e. The air and pressure problems
were getting to me as well, but I handled them better
than Arlene.
     Of course, the problem with oxygen starvation is
that you are not the best judge of your own reason.
But the best chance for both of us was to finish the
rocket.
     And we were close, tantalizingly close.
I suddenly got the creepy crawlies. I recognized the
symptom: I was picking up the same psychosis as
Arlene. "All right," I acquiesced, "we go in the next
few hours. We have a chance, I guess; eighty percent is
eighty points better than zero."
     We got busy. We drank water. We ate a last good
meal of biscuits, cheese, fruit, nuts. The Eskimos say
that food is sleep, by which I guess they mean if your
body can't get one kind of recharge, you might as well
take the other.
     Arlene abandoned me to work out the telemetry
program that would (God willing) launch us, kill
Deimos's orbital velocity, dropping us into the atmos-
phere, then take us down, at which point she'd hand
over control to me to find a suitable spot to touch
down. Fortunately, it was basically cut-and-paste; I
doubt she could have written it from scratch . . . not
in the condition she was in. The hand of God must
have graced her, though she'd never admit it, for her
to keep it together long enough to patch it together.
As we prepared to leave, I kept running the basic
worries through my mind. The mail tubes were de-
signed for Mars, which has only a fraction the atmos-
phere of Earth and a much lower gravity; the specific
impulse developed by the rockets might not be
enough to overcome Earth's gravity as we spilled
velocity and tried to land. On the other hand, the
thick atmosphere might cause so much friction that
our little ship would burn up.
     The launcher was a superconducting rail gun. Re-
minded me of the eight-loop wonder at the amuse-
ment park back in the Midwest. This time I hoped I
wouldn't throw up. At least this piece of equipment
didn't have an auxiliary chain ... so what was there
to worry about?
     I grunted the launcher around to point opposite
Deimos's orbital path. The rocket controls were sim-
ple to operate, thank God; throttle, stick, various
navigational gear that I didn't really understand, and
environmental controls, all ranged around my face in
a tremendously uncomfortable position.
     Then suddenly, a few hours before our scheduled
departure, Arlene totally freaked out.
     At first I thought she was joking. She strolled up to
me and said, "Don't try to fool me; I know what you
really are."
     "Yeah, a prize SOB," I said distractedly. A moment
later I was on my butt with Arlene's boot on my chest
and a shiv--a sharpened piece of metal--against my
throat. Looking into her eyes, I saw the blank look of a
zombie . . . and for a moment, Jesus, I thought they'd
somehow gotten her, reworked her!
     But it was just the low pressure, or maybe slow
oxygen deprivation. I talked to her for five minutes
from my supine position, saying anything, God knows
what, anything to snap her back to some semblance of
herself. After a while she dropped the shiv and started
crying, saying she had murdered God or some such
silly nonsense.
     I wasn't going to abandon her, no matter what; but
there was nothing in my personal rule book that said I
had to make it any more difficult. We had Medikits in
the shed. I gave her a shot. She struggled, coughed,
and turned to me. "Why can't we eat our brothers?"
she asked; then the drug took effect.
     She'd be okay; in the mail-tube rocket, we've have
more pressure, and more important, more partial-
pressure of O2. She'd be all right ... I hoped.
I put her aboard the rocket, threw in a bag of
supplies, and squeezed in next to her. It was like being
in a sleeping bag together--or a coffin. I positioned
myself so I could reach all the controls, took a deep
breath and got serious.
     Just before lighting the cigar, I remembered the
stark terror of riding in the E7 seat of an S-8 sub-
hunter "Snark" jet and coming in for my virgin
landing on an aircraft carrier. Trusting entirely to the
guy on the other end made me more nervous than the
idea of landing on a postage stamp. Well, this time,
for better or worse, I was the guy with the stick;
considering that I'd never flown anything but a troop
shimmy over some mountains, I almost wished I were
back in the S-8.
     I threw the switches, pushed forward on the throttle
(oddly similar to a passenger airliner), and the rocket
slid along the tube, launching at ten g's. Arlene was
already out, of course, and missed the pleasure of
blacking out with me.
     Suddenly, I discovered myself in a strange room, a
faint hissing catching my attention. Black and white,
no color ... I knew I should know where I was, what
all these things, this equipment around me, was.
I should know my name too, I guessed.
     Then the sound cut back in; fly, someone said. A
command? Fly, fly--"Fly." It was me, my lips, saying
the word fly ... the name! Fly, me; my name.
Then I saw color and recognized the jerry-rigged
blinking lights and liquid-crystal displays of the mail
tube. I'd installed them myself; the mail doesn't need
to see where it's going, but we did.
