'No problem, sir,' said Chester, smiling back. 'I'm wearing them.'
That's good, because your driver should be waiting for you outside by now.'
Chester glanced involuntarily toward the closed door. When he turned back, he saw that MacGregor was standing. Coming to attention, he saluted, and the general saluted him back.
'One last thing, Joe,' MacGregor declared. Chester paused with his hand on the doorknob.
'What's that, sir?'
'Probably worrying you needlessly. Kauai was the first of our stations to pick this thing up. Midway missed it, but we can't tell if that means the Russians did, too. We. haven't had any queries from them, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything. Given the potential of this, if it's; what we hope it is, well ~ . . . I'm not saying they'd try anything crazy, but . . . .
Chester didn't reply, merely patted his left underarm in a significant fashion. 'I understand, sir. I'll brief that driver accordingly.' i
'He's already been briefed,' explained a grim MacGregor. 'With those three scientists jabbering among themselves, we couldn't very well keep him in the dark, anyway. It'll be up to you and him to take care of the three people from NASA. They won't look beyond the end of their gauges.'
'Yes, sir. Good night, sir.'
'Good night, Major Chester. Tell the driver to take it easy. The roads are bad.'
'I will, sir.'
Chester turned, walked wordlessly through an outer office, a waiting lobby, and down a corridor, then out into the subfreezing night.
'Dad?'
'Huh-what?'
'Dad!'
Jesse Shattuck blinked, rolled over in bed. In the moonlight filtering fitfully in through the broken clouds and the big window he saw the anxious face of his sixteen-year-old, David.
'What is if, boy?' Then he put up a hand for silence as his son started to reply.
The wind was a sad echo of its former might-the storm had obviously passed, he told himself-and the barking reached him clearly from somewhere back of the henhouse. A shadow stirred on the other side of the bed and sat up. It had a small, intense, delicately aquiline fact with eyes of black opal. The hair of a woman thirty years younger cascaded in curls and ripples at its sides.
Shattuck sat motionless, listening to the frantic barking. The bedroom was warm and dark. A soft anvil-like bang sounded from the old heater. He definitely did not want to go outside.
'What are those damn-fool dogs barking about now; J.W.?' his wife wondered in the darkness.
'I don't know, Mother,' the rancher admitted as he slid his long legs out from under the quilts.. He bent over hunting for his socks. 'Could be coyotes, maybe wolves. Too, it's cold enough and the pickings are thin enough for them to risk trying the henhouse again. Thought we'd cured 'em of that last winter, though.' He pulled up the last sock, found his boots by the nightstand.
David rose, looked excited. 'Should I get my gun, Dad?'
Shattuck nodded. 'My twelve-gauge, too.'
'And mine,' said the woman, scrambling out of the other side of the bed.
'Don't you think you ought to stay here, Mother?'
Awry, delightful smile crossed her face, feminine lightning. 'Go-'and she added a colorfully crass suggestion. Shattuck said nothing, merely smiled ever so slightly.
By the time David returned to look down at his tall father and his mother expectantly, they were already dressed and donning winter coats. The son passed out the armory. Husband and wife methodically checked their weapons. Four shells slid into four chambers.
Suitably attired for the cold and armed against whatever might be threatening their domain, the family started for the back of the rambling house.
The chill hit Shattuck the moment he opened the rear door. Dry, freezing air caressed his stubbled cheeks like steel wool, and his breath formed ghost patterns in the night.
Off to the south, nothing could be seen under the black clouds of the receding storm. The remainder of the night sky was clear. He regarded the nearly full moon and its tenebrous halo, a sign, perhaps, of more wetness to come.
'It wouldn't be a wolf, Dad, would it?' David theorized nearby. 'Isn't it too light out for them to come in this close?'
'Could be a sick one, David,' his father told him curtly. 'Funny, the dogs have shut up. Quiet now.'
The faintest whisper of a breeze stirred the cold air. From the henhousecame only a soft clucking, nervous and uncertain. That was to be expected from the way Cotton and Gin had been carrying on. But the cluckings weren't panicky, as they would have been if the scent of wolf were m the wind. The guineas, at least, would have sensed that, and they were quiet.
'Must be out back of the tank somewhere, J.W.,' his wife said. The rancher nodded slowly, and they started off past the coop.
Behind it the dogs were wandering back and forth, looking puzzled and anxious but not straining at their tethers, either. Cotton, the big Irish setter, whined as the family came up to him. The big weimaraner, Gin, abruptly turned, barked at the distance, and then turned whining to David.
'Never seen dogs act like this before,' Shattuck mused. 'Something out there's got 'em stirred, all right, but they don't seem anxious to be out after it.'
He looked out toward the distant tank, the deep artificial pond that held the ranch's water supply. Overhead the sky was almost white with stars. The moon spread pale fingers across the still water. A light snow had sugared the ground, final testament of the retreating storm.
'See anything, Mother?'
His wife shook her head slowly, one finger resting easily on the trigger of the .30-30. 'Not a thing, J.W. If there is something out there, we're going to have to let the dogs find it.'
'Yep.' He bent over Cotton, his hands working gently at the setter's collar. David was performing the same actions with Gin.
'All right, girl,' he whispered into one russet ear, 'go git it. Let him go, David.'
Both dogs were set free at the same time. They started off toward the tank on the run. Twenty meters from the near shore they unexpectedly slowed, turned, and came trotting back toward the henhouse. Something appeared to pull at them. They whirled, ran at the tank once more. And once more came to a halt, reversed their direction, and headed back toward the astonished family.
'I swear, Mother,' Shattuck muttered, 'strangest behavior I ever saw:' He gestured with the end of the shotgun. 'Still, there's for sure something out back there: It may scare the dogs, but it doesn't scare me. It's on our property; better go find out whatever it is.'
Nothing rose to confront them when they reached the rim of the tank or when they started around it. The tank backed up against a slight rise that had once housed a den of rattlers. They started up the slight slope.
Alternately barking and whining as though they couldn't make up their minds whether to be angry or afraid, the two dogs trotted alongside. They showed no inclination to charge ahead, as was the normal manner of dogs.
As they approached the rim of the rise, a brightness separate from that falling from the lambent moon seemed to come from just ahead.
'Something burning over there, J.W.,' Beth Shattuck said huskily. The rancher considered, shook his head positively.
'We would smell smoke sure in this air, Mother. Could be a plane crash, maybe, but I think we would have heard it hit. Car or bike's a possibility, but I don't know any kid in town fool enough to be out playing at motorcross on a night like this.'
'It might be something that's fallen from a plane, Dad,' suggested his son helpfully. 'You read lots of times about a piece of cargo or part of an engine that breaks loose.'
His father didn't nod or smile, but quiet approval was in his words. 'Could be.'
