THE TENTH PLANET OBLIVION
by
Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch


CASTRO VILLE MARINA, THEN

A SHADOW ACROSS THE LAND

The peninsula that was home to Monterey was still there, but instead of
one of the most beautiful cities in California, there was blackness and
rubble.  Nothing else.  No pier, no ships.

No people.

Cross gripped his seat.  He wasn't sure what sound he made as the
helicopter approached the destruction, but he knew it wasn't good.
Perhaps he moaned.  Perhaps he swore.  Perhaps he simply gasped ...
Cross had seen the dust, studied it, even held bits of it in various
labs back in D.C. He had watched the battle on television, seen
satellite images, still photographs, infrared images, and spectral
analyses.  Nothing had prepared him for being here in person.

Nothing had prepared him for the blackness that covered the coastline
for as far as his eye could see.

By Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch Published by
Ballantine Books:

THE TENTH PLANET

THE TENTH PLANET: OBLIVION

THE TENTH PLANET: FINAL ASSAULT

"forthcoming

Books published by The Ballantine Publishing Group are available at
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THE TENTH

PLANET

OBLIVION

Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Story of Rand Marl is and Christopher Weaver

DEL

REY

A Del Key Book

THE BALLANTINE PUBLISHING GROUP NEW YORK

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received payment for it.

ADelRey*Book

Published by The Ballantine Publishing Group

Copyright 2000 by Creative Licensing Corporation and Media

Technologies Ltd.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright
Conventions.  Published in the United States by The Ballantine
Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc."  New York, and
simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

Del Rey is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon is a
trademark of Random House, Inc.

www.  random house.com/deh-ey/

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 99-91744

ISBN 0-345-42141-8

Manufactured in the United States of America

First Edition: February 2000

10 9876543

For Amy.  Thanks.

Section One

REBUILD

Prologue

April 23, 2018

3:10 p.m. Pacific Time

174 Days Until Second Harvest

Danny Elliot was shaking as he ran, half crouched, to the white house
at the very edge of the destruction.  The morning was sunny and the air
smelled faintly of roses and the sea.  If he closed his eyes, he could
imagine this neighborhood as it had been ten days ago, as if it had
never changed.

But he didn't close his eyes.  He didn't dare.  He had to remain alert,
in case he saw a soldier or heard a truck.  This entire area was
cordoned off--a quarantine zone--and if he and his best friend Nikara
Jones got caught, they'd get into a lot of trouble.

Nikara was right beside him.  Nikara didn't look nervous at all.  His
thin mouth was set in a line, and his brown eyes were intent on that
house.  Danny was more concerned with the National Guard patrols and
the other military vehicles that constantly roared along this deserted
street.

That, and with what his mother would say if she knew what he was
doing.

He stopped beside a hedge.  It had been neatly clipped-probably a week
ago, even though it felt like eighteen years ago--and was just high
enough to give him protection from

any approaching patrol on his left side.  He put a hand on Nikara's
arm, stopping him.

"What?"  Nikara whispered.

"I don't think we should do this," Danny said.

"We're here already," Nikara said.  That wasn't entirely accurate. 
They were heading for the white ranch house that stood out against the
blackness beyond like a beacon.  They still had some distance to go.

"What if we get caught?"

"We talked about this," Nikara said.  He ran a hand through his tight
dark curls, then shook his head.

"Yeah," Danny said.  "At my house.  I'm not so sure now."

Nikara sighed, and rocked back on his heels.  He had been Danny's best
friend for the last ten years--since they were both five years old--and
they had done everything together.  Since the aliens attacked, they had
spent most of their time with each other.  Everyone else was watching
television or working disaster relief.  Danny's mother would come home
at night, sit on their new sofa--a family Christmas present she had
bought on credit--and cry.  He had seen his mother cry when his dad
left five years ago, but she hadn't cried since.  Not once.  He'd
thought his mother was the strongest woman in the world.  Maybe she
was.  Maybe even the strongest woman in the world couldn't handle what
the aliens did.

Now there were people starting to say it really hadn't been aliens, but
the government that destroyed everything.  But that didn't matter to
Danny.

What mattered to Danny was that it had all been so unexpected.

Ten days ago, he'd gotten up at six like usual, taken a shower, and had
a bowl of Frosted Mini-Wheats.  Then he'd gotten his bag lunch from his
mother and begged for lunch money like he always did, and when she'd
refused like she always did, he'd gotten on his bike and ridden the
mile to school.  Another year and he'd be old enough to drive, but
for

now he was still stuck on his bike.  He'd had algebra, English, and
social studies before everything he knew disappeared.

Alien ships appeared over San Luis Obispo and Monterey.  And everywhere
in between.  Huge black alien ships that blocked the sky.  Then they
dropped a black cloud on everything, a cloud that ate through wood and
skin and bone.

Monterey was gone.

San Luis Obispo was gone.

Only the outlying areas remained.  The outlying areas, where the
housing was cheap.  The poor section or, as his mother used to say, the
wrong side of town.  Their side of town.

He'd never felt lucky living there before, and he wasn't sure he felt
lucky now.  But he was glad to be alive.

"Come on," Nikara said.  "We only got twenty minutes before the patrol
is due."

Danny rubbed his hands on his jeans.  His palms were sweating--his
whole body was sweating.  He'd never done anything like this in his
life.  He was breaking all the rules.

"From here to the white house," Nikara said.  "We can hide near the
rhodies.  There's a trellis behind them.  From there we can climb to
the roof."

That had been the plan all along.  They wanted to go to the very edge
of the Black Zone, as people were calling it, and see the destruction
for themselves.  Danny wasn't entirely sure if he could tell anyone why
he wanted to see the Zone.  He just knew it hadn't looked real on
television, and from a distance, it seemed as if someone had dropped a
lot of gray paint on the horizon.  The sea was still there, and the
sky, but all the buildings were gone.  Some rubble remained-nonorganic
stuff, the news reports said--but the trees, the buildings, Otis people
were gone.

"Aren't you a little creeped out?"  Danny asked.

Nikara looked at him, his dark eyes flat.  "No."

Danny felt a flush building.  This had been his idea.  For days he had
pushed Nikara to come.  Nikara had finally agreed, on

the condition that he'd plan their route and time the patrols before
they left.  Nikara had put two days of work into this little trek,
making sure they had time enough to view the destruction.  No matter
how creeped out Nikara was, he'd never admit it, not after all that.

Danny should have known better--or he never should have suggested it in
the first place.

"Let's go," Nikara said, and started across the street at full run.

Danny followed.  So far, Nikara had been right about the patrols.  They
ran every hour, like clockwork.  Otherwise, there was no one here.

Every house was empty.

This neighborhood with its trimmed lawns, and flower gardens, and newly
painted small and old houses had always teemed with life.  A lot of the
people were elderly and spent most of their time outside.  Most had
owned their houses forever and took a lot of pride in them.

Now everyone was gone and the houses looked abandoned, even though the
flowers still bloomed.  The yards were getting ragged, and the
driveways were empty.  Danny wanted to have someone--anyone--open a
door and yell, "Hey, kid!  Don't you know you're not supposed to be
here?"

But no one did.

The doors remained closed and the blinds pulled down.  He ran up the
curb and onto the lawn of the white house, feeling as if he were
trespassing.

Nikara had already made it to the rhododendrons on the side of the
house.  Their pink flowers shook as he pushed past them toward the
trellis.

Danny took one more glance at the street.

Empty.

The cracked pavement seemed almost naked.  From this direction, though,
everything seemed normal.  Behind the ranch houses, he saw the
thirty-year-old manufactured homes that

marked the beginnings of his neighborhood, and behind that the
somewhat larger homes of the next development.

Only if he looked forward, toward the white house, was he reminded of
everything lost.

He slipped into the rhododendrons--large plants that had probably been
there since the houses were built--and felt the jutting branches
scratch his arms.  The pink flowers had no real smell, but the leaves
gave off a slightly unpleasant odor.  He had to push through the sturdy
lower branches to get to the trellis.

As he put his hand on the wood, Nikara said, "Careful.  It's wobbly."

Danny glanced up.  Nikara was already on the roof.  He was hanging his
head over the side, watching.

Danny took a deep breath and started to climb.  The trellis wasn't just
wobbly--the wood was rotten and weak.  He could feel it bending beneath
his weight.  A few years ago this wouldn't have been a problem, but
this last year he'd really grown.

He shimmied up it as quickly as he could, hearing one of the boards
snap just before he reached the top.

Nikara put a hand on Danny's back to help him up, then moved up to the
peak.

Danny lay on the roof for a moment, his heart pounding.  The shingles
felt gritty against his cheek.

"God," Nikara said.  "You should see this."

Danny pushed himself up.  The pitch of the roof was shallow--which was
why they'd chosen this house--and it took very little effort to climb
to the peak, where Nikara was now sitting.

Danny climbed, still slightly crouched so that his hands could brush
the shingles.  That way, he didn't have to look at the devastation
until he was ready.

"God," Nikara said again.  The word was coming out of him like an
involuntary prayer.

Danny sat down next to him, his feet resting on the other side of the
roof, the peak against his butt.  His hands gripped the rough surface.
He waited until he was braced before he looked up.

The blackness spread before him like a shadow across the land.  It made
everything look flat, even where Danny knew there were rolling hills,
slight inclines, and tiny valleys.  Then the blackness ended, and the
blue water of the Pacific sparkled in the sun.  The ocean looked
exactly the same.  Only it was as if someone had moved a new landscape
in front of it, a landscape without houses or stores or tourist
attractions; without restaurants or the Wharf or ships; without birds
or dogs or people.

His breath caught in his throat.  He might have said something--he
didn't know for certain.  He had gone into those businesses, walked
down streets now buried in blackness.  He had played at the water's
edge.

He had had friends in the neighborhoods covered in soot.

The wind was cooler up here and smelled of the sea.  The blackness had
no smell at all, at least not one he could detect.  A gust hit him, and
then another even colder gust, drying his sweat and covering his skin
in goose bumps.

"Can you see where Cort's house used to be?"  Nikara asked in a voice
Danny had never heard before.

Danny made himself look toward the south.  Cort had grown up with them,
but he lived about five blocks away.  He had stayed home sick that day,
April 13.  And when it became clear what parts of the area were
completely destroyed, Danny had asked his mother if she thought Cort
got away.

"No, honey," she had said.  She had tried to pull him into a hug, but
he wasn't a baby anymore.  He didn't need comfort.  When Nikara had
come over to the house the next day and asked the same question, Danny
had said, "What do you think?"  and neither of them mentioned Cort
again.

Until now.

Danny's grip on the roof grew tighter.  The wind was stinging his
eyes, filling them with tears.  Cort had rounded out their threesome.
He had been cautious when Nikara was reckless, the voice of reason when
Danny had one of his crazy ideas, and completely willing to tag along,
even on the silliest adventure.  In fact, Cort would have been sitting
beside them if he hadn't--melted--or whatever those things did to
someone.

If he hadn't died.

Danny shivered.  He would never see Cort again.  Or Cort's father, the
only father who was still at home among the three of them.

Or Cort's dog, Buddy.

Or Cort's house.

"Do you see it?"  Nikara asked.

"No," Danny said.  "I can't tell where it was at all."

He was amazed at how calm he sounded.  It was as if he were talking
about a landmark or a shop or something he had never seen before.  Not
a place where he had eaten dinner, where he and Nikara and Cort had
logged on to his parents' system and sent phony e-mails to all the
good-looking girls in class.

"You can see some of the foundations, if you look hard enough."
Nikara's voice was flat.  That was why it sounded so weird.

Danny squinted.  He could see the shapes of the houses beneath the
black dust, something that wouldn't have been as visible from the
ground.  Large squares here, large rectangles there, a tangle of rubble
between.

He rubbed his eye.  Damn the wind.

"I still can't pick out which house was his."

"Why does it matter so much?"  Danny asked.

"I don't know," Nikara said.  "It just does."

They looked at each other.  Nikara's eyes were red, too.  Cort was the
only friend they'd lost.  Their school was east of

the destruction and everyone they knew had been in class that day.
Except Cort.

A lot of kids lost homes, though.  And pets.  And parents.

"Do you think it hurt?"  The question came out as a whisper.  He was
surprised it even left his lips.

Nikara swallowed so hard his Adam's apple bobbed.  He hunched his
shoulders, then turned the movement into a shrug.  "They showed some
film on CNN.  That lady, in Europe--"

"Africa," Danny said.

"--she got caught in the black cloud and it dissolved her skin.  There
was blood everywhere and she was screaming" Nikara's voice trailed off.
He glanced at the blackness before them as if he were seeing it for the
first time.  "Yeah.  I think it hurt."

Danny closed his eyes.  He didn't want to think about Cort like that
lady, Cort on his couch, sick with the flu when suddenly the roof
disappeared, and this black cloud came at him Danny eyes flew open.
There was no black cloud.  Only black dust.  "They don't want people
walking in that stuff," he said.  "You think that's because it might
dissolve their feet?"

"I don't know," Nikara said.  He brought his knees up and rested his
chin on them, as if he were contemplating a problem.

The plan had been to look at the destruction and then maybe walk
through it.  Unspoken in all of it was that maybe they'd find something
of Cort's.  Maybe even Cort's house.  Maybe proof that Cort had lived
through it all.

But that wasn't possible.  Danny knew it now.  Even though he had seen
the destruction from a distance and on television, it wasn't the same
as sitting here, on the edge of it--an edge that was as arbitrary as
the teams Mr.  Goble chose in gym class.  If Cort's house had been five
blocks east, Cort would be sitting up here with them now.  Cort would
know if the black

dust was safe.  He'd know how much trouble they'd be in if the patrols
caught them.  He'd know everything.

"How much time do we have?"  Danny asked.

Nikara checked his wrist'puter.  "Ten minutes."

"We have to get down before that," Danny said.  "They could see us for
miles up here."

"If they're looking up," Nikara said.

"Where else would they look?"  Danny asked.  "The attack came from
above."

"I don't think they're expecting another attack," Nikara said.  "At
least not right away.  They'd be acting a whole lot different if they
were."

Still, thinking about patrols put Danny back on alert.  If the patrols
could see him from far away, he should be able to see them, too.  He
made himself look away from the black dust covering everything and
instead focused on the roads.

The army used the roads closest to the destruction.  They had also
built a few roads through it--long winding paths where the black dust
had somehow been cleared out.  Danny remembered his mother telling him
about that, and how she didn't approve of the army sending the dust
back in the air where it might do damage again.

He scanned those roads and saw nothing.  But on the concrete roads at
the edge, he saw vehicles moving like ants going back to their hill.
Nikara had said that the patrols were very regular--no one, apparently,
wanted to go back into the dust, but the government insisted it be
guarded.

Nikara was looking in the same direction Danny was.  "You know," Nikara
said as he squinted at the roads, "they've been riding through this
stuff.  It's got to be safe."

Danny shuddered.  He was getting cold on this roof.  "Maybe they wear
special suits or something."

"I've seen them," Nikara said.  "The first few days they wore masks,
but they haven't worn anything since."

Danny looked down.  The dust on the other side of the house glistened,
just a little.  He had never seen blackness glisten before.  It seemed
almost evil.

"Maybe they'll get sick later," Danny said.

"They would have done tests," Nikara said.

"My mother says you should never put too much trust in the government.
Some people even say the government is the cause of all this."

Nikara sighed.  "The aliens did this.  I'm going.  That's what we came
for."

"I thought we came to see it up close."

"You can't see it up close without getting in it."  Nikara snorted.
"Anybody knows that."

Danny didn't agree, but he knew better than to argue with Nikara when
he was in this kind of mood.  Nikara half slid, half walked to the edge
of the roof.

"Think it's too far to jump?"  he asked.

"Yes," Danny said.  He hadn't left the peak, hoping that would
discourage Nikara.

"If I hang off the gutter, I won't drop so far," Nikara said.

"If you break your leg and those things start eating you," Danny said,
"I'm not coming to get you."

Nikara looked at him over his shoulder.  "I didn't think you would."

Danny didn't know how Nikara meant that.  Did he mean Danny was a
coward?  Or that it was a sensible thing not to rescue someone who was
dissolving?

Nikara gripped the gutter and swung his legs off the roof.  Danny's
stomach tightened.  All he could see were Nikara's brown hands clinging
to the rusty metal.

Danny made his way across the roof.  He reached the edge just as Nikara
let go.

A cloud of dust rose around him, and Danny felt a cry leave his throat.
Not Nikara, too.  Danny wanted to close his eyes, so that he wouldn't
see a friend die, but he couldn't look away.

He was breathing shallowly, waiting for the dust to settle, hoping
he'd see Nikara in one piece.  Danny realized he had lied; if Nikara
was injured, Danny would do everything he could, short of jumping in
the dust himself, to get Nikara back on the roof.

Finally the dust stopped swirling.  Nikara was standing very still. His
face, his clothes, his hair were covered in black dust.  But his eyes
were his own.  And they were twinkling.

"It's like feathers!"  Nikara said.  "It tickles."

Danny frowned.  He thought the stuff would be stiff and bristly, like
rust flakes.  He didn't expect it to be soft.

"Come on down," Nikara said.

Danny put his hands on the gutter as he had seen Nikara do.  The metal
was cold against Danny's skin.  He was about to swing over, to join
Nikara, but something stopped him.

"Come on!" Nikara said.

Danny looked at the dust.  Some of it was still swirling near Nikara's
feet.  Every time Nikara moved, the dust would move, too.  Then Danny
let his gaze wander from Nikara to the house foundations.  One of those
was Cort's.  No one had said what the black stuff was.  Some of it had
come from those ships, yes, but some of it had to have the remains of
buildings in it.

When Danny's great-uncle Milton died, he'd been cremated, and Danny's
mom, as the only surviving relative, got the ashes.  She couldn't
decide whether to keep them or scatter them, so for a few weeks, Danny,
Nikara, and Cort would open the urn and look inside.

There were gray flakes--soft gray flakes because Danny had touched
them--mixed with bits of bone.  And that's what this black dust and the
rubble reminded him of.  Ashes, with a bit of bone.

Bile rose in his throat, and he had to swallow hard to keep it down.

"Danny," Nikara said.  "We don't have a lot of time.  "But Danny
couldn't swing himself off the roof.  Not and land in ashes.  Cort's
ashes.  One of his closest friends, forever reduced to dust and bone.

"You go," Danny said.

Nikara made a small sound of disgust and slogged through the blackness
toward Cort's house.  A cloud rose in his wake.  Danny watched as the
ashes mixed with ashes, and the dust with dust.

And right at that moment he knew that the aliens had to pay for what
they had done to Cort and everyone else.

Danny didn't know how.  But he knew they had to pay.  Cort and everyone
else mixed with this gray dust that spread out before him couldn't rest
until they did.

1

April 23,2018

7:30 p.m. Eastern Time

174 Days Until Second Harvest

The Oval Office smelled musty.  That was always the first thing
Secretary of State Doug Mickelson noticed about the place.  Then he
noted the large blue area rug with the emblem of the United States in
the center, the antique partner's desk beneath the large windows where
President Franklin did most of his work, and the white couches nearest
the door.  The room's oval shape wasn't that obtrusive--the first time
he'd been invited here, Mickelson had thought it would be--but the
relatively low ceiling and the comfortable furniture kept it from
feeling like a mausoleum, as so much of the White House did.

Still, all the years the building had stood in the District's damp heat
in the days before air-conditioning had taken their toll.  There was a
general mustiness about the whole building, something an army of
cleaning people couldn't seem to tame.  Once, when Mickelson mentioned
that the faint pervasive hint of mold played hell on his allergies, his
best friend, scientist Leo Cross, had suggested using nanotechnology to
clean it out.  Mickelson had thought it a good idea at the time.  Now,
thanks to the alien attack, he understood how nanotechnology

worked--had actually seen it in action--and he would rather live with
the mold.

He dropped his tall, muscled frame onto the couch, almost tempted to
put his feet up.  He couldn't remember being so worn out and so angry
at the same time.  Since the attack he'd had almost no sleep, and had
wanted to punch a dozen people, even though he was known for his
calmness under diplomatic fire.  He was just boiling mad that the
aliens had so easily destroyed so much of his home, his country, his
planet.

He was amazed the world had survived an alien attack.  Thank God it
looked as if humans had won when the aliens left, otherwise the world
would be coming apart in riots.  At the moment almost everyone on the
planet thought humanity had chased off the aliens.  Doug knew better.

So did President Franklin and about thirty other people around the
nation.  And maybe a few hundred more around the world.  But that was
going to change.

The aliens hadn't been chased off--they were just following a plan.  A
plan that was going to bring them right back to Earth for a second
attack as soon as their tenth-planet home got into position again.

And the fact that they were coming back had him even angrier.  And
scared at the same time.  Not for himself, but for the millions and
millions who would die in a second attack, not counting all the people
who would die in the panic that would sweep the world the moment
everyone knew the aliens were headed this way again.

Humanity, civilization as Mickelson knew it, wouldn't survive a second
round.  It was that simple.

Mickelson heard President Franklin in the narrow corridor off the
opposite side of the room, his braying Bronx accent impossible to miss.
Thayer Franklin had a patrician name, but that was the only thing
patrician about him.  His father was distantly related to some of the
best families in New England, but he'd married "down," or so the
pre-election news reports

had said, to a woman from a blue-collar family who'd gotten a
scholarship to Harvard.  That marriage had lasted long enough to
produce Franklin, and to prevent his spunky mother from finishing her
Ivy League education.  Franklin's father refused to pay child support,
and Cara Franklin went home to raise her child.

That was all in the official biography.  What wasn't, seemed incredibly
clear to anyone who met the small, dark-eyed, clear spoken mother of
the president.  She'd poured her ambition into him, and he'd responded.
Sometimes, Mickelson thought, the entire success story was an elaborate
way for Franklin to thumb his nose at his still-living, unrepentant
deadbeat father.

Now Franklin was faced with the largest crisis to ever face a president
Mickelson hoped the man was up for it.

Mickelson leaned his head back and closed his eyes.  Most of the time
over the past few days, when he did that, either in bed or on a plane,
he saw the images of the alien craft pouring the black clouds of
nanomachines over people, buildings, entire towns.  And those people
screaming in pain as the machines ate them alive, from the outside
inward.

It was the stuff of horror movies.  Skin eaten, blood spurting
everywhere.

Faces contorted in pain, covered in blood, skin gone.

Millions of dead.

Nightmares.

Nothing but nightmares.

"Napping on me, Doug?"  President Franklin's voice broke through the
images of the attack as he closed the door to his inner office behind
him.

"Hardly," Doug said, opening his eyes to see the intense gaze of his
friend.  "Every time I try to sleep I see the attack again."

Franklin dropped down into his normal chair, his back to his desk, and
nodded.  The exhaustion was clear around the man's black eyes and
wrinkled face.  Franklin had grown tired

looking over his first years in office, but this alien attack had
added years to his face.

"So do I, Doug," Franklin said.  "And to be honest with you, it's
making me damn angry."

"You and a lot of other people," Doug said.  He'd spent the last few
days on emergency trips to meet with heads of states, calming people,
letting them know something was going to be done.  "But everyone feels
so helpless, at least those who know about the aliens coming back
again."

"How many know?"  Franklin asked.

Doug shook his head.  "Not many at this point.  Less than a couple
hundred, but it won't take long for others to start figuring it out."

"And the rest of the world, those who don't know?"  Franklin asked.
"How do you see them taking it?"

"Shock," Doug said, used to having Franklin quiz him on common people's
reactions around the world.  "Mourning the dead.  And celebration that
the aliens are gone and that we won."

Franklin snorted.  "We didn't win.  I'm not sure we even really
bothered the bastards."

Mickelson couldn't agree more.

"Well," Franklin said, his voice turning cold and low.  "That's not
going to happen next time.  We're not going to just let them come here,
take what they want, and kill our people."

Mickelson knew this wasn't just another of Franklin's speeches.  He had
known Franklin long enough to see when all the political screens and
faces were gone and he was being the real Franklin.  And this was one
of those times.

But unless something major had changed in the last few hours while
Mickelson had been on the plane home from Great Britain, there wasn't
any way to stop the aliens that he knew of.

"Oh," Mickelson said, sighing and leaning back.  "I wish it were that
easy."

Franklin pinned Mickelson with his stare, the anger clearly being held
in check just below the surface.  "I've seen enough death over the past
week to last me a thousand lifetimes.  Those bastards aren't going to
do it again."

Mickelson sat forward and faced his president.  "You have a way to stop
them?"

"Damn right I do," Franklin said.  "We're going to blow that damn
planet of theirs right out of the system before they get another chance
to hurt us."

For a second Mickelson didn't understand exactly what the president was
telling him.  The words seemed to make no sense.

"We're going to attack them?"  Mickelson said.

Franklin smiled, but there was no merriment behind the smile or in his
eyes.  "You bet your ass we're going to," President Franklin said. "And
they're not even going to know what hit them."

April 24, 2018

8:10 a.m. Pacific Time

173 Days Until Second Harvest

Leo Cross clung to the edge of his seat, feeling the plastic bite into
his fingers.  His heart was pounding harder than usual.  He'd been in a
lot of helicopters and landed in a lot of strange places, but none of
the landings had ever made him nervous before.  It was the black dust
that unnerved him.  The black dust and the flat land where houses,
businesses, and people should be.

He glanced around the copter.  The pilot was concentrating on the path
before them.  His navigator, an Army man whose name Cross had already
forgotten, watched with tightlipped

determination.  Cross turned.  Behind him, Lowry Jamison looked
slightly queasy.

Jamison was a big man--a former college quarterback who would have gone
on to play pro ball if it weren't for his heroics in the Rose Bowl
several years back.  He'd twisted his knee with six minutes remaining.
The coach had wanted him out, but the second-string quarterback had
already been sidelined with a rotator cuff injury before the game.  The
third string was a freshman who'd never played in the regular season.
Jamison finished out the game, running fifteen yards to set up a field
goal, and giving his team the three points they needed to win.
Unfortunately, he'd torn cartilage in the knee, and never played ball
again.

Unfortunately for Jamison.  Fortunately for the rest of the world.  For
Jamison had a diabolical mind, and once he could no longer use it
toward a career in football, he turned his attention to physics.  He
worked for Nan Tech same as Portia Groopman, another member of Cross's
team.  Unlike Portia, Jamison didn't work on nanotechnology per se, but
on ways to make nanotechnology impossible to detect.

Right now, however, he didn't look like a man who knew how to hide
things already too tiny to be seen by the naked eye.  He looked like a
man who thought the helicopter was going to crash.

Cross had flown with Jamison before.  Jamison was not afraid of flying,
or even of helicopters.  He had the same reaction to this trip the rest
of them did.

The thing was, they were prepared.  They knew what they were going to
face.  And they had had warning as the copter brought them in from the
north.  They were following the coastline, looking at the ocean dash
against rocks.  They flew low enough that Cross could see homes built
on the mountainside, cars parked in the driveways, toys in the yards.
As they passed Santa Cruz, he watched the cars crawl on the highways
beside the tacky tourist traps.  There were more Army vehicles

on the roads than he had ever seen before.  Humvees, trucks-all green,
all moving swiftly.  Things looked normal here, but he doubted they
were.  He doubted things were normal anywhere in the world anymore.

The copter turned slightly, following the coastline inward as they
entered Monterey Bay.  The pilot, unable to talk because of the thrum
of the engine and the whap-whap-whap of the blades above them, turned,
tapped Cross on the shoulder, and pointed.  Cross leaned forward in his
chair and saw For a moment, he didn't know how to describe it.  He had
flown this way before, once in a low-flying private plane, and he still
remembered it: all the seaside towns nestled against the bay, the
sailing ships, the bright, blue ocean.  There were the remains of
canneries, some of them unable to be torn down because John Steinbeck
had written about them in the 1930s, and piers that went out into that
sparkling water.  The communities, from the air, seemed to blend into
one another, and he remembered thinking how lovely they were, how
perfect, how typically American West Coast.  The kinds of places where
people always wanted to live but never could.

Many of the communities remained.  Around the curve of the coastline,
he saw Castroville, Marina, and thenA shadow across the land.

The peninsula that provided the home for the city of Monterey was still
there, but instead of one of the most beautiful cities in California,
there was blackness, rubble, and nothing else.  No pier, no ships.

No people.

That was when Cross gripped his seat.  He was glad for the noise, the
constant roar that copters still made, when all other motorized
vehicles were built quieter and quieter.  He wasn't sure what sound he
made as he saw the destruction approach, but he knew it wasn't good.
Perhaps he moaned.  Perhaps he swore.  Perhaps he simply gasped.

All he knew was that a knot had formed in his throat.  Swallowing was
hard, and so was breathing.  His throat was so tight, and his emotions
so close to the surface, that he feared a deep breath would make him
lose what fragile control he had.

The blackness covered the coastline as far as his eye could see.

The copter was slowing down as it came in for its landing.  Cross's
grip on the seat grew tighter.  He had seen the dust, studied the dust,
even held bits of it in various labs back in Washington, D.C. The
television stations had shown images of the destruction for the past
ten days. Cross had seen satellite images, still photographs, infrared
images, and all sorts of spectral analyses.  But nothing had prepared
him for being here, in person, seeing the destruction up close.

Perhaps he had been too busy to let it sink in before now.  Yes, he had
watched as the alien ships released the clouds of black dust over six
large regions worldwide.  The first attack had occurred in the Amazon,
Central America, and in central Africa.  He and Brittany Archer, the
head of the Space Telescope Science Institute--a beautiful woman who
had miraculously become his lover through all of this--had watched the
attack in the media room of his D.C. home.

They had felt helpless, even though they had been involved with the
Tenth Planet Project from the beginning.  In fact, it was Cross who had
put the world scientists--and ultimately, the world leaders--on alert
that something would cause worldwide devastation sometime that year. He
had seen the same result in the archaeological record every 2,006
years, and had known it was coming.  At first, however, he hadn't known
what or from where.

The copter headed toward a white space in the middle of all that
blackness.  The military had cleared off a section of land on the
Monterey peninsula, probably where the Wharf used to be.  He didn't
know how they had gotten rid of the black dust--whether they had
scraped it off into the sea or whether

they had scooped it up and saved it for later study.  But as the
copter approached, he could see the white patch like a ray of light in
the middle of a very, very dark night.

He let out a small sigh.  Monterey hadn't been destroyed until the
second attack.  The world governments had united, mostly through the
United States, and had fought the aliens as best they could.  A number
of lucky shots in the Amazon had destroyed alien ships.

The aliens had retaliated by targeting highly populated areas: South
Vietnam, central France, and this part of California.  The images had
been even more horrifying than the first time.  Cross had sat alone in
his media room, staring at people who were trying to escape: some on
foot, others by car.  The traffic had been backed up for miles, and
most of those people hadn't escaped in time.

The copter hovered over the ground.  Its propeller blades whipped the
nearby black dust into the air.  Cross ducked as the dust hit the
plastic windshields, although he had been reassured that it was
harmless.  It had been through test after test.

In fact, he had already suspected it was harmless.  It had been his
friend, Edwin Bradshaw, who had discovered the little nanomachines that
the aliens sent down.  Portia Groop man, Nan Tech twenty-year-old whiz
kid, had determined that the nanomachines had two functions: collecting
and storing organic material.

That was why bits of metal rose from the dust like dinosaur skeletons,
why the concrete foundations of buildings remained.  Only the organic
material had been destroyed.

The gray dust was just a byproduct.

The dust coated the windows as the copter bumped to a gentle landing.
The pilot shut off the copter.  He had warned them earlier to wait
until the blades stopped whirring before leaving the copter--not for
safety's sake, but so that they wouldn't get blinded by the swirling
dust.  Cross had been

told that the ocean dampness had pasted a lot of it down, but not
enough to keep the force of the copter winds from stirring it up.

"It's something, isn't it?"  the pilot shouted as the blades slowed.

"You could say that."  Lowry Jamison sounded gruffer than usual, as if
his throat was as tight as Cross's.

"Saw you duck, Doc," the pilot said to Cross.

"I knew it couldn't get in here, but it still unnerved me."

"It bothers all of us," the pilot said.  "I got this gig because I'm
the only one who can land here safely.  Everyone else blinks at the
wrong time.  Too many images of dissolving people, if you know what I
mean."

Cross did know.  The images had been repeated so many times on
television that the idea of having the black dust touch him made his
skin crawl.  Still, he was here to sift through it, to find, if he
could, some of the nanomachines that he believed the aliens left
behind.

"Dust's settling," the Army man said.

It was, but it seemed to be taking forever.  The black stuff was so
thin, so light that even when stuck together by moisture it floated up
like carbon flakes from a burned building.

The remains of everything organic.  Or, as one of the scientists in the
Project had called it: the useless stuff, the waste.  The organic
material the aliens believed they couldn't use.

Cross opened the copter door, disturbing more dust.  His task would be
more difficult than he had thought.

He climbed outside and stepped onto the clear patch.  It was bigger up
close than he had thought it would be.  They had actually landed on
what had once been a parking lot.

The smell of the sea, sharp, salty, and tangy, surprised him.  Somehow
he had thought the dust would have an odor all its own.  If it did, he
couldn't smell it.  The air was fresh, probably fresher than it would
have been if Monterey were still here.

The thought made him sad.  He moved away from the copter and stared at
the devastation around him.  He had expected it to be completely flat,
a level black surface as far as the eye could see.  But it wasn't.  He
could actually make out shapes: the steel reinforcements in old
buildings; the concrete supports that stood, like columns, in the sea;
the metal hulls of boats that had washed ashore.  He could see, without
much effort, the layout of the city, the Wharf, the harbor.

He could see what once had been.

That, actually, was his strength.  Even though Cross had degrees in a
number of areas, his specialty was archaeology.  He had been trained in
using his imagination to determine, from the smallest of hints, what a
culture--or a place--had been like.

It didn't take much imagination here.

"Damn," Jamison said.  He had stepped out of the copter and stopped
beside Cross.  Cross didn't know how long Jamison had been standing
there.

"It's going to be a needle in a haystack," Cross said, turning the
conversation immediately to business.  He didn't want to focus on what
had been.  If they did that, they might not be able to work.

"We knew it was going to be hard," Jamison said.  "I just didn't
imagine it would be like this."

Cross hadn't either.  He had imagined stepping into the dust, using the
device Jamison had designed, and searching for one of the nanomachines
that he hoped had been left by the aliens.  But he hadn't imagined
walking around metal bicycle frames and bronze fisherman statues.

"I guess we should start," he said.

Jamison nodded.  He handed Cross a thin wand with a large glass base.
It looked like a combination of an old-fashioned metal detector and a
vacuum cleaner designed to clean stairs.  But it was much, much more
than that.  It had been invented to find machines too small to be seen
by the human eye.

"I hope it works," Jamison said.

"Me, too."  He had only used it once, and that had been in the R&D room
at Nan Tech  The wands, as Jamison called them, were prototypes.  In
fact, Jamison and his team had modified an existing device that they
hadn't planned on selling.

Jamison's team specialized in hiding nanotechnology, in making it
completely undetectable to any modern machine.  Jamison had told Cross
that in confidence, assuming that Cross had the same high-level
security clearance as most people who visited the R&D section of Nan
Tech  Even though Nan Tech was a private firm, the bulk of its Secrecy
Division, as Jamison playfully called it, was funded by the military.

The fear had been, before the aliens had come, that other countries
would develop a series of nanoweapons, things that would destroy
electrical systems.  Yet the nanoweapons would be undetectable, and
even if they were traced to the source, they would be impossible to
find and remove.

Military intelligence had shown that no other country was close to
developing anything like that, so after the initial wave of research on
finding nanoweapons, the research shifted to making and hiding
nanoweapons.  Jamison's division was split: half the division
discovered ways to hide the weapons while the other half discovered
ways of finding them.

So, after Cross got a chance to think about it, he went to Nan Tech for
help.  Finding the nanomachines--an actual nano machine, not a
fossilized one from a previous visit by these aliens--might provide a
way to understand what they were fighting.

And better yet, fight back.

That was what Cross thought about the most.  Stopping the next attack
and fighting back.  Humanity had to.  There was no choice.

In spite of himself, Cross shuddered.

Cross knew that he and his team weren't the only ones working on ways
to fight the aliens.  There were branches of military all over the
world working on ways to stop the alien ships, but Cross and his team
were focusing on stopping what the aliens dropped.  The
nanoharvesters.

Nonetheless, here in the field, Cross felt out of place.  He wasn't a
hands-on technology guy, and he'd only recently learned about
nanomachines.  He was in Monterey because he knew what the nanomachines
looked like, at least in fossilized form.  He had been studying them
since before the alien ships arrived.  People like Jamison could study
them as well, but they didn't have quite as much experience as Cross
did.

And, in fact, the one man who had more experience than Cross--his
friend Edwin Bradshaw--was in Brazil with Portia Groopman, the genius
of nanotechnology, using the same devices to try to find alien
machines.

He hefted the wand Jamison had given him.  It was light, so light that
it felt as if he were holding a toy.  Only the glass base gave it any
weight at all.

When Cross had tested the device back at Nan Tech Jamison had
apologized for the glass.  "It's more tempered than bulletproof glass,"
he had said, "but it does make the wand heavier than we want.  We've
just found that glass is the best substance for the base."

Heavier.  The wand wasn't heavy at all.  In fact, if it were any
lighter, Cross might forget that he was holding anything.

Jamison clutched his wand as if it were a golf club and he were staring
at the first tee on a complicated hole.  With his other hand, he shaded
his eyes.

"This stuff goes on forever," he said.  He sounded mournful.

Cross nodded.

"You know the odds against finding a single nanomachine?"  Jamison
asked.

In fact, Cross knew them exactly.  "They're not as slim as you might
think," he said.  "Because there is a lot of ground

that got covered, the aliens had to use billions and billions of those
nanomachines.  Even if they left one in a million behind, there should
be hundreds of thousands of them scattered in this dust."

"Machines smaller than a speck of dust."  Jamison sighed.  "Just
because we think they're here doesn't mean these wands will find
them."

Cross knew that.  They'd had that discussion back at Nan Tech.  "Why're
you getting pessimistic on me now, Lowry?"

Jamison didn't answer.  He just stared at the blackness in front of
them.

Cross understood.  Over the years, he had stood on hundreds of sites of
devastation--devastation that had ruined civilizations thousands of
years before.  He had sifted through the archaeological record, held
black dust compressed by centuries, and wondered at it.

He had never faced it in real time, never thought what it meant--at
least not in real terms--to the survivors.

Cross clapped Jamison on the back.  "You've faced tough odds before."

"Yeah," Jamison said softly.  "But I always knew someone would win the
game."

"You know that now," Cross said.

Jamison looked at him, his broad face empty of all emotion, but his
eyes were alive with something.  Fear?  Probably.  Cross suspected that
emotion was underneath all of their facades.

Fear and anger.

"Right now, we're the underdogs," Cross said.  "And this is our Hail
Mary pass.  We're going to fight back and win this."

Jamison smiled.  "Your analogy sucks."

Cross shrugged.  "I'm not much of a football fan."

"It shows."  Jamison pressed a small area at the tip of the wand, then
pressed the base against the black dust.  Dust swirled within the glass
base, just like it would in a vacuum cleaner,

and then it rose around Jamison.  He coughed and shut off the wand.

His face was covered with dust.

"We need some kind of suit," he said.

"Already thought of that."  Cross nodded toward the copter.  The Army
guy was there, holding a box.  "You just got ahead of me a little.  I
didn't expect you to turn that thing on so quickly."

"Hey, if we're going to go for the Hail Mary pass," Jamison said,
"we've got to move quickly."

"Yes, we do," Cross said.  More than he wanted to admit.  Because in
one hundred and seventy-three days, the alien ships would be back.  And
if Earth didn't find a way to fight them, the ships would again take
what they wanted.  Cross felt every second tick away, as if second by
second, the blood was dripping from the body of humanity.

April 25, 2018

10:12 Universal Time

172 Days Until Second Harvest

Commander Cicoi stood on the balcony of Command Central, overlooking
the valley below.  Malmur was a beautiful planet--or it had been, in
the times before.  He had once been privileged to see the Stored
Memories in the sacred vault, images of Malmur when it had its own sun,
when it had life every day of every year.

Now the valley below him was just a cut in the dirt, with thousands of
solar panels gathering the life-giving energy covering its slopes.
There were suggestions of the past.  The river that had once flowed
through the valley left an impression time could not erase.  Smooth
stones covered that area

under the panel, and a winding depression suggested where the river
had once been.

