Gennady Larkspur had fallen to his knees and was rubbing at his light-shocked eyes. “Forgive us! We didn’t know. We—”

“For heaven’s sake, Gennady, get up!” Equally dazzled, his wife was tugging futilely at his arms.

“Come on!” Picking up the alien body and shoving it into a dumbfounded Ross Ed’s arms, Caroline urged him toward the dry cross section of river bottom.

“But … but it can’t be. Didn’t you hear? It’s …”

She shoved him hard with both hands, nearly knocking him off his feet. As long as he was stumbling, he decided he might as well stumble with her.

“Just move your big Texas butt!”

Together they clambered over boulders and driftwood until they reached the waterline. The backward-arching wave towered above them, an ominous, rumbling shape looming over their left shoulders as they started across.

Somewhat less than overawed, Miriam Larkspur had abandoned her mumbling husband to his shocked recriminations. Taking aim with both hands, she fired at the fleeing couple. But while she was an excellent shot, the combination of increasing darkness, distance, and the impossible wave caused her to miss badly. The Texan and the woman ducked their heads and kept running.

“Woe unto those who would disobey My Word!” the voice

She turned back to her husband and smacked him hard across the face. “Dammit, Gennady! You stupid old man, get up!”

“But. Miriam, don’t you hear it? Don’t you hear the Voice?”

“They’re getting away!” She pointed toward the river. “Where they’ve gone we can follow. This time I’ll put a bullet in each of them.”

“Don’t you remember the story?” At her continual urging he rose, but shakily. “When the Red Sea was paned and—”

“Red Sea, schmedsea!” she interrupted him. “Don’t you recognize that voice?” She slapped him again. “Get a hold of yourself, Gennady.”

“The voice?” Dazed, he looked down at her. “It has to be the voice of—”

“It’s Charlton Heston, you idiot! I don’t know how the alien got a recording of it. Must have picked it off a television station showing his old movies, but I’d recognize it anywhere.”

“Those who pursue are lost!” the voice declaimed unctuously.

“See? Limited vocabulary. You think a deity would speak today in a Hollywood variant of Old Testament rhythms? It’d be more direct. It’s the alien suit that’s doing it. The suit!” She reached up to smack him again but this time he forstalled her.

“Yes.” Realization struck home, uncomfortably. His expression hardened. Gennady Larkspur didn’t like being made a fool of, not by his fellowman not by an alien corpse. “Yes, of course.” Drawing the magnum, he followed his wife toward the river.

“Hurry! We can’t let them get too far ahead of us.” She picked her way nimbly over and through the rocks.

Upon reaching the waterline, he paused to look up at the mighty reversing wave. “I don’t know, Miriam. Are you sure about this? Maybe it would be better to go back and pick them up somewhere else.”

“Are you crazy?” She’d already started across. “If we lose them here and they switch vehicles, we might never catch up to them again. Or the army might nab them first. I’m going.” Her voice was cold as ice. “All I need is one clean shot.”

Reluctantly, he followed her out onto the damp sand, warily eyeing the massive wall of dark water off to their left. There were times when he felt that despite the boredom and the comparative poverty they should have stuck to the dry-cleaning business.

But that would have meant spending their entire lives in Indiana. The thought gave him strength.

Making use of the residual light from Jed’s suit, Ross Ed and Caroline picked and scrambled their way across the river bottom. Once, Caroline tripped and nearly fell over an enormous stranded catfish, but managed to recover to stumble on.

“I wonder if Moses had a dead alien to help him.” Ross kept glancing to his left, at the boiling, dancing wall of water. What would happen if he stuck his hand into the aqueous anomaly? He decided this was no time to find out. They needed to keep moving. Powered by Jed’s suit, the incredible hydrological diversion certainly couldn’t hold forever. Besides, the water was ice-cold.

Looking back over a shoulder, he thought he heard another shot. With the entire pent-up force of the Colorado hollering in his ear, it was impossible to tell for sure. In any event, nothing nasty whizzed past him.

They were near enough now to the south shore to see the outlines of the rocky bank. “You think they’re following us?”

Caroline looked back. “I don’t know. I can’t see anything behind us. They’d have to be pretty stupid. Or avaricious.”

“What?”

“Greedy.”

He nodded to himself. “Then they’re following us. I wouldn’t put anything past those two. And I don’t think they’ll be so polite if they catch up to us again. What’s that?”

A thunderous, reverberating boom was rolling up behind them.

“The wave!” she yelled. “It’s collapsing behind us!”

“Come on, move it!” A glance revealed that the glow from the dead alien’s suit was beginning to fade. The force that had been holding back the water was starting to fail. Frankly, Ross Ed was surprised it had held this long. The suit had shown itself capable of many minor miracles, but even advanced alien technology had to have its limits.

Running hard and looking back, he could both see and hear the water crashing down behind them as the river reclaimed its course. Had anyone else witnessed the incredible phenomenon? He doubted it. People didn’t hike the river at night and the occurrence had taken place well downstream from the nearest campsite and the two pedestrian bridges which spanned the gorge. As for the noise, well, the rapids-rich Colorado was always noisy.

With the angry, surging water lapping at their feet, they reached the far bank and began to climb. Caroline got her feet wet, but otherwise they were safe and dry above the waterline. They’d made it.

On the opposite bank, a soaked and shivering Gennady and Miriam Lurkspur sprawled out on the flattest boulder they could find. They were in danger of being swept downstream when Gennady, clinging to his sputtering mate, had managed to reach out and grab a piece of driftwood projecting from the bank. Their weapons were now so much scrap tumbling and banging along

The loss didn’t concern them. In Arizona you could buy a .44 magnum in a drugstore. But the uncontrollable shivering was another matter.

Arms wrapped around her chest and shaking violently, Miriam Larkspur rose to her feet and chattered at her husband. “Come on, Gennady. We’ve got to get some coffee or hot lemonade in us or we’re going to catch our death out here.”

“I kn-kn-know.” He was trembling with the cold as he squinted at the restored river. It was hard to focus and he could see no sign of their quarry. “It was the alien, of course. How do you suppose it did that little trick?”

“I don’t know.” His wife wrung river water from her long hair. “But the more I learn about it, the more I want it. We could retire, Gennady. We could name our own price. No more spying for the French, no more industrial espionage in the dairy business.”

“I know.”

“We’ll find them again.” She sneezed explosively. “You’ll see.” She started up the rocks toward the viewpoint and the trail. “Let’s gid bag to their cabin and pile the blangids on before we catch pneumonia.”

Of course, they already had, but it would take a day for the symptoms to fully manifest themselves. It would put an end to their hunt in a manner neither they not their quarry could have imagined, and without any further intervention on the part of dead aliens.

FIFTEEN

On the far side of the river, Ross Ed and Caroline were becoming chilled. Though they had escaped the water, nighttime temperatures at the bottom of the canyon were still cool this time of year.

Ross Ed pointed upstream. “Let’s head for the bridges. Once we find the trail we can follow it up to the South Rim. I don’t think those two will be in any mood to follow us, even if they’re in any kind of shape to do so.”

But the intervening rocks and boulders proved difficult to surmount, not was Jed’s suit inclined to shed more light on the matter.

“This is crazy. If we don’t wait until morning someone’s going to break a leg stumbling around in the dark.” Caroline began a search of the surrounding slope. “Find a soft rock and we’ll try and get some sleep until it’s light.”