"They haven't. At their level of tech, they could if they wanted to. In any case, you don't have an indication that there are any alien beings at Saturn, all you know is that the visitor's apparently extra-solar and artificial. You want my considered opinions? Of course you do, that's why you're here."

"And I'm listening closely," Crow said. The jambalaya was really good. Clover might be goofy, but he could cook.

In the other chair, Clover fired up the remnant of the joint, took a drag, and said, "My first opinion is that if there actually are aliens there, they don't want to talk to us. Showing up on their doorstep might not go over real well. I mean that as understatement. What little information you've got-the fact that there was already a station at Saturn-suggests that they are not new to this game, which means they've probably got good reasons, from their perspective, for what they're not doing. Like communicating with us."

He continued: "My second opinion is that there probably aren't aliens there, that it's just a space probe. No LGMs, no 'take-me-to-your-leader.'"

Crow was getting a contact high from the dope; either that, or from the jambalaya. "Okay. Our problem is, sooner or later, this cat is going to get out of the bag. We know for sure that these . . . beings . . . are more technologically advanced than we are. We don't know by how much, but we do know that we don't want that tech falling into the hands of the Chinese before we get it."

"Ahh . . ." Clover blew smoke toward the ceiling. "I'm beginning to see."

"And it's probably not a probe. We've had some people thinking about that, and the ship's simply too big to be a probe, for beings that advanced. Right now, we could build a computer and sensory package not much bigger than a soccer ball, stick it in a probe, run out to the Centauri system in a couple of decades, and the computer would radio back everything we need to know about the system. No need to build a starship the size of an asteroid."

Clover shrugged. "Well, I've told you what I can, at this point. If you get more information, I'll be happy to advise-and I'll think about what you've told me so far, and get back to you with some ideas. If you get out there, and get more information, I will look forward to hearing about it. With more information, I can probably give you better opinions and better evaluations of what your options are. Leastwise, I can probably keep you from making boneheaded mistakes."

"John, I didn't actually want to throw this out there before I heard your opinions. . . . The President would like you to join the crew on the Saturn run."

Crow took some small pleasure in the surprise on Clover's face.

"You mean . . . go out in space?"

"Well, yeah."

"Jesus, Crow, who'd take care of my cat?"

It took Crow a moment to realize that Clover was serious.

"John, we've got bigger problems than your cat."

"Maybe you do, but I don't. Mr. Snuffles is sixteen years old. He's been my best friend all that time. I mean, we've dug in Mayan ruins together. We've fought snakes, mano a mano. No way in hell I'm going to leave him now. He's only got a couple of years left."

Crow took a second to rub his forehead. "Let me check to see if the cat could go."

Clover leaned back: "That would put a different complexion on it. If the cat could go, well, yeah, I could see making the trip. It's still a crappy idea. I don't trust aliens."

"You don't know any aliens."

"Yeah, and they don't know me. Seems like a hell of a good reason for not trusting them." He took a hit on the joint. "What are the chances of getting back?"

"Don't know. Assuming the aliens don't turn out to be hostile, probably ninety-nine percent. The other one percent, everybody dies."

"You mean, some massive failure."

"Yeah." Crow leaned forward. "John, the last thing we want to do is get anyone killed. That would defeat the whole purpose of going out there. As far as the aliens go, our Pentagon people don't think there's any reason that they might be hostile."

Clover shook his head. "Your Pentagon people are piss-ignorant. They don't know anything about the aliens, if there are any aliens. And that cuts both ways. The aliens might not know anything about us. Or maybe they only know the big stuff: Hiroshima, Vietnam, the Oil Wars, 9/11, the Tri-Border Fight, the Houston Flash. You think that might worry them? Crazy people, coming to visit? First contact-it's gonna be dangerous no matter how you cut it."

"All right."

"And then, we could get out there, find that they are a bunch of beautiful spiritual Zen people, ready to give us the secret to eternal life, and the Chinese show up and throw a nuke at us."

They sat staring at each other for a moment, then Crow said, "If you can take the cat?"

Clover waved a heavy hand at him: "I'll think about it. Probably say no. But I'll think about it." He inhaled, held it. "I don't believe my pot would be a good idea, given a recirculating ventilation system, but I'd want to take a few gallons of Old Horseshoe to get me through it."

"Let me know soon as you can, or we'll have to talk to somebody else," Crow said. "We'll stick you on a large retainer, until you say no, anyway. We'll want to see you in D.C. in a week to meet with our study group. Bring every idea you've got on this."

"I can do that," Clover said, as Crow got up to leave.

Clover watched Crow as he walked down the crooked sidewalk to a waiting car. When he was gone, Clover looked at his cat: "Tell you what, Snuff: I've got a feeling that I might say 'yes.' But it's possible that we should stick with the Mayans, and let the aliens go."

Three weeks after the alien ship was spotted, Sandy was going up.

He'd been allowed two packs-a big one for equipment, a small one for clothing and personal effects. At eight in the morning, he popped the door on his condo, hauled the bags outside, sealed the door, jacked the alarms to the highest settings, and carried his bags and a paper cup of coffee through the complex gates and out to the curb, to an empty bus bench.

