“I really don’t understand at all what you are—”

He lunged abruptly.

Nikka swiveled and kicked high, heel turned outward to take the impact. Sanges caught it in the shoulder and shifted his weight with surprising speed.

Nikka came down too heavily from the kick, losing balance. Sanges danced to the side. Nikka got herself into position and tried to remember what she had learned, long ago and far away, about personal defense.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Sanges said.

“Don’t you.”

“I will see to it that you and Walmsley never work again.”

“We’ll see.”

“I warn you.”

“So I heard.”

“I order you—”

“You haven’t the authority.”

“Then—”

He lumbered forward. His hands were held down, palms up. He clearly intended to get her into a bear hug and sling her around. If he could then reach the console switches he could stop transmission.

She turned, back to him, and brought up her elbow. She felt her arm smack into him with a satisfying thud. Sanges wheezed out his air. He wheeled away. Caught himself. Turned.

Nikka backed away. She needed space to maneuver. She felt the console rim press against the small of her back.

Time. She needed time. The data was going out. A few more minutes and—“Listen, Sanges.” Maybe she could kick the son of a bitch in the balls. “Listen—”

Sanges feinted to the right. Nikka moved to block his way. He shifted weight and dodged to the left. She turned to follow. He slammed into her with full force. Nikka tried to strike him but he lurched forward. Her arms were pinned. Together they sprawled backward. Nikka felt herself tipped over, past the safety guard on the console. The small switches of the alien terminal knifed into her back. They were crushing delicate wire switches, clicking them over from active to passive, calling new entries forth—

“Stop! We’re wrecking it!”

“Let me—” Sanges grunted and flailed at the power switch. He wrenched it over to the OFF position. The screen above them faded.

“There,” Sanges said. “I hope you realize the damage has been caused totally by your—”

“Look,” Nikka said quietly, panting.

She pointed at the alien terminal. Some switches were alight, winking redly in the shadows, following a sequence of their own. The lights danced and rippled.

“It’s running on its own.”

“An internal power supply?” Sanges wheezed, his face flushed.

“It must be. Something we did activated—”

The wheeling dabs of yellow pulsed, flickered, pulsed. “Some very complex program is running,” Nikka said. “Not simple one-to-one data retrieval. An action sequence of some kind—”

A dim glowing lamp caught her attention. “Nigel’s online input—it’s still active. He’s still reading this.”

“Here.” Sanges reached over and switched off the connection. The lamp remained steady. Sanges clicked the toggle switch back and forth. “Funny,” he said. “Something’s happened.”

A silence grew between them in the dark bay, now lit only by the twinkling, shifting array of alien console lights. Each tiny fleck of solid-state electronics flared briefly into life and then died momentarily, part of a jiggling rhythm.

“Nigel’s getting this, whatever it is, and we can’t turn it off,” Nikka said. “We can’t stop it.” Her words were swallowed in the cold stale space surrounding them.

Nigel had turned off all the room’s illumination, to improve contrast as he monitored the readout Nikka was transmitting. He sat far forward into the console, its plastiform arms enveloping him, its hood lowered to maximum depth. Nikka’s series began. Nigel hunched over and tracked the flow of data. The images flared into being and were erased with blurring speed. The large rat, three different views. Rotating pinwheels of orange and blue. Ancient photographs of Earth. Molecular chains. Chemical arrays. The hairy, shambling creatures. The beings in rubbery suits. Star charts. Indices. Data. Nigel tracked it at the limit of his speed, mentally checking off each category as it was recalled from storage and sent on electromagnetic wings to Alphonsus, Earth, Kardensky, freedom.

The screen jumped.

Froze.

Sputtered an array of dots, lines, ripplings—

… Nigel perceived it first as a faceless blank space. He peered at it intently. Something in it made him shiver.

He frowned. He moved his eyes to the side. He tried to look away.

And found that he could not.

It came to him out of the screen like a trembling high shriek, in color, a mottled green blister swelling toward him.

It hit him in the face and Nigel Walmsley disintegrated.

A day had passed briefly, scarcely more than an interval of wan light that seeped through the roof of clouds. Now the twilight gathered and Mr. Ichino sat rocking, his face a solemn mask, and turned the weapon over in his thin, bony hands. Could he feel the strangeness in it, or was that imagination?

A further conversation with Graves at lunch had clarified matters a bit, but Mr. Ichino was sure much would never be explained. Graves had mapped all Bigfoot sightings over the past century and found there were recurrent patterns, preferred routes through the mountains, and there he had sought the shambling beasts with helicopters and infrared eyes. Mr. Ichino had selected this place for a similar reason: studying the Oregon back country, he had noted that a series of shallow valleys and passes connected this region with the Wasco area. Merely a guess, a convenient reason to settle in these forgiving woods, but it had brought Graves to him. And perhaps that was the end of it—there might well be no other bands of Bigfoot. The Wasco blast must have caught most of them, burrowed deep inside their winter warren.

Where they had… what? Waited for some promised return? For the Marginis wreck? The Bigfoot had clearly known the aliens, perhaps worked for them, learned from them. These early men might well have worshipped the all-powerful, godlike aliens.

It would be a simple, natural thing to transfer that worship to their gods’ possessions that were left behind when the aliens abandoned Earth.

In the distant past the Bigfoot must have collected the bits and pieces of their gods’ leavings and carried them along when the higher forms of men drove them deeper into the forests. Dragged them through that vast retreat, perhaps used them to survive.

And the tribes with weapons would live longest, of course. A band of Bigfoot that worshiped an alien refrigerator wouldn’t find it of much use when it was cornered and had to fight, Mr. Ichino thought, smiling.

Graves spoke in his sleep, mumbling, and thrashed against his bedding. Mr. Ichino looked over at him.

Graves would make his name with this discovery. He had brought the Bigfoot at last into the light.

Mr. Ichino found the film in Graves’s pack. It made an orange kernel in the fire and in a moment there were no traces.

He carried the tube—how had they made it so tough, to last this long?—out into the clearing, and stood with it in the darkening chill of evening.

Minutes passed. Then they came.

There were not many. Six stepped away from the shelter of the black tree line and formed a semicircle around him. Mr. Ichino had the feeling more were waiting out of sight, their presence hanging in the air.

In the light thrown through the open cabin door behind him he could see one of them clearly. The head was very human. A thick forehead slanted into flaring nostrils. Glittering, sunken eyes darted quickly, seeing everything. Yet it moved without anxiety or tension.

Massive, muscled arms hung almost to its knees as it crunched forward through the snow. Bristly black hair, shiny in the cabin light, covered the entire body except the nose, mouth and cheeks. A faint sour animal smell drifted in the light breeze.