If Cicoi brought down all but two of his eye stalks he could almost see
the water flowing, as it did in the Stored Memories.  But try as he
might, he could not imagine the greenery that had once surrounded the
river, nor the creatures--long sacrificed--that flew overhead or bathed
within its depths.

It was said that the Malmuria began their existence in the once-fertile
oceans of Malmur, oceans that, like the rivers, were long gone.  The
tentacles and eye stalks that were such an important part of their race
once had different purposes within the water.

So said the Keepers of the Stored Memories, the only ones allowed to
study the past for its own sake.  Most Malmuria spent their brief time
awake struggling for survival, procreating, repairing damage, and
eating enough to make it through the next period of darkness.

Once, so said the Keepers, the Malmuria were a magnificent people. They
had vast cities and miraculous technologies.  They thrived on a healthy
planet that orbited its own sun.

But a disaster struck, a disaster so horrible that none were allowed to
speak of it, even now.  The only way that the Malmuria survived was due
to the wisdom of the Ancients.  They foresaw the disaster in time to
develop a way to survive it: they changed the entire planet into what
it was now.  And survive was what Malmur did.

Now the planet had a strange orbit in a different sun's system.
Malmur's survival depended on a rigorous structure of harvesting that
began early in the First Pass near the sun's third planet, ceased as
Malmur disappeared behind the sun, and continued when Malmur passed the
third planet again on the way back out.  Then Malmur was plunged into
darkness, a darkness so long and terrible nothing could survive on the
planet's surface.  The Malmuria themselves went into a cold

sleep in specially designed units and were awakened only after the
First determined it was time.

Cicoi did not know how the First knew it was time, but in each Pass
that Cicoi had experienced, the First had awakened the population at
the exact moment.

Cicoi had been among the early arisers for a hundred Passes now.  He
was considered one of the young leaders, someone who would come into
his strengths a hundred Passes in the future.

He was not prepared to be a Commander now.

Cicoi's upper tentacles rose and fell.  His eye stalks floated around
his face before he turned all of them to the valley below.  He had to
remember--it was important to remember-that once that valley had been
great.  And now it was no different from the rest of Malmur.  Covered
in black solar panels, dark and dusty and empty underneath the
panels.

When Cicoi awoke on this Pass, he was a general, yes, but a young
general.  And since then he had been promoted.

He had become, with no special training, Commander of the South.  He
had known that he was in line for this position.  But he had expected
ten Passes of instruction, ten Passes of apprenticeship, and ten Passes
of guided rule before he ever took over the position from his
predecessor.

But his predecessor, and his predecessor's generals, had all reported
to the recycler without having to be instructed to do so.  They were no
longer useful as living beings.  They were killed, their bodies changed
to much needed fuel and stored until the long journey into the dark
night.

Such was the price of failure.

Cicoi's tentacles drooped further.  The very thought of the losses
overwhelmed him.

In all of Cicoi's memory, indeed in the memory of all Mal muria, even
the Keepers of the Stored Memories, no ship had ever been lost during a
harvest.  No disaster had ever struck on the third planet.  Always, the
Sulas had been sent and

retrieved.  Sometimes the creatures of the third planet had fought,
but never in a meaningful way.

This time, the creatures had developed into a stronger people.  They
had technology, which they had never had before.  They were able to
destroy seven ships.

It was a disaster of untold proportions.  Even now, when he should be
examining the losses, trying to compensate for them, Cicoi preferred to
stare into the valley below and imagine times long past.  For he knew
what the losses meant, just as all Malmuria did.

They meant that thousands of his kind would not be able to wake up on
the next Pass due to the lack of ships to harvest food.  They meant
that thousands of his kind on this Pass would have reduced rations,
making the long, cold sleep much more dangerous.  The birthrate would
be reduced for many Passes to come, until a balance was again reached
with the number of harvester ships and the population.

He would not make those decisions.  He would not decide whose rations
would be cut or whose chance at procreation would be denied.  Nor would
he decide which workers had to forgo rest in order to repair the damage
already done, to build more Sulas, and to attempt--since it had not
been attempted in a thousand Passes--to build more ships.

No.  His task was in some ways ethically easier, but practically much
more difficult.

He had to figure out how to minimize those losses.  He had to find ways
to improve the yield on the next Pass, to harvest enough food with the
equipment they had so that some of the losses below would not be as
severe.

If he had the experience his predecessor had, he might make the right
decisions.  But Cicoi was new to the job, without training, and fearful
of the consequences.  He had seen the battles with the creatures from
the third planet.  He realized now what he had not seen on the last
several Passes.

These were not primitives.  These were creatures that had in common
with Malmuria a mind and a heart.  They too had died defending their
lands.  They had technology, and with it, a memory.  They would do all
they could to fight again.

He could not assume that they would be as easily defeated this time.

At least the energy screens and panels were working at full efficiency.
Malmur was taking all that it could from this sun, storing it, and
keeping it so that the planet would survive the dark part of its long
orbit.

Cicoi raised his eye stalks toward the sky.  The light that Malmur
received in this, its nearest contact to the sun, was thin and pale and
extremely weak.  Still, the brightness all but overwhelmed him.  He
pocketed seven of his eye stalks and continued to look above.  Strange
to think that something so simple as light, something so small as heat,
would affect a world like theirs.

This was the only time in the entire Wakening Cycle mat he could stand
on the balcony without the warmers being activated.  The balcony was
usually not used because warmers were a waste of energy.

He usually valued his time here.

But not today.  Today he knew how much it cost.

He turned and glided toward the doors.  They eased open.  His
assistants were standing on their circles, working their floating
units, attempting to maximize effort.  His Second was bent over a
representation of the third planet, looking for the lush est region,
the place with the fewest creatures and the most food.

Cicoi was beginning to believe such places did not exist any longer.

As he glided to his circle in the center of the room, his assistants
rose on the tips of their lower tentacles and raised their eye stalks
so that all faced him.  He waved a careless eyestalk at them all.

"I thank you for the honor," he said.  "But continue your work."

He would continue his.  He un pocketed two more eye stalks and raised a
small image of the third planet for his own use when he heard ten soft
chimes.

Irritation made his lower tentacles curl.  Only he could ring the
chimes, and then only when he had an emergency.  He raised all of his
eye stalks and bent them in displeasure at his assistants.

They had flattened themselves on the floor, tentacles covering each
other in proper pattern.

The chimes sounded again, ten times, and as he heard each, he realized
that these were not his chimes.  They were too high-pitched, too
warm.

Too old.

A shiver made his eye stalks stand on end.  His assistants lowered
themselves farther.  At first, they had apparently thought, as he had,
that the chimes had come from him.  But on the second chiming, they
realized, as he had, that the chimes had come from a higher
authority.

Indeed, the highest authority.

The Elders.

Cicoi let his own lower tentacles slither outward.  Nothing was normal
about this Awakening.  Nothing was going as it should.

He had never heard of a summoning by the Elders.  Not in a hundred
Passes.

The Elders were the survivors, the brains of the Ancients who had first
designed Malmur for its journey across interstellar space.  When Malmur
was knocked out of its orbit around its original sun, it was the Elders
who devised the plan that had saved them all.  To make sure Malmur
survived its centuries-long travels across deep space, the Elders left
their bodies and only lived in an energy-free form, almost

pure thought, in the center of Malmur.  They had not communicated with
any leader since the very first cycle of this new star.

Some even said the Elders had allowed themselves to be recycled long
ago, that the Elders no longer watched over the Malmuria, that the
Malmuria were on their own.

And many of the dissenters used as proof the loss of seven ships, and
the disaster that lay ahead.

Again the chimes sounded.  Cicoi pocketed all but one of his eye stalks
His lower tentacles were splayed across the floor.  He could not cower
here, like his assistants.  He was a young leader no longer.  He was
Commander of the South, and those chimes were for him.

If tradition was to be followed, and it would be, then the series of
chimes would ring ten times.  If he was not in the Elders Circle by the
last of the chimes, he would no longer hold his position as Commander
of the South.

He was tempted.  He had lost the arrogance that had made him one of the
youngest generals in the fleet.  He knew that he had been promoted past
his skills, that the tasks laid out for him had defeated a better
person.

But Cicoi was not a coward.  Slowly he slid his tentacles beneath him.
Then he wrapped his upper tentacles around his body and glided from the
room.

That the Elders had sought him out worried him, but he knew the summons
was based on the loss of ships, the destruction that had happened on
the third planet.  In that, he found comfort.  The Malmuria still had
their greatest minds to help them solve the problems.

No.  That was not what worried him.  What worried him was the fact that
the situation had become so grave, the Elders had again taken interest
in Malmur.  Until now, they had been content to allow the Malmuria to
handle their own problems.

The Elders must have felt that this problem was beyond theMalmuria's
skills.  So the situation was as extraordinary as Cicoi feared it
was.

And his worst fear, the one he could barely admit to himself, was that
the situation was so extraordinary, not even the Elders would know how
to make things right.

2

April 26,2018

1:13 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time

171 Days Until Second Harvest

For two days, Leo Cross had been working in the swirling black dust.
His skin still crawled when he thought about where the dust had come
from, but he thought about it less often.

He was standing in the center of what had once been a populated area.
He wasn't familiar enough with Monterey to know exactly what the area
was, or who had populated it, and for once, he was glad he didn't
know.

He wore an environmental suit provided by the Army, but instead of a
gas mask, he wore a simple doctor's mask over his mouth and nose.  His
eyes were covered with welder's goggles, and he had a hat with flaps
that covered his ears.  The dust still got into everything--his
clothing, his shoes, even under his fingernails--but not in the
quantity he had first feared.  Even though he knew the short-term
effects of this stuff were negligible, he was worried about the long
term.

If the human race had a long term coming to it.

Jamison was working about a block away.  They had discovered that, if
they worked side by side, the dust cloud was almost unmanageable.
Because the wands hadn't been designed

for work in such fine material, the slight pressure with which the
wands sorted through the dust created a cloud.  Cross discovered that,
unless he shut off his wand for nearly five minutes, the dust wouldn't
settle.  Even though the days had been sunny, he had felt as if he were
working in twilight.  What light he did get was filtered through the
blackness and felt ominous.  The times in the day when the ocean breeze
picked up and cleared the dust clouds faster were the best.

It didn't help that the wand jammed a lot.  Large items like snaps and
zippers from clothing, pins that had once been in someone's hip, or
even--God help him--dental fillings jammed the machine hourly.  He
actually began making a pile of the stuff on the first day and quit
when the pile had become a mound.

He didn't like to think about what it symbolized.  All those lives
lost.  So many that the U.S. government was now saying it doubted it
could account for all of them.  There were no bodies left to identify.
Whenever people were reported missing from that particular area, they
were considered dead.  It was the only way the government could deal
with the numbers.  It also prevented a ton of lawsuits that survivors
were going to file against the insurance industry.

Although Cross knew those lawsuits would get filed, no self-respecting
insurance company covered its clients for "death resulting from alien
attack."

He shook his head.  His humor had become mordant, probably due to a
lack of sleep.  He quit at sundown, just as Jamison did, but every time
he closed his eyes, he could hear the clinking and then silence that
resulted whenever something got stuck in the wand.  That first night,
he had slept and dreamed of finding fingers, or bones, or eyes when he
went to clear the jam.

He had awakened, a scream buried in his throat, and found it difficult
to sleep soundly again.  It didn't surprise him to see Jamison up as
well.  The two of them were now trading a stack

of quarters back and forth from their penny-ante midnight poker games,
neither of them wanting to admit that anything was better than sleep.

Cross's shoulders hurt, and so did the small of his back, but he kept
working.  Neither he nor Jamison had found one of the nanomachines yet,
but he knew they would.

A hand touched Cross's shoulder and he jerked.  He turned to see
Jamison, dust covering his mask and goggles, indicating with his head
that it was time for lunch.

Eating lunch was almost as difficult as sleeping, but Cross knew he had
to do at least one.  If he went without food and sleep he would be of
no use to anyone.

He shut off the wand and let the dust settle.  It floated around him
like ash on the air.  If he breathed just right, he could keep some of
the flakes airborne.  The entire scenario freaked him out.

He waited until the flakes settled slightly, blown on a slight breeze
to his right, revealing the blue sky above him and the miles of
blackness in front of him.  Somewhere in all of that, a single
nanomachine, smaller than anything he could imagine himself making,
waited.  Maybe more than a single one.

He had to find it.

He turned, felt the dust swirl around his feet, and looked at the
ocean.  Its blueness met the blueness of the sky at the horizon.  Even
if the aliens came and harvested again, destroying any possibility for
mankind to continue on the Earth, the ocean would still be here,
reflecting beautifully toward the sky.

He found comfort in that.

"Come on, Leo!"  Jamison shouted.

One of the trucks had arrived with the afternoon grub.  Usually Jamison
and Cross had to slog to the nearest base.  But this time, Jamison was
eating a burger from the side of the truck, looking like a chimney
sweep at a tailgate party.

The image made Cross smile.  He walked carefully through the gunk until
he reached the edge of the road.  Then he waited

for the dust to settle again.  No sense in getting it on Jamison's
food.

Cross's stomach was growling.  He'd only had a banana for breakfast,
and only because he knew he had to eat something.  He barely remembered
dinner the night before.  Some spaghetti like thing in the mess hall.
Mostly he hadn't eaten.  He had pushed the food around pretending to
eat.

A burger actually sounded good.

It sounded normal.

An Army officer sat inside the truck with the door open.  He was
eating, too.  The burgers were wrapped in aluminum with a fast-food
logo on the side.  He took a bacon cheeseburger, still warm, from the
bag, and some soggy French fries.  They tasted like a bit of salted
heaven.

The officer, a blond man in his early twenties, handed Cross a Coke.

Cross took it and drank.  The lemony sweetness tasted good, too.  He
had to take better care of himself.

He was halfway through the cheeseburger when the officer spoke.

"Dr.  Cross?"

"Mmm?"  Cross hated answering when his mouth was full.

"That's him," Jamison said, reaching around him for another burger.
"Damn, this is fine food."

Cross swallowed.  "Is this what football players consider gourmet?"

"Only if it has catsup," Jamison said, unwrapping the burger and taking
a huge bite.

Cross wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.  "Did you need me for
something?"  he asked the officer.

The officer nodded.  He looked even younger than twenty, with his blond
crew cut and his flaming red sunburn.  His eyes had shadows beneath
them, though, just like everyone else who worked on this project.  It
was their version of the thousand-yard stare.

"I wish I could say I was only here to bring you lunch, but you're
wanted in Washington, sir, and I'm not allowed to leave until I take
you with me."

Jamison shot him a look.  Cross took a final bite of his burger, then
set the rest of it down.  It no longer tasted as good.

"I've already told them I'm staying here," Cross said.

"I'm not supposed to take no for an answer.  General Maddox's orders,
sir."

The officer said General Maddox's name as if she were God.  And maybe
to him she was.  She was one of the members of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, and also a representative on the panel that formed the Tenth
Planet Project.  She had, during the Project's existence, kept it on
track and given it validity throughout the military structure.  She had
also come up with the only game plan that had allowed them to destroy
enemy ships.

She was justifiably famous.

She was also an absolute hard-ass whom Cross had tangled with more than
once.

"Did she say why?"  Cross asked.

"Something about you being the vision of the Tenth Planet Project."

He blinked.  The burger he had eaten sat like a lump in his stomach. He
had been the vision behind the Tenth Planet Project.  He had been the
push to get the world governments to do something, anything, before the
tenth planet arrived.  It had been his foresight that had enabled them
to find the planet in the first place.

The tenth planet had an elliptical 2006-year orbit that took it into
the very depths of space.  Unlike other recurring events in the solar
system, from Halley's comet on down, the tenth planet's orbit was so
long that only archaeological records held its secret.  There was no
one alive who remembered it, and there were few written records about
it--and certainly no written records from anyone who understood it.

Cross had seen the archaeological record, and had managed to tie it,
through astroarchaeology, to something that happened in the sky.  He
had used his friend Doug Mickelson, the secretary of state, to open
doors that would otherwise have remained closed.

That was why Clarissa Maddox called Cross the vision of the Tenth
Planet Project.

"I think I'm more useful here," he said.

"You can argue with the kid all you want," Jamison said, "but he's not
going to stand up to Maddox for you.  You'll have to fly back to D.C.
to do it on your own."

Cross shook his head.  "I'm not beyond my usefulness here."

"We can do this.  I can train someone else to use the wand," Jamison
said.

"Yes, but I am the one familiar with the fossils.  I'm the one--"

"We'll know it when we see it," Jamison said.  "If we have any
questions, I can always e-mail or call you.  Chances are, they need you
for some bogus meeting, and you'll be back here when it's done.  Trust
me, going is easier than fighting a member of the Joint Chiefs."

Cross sighed.  He was just getting tired of meetings in which everyone
rehashed all the facts that they didn't know.  He found it even more
discouraging than digging through this dust and finding fillings that
had, until a few weeks ago, been a part of someone's mouth.

"You're not going to let me off the hook either, are you?"  Cross
asked.

Jamison finished his second burger and tossed the wrapper in the bag.
"If I'd known this was why you were avoiding your link, I'd've been on
your butt in an instant.  This is a needle-ina-haystack project no
matter how you spin it, Leo.  And you don't know what they're going to
discuss in Washington.  They might need you more there than we do
here."

"I think I know," Cross said.  "It's just another meeting."

"If it were just another meeting, don't you think your colleagues would
let you stay out here?"

Cross looked at him.  Jamison was probably right.

This was a meeting of the Tenth Planet Project, and even though Cross
had been to a dozen meetings since the aliens left, none of them had
been of the original Tenth Planet group.  The meetings had been for
other things, crisis things, with some or none of the members of the
Tenth Planet Project.

That alone made this coming meeting different.

He knew it.  He was just avoiding it.  And he couldn't any longer. That
was what he had been telling his colleagues: no one had time to shut
their eyes anymore.  And yet he was trying to do it, too.

It was hard to look clearly at something that could destroy life as he
knew it.

"All right," he said to Jamison.  "But you call me the instant you find
something."

Jamison mock saluted, a goofy grin on his face.  "I'll call you in a
nanosecond, sir."

"You know," Cross said, smiling for the first time in a while, "I
believe you will."

April 27, 2018

18:05 Universal Time

170 Days Until Second Harvest

Commander Cicoi had only been in Elders Circle once before, several
Passes ago, as he got a tour of Command Central.  He had just been made
general, and it was customary to let all generals know what they were
defending.

He had thought it odd that the Commanders believed the 43

generals were defending buildings.  Cicoi had always thought he was
defending Malmuria.

Elders Circle was deep within the bowels of Command Central, ten layers
below the tenth public layer.  The Waiting Chamber was icy cold, even
for Malmur, and the lighting was thin, activated when the first
tentacle crossed the threshold.  The Waiting Chamber was done in black;
the Waiting Circles, dark spots on an already dark floor.

The Commander of the North was already in the room, on the Waiting
Circle that designated his position.  The Commander of the North was
the oldest of the Commanders, the only one of the main Commanders who
did not lose his life after the disaster.  He was large, as most elder
Malmuria were, but his tentacles were graying at the tips.  Someday,
his upper tentacles would be gray and useless, his lower nearly solid
stumps, and he would lose his position through sheer immobility.

It was a fate that awaited them all, a fate that Cicoi was not looking
forward to.

The Commander of the North raised a single eyestalk, turned it, and
peered at Cicoi.  "We await only the Commander of the Center, then."

Cicoi nodded.  The Commander of the Center was in a tenuous position.
He had risen through the ranks, as the rest of them had, but had done
so over the objections of the Brood Nest females.  The females, though
a younger group, had made it known that they did not accept the results
of the last harvest.  They were clamoring for one of theirs to become a
Commander, even though they had no military experience.

The clamor was coming from the Center, from a group of females who
believed that all decisions should consider the impact on the nestlings
and the families, and the future of the race.  Some of the youngest
females, barely out of the nest, their tentacles newly sprouted,
believed they should get military training just like the males.

Fortunately this rebelliousness had not spread to the other segments.
In fact, the Commanders had tried to keep news of this uprising quiet,
so that the other females would not learn of it.  The females would be
busy enough tending the broods and making the food harvested by the
Sulas last long enough to compensate for the shortages.

The final set of chimes were ringing as the Commander of the Center
entered the Waiting Chamber.  He seemed diminished somehow, as if
command had shortened him and damaged his tentacles.

He slid onto his circle, his head bowed, all but two of his eye stalks
pocketed.  More problems in the Center then.  Cicoi did not want to
know about them.

Cicoi stood on his own circle, head bowed.  His tentacles were at his
side in proper respectful position.  He stood on the tips of his lower
tentacles.  He had pocketed nine of his eye stalks When facing the
Elders, the ancient instructions said that no more than two eye stalks
should be showing.  That, of course, was different from the circle of
respect for their betters that the Malmuria formed around their faces
with all ten eye stalks  It felt awkward and uncomfortable.  Cicoi had
to work to keep the single eyestalk from floating freely and looking
too closely at things it should not see.  The room darkened for a
moment, and then ten bells rang.  Cicoi felt a sheen of nervous
moisture form on his outliner.  A waste of energy, but he could not
stop it.

Then the floor whitened and dropped away.  The standing circles were
the only support.  If Cicoi stepped off his, he would fall into white
nothingness.

Slowly his circle lowered and, he noted with his uncontrollable
eyestalk, so did the other two.  The Commanders of the Center and North
were holding their positions as if a single movement would hurt them.

In exasperation at his own lack of control, Cicoi pocketed his last
eyestalk and let the circle take him down in darkness.  Only when he
felt the circle bounce to a stop did he release an eyestalk--a
different eyestalk.

He had sight just in time to watch the room above, where they had been
standing only a moment before, disappear.  The ceiling closed, leaving
them in this expansive luminescence.

It was so bright to his single eye that Cicoi could not make out the
details in the room.  Except that this vast chamber had a slight breeze
and was hotter than any other place he had ever been on Malmur.

Was the energy expended here some of the energy brought to the planet
through the solar panels?  Or was there something else going on?

He raised a second eyestalk, keeping it in rigid control.  He noted
that the Commanders of the North and Center had their eye stalks
pointed in two different directions.  He did the same.

Then, from the depths below, creatures rose.  They were shaped like
Malmuria, but they were just black shadows, almost outlines of the
shape of Malmuria.  All of their eye stalks were floating around their
heads in an uncontrolled fashion, and their tentacles waved like a
child's before the child learned discipline.

One of the creatures assumed the front position.  Cicoi saw that the
rest, at least twenty, formed a row behind.  He turned one of his eye
stalks  There were others behind him.  Perhaps fifty Elders in all.

It was the force of their presence that kept this chamber warm.  Cicoi
wanted to hunch forward like the Commander of the Center, but he did
not allow himself to do so.  To express fear or even awe was to insult
the Elders.

Then there was a whisper inside Cicoi's mind.  A faint hum, like the
touch of a tentacle before a male-female bonding.  He tilted his head
involuntarily and saw the others doing so as well.

Good, a wispy voice said.  Cicoi realized it belonged to the lead
Elder.  You can hear us now.

Cicoi waved his front tentacle in acknowledgment as the other
Commanders did the same.  The Commander of the Center had raised a
single eyestalk in surprise.

We have been content for all this time to watch and let our people make
their own way through the problems our new sun has brought.  And for
thousands of Passes near this new sun, all has gone well.  Until this
Pass.

The thought felt alien, unlike his thoughts.  It was like a voice, but
not like a voice.  Cicoi tamped down a feeling of fear.  These were the
Elders, the ones who had made Malmur survive.  He had to listen to
them.

He tried to control his own thoughts, in case they could hear what he
was thinking in return.

The ability of our people to supply our basic needs has been put in
extreme danger by the quick and surprising development of the race on
the third planet.  You must not underestimate these creatures as you
have done before.

That was the argument Cicoi had just made to his own Second.  But to
say that, and to do it, were two different things.  The creatures on
the third planet had changed so much between this Pass and the last
that they seemed to be almost different creatures.

There was no time to study them.  There was no time at all.

We feel that for the safety of our entire race, we, as Elders, must
again step forward to guide our people past this crisis.  It was the
way of the past.  It is the way of the present.

The words echoed inside Cicoi's mind.  He felt no judgment in them;
only acceptance of what must occur.  The Elders continued flowing,
their tentacles moving in the same direction.  Cicoi wondered if their
wispy forms were simply for the benefit of the Commanders or if the
Elders truly looked like that.  No one, except perhaps the Keeper of
Secrets, would know the answer.

The Elders seemed to be waiting for some sort of response to those
last words.  Cicoi did not know what to say.  The Commander of the
Center was standing taller on the tips of his tentacles, but he didn't
seem to know either.  He turned an eyestalk toward Cicoi as if he were
expecting Cicoi to do something.

But it was the Commander of the North who finally spoke.  He turned his
two eye stalks forward in a bad imitation of the circle of respect and
pointed his upper tentacles down.  He rose as high as he could on his
lower tentacles.

"Forgive me, O Great Ones, for speaking to such an august body," the
Commander of the North said.  "We will do what is needed.  We will heed
your guidance.  We welcome it."

The Elders did not move.  In no way did they acknowledge the Commander
of the North's polite movements, nor did they respond in kind.  The
Elders, perhaps, had had different traditions once upon a time.

Finally the lead Elder bowed his head, his eye stalks facing the
Commanders.  Cicoi's lower tentacles went rigid, and he nearly lost his
balance.  The direct stare of all those eyes-those ghostly black
eyes--was more than he could take.

You must heed us, the Elder said, if you are to survive.

His words almost sounded like a rebuke.  Was it a rebuke to the
Commander of the North for having the temerity to speak to them?

The Commander of the North bent his eye stalks forward and said
nothing. Neither did anyone else.

Hear our words, the Elder said.

The phrase was echoed by the others, a faint chorus, that jangled in
Cicoi's mind.

The Commander of the North turned an eyestalk toward Cicoi as if Cicoi
had done something to provoke the Elder's words.  But Cicoi kept his
rigid position.

We shall guide you, the lead Elder said.  But before we do, we shall
give you an overview, so you know how to prepare.

The Commander of the Center moaned.  It was a small, involuntary
sound, but it echoed in the large chamber.  Several of the Elders
turned toward him, and a breeze came up.

"I'm sorry, O Great Ones," the Commander of the Center said, two of his
eye stalks waving wildly.  "I mean no disrespect."

The Elders turned away from him.  Apparently that was all the
acknowledgment they would give him.

It was as if the interlude had never happened.

Here is how you will prepare, the lead Elder said.

Cicoi waited, concentrating as hard as he could, so that these words
would become part of him.

The next harvest of the third planet must be complete and varied.  We
must obtain enough raw materials to finish building new harvest ships.
An Elder will be on each harvest ship to make certain that the
procedures are followed exactly.  You will prepare your generals to
work with us.

Cicoi shuddered slightly.  Commanders, at least, had always been warned
of the possibility of meeting the Elders.  The generals had not.  And
one of the Commanders was having trouble, despite the warning.  The
generals had better be tougher than Cicoi thought they were.

Nine Elders floated from the group and stopped beside the one who
seemed to be giving the orders.

We will go with you now to begin preparations.  The very existence of
our people rests on what we do next.  We must not fail

Cicoi wanted to say they would not fail, but he did not.  He did not
like the way the Elders had treated the other two who spoke.  Instead,
Cicoi kept his stance rigid and waited for further instructions.

But there were none.  The lead Elder waved his eye stalks turning them
toward all the other Elders.  They imitated the movement, and then
their tentacles pointed upward.

The ceiling opened, and the breeze grew stronger.  The Elders tilted
their heads back, pointed their lower tentacles

behind them so that they were streamlined, and floated toward the cold
darkness above.

Cicoi un pocketed two more eye stalks so that he could watch this
tremendous sight.  Fifty Elders, their bodies wispy and black,
absorbing all light and energy, soared toward the surface of Malmur, a
place they had not been in generations.

A place they had not been in living memory.

A place they had not been since Malmur left its home sun a long, long
time ago.

Cicoi had thought life for his people was hard before.  Now it would
become even harder.

April 27, 2018

8:45 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time

170 Days Until Second Harvest

Leo Cross balanced one suitcase against his thigh as he struggled with
the old-fashioned lock on his front door.  He had already disengaged
the security system, but for some reason his housekeeper Constance
insisted on using all of the locks when he was gone, including the one
on the antique oak door.  He should have waited at the airport for
fifteen more minutes.  By then, she would have arrived and been able to
let him into his own house.

Instead, he had to waggle the ancient brass key into the even older
brass lock and wait until he heard the tumblers turn.  Then he pushed
the door open with his shoulder.

The suitcase fell inward with a bang and Cross stiffened, half
expecting his mother's voice to yell at him from upstairs.  But his
parents were long gone.  Only their ghosts echoed throughout the house.
He had grown up here, and had done little since his parents' death to
make the house his.  The antiques his mother so loved still filled the foyer and most of the
ground level.

Still, it felt good to be home.  It felt good to have a home to return
to.  He shuddered.  He'd managed to get some sleep on the red-eye he
had taken back from San Francisco, but his dreams had been filled with
the slight whirr of Nan Tech wand and the clank of wedding bands as
they hit the glass front.  Wedding bands and engagement rings and
anniversary necklaces.  So much stuff that had meant so much to people
at one time and was now not much more than junk.

His personal phone hadn't rung since he left, nor had his pager gone
off.  Jamison clearly hadn't found anything--and neither had Bradshaw
and Groopman in South America.

Cross sighed and kicked the door closed.  Then he lugged his suitcases
upstairs and tossed them on the king-sized bed he had bought specially
for his room.  He had made this room his, with its utilitarian
furniture and high-tech gadgetry.  It wasn't fair to say he had missed
it--he hadn't been gone long enough--but he did feel more relaxed when
he was here.

Downstairs the door opened, and he thought he heard female laughter.
Constance usually wasn't so merry when she came to work.  She had been
with the family forever.  He could no more get rid of her than he could
have fired his grandmother.  She made certain he ate well and his home
wasn't a complete pigsty.

Cross could have afforded an entire bevy of housekeepers-his parents
had left him independently wealthy--but he rarely thought of the money.
Instead, it provided him a way to do the work he loved.  Or the work he
had once loved, before the world had changed with the attack of the
aliens.

He pulled off his clothes and took a hot shower, staying for a long
time under the spray.  He needed to get the feel of the black dust off
him  He knew he didn't really have any on him, but that didn't matter. 
What mattered was the sense of it, the way his skin crawled even when
he thought of it.

As he got out, the smell of fried pork sausage reached him, along with
the scent of pancakes and fresh coffee.  Constance was here, and she
knew he was home.

For the first time in days, he felt really and truly hungry.

He pulled on a sweater and a pair of jeans, and walked, barefoot, down
the stairs.  He would have to change before the big meeting, but he had
about four hours.  Even in the worst traffic, it wouldn't take him that
long to get downtown.

Soft voices reached him as he got to the bottom of the stairs.  Female
voices.  For a moment, he thought Constance had the radio or the
television on, and then he recognized the second voice.

His mouth went instantly dry.

Britt.

He hadn't expected to see her until the meeting.

He ran a hand through his wet hair, feeling like a teenager ill
prepared for a first date.  Dr.  Brittany Archer had that effect on
him.  They had become involved shortly after they met, and they'd been
lovers for some time now, but his heart still jumped when he heard her
voice.  He hadn't felt this strongly about any woman in all his years.
All he wished was that he'd met Britt Archer under different
circumstances.

Cross made his way through the hall into the kitchen.  Constance was
pouring batter on the griddle.  She already had a pile of perfectly
formed pancakes on a platter.  Sausages steamed on another platter
beside it.  Fresh-squeezed orange juice was in a glass pitcher near the
refrigerator, and the last of the coffee percolated through the
automated coffeemaker.

Britt was sitting at the kitchen table, her stockinged feet on one of
the old chairs.  Her dark hair was pulled back and held by a gold
Irish-love-knot barrette--which would have survived the mess in
Monterey.  The thought made Cross's gorge rise and he fought it down.

Britt turned to him, her intelligent eyes missing nothing.  She stood.
She was nearly as tall as he was.

"It was tough there, huh?"

Apparently she saw it in his face.  He wrapped his arms around her and
pulled her close.  He didn't want to think about it, didn't really want
to discuss it.  He buried his face in her neck and let himself feel how
alive she was.

After a moment, Constance said, "I got breakfast for you, Leo," as if
nothing had changed.

The memory of the past two days had played hell with his appetite
again, but he wasn't going to let all this food go to waste.  He
squeezed Britt, then let her go, and walked over to Constance.

"You're trying to make me fat," he said.

"And I'm failing," she said.  "Looks like you lost weight in the past
two days."

"Without your cooking, how could I survive?"  He grabbed a plate from
the cupboard and served himself, slathering the pancakes with butter
and pouring maple syrup on top.  Then he poured a glass of orange juice
and headed for the table.

Britt was just behind him, serving herself, as well.

They didn't even make a dent in the food, although Constance continued
cooking, as if she were trying to feed an army instead of two of them.
Cross had noticed that Constance had been doing that ever since the
alien ships arrived, making too much food and then giving much of it
away to shelters later on.  It was as if some part of her felt guilty
for still being there, for still being alive, for having a place to go
and people to take care of.

Cross took a bite of pancake and decided he hadn't had anything that
good in a long time.  Then he smiled at Britt and put his hand on hers.
"I didn't expect to see you until later."

"You think I'd want a reunion with you in front of the Tenth Planet
Project?"  Her eyes twinkled and she shook her head.  "They would have
loved that."

She got up and poured herself a huge mug of coffee.  Then she held up
the pot.  "You want any?"

He shook his head.  He wasn't quite the coffee freak that she was.
He'd wait until he was done eating.

She came back to the table and sat down.  She wrapped her hands around
the mug and stared at him.  "Do you want to talk about it?"

The pancake he'd been eating turned to glue in his mouth.  He shook his
head.

"I take it you didn't find anything."

"Not yet," he said.  "I should still be there."

"I'm sure Lowry will do just fine."  Britt had never really believed
that they'd find a nanomachine, even after Cross had made the argument
to her, the same one he'd made to Jamison.  "We need you here."

"Did something happen?"

"Not to my knowledge," Britt said.  "But I'm not the one who called the
meeting."  She shoved her mug away, picked up her fork, and dug into
her breakfast.  "I suspect it's just a briefing."

Cross sighed and took a sip of orange juice.  It was fresh and cool and
delicious.  "Then why call me back?"

Britt raised her eyes at him without moving her head.  "Leo," she said
softly, "you just don't get it sometimes, do you?"

"Get what?"  he asked.

"How important you are."

"I'm no more important than you or Jesse Killius or Yo landa Hayes," he
said, listing two other members of the committee.  Jesse Killius was
the head of NASA and Yolanda Hayes was the president's science
adviser.

"Yes, you are."  Britt set down her fork.  "It was your insight that
warned us of this problem in the first place, and you were the one who
figured out that they're coming back."

"No," he said.  "You did."

She shook her head.  "You solidified it.  You're the unifying force on
this committee.  Without you, it goes nowhere."

"Even if I never have another brilliant idea."

"Even if," she said.  "This is no longer about brilliant ideas.  It's
about survival.  You run the team whether you want to or not."

"Clarissa Maddox runs the team."

"Because you think she runs meetings efficiently," Britt said.  "They
never start until you arrive.  It's unthinkable to have a Tenth Planet
Project meeting without you."

Cross sighed, and rubbed the bridge of his nose with his thumb and
forefinger.  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Constance watching
them.  She smiled at him.

"Someday you'll figure out that your strengths aren't where you think
they are," Constance said.

Cross looked at her.  "Oh?  You mean I'm not a good archaeologist?"

She shrugged.  "Right now, it's not your digging skills that matter.
It's your imagination."

"She's right," Britt said.

"My imagination is giving me nightmares," he said.

"From California?"

He nodded.

Britt rested her head on her palm.  "Tell me about it."

He couldn't yet.  He didn't have the right words, and to explain the
horror incorrectly was to cheapen it.  "It's not something you want to
discuss over breakfast," he said.  He pushed his half-finished meal
away, and Constance brought him coffee without his having to ask for
it.  He put his hand around the warm mug.

"So " he said, "did our alien friends get home safely?"

Britt blinked, obviously confused, and then she gave him a rueful
smile.  "I'm sorry to say they did, as far as we can tell."

He sighed.  They were talking about the alien ships, heading back
toward the tenth planet.  Britt's agency, the Space Telescope Science
Institute, was using all of its telescopes,

from the Hubble III on down, to monitor the alien ships as they left
Earth's orbit and headed back to the passing tenth planet.

"I was hoping they'd self-destruct or something," he said.

She shook her head.  "That only happens in the movies.  Too bad,
huh?"

He sipped the coffee.  It was better than the stuff the Army had served
him.  "Do we know what will happen at the meeting today?"

"No," Britt said.  "I know we'll get a report on the alien ships--what
they're made of, how they're vulnerable, that sort of thing."

"We know that?"

She shrugged.  "I don't know.  The report might just be about what we
don't know."

Cross sighed.  For all the speeches everyone was making about his
importance, it sounded like the meeting would be the same old thing.
"Anything else?"

Britt loudly sipped the rest of her coffee, then set the mug down.  "If
there's something new and surprising, I haven't heard about it."

Cross closed his eyes.  "The end of the world is coming, and all we're
doing is having meetings."

"We're doing more than that," Britt said.

He opened his eyes.  She looked tired.  They were all tired.  "Oh?"  he
asked.  "What else are we doing?"

"We're trying to figure out a way to destroy those aliens," she said,
her voice so cold it even stopped Constance for an instant at the
stove.

Cross looked at Britt.  Her eyes were dark, focused on something far
away.  And the anger was just below the surface of her face, just as it
was below all of theirs at the moment.

Cross thought about the fillings rattling around in the wan ding
California, then sighed.  "I would do anything to stop them.  Damn near
anything."  "So would I," Britt said, coldly.  "So would I."

3

April 27, 2018

11:41 a.m. Central Daylight Time

170 Days Until Second Harvest

Vivian Hartlein had spent the early morning standing outside the gates
of Graceland until some security guard waved her away.  Then she
crossed Elvis Presley Boulevard to the now-boarded-up Day's Inn and sat
in its parking lot, staring at the long lawn heading up to the old
mansion.  She'd toured the King's home dozens of times--the first with
her parents when she was just a little thing--and she liked the way it
always stayed the same.  The dark kitchen with its faint never to-leave
smell of grease.  The yellow dining room, the beautiful white piano.  A
permanent place.  A historical place.  A place where time seemed to
stand still.

Vivian had come here every day since the attack.  She wanted to go
inside again, she wanted to see if time would reverse for her, and she
thought maybe it would happen in Graceland.  Maybe if she went inside,
she would see her mom again.  And her dad.  They had been gone for
years.

Maybe if she went inside, she'd see Cheryl and Lucy and Tommi Jo. She'd
told them to stay out of California, but they didn't listen to her. 
They'd gone anyway, saying there was nothing in Memphis for them. All
the jobs were west.  And

what did Cheryl end up doing, but working in some tourist place near
the ocean?  She could've worked at Graceland or any of the places
around it, or got a job on Mud Island, or even gone to Nashville.  It
was far, but not that far.

And it hadn't been wiped off the face of the Earth.

Cheryl, her daughter.  Lucy, her granddaughter.  And Tammi Jo, who was
just a baby.  Their daddy didn't even have the decency to call, to find
out what happened.  He was so dumb he didn't even know the attack had
happened over Cheryl's house, over her work.

Vivian's husband, Dale, he'd gone out there, trying to find his little
girl, and the Army didn't tell him nothing.  Vivian stayed home.  She
couldn't get herself in no airplane.  Never had been able to.  Dale
thought it was maybe connected to that time when she couldn't leave the
house, back when she was pregnant with Cheryl, her only child.

Back when she had had hope.

She choked and swallowed hard.  Dale was still in California, waiting
to get remains, if there was going to be remains.  He said he wasn't
counting on it.  He said there was nothing he could do.  He said he'd
never felt so helpless in his whole life.

Dale Hartlein, a man who'd never been helpless.  One afternoon in
California, he told her, he jumped the fence, and went into that black
mess himself without protection, tracing the concrete buried beneath
the dust, picking up metal road signs with the names pressed into them,
and finding, through sheer energy, Cheryl's house.

Or what was left of it.

He said he sat down and bawled like a baby.

Vivian'd never seen Dale cry.  He'd teared up when Cheryl was born, and
them tears'd come back the day Cheryl said she was marrying that loser
ex-husband of hers, but he'd never cried.  Not once.

Till now.

And when he told Vivian that, she knew her baby, and her baby's babies,
was well and truly dead.