     Through the slit of a viewscreen, I saw deepest blue
with faint, cotton-candy wisps, strings flashing past. I
glanced at the altimeter--much too high for clouds.
Ionized gases?
     Then something socked me in the face, like a 10mm
shell, and agony exploded across my face. At first it
was bilateral; then it focused right behind my eye-
balls, like God's own worst migraine. For a few
seconds I thought my head literally was going to
detonate. Then it faded as the blood finally
repressurized my cranial arteries and rebooted my
brain. I looked at the chronometer: the entire black-
out had lasted only forty-five seconds.
     It could have been forty-five years.
A low groan announced Arlene's return to con-
sciousness. "Fly," she moaned, "good luck."
     I was too busy to say anything. But it was good
having her back again. The calculations she'd already
worked out for our glide path were okay, and I used
the retros to get us on her highway.
     As we came in, the ride got bumpier and rougher.
The interior of the little craft started heating up.
Being so close together made us sweat all the faster.
When it got over fifty degrees centigrade, beads of
perspiration poured into my eyes, interfering with
vision.
     But the temp continued to rise. The mail tubes are
supposed to be insulated--but the skin on this one
was built for Mars.
     In Earth atmosphere, we were being baked. The
temp boiled up past seventy degrees, and I was gasping
for air, every breath searing my lungs. My skin turned
red and I could barely hold the controls. Another
minute and we would be dead.
     6
Fly!" Arlene screamed. "Blow the oxygen!
     We'll lose it, but it'll heat up and blow out the
exhaust, cooling the interior!"
     "Not again!" I said.
"Huh?"
     "We'll be low on air again!"
"Do it, Fly, or we'll fry."
     We took turns making the other face unpleasant
facts. It was something like being married.
     I did as she commanded. The cooling effect made a
real difference. My brain was still on fire, but at least I
could think again.
     "So what systems still aren't working?" she asked
next, still gasping from each searing breath.
This seemed like an opportune moment to be
     completely honest. "Now that you mention it," I
mentioned, "the only one I'm worried about is the
landing system."
     "What?"
"The thingamabob would have come in useful for
landing. What do they call it? Oh yes, the aerial-
braking system."
     She sighed. If there had been more room in our
little cocoon, she might have shrugged as well. "By-
gones," she said. "Sorry for the trouble I caused."
"Arlene, don't be ridiculous! I was having crazy
dreams and was about to go off the deep end myself.
You just went first because you're . . . smaller." It
occurred to me that we were having more of a
discussion than was wise under the circumstances.
"So how in hell do we land this puppy?" No sooner
were these words out of her mouth than Arlene
started yawning.
     I figured we should try and set it down anywhere on
dry land. Live or die, I wasn't in the mood for a swim.
If we survived, we could get our bearings anywhere on
Earth--pick a destination and then haul butt.
We didn't have any time to waste. Thanks to our
stunt with the oxygen, the O2 to CO2 ratio was
dropping. I was in even less mood for us to become
goofy from oxygen deprivation after watching Arlene
go nuts before--thanks, Mr. Disney, but I'm not
going back on that ride.
     I had to explain this to Arlene, but she was asleep
again so I explained it to the Martian instead. He was
a little green guy, about three feet high, and I was glad
to see him. "About time one of you showed up," I
said. "We always expected to see guys like you up here
instead of all this medieval stuff."
     "Perfectly understandable," he said in the voice of
W. C. Fields. "These demons are a pain. But they're
welcome to Deimos."
     "Why is that?" I asked.
"Confidentially, it's an ugly moon, don't you think?
Not at all a work of beauty like Phobos, a drinking
man's moon. Speaking of which, you wouldn't have
some whiskey on you?"
     "Sorry, only water."
He was very offended. "You mean that liquid fish
fornicate in? We Martians don't care for the stuff. You
can drown in it, you know. Now ours is a nice, dry
planet, rusty brown like that car of yours after you
abandoned it to the elements. Mars is nice and cold,
good practice for the grave. Are you sure you don't
have any booze?"
     I figured he was bringing up drowning just to scare
me. If Arlene and I didn't burn up in the atmosphere,
there was always a good chance of winding up in the
drink and drowning like the Shuttle pioneers had in
the 1980s.
     Besides, he'd raised a certain issue and I wanted an
answer. "Why does Phobos look better to you than
Deimos?" I asked.
     "My dear fellow, Phobos is the inner moon of
Mars. Deimos was always on the outs even before
those hobgoblins hijacked it. The outs is a bad place
to be, and you are out of time and going to die and
betray Arlene and betray the Earth, you puny little
man with your delusions."
