Jesse glanced at Amelia, then back to Dr. Traub. “No surgery?” he asked with great relief.
Dr. Traub nodded.
“So, if you get this thing out of my head,” Jesse asked tentatively, almost afraid to hear the answer, “then it might make… them… go away?”
“Them?”
Jesse shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.”
Traub looked at him gently. “You don’t think you’ve got a metallic deposit in your head, do you, Jesse?”
“You’ve got your ideas about what’s in my head. I’ve got mine.”
“Why are you here, if you don’t think I can help you?”
“You have to help me,” Jesse said, his desperation rising to the surface. “You have to make this thing go away. I don’t care what it is anymore. I have a nine-year-old son. I don’t want to see him hurt… because of this thing in my head.”
Dr. Traub smiled quietly, though in some way, as Jesse noticed, his eyes remained oddly calculating. “Don’t worry,” he said. “You’ll soon be fine.”
The house was chaos, and all Eric wanted to do was escape it. There were boxes and packing crates everywhere, and Mary was screaming that she didn’t want her Cabbage Patch dolls put in boxes for the move, and Julie was screaming at Mary to do it now, and everything was in such intolerable disarray that Eric heard the knock at the door as sweet relief from the disorder within the house.
Chet Wakeman stood on the front porch. He was beaming. “We’ve had a fantastic stroke of luck, Eric,” he said. “Jesse Keys is in a clinic in Minnesota.”
“How do you know?” Eric asked, astonished.
“I have a contact there,” Wakeman answered. “A Dr. Traub. In seems that Keys came to see him about some odd behavior. Traub found the same kind of ‘tumor’ that was in Keys’ father.” He clapped his hands together delightedly. “We’ve got him!”
“What do you want to do with him?” Eric asked.
Wakeman smiled. “I’m thinking. I’m thinking.”
“Well, while you’re thinking, don’t lose him,” Eric said impatiently. “I’m not going to make the same mistakes my father made.”
Wakeman looked at him. “Your old man’s been dead what, eight years?”
Eric nodded.
“So don’t you think you can stop trying to kick his ass?” Wakeman asked.
Eric frowned darkly.
Wakeman shrugged. “We’re not going to lose him,” he said. “One of our researchers was going through some of the old files, looking for research that we might have missed. He found these.”
Eric looked at the papers Wakeman handed him. They were transcripts of the markings that were identical to the metal artifact his father kept in the safe in his study, but Eric betrayed no sense that he’d ever seen such markings.
“Any idea what they are?” Wakeman asked.
“They look like the glyphs from that excavation in Alaska,” Eric replied. “The one where my brother died.”
“That’s what I thought too. But these are dated 1947, and that burial chamber in Alaska wasn’t opened until 1970.”
“Did you translate it?”
“Can’t be done,” Wakeman said. “But we may be close, what with Jesse Keys under wraps. The genetic guys are finding out more and more about the implants. I think we’re near a breakthrough.” He stopped and looked at Eric darkly. “Is there something you’re not sharing?”
“You know everything that I know.”
Chet Wakeman looked at him, considering, then his gaze fell to Eric’s desk, two books by Tom Clarke. “What’s this?” he asked.
“Did you see him on TV the other day?” Eric asked. “Talking about a government conspiracy to cover up the presence of aliens here on earth?” He laughed. “Suddenly he’s the Woodward and Bernstein of alien abduction.”
Wakeman held his eyes on the books. “Hmm. Tom Clarke.”
“Tom Clarke,” Eric repeated. “The same guy who thought our entire program was a lie. The one who made that peace sign in the corn that cost my father his job. Now he’s suddenly a believer?”
“Evidently,” Wakeman said.
Eric turned Clarke’s inexplicable conversion over in his mind. “I think I’ll find out what made him change his mind.”
Eric stood, half-hidden by the morning light as Becky’s car drew to a stop before the traffic light. He knew the moment had come, and so he quickly approached Becky’s car and yanked open the door. “Don’t be afraid,” he said. He flashed his Army Intelligence identification. “Just drive to the park.”
“Who are you?” Becky demanded.
“Just drive,” Eric told her. “When we get to the park, I’ll tell you.”
Becky eyed him apprehensively.
Eric smiled. “If I were planning to hurt you, would I have you drive me to a public park?”
At the park, Eric escorted Becky to a bench in the open.
“You’re much prettier than I expected,” he told her. “Your surveillance photographs don’t do you justice.”
Becky stared at him edgily. “Is this visit about something more than good looks?”
“My name is Eric Crawford. I’m here because I understand that your brother Tom has switched sides-that now he’s a believer.”
Becky didn’t answer, only peered out into the park, her hands in her lap.
“You look a lot like your mother,” Eric told her.
Becky faced him. “That’s what they say.”
“My father was a bastard,” Eric admitted. “What he did to your mother was unforgivable. But he had a reason for doing it. He found a spaceship in the desert in New Mexico. There were four bodies in that ship. But there were five seats in the craft. He came to your home looking for the visitor who was sitting in the fifth seat. He never stopped looking. And when he died, I started looking.” He leaned forward slightly and his voice took on an unmistakable gravity. “This planet has been visited thousands of times since my father found that ship. People have been taken from their homes. Things have been done to them. But we still don’t know what they’re doing here, or what they want from us.”
Becky nodded softly, and he could see that she no longer feared him.
“My father was a ruthless man, Becky,” Eric added. “But the things he wanted to know were reasonable because these aliens are the greatest threat the world has ever known.” He lowered his voice like one confiding a deep secret. “You don’t have to tell me what changed your brother’s mind. At least not for now. There’s something else you can do instead.”
“What?” Becky asked.
The Crawford smiled slithered onto Eric’s face. “Have dinner with me,” he said.
Dr. Traub glanced up from his desk as Wakeman entered his office.
“There’s something new,” Wakeman said. He dropped a file on Traub’s desk. “My guys have found the signal the tracking devices give off. It’s incredibly weak, and so it has to be amplified somehow before it can be transmitted back to… our little buddies.”
“You mean to their transmitter?” Traub asked.
“Perhaps an organic one,” Wakeman said with a clever grin. “For example, a brain.” He sat down in the chair opposite Traub’s desk. “The energy of thought… of mind. That’s why Jesse Keys is so important to them. He’s their transmitter. Of course, there’s only one way to find out if he really is a transmitter.”
“How?”
“Shut him off.”
Dr. Traub was clearly shocked by Wakeman’s suggestion. “You mean, kill him?”
“Sooner or later the man had to go,” Wakeman answered casually. “A question of security, you know.”