Copyright Information

Copyright © 1994 by Lawrence Watt-Evans. This edition copyright © 2003 by Lawrence Watt-Evans. All rights reserved.

Published by Wildside Press LLC.

www.wildsidebooks.com

Dedication

For Julie—

because she’s long overdue for another.

Chapter One

He was changing lanes, cutting in front of a silver-grey Toyota, when he suddenly felt as if he were being watched, as if someone were desperately trying to get his attention. He was alone in the car, though. He knew he was alone in the car.

He swerved back into line and checked his mirrors.

Everything looked normal.

He shook his head, puzzled, and began looking for another opening. His appointment was in five minutes, and he had three miles to go on the highway, another through the city streets. He wasn’t going to make it on time, but all the same, he didn’t want to be any later than necessary. He ignored the odd sensation, waiting for it to go away.

It refused. Instead of fading, it nagged at him like a sore tooth. Someone was watching him, somehow.

When he stopped at a light he looked in the back seat, just in case; of course, no one was there. For a moment he even thought about checking the trunk when he parked, but then he shook his head again. That was ridiculous.

The feeling was very definite. It was almost like one of those psychic things he’d read about—but he didn’t believe in those.

The feeling was there, and it wouldn’t go away.

He forced himself to ignore it.

* * * *

“Mommy?” Angela, seated cross-legged on the kitchen floor with her Raggedy Ann doll sprawled on her lap, looked up at her mother.

“Yes, honey?” Margaret Thompson went on scrubbing the saucepan, trying to get out every trace of the burnt-on cheese sauce.

“Mr. Nobody’s talkin’ to me again.”

“Oh?” Margaret answered, not really listening. “What’s he saying?” She peered critically at the pan, decided it would do, and put it in the drainer.

“He’s in terrible trouble, Mommy,” Angela told her, quite seriously.

“What kind of trouble?” Margaret asked, picking a skillet out of the soapy dishwater.

“There’s this bad monster wants to get him, and eat him up, and make everybody do bad things.”

Margaret looked down at her daughter. “Angie, there aren’t any monsters. You know that. You tell Mr. Nobody that.”

“I told him that, Mommy,” Angela said very seriously, “but he just keeps talkin’ about a monster in the shadows.”

Margaret was a bit startled to hear a phrase like “a monster in the shadows” from her three-year-old, but she didn’t worry about it. Kids pick up all kinds of things, and besides, Angie was almost four now. She was growing up fast. “Well, if he keeps talking about monsters,” Margaret told Angie, “then just don’t listen to him. Tell him to be quiet and stop bothering you with that stuff.”

“Okay,” Angela said, doubtfully. “I’ll try.”

* * * *

PSYCHIC PREDICTS ARMAGEDDON

Ray Aldridge, noted West Coast psychic advisor, told reporters today that he has it on good authority that Armageddon, the final battle of good and evil, is almost upon us.

“It was the clearest message I’ve ever gotten from any psychic entity,” Dr. Aldridge reported. “It was a warning sent by beneficent aliens far out in the galaxy, telling me that the powers of darkness are building up their forces for the final conquest of Earth. The aliens who contacted me say that the Galactic Empire they represent has tried to fight back Shadow, as they call it, but has been unsuccessful. It’s up to us, here on Earth, to defeat it.”

When asked how this evil force could be defeated, and what ordinary people could do that telepathic space aliens could not, Dr. Aldridge admitted, “I don’t have any idea at all.”

* * * *

“Got a good one,” the agent at the desk called, holding up an opened letter.

His partner looked up from the file drawer. “What’s this one say?”

The man at the desk smiled. “Dear Mr. President,” he read from the letter. “The angels from Venus who have been helping me with my garden called me up yesterday on the special telephone in my head to warn me that we’re in big trouble. The Devil Himself...” He pointed and said, “That’s underlined in red crayon.” Then he continued reading. “The Devil Himself has found out about all the secret messages I’ve been relaying to you, to keep the Chinese from invading and to tell Americans how to grow better carrots, and he’s really mad. I think my neighbor with the sick cat told him. I’m sure she’s a witch or one of them Satan cults. The Venusians are going to fight the old bastard and chase him back to Hell...” The agent paused again and looked up, grinning. “’Hell’ is in all capitals and underlined in red,” he said, before turning his gaze back to the letter. He cleared his throat and continued, “...chase him back to Hell, but they need some help, so if you could send the 82nd Airborne to Goshen, Maryland, that’s where they expect to meet him. Yours Truly, Oram Blaisdell.”

“Goshen?” the other man asked, bemused. “Why Goshen? Where the heck is it, anyway?”

“Just north of Gaithersburg, I think,” the reader said. “One of those ritzy suburbs with three-acre estates.”

“Does this guy live there?” The man by the files knew, intellectually, that the nuts whose letters came to this office sometimes lived in fancy suburbs, but it still didn’t seem right. He expected them to come from either the inner city or the outermost sticks.

“No, no, of course not,” the man at the desk replied. “He lives in Tennessee somewhere.”

“Then why’d he pick Goshen? How’d he ever hear of Goshen, Maryland?”

The man holding the letter shrugged. “Who knows?” he asked. “Why the 82nd? Why Venus? Why carrots?” He tossed the letter aside. “At least that one didn’t have Elvis in it.”

* * * *

Pel Brown gave the screwdriver another turn and cursed when it slipped out of the slot and scraped across the metal. He dropped the screwdriver to one side, then brushed at the red-enamelled surface and leaned over to peer at it, wishing the light were better.

It looked okay.

Better light might be nice, Pel decided, but what he really wished was that wagons came ready-assembled. Had his father had to put together his old wagon? He’d never thought about that before; just one year there it was, under the Christmas tree, and he’d taken it entirely for granted.

Well, this one was going to be a birthday present, rather than for Christmas, but Rachel was probably going to take it for granted just as much as he had. And she probably wouldn’t notice if he did scratch the paint. That wasn’t something a six-year-old cared much about.

She was going to be six. Amazing. Almost ready for first grade.

Of course, the next school year was still almost four months off, but she would be six tomorrow.

She still wouldn’t care about scratched paint, though. He sighed and reached for the screwdriver, then froze.

Standing next to the screwdriver was a... well, a person. Pel hesitated to call it a man, even in his thoughts; it stood just over a foot high, wrapped in a tattered cloak of coarse brown wool, black hair pulled back in a tight braid, revealing oversized pointed ears. It was looking about curiously and uncertainly, taking in the contents of the basement—the furnace, the water heater, the boxes of stored junk.

It was not a doll; no doll could look that lifelike and alert, no matter how many computer chips were stuffed into it. It wasn’t a monkey, either.

And Pel sure hoped it wasn’t a hallucination, as up until that moment he hadn’t had any reservations at all about his mental health, and he hadn’t taken anything more mind-altering than beer in weeks.

The creature had seen him, he was sure, but it wasn’t saying anything, wasn’t running or hiding or attacking. It was just looking around, a trifle uncertainly, taking in the scenery.

“What the hell are you?” Pel asked.

The thing looked up at him and grimaced. “I’m a bookkeeper,” it replied. “Wouldn’t know it from this outfit, would you?” Pel was relieved that it spoke, and spoke English; that probably simplified the situation, because it meant he could just talk to it and get some answers. Its voice was higher-pitched than a man’s, but not squeaky or thin at all. Pel had heard grown women whose voices sounded far smaller and more childlike.

“No,” Pel said, “I don’t mean what do you do, I mean what are you?”

“I’m a human being, of course,” the creature replied. “A small one. What do I look like?”

“You look like some kind of fairy,” Pel replied, in honest bemusement.

The little person squinted up at Pel. “Are you looking for trouble, buddy?” he demanded. “I’m as much a lady’s man as the next guy! If you weren’t so damn big I’d punch your lights out!”

“Hey, I’m sorry,” Pel said, holding up his hands in apology. “I didn’t mean that. I meant an elf or something. I mean, you’re a foot tall, with pointed ears—where’d you come from?”

Somewhat mollified, the little man said, “That’s better. Yeah, I’m a little person. I came from a place called Hrumph—no jokes, I know it’s a stupid name! That’s what we called it, though, when it still existed. It was in... well, in another world.”

“Oh, wow,” said Pel, who had seen just as many episodes of ‘Twilight Zone’ and ‘Lost in Space’ as most of his generation. “You mean like another dimension?”

The creature looked puzzled. “Dimension? Um... I guess.” He hesitated. “Not the word I’d have used,” he said. “Another world, alternate reality, parallel universe, whatever.” He waved vaguely, and his voice trailed off somewhat.

Pel blinked. After a moment of unthinking acceptance, a certain uncomfortable suspicion was growing in the back of his mind. Outside of movies and TV, things like this didn’t happen, did they? Not for real.

“You’re putting me on, right? This is a joke?” he asked.

“No, it’s... it’s not a joke.” The person—he might not be human, in the usual sense, but after conversing with him Pel certainly thought of him as a person—looked uncomfortable. Not as if he were lying, but as if he were considering throwing up. “Hey...” he said, “I don’t feel real good just now. Is it hot in here?”

“Hot?” Pel glanced around at the cool, moist basement. If this little person really did come from another world, maybe it was one colder than Earth—but that was silly. He shouldn’t be taking it that seriously. “No, it isn’t hot,” he said.

“No?” The little man was swaying visibly.

“Are you all right?” Pel asked, concerned.

“No,” the creature said. “I think... I think I better go.” He swallowed hard. “Listen, we’ll be back, okay? Or someone will. Don’t go away!”

Before Pel could answer, the elf, or whatever it was, turned, stumbled away, and walked into the concrete wall.

Pel heard the smack clearly from where he sat. He winced in sympathy.

The little man got to his feet, let out a wail, and again stepped forward.

This time, when he hit the wall, he vanished into it.

Pel stared for a moment.

Then, moving slowly, he reached out and picked up the screwdriver.

He looked at the wall. In the movies, any character who had just seen such a thing would reach out and poke at the place the little guy had vanished, and maybe nothing would happen, and maybe not. He might get sucked into another world, or he might get killed by some sort of splashy special effects, or monsters might jump out at him.

Pel Brown was not going do that. He had no particular interest in watching the end melt off his screwdriver, or seeing his finger disappear into the fourth dimension, or even just poking the wall. It wouldn’t prove anything. If he could hallucinate an elf, he could hallucinate anything.

He waited for a moment, but nothing happened, and he turned back to the wagon, shaking slightly.

Whatever he had just seen, real or not, seemed to be over. Maybe it had been just a weird sort of dream or something, or some kind of flashback to the one hit of mescaline he’d taken back in college, when he was young and stupid.

Or maybe he really had just talked to an elf from another dimension, and this sort of thing happened all the time, but most people didn’t talk about it because they didn’t want everyone thinking they were nuts. Maybe all those UFO aliens were real, Bigfoot was roaming the woods, and Elvis really was alive in outer space somewhere.

Maybe it happened all the time.

And maybe it didn’t.

Whatever it was, it was not his problem; he still had to get the wheels on this stupid wagon in time for Rachel’s party tomorrow. If the little man came back, Pel thought, he would worry about it then.

* * * *

Amy Jewell leaned back in her lawn chair, the book on her lap forgotten for the moment as she rested her eyes and listened to the pleasant hiss of the sprinkler. The sun was warm on her face, unseasonably warm for early May, and enjoying it seemed more important just now than reading whatever Danielle Steel had to say.

She wasn’t sure she was going to bother finishing this one; she was beginning to lose her taste for Steel. And it was good to just lie here, eyes closed, enjoying the warmth, knowing that she had all day with nothing important to do. She liked that about Sundays.

Her eyes snapped open and she looked up, startled, at the crack of a sonic boom. It sounded as if it was almost directly overhead; she scanned the sky, but she couldn’t see any plane.

Then suddenly she did see a plane, or something like one, but it wasn’t flying, it was falling. It was brightly painted, like the old Braniff jets, mostly purple, and she didn’t see any wings, just stubs. And it was huge, and it was almost directly overhead and it was falling almost directly toward her.

She rolled out of the lawn chair, scrambled to her feet, and ran for the house.

An instant later the thing hit with an immense, booming thud. The shock of its impact rattled windows and the dishes in her kitchen, and a planter at the corner of the patio toppled over, spilling scraggly geraniums across the flagstones. The sprinkler bounced, but did not overturn; its spray rattled against the thing’s metal side.

The object had completely flattened the back hedge and had torn a major limb off the big sycamore. One of the stubby wings, or fins, or whatever they were had missed the lawn chair by just two or three inches.

It had stayed in one piece, though, it hadn’t broken into sections like the crashed airliners she had seen on the TV news. The nose was no more than twenty yards from Amy’s back door, while the tail was well across the property line, on Mr. Janssen’s vegetable garden.

Amy had reached the back door just as it struck; she turned for a quick glance, paused long enough to lean over and turn off the sprinkler, then slipped inside. From the safety of her kitchen she stared out the window over the sink for a few seconds, then reached for the phone and dialed 9-1-1.

9-1-1 worked on Sundays, didn’t it? Of course it did. Emergencies weren’t limited to weekdays.

She didn’t wait to hear what the person on the other end said; when she heard the phone picked up she said, “This is Amy Jewell, at 21550 Goshen Road, and an aircraft of some kind just crashed in my back yard.”

“Do you need an ambulance?” a woman’s voice asked calmly.

“I don’t know,” Amy said. “There hasn’t been any explosion or anything, and the plane looks mostly intact; I don’t see any bodies or flame.”

“We’ll send one. That was 21550 Goshen Road?”

“Yes.” Amy heard other voices in the background.

“Even if there hasn’t been an explosion yet, you might want to get well away from the wreckage. Was it a private plane? We have no reports of any commercial craft in trouble.”

“I don’t know what it is. It’s purple.”

The voice on the other end was silent for a moment, then asked. “Ma’am, where are you calling from?”

“I’m calling from my kitchen. I can see the plane, or whatever it is, out the window, about fifty feet away, and it’s purple, and I never saw a plane like it before. Maybe it’s some kind of experimental military thing.”

“Fifty feet? Ma’am, I strongly suggest you leave the building and get well clear, quickly.”

“Yeah,” Amy said, staring out the window, “I think you’re right.” She hung up the phone.

The thing was lying across most of the width of her back yard, easily over a hundred feet long, with leaves and twigs from the sycamore scattered all over it. Amy’s yard was three acres, what the real estate people called a “mini-estate,” and the aircraft, or whatever it was, seemed to cover most of it, and a fair chunk of the Janssens’, as well. Three fins, each shaped differently, projected from the near side, and a fourth jutted up from the top of the tail; the fins were pink and maroon, with yellow lettering she couldn’t make out on them. The fuselage was mostly purple, with maroon detailing and more yellow lettering. It didn’t look like any sort of airplane Amy had ever seen; it had a rather old-fashioned appearance, somehow.

