“Get caught?” Marty asked doubtfully.
“Sure. After they’ve got you, they’ll forget all about me, and I’ll be able to go wherever I need to without them knowing anything at all.”
“I wonder if they’d take me back to JPL or stick me in some secret government prison.”
“Regardless,” Ester said, “after the asteroid goes public, there won’t be any reason for them to hold you.”
“So you’ll do it, then? If I let them catch me, you’ll contact someone who can verify the story and take it to the media?”
“It’s been a long time since I’ve taken a trip. And if you’re right about this old rogue, it sounds like it might be now or never.”
“So then we have to figure out a way for you to know when I’ve been caught. I obviously can’t just walk up to their car out there and turn myself in.”
“It’s almost that simple, though,” she said. “I assume you’ve got a car around here someplace?”
Marty nodded.
She said, “Well, pull up to the curb across the street there and get out like you don’t have a care in the world. I’m sure they’ll put the old habeas grabbus on you before you can even make it to my front door.”
Twenty minutes later Marty drove past the Secret Service men and pulled to the curb in front of Ester’s house. He shut off the engine and stole a glance in the rearview mirror. Summoning his courage, he got out and started across the street. A few seconds later he heard a pair of car doors open and shut and knew they were coming.
“Chittenden!” a man said. “United States Secret Service. Stop where you are!”
Marty turned to see the same two agents he had escaped from back at JPL marching toward him. He spun and bolted, but didn’t make it more than a couple of steps before he felt a sharp sting between his shoulder blades and every muscle in his body was seized by a great electrical shock.
He crashed to the street, jerking spasmodically about on the asphalt. He was vaguely aware that he was screaming but couldn’t control that either, and after eighteen agonizing seconds he lay on his face with drool running from the corner of his mouth. He had been Tasered and pissed his pants.
“Remember me, dickhead?” Agent Paulis said, kicking his foot. “I’m the guy you jabbed in the fucking eye.” Paulis turned to his partner. “Juice him again, Bruce. He’s trying to escape.”
Agent Bruce pulled the trigger and subjected Marty to another eighteen agonizing seconds of electric shock. When it was finally over, Paulis knelt beside him on the walk and looked him in the face. “How do you like me now?”
Marty mumbled something unintelligible as the two men cuffed his hands behind his back and hauled him to his feet.
“You know, you might as well have drawn us a map,” Paulis said they dragged him off to the car. “You left the old lady’s book sitting right out on your desk. For a scientist, you’re pretty fucking stupid.”
Ester peered through the curtains and watched as they drove away. After she was fairly certain they wouldn’t be coming back for her, she went into the bedroom and packed a small bag, which she took into the garage and put into the backseat of her car. Then she went upstairs to bed, wondering if anybody now working at the Gemini Observatory would even remember her.
Five
Veronica sat up in bed and turned on the light. It was two o’clock in the morning. “Michael, wake up.”
Her boyfriend rolled over and squinted against the lamp light. “What’s wrong?”
“I need to talk to you about something.”
He twisted onto his side. “Okay,” he said sleepily.
“On the way back from Crissy’s I met this guy at a truck stop in Nebraska,” she said. “And he… well, long story short, he told me that an asteroid is going to hit the Earth in like eighty days or something and that he and some friends of his are going to try to save a bunch of women and children. I think they may’ve bought one of those old missile silos the government’s been selling.”
Michael’s face split into a grin. “Let me guess, he invited you to help him repopulate the Earth.”
“Something like that, yeah.”
He chuckled and rolled back over. “That story could have waited until breakfast. The man is obviously a paranoid delusional.”
She sat looking at him, a sinking feeling in her stomach. She wasn’t particularly close to her sister, but Michael had a large extended family and they were very close.
“You don’t want to hear what else he said?”
“Not particularly,” he mumbled. “I talk to crazy people all day, honey.”
“He was very convincing.”
“Paranoids often are.”
“He said that I could only bring you. No one else. Which means you’d have to leave your family.”
He turned back over. “Are you telling me you’re actually taking this goof seriously? Veronica, tell me you’re not.”
She sat looking at him, unblinking.
“Veronica, come on.”
“He said he had a friend at the Pentagon who broke a bunch of laws even telling him about it.”
“Now, hold on a second,” he said, popping himself up on an elbow. “Since when do you suffer fools so lightly?”
“I like to think I never do.”
“Then what’s different about this one?”
She shrugged. “Like I said, he was very convincing.”
Her body language was such that Michael had a sudden realization. “You were attracted to him.” His tone was not quite accusatory.
“I wouldn’t say that. But there was a very definite confidence about him.”
“Which is another way of saying what I just said.”
“I don’t think that’s fair, Michael. And so what if I was? You see women all the time you’re attracted to.”
“But it’s not the same,” he countered. “Men are chemically predisposed to chase after the opposite sex. For women it’s different, it’s cognitive.”
“Oh, I’m so tired of that bullshit argument! Every time I catch you looking at another woman, it’s the same crap.”
He frowned, feeling only slightly guilty for not being able to help himself. “All I’m saying is that you were affected on an intellectual level.”
“And don’t you dare psychoanalyze me. I hate it when you do that.”
He sighed and lay back, looking at the ceiling. “So have you talked to him since?”
“No. Are you going to listen to the story or not?”
He propped himself back up and smiled at her. “I’m all ears.”
When she was finished, he took her hand and held it. “You’re telling me you honestly believed all that?”
“I’m telling you that he was very convincing, and I don’t appreciate being patronized.”
“I’m not patronizing you. How’s this… In the morning we’ll Google the number and see what comes up.”
“I’ve already done that, as a matter of fact, and nothing came up on that specific number, but I did discover that it’s the same exact area code and prefix as the goddamn Pentagon.”
A shadow crossed his brow. “Okay, that’s odd,” he admitted, “but it doesn’t mean that’s really his number.”
“There’s only one way to find out,” she said, rolling out of bed.
“Honey, it’s two A.M.”
“He won’t care if he’s the sort of guy I read him to be,” she said. “And if he was lying, so what if I wake him up?”
“But suppose you get the Pentagon?”
“Oops, wrong number!”
She fished the receipt from her purse and punched the number into her cell phone.
Then she pressed the send button and put the phone on speaker so Michael could hear.