He got into the trench and pulled his food pouch and canteen in with him. Then he spread the blanket over himself. By sitting up and leaning forward, he could reach a few small stones. He put them on the lower corners of the blanket to anchor them down. Then he lay down and pulled the blanket over him.
The blanket was brown, and probably wouldn’t be spotted from a helicopter. Lying there under it, staring at the fuzzy brightness two inches over his nose, Johnny told himself he was an Apache hiding out from the Army.
It was almost true.
It got very hot in Johnny’s hideout. Time seemed to drag endlessly. The air became stifling; Johnny could hardly breathe. Once he thought he heard the drone of a helicopter, but it was far off in the distance. Maybe it was just his imagination.
He drifted off to sleep again.
Voices woke him up once more. More than one voice this time, and he didn’t recognize who was talking. But they were very close by—they weren’t using a bullhorn or calling out to him.
«Are you really sure he’s out here?»
«Where else would a runaway kid go? His mother says he hasn’t talked about anything but that weirdo ship for the past three days.»
«Well, it’s a big desert. We’re never going to find him standing around here jabbering.»
«I got an idea.» The voices started to get fainter, as if the men were walking away.
«Yeah? What is it?»
Johnny stayed very still and strained his ears to hear them.
«Those Army guys got all sorts of fancy electronic stuff. Why don’t we use them instead of walking around here frying our brains?»
«They had some of that stuff on the helicopter, didn’t they?»
The voices were getting fainter and fainter.
«Yeah—but instead of trying to find a needle in a haystack, we ought to play it smart.»
«What do you mean?»
Johnny wanted to sit up, to hear them better. But he didn’t dare move.
«Why not set up the Army’s fancy stuff and point it at the ship? That’s where the kid wants to go. Instead of searching the whole damned desert for him…»
«I get it!» the other voice said. «Make the ship the bait in a mousetrap.»
«Right. That’s the way to get him.»
They both laughed.
And Johnny, lying quite still in his hideaway, began to know how a starving mouse must feel.
After a long, hot, sweaty time Johnny couldn’t hear any more voices or helicopter engines. And as he stared tiredly at the blanket over him, it seemed that the daylight was growing dimmer.
Must be close to sundown, he thought.
Despite his worked-up nerves, he fell asleep again. By the time he woke up, it was dark.
He sat up and let the blanket fall off to one side of his dugout shelter. Already it was getting cold.
But Johnny smiled.
If they’re going to have all their sensors looking in toward the ship, he told himself, that means nobody’s out here. It ought to be easy to get into the Army camp and hide there. Maybe I can find someplace warm. And food!
But another part of his mind asked, And what then? How are you going to get from there to the ship and the strangers?
«I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it,» Johnny whispered to himself.
Clutching the blanket around his shoulders, for warmth in the chilly desert night wind, Johnny crept up to the top of the hill once more.
The Army tanks and trucks were still out there. A few tents had been set up, and there were lights strung out everywhere. It almost looked like a shopping center decorated for the Christmas season, there were so many lights and people milling around.
But the lights were glaring white, not the many colors of the holidays. And the people were soldiers. And the decorations were guns, cannon, radar antennas, lasers—all pointed inward at the strangers’ ship.
The ship itself was what made everything look like Christmas, Johnny decided. It stood in the middle of everything, glowing and golden like a cheerful tree ornament.
Johnny stared at it for a long time. Then he found his gaze floating upward, to the stars. In the clear cold night of the desert, the stars gleamed and winked like thousands of jewels: red, blue, white. The hazy swarm of the Milky Way swung across the sky. Johnny knew there were billions of stars in the heavens, hundreds of billions, so many stars that they were uncountable.
«That ship came from one of them,» he whispered to himself. «Which one?»
The wind moaned and sent a shiver of cold through him, despite his blanket.
Slowly, quietly, carefully, he got up and started walking down the hill toward the Army camp. He stayed in the shadows, away from the lights, and circled around the trucks and tanks. He was looking for an opening, a dark place where there was no one sitting around or standing guard, a place where he could slip in and maybe hide inside one of the trucks.
I wonder what the inside of a tank is like? he asked himself. Then he shook his head, as if to drive away such childish thoughts. He was an Apache warrior, he told himself, sneaking up on the Army camp.
He got close enough to hear soldiers talking and laughing among themselves. But still he stayed out in the darkness. He ignored the wind and cold, just pulled the blanket more tightly over his thin shoulders as he circled the camp. Off beyond the trucks, he could catch the warm yellow glow of the strangers’ ship. It looked inviting and friendly.
And then there was an opening! A slice of shadow that cut between pools of light. Johnny froze in his tracks and examined the spot carefully, squatting down on his heels to make himself as small and undetectable as possible.
There were four tents set up in a row, with their backs facing Johnny. On one side of them was a group of parked trucks and jeeps. Metal poles with lights on them brightened that area. On the other side of the tents were some big trailer vans, with all sorts of antennas poking out of their roofs. That area was well-lit too.
But the narrow lanes between the tents were dark with shadow. And Johnny could see no one around them. There were no lights showing from inside the tents, either.
Johnny hesitated only a moment or two. Then he quickly stepped up to the rear of one of the tents, poked his head around its corner and found no one in sight. So he ducked into the lane between the tents.
Flattening himself against the tent’s vinyl wall, Johnny listened for sounds of danger. Nothing except the distant rush of the wind and the pounding of his own heart. It was dark where he was standing. The area seemed to be deserted.
He stayed there for what seemed like hours. His mind was saying that this was a safe place to hide. But his stomach was telling him that there might be some food inside the tents.
Yeah, and there might be some people inside there, too, Johnny thought.
His stomach won the argument.
Johnny crept around toward the front of the tent. This area was still pretty well lit from the lamps over by the trucks and vans. Peeking around the tent’s corner, Johnny could see plenty of soldiers sitting in front of the parking areas, on the ground alongside their vehicles, eating food that steamed and somehow looked delicious, even from this distance. Johnny sniffed at the night air and thought he caught a trace of something filled with meat and bubbling juices.
Licking his lips, he slipped around the front of the tent and ducked inside.
It was dark, but enough light filtered through from the outside for Johnny to see that the tent was really a workroom of some sort. Two long tables ran the length of the tent. There were papers stacked at one end of one table, with a metal weight holding them in place. All sorts of instruments and gadgets were sitting on the tables: microscopes, cameras, something that looked sort of like a computer, other things that Johnny couldn’t figure out at all.