He was staying in California until he had remains, but that might mean
he'd be gone forever.  The bureaucracy ruled, just like she always knew
it had.  Like her own daddy used to say.  The government ain't nothing
but a pack of fools leading another pack of fools by the nose.

She believed it now.  Only now they had gotten worse.  Now they had
killed her family.  And for that, she was going to make them pay.

She had left the Day's Inn at sunrise and come to Riverside Park.  The
Mississippi smelled faintly of mud and river mold.  Barges and tugs
still made their way through the shallow water as if nothing had
happened.  Planes flew overhead.  Life went on.

For most people, life went on.

She sat on the old bandstand near a grove of trees and watched as the
first car pulled into the lot.  She was taking a risk holding the
meeting here, in such a public place, in the middle of the day, but she
didn't know who would come.  She'd keep things toned down.  She didn't
say nothing in her flyers, or on the web site, or in them radio
announcements she made to all the call-in shows about what, exactly,
she was going to talk about.

She'd just tell them the truth she learned from Dale.  She'd just tell
them how the government killed her family and how she was going to get
even.

She'd tell them the truth as she knew it from the moment she saw them
phony pictures on CNN.

Another car pulled into the lot.  Then another.  People she didn't
recognize was opening the doors and getting out.

She took a deep breath as she watched them, straightening her
shoulders, shaking the nervousness out of her.  It began this way, with
a small group.  Jesus taught the world that,

two thousand years ago.  He started with twelve, and they spread the
gospel all over the land.

The tough part was speaking out.  Once she spoke out, then the news
would spread and everyone would know.

Sometimes she wondered why they didn't already.  It seemed so obvious
to her.

There was no aliens.  There'd never been aliens.  Ever since she was a
little girl, there'd been talk of aliens.  Bestselling books with
slant-eyed creatures on the cover.  Movies with those same
creatures--sometimes friendly, but usually trying to take over Earth.
Then those series of "true" stories, mostly on the TV, about people
getting abducted.

By the time Vivian was twelve, as many people believed in aliens as
believed in angels.  She remembered that statistic because Reverend
Foster used it in one of his most famous sermons, the one where he
lamented the loss of true faith.

Well, she had true faith.  And Cheryl had, too.  But Cheryl had become
an unwitting victim of a plot to take over the world.  Vivian was
already seeing it.  The news carried parts of it.  The other countries
was listening to the president.  Soon he'd take over everything, a man
who didn't believe in God or liberty or nothing.

A dozen cars was in the parking lot now, and a group of people was
hanging around the edge of the grass, just staring at her.  If she was
going to do this, she had to take control.

Dale'd tried to talk her out of it, tried at least to get her to wait
until he got home.  But she wasn't going to wait, not anymore.  It was
either wait and let the grief eat her up, eat her message and make
Cheryl and Lucy and Tommi Jo die for nothing, or Vivian would start
taking action.  She was angry and someone was going to pay.

She'd always been an action woman.  Sitting around just made things
worse.

She waved a hand toward the group, and a tall thin man with long blond hair grinned at her.  He spoke softly to the others
around him, and they came forward like a little troop.  She was
surprised she didn't recognize none of them.

More cars was pulling in.  A man in a business suit got out of one of
them, along with a woman wearing too much makeup for a rally.  And sure
enough, they took out a video camera.

She didn't want them taping the rally.  She knew what they'd do. They'd
send it on, make her a laughingstock or, worse, sic the government on
her.  Kill her.  That couldn't happen.  Not yet.  Not this early.

The blond man had gotten to the bandstand.  He looked like a
take-charge type.

"Hi," she said.  "I'm Vivian Hartlein.  I'm the one who called this
here meeting."

"Jake Styles," he said.

"Well, Jake Styles, there ain't gonna to be nothing happening here if
them reporters stay.  Think you can get them to go?"

He looked over his shoulder.  "Why would I want to?"

"Why're you here?"  she asked.

His blue eyes darkened.  "My daddy lived on the California coast."

"My daughter and her babies did, too," Vivian said.

They stared at each other a moment.  Bonded.  She felt it.  The loss
created a link between them.  Without saying nothing more, he turned
around and walked toward the reporters.

She'd picked well.  He had a charm about him.

More and more cars came.  There was maybe fifty people here now.  Some
she knew, most she didn't.  The ones she knew belonged to some of the
same groups as Dale.  They looked surprised to see her without him.

She wasn't speaking for him today.  She was speaking for everyone.  And
for her dead daughter and grandchildren.

The woman reporter laughed and then patted Jake Styleson the arm.  Oh,
charm was useful.  But not everything.  Still, the reporters got back
in their car, backed up, and pulled out of the lot.  Jake Styles stood
at the edge of the lot until the car disappeared.

By then, her entire crowd was sitting on the dew-damp river grass or
standing at the fringes, leaning on trees for support.  He came back,
shrugged amiably, and said, "I don't think they're coming back."

" What'd you tell them?"  she asked.

"That this was the traditional singing rally for the Baptist churches
in the area.  We're just organizing, and we'd hope they'd come back
when we're getting ready to sing in the big sing-a-thon in July."

"You didn't," Vivian said.

"I did."  He grinned.  "They said that explained the strangeness of the
announcements they'd heard on the radio, and they were sorry for
troubling us.  And they got the date of the big sing-a-thon.  They were
embarrassed they didn't know about it."

"I can't believe they believed that."

"People believe anything, you say it with enough conviction."  His eyes
seemed to bore right through her.  He was right, of course.  That was
what she was here to talk about.  "You know, if you're gonna talk about
how awful things are and not give no ways to resolve things, I ain't
staying."

"We got to take things into our own hands," she said.

"Things?"  he asked.

"What do you do?"  she said.  "You ain't government, are you?"

"If I was government, you think I'd be here?"

"Them reporters was."

He took a battered wallet out of his back pocket.  Inside was his
electricians' union card, tattered now, and a driver's license, a few
ripped photos, and nothing else.  None of them

credit cards or them identification strips that had a person's entire
medical history on it.  No electronic slider cards at all.

The casual way he handed his life to her was just as it should be A
code among compatriots.  A way that believers knew they weren't
alone.

"I been thinking about this a long time," she said.  "Studying it.  Not
just when them so-called aliens came, but before.  You want to
listen?"

"Yeah."

She nodded toward the people before her.  "Join them.  When I get 'em
fired up, I'm going to find out how many of them is truly
interested."

"In doing what?"

"Crippling the government.  Getting rid of all them who killed our
family and aim to kill our country.  I know the perfect way to do
it."

"Them reporters would say that the government is our only
protection."

"Yeah," Vivian said.  "They would.  They're the ones who aired the
phony pictures of those alien ships, and they're the ones who say,
'believe in the president," and they're the ones who've encouraging
allying with other countries.  We're going to lose our sovereignty.
We're going to become part of a worldwide dictatorship, run by godless
people.  It's been happening for a while.  But now your daddy and my
daughter, they been caught in the first assault."

"You think our government did that to our own people?"

She raised her eyes to his.  His look was flat, even.  He didn't seem
shocked.  "You do, too."

He nodded.

"Sit down.  We got a lot of talking."

He found a place in the crowd.  She stared at them for a moment,
wishing Dale was here instead of in California.  He'd be proud of her.
Whenever he had a group needed convincing,

whenever he had a difficult customer who needed coddling, he called
her.

You missed your calling, baby doll, he used to say.  You shoulda been
some sort of preacher, a leader.  You wasted it sitting home.

Don't never say I wasted time raising our girl, Dale Hart lein, she
used to say in response.  She hadn't wasted time.

But she had lost it.

She stood in front of the crowd and raised her arms.  They looked wary.
Then she started to speak, and they all looked at her as if she was
going to lead them to the promised land.

They was in the promised land.  She was going to show them that.  And
then she was going to show them how to cast out the evil ones and take
the land back.

It would not be easy.

But it would be right.

April 27, 2018

12:55 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time

170 Days Until Second Harvest

Dr.  Leo Cross wished he had never seen this room.

It was a standard conference room, built in the middle of the last
century, and furnished in the 1980s.  The conference table, which stood
on wobbly legs, carried coffee rings so old that they were practically
fossilized.  The cushions on the chairs had been worn thin fifteen
years ago.

Cross had sat in this room more than he wanted to think about, ever
since the Tenth Planet Project was founded earlier that year.  The
discussions here were often a prelude to gaining more information in
the days before the attacks.  In those days, he had considered the
meetings successful.

Now he wasn't so sure.

He kept going over and over information in his mind, wondering if he
had spoken up sooner--maybe even a year sooner--about his suspicions,
the first attacks wouldn't have gone as badly as they had.

But if he had spoken up then, he might have been dismissed as a
crackpot.  He didn't have all the evidence then that he had when he
finally approached his friend, Doug Mickelson, who was the secretary of
state.  Doug had opened a pile of doors for him, and in many very real
ways, got the Tenth Planet Project started.

Britt set down the Starbucks travel mug that Cross had bought for her
after the last Tenth Planet Project meeting.  The mug was steaming. 
She set down a Starbucks paper cup for him, filled with the latte he'd
asked for.  He wasn't sure, with the heavy breakfast, the interrupted
sleep, and the awful way he'd been eating, that his stomach could take
any more caffeine.

Robert Shane of the President's Special Committee on Space Sciences,
and one of the Project's cooler heads, sat down across from Britt.
Shane was a tanned, athletic man whose blond hair was cropped short. He
had sharp blue eyes and a quick wit that, Cross suspected, served him
well in his government post.  Shane was first and foremost a scientist,
and in all the meetings, through all the debates, Shane never forgot
that, which was something Cross appreciated.

Britt took a sip from her mug, and tapped on her wrist 'puter.  Taking
time away from the office to spend the morning with Cross had cost her
a lot.  She had been working around the clock, canceling research times
on the various space telescopes and trying to determine which agency
now had priority with the vast machines.  Before the aliens had
arrived, the telescopes' time was carefully parceled out to scientists
and researchers all over the globe.  Now the crisis took precedence,
and Britt found her orderly life in complete disarray.

"I hope this damn thing starts on time."  Yolanda Hayes, the
president's science adviser, walked into the room.  She had her dark
hair pulled away from her face, and she was wearing minimal makeup.
When Cross had first met her--what seemed like years ago, but was
actually only seven months before--she was one of the most stylish
women he had ever seen.  She still wore the clothes, but the details
were gone: no painted nails, no lipstick.  It was as if she no longer
had time for anything but the essentials.  "I feel like I'm
coordinating an army."

"Maybe that's because you are."  Jesse Killius, the head of NASA,
followed her into the room.  Jesse looked more tired than Cross had
ever seen her.

"I guess."  Hayes smiled, but the smile was small.  "My job used to be
committees and advice.  I never expected to coordinate a nationwide
research effort in so many different areas."

"None of us did," Shane said.  "At least we have the information about
most of the nation's scientists at our fingertips."

Hayes nodded.  "I'm just worried that we don't have enough."

No one answered her.  It was the fear they all had, on various levels,
and it really had nothing to do with their areas of expertise.  It had
to do with the aliens, the tenth planet, and the fact that they were in
the lull between storms they didn't entirely understand.

"I can't believe Clarissa's the one who's late," Killius said.  "She
had her aide call me last night to remind me about this."

"She's balancing too much," Shane said.  "She probably shouldn't even
be in this meeting anymore."

"I'm glad she is," Cross said.  "She's still representing the
president."

At that moment the door slammed back and General Clarissa Maddox strode
into the room.  She was a powerfully built woman who wore her general's
uniform like a shield.  Her back was so straight that Cross sometimes
wondered if it had been surgically altered.

She took her seat and nodded to the group.  "I see I'm just in time
for the uplink," she said, which was probably the only acknowledgment
she would make of being late.

"Coffee, General?"  Shane asked.

Half a smile crossed Maddox's face.  "Right now, I'm subsisting on the
stuff.  I'd love some."

Shane got up, went to the refreshments table, and poured her a cup.
Even though there were pastries on the table as usual, no one had taken
any.

The two flat vid screens were already down.  As the clock hit 1 p.m."
images appeared in various corners: the Japanese representatives, the
European representatives, the Africans, and the newest members, the
Chinese.  Most of the groups were sitting at long conference tables
like the U.S. group was, and Cross was surprised that he knew the rooms
in those faraway lands as well as he knew this room here.  In fact, it
almost seemed as if the rooms were somewhere in this building, in parts
he hadn't been to yet.

The customary greetings in the various languages echoed.  The official
language of the Tenth Planet Project was English, partly because it had
become the language of science, and partly out of deference to the
Americans, who were the ones who first put this meeting together.  But
the greetings were always in the native tongues, and it was a custom no
one wanted to forgo.

When the formalities were done, General Maddox sighed so softly that
only those at the U.S. table could hear her.  Then she smiled, a
businesslike smile that had an edge of weariness to it.

"I have a personal announcement first," she said.

Cross stiffened.  Britt put her hand on his arm.  Here it comes, Shane
mouthed.  Apparently he thought what they all were thinking: they were
going to lose the general.

"I've been asked to leave the Project," Maddox said, her voice
strong.

Shane rolled his eyes and shook his head slightly, his commentary on
the stupidity of government clear, at least, to the people across the
table.

"But I have refused.  I believe that the work we do here may be the
work that saves this planet.  I want to be a part of this as much as I
want to be a part of the military team that eventually destroys those
alien bastards."

Shane turned his head toward her in surprise.  Cross let himself relax.
Britt squeezed his wrist, bowed her head, and smiled slightly.  None of
them wanted to lose Maddox.

Maddox said, "I suspect that I will have to defend my place on this
Project for some time to come.  That's my problem.  However, I do have
one favor to ask of the group."

Cross noted that everyone in all the various conference rooms around
the world was watching her intently.

"In the past we've had a bit of banter and a rather loose format for
the meetings."

"Loose?"  Britt whispered so softly that only Cross could hear her.  It
was his turn to smile.  Scientific meetings were never as structured as
the meetings of the Tenth Planet Project had been.

"I would like now to run these meetings as efficiently as possible."

One of the Russian scientists started to protest.  Maddox held up a
hand for silence.

"I understand the need for informal discussion," she said.  "I can no
longer be present for that.  So instead of holding those discussions
within the structure of the meeting, I have arranged to keep the uplink
going for as long as necessary after the formal meeting, so that the
informal talks can continue.  All I ask is that I am briefed on any new
and important information that comes from the informal discussions.  Is
that acceptable to the group?"

All of the members of the Project nodded, and many spoke the word "yes"
aloud.

Maddox's smile was real this time.  "Good," she said.  "Very good.
Then let's get this meeting under way."

She touched her wrist'puter, where it seemed as if she had a list of
notes.  Britt also had notes, and several of the others at the
international tables seemed to have notes as well.

"Since I started," Maddox said, "let me continue with a matter the
president has asked me to bring to your attention."

Cross cradled his cooling latte.  He wondered if Jamison had had any
luck yet in Monterey, and if so, why he hadn't paged Cross.

"All of the world leaders have discussed this, but the president asked
me to make a special point of mentioning it here."

Britt's grip on Cross's wrist eased.

"The Tenth Planet Project is something the press does not know about.
Our governments have managed to keep a lid on our work, as well as on
one other thing: no one has yet, in any credible way, leaked the news
that the tenth planet will make a return visit in five and a half
months.  All our analysts believe there will be massive riots and
destruction, with millions dead, if the world finds out that what
happened two weeks ago was only a prelude to another alien attack.  We
cannot allow this to happen."

There was a general murmuring of agreement.  Cross waited for the
rest.

"We have been ordered not to speak to the press about the future of the
tenth planet.  No hints, no leaks.  We need to keep this information
contained, and part of containment is this: if there is a leak, we have
to squelch it, and quickly."

"You want us to lie," one of the Chinese representatives said.

"If necessary," Maddox said.

"The news will get out eventually," Britt said.

Maddox frowned at her.

Britt shrugged.  "Scientists all over the world are familiar with the
tenth planet now.  They may not be part of our organization, but
they're not dumb.  They're going to come to the same conclusions we
do."

"We've already spoken to the best and the brightest in astronomy and
physics, at least in this country," Yolanda Hayes said.  "They're under
instruction to send any new information to the president's Science
Office first.  We're forming a brain trust to be coordinated by me,
Robert Shane, and two other members of the White House's scientific
community."

"You're going to control the free flow of information?"  Cross asked,
unable to keep quiet any longer.

"In a nutshell, yes, Dr.  Cross."  Maddox crossed her arms.  "What's
your problem with this?  I assume you don't want the millions of dead,
which rioting would cause, any more than I do."

Her remark was like a slap, but he went on anyway.  "Science doesn't
function with restrictions on information."

"Are you familiar with the Manhattan Project?"  Maddox's voice was
cold.

"You're comparing us to a group of scientists hidden in the New Mexico
desert, a group whose mission was to design the deadliest weapon of all
time?"  Cross turned toward her.

"Leo," Britt whispered.  "Not now."

He ignored her.  The other members of the Project were silent.

"Yes," Maddox said.  "I am."

"In many ways our mission is similar," Hayes said.

Cross turned to her.  "I can't believe you want to stifle the free flow
of information," he said.  "You of all people know how valuable it is
to scientists."

"I believe in a trade-off," Hayes said.  "If we don't control this
information, we'll have rioting in the streets, and I personally can't
live with the idea I could be even partially responsible."

Maddox looked pointedly at her watch.  Cross ignored her.  "I
understand the press blackout," he said.  "It's the rest of it.  The
brain trust, the control of information even among scientists--"

"Someone will leak it," Killius said.  "You know as well as I do that
scientists don't always have the best social skills.  They sometimes
don't think about the people applications.  Do you want some
lower-level astronomer posting his notes on the tenth planet's return
on the Internet?  Others'll check it and--"

"How do we prevent it?"  Cross said.  "Just because you have the best
and the brightest already on tap doesn't mean that some amateur
astronomer won't figure it out on his own."

"That's a problem," Hayes said.

"Yeah, it's a problem," Cross said.  "It's a twofold problem.  The
amateurs are often the ones who come up with the most creative
solutions.  And right now, that's what we need.  We need creativity,
not some brain trust sitting around in a damn meeting!"

He slammed his hand against the table and the sound silenced everyone.
They were all staring at him.

His heart was pounding, and he was breathing hard.  They clearly knew
that he was frustrated being in the room, but he wasn't going to back
down.  He had a point.  They had to see that, too.

"Pardon me," one of the British physicists said, "but I do see both
your points.  Dr.  Cross is right; it is always better to share
information among like minds.  However, if perhaps we set up a web site
or a contact number for people who believe they have valuable
information, we will still be able to get the input of the creative
amateurs."

"And who'll monitor the sites?"  Hayes asked.  She sounded as frayed as
Cross felt.  "That'll be a full-time job in and of itself."

"Graduate students," Shane said.  "Research assistants.  Maybe some
high school science teachers.  Folks who we can trust with the
knowledge but who won't be on the brain trust."

"This is a compromise, Dr.  Cross," Maddox said, "and I believe it's
the only one you'll get.  It's better than anything I would have
mentioned.  But then, I have a military mentality, as some of you are
fond of pointing out."

Cross made himself swallow hard.  Maddox was right.  This was a
compromise, and it was probably the best one he was going to get.
"We're going to need someone to coordinate this effort in each
country."

"I'm sure that's something that can be determined after I leave,"
Maddox said.

"I think it can, General," Shane said quickly, with a look toward
Cross.  "I have some ideas that might make it work."

"As long as any new information is contained, I don't care what you
do," Maddox said.  "But believe me, if something leaks, I'll have that
leak traced ar 4 the leaker's butt in a sling so fast that he won't
even know what hit him.  Is that clear, Dr.  Cross?"

"I won't leak anything, General," he said.  "I kept this a secret for a
lot longer than anyone else."

Her gaze met his and in it, he thought he saw a trace of sympathy.  So
the general understood his argument and the problems with silence.
Good.  He hoped the others did.

"Good," she said.  "Moving on.  The second item on my agenda is,
ironically enough, the sharing of information between governments.  We
need to keep our people in the dark to prevent rioting, but we, as
governments, need to share as much as possible.  With that in mind, I'd
like to update you on the USs military position."

As she talked about troop counts and training and increased weapons
buildup, Cross finished his now-cold latte and calmed himself down.
Without the free flow of information,

Cross would never have put together the facts that led to the
discovery of the tenth planet.  He had contacted archaeologists via
e-mail, amateurs and professionals alike, asking simple, pointed
questions.  He'd brought Edwin Bradshaw into his circle--Bradshaw, who
had been a man ahead of his time, and then had been disgraced for
research that was now proving central to the tenth planet itself. Cross
could have done none of that with the strictures the governments wanted
to impose.

"... in the history of the world," the German military representative
was saying, "there has never been a military buildup like this one. Not
this quick, not this uniform, not worldwide."

"Every country that has a military is deploying it," said the British
Cabinet member who was fulfilling the equivalent of Maddox's duties in
his tenth planet group.

"We've stepped up production of aircraft, weaponry, and anything else
we can think of that might defeat these aliens," Maddox said.

Cross wondered why.  The weapons had done no good against the alien
ships last time.  Or at least not much good.  He guessed building
weapons was the only thing the military knew how to do.

"Please," the head of the Japanese group said, "my people have a
special request."

Everyone was silent.  The Japanese listened more than spoke at these
meetings.

"We are not only conscripting our young people for military duty," the
Japanese leader said, "but we are also taking our youngest scientists,
the award-winning students, and putting them to work on various
projects that might help us defeat the aliens.  We believe we are alone
in this program.  We ask that other countries do the same."

"A modified way of dealing with your objections, Dr.  Cross," Shane
said.

Cross shrugged.  "It'll do."

"It's a wonderful idea," Britt said.

"I think," Killius said, "we might also want to consider funneling some
of our young people into accelerated astronaut programs."

Her words were met with another silence as the members contemplated
them.  Then, one by one, the leaders of the various groups nodded.

"Excellent," Maddox said.  "We're accomplishing more here than I
thought we would."

Yeah, Cross thought.  And if the world survives, everything will be
different.  We won't recognize the military culture we've built.  Or be
able to control it.

But he said nothing, because as far as he could see, there was no
choice.

"Dr.  Cross," Maddox said.  "Has there been any progress on the
nanomachines?"

He sighed.  "Not the kind I want," he said.  "We haven't found one. But
we do have a device that might make finding one possible.  We have
teams at the various damage sites"--he was already using euphemistic
language himself--"searching for the machines.  I was there myself
until I was called back here, a move that the general probably
regrets."

There was laughter all around.  Maddox even smiled.

"We can disagree, Dr.  Cross, but your opinion is extremely valuable to
this Project," she said.

"Thanks," he said.  "Statistically, we should find more than one
nanomachine--enough were left to form a fossilized record in the
past--so it's only a matter of time.  The key is, the sooner we find
one of these things, the more time we have to study the aliens'
technology.  And if we're going to defeat them, we're going to defeat
them through knowledge, not guesswork."

"That said," Maddox said, "does the South American team have
information from the downed alien craft?"

On the vid screen in front of them, one of the men sitting at the
South American conference table stood up.  He folded his hands together
and nodded toward someone off the monitor.

That someone, a man, joined him.  Both men were thin and wore dark
suits.  They could almost have been twins if it weren't for one man's
thick head of hair, and the other's baldness.

"We have just begun work on the ships," the first man said.  "We have
very little by way of preliminary findings, only that it was not what
we expected."

"What did you expect?"  Shane asked.

The other man smiled.  "Perhaps something out of your American movies."
Then he shrugged.  "But we have been working with a large group of
scientists.  We have found little enough to report, but our biologists
have studied the alien remains."

Cross felt the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.  He had been
so focused on the technology and preventing the aliens from returning,
he hadn't even thought of the possibility of alien remains in those
downed ships.  But, of course, they would be there.

"They are quite different from us, and yet, I think we may have had
similar origins."  A third man had joined the group.  He was speaking
with an Australian accent.  "I lead the biological team," he said by
way of introduction.

"Continue," Maddox said.

He nodded.  "I would guess they originated in their planet's oceans as
we did in ours.  Only when they climbed into the primordial ooze, they
kept their tentacles and a few other features.  They breathe through
slits, like gills.  There are many other features to their anatomy that
we don't completely understand yet, but we have done one thing.  We
have, using the information we got from the remains and from the
structure of the ship, created a composite sketch of what we believe
these aliens look like alive.  I will uplink it now."

The vid screen blanked for a brief moment.

"Sorry," Maddox said to the group in front of her.  "That's the
security protocols kicking in.  Our techs are instructed to
double-check the secure lines before images other than our own go over
them."

Cross folded his hands and rested them on the table.  Britt put the
plastic cap on her mug.  She slid her chair back slightly.

Then the screen lightened again.

The image facing them was not what Cross had expected, even hearing
about the tentacles.  The creature before him had smooth, rubbery black
skin--if skin was what you called it-that covered an oblong center.
Cross was reminded of the middle portion of the butterfly, the part
that held the antennae and wings in place.

Tentacles floated off the middle of the torso, and the bottom of the
oblong center.  At the top were what appeared to be more tentacles
until the image shifted.

They were long stems, with eyes on the top.

Cross shuddered.

The biologist was explaining that the breathing slits were on the sides
near the top of the oblong center and that there were pockets at the
very top of the creature's torso thingy, ten of them, probably for the
eyes.  The alien looked like a squid crossed with some sort of nasty
stinging bug.

Cross shuddered.  He was completely repulsed.  And he didn't know
why.

But he did know he was going to do everything in his power to strike
back at these creatures for what they had done to his planet.  And his
people.

April 27,2018

21:05 Universal Time

170 Days Until Second Harvest

Malmuria filled the streets.  Overhead the great solar panels had
tightened down, so that a brown light filtered through.  The light was
greater than Malmuria were used to, but it was still thin and provided
little illumination.

Barely enough to see the Elders, floating toward the Great Monument,
their wispy bodies like black smoke pouring across the city.

Cicoi had never seen so many of his people outside.  Young females,
their tentacles tight around their bodies, stood beside older females
who had briefly left the nests untended.  Worker males had left their
jobs and were standing in clumps, as far from the females as possible.
And family males, what few of them had been allowed to awaken, were
standing with their females, huddled close as if they derived comfort
from the bodies around them.

All of the Malmuria had un pocketed two eye stalks--any more would be
an insult--and all of those eye stalks were raised toward the sky,
turning, watching, as the Elders moved forward.

Cicoi had never seen such a sight.  The buildings behind me Malmuria
were filled with more timid members of the communities, leaning out
windows that hadn't been opened in generations, standing on balconies
whose use was long forgotten.

So much change.  Cicoi raised a single tentacle and let it fall.  More
change than he had ever wanted to see.

He stood on the tips of all of his lower tentacles on the slide leading
up to Command Central.  The Commanders of the North and Center were
beside him, their posture the same as

his.  None of them spoke to the others; they didn't dare.  The Elders
weren't done with them yet.

How Cicoi knew that, he had no idea.  But he suspected it had to do
with the Elders touching the inside of his brain.

The Elders floated as a group toward the Great Monument, the last thing
ever built by the ancient Malmuria, in the days before they left their
original sun.

It was a statue of the ten greatest leaders, each with their ten best
advisers, eye stalks pointed toward the stars as if they could see into
the blackness of space, tentacles flowing freely as was once allowed.
Cicoi loved that monument; it spoke of things lost and things gained,
at least to him.  He had never heard any of his own people discuss its
actual meaning.

The Elders encircled it.  Some leaned against the central ten figures.
Others touched the tentacles of the advisers.  There were not enough
Elders to touch all of the advisers.

My people, said the Elder who had spoken before.

In unison, all of the eye stalks were pocketed.  Heads went down,
tentacles flattened in a submissive position.  The sound of so much
movement echoed in the square.

Cicoi kept one stalk out.  He wanted to see, and he knew it was
allowed.

We shall do all we can to preserve our people.  You must trust in us,
as you have in the past.  Now.  Go back to your work.

Single stalks rose and pointed away from the Elders.  Keeping heads
bowed and tentacles as flat as possible, the Malmuria filed toward
their work.

Cicoi took a deep breath.  He turned toward Command Central's main door
only to find a single Elder before him.  He did not recognize which one
this was: they were so wispy as to be almost formless.

Other Elders stood before the Commanders of the North and Center.

You seem hesitant, the Elder said, and Cicoi wondered if it was
speaking to him, or to all three of them.

None of the others answered.  Cicoi could only assume that the Elder
was speaking directly to him.

"I am not hesitant," Cicoi said softly.

Ah, the Elder said, and his head moved slightly forward.  But you are.
You have concerns about the creatures of the third planet.  You believe
because they have developed technology, because they have learned, they
should not die.

Cicoi flattened his tentacles and moved his eyestalk into a position of
respect.  "It has always been our policy to leave the natives as
untouched as possible."

We no longer have time for niceties, Commander.  The Elder's mental
voice seemed colder than it had before.  Cicoi did not know how that
was possible, but it was.  We are speaking of the survival of our own
people.

"I know," Cicoi said.

You are young.  Inexperienced.  You do not know.

Cicoi raised one of his eye stalks enough to peek out of the pocket.
The other two Commanders appeared to be getting instructions from their
Elders, not having conversations.

Are you paying attention?  This time the Elder's voice held the
sharpness of command.

"Yes, O Great One.  I'm sorry."

We were speaking of our survival.

"I know."

Survival occurs at all costs.

Cicoi almost lost control of the single fully extended eyestalk.  He
forced himself to hold it in place.  "All costs?"

You are young, the Elder said.  Six of its upper tentacles floated
free.  Cicoi couldn't tell if they indicated annoyance, amusement, or
both.  We were speaking of the creatures on the third planet, and your
sympathy for them.

"It's not sympathy."

Empathy then.  A reluctance to kill sentient beings.

"It is a tenet of our training."  80

It is a luxury.  All ethical considerations are luxuries in grave
situations.

Cicoi felt his lower tentacles wobble.  "We have to make choices that
do not diminish us."

Do you think anyone will care what our choices were if our species does
not survive?  The Elder moved closer to him.  Cicoi had to concentrate
to prevent himself from backing away.  I am not telling you to kill
indiscriminately.  I am ordering you to view all options.  The
creatures of the third planet have proven themselves to be resourceful.
If they hold us off, if they destroy more of our harvesters, the choice
will come down to one thing: their survival or ours.

Cicoi's eyestalk toppled, and he pocketed it quickly, making himself
temporarily blind.  He raised a different eyestalk.

Theirs or ours, the Elder repeated.  If it comes to it, can you order
the destruction of the creatures of the third planet?

"All of them?"

We might need them gone because of their fighting capability.  Or -we
might need their organic material for food.  The third planet is not as
rich as it was in my time.  The Elder's transparent eye stalks turned
toward him.  Which is a long way of saying, yes.  You might have to
destroy all of them.  Can you do so?

Cicoi wobbled again on his lower tentacles.  He couldn't maintain the
position of respect much longer.

The Elder's ten eyes were staring at him.  They seemed eerie, with
their whitened pupils, their transparent lids.

"Yes," Cicoi finally said.  "I'll do what I have to.  I will protect my
people first and foremost."

The Elder's eye stalks bent slightly, and then he turned them toward
his companions.  We have agreement from the Commander of the South.

And the North, came a different Elder's voice.

And Center, came a third.

Cicoi bowed his head and folded his tentacles into a position of
submission.  Survival at all costs.  It was the only way.

4

April 29, 2018

11:16 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time

168 Days Until Second Harvest

Somehow, seeing the destruction a second time wasn't as devastating.
Perhaps that was because Cross was prepared for it.

He sat in the back of a helicopter, again, the same pilot in front of
him.  Sunlight played across the majestic Pacific, sparkling on the
waves.  He saw the white spot among all the black as the copter turned
and began its rapid descent.

Cross wasn't nervous this time.  He was feeling optimistic and it felt
strange.

Jamison had paged him less than twenty-four hours ago, claiming he had
found what they were looking for.  A cache of the little alien
nanomachines.

Cross's stomach had settled down for the first time in weeks.  He even
ate some leftover pot roast from the dinner Constance had prepared for
him while he was packing for his second flight across country in less
than a week.

He was glad to be returning to California.  The Tenth Planet Project
meeting had left him unsettled.  Britt claimed it was because of the
discussion about secrecy.

Cross knew that it was his reaction to the aliens.

Something about them had penetrated his scientific aloofness.  If he
had to guess, he would say something buried within him recognized that
visage as the face of the enemy.  He had mentioned it to Shane in
passing, and Shane had laughed.

"You mean we've got an instinctual reaction to those things?"  he
asked.  "Like a rabbit instinctively knows the shadow of a hawk means
danger?"

"I don't like your analogy," Cross said.  "But yeah, I think that might
be what's going on.  Didn't you have a reaction?"

"Of course," Shane said, "but my rationale for it was different.  I
know what those creatures can do.  I think I have a right to be
repulsed. And angry."

"It's not a scientific reaction," Cross said.

"Since when did an emotional response become unscientific?"  Shane
asked.  "You might have been looking on the thing that will kill you.
Don't you think that'll create a reaction--in anyone?"

Shane had a point, but, days later, Cross wasn't sure he agreed with
it.  His reaction concerned him because he worried that he wouldn't be
able to look at the aliens rationally.  In a war situation, the enemy
was always made out to be subhuman.  In this war situation, the enemy
was nonhuman, and that might be a problem.  If Cross--and his
colleagues-couldn't get by their feelings of disgust, couldn't look at
things rationally, then they might miss something important, something
that could only be gained through understanding.  Not through fear or
anger.

But Cross wouldn't, and couldn't, put away the desire to pay those
creatures back somehow.

Someway.

The copter set down on the white patch, and Cross got out.  The black
dust whipped around him as the copter blades slowed.  His skin crawled,
just like it had before, only this

time, he ignored it.  He stepped out from under the blades, and into
the truck that was parked alongside the spot.

Jamison was at the wheel, looking jaunty.  "We have loot," he said.

"Let's hope it's the right kind," Cross said.

Jamison backed the truck up and drove down the narrow path that led out
of the destruction.  "We found it in the remains of a restaurant, of
all things."

"A restaurant?"  Cross asked; "How'd you know?"

"The industrial-sized stove, refrigerator, and dishwasher were largely
intact, along with some steel tables.  The nano harvesters got blown
underneath the door of the freezer somehow."

"If they were inside something, how'd you find them?"  Cross asked.

"I opened the door.  I wanted to see if the food inside had gotten
destroyed."

"It had, I take it," Cross said.

Jamison shook his head.  "Apparently those nanoharvesters eat on the
way down.  They don't have independent propulsion.  They somehow got
through the door.  Maybe it was left open when they were dropped and
got shoved closed by something falling before they were picked up.  Who
knows.  But they were trapped in there.  Some of the food they had
missed, and it smelled like a son of a bitch."

Cross didn't have to be in that freezer to know what it smelled like.
He was glad he hadn't been there after all.  "Good work," he said.

"You've been saying that, but let's wait until you examine those
things."  Jamison bumped the truck over a curb and onto a real road.
Suddenly buildings surrounded them.  It felt as if they had sprouted
suddenly, when of course they hadn't.  But Cross hadn't been looking at
the road--purposely.  He hadn't wanted to see the black dust, the
twisted metal, lining the

sides.  So it was out of the corner of his eye that the buildings
suddenly appeared.

Jamison took the truck on a road Cross hadn't been on.  They parked in
front of what had once been an insurance office.  Jamison had gotten
permission to set up camp here before Cross had left the first time,
but this was the first time Cross had been in the building.

It was a single story with tacky plastic desks from the early '90s. The
door's window even had the business's name painted in gold.

Jamison unlocked the door and went inside.  His computer setup was in
the back office, the one that had probably belonged to the
long-vanished insurance agent.  Cross didn't want to think about what
had happened to that person.

"I suppose you want to see them," Jamison said.

"Yes," Cross said.

"Okay."  Jamison sat down at the desk, spun his chair to the right, and
grabbed two sets of thin rubber gloves.  He handed one set to Cross,
who put them on, and then slipped the other set on himself.  Then
Jamison picked up a microscope slide.  It really didn't look as if
anything was on it, the nanomachines were so small.

"These were in the freezer by themselves?"  Cross asked.  "How did you
even see them?"

"I kept the wand running.  I found a whole pile.  It was like a little
anthill."

Cross took the slide and held it gingerly.  He brought it closer to his
eye.  He could barely see what looked like dirt flecks that sometimes
got on his sunglasses.  Smaller by far than the period at the end of a
sentence, these nanoharvesters seemed completely harmless.

He still found it amazing that something that small could do so very
much damage.

"Okay," he said, handing the slide back to Jamison.  "Let's see these
vicious machines up close and personal."

"I thought you'd never ask."  Jamison put the slide into the
microscope built into the side of his computer.  An enlargement of a
section of the slide, a thousand times bigger than could be seen by the
naked eye, appeared on the screen.

The nanomachines were gray and oblong, with ten slashes along their
upper surface.  Viewed this way, they looked like carved rocks or the
badly designed New Age jewelry of his youth.

Except for their color and their three-dimensional appearance, they
looked just like the fossils that Edwin Bradshaw had found embedded
into a bit of rock decades ago.

"That's them, all right," Cross said.

"I figured," Jamison said, "when I brought them back here and gave them
a quick look-see.  Our nanotechnology is becoming pretty sophisticated,
but it's nothing like these little creatures here."

"What can you tell me about them?"  Cross asked.

"Not much," Jamison said.  "Analyzing other people's technology is not
my strong suit.  That's why you have Portia."

"She's in South America with Bradshaw," Cross said.

"I think it's time she comes home," Jamison said.

"I think you're right."  Cross tapped his wrist'puter and had it dial
out for Bradshaw.  Jamison continued to stare at the nanomachines.

So did Cross.

They were creepy in their own way, a completely different way than the
aliens themselves were.  The nanomachines didn't move.  They seemed
inanimate.  Something that small, Cross thought, should be moving, like
viruses in a drop of blood.  But these things just rested on the glass
surface, waiting for something to activate them.

"Will they eat us if we touch them?"  Cross asked.

"I don't want to find out," Jamison said.  "We've been using strict
contamination procedures whenever we work with

these things.  I don't even know if this group has chewed its quota or
hasn't even begun its work.  That's for Portia."  "What is?"  a tinny
voice said.  Cross glanced at his wrist.  He had an audio connection
with Bradshaw.

"We hit the jackpot, Edwin," Cross said.

"Jackpot?"  Bradshaw sounded confused.

"We've found an entire stack of our little friends," Cross said.  "Have
you had similar luck?"

"No," Bradshaw said.  "Although I keep thinking we should."

"Well, worry about it no longer," Cross said.  "Pack up the equipment
and come home.  Bring Portia.  Tell her I'll bring her some new toys to
Nan Tech tomorrow."

"Tomorrow?"  Bradshaw said.

"We've only got a few months," Cross said.  "We can't afford to waste
any time at all."

Cross heard mumbling in the background, then Bradshaw said, "Portia
wants to know if you can download any of this to us now?"

"Is this a secure line?"  Cross asked Jamison.

He shook his head.  "We'd have to go to the Army for that."

"Sorry," Cross said to Bradshaw.  "No can do.  Just go back to D.C.
I'll meet you both there tomorrow."

"Got it," Bradshaw said.  "And Leo, cong rats

"Thanks," Cross said.  "But the cong rats go to Jamison.  It's a good
first step."

Jamison smiled slightly as Cross severed the connection.  "When I found
these things I got completely overwhelmed."  He swept his hand toward
them.  "They're so alien."

"Funny," Cross said.  "I thought they seemed eerily familiar."

Jamison shook his head.  "Not to me.  They're so unlike our
nanomachines.  It's as if they're based on a different thought
process."

Cross stared at the gray shapes on the screen.  They weren't much
different than he had expected.

"It's kind of like what we'd get if a dolphin invented a vehicle,"
Jamison said.

"Why would a dolphin do that?"

"Rapid propulsion," Jamison said.

"That's a hell of an assumption," Cross said.

"But make it for a moment," Jamison said.  "They'd start from the idea
that the car would have to move quickly in water."

"It wouldn't be a car, then," Cross said.  "It would be a submarine."

"Not for them," Jamison said.  "They can already be underwater for long
periods of time.  It's as if these creatures had a similar principle in
mind--something small that works quickly--but began from a different
technology.  The result is familiar enough that we can understand it,
but not so familiar that we can make it work on the first try."

"Got it," Cross said.  Jamison's analogy was faulty, but Cross
understood.  It was like finding bits of pottery or ancient tools in a
dig.  Sometimes, if the culture was an unfamiliar one, the
archaeologist could only hypothesize what the particular tool was used
for.

