The gleaming government car came to a halt beside a vast field of corn. Other cars lined the road, and everywhere, excited onlookers were scrambling to get a view.

“I really appreciate you taking me along on this, sir,” Eric Crawford said.

“I thought it was time you… came on board,” Owen replied.

“You won’t regret it,” Eric assured him. He glanced about excitedly. “This could be really big.”

Owen said nothing, less pleased than irritated by Eric’s enthusiasm. It was not Eric he wanted by his side, but Sam, who’d gone in the opposite direction, and was now in journalism school. Sam had had the mind and the will and the sheer energy to keep up with him. Eric seemed able to do little more than ride precariously on his old man’s churning wake.

“We get these reports two or three times a week.”

Owen said dismissively. “It’ll probably be nothing of real interest. Mutilated cattle. Dancing lights.”

Eric persisted. “But for you to come personally… there must be some reason.”

Owen shrugged. “Well, these particular reports are a little better than usual,” he admitted.

Owen got out and surveyed the scene before him, a vast field of corn that waved green and lush in the spring breeze. People were streaming in and out of the field, eager to get in on the big news. He paused briefly, then pushed his way through the crowd and the waving stalks of corn, until he came into a clearing where the corn had been leveled and lay flat to the ground as if pressed down by a huge invisible hand.

A helicopter landed a few minutes later, bearing two fresh young government agents.

“Colonel Crawford, I’m Toby Woodruff,” the taller agent said. “Defense Department. This is Ted Olsen. He’s with the NSA.”

They were low-level officials, Owen knew, and their lack of seniority reflected the low esteem to which he and the project had sunk. It should have been President Nixon in that helicopter, he thought bitterly, not two snot-nosed kids.

Owen pointed to the still whirring copter. “Let’s go for a ride-take a look from the air.”

In the air over Indiana, the leveled corn assumed the pattern of a perfect circle.

“It’s a landing field if I ever saw one,” Owen said, suddenly confident that the reports had been accurate, that something very noteworthy had happened in this cornfield. “This has happened before. Here and in France and Germany. But the scale of this. The intent. Look at that formation. It’s like a runway.”

“A landing strip?” Eric asked. “If it’s a landing strip then maybe they’re going to be…”

“Landing?” Owen interrupted.

“Look over here,” Eric cried as the helicopter banked to the right.

Owen stared out the window, down into the undulating corn, where a different pattern emerged, not a vast landing strip at all, but a huge peace symbol, and the single greeting, “Howdy.”

“Landing field?” Woodruff scoffed.

Owen gave him a lethal stare, but couldn’t rid himself of the mockery he saw in Woodruff’s eyes, the way this pasty-faced kid seemed to be looking at a man who’d wasted his life chasing phantoms. He’d once had the proof in his grasp, he thought angrily, but Russell Keys and his tumor had gone up, quite literally, in smoke. And as for his son? The way he just vanished from a bomb shelter? How could he have followed a trail that disappeared in a beam of light?

Owen stared down at the earth beneath him. Jesse Keys might well be down there somewhere, he thought, but it seemed to him that the way he’d been taken was the most powerful argument so far that whatever the visitors were doing, he didn’t have a chance against them.

“I think your control over this project has ended,” Woodruff said with a smirk.

The rocket lifted from the launch pad, and Jesse Keys held his breath as it rose into the empty blue. Men were headed for the moon. The small screen seemed hardly able to contain the magnitude of the achievement, the sheer awesome nature of what was happening.

Willie slouched on the ratty sofa next to Jesse. “Hey, man, what’s the weirdest thing you ever saw?”

Jesse shrugged, his attention still riveted on the rising rocket.

Willie tapped a small portion of brown powder into a spoon and began to heat it with a match. “I think I saw a flying saucer once.”

Jesse wrapped a belt around his arm. “I’ve been on a flying saucer. More than once. One time I saw my father. He’d been dead for four days.”

Willie sucked the solution through a cotton ball and poured it into the syringe. “Okay, my man.” He handed the syringe to Jesse. “That is really and truly weird.” He slouched back on the sofa, watching dully as the rocket continued upward. “Waste of frigging time and money, going to the moon.” His gaze drifted over to Jesse. “You know what I always admired about you? When we were in ‘ Nam, I mean? That you were the only officer who walked point. Every single mission, you walked point.”

Jesse shrugged, his attention on the few balloons Willie had placed on the table before him. “How’s my credit?”

“Sorry,” Willie said.

“I saved your life, Willie.”

“Two times, man,” Willie said. “Now I’ll save yours. Get straight, Jesse.”

Jesse released a despairing laugh. “I don’t want to get straight.”

“I know what you want. You want to get taken to that other world.” He grinned. “Well, that costs money.”

“I’m good for it.”

Willie shook his head. “No, you ain’t. You’re like every other junkie. That’s why it’s strictly cash and carry.”

Jesse gave up and returned his attention to the television. The rocket had disappeared into the empty blue by then. Well, not exactly empty, he thought. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded piece of felt, his father’s medals inside it. “These were my dad’s,” he said. He handed them to Willie. “They should be worth something, right?” He closed his eyes wearily. “At least one balloon.”

Sarah, a young graduate student, set the canned beans and coffee on the store’s plain wooden counter while Dr. Powell, her boss and lead archeologist, went to see if the telegram had arrived. The other people in the store watched them warily, unused to strangers.

“You’re the people digging in the woods, aren’t you?” someone asked.

Powell looked at the little girl who’d suddenly come over to him. “Yes, we are,” he told her. “And who are you?”

“Wendy.”

“Nice to meet you, Wendy.”

The little girl cocked her head, her large eyes filled with innocent curiosity. “What are you looking for?”

“We’re trying to find out about the Indians who used to live up there,” Powell answered. He glanced at the other people in the store, took in their curious resentment.

“That’s nice,” a man said. “You gonna be getting the hell out of there any time soon?”

Sarah stepped back from the counter and turned to the other people in the store. “Why are you all so hostile to us?” she asked. “We’re not doing anything but digging up a few artifacts from…”

“Maybe some things should be left buried,” the man said.

“Like what?” Powell challenged. “What have we dug up that should have been left buried?”

The man hesitated, as if at the mouth of a tomb. “Word is, a mummy.”

Sam Crawford sat in his father’s study, his attention focused on an article in the Anchorage Daily News. The headline read MUMMY FOUND IN TSIMSHIAN village. An accompanying photograph showed a certain Dr. Powell standing inside what appeared to be an underground chamber, the walls of which were covered with strange markings.