And a hatchway over the central, largest, nearside fin was opening.

Amy knew she should turn and run, go out the front door and either wait for help or alert the neighbors, but she stared, fascinated.

The hatch swung wide, and a man stepped out. He was tall and blond, wearing a purple uniform with a black belt and high, shiny black boots—it wasn’t any design she recognized, but it was clearly a uniform. He had a black holster on his hip—securely closed, to Amy’s relief, with a flap that hid whatever weapon was in there; for all she could tell, it might be empty. He held a helmet in one hand, something like a motorcycle helmet; it was purple, too, with a yellow star on the side. He gazed around the yard. He said something.

Long ago, Amy Jewell had learned to read lips a little, just for fun. She couldn’t hear him through the closed window, but she knew what the man had said.

He had said, “Shit.”

He turned and called something back into the hatch, but Amy couldn’t make it out, nor could she see his lips.

The man looked perfectly normal and ordinary, except for his rather outlandish attire. He was clean-shaven, his hair in a military crewcut that was beginning to grow out. He was tall and broad-shouldered and reminded her a little of Harrison Ford. She could see no sign of any injury; the thing’s fall didn’t even appear to have seriously mussed his uniform.

He was scanning her back yard, looking over the lawn chair, the still-dripping sprinkler, the spilled geraniums and the branch that had been torn off the sycamore. He did not look pleased.

Then he spotted her in the window. He waved and cupped his hands around his mouth and called, “Hello!”

Amy stared for a moment.

Then another head appeared in the hatch, looking out—another young man in uniform and crewcut.

Amy decided that she didn’t want to talk to these people. They might be harmless—but they might not, and she was alone in the house, the neighbors were still off at their church, and there were at least two of the strangers and either one was bigger than she was. Those blond crewcuts brought Nazis to mind, which didn’t help any.

She didn’t think that the plane, or whatever it was, was going to explode. If there were any possibility of that the men would be running to get clear, not standing there looking around as if her back yard was some sort of disaster they had to clean up.

She locked the back door and then went upstairs to her bedroom. She got the little gun her father had given her from the bedside drawer, then crossed to the back windows and looked out again.

There were three men standing in her yard now, looking about. They looked nervous; one of them, the one she hadn’t seen at all before, looked downright twitchy, his head jerking back and forth, scanning the shrubbery.

Naturally, he was the one with the gun.

It was quite a large gun, too, not one that would fit in a holster and not a kind Amy remembered ever seeing before. It looked oddly bulbous, but very complicated and ominous. He had it tucked under his right arm, he wasn’t pointing it at anyone or anything, but Amy still had to suppress a nervous shudder. She was very glad she hadn’t gone out to yell at the men for wrecking her yard; that man looked as if he might have shot her without even meaning to.

The second man righted the fallen lawn chair and sat down—making himself right at home, Amy thought with a stab of resentment. Then he put his head down in his hands and she felt a twinge of guilt for her resentment. She still didn’t have the faintest idea what was going on, but obviously, whatever these people were doing had gone wrong. Let the poor man sit down if he had to.

The big blond who had been the first out cupped his hands around his mouth and called, “Hello, in the house!”

Amy didn’t answer. She thought about it, but decided to wait.

“Hello!” he called again.

She put the gun down and opened the window-latch, then reconsidered.

“Where are we?” the man shouted. “Can you send for the authorities?”

Amy frowned. That seemed like a strange thing to ask. She opened the window a few inches.

“I already did!” she called.

The man blinked up at her, and the other man, the one with the big gun, turned to look. She ducked down and picked up her own gun.

This was crazy, she told herself. This was absolutely insane. These people were not acting like air-crash survivors at all. And that plane didn’t really look that much like a plane.

So who the hell were they, then, and what was that thing? They didn’t sound like foreigners, not really—though asking her to send for the authorities, rather than to call the cops, was odd phrasing.

That thing they came in—she had a better view of it from upstairs than she had had at ground level. It didn’t look like an airplane.

It looked like a spaceship.

Not a real spaceship—not the space shuttle or a moon rocket. It looked like something out of an old Flash Gordon serial, only real—as if those comic-book spaceships had been based on this ship the way comic-book cars were based on real ones.

It bore the same relationship to those cheap models in “Flash Gordon,” she thought, that a real 1947 Checker bore to Benny the Cab in “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?”

She blinked. Was someone shooting a movie, maybe? She’d never seen a ship like that in any movie, though. They wouldn’t build it full scale and drop it in her back yard, in any case—not without asking her permission.

What the hell was going on?

Then she heard the sirens approaching and decided it wasn’t her problem any more.

Chapter Two

The nagging in the back of his head had been there for a few days, and he didn’t really consciously notice it any more—until it abruptly stopped. For a moment he was startled by the sudden mental silence; then he realized what had happened and smiled broadly.

It had stopped.

About time.

He had never figured out what caused that odd feeling, but whatever it had been, it was a relief to be rid of it.

* * * *

Angela Thompson burst out crying, and when her mother finally got an explanation it took a real effort not to slap the girl for getting hysterical over nothing.

“Mr. Nobody stopped talking to me,” indeed!

* * * *

Ray Aldridge didn’t like it when the messages stopped, but it was no big deal. They weren’t providing all that much useful material, anyway—no bulletins from dead millionaires or miracle diet plans. He had gotten along without them for years, and he could get by without them again. He would just go back to making up his own.

* * * *

Oram Blaisdell wasn’t so complacent as the others. When the angels from Venus stopped talking to him, he concluded that Satan had somehow killed them all. He got his old twelve-gauge from the back room and went out to his pick-up and headed north.

He wasn’t any too sure where Goshen, Maryland might be, but he reckoned he could find it.

He got as far as Radford, Virginia before the cops picked him up for speeding. Listening to his story, they decided the poor old guy shouldn’t be running around loose. They called up his kids back in Paulette.

Between Henry Blaisdell’s coaxing and the state troopers’ story about a secret government campaign against the Satanists in Goshen, Oram finally decided to go home and mind his own business.

Satan wouldn’t get him without a fight, when the time came, but why go looking for trouble where he wasn’t wanted?

* * * *

Pel Brown was sitting in his favorite chair, re-reading C.S. Forester’s Ship of the Line, when someone knocked.

He glanced up, annoyed. He had been in the middle of the scene where the Sutherland, Hornblower’s ship, tears up an entire Italian army on the Spanish shore road, and he resented the interruption. He had been comfortably absorbed in ships’ broadsides and Napoleonic politics.

Nancy and Rachel were out shopping, he remembered, partly to return the duplicate tape of ‘Beauty and the Beast’ Rachel had gotten at her party yesterday, but mostly after groceries. They weren’t around to answer the knock—but maybe whoever it was would go away.

Whoever it was didn’t go away, but knocked again instead.

Why would anyone knock, anyway? Was the doorbell broken?

Sighing heavily, Pel got up out of the recliner and put the book down on the endtable, using the unpaid cable TV bill as a bookmark. He plodded to the front door and opened it.

No one was there. The porch and front steps were empty. No one was on the sidewalk or the lawn, either. More annoyed than ever, Pel turned and headed back for the recliner.

The knock sounded again, and he realized it wasn’t coming from the front door. It was coming from the door to the basement.

Had Nancy come home without his even noticing it and somehow got herself locked in the basement?

No, because then where was Rachel? She was never this quiet. And besides, he hadn’t been that involved with the book; he’d have heard them come in.

Maybe a meter reader had come in from outside and needed to talk to him about something?

On Sunday? Not likely.

There was one easy way to find out. He opened the basement door.

The man standing on the steps was a complete stranger. Pel blinked at him, startled. It was only when he saw this new apparition that he remembered seeing the little person while assembling Rachel’s wagon two nights before.

“Good day, sir,” the stranger said. He bowed, right arm across his chest, a hat in his right hand, a feather bobbing on the hat.

“Hi,” Pel said. “Who the hell are you?”

“I am called Raven,” the stranger replied, with another bow. “And whom do I have the honor of addressing?”

Pel stared for a moment.

He had, he felt, plenty of reason to stare. The man before him was of medium height, maybe five foot eight or so, with curly black hair and a tan. He was wearing a black tunic with silver embroidery and gold trim, black woolen hose on his legs, and a fine black velvet cloak thrown over one shoulder. The hat he held was a wide-brimmed, flat-crowned black felt, with a curling white ostrich plume in the band.

It didn’t look like a stage costume, though—the materials were too heavy, the detailing too fine, without any of the glitzy look of theatrical attire. The clothes had a solid reality to them.

So did the man who wore them. He had a long nose, dark eyes, and lines at the corners of a thin-lipped mouth; Pel estimated him to be in his late thirties or early forties. He looked more like a Mafioso than an actor.

He was waiting for an answer.

“Pel Brown,” Pel said at last.

The stranger straightened up a little more and said, “Your servant, sir. Are you the master here?”

“It’s my house, if that’s what you mean.” Pel considered it odd that the man’s speech was rather flowery, in accord with his garb, but his accent was faint and seemed somewhere between Australia and the Bronx, not at all in the traditional British upper-class manner.

“Indeed,” Raven said. He moved his eyes.

Pel took the hint and stepped aside. “Come on up out of there,” he said.

The man who had introduced himself as Raven obliged, and for the first time Pel realized that the stranger’s tunic was belted with a wide band of black leather, and that a sword hung from that belt. Not a dueling foil, as his outfit might have led one to expect, but a sheathed broadsword.

“Come on over here,” Pel said.

Raven’s eyes darted about, taking in the passageway, the kitchen that was visible through the doorway, the family room, the bookcases, the etageres, the couch, the recliner, the video set-up, the Maxfield Parrish print on the wall.

Pel stepped back and closed the basement door, making sure that it latched and that the lock was set. Then he followed his guest into the family room.

Upon spotting the stranger the household cat, Silly Cat by name, leapt up from his place on the back of the couch and made a dash for the stairs. He was a timid beast, much given to hiding under the bed, and would hardly ever stay in the same room with an unfamiliar human being.

“Have a seat,” Pel said, gesturing at the couch.

“Thank you,” Raven said. He sank onto the sofa and seemed startled by how soft the cushions were. His sword got in the way; he swung it to the side, and had to unbuckle the belt to get comfortable. He pulled the leather band out, wrapped it around the scabbard, and then laid the whole package gently on the coffee table, carefully not disturbing the two issues of TV Guide or the beer-stained coaster. His velvet cloak he draped over the back of the couch, where, Pel was sure, the velvet would pick up cat hairs.

Pel settled back into his recliner, his hand reaching automatically for his book. He stopped himself, leaned forward, and asked, “So, Raven, you said?”

The stranger nodded.

“Okay,” Pel said. “So what were you doing in my basement? You have anything to do with the elf who turned up down there night before last?”

“Elf?” Raven’s face expressed polite puzzlement.

“Something like that—little guy, about this high.” Pel held out his hands to show his tiny visitor’s height. “Said he was from Hrumph.”

“Oh.” Raven nodded. “Aye, that would be Grummetty.”

“Grummetty, huh?”

“Aye,” Raven said. “A little person. He’s no elf; the elven are another sort entirely. Of a time, we called Grummetty’s people gnomes, but ‘twould seem they find the term offensive now, so we... well, most of us try to oblige them. Particularly now, in their days of exile.”

“I asked him if he was a fairy,” Pel said.

“Alack for that!” Raven exclaimed. A wry grin flickered quickly across his face, then vanished. “He made no mention on that. I’ll hope he took not too great an offense at it.”

“No, he accepted it as an honest misunderstanding, I think. So, he’s a friend of yours?”

“An ally, more than a friend, I would say,” Raven replied judiciously.

“Oh,” Pel said, accepting the distinction without comprehension. “Well, so you got into my basement the same way he did?”

Raven nodded. “Exactly. It pleases me well to see that you’re a man of such quick intelligence.”

Pel gave a self-deprecating smile. “Sure. So now that we’ve got that straight—who the hell are you people, and how are you getting into my basement, and why?”

“Well...” Raven’s eyes roamed the room again, the green wall-to-wall carpeting, the textured ceiling, the green drapes and the sliding glass door to the patio, the books and records and CDs and videotapes, the throw pillows that Rachel had stacked on the floor as a fort for her Barbie dolls.

Pel waited.

Raven sighed. “’Tis a long story,” he said, “and I scarce know where to start.”

“Begin at the beginning,” Pel said, without thinking. “And go on till you come to the end; then stop.” The quote from Lewis Carroll was an old favorite.

“Indeed, that’s the wisest course for most tales,” Raven agreed. “But I think I’d do best to start by asking you a question. What know you, sir, of other worlds than your own?”

“It depends how you mean that,” Pel replied cautiously. He did not intend to set himself up for anything.

“What I mean, good sir,” Raven replied, “is that I am not of your world. In truth, I know nothing of it save what Grummetty told me, and what I have seen for myself. Your pardon, but your world seems to me passing strange; your chamber here reminds of nothing so much as a wizard’s secret chamber, yet the door—it is a door?—aye, the door yonder is sheerest glass, is it not? Not some mage’s trickery?”

“It’s glass,” Pel agreed. “Go on.”

“Doors of glass,” Raven said, shaking his head in amazement.

“Get on with it!” Pel snapped. His patience was wearing thin. If this was all some elaborate stunt he was getting tired of it, he wanted the punchline. If it was real—well, that was another matter entirely. That was frightening.

It was downright terrifying, in fact.

“Your pardon, sir,” Raven said, ducking his head. “As I was saying, your world is not my own, nor from what I see here does it much resemble my own, though men are yet men, and the trees and grass I see through the pane seem familiar, and we speak the same tongue.”

That fact had already struck Pel. It seemed very unlikely that people from another world would speak English.

“It seems to me that you speak it as the little people do, rather than as my own, yet ‘tis certainly the same tongue,” Raven continued.

Pel began to wonder if he would ever get to the point. “All right, you’re from another world,” he said. “How’d you get in my basement?”

“’Tis the doing of our mage, Elani, with a spell stolen from the foe; she sent first Grummetty, and then myself, to see what manner of world it was that the Imperials had found in their quest for aid against Shadow.”

“What?” asked Pel, thoroughly confused. Raven’s accent seemed to be thickening, and his phrasing becoming more complex, as he settled into the conversation. The words didn’t seem to make sense, but he tried a little free association. “You’re in trouble with Lamont Cranston’s Chrysler?”

“How’s that?” Raven expressed polite puzzlement.

“Never mind,” Pel said, waving it aside. “Go on.”

Raven nodded. “As I said, ‘tis a long tale. Know you aught of Shadow, or perchance of the Imperials?”

“No,” Pel said flatly. He decided not to try any Little Anthony jokes.

