No word of warning or welcome. They just kept coming, decelerating.On the morning of the thirty-first, when they were about a half-million miles away-twice the distance to the Moon-four large satellites were disintegrated in the course of one second. One of them was Davis's weapon. The aliens broke silence long enough to apologize, saying they couldn't tell which one it was, hoping none of them were inhabited.

Rory saw the news when she got off the Mafia boat in Key West. She was about to retrace their circuitous route. Norm had obeyed her request that he stay in Cuba for the time being.

There were things she had to know.

January 1 Pepe He had slept through the early evening, and dropped by Lisa Marie's party long enough to have one gla.s.s of champagne and watch the ball drop over Times Square. He had kissed her good-bye and gone to the office.

He snapped on the lights and was going through his top drawer, looking for the stimulants that would keep him sharp for the next couple of days, when there was a light knock on the open door.

He looked up. "Aurora?"

She nodded and sat down in a chair by the door.

"Where have you been? We've-"

"Cabo de Cristobal. Cojimar, Holguin, Havana."

"Y?".

"I want to know who you are."

He didn't blink. "I am who I am."

"Who you are, who you work for, and how you managed to wind up in charge of this enterprise, whatever it actually is. You might explain the s.p.a.ceship part, too."

"Or what? What will you do?"

"What we used to say was 'I'll blow the whistle on you.' Expose you."

"But you say you don't know what I am."

"What you aren't is Pepe Parker. There is no such animal. Birth records stolen from Cabo de Cristobal. Grade school burned to the ground. High school records destroyed in the Outage of thirty-nine-"

"Everybody's were."

"Most of them were restored. There's no actual record of your existence until you began graduate work at the University of Havana. After your doctorate, you got a blue card and came here."

Pepe realized he was sweating. He wiped his face with a handkerchief. This couldn't be happening.

"So tell me what's going on. Or I'll blow the whole thing up."

"You can't do that."

"I can indeed. And if something happens to me, Norman-"

"No, no. I wasn't threatening you. What I mean is you mustn't."

"I'm willing to be convinced. You could start by telling me who you work for."

"Humanity. I work for all humanity."

"That's no answer."

The phone buzzed and he pushed the b.u.t.ton. A dim gray picture of a man in NASA fatigues who spoke over the low thrum of a helicopter. "Dr. Parker? We're closing on Gainesville. Be on your roof in four or five minutes?""Gracias. I'll be waiting."

They signed off. "So you're going to the Cape," Rory said.

"As you would have. I'm sorry I can't invite you along."

"I'm still a wanted woman?"

"They call about once a week, the FBI. They've never explained anything." He found the pills and popped one, crunching down on its bitterness. "All-nighter, I'm afraid."

"I guess I could go to the FBI. Tell them what I know, what I don't know."

"No! Please!" He snapped open his attache case and checked its contents. "Let's make a deal."

"I'm listening."

"Just watch what happens today. Afterward, we can talk forever about it. If you want to blow your whistle then, I won't stop you." He closed the case. "Right now I have to catch that helicopter and go join the festivities." He reached in his pocket and pulled out a key ring. "Here-stay at my place. You know where it is?"

"Still over at Creekside?"

"Yes, 203. Your place might not be safe."

"Okay. You've got a deal. But tell me this ... do you know who they are? The aliens?"

"I ... I really can't say."

"But they aren't actually aliens, are they?"

He looked at her silently for a second. "As alien as me."

They both heard the whisper of the helicopter approaching, the pitch of the blades deepening as it landed. He kissed her on the cheek and ran out the door.

Aurora As the helicopter faded, she crossed the hall to her old office. It was locked, but her old key worked. She said, "Lights."

Nothing had changed. Neater than possible, but she had straightened up for the expected interview.

A layer of dust.

Would she ever work here again? She'd know in a few days.

Her shelves of old books seemed untouched. On impulse, she took the latest acquisition, the volume of century-old photographs from Life magazine, turned off the lights, and locked the door behind her.

It was about a mile down to Creekside. She was tired, but didn't dare use a cab; most of them weren't set up to take cash, and the ones that did took pictures of their suspicious customers. But at least the sidewalks wouldn't be deserted, not with revelers rolling from party to party.