     While he was talking, he was growing in size, and
sharp teeth protruded beyond his sneering lips; the
eyes flamed red, as the rockets flamed red, as the sky
was underneath and overhead all at the same time.
And I was screaming.
     "You're one of them! You're a demon-imp-specter-
thing. You tricked me."
     "Fly," said a comforting voice from behind the
Martian. "Fly, you're hallucinating."
     "I knew that," I told her as the Martian faded from
view. "I knew it all along."
     A quick check of the cabin gave a head count of (1)
myself, (2) Arlene, (3) no Martians. I checked again to
make sure. Yep, just two humans. No monsters. No
Martians. Not much air. Definitely not enough air.
"We've got to land this quickly," I said.
     "Um ... if it's all the same to you, Fly, I can wait
until we can land it safely."
     The atmosphere got thick enough that I pulled the
cord to extend our mini-wings. Instantly, we started
buffeting like mad, shaking so hard I thought my
innards would become outards. We rolled, pitched,
yawed--triple-threat!--and it was all I could do to
hang on to the ragged edge of Arlene's computer-
projected glide path.
     The screen displayed a series of concentric squares
that gave the illusion of flying through an infinite
succession of square wire hoops. So long as I kept
inside them, I should go where she projected, some-
where in North America, she said; even she wasn't
sure where.
     But I kept cutting through the path, coloring out-
side the lines. I couldn't hold it! I'd yank on the stick
and physically wrench us back through the wire
frames and out the other side (they turned from red to
black when I was briefly on the meatball). The best I
could do was stay within spitting distance of my
proper course . . . and naturally, we were running too
hot, much too fast. We were going to overshoot our
mark--possibly straight into the Pacific Ocean.
I barely hung on, abandoning retros to guide our
two-man "cruise missile" by fins, air-braking to spill
as much excess velocity as possible. The ship started
shaking. An old silver tooth filling started to ache.
Arlene leaned back against the seat, muscles in her
jaw tightening, eyes getting wider and wider. I think
she was starting to appreciate the gravity of our
situation.
     North America unwound beneath the window like
a quilt airing out on a sunny day. We were over the
Mississippi, sinking lower, falling west, descending
fast. Then we entered a cloud bank. We weren't there
very long.
     "I know where we are!" shouted Arlene, voice
starting to sound funny from the breathing problem. I
placed it too. We'd popped out of the cloud bank
about 150 kilometers due west of Salt Lake City. The
Bonneville salt flats were ideal for a landing--a vast,
dry lake bed, nothing to hit but dirt. Very hard dirt.
But we had a chance.
     "Spill the fuel!" she screamed, right in my ear,
straining against the buffeting. At least we were low
enough that we could breathe. I yanked the lever,
dumping what little JP-9 remained in the tanks.
The cabin was getting hot again, the structure of the
rocket shaking like we were in a Mixmaster, and it
was now or never. "Hold on!" I shouted, thinking
how stupid it sounded but needing to say something.
Arlene screamed like a banshee--a much more
     insightful comment.
We came down fast and hard, finally striking the
ground at Mach 0.5. The ship shredded on impact,
skipping like a rock on the waters of a salt-white lake.
Then it rolled, and Arlene's elbow jammed into my
side so hard it knocked the breath out of me.
End over end we tumbled, and my brains, already
fried, scrambled so I didn't know dirt from sky. We
shed bits and pieces from the ship--only the titanium
frame was left, but still we kept rolling.
     The ship finally skidded to a stop, on its side, with
me underneath Arlene.
     For a good five minutes, felt like five hours, we lay
silently, dazed, wondering if we had made it or not
. . . waiting for the world to stop spinning.
"Are you all right?" Arlene managed to ask.
     "I think we're alive," I said.
The fuel was completely spent, which was just fine
with me. No risk of fire or explosion. Now if we could
just get out of the thing.
     Fortunately, the door on Arlene's side wasn't
jammed. In fact, it wasn't even with us anymore.
Arlene stumbled out, falling heavily with a grunt. I
followed somewhat more gracefully, which was a
switch,
     We'd suffered no injuries, thank God; I didn't want
us to wind up sitting ducks. If aliens had taken over
Utah--a belief held by one of my old nuns many
years before the invasion--then we must be on our
guard. Someone, or something, would come to find
out what had just made a smoking hole in the salt lick.
We took a moment to enjoy being alive and in one
piece, enjoying the dusk in Utah, breathing the best
air we'd tasted in months. Then we took inventory.
The food and water came through. But the weapons
were trashed.
     "You said we couldn't do it," she teased me.