“I feared as much.” The stranger groped for words, then began. “Shadow,” he said, “is an evil thing. ‘Twas once a mortal wizard, the legends say, but I’d not swear to that. Whatever it is in truth, its magic is great, its slaves and servants many and mighty, and in its realm its power is absolute. For centuries, since before my family’s first father began the archives, Shadow has been growing, spreading its power, fighting and defeating and devouring mages and wizards, learning their spells and consuming their power. In its wake come death and terror; castles are thrown down, their inhabitants horribly slain. Villages are burnt, the people devoured, crops and livestock vanished. For centuries, men of good will have struggled against Shadow, have resisted the offers it made of power in its foul realm—but weaker men have sold their souls for empty promises and brief pleasures.”

Pel listened appreciatively. Raven told the story well, despite his curious accent. Pel had heard it before, of course, in any number of fantasy novels and movies. “And you’ve found some way this Shadow can be defeated?” he asked, anticipating the next step in the traditional plot. “Some talisman that can kill it, or something?”

“No,” Raven said, startled. “Of course not. Such things are the stuff of children’s tales. We know of no way Shadow can be fought save by slaying its creatures and combating its spells, as we have done since my grandfather was a babe.”

“No?” It was Pel’s turn to be startled.

“No! No, there can be no easy victory—can there?” An odd, hopeful note crept into Raven’s voice. “Do you know of some way that Shadow can be defeated? Has something like this happened in your world, and was a way found?”

“No, of course not,” Pel replied, confused. “Magic doesn’t work in the real world.”

For a moment Raven was silent, his face slowly reddening; then he stood up angrily. “You mock me, sir,” he said, in a tone that was pure threat.

If this was a joke, Raven was a superb actor; he sounded utterly sincere. Pel blinked up at him, startled anew, and for a long silent moment the two men stared at each other.

“No, I don’t,” Pel said at last. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean any mockery. Go on with your story.”

Raven glared for a moment longer, then slowly settled back onto the couch. He stared at the far wall for a moment, where a blonde in white gauze rode a swing before a landscape of impossibly vivid colors.

Pel had always loved that print, but Raven seemed puzzled by it.

At last the stranger said, “Magic does not work in your world, you say?”

“No,” Pel said. “At least, we generally don’t think so, except for a few loonies. Real magic doesn’t work. It never has.”

Raven nodded.

“That,” he said, “might well account for Grummetty’s illness. ‘Tis said by some that the little people are magical in origin, and yet need a trace of that magic to live. Perhaps in your world that magic is gone, and they cannot exist. Grummetty told us all that he felt as if his own flesh were burning him when he came here, and indeed he was sore ill when he returned to us. At first we feared he might not live, but when his fever broke and his strength began to return, I ventured through the portal. As yet, I’ve felt no ill here.”

“Oh,” Pel said. “He said he felt sick. I wondered about that.”

Raven nodded. “We sent a little person at the first because he might more easily hide, should danger arise. He said he found no danger save the illness, only a metalsmith at work. Would that be you, sir?”

“I was putting together a wagon for my daughter,” Pel explained, a little impatiently. “She just turned six, and we had a party for her yesterday. Now would you go on with your story about the Shadow, and what you’re doing here?”

“Indeed,” Raven said. “And gladly will I speak, an it be that my words can sway. That thing we call Shadow has conquered all my world, now; the darkness is everywhere. From one edge to the other it is supreme, and only in isolated pockets do a few of us still resist its dominion. In truth, we can do little ‘gainst it. And having thus triumphed, ‘twould seem that the evil seeks new challenge; our surviving free mages, working in secret, spied upon Shadow, and learned that it had sought new worlds to conquer—and had in fact found them.”

“Earth, you mean?” Pel asked.

Raven stared blankly at him. “Earth?”

“This world, I mean,” Pel explained.

“Oh,” Raven said, with a glance out through the glass of the sliding door. “You call this Earth? How odd.” He shook his head. “’Tis no matter, though. No, ‘twas not this world Shadow found, but another, the realm of the Imperials.”

“Oh. Okay, who are they?” The tale, Pel thought, was getting unnecessarily long and complicated, and he wished that Raven would get to the point.

“They are men, like us,” Raven told him, “and they rule not one world, but many. Not worlds that are reached by magical portals, such as the one that brought me hither, but worlds that float separately in the sky, among the stars, and that can be sailed to in special flying ships—or so I am told. I do not pretend to understand it, not having been there. They call all the worlds gathered under their rule the Galactic Empire, though I know not whence the name derives.”

“The Galactic Empire?” Pel objected. “Aren’t you mixing genres?”

“What?” Raven asked. His confusion was beginning to have a constant visible admixture of anger, and Pel decided not to provoke him with explanations of the difference between science fiction and fantasy.

“Never mind,” Pel replied. “Go on.”

“As you will,” Raven said, calming. He continued, “When ‘twas learned that Shadow sought these other realms, certain mages among those who strove ‘gainst the darkness took careful study and discovered the secrets of the spells Shadow had used in its researches—Elani was one such. Those mages then opened portals to the worlds of the Galactic Empire, that they might forewarn the Imperials, and thereby gain their aid in fighting Shadow. However, those who passed through these portals found that the Empire was strange beyond our understanding, and was perhaps itself no better than the lesser of two evils. Some, my group among them, therefore resolved not to trust the Imperials, but to proceed on our own.”

“So you looked for another, better world, and you found us?” Pel asked.

“No,” Raven answered. “The Imperials did that. Once they learned that one other reality existed, and that ‘twas ruled by a hostile force, they set about finding another, in hopes of acquiring an ally in their coming battle against Shadow. They have no mages, but they have men and women who can hear the thoughts of others...”

“Telepaths?” Pel suggested.

“Aye, telepaths, the very word they use!” Raven agreed, startled.

Pel nodded. For once he’d guessed right about something in Raven’s tale. “Go on,” he said.

Raven continued, “’Twould seem that these telepaths had sometimes found traces of thought for which they could not account. Some, it seemed, had leaked through from my own native realm—but some, so it chanced, came from your world. Thus, they sought out your reality, and attempted to send messages to a few receptive individuals therein. When that yielded no useful results, they devised a means of transporting one of their sky-ships into whatsoever other realities they might find, and sent that ship hither, to your land. This morning it arrived, and if Elani’s spell be sound, not far from here. My group learned about these plans, and our mages opened a portal, that we might communicate with your people—this, that you might have some contact with our realm other than through the Imperials, and that, perhaps, we, too, might benefit from whatever your people can teach us.” He frowned. “We had hoped that our messenger might bespeak your rulers ere the ship of the Imperials came, but alas, Grummetty’s illness cut short our first attempt, and ‘twas not until some hours after the ship was sent that we made another.”

Raven spread his hands.

“And here I am,” he said, just as Pel heard the whir of the garage door opener.

* * * *

Amy Jewell watched as the last of the crewmen from the spaceship—if that’s what it was—climbed reluctantly into the police van.

“What’s going to happen to them?” she asked.

The plainclothes cop beside her looked up from his notepad. “Them?” he said, pointing his pen at the van.

Amy nodded.

The cop shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “I never heard of anything like this before. If it’s a publicity stunt I expect the movie company will bail them out tomorrow morning—not today, because it’s Sunday and the judge won’t be in, but probably first thing tomorrow. If it’s for a movie. And they didn’t resist arrest or give us any trouble at all—hell, you probably heard them, they were asking to talk to the authorities—so even if they don’t get bailed out we may not be able to hold them.”

Amy nodded again. “I see,” she said, though she wasn’t sure she did.

“You worried about them?” the cop asked, giving her a shrewd glance.

Amy grimaced. “Not really,” she said.

The cop didn’t answer.

“What about the airpl... the shi... that thing?” Amy asked, pointing. “How are you going to get it off my lawn?”

The cop frowned. Then he sighed. “I don’t know, lady,” he said. “That’s not my job. I’m sorry, but it’s not police business. Either you can move it, because it’s your yard, or they can move it, because it’s their ship. Either way, they’re liable, but you’ll probably need to sue them to collect.” He glanced at the huge purple object. “The FAA people are supposed to be on their way out here now, you know, Sunday or not—they want to look at the thing and figure out how it got here. You probably shouldn’t touch anything until they get here.”

A siren started up, then cut off abruptly; a white pumper truck with GAITHERSBURG-WASHINGTON GROVE FIRE DEPARTMENT lettered on the doors in gold pulled away, engine roaring and the tires spitting gravel from the roadside. Amy and the cop watched it go.

“I’ve gotta say,” the plainclothesman remarked, “that this is the weirdest damn thing I ever heard of.”

Amy nodded.

“If worse comes to worst,” he suggested, “you could sell tickets and run tours.”

“I suppose so,” Amy said, unenthusiastically. She wasn’t really very interested in the idea; she wanted her yard back, not a tourist trap. She didn’t really need so dubious a source of additional income.

As she watched the pumper depart she spotted a blue sedan creeping up the road. She thought it looked as if it had writing on the door, but at that angle and distance she couldn’t make it out.

“That’s the FAA boys now,” the cop said. “I’ll be going along. If you could come to the station tomorrow and let us know whether you want to press charges or anything, we’d appreciate it.”

“All right,” Amy said distractedly.

“That’s it, then,” the cop said, closing his notepad. “Have a nice day.”

He turned and ambled toward the remaining county police cruiser as the van pulled away and the blue sedan coasted to a stop.

Chapter Three

Nancy stared stupidly as Raven bowed deeply. Rachel giggled behind her hand, and dropped a small plastic shopping bag to the floor.

“Hi, honey,” Pel said. He gestured at their unexpected guest. “This is Raven.”

“Hi,” Nancy said, looking questioningly at Pel as he came to take one of the bags of groceries from her arms.

“Your servant, madame,” Raven said, bowing again.

“My wife, Nancy, and my daughter, Rachel,” Pel explained as he carried the groceries into the kitchen.

“A pleasure to meet you, I assure you,” Raven said.

Nancy murmured something vague, then followed Pel into the kitchen with the other bag.

“Who’s he?” she demanded. “Why’s he dressed like that?”

Pel put the sack on the counter and started putting cans of soup on the pantry cupboard shelves while he tried to think how to answer that.

“He says to call him Raven,” he said. “I’m not sure if it’s really his name or not. And he’s apparently dressed like that because that’s what he wears at home.”

“Where’s home? What’s he doing here?”

A can of Campbell’s cream of mushroom slipped, and Pel caught it in his other hand.

“I don’t know, really,” he said. “I mean, I sort of do, but it’s... well, it’s not that it’s hard to explain as that nobody would believe the explanation.” He paused, considering, and added, “I’m not sure I believe it.”

Nancy stared at him. “Pel, what are you talking about?” she asked, worried.

Pel looked helplessly around the kitchen, as if hoping the cabinets would tell him what to say.

The cabinets remained blank.

He could hear voices from the family room, he realized—Raven and Rachel were talking. He crossed to the door and leaned through.

“You see?” Raven was saying. “It is indeed a real sword. And sharp—do you not touch it, lest you cut your pretty fingers.” He had pulled about a foot of the blade from its sheath, and Rachel was admiring the dull gleam of the metal.

That wasn’t cheap chrome, like some of the ceremonial swords Pel had seen, nor stainless steel, nor plain iron. Even from the kitchen door he could see the fine finish, the sort of finish one saw on very expensive carving knives.

Nancy came up behind him and looked over his shoulder.

“Pel,” she whispered in his ear, “what’s he doing here?”

Pel turned and pushed Nancy back into the kitchen.

“He’s from some sort of fantasy world,” he said. “Where magic works. He’s a warrior of some kind, I guess.”

“You mean he’s crazy? An escaped lunatic?” In an instant, Nancy’s expression went from mildly concerned to seriously worried.

“No,” Pel told her. “Or at least I don’t think so. I think he’s for real. There’s some kind of space warp that comes out in our basement.”

The worried look now verged on panic. “Maybe you’re crazy, too!” Nancy said. “Pel, what are you talking about?”

Pel groped unsuccessfully for words, and finally just said, “Come on.” He took Nancy’s hand and pulled her back into the family room, where Rachel was admiring the silver embroidery on Raven’s tunic. Raven was watching the girl’s little fingers indulgently as they explored the textures.

Raven looked up as the pair entered, and smiled. “A lovely child,” he said. “And well-spoken.”

“Thanks,” Pel said.

“In her sixth year, you said? Or was it seventh?”

“She just turned six.”

“Ah!”

For a moment the Browns just stood there, and Raven sat, and Rachel ran her fingertips down the silver piping. Then Raven carefully lifted Rachel off his knee, placed her on the couch, and stood up.

“My presence here troubles you, I see,” he said, “and I’ve no wish to trouble anyone.”

Pel chewed his lower lip, glancing back and forth between Raven and Nancy, while Raven awaited a reply. He was obviously hoping for a polite denial, but Nancy was obstinately silent as she stared at the stranger.

Raven sighed and picked up his sword. “I’ll be going, then,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” Pel said, “but I can’t think of any way to explain you that doesn’t sound crazy.”

“Ah,” Raven said, comprehension dawning, “I see. I’d feared it was something else, that perhaps I’d given offense somehow. I know so little of your world, after all!” He looked hopefully at Nancy.

She remained silent; it was Pel who assured him, “No, you’ve been charming. But your clothes, and your name... well, it’s strange.”

Raven nodded.

“Madame,” he said, “I beg your pardon for intruding, and for my garb, which I take it you find outlandish. In truth, I am outlandish—I’ve come here from another realm entirely.”

Pel listened to this with interest; it was remarkable how much more believable that sounded coming from Raven than it did coming from him.

It still wasn’t very believable, though, and in fact Nancy obviously still didn’t believe it.

Rachel was also skeptical, judging by her expression. Nifty embroidery and shiny swords were all very well, but modern kindergarteners knew better than to believe stories about other worlds. Rachel had independently figured out just weeks before that Santa Claus wasn’t real; she was still working on the Easter Bunny and the tooth fairy, but she wasn’t about to accept Raven at face value.

Raven could see the disbelief as well as Pel could. He sighed. “You doubt me,” he said, deliberately understating the case, “and I can scarce blame you, for who in her right mind would believe such an assertion without proof? But perhaps I can convince you. And if not, I’ll go, and at least you’ll be rid of me.” He rose and reached for his sword and belt. “Pel Brown,” he said as he fastened the buckle, “if you would be so kind as to lead us to the cellars?”

That was clearly the thing to do, though the idea had not occurred to Pel. “Come on,” he said. “Everybody down in the basement, and you can see why I believed Raven about where he came from.”

They trooped down the stairs, Raven in the lead, then Pel, then Rachel, and last Nancy. Raven did not hesitate; he walked directly across the basement and into the concrete wall.

Unlike Grummetty, who had whacked his head the first time he tried to return to his own reality, Raven vanished immediately.

Rachel’s eyes widened, and her mouth opened.

Nancy turned to her husband and demanded, “Pel, what’s going on here?”

