Curtis tried to grab the Polaroid, but Tony wouldn’t let it go. They stood there in front of the Shed B door, turned into flinching silhouettes by each new flash from the shed. Arguing?
Sandy didn’t think so. Not quite, anyway. It looked to him like they were having the sort of heated discussion any two scientists might have while observing some new phenomenon. Or maybe it’s not a phenomenon at all, Sandy thought. Maybe it’s an experiment, and we’re the guinea pigs.
He began to measure the length of the dark intervals as he and the others stood watching the two men in front of the shed, one wearing an oversized pair of goggles and the other holding a boxy Polaroid camera, both of them outlined like figures on a laser-lit dancefloor.
The flashes had been like chain lightning when they began, but now there were significant pauses. Sandy counted six seconds between . . . ten seconds . . . seven . . . fourteen . . .
twenty.
Beside him, Buck Flanders said: ‘I think it’s ending.’
Mister D barked and made as if to start forward. Sandy grabbed him by the collar and held him back. Maybe the dog just wanted to go to Curt and Tony, but maybe it was the thing in the shed he wanted to go to. Maybe it was calling him again. Sandy didn’t care which; he liked Mister Dillon right where he was.
Tony and Curt went around to the walk-in door. There they engaged in another warm discussion. At last Tony nodded — reluctantly, Sandy thought — and handed over the camera. Curt opened the door, and as he did the thing flashed out again, burying him in a glare of brilliant light. Sandy fully expected him to be gone when it died out, disintegrated or perhaps teleported to a galaxy far, far away where he’d spend the rest of his life lubing X-wing fighters or maybe polishing Darth Vader’s shiny black ass.
He had just time to register Curt still standing there, one hand upraised to shield his goggled eyes. To his right and slightly behind him, Tony Schoondist was caught in the act of turning away from the glare, hands upraised to shield his face. Sunglasses were simply no protection; Sandy was wearing his own and knew that. When he could see again, Curt had gone into the shed.
At that moment, all of Sandy’s attention switched to Mister Dillon, who was lunging forward in spite of the hold Sandy had on his collar. The dog’s former calm was gone. He was growling and whining, ears flat against his skull, muzzle wrinkled back to show the white wink of teeth.
‘Help me, help me out here!’ Sandy shouted.
Buck Flanders and Phil Candleton also grabbed Mister D’s collar, but at first it made no difference. The dog went motoring on, coughing and dripping slobber on the pavement, eyes fixed on the side door. He was ordinarily the sweetest mutt in creation, but right then Sandy wished for a leash and a muzzle. If D turned to bite, one of them was apt to wind up a finger or two shy.
‘Shut the door!’ Sandy bawled at the Sergeant. ‘If you don’t want D in there with him, shut the damn door’
Tony looked startled, then saw what was wrong and closed the door. Almost at once Mister Dillon relaxed. The growling stopped, then the whining. He gave out a couple of puzzled barks, as if he couldn’t remember exactly what had been bugging him. Sandy wondered if it was the hum, which was appreciably louder with the door open, or some smell. He thought the latter, but there was no way of telling for sure. The Buick wasn’t about what you knew but what you didn’t.
Tony saw a couple of men moving forward and told them to stay clear. Hearing his normal speaking voice so clearly was calming, but it still seemed wrong. Sandy couldn’t help feeling there should have been whoops and screams in the background, movie-soundtrack explosions, perhaps rumbles from the outraged earth itself.
Tony turned back to the windows running along the roll-up door and peered in.
‘What’s he doing, Sarge?’ Matt Babicki asked. ‘He all right?’
‘He’s fine,’ Tony said. ‘Walking around the car taking pictures. What are you doing out here, Matt? Get in on dispatch, for Christ’s sake.’
‘The radio’s FUBAR, boss. Static.’
‘Well, maybe it’s getting better. Because this is getting better.’ To Sandy he sounded normal on top — like the Sergeant — but underneath, that excitement still throbbed in his voice. And as Matt turned away, Tony added: ‘Not a word about this goes out over the air, you hear me?
Not in the clear, anyway. Now or ever. If you have to talk about the Buick, it’s . . . it’s Code D. You understand?’
‘Yessir,’ Matt said, and went up the back steps with his shoulders slumped, as if he had been spanked.
‘Sandy!’ Tony called. ‘What’s up with the dog?’
‘Dog’s fine. Now. What’s up with the car?’
‘The car also appears to be fine. Nothing’s burning and there’s no sign anything exploded.
The thermometer says fifty-four degrees. It’s cold in there, if anything.’
‘If the car’s fine, why’s he taking pictures of it?’ Buck asked.
‘Y’s a crooked letter that can’t be made straight,’ Sergeant Schoondist replied, as if this explained everything. He kept his eye on Curtis, who went on circling the car like a fashion photographer circling a model, snapping photos, tucking each Polaroid as it came out of the slot into the waistband of the old khaki shorts he was wearing. While this was going on, Tony allowed the rest of those present to approach by fours and take a look. When Sandy’s turn came, he was struck by how Curtis’s ankles lit up green each time the Buick flashed out.
Radiation! he thought. Jesus Christ, he’s got radiation burns! Then he remembered what Curt had been doing earlier and had to laugh. Michelle hadn’t wanted to call him in to the phone because he was mowing the grass. And that was what was on his ankles — grass-stains.
‘Come outta there,’ Phil muttered from Sandy’s left. He still had the dog by the collar, although now Mister D seemed quite docile. ‘Come on out, don’t be pressing your luck.’
Curt started backing toward the door as if he’d heard Phil — or all of them, thinking that same thing. More likely he was just out of film.
As soon as he came through the door, Tony put an arm around his shoulders and pulled him aside. As they stood talking, a final weak pulse of purple light came. It was really no more than a twitch. Sandy looked at his watch. It was ten minutes of nine. The entire event had lasted not quite an hour.
Tony and Curt were looking at the Polaroids with an intensity Sandy couldn’t understand.
If, that was, Tony had been telling the truth when he said the Buick and the other stuff in the shed was unchanged. And to Sandy, all of it did look unchanged.
At last Tony nodded as if something was settled and walked back to the rest of the Troopers. Curt, meanwhile, went to the roll-up door for a final peek. The welder’s goggles were pushed up on his forehead by then. Tony ordered everyone back into the barracks except for George Stankowski and Herb Avery. Herb had come in from patrol while the lightshow was still going on, probably to take a dump. Herb would drive five miles out of his way to take a dump at the barracks; he was famous for it, and took all ribbing stoically. He said you could get diseases from strange toilet seats, and anyone who didn’t believe that deserved what he got. Sandy thought Herb was simply partial to the magazines in the upstairs crapper. Trooper Avery, who would be killed in a rollover car crash ten years later, was an American Heritage man.
‘You two have got the first watch,’ Tony said. ‘Sing out if you see anything peculiar. Even if you only think it’s peculiar.’
Herb groaned at getting sentry duty and started to protest.
‘Put a sock in it,’ Tony said, pointing at him. ‘Not one more word.’
Herb noted the red spots on his SC’s cheeks and closed his mouth at once. Sandy thought that showed excellent sense.
Matt Babicki was talking on the radio as the rest of them crossed the ready-room behind Sergeant Schoondist. When Matt told Unit 6 to state his twenty, Andy Colucci’s response was strong and perfectly clear. The static had cleared out again.
They filled the seats in the little living room upstairs, those last in line having to content themselves with grabbing patches of rug. The ready-room downstairs was bigger and had more chairs, but Sandy thought Tony’s decision to bring the crew up here was a good one.