"Never listen to a pessimist," I answered, adding,
"and the world is so full of them you might as well
give up." She laughed as she playfully punched my
arm, numbing me.
     Astonishingly, Arlene's GPS wrist locator was still
working. That was one tough piece of equipment! I
thought maybe I should buy stock in the company;
then I wondered whether any companies still existed.
Maybe the monsters had done what no government
was able to do: end all commerce and starve the
survivors.
     She sat cross-legged and fiddled with the thing,
trying to get a fix on our exact position. The satellite
should have responded immediately, spotting us with-
in a meter or two.
     "Getting anything?" I asked, listening to the sym-
phony of white noise coming off her arm.
     "Nada," she said. "I'll bet the sat is still up there,
but the Bad Guys must have encrypted the signal.
Maybe so humans can't use them in combat."
     "I wish they were all as dumb as the demons," I
said.
     "Yeah, one spidermind goes a long way. But who
cares, Fly? We've beaten the odds again. We're alive,
dammit!" She ran across the sand like a kid let loose
at the beach. Then she gestured for me to join her. I
ran over and grabbed at her. She threw me off balance
and I took a tumble in the sand.
     "Clumsy!" she said, sounding as young as she had
when sleepwalking through her waking nightmare on
Deimos; but now was a lot more pleasant.
     "We don't have time for this, you know," I said, but
my heart wasn't it.
     "We don't have time to be alive, or to breathe air.
But here we are, still in one piece. God, I didn't think
we were going to make it. We got down from orbit
with nothing but spare parts, spit, and duct tape, and
our bare hands--hah!"
     "Frankly, my dear, I had my doubts," I admitted. I
couldn't help running after her. She was right. We
kept coming through stuff that should have killed us
twenty times over. We weren't indestructible, but I
was beginning to believe in something I'd always
hated: luck.
     People who accomplish nothing in their lives al-
ways attribute the success of everybody else to good
luck or knavery. I believe you make your own luck:
"Chance favors the prepared mind." But in combat,
there are too many random factors to calculate.
Arlene and I were feeling cocky. We had plenty of
reason to be thankful.
     "I wonder what the radiation level is here," I said.
"Do we have to know?" she asked, skipping. "It
didn't look like any bombs were going off in this
area."
     "Not while we were watching," I pointed out.
"There's no reason to nuke a desert. It's already a
wasteland."
     "You nuke military bases, Arlene. And don't forget
the nuclear testing that's gone on in areas like this."
"Human wars, Fly; and human preparation for
     war. Besides, we don't know for certain we were
seeing nuclear weapons going off; they could be some
other kind of weapon without fallout. Makes it easier
to take over later."
     "Some of these beasties seem to thrive on radia-
tion."
     She stopped playing in the sand and sat down. She
didn't say anything at first, as she poured sand out of
her right boot, but then had an answer for me as she
began unlacing her left one: "The radiation levels on
the base weren't healthy for humans, but they weren't
anywhere near what you'd get from a full-scale nucle-
ar exchange."
     The lady had a point. "You're probably right. You
can thank me for going to such lengths to bring us
down in this location."
     "Ha," she said. "Pure luck. You brought us down
where you could."
     "Skill and perseverance, dear lady. One of these
days, I'll explain my theory of luck to you."
7
     For the moment, I was glad to join her,
sitting in the sandbox. I ignored the little voice in the
back of my head that worked overtime to keep us
alive. It said we didn't have a moment to waste; the
monsters of doom could be upon us any second,
burning away our little victory faster than the setting
sun.
     Comes a time when you have to say the hell with it,
if only for a moment. Arlene and I had recently faced
the worst thing anyone can face, worse than the
monsters or dying in space. We knew what it meant to
lose your sanity . . . and come back to yourself again.
Arlene started whistling "Molly Malone." She'd
picked one of the few songs to which I knew the
words. I sang along. All that was missing was a bottle
of Tullamore Dew, the world's finest sipping whiskey.
As it was, our duet seemed to transform the lengthen-
ing shadows of dusk in Utah into the cool glades of
Ireland. I wondered if doom had come there. Were
there demons in Dublin? Did the men there see little
green leprechauns instead of Martians in their mo-
ment of madness? I wondered about the whole world,
and it was too much for me.
     Right now the world was a stretch of desert in Utah.
What we could do for ourselves, for the human race,
for the world, would be determined here, as it had
been on Deimos, and before that, Phobos. We'd take
it one world at a time.
     I lay back happily for a few moments, watching the
stars wink into existence in the darkening sky.