The sky was light gray: the marine layer hadn't burned off yet, so the L.A. basin hadn't had a chance to heat up. Sandy sipped his coffee and kicked back a bit. Might as well relax and enjoy the moment.

He lived in a condo complex built around an enormous swimming pool, and populated by affluent, good-looking people. Most affluent people were good-looking, not because they inherited the right genes, but because the surgery was so good and painless and safe.

From outside, the apartment complex might have been a tropical jungle: something painted by Winslow Homer on one of his Caribbean trips, he thought. The complex also had tight security, another benefit: he'd once been dropped off by a drunk friend, drunk himself and mostly naked, and when he'd tried to cross the wall, he found himself surrounded by armed guards in about six seconds.

They hadn't been fooling around; they'd run a DNA check on him before they let him back in his apartment. He didn't live in a place where you just dropped in.

Sandy hadn't had that many moments to relax in the two previous weeks. After making his deal with Crow, he was flown to Maryland, to the Defense Information School at Fort Meade, where he was turned over to a harsh, hawk-nosed marine gunnery sergeant named Cletus Smith, who didn't care for Jesus hair or burnt-orange GnarlyBrand pants or RhythmTech overshirts.

The gunny was not happy: "I don't know exactly what's up, Dingleberry . . ."

"That would be Darlington . . ."

". . . Darlington, but I don't like it. It wasn't done right. I got some freshly made West Point asshole shoving security papers down my throat, I got the sergeant major yapping at me, my schedule's screwed for the next six months, I was supposed to start an advanced vid class . . ."

The gunnery sergeant was wearing the usual uptight marine camo uniform, which had some kind of special marine name that Sandy didn't remember, and as ex-army, really didn't care about. He reached forward and slipped two fingers inside the placket on the sergeant's shirt, and gave it a tug.

"Gunny, gunny, gunny," he said, leaning toward the sergeant until their noses were only six inches apart. "Nobody gives a shit what you think or how inconvenient it is, or what Mrs. Cletus or the Cletus rug rats think. But you should give a shit what I think-because if you don't have me up to Ultra Star vid status in two weeks, Major General Harrington will be down here with a fuckin' power mower. Guess whose ass gonna be grass?"

Few marines had ever had their placket tugged; Smith was not one of them, and his nose turned white. "Get your fingers the fuck outa my . . ."

Sandy broke in: ". . . and if you ever give me any serious shit, I will personally take your skinny, ignorant peckerwood Marine Corps ass outside and stomp a new mudhole in it, to replace the mudhole you already got."

Smith stared at him for a moment, then showed a very tight grin: "They didn't tell me you'd been in the service, and the hair fooled me. Argentina?"

"The whole cruise," Sandy said. The whole cruise was insider code for those who had been shot up.

"I was on that boat," Smith said. He took a step back. "All right. You can call me Clete. Let's take a look at your gear. . . ."

Ten straight days of hard work-and a Marine Corps haircut: Jesus hair didn't work all that well in weightless conditions.

Maybe he wasn't Ultra Star when he finished, but Sandy was two thousand percent better than he had been, and he hadn't been bad to begin with. Cletus Smith had been a combat videographer, and had actually filmed himself being shot down in a Marine Blackfoot IV helicopter; he rode the vid right into the ground, with commentary, although the commentary had been suppressed for the good of the Corps. Smith said, at the end of their last day, "Y'all come back: I got more."

"Clete, I wish I could take you with me," Sandy said, as they slapped hands. "Once I get some space under my feet, I'll be looking for ideas."

"Bring the vid. And boy, I'd love to go to Mars. If you can find me a slot . . ."

Sitting outside his condo, Sandy's wrist-wrap told him that his ride had been held up on the 110, because some underclassman had dropped a bowling ball off a bridge. Traffic had resumed, and the underclassman was being pursued through the Avenues, where he wouldn't be caught. Sandy hoped the cops were watching all available bowling balls. Having a sixteen-pound Brunswick blow through your windshield could seriously screw up your trip to Disneyland.

Eight or ten minutes later, his wrist-wrap told him his ride was turning the corner, and he got to his feet. A black limo, unmarked. The car hummed to a stop, and a driver got out of the front. A rear door slipped open, and the truck lid popped. Sandy said, "I got it," threw his bags in the back, kept the coffee, and climbed inside.

The driver got back in, the door slid shut. Sandy nodded at the woman who sat opposite him, and put the coffee cup in a cup holder.

The woman was a redhead, a spectacular example of the species, and it took only a moment for her name to register: Cassandra Fiorella, chief science editor for the Los Angeles Times, and the daily on-air science correspondent and producer for the biggest netcast on the West Coast.

She was stunning: red hair, green eyes, and the rest of the package wrapped in a slippery green-black jumpsuit. Her face showed none of the stress lines of plastic surgery; she was wearing a charm necklace with gold endorsement charms from Apple, IBM, MIT, Stanford, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, and EuroBank, and in the center, a big fat green diamond that matched her eyes. Crow had not told him that she was on board.