Only here, they didn't have to hypothesize.  They knew.  They just
didn't know how the thing worked.

Which reminded him.  He had one more phone call to make.  "Can I link
into your system?"  Cross asked.  "I have one more call."

"Just use it," Jamison said.  He removed the nanoharvesters from the
computer, and deleted the image.  The video link system showed on the
screen.  Cross dialed, and the numbers were blacked out.  Efficient.

He got through to the Pentagon in one try.  Apparently it was easy when
you had the right numbers.  The face that filled his screen belonged to
Clarissa Maddox's aide, Paul Ward.

"Leo Cross for General Maddox.""She's in conference," Ward said.

"It'll only take a minute," Cross said.  "This shouldn't wait."

Ward didn't even ask him to hold.  Instead, the screen went black, and
then the United States Government seal filled the blankness.

"What?"  Jamison asked.  "No music?"

"Your tax dollars at work," Cross said.

"Do you want me to leave?"

"It's not necessary."

Then the screen blanked again for a moment before Clarissa Maddox's
face appeared.  She looked tired.

"Dr.  Cross.  I trust you have good news."

"Excellent news, actually, General."  He leaned toward the computer.
"I'm in California.  We found what we were looking for."

To his surprise, she smiled.  It was a warm and joyful smile that made
her look years younger.  "You don't know how I've needed to hear
something good, Doctor.  This is wonderful news, and it'll be very
helpful in our efforts."

"I know," Cross said.

"All right.  I will order the Commander on-site to have you and the
items flown back to Dulles.  Then you bring all of the items directly
to the Army lab.  Is that clear?"

"General, I thought that Nan Tech would help with some of this.  After
all, they're on top of the current research."

"It's a military problem now, Doctor.  If our scientists need outside
experts, I'm sure they'll bring them in."  The smile had faded from her
face.  "You're not going to give me another argument, are you, Leo?"

He made himself smile, even though he didn't feel like it.  He felt as
if he'd been run over with a tank the last few times he'd talked to
Maddox.  "Of course not, General.  I see your point."

Her face softened.  "Good.  I look forward to seeing those little
beasties."  She reached for the off button and then she paused.  "Tell
your team that it has done spectacular work."

And her image vanished.

"Spectacular work," Cross said dryly.

"I heard," Jamison said.  "What a tight ass

Cross shook his head.  "She's getting pressure from all sides.  The
only victory we had in that conflict came from her quick thinking. 
She's just doing her job."

"And now she expects you to give this to government scientists?  No
offense, Leo, but we turned down a number of their nanotech guys when
they applied at Nan Tech  The government is very behind in this area. I
can only think that the Army's guys are even farther behind."

"I know," Cross said.  "I'm not a member of the U.S. military."

"Which means what?"  Jamison asked.

"I'm going to look the other way as you divide these 'beasties," as the
general calls them, in thirds."

"Thirds?"

"You're taking a large pile to Nan Tech and I'm taking a small pile to
the Army."

"And the third pile?"

"I think Edwin and I deserve just a few, too, don't you?"

"You guys aren't that familiar with nanotechnology," Jamison said.

"Nope, but we know fossils.  And we might see something in the old ones
that is missing from the new or vice versa.  It might be something you
guys miss."

Jamison grinned.  "I like how you think, Dr.  Cross."

Cross stood.  "I'm glad someone does."

April 29, 2018

6:09 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time

168 Days Until Second Harvest

Britt Archer hadn't put on a slinky dress in half a year.  She'd spent
all of her time at the office or at Cross's house.  Her cats barely
knew her any longer.  Poor babies.  They didn't know why she was so
frazzled, and she was glad she couldn't explain it to them.  They, at
least, weren't panicked, like the rest of the world.

She adjusted the strap on her high heels, clutched her purse, and ran
her tongue over her teeth, making sure she didn't have any lipstick
where none should be.  A long time since she got dressed up, and Cross
wasn't even in town to see it.  He had called as she was leaving her
apartment.  He would be back by morning.

She didn't tell him how much she missed him.  She had decided, in the
middle of the bombing, that while personal feelings were nice and good,
they didn't help wage a war.

And that's what they were in now.  A war.  With an enemy no one
understood.

She shuddered, and got out of her car.  The valet had been waiting for
her to do just that.  He looked about twenty-one, athletic, and
impatient with everything.  If he were living in Europe right now, he'd
be in the military.  The U.S. was delaying the draft for just a few
more weeks while it put training programs in place.  Maddox had said
she wanted some of the new recruits to go into astronaut training,
others into science work.

In a month, this kid wouldn't be parking cars.  No one would.

But Archer couldn't tell him that.  Instead, she handed him her keys
and stepped onto the red carpet someone had laid over the concrete
sidewalk.  It led under a matching red awning with the restaurant's
name emblazoned in gold.  Another young man held open the oak door for
her, revealing a coat check area and stairs leading up to the main
dining room.

She felt awkward being in a place like this, and somewhat amazed that
fancy restaurants were open and doing business.  But why wouldn't they?
Fancy restaurants were the mainstay of Washington society.  They
wouldn't shut down unless the entire country were under continual
bombardment.

Which it just might be in a few months.

She shuddered, removed her shawl, and handed it to the young woman
behind the counter.  Then Archer walked up the stairs, careful to hold
the railing so that she wouldn't trip in her stylishly uncomfortable
shoes.

The maitre d's station was at the top of the stairs.  A dapper man in
his mid forties fussed behind an oak podium.  When he saw her, he
raised a single eyebrow as if inquiring what had possessed a woman like
her to come into a restaurant like this.

"I'm here to meet General Maddox," Archer said.

The maitre d's face eased into a wide smile.  "Ah, the general.  We
don't see enough of her these days."  He made it sound as if it were
Maddox's fault for failing to patronize the restaurant in times of
crisis.  "Follow me, please."

He grabbed a menu swathed in leather, and a smaller book that had to be
the wine list.  Archer wondered if she was the first to arrive.  When
they reached the table in the very center of the room, she realized she
wasn't.

Jesse Killius sat there, looking awkward, her chewed fingernails
tapping on the wine list.  She looked as uncomfortable in her black
silk dress and pearls as Archer felt.  When Killius saw Archer, she
smiled in what seemed like relief.

"I was beginning to feel like my date stood me up in front of the
entire school," she said.

Archer laughed and sat down.  With a flourish, the maitre d'handed her
the menu, and then disappeared before Archer could ask for a drink.

The restaurant was full, and Archer recognized a number of Washington
power brokers as well as a few journalists scattered among the tables.
Everything was done in heavy oak and linen, very traditional, very
old-fashioned.

"Would madam like a drink?"  a voice asked at her elbow.

Madam would like the whole damn bottle, Archer was tempted to say, but
didn't.  Instead, she said, "Yes, please.  A glass of Chardonnay."

She didn't even get to see the voice's owner before he was gone.

"After all that's been going on," Killius said, "I would have thought
you would order something stronger."

Archer shook her head.  "For all its trappings, I suspect this is a
business meeting."

"You don't think we have enough in common with the general to warrant a
girls' night out?"  Killius asked.

Archer liked Killius's fey sense of humor.  They had spoken on the
phone a number of times, but never enough for that humor to come out.
Whenever they were on the phone it was either STScI business or NASA
business, and they were talking in either scientist or administrator
shorthand.

"I think we probably do," Archer said, "but I don't think we have the
time to find out."

Killius's smile faded and she sighed.  "When I was in college," she
said, "we had to interview people who had gone through a
twentieth-century historical moment for a history term paper.  I
interviewed an old guy who had been a German POW in World War II."

Yet another waiter set down Archer's white wine.  She picked up the
glass and twirled the stem between her thumb and forefinger.

"He had a lot of stories, most of them about the harsh conditions but
the one thing that stuck with me is that they piled a bunch of sawdust
into something shaped like a bread loaf and as they ate it, they talked
about the best meals they had ever had."

Archer sipped her wine.  It was the best house Chardonnay she had ever
had.

"So after that, at times when I was cooking Thanksgiving dinner or when
I came to a fancy restaurant--" Killius swept her hand toward the door
"--I would remember what he said and wonder if I would ever be in a
situation where I would be starving and remembering that meal as one of
the best meals I ever had."

Archer shuddered.  "I think if something happens to us this time, it'll
happen so fast we won't have time to think about meals or our lives
flashing before our eyes.  We'll just be gone."  Killius's gaze slipped
away from hers.  "Sorry.  I didn't mean to be so glum."  Archer
shrugged.  "I'm the one who brought it up.  I mean, aren't you a little
uncomfortable being here, knowing that--"

"Ladies."  General Maddox approached the table, leading the maJtre d',
who now looked like a whipped puppy.  "I'm glad you could make it."

If she hadn't spoken first, Archer wouldn't have recognized her. Maddox
was dressed up, too, in a slinky blue dress, with a sassy set of
sapphire earrings, and a matching sapphire bracelet that accented her
strong arms.  She wore her hair up and her makeup light, but she looked
nothing like the tough general who had been running the Tenth Planet
Project meetings all these months.

She let the maitre d' pull out her chair, then sat, and nodded when he
asked her if she wanted her usual.  He was gone before anyone else had
a chance to say a word.

"This is some place," Killius said.

Maddox smiled.  She was a beautiful woman in a nonconventional way.
Archer had never seen that before.  "I've always liked it," she said.

"They seem to know you here," Archer said.

Maddox shrugged.  "I've learned that sometimes having a conversation
over a relaxing meal is a lot better than a meeting in a stuffy office,
especially in the evening."  She picked up her menu.  "The crab cakes
are always good here."

They looked at the menus as yet a third waiter brought Maddox a gin and
tonic.  A fourth waiter described the specials, and Maddox assured all
of them that this would be on the government's tab.

Archer ordered a filet mignon, medium rare, and felt slightly guilty at
the expense.  Killius ordered lobster and smiled in obvious
anticipation.  Maddox ordered the roast duck special.

Then the waiter took their menus and wine list, and disappeared.  The
conversation around them was a low hum.

Archer decided she'd begin.  "You called this a meeting?"

"I called this a conversation," Maddox said.  "But you can call it a
meeting."

"Just us, not the Project?"

Maddox sighed, but she didn't look irritated.  She took a sip of her
drink.  "I'm coordinating a lot of things right now," she said.  "My
biggest concern is that the aliens are an unknown.  We can make
assumptions about them based on very little evidence.  And we only have
a short time to gather more evidence.  I know that Cross is right.
They're not done with us yet."

"All we have are the bodies," Killius said.

Maddox shook her head.  "The bodies, the ships, and the historical
record.  I've been thinking about that first presentation of Cross's.
Do you remember?"

Archer did.  She'd seen it more than once as Leo was drumming up
support for the Project.  In it, he had used the historical
record--actually the writings of civilizations dead for thousands of
years--to show that a "black death from the sky" happened at all.  Now
they'd seen the black death and knew why it came from the sky.

"Yes, I remember," Killius said.

"There's bound to be more information in there, if we just know where
to look."  Maddox sipped her drink as a waiter set down some warm
bread.  She took a piece and slathered it with butter, then set it on
her bread plate.  "We also have observation.  Obviously these aliens
have a civilization.  We should be able to see it."

"With the telescopes?"  Archer said.

Maddox nodded.  "They are the best vision we have into deep space.  The
planet is moving inside Venus's orbit and won't be this close again for
four months.  We need to get better information about the aliens before
then."

Archer frowned.  They had had this discussion once before.  Briefly and
on the phone, but they had had it.  Then Maddox glanced at Killius, and
Archer realized what was going on.  This meeting wasn't for her.  It
was for Killius.  Was there a problem at NASA?

"I empathize," Archer said.  "But the scopes can't help you, not for
another three months.  They just aren't powerful enough.  The tenth
planet doesn't reflect light, and soon it'll disappear behind the sun.
We have to wait until it's much closer before we attempt to see
anything on its surface.  But to be honest, I don't think we're going
to get much more as it comes toward us this time than last time."

Maddox sighed and took a bite of the bread.  Killius dug in the bread
basket until she found a piece of rye.  She pulled it out and buttered
it lightly.

Yet another waiter appeared with their salad course.  As he mixed the
Caesar salads and queried them about the amount

of pepper, the women watched him.  When he left, leaving large plates
of greenery before them, they continued.

"What about probes?"  Maddox asked.

Killius picked up her salad fork.  She stabbed at her plate.  "We lack
the funds, General."

"If funds weren't an issue."

Killius raised her head.  A single lock of hair had fallen alongside
her face.  She was thinner than she had been when Archer had met her, a
long time ago.  "Not at all?"

Maddox ate her bread and didn't touch her salad.  In fact, she pushed
the salad plate away.  "Jesse," she said softly.  "We've just suffered
through the worst attack ever on the continental United States.
Congress is going to roll over and bark whenever we ask it to.  Money
is not an issue.  Most of the defense funds that had gone to
conventional ground weapons are useless in this campaign.  We can now
turn that toward space.  Toward NASA, if that's the place to go.  If
it's not, I suppose we can go directly to private industry--there are a
number of companies that have been launching their own satellites and a
few probes--but I worry about their commitment to our cause."

"They should be just as involved as the rest of us," Archer said. She'd
talked to some of her nonscientific friends.  They were scared.

"Should be.  But I have a healthy mistrust of private industry.  I
prefer to keep things under government control."

Where she or someone like her could oversee the work, Archer thought.
The key word in Maddox's last sentence wasn't "government."  It was
"control."

"We can do probes," Killius said.

"What about a defense system?"

Killius frowned.  "A planetary defense system?  That's not something we
can do alone.  I'm sure the other nations would

have something to say about it.  In the '80s, when President Reagan
suggested the Star Wars system--"

"I know your institutional memory is long," Maddox said.  "So's mine.
And Reagan's system, in addition to being forty years out-of-date,
never got off the ground.  And it wasn't designed to protect us from
things arriving from outer space.  Instead, it was to protect us from
things launched into space from other countries.  It's not applicable.
If we're doing a planetary defense system, the other nations will
benefit from it."

"If we present it to them properly," Archer said, finally understanding
one of the reasons she was here.  Her work at STScI was largely a
matter of international cooperation and coordination.  "If we give them
a say-so in much of what we do."

"I'd prefer this to be an American-run project," Maddox said.

"Forgive me, General," Archer said, "but you can have a project that's
run formally by the Americans, and you'll get a lot of protest.  Or you
can have one run informally by us, with much of the control situated in
this country, and you'll get almost no protest at all."

"This has happened with your telescopes?"

"Yes," Archer said.  "And I'm speaking from experience in times of
peace.  We're not at peace now.  There should be even more
cooperation."

Killius was studying her salad, working her way methodically through
all the lettuce and pushing the croutons aside.  She looked like a
woman who knew she was being double teamed.  Archer wanted to take her
aside and assure her that it hadn't been set up beforehand, that she
hadn't agreed to the meal to badger Killius into a position she didn't
want to be in.

The very first waiter, the one who had brought Archer her drink
appeared and whisked away their salad plates.  He cleaned the crumbs
off the tablecloth with a little brush and then put large platters down
before leaving as silently as he had arrived.

"So," Maddox said.  "A defense system.  We have ideas, and we've
already talked to a few of your people.  What we really need from NASA
isn't a design for the defense system, but your cooperation in using
manned shuttles to set it up."

"Oh," Killius said.  "We don't become a long arm of the Defense
Department, then."

Archer stiffened, wondering if Maddox would take offense.  But she
wasn't even looking at Killius.  She was looking at the headwaiter, who
was carrying a tray of food on three fingertips.  He bowed and placed
the tray on its little cart.  On top were dishes covered with silver
warmers.

"The filet," he said with just a hint of a British accent.  Archer
wondered why it was that all headwaiters spoke with that same accent,
that same precision.  Was it taught to them in headwaiter school?

"Mine," she said.

He waved it in front of her, before setting it down and removing the
cover with a flourish.  Then he repeated the procedure with the lobster
and the duck.

"Do your meals look satisfactory?"

"As good as usual, Claude," Maddox said.  Her tone clearly held
dismissal.  The headwaiter nodded, grabbed his tray, and left.

"The long arm of the Defense Department?"  Maddox said softly.  Archer
winced.  She had hoped Maddox hadn't heard that.  "You sound as if
that's a problem, Jesse.  NASA and Defense have always worked together
closely."

"And been separate agencies."

"This is not the time to worry about who's in charge of what," Maddox
said.  "The lines are probably going to blur mightily before this thing
is over."

Killius stared at her lobster as if she suddenly didn't know how to
eat it.

"They've already blurred," Archer said.  "Even between countries."

The cooperation they had all seen on the Tenth Planet Project wouldn't
have been possible a year before.

"Jesse," Maddox said.  "What's bothering you?"

Killius pushed her plate away.  She hadn't touched the lobster. 
"Change bothers me," she said, her head down.  Then she raised it. 
"It's not you, General.  It's the new ways of thinking.  I'm a better
bureaucrat than scientist, I guess, but I'm both, ultimately, and both
operate by strict rules.  Suddenly I find myself in a world in which
the old rules no longer apply, not to science, and not to
bureaucracy."

"The old rules do apply," Maddox said.  "But it's the old wartime
rules, not peacetime rules.  None of us worked during the Cold War--in
fact, we were all children when it ended--but that's the model NASA has
to look to now.  An enemy so great that we might not be able to destroy
it, but we have to put our best effort into it.  That attitude got us
into outer space in the first place."

"We're not trying to go to space, General," Killius said.

"No."  Maddox spoke softly.  "We're trying to save Earth."

Archer let out a small breath.  Her hands were trembling.

Killius looked at both of them for a moment.  She was pale beneath her
makeup.  "Probes, and manned shuttle missions."

"Yes," Maddox said.  "That's all we're asking."

"That's a lot," Killius said.  "We're stretched now."

"I'm trying to change that," Maddox started, but Killius raised a hand
to stop her.

"If you can guarantee the money," Killius said, "I can guarantee
results."

Maddox met Killius's gaze for a moment.  Archer found herself holding
her breath.  The two women were staring at each other as if they could
read each other's minds.

"I can guarantee the money," Maddox said.

"Then you'll have your probes.  I'll make sure we'll know everything
humanly possible about those aliens by the time they make their return
trip around the sun.  And you can have all the shuttles you can pay to
get into orbit."

"Good," Maddox said.  "I can't ask for more."

She picked up her fork and poked at her duck.  Archer cut another piece
of steak.  It was one of the best steaks she had eaten for a long time.
After a moment, Killius pulled her plate closer and began to pick apart
the lobster.

Maddox took a bite of duck and then smiled.  "The meeting's over," she
said.  "Let's have a real conversation, about men, and vid stars, and
whether or not we should have dessert."

Archer looked at her.

Killius seemed startled.

Maddox raised her eyebrows.  "We don't get chances like this very
often," she said, "and I suspect our chances will be fewer and fewer
over the next couple of months."

She took a bite of duck, chewed for a moment, and then cut another
piece.  It was as if she couldn't get enough.

She said, "Eat well, ladies.  We have to enjoy the good things in life
while we still have them."

The words didn't encourage Archer to eat more.  Instead, they nearly
stole her appetite.  While we still have them.  Even Maddox thought
that ultimately they'd lose.

Archer shuddered.

She had a hunch Maddox was right.

April 29, 2018 22:07 Universal Time

168 Days Until Second Harvest

General Gail Banks felt the shuttle shudder as it attached itself to
the docking bay outside one of the units of the International Space
Station.  Sloppy work, that.  A shuttle should never shudder when it
docked, especially in space, where so many things could go wrong.

She waited for the all clear, then unhooked all her seat belts locking
her into the passenger chair.  She had purposely stayed out of the
cockpit--she'd learned through bitter experience that she couldn't be
hands-off when faced with a less competent pilot than she was, and most
pilots never came up to her exacting standards.  When she had been in
charge of the shuttle program, pilot testing had been rigorous.  So
rigorous, in fact, that some idiot had complained to the media, which
then sicced the congressional doofuses on the case.  Congressmen who
had Air Force bases in their home states, and tons of pilots who
someday dreamed of flying to the moon as their constituents, suddenly
demanded an investigation.

And so, Banks had to spend a week out of her life sitting in front of
microphones in the House of Representatives, defending her standards to
a bunch of people who wouldn't know what standards were if a lobbyist
didn't tell them.  It had been all she could do to keep her contempt to
a minimum.

Not that it did any good.  She was the public face for the program, and
so, of course, she was the one whose head went on the block.  She got
several apologies from her superiors, all of whom said they wouldn't
have removed her from duty if it had been their choice.  But it hadn't
been.  The suits had

decided that standards were too rigorous.  Our pilots weren't getting
a fair shake.

And now she had to tolerate a shuddery docking on the International
Space Station.  A shuddery docking on the wrong part of the ISS could
create all sorts of internal problems for the station.  If she had
time, she would try to affect the piloting problems from here.

She wouldn't have time, and she knew it.  She was on the tightest
deadline of her life.

"Ready, General?"  The pilot poked his head through the separator.

"Are you certain we're properly docked?"  she asked.  "That was a rough
connection."

"All systems go according to the board."

"I don't give a damn about the board," she said.  "You eyeball it,
mister, and then we disembark.  I've got nuclear missiles onboard this
beast, and I'm not going to lose one of them to your carelessness."

The pilot's face flushed.  "Yes, sir."  He disappeared into the cockpit
again.

She clutched a rung and waited.  He hadn't turned the low gravity on
yet either, and they would need it to unload those missiles.  This part
of the ISS, the newest part, had continual gravity--not as strong as
Earth's--but enough so that the permanent members of the ISS's staff
didn't get osteoporosis or other degenerative bone and muscle diseases.
No matter how much exercise folks did in zero g, it didn't substitute
for the good old force of gravity herself.

Through the closed cockpit door, she heard the slide of the pilot's
exit.  Well, at least he took her advice.  Only she didn't think it was
her tone that worried him.  She thought it was probably the mention of
the missiles.  Most folks didn't like the mention of nuclear and
warhead in the same sentence, let alone in the same phrase.

She smiled to herself, and floated toward one of the windows  The ISS
was a strange place.  The first pieces, Russian built, went up before
the turn of the century.  The ISS was, as its name suggested, an
international project that had been initially designed for research.
But as more private industry got into space travel, and as governments
saw the point of it, the suggestion of turning the ISS into an
interplanetary way station gained legs.  The problem was that the ISS
wasn't designed for it.  Sure, it had modules upon modules upon
modules, but they were held together with spit and glue, and a whole
lot of prayer.  The newest pieces could barely talk to the younger
pieces, and the oldest piece, called Zarya by its designers, was mostly
shut down because it had become so dangerous.  Unfortunately, it was
smack-dab in the middle of the main section of the station, so it
couldn't be disassembled or jettisoned, at least not without great
effort, great expense, and great risk.

Zarya wasn't her problem.  The ISS really wasn't.  She was running ops
from here, and her biggest problem wasn't the missiles.  It was the
deadline.  When General Clarissa Maddox assigned Banks the task, she'd
said, "I know this deadline is tight.  In fact, it's damn near
impossible.  But you're the only person I know who can make the
impossible happen efficiently and well."

It was, Banks knew, both a vote of confidence and an apology for all
the things that had happened with the shuttle program.  But Banks also
knew she wouldn't be assigned a mission this critical strictly as an
apology.  She had to be the best for the job, just like Maddox said she
was.

There was no margin for error.  She wouldn't allow any.  She'd make
sure these missiles were unloaded, and then when the next shipment came
up, she'd make sure those missiles were properly taken care of, as
well.

And she would keep doing that until all the area around the space
station was filled with missiles.  And then the aliens would see that
they attacked the wrong people.

Maddox's plan was a good one, and Banks was proud to be the one who
would make sure everything got done right.  She wouldn't make any
friends on this job, but she might just save a few billion human
lives.

She grinned.

As long as they were killing a few billion aliens in the process, she
could live with that.

5

May 6, 2018

9:02 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time

161 Days Until Second Harvest

Leo Cross was late and of all the places to be late to, Nan Tech wasn't
one of them.  He had forgotten how these old streets outside the
Beltway jammed during rush hour.  He was five miles from Nan Tech and
it felt like he was five hundred miles away.

His car was on automatic, following the directions given by the
guidance system installed somewhere in Detroit.

"What do those idiots know about D.C.?"  he muttered and shut off the
guidance system.  The Mercedes squawked, "Are you certain--?"  before
he shut off the vocal controls as well.  Then he took over the steering
himself, turned right onto a side street, and drove fifteen miles over
the speed limit through a residential area that had been built around
the time he was born.

He hoped no children were playing hooky from school, no dogs decided to
take that moment to cross the road, no cats chased a mouse across his
path.  He hadn't driven hands on in months, not since the last time
he'd rented a car in, what?  Oregon?  when he went out to see Bradshaw
for the very first time.

It was rather liberating.  He hadn't realized how controlled he felt
by this expensive car, by its automatic everything--so smooth you can
forget how to drive and still get where you're going in comfort,
according to the stupid radio ads.  Well, he was getting where he was
going, in comfort, and on time, because he was taking matters into his
own hands.

The back streets had none of the crunch of the main thoroughfares.  He
was beginning to see the problems inherent in automatic guidance
systems.

He turned into the Nan Tech employee lot, bounced over a few speed
bumps, and parked behind the building.  There was no gilt here, no
fancy scrollwork to mar the glass-and-steel design.  It looked so '90s.
He'd always found that amusing.  He was coming to the cutting edge of
nanotechnology, and the building looked dated.

He walked in the back door, ignoring the building as it greeted
him--everything at Nan Tech talked--and happy to avoid the bug
sculpture in the lobby.  That's what Bradshaw called it anyway.  The
sculpture was supposed to be of a human form covered with nanomachines.
Instead, Bradshaw said, it looked like some poor guy covered with
ants.

Cross pressed a button for the elevator.  He debated, as he waited for
the doors to open, whether or not to shut off the vocal unit, but then
decided not to.  He was late.  He deserved it.

Besides, he didn't know where everyone was meeting.

The elevator doors slid open silently.  The elevator was empty.  Cross
cursed under his breath, and stepped inside.

Dr.  Cross.  You are half an hour late.  I will take you to the
fifteenth floor.

"Thanks," he muttered, knowing he didn't sound grateful at all.  He
hated having inanimate objects talk to him.  Portia Groopman, she of
the genius mind trapped in a twenty-year old's body, said she found all
this idle chatter "comforting."

Cross was really afraid to think about what the world would be like in
his old age.

If the world survived to his old age.

He shuddered, wishing that for one day he could forget how very close
they all were to losing everything.

The elevator doors opened.  The nanomachines had formed a series of
teddy bear sculptures, all of them pointing to the left.

"Cute, Portia," Cross said.

She had designed the nanosculptures, as she called them.  They changed
daily, sometimes hourly.  Nanomachines were programmed to form several
different images.  Usually the changes followed a prearranged program,
but sometimes someone--usually Portia--made them do something special
for a guest.  In this case, a late guest.

Cross followed the pointing bears down one hallway until he reached an
open doorway.  Inside, he saw Bradshaw, Portia, and two other members
of Nan Tech whiz squad, as Bradshaw called them.  None of the Nan Tech
employees on this team, at least, were older than twenty-five.

"Hey, Leo, it's about time," Portia said.  She looked up from the
screen she'd been studying.  She was a slight girl, whose delicate
frame made her seem even slighter.  She wore rose tinted glasses and
had her black hair cut in a perfect wedge.  Her skin was tanned from
her trip to South America with Bradshaw.

Bradshaw looked up at the mention of Cross's name.  Bradshaw was the
oldest member of the Tenth Planet Project.  He was nearly sixty,
although he didn't look it.  He had lost weight since coming to
Washington, D.C."  but he still had love handles, as Britt called them,
and his graying hair needed a trim.  He, too, had tanned on this last
trip, and it accented the laugh lines around his eyes and mouth.

"Leo," he said.  "You're late.  ""It the damn car," Cross said, and
came into the room.  "It insisted on driving us the slow route."

"You know, you can program the guidance systems to do anything you
want."  Jeremy Lantine, the head of the biology division at Nan Tech
was a scrawny black-haired man who, in a different generation, probably
would have been a poet.  His goatee was an affectation that matched his
beret.  His beat-up leather jacket hung on the chair beside him.  He
wore a see through muscle-T that revealed his muscle less chest.  "You
can even make them ignore all the rules of the road.  It takes some
jury-rigging, but--"

"Some day," Cross said, "I'll let you adjust my machine."

"Excellent," Lantine said.

"I wouldn't let him loose on it," said Yukio Brown.  Yukio wore his
dark hair in a modified Mohawk, and he had tattoos on both cheeks.  The
designs matched--two S-shaped squiggly lines on one side, and two
inverted S-shaped squiggly lines on the other side--but Yukio said they
signified nothing except his lame attempt to get his father's
attention.  "He might instruct your guidance system to drive only on
lawns."

"I wouldn't do that," Lantine said.  "I never repeat myself."

"See why I don't have a car?"  Portia said.  "These guys would just
screw it up.  Although that was kinda funny, watching you chase after
your car as it dug ruts in all that nicely mowed grass."

"It was not funny," Brown said.  "That old lady on Third made me pay to
have the whole thing re sodded

"Made me pay, you mean," Lantine said.

"No," Brown said.  "I made you pay."

"Enough, children," Bradshaw said.  "Leo wasted enough of our time
being late.  When this crisis is over, you can tell us all you want
about your car wars.  Until then, the stories get canned."

Cross whistled.  "You're being tough, old man."

"I've had to listen to them for a week, Leo."  Bradshaw looked aggravated, but his eyes were twinkling.  "While you've
been--what have you been doing since you got back?"

Cross came around the table.  They had several screens set up, all with
different views of the nanomachines.  Many were models that were
rotating.  Some were changing as if they were going through a cycle.

"I've been visiting our friends at the Pentagon mostly," Cross said,
"trying to find out what the government's doing with the other
nanoharvesters.  No one'll tell me.  Clarissa Maddox says that I'll
know when she knows."

"But you're the guide behind this thing," Lantine said.

"I am not a specialist in nanotechnology," Cross said, modifying his
voice so that he sounded like Maddox.  "Really, Dr.  Cross.  You can't
oversee everything."

"Yes, Dr.  Cross," Bradshaw said, and then shook his head.  "How do
they expect anything to get done if they're going to clamp down on the
information flow?"

"They have to," Cross said.  "They don't want it in the wrong hands."

"Since when did you become the wrong hands?"  Brown asked.

The room was silent for a moment.  Cross felt his breath catch in his
throat.  He hadn't thought of it that way.

"It's the military way," Bradshaw said.  "One branch doesn't tell the
other branch what's going on, not without a big conference about
something or other."

"It's the government way," Cross said, thinking about the stuff his
friend Mickelson went through as secretary of state.

"I suppose," Portia said.  "But it seems weird to me.  They don't know
we have these, do they?"

Cross shook his head.

"You expected this?"  Lantine asked.

Cross's smile was small.  "No, I didn't.  But Maddox warned me.  She
didn't have to.  She could have ordered me to bring

everything to her after I'd arrived in D.C. But she told me before."

"You think that was a warning?"  Brown asked.  "Sounds like that good
old-fashioned oxymoron, military intelligence, to me."

This time, Cross glared at him.  "Clarissa Maddox is one of the
smartest people I know.  And she's damn political.  She doesn't make a
mistake like that.  She let me know she was going to cut me out of the
loop, it was part of her job, and she gave me a choice of going around
her."

"Which isn't to say you won't get nailed if she catches us working on
this," Bradshaw said.

"Right," Cross said.  "Unless we find something really good."

Portia sighed.  She eased herself into a chair.  Lantine adjusted his
beret.  Brown flopped beside Portia.

"We did find something good, right?"  Cross asked.

"It depends on your definition of good," Bradshaw said.

"Anything that'll help us win this next battle," Cross said.  "Or
prevent these things from working."

"We're not miracle workers," Lantine muttered.

Portia punched him in the arm.  He glared at her, rubbed his rubbery
bicep, and said, "I mean, we've only had a week, sir."

"Actually, I think we've got a lot," Portia said.  "It just isn't what
you need yet.  But we'll get it."

"What do you have?"  Cross asked.  He turned his fullest attention to
her because she was the real whiz kid in this group.  Her office--which
was in a different part of this building-was decorated in early
chocolate and stuffed animals.  But she was no child.  She had one of
the most far-reaching minds he'd encountered in all his years in the
sciences.

She glanced at her colleagues.  "Everyone okay with me telling this?"

"You're the one who found the stuff," Brown said.  There was no
animosity in his tone.  "We're just here to ask the questions that get
you going."

Portia laughed.  She got up and went to the nearest screen.  On it, one
of the nanomachines rotated slowly.  It was clearly a model.  She
picked up a laser pointer and turned its red beam on the screen.

"What's bugging me the most are those marks," she said.  "I think
they're a language, and I'm not a linguist.  Still, I look at them and
wonder if I'm missing something."

"Tell me what you do have," Cross said.

"Okay," she said.  "This is a simple machine, just like I told Edwin
from the fossil he showed me.  It's designed to harvest.  Matter goes
in, gets processed and the good stuff stored, and the waste comes out.
That's all."

"These things can't fly or move on their own?"

"Nope.  They're like a single-celled organism.  They may have a
molecular attraction to their target, like a magnet to metal, but they
have one function and one function only.  Harvest."

Cross nodded.  "That's good news, right?"

She shut off the laser pointer.  "I don't know.  These things are
really, really efficient.  Once they're dropped, they go to work, and
they don't quit until their little bellies are full."

"Bellies?"  Cross said.

"Portia anthropomorphizes everything," Brown said, fondly.

"She's saying that they eat until there's nothing left.  That's why
it's good these things don't move around much."  Lantine stretched out
his legs.  "And don't reproduce themselves from what they eat.  When we
discovered that part, I had this nightmare that these little buggers
grew legs, reproduced, and started walking.  And when I woke up, I got
even more scared, because I thought about it, and if they did, they'd
have gone through more than the California coast.  They'd have eaten
their way into Nevada, and up into Oregon, and down into

Mexico, and God knows what they'd've done under the ocean, and we'd
have no hope at all."

Cross felt his shoulders tighten.  "No hope?"

"None," Lantine said.  "Kabingo, we're dead.  These things eat organic
material.  If they walked, reproduced themselves as they went along,
nothing would survive.  I'm just glad they don't."

"We'd have designed them to move more, I'm sure," Brown said.

"Remember," Portia said to Bradshaw, "when I looked at that fossil, I
said these things were designed different than people would design
them?"

"I remember," Bradshaw said quietly.

"Jamison said the same thing to me just last week," Cross said.

"Well, that's one of the things I meant," Portia said.  "We put a lot
of emphasis on equipment that moves on its own.  I'm guessing that
movement is less important to these aliens.  Having the harvesters have
a molecular attraction is more than enough to make them efficient."

"Interesting hypothesis," Cross said, "but I'm loathe to make
generalizations based on one bit of equipment.  After all, we know
these aliens are good at other kinds of movement, like using their
spaceships.  Just because they didn't design their nanomachines in the
way we would doesn't mean they're that different from us."

"They've got to be different," Brown said.  "We'd never devastate a
planet like this."

Cross had to prevent himself from snorting.  Bradshaw looked at Brown
as if the boy were the most naive person on the planet.

"You need to take a class in archaeology," Bradshaw said.

"Archaeology, hell," Cross said.  "How about the history of food?  Take
a look at what the introduction of farming did to this planet."

"Not to mention certain methods of hunting," Brad shaw said.

"We're notorious for stripping land bare--on our own planet," Cross
said.

Brown held up his hands.  "I stand corrected."

"Better sit, then," Lantine said.

"Are you boys done?"  Portia asked.

Cross grinned at her.  She smiled back, then ducked her head shyly, her
bangs falling across her eyes.  "Sorry, Portia," he said.  "What else
have you got?"

She tossed the laser pointer from one hand to the other.  Lantine
grabbed a small stuffed dog, about the size of a golf ball, from a
nearby table and tossed it at her.  She caught it and nodded her
thanks.

Cross suppressed another smile.  The team knew one another well.
Whatever Portia had to say, it bothered her, and Lantine knew she
needed comfort.  He also knew the dog would provide it.

"Okay," she said, taking a deep breath.  "Dr.  Cross, I'm not sure we
can turn these harvesters off."

"They stop, don't they?"

She nodded.  "But only when they're full.  Once they start chewing or
dissolving or whatever they do, they keep doing it.  I have not been
able to find an intercept."

"No emergency shut-off valve?"  Cross asked.

"Not that I can find."  She cupped the dog in her right hand and rubbed
a thumb along the dog's nose.  Cross half expected it to wag its
stuffed blue tail.  "And I'm not even sure these things shut off in the
way that we're thinking."

"What do you mean?"  Cross asked.

"I think they shut off when they're full, like I said.  But there's no
way to test it.  Because they seem to be full when the organic material
goes away."

"In other words," Brown said, "they stop running when the food is
gone."

"But if there were unlimited food," Portia said, "I'm not sure they
would stop until they were completely full."

"Like the locusts of Biblical fame," Bradshaw muttered.

"What?"  Lantine asked.

"You know, the ones that God sent against the Pharaoh," Brown said.

"Actually," Bradshaw said, "I was thinking of the one mentioned in the
Book of Joel."

"It left the land barren," Cross said.  His gaze met Brad shaw's.  "You
think they saw these things?"

Bradshaw shrugged.  "I don't know.  It might have been actual locusts.
But I was thinking about the devastation, how nothing was left and
there was starvation all over the land."

"If they drop more of these things," Lantine said, and then stopped.

Portia was staring at all of them.  Her hand had closed around the dog.
The poor thing looked as if it were strangling.  If, of course, it had
actually been alive.

"If they blanketed the entire United States," she said, "we'd have
nothing left.  It'd look like it did in South America.  We'd be gone,
and there'd be dust everywhere."

"And that'd be all that's left of us," Brown said.

Cross shuddered.  Not all.  There'd be zippers and earrings and
buttons, and concrete, and cable, and steel.  Enough for archaeologists
to sift through a thousand years from now and misjudge what the entire
society was about.

"Okay," Cross said.  "Let me get this straight.  Either these things
stop when they're full or they stop when they run out of material to
chew."

Portia nodded.

"Can you make them think they're full?"

"Or think they're out of raw material?"  she asked.  "I don't know.
This technology is truly alien, Dr.  Cross.  I mean, they

have spaceships and we have spaceships, but that doesn't mean one of
our astronauts can get into their ship and fly it."

"Not without some study," Cross said.

"Right," she said.  "And I'm just beginning work on this."

"We don't have a lot of time," Cross said.

"She knows."  Bradshaw now sounded fatherly, as if Cross were pushing
too hard.  "These kids have already managed to cram a year's worth of
work into a week, Leo.  You're expecting miracles."

"We need miracles."  He leaned against the desk and stared morosely at
the slowly rotating image of the nanoharvester.  Whoever thought that
destruction of the human race might come from machines so tiny that
they were almost impossible to see with the human eye?

"There's one more thing, Dr.  Cross," Portia said softly.

He looked up.  She had opened her hand and was still petting that
little dog.  She looked like a girl who was asking for the keys to her
dad's car, not about to explain a scientific discovery.

"It's really clear that these nanoharvesters can be programmed."

He felt his heart leap.  "By us?"

She shook her head.  "By the aliens."

He frowned.  "What do you mean?  I thought you said these harvesters
had only a single purpose."

"They do," she said.  "They're harvesters.  But they don't have to
harvest organic material.  They can harvest anything.  What they
harvest is programmable."

"How'd you figure this out?"

"Don't ask," Bradshaw said, meaning he already had.

But Portia had turned toward the third screen.  A set of the
nanoharvesters was shoved to one side, next to several of the fossils.
"Edwin's been teaching me how to examine fossils," she said.  "I looked
at the fossils we have and compared them to the harvesters we have."

Cross's stomach was jumping.  He wasn't sure he liked what was coming
next.

"About four thousand years ago, we have a fossilized harvester
preserved with the body of a small rodent," Bradshaw said.  "I didn't
think anything of it at the time.  But when we got back from Brazil, I
looked at it.  And this was one of the few cases where we had a written
record.  The aliens needed something special.  The harvesters fell, but
they took minerals out of rock instead of organic material.  At least,
that's what I'm guessing."

Cross peered at the harvesters and then at the fossil.  "I don't see a
difference."

"There is none," Portia said.  "That's what I'm saying.  These aliens
can program these things.  If the aliens need organic material, they
take that.  If they need water, I'll bet they can take that.  If they
need only ocean salt, I'll bet they can take that.  All with these
things."

