Kathryn scooped Jill up and took her across the street to a neighbor with whom she maintained a vague, distant friendship. The neighbor had four children under ten, and an extra one never seemed to matter to her. “Can you watch Jill until about five?” Kathryn asked. “I’ve got to go to town.” It was as simple as that. Jill waved a solemn goodbye to her.

Five minutes later, Kathryn was on the highway, buzzing toward Albuquerque at eighty miles an hour. The smooth, silent battery-powered engine of her car throbbed with power. She shot past Bernalillo on the freeway and glided into suburban Albuquerque. At this hour, the traffic was light. The winter sky was speckled with gray clouds, and the lofty skyline ahead of her seemed blurred. It might snow today, perhaps. But there were people in town who could tell her about flying saucers, and this was a good day for talking to them.

When she’d parked the car in the big city lot underneath Rio Grande Boulevard, Kathryn walked eastward toward the Old Town. The telephone book gave the Contact Cult office an address on Romero Street. Of course, it didn’t call itself a Contact Cult; that was the newspaper name, and Kathryn understood that the cultists resented being thought of as cultists. The official name of the group was the Society for the Brotherhood of Worlds. Kathryn had found it listed in the telephone book under “Religious Organizations’.

A burnished bronze plaque mounted on the front of a ramshackle old building identified the local office — church of the Society for the Brotherhood of Worlds. Kathryn held back at the entrance. Her cheeks suddenly flamed as she recalled how acidly Ted had spoken of this organization, with its trappings of mystic pomp, its seances at Stonehenge and Mesa Verde, its pious mingling of ancient ritual and modern scientific gadgetry. Ted had said something to the effect that half the members of the. Contact Cult were con men and the other half were willing marks, and that Frederic Storm, the leader, was the biggest con man of all. Kathryn shook off her hesitation. Ted’s opinions didn’t matter now. She hadn’t come here to join the cult, merely to try to find information.

She went in.

The lavishly appointed interior belied the building’s shabby facade. Kathryn found herself in a small, high-vaulted anteroom that was empty save for a couple of elegant chairs and a gleaming bronze replica of the statue that was the Contact Cult’s trademark, a naked woman, her eyes closed, her arms outstretched, reaching in welcome toward the stars. Kathryn had always thought that that emblem was marvelously silly, but now, to her discomfort, she was not so sure. On three sides of the room sumptuous mahogany doors led to inner offices.

She was being scanned, she knew. A moment passed, and one of the doors opened. A woman of about forty came out, flashing a quick professional smile. Her hair was pulled severely back from her forehead; her clothing was fashionably austere; pinned to her collar she wore the little stylized emblem of a flying saucer that served as the Contact Cult’s identifying badge.

“Good afternoon. Can I can help you?”

“Ah — yes,” Kathryn said uncertainly. “I’d like — some information—”

“Would you come this way?”

She found herself being brusquely conveyed into an office that would have delighted a bank president. The severe, no-nonsense woman seated herself behind an angular desk. Kathryn saw the brooding, consciously mystic features of Frederic Storm staring down from the wall in a tridim photo at least six feet high. Der Fuhrer, she thought, He’d!

“You’re a little early for our evening service of blessing and universal unity,” the woman said. “We’ll be having Frederic Storm on the screen at eight tonight, and it should be an inspiring event. But in the meantime we can go through the preliminary orientation. Have you belonged to any chapter of the Society prior to this?”

“No,’Kathryn said.’I-”

“There’s just this simple routine, then.” The woman pushed a recording cube toward her. “If you’ll answer a few questions for us, we can register you right away, and begin to draw you into the harmony of our group. I take it you’re aware of our general purposes and beliefs?” The woman nodded meaningfully toward the glowering image of Frederic Storm on the wall. “Perhaps you’ve read several of Frederic Storm’s books about his contacts with our brothers from space? He’s a miraculous writer, wouldn’t you say? I don’t understand how any rational person can read his books and fail to see that—”

Desperately, Kathryn cut in. “I’m sorry, I haven’t read any of his books. I didn’t come here for the service, either. Or to join, really. I just wanted some information.”

The look of professional warmth vanished. “Are you from the media?” the woman asked crossly.

“You mean a reporter? Oh, no. I’m just a—” Kathryn paused and realized the right approach to take. “Just an ordinary housewife. I’m troubled about this space thing, the saucers and all, and I don’t really know where to begin asking questions, except that I want to know more about it, whether there are beings out in space, you know, and what they want with us, and everything. I’ve been meaning to stop by for a long time. And when I saw the fireball a few nights ago, well, that clinched it. 1 came here first chance I got. But I’m really ignorant. You’ll have to start from the beginning with me.”

The Contact Cult woman relaxed, no longer on guard against a poking newshound. She said, “Perhaps you should start with our literature. This is the introductory kit.” She took a thick manila envelope from her desk and slid it toward Kathryn. “You’ll find all the basic brochures in there. Then—” she added a stout paperback book to the pile “—this is the most recent edition of Frederic Storm’s Our Friends, the Galaxy. It’s quite inspiring.”

“I’ll look everything over.”

“There’s a charge of two dollars for the material.”

Kathryn was startled at that. Proselyters didn’t usually dive for the profits so early in the conversion process. She pursed her lips and handed over the two bills, all the same.

“There’s also a fifteen-minute information film. We show it in our auditorium on the second floor every half hour. The next show takes place in about five minutes.” A quick grin. “There’s no admission fee.”

“I’ll watch it,” Kathryn promised.

“Fine. Afterwards, if you feel you’d like to participate more deeply in the experience Frederic Storm offers the world, come back here and we’ll talk, and I’ll register you on a preliminary basis. That’ll entitle you to attend tonight’s service.”

“Fine,” Kathryn said. “And now could I ask you just one thing — something about saucers, not exactly about the Society here?”

“Of course.”

“The fireball on Monday night. That wasn’t really a meteor, was it? Don’t you think it was a flying saucer, maybe an exploding one?”

“Frederic Storm believes that it was indeed a vehicle of the galactic people,” said the woman primly. She was like some sort of robot, mouthing the words of the leader, always taking care to call him by his full name. “He released a brief statement about it yesterday. He plans a fuller exposition of his thinking at a service early next week.”

“And he says it was a saucer? What about its crew?”

“He has not issued any statement about the crew.”

“Suppose,” Kathryn said uneasily, “suppose the crew bailed out. Suppose they landed alive. Is that possible? That they could land, and look like human beings, and maybe be discovered by us and come into our houses? Has anything like that ever happened, could you say?”

She was afraid she was being too transparent. Surely this woman would pounce on her and demand to be taken instantly to the injured galactic visitor in her home. But no, there was no appearance of personal involvement, only the shifting of the gears and the declaiming of the appropriate segment of the party line.