Teresa began her journey home as she had arrived, in the company of Pedro Manella. For probably the last time, she stepped into a little boat to be conveyed through the Cave of Glowing Worms — their living constellations still shimmering in a subterranean mimicry of night. Then she and Pedro took advantage of the darkness to slip behind a flock of whispering tourists, treading well-worn guide paths past phosphorescent signs lettered in a dozen languages. Finally, they emerged on the flanks of a forested mountain, in New Zealand.

It’s like we only first entered for the first time an hour ago, Teresa thought, coaxing an illusion. Nothing in the intervening weeks has been real. I made it all up — Beta, the trip to Greenland, the gravity laser…

As Pedro stepped ahead of her down the tree-lined path, his shadow moved aside at one point to let glaring afternoon brightness fall upon her face. Teresa fumbled for her sunglasses.

Just a fantasy, that’s all it’s been, she continued wishing, including all that stuff about interstellar enemies sending monsters to devour our world.

It was a good effort, but Teresa had to sigh. She lacked enough talent at self-deception to make it work.

While you’re at it, might as well go whole hog and pretend you’re nineteen again, with all life’s adventures still ahead of you — first flight, first love, that illusion of immortality.

Southern autumn was ebbing fast, chilling toward winter. A breeze riffled her hair — now again her own shade of brown, but longer than at any time since she’d been a teenager. It felt at once sensuous, feminine, and startling each time it brushed against her neck.

Distracted, she suddenly collided with Manella’s massive back. “Hey!” Teresa complained, rubbing her nose.

Pedro turned, glancing at his watch, an agitated expression on his face. “You go on to the car,” he said. “I forgot something. See you in a nano.”

“Sure. Just remember I have a plane to catch at fourteen hundred. We—” Her voice trailed off as he hurried uphill, disappearing round a right-hand fork in the path. Strange, she thought. Didn’t we come down the left branch?

Maybe Pedro had to visit the gents’ before the long drive. Teresa resumed walking downhill again, one hand lightly on the guide rail overlooking steep forest slopes. Rain-damp ferns brushed in the wind. The tourist group had gone ahead and were probably spilling into the parking lot to seek their buses or rented runabouts. Perhaps the traffic jam would have cleared by the time Pedro caught up.

Teresa’s bags were already in the car. In them lay a packet of doctored photos, depicting her at an Australian hermitage-resort for the past month. They should get by any cursory inspection. And she’d gone over her cover story umpteen times. Soon, at the Auckland airport transit lounge, she would change places with the woman who’d been taking that holiday in her name. After the switch, at last, she’d be Teresa Tikhana once again. No reason for NASA ever to think she hadn’t done what they’d asked — taken that long-delayed recuperative holiday.

A new swarm of tourists loomed ahead, a big, intimidating group of determined sightseers climbing rapidly, staring about with their total-record goggles, holding tightly onto their shoulder bags. The tour guide shouted, describing the wonders of these mountains — their hidden rivers and secret byways. Teresa stepped aside to let the throng by. Several of the men looked her up and down as they passed, the sort of cursory, appreciative regard she was used to. Still, though the odds of being recognized were infinitesimal, Teresa turned away. Why take chances?

I wonder what’s keeping Pedro? She chewed on a fingernail as she looked across the rain forest. Why do I feel something’s wrong?

If she were in a cockpit right now, there’d be instruments to check, a wealth of information. Here, she had only her senses. Even her data plaque had been packed in the luggage below.

Glancing behind her, she realized something was distinctly odd about the tour group passing by. They’re sure in a hurry to see the caves. Is their bus behind schedule, or what?

Every one of them carried pastel shoulder bags to match their bright tourist gear. Four out of five were men, and there were no children at all. Are they with some sort of convention, maybe?

She almost stopped one to ask, but held back. Something seemed all too familiar about these characters, as she watched them recede upslope. Their movements were too purposeful for people on holiday. Under their goggles, their jaws had been set in a way that made Teresa think of—

She gasped. “Peepers! Oh… burf it!”

Helplessly she realized what her inattentiveness might cost. Without her plaque, she had only her slim wallet to use in an attempt to warn those below ground. Teresa took it from her hip pocket and flipped it open — only to find it wouldn’t transmit! The tiny transceiver was jammed.

There was a telephone though, in the gift shop by the park entrance. Teresa backed downhill till the last “tourist” vanished round a bend, then she turned to run—

— and crashed into several more men taking up the rear. One of them seized her wrist in a ninety-kilo grip.

“Well. Captain Tikhana. Hello! But I heard you were in Queensland. My goodness. What brings you to New Zealand so unexpectedly?”

The man holding her arm actually sounded anything but surprised to meet her here. Despite Glenn Spivey’s scarred complexion, his smile seemed almost genuine, empty of any malice. Next to Spivey, making useless any thought of struggle, stood a big black man and an Asian. Despite the ethnic diversity, they all seemed cast from the same mold, with the piercing eyes of trained spies.

A fourth man, standing behind the others, seemed out of place in this tableau. His features, too, were vaguely oriental. But his stance shouted civilian. And not a very happy one, either.

“You!” Teresa told the peeper colonel, cleverly.

“I hope you weren’t planning on leaving so soon, Captain?” Spivey replied, apparently bent on using one old movie clichi after another. “I wish you’d stay. Things are just about to get interesting.”

“… warn you, George! The place is swarming with soldiers! They’ve already taken the thumper and my crew. You and Alex and the others better clear out…”

A hand reached past George Hutton to turn off the sound. The holo unit went on visually depicting an elderly man in a heavy parka, obviously worried but now speaking only mime into a portable transmitter. Behind Stan Goldman loomed a titanic, icy palisade.

“I’m afraid the warning wouldn’t have done much good, even if it had come earlier,” Colonel Spivey told Hut-ton and the assembled conspirators. “We snooped all your files, of course, before running this kind of operation. Can’t afford to be sloppy, you know.”

Teresa sat in her old chair, across from Alex Lustig and two seats from the exit, now guarded by Spivey’s ANZAC commandoes. This time, the underground meeting room was packed with everyone, even the cook. Everyone except Pedro Manella, that is.

How did he know? She wondered. How does Pedro always seem to know?

She was feeling numb of course. Another few hours and she’d have been on her way to Houston, back to her comfortable apartment and her loyal NASA publicity flack.

Now though?

Now I’m cooked. Teresa’s thoughts were scattered like leaves. It was only natural, of course, when you contemplated a future in federal prison.

She glanced across the table at Alex and felt ashamed. Certainly he wasn’t worried foremost about saving his own neck. This event would have effects on more than just one life. All right, then. We’re all cooked. There was little solace in the reminder.