As night fell, we spotted a glow, due east. That was
the way to bet--Salt Lake City, I guessed. We gath-
ered together what had survived the crash and fol-
lowed the light. We took a break at nine P.M., another
at midnight.
     "How long do you think this is going to take?" she
asked.
     "Not sure, but I'm glad we brought the provisions."
The bag survived the crash just as nicely as we did. We
had water. We had biscuits and granola bars. We had
flashlights (which we wisely didn't use). But I sure as
hell wished we had some weapons, other than one
puny knife in the provisions bag.
     We trekked at night and slept by day. Hell, I saw
Lawrence of Arabia. After Phobos and Deimos and
nearly splattering ourselves over old terra firma, after
all we'd survived, I'd be damned if we were going to
cash in our chips here. Hell, we could go to Nevada to
do that!
     The water held out better than the food. We hud-
dled together in the cold during the day, when we
slept. We could have made a fire, but no point giving
away our location with unnecessary light. And there
was one thing about the situation creepy enough to
encourage caution, even though we hadn't run into
any trouble yet.
     Arlene was the first to notice it: "Fly, there are no
sounds."
     "What do you mean?" I asked. We crunched along
in the night, heading toward a glow that seemed
barely bigger than it was three days ago.
     "The night creatures. No owls . . ."
"Are there owls in the desert?"
     "I don't know, maybe not. But there should be
something. No bugs. No lizards. No nothin'."
I thought about it. "If we've seen the collapse of
civilization, you'd expect wild dogs."
     "There's no coyotes. Nothing. Even out here, there
ought to be something. Unless everything was killed
by the weapons."
     "No, that can't be right. We'd be puking up our guts
by now from poison or radiation. That light suggests
somebody's still in business."
     "I hope so," she said. "So you think that's Salt Lake
City."
     "Should be."
"Salt Lake City, Utah?"
     "Unless it's wintering in Florida."
She was silent for a hundred paces; then she cleared
her throat. "Fly, I have to confess something to you.
Again."
     "Anytime."
"I sort of have a problem with the Mormon
     Church," she said.
Making out her face in the dim light wasn't easy. I
wished we had a full moon instead of the sliver
hanging over us like a scythe. "You were a Mormon?"
I asked.
     "No. But my brother was, briefly."
"You blame the church for ... for whatever hap-
pened?"
     She shook her head. "No, I guess not. He had
problems before he joined the Church; had problems
when he left."
     "Do you think he might be here?" I asked.
"Nah. We lived in North Hollywood. He left for
Utah when he became a Mormon; but after he left the
Church, I don't know what became of him. I don't
care if I ever see him again."
     "I'll never bring it up," I said.
"There's another reason I'm telling you this," she
went on. "I became obsessed with Mormonism while
he was with them. I read books by them and against
them. I even read the Book of Mormon."
     "Maybe that could come in useful," I suggested.
"I doubt it. It just makes me more prejudiced.
Look, Fly, if we find living human beings at the end of
this, we must stand with them and fight with them.
I'm promising you right now I won't discuss religion
with any of those patriarchal..."
     She paused long enough for me to jump in: "I get
the picture."
     "Do you have any opinions abut them?" she asked,
quite fairly.
     "Well, I read an article about them having a strong
survivalist streak; that they stockpile a year's supply
of food and stuff like that. You'll get a kick out of this!
When I visited L.A. once, I took in the sights:
Disneyland, the La Brea Tar Pits, Paramount studios,
the Acker Mansion, and I even found time to go into
their big temple at the end of Overland Avenue.
There's an angel up top with a trumpet; I mistakenly
called him Gabriel."
     "They must have loved that; it's the Angel
Moroni."
     "Well, now I know."
"Heh. I used to drop the i off that name when I used
it."
     I took a deep breath. "Arlene, I'm going to hold you
to that promise not to talk theology with them."
"Scout's honor," she said.
     "Were you ever a Scout?"
She didn't answer again.
     We kept the flashlights off; the glow on the horizon
was the only illumination I wanted in that desert. It
was easy to follow the direction at night. We made
sure that we didn't waste opportunities.
     "You're burning night-light," Arlene would say
when it was her turn to wake me up. Then she'd
snicker, Something amused her, but she didn't let me
in on it.
     Turned out that we ran out of food, but we had
more water than we needed. It took us five days to get
to Salt Lake City, the center of what once had been
the Mormon world. And by God, it still was!
     We lay on our bellies in some brush, shielding out
eyes from the sun, leaning against a side-paneled
truck.
     "They're people!" marveled Arlene as we watched
hundreds of men on the streets in the early dawn.
They relieved other men who'd obviously been doing
the night shift.
     "Where do you think the women are?" I whispered.
