“Better that than getting you killed.”
“Jo, I told you once that this is my life. I meant that, quite literally. Let me handle this my way.”
“And get killed.”
“I’ll take that risk,” he said.
“Keith…” But what can I say? she asked herself silently. That desk is between us. His work, his obsession. It’s more important to him than life itself. More important to him than I am.
“Besides,” he was saying, trying to make it sound less grim, “it was probably Cavendish’s doing. I don’t think his disappearance on the same night was a coincidence.”
She nodded slowly. “There are a lot of rumors going around about Dr. Cavendish.”
Stoner nodded back. “Yeah, I guess there are.”
“Was he really an agent for the Russians?”
“Back in New England he told me he was a double agent. I’m not sure that he knew which side he was really working for, now.”
“He was awfully sick.”
“Maybe. Maybe he was faking that.”
“Do you think any of the other scientists are working as intelligence agents for their governments?” Jo asked.
Stoner’s brows rose. “I don’t know. I never thought about it. Some would, I suppose.”
“Professor McDermott would,” she said, very deliberately.
Stoner gave a bitter bark of a laugh. “Big Mac? Some spy he’d make, with that mouth of his.”
“He’s sneakier than you think,” Jo said.
He gave her a long, searching look. “Yeah, I’ll bet he is.”
“His health isn’t very good,” Jo went on. “Ever since the aurorae started, he’s been a wreck.”
“So I’ve heard. I haven’t seen him for more than a week.”
“Neither have I,” she said pointedly.
He hesitated, then said evenly, “That’s good.”
For long moments neither of them said anything. Jo waited for Stoner to speak, to come out from behind his desk and reach toward her, touch her, do something to show that he cared for her. Instead, he merely sat there, looking uncertain, uncomfortable.
“I heard,” she broke the silence at last, “that you’re in charge of picking the personnel to go to Russia with you.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“I want to go. I’ve checked the personnel requirements, and you can carry me as a computer analyst. There’s an opening.”
He drummed his fingers on the bare desktop for a moment. “Jo…if there’s any danger in this trip for me, it might catch any other Americans traveling with me.”
Her chin went up a notch. “Do you think you’re the only one around here who can be a hero?”
He almost grinned. “I’m no hero, Jo. I’m a madman. I know that.”
She couldn’t help smiling at him. “Keith, I told you a long time ago that we’re two of a kind. I want to go, just as much as you do.”
“You really do?”
“Like you said—it’ll look good on my résumé.”
“Yeah,” he replied. It was nearly a sigh. “Okay, I’ll put you down for our computer analyst. Better get over to the hospital for the physical checkup.”
She got to her feet. “Thanks, Keith.”
“You’re crazy, you know.”
“I know,” she said. “Just like you.”
He stood up too, but wouldn’t come out from behind his desk. Jo went to the door and left his office, with him standing there watching her go.
“Jesus Christ, willya look at that!”
The TV newsman frowned at the helicopter pilot. “Keep a decent mouth,” he said, more into his lip microphone than across the whining roar of the turbine engine.
“We won’t be on the air for another twelve minutes,” the pilot shot back, still staring down at the mammoth throngs streaming into Anaheim Stadium. As far as the eye could see, along the freeways stretching back toward Los Angeles and out beyond Disneyland, solid masses of cars inched along bumper to bumper.
“Where’d they get all the gas?” the pilot wondered.
The TV reporter lifted his tinted eyeglasses and rubbed at the bridge of his nose. “Look,” he said to the pilot, “keep a decent mouth anyway, will ya? All we need is for a wrong word to sneak out on the air and we’ll have all of them screaming for our scalps.” He pointed downward, toward the cars.
The pilot shook his helmeted head. “I never seen a crowd like that. Where they gonna put them all?”
The reporter heard it as an awed whisper in his headset earphones. Turning in his seat, safety harness cutting into his fleshy shoulder, he looked across the early evening sky for the camera copter. It was skittering along the Orange Freeway, taping the credible traffic for the eleven o’clock news.
The reporter reached forward to click the radio dial to the frequency that connected him with the camera ship.
“Harry, this is Jack. Can you hear me?”
“Yeah, Jack.”
“How’s the equipment?”
“Everything’s A-okay here. Fine.”
“Good. Now remember, in the middle of Wilson’s spiel they’re gonna douse all the lights so everybody can see the aurora. That’s the shot I want—the stadium lit by the Lights from the Sky.”
“I know. I’ll get it.”
“You sure?”
“I got the low light level snooperscope. Don’t worry about a thing. It’ll come out terrific.”
“It better,” the reporter said.
The stadium literally pulsed with the immense crowd. It was like a vast supernatural beast, breathing and murmuring in the gathering twilight. Row upon row, tier upon tier, the crowd filled every seat, jammed the cement stairways so that vendors couldn’t get through to hawk their wares, stood shoulder to shoulder on the ramps behind the seats and down on the field surrounding the speaker’s platform.
Off at one end of the huge oval, the mammoth scoreboard used for baseball games proclaimed in fluorescent lights, HOME OF THE ANGELS. A gigantic letter A, its apex circled by a glowing halo, stood out against the darkening sky.
Outside the stadium, still more thousands milled around the parking areas. Portable TV sets flickered on the tailgates of station wagons. Families picnicked amid the carbon monoxide fumes.
The night deepened and the activities began. The many-throated crowd roared and laughed and sang as it was prompted to by evangelists, guitar players, rock groups and politicians who followed each other up onto the makeshift wooden platform at the center of the field.
A former astronaut who had become deeply involved in studies of extrasensory and paranormal experiences came to the microphone and proclaimed, “This alien ambassador is bringing us our chance to join the brotherhood of the galaxies.”
The crowd sighed with awe.
An evangelist, red-faced in the spotlight, exhorted the crowd, “This message from the Lord is a warning that we must mend our ways, atone for our sins and surrender our willful hearts to Christ Jesus, our God and our Savior.”
Thousands fell to their knees, shouting praises and screaming for forgiveness.
“Let those who have scoffed at us,” bellowed a noted UFOlogist, “come forward and admit that they were wrong! We are not alone, and we never have been!”
The crowd roared its approval.
Finally, after more hymns and clapping in time to a Gospel choir, after a deafening medley from an over-amplified rock group, after full darkness had shrouded the brilliantly lit stadium, the loudspeakers solemnly proclaimed:
“Ladies and gentlemen, the man whose voice cried out in the wilderness, the harbinger of the Great Days to Come, the Urban Evangelist himself—WILLIE WILSON!”
Like a huge animal with a hundred thousand voices the crowd surged to its feet and bellowed as Willie Wilson, slim and lithe in a sky-blue denim suit, loped down the cleared path through the crowd on the field and up the wooden steps to the microphone.