Cross stared at those alien machines.  They were growing more and more
hideous, the more he heard about them.  "So," he said.  "If they want
to take all of Earth's resources, they can."

Portia nodded.  "I think so.  If they have enough harvesters.  And
enough time."

"My God," Cross said.  How come the more they discovered, the more
difficult things became?

He stood.  "See if you can find a way to shut those things off," he
said

"We're doing our best," Brown said.  "It would help if we knew what our
military colleagues were doing."

"I know," Cross said, "but I don't think we'll know any time soon. Just
assume you're working alone on this."

"There are some great nanotechnology guys in other labs," Brown said.

"Bring them in," Cross said.  "We a for-profit company," Lantine
said.

Cross stared at him for a moment.

Lantine raised his hands in a gesture of surrender.  "I know, I know.
If we don't survive, profit won't matter.  But if we do--"

"You have my permission to patent your findings.  This is a rogue
operation anyway.  You may as well make use of it."  Cross again had
the feeling that, if the Earth survived this threat, he and the others
were creating a culture he wasn't sure he was going to like.

But he'd rather take that--a culture he hated--than a silent Earth
blanketed in dust.

May 6, 2018

20:34 Universal Time

161 Days Until Second Harvest

The old glide paths were dust covered and rusted.  Cicoi was able to
use his glide platform for only half of the distance.  For the rest, he
had to pick it up with two lower tentacles, and cross debris, gingerly,
with the remaining eight.  The Elder who had been assigned to him
waited in the air before him, flapping his own ghostly tentacles, as if
Cicoi's slow progress irritated him.

Cicoi had no idea where they were going.  All he knew was that his
Elder, who refused to tell Cicoi his name, had simply said, inside
Cicoi's brain, You shall come with me.

Of course Cicoi obeyed.  All of the Commanders obeyed the Elders, and
did not discuss their hesitations, although Cicoi had many.  He assumed
the others had many as well.  The Elders seemed to have taken complete
control, and they didn't seem concerned about the destroyed ships, the
lack of

food gathered on the First Pass, or the decreased possibilities for
the future.

The Elder was taking Cicoi to a part of the planet Cicoi had never been
in before.  Actually, it was a part of the South Cicoi had never been
in before.  When he had inspected this area before he became Commander,
he had seen the solar panels laying dark on the planet's surface, as
they did over most of the planet, and believed what he was told.

That this part of the South was empty land--once farmland, generations
ago, under a different sun.  Now abandoned and left, empty and resting,
until, perhaps, that day came in Far Beyond, when life grew on Malmur
again.  When the solar panels could be removed and light actually
allowed to reach the surface.

Sometimes Cicoi did not believe in the Far Beyond.

The glide paths leading to this region confused him.  He knew that
workers had once been here--as evidenced by the solar panels' existence
over them--and he knew that workers occasionally had to come effect
repairs, but he did not expect someone--even long ago--to have gone to
the expense of a glide path.

It had been built properly, too, with the right down sloping trajectory
so that travel on a glide platform required only a single puff of
energy at the start, and the rider would use slope and momentum to
maintain speed.  Cicoi felt rather guilty that he had had to restart
his platform six times already, but the Elder didn't seem irritated by
it.  He seemed more irritated by Cicoi's slow progress down the glide
path.

It was almost as if the Elder wanted to pick him up and drag him toward
whatever it was the Elder wanted to show him.

As Cicoi went farther down the glide path, he began to wonder about the
return trip.  Sometimes, glide paths had a wide slingshot angle, so
that he would have to go far out of his way in order to rise high
enough to find the return downslope.  He saw no return slope on either side, and that made him worry
that it was either too far above him or too far away for him to see.

The Elder had said nothing during this long trip.  He had to know that
Cicoi was worried about everything, from the return glide path to the
amount of time he was taking away from his post.  Right now his Second
was running too much of the planning.  His Second was ambitious and
sometimes short-sighted.  He might be planning for glory rather than
for the future.

Cicoi had been spending too much time with the Elder to double-check on
his Second.

The time with the Elder was, to Cicoi's mind, wasted time.  The Elder
wanted to relive the First Pass, to see what exactly the creatures on
the third planet had done.  Then the Elder wanted to see Cicoi's plans
for the Second Pass.  When Cicoi had showed him, the Elder had grunted
and flown off.  Later, Cicoi had learned that the Elder had joined the
other Elders, and they had had some sort of conference.

Cicoi had a blessed two days without the Elder, and then he returned,
along with his cryptic message.  You shall come with me.

And Cicoi had.  The deeper he went along this glide path, the colder he
got.  His upper tentacles wrapped around his torso in an effort to keep
warm.  Cicoi was used to cold temperatures; he had grown up in them.
But these were uncomfortable and--he worried--maybe even dangerously
cold.

He only had two eye stalks up, but he might have to send up more just
to see.  Even though the solar panels above him were collecting the
light, they weren't funneling it this deep.  The brownish half-light
down here did come from the surface, but Cicoi knew the farther he
went, the dimmer it would get.

Then he would have to choose between insulting the Elderand seeing
better.  Cicoi had lost some of his awe of the Great Ones.  He would
insult the Elder and see what happened.

Suddenly, the glide path veered to the right.  Cicoi went with it, into
an even darker area.  He was about to un pocket three eye stalks when
the Elder waved his tentacles at the far rock wall.

Lights flashed on beneath the solar panels.  Lights, clearly being fed
by the panels.  Lights, whose energy hadn't been used in hundreds of
Passes.

Cicoi felt a shudder run through him at the thought of all the wasted
energy.  He personally knew of several lives that might have been saved
if he had simply known this energy existed.

You would have used it unwisely, the Elder said to him.

Cicoi didn't argue, at least out loud.  But if the Elder could read his
thoughts, as it seemed he could, then the Elder would know that Cicoi
was losing his patience for all this mystery.

The Elder flattened himself to fit on the glide path and placed himself
in front of Cicoi.

Come with me.

Cicoi had no choice but to follow.

The glide path led inside a massive cavern, carved out of rock.  Lights
went on in here, as well, flooding the cavern with light.

Cicoi's tentacles waved slightly, mourning the waste of energy.  And
then he let his tentacles drop.

Before him were a hundred ships.  Bullet-shaped in the front, like a
torso with no tentacles, swept back and expanded in the rear.  Clear
black reflecting material over the nose, and propulsion at the base.

Cicoi had never seen anything like these.

As you stand here, the Elder said, your companions to the North and
Center stand in similar caverns.

"These aren't harvester ships," Cicoi said.  That was obvious.  They
were too small and sleek.  They were shaped like

Malmuria with their tentacles pointed downward and their eye stalks
pocketed.  Poised to move as swiftly as possible.

No, they are not, the Elder said.

"You built them, obviously," Cicoi said.  "But how come we didn't know
about them?"

There has been no need for them.  We have had no enemies.  Until now.

Cicoi shuddered.  He did not think of the creatures on the third planet
as enemies.  They were obstacles.

Or they had been.

The Elder was right.  "Enemy" was the better word.

"If these aren't harvester ships, what are they for?"  Cicoi asked,
fearing the answer.

The Elder spun toward him, tentacles flowing freely, as if his answer
gave him great joy.

They are for war, the Elder said.

"War?"  Cicoi repeated.  He shuddered.  He had heard stories of great
wars, but had never lived through them.  "Surely we don't have enough
energy to run a war."

We have stored it, the Elder said.  His tentacles were still waving. We
are prepared.  He waved two tentacles toward the ships.  These are more
powerful than our harvesters.  They are the best ships we have ever
built.

"More powerful than the harvesters?"  Cicoi asked.

And faster, too.  The Elder's tentacles flowed toward Cicoi.  He had
read the emotion right.  It was joy.  We shall destroy the creatures on
the third planet, and they will never, ever know how we did it.

Or why, Cicoi thought.  But he said nothing.  For the first time since
the last Pass, he felt hope.

May 6, 2018

22:07 Universal Time

161 Days Until Second Harvest

They were going to fight back.

That was all General Gail Banks kept repeating to herself as she stood
inside the small cubicle that had been assigned to her as an office.
Initially she had sworn she hadn't needed one.  Now she was glad she
had it.  The cabin they had given her to bunk in was little more than a
closet, even though it was top-grade and private.  Here, though--here
she had room to think.

And she was thinking about humanity fighting back, destroying the
aliens that dared attack Earth.  She'd seen pictures of their bodies.
Information about their ships.  She knew that even though they had the
dampening screens, the coming attack would work.  Some of the missiles
would get through.  And all they needed was for some of them to
explode. It would be enough, she was sure.

But her job was to make sure the odds were in humanity's favor.

She moved to the porthole in her office that looked out into space. The
plastic porthole wasn't really a hole at all.  Instead it was a long
clear section that ran the entire length of the wall.  Through it, she
could see the missiles that had been launched into orbit, at least part
of them.

They glinted against the blackness of space.  All had their internal
telemetry on, and some had lenses and cameras pointing toward the tenth
planet, ready and waiting.

Banks spent a lot of time before this window, just staring.  She had
gotten the station organized.  She had workers on regular schedules,
she was monitoring the incoming shuttles, she double-checked the orbits
of incoming missiles before they arrived.  She dealt with the
recalcitrant permanent staff,

the hardworking temporary staff, and longed for her own people.  She
put in requisition orders and sent messages to Earth, demanding more
missiles.

About three hundred missiles had arrived and, she was told, that was
about all she'd get.  A few more here or there might arrive before the
fight, but probably not.  Maddox had confided that two countries were
being "somewhat difficult" but that was it.

After that it was up to her and her people.

From her window, she could see half the missiles at one time, hanging
in the blackness of space.  They were all cylindrical, but after that,
the similarities ended.  The most current ones, all of U.S. design,
were sleek things that looked like they could respond to a whispered
command with complete accuracy.  Beside them were some ancient rockets
that were so ungainly, they seemed impossible to move, even in space.

Then, of course, there were the handful of missiles that used to belong
to the countries that had once formed the Soviet Block.  Banks couldn't
believe the organizers let some of those antiques lift off.  They'd
come from the smaller, less powerful countries of Eastern
Europe--Lithuania, Latvia, and a few others whose names she couldn't
remember.  Even though the missiles should have been disassembled
twenty years ago, they suddenly "reappeared" when they were needed to
defend the Earth.

Banks hoped that they wouldn't explode at the wrong time.

She had workers outside, placing the warheads on top of the missiles.
It was precise and difficult work, and she had only her best people on
it.  But the demands of time made it clear that she had to push them.
She didn't worry about shortcuts-none of the people tethered to those
rockets, working on the parts, would ever take shortcuts.  But she knew
what it was like to work under an impossible deadline, to know that the
fate of everything you knew and loved depended on your success.

She knew that fear drove them--fear and panic and anger-and she knew
that no matter how hard she tried to reassure them, she wouldn't be
able to cut through that.  Especially the anger.  All of them wanted
this work.  All of them wanted to strike back at the aliens.

The best she could do was push them, but be aware of their needs.  No
one had less than six hours sleep, fewer than two meals.  No one worked
two shifts in a row, no matter how much their skills were needed.

No one cut corners, even if they were sure the corners could be cut.

She had promised Maddox she'd make the impossible deadline, and she
would.

The missiles were here, hanging in space near the station, and everyone
said that wouldn't happen.

The warheads were here, being put on the missiles, and no one believed
that would happen, either.

The workers were here, some of them finishing their training in a New
York minute, and the entire senior staff said that couldn't happen.

So far, three small miracles.

She hoped those three miracles would equal one giant miracle: stopping
the aliens cold in their tracks.

She folded her hands behind her back and watched.  Occasionally she saw
movement as one of her workers, in a white environmental suit, slowly
moved around the cone of a missile.  Dozens of small shuttles floated
among and around the missiles, helping with the work.  At least thirty
people were doing space walks at the moment, and she had thirty more
taking their eight-hour break--six hours of sleep, plus two
meals--inside.

More people were in space than had ever been here.  Ever, in human
history.

Once she would have been proud of that.  Once she would have been happy
to command such a force.  Once she

would have used that fact as a major point in her military resume, a
case to be made for yet another star.

But she wouldn't speak of it.  She had a hunch that fact would be
forgotten in a very short time.

Once the missiles were launched.

Once the codes were activated.

Once the warheads exploded.

Right now, this mission was Earth's best hope.

Earth was fighting back and it was up to her to make sure the attack
worked.

Section Two

WAR

6

May 20, 2018

8:01 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time

147 Days Until Second Harvest

Again, when entering the Oval Office, the first thing Mickelson noted
was the faint smell of mold, covered by the cleaning fluids and
furniture polish.  But it was still there, just under the surface,
waiting for the heat of the summer to bring it out into full bloom.

He was the first to arrive.  Timeliness, which served him so well
overseas, was a curse here.  It meant he would have to wait alone, in a
room he had never thought he'd find himself in ten years before.

Mickelson took his usual place on the white couch nearest the main
door.  Long ago, Franklin had told him to make himself comfortable no
matter when he came into the room.  Franklin hated walking into his
office to find his Cabinet members standing on the blue rug like
children waiting to be told to sit down.

"You're running this meeting?"

Mickelson started, and turned slightly.  General Clarissa Maddox had
entered the room.  She was in full uniform-all five stars glistening on
her broad shoulders--and she seemed to be in a take-no-prisoners mood.
But there were

shadows under her eyes, and new lines around her mouth that Mickelson
had never seen before.

"If I were, we wouldn't be meeting in here," Mickelson said.

Maddox sank onto the couch beside him.  The cushion didn't sag as much
as he thought it would.  It always surprised him how she could look so
powerful and be so slight at the same time.

"I've got so much to do," she said, so low that only he could barely
hear her.  "I hope he doesn't make us sit here for an hour like the
last time."

"The last time he got a call from Britain's prime minister.  He
couldn't exactly blow it off," Mickelson said.  He hadn't been able to
tell anyone during that last meeting what was going on.  But now he
could. A lot had come out of the call.  And it seemed like months ago,
instead of just ten days.  Strange how time slowed when every minute of
every hour was being used.

"I suppose not."  Maddox looked at him sideways.  "Do you even know
what time zone you're in?"

Mickelson grinned.  "Lessee.  A round room, lots of blue, gold, and
white decor, and oh yeah, an American flag behind the desk.  Must be
Washington, which puts me in Eastern Daylight officially."

"And unofficially?"

"I think I'm still working on strict Greenwich Mean."

"Your last stop was England?"

"I hope so," Mickelson said, "or that rather shy man I was referring to
as Your Royal Highness was too polite to tell me I should have been
calling him something else."

Maddox laughed.  "If he was too polite to say anything, you were either
in England or Minnesota."

"What about Minnesota?"  Shamus O'Grady, the president's national
security adviser, sat down across from them.  He was a slender redhead
with hazel eyes.  His light skin, which

he never allowed in the sun, gave him a more youthful appearance than
he deserved.  It also showed every line, every mark of fatigue.  And
there were dozens of them.  If everyone else on the president's team
looked this tired, Mickelson thought, he wondered how bad he looked as
well.

"Just saying that the folks there are polite," Maddox said.

"Wow," O'Grady said.  "Are we talking about regional customs?  Because
I know a few that might shock you."

"I doubt you do," Maddox said.

Mickelson held up a hand.  He'd been in this conversation with these
two before.  They had a sort of one-upmanship going that he found
amusing most of the time, and disgusting the rest.  He once told them
that it seemed as if they brought out the high school in each other, or
maybe even the middle school.  It was as if gross-out humor were the
highest form they could aspire to.

"Let's not go there," he said.  "It probably won't shock General
Maddox, but it'll shock me.  Think of me as though I'm as naive as your
twelve-year-old son, O'Grady."

"Then nothing'll shock you, Mickelson," O'Grady said.

"We're playing that game again?"  President Franklin walked into the
room.  Everyone stood.  He waved them back down.  "The last time you
played it, I walked in to hear my staff discussing which was more
disgusting, eating monkey brains or goat brains.  And if I remember
correctly, it was you, Doug, who actually had an opinion."

"I was just trying to shut them up, sir."

"Well, it seemed like encouragement to me."  President Franklin sat
down in the armchair.  He was a slight man who had his mother's button
eyes and mobile mouth.  His dark hair fell across his forehead
naturally, and that, combined with his incredible personal charm and
aquiline nose--apparently the only thing he'd inherited from his
father--got him voted People Magazine On-Line's Sexiest Man in America
in 2016, the year of his successful reelection campaign.

"I'm sorry, sir," Mickelson said with mock humility.  "I won't do it
again, sir."

"See that you don't," Franklin said, his black eyes twinkling.  "I
chance upon too many of these conversations as it is."

Maddox's cheeks were slightly rosy, and O'Grady's neck was flushed.
Mickelson suppressed a smile.  Franklin could embarrass them any
time.

Of course, he could embarrass Mickelson, too.  Franklin had a wicked
sense of humor, and it was so dry that most people rarely caught it.
His staff usually caught the blunt end of it, and Franklin liked
nothing more than to razz people who gave him the opportunity.

He leaned back in the armchair and seemed to gather himself.  Franklin
had looked exhausted since the day of his inauguration, and Mickelson
thought that a good sign.  In all his years in Washington, Mickelson
noted that there were two kinds of presidents--those who aged five
years for each year they were in office and those who looked the same
when they emerged as they had on the day they entered.  Or, as
Mickelson once put it to Cross, there were those presidents who haunted
the hallways at night and those who slept like babies.

Mickelson preferred to work for the ones who aged and didn't sleep.
They were the ones who were in office to do some good, not because
they'd reached the political Holy Grail.

"All right," Franklin said.  "I guess we'd better do this.  You've got
the ball, Doug.  How do we stand?"

Mickelson straightened, as if his posture suddenly made a difference.
The last ten days had felt like ten years.  He'd hit most of the major
nations, inspecting their weapons, their military, their production
facilities, talking with their leaders about the best methods to
approach the next attack by the aliens.

When he was visiting the USs traditional allies, he had little
trouble.  Britain welcomed him with open arms.  But in countries with
which the U.S. had shaky relations, or a history of bad relations,
Mickelson also had to have meetings in which he reassured the
countries' leaders that cooperation didn't mean a loss of
sovereignty.

Mickelson's argument had been simple: this was a global threat, and it
needed global leadership.  The United States was the logical choice.

China's leaders had argued for a UN-led effort, which would have made
sense fifteen years before.  But the last two U.N.-led efforts had
dissolved into infighting and slow movement.  Mickelson argued,
parroting Franklin's words, that slow movement in this case would be
deadly.

China really didn't need much more convincing.  And since the entire
argument hadn't taken longer than lunch, Mickelson suspected the entire
interchange was intended only to save face.

"I spent most of my time touring military facilities," Mickelson said,
"and talking to each country's leadership about the best methods to
proceed.  Everyone seems to understand the need for speedy action. Even
China."

Maddox made a soft sound and leaned back on the couch.  "They're going
to cooperate?"

Mickelson nodded.  "It took very little persuasion on my part."

"So they think the world's going to end," O'Grady said.

Mickelson smiled.  He'd had the same thought.  In fact, before he left
he'd said to Franklin that it would be a cold day in hell before China
cooperated.  Apparently that long-predicted cold day had finally
arrived.

"I saw weapons facilities and military outposts that we've been trying
to get into for years," Mickelson said.

"I need a full debrief," Maddox said.

Mickelson nodded as Franklin grinned.  Franklin had warned Mickelson of
that the night before.  "You'll get it," Mickelson

said.  "Although you might get more out of Lieutenant Rogers.  She, at
least, knows more of what she was looking at."

"I didn't realize you'd taken her as your aide," O'Grady said.

"With the president's permission."

"But not mine," Maddox said.  "They're taking all my best people for
these political tasks, when I need them onboard for military work."

"This is military work, Clarissa," Franklin said without a trace of
irritation.  That was more than Mickelson could have done.  Maddox
simply had no comprehension of diplomacy.

"Forgive me, sir," Maddox said.  "But that's not military work.  You
could have sent a flack with Doug.  But to send a perfectly good
officer, that's bullshit and you know it."

Mickelson thought he saw a smile play around Franklin's lips, but he
couldn't be certain.  "Was it bullshit, Doug?  Could you have used a
flack?"

Mickelson suppressed a sigh.  Meetings should be banned, and yet the
government thrived on them.  "No," Mickelson said.  "Lieutenant Rogers
had some valuable insights that I don't think I would have gotten
without her along."

"Such as?"  Maddox said.

"Such as," Mickelson said, struggling to keep the irritation from his
voice, "the fact that much of the First World's military might is very
out-of-date.  We haven't had much more than border skirmishes since the
turn of the century.  The last significant worldwide military buildup
was during Kosovo, and the last great one was during the Cold War.  I
saw missile silos in Russia that had completely rusted out.  Most of
this world, to put it flatly, isn't in shape to fight the aliens if we
let them get back here."

O'Grady leaned forward.  "Then this is terrible news.  The plan won't
work without functioning warheads."

"We almost have enough warheads in orbit now to do the job," Franklin
said.

Doug sat in stunned silence.  He had no idea the launches had gone so
fast.

"But we can always use more," Maddox said.  "And we need to have
everyone ready to fight in case our first plan fails.  We've known for
a decade about the world's aging military-industrial complex.  We even
have a scenario on what to do if some of the oldest equipment
malfunctions and starts a war."

Franklin spoke softly.  "Granted, we knew about this.  Mickelson's
junket only confirmed it.  In fact, the news about the Chinese is good.
We hadn't counted on them."

"They really must think the end of the world is near," Maddox
mumbled.

"I think they do," Franklin said.  He was looking at her.  "I think
we'd all be fools not to consider that."

"Aging warheads?  Come on, Mr.  President.  We can't send ancient
warheads to the ISS."  O'Grady had shifted in his seat.

"We already have.  And we'll send more, if we need to," Franklin
said.

"We have more than we planned on," Mickelson said.  "We have full
Chinese cooperation.  Russia has been maintaining its weapons
production--at lower rates than fifty years ago, but nonetheless, they
have some up-to-date equipment.  So do the Saudis and the Israelis, and
most of Southeast Asia.  Japan is the only country that's a bit farther
behind than we expected.  Even Germany is going to contribute more than
we had planned on.  The aging warheads do exist, but they're going to
be our last-ditch effort if, and this is a big if, we don't have time
to step up production worldwide."

"You think we can?"  Maddox asked.

Mickelson nodded.  "That was the most encouraging news I got from this
entire trip.  A lot of factories can be converted quickly to military
supplies and weapons productions.  I'm gathering our biggest problem
worldwide isn't going to

be weapons or equipment or production.  It's going to be manpower."

"And getting through the alien screens to use the weapons," Maddox
said.

No one said anything to that.

"I don't completely agree with the manpower problem," O'Grady said. "We
have satellite photos showing almost every nation on Earth has fully
deployed its military.  If anyone is behind the eight ball, it's us. 
We haven't deployed enough."

"We've explained that, Shamus," Maddox said.

"It's making me nervous, Clarissa."

The whole thing made everyone nervous, but Mickelson didn't say that.

"The problem isn't numbers," Mickelson said.  "It's talent.  We need
astronauts and shuttle pilots and ground control crews.  We need very
specialized talent to fight this war, and it's precisely the kind of
talent we haven't trained.  And not just us.  The Japanese and the
Russians are the only other countries with a significant number of
trained astronauts and pilots.  The rest of the world didn't have the
money or the time to pursue a space program like we did."

"Exactly," Franklin said.  "If our attack doesn't work, the coming war
with the aliens isn't going to be fought on the ground.  It's going to
be fought in the air and in space."

"The Australians have something."

"The Brits have something, the French have something, the Germans have
something, even Israel has something," Mickelson said.  "But something
isn't enough."

"I've already got my people changing the focus of training," Maddox
said.  "They think they can find candidates and train them to operate
in zero g within six months."

"That's a short time frame," Franklin said.

"It's more than what we've got, sir," Maddox said.

Her words hung in the air for a moment.  Then Franklinleaned back and
templed his fingers.  "The question is, Doug, whether or not the other
countries are with us."

"If they have the capability to build a warhead, they have the
capability to send it into space," Mickelson said.  "I've got to tell
you, I didn't expect that, and that turned out to be good news.  A lot
of countries can convert the system they use to launch satellites to
get the warheads to the ISS.  We'll have some accidents, but a small
number is to be expected.  We can be ready for a second wave of attack
if we need it."

"You're kidding," O'Grady said.

Mickelson shook his head.  "The best part of this junket was that I
learned that any functional transport that can get a payload into low
Earth orbit is being used.  A lot of countries have commandeered their
private industries' transports as well.  As we're sitting here, atomic
warheads are being launched into space from all the countries that have
them.  This is the biggest mass deployment of nuclear weaponry in human
history."

O'Grady shuddered.  "At least it's not being deployed against human
beings," he said softly.

Franklin tapped his fingertips against his lips.  It was almost as if
that comment displeased him--not for its sentiment, Mickelson knew
Franklin agreed with that, but for the interruption it caused in the
flow of the session.

Franklin let his hands drop.  "All right, General.  We know what our
allies are doing--"

Mickelson winced at the word "allies."  Many of the countries he
visited weren't really allies at all.  He had a sense this was like
World War II: incompatible governments uniting against a common cause.
If that cause went away, all hell would break loose.

"--so now I want to know what we're doing.  How're those attack rockets
coming?"

"Better than can be expected," Maddox said.  "We'll have enough boost
power to get every warhead we have in orbit to its target."

"Excellent."  Franklin truly sounded pleased.  "And the work on the
International Space Station?"

"General Banks is there and--"

"Banks?"  O'Grady said.  "The one who testified before Congress?"

Maddox leaned forward, her face inches from O'Grady's.  "She got
busted, mister, because she was too competent.  And frankly, I would
rather have someone who is too competent, who demands too much of our
people, on that space station than one who believes in coddling
everyone. Wouldn't you?"

Mickelson moved out of the way.  He'd never seen Maddox in her
professional soldier mode.  She was tough and hard.  He was
impressed.

"Well," O'Grady said.  "When you put it that way..."

"There's no other way to put it," Maddox snapped.  "There's government
and then there's the military.  We're at least efficient."

"Ouch," Franklin said.

Maddox sat up.  "Sorry, sir."

Franklin shook his head.  "It's a point well taken.  We need competent
efficient people, folks who can get the job done.  You're exactly
right, General.  If we have any chance of success against those aliens,
we have to be operating at peak efficiency, not just in this country,
but all over the world."

That was Mickelson's cue.  "I think it can be done," he said.  "And
most every country will be looking to us to coordinate things."

"To lead," O'Grady said.

Mickelson smiled.  "In effect, yes.  But don't tell them that."

"They're not dumb, Doug."

"I know," Mickelson said.  "But in diplomacy, a polite lie gets a lot
more accomplished than the bold truth."

Franklin nodded.  "We're close, then.  All the details are in place.  I
don't want to hear about leaks from anyone's office.  And I want no
statements made to the press.  They're going to

notice all the activity, and there will be questions, but a good
old-fashioned 'no comment' will work.  I want to be the one to make the
announcement."

"All right," Maddox said.

"The less I talk to the press, the happier I am," O'Grady said.

"I already told the heads of state I met with that you'd make the
announcement when the time was right."

"I take it they had no problem with that," Franklin said.

"If they did," Mickelson said, "I would have told you."

"Good."  Franklin sighed.  He looked at every one of them, holding each
gaze for several seconds.  It was an old political trick, designed to
make the person feel as if he were friends with the person in charge.
Mickelson knew that and was usually immune when other people did it to
him.  But when Franklin's gaze caught his, he felt absurdly flattered
and mentally shook his head at himself.

This was why he was sitting here, now, handling a crisis he wouldn't
even have been able to imagine two years before.  This was why he
accepted Franklin's offer to become secretary of state, why he put
himself on the line.  He trusted Franklin, as much as someone could
trust a man who desired to become president.  He knew Franklin was one
of the smartest, most committed policy men to ever hold office.

But Mickelson wasn't sure policy was what was needed now.  He wasn't
sure Franklin would prove himself to be a good wartime commander in
chief.

Yet Mickelson had gone all over the world, making certain that Franklin
would metaphorically lead the troops into battle.  He hoped that this
was the right choice.  Other world leaders had more charisma.  Several
others were smarter.  But none of them led the most powerful nation in
the world.

Mickelson wondered if Franklin knew how much of the fate of the world
rested on his shoulders.  He seemed more focused than he had ever been,
and that was saying something.

But being focused and being the right man in the right spot at the
right time were two different things.

A lot rested on Franklin's speech.  Mickelson hoped that when the time
came, Franklin could pull it off.

May 24, 2018

12:57 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time

143 Days Until Second Harvest

Britt Archer's cat Muffin hated Leo Cross.  From the first time he had
come to Archer's apartment, Cross had had to contend with the small,
gray tabby with the face of an angel and the temper of a lion.  Any
time he got close to Britt, the cat tried to bat him away.  He didn't
have this problem with Britt's other cat, Clyde.  Clyde seemed to know
that they were both guys, and as such, had to bond.  But sometimes,
Cross was afraid that Muffin would slice him up in his sleep.

Britt's large two-bedroom apartment was close to her job at STScI. Even
though she'd been at the job for nearly ten years, she'd never bought a
house, because she'd always believed she'd have to move for her work. 
So far, that hadn't happened, but, Britt said, the moment she bought
something, it would.

Cross loved the apartment.  It had bay windows with a view of the
tree-lined street, lots of light, and a functional design.  Its only
flaw was the kitchen, and since Britt didn't cook, that meant that she
only had to squeeze herself into its dark and cramped quarters twice a
day--once to pour cereal in the morning, and the other time to feed the
cats at night.

However, Muffin thought the kitchen was her domain, and whenever Cross
padded in there, as he had now, she attacked his ankles.  He was
careful to wear shoes and socks any time he headed in this direction.
He'd once said to Britt it was like the cat believed he'd die if she
cut him off at the feet.

Britt found all of this cute and funny, but Cross looked on it as a
war in miniature.  He was trying to get along with this alien being
that Britt had brought into her house.  So far, things weren't going
well.  At least he had Clyde.

Britt was in her bedroom, getting dressed.  She rarely wore makeup and
never fussed with her hair, but for her, getting dressed took much
longer than it should have.  Cross finally figured out why.  She
dithered over what to wear, so much so that she often tried on three or
four separate outfits before picking the outfit of the day.  When Cross
finally asked what the reason for the dithering was--expecting some
sort of cliched female thing, like she had to make certain she looked
perfect--he was surprised by the answer.

It seemed that the brilliant and competent Britt Archer was confounded
by the weather.

She listened to the weather reports as if they were gospel, then tried
to dress accordingly.  She worried that she would be too hot or too
cold, wearing too many layers or not enough.

Cross had learned, in the few months of their relationship, to offer no
opinions about this morning ritual.  It didn't piss Britt off, but it
did make her try on at least two more outfits before she decided what
to wear.

Since they had yet another Tenth Planet Project meeting this morning,
he had to get Britt going on time.

He'd actually bought donuts the night before, knowing that getting out
of the apartment would be a problem.  He'd tried to talk her into
staying at his house, which was closer, but Britt had had a mountain of
work to finish, and she hadn't wanted to make the drive that late at
night.  Cross understood.  He could be flexible, and often was, and
decided that staying here was the better part of valor.

Even if he had to fight with Muffin.

She was crouched in the corner of the kitchen, her tail switching back
and forth, her eyes slits.  Of course, she was

right beneath the part of the counter where the coffeemaker lived.

If Britt didn't have her caffeine in the morning, she was no good to
anyone.  Cross was about to make the dangerous trek to the coffeemaker,
when the doorbell rang.

Britt cursed from the bedroom.

"I got it," Cross said, and gladly left the wilds of the kitchen.  He
had to step over Clyde, who was sprawled on the fake Oriental carpet
that was the living room's centerpiece, before opening the door.

Portia Groopman stood in front of it, her dark hair mussed, its oblong
cut growing out unevenly.  She had a monkey on her back--a stuffed
white monkey with long arms and equally long legs.  They had Velcro on
the palms so that the hands looked like they were clasped together.

"Oh, good, Dr.  Cross.  I caught you."

He blushed.  For a brief moment, he felt like he was still in high
school and had been caught doing something he shouldn't.  "How'd you
know I'd be here?"  he asked.  Most folks knew about him and Britt, but
they had never made a big deal about it.

"Edwin," she said.

Bradshaw.  The eternal matchmaker and gossip.  Cross nodded.  "Is
something wrong?"

"I got a wild hair," Portia said.

Cross frowned.

"An idea" Portia said as if he were dumber than a post.  "Can I come
in?"

"Oh, sure."  He stepped away from the door.

She entered the apartment, looked at the books and the computers and
the ivy crawling its way across the ceiling, and said, "Nifterino--Dr.
Archer knows how to live."

"I'll tell her that she has your seal of approval," Cross said dryly,
but Portia didn't seem to hear.  She had already crouched on the rug,
and was petting Clyde's stomach.  Clyde's front

paws were kneading the air and he was purring so loudly, Cross thought
the cat might make himself sick.

Muffin was watching the entire display from the entrance to the
kitchen.  She looked as disgusted as a cat possibly could.

It was probably his only chance to get to the coffeemaker.

"I was about to make some coffee.  Want some?"

"Sure," Portia said.

Cross slipped past Muffin, who was focused on this new intruder, and
made coffee as dark and rich as Britt liked it.  Then he grabbed the
giant box of donuts and placed them on the oak table that stood in
front of the bay windows.

"There's some breakfast, too, such as it is," he said.

"Great," Portia said, but didn't move from her spot beside Clyde.  She
looked like a little girl, her stuffed monkey hugging her, and the
happy cat beneath her.  At moments like this, Cross could see the
impact her lonely childhood had on her.  She had been homeless until
she was ten.  As good as she was at her work, she still didn't have a
real place to call her own, not with family and cats and plants.  And
she needed it.

That was only one reason to make sure those damn alien harvesters
didn't destroy the planet.

"What was your idea, Portia?"  he asked as he sat down beside the open
box of donuts.

She looked up, seemed to remember herself, and then tucked some loose
hair behind her ear.  "Oh, you'll probably think it's crazy."

"Crazy enough for you to track me down."

"Yukio and Jeremy said I shouldn't, but Edwin said I should.  He said
you like wild-hair ideas and that those are the only kind that make any
real sense.  He also said that if you didn't believe in wild hairs, no
one would have known about the aliens until it was too late."

It almost was too late when they found out, but Cross didn't say that.
Instead, he said, "Edwin's right."

She nodded.  "We've been trying to find out more about those
nanoharvesters, and we've made some progress, but we're still a long
way from being able to shut them down like you want."

The coffeemaker gurgled and shut off.  Muffin raced for the kitchen. It
was Cross's sign that the coffee was done.

"It's still early yet," he said, even though that wasn't true.

"I worry about the reality of learning everything there is to know
about an alien technology in time to do some good," Portia said.  She
sat down across from him, pulled the monkey's hands apart, and took a
long moment settling him in the third chair.  She made certain he sat
upright, that his paws rested on the table, and that his face was
turned toward her.

"How do you drink your coffee?"  Cross asked.  While she was settling
the stuffed animal, he might as well deal with the live one.

"Lots of sugar," she said.

He should have known.  He got up and headed into the kitchen.  There
was a yowl, and Muffin wrapped herself around his right leg.  He
ignored her, even though she was biting so hard he could feel the
scrape of teeth through his socks.

He poured three cups of coffee, got out the sugar, and poured some
whole milk into Britt's so it would be the right temperature by the
time she got dressed.  Then he brought his and Portia's to the table.

"What's with that cat?"  Portia asked.

"She doesn't like me."

"No shit."

Muffin finally let go of his leg and moved away from him.  She was
cleaning her fur, as if it were his fault that she was ruffled.

Portia put three teaspoons of sugar into the mug, took a sip, and added
three more.  Then she took a Bavarian cream donut out of the mess of
donuts, and started to pick it into small pieces.

"Okay," Cross said, grabbing an eclair.  "What's this crazy idea?"

"Well," Portia said around a piece of donut.  "You know, if we can't
shut the harvesters off, maybe we can attack them."

"Attack them?"

"Sure.  You know, develop our own nanomachines designed to attack alien
technology.  We'd have this mega war being fought on the molecular
level."

Cross frowned.  He had no idea how this would work.

"You can develop this?"

Portia shrugged.  "Don't know until we try.  But I wanted to check with
you first.  Any word from the government guys?"

"None," Cross said.  "That door is completely closed.  Whatever their
nanotech researchers are discovering, they don't want to tell us about
it."

"Damn," Portia said and popped the rest of the donut in her mouth.  She
chewed, chipmunk like and then swallowed, washing everything down with
coffee.

Cross suddenly understood.  "You don't have enough workers to study the
nanoharvesters and create some machines of your own."

"No," Portia said.  Then she shook her head.  "Well, that's part of it.
But not all of it.  I mean, we've got some good people, especially
after you told Jeremy that he could do what he wanted with what we
discovered.  But they're not me, you know."

He did know.  There was no arrogance in what Portia said, only truth.
She had the right kind of vision for this project.  She would probably
be the one to discover the shut-off mechanism for the nanoharvesters,
or be the one to discover the kind of nanomachine that would defeat the
alien machines.  But she wouldn't be able to do both.

Britt picked that moment to come into the living room.  She was wearing
a summer sweater with a pair of khaki pants, some Birkenstocks, and
gold jewelry.

She looked gorgeous, but Cross knew better than to tell her that, this
close to decision-making time.  He had to bow his head so that she
wouldn't see him grin.  He was in love with the woman.  She was one of
the most capable scientists he knew, and yet she had some of the best
quirks he'd ever encountered.

"How're the Muffin wars this morning?"  she asked.

"Your coffee's on the counter," he said, "and I've already poured the
milk."

She kissed him on the top of his head.  "You're a god," she said.

"Wow," Portia said.

"And you can take that however you want to," Britt said.  "Good
morning, Portia."

"Hi, Dr.  Archer.  I hope you don't mind me being here."

"I hope you don't mind if we eat and run," Britt said.  "We have to get
across town."

"We're nearly done anyway," Portia said as Britt disappeared into the
kitchen.  Muffin followed her, purring.

Cross shook his head.  Cats.  He'd managed to live his entire life
without them.  Why was he investing so much time in them now, when he
had no time?

Britt, of course.

"So what do you think, Dr.  Cross?"  Portia asked.  She was cradling
her coffee mug.

He sighed.  Resources.  It all boiled down to resources.  Then he
smiled slightly.  Resources for Earth--and for the tenth planet.  "Can
you work on the new nanomachines alone?"

"No," she said.

He cursed softly.  "I don't know, Portia.  Nanotechnology is your
area."

"But the aliens are yours."

He didn't know how that had happened, but everyone seemed to assume he
knew more about the tenth planet than he did.  Still, inventing their
own nanomachine to fight

the aliens' might have more of a chance.  Portia would be developing
something with technology she understood, not trying to figure out
technology she didn't.

"Leo," Britt said as she came out of the kitchen.  "If we're going to
fight the traffic, we've got to go now."

Portia was still looking at him.

"I like the idea," he said to her.  "But I need some time to think
about it.  The choice is a tough one.  Off the top of my head, I'm
leaning toward developing our own technology, but I don't like taking
you off the current project."

"It's not as if we're the only ones working on it," Portia said.  "And
besides, we're not even supposed to be.  So I keep worrying if we do
figure something out, no one will listen."

It was a good point, and if the people weren't so damn scared, it would
be a valid one.  "If you do figure something out," Cross said, "I'll
make sure someone listens."

Portia smiled and stood.  She slung the monkey on her back, and only
then did Cross realize that it had another Velcro slit on its back.  It
had a tiny carrying case built in, and Portia was using it as a
backpack.

"I'll get back to you," Cross said.  "In the meantime, continue on the
same project."

"Okay," she said.

"Need a lift?"  Britt asked.

Portia shook her head.  "I've got my own, thanks."  She stopped to pet
Clyde, then let herself out.

"Strange girl," Britt said.

"Lonely one," Cross said.

Britt looked at him.  He shrugged, and handed her a glazed donut.  "We
don't have time to eat," she said.

"You don't have time not to."

"I'll eat in the car."

"Fine," Cross said.  He finished his coffee and waited while Britt
poured hers into a travel mug.  Then they gathered their things and
left the apartment.

