can't even think properly, when you have to repeat every other phrase, and I signalled the operator and asked for a better connection. After a little delay, the connection was cleared up, but I'd hardly resumed when a sort of buzzing sound started in the receiver in my ear, and then I had to try to talk over that. Twice the connection was broken off completely, the dial tone suddenly humming in my ear, and finally I was mad and shouting at the operator. It wasn't a satisfactory conversation at all, and when I'd finished, I wondered how it all must have sounded to Ben, the width of a continent away.
He answered when I'd finished. 'I see,' he said slowly, then paused for a moment or so, thinking. 'Well, Miles,' he said then, 'what do you want me to do?'
'I don't know, Ben' – the connection was pretty good at the moment – 'but you can see that something has to be done; you can see that. Ben, get the story moving. Right away. Move it on up, in Washington, till it reaches someone who can do something.'
He laughed, a forced laugh from the stomach. 'Miles, remember me? I'm a lieutenant-colonel in the Pentagon building; I salute the janitors. Why me, Miles? Don't you know anyone here who could really… '
'
'All right, all right' – his voice was placating. 'I'll do what I can, do all I can. If it's what you really want, I'll give this whole story to my colonel within an hour; I'll go see him and wake him up; he lives here in Georgetown. I'll tell him just what you've told me, as well as I've followed it. And I'll add my own report that I know you well, that you're a sane, sober, intelligent citizen, and that I am personally certain you're speaking the truth, or believe that you are. But that's all I can do, Miles, absolutely all, even if it means the end of the world before noon.'
Ben paused for a moment, and I could hear the electrical silence of the wires between us. Then he added quietly, 'And Miles, it won't do one bit of good. Because what do you expect him to do with that story? He's not imaginative, to put it mildly. And even if he were, the colonel's no man to stick his neck out; you know what I mean? He wants his star before he retires; maybe a couple of them. And he's very conscious, asleep or awake, of what goes into his service record. He's worked up a reputation ever since West Point for good, hard, practical common sense. Not brilliant, but sound, that's his speciality; you know the type.' Ben sighed. 'Miles, I can just see him going to his general with a story like this. He wouldn't trust me to fill his ink-well from then on!'
Now it was my turn to say, 'I see.'
'Miles, I'll do it! If you want me to. But even if the impossible happened, even if the colonel took this to the brigadier, who took it to the major-general, who carried it on up to three- or four-star level, what the hell are
My voice was tired and defeated as I said, 'Yeah.' I sighed, and said, 'Yeah, I see, Ben. And you're right.'
'I'll do it, and to hell with my service record – that's not important – if you can see even a chance that it'll help at all. Because I believe you. I don't say it's impossible that you're being hoaxed in some way for some weird reason, but at least
'No.' I said, and now my voice was firm and definite. 'No, Ben, forget it. I'd have known better myself, if I'd thought about it; because you're completely right; it would be useless. There just isn't any point in wrecking your service record when it wouldn't do one bit of good.'
We talked for a minute or so longer, and Ben tried to think of something helpful and suggested getting in touch with the papers. But I pointed out that they'd treat the story like one more flying-saucer item; probably be very cute and humorous about it. He suggested the FBI then. I said I'd think about it, promised to keep in touch with him, and all that, then we said good-bye and hung up. A moment or so later, Jack came down the stairs.
'Well?' he said, and I just shrugged; there wasn't anything to say. After a moment Jack said, 'Want to try the FBI?'
I didn't know or much care at that point, and I just nodded at the telephone. 'There's the phone; go ahead if you want to.' And Jack opened the San Francisco phone book.
A few moments later, he dialled the number, and I watched him – KL 2-2155. Jack held the phone at an angle to his ear so I could hear, and I heard the ringing sound begin. It was interrupted, a man's voice said, 'Hel – ' and the line went dead; a moment later the dial tone began.
Jack dialled again, very carefully. He finished, and before the ringing could begin, the operator cut in. 'What number are you calling, please?' Jack told her, and she said, 'Just a moment, please.' Then the ringing began; and it continued – ring, then a pause, ring, then a pause, for half a dozen times. 'Your party does not answer,' the operator said presently, in that mechanical telephone-company voice they use. For just a moment Jack held the phone before him, staring at it; then he raised it to his mouth. 'Okay' he said softly. 'Never mind.'
He looked up at me, and spoke quietly, his voice rigidly calm. 'They won't let the call get through, Miles. There's someone there, we heard him answer, but they won't ring that number again for us. Miles, they've got the telephone office now, and God knows what else.'
I nodded. 'Looks like it,' I said, and then the panic ripped loose in our minds.
Chapter eleven
We thought we were thinking, but actually we moved in a wild, spontaneous, mindless impulse. We had the girls on their feet, blinking in the light, questioning us bewilderedly, but at the looks on our faces when we didn't reply, the panic leaped from us to them like a contagion. Then all of us rushed through that house, gathering up clothes; Jack had a butcher knife thrust into his belt, I took every cent of money I had in the place, and we found Theodora down in the kitchen, half dressed, packing canned goods into a small carton; I don't know what she thought she was doing.
We actually bumped into one another in hallways, on the stairs, and rushing out of rooms; it must have looked like an old-time silent-film comedy, only there was no laughter in it. We were running – out of that house, and out of that town, as fast as we could move. We were suddenly overwhelmed, not knowing what else to do, how to fight back, or against what. Something impossibly terrible, yet utterly real, was menacing us in a way beyond our comprehension or abilities; and we fled.
Theodora still in bedroom slippers, we were slamming into Jack's car on the dark, silent street just out of the pool of swaying light from the overhead street lamp, our foolish armfuls of clothes tossed into the back seat. The starter ground, the motor caught, then Jack squealed rubber, pulling away from the curb, and we weren't thinking at all, just running, running, running, till we were on US. 101, and Santa Mira eleven miles behind us.
Then, moving along over the almost deserted highway, I began to feel a return of some sort of ordered thinking, or at least the illusion of it. Successful rapid flight, the piling up of distance, becomes in itself a calming thing, an antidote for fear, and I turned to Becky in the back seat beside me, smiling, my mouth opening to speak. Then I saw she was asleep, her face pale and drained in the light from a passing car, and the fright roared up in me again, worse than ever, bursting in my brain in a silent explosion of pure panic.
I was shaking Jack's shoulder, shouting at him to stop, then we were bouncing off the dark road onto the narrow dirt-and-gravel shoulder. Jack's hand brake rasped, then, leaning far across Theodora, he brought his fist down on the glove-compartment button, it flew open, he fumbled inside it, then scrambled out of the car, his face wild and questioning. I was leaning past him, yanking his keys from the dashboard, then we were running toward the back of the car. But Jack ran on, down the narrow dirt shoulder, and I had my mouth open to yell at him, when he dropped to one knee, and I knew what he was doing.
Jack once had the back of his car smashed in while he was changing a tyre, and now it's second nature with him, when he stops off the road, to set out a flare. It sputtered in his hand, now, then flared into smoky pink-red flame, and as Jack raised it high to jam the spike into the ground, I shoved a key into the lock of his trunk, twisting
