's laugh or go crazy. You dig it?”

Bobbi looked at him, obviously not digging it, and Gardener thought: Of course she doesn't. Bobbi got stuck with the other option. She can't laugh because she went crazy.

Gardener roared until tears rolled down his cheeks, and some of these tears were bloody, but he did not notice this. Bobbi did, but Bobbi didn't bother to tell him.

It took them another two hours to completely clear the hatchway. When they were done, Bobbi stuck out a dirty, makeup-streaked hand in Gardener's direction.

“What?” Gardener asked, shaking it.

“That's it,” Bobbi said. “We're finished with the dig. We're done, Gard.”

Yeah?”

Yeah. Tomorrow we go inside, Gard.”

Gard looked at her without saying anything. His mouth felt dry.

“Yes,” Bobbi said, and nodded, as if Gard had questioned this. “Tomorrow we go in. Sometimes it seems like I started this about a million years ago. Sometimes like it was just yesterday. I stumbled over it, and I saw it, and I ran my finger along it and blew off the dirt. That was the start. One finger dragged through the dirt. This is the end.”

“That was a different Bobbi at the beginning,” Gardener said.

“Yes,” Bobbi said meditatively. She looked up, and there was a sunken gleam of humor in her eyes. “A different Gard, too.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I guess you know, it'll probably kill me to go in there… but I'm going to give it a shot.”

“It won't kill you,” Bobbi said.

“No?”

“No. Now let's get out of here. I've got a lot to do. I'll be out in the shed tonight.”

Gardener looked at Bobbi sharply, but Bobbi was looking upward as the motorized sling trundled down on its cables.