They took Cross's car, but Britt drove.  She liked the new
conveniences, and had, in the last week, taken five minutes to
reprogram his navigation system so that he wouldn't be stuck in
traffic.  He had had no idea you could program the system to monitor
links that showed which roads had the most traffic, or traffic tie-ups,
or road construction.  When Britt realized how much he let technology
abuse him, she had taken over, and he hadn't minded.

He settled into the passenger seat, and thought about Portia's idea. If
it worked, it would be the answer to everything.  But he'd learned long
ago not to trust answers like that.

With Britt's reprogramming, the car's natural speed, and its programmed
ability to hit the timed stoplights correctly, they made it to the
meeting in record time.  They arrived as General Maddox did.  She
nodded curtly at Cross, then smiled at Britt as if she were an old
friend.

Most of the rest of the group was there.  Three large pots of coffee
sat in the center of the table, their plastic sides bearing the
Starbucks logo.  A plate of donut holes sat beside them.

"See?"  Britt whispered to Cross.  "Told you I didn't need
breakfast."

He didn't argue, but he remembered how many times in the last few weeks
there'd only been institutional coffee and stale food.  "I tapped the
military budget," Maddox said as she took her seat.  "If we have to be
locked up in this remnant of the 1980s, we should at least be
comfortable."

The group chuckled.  Britt smiled and looked down.  Cross found that
curious.  Normally, she would agree on that point.

"What is it?"  he whispered.

Britt shook her head, but he nudged her.  Finally, she sighed, grabbed
a donut hole, and then leaned toward him.  Nice move, he thought as she
did so.  No one would know that her movement was connected to Maddox's
comment.

"The general believes," Britt whispered so softly that he \

had to strain to hear her, "that we have to enjoy the good things in
life while we can."

Cross shuddered.  He didn't like the idea that Maddox was planning to
lose this battle.  He resisted the urge to look at her.  Maybe she had
always felt this way.  Maybe she was naturally pessimistic.  But now he
wished that Britt hadn't shared.

"No secrets."  Robert Shane rounded the table and poured himself a cup
of coffee.  Then he grabbed four donut holes with his left hand.

"Leave the lovebirds alone," Jesse Killius said as she took her seat.

"Lovebirds?"  Cross asked.

"Denial is not your forte, Dr.  Cross," Hayes said.  "Leave it to the
politicos."

"Denial?"  Britt asked.

"Hey," Cross said spreading his hands, his half-eaten donut hole
dropping crumbs on the table.  "I'm not denying.  I'm just stunned at
the word choice."

"What would you prefer?"  Killius asked.  "The 'couple'?  That's so
mundane."

"And unclear," Shane said.  "The couple of whats?"

Maddox was smiling.  "You know, we do need to get down to business
here.  I understand our international uplinks are ready."

Cross finished the donut hole, then poured himself a large cup of
coffee.  The last few meetings had gone on longer than he wanted, and
he'd nearly dozed in one.  Not because the information was dry--it
wasn't--but because of his lack of sleep, the stuffy room, and the fact
that he had always despised meetings.  He was stuck in them now. Maddox
led the Tenth Planet Project meetings, but everyone still turned to
Cross as the de facto leader.

He was beginning to mind that.  This whole thing didn't belong on his
shoulders.  He wasn't superhuman.  He was having as much trouble with
this as everyone else.

He let out a soft breath, trying to calm himself.  Portia's visit
bothered him more than he wanted to admit.  Why did he have to choose
which job she should do?  If he chose wrong, Earth might lose
everything.

Then of course, there were no guarantees that either path would work.

"... right, Dr.  Cross?"  Maddox was saying.  The links were up.
Conference tables in various rooms had people surrounding them, just
like this one, and half the faces were turned toward him.  Or so it
seemed.

"I'm sorry," he said.

She grinned.  "I said, we're ready to start, right, Dr.  Cross?"

"Whatever you say, General," he said, wondering why she was tormenting
him this morning.  Or maybe it was evidence of a good mood.  Was there
a reason the general was in a good mood?  A reason he should know
about?

He frowned, and decided to watch her more closely.

"The last few meetings have run over time," Maddox was saying.  "I'm
going to do my best to push this one through.  First, an update on the
spaceships.  What have you found?"

The same man who had been doing all the reports from the South American
team stood.  His name was Joao Agripino, and he was renowned in both
physics and biology.  Cross had read some of Agripino's e-mail updates.
It was inaccurate to call the team "the South American team."  That was
simply where they were operating.  The team itself was large--over a
hundred of the best engineers and scientists from all over the world.
Even a few of the SETI people were down there, and a few science
fiction writers with strong science credentials.  As Maddox had said,
imagination was as important as direct knowledge, at least in this
instance.

"The going's slow," Agripino said in heavily accented English.  "This
technology is quite foreign to us, which makes sense when you consider
how different these aliens are from us physically.  It took us most of
the last week to determine

r where the command center of the craft is.  There are still many
sections of the spaceship that seem to be wasted space or have uses
that we do not understand."

"I don't care if you can reproduce the entire ship," Maddox said.
"What we need, and we need now, is to know how those shields work.  We
want to know how they stopped our fighters."

"Yes, General.  We have received this request not just from you but
from several other military leaders.  Even from your president.  But
this is not one of your American stories where the hero figures out how
alien technologies work an hour after seeing them.  In order to
understand a detail of the technology, which this is, we must see the
larger picture."

Two spots of color appeared on Maddox's cheek.  How many people had
told her that this was not a movie or a novel?  The comparisons to
science fiction thrillers were being made in all corners, probably
because of the aliens, and scientists were especially defensive about
it.  Cross personally had heard half a dozen scientists use this
analogy, and he'd used it a time or two himself.  He bet Maddox had
heard it more because so many scientists saw her as military and
therefore assumed she was stupid.

"I do understand your dilemma, Dr.  Agripino," Maddox said.  "But you
need to understand this: you don't have the luxury of time.  If you
can't gather all the information you need with the team you have, then
get more people on this.  If we don't understand those shields by the
time the tenth planet returns, we may as well hand this planet over to
those aliens.  It's the same thing."

Agripino's body stiffened.  On the small screen, he looked as if he had
been jerked into position by an invisible string.

"Now," Maddox said.  "What do you know about those shields?"

"We have yet to figure out the controls in the command room General,"
Agripino said.  "We are a bit leery of randomly touching buttons."

'"Defensive," Britt whispered.  Cross nodded.

"In other words, you don't have anything beyond discovering where the
control room is," Maddox said.

"That is a major breakthrough, General," Agripino said.

"Not major enough," Maddox said.  "We need to understand those shields.
Conrad, what have you got?"

Stephen Conrad was a Londoner in charge of monitoring the worldwide
situation.  The human problem, as the head of the English team had
referred to it.

Cross glanced at Maddox.  She wasn't going to let anyone slow down
work.  She was scared, but she wasn't admitting it.

On the screen, Conrad sat up when Maddox said his name.  He looked
surprised.  Agripino sat down in his chair, keeping his face from the
camera.

"Um, well, it's not good news on this front either, I'm afraid," Conrad
said.  "We're discovering growing pockets of discontent worldwide.  A
rise in hate groups, most of them fortunately concentrated on the
aliens, but a disturbing number who do not believe that aliens
exist."

"What do they believe?"  Britt asked, sounding stunned.

"Well, that's a bit of a hodgepodge, really," Conrad said.  "Near as we
can tell, they believe that this is a hoax perpetrated by world
governments to encourage the rise of dictatorships.  But nothing is
uniform.  We're talking about fringe groups here.  They only become a
worry if they gain legitimacy."

"Do they have any legitimacy?"  Maddox asked.

"More than they had before the aliens arrived," Conrad said.  "People
are always looking for explanations.  You've got to remember one other
thing.  We're tracking the groups that have gone public in one way or
another, whether on the Internet or on the airwaves or written letters
to their MPs or some such.  But the problem with most of these fringe
groups,

particularly in Germany and in the United States, is that they operate
underground.  They're particularly mistrustful of any organization and
prefer to create their own.  We have no good way of tracking those."

Cross felt cold.  He hadn't thought much about this.  "Is this going on
in every country?"

"So far as we can tell.  China has quashed all unusual Internet
activity, and many of the African countries still have limited access,"
Conrad said.

"What does this mean for us?"  Cross asked.

"What it means," Conrad said, "is that there is a greater tendency than
ever for overreacting.  Our governments have to be very careful how
they present things.  Mass hysteria is just around the corner.  Riots,
burning in the streets, attempted coups, all are possible and likely at
any moment."

"Because we're facing a common enemy?"  someone from the European Block
asked, as if she were stunned.

"Because we've suffered such a mass defeat," Conrad said.  "And because
our worlds are changing because of it.  We're losing national
identities."

Cross frowned.  He hadn't had this sense.

But Conrad continued.  "For example, we're all in our separate
countries here, working on this Tenth Planet Project, and when we do
communicate face-to-face, we do it in my native language, which happens
to be English.  However, we do it in a branch of my native language
that many of my own countrymen deem inferior: American English.
Multiply that tiny dissatisfaction among all the other countries in the
world, and you suddenly have a problem.  Add to that problem the fact
that everything is changing, from the way we deal with one another to
the way that our jobs and resources are being used, and we have the
makings of serious social discontent."

"Well," Maddox said as if this didn't concern her.  "We'll have to--"

"Pardon me, General, but I would like to finish because this test
point is the most important."  He looked a bit embarrassed, but that
didn't stop him.

Maddox's fingers tapped against the table, just once, a rapid drumbeat.
Conrad probably didn't see or hear it.  "All right," she said.

"We have lost our sense of ourselves," Conrad said.

Maddox closed her eyes, but Cross had the sense she would have rolled
them if she had kept them open.

"I know you Yanks don't think of this as being all that important, but
we Brits know the dire consequences of this.  We suffered through it
all during the last century, when we went from being an empire that
ruled most of the world to a commonwealth."

There were mutterings from other groups.  Some of them, Cross noted,
former members of the British Empire.  Apparently Conrad noticed,
too.

"I don't mean to say that the Empire was well and good for all those
involved.  We don't need that sort of political discussion here.  But
we do need to acknowledge that, until a few short months ago, we
thought ourselves alone in the universe.  And not just alone, but the
most superior race in this universe."

"You'd better have a point," Maddox said tightly.

"I do, General, and I do want you all to hear me.  What I'm saying may
not be politically popular, but it does factor quite strongly into much
of what is happening worldwide."  Conrad leaned against the table.  His
colleagues had moved away from him slightly.

Cross found that fascinating.  Were they afraid of being associated
with the superior race theory?

"If we look at human history, one perspective is that it's a continual
struggle for world domination.  But we have always assumed that the
world domination we've been speaking of is human domination.  None of
us ever thought that apes would

rise up and take over the world, or that we'd suddenly be attacked by
squadrons of killer dolphins."

Surprisingly, no one laughed.  Cross almost did: the mental image was
one he appreciated.  Killer dolphins on scooters, coming to take over
the world.

"I believe," Conrad was saying, "that this assumption is behind much of
the denial that's going on in the fringe groups.  Aliens can't be out
there because they might take over our world.  And we all know that no
alien will take over Earth.  We--the Americans, the Japanese, the
Germans, whomever--we will take over the Earth, but certainly not some
outsider."

"You're calling us xenophobic," Hayes said.

"Yes," Conrad said.  "And some of us are ignoring it because we need to
defend ourselves.  Some of us are expecting humans to triumph because
we've always seen ourselves as the superior species.  And some of us
are so xenophobic we can't imagine any other species--from anywhere,
Earth, Mars, or the tenth planet--being greater than we are.  So we
deny that the aliens exist."

"Clearly their technology is superior to ours," Cross said.

"Clearly," Conrad said.  "And it always has been.  One of the most
bitter pills about this entire affair, Dr.  Cross, are the discoveries
that you made, the discoveries that led us all to look toward the skies
before the tenth planet even arrived."

Someone whistled--it looked like someone in the Australian feed--and
Cross felt his stomach turn.

"The fact that they've been here before," he said.  "Countless times,"
Conrad said.  "Defeating humanity each and every time.  What this
means, my friends, is that we are not the superior species.  They are,
and have been, for millennia.  It requires an entirely new way of
thinking, about humanity, about Earth, about ourselves.  England went
through this on a very small scale when it lost its empire.  So, I
would assume, did Rome, centuries ago.  But never have humans, on

this scaled-been forced to examine themselves.  And never before have
we come out looking quite this bad."

Across the table, Robert Shane sighed and looked down.  Britt put her
hand on Cross's.  Yolanda Hayes pursed her lips and looked toward the
ceiling.

Maddox had threaded her fingers together.  "Let me see if I get this,
then," she said.  "You believe this reassessment, this new way of
looking at things, is causing more nut balls

"Absolutely," Conrad said.  "I keep going to the British model because
it's the one I'm familiar with, but the discontent in England during
the 1920s is related to an economic crisis, yes, but also to the fact
that our national psyche was injured.  People were quite angry, and
they took to the streets over the smallest thing."

He paused.  No one was fidgeting any longer.

"Right now, people are very angry.  We've been attacked from above,
from the heavens, something we have never expected.  We've had
significant loss of life and property.  We've been destroyed by weapons
we don't understand, by a species we've never heard of, and for no
apparent reason.  The average citizen in almost every country feels
quite powerless.  There is no rising against the oppressor because the
oppressor is invisible.  So the uprising could occur against the people
who are visible."

"The governments."  Maddox didn't look bored any longer.

"Not just one," Conrad said, "but all of them, and for different
reasons."

"This is a political problem," one of the Japanese scientists said.

"No," Conrad said.  "This is a problem we must all be aware of.  Fringe
groups often tie with terrorist organizations, and if they direct their
wrath against a major government, we might be fighting on two fronts:
against the aliens, and against ourselves."

"What do you expect us to do?"  one of the African representatives
said.  "Most of us are scientists."

"Or advisers," the South Korean representative said.

"We need to warn our governments to pay attention to these threats, and
to neutralize them where possible.  I will send you all e-mail with
some of this material in it."  Conrad threaded his fingers together.
"We also need to make certain that the people know we're doing
something."

"The massive deployment of troops should tell them that," Maddox
said.

"The massive deployment of troops figures into the conspiracy
theories," Conrad said.  "I've read some of the paranoia on this.  We
need to let people know, as time goes on, that we have successful plans
for fighting the aliens."

"Most of the world doesn't even know the aliens are coming back yet,
even with some of the tabloid coverage," Cross said.

"That status is not going to last much longer," Conrad said.  "There's
too much coming out from too many sources.  And anyone with a slight
knowledge of orbits will figure out that the tenth planet will be close
to Earth a second time in a few months."

"We can't divulge what we're going to do," Maddox said.  "We're at
war."

"No, we can't," Conrad said.  "But we can make reassurances.  And we
should from time to time."

"I'll speak to the president," Yolanda Hayes said.

Others echoed her sentiments.

Maddox's mouth was a thin line.  "Well," she said.  "That was cheerful.
Let's talk about something we do have control over.  General Obote,
what's happening with those fighter planes?"

A heavyset man wearing a uniform that Cross didn't recognize stood.  He
was in the African group.  He nodded, as if

he felt there needed to be a bit more formality in these
proceedings.

"Thank you, General Maddox," Obote said.  "I have been placed in charge
of coordinating the joint military effort to build more fighter planes.
Several governments are involved in this project, and we have made
contact with several more.  We have also spoken to international
conglomerates, like your Boeing, and they have, as you say, stepped up
production.  Things are proceeding rapidly.  We should have many more
planes by the time the tenth planet returns.  More planes than I would
have been able to predict a week ago."

"Excellent," Maddox said, and Cross knew she wasn't surprised by this.
She had been saving it for just this sort of moment in the meeting.
"Anything else?"

"All of the countries we have spoken to have taken old fighters out of
retirement and are fixing them, putting them in working order.  We
shall have, by our target date, more fighter planes than the world has
ever seen."

"What about pilots?"  Shane asked.

"Many are returning from retirement, and many are on an accelerated
training program.  Many of the smaller countries are sending their most
promising candidates to flight schools in the larger, more developed
countries.  We shall have pilots to fly our fighters, sir.  We shall
have a fighting force that the aliens will not expect."

"Thank God," someone said.

Cross only thought about how worthless that would be without the
ability to get through those alien ships' screens.

"Good news at last," Maddox said.  "Thank you, General."

Obote nodded again, then sat back down.

"Dr.  Archer, what do we have on the planet itself?"  Maddox asked.

"Not much, General," Britt said.  She slowly stood up as the others had
been doing.  Cross got the sense she was still unnerved by Conrad's
argument.  It had been as if he had
spoken about a taboo subject.  No one wanted to think about the
changes the arrival of the tenth planet brought, especially the less
visible, psychological changes.

"We're attempting to get as much information as we can," Britt was
saying.  "All of the telescopes are focused on it, but right now it's
too close to the sun.  We can only get minimal information, most of
which I've already reported.  Soon the tenth planet will go behind the
sun, and then we'll have three months to sift through the information
we have before the planet reappears."

"I expect that sifting to take less than three months," Maddox said.

Britt smiled as if she had expected that slight rebuke.  "You've
already gotten the important information, General.  It's the subtler
stuff we'll be working on while the planet is out of our range.  We're
going to be double-checking facts and figures to see if we've missed
anything. We're going to go over our previous work to make certain
we're on the right track, and we're going to see if we can clean up
these last images we get in the hopes that we gain more information
from them than we initially thought possible."

"Excellent," Maddox said.  "Is there anything else?"

As usual, there were small items, things that had more to do with
coordination than information.  Finally Maddox insisted that the
specific groups work the details out among themselves.  Cross noted, as
things wound down, that Maddox had said nothing about what the military
was doing.  She had, in fact, steered the meeting away from all but the
good news about the fighter planes.

When the international contingent signed off, Cross reached for one
more donut hole to tide him to lunch.

"I didn't adjourn us, Dr.  Cross," Maddox said, and he felt like a high
school student who got caught cutting class.

He took his donut hole and leaned back.  "Just getting more food he
said, holding it up to her as evidence.  He would have done the same
thing in high school.

"Well, when you're done, you can tell us what Nan Tech has discovered
on those harvesters," she said.

Britt gasped.

Thank you, Dr.  Archer, Cross thought, but didn't say.  If Maddox
hadn't known before, she definitely did now.

A small smile played at Maddox's lips.  "Don't be coy, Dr.  Cross.  I
happen to know that you took some of those alien nanomachines to Nan
Tech  If I had been thinking, I might have instructed you to do that. 
So, what has the team found?"

"Not much," Cross said.  "Just the fact that the harvesters don't move
on their own, that they do seem to shut off when they're full, and they
can be programmed to eat anything."

"Anything?"

"Right now they're designed to eat organic material.  The Nan Tech team
believes they can absorb minerals as well, or saline from the ocean.
Anything the tenth planet needs, in other words."

Maddox didn't look surprised.  Apparently her spies had told her that
as well.  But the others did.

"My God," Yolanda Hayes said.  "You mean they could destroy the very
Earth itself?"

"If they wanted to," Cross said.  "It would take a lot of
nanoharvesters."

He turned to Maddox.  He wasn't military and he wasn't her underling.
He didn't appreciate being ambushed like that, and he was going to make
it as plain as he could without direct confrontation.

"What about your people?  I've heard nothing since I brought the
harvesters back from California.  What have your researchers found?"

"About the same thing yours have," Maddox said.  Then she slapped her
hands on the table.  "I suspect we all have better

things to do than finish the last of the donut holes.  Now the meeting
is dismissed.  Oh, and Dr.  Cross?"

Why did he have the feeling he wasn't going to like this request
either?

"Make certain you have a report on Nan Tech work next time we meet."

"It would be easier if they had access to the military's work," Cross
said.

"I doubt that," Maddox said.

Cross let out an exasperated breath.  It was Shane who came to his
rescue.

"General Maddox," Shane said.  "Remember the discussion we had about
sharing information?  It's critical in the sciences."

She nodded curtly.  "I'll take that under advisement."  And then she
stood.  "Thank you all for coming," she said, and left.

"Dammit," Britt said.  "Just when I was starting to like her."

"That wasn't so bad," Hayes said.  "If you'd been military, Dr.  Cross,
you'd have received a strict dressing-down for taking those harvesters
to private industry."

"It feels like I did get a dressing-down," Cross said.

"I suspect that General Maddox wasn't even trying to upset you, Leo,"
Shane said.  "She's got bigger balls than most of the guys on the Joint
Chiefs.  She could have humiliated you with a single sentence.  Trust
me, I've seen it."

Cross shook his head.  "It's not something I want to see."

"Well, your dressing-down is good news actually," Killius said.

"Why's that?"  Britt asked.

Killius sipped the last of her coffee and tossed the paper cup into the
wastebasket near the door.  "I'd been getting the sense from the
general that she wasn't sure we could win this battle against the
aliens."

"Yeah," Britt said.  "Ever since that dinner."

"Dinner?"  Shane asked.

Cross shook his head.  "It doesn't really matter," he said softly.

"Exactly," Killius said.  "That dinner creeped me out, too.  It kinda
felt like the opening round of the party at the end of the world."

"Oh," Shane said.

"But if the military doesn't want private industry to get its filthy
paws on those nanoharvesters, then that's a good sign," Killius said.

The logic was too circuitous for Cross.  "How's that?"

Killius looked at Cross as if he were dense.  "It means they think
we're going to survive this, and after it's all over, the private
industry will exploit things that the government feels are dangerous in
the wrong hands.  The government wants to control this technology.  And
I'm convinced, after that little performance, that the only people
working on those nanoharvesters are Americans."

"Je-zus," Hayes said.

"That's just plain wrong," Cross said.  "If we fail in the air, we have
to be able to defeat those aliens on the ground.  And the
nanoharvesters are the key to that.  We should be making it a top
priority in all this research.  I'm half tempted to ship information
off to labs all over the world."

"Do that," Shane said, "and you will get a real dressing down.  Don't
worry about it for now."

"It seems you were hiding information as well," Hayes said.

"No, I was just pissed that we were going to be out of the loop."  Then
he paused, a bit confused.  "You know, it was Maddox who told me we
were going to be.  Why would she do this now?"

"Maybe because the orders didn't originate with her," Killius said.
"And maybe she doesn't agree with them."

Shane made a dismissing sound.  "She's too by the book for that."

"No," Britt said.  "Jesse's right.  Maddox is by the book, but she's a
human being, too.  And she's scared.  That's what we got from that
dinner, just how scared she is.  Maybe she was hedging her bet without
the government's approval."

"Then your sign isn't as good," Shane said to Killius.  "Maybe we've
come up against good old-fashioned stupidity."

Killius shook her head.  "Nope.  I hold to my opinion.  The fact that
they're hiding information like this means someone thinks we can win
this thing.  And if that's the case, that means someone above us is
optimistic.  I see that as good news."

"If that's what you need," Shane said.  "But I've been in this too
long.  I have the hunch it's just a case of business as usual."

"We haven't been doing business as usual on anything else," Cross said,
"even to the extent of sharing information about military equipment.  I
can't believe we'd do it here.  I vote with Jesse.  I see something
good in all of this."

Shane's eyes twinkled.  "Well, if far-seeing Dr.  Cross believes that
we'll survive, that's good enough for me."

Cross grinned.  "Sometimes, Shane, I wonder how you made it this far in
this business."

"Usually," Shane said, "I keep my mouth shut and my head low.  I have
no idea what was wrong with me today."

"Too many donut holes," Britt said, grabbing the last one.  "And me,
I've got to get to work."

The others agreed, and followed Britt out of the room.  Cross lingered
for a moment and stared at the now-blank screen.  Optimism.  Hope.  No
one was using those words.  Maybe Conrad was right.  Maybe the fear
came from the sudden, new knowledge that not only were humans not alone
in the universe, but that the new race was so superior it'd been
kicking our ass for generations.

When you got down to the survival level, people became completely
unpredictable.

Even he had.  He hadn't said a word about Portia's idea to create new
nanomachines, machines that would attack the nanoharvesters.  Because
he didn't believe in the plan?  Or

because he was protecting Portia?  Or because he wanted to hide
information from Maddox?

He liked to think it was none of the above.  If he were rationalizing,
he would say it was because he hadn't decided it was worth pursuing.

But somewhere, in that long and tense meeting, he had decided.  He was
going to tell Portia to go ahead with the new plan.  If he could trust
Maddox--and he wasn't sure he could-then the military was working on
the same path as Nan Tech If that was the case, then Portia was free to
work on the new nanomachines.

He wished he could find out for certain, but he would lose too much
time trying to crack the military's secrecy policies.

Survival took risks.  Calculated risks, but risks to be sure.  Portia
wanted to deal with human technology.  She felt more comfortable with
it.  And he knew that a scientist working in a realm she felt
comfortable in made more progress than a scientist who worked in an
unfamiliar place.

"You coming, Leo?"  Brirt asked from the door.

"Yeah," he said.  He had a lot to do.  And the first thing on his list
was contacting Portia Groopman.

May 25, 2018

5:47 a.m. Central Daylight Time

142 Days Until Second Harvest

Vivian Hartlein leaned against a tree three blocks off Union Street in
Memphis, watching.  The morning air still had a damp chill, but she
knew the summer heat would fall, thick and heavy, by noon.  She hoped
to be on her way north in that little truck she'd had Jake buy her.
Forty-year-old Ford-rebuilt, of course--but not with none of them
electronic

parts.  No tracers, no nothing.  Simple, old-fashioned combustion
engine, just like God intended.

But she couldn't leave yet, not without knowing that her plan was
started right.

From this morning on there'd be no turning back.

This morning the government would start paying for the deaths of her
family.  And for all the other millions of people it had killed.  And
this time they wouldn't be able to blame it on no aliens.

The street in front of her was tree lined and landscaped.  A full two
blocks away stood the Internal Revenue Service.  It was in a four-story
older building, made of granite, looking gray and solid and mean.

She studied the building one last time, taking in all the pictures of
what it looked like.  She wanted to remember every detail.  The tall
windows, the columns, the stairs leading in, the stone foyer beyond.

She'd never been in the building.  She never paid no taxes, and Dale
didn't neither.  They got by.  Government didn't even seem to notice
they wasn't in the system.  That was because they made sure they was as
outside it as possible: no ID, no bank accounts, no active social
security number.  No way she'd give money to a corrupt and evil
government.  Especially now, now that they done killed her family.

Even as she was planning this, she never went inside.  Two blocks away
was as close as she had ever gotten.  But she'd seen the plans, helped
in guiding those who was going to help her do right.  She had convinced
them all.

Now she wanted to remember.

This morning was only the beginning.

She glanced at her watch as two cars, both sedans, moved down the
street toward her.  She pretended to be looking the other way as they
passed.

There was less than two minutes left.  Another car pulled up in front
of the IRS building and stopped.  Even from two blocks away she could
see a man in the passenger seat and a woman driving.  Two kids was
strapped in safety seats in the back.  Vivian remembered when she'd
driven her daughter around like that.  And how she'd never gotten the
chance to drive her grand babies anywhere.

And she never would now.  Thanks to the government and all their
lies.

The man kissed the woman in the car lightly, said something to the
children, then opened the door.  That was as far as he got, half in,
half out of the car, his head turned to look at his children.

The front of the IRS building blew outward directly at the car.

Every window in the building exploded as a massive black cloud covered
everything.

Vivian stared, making sure she would remember.

Even two blocks away the concussion of the blast knocked Vivian to one
knee.

The ground shook under her.

Windows smashed in the buildings near her, raining glass on the streets
and sidewalks.

The rumbling, roaring sound smothered everything.

She never took her gaze off where the government building had been.

Slowly, she climbed to her feet.  She'd expected a feeling of joy.  Or
maybe excitement.

But she felt nothing.

She stared down the street of destruction in front of her.

The IRS building was gone, covered in a cloud of rolling smoke.  Car
and building sirens was screaming from all directions.

The IRS employee's car had been smashed into the wall of the building
across the street and was burning.  She couldn't see the little family
at all.

She thought about the children and felt nothing.  She had cried all
her tears for her babies.  Now, everyone else would know what she'd
been through.

War meant sacrifice.  The Bible said an eye for an eye.  A child for a
child.  Two grandchildren for her grandchildren.  A daughter for her
daughter.  A father for Jake's father.

With one more look at the building, she turned away.  Around her,
people were running toward the destruction.  But she walked quickly in
the other direction.

She'd planned other shots in this war, and she was going to make sure
they were done right.

7

June 5, 2018

10:22 Universal Time

131 Days Until Second Harvest

The command chamber inside the warship was large and round, a perfect
circle.  Cicoi stood at the entrance, his upper tentacles rising in
astonishment as they had every time he had entered this chamber.

The command positions, circles built onto the walls and extended so
that the officers seem to float by ranks, had all been repaired.  The
Commander's circle was in the middle on the only real floor.  Before it
were half a dozen round balls, all of which represented a different
information feed about the third planet.

A cone-shaped command center encircled the Commander's position, with
ten spots built into the board to rest upper tentacles during long
battles.  The entire design, using perfect shapes throughout, would
relax a crew that had had a long space voyage or suffered a long tense
battle.

Cicoi didn't want to think about the battles that had been waged from
here.  He knew enough of his people's history to know that those
battles had been waged against either the North or the Center.  Once
upon a time, his people battled themselves.

Now they had a truce, built by circumstance and need.  It was no
longer as fragile as it had been when the Elders decided to save the
planet, but there was still talk that if the survival situation ever
eased, Malmur would separate itself into three distinct sections once
more.

Cicoi wasn't here as Commander of the South.  He was here as leader of
the fleet.  He had come to customize the command center for himself.
This ship, the first warship to be fully repaired, would be the
flagship for the new battle.  His experience gained him the position of
leader of the fleet.  His youth had raised him above the other two
contenders: the Commanders of the North and Center.  The Elders
believed that Cicoi had the reflexes, both mental and physical, to
withstand a long battle.  Since no one except the Elders had ever used
this warship, true battle experience did not exist, and Cicoi had a
hunch that the Elders were lying about the real reason they wanted him
to lead.

They did think him more physically able: that was true.  But they also
thought him more malleable than the others, more willing to do their
bidding.

And he was.  Cicoi had always bowed to experience.  He did not know the
history of these ships well enough to know when the Elders had used
them, but he knew from his Elder's sharp commands, barked to Cicoi from
inside his own brain, that the Elder had once commanded the flagship
himself.

Against whom or what Cicoi could not imagine--and was not even sure he
wanted to.

The rungs leading to the command circle were built into the wall, and
Cicoi had fallen in love with them immediately.  He could wrap a
tentacle around one and hold himself in place, while placing another
tentacle above to pull himself up, or another tentacle below to ease
himself down.  After only a few weeks, he had already become so
accustomed to this design that he moved along it rapidly, sometimes
choosing to hang from the rungs while he gave orders to his repair
crews.

They had looked at him with a mixture of fright and awe.  The Elder
had told him that the rungs had once been the latest design, the newest
technology--the last new technology invented before the great move
through the darkness of space-and there had been no time to implement
it planet wide

Cicoi wished their sun still existed.  He wished he had seen the light
and the plant life, and the waters Malmur once had.  He wished all the
buildings he frequented had had rungs instead of glide paths that broke
down, or ramps that strained the tentacles, or even the awkward steps
that had been cut into rock and tangled tentacles into awful messes.

The Elders had the wisdom of technology.  Cicoi wished he had seen what
other things their fertile brains could have created.

Even though the Elders had saved all of their lives-indeed, made it
possible for Cicoi to be hatched.

And now, they made it possible for Cicoi to lead a fleet that would
rescue his planet once again.

Cicoi grabbed a rung with his tenth upper tentacle and pulled himself
upward, working his tentacles as the Elder had taught him: tenth,
ninth, eighth, and so on, until it became time to repeat.  His lower
tentacles did not mirror, but floated free.

In space, the Elder warned him, gravity was sometimes lost on the
warships--destroyed--or the energy from the gravity controls was moved
to weapons or propulsion.  The rungs made it possible for any command
staff who were knocked loose or in the wrong place to return to their
stations.

The stations were also models of innovation.  In the harvester vessels,
the circles were marks on the floors, as they were in the buildings
planet wide  In the warship, there were tentacle hooks in the circles
as well, so no matter what happened to the ship, the staff could remain
in place.

Cicoi's upper tentacles twitched with anticipation.  He longed to get
this vessel spaceward.  He longed already for the fight.

He glided across the floor and stood in the command circle.  From this
place, he could see all the other stations, above and below.  Around
him, if he needed it, the entire inside of the command chamber would
become a viewer that would show him the vastness of space.  He would
see in three dimensions, pointing his eye stalks in all ten directions,
including the lesser directions of above and below.

The Elder had told Cicoi to practice this maneuver so that he would not
become dizzy at crucial parts in the battle.  Cicoi had promised he
would, and he had also ordered his team to do the same.

They would be ready.  He would not underestimate the creatures of the
third planet again.

Cicoi straightened all his tentacles and streamlined his body.  He
slowly raised his eye stalks as he would before the formal order to
launch the ship, and he turned them in the proper ten directions,
feeling that half moment of dizziness as stalks two and seven went
above and below simultaneously.  Then he extended his upper tentacles,
resting them on the console in the designated areas.  His lower
tentacles wrapped the rungs inside his command circle.

Never before had his body been fully utilized like this.  He understood
now why the Elder wanted him to practice.

Cicoi examined, from his post, all areas of his command chamber.  This
was the first time he had ever been inside it alone.  First he had come
with his Elder, and the command chamber had been a mess of collapsed
circles, shattered rungs, and dust.  The Elder had been distressed by
this, his tentacles wrapped around his body, all but one of his eye
stalks protruding as if he couldn't stand the sight of the destruction
time had wrought.

All the other visits Cicoi had made had been to check on the progress
of his repair team, and to learn how to run this command chamber.  As
the Elder taught him the tricks of the command circle, repair workers
floated around them, tentacles clinging to rungs, or stations, or
suspending them above work areas.

It had seemed like a pod-hive to him then, a child's pod hive, safe and
full of countless bodies learning how to move tentacles without
tangling them.

Until now Cicoi had no idea this chamber was so vast.  Or how much
power it seemed to have in its glistening parts.  It made him feel as
if he could win anything, anything they faced, just by standing in this
circle at this time.

And that, of course, was how he was supposed to feel.  The comfort of
circles, the confidence they gave.

But now the repair crews, trained as the Elder taught them through
Cicoi--and in the process giving Cicoi more power than he'd ever had
before--had moved on to the other ships.  They had to work at full
strength.  Cicoi spared all the workers he could for this, but even
that fell short.

The warships were so badly neglected, the damage time had caused so
terrible, that the amount of work to fix them was tremendous.  Even
with this repair crew working at full ability, no more than ten
warships would be ready by the time Malmur was in position to launch
them.

Cicoi was taking a large risk moving this many workers to warship
repair.  Malmur needed a new harvester ship.  It needed to absorb all
the energy it could from this Pass around the sun.  It needed to make
provisions for the problems that had occurred last Pass.

And now the Elders were siphoning off more of the workers, making them
work on the Sulas.  The Elders wanted as many Sulas as possible.
Instead of two harvests, the Elders wanted to do three, and that would
take millions and millions of additional Sulas to replace the ones lost
each harvest.  The Elders had programmed the Sulas so that they would
eat quicker, which would enable the extra harvest, but it also meant
that they would use additional energy.

Cicoi's people were working all the time, with very short rest breaks.
As the Elder said, sleep was something that happened in darkness, not
light.  Still Cicoi knew most of his people would rather have their
stalks in their pockets once per deca unit  It kept them fresh.  He
worried about errors.

He worried about a thousand things.

He even considered asking the non fertile females to leave the pods and
come to work, but the training would be terrible.  Still, there were
easy jobs that even an untrained worker could do.  Suggesting such a
thing, though, was close to heresy, and he feared doing it.

If things got much worse, however, he would ask that the females become
involved.

His tentacles were growing tired.  His eye stalks were quivering
slightly.  Holding this position was much more difficult than he had
thought.

He snapped his eye stalks into their pockets and relaxed his lower
tentacles.  Then he let his upper tentacles rest against his sides.

He had much to do before he met with the Elder again.  Cicoi needed to
check the newest batch of Sulas, the ones designed not for the third
planet, but for the dead fourth planet.  In this last Pass through this
particular solar system, the harvester ships would make a stop at the
fourth planet as well, and strip it of raw materials.

Cicoi hoped the materials on the fourth planet would be worth the
effort.  The loss of energy in this last effort had been tremendous.
Workers reassigned.  New parts for these warships.  New Sulas.

Cicoi did not know what the plan was.  He had tried to ask several
times.  But the Elder had told him he would learn what he needed to
when he needed to.

Only, Cicoi was beginning to believe he would never learn of the plan.
And he feared he was trusting in the wrong place.  The Elders had lived
in a time of unlimited energy.  They hadn't experienced an entire
lifetime of deprivation.

Cicoi had.  And he knew the cost of each bit of energy used.  If it
wasn't replaced, then the Malmuria would die off slowly, unable to
support new pods, new life, new anything.

Malmur would be dead.

And it would be his fault.

June 5, 2018

5:10 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time

131 Days Until Second Harvest

"Lunch," Bradshaw said as he backed through the door of Portia's lab at
Nan Tech  He held one large greasy white bag, and balanced a drink
holder in his left hand.  Portia's giant cup of Surge had spilled
twice, and his fingers were sticky.  He'd have to wash them before he
got any work done at all.

Not that he was really working.  Sometime in the last month, he had
gone from being the adviser on fossils to the fetch-and carry man for
Portia Groopman.  She didn't seem to notice and he really didn't mind.
There wasn't much for a nearly retired professor of archaeology to do
anymore, anyway.

After Leo Cross first got in touch with Bradshaw, a year earlier, the
first six months had been heady.  Suddenly archaeology had a relevance
to modern society--more of a relevance than it usually did.  So many
archaeologists mouthed the old trope: You won't understand your present
if you don't understand your past.  But few believed it.  Bradshaw
found it ironic that the thing that discredited him--the alien
nanomachines

he found fossilized decades ago--were the things on which all of
society depended today.

Now, since his training had again become moot for the moment, he stuck
close to Portia, helping in every fashion that he could.  He had begun
to feel responsible for her.

Portia's parents were mostly absent.  They felt that since Portia had
found a profession she loved, and was making more than enough money,
she could take care of herself.  And she could.  She had always done
so, even when her parents' medical expenses had far surpassed their
teachers' salaries, and caused them to get thrown onto the street.
Portia had always found ways to survive.

But Bradshaw believed people needed to do more than survive.  He
believed they needed affection and caring and a useful purpose.  Portia
had affection from her coworkers and a useful purpose.  But she didn't
really have anyone to care for her.

Until him.  He saw himself as the grandfather she had never known.
Although if he really and truly were her grandfather, he would buy her
a house, with a soft comfortable bed, and make her sleep in it once in
a while.  He was probably the only person who knew that Portia had lied
about having an apartment.  She slept at Nan Tech showered at the
health club across the street, and often bought her food from vending
machines.

The least he could do was make certain that she was well fed.  He'd
actually set the chime on his watch to go off every three hours, and he
supplied either a snack or a meal, whichever was necessary.

This time, he was bringing lunch.  He'd found a superb deli two blocks
away that made sandwiches of a kind he'd never seen.  Stacked with
meat, lettuce, tomatoes and whatever other vegetables he wanted,
cheeses, and some kind of sauce that was to die for, all on a caraway
rye that caught in the teeth and

lingered on the tongue.  The smell of these sandwiches alone could
pull Portia away from her research long enough to eat, and today, he
was counting on that.

She'd been working nonstop all night long.  He couldn't get her to quit
and sleep.  He'd finally gone home around eleven-he was of no use to
anyone if he didn't sleep--and when he woke up, feeling guilty, at 4
a.m."  he called.  Portia answered, wide awake.  No, she hadn't slept.
No, she didn't know what time it was.  And no, she didn't care.

She kept the shades in the lab drawn so that it was perpetual night.
The lights made everything look washed out.  Portia had her own lab at
Nan Tech--she was that valuable to the company--and it had her usual
collection of stuffed animals lining the walls.  The computer systems
were elaborate and the screens were huge.  Much of the actual work was
done by computers, with robotic arms that had different tools for the
smallest bits of work.

She was sitting at the main desk, two large computer screens turned
toward her.  Her hair was mussed, its stylish do so long overgrown that
it was ragged.  She wasn't the composed girl he had met half a year
before.

"I got roast beef for you," he said, coming around the table.  "Lots of
spicy mustard as usual.  Extra cheddar, like usual, and they were
saving a beefsteak tomato for you so that you'd get a really thick
slice."

"Mmm," she said, not because the food sounded good, but because she had
heard his voice and had to respond.

