A wide, rutted track wound into the woods. Ev bounced onto it.

“There was blood on his face.” Dugan swallowed. It was hard. His head ached very badly now, and all the fillings in his teeth seemed to be vibrating very fast. His guts were churning again. “And his shirt. Looked like somebody popped him one in the n

“Pull over, I'm going to be sick again.”

Ev jammed on the brakes. Dugan opened his door and leaned out, vomited a thin yellow stream onto the dirt and then closed his eyes for a moment. The world was swooping and turning.

Voices rustled in his head. A great many voices.

(Gard saw them he's yelling for help)

(how many)

(two two in a Cherokee they were headed)

“Look,” Butch heard himself say, as if from a great distance, “I don't want to spoil the party, Hillman, but I'm sick. Seriously sick.”

“Thought you might be.” Hillman's voice came down a long, echoing hall. Somehow Butch managed to haul himself up again in the passenger seat, but he didn't even have strength enough to pull the door closed. He felt as weak as a new kitten. “You ain't had time to build up any resistance, and we're right where it's strongest. Hold on a second. I got something that'll fix you up. Least, I think I do.”

Ev pushed the switch that lowered the Cherokee's electric rear window, got out, lowered the tailgate, and pulled out the gunnysack. He dragged it back to the Jeep and then hoisted it onto the seat. He glanced at Dugan, and didn't like what he saw. The trooper's face was the color of candlewax. His eyes were shut, the lids purplish. His mouth was half open and he was breathing in quick, shallow gasps. Ev found a moment to wonder how whatever-it-was could be doing that to Dugan when he himself felt nothing, absolutely nothing.

“Hang on, friend,” he said, and used his pocketknife to cut the rope holding the neck of the bag.

“… sick…” Dugan wheezed, and retched brownish fluid. Ev saw that there were three teeth in the mess.

He got out a light plastic oxygen-supply tank-what the clerk at Maine Med Supplies had called a flat-pack. He stripped the gold-foil circle from the end of the hose leading out of the flat-pack, revealing a stainless-steel female connector. Now he brought out a gold-colored plastic cup-the sort jet airliners come equipped with. A segmented white plastic tube was attached to this, and at the end there was a white plastic male connector-a valve.

If this don't work the way that guy said it would, I do believe this big fella's going to die on me.

He slammed the male connector of the mask into the female connector on the oxygen supply-violent intercourse which he hoped would result in-keeping Dugan going. He heard oxygen sighing gently inside the gold cup. All right. So far, so good.

He leaned over and put the cup over Dugan's mouth and nose, using the plastic straps. Then he waited anxiously to see what would happen. If Dugan didn't come out of his tailspin in thirty or forty seconds, he would haul ass. David was missing and Hilly was sick, but neither thing gave him a right to murder Dugan, who hadn't known what sort of a mess he was getting into.

Twenty seconds passed. Then thirty.

Ev dropped the Cherokee into reverse, meaning to turn around on the edge of Anderson's garden, when Dugan suddenly gasped, jerked, and opened his eyes. They looked very wide and blue and bewildered above the rim of the gold cup. Some color had come back into his cheeks.

“What the hell-” His hands groped for the cup.

“Leave it on,” Ev said, putting one of his big, arthritis-warped old hands over one of Butch's. “It was the outside air poisoning you. You in a hurry for another dose?”

Butch stopped reaching for the cup. It bobbed on his face as he said, “How long will this stuff last?”

“Twenty-five minutes or so, the guy told me. It's a demand valve, though. Every now and then you can pull it down. When you start feeling woozy again, put it back on. I want to go on in, if you think you can. It can't be far, and… and I feel like I got to know.”

Butch Dugan nodded.

The Cherokee lurched forward again. Dugan stared out at the woods around them. Silent. No birds. No animals. No nothing. This was very wrong. Very bad and very damned wrong.

Faintly, far back in his mind, he could hear thoughts like a whisper of shortwave transmissions.

He looked at Ev. “What the blue fuck is going on here, anyway?”

“That's to find out.” Without taking his eyes off the rough track, Ev rummaged in the gunnysack. Dugan winced as the Cherokee's undercarriage screamed over a stump sawed off a little higher than the others.

Ev brought out a big. 45. It looked old enough for its original owner to have carried it in World War I.

“Yours?” Dugan asked. It was amazing how fast the oxygen was bringing him around.

“Yeah. They teach you to use these things, don't they?”

“Yes.” Although the one Hillman had looked like an antique.

“You might have to use it today,” Ev said, and handed it over.

“What-”

“Have a care. It's loaded.”

Up ahead, the land suddenly sloped downward. Through the trees came a giant reflection: sunshine bouncing off a huge metal object.

Ev stamped on the brake, suddenly terrified to the depths of his heart.

“What the hell?” he heard Dugan mutter beside him.

Ev opened the door and got out. As his feet touched the ground, he became aware that the earth was crisscrossed with small dusty cracks and that it was vibrating very rapidly. At the next moment music so loud that it was deafening blew through his head at gale force. It went on for perhaps thirty seconds, but the pain was excruciating and it seemed forever. At last, it simply winked out.

He saw Dugan standing in front of the Cherokee, the cup now hooked under his chin. He held the flat-pack by the strap in one hand, the. 45 in the other. He was looking at Ev apprehensively.

“I'm all right,” Ev said.

“Yeah? Your nose is bleeding. Just like that guy back at the farm we passed.”

Ev wiped his nose with his finger and looked at the smear of blood. He wiped his finger on his pants and nodded toward Dugan. “Remember to put the mask back on when you start to feel woozy.”

“Oh, don't worry.”

Ev leaned back into the Cherokee and rummaged in his bag of tricks again. He brought out a Kodak disc camera and something that looked like a cross between a pistol and a blow-dryer.

“Your flare-gun?” Dugan asked, smiling a little.

“Ayuh. Get on the gas again, Trooper. You're losin y'color.”

Dugan pulled it up, and the two men started toward that glittering thing in the woods. Fifty feet from the Cherokee, Ev stopped. It was more than huge; it was titanic, a thing that would perhaps be large enough to dwarf an ocean liner when completely uncovered.

“Gimme your hand,” he said roughly to Dugan.

Dugan did as Ev asked, but wanted to know why.

“Because I'm scared shitless,” Ev said. Dugan squeezed his hand. Ev's arthritis flared, but he squeezed back anyway. After a moment, the two men started forward again.

Bobbi and Jud got the guns from the hardware store and put them in the back of the pickup. The side trip hadn't taken long but Dick and the others had gotten a good start and Bobbi pushed the pickup as fast as she dared to catch up. The truck's shadow, shortening as the day approached noon, ran beside them.

Bobbi suddenly stiffened a little behind the wheel.

“Did you hear it?”

“Heard something,” Jud said. “It was your friend, wasn't it?”

Bobbi nodded. “Gard saw them. He's yelling for help.”

“How many?”

“Two. In a Jeep. They were headed out to where the ship is.”

Jud brought a fist down on one leg. “The fuckers! The dirty snooping fuckers!”