The night air was clear and getting cold. There seemed to be activity at the far end of the airfield, where vehicles were moving and searchlights probing, but nothing came closer. Then the sound carried across of another jet starting up, and a low, sleek shape moved out from the terminal area. It rolled toward the perimeter about a mile away and swung around, causing its landing lights to brighten suddenly. Cade tensed as the plane moved toward them. It had four engines slung beneath the wings, he saw as it enlarged, and the tailplane carried atop the fin. Several hundred yards away, it slowed. Cade thought he saw what looked like a light flash several times from a window of the flight deck. Don stood up, raised his flashlamp, and pressed the switch several times. The aircraft moved in front of them—a windowless cargo transport with low-slung body and tail loading doors. As it came to a halt in the gloom, Cade made out the side door already opening and its internal stairs hinging down. Cade and Hudro rose from the grass.
“Now, go!” Don brushed aside their attempts to shake hands and waved them on. At the top of the steps Cade turned to send back a salutation from the doorway, but he had already disappeared.
* * *
The convulsions had caused Miguel to bite through his tongue. Congealing blood covered the front of his bruised, naked body. Evita, her own faced swollen, lips split from the softening-up process, watched with dull horror creeping over her as he was dragged unconscious from the room.
The interrogator turned toward her. “Now, I ask you. Where did you leave the American and the Hyadean?” Evita felt dryness in her mouth. She was unable to swallow. She had heard that the best thing was to say nothing. Once you began to give a little away, there was no stopping it. The voice barked. “Where were they heading for? What was the plan to get them out of the country?” She felt herself shaking, tears running uncontrollably down her face. The interrogator’s hand moved toward the box connected to the electrodes. Evita closed her eyes and began to pray.
* * *
The jet lifted into a clear sky filled with stars. Minutes later, the ghostly shapes of Andes peaks were drifting by in the night below. Then they were high over Chile. The Moon appeared slowly over the horizon, and in its cold, expanding light, the dark mass of the Pacific opened out before them, extending endlessly toward the west.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
DEE HAD ALWAYS BEEN of that independent turn of mind that led her to be her own person. She didn’t like others trying to program her thinking, and when it suited her, took an inner delight in shocking them by daring to be different. That was probably why, when Vrel had contacted the office not really knowing what a travel agent was but needing a guide to show some Hyadeans from the mission around the area, she had elected to take charge of the party personally; and then, when Vrel turned out to be an intriguingly different alien also, in his own kind of way, probably been a little forward in propelling things toward a more personal relationship. The simple Hyadean readiness to accept words for what they meant and people for what they said had come as a welcome relief after the minefield of California dating politics that she was accustomed to, and from then on whatever friends and neighbors thought hadn’t figured into it. Vrel had introduced her to Cade and his seemingly limitless list of friends who supplied, arranged, or were looking for just about anything one could name. And life had taken on a progressively more interesting slant ever since.
Then Rebecca had appeared, trying to trace Julia after being referred by a friend of Julia’s former husband, and disappeared with Cade about two weeks later. Three days after that, Vrel left for St. Louis suddenly and hadn’t been heard of since. There had to be some connection, but without Cade around there were few leads she could follow. Julia had professed to know nothing—and seemed curiously impersonal about it for someone in her situation, for what Dee’s opinion was worth. Then, less than a week after Vrel’s departure, when the whole country was in uproar over allegations of political assassination by the government, Cade and his former wife, long supposed to have become part of the past, appeared in a Hyadean news documentary, filmed in South America of all places, that exploded the official denials. In something approaching a dream state, Dee had listened to the announcement two days later that she was living in a new country. . . .