“You saw,” Pel said. “He vanished into the wall. See, night before last, when I was down here, this little tiny guy, like an elf or something, appeared out of nowhere, and talked to me for a minute, and then disappeared into the wall just the way Raven did.” He didn’t mention the bump. “Then this afternoon, when you were out, I heard knocking, and there Raven was, in our basement. And he gave me this whole story about another world, and I know it sounds stupid, but I bought it—it sounded real, and he looked real, and I couldn’t figure out any other way it could happen.”

“Well, he’s gone now,” Nancy said, and just then Rachel, who had wandered halfway across the basement staring at the spot where Raven had vanished, let out a shriek.

Raven was stepping back out of the blank concrete wall.

Rachel came running back across the basement floor to her parents and flung herself against her father, who bent down and picked her up, hugging her to him.

“It’s okay, Rae,” he told her, as Nancy laid a comforting hand on the back of the little girl’s head. “It’s just Raven. It’s okay.”

The dismay he saw on Raven’s face over Rachel’s shoulder could not be feigned, Pel was sure.

“My humble apologies, Mistress Rachel,” Raven said, going down on one knee and lowering his head. “I’d not meant to startle you. Please, forgive me?”

Rachel lifted her head from her father’s chest and peeked behind her. When she saw Raven’s posture she pressed against Pel’s shoulders, and he lowered her to the ground.

She turned to face Raven, but didn’t say anything.

The man in black raised his head and looked at her. “Grant me your pardon, Mistress Rachel, please. Say you forgive me,” he begged.

“It’s okay,” Rachel said. “I think. Isn’t it, Daddy?”

“I think so,” Pel agreed.

“Thank you,” Raven said, rising to his feet and brushing the dust from the knee of his hose. He stood, waiting.

Nancy still didn’t say anything.

“Shall we go back upstairs?” Pel suggested.

Nancy didn’t say anything, but she turned and marched back up.

A moment later all four of them were back in the family room, and Nancy finally spoke.

“Pel,” she said, “come in the kitchen for a moment.”

Pel came.

When they were out of sight of Raven and Rachel, Nancy whispered loudly, “Do you really believe him?”

Pel shrugged. “I’m not sure,” he said. “I don’t have any better explanation.”

“It could be some kind of trick,” Nancy suggested. “Some kind of illusion.”

“Sure, I guess it could be,” Pel agreed. “But why?”

“I don’t know,” Nancy said, fretting, “but I don’t like it.”

Pel sighed again. “Nancy,” he said, “the guy is not selling me anything. I’m just talking to him. He turned up in the basement, with this whole story about some kind of cosmic war, and I’m just listening to it. That’s all. And frankly, I want to hear some more. If you want to go upstairs or something, go ahead.”

“All right,” she said. “You can talk.” She turned and led the way back into the family room, then stopped suddenly.

“Can I get you a drink?” she asked Raven.

He glanced at Pel, then back at Nancy. “Thank you, aye,” he said, “I judge I could put a drink to use.”

“Um... beer?”

“Yes, that would suit me well, thank you.”

Nancy spun on her heel and marched back toward the refrigerator while Pel resumed his seat on the recliner. Rachel was sitting on the couch, not touching Raven, Pel noticed, but staring at him intently. His performance in the basement had obviously impressed her.

“Now,” Pel said, “you were telling me that you came here to talk to us about maybe joining forces with your people against something you call a Shadow?”

“Yes,” Raven said, with a nod. “That’s exactly right.”

“Shadow is magical, right?”

“Aye,” Raven said. “’Tis magical in nature. We know little enough of its true origins, but we know that much. It has gathered to itself all the magic that its evil allowed it, the greater part of all the world’s magical might, leaving only crumbs for our wizards to pick at. Because the good magicians were not united against it, it has triumphed.”

“But magic doesn’t work here. No one in our world has any magic.”

Nancy appeared from the kitchen, carrying two cans of Miller.

“You have nothing you call magic, perhaps, and nothing like our magicks, it would seem,” Raven agreed, “but you have magicks of your own, I am sure, though perhaps you call them by another name. The Galactic Empire calls its magic ‘science’; do you use that, perhaps?”

“Science isn’t magic,” Rachel said scornfully.

Raven turned to her, startled.

“She’s right,” Pel said. “Science isn’t magic. It does some pretty amazing things, though.”

Nancy put the two cans of beer on the table, then seated herself on the arm of the couch behind Rachel, at the far end from Raven. Pel leaned forward, picked one can up, and popped the top.

Raven blinked, then picked up the other.

“Cold!” he exclaimed, startled, as he quickly put it back down. He stared at it.

Rachel giggled. Pel and Nancy exchanged a glance.

“Maybe he’s British,” Nancy said, sotto voce.

“’Course it’s cold!” Rachel said. “It just came out of the fridge!”

Raven glanced at her, then reached down and cautiously picked up the beer can. He held it up with one hand while the other explored it carefully, stroking beads of condensation from the side, feeling the smooth, thin metal. He studied it intently.

“I’d wondered,” he said, “why you had no bottles or barrels in your cellar. It seems you have other ways of keeping things cool.”

“The refrigerator,” Pel agreed. “I guess that’s some of the scientific magic you were asking about.” He remembered his own beer and took a pull on the can.

Raven watched him, then looked at the top of the can he held. “How... there are letters here, stamped in the metal, or etched, perhaps. I cannot read them.”

“Oh,” Pel said. He put down his own beer and leaned over. “Let me show you,” he said.

He took the can and popped the top, while Raven watched, fascinated. Beer foamed up, and Pel handed it back.

Raven tasted it.

“Good,” he said, though his expression contradicted his words.

“It’s American beer,” Pel remarked. “I like the European stuff better.”

“This is a trifle thin, perhaps,” Raven agreed.

“So I guess we have technology you don’t, like refrigerators,” Pel said, leaning back with his beer in hand. “Is that what you came looking for?”

“I’d nothing specific in mind,” Raven said, “but if you have this science, or... technology, did you call it? If you have this, and use it for weapons, perhaps we could use it against Shadow.”

“I suppose you could,” Pel agreed. “If it works in your world.”

“Why shouldn’t it?” Nancy demanded, addressing her husband rather than their guest.

“Magic doesn’t work here,” Pel pointed out.

Raven sipped beer. “There is that,” he agreed. “So you do have technology weapons? Rayguns, perhaps, like the Galactic Empire’s? Or mayhap you call them blasters? The Imperials use both terms.”

“Not exactly,” Pel said, amused. “The closest we have to rayguns would be lasers, I guess, and they only work as weapons in the movies.”

“In the...?” Raven began.

“Never mind,” Pel said, cutting him off. “In stories, I should have said.”

“What works in reality, then?”

“Bombs,” Pel said. “Guns. Tanks, airplanes, nuclear warheads. Poison gas.”

“I know bombs,” Raven said, a little hesitantly. “And I think I know what you mean by guns, but these others—what sort of tank is a weapon? What is a nuclear war head?”

“A nuclear warhead,” Pel explained, “is a bomb that can destroy an entire city.”

Raven sat silently for a moment, staring at Pel. Rachel got up her nerve to stroke the fine black velvet of his cloak, and Nancy got up to go to the kitchen again.

“How big be these warheads?” Raven asked at last. “Be they real, not just another fancy found in stories?”

“Oh, yes,” Pel said. “They’re real. But they’re very big and heavy, and besides, only a few governments have access to them.”

“You don’t want them,” Nancy said, startling both Pel and Raven. “Besides destroying cities they poison the air and soil, and kill or deform unborn children.”

“In truth?” Raven asked, looking at Pel.

“Truly,” Pel said, nodding. “They use atomic energy—the same thing that keeps the sun burning—and that produces radiation.”

“Our sun burns with magic—I know nothing of yours. But your people fight with these bombs?”

“No,” Pel said. “We keep from fighting because we’re scared of them.”

“Don’t forget Hiroshima,” Nancy interjected.

Raven looked a question.

“We used them once,” Pel admitted.

“Twice,” Nancy said.

“Right, twice. On Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Two cities in Japan. That was when the bombs were first invented, at the end of a long war, when we didn’t know any better. Almost fifty years ago.”

“Ah. So you know they work, then.”

“Oh, yes, they work,” Pel said bitterly.

“And are they strong enough to break through fortress walls?”

Pel stared at Raven for a moment, then said, “I don’t think you understand. A nuclear bomb can totally obliterate an entire city—flatten it, leave nothing but a crater. When they tested them in the desert they fused the sand into glass. The Hiroshima bomb killed a hundred thousand people—and that was a small one, much less powerful than the ones we have now. If you dropped a nuclear bomb on a fortress, any fortress, the fortress would be gone. There wouldn’t be any walls left.”

“Even a magical fortress?”

“There’s no such thing.”

“There is in my world.”

Pel had no immediate answer to that, but Nancy said, “It doesn’t matter, anyway—you can’t get a nuclear warhead, not even a Russian one. They’re kept sealed away, heavily guarded. And you wouldn’t know how to use one if you had it.”

“I see. But guns and bombs and... and tanks?”

“You can get guns easily enough. And make bombs. I don’t think you could get tanks, though.”

Raven nodded. “I see. Thank you.” He put down his can of beer and spoke slowly, as if making an effort to phrase clearly what he wanted to say. “I think perhaps I have imposed enough upon your hospitality,” he told the Browns. “I’m very grateful for your kindness, but perhaps I had best return home now, to discuss what you have told me with my people.”

“You haven’t finished your beer,” Nancy pointed out.

Raven looked at the can. “I fear my thirst is gone,” he said, rising.

“All right,” Pel said. “I’m sorry we couldn’t be more help.”

“I may return, sometime, if you have no objection,” Raven said diffidently.

“We’d be glad to see you,” Pel replied, getting to his own feet and not adding that he would be glad mostly because it would be further evidence that this wasn’t all simply a dream or hallucination.

“I like your cape,” Rachel said.

Raven smiled down at her. “I like it, too, child,” he said kindly.

Pel led the way to the basement, and together, the Browns watched Raven vanish into the wall again.

As Pel had feared, there were cat hairs on the black velvet cloak.

* * * *

“Are you people finished?” Amy asked.

“I don’t know,” the FAA man answered, not looking at her, “I really don’t.”

Amy stared at him without trying to hide her annoyance. “Why don’t you know?” she demanded.

“Because I don’t know what the hell is going on here,” he told her.

She stared at him, and he explained, “That thing out there—it’s not an aircraft. There’s no way it could ever have flown under its own power. There’s no engine, just this weird contraption of crystals and metal plates that doesn’t do anything, attached to what looks like a pressure chamber. Some of the equipment aboard is ordinary electrical stuff, and works fine; other equipment is more of this crystal-and-metal nonsense that doesn’t do anything. Those weapons those people were carrying—they have little batteries, but they don’t do anything. All of them, the big one and the ones that look like pistols, they’re harmless. They don’t even light up or make noise like my kid’s toy rayguns.” He shook his head.

“It’s some kind of hoax, I guess,” he continued, “but why would anyone go to all this trouble? And all the expense? Some of the stuff in there looks like it’s made out of gold and platinum, and if it’s all a gag, wouldn’t copper or tin do just as well? And how did the thing get here, anyway? Nobody tracked anything flying around here that shouldn’t have been, and this thing would show up on radar like a Christmas tree, not to mention whatever must have carried it in and dropped it.” He sighed. “Lady, you’ve got a really major mystery sitting in your back yard, and I’m glad I’m not the one who has to figure it out.”

“You’re not?”

“Nope.” He smiled uneasily. “I passed the buck. This close to Washington it’s all restricted airspace, you know—or just about. So I called the Air Force. They’re sending someone out to take a look, and if he’s as impressed as I am—which he will be—they’ll be doing some serious investigating in the morning. And I think they called the FBI, too. I’m waiting around until their man gets here, and after that it’s up to them. I’m hoping he’ll just tell me to go home and forget any of this ever happened.”

“But...” Amy turned and stared around the corner of her house at the huge purple object. “I can’t go home and forget about it! It’s on my land!”

The FAA man shrugged. “I know,” he said, “and I’m sorry. You might want to start thinking about how much to ask if the national security folks decide to buy your property.”

“What?” Amy whirled back.

“Well, they probably won’t,” he said, trying unsuccessfully to sound reassuring. “They may just haul the thing away.” He paused, then added thoughtfully, “Though I’m not sure how they’d do that.”

Amy stared around wildly, looking for a solution and seeing none.

“Listen,” she said, “where’d they take the people who were aboard it?”

The FAA man shrugged. “County jail down in Rockville, I guess,” he said.

“Thanks,” Amy said.

She turned, leaving the FAA man leaning against the maple tree by the driveway, and went into the house. She wasn’t sure just who to call to find out how she could get to talk to those people, the people who had been inside the thing, but she thought she could figure it out eventually.

And if she couldn’t, her lawyer could.

She chewed her lower lip. It was probably time to call her lawyer in any case.

But then she remembered—it was Sunday. No one would be in the law offices on Sunday.

“Damn,” she said, staring out the kitchen window at the ship. Then she shrugged. “So I’ll have to wait ‘til morning. It isn’t going anywhere.”

Chapter Four

“Any word yet?”

The lieutenant started, and looked around. The question had come from a woman in a major’s uniform, a woman he did not recognize immediately.

“No, ma’am,” he said, saluting.

She returned the salute briskly.

“Thorpe should have reported in hours ago, even if Cahn couldn’t,” the major said.

“Yes, ma’am,” the lieutenant agreed.

“You haven’t done anything about it?” she demanded sharply.

“No, ma’am,” the lieutenant answered. “There’s nothing in my orders that says I should, and after Major Copley took ill no one told me anything different.”

The major’s expression made clear what she thought of that argument. “You’ve dropped all the other contacts with that universe?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am—at least, the telepaths were instructed to do so, as soon as the ship went through the warp. I was told that we wanted to be sure Captain Cahn didn’t have any of our contacts interfering.”

“That’s right.” The major chewed her lower lip for a few seconds, then ordered, “Get another telepath down here—one who’s done those interdimensional contacts. I want to know what the hell Thorpe is doing.”

“Yes, ma’am.” The lieutenant started to reach for the telephone, then stopped.

Why bother? His post was supposed to be monitored at all times; the telepaths had already heard him.

Or if they hadn’t, they were in trouble, which would suit him just fine.

* * * *

“And this device of theirs, which they say will destroy an entire city and leave no stone upon another—believe you that it exists, and is not but some mad dream, or a tale to frighten strangers?”

Raven turned up his palms. “Who can say?” he replied. “They spoke of it as though ‘twere but simple fact, they named names to me that meant nothing but had the ring of truth, yet how am I to know whether they speak lies? I’m but a man, not a wizard who can read men’s souls.”

The other snorted. “Would that I could!” he said. “I can see a lie betimes, when ‘tis spoke, but beyond that I’ve no more insight into a man’s secrets than you, my lord. I’m not one of these the Empire has, who claim to hear the innermost thoughts of others as if they were spoken aloud.”

