The cell door was ajar; it opened to Wes Dawson’s touch. He pushed it shut with his feet, and heard the lock click. Thoughts and memories boiled in his head. He pushed them deep into his mind, concentrating on the pain in his leg, and on not appearing injured. The fithp are not telepathic, he thought. But why take chances?
The cell was large and lonely. He had lived there for five days now. He liked the elbow room and he hadn’t liked dealing with the Soviets. Nonetheless—
They’re punishing me. But for what? it must be punishment. To a herd beast, being left in solitary must be agony.
They want to break me. I won’t let them. Think of something. What? There’s nothing to read…
Thuktun Flishithy’s main drive was a universal subliminal hum in Dawson’s mind. Its source was a gnawing ache.
It must be pushing against an enormous mass, for the acceleration to be so low. The fillip must have a hell of a big reserve of deuteriwn-tritium mix. That’s an ominous thought. It’s a big ship, and it can fight.
It has to be D-T mix. Any other assumption is worse. A fusion motor using simple hydrogen would have to be far more sophisticated, halfway from science fiction to fantasy. Wes Dawson preferred a more optimistic assumption.
Endlessly he waged the Fithp-Human War in his mind.
The door opened.
The intruder wailed as she entered. She had bright red hair and a pale face that would have been pretty if she hadn’t looked so sick. She was slender as a pipe cleaner, fragile-looking. Free-fall was making her terribly unhappy.
Wes caught her arm. The newcomer wailed at him without seeing him.
Others came into the cell. A blond girl, no more than ten years old, floated gracefully to remove his hand from the slender woman’s arm. “It’s all right, Alice,” the girl said.
“Makes me sick, oh God, I’m faaaluinggg.
New prisoners. Not astronauts. My God, they’ve invaded Earth)
The thin-faced redhead screamed again, and the blond girl said something soothing. Wes pushed woman and girl toward a wail, recoiled from the opposite wall, and was with them before they could bounce away. He pushed the woman’s hands into the rug surface until she got the idea: her fists closed tight and she clung. The blond girl stayed with her.
Now he could look at the others.
There were four more. One was a boy of nine or so, blackhaired, darkly tanned. Two were in their fifties, weathered like farm people, umnistakably man and wife from the way they clung to each other.
The final one was probably the blond girl’s mother. She had the same shade of blond hair and the same finely chiseled nose. She floated at arm’s length, like an acrobat.
The blond woman looked at him hard. “Wes Dawson? Senator?”
Did she expect him to recognize her? He didn’t. He smiled at her. “Congressman. Which way did you vote?”
“Jeri Wilson. We met at JPL, fifteen years ago, when the Voyager was passing Saturn… Uh, Republican.”
A long time ago. She couldn’t have been more than twenty then. Maybe not that old. And he’d met a lot of people since.
“Right. The Saturn encounter seems almost prehistoric now. How did you get here?”
“We were captured—”
“Sure, but where?”
“You don’t know?” Jeri asked. “Oh. I guess you wouldn’t. We were captured in Kansas. The aliens invaded.”
“Kansas-where in Kansas?”
“Not far from your wife’s home,” Jeri said. “About forty miles from there—”
“How the devil do you know where my wife is staying?” Dawson demanded.
“We were on our way there,” Jeri said. “Do you believe in synchronicity? I don’t, not really, but-well, actually it’s not too big a surprise. Nothing is, now.”
Wes shook his head in confusion. Aliens in Kansas. “Why were you going to find Carlotta?”
“It’s a long story,” Jeri said. “Look, we were going west, getting out of Los Angeles, when we ran out of gas. I was afraid to stop anyone until I saw Harry Reddington—”
“Hairy Red? You know him?”
“Yes. He tried to help us, and when-when that didn’t do any good, he was trying to go help your wife, and he took us with him, only the aliens landed—”
“All right,” Wes said. “I can get the details later. Is Carlotta all right?’
“I don’t know. Something happened in Kansas. Something bad for the snouts, because first they were happy, and then all of a sudden our guards turned mean.”
“Snouts?”
“That’s what everyone calls them now.”
“Good name.”
He turned to the others. “Didn’t mean to ignore you. You must have a lot of questions?”
“Some,” the man said.
“Reckon the Lord will tell us what we have to know,” the woman added. She put a protective arm around the boy.
“John and Carrie Woodward,” Jeri Wilson said. “From Kansas, but they didn’t see any more of the war than I did. And Gary Capehart. They left his parents behind. We don’t know why. And that’s my daughter Melissa, and her friend there is Alice. What’s going to happen to us?”
“Good question. I wish I knew. What’s wrong with Alice?”
