Her sarcasm didn’t faze Martha in the slightest. “You’re righter than you know, dear. We are sort of going fishing, but not for bass. You see, it’s well known that the Visitors will come to rescue any of their kind that they know to be in trouble.”

“Rescue?” Then the dawn of realization broke over Ross Ed, and it was no less cloudy than these folks’ thinking. He knew enough to recognize a cult when he saw one.

“So that’s it. Y’all are a bunch of saucer nuts!”

“And you’re worried that I might provoke them.” Caroline shook her head slowly.

The woman took no umbrage at the undiplomatic judgment. “We don’t really think they use flying saucers. We have no knowledge of the true nature of their ships’ shapes, since no one’s ever made a proper picture or recording of one. But as to their presence and motivations we have no doubt.”

“Because?” Caroline prompted.

The woman smiled. “Because we are the Circle of Knowers.”

“There you are.” Caroline spread both palms upward. “Quod erat demonstrandum.”

“Don’t mock, dear. It doesn’t become you. Especially in Latin. Yes, we are the Knowers, working silently, gathering our tiny bits and scraps of information, hoping each day to learn a little more, to one day perhaps even make contact. And then you two happen along, with your priceless cargo. Drive right up to our place you do, and if Walter hadn’t happened to peek inside your van, we never would have known. Of course, he knew right away what it was. Waiter’s been a Knower for nigh on thirty years.”

“This little midnight soiree.” Caroline indicated the gathering. “Ever done this before?”

“Oh yes! Each time we thought we had a real alien body, or a piece of one, but each time it turned out that we were mistaken.” She lowered her voice. “Of course, you know that the real alien bodies are in an underground cryogenic vault at Sandia. We’ve tried for years to get one of our people in there but without any luck. Their security is very good.”

Sandia. Where had he heard that name before? Ross wondered.

“They were picked up after the crash at Roswell,” the woman went on. “The Russians are holding two themselves, in a converted chromium mine in the northern Caucasus. It’s so sad. They don’t know what to do with them, so they keep them frozen and under cover. They’re afraid of the Visitors, who simply want to make contact. In order to convince them to do so, we have to provide a suitably strong reason. Offering them the body of one of their own should be sufficient.” She looked after her husband, who had lengthened his stride and moved on ahead.

“Personally, I expected them to be slimmer, with larger eyes and heart-shaped skulls. The extra limbs are a surprise, too.”

Linking hands, the supplicants began to chant wordlessly as Walter reverently set the alien corpse down on a crude metal altar. It was about four feet high and nicely made. Probably welded in somebody’s garage, Ross mused. At least the assembled weren’t bowing and scraping, which would have dirtied their nice, clean capes.

As the last flashlight was turned off Walter stepped back from the altar and raised his hands and eyes heavenward. Over the monotonal chanting he launched into a hysterically solemn invocation which reminded Ross Ed of similar paeans to absolutism frequently espoused by uncritical enthusiasts of many stripes, usually in taverns. Being woefully ignorant of the True Realities and pitiably uninformed (not to mention improperly dressed), he and Caroline were kept out of sight at the far end of the line.

In the absence of anything resembling a bullhorn or amplifier of Promethean proportions, Ross wasn’t exactly sure how Walter and his buddies expected their hokum to be heard by the heavens. And indeed, Jed’s immobile presence notwithstanding, the heavens so far seemed inclined to treat the gathering with monumental, if not cosmic, indifference.

Ross Ed’s only concern was that when nothing happened, the frustrated cultists might choose to take out their disappointments on the bearers of false idols, meaning him and Caroline. Not to mention what they might do to Jed. The deep, concealing lake was all too conveniently close. Leaning over, he murmured of his misgivings.

“Can you run?” he finished by asking her. Martha was too busy chanting to pay much attention to them.

“If I have to. But they’ve been so nice to us. Why would they turn violent now?”

“Because they’re nuts, and my daddy always told me you can’t talk sense with nuts.”

“An observation not in line with current mainstream developments in mass psychology, but to the point,” she conceded.

“I hate it when you talk like that.”

“Sorry.”

The chanting and invoking continued for another hour. When Ross next checked his watch he saw that it was after two in the morning. Time was running out on the Visitors and a few of the Knowers were starting to show signs of wilting. As yet there was no muttering in the ranks, but Ross Ed could see it coming.

Was he never going to get back to a normal daytime schedule?

Caroline interrupted his reverie. “At least they’re only sacrificing Jed and not us.”

“Don’t applaud yet. They’re not through. Have you been listening to our friend Walter?”

“I’ve been trying not to. Interspatial bullshit.” She winced and shifted her stance. “Wish I could sit down. The grass looks comfortable. But I don’t think they’d consider that a properly reverential position.”

“You could ask. It’s not like we’re going to try anything.”

She pursed her lips. “Why, Ross Ed Hager, were you thinking of trying something?”

“I didn’t mean that. I just—” Recognizing that certain smile, he chose another tack. “All I’m saying is that they’re taking this business pretty seriously. It’s all nonsense, of course, but it’s dangerous to spit in somebody else’s holy water.”

She shook her head. “You need to chill, Ross Ed. They’re nuts, sure, but they don’t strike me as homicidal nuts.”

“Remember that when they finally decide to call it a night without having accomplished anything.”

She made a face, listening. “If I was an alien, the racket they’re making would send me warp-factoring in the opposite direction. Even for an amateur choir, this bunch could do with a few music lessons.”

“Poor Jed.” Ross Ed stared at the altar and its immobile burden. “He can’t even put his hands over his ears. Assuming he has ears.”

“See how they’ve cut the grass and reeds down by the water?” She pointed. “That’s where the ‘Visitors’ are supposed to land.”

Somewhere on the far side of the lake a frog commenced to croak, its insouciant burr-upp a mocking counterpoint to the dreary chant, some of whose perpetrators were beginning to exhibit unmistakable signs of waning enthusiasm. Ross Ed considered joining in but decided not to. Where the unseen amphibian could get away with mocking the ceremony, he could not.

Tilting back his head, he surveyed a truly magnificent night sky. In the clear mountain air thousands of stars were visible, including the denser swath of the Milky Way. While it wasn’t Texas, the cool scent of pine and cedar lent a pungency to the atmosphere that was every bit as refreshing as mesquite. As a true Texan, it put him in mind of certain thoughts, certain feelings. He looked back down at the expectant Caroline.

“I could really use a beer.”

Pushing out her lower lip, she nodded understandingly. “Sure. Let’s get a couple of lawn chairs and we’ll set ourselves up here with a cooler and a portable TV. Our ‘hosts’ would appreciate that, they would.”

He found himself checking his watch again. It was coming up on two-thirty. “How long d’you reckon they can keep this up?”

“I don’t know, but by the looks of them I’d say more than a few are about ready to pack it in.”

“that’s what I was thinking. What I don’t understand,” he continued, “is what they expect from Jed. I mean, even if he was alive, I don’t know what they think he could do. But he ain’t. He’s plain demised.”

“Well, according to what you’ve been telling me, he’s done all right looking after you.”

“That’s just the suit. It reacts to threats.” He scrutinized the line of cultists, several of whom were sounding distinctly hoarse. “This is just irritating, not threatening. You touched the suit and nothing happened. Hell, old Walter there picked Jed up and carried him, and nothing happened.”

“Maybe whatever part of the suit that was handling protection finally gave out,” she suggested. “Maybe its batteries, or whatever, finally ran down. Maybe they’re as dead as Jed.”

Well, maybe not quite.

A soft amber light had begun to suffuse the apex of the altar.

TWELVE