“Telepaths,” Raven said.

“Aye,” the other agreed. “That’s the word.”

For a moment the two were silent. Then Raven spoke.

“What of the Empire’s expedition to this new world?” he asked. “Have we word of their success, or perchance their failure? Have they made contacts, perhaps obtained these terrible weapons?”

“Word is not yet received,” the wizard replied.

“No?” Raven turned, startled, to look at the door of the chamber, as if he expected it to burst open on cue.

The door did not move.

“Did not Elani open the way for our messenger this hour past?” Raven asked.

The other nodded. “Aye,” he said. “That she did, yet there’s no word.”

Raven stared at him.

“Why?” he demanded.

“Because the messenger tells us that the Empire has had no word of their sky-ship’s fate, and our spies can hardly learn what is known to none,” the wizard explained.

“No word?” Raven’s brows drew together as he frowned. “Why would there be no word? They have their miracle-workers, their telepaths—why have they not heard?”

The wizard turned up his palms. “Who knows?” he asked.

* * * *

“I may have to start believing in UFOs and Bigfoot,” Nancy said, as she slumped on the couch and stared at the spot where Raven had sat.

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Pel said.

“Why not?” she asked, turning to face him. “I mean, if we can have swordsmen and elves walking through our basement wall, why are space aliens bringing Elvis back from the dead any less likely?”

Pel opened his mouth, then closed it again and considered the statement. He looked at Raven’s unfinished beer, still sitting on the coffee table.

“I don’t know,” he said at last. “Maybe they aren’t any less likely, but the evidence for them is pretty damn weak.”

“Yeah, well, what evidence do we have?” Nancy retorted. “We didn’t take any pictures or anything; all we’ve got is some memories and a can of beer. Is that any better than some of the saucer nuts?”

“No,” Pel admitted.

“So maybe it didn’t really happen at all,” Nancy said; Pel noticed a hopeful tone to her voice. “Maybe we imagined it, got ourselves hypnotized somehow into believing it.”

Pel took a deep breath, then let it out slowly.

That explanation was actually just about as believable as any other, he had to admit. He didn’t like the idea that his mind could play such tricks on him, and he couldn’t explain it, but really, a man from another universe wasn’t a much better explanation.

He remembered Raven so clearly, though—the embroidery on his tunic, the greasy smudge on one temple, the cat hairs on his cloak, his odd accent. It didn’t seem like something he and Nancy would have imagined, not with the weirdly confusing story about evil wizards and galactic empires.

That reminded him of something, and he sat up in the recliner.

“Hey,” he said. “There was something he told me before you got home—he said the Galactic Empire sent a spaceship to Earth. Through a whatchamacallit, a gate or a space-warp or whatever, somewhere near here.”

Nancy looked puzzled.

“So?” she said.

“So,” Pel said, “if it was all real, then don’t you think a spaceship might make the evening news?”

Nancy blinked.

“I don’t know,” she said slowly. “Maybe.”

Pel was annoyed at her lack of enthusiasm, but tried not to show it. “Well, if it’s on the news, that would settle it, right? It would all be real, if it’s on the news.”

“And if it’s not?” Nancy asked.

Pel shrugged. “Well, then we still don’t know for sure,” he said. “But we wouldn’t be any worse off than we are.”

“That’s true,” she admitted.

“And if it is on the news,” Pel said with sudden enthusiasm, “this would really be big-time stuff! The first contact with another universe, my God!”

Nancy refused to share his excitement as he lifted the remote control and turned on CNN.

* * * *

Amy spoke quietly into the phone as she peered out her kitchen window. A man with what looked like a metal detector was walking across the back yard, swinging it slowly from side to side a few inches above the dewy grass. A team of men was taking photographs from every possible angle, with one of them holding a yellow measuring stick in various positions to provide a scale; about half of them wore Air Force uniforms, while the rest were in mufti.

They had started arriving right around dawn, and had apparently reached equilibrium now, with a few leaving whenever more arrived. And Amy’s call had finally gotten an answer.

“This is Amy Jewell,” she said. “I need to speak to Bob Hough right away.”

“I’m sorry,” replied the receptionist at Dutton, Powell, and Hough, “but Mr. Hough is on vacation in Cancun. I have the number of his hotel if this is an emergency, but Ms. Nguyen is handling everything for him while he’s away.”

Amy paused to think who Ms. Nguyen was. There was Susan, the Vietnamese woman who had helped out with the divorce—that must be her.

Susan had probably done most of the work anyway. The women with no titles or authority generally did everything except get the credit. “All right, then I’ll talk to Ms... to her,” Amy said.

“She’s only just gotten in, but I’ll see. Just a moment,” There was a click, and insipid music began playing softly. Amy watched as the man with the metal detector thing wandered out of sight around the corner, and the photography crew paused to reload.

“Susan Nguyen,” said a voice on the phone.

“Susan,” Amy said, relieved; the voice was familiar. This was definitely the Susan she remembered. “This is Amy Jewell; I think you helped Bob Hough handle my divorce last year?”

“Oh, yes, Ms. Jewell; how are you?”

“I’m fine, but listen, something really weird happened yesterday. This... this thing landed in my back yard yesterday. It’s like a... well, it’s like a spaceship out of a comic book or something.”

“A spaceship?” Susan replied dubiously.

“Not a real one,” Amy said hastily, “I think it’s some kind of gag—maybe a publicity stunt of some kind.”

“Oh,” Susan said. “It still seems strange. How big is... no, never mind that. What is it you want us to do?”

“I want it out of my yard, that’s what I want!” Amy’s temper, carefully held in check until now, finally gave out. “I don’t want anything to do with it! I want it out of here, and I want all these people who are out here looking at it off my land and away from here! And I want damages—it smashed my hedge and scared the hell out of me!”

“Have you called the police?”

Amy said, almost screaming, “They’re the ones who started it!” Then she stopped herself, took a deep breath, and forced herself to calm down.

She could sense Susan waiting calmly on the other end of the line.

“I called 9-1-1,” Amy said at last, “when the thing first fell here, because I thought it was a crashing airplane or something. So the police and the firemen came out and looked at it, and they took away the people who had been in it, and then the FAA came out and looked at it, and they said it wasn’t a private plane, it was some kind of military thing. So now...”

“Wait a minute, Ms. Jewell,” Susan said, interrupting. “There were people in it?”

“Yes! About a dozen of them, in silly purple uniforms. One woman and a bunch of men. All white, most of them blond, like a bunch of Nazis, with things like rayguns that didn’t work. The police took them all away and charged them with trespassing. And I want you to find them and find out who’s responsible and make them get this thing out of here!”

“I see,” Susan said. “Was it the county police that took them?”

“I think so,” Amy said. “Someone said something about taking them to Rockville, I think.”

“Well, that would be the county, then,” Susan agreed. “So you want to know who they are, and get the... the thing off your property. Anything else?”

“I want these people out of here. The FAA man called the Air Force, and one of them was here all night, sitting in his car, and a lot more got here this morning before I even woke up, and now there are a bunch of people out there taking pictures and measuring everything, and I want them off my land.”

“Air Force?” There was a long pause before Susan said, “I’m not sure how much I can do about them, Ms. Jewell, but I’ll try.”

“I don’t care who they are, I want them off my land!” Amy shouted. “Isn’t there something in the Constitution about soldiers in people’s houses?”

“Third Amendment,” Susan replied automatically. “I doubt it applies in this case, but I’ll see what I can do. I need to make a few calls, and then I’ll probably want to come out there and see just what the situation is. I have your address and phone number in the files; are they still current?”

“I haven’t moved,” Amy said.

“Good. Just hold on, Ms. Jewell, and I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thank you,” Amy said.

“Goodbye.”

“’Bye.” She hung up the phone and looked out the window at the photo team. Now they were pacing off the dimensions of her patio.

What business of theirs was that? She clamped her lips tight and turned away.

Maybe, she thought, if she didn’t watch, it wouldn’t be so annoying.

* * * *

“What I can’t figure out,” the detective lieutenant said, “is that not one of them wanted to use the phone. You’re sure of that?”

The booking sergeant nodded. “Absolutely,” he said. “We read them their rights individually, just to be on the safe side, and we explained it all, and we told each of them he was entitled to one phone call, and all we got was blank looks. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear that none of them had ever heard any of it before.”

“What, they never saw cop shows on TV?”

“That’s what it seemed like. I mean, when I read the line about if you can’t afford an attorney one will be appointed for you, I got these looks you wouldn’t believe—they were all of them astonished, like they’d never heard of such a thing. One of them, I mean, man, his jaw dropped open. And one said, ‘Really? It’s not a trick?’ and Jesus, he sounded sincere.”

The detective shook his head in wonder.

The sergeant slapped a hand on the desk. “It’s weird,” he said. “I mean, I know there are nuts out there, I’ve seen plenty of them. I’ve seen guys dragged in here trying to pick invisible bugs off their skin, and guys hopped up on PCP who needed a dozen men to hold them, and guys that looked like they’d been dead for a week and I was afraid they’d drop dead on the floor for real before we could get a doctor in, and I’ve had guys swear at me and curse me up one side and down the other, I’ve had rich guys screaming at me and street punks being Momma’s little angel, but I have never seen anything like this bunch!”

“Gave you a lot of trouble?”

“Hell, no—that’s what’s so strange! They all of them looked around like this place was something out of a fairy tale, and did just exactly what they were told, and they gave us names and ranks and serial numbers, like they were prisoners of war instead of just busted for trespassing and littering, but they wouldn’t tell us anything else. They didn’t ask for lawyers, didn’t make phone calls, nothing. It’s like they really believe they’re soldiers from another planet!”

“Maybe they do,” the detective suggested.

The sergeant spread his hands wide. “Ten of them? Ten nuts with the same delusion?”

The detective shrugged. “So they were all ten like that?”

“Well, eight of ‘em, anyway. The woman was a little different, I guess. She seemed real upset, where the others were calm as anything. And the captain, as he’s supposed to be—he wanted to talk to someone official, and no, I wouldn’t do, he wanted somebody from the military or the State Department. I told him I couldn’t do that, especially on a weekend.”

“Did he say why?”

“Well, yeah. He’s an envoy, he says, from the Galactic Empire, and he wants to talk to someone about arranging a mutual defense treaty with Earth, or at least the United States. He can’t make a treaty with local cops.”

The detective considered that silently for a moment, then asked, “Think it’s a movie stunt?”

“At first I did,” the sergeant said, “but now... I dunno. Wouldn’t they have called in the reporters by now? Wouldn’t they have made some phone calls? And why would they pick this lady’s back yard way the hell out in Goshen? Her lawyer just called, y’know—the lady’s really pissed about it.”

The detective nodded again. “So they all claim to come from the Galactic Empire?”

“As much as they claim anything, yeah.”

“They’re consistent?”

“Oh, yeah, absolutely. Not one of them has slipped out of character for as much as an instant, I swear.”

The detective sighed. “All right,” he said. “Where should I start?”

“Wherever you like,” the sergeant said, pushing a clipboard over.

The detective picked it up and scanned the list of names. “Prosser-pine Thorpe?” he said. “Is that the woman?”

“Proserpin-AH,” the sergeant corrected him. “Yeah, that’s her.”

“Gave her rank as ‘registered master telepath’?”

“That’s what she said, yeah.”

“She try to read your mind?”

The sergeant just shrugged.

“Not so you could tell, huh?”

“So how am I supposed to know? But she sure didn’t talk about it, if she read anybody’s mind.”

“You said she was nervous?”

“Well, upset about something, anyway. Had a sort of trapped look—like a junkie who suddenly realizes she doesn’t know where to get her next fix. You know what I mean.”

“Sure,” the detective said. “She a looker?”

The sergeant shrugged. “She’s okay,” he said. “Nothing I’d leave home for, but okay.”

“What the hell,” the detective said, dropping the clipboard back on the desk. “I’ll start with her.”

* * * *

Proserpine Thorpe stared at the walls of her cell, baffled and frustrated.

Nothing. She had been straining her every nerve, focusing all her being on her telepathic sense, and there was simply nothing there.

This universe had some characteristics that nobody had mentioned or thought about in any of the briefings—presumably because nobody knew about them. The ship’s main drive didn’t work here. The crew’s blasters didn’t seem to work, either, though she wasn’t sure they’d really been tested.

And, it seemed, telepathy didn’t work here.

They should have expected this, or at least considered the possibility. After all, they had known that at least some of Shadow’s magic didn’t work in Imperial space. That demonstrated that there were differences. Why hadn’t they considered what other differences there might be?

She felt as if her head were packed with wool, shutting out the constant background hum of other people’s thoughts, and it was not a comfortable feeling at all. She had never experienced anything like it before.

What was even worse, though, was that no one had yet contacted her.

The plan had been that once they were through the warp she would send a quick verification that they had arrived safely, and that she then would devote her attention to the usual duties of a ship’s telepath—accompanying Captain Cahn on his diplomatic mission, reading the minds of those around them, advising him when they were lying, and so on and so forth. All of that had obviously become impossible when the ship had crashed twenty miles from their objective and they had all been taken prisoner by the local constabulary, and when most of their equipment wouldn’t work.

And she hadn’t sent any verification because her telepathy didn’t work, either.

Which meant that as far as she could tell, nobody back at Base One had any idea what had happened to them.

So why hadn’t they gotten another telepath and contacted her? Surely, she could still receive as well as the natives here could, and her team had managed to make limited contact with half a dozen of the native psychics. Didn’t they realize something had gone wrong? She had been here, isolated, all night, and there had been no contact.

Surely they knew something had gone wrong. Surely they had had plenty of time to try to get through.

Then, at last, something stirred in her mind, as if a mouse were moving inside that mass of wool. She tried to focus on it, and it became clearer, she could sense a sort of shape to the message.

And then it was through, it was Carrie back at Base One, calling her, calling desperately.

“Here!” she thought. “I’m here, Carrie!”

“Prossie!” Relief flooded through the contact, flowing both ways.

She didn’t reply with words, but with reassuring thoughts roughly equivalent to, “It’s okay, Carrie, I’m fine.”

Carrie’s thoughts caressed hers for a moment, and then a question came through, so clear that for a moment Prossie thought she had heard it spoken aloud.

“Prossie,” it said, “what happened?”

Chapter Five

“No telepathy? No anti-gravity?” The Under-Secretary frowned at the papers on his desk.

“No, sir,” the telepath standing stiffly before him reported. “Neither one. It appears that the laws of physics are totally different there—it’s not just that the telepathic mutation never happened, or AG wasn’t discovered. Not only do they have no telepaths or AG of their own, but ours don’t work there; that’s why the ship crashed, and why Prossie... why Telepath Thorpe didn’t report in. It’s a miracle that there are human beings so much like us in a place so alien, let alone that they speak the same language.”

“But they have some sort of technology, don’t they?” the official demanded. “I mean, they aren’t just using sticks and stones?”