How many people, though, were sitting at home, terrified, waiting to die? On her way downhill, she pa.s.sed two churches and a mosque, and they were all doing a brisk business.

A block from Creekside, she stopped at a convenience store and bought an overpriced bottle of domestic champagne.

It came out of a barrel of ice water. The clerk dried it off for her and put it in a bag. "I hope we have something to celebrate tomorrow," he said. "I hope we're here tomorrow."

"I wouldn't worry about that," she said. "If they wanted to destroy us, they would have done it by now."

He nodded and took her cash, and clumsily counted out change. "Do I know you from somewhere, ma'am?"

"No. Just pa.s.sing through."She crossed the bridge over Hogtown Creek and hurried into the apartment building. There were a lot of people sitting, partying, on the gra.s.sy banks of the creek, and she didn't want to be recognized.

She tried four entrances before she found the one with p. parker, 203. Whatever his real name was.

She'd expected a spare bachelor flop, appropriate for a man with no history. But it was an eclectic, even baroque, collection of furniture and decorations from all over the world.

j.a.panese screen, coffee table from Bali or someplace, Mexican bullfight poster, a cuckoo clock from Germany or Switzerland. A pile of cushions in front of the cube, imported from exotic Taiwan.

There was something odd about the collection, which suddenly struck her: everything was the same age.

As if he'd gone into Pier Three and said, "I'll take this, this, and this."

No champagne flutes in the kitchen, but she did find two winegla.s.ses of Waterford crystal. So it wasn't all Pier Three. She popped the cork on the champagne and poured herself a gla.s.s, and put the bottle in the refrigerator.

It was empty, and spotless.

She checked the cupboards and there was no food, not a can of sardines or a box of cereal. Just matching plastic salt and pepper shakers.

Nothing sinister about that. A lot of bachelors ate in restaurants all the time, or brought takeout home.

She took the champagne back to the living room and turned on the cube. It didn't respond to the clicker, but the manual controls were clear enough. She put it on CNN and turned the sound down to a whisper. She set her gla.s.s on the Balinese table and curled up on the Taiwanese pillows and opened the musty old book.

That was also a world-changing time, World War II. The stridently upbeat tone of the magazine probably meant people were as worried as the young man who sold her the champagne. But that was protracted-she checked the dates, six years-and the enemies were just people, beatable. Not aliens who could destroy your planet on a whim. Or said they were.

She put her book down, finished off the gla.s.s in a couple of gulps, and went to refill it. From the kitchen she could hear a commotion going on outside. She filled the gla.s.s and took it out onto Pepe's balcony.

A circle of young people was dancing in the creek, laughing and singing. About half were naked, in spite of the cold water. Crowds on both banks were clapping and shouting. "Take it off, take it off."

Well, they were expecting a message of peace and hope in a few hours. What would they actually get?

She closed her eyes and suddenly opened them, just in time to keep from dropping the expensive crystal over the balcony. Her arms and legs were heavy with fatigue. She went into Pepe's bedroom and manually set the clock to wake her at five forty-five, not trusting the voice controls. Exactly three hours of sleep. She was unconscious before it said two forty-six.

When the clock woke her she staggered downstairs and got breakfast from machines, guaranteed bad coffee and a candy bar. They didn't have any Mars bars, unfortunately, so she picked one at random. Did they still make Mars bars? She hadn't bought a candy bar in twenty-some years. The chocolate was unpleasantly rich and sweet. But it would get her through to the end of the world.

She was mildly surprised not to have been rousted out of bed by FBI agents. Whatever Pepe was, he was evidently not on their side.

She turned on the cube and switched it to Channel 7, hoping to catch Marya. Some male voice-over was describing the procession of notables, showing footage of one helicopter after another alighting on the same landing pad, dropping off this or that president or prime minister or movie star. A large stand of bleachers filled up with people not accustomed to sitting in bleachers. The rising sun was behind them; the sky was salmon deepening to perfect blue.At precisely six, a U.S. Marine Corps helicopter, number 1, came in and disgorged President Davis and his retinue, including a squad of heavily armed marines. Rory smiled at that. They wouldn't be much help against planet-busting aliens, but they might prevent him from sharing the fate of his predecessor.

