The Grays

“First, they are not people. Second, they are not only extremely brilliant, they are extremely sinister and they have no emotions.”

“Adam showed grief when Dad got killed.”

“He was faking it.”

“Plus, he—I don’t know how to put it, it’s not human emotion, not at all, but he does care about me.”

“You’re projecting. End of story. Now, let’s go down. We have work to do.” As they waited for the elevator, he added, “We have a scramble running on the glowboy, incidentally.”

“Oh, great, how do I explain that?”

“Communicate that it’s a friendly warning. The civilians are liable to have cameras. There could be a security breach that’s beyond our control.”

“Wunderbar.” She was annoyed when Wilkes got into the elevator with her. She did not like him around when she and Adam were together.

A few moments later, the doors opened onto the control room and, beyond it, the huge door that sealed Adam’s space.

As Lauren stripped, Andy began opening a fresh prep kit. She dropped her sweater to the floor and rubbed her temples. “So I need to find out why this triad is off-station?”

Lauren threw off her clothes in front of both men. Let them see. She was proud of what she was.

“Lauren, I need concrete information from you on this.”

She let Andy cover her body with the emollients that would protect every inch of her skin. Over the years, she’d gotten drier and drier from the zero-humidity conditions in the cage. At twenty-six she had the skin of a forty-year-old. She caked her face in Vaseline.

Andy’s hands felt only clinical to her, but she was aware that she did not feel clinical to him. She knew because of the way he would turn away when he was finished, his cheeks burning, poor guy.

She pulled on her orange coverall, zipped it, and wrapped the neck shield tightly. Andy fitted her cap. Then she rolled her heavy latex gloves onto her hands.

She faced the steel door.

Andy pushed up the sleeve of her coverall and injected her. “Sorry,” he said, as always. He kissed her then, very quickly, on the place he’d just pricked.

She opened the door, stepped into the airlock, and waited. The inner door hissed and slid aside.

She entered her secret heaven and hell, the world of love and terror that she shared with Adam.

SEVEN

AS A SOCIAL SCIENTIST, KATELYN Callaghan understood the impulse to congregate after a tragedy, which was why the Jefferses had returned, baby in carrier, and now sat before the Callaghan fireplace. The Keltons had rushed home to study their video, the Warners to keep their excited kids from doing anything rash.

Hell’s gate had opened for somebody tonight, and now there must be congregation—the ancient holy act that was intended by deepest human instinct to declaim the persistence of life.

Chris and Nancy sat with straight backs, methodically sipping wine. Six-month-old Jillie slept in her carrier between them, her little mouth open, her pacifier in her hand.

Katelyn wanted only to go downstairs to Conner. As irrational as it probably was, she was nevertheless experiencing an urge to guard him, and this urge was growing by the minute.

Nervously, she paced in front of the fireplace, drinking rather than sipping. She feared that Conner might go back out there on his own. That was why the Warners were staying home, to keep Paulie in. Conner could easily leave via the door that led from his basement room under the deck, and out into the yard.

She stepped onto the deck and looked out across the yard. No movement. Total silence.

It had seemed like half the campus police department, the entire volunteer fire department, County Emergency Services, and the state police had come.

None of the official types had seen the light, but the Air Force jet had still been maneuvering around when they came, at least. Police Chief Dunst had called Alfred AFB, only to be told that there were no fighters in the air at that time. No planes at all, in fact. He’d closed his cell phone in disgust. “Guess that was a privately owned F-15 on afterburners,” he’d muttered.

The emergency crews had combed the field with infrared detectors. It had all been very impressive, but it would have been more impressive if they had found something resembling human remains, or even a shard of debris of some sort.

“Well,” Nancy said at last, “what do we think?”

“We think some damned kids are in big trouble. I mean, I saw the Air Force out there,” Katelyn said.

“Dan. Danny Dan.” Chris laughed silently.

“No, Chris,” Nancy said.

“No? With regard to what?”

“With regard to the fact that you think it was a flying saucer.”

“With an abductee aboard, yes, I do think that.”

Now it was Nancy’s turn to drink deep. She glared at her husband. “I don’t want to hear this.”

“It’s true, though.”

“Maybe and maybe not, but I do know one thing, we’re here because of this UFO stuff! Shunted off into this backwater with barely enough of a salary to raise our baby—and it’s because you side with the trailer trash instead of your fellow physicists. Excuse me, folks. Family stuff.”

“No, it’s true,” Dan said, “everybody here is a failure somewhere else.”

“They’re real, they’re here, and my colleagues are wrong. If that video—”

“Don’t you dare go on TV about this, Chris. Don’t you dare!”

Chris raised his hands defensively. “Be it far from me, unless—”

“Unless nothing! No more, Chris. I have gone from CalTech to U. Mass to this because of your damn UFOs. Below here, we are looking at the junior-college pit.”

“I reserve judgement until I have seen the video. If it’s as good as I think it’s going to be, it might just get us back to CalTech.”

“You are so fired, Chris. You will never, ever get back there. My God, you made a public idiot of yourself on national television.”

“I told the truth!”

He had appeared on Dateline as an advocate for the reality of UFOs, and his status as a CalTech professor had been used to give him credibility. Within a year, he was out. At U. Mass, it had been an article in the Boston Globe that had quoted his Dateline statements. He lasted six months that time.

Dan told himself to keep out of it. But then he thought that the poor woman was just so vulnerable, with that little baby, and, as much as he liked Chris, he was way off base on this one. “Alien abduction is seizure-related folklore. Did I ever tell you that I suffered from waking nightmares when I was a child? Which is why I know what this is. I saw these little figures. Yeah, me, Chris. I’m an abductee, by your rather dubious—excuse me—standards. But because I also happen to possess a little professional knowledge of the brain, I know where the aliens come from—” He pointed to his own head. “The same place that ghosts and demons and—whatever—goblins come from. And not from some damn field on the outskirts of a one-horse town in Kentucky.”

“Officially, I believe that Wilton is classified as a half-horse town.”

“Whatever, we saw a prank, it was terrifying, and now the Air Force is involved, and there is likely to be hell to pay for these students and this institution, and that is a damn crying shame! Although they do deserve it. The students, not poor Bell.”

“The Air Force said they weren’t there.”

“Dan,” Nancy asked, “are you concerned about your tenure bid? You must be.” She turned to her husband. “Because he won’t involve you. That I will not let him do.”

“All the witnesses—”