"Home, minding the kids. Mormons are so damned
patriarchal."
     "Arlene . . ."
We were in a good spot to see plenty, behind a
wrecked truck on a rise. As the sun crawled up the
sky, shafts of light came through the broken windows
like laser beams, one blinding me for a second. We
positioned ourselves to see more. There was plenty to
see.
     The streets of this garrison town had over a thou-
sand men with guns, and to my surprise I made out a
few women and teenage girls toting heavy artillery.
Arlene gave me one of her funny looks.
     I didn't make her take back anything she'd said;
when a society is threatened, it will do what it must or
go down fast.
     "You don't think they might be working with the
aliens?" asked my buddy. I had the same thought. But
they didn't act zombified, and we'd learned that the
monsters preferred human lackeys in that condition.
The spidermind had made only one exception when it
needed knowledge in the human brain of poor Bill
Ritch.
     We had to make contact with these people, but I
preferred doing it in a way that wouldn't get us shot.
While I was formulating a plan, Arlene tapped me on
the shoulder.
     I turned and found myself staring down both bar-
rels of a twelve-gauge duck gun. It had gorgeous,
inlaid detail work running all seventy-five centimeters
of the stock and barrel. . . and it was attached to a
beefy hand connected to a large body with a grinning,
boyish face topping it off. Twenty-two, twenty-three,
tops.
     "How do?" said the man. His buddy was a lot
thinner, and he held an old Ruger Mini-14 pointed at
Arlene.
     He caught my expression and grinned at me as if he
could read my mind. Here was proof positive we were
facing honest-to-God, living humans: they had pride
in a good weapon.
     "Hi," I said, moving my eyes from man to man.
"Good morning," said Arlene.
     "Hey," said the other man by way of greeting,
noticing how my eyes kept drifting to his piece. "Took
me quite a while to get one of these," he said
conversationally.
     "Beautiful weapon," I said, noticing that the beefy
guy was still calm.
     The thin one nodded and said, "They are compact,
easy handling, fast shooting and hard hitting." He
paused, then added: "Don't you agree?"
     Thunk. The penny dropped. They were testing us!
"Oh, yes," said Arlene, jumping in. The thin guy
looked at her a little funny and waited for me to say
something.
     "One of my favorite weapons," I said. "Hardly any
kick. Not like the bigger calibers."
     Finally the big guy spoke again: "Jerry, these people
don't want a lecture."
     Jerry squinted at him. "They're military. Look at
their clothes." We weren't asked to confirm or deny
anything, so we kept our mouths shut. Jerry had
plenty of words left in him: "They're interested in a
good weapon. Aren't you?"
     He looked straight at me and I answered right away:
"I sure am, especially that one you've got."
Jerry smiled and went on: "Albert gets tired of
hearing me go on about what a good model this is.
They were even reasonably priced until they were
outlawed."
     "Not a problem now," said Arlene. "I'm sure
there's plenty of squashed zombies you can take one
off'n."
     Whenever she spoke, the men seemed a bit uncom-
fortable. I had the impression she was getting off
on it.
     Arlene looked over at me and winked. We'd fought
enough battles to read each other's expressions and
body language. Her expression told me that things
were looking up as far as she was concerned, but she
couldn't resist getting in the act: "I like an M-14," she
said.
     Jesus, it was like going shooting with Gunnery
Sergeant Goforth and his redneck buddies!
     The men started to warm to her a little. "Good
choice for a military gal," said Albert. We all just kind
of stood there for a moment, smiling at each other,
and then Albert broke the ice by changing the subject.
He asked, in the same friendly tone of voice: "You
wouldn't happen to be in league with those ministers
of Satan invading our world?"
     "We were wondering the same thing about you,"
said Arlene. I gave her a dirty look for that.
The beefy kid with the double-barreled duck gun
chuckled. "Don't mind her saying that, mister. It
shows a proper godly attitude. I hope you both check
out; I like you. We talk the same language. But we
can't take any chances."
     They searched us both thoroughly, found the
knife, and impounded it. We were weaponless. In a
way, I was glad. These guys weren't acting like ama-
teurs . . . which meant they had a chance against the
invaders.
     "Okay," said the man with the bird gun, "we'll take
you to the President of the Council of Twelve."
Arlene grimaced, which told me she knew what he
was talking about; but she kept her promise. Not a
word came out of her about the religious stuff. The
title sounded impressive enough to tell me that the
Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints was
still in business big-time.
     Maybe she was right, and they were a cult; but I
don't know any difference between a cult and a
religion except as a popularity contest. They had
survived, and we needed allies against the monsters.