“Thorpe says that they have a different technology from ours, sir,” the telepath explained, “but it’s one that’s very nearly as advanced as ours in some ways, sir, maybe even higher. She reports seeing a recording machine of some kind that’s unlike anything we’ve ever imagined, and they appear to have a sophisticated mechanical communications system.”

“But if our machines won’t work there,” the Under-Secretary asked, tapping the desk, “will their machines work here? Will their weapons work here? Or in the Shadow realm?”

“I don’t know, sir,” the telepath said. “Nobody knows.”

“The reports say these people do have advanced weapons,” he said. “Did Thorpe say anything about them?”

“Well, sir,” the telepath said cautiously, “you have to remember, she was taken into custody before she’d ever had a chance to leave the landing site, and she can’t read minds there, she has to rely on her eyes and ears, like anybody else. She spent the night in their jail, and there wasn’t much to see there. And I didn’t take time to go over every detail; I came directly to you to report.”

The Under-Secretary’s manner made his impatience clear as he said, “Yes?”

“So far as I know, she hasn’t seen any weapons except the handguns the law enforcers carry,” the telepath said. “And she hasn’t heard anything about any others.”

“Handguns?”

“Yes, sir. Projectile weapons, apparently, like the pistols of a century ago. She saw bullets on the law officers’ belts.”

“Bullets,” the Under-Secretary said, frowning.

“Yes, sir,” the telepath said.

“We’re looking for help against the alien super-science of another universe,” the Under-Secretary demanded, “science so advanced that they call it magic, and the best we can find is people who still shoot bullets at each other?”

The telepath shifted uneasily, struggling to stay at attention. “Well, sir, bullets can be very effective, really, and these were civilian law officers, after all, not military personnel. We’ve all read things in other minds there that hint at much better...”

“Which, even if it’s true, doesn’t mean any of these better weapons would work in our space, or in Shadow’s space.”

“True, sir,” the telepath admitted.

The Under-Secretary shoved papers across the desk, letting the telepath continue standing at attention. After a moment he looked up.

“The natives think our people are crazy?” he asked. “I mean, certifiably insane?”

The telepath nodded. “Yes, sir,” she said. “Either that, or perpetrating a hoax of some kind.”

“Will they gas ‘em?”

The telepath hesitated. “I don’t think so, sir,” she said. “When they were taken into custody, the arresting officers read each of the crewmen a statement of rights and privileges. It’s Prossie’s... it’s Telepath Thorpe’s impression that the culture is relatively non-violent and benevolent. Her cell is equipped with its own plumbing and electric light, and no one has struck her; she’s still wearing her own uniform, in fact, though they did take her helmet and search her for weapons. She’s seen no sign of a gallows or whipping post, nor any other means of torture or execution.”

The Under-Secretary stared at her. “Bunch of wimps,” he said. “Just like she said. And these are the people we thought might have super-weapons for us?”

The telepath didn’t respond. She resisted the temptation to ask just who had said what about wimps, and the even stronger temptation to snatch the answer from the Under-Secretary’s mind.

“All right,” he said. “Go away. Dismissed.” He turned back to his papers.

“Sir?” the telepath said.

The Under-Secretary looked up. “What is it?” he demanded.

Hesitantly, the telepath asked, “Will we be sending a rescue mission? What should I tell Prossie?”

“I’ll be taking it under advisement, Telepath, but you can tell her, provisionally, that we plan no rescue mission,” the Under-Secretary said. “It’d be a waste of time and money and manpower. How would we rescue anyone, anyway, when our warp comes out in mid-air and our anti-gravity doesn’t work there? And blasters don’t work; how would we get them out if our weapons won’t fire? No, they’re on their own. We can keep in touch, and re-open the warp if they can find a way to get to it, but beyond that I’m writing the whole thing off as a failure. We’ll take care of Shadow ourselves.”

“But, sir...” The telepath didn’t finish her protest; even before the Under-Secretary spoke she had inadvertantly, and against all her careful training and discipline, read his response.

“No buts. Ruthless was expendable, or we wouldn’t have sent her, and she’s lost. No point in wasting any more men trying to get her back. Copley probably shouldn’t have sent her in the first place, not without more advance work. It sounds to me as if Cahn and his crew aren’t badly off—hell, we’ve got plenty of men on active duty who live in worse than those cells, from what you’ve said. They may even be let go, and then they’ll be free to look around and maybe find a way back. You’ll be checking in with Thorpe every so often—say, every forty-eight hours, if your other duties allow. They’ll be all right. So we’ll get on to other things. Understood?”

“Yes, sir.” The telepath offered no further argument. For one thing, she had seen at least part of the real reason underneath Under-Secretary Bascombe’s thoughts.

There were the usual petty political concerns that flavored almost everyone’s motivations, the personal jealousies and competitions that every telepath learned to ignore—in this case, the project was associated with Major Copley, who had been falling out of favor even before his appendicitis sent him to the hospital and knocked him out of the inner circle, so continuing it was a bad career move. Underneath that, though, Carrie found a good and logical reason.

If they sent in a rescue mission and shot up a jail in this other universe, they would be making an enemy of the people there, of the dominant nation, the United States of America, as it was called. If the super-weapons really did exist, they would then be more likely to be turned against the Empire than against Shadow.

She couldn’t argue with that.

“Dismissed,” the Under-Secretary said.

* * * *

“Our messenger is bespoke,” Valadrakul reported.

Raven sat up and thumped the chalice onto the table by his chair. “And?” he demanded.

“The sky-ship is fallen, and its crew prisoners in the land of Earth.”

“Ah, evil tidings, ‘twould seem,” Raven muttered. “Fallen, you say?”

“Aye,” the wizard said. “The magicks that hold it aloft failed, when the new realm was reached.”

Raven considered that for a moment, then asked, “Wherefore was this word so tardy—was it said?”

The wizard nodded. “Aye,” he said. “’Twould seem that the spells of telepaths have no virtue in Earth, as the flying spells have none, and as our own magicks do naught in the Empire.”

Raven nodded. “I see,” he said. He rubbed his temple, trying to think. “Prisoners, say you? Of whom, and wherefore?”

“Of—an’ it be I have this right—of the constabulary of the County of Montgomery, in Mary’s Land.”

“And wherefore?”

“For trespass upon a lady’s park, and the unlawful casting of debris upon the land, in that thereupon the ship was fallen.”

Raven stared for a moment, then started to speak, then thought better of it.

Valadrakul waited.

“At first,” said Raven, at last, “I thought to shout at you, good wizard, and denounce this tale as madness—knights held for letting fall their transport—but upon consideration, I fear you speak only simple truth, for the land of Earth is strange indeed. I saw as much with mine own eyes.”

“Aye, marry,” Valadrakul replied.

“What does the Empire intend, then? Have we word? Does mount an expedition to free the men, or offer ransom?”

“Nay,” said the wizard. “That lordling John Bascombe, him that they call Under-Secretary for Interdimensional Affairs, has but moments ago said that such an effort would serve no good purpose, that the people of Earth do not harm prisoners. Among themselves, the mind-readers say he fears lest Earth be affronted thereby and fight on the side of Shadow ‘gainst the Empire.”

“Think you this is truth?” Raven asked.

Valadrakul shrugged. “Who can say?”

“Think you, perhaps, that this Under-Secretary Bascombe might himself be a creature of Shadow?”

Valadrakul considered that carefully before replying, “In truth, I know not, but methinks he be otherwise. His reasoning is not valorous, yet ‘tis sound enough. Perchance he has such creatures among his counsellors, but I think he be not one himself.”

Raven nodded.

“What think you would befall,” he said, “should we free these men from durance, and bring them hither?”

Valadrakul spread his hands. “Who can say?” he said.

“Perhaps,” Raven said slowly, “Messire Pel Brown can say.”

* * * *

There was nothing on the six o’clock news Sunday evening about a spaceship, nor on the ten o’clock on Channel 5, nor the eleven o’clock; in desperation, Pel even tried CNN and CNN Headline.

“They wouldn’t have anything,” Nancy told him. “Not if the networks don’t.”

Pel protested, “Sometimes they have stuff the networks don’t. You remember the boys in Baghdad, don’t you?”

“Of course I do,” Nancy said. “And I know they break a lot of stories. But that’s different, it’s all international stuff. They wouldn’t have something like this if the networks and locals don’t.”

“I know,” Pel admitted. He put out the cat, and they went to bed.

It gnawed at them both through the night; at breakfast they were both surly, even after coffee.

Nancy spent most of the morning at job interviews, while Rachel was at her kindergarten. Pel made his Monday morning calls, but had no all-day projects or out-of-town appointments, so he was home again for lunch five minutes after Rachel’s bus dropped her off.

Ordinarily, a family lunch together was a cheerful event, but the tension still lingered, poisoning the atmosphere; Rachel wolfed her sandwich and left the table, while Pel and Nancy ate in sullen silence.

“It was a joke,” Nancy said, without preamble, as she carried her plate to the sink.

Pel didn’t have to ask what she was referring to. He shook his head. “How could it be a joke?” he asked.

“What else could it be?”

“I don’t know, but it wasn’t any joke.”

“Of course it was.”

“No, it wasn’t, damn it.”

Nancy turned to face him, hands on hips. “It had to be, and don’t you swear at me!”

“It was not a fucking joke!” Pel shouted.

“Well, then, what the hell was it?” she shouted back.

“Daddy?” Rachel said from the doorway.

“I don’t know what it was, but no goddamn joker would be able to walk through our basement wall like that!”

“It was a trick, Pel! A hologram or something!”

“Daddy?”

“You think a hologram sat on our couch drinking beer? You think a hologram would wear a velvet cape that Rachel could feel?”

Nancy had no immediate rejoinder, and as she fumed, trying to think of one, Rachel was able to get Pel’s attention by yanking at his sleeve.

“Daddy!” she yelled. “The man’s back!”

For a moment, Pel didn’t understand. Nancy was quicker; her mouth opened, then closed, and she demanded, “Where?”

“In the basement, of course.” Rachel looked as disdainful as only a little girl can. “I heard him knocking and calling for Daddy.”

That got through to Pel; he stood up so fast his chair started to topple over backward. He snatched at it and caught it before it fell, jostling the kitchen table. His coffee sloshed onto the placemat; he ignored it as he headed for the basement stairs.

* * * *

“They may be back with a court order,” Susan said. “They may even try to condemn your property and take it by eminent domain.

Amy sipped tea before replying. “Then what?” she said.

“Then I try for a restraining order, claiming their order violates your property rights and your right to due process.”

Amy glanced out the window at the thing in her back yard; it was still damp from the morning dew and gleamed gold in the sun. “Then what?” she asked.

Susan shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said. “This isn’t really my field. I’ve never done a national security case before.”

Amy shuddered slightly and put down her teacup. “Do you think it’s really a national security thing?” she said.

Susan considered carefully before answering, “I don’t know.” She took a deep breath and continued, “That’s what the Air Force people claimed, but if that thing out there is a fake, the way they say it is, I don’t see how they can make a national security claim stick.” She picked up her own cup, which contained instant coffee rather than tea. “Of course, if it’s a fake, there is the question of how it got here,” she added just before she sipped.

“It fell out of the sky,” Amy said.

Susan nodded and lowered her cup. “I know it did,” she said. “So does the Air Force; they’ve measured the thing’s mass and the effects of impact and can probably tell you exactly how far it fell and how fast it was going when it was hit. What they can’t tell you, though, is how it got up in the air in the first place, because they don’t know—and that’s what has them so worried.”

“So you think they’ll be back?”

“Ms. Jewell... Amy, I really, honestly don’t know.”

Amy accepted that and delicately sipped more tea. Susan gulped coffee.

“At least you kept them from setting up those lights,” Amy said a moment later.

Susan shrugged deprecatingly. “For now,” she said.

“Thanks,” Amy said. “I know I would never have gotten any sleep tonight with those things out there.” She hesitated, then asked, “Did you talk to any of the people who were inside it?”

“No,” Susan said. “I probably can, if you think it would help, but I haven’t yet.”

“Are they in jail?”

Susan looked at her watch. “So far, they probably still are,” she said, “but the police won’t be able to hold them for very long unless you press charges.”

“Me?”

Susan nodded. “They were charged with trespassing, vandalism, and malicious mischief—they dumped that thing on your land, smashed your hedge, ruined your lawn—you could probably claim reckless endangerment, too, since you were out there at the time. But if you don’t press charges, the cops will have to let them go. You don’t hold people without a charge, not in the U.S.”

“And if I press charges?”

Susan sighed. “None of them could give an address or show any means of support. None of them had any money or identification except for their ‘Galactic Empire’ stuff. None of them have asked for a lawyer, or used their phone privileges. They’re all staying strictly in character. You can probably get them held for a couple of weeks, at the outside, since they can’t make bond and the feds don’t want them released, but more than that...” She shrugged.

Amy put down her cup and picked up the teabag by the string, toying idly with it.

“Susan,” she said, watching the teabag, “what do you think is really going on here?”

Susan chewed her lower lip, then admitted, “I don’t have any idea.”

Amy looked up. “Do you think they could really be from some Galactic Empire?”

Susan hesitated, then said, “I don’t believe in little green men.”

“Neither do I—but how else do you explain those people, and that thing in my yard?”

Susan frowned. “If they’re really from outer space, then why won’t their ship fly?”

“But maybe it did fly—how else could it get there?”

“I don’t know,” Susan said. “I don’t understand any of it.” She rubbed her temple. “Maybe if I’d gotten more sleep over the weekend, but I didn’t expect anything like this first thing on a Monday morning.”

“Thank you for coming so early,” Amy said gravely. “I appreciate it.”

Susan waved away Amy’s gratitude. “No problem,” she said. “Shall we get down to Rockville and fill out the papers?”

* * * *

Prossie lay curled up on the cot, staring at nothing.

She was betrayed.

She was trapped here, a prisoner, completely cut off from the minds of others, and most particularly from the minds of her fellow telepaths, the minds of her family and her community.

She was in jail, for reasons she did not understand—listening to words without being able to read the minds behind them was hard for her, and although she had heard the charges against her, she did not see why they had been leveled at her and the rest of the crew. Their ship had crashed; how could that be a crime?

And she knew that there would be no rescue. The brief moment of hope when Carrie had first reached her had died again when the news came through—her people had written her off. They had declared her expendable and expended. Carrie had told her—the mission had been abandoned as a failure, I.S.S. Ruthless given up as lost, and she and Captain Cahn and the other eight were considered prisoners of war. No efforts would be made to rescue them.

And since there were no other contacts between the Empire and this Montgomery County, there could be no negotiated freedom, no exchange.

She would rot here, in this bland little cell.