That response used to fool him, but it didn't any longer.

"Lunch," he said again, coming through the opening between the tables.
He was about to set the white bag down on the empty tabletop when she
said, "Don't!"

He frowned at her.

"I've got the nanoharvesters out, and I don't want anything near them.
Especially anything that smells that good."

"The nanoharvesters."  He went to the refrigerator and put the
sandwiches inside.  His stomach was jumping.  She had said she wouldn't
get the alien machines out until she had a prototype.  "You had a
workable idea, and you didn't tell me?"

"I made the breakthrough after you crashed," she said.  "This morning,
over--what the hell were those things?"

He thought of the incredibly gooey donuts they'd had this morning:
thick whipped icing, cream in the middle, chocolate underneath.  "I
don't know what they're called," he said.  "A Dunkin' Donuts specialty
I've loved since I was in grad school."

"They had Dunkin' Donuts then?"  she asked, teasing him about his age
as she always did.  But he could tell her heart wasn't really into
it.

"You were making the excuses as to why you weren't going to tell me
about the prototype."

"Oh, yeah," she said.  "This morning over the Dunkin' Donuts specialty
you love, you wanted to talk about that little incident in Coeur
d'Alene, Idaho.  So I let you."

His mood slipped a little.  After talking to Portia, he'd been able to
put his upset in the back of his mind.  Now she reminded him of it.

Four bombs had gone off the day before in a home just outside Coeur
d'Alene, killing a husband and wife.  The neighbors were closed-lipped
about what happened, but a few folks from the town said there had been
a lot of suspicious activity lately, and a lot of outsiders coming into
Northern Idaho.  There was talk, the locals said, of an attempt to
overthrow the government, and a specific group, which the husband and
wife belonged to, was involved.

The bombing of the IRS building in Memphis was just a first step in
that plan, many believed.

The antigovernment group's leader, Vivian Hartlein, was agrandmotherly
type who had lost her daughter and her grandchildren in the alien
attack on California.  She'd sounded reasonable enough, and had even
laughed at the idea of overthrowing the government.  But she had said,
in the interview Bradshaw had watched, that she didn't understand why
so many people had "swallowed the story of an alien attack."

This was the beginning of something, Bradshaw knew.  And he only hoped
it would fade away before the aliens returned.

"Earth to Edwin," Portia said.

He looked at her.

"Still thinking about the idiots?"

"I guess," he said.  "I've seen too many of them in my lifetime."

"Yeah, well, they never really hurt anyone except themselves."

"Spoken like a true twenty-year-old," he said.

She looked at him, somewhat hurt.  She always commented on his age, but
he never commented on hers.  And never in such a derogatory way.

"I'm sorry," he said.  "I was in Oklahoma City on business during the
bombing.  I saw what idiots like that can do, and I've never forgotten
it."

"What bombing?"  she asked.

He felt a small stab to the heart.  Of course she wouldn't know.  She
hadn't even been born yet, and her education was anything but formal.

"Never mind," he said.  "What do you have?"

"A prototype," she said.  "I was about to test it.  Want to watch?"

He'd watched two other tests of her prototypes.  They had consisted of
a small Portia-made nanomachine on one side of the big computer
screen--the machine was blown up to a hundred times life-size, of
course--and an alien nanoharvester

on the other.  Theoretically, the Portia-made machine was supposed to
demolish the alien machine, but in both cases nothing happened.

And Bradshaw had had to calm Portia down afterward and get her back to
work.  It wasn't that she was angry so much as extremely frustrated.
This was the first time she'd ever had to make more than one attempt at
solving a nanotechnology problem that she'd put this much time into.

The troubles of prodigies, he'd thought more than once.  They never
learned patience.

"All right," he said.  "But after the test, you eat."

"Yes, Gramps."  She kicked out a chair beside her, and he sat on it.

The alien nanoharvester was already on the screen.  Its strange shape
and eerie markings looked more alien every time he saw them.

Portia bent over the microscope part of her computer and, using an
extremely tiny tool that looked like a miniature tweezers, placed
something on the slide.

A round, gray nanomachine appeared on the edge of the computer screen.
The Portia-made machine was a lot more aesthetically pleasing, with its
precise and sensible design, and Bradshaw was starting to ruminate on
the differences between species, when suddenly Portia's nanomachine
began to move.

"Oh, shit," she said, but she sounded pleased.

It seemed to slide across the screen like a magnet heading for steel,
and attached itself to the alien nanoharvester.  Portia's machine
quivered and Bradshaw suddenly realized that this looked like sex to
him, sex between two incompatible insects--like a ladybug trying to
mount an ant.

The thought gave him shudders.

"Oh, God," Portia said.

Finally her nanomachine stopped quivering.  She looked at some
numerical specs that had been running on the other screen, and let out
a whoop.

The sound made Bradshaw jump.

"Edwin!"  she said.  "We did it!"

He smiled at the "we."  He hadn't had anything to do with it, as
evidenced by the fact that he didn't know how she knew she'd
succeeded.

"Well," he said a bit cautiously, "I know you got your nanomachine to
attack, but how do we know that it killed the alien machine?"

"Edwin," she said, sounding disappointed in him.  "I showed you how the
power grids worked last time."

She had, too.  He had understood the theory.  One of the few
breakthroughs she had been able to make on the alien nanoharvesters was
to read their energy signature.  She had shown him how, but he hadn't
understood it then.  He certainly didn't understand it now.

"My machine drained the energy from theirs.  Look!"  She pointed to the
information running down the other screen.  "That's all mine.  And see
the spike?  That's where it absorbed the energy from the alien
machine."

She clapped her hands together like a child in front of a surprise
birthday cake.  Bradshaw grinned.

"This is so wonderful.  I conquered the molecular atomic attraction
problem last night, but I just guessed on the energy signatures.  And
bingo, ban go bongo, we've got it!"

"Do we tell Leo?"  Bradshaw asked.

"Not until we repeat this experiment half a dozen times," she said,
leaning forward.

He put a hand on her shoulder.  "You've made a breakthrough," he said.
"You deserve lunch."

She waved a hand at him.  "No time."

"No time for passing out from hunger either."  He tugged at her arm.
She didn't move.  "Come with me, or I'll bring the sandwiches over here
and contaminate your nanoharvesters."

She stood instantly.  "You don't play fair, Edwin."

He grinned.  "I want our resident girl genius to continue wowing the
troops."

"There aren't any troops," she said.

"There's me."

"Do I wow you, Gramps?"

"All the time," he said, clapping her on the shoulder.  "All the damn
time."

June 5, 2018

8:45 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time

131 Days Until Second Harvest

Leo Cross's security bracelet bumped against his wrist.  The plastic
itched, and he wasn't used to wearing anything on his right side.  His
wrist'puter was on his left, and it had taken him years to get used to
that.  But the bracelet was a small price to pay to be here now.

He was in Britt's main lab, surrounded by nearly twenty scientists.  A
dozen more sat in a special viewing room, with a few special guests.
Britt had used her guest pass to invite Mickelson.  She had brought
Cross into the main area as an adviser.

Hayes and Shane were on the floor, looking as uncomfortable as Cross
was.  It was all he could do to keep from standing beside them.  He was
dodging scurrying people, doing his best to stay out of the way.

This wasn't his kind of science.  His kind of science involved digging
and thinking and a few computerized tools.  But Britt's involved
computers everywhere, large screens that relayed information, and
smaller equipment for telemetry.  Speakers stood on one side of the
room, wired into even more

computer hardware, to amplify any ambient noise, although no one
really expected there to be any.

They were going on-line with a probe, launched five days ago on an
intercept course with the tenth planet.  The probe was outfitted with
equipment that would send all sorts of information back to Earth, from
simple things that Cross would have thought of like visual and audio
scans, to more complicated things such as devices that measured
temperatures and surface composition.  There would be infrared scans,
and energy scans, and all sorts of other things that no one had
bothered to tell him.

What he did know was that this was only the first of five probes.  The
second probe was launched three days ago, and would come on-line
tomorrow.  The next one would be launched in two days, with the
remaining probes launched in rather quick succession.

The hope was that all of the probes would land on the tenth planet. The
predicted best-case scenario was that one of them would get through.

Cross knew that Britt was worried that none of them would get through,
that the aliens would have some sort of orbital defense of the planet.
Cross doubted it, though.  Never before had those creatures been
attacked, at least not by humans.

Britt was moving from screen to screen, completely focused on getting
everything ready.  She lingered near the audio area, leaning toward the
mathematical readouts.  Cross took a step closer.  He had seen the
trials on this equipment and knew enough to recognize wave patterns and
the Fourier Scale, but some of the other work looked completely
unfamiliar to him.  The physics of sound never interested him very
much, not until now, when it suddenly became important.

Another scientist moved past him.  Cross had long ago stopped looking
at little name badges attached to the lapels.  There were just too many
people here he didn't know.  Early

on, Britt had tried to introduce him, but he must have gotten that
blank overloaded look, because she soon stopped.

"Coming on-line now," said the middle-aged redheaded guy up front with
a starburst tattoo on his right cheek.

Cross looked at the screen directly before him, just like the others
did.  Numbers and figures ran across the screens.

"Put the telemetry on One," Britt said.  "I want visuals onscreen
only."

She had warned Cross she would do that.  There were particular
scientists trained to read the telemetry.  Everyone else found it
annoying and distracting.

"No sound except the probe itself," said one of the women.

"Readings near the probe are exactly what we expect in space," said
someone else.

"Visuals coming on-line now," said the redhead.

Cross felt the muscles in his back tighten.  The screens went blank for
a moment, then filled with the blackness of space.  Blackness and
stars.  He wondered how many other aliens were out there, how many
other cultures existed on how many distant worlds, worlds he couldn't
even see, not with the help of probes or oversized telescopes.

He had never expected, in all his years, to learn that aliens existed.
And even if they had, he wouldn't have expected them to be so
hostile.

So far the probe showed nothing new.  But Cross didn't expect it.  It
was a miracle to get the information back.  Ultimately, though, he
wanted images of the tenth planet.  He wanted to know what the surface
looked like, what else the aliens had built besides spaceships and
nanoharvesters.  He wanted to know as much about them as he did about
the ancient cultures he'd been studying his whole life.

The blackness of space was taunting him.

All over the world, in war rooms just like this, scientists were
looking at these images, and wanting more.

Suddenly science had become the key to everything.  Andhumans had to
work together to solve scientific puzzles that five years ago they
hadn't even known existed.

More scientists were linked now than ever.  More information was being
shared than ever before.  For the first time in its existence, the
Earth was united in a common goal.

8

June 15, 2018

6:02 Universal Time

121 Days Until Second Harvest

The command center inside the International Space Station was a pile of
ancient computers held together by buckets and bolts.  Every time Gail
Banks entered it, she half expected to see a pan beneath the so-called
ceiling, collecting water drippings, like the house of her childhood.
Badly constructed roof, walls that were falling apart, and parts that
never should have been glued together.  The station was like that, and
as more and more modules were built on, no one thought to move the
command center.  Occasionally one of the countries that worked on the
station sent up new computer equipment and it was cobbled onto the
rest.  The result was a hacker's paradise, which made a by-the-book
woman like Banks want to pull her hair out.

Especially at a time like this.

She needed to launch three hundred missiles, and she only had enough
equipment in the command center to handle a hundred at a time.  She was
relying on the shuttles to provide backup.  Fortunately, though, her
ISS team was a prepared group of hackers, and they had managed to
jury-rig something.  She wasn't happy with it, but it would do.

Her staff was scattered at the various posts.  They were top-notch,
well trained and ready.  She'd already briefed the backup shuttle
pilots and the mission control folks back home.

They were as ready as they were going to be.

She peered at the nearest monitor.  The image she had chosen to watch
was a real-time image of the missiles hanging in space.  She was going
to have three staggered launches, one hundred each launch.  If she
hadn't been so rushed, she would have moved the damn command center to
a more sensible part of the ISS, and she would have waited until Earth
sent her better equipment.

But she had known when she took this job the need for haste, and she
had known she would have to jury-rig things.  She did receive
permission, when this was all over, to develop a new command center on
the ISS, and she did put in requisitions for new equipment.
Unfortunately, none of the changes would come when she needed them.

And she prayed that she wouldn't need them later.

This project had to work.  She'd given her whole heart and soul to
it.

As she watched, the countdown started behind her.  How many times had
she listened to countdowns like this, getting ready to launch
missiles--fire rockets, so that shuttles could go into orbit.  Never
before had she experienced it while she was in orbit, or while the
missiles were in orbit.

She had this horrible fear that some of the missiles wouldn't make it
out of Earth's gravitational well.  It was a fear she admitted to no
one, although she did ground two Ukrainian missiles after examining
them herself.  They'd clearly been dug out of a silo that was built in
the 1950s, and there was no way she would let them contaminate her
project.

Her project.  She let out a sigh and stood up.

"General?"  one of the women said.  "Everything all right?""I can't
watch a launch on a monitor," she said.  It always made her feel as if
she were out of the loop somehow.  Of course she usually felt that way
when she wasn't hands-on.  Command really wasn't her thing, but she
knew how to organize people and she had been promoted to this place.
Sometimes she still longed for the days when she was the one with her
hand on the joystick, in control of the plane rather than the entire
project.

She went to the nearest porthole.  In this part of the ISS, the
portholes were exactly that, large circles of thick, clear, scratched
plastic that offered a distorted view into the blackness of space
beyond.

Still, she could see the missiles hanging out there in space, a safe
distance away from the station, their cylindrical shapes ghosts against
the darkness.

"General, you can't see clearly from there."

"I can look at the replay on the monitors and I'm not going to read the
telemetry," she said.  "I trust you to let me know if anything is going
wrong."

There was too much telemetry for one person to monitor anyway.  Her
staff had maxed itself out, with as much information as possible on all
of the screens.

She clasped her hands behind her back.

The countdown continued.

Flares of light appeared at the base of some of the missiles-the older
ones going through several launching stages.

Her breath caught in her throat.  Her heart was pounding.  They were
actually going to do this.  Goddammit.  She had pulled it off.  She had
thought the task impossible when they assigned it to her.

"Three," the computerized voice droned behind her.

"Two."

"One."

"Launch!"  Banks said in her firmest voice.  "Launch commencing," the
computer voice responded, and her staff murmured its acknowledgment of
that.

The blackness in front of her flared into brightness so blinding she
had to resist looking away.

One hundred missiles, launching at the same time.

Fires burned beneath their bases and together they moved slowly, then
quickly picked up speed away from the station, heading after a quick
orbit around Earth into the vastness of space.

Red and green comm trails danced in front of her eyes, remaining even
when she closed them.  She felt her heart pounding.  She opened her
eyes again, and saw bits of color remaining against the backdrop of
space, but she wasn't sure if that was another trick of her ocular
nerves.

"Report," she said, turning around.

As they had been trained, her assistants called out the information she
needed.

"Group One, green."

"Group Two, green."

The countdown continued through all twenty groups.  Only four missiles
had failed to fire, and she had expected that.  They were the oldest
missiles in this particular batch.  There were more in the next wave of
missiles, but she didn't have time to have the oldest ones double- and
triple-checked.  There was no time at all, actually.

Telemetry covered the screens before her.  The warheads were alive,
their codes already programmed in.  Some of the missiles even carried
old-fashioned warheads that detonated on impact, just in case the
energy-draining shields of the alien ships affected all of the other
missiles.

Warheads.

Nuclear missiles.

She had never in her life thought she would be the one to give the
codes to launch them.

But then, she had always expected that, if they were launched, they'd
be launched at other humans, at Earth.

She went back to her porthole.  The other missiles hung in their
orbits, awaiting their launch sequence.

She had two more waves of missiles to launch.  Soon every warhead that
human beings could get into orbit under short notice, every missile
that even had a prayer of working, would be hurtling into space.

She turned to her crew.  "Prepare second launch countdown."  Then she
turned back to stare out at the blackness of space.

Earth's greatest hope rested on her shoulders, and she had done all she
could.

She prayed that would be enough.

June 15, 2018

2:51 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time

121 Days Until Second Harvest

Food is sleep, Britt Archer thought to herself as she studied the cold
pizzas in their greasy boxes that someone had left in the back of the
lab.  She had a choice of cold pepperoni, cold sausage and mushroom,
cold vegetarian, and cold pineapple with anchovies.  Of course, there
were only a few pieces of the first three, and almost the entire
pineapple and anchovies.  Archer grimaced.  If there was anything worse
than a pineapple and anchovy pizza, it was a cold pineapple and anchovy
pizza.

But she had to eat, because she certainly wasn't going to sleep, not in
the foreseeable future.

She grabbed the last slice of pepperoni, and then took a slice of
vegetarian for good measure.  The three pots of coffee

she'd made someone get from the nearest Starbucks were already gone.
She'd used some French roast, finely ground, to make a pot in the lab's
machine, but it wasn't the same.  Besides, her nerves were jangled. She
must have had enough caffeine to wire the entire Pentagon.

The Pentagon.  She snorted slightly.  Maddox could have warned her.
Archer had thought the two of them had the beginnings of a friendship.
To get a phone call this afternoon from Jesse Killius was bad enough.
Someone could have told her sooner that her entire staff, plus everyone
else she could muster in all the different labs all over the country,
would be working well into the night.  It was common courtesy.

But Archer was beginning to sense that courtesy and secrecy didn't go
well together at all.  She hadn't even felt comfortable enough to tell
Leo what was going on when she had to cancel their dinner plans.  She
had to rely on the good all purpose dodge, telling him that "something"
had come up.

Yes, something had come up.  Twenty probes that she had known nothing
about were suddenly sending back telemetry, and her people had to
monitor all of it.  Twenty probes, in addition to the other probes her
staff was in charge of.  Twenty secret probes.  Where the hell had they
come from?

And who launched them?

And from where?

Dammit.  She'd thought the entire world was working together.  She
didn't understand the point of secrecy.  Did the government think that
the aliens had planted spies among the general populace?  And if so,
how had they hidden those silly tentacles?

Archer shook her head slightly.  She was getting punchy.  She took a
bite of pizza, thinking the pepperoni was fine cold, if a little
greasy.  Her stomach rumbled.  She had no idea when she had last
eaten.

Special probes One through Twenty.  She cursed each and every one of
them for robbing her of her semi decent night's sleep.  And her dinner
with Leo.  How come she finally discovered a man who understood her and
at that moment the world decided it was on its last legs?  Was someone
trying to tell her something?

"Dr.  Archer," Odette Roosevelt, one of her best researchers, said.
"Those special probes are sending us signals."

Archer shoved a bit more pizza into her mouth, set the plate down,
grabbed a napkin, and wiped her face and fingers.  She crossed to the
nearest monitor.

She'd had to give a speech tonight, too, the one she hated.  Her staff
all had high-level security clearance and it was because of days like
this one.  Her speech had been the usual song-and-dance about
confidentiality, not speaking to the media on pain of death, and oh,
yeah, no leaks.  Nothing left this room without Archer's say-so.  And
she received permission for that from above.

Killius, who was the one to tell Archer that she and her staff had to
spend the night together, did say that the information would be
released to all the war rooms worldwide the following day.

She slipped into the chair in front of the monitor, staring at the
images that came from Probe One.  With the punch of a button, she could
switch to telemetry, but she wasn't ready, not yet.  She was frowning
at the images, trying to make sense of them

Some sort of movement, something in space.  But what?

"Special Probe Number Two is now on-line," Roosevelt was saying, and
the screen before Archer split so that she saw two slightly different
views of the same images.  Space, yes, but a lot more than that.  The
shapes were cylindrical, and they were moving.

What the hell was this?

"Probes Three, Four, and Five are coming onboard together," said Tom
Cavendish, one of her other assistants.

The new images appeared on Archer's monitor.  She gasped, as the
picture before her finally made sense.  She was staring at rockets
heading out of Earth's orbit.  Heading into space.

A lot more than twenty of them.

"My God," she whispered.

Then she felt a flare of anger.  She had been part of the Tenth Planet
Project from the beginning and no one had bothered to tell her of this?
No one had bothered to tell Leo?  This was what Maddox had been so
secretive about.  What the hell were they doing with rockets?

"Dr.  Archer," Roosevelt said, her voice softer this time.  "Do you see
this?"

"Yes, I do," she said.

"Probe Six is coming on-line," Roosevelt said, in a more businesslike
tone.

Probe Six didn't add much to the picture that Archer already had.  She
frowned.  What was going on?  Why launch so many probes and all at the
same thing?

"We have Probe Seven," Cavendish said.

Probe Seven's view was of the top of one of the rockets.  Archer felt a
sudden chill.  That couldn't be right.  She punched a few keys,
magnifying the new image.

"Jesus," Roosevelt said softly.  "Is that a warhead?"

"What the hell is going on?"  one of Archer's other assistants said.

"I guess we decided to take control of things," Cavendish said.

Archer's mouth was dry.  Take control was an understatement.  "How many
missiles do you think we have here?"

"I'm guessing more than fifty," Cavendish said.

"Probe Eight is on-line," said someone from the far corner of the room.
Archer didn't even try to identify the voice.  She

was still looking at the U.S. Government stamp on the side of that
missile.

"Those are nukes, aren't they?"  said Melissa Carter, Archer's newest
assistant.

"Yeah," Archer said.  Nukes.  Heading into space.

She raised her head as if she could see through the ceiling, into the
sky above.  Then she stood, feeling more unsettled than she ever had in
her life.

Nukes.

No wonder this had been a secret.

Not from the aliens, but from humans.

She thought about the destruction she and Cross had watched less than a
month ago, the black dust, the melting people, the screaming.  She'd
even dreamed about it--or more accurately, had nightmares about it. She
had vowed that she would do everything within her power to prevent that
from happening again.

Her power didn't include nukes, but human power did.  Humans had the
ability to defend themselves, and some of those ways were uncomfortable
to say the least.

She was feeling ambivalent about this, and she at least understood it.
Imagine if this had been announced.  The peaceniks would have been
protesting, and those nutcases who had blown up the IRS building in
Memphis, along with their friends all over the country, would have been
calling this a big government conspiracy and using it as a way of
rallying their sick programs.

They were getting enough help as more and more people started figuring
out that the tenth planet was going to have to pass Earth again.

No.  The secrecy had been right.  And it was her job, at least for the
time being, to keep that secrecy until someone else told the world.

"Probe Nine on-line," Cavendish said.

"Probe Ten right behind it," Roosevelt said.  Archer swung her chair
forward, divided her monitor among all the views, and also brought in
the telemetry.  It was going to be a very long night.

June 15, 2018

12:00 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time

121 Days Until Second Harvest

The curtains were closed in the Oval Office, the thin sheers not enough
to stop the light from the cameras from reflecting in the bay windows.
Grace Lopez, the president's chief of staff, was standing behind the
antique partner's desk, arguing with the White House correspondent for
CNN.  He wanted to close the blue curtains, and she wasn't going to
allow it.

Grace Lopez was a short, round woman with curly gray hair, and a manner
that reminded Mickelson of his second grade teacher--a woman who had
terrified him throughout his grade school years.  If Grace Lopez wanted
something done, then someone had better do it.

But the lights were a problem, and President Franklin had been
insistent: he wanted to make his speech from this room.  The television
reporters were suggesting the Map Room or even the Press Room, but
Lopez was having none of it.

She would have to compromise, though.  Even Mickelson knew that no vid
reporter worth his salt would record in a room with that kind of
reflection.

He turned his back on the argument and watched the White House press
corps prepare for the big speech.  The pundits had been guessing all
evening about what the president would talk about.  Fortunately
Franklin hadn't announced that he was even giving a speech until
dinnertime, or the punditry would have gone on for days.

Mickelson's palms were wet.  He was wearing what he privately called
his duck suit--the next step down from a tuxedo.  It was an Armani
suit, black, with a stylish long coat, and matching trousers.  He wore
a round-collar shirt to follow the modern style, and he felt as if he
were choking.  But at some point in the evening, he would go in front
of cameras himself.  The president had spent the entire day briefing
his Cabinet.  He planned to send them out, like troops, to mount a
verbal assault defending his chosen plan of action.

General Maddox and the other Joint Chiefs were still in the president's
study, going over last minute details with the president and his press
secretary.  Which was why Lopez was doing battle with CNN.

Other Cabinet members were scattered about the south end of the room.
The secretary of agriculture was pretending to be interested in the
musty books that lined the bookshelves, while the secretary of defense
stood silently, her hands clasped before her as if she were waiting to
be graded on her posture.  Mickelson wondered if he looked as
uncomfortable as she did.

"I don't like this."  Tavi Bernstein, director of the FBI, stopped
beside Mickelson.  She was a slight woman who wore her dark hair in a
conservative knot at the back of her neck.  She, too, wore a long
waistcoat, but instead of pants, she had on a knee-length skirt that
showed off surprisingly good legs.  Mickelson had once considered
dating her, until he listened to her resume during her confirmation
hearings.  The woman had been a special agent in undercover work for
half of her career, and the other half she had run, with an iron fist,
some of the most elite units in the agency.  She was smart, and tough,
and she intimidated him more than anyone else he had ever met.

"You don't like the speech?"  Mickelson asked.  They were keeping their
voices low, so low that it was almost impossible

to hear each other.  But with this many members of the press around,
it was always better to be cautious.  In fact, Mickelson noted, they
were both keeping an eye out for the errant boom mike or passing
reporter.

"I haven't seen the final draft of the speech," Bernstein said.  "But I
spent all of yesterday arguing that he shouldn't make it at all."

"People have a right to know--" Mickelson started, but Bernstein waved
an impatient jewel-covered hand.

"Spare me the liberal bullshit," she said.  "We're at war.  And it's
time we acknowledge it.  This country is a powder keg, and no one
outside my department seems to understand that.  Everyone else is
looking skyward."

"That's where the danger is coming from," Mickelson said.

"Not for a few more months.  Right now, we're running triple the number
of hate crimes and conspiracy arrests.  We got a tip, fortunately, that
led us to a huge supply of anthrax just outside Denver last week.  And
so far we've managed to stop five more bombings like Memphis."

Mickelson turned his head so that he could see her face.  She raised
her eyebrows.

"Don't look so serious," she said through her teeth, then smiled,
obviously for the benefit of all the reporters in the room.  "And don't
look so surprised.  We're not broadcasting any of this, except to a
handful of folks."

"Not even Cabinet members?"

She shrugged.  "You have enough on your plate, Doug.  The anthrax thing
is one of many my office has been dealing with since that damn planet
appeared.  My people are working harder than they've ever worked, and
on more cases, from more areas, than ever before."

"What the hell do you think is going on?"  he asked.

She looked at him for a long moment, then turned her gaze pointedly on
the reporters.  "How long do you think we have?"

He glanced at his watch.  "We're only fifteen minutes late at this
point.  No one's left that office yet.  They're fine tuning.  I think
we've got five minutes at least."

"Yeah, and ball-buster Lopez hasn't acquiesced yet," Bernstein said.
"What the hell is she thinking?  The drapes have to be closed if
they're going to do a press conference in here at night.  It doesn't
matter if they haven't been closed since the Kennedy Administration."

Mickelson grinned.  "I think I saw a photo of LBJ with them closed."

"Yeah, to keep the glare off all his television sets."

They both laughed, and Mickelson thought how rare it was to have
someone else who knew the details of modern American history.  He would
wager they were the only two people in the room who knew that right
where half the press corps was standing, President Lyndon Baines
Johnson had had a console with three television sets built in, one for
what was then every network.

That good ole boy from Texas would certainly be surprised now.
Hundreds, maybe thousands of channels, not counting all the video on
the Web, and the low-wattage stations.  Now there was so much noise,
Mickelson was amazed anyone heard anything.  He knew that Franklin's
press people spent most of the evening making certain that all the
networks knew this was the most important speech in Franklin's
career-maybe in the world.  Even then, Mickelson doubted if more than
half would carry it, and those would have pundits dissecting everything
instantly afterward.

He was scheduled to appear on NBC and its sub networks He had no idea
where Bernstein was supposed to lend her two cents.

She led him out the door and into the office of Franklin's private
secretary.  There was a crowd here, too, but none of

them were reporters.  More Cabinet members were here, waiting, and
some of the deputy officials.

"Okay."  Bernstein pulled him into a corner near a Remington statue of
a cowboy on a horse, purchased during the Reagan administration.  "You
wanted to know what's going on?  Here's what I think.  I think people
are terrified, and they don't know how to express it.  They're also
feeling helpless.  We've had a huge rise in voluntary military
recruitment.  But that's not helping like it usually does in war.  This
threat is an unknown, it comes from the sky, and it seems
all-powerful."

"So the speech should help," Mickelson said.

"Oh, for sensible people, maybe," Bernstein said.  "But most people
aren't sensible, not in the way we want them to be.  And those crazed
groups out there are spreading the word that the aliens aren't real. So
when Franklin uses the 'n' word--"

Even in this more private room she didn't dare say nukes.  Franklin had
impressed on all of them the need for secrecy on this point.  Mickelson
had been avoiding discussing it all day.

"--who are those crazies going to believe is being attacked?  If they
don't believe aliens exist, there's only one other answer."

"Some international target."

"Fuck, Doug, sometimes your job colors your vision," Bernstein said.
"No.  We're not talking rational folk here."

"Used to be," he said softly, "the rational people were the ones who
didn't believe in aliens."

She smiled grimly.  "Well, times change.  And our crazy friends aren't
going to be worrying about an international target.  They're going to
be worrying about a local one.  They know that we've been on their
butts and so have the aTF., and the U.S. Marshals.  They're going to
think this is some kind of code."

Mickelson still didn't get it.  "Yes, but you're talking about a fringe
element."

Color rose in her cheeks.  "That's what Franklin was saying  He's so
focused on the skies he's forgetting about the home front  He does this
and I guarantee that cities'll be burning in the morning."

Mickelson let out an exasperated sigh.  "Why are you telling me this
now?  Why didn't you bring it up at the Cabinet meeting?"

"Because I've been talking to Franklin about it all week, and he didn't
want the dissent at the damn meeting.  He says, and I quote, "What
happens here doesn't matter a rat's ass if we don't get rid of those
aliens."  "

Mickelson bit his lower lip.  In his own way, Franklin was right.  What
happened in the next few months didn't matter if the aliens returned. A
lump formed in Mickelson's stomach.  His shoulders were so tight, it
felt as if he'd snap every muscle in them simply by moving.

"You agree with him, don't you?"  Bernstein said.

Trapped.  Mickelson glanced at the door.  Some of the reporters were in
position, but Lopez was still arguing over the drapes.  What a weird
stalling tactic that was.  "Don't you?"  Bernstein asked.

There was no way she was going to let him off the hook.  "Yeah," he
said.  "I do."

"Damn," Bernstein said.  "He listens to you.  I was hoping you could
get him to call this off at the eleventh hour."

"Sorry, Tavi," Mickelson said.  "I think in this case, we're on the
right path."

He left her side, feeling more uncomfortable than he had in days. There
were no good options anywhere.  And now the missiles had been
launched.

He stepped back into the Oval Office just as Lopez closed the drapes.
The reflection disappeared.  She walked across the room, and let
herself through one of the many doors.  The CNN White House
correspondent was shaking his head as if he hadn't seen anything like
that for a long time.

Bernstein entered and pointedly went to a different part of the room
from Mickelson.  What had she expected?  Yeah, he and Franklin went way
back, almost as far back as he and Cross did.  Franklin and Mickelson
were both Rhodes scholars, and were in Oxford at the same time.  They'd
been part of a small enclave of Americans--it wasn't a popular time for
Americans abroad--and they had stuck.  closer together than they would
have if they had been going to graduate school in the States.

But Franklin hadn't chosen Mickelson just out of loyalty.  He had
chosen Mickelson to represent the U.S. abroad because he and Mickelson
had similar views.  Bernstein had been promoted from within the ranks.
When the director's job came open, she had been the natural choice for
it.  But Mickelson had been chosen from the outside, and he had done
his best to serve both his country and his president.

Which he was also doing now.  Bernstein had presented her argument.
Franklin had rejected it.  End of story.

At that thought, the door to the president's study opened, and Franklin
walked in, flanked by the members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and his
press secretary.  As Franklin approached the desk, lights went on all
around him, illuminating that entire section of the Oval Office.  Even
the cracks in the ceiling were visible.

Franklin took his chair, and the others joined the throng behind the
cameras.  If viewed only from the cameras' undiscerning eye, it looked
as if Franklin sat alone in front of windows hidden by lush blue
drapes, an American flag and some lovely ferns in the background.

"Can we have a camera test, Mr.  President?"  one of the reporters
shouted.

"We already did that," Lopez said.  "Let the president start."

The lump in Mickelson's stomach grew heavier.  All day, the discussions
around the Oval Office had been about the

speech.  If human beings survived, this would be the signature speech
of the Franklin presidency.  Every adviser, every member of the
president's staff was conscious of the fact that they were making
history here.

And they were conscious of the fact that with each decision, they could
be writing the end of history as well.

Mickelson made himself take a deep breath.

A TelePrompTer had been set up in front of the camera, a bow to the
fact that this version of the speech had been cobbled together at the
last minute.

Franklin stiffened his shoulders.

His press secretary was looking at her watch.  She would give him the
signal to start from off-camera.

Mickelson scanned for General Maddox.  She was standing near the door
that led into the president's office.  She was in full dress uniform
and, for the first time since Mickelson had met her, she looked
nervous.

The press secretary's finger came down, the red lights on top of all
dozen handheld cameras came on, and Franklin was beginning the speech
that would define him.

"Good evening, my fellow Americans, and citizens of the world."

Franklin's voice quivered just a little, and his eyes widened just
slightly in surprise.  He was nervous.

Mickelson couldn't remember the last time he'd seen Franklin well and
truly nervous.

"I speak to you today not only as the president of the United States,
but as the representative of many of the leaders and governments of
this world, with full support from the United Nations."

Good start.  Mickelson's back stiffened.  Now for the tough part.

Franklin held up a piece of paper.  "I hold in my hand a declaration of
war against the inhabitants of the tenth planet.

This declaration has been signed by all the major governments of the
planet Earth.  Last night, in a secret Security Council session at the
United Nations, this declaration was presented as a resolution and
passed unanimously.  Later today, it will be formally approved by the
general session."

Mickelson stole a glance at the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
She had her hands folded in front of her.  He'd helped her prep for
last night's debate, only to get a call from her later with the report
that there had been none.

The nations of the world were united on this.  He should have mentioned
that to Bernstein.

Although he doubted she would have appreciated it.

"At 6:05 Greenwich Mean Time today," President Franklin was saying,
"the combined nations of this planet launched a counterattack against
the tenth planet from orbit.  Over a period of one hour, three hundred
and six nuclear-tipped warheads were launched on an intercept course
with the tenth planet.  A few more will be launched over the next few
weeks, until the launch window closes our opportunity for such
action."

Mickelson's throat was dry.  He wished he didn't have to be here.  He
wanted to be in some Georgetown bar, near the university, listening to
the seniors react to the speech.  He had no idea how this was playing
in Peoria, let alone Beijing.

He hoped it was playing well, because there was no way to turn back
from this course.

The president paused for a few moments, then went on.  "It will take
the fastest of this massive first wave of missiles sixty-three days to
reach an intercept point with the tenth planet as it comes around the
sun and heads back toward our planet."

Franklin was looking pale in the bright light.  He was talking about
the largest nuclear attack ever made.  And, bless him, he looked as
disturbed by it as a leader in time of crisis could.

Mickelson dry-swallowed.  He resisted the urge to glance at Bernstein.
Goddamn her.  Why'd she have to come to him at the last minute?  She
had made him uncertain, and he couldn't be, not with his own television
appearances awaiting him after this.  He had to sound like a positive
member of the team, something he was usually very good at.

Franklin lowered his voice to a confiding tone.  "I know all of you
watched what the inhabitants of the tenth planet did on their first
attack against Earth.  Many of you lost loved ones: parents, children,
grandchildren.  We all saw the damage these hideous weapons did.  We
were affected unevenly, but we were all affected.  Earth is our home
and it has been violated.  We rise up now in self-defense."

Heartstrings.  Mickelson nodded.  Someone had had the good sense to use
hot-button words like "home" and "Violation."  Franklin had even
skirted around the concept of motherhood.  If this had been a strictly
American speech, Mickelson wondered, would there have been a mention of
apple pie, too?

He shuddered and glanced at Bernstein.  That cynical thought was
courtesy of her.

Or was it?  Maybe it was his own way of distancing himself from the
emotional content of Franklin's speech.  Mickelson had vacationed on
the California coast.  He'd been down the Amazon, and he'd even been to
the places in Africa that had been destroyed.  He hadn't lost friends
or family, but he had lost places and in some ways that was just as
bad.  Maybe worse.  Because humans believed places outlasted
everything.  In Europe, cities existed for a thousand years.  In Asia
and the Middle East, several thousand.

And the aliens had destroyed that feeling of security, the fact that
some things lasted through time.

Mickelson took a deep breath.  Calm.  He had to remain calm.

"We cannot allow a second such attack to occur as the tenth planet
comes past us again," Franklin was saying.  He had raised his voice
again.  He was speaking with force, no longer the friend and confidant,
but the world leader.  "All of the governments of the world have been
working together, and will continue to do so, to fight the aliens on
all fronts.  The strike today was just the first.  There will be
more."

More.  Jesus.  A part of Mickelson had hoped that this one attack would
be enough.

Franklin was looking directly at the camera.  He looked more confident
than he had when he began this speech.  His tone was firm again.

Or maybe, just maybe, it came from the heart.

Mickelson braced himself.

"This is an historic day," Franklin said.  "It is the first time the
entire planet has gone to war against a common enemy.  I had never
imagined such a day, but it has arrived.  We did not ask for this war.
We do not want it.  But be assured, we shall win."

Franklin continued to stare at the cameras.  Then the red lights above
them went out.  Mickelson started with surprise.  No traditional
ending. No "thank you and good night."  Just a declaration of power.

The reporters weren't even shouting questions.  They looked stunned.
Franklin stood, walked to the study, and closed the door behind him.

The Oval Office was incredibly quiet, considering how many people were
in it.

Mickelson gathered himself.  He had to go to the press room so that he
could be the third wheel on some NBC panel talk show.  He had to
move.

But he didn't want to.  Even though the president was gone, the air was
still fraught with import.

We 'we finally done it, he thought.  We 'we finally declared war.

Against an enemy they didn't know.  An enemy they didn't understand. An
enemy they'd never really seen.

Franklin had spoken with confidence about their chances.  Mickelson
wasn't sure if that confidence was real or not.  But he knew that, for
the first time since the tenth planet had started destroying sections
of the Earth thousands of years ago, Earth finally had a realistic
chance of fighting back.

And maybe, just maybe, they could win this.

Section Three

FINAL

COUNTDOWN

9

August 1,2018

10:01 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time

101 Days Until Second Harvest

As Leo Cross pushed open the double doors leading into Britt's main
lab, he felt like an outsider about to enter a closed town.  He took a
deep breath, trying to overcome the feeling, but he couldn't really
shake it.

Even though Britt had gotten him a permanent pass into the building a
month ago--the day after the president had given his famous "We Are at
War" speech--Cross still didn't know anyone but Britt by name.  He
wasn't consulted by the other scientists and he was constantly treated
as "the boyfriend."

It was a new experience for him.  All his life, he had been the center
of attention, he had been the one that others had looked to, he had
been the one with other people hanging on his arm.

Right now, he wasn't really hanging on Britt's--he was doing work--he
just wasn't getting results.  He spent a lot of time in his office, and
in his workroom at home, studying information from all the different
groups working on the various aspects of the Tenth Planet Project.

Movement seemed so damn slow.  Slowness had never bothered him in the
past, but now it did.  Everyone was looking at the missiles as the
things that would save the Earth, but Cross wasn't by nature an
optimist.  Nor was he a pessimist.  He quantified things, hypothesized
from information presented to him, and waited for results.

But with the missiles, he couldn't do that.

He threaded his way through the desks and computers and scientists
hunched over them, studying telemetry or turning the streams of raw
data into visuals.  Britt had placed a large screen in the center of
the room--a flat screen that had images on both sides.  Right now it
was running numbers, and no one was looking at it.  At other times he
had been in the lab, it had been showing images from various probes,
sometimes the best or the prettiest.  And a few times, late at night,
it showed those images that could, when someone connected the dots with
a white line, be made to look like something else--usually something
juvenile and extremely funny.

A few of the scientists had looked up as Cross entered, but no one
greeted him.  Sometimes when he showed up, they looked at him as if he
were the enemy.  He took Britt away, when the rest of them had to
remain, and he had a hunch they saw that as unfair somehow.