I knew one more thing about the Mormons that I
hadn't mentioned to Arlene during our little chat in
the desert. A friend I trusted with Washington con-
nections told me that a good part of Mormon self-
reliance was to really prepare for every eventuality.
After their tumultuous history, extreme caution was
understandable. Result: there were a lot of Mormons
in the government ... in the FBI, in the various
services, in the CIA, even in NASA. God help anyone
who tried to play Hitler with the Mormons as the
Jews! The Mormons should be ideal allies against a
literal demonic invasion.
     Arlene and I would find out soon enough.
8
     As we were led through the streets of SLC, I
allowed myself to hope that Arlene and I had lucked
out by landing here. If I were still a praying man, I'd
burn candles and say a few Ave Marias that we
wouldn't find a spidermind sitting in the Mormon
Tabernacle . . . which loomed closer and closer, obvi-
ously our destination.
     The people in the street gave us a wide berth as we
passed, but they didn't act unfriendly--just cautious.
No one acted like an idiot. I hoped it stayed that way.
Suddenly, a man on a big motorcycle roared over to
us and stopped a few inches away, kicking up dust. He
wore a business suit. "Hey, Jerry," he said.
"Hey, Nate," said Jerry. "Folks, this is my brother,
Nate. I'd introduce you, but I don't know your
names,"
     "Now, Jerry," said Albert, "you know better than
that. The President of the Twelve hasn't interviewed
them yet. They should give their names to him."
"Sorry."
     "Sounds like they know your names already," said
the man on the cycle, taking off his helmet. These
guys were twins.
     Although Arlene kept her promise about not dis-
cussing theological matters, she leapt into any other
waters that gurgled up around us. "That's a bad
machine," she said.
     Nate proved to be his brother's brother: "You like
this?" he asked with a big grin.
     "They have good taste in guns," said Jerry, spurring
them on. Albert groaned.
     Nate was on a roll: "BMW Paris-Dakar, 1000
cc's ..." He and Arlene went on about the bike for a
few minutes.
     Part of me wanted to strangle the girl; but another
part appreciated what she was doing. Putting the
other guys at their ease is a critical strategy. There
were a lot more men in the street than women, but our
captors--hosts?--remained respectful and polite in
Arlene's presence. A very civilized society.
". . . and the glove compartment can hold five
grenades!" announced Nate, topping off his presenta-
tion.
     "That does it," said Albert. "If these nice people
are spies, why don't you just give them mimeo-
graphed reports?"
     In the short time we'd been prisoners, I'd learned
that there was no genuine military discipline here. I
had mixed feelings about this. The good thing was
that I couldn't believe these casual people had been
co-opted by the invaders. They still talked and acted
like free men. Very loquacious free men!
     As far as getting their president to cooperate with
us, it could go either way. In the land of the civilians,
the Marine is king ... or a fall guy. I was impatient to
find out which.
     "Oh, I almost forgot," said Nate. "I have a message
for you. The President hasn't returned yet."
"You should have told us that right off," said Albert
peevishly. "We'll take them to Holding."
     We entered the Tabernacle. It was nice and cool,
with a fresh wood smell that was clean and bracing.
The floors were highly polished. You wouldn't notice
anything different from the world I'd left on a court-
martial charge that now seemed to belong to a differ-
ent universe.
     Arlene wasn't the only one with a lot of reading
under her belt. I didn't know a whole lot about the
Mormons, although I knew a bit more than I told
her--but I'd read the Bible all the way through,
enough to recognize things the Mormons took for
inspiration from what they accepted as the earlier
Revealed Word.
     In addition, the nuns taught a little about compara-
tive religion, probably so we'd be better missionaries.
I remembered that God was supposed to have given
Moses directions for the construction of the Taberna-
cle. The structure was to be a house constructed of a
series of boards of a special wood, overlaid with gold,
set on end into sockets of silver. In other words, it
wasn't Saint Pete's, but it was no Alabama revival tent
either. The Mormons adapted the idea for a perma-
nent standing structure.
     Right outside the Tabernacle were some more con-
ventional office buildings. We entered one, and were
led into an office by Albert. "I'll bring you something
to eat and drink," he said. I was hungry and thirsty
enough to settle for bread and water. A minute later
Albert returned with bread and water, then left us
alone.
     "Damn," I said; "I was hoping for a more splendor-
ous galley."
     I walked over to a small table, and picked up the
sole object on it: the Book of Mormon: Another
Testament of Jesus Christ. I felt puckish and decided
to tease Arlene a bit. I thought she'd pushed the
envelope too much, encouraging the more talkative of
our captors.