This was almost worse than a dungeon, really. If she were confined behind cold stone walls, in darkness and filth and hunger, she would be able to concentrate herself on resistance, on courage; she would have the romance of all those childhood stories to fall back on, all the tales of heroes who endured monumental suffering along the way to magnificent triumphs. The Earl of the White Mountain, the Man in the Sealed Helm, the people of Camp Eight—all the old stories of famous prisoners came back to her.

What romance was there in concrete block walls, a steel cot, and porcelain fixtures? What suffering did electric light and three meals a day provide?

She was no swashbuckling hero; she wasn’t even a real soldier. She was just a telepath, sent along on this expedition because telepathy was the only good way to communicate over long distances.

Maybe, she thought, she should ask for an attorney—the officer had said that if she could not afford one, one would be provided for her.

But no; what good would that do? Why would a native attorney want to help her? How could an attorney get her out if the authorities wanted to hold her? If she got out, where would she go? What would she do?

She wished that Carrie hadn’t told her Bascombe’s decision. Captain Cahn and the others presumably didn’t know about it, and they were probably stewing in their uncertainty, but that was better than despair.

She curled up more tightly, her head full of telepathic wool, and stared at nothing.

Chapter Six

“She’s not taking it well.” The telepath sat slumped in her chair, staring unhappily at the floor.

“Carrie, don’t let it get to you,” her supervisor said. “Prossie’ll be okay, I’m sure of it.”

Carrie looked up.

“I’m not,” she said. “I read her mind, and I’m not sure at all.”

* * * *

There were four of them this time. Nancy hung back as they emerged from the basement, and despite their deferential manner, Pel found their numbers and armament somewhat intimidating himself.

Raven came first, and stood to one side, introducing the others as they stepped out into the hall and bowed.

“Stoddard, man-at-arms and a loyal friend to me since I was a lad,” Raven said, describing a man who stood six feet tall and wore a dirty and somewhat faded red tabard over a stiff leather garment Pel had no name for. Stoddard bowed—more than a mere bob, but not a particularly deep bow. His hair was black and shaggy, his face brown and rugged; besides the tabard and leather, he wore baggy brown hose and brown leather boots. A scabbard hung from his belt, and from the look of it Pel judged his sword to be somewhat heavier than Raven’s.

“Squire Donald a’ Benton,” Raven named the next. His bow was more perfunctory than Stoddard’s, his green tunic considerably cleaner, his boots newer. He seemed about half Stoddard’s size, and in fact was no taller than Nancy’s five foot four, Pel realized. Like Raven and Stoddard, he bore a sword.

His green eyes darted about curiously.

“The mage Valadrakul of Warricken,” Raven said, gesturing at the last member of his party. “Now sworn to Stormcrack Keep.”

The wizard did not bow at all, but made an odd gesture with one hand instead. Most of his dull brown hair trailed loose, halfway down his back, while the rest hung in two narrow braids in front of either ear; he wore a long black vest, ornately embroidered in red and gold, that reached to mid-calf and mostly concealed a plain black tunic and breeches. The sheath on his belt was too small for a true sword, but held a good-sized knife.

“Mage?” Pel asked.

“A wizard,” Raven said. “A magician. One who works spells and brings forth wonders.”

Pel nodded, and tried not to stare. “This way,” he said, motioning toward the family room, herding the visitors ahead of him.

Valadrakul did not fit Pel’s image of a wizard. He was neither tall and imposing, nor small and wizened; his face was not long and hawk-nosed. He wore no robes, nor pointed hat, nor long white beard.

Instead, he was of medium height—five-nine, perhaps, or a bit over—and a little fat, with a pale, round face and a full brown beard, clipped short. His hairstyle reminded Pel of Val Kilmer playing the warrior in “Willow,” though it wasn’t exactly the same, and his outfit didn’t seem like anything in particular. There were no moons and stars, no pentagrams; the embroidery was a graceful floral pattern.

Pel stepped down into the family room to find three of the four strangers standing in the center, staring in all directions. Raven stood with the others, but smiled politely at his host and did not stare; after all, he had been here before.

“Have a seat,” Pel suggested.

Raven nodded and settled on the couch; the wizard, whose name Pel had not caught, took the other end. Squire Donald started toward the recliner, but threw first Pel and then Raven a questioning glance before sinking gingerly into it.

Stoddard ignored the invitation completely; he stepped back toward one wall, but continued to stand, arms crossed over his chest and feet braced apart.

Pel looked at his stolid pose and decided not to argue. Sitting down in that leather barrel the man was wearing might be difficult, and he looked as if he were accustomed to standing.

The man-at-arms looked incredibly out of place in that room, in his rough and archaic clothing. The other three weren’t so bad, but Stoddard simply didn’t fit in such a setting.

With a final glance at him, Pel decided against taking a seat himself; there were no good ones left. Sitting on an endtable seemed undignified.

“So,” Pel said, addressing Raven, “what brings you back?”

“Why, the same portal as erstwhile, of course,” Raven answered smoothly.

“No,” Pel said, “I mean, why have you come back?”

Raven smiled an acknowledgment of his slip. “As before,” he began, “we seek your aid. Have you heard aught of the sky-ship the Imperials sent hither?”

“No,” Pel replied. “And we should have, if it’s really there.”

“Oh, ‘tis real, beyond question,” Raven said calmly. Then he stopped abruptly and glanced at Valadrakul for confirmation.

“’Tis real,” the wizard said. His voice, which Pel and Nancy had not heard before, was a pleasant tenor. “We’ve not been deceived, I assure you.”

“It wasn’t on the news,” Pel said doubtfully.

“Nonetheless, the ship is real, and it reached your world,” Valadrakul said. “However, its magic did not work here; it plummeted to the earth and has not moved since. Its crew has been taken prisoner by the Earl’s men. This much we have learned.”

“The Earl’s men?” Pel asked, puzzled.

“The Earl of Montgomery,” Raven explained. “’Twas the county constabulary apprehended the Imperials. Are we not in the County Montgomery here?”

“We’re in Montgomery County, yes,” Pel said, still puzzled, “but there’s no earl. You mean it crashed, and the county police picked them up?”

“A county with no Earl? A Countess, then?”

“No, Montgomery County’s democratic,” Pel explained. “Or Republican, depending. We have a county executive, not an earl.”

Raven and Valadrakul exchanged glances. Pel looked at the others; Stoddard was staring straight ahead, paying no attention to anything so far as Pel could determine, while Squire Donald was studying the shelves beside him, fascinated, and might or might not be listening.

For the first time Pel noticed that Nancy wasn’t in the room; he turned, and saw Rachel watching from the door to the kitchen. Listening, he could hear Nancy moving about in the kitchen.

“Why call it a county, an there’s no count?” Raven asked, annoyed. “Neither earl nor countess, then where’s the county? Why not call it a shire?”

Pel shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “We do have a sheriff, I think, so yeah, shire would make more sense, but we call ‘em counties anyway.”

Raven waved it away. “It matters not a whit, then, who rules here, save that you understand your county police have taken prisoner the ten Imperials who came hither. And yes, their ship fell, and could not fly in your skies.”

Nancy leaned through the kitchen doorway and called, “Would anyone like a beer? Or anything? I can put the kettle on if you’d like tea or coffee.”

Stoddard turned a questioning look at Raven; Squire Donald glanced up from the bookshelves. Raven looked around quickly at all his companions, then up at Nancy.

“Beer would be most welcome, good lady, and our thanks.”

Nancy nodded and disappeared.

“All right,” Pel said, “so the cops picked up these Imperial stormtroopers. Why wasn’t it on the news? It’s not every day a bunch of people from outer space crash-land around here.”

“I know not,” Raven said, turning up an empty palm. “Perchance whoever retails your news has not yet learned of it.”

Pel considered that. If a spaceship really had landed, the government might try to hush it up—but he would be surprised if they actually managed it. He had never bought the Hangar 19—or 18, or whatever the number was—stories for a minute.

“Where’d it land?” he asked.

Raven looked at Valadrakul, who turned up his hands and said, “How are we to know the name of the place? It lies perhaps half a day’s journey to the north, traveling on foot.”

“But it’s in Montgomery County?”

“That, or your shiremen crossed the border.”

If the ship had come down somewhere out toward the Howard County line, that might explain how it had stayed off the TV news, so far; there was still a good bit of fairly empty countryside up that way, as Pel knew from driving the back roads to Baltimore on occasion.

“What are they charged with? I mean, why were they arrested?” he asked.

“The charges we were told are trespassing and vandalism,” Valadrakul replied. “I fear we have no such word as ‘vandalism’ in our tongue, so we know not what it means.”

“It means wrecking things just for fun,” Pel explained.

The story didn’t sound quite right to him; why would the county cops arrest a bunch of aliens on charges like that? Why weren’t the feds all over the place?

Then an explanation occurred to him, one which made the whole thing make sense, including the fact that the news media had not reported anything.

“They don’t think it’s real, do they?” he asked.

“Your pardon, sir, but what do you say?” Raven replied.

“Nobody thinks the spaceship is real,” Pel said. “Whoever found it thinks it’s a hoax, right?”

“Indeed,” Valadrakul answered, “you may have the truth of it; our reports cannot tell us everything, but ‘tis hinted your constables think the crewmen mad. Certes, they do not accept them as envoys.”

Raven turned to the wizard. “You’d said naught of that to me,” he said, clearly irritated. “I had thought the captors mad, not the prisoners!”

“My apologies,” Valadrakul said, bowing his head. “There was much to tell, and in my haste...” He turned up a palm.

“I’d like to see these guys,” Pel said.

“Guys?” Donald said, looking up.

“A gnomish word,” Valadrakul told him. “From a trickster of days agone, one Guiler by name, called Guy o’ the Mews, who was famed for harassing the little folk.”

This bizarre false etymology caught Pel’s attention for a moment, distracting him.

Just then Nancy stepped in with a tray, carrying five foaming beer mugs. “I didn’t think cans would go over well,” she said to Pel.

The entire conversation seemed to be going in half a dozen directions at once, and Pel was becoming thoroughly confused. Reversing his earlier decision, he sat down on the edge of the stereo cabinet. “Fine,” he told Nancy.

She smiled, not very confidently, and handed Raven a mug. He thanked her, as Pel wondered where she had found five beer mugs, since he only remembered owning four. Taking another look, he realized that the fifth was actually a small vase that they never used. It was about the right size and shape, though it lacked a handle.

She handed the vase to Stoddard, who nodded his head in polite acknowledgement.

Valadrakul and Donald accepted their mugs gratefully, and Pel himself took the last. He held it without drinking while the others sampled the brew.

He could tell they weren’t impressed, but that wasn’t anything he cared about just now.

“Let me see if I have this straight,” he said. “The Galactic Empire sent a ship, with ten men aboard, to make contact with our government—in Washington, I guess?”

He glanced at Valadrakul, who made a sort of one-handed shrug while sipping beer with the other.

“They found out the hard way that some of the machinery doesn’t work here, and the ship crashed, somewhere north of here, but still in Montgomery County. Right so far?”

Raven nodded.

“Then the county police came and arrested them all for trespassing,” Pel continued, “and hauled them away somewhere—the county jail in Rockville, probably.”

Valadrakul nodded this time.

“And they’re still there, and the cops think they’re crazy, they don’t believe any of this stuff about spaceships and galactic empires.”

No one objected to any of that.

“All right,” Pel said, “I’ve got all that—so what are you people doing here?”

Raven put down his beer—what little was left of it. Pel noticed that Nancy was collecting an empty vase from Stoddard. “More?” she asked.

He nodded, and she slipped away to the kitchen.

“The Empire,” Raven explained, “has given up their men as lost—aye, and the lady, as well, for the ship had a woman aboard. The man who has charge of the matter has decided against any attempt at rescue, or any further expedition hither. Thus, these ten are abandoned, at the mercy of their captors. ‘Tis a coward’s decision, say I, but ‘tis made, nonetheless.”

Pel nodded.

“The thought came to us,” Raven continued, “that perhaps we might find a use for these abandoned men, ourselves. They might tell us much about the Galactic Empire. We might find a worthy ransom, should we offer to send them home. Failing all else, we could at the least find ourselves with nine more brave men in our fight against the creatures of Shadow.”

“And a woman,” Pel added.

Raven ignored the interruption; his speech rolled on as if Pel hadn’t said a word. “We know naught of your world, however, and finding and freeing these Imperials could be a fearsome task. Our portal opens in your cellars and is not so very easily moved, nor can its point of arrival be precisely determined in advance; further, you seemed a good man and kindly disposed toward me. Thus, we came hither to seek your counsel.”

Nancy reappeared with the vase refilled.

“You want me to tell you how to get these people out of jail?” Pel said. He saw smiles and nods starting, and asked, “How would I know?”

The smiles vanished and the nods never came. Raven and Valadrakul exchanged an unhappy glance. “We had thought,” Raven said, “that you might perchance know something of this prison—its strengths and weaknesses, perhaps, whether a warder might be bribed, somewhat of that nature.”

“You want me to help you get these guys out of jail?” Pel asked again.

Nancy looked up from the tray. “Have you talked to their lawyer?” she asked.

Raven and Valadrakul stared at her, startled.

“What’s a lawyer?” Raven asked.

* * * *

“Maybe I should talk to them,” Amy said, uncertainly, as she toyed nervously with a ballpoint pen.

Susan looked up from the forms she was reading. “Why?” she asked.

“Well, I don’t want to be vindictive or anything,” Amy explained, “I just want everybody to get their stuff out of my yard and leave me alone.”

“And pay for your hedge and your tree and all the other damage,” Susan pointed out.

“Yeah,” Amy admitted. “That, too.”

The desk sergeant shook his head. “I don’t think those guys are gonna pay for anything, lady,” he said. “They didn’t have a cent between them, they haven’t called anyone about getting bailed out, nothing.”

Amy stared. “They still haven’t?” she asked.

“Nope. Not one of them. They’re all sticking to their story about this Galactic Empire, and most of ‘em won’t give us anything but name, rank, and serial number.”

Amy looked at Susan, who shrugged.

Amy frowned. “If they’re real,” she said, “then they can’t pay for anything, can they?”

Susan answered, “Who knows? If they’re for real, then it’s all beyond me. If they’re not real, though, and they’re carrying it this far...”

“If they’re not real, then screw ‘em,” Amy said, grabbing the pen. “They’re carrying it much too far, and as far as I’m concerned they can rot here. Where do I sign?”

The desk sergeant pointed.

* * * *

Prossie heard someone calling her name, or at any rate something intended for her; she sat up and listened.

To her ears the cell was silent, save for the distant hissing of the highway that passed near the jail. It was her mind that had been touched.

“Carrie?” she said, whispering to make sure her thoughts were in words. “Is that you?”

Her ears still heard nothing, but the words reached her. “Yes, it’s me, Prossie,” the telepathic voice replied. “How are you doing?”

“Better,” Prossie replied. “Much better. That woman filed formal charges against us this morning, so they sent an attorney for us, whether we wanted one or not, and he explained some things—oh, Carrie, I wish I’d asked for an attorney sooner!”

