need one to celebrate when they come back safe.” He had already downed
one Scotch himself. The drink he poured now would be his second. This
was the first time in his life he had drunk hard liquor-or needed it.
“How long?” Julie demanded.
“Twenty-two minutes,” Clint said.
And I’m still sane, she thought wonderingly. Bobby, you, come back to
me. Don’t you leave me alone forever. How am I going to dance alone?
How am I going to live alone? How am I going to live?
BOBBY DROPPED the bed railing, and the lasers winked leaving him in the
shadow of the spiny ship, which seem darker than before the beams
appeared. As he looked up to see what would happen next, another light
issued from the underside of the craft, too pale to make him squint.
This one was precisely the diameter of the crater. In that queer,
pearly glow, the insects began to rise off the ground, as if they were
weightless. At first only ten or twenty floated upward, but then twenty
more and a hundred after that, rising as lazily and effortlessly as so
many bits of dandelion fluff, turning slowly, their tarantula legs
motionless, the eerie light gone out of their eyes, as if they had been
switched off. In a minute or two, the floor of the crater was
depopulated of insects, and the horde was being drawn up effortlessly in
that sepulchral silence that accompanied all of the craft’s maneuvers
except for the base vibrations that had called the insect miners from
their bores.
Then the silence was broken by a flowerlike warble.
“Frank!” Bobby cried in relief, and turned as a gust of vile smelling
wind washed over him.
As the cold, hollow piping echoed across the crater again, there was a
subtle change in the hue of the light that issued from the ship above.
Now the thousands of red diamonds rose from the ash-gray soil in which
they lay and followed the insects upward, gleaming dully here and
brightly there, so many of them that it seemed as if Bobby was standing
in a rain of blood.
Another whirl of evil-scented wind cast up a cloud of the ashy soil,
reducing visibility, and Bobby turned in eager expectation of Frank’s
arrival. Until he remembered that it might not be Frank but the
brother.
The piping came a third time, and the subsequent puff of wind carried
the dust away from him, so he saw Frank arrive less than ten feet from
him.
“Thank God!” As Bobby stepped forward, the pearly light underwent a
second subtle change. Reaching for Frank’s hand, he felt himself
suddenly weightless. When he looked down he saw his feet drift off the
floor of the crater.
Frank grabbed at his outstretched hand and seized it.
Nothing had ever felt better to Bobby than Frank’s firm grip, and for a
moment he felt safe. Then he became aware that Frank had risen from the
ground too. They were both being drawn upward in the wake of the
insects and diamonds, toward the belly of the alien vessel, toward
God-only-knew what nightmare inside.
Darkness.
Fireflies.
Velocity.
They were on Punaluu beach again, and the rain was coming down harder
than before.
“Where the hell was that last place?” Bobby demanded holding fast to
his client.
“I don’t know,” Frank said.
“It scares the hell out of me. it’s so weird, but sometimes I seem to
be… drawn there. He hated Frank for having taken him there; he loved
him for having returned for him. When he shouted above the roar of the
surf, neither love nor hate was in his voice, which was just borderline.
“I thought you could only travel to places you’ve been
“Not necessarily. Anyway, I’ve been there before.”
“But how did you get there the first time, it’s another world. It can’t
have been familiar to you-right, Frank?”
“I don’t know. I just don’t understand any of it, Bobby turned to stand
face to face with Frank, and Bobby took notice of how much the man’s
appearance had deteriorated they had teleported from the Dakota & Dakota
offices in New port Beach. Although the storm once more had soaked them