She didn't introduce herself-you'd have to be an idiot not to know who she was-but gave him a low-wattage smile and said, "You're Sanders Darlington."

"Yup."

"Where have you worked? Crow didn't tell me much about you. Except for an assistant videographer's stint on Naked Nancy, I couldn't find your professional resume."

"Well, that's about it," Sandy said.

She frowned: "I don't believe it. For this trip? There must be something else."

Sandy had been outrageously rich since childhood, living in L.A. Some of the most beautiful women in the world had made the effort to say 'hello' to him. While he'd taken advantage of that, from time to time, he'd also learned that behind a certain percentage of great beauty, there lurked a wicked witch of the west. He got that vibration from Fiorella.

He said, "Well, I won the 2064 Oscar for the best manual projection of a naked producer into the Pacific Ocean."

"I saw that, too." Fiorella nibbled a little lip gloss from her lower lip, then shook her head. "You bought your way on."

Sandy shrugged.

"This is absurd," she said. "I will tell the President that. I'm supposed to be on-camera, recording this for the whole future of mankind, and I've got to work with an inexperienced daddy's boy who'll inevitably mess it up, and not only that, has a history of violence-"

"Hey, Cassie?" Sandy smiled at her and said, "Go fuck yourself."

She blanched. Nobody talked to her like that. "What did you say?"

"I said, 'Go fuck yourself.' I don't need any ego rages from the talent. You just get the makeup right, sweetheart, and practice reading without crossing your eyes, and I'll see that you're looking good. But I gotta tell you, this little rant just took you a step down from 'looking great.'"

With her face bright red with anger, Fiorella crossed her arms and looked away from him. Sandy knew this wasn't over. There'd be consequences. Someone with Fiorella's creds wouldn't take that lying down. Well, tough shit. As they headed up the 210, Sandy closed his eyes and dozed off.

The Mojave Spaceport was unseasonably cool: at 10 A.M., the thermometer was only slowly climbing past ninety-four. The sun, though, was starting to burn. Sandy let Fiorella haul her case out of the back of the limo-she wasn't talking to him-and then threw his personal duffel on one shoulder and rolled the bigger equipment case along behind.

They'd been dropped at the far end of the terminal. Inside the doors, Sandy found himself in a private waiting room. Through glass doors on the far wall, he could see a larger waiting room, with more people in it.

Crow was sitting on a bench, looking at a tablet: he glanced up when they walked in, and raised a hand to them. Fiorella made a beeline for him and Sandy heard her say, "Mr. Crow, we've got to talk . . ."

The two other people included a short, round blonde, who hadn't looked up when they walked in, probably the power engineer, Rebecca something, and a large black man with white hair, who was clutching a nylon travel case, and had to be the anthropologist. The blonde was pounding on a tablet; the big man looked like he needed somebody to talk to. Sandy went that way, stuck out a hand, and said, "You're John Clover, you're more important than I am, so how about if I suck up for a while?"

"I could use some good suckin' up," Clover said, as they shook hands. "You must be the rich kid."

"Not only that, but I'm good-looking, have a terrific singing voice, and women find me irresistible," Sandy said, as he dropped into the chair next to Clover. "For the most part, anyway. I've already pissed off half the women on this flight."

Now the blonde looked up at him, glanced over at Fiorella, back to Sandy, and said, "If you keep talking over my work, here, you'll have pissed off all of them."

Clover said to the blonde, "Let me tell you something, honey-"

"I'm not a honey," Becca snapped.

"Of course you are, and I'm a southerner, so I get to call you that," Clover said. "What I'm gonna say is that they are about to strap a twenty-megaton nuclear weapon to our asses and blast them into orbit. Y'all ought to be sweating it out. Like me."

Sandy smiled at that and said, "A twenty-megaton nuke?"

"Might as well be, as far as we're concerned, you know, if it blows," Clover said.

"Ah, it's not going to blow," Sandy said. "A fortune-teller in Venice told me that I'd suffer a long, lingering, painful death."

"Good, good," Clover said. "I'm reassured."

He had a case by his feet; the contents meowed. Becca looked at it and asked, "You're taking a cat?"

"Only way I'd go," Clover said. "You got a problem with that?"

"No. Actually, I don't," Becca said.

Sandy shrugged. "Neither do I. Long as it doesn't shit in my shoes."

"I can't promise anything," Clover said.

Crow strode toward Sandy, typing on his handslate, not looking at it. He bent over and said, quietly, "Don't fuck with her."

"She started it. I'm tired of people assuming that I'm incompetent because I'm rich. I-"

"Don't . . . fuck . . . with . . . her."

"All right, all right. I'll go easy," Sandy said.

"Good answer."

Sandy muttered, "I just gotta remember, journalism school grads can be touchy about their lack of intelligence."

Crow said, "Actually, it's a double major in economics and general science. From Stanford."

"Jesus. Is everybody on this trip a genius?"

"Pretty much," Crow said. "Except maybe you and me."

"But we'll have guns."