Carrie’s response was a wordless questioning.

“They aren’t going to keep us here,” Prossie said. “They can’t keep us. They have all these complicated rules they follow, and guarantees of rights—it’s really incredible, if it’s all true. We should be free in a few days, I think.”

After a moment of mental silence, Carrie asked, “Then what?”

“I don’t know,” Prossie admitted. “But I’m sure we’ll manage somehow. We can work, or live off the land, and find some way to get back to the warp eventually, I’m certain of it. It’s just a hundred yards above where the ship crashed—that can’t be all that inaccessible.”

Prossie paused, and listened.

She sensed uneasiness on the other side of the conversation, as if Carrie doubted her, or as if she knew something Prossie did not. She certainly wasn’t sharing Prossie’s relief.

That troubled Prossie, but she thrust it aside as a new idea struck her.

“Listen, Carrie,” she said, “once I’m free, what if I were to track down some of the people we contacted—Miletti, or Blaisdell, or Aldridge? Wouldn’t they help us?”

“I don’t know,” Carrie answered, startled. “I hadn’t thought of that. Are you sure they’ll free you?”

“Well,” Prossie admitted, “I have no way of being sure the attorney didn’t lie to me—I don’t have my telepathy here, so I couldn’t check. I hadn’t really thought about it—why would he lie? And if he told the truth, they definitely won’t keep me here more than, I think he said thirty days, at most. They might try to send me to a madhouse, though—I think that was what he meant, anyway, though he didn’t come right out and say so. But I’m not mad, and I ought to be able to avoid that.”

“I see,” Carrie said, and again Prossie sensed doubt. “There’s something else, though; I don’t know if any of the contactees are near where you came out. Some of them were thousands of miles apart. I’ll have to see if we have any maps.”

“Do it, Carrie, please—for me.”

“Sure, Prossie. Hey, whatever happens, it’s good to hear you sounding so much more cheerful!”

“It’s good to be more cheerful, Carrie. Do check those maps for me, please. And thanks.”

The contact broke.

Silent, Prossie sat on her bunk, puzzled.

She had been so pleased with her conversation with Jerry de Lillo, the attorney from the public defender’s office, that she had not really considered the possibility that it was all a fraud, or that things might not work out as well as Mr. de Lillo said. Carrie, however, seemed to be taking it for granted that there was something wrong somewhere.

Why?

What could Carrie know that she, Prossie, did not? Had they been reading other minds here in Montgomery County, or whatever this place was called?

No, that couldn’t be it; she knew perfectly well that contacting anyone in this universe was difficult, and only a handful of people had been sufficiently receptive to manage any sort of communication at all. Out of that handful, only three had been able to both send and receive.

Prossie hadn’t been in on all the initial contacts, but she had done her share, and had carefully studied the files on those she hadn’t personally attempted. None of them had been connected with law enforcement or government.

The chances of locating another new contact who just happened to know something about the fate of the crew of I.S.S. Ruthless had to be just about nil. Whatever Carrie had learned, she must have learned back at Base One, or through a contact somewhere else in the Empire.

Prossie tried to remember the conversation and spot just where it had begun to go sour.

When Prossie had first mentioned being freed, there had been a lack of certainty, but that was just an insufficiency of evidence—Carrie had been eager to be convinced, at that point. Then Prossie had gone on to describe her hopes for after her release...

That was it.

It was when she had mentioned going back through the warp that Carrie had started hiding something.

Any ordinary person would never have noticed it, but Prossie was a telepath; she knew how minds worked. Carrie would never have tried hiding anything from another telepath that way ordinarily, she would have known better, but where Prossie’s talent was stifled she must have misjudged.

It must be that Carrie knew something about the warp that Prossie did not, and Prossie did not have to think very hard about the situation to guess what it might be.

The Under-Secretary had said that there would be no rescue, that the attempt to contact Earth was being abandoned; the next step was obvious and logical.

They must have shut down the warp.

Prossie slumped back against the wall. They had shut down the warp. The opening between universes was gone.

It would be possible to re-open it, she was sure. It had to be possible.

But would they do it?

Chapter Seven

“Ted, this is Raven,” Pel said.

Ted held out a hand, but Raven was already bowing and did not see it. Discomfited, Ted pulled back his hand and stuck it in his pocket.

“Raven, this is our lawyer, Ted Deranian.”

“’Tis an honor, good sir,” Raven said, flourishing his hat as he rose from his bow.

“Uh, yeah,” Ted said. He glanced at Pel, silently asking what the hell was going on.

“Raven’s not from around here,” Pel said hastily. “I mean, he’s not just dressed up; that’s his native costume.”

Ted looked over the black velvet and elaborate embroidery, the sword and the bobbing ostrich plume. “I didn’t know they still dressed like that anywhere any more,” he said.

Raven cast a questioning glance at Pel, who quickly said, “Don’t worry about it. Come on into the living room and sit down, Ted, let Nancy get you a drink or something.”

“Sure,” Ted said. He turned toward the living room.

As he did, behind his back but in sight of Pel, Raven jerked his head toward the family room, down at the far end of the hall; Pel shook his head no. There was no need to bring Stoddard or Donald or the wizard into things at this point.

Ted accepted a scotch and water from Nancy, then settled into the fake-antique wing chair by the front window. Pel gestured for Raven to take the other armchair, while he seated himself on the couch and Nancy slipped out through the dining room, back to the kitchen.

“Look, Ted,” Pel explained, when they were all seated, “Raven’s got a problem. Some friends of his are in jail down in Rockville, charged with trespassing and vandalism. They’re probably more or less guilty, but it was an accident, nobody meant any harm, and they’re all foreigners, they don’t understand the American courts and they haven’t got any money for fines or bail or anything. We’d like you to go and look after them, get them out if you can—we need to talk to them, if you can arrange it.”

“Foreigners?” Ted pursed his lips and put down his glass. “Do they speak English?”

Pel glanced at Raven, who nodded. “Aye,” he said. “’Tis their native tongue.”

Pel improvised, “They’re from the backwoods of New Zealand someplace, I think.”

Ted nodded. “Ordinarily, I’d say no problem,” he said. “Do they all dress like, uh, Raven, here?”

Again, Pel glanced at Raven, who answered, “Nay, their garb is like neither mine nor your own.”

Pel shrugged.

Ted hesitated, and then said, “I can’t place your accent, Raven; where are you from?”

Raven glanced at Pel, then turned up a palm. “I come from Stormcrack Keep, in the Hither Corydians.”

“Is that in New Zealand?”

Raven just smiled and didn’t answer.

“Listen, would you do me a favor?” Ted asked.

Raven looked politely inquiring.

“Would you say, ‘Yonder lies the castle of my father’?”

Puzzled, Raven looked at Pel, whose expression shifted quickly from thunderstricken to suppressed giggling.

“Yonder lies the castle of my father?” Raven said.

“No,” Ted said. “Declaim it, announce it—you know.”

“Ted,” Pel interrupted, “Raven isn’t Tony Curtis, and he doesn’t know what you’re talking about. The accent’s real, he can’t help it.”

Baffled, Raven looked at Pel, who explained, “It’s a line from an old movie... oh, never mind.” He turned to Ted. “So can you get these people out of jail for us? As soon as possible? I’ll stand bail, if it’s not too much, or agree to be responsible for them.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Ted said, gulping the rest of his scotch. “If it’s just trespassing and vandalism—they broke something?”

“Tore up someone’s yard, I think,” Pel said.

Ted nodded. “Simplest thing, then, would be to get the complainant to drop the charges; are you good for the damages, Pel, if that’s what’s wanted?”

Pel had to think for a moment before reluctantly agreeing. “I guess,” he said. “If it’s not too much.”

Ted stood up. “Well, thanks for the drink, then, and I guess I better get down to Rockville and see what the story is. Ah... do you have names for these people?”

Pel looked at Raven, who said, “Tarry a moment, please.” He turned and hurried to the family room, leaving Ted and Pel standing where they were.

Pel looked apologetically at Ted. “Another drink?” he asked.

“No, no,” Ted said. “I’m working, and I’m driving, and it’s too early anyway.”

“Coffee, maybe, or water?”

“No, thanks.”

They stood, awkwardly waiting, for another few seconds; then Raven reappeared.

“Your pardon, sirs,” he said. “The captain of the crew is one Joshua Cahn; his second is Alster Drummond. The lady with them is Mistress Proserpine Thorpe. Is that sufficient?”

“Should be,” Ted said. “Joshua Cahn—how’s that spelled, with a K?”

“I fear I know not, sir,” Raven replied.

“Doesn’t matter, I’ll find him. Cahn, Drummond, and Thorpe. Got it.”

“My thanks, sir, for your efforts in our behalf,” Raven said, bowing again as Pel showed Ted to the door.

* * * *

“Somebody named Ted Deranian wants to talk to you,” Susan’s voice said. “He’s a lawyer, has an office in Germantown.”

“A lawyer? What does he want to talk to me about?” Amy asked, puzzled.

“About the people from the thing in your back yard. He says he represents a friend of theirs who’s willing to pay for the damages if you drop the charges.”

Amy looked out her kitchen window at the ship, still lying where it had fallen. The Air Force people had not come back; she hoped they never would, though that did still leave the question of what she was going to do with the thing.

“I thought none of them knew any lawyers,” she said.

“I don’t think they do,” Susan said. “They got Jerry de Lillo from the public defender’s office appointed to represent them—he’s okay. This isn’t him. This Deranian person doesn’t claim to be representing anyone directly involved in the case; his client is just a friend of one of them.”

“If they’re supposed to be from outer space, how can they have friends in Germantown?”

“That’s a very good question,” Susan said.

Amy considered for a long moment, then said, “I don’t suppose it can hurt to talk to him.”

“I wouldn’t think so,” Susan agreed.

“Maybe I’ll finally find out what the heck is going on.”

“Maybe. Should I send him out there?”

“Here? Oh, no. Not here. I can come to your office, or his office—I don’t want him here.”

“All right. I’d like to sit in, so how about my office? When can you be here?”

* * * *

“I want to talk to them,” Amy said. “The people who were in it.”

“Fine by me,” Ted replied, smiling.

“I mean, I’m making that a condition. If I drop the charges, I want to talk to these people. That’s besides payment for the damages.”

Ted leaned back in the chair. “Ms. Jewell,” he said, “that’s fine with me, but I don’t know whether they’ll say anything. I don’t represent them; I’m acting on behalf of a third party.”

“Who?”

“His name is Pellinore Brown. He’s something of an old friend of mine.”

“Pellinore?” Susan said, startled.

Ted swiveled in his chair and said, “His mother got it out of a book somewhere.” He turned back to Amy. “Ms. Jewell,” he said, “I can’t make them talk to you, but how about this—you come to Mr. Brown’s house, and I’ll bring them there, and the lot of you can talk to each other all you want or not, whatever suits.” He smiled. “It should be interesting; I’ve already met another of Mr. Brown’s guests.”

Amy considered for a moment, glancing from Ted to Susan and back. Susan shrugged.

“Okay,” Amy said.

* * * *

“Somebody’s put in for a writ to get those people out of jail,” the lieutenant reported, holding the phone.

Major Johnston looked up, then back down at the reports spread on his desk.

Design analysis—nothing. The unidentified machines can’t possibly do anything.

Field trials—nothing. The machines don’t do anything.

Materials analysis—nothing. Steel, glass, simple plastics and ceramics, polished redwood, assorted metals—copper, brass, gold, platinum. Nothing untoward, unless you asked what the gold and platinum were doing there. No unidentified or unusual substances. No petroleum-based plastics, which was odd, and no aluminum, which was even odder. Who ever heard of any sort of flying craft made entirely without aluminum?

Electronics analysis—nothing. Not just nothing comprehensible, like the other reports, but nothing at all. No silicon chips anywhere, not so much as a single printed circuit. Everything electrical was hardwired, with simple copper wires and connectors. No transistors, not even any vacuum tubes—the most advanced equipment aboard that was recognizable at all was solenoids. Good solenoids, but solenoids.

This all assumed, of course, that the stuff that looked like random bits of wire, metal, and crystal wasn’t some sort of circuitry, but whatever it was, it didn’t do anything.

Aerodynamics analysis—nothing much. No airfoils. The guidance vanes were just that—guidance vanes. They would provide no lift to speak of. You could drive the thing up to Mach 1 and it still wouldn’t fly, just fall. Air resistance would be very low, the streamlining was perfectly sound, there just wasn’t any lift built into it anywhere.

Tracking analysis—nothing. The ship appeared out of nowhere about three hundred feet up, just barely high enough to show up as a blip at the county airport, and immediately plummeted to the ground. It didn’t come in from above; if it had flown in below the radar, it had somehow done so without a single report being filed anywhere. No complaints from homeowners, no sightings by UFO spotters, nothing.

Document analysis—still to come.

Somebody was supposed to analyze the food that had been stored aboard the ship, but that hadn’t been done yet, either. At first glance it looked ordinary enough—canned goods, freeze-dried stuff, and so forth.

The thing didn’t really look like a hoax, exactly; he would have expected hoaxers to rig up fancy displays and use lots of electronics, for effect. Hoaxers wouldn’t use gold and platinum; they would use aluminum.

Unless, of course, they were very clever hoaxers indeed, trying to not look like a hoax.

The whole damn thing made no sense at all.

“The hell with it,” he said, shoving back his chair. He looked up to see the lieutenant still holding the line. “Screw it,” he said. “Tell ‘em they can let ‘em go. It looks like we aren’t going to figure this one out until someone tells us something, and if those people haven’t talked yet... just screw it.”

“Yes, sir,” the lieutenant replied. He uncovered the mouthpiece and spoke into it as Major Johnston angrily shoved the reports to one side and glared at them.

* * * *

“Ms. Thorpe?”

Prossie looked up, startled. The jailer who brought her meals never called her that, never said “Ms.”, and it was too early for dinner, anyway—she had only finished her lunch an hour or so ago. She wasn’t expecting that wonderful Mr. de Lillo again until tomorrow.

And she hadn’t sensed anyone coming, and she still wasn’t used to that.

It was a uniformed officer speaking, and not the regular jailer. “What is it?” Prossie asked, concentrating on listening for spoken words.

The officer fumbled with the lock as he said, “Ms. Jewell’s dropped the charges, and there’s someone here with a writ, says he’ll take responsibility for you people, so we’re letting you all go.” He swung open the door of the cell and stood to one side.

“Letting us go?” Prossie blinked.

“Yeah,” the man said. “Letting you go. Get your things, if you have any, and come on.”

“Really?” She did not understand this; why would that woman drop the charges? Who would take responsibility for her, and the rest of the crew?

What was really going on here?

“Come on, already,” the officer said, annoyed. “Do you want to get out or not?”

Prossie didn’t dawdle any further. Whatever the explanation might be, she wanted out.