For a second there was no sound but the birds singing outside.

“Anyway, all I get from you is surface stuff, and most of that is all broken up and garbled. If you were like anyone else, I'd know what's been going on with you, and why you look so crappy-”

“Thanks, Bobbi. I knew there was a reason I keep coming here, and since it's not the cooking, it must be the flattery.” He grinned, but it was a nervous grin, and he lit another cigarette.

“As it is,” Bobbi went on as if he hadn't spoken, “I can make some educated guesses on the basis of what's happened to you before, but you'll have to tell me the details… I couldn't snoop even if I wanted to. I'm not sure I could get it clear even if you shoved it all up to the front of your mind and put out a Welcome mat. But when you asked who “they” were, that little rhyme about the Tommyknockers came up like a big bubble. And it ran itself off on the typewriter.”

“All right,” Gardener said, although it wasn't all right… nothing was all right. “But who are they besides the Tommyknockers? Are they pixies? Leprechauns? Grem-”

“I asked you to look around because I wanted you to get an idea of how big all of this is,” Anderson said. “How far-reaching the implications could be.”

“I realize that, all right,” Gardener said, and a smile ghosted around the corners of his mouth. “A few more far-reaching implications and I'll be ready for a strait-waistcoat.”

“Your Tommyknockers came from space,” Anderson said, “as I think you must have deduced by now.”

Gardener supposed the thought had done more than cross his mind-but his mouth was dry, his hands froze around the coffee cup.

“Are they around?” he asked, and his voice seemed to come from far, far away. He was suddenly afraid to turn around, afraid he might see some gnarled thing with three eyes and a horn where its mouth should have been come waltzing out of the pantry, something that belonged only on a movie-screen, maybe in a Star Wars epic.

“I think they-the actual physical they-have been dead for a long time,” Anderson said calmly. “They probably died long before men existed on earth. But then… Caruso's dead, but he's still singing on a hell of a lot of records, isn't he?”

“Bobbi,” Gardener said, “tell me what happened. I want you to begin at the beginning and end by saying, “Then you came up the road just in time to grab me when I passed out.” Can you do that?”

“Not entirely,” she said, and grinned. “But I'll do my best.”

Anderson talked for a long time. When she finished, it was past noon. Gard sat across the kitchen table, smoking, excusing himself only once to go into the bathroom, where he took three more aspirins.

Anderson began with her stumble, told of coming back and digging out more of the ship-enough to realize she had found something utterly unique-and then going back a third time. She did not tell Gardener about Chuck the Woodchuck, who had been dead but not flyblown; nor about Peter's shrinking cataract; nor about the visit to Etheridge, the vet. She passed over those things smoothly, saying only that when she came back from her first whole day of work on the thing, she had found Peter dead on the front porch.

“It was as if he'd gone to sleep,” Anderson said, and there was a note of schmaltz in her voice so unlike the Bobbi he knew that Gardener looked up sharply… and then looked down at his hands quickly. Anderson was crying a little.

After a few moments Gardener asked: “What then?”

“Then you came up the road just in time to grab me when I passed out,” Anderson said, smiling.

“I don't understand what you mean.”

“Peter died on the 28th of June,” Anderson said. She had never had much practice as a liar, but thought this one came out sounding smooth and natural. “That's the last day I remember clearly and sequentially. Until you showed up last night, that is.” She smiled openly and guilelessly at Gardener, but this was also a lie-her clear, sequential, unjumbled memories ended the day before, on June 27th, with her standing above, that titanic thing buried in the earth, gripping the handle of the shovel. They ended with her whispering “Everything's fine,” and then beginning to dig. There was more to the tale, all right, all kinds of more, but she couldn't remember it sequentially and what she could remember would have to be edited… carefully edited. For instance, she couldn't really tell Gard about Peter. Not yet. They had told her she couldn't, but on that one she didn't need any telling.

They had also told her Jim Gardener would have to be watched very, very closely. Not for long, of course-soon Gard would be

(part of us)

on the team. Yes. And it would be great to have him on the team, because if there was anyone in the world Anderson loved, it was Jim Gardener.

Bobbi, who are “they”?

The Tommyknockers. That word, which had risen out of the queer opaqueness in Gard's mind like a silvery bubble, was as good a name as any, wasn't it? Sure. Better than some.

“So what now?” Gardener asked, lighting her last cigarette. He looked both dazed and wary. “I'm not saying I can swallow all this…” He laughed a bit wildly. “Or maybe it's just that my throat's not big enough for it all to go down at once.”

“I understand,” Anderson said. “I think the main reason I remember so little about the last week or so is because it's all so… weird. It's like having your mind strapped to a rocket-sled.”

She didn't like lying to Gard; it made her uneasy. But all the lying would be done soon enough. Gard would be… would be…

Well… persuaded.

When he saw the ship. When he felt the ship.

“No matter how much I do or don't believe, I'm forced to believe most of it, I guess.”

When you remove the impossible, whatever remains is the truth, no matter how improbable. -

“You got that too, did you?”

“The shape of it. I might not have even known what it was if I hadn't heard you say it once or twice.”

Gardener nodded. “Well, I guess it fits the situation we have here. If I don't believe the evidence of my senses, I have to believe I'm crazy. Although God knows there are enough people in the world who would be more than happy to testify that's just what I am.”

“You're not crazy, Gard,” Anderson said quietly, and put her hand over his. He turned his own over and squeezed it.

“Well… you know, a man who shot his wife… there are people who'd say that's pretty persuasive evidence of insanity. You know?”

“Gard, that was eight years ago.”

“Sure. And that guy I elbowed in the tit, that was eight days ago. I also chased a guy down Arberg's hall and across his dining room, with an umbrella, did I tell you that? My behavior over the last few years has been increasingly self-destructive-”

“Hi, folks, and welcome once more to The National Self-Pity Hour!” Bobbi Anderson chirruped brightly. “Tonight's guest is-”

“I was going to kill myself yesterday morning,” Gardener said quietly. “If I hadn't gotten these vibrations-really strong ones-that you were in trouble, I'd be fishfood now.”

Anderson looked at him closely. Her hand slowly tightened down on his until it was hurting. “You mean it, don't you? Christ!”

“Sure. You want to know how bad it's gotten? It seemed like the sanest thing I could do under the circumstances.”

“Come off it.”

“I'm serious. Then this idea came. The idea you were in trouble. So I put it off long enough to call you. But you weren't here.”

“I was probably in the woods,” Anderson said. “And you came running.” She lifted his hand to her mouth and kissed it gently. “If this whole crazy business doesn't mean anything else, at least it means you're still alive, you asshole.”

“As always, I'm impressed by the almost Gallic range of your compliments, Bobbi.”