Jacob nodded silently.
Becky leaned over and kissed him.
“Where’s Mom?” she asked.
“She’s in the shed,” Jacob answered.
“What’s she doing in the shed?” Tom asked.
“She’s working on something.”
“On Christmas Day?” Becky asked. She glanced at Tom, then the two of them walked out of the house and made their way toward the shed.
Sally saw them coming across the lawn as she stepped out of the shed. “You’re early. I thought you weren’t going to be here till evening,” she said as they rushed up to kiss her.
“Mom, it’s almost five o’clock,” Tom said.
Sally shrugged. “How did that happen?”
Tom looked at her suspiciously. “What were you doing in the shed?” he asked.
“Oh, nothing,” Sally answered dismissively. “Come, let’s get to the house.”
In the house, Tom and Jacob headed for the living room while Sally and Becky prepared dinner in the kitchen.
“You know, with all the money Tom’s made,” Becky said. “We could put Jacob in a school where he…”
“Jacob’s fine here with me,” Sally interrupted.
But Becky continued, undeterred. “There’s one in Montana. For children who are… different.”
“Jacob is fine,” Sally repeated.
Becky looked at her pointedly. “When’s the last time Jacob smiled, Mom? Or laughed? Or cried?”
“He is just not that kind of kid, that’s all.”
“But Mom…”
Sally squared her shoulders and faced Becky determinedly. “There is nothing wrong with Jacob, and he is fine here with me,” she said, turning to pull the turkey TV dinners out of the oven, and thus ending the conversation.
“There it is,” Dr. Kreutz said.
Owen watched the bus as it made its way across the tarmac. He knew who was inside, Mavis and Gladys Erenberg, twin sisters he’d tested again and again and each time found that indeed they did have “powers.” Now it was time to test those powers.
The bus drew to a halt and Marty stepped out, turned and lifted his hand first to Mavis, then to Gladys Erenberg.
They looked ordinary to Owen, just a couple of middle-aged women dressed in cheap clothes. And yet they’d been able to read each other’s mind, one able to draw a picture of whatever the other one was looking at, even though separated by thick concrete walls. Still, in the end, they were only… specimens.
Now they were moving toward the real purpose of Owen’s study. He knew that the first sight of the spacecraft might alarm them, and he noticed that Mavis hesitated slightly as she approached, but Marty stepped over quickly, assured her that everything was fine, that it was all perfectly safe, just anothei test.
The sisters disappeared into the interior of the craft. Owen looked at his watch. Within seconds they’d be strapped into seats only aliens had occupied before. He waited, glanced at his watch again as Marty took his position beside him.
Seven-thirty. Within minutes he would have a finding.
And so he waited, sweat accumulating on his brow, while Dr. Kreutz stood beside him, his gaze fixed on the craft.
Twenty minutes passed, and Marty glanced fretfully at Dr. Kreutz.
“Give it another five minutes,” the doctor told him.
Marty looked helplessly at Owen. “Sir, that will kill them.”
Owen’s voice was as hard as the man he had become. “They were dead the second they set foot on this base.”
Eight o’clock, and nothing, no sense that the Erenberg sisters had demonstrated any capacity to power the craft. It stood as it always stood, silent and motionless, as if waiting for the code Owen could not yet supply, or some secret order he could not give.
Owen looked at Dr. Kreutz and as if in obedience to a silent command, the doctor stepped up beside him and the two men made their way toward the craft. The door opened as they approached it and they went inside. Nothing they saw surprised them.
The Erenberg sisters rested faceup in the alien seats into which they had been strapped. Their eyes were closed and their bodies remained motionless. They might have been sleeping calmly, save for the blood that had drained from their noses and mouths and accumulated on the identical gray coat dresses they’d selected for the occasion.
“Have this mess cleaned up and the ship put away,” Owen ordered. He turned and saw Howard rushing toward him, a field telephone in his hand.
“It’s the White House,” Howard said.
Owen took the phone, and flashed the bright smile that had served him long and well, but which now bore a faint, demonic crook. “Colonel Crawford here,” he said. “And a Merry Christmas to you, Mr. President.”
The house was dark as Owen entered it. He could smell the lingering aroma of the Christmas dinner he’d failed to attend. In the living room, the last embers of a Yule log glowed faintly in the hearth. Christmas paper, torn from Sam and Eric’s presents littered the room. His boots crushed it as he made his way across the room.
“We waited a long time, Owen.”
Anne stood in the doorway, dressed in a nightgown, though clearly she had not gone to bed.
“I’m sorry,” Owen told her. “Something came up.”
Anne took a deep breath. “You gave them both the Lionel train set. You gave Sam the Space Patrol board game and the Leave it to Beaver lunch box. Eric got the Leave it to Beaver board game and the Space Patrol lunch box.”
“What did I give you?” Owen said with a cold smile.
“A lot more than I bargained for,” Anne answered sharply as she turned and left the room.
Owen walked to his office and stared out into the night. A light snow was falling, but its beauty did nothing to lift his mood. The Erenberg sisters had died for nothing, but that was not the point. The real problem was that for all the power they had demonstrated, it had been nothing compared to the power that had destroyed them, literally within minutes, as they sat inside the craft. That was a power beyond anything human, Owen thought, and until he found something within the human world to match that power, the craft would sit motionless inside the darkness of the hangar, as heavy and unliftable as his dream of making a mark in the world.
He walked to the safe, dialed the combination and took out the artifact Sue had given him years before. This was the only proof he had that he could call his own. He stared at the markings, but they remained indecipherable. Somewhere in the stars, there were creatures who could read it, but for all he knew, they would never return to earth unless they were lured back, or unless he found a power as great as theirs, and with that power force them to return. In the end it all came down to that one thing, he thought, his fingers moving delicately over the artifact. It all came down to Power.
“A little more to the right,” Tom said. “This is kind of mean, Tom,” Becky said as Tom retrieved his mother’s copy of My Life Inside the Flying Saucers from the ground at his feet. “Mom believes this kind of crap. She takes Jacob to these conventions. If we can show her how easy it is to fake…” He dropped the book, took the Brownie camera from his pocket and lifted it to his eye. “Okay, swing.”
Becky swung a fishing rod to the right and the hubcap that dangled from the end of the fishing line took wobbly flight. “But Tom,” she interjected. “You were with me. We saw those lights in the sky.”
“There was an article on them in Popular Science. Do you know what they were?” Tom asked. “The reflection of streetlamps on the breasts of a flock of plover birds.” He shook his head. “Becky, we were little kids. We saw what we wanted to see.” He snapped the picture, then pocketed the camera, clearly pleased with the plan he’d just implemented.