     "Bet you can't remember all the books in here,
Arlene."
     She gave me that look of hers. "Will you bet me the
next decent weapon we find?"
     "Deal," I said.
"Okay," she replied, and rattled them off: "First
and Second Books of Nephi, Jacob, Enos, Jarom,
Omni, the Words of Mormon, Book of Mosiah, Alma,
Helaman, Third and Fourth Nephi, Book of Mormon,
Ether, Moroni. You're not getting out of this, Fly. I get
first pick on the next piece!"
     "Damn!" I said, thoroughly impressed.
"Watch what you say near a holy place."
     "Don't worry about it," came a third voice. Albert
had rejoined us without knocking.
     "Don't you knock?" asked Arlene.
"As soon as you're no longer prisoners," he said,
closing the door behind him. "I just wanted you to
know that I don't think you're spies for the demons."
"We call them aliens," I said. The medieval termi-
nology didn't bother me when Arlene and I were using
it to distinguish the different kinds of monsters. It
seemed very different when talking to a deeply reli-
gious perseon. These things from space could be
killed. They were created by scientific means. In no
way should they be confused with immortal spirits
against which all the firepower in the galaxy would
mean nothing.
     "I understand," said Albert. "Would you mind
telling me who you are and how you came to be
here?"
     "Won't the President ask us that?" I asked.
"Yes."
     "Then why should we tell you?" asked Arlene.
"Because I don't have to be as cautious, and I'm a
fellow soldier."
     "So you should tell us about yourself," I said.
"In time. You don't have to tell me anything either,
but you should consider it."
     "Well," I said, thinking on my feet, "if we talk to
one Mormon, we should probably talk to the leader."
Albert laughed. "We're not all Mormons here," he
said. "Just most of us."
     "Oh?" I said, unconvinced.
"Uh, I am," he cautioned. "Think about it. We're
fighting the common enemy of mankind. We don't
care if you're Mormons. We care that you can be
trusted."
     "Makes sense," admitted Arlene in a tone of voice
so natural that I realized she'd been subtly mocking
them before.
     "I'm of the Church," continued Albert, "but Jerry
and Nate are Jehovah's Witnesses."
     "I thought they didn't fight," said Arlene,
surprised.
     "They are not pacifists, but neither are they of the
Latter-Day Dispensations," he said as warning bells
went off in my head. I prayed I could count on
Arlene's promise to keep her trap shut . . . but she
pressed her lips pretty tight.
     "Latter-day what?"
Albert was more succinct than his friends: "They
believe all the world's governments are works of the
devil. They won't fight their fellow man at the com-
mand of a state. But they can fight unhuman monsters
until Judgment Day."
     "I get it," I said. "Draft protesters in World War
Two--"
     "But volunteers for this," Albert finished.
"What do you mean by, uh, 'dispensation'?"
     He laughed. Apparently we'd fallen into the hands
of someone lacking in missionary zeal, for which I
was grateful. "The United States Constitution was
ordained by God. That's why we didn't like seeing it
subverted. We never know if a governmental person is
good or bad until we see where his loyalty lies. But
you two made a wonderful impression on the Wit-
nesses; I think you'll do fine with the President. If you
change your mind about chatting with me, you will
find me easily enough." He left us with the promise
we would see the President soon.
     Three hours later we were led to the office of the
President of the Twelve. A clean-shaven, elderly man
with pure white hair, a dark tan, and a tailored suit
got up from behind a walnut desk and rested his
hands on his blotter. He kept his distance. He had a
judge's face, carved in stone. If we were assassins, he
was giving us a clear shot at him. But Albert and Jerry
continued to baby-sit, fingers on triggers.
     Mexican standoff. He sized us up. We did the same
to him. He reminded me of a senior colonel in the
Corps, a man used to giving orders.
     Finally, he coughed. "I'm the President here," he
said.
     "You make it sound like President of the United
States," I said.
     He didn't seem to mind. "Might as well be," he
said, "under the circumstances. Who are you?"
We gave him name, rank, and serial number. Being
a gentleman, I let Arlene go first. Then he asked the
sixty-four-trillion-dollar question: "How is it you
come to be here?"
     Arlene laughed and let him have it: "Fly, here--
that's his nickname--Fly and I single-handedly
kicked the spit out of the entire Deimos division of
the alien demons. They moved the Martian moon
into orbit around Earth, but we cleaned their clocks."
The leader of the Mormons said, "This is a time for
mighty warriors. We have many prophecies to this
effect. In the Book of Alma there is a verse that I find
indispensable for morale:
     "Behold, I am in my anger, and also my people;
ye have sought to murder us, and we have only
sought