He stepped forward resolutely and headed down the street, the breeze at his back, pressing him forward like an invisible hand to where the street made a slow curve toward a bus stop. He could see a man sitting on the bench at the stop, his crooked profile in silhouette beneath the streetlamp, a dusty old carnival truck rooted in the distance, traveling attractions that seemed to have traveled very far.

Charlie stopped, felt a spike of fear, and kept his eyes on the man before him, watching fearfully as he continued to smoke idly, the ghostly curls from his cigarette rising skyward into the darkness like souls released from their long travail.

Lisa wasn’t sure why it had come over her, this sudden interest, only that it grew more intense with each passing day. Now she was reading The Mojave Desert Sightings, by Tom Clarke, a book she’d hardly have noticed before… what? She didn’t know. It had simply come upon her, this need to explore the far-fetched notion that strange beings walked the earth, or hovered above it, looking down, waiting to be discovered.

Carol glanced at Danny worriedly, then across the table to where Lisa continued to read intently, her food untouched before her.

“Are you reading that for an assignment?” Carol asked.

Lisa did not look up from the book. “No.”

“Then why are you reading it?”

Lisa shrugged, her eyes riveted to the page. “I don’t know,” she answered. “I just got curious.”

Danny looked at the book, the photograph of Tom Clarke on the back cover.

“Tom Clarke,” he said to Carol. “That’s Jacob’s brother, right?”

Carol nodded.

“Kind of a fruit-loop.”

Lisa tensed. “I’ll be in my room,” she said.

In her room, she was not sure why she’d suddenly felt so hostile to Danny, or so defensive about Tom Clarke. After all, Danny had always been good to her, and she hardly knew Tom Clarke. And yet, she’d bristled visibly when Danny had made light of Tom. It was almost like he’d insulted her as well, called her a fruit-loop, too.

Strange, she thought, as she sat down on her bed, reading intently once again, her eyes fixed on the page, her mind so focused on the account of the Mojave sightings that she barely noticed when her mother stepped into the room.

“What’s going on, Lisa?” Carol asked.

“Nothing,” Lisa answered. She could see that her mother wasn’t buying it. “I’m fine,” she added reassuringly. “Really.”

Carol sat down on the bed beside her. “Your uncle Tom has a lot of weird ideas, Lisa.” She glanced at the book apprehensively, as if it were a loaded gun. “You’re not starting to… have the same ideas, are you?”

“What if I am?” Lisa replied, a touch of defiance edging into her voice.

“Lisa,” Carol said softly, “you come from a… special family. Your father had an amazing mind. He could look at things and figure them out. With people too. He could see things other people couldn’t see.” She touched Lisa’s hand. “Honey, your life is changing because you’re growing up. You’re not being abducted by a spaceship, you’re being taken into adulthood.” She released a short, awkward laugh. “Of the two, I’d say that’s far and away the scarier proposition.”

Lisa listened as her mother continued, but found her mind continually drawn back to the Mojave sightings, her uncle’s book, so that by the time Carol left her room, she had made up her mind to contact him.

Wakeman gave Eric a boyish wink. “So, what’s this all about?” he asked.

Eric didn’t know. He knew only that he and Wakeman had been summoned to the Office of Science and Technology for what had been described as an important briefing.

The briefing began with the solemn description of a disturbing event.

“About three weeks ago we sent a manned mission into space,” Hinkle told them. “This launch was unannounced. The purpose of the mission was to put certain very sensitive equipment into orbit.” He glanced at General Beers, as if for approval to go on. The general nodded silently, and Hinkle continued. “It had to do with President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative.”

“Star Wars,” Wakeman said in a carefree tone Hinkle did all he could to ignore.

“As you probably remember,” Hinkle said. “There were some questions about whether or not this program was feasible. Before President Bush revisits the project, we need to know if it is…”

“So what did you send up?” Wakeman asked. “A reactor?”

“One of the major issues was finding a compact power system that put out enough kilowatts to power both particle-beam weapons and rail guns.”

“So, a reactor, like I said,” Wakeman said happily.

Hinkle looked at Wakeman irritably, but continued. “Our payload was highly classified. The capsule has been in orbit for fourteen hours. It was two hours away from the position where the payload was to be… delivered when… well… the astronauts went dark for almost two and a half hours.”

“They disappeared,” Eric said dryly.

“There was no contact,” Hinkle confirmed. “Nothing. Then they came back, clear as day. They had no idea that they’d lost two and a half hours of their lives.”

“What happened to the payload?” Eric asked matter-of-factly.

“Gone,” Hinkle replied.

“And the astronauts?”

“We’ve debriefed them extensively, used hypnosis and drugs, but they simply have no recollection of this… missing time.”

Wakeman sat back and grinned. “So, gentlemen, what have you come up with for an explanation?”

General Beers leaned forward. “Let’s get something straight,” he said to Wakeman sternly. “The people in this room represent seven billion dollars a year in defense spending.” He glanced from Wakeman to Eric. “We need your help, gentlemen.”

“What do you need from us?” Eric asked.

“What you know about whatever might be… out there,” Beers answered. “Who they are and what they want.”

Eric and Wakeman left the room a few seconds later.

“We’re back, baby,” Wakeman said cheerily.

Eric stopped and looked at him seriously. “You get started.” He smiled. “I’m going to keep working on this Tom Clarke thing.”

“Tom Clarke?” Wakeman asked.

“He keeps getting calls from someone in Los Altos, California,” Eric explained. “The phone is registered to a guy named Danny Holden. I thought I’d run out there and take a look.”

Wakeman looked at him and smiled. “For a while, I thought this was all a bluff. I thought you had something big and you were holding out on me.”

Two weeks later Eric arrived at Los Altos, all the other trailers in the park little more than a blur beside the one he came toward like a bullet.

At the door, he presented his ID as a census taker.

The man at the door gave it only a cursory glance, then swung open the door and let him in.

“Let’s begin with your name,” Eric said as he took a seat in the trailer’s cramped living room.

“Danny Holden.”

“Do you rent or own?”

Danny laughed. “Who would rent a trailer?”

Eric smiled. “And you wife is?”

“Carol.”

“Children?”

“One daughter. Carol’s. Her name is Lisa.”

Eric wrote the names down on his form.

“She’s my stepdaughter,” Danny added. “From my wife’s first marriage.”

At that moment, Lisa entered the room, lugging her drums.

“Lisa, this is Mr…”

“Jones,” Eric said.

“Mr. Jones. He’s from the census.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Lisa told him.

Eric offered his hand. “I’m very, very glad to meet you,” he said. He saw the odd look in her eye, the lightning glint of her suspicion. It was pure intuition, a way of knowing more than the simple facts revealed. It was not unusual to see it in people, this intuition, and he’d have thought nothing of it had Lisa’s particular form of it not struck him as far more powerful than any he’d seen before, like steel made stronger by some alloy from another world.