She had been following his career from Cuba; he was the least popular president since Nixon. A majority of the House and Senate wanted him impeached, if not actually hanged, but they were putting it off for a few days. Maybe the aliens would vaporize him and save them the trouble.

After the old man was safely installed on the dais in front of the bleachers, seated uncomfortably close to the secretary-general of the UN, the cube switched to a telescopic view of the alien ship. It didn't seem fundamentally different from a human s.p.a.ceship, which could just be form following function.

Or perhaps they wanted to rea.s.sure us.

Or, most likely, it was a human ship, part of the biggest hoax in history. With Pepe somewhere near the center of it.

Her certainty had grown as the evidence acc.u.mulated that Pepe had obviously been planted in her department, set up to be her second-in-command. If it was a hoax, it was an enterprise larger than the Manhattan Project. The early data could have been faked, someone hacking the input from GRS-1 and its lunar counterpart. But eventually other telescopes picked it up. It did come from outside the solar system, though perhaps not from nearly as far or going as fast as they thought.

And it did apparently crack Phobos in two, though that could conceivably have been set up beforehand. The figure of a hundred thousand megatons-"give or take a factor of a thousand"-came from Leo, but through Pepe. She'd never checked, and Leo died.

Like the president. Like Pauling, and the rest of the cabinet.

She and Norman would have been out of the picture, too, except for the coincidence of Qabil hearing about the FBI.

The four satellites, destroyed by an invisible ray-that was the easiest to explain. Simple sabotage.

In less than an hour, the last piece would fall into place, though it probably would not be conclusive.

Hollywood had more than a century of experience in creating aliens.

The president gave a neutral, optimistic speech, blessedly free of spoonerisms and hysteria. The secretary-general of the UN followed, speaking in his native Bantu. Except for glottal clicks and such, it was pretty much the same speech as Davis had given. A great opportunity awaits us; we welcome our friends from s.p.a.ce with open arms. Now that they've destroyed our other arms.

There were lots of vehicles parked behind the bleachers-white NASA vans, a couple of military trucks, two ambulances, and a fire truck. She wondered whether one of them might conceal a last-resort bomb, and if so, who controlled the trigger.

And how big a bomb? A high helicopter showed the NASA causeway as crowded as a subway station, all the way to the dikes; over a million people waiting to watch the alien craft land. She was glad not to be there.

The cube shifted to a shimmering telescopic view of the alien craft, which had begun to de-orbit somewhere over Australia.

It might pa.s.s by overhead on its way to the Cape. She went out on the balcony to check the sky, but it was the usual gray blanket.

The partying students were gone, and had not left a mess behind. Kids nowadays. She heard m.u.f.fled news broadcasts from apartments all around her, and kept the door open so she could listen for Marya or Pepe on the cube.

Not hearing Marya was no surprise. She hadn't had a chance to disappear after the "accidental"

broadcast, and even if the FBI didn't take her, the network would probably have fired her or put her on ice for a while.

Overhead, the familiar double crack of a sonic boom; a s.p.a.ceship on its approach path to CapeKennedy. She went inside and sat in front of the cube.

There was Pepe, on the dais with nine other notables, behind the president, who slowly got to his feet. They all did the same.

The ship was dimly visible, descending. Rory realized she was holding her breath.

It touched down precisely at the end of the runway, about the size of a regular shuttle. It would have to be, of course, if this were a hoax-they couldn't have secretly built a s.p.a.ceship from scratch. It was prettier than a regular shuttle-shiny, like chrome, and somehow it didn't use a braking parachute to slow down.

It rolled to a stop a few hundred meters from the dais, and then, with a slight hissing sound, continued on to stop directly in front of the president. A door opened in the side of the craft and a stairway unfolded to the ground.

Two human-looking figures walked down the stairs. They wore shimmering silver skintight suits, obviously male and female. They didn't walk like people who'd been in zero-gee, Rory noticed. Then she noticed they were both beautiful, despite complete hairlessness, not even eyebrows. A nice touch.

When they stepped off the staircase, it folded back into the ship. As they walked toward the dais, the ship started to hiss again, and rolled slowly down the runway.

They walked up the steps in no rush, the woman leading, and when they got to the dais, they ignored the standing notables and went straight to the microphone.