Britt was standing between two of her assistants, one hand on each
desk, having an earnest conversation.  He stayed well back, knowing
better than to interrupt her work.

She had gotten thinner in the last few months, and the lack of sleep
had hollowed out her face.  The prettiness that had so appealed to him
when they first met was lost to stress and burnout.  She was still
attractive, but she wasn't fresh faced, wasn't the energetic woman he
had fallen in love with.  He was beginning to worry how much more of
this she could take, but he didn't know how much of his worry was
coming from his love for her and how much of it was actually based on
some intangible that he could see but not define.

Everyone who had reached the national--or international-level in
science as Britt had done, had gone through weeks and months like this,
just in their schooling, not to mention their jobs.  But never did
something like this happen when so much else was at stake.

He'd seen an article in the Washington Post about the extreme rise in
stress-related diseases worldwide since the tenth planet unleashed its
destruction on the Earth.  The conclusion of the people who sent out
the data was that everyone was under more stress now than ever before,
and that there was little anyone could do about it except accept it,
and move on.

Helpful advice for some people, for whom not being able to identify the
actual problem made things worse, but rather ridiculous for the rest of
the world--people like Cross.

Still, he wasn't really concerned with the rise in stress rates
worldwide.  Just the way that it manifested in Britt.

She wasn't getting much sleep, sometimes as little as two or three
hours a night, and never more than five.  She forgot to eat, unless
someone ordered into the lab, and she was drinking way too much coffee
to keep herself motivated.

"At least," Constance had said to him when he complained one morning
over a solitary breakfast, "Dr.  Archer gets some protein and calcium
and solid calories from those coffee concoctions she drinks.  They may
not be healthy meals, but they're better than that swill we used to
drink before someone invented Starbucks."

Maybe.  But Cross didn't like it anymore than Britt had when he had
been the one under such pressure.

She had vowed last night that she would get a full eight hours sleep.
He had known then that she didn't have to be in the lab that morning,
so he had conveniently shut off the alarm.  He would let her sleep as
long as her body dictated, and then he would feed her a big, healthy
meal.

But they hadn't been asleep an hour when the phone call

came in.  Dr.  Archer was needed in the lab.  The telemetry from the
first probe was coming back.

Cross, who had been only partially awakened by the call, argued that
she didn't have to go in, that the probes had been sending telemetry
all along.  Britt had snapped at him as she got out of bed and stumbled
around searching for clothes that this particular probe was sent on a
flyby of the tenth planet.  She had instructed her staff not to disturb
her unless the probe was sending in imagery from the planet itself.

That had gotten Cross out of bed, his head feeling like a melon that
had just been split, and he had dressed with her, grabbed them both
apples from the kitchen, and driven her to the lab.

Once there, he'd waited an hour before he asked to see the visuals, and
he got a cold stare from all the scientists involved.  This particular
probe was sending the visuals back encoded along with all of the other
information, and it would take a while to turn that code into actual
pictures.

A while turned out to be hours.

Cross, who hated waiting around anyway, decided he was of no more use
at the lab and went back to bed.

Alone.

He still had forgotten to set the alarm, and he had awakened a lot
later than he had planned, grumpy, tired and out of sorts.  At first he
thought it was because of Britt's defection in the middle of the night,
and then he wondered if it was because he had so little to do with the
important events at the moment.

And then he realized that neither was correct.  He was worried about
what the probes would find.  Sometimes he was afraid they would locate
huge cityscapes like the ones he had seen in science fiction films.
Sometimes he was afraid they'd find that the creatures in the ships
were only the beginning; that there'd be a greater, more diverse
race--all of it threatening-on the planet's surface.

And sometimes he was afraid they'd find nothing at all.

He wasn't sure which he could deal with, but he knew, the closer the
probes got, the closer they all came to gaining more information, the
more uncomfortable he got.

The biologists working on the alien corpses hadn't found much that was
helpful.  They knew so little about this creature that they didn't even
know if the specimens before them were young or old, and they were
having a hell of a time finding gender characteristics.  There didn't
seem to be any obvious kind.

The aliens were, at the moment, a dead end.

Britt finally looked up from her conversation, saw Cross, and smiled.
He warmed.  That smile made all his discomfort float away.  Yeah, the
others here might see him as an intruder, but they weren't Britt, and
it was her lab.

"Leo," she said.  "Come with me.  I have something to show you."

He hadn't told her about his fears.  He hadn't discussed them with
anyone.  He followed her toward a large console that had multiple
monitors.  They formed a circle, and she sat in the middle of them, and
pulled a chair over for him.

"The planet is still on the far side of the sun, just outside of
Venus's orbit," she said, "and it's too far away for our scopes to pick
anything up.  The information we're getting from the flyby has been
relayed to the satellites, before it came here--the distances are
amazing!--but we are getting information."

She glanced over her shoulder at him.  Her eyes were bright with
excitement, but he knew her well enough to know that the data streams
were possibly what had excited her.  He was past marveling at
technology.  He wanted to find a way to defeat those aliens, and he
wanted a way to do it quickly.

He hoped that the nuclear weapons would do it.  There was a chance, a
pretty good chance, that they would.  Three

hundred of them pounding into this planet would end just about
everything here with a nuclear winter.

A slight frown creased her forehead apparently at his lack of
response

"The sun," she said as she turned back toward the screen, her tone
slightly cooler, "is still creating some interference, so what we're
getting here is preliminary.  But I thought I'd show you our first
up-close-and-personal views of the tenth planet."

She punched a few keys, and an image formed on the monitors.  It formed
slowly, like images used to in the early days of computers, unfolding
as pieces of data were transformed into images.

Cross's breath caught in his throat.  This first image was a distant
one, and it was familiar.  It was a blackness, a round blackness, in
space.  It almost reminded him of the award winning photos he saw of
eclipses: a black hole in an active sky.

Nothing.  His worst fears were coming true.  He was going to see
nothing.

He leaned over Britt's shoulder, afraid that if he said anything it
would reveal his disappointment.  So he tried to show interest in other
ways, by focusing on the image before him, by moving closer to it.

Britt punched a few more keys, and that image disappeared.  Another
appeared just as the first one had, scrolling up.  This one showed the
same blackness, only larger.  Then another appeared and another, each
as the probe got closer to the planet.

The final image was quite close, and it was just of blackness, with the
hint of something glinting against an edge.

"It seems odd to me," Britt said, "that this close to the sun, the
planet looks black.  It's really there.  It's a solid mass.  We're
getting other readings that show it does have a surface, and

that there are some energy readings on the surface, but it's almost as
if there's a shield in place that we can't get beyond."

Cross pulled his chair closer to the screen.  He was staring at that
glint.  It looked like an angle, a large angle.  He put his finger on
it.  "Can you blow that up?"

She did.  The image was larger, but grainy, and it told him nothing.

"What kind of shield could that be?"  he asked.

She shrugged.  "I'm not even sure it is one.  I have never seen
anything like it.  The other planets in this solar system don't look
like this.  Nothing in our databases prepared us for this."

Just like nothing had prepared them for the attack on the Earth, for
the spaceships, and for the appearance of the aliens themselves.

Cross leaned back and templed his fingers.  "The biologists are saying
that these creatures emerged from an ocean, just like we did.  Only
they kept their tentacles and their eye stalks They've found evidence
that these creatures need water to survive, just like we do.  I'm not
an astronomer, but shouldn't we see evidence of water on this surface
somewhere?"

"If that is the surface," Britt said.  "We're not picking up any
readings of shielding, but then, their technology is so different from
ours."

"What if it's not technology?"  Cross asked.  "What else could it
be?"

"Nothing that would form life as we know it," Britt said.  "And these
aliens have to be related to life as we know it.  They build machines,
they congregate in groups, they obviously communicate with one another.
Life can't form without water and light, at least not life that we
understand."

Cross sighed.  He wasn't sure he could deal with the frustration.  "Are
we going to have another flyby before one of those probes goes down to
the planet's surface?"

"One or two," Britt said, "depending on how things work."

"Are any of them going to go closer?"

"Yes," she said.

"Maybe that will give us more information."  He looked at her.  The
excitement in her eyes had dimmed a little.  "Unless I'm missing
something."

"Just the fact that we're close, Leo."  Her voice was low so that the
other team members couldn't hear her.  "We're actually looking at the
planet itself, getting readings from it.  That's a good thing."

"Intellectually I know that," he said.  "I guess I'm just impatient."

"So am I."  She patted his hand.  "But the only way we're going to
learn anything is to keep studying."

He grinned.  "You sound like my old professors.  They hated it when I
leapt over weeks of experimentation with an accurate hunch.  They
always made me prove it."

"And that's why you went to archaeology instead of the hard sciences,
isn't it?"  she asked.  "Because hunches are valued there."

His gaze met hers.  She knew him too well already.  He leaned in, and
kissed her, then he rested his forehead against hers.

"Can I buy you lunch?"  he asked.  "You look like you're wasting
away."

And then he caught his breath.  He turned toward the screen, but the
image on it was the first one.

"What?"  Britt asked.

"Let me see that close-up again," he said.

She punched keys, and the final image appeared, its small glint
taunting him from the corner.

"Shit," he whispered.

"This planet is on a long elliptical orbit," he said.

"Yeah?"

"And that means, for long periods of time, it's in the cold darkness
of space, no light, no nothing.  And the temperatures on the surface
would be incredibly cold, right?"

Britt frowned.  "Yeah."

"But the biologists are saying that these creatures started out like we
did.  So their planet should have an ocean at least, and oceans don't
happen on incredibly cold planets.  They are ice, if they exist at all.
Life doesn't emerge from the ice into the primordial goo."

"I guess," Britt said, sounding even more confused.

"Something changed for these creatures," he said.  "Something major,
and they were technologically advanced enough to deal with it."

"Maybe they have incredibly short life spans," Britt said.  "Maybe they
only exist during their time around the sun."

Cross shook his head.  That didn't feel right.  Or did it?  Creatures
with incredibly short life spans spent those lives gathering food, and
reproducing.  It wasn't conducive to making tools or industrialization,
but he was basing this on an Earth model.  What if, for the aliens,
time went faster?

There was no way he could know that, no way he could prove it.  But a
shiver had run down his back.

"You have a hunch," she said.

He nodded.  He didn't like it, but it made complete sense, no matter
what was going on for those aliens.

"Britt," he said.  "We're their food source."

"I know they harvest nutrients, but--"

"No, listen to me," he said.  "What if they had some kind of
technological disaster that destroyed their planet?  What if something
they made created that blackness?  What if enough of them survived? Why
would any creature go to such great lengths to create spaceships and
nanoharvesters if this were something they didn't really need?"

"What are you saying?"  Britt asked."I'm saying that I'll wager we are
the key to their survival.  Not humans.  Earth."

She looked at him.  There was something sad in her eyes.  "I don't want
to know that if it's true, Leo."

"Why not?"  he asked.  "It explains so much."

"Yes," she said.  "It does.  But it also means that in the end, it's us
against them, and whoever wins the conflict is the only one who
survives."

Cross nodded.  He stood.  "Yeah," he said.  "It means that.  It also
means that they're not going to be deterred by half measures.  If I'm
right, they're going to keep coming until they have nothing left."

"Then I hope you're not right, Leo," Britt said.

But he didn't really pay much attention.  He had to tell Maddox his
theory, and he had to prepare her.  She wouldn't like the lack of
evidence, but he'd learned enough about her over the last few months to
know that she would hear him on some level.  She would continue to
prepare for the worst.

Britt was exactly right.  The Earth was in a fight to the death.  And
only the strongest, most creative species would survive.

August 1, 2018 19:31 Universal Time

101 Days Until Second Harvest

Cicoi wrapped his upper tentacles around his workstation inside the
Command Building of the South.  He hadn't been able to go back to
Command Central, not since the Elders had shown themselves.  He
preferred to work here.

The warships were coming along, but his workers were getting tired.  He
had them on rapid rotations, with little pod

time, but that wouldn't work forever.  The strain was beginning to
show on his people; the extra work had become a burden.  He wished he
could awaken more of the sleepers, but he didn't dare.  They hadn't
gathered enough food on the last Pass to make awakening others
possible.

The plans for the next Pass were shaping up well.  He and his
assistants had been going over the maps of the third planet, looking
for the most fertile areas.  That was old habit; the Elders wanted him
to take as much as possible.  But he didn't want to send the harvesters
down to an area that was inferior to some other area.  Even though the
Elders wanted him to pluck the planet bare, he knew--and they
knew--that they only had resources enough to harvest a large part, but
not all, of the planet.

The Elder had been lurking all day.  Something was bothering him, but
he was saying nothing.  Cicoi was actually grateful for that.  He was
getting tired of having the Elder constantly in his head.

"Commander."  His Second was standing before him, all eye stalks
extended, eyes facing forward in a circle, the position of respect.

"What?"  Cicoi asked, not pointing a single eyestalk toward his Second.
He had specifically asked not to be disturbed.  How much time would
pass before someone understood that when Cicoi asked not to be
disturbed it meant to leave him alone?

"The creatures from the third planet have sent something hurtling our
way."

"Another probe?"  Cicoi asked, trying to keep the exasperation from his
voice.  The probes had led to a huge argument with the Elders.  Cicoi
and the other Commanders had agreed that sending a ship out to gather
energy from the probes would waste more energy in fuel than they would
receive.  The Elders weren't so worried about the probes'

energy as they were about the information they would send back to the
third planet.

Every time we think them primitive, Cicoi's Elder had thought to him,
we learn they have grown tremendously since the last Pass.

Grown yes, but probes and information were not a threat.  Cicoi didn't
want to worry about the creatures until Malmur was much closer.

"No, Commander," the Second said.  "This seems much bigger than the
last few probes that we have monitored."

That caught his attention.  He raised two eye stalks  His Second was
also poised on top of his lower tentacles, and not balanced well.  He
was tottering slightly.

Cicoi waved an upper tentacle, signaling his Second to stand down.  His
Second did, with obvious relief.  His eye stalks remained in a position
of respect, however.

"Bigger?"

"Yes, Commander."

With his sixth upper tentacle, Cicoi activated a vision ball.  It rose
between him and the Second.  "Where?"  he asked.

"Coming from the third planet."

Cicoi had the ball show him the area of space and saw a shape,
cylindrical, and quite large, heading in their general direction.  Then
he pulled out two other eye stalks and held them close to the vision
ball.  Not a single cylinder.  But several.

They were too far away to count.

"These are too large to be probes," he said.

"Probably not," said his Third, who had come up beside the Second.  The
Third's eye stalks were also in a position of respect.  "Probes can
come in all sizes."

"But we have monitored their probes," Cicoi said.  "None were this
large."

"We cannot assume everything about the third planet is uniform."

Cicoi lifted three eye stalks straight up, eyes pointed at the
ceiling. It was a sign of disgust.  He had studied the third planet
from his pod ling days.  The creatures of the third planet preferred
uniformity in function and design.  It pleased their aesthetics.  Just
as it pleased the Malmuria.

Cicoi let his eye stalks drop as the thought dissipated.  He had tried
not to think of any similarities between the third planet's creatures
and Malmuria since he had been accepted into the military.

"We must be suspicious of difference," he said.  "Monitor these
cylinders.  When they get closer--"

We will die.

The Elder had returned.  Cicoi withheld a curse, and finished his
sentence.  "When they get closer, we will see if we must take other
action."

His Second and Third both raised their upper tentacles in a gesture of
respect, and turned away.  Then Cicoi left his workstation and went
into the antechamber.  He did not like having conversations with the
Elder in public.  It felt too revealing.

"If you think we will die, then tell me what those things are," he
said.

Ida not know, the Elder's strange voice was inside his head yet again.
Cicoi hated this method of communication.  But we have underestimated
these creatures too much.  We cannot let the cylinders get close.

"What do you propose we do?"

Send ships to intercept.  Rob them of their energy as you have done
with other space debris.

Cicoi remembered the vision ball.  He saw the shapes, but the energy
readings beneath were small, at least from a distance.

"We have the same problem," he said.  "It would use up too many
resources.  We would not get enough in return."

Knowledge is something, the Elder said.  Without it, too many mistakes
are made.

"You mean, I make too many mistakes."

You and all of your young kind, the Elder said.  Somewhere along the
way you have become dangerously cautious.  If we had been so
dangerously cautious, our race would be dead now.

There was a lot of history in those words, some of which Cicoi
understood and some he did not.  He did know that it had taken courage
for the leaders of the South, Center, and North to band together, to
get the Malmuria to work together as a species, despite their
differences.  It had taken a great risk to throw Malmur out of its
orbit as its sun went nova instead of building the ships that some had
suggested, ships that would have scattered the people among distant
stars.

"What do you think these are?"  Cicoi asked.

You have said yourself they are too big for probes, at least of the
kind we have seen, the Elder said.  Think strategically.  Obviously the
creatures of the third planet can.  You have sent probes into space to
find out all you can of your enemies.  If you were to send something
else, what would it be?

"A weapon?"  Cicoi felt all of his upper tentacles rise in horror.

We have thought of them as primitives for too long.  And they were,
when we first began coming to this planet.  But they no longer are.
They have space travel and cities and societies.  They have reason, and
they have obviously found a way to codify their history.  They have
looked at the record, my young friend, or perhaps they have an oral
tradition that warned them.  They know we never come for just one
Harvest.  They know we are going to make another.  They are going to
strike first.  It is a way some creatures have of defending
themselves.

"You sound like you have sympathy for them," Cicoi said.

The Elder floated before him.  Cicoi hadn't seen the Elder until then.
Where had he been?  Behind Cicoi?  Or did Elders have a way of being
present without being visible?

I did not have sympathy for them when we first came to the third
planet.  In those dark days, they were not different from other
life-forms on that planet.  But they have proven themselves smart and
strong, and they have shown that they are worthy opponents.  In my day,
before we lost our sun, a worthy opponent was all we sought.

"Going into space at this time would waste energy we cannot afford to
lose," Cicoi said.

You sound like your compatriots in the North and Center.  The Elder's
eye stalks were rotating.  Cicoi had learned that was the Elders' way
of expressing disgust.  Cautious to the end.

"Caution has its place," Cicoi said.

But not here.  Not now.  If I am right and you are wrong, we lose more
than a bit of energy.  We lose lives we cannot afford to give.  Perhaps
we lose everything.

"Do you believe the creatures of the third planet have that kind of
power?"

"I would not have believed that they had discovered space travel, the
Elder said.  But they have, and now we must contend with that.

Cicoi felt his upper tentacles droop.  "What if I'm wrong?  What if
these things are probes?"

Then absorb their energy as you have done with so many other things.
The trip will be worthwhile, just for that.

The Elder did not understand the kind of waste he was promoting.  His
time had been so different.  He had not been born to limited resources,
to long periods of darkness and cold.  He did not understand.

"Every time we do something like this," Cicoi said, "we jeopardize
lives."

The Elder wrapped his upper tentacles around his torso.  We jeopardize
the entire planet whenever we pocket our eye stalks and refuse to see
what is around us.

Cicoi flapped four upper tentacles in distress, but the Elder didn't
seem to notice.

You will send ships to intercept those cylinders.  Warships.

"But we've only gotten a few ready and we need them when we approach
the third planet."

You will send warships, the Elder said.

Cicoi pocketed his eye stalks in protest.

No matter how much you deny, you will listen to me.  You may have
experience with deprivation, but I have experience with war.  We are in
danger from those creatures.  You must acknowledge this and head it
off.

"I'm not wasting the energy of the South's warships on this mission,"
Cicoi said.

The other commanders will send ships.  They will do as they are told.
So will you, the Elder said.

"This is a mistake," Cicoi said.

Yes, your plan is a mistake, the Elder said.  I am amazed we did not
catch these cylinders sooner.  We should have destroyed the probes as I
wished.  Now we will pay the consequences.

Cicoi kept his eye stalks pocketed for a long moment, but said nothing.
There was nothing else to say.  He had lost, and he knew it.

Finally, he raised a single stalk.  The Elder was gone.  Cicoi let his
tentacles droop.  Lost energy, lost resources, and all for a bit of
curiosity.  Curiosity that could have been satisfied if they only
waited.

But he would do the Elder's bidding.  He would take the five
functioning warships into space, and he would examine those
cylinders.

He only hoped he would get enough energy from them to make up for at
least half of the waste.

August 1,2018

6:45 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time

101 Days Until Second.  Harvest

Mickelson loosened the tie around his neck.  The fifteenth formal
dinner he'd had to attend in a row.  It was beginning to get tiresome.
In a day or so, he would call Cross and see if Constance could whip
them up something wonderful and old-fashioned, something impossible to
get at the fancy restaurants where he had to take other diplomats.

He longed for this whirlwind to end.  But he knew it wouldn't.  Not
until the missiles hit the tenth planet.

He wished he could take the tie off, but he couldn't.  He'd had this
meeting scheduled for two days now.  The president wanted to touch base
with his key advisers, something he'd been doing off and on since the
missiles were launched.  The first meetings were held in the Oval
Office, but Franklin had been inviting more and more of his advisers.
So tonight's was being held in the Roosevelt Room.

The Roosevelt Room was across the hall from the Oval Office.  Lopez had
left the door open, and had placed beverages and snacks on the center
of the large table.  A few advisers were already inside.  Mickelson
peered in, wished he hadn't loosened his tie at all, and then crossed
the threshold.

He had loved this room early in the Franklin administration.  Then
Franklin had gotten the bright idea to restore the room's original
furnishings.  When those couldn't be found, he settled for some
mid-twentieth century couches and chairs along the side, a grandfather
clock in the back corner, and a plastic-looking conference table that
someone said was an antique from the 1960s.

To Mickelson, the table was an affront.  It didn't go with the
fireplace, which was original to the West Wing, or the lovely

arched door.  Mickelson had complained loudly about the table and the
mixed decor as well as the soft orange color of the wall, and the burnt
orange color of the rug.  He had complained so loudly and so often that
Franklin had finally hauled out a photograph, which dated from the
1970s, of the room, and it looked just like it looked now.  Ugly and
mismatched and uncomfortable.

It wasn't until someone told Mickelson that Franklin's predecessor had
redecorated that Mickelson understood Franklin's decision to make the
room his own.

Still, Mickelson wished he would have improved it.

The advisers who were waiting were O'Grady and Bernstein.  Lopez was
down the hall, but she would join them as well.  Mickelson looked at
the makeup of the group and already knew tonight's topic: the state of
the world since the declaration of war.

He suppressed a sigh.  His job had actually gotten easier since war was
declared.  All the usual hot spots had cooled.  No one wanted to be
fighting among themselves when the aliens arrived.  Issues weren't
settled, of course, but that didn't matter.  Right now, issues such as
historical boundaries and trade agreements had been made moot.  No one
knew if they would even have a country three months from now, let alone
borders to argue about.

Bernstein looked up from her conversation with O'Grady and her gaze met
Mickelson's.  They hadn't talked much since the night of the
president's speech.  Mostly Mickelson had avoided her.  He didn't
really want to talk to her.  She intimidated him, attracted him, and
made him feel foolish all at the same time.

It didn't help that her prediction of civil unrest had come true.

But not as bad as she had said it was going to be.  There had been a
march on Washington, peaceniks who didn't believe in

the use of force, such a nonevent that no news station carried it.
There had been five bombings, one in Denver, one in Chicago, one in New
York, and two in Los Angeles, all government buildings.  There were two
assaults on military installations.  And one attempt, in Washington
state, to sink a fleet of ships in Puget Sound.

The image from those few days after the declaration of war that stuck
with Mickelson was of a woman running from a bombed and burning IRS
building in Los Angeles.

He could see it as if he were there.  He remembered every detail of it
shown on the news.

The woman's clothes were on fire, and she carried a child in her arms.
He had heard she'd been there visiting friends she worked with, showing
them her new baby.

A news crew was in the street and caught her running from the bombed
building.

The faster she ran, the more the flames engulfed her.

The image of pain on her face was something Mickelson would never
forget.  He had thought of it over and over, trying to understand it.

Pain.

And intense fear as she tried to save her child.

Finally, as the flames engulfed her, she had gone down on her knees in
the street.  A passerby and the news broadcaster had tried to beat out
the flames with coats, and as they had, the woman had offered them her
child in a burning blanket.

The newscaster badly burned his hands taking it.

Neither the woman nor the child survived.

The unrest had lasted for days, then slowly faded.

But the memory of that woman and child would never fade for
Mickelson.

Bernstein crossed the room and stopped in front of Mickelson.  She
touched the loosened knot of his tie.  "You know, you should really
commit.  Either tighten it or take it off."

"If I take it off, I fail to show respect for my commander and chief,"
Mickelson said only partly sarcastically, "and if I tighten it, I swear
I'll choke to death."

"Oh, you have room," she said, and started to tighten the knot.

He stopped her by placing his hand over hers.  Her skin was softer and
warmer than he'd expected.  "It's not the room," he said.  "It's the
idea."

She smiled a little.  Then she moved her hand and dropped her gaze.  "I
suppose you think I'm an alarmist."

He could have lied, but he didn't see the point.  "Yeah."

"I was wrong about the reaction to the speech.  I thought people would
take to the streets.  I'm not wrong about the unrest."

"We're at war," he said to her.  "We've been attacked as a world.  We
respond as a world."

She shrugged and turned away.

O'Grady had heard part of that.  "If she knew her history, she'd know
that people rally after their homes have been violated," he said.

"I know my history," she said, turning back to face O'Grady.  "Who was
this room named for?"

"Gosh," O'Grady said.  "I have a fifty-fifty shot here, and the West
Wing was finished in the 1920s, so I'm guessing the namesake of the
teddy bear, Mr.  Theodore Roosevelt, our twenty-sixth president."

"And what did his cousin, our thirty-second president, call this
room?"

"Hell," Mickelson said, "if it was decorated like this."

O'Grady looked blank.  "How the hell should I know that?"  he asked.

"The Fish Room," she said.  "He called it the Fish Room because he felt
stupid calling it the Roosevelt Room."

"That's not history," O'Grady said, "that's interior decoration."

Her eyes narrowed.  "I know my history," she said.  "Iprobably know it
better than you.  I know that the United States rallied when we were
attacked at Pearl Harbor.  I know that England, when it was bombed in
the very same war, came together as a nation.  I know that Afghanistan
rebels, in their determination to drive the Soviets off their soil,
helped destroy an empire.  I know all of that.  It's basic stuff."

She leaned in closer.  "But I also know the history of extremism, and I
know that when it's unchecked, especially in times of war, we're in
trouble."

"So what are you suggesting?"  O'Grady asked.  "Taking all the UFO nuts
who appeared over all the years and putting them in internment
camps?"

There was a silence in the room at that moment, and O'Grady's last
comment sounded louder than O'Grady had clearly intended.  Over
O'Grady's shoulder, Mickelson saw Franklin in the doorway, his face
dark.

"Internment camps aren't anything to joke about, Shamus," he said.

O'Grady flushed a deep red and turned.  "I didn't mean offense, sir."

"Yes, you did.  You meant to offend Director Bernstein, and I won't
have it.  We're under too much pressure for your normal wry humor."

O'Grady nodded.  Mickelson wished he could blend into the orange wall.
Tempers were short, patience was frayed.  These conversations never
used to happen with Franklin's advisers.

"I take it you're talking about the lack of dissent," Franklin said as
he approached the head of the table.  The others did as well. Mickelson
put his hand on the leather upholstered chair, with the brass buttons
holding the fabric in place.  By the time the meeting was half over, he
knew, those buttons would be creating welts in his back. "Actually,
Mr.  President," Bernstein said, "what prompted Shamus remark was my
observation that extremism in times of war should not go unchecked."

Franklin shot her a withering glance.  "Director, you've warned me of
riots and dissent, which are simply not happening.  Except for those
small bombs which were, I grant you, distressing, we've seen nothing
since I made my speech."

"That worries me," Bernstein said.  "The hate mongering has grown, sir,
and so has the discontent.  I'm afraid that things are actually being
planned."

"And I am not going to worry about a threat that may or may not be
real," Franklin said, effectively closing the door on that
conversation.  "What are you seeing in Europe, Doug?"

Mickelson resisted the urge to bring his hand to his tie knot and
tighten it.  "It's about the same, sir," he said.  "No great dissent, a
lot of cooperation.  There's been some moaning that the United States
has taken the lead, but in Europe at least, no one seems to mind."

"In Europe, at least," O'Grady repeated.  "Which means that people mind
elsewhere."

"Asia mostly," Mickelson said.  "China in particular.  But right now
they don't see any way around it.  My sense is, from the heads of state
I've spoken to, that most countries are relieved that we're taking the
front position."

"So that if we fail, they can blame us," Franklin said.

"But we won't fail."  Lopez was in the room.  She had pulled the door
closed.  Mickelson fought a surge of irritation at her comment.  Since
the speech, she had become Franklin's greatest cheerleader.  Mickelson
had never really thought that that had been the position the chief of
staff should take.

Franklin, too, apparently found the comment a tad too obsequious.  "We
might," he said.  "Nothing is guaranteed until those nukes blow that
planet out of the sky."

His metaphor was mixed, but that was the only problem with his
statement.  Mickelson agreed heartily with it, and he'd never
considered himself a hawk--that is, not before the tenth planet
arrived.

"What about our borders, Shamus?"  Franklin asked.  "Are we having any
problems?"

O'Grady shook his head.  "Even the illegals have slowed.  Right now,
people are sticking close to home.  It's my sense that no one is
looking at their own problems.  We're all looking at the heavens,
waiting for those nukes to go off."

"Yeah," Lopez said.  "I saw in one of the vid chats a kid say that he
hoped you could see the explosions with the naked eye."

"I doubt we'll be able to see them with the large telescopes,"
Mickelson said.  "From what I hear, the only information we're getting
is from the probes."

"And it's good enough," Franklin said.  "Right now, everything is a go.
No problems so far.  And that's all that matters."

"We're in the calm before the storm," Bernstein said.  Her pessimism
was beginning to grate on Mickelson's nerves.

"Maybe," O'Grady said.  "Or maybe we're catching a break."

"I think those aliens have thought of us as easy targets for so long,
we'll whup them with sheer surprise alone," Lopez said.

Mickelson let the conversation drift around him.  That's how these
meetings had been ending up.  Endless discussions of the possibilities
of success.  It seemed like Franklin needed almost nightly reassurance
that he had taken the right course of action.  Mickelson thought it was
interesting that in all of these meetings he'd attended, Maddox or
other members of the Joint Chiefs hadn't been here, nor had the science
advisers.  The people who were still working on ways of defeating the
tenth planet when it got closer to Earth hadn't

stopped their work, nor did they debate the success of the missiles.

They went on as if they had a deadline, an important one.  Mickelson
wondered if they knew something he didn't.

"You're quiet, Doug," Franklin said.

"Yeah," Mickelson said.  "One too many diplomatic dinners, I guess."

Franklin raised his eyebrows slightly.  "Is it that, or something more
profound?"

Bernstein was staring at him.  O'Grady was studying his hands.  Lopez
was watching Franklin.

"We keep acting as if we expect the other shoe to drop," Mickelson
said.  "I guess I'm wondering when it will."

O'Grady shook his head.  "I think we're not used to the time between
action and result."

"Huh?"  Lopez said.

Franklin also looked confused, but Mickelson got it.

"Yeah," he said.  "I suppose we'd always assumed if we'd launched
nuclear missiles, we'd know what got hit and when within the hour. We'd
know if we'd wiped out our enemy, or if we had simply made things
worse.  But this time, we're waiting weeks."

"I hadn't thought of that," Lopez said softly.

"It's turning Bernstein into a Cassandra," O'Grady said.  "And--"

"Watch it," Bernstein said.  "Cassandra was right."

"Tavi," the president warned.

"I'll stop," she said.  "Although I shouldn't."

Franklin sighed.  "We are spinning our wheels.  It doesn't feel right
to work on domestic problems, and there seems to be little foreign work
we can do.  I guess you're right, Shamus.  We're waiting, and none of
us are very good at that."

"I'd like the wait to be over," Mickelson said.

"Me, too," Lopez said.

Franklin looked at both of them.  "I only want the wait to end if we
get the result we want," he said.

"You think there's a realistic chance we won't?"  O'Grady asked,
sounding a bit surprised.  "I'd be a fool if I counted on anything,"
Franklin said.  "As bizarre as this is, we're fighting a war here."

Mickelson's heart was pounding.  He hadn't heard Franklin this
pessimistic since the initial attack.

"I trust you have backup plans," Bernstein said.

Mickelson knew of some of them.  He was surprised she didn't.  Then he
realized that, with her dire and incorrect warnings, and the domestic
focus of her job, she probably had no need to know.

"Oh, we have plans," Franklin said.  "But if this is the first volley
in a protracted struggle, we're in trouble."

Then, as if realizing that he was being too pessimistic, he stood, and
put his hands on the table.  "I'm glad you all came," he said.  "We're
ending now so that Doug can finish taking off his tie."

This time, Mickelson's hand flew to the knot.  Franklin gave him a
wicked grin and walked out of the room.  The others stood too.

"You think he's scared?"  Bernstein asked.

Mickelson thought for a moment.  He assumed everyone was scared. They'd
be fools not to be.

"I don't think that's an issue," he said.  "He's doing his job, and
that's all that matters."

"I guess."  She looked at the open door, the one Franklin had
disappeared through.  "For the record, the reason I'm focusing on the
domestic problem is I believe this nuke thing is going to work."

Mickelson gave her a sharp glance.

She shrugged.  "I've been studying nuclear scenarios my entire career,"
she said.  "No planet can comfortably survive three hundred nuclear
explosions on its surface.  No planet."

Her words buoyed his mood.  It surprised him, that she wasn't as
pessimistic as he had thought.  He smiled, really smiled, for the first
time in weeks.

"You know," he said, "I'd never thought of it that way.  You're exactly
right."

And he left, knowing that, for the first time since the destruction of
the California coast, he was going to get a good night's sleep.

10

August 12, 2018

12:31 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time

94 Days Until Second Harvest

Vivian Hartlein fixed the strap on her vest where it bit into her side.
The vest weighed almost thirty pounds and made it hard for her to
breathe.  And climbing the steps up into the Capitol Building had been
slow.  With the extra weight she felt like an old woman.

Over the vest she wore a long raincoat, even though there had been no
rain forecast.  She knew no one would pay her no mind.  With the
raincoat and the slow walk, she looked like a crazy old lady, not the
leader of a group doing its best to bring down a godless government.

The warm afternoon sun beat on her, the vest heavy, as she climbed the
long set of stairs toward the Capitol Building.  The images of her
daughter kept her going.  Cheryl and them grand babies turned to black
dust.

One foot at a time, one step at a time, she climbed until she was close
to the security checkpoint.  She didn't plan to try to get past them
deluded guards.  With so much explosive strapped to her, she knew she
had no chance of getting through, no matter how she looked.

She stopped and rested, pretending to stare at the view behind her.
The day was almost cool for August, and she was thankful the humidity
was low.  She wasn't sure she could have climbed those stairs on a
really hot summer day.  Not with this much weight on her.

Since the president had declared war on them made-up aliens, she'd lost
more and more of her people.  No matter how much proof she had, no
matter how much talking she did, they slowly stopped listening to her.
The government poisoned their minds.  They saw all the media stuff as
proof.  Slowly they started to believe that the aliens was real, that
they was coming back.

It don't matter what's goin 'on with our government, Jake'd said to her
that last day.  He'd been her last soldier, the one she'd thought she
could count on, her rock when her husband Dale didn't come back from
California.  Right now, we got to ignore what's going on here because
them aliens'll be back.

They ain't no aliens, she'd said.

He'd looked at her sad like  They is, Vivian, he'd said.  And right
now, it's our planet that we gotta defend.  When the aliens is gone, we'll
go after the government.  But not till then.  Can't you see that?

She tried to see what they all saw.  But it was lies.  All lies.  So
clear that she wondered why she was the only one that saw it.  She'd
removed the log from her own eye, but she couldn't seem to get the mote
from her neighbor's, even though the Bible promised she could.  She was
righteous, and sometimes the righteous had to stand alone.

Above her the Capitol dome towered into the sky, a symbol of all the
lies.  All the murdering lies.

The death would just continue if truth didn't break through.

She had left messages, long letters and tapes, telling everyone the
truth.

The truth would set them free.  She just had to shock them into seeing
it.

Her death, her strike against the very heart of the government, would
rally those who'd strayed.  They'd use her death to keep the fight
going until the truth prevailed.

Her hands were shaking as she eased them into the pockets of the
raincoat.  In the left pocket was a picture of her daughter and her
grandchildren.  It was the only picture Vivian had of all of them.

She pulled it out and stared at it.  With her right hand she grasped
the trigger to the explosives.  There was enough to blow a two-story
hole in the side of the Capitol.  And she would never feel a thing.

By the time the first siren wailed, she'd be in heaven, holding her
grand babies and hugging her little girl.

With one more look at their picture, she turned and moved directly to
the security checkpoint leading into the building.

The man in uniform smiled at her.

She smiled back--and pushed the trigger in her pocket.

August 12, 2018

1:01 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time

94 Days Until Second Harvest

Leo Cross sat in the hard lab chair, General Maddox beside him.  It
felt strange to see the general, in her uniform with her perfect
posture, sitting in Portia Groopman's lab at Nan Tech The stuffed
animals, the scattered equipment, the expensive machinery, combined
with General Maddox's presence, made this seem like they were three
adults sitting in the bedroom of an incredibly rich, incredibly spoiled
teenage girl.

Albeit one who had amazing talents.

Portia, her eyes bearing the same shadows as everyone else's, no longer
looked so young.  There were strain lines around her mouth, and an
older look on her face.

Edwin Bradshaw--who had been trying to make certain that in addition
to all the work she did, she got sleep and food--was standing toward
the back of the room, arms crossed.  Jeremy Lantine and Yukio Brown
stood beside him, mimicking his posture.  Both of them seemed somewhat
nervous, even more so when they saw General Maddox.

The general was here on Cross's invitation.  Portia had said she had
found a way to stop the alien nanoharvesters, and Cross wanted to make
sure the government knew about it.  He didn't want to invite any of the
science advisers.  He felt that, if Portia was right, this would fall
under the purview of the military.  No one was better for the job than
General Maddox.

After all, she was the one who had helped Cross get the harvesters to
Nan Tech in the first place--through such a circuitous route.

The entire group was staring at the screen in front of them.  On it,
several alien nanoharvesters, blown up to one hundred times life-sized,
were being attacked by the nanomachines Portia had designed.  She had
shown her five guests several different experiments.  The first with
one nanoharvester and one nanorescuer, as Portia was calling them.  The
nanorescuer had scuttled across the screen and landed on top of the
nanoharvester.  Then she had shown the same experiment with two, and so
on, but these experiments were controlled.  Each nanoharvester was
lined up with a nanorescuer.  Then she had run a series of experiments
showing the harvesters already dissolving bits of grain.  The
nanorescuers still shut down the harvesters.

Those experiments were impressive, but this last one was the important
one.

In it, she had placed a bunch of nanoharvesters on her slide and now
had just finished putting an uncounted number of nanorescuers beside
them in a large group.

Then she leaned back to watch.

The nanorescuers separated from their pack and each went toward a
different nanoharvester.  When they reached the harvesters, the
rescuers attacked one by getting on top of it and shutting it down.

When Bradshaw had first described this to Cross, he had said it had
reminded him of insect sex, and now Cross agreed.  But he wished that
Bradshaw hadn't put that image in his head.

There were fewer rescuers than harvesters though, and once the
individual rescuers had "killed" their harvester, they didn't move on.
The other harvesters were untouched, and presumably remained alive.

Portia shut off the monitor.  "And there you have it," she said.  "The
strengths and weaknesses of the nanorescuers."

Maddox leaned forward.  "This is quite impressive," she said, and
Portia smiled.  "I never thought we'd be able to neutralize those
things."

"And neutralize them once they're activated," Cross said.  "You're
amazing, Portia."

"Don't compliment her too much," Lantine said, "she might expect a
raise."

"For this," Maddox said, "she should own the company.  If our first
method of attacking those aliens fails, then this one will certainly
save us all.  Congratulations, Ms.  Groopman."

Portia was grinning like Cross had never seen her do.  She seemed to
enjoy the compliment from Maddox more than from anyone else.

"You did see the problem, though," Portia said.

Maddox nodded.  "I am less concerned about it than I probably should
be.  I'm still stunned that you've found a way to stop these hideous
things."

"Obviously," Cross said, "we're going to have one rescuer for each
harvester.  What kind of money are we talking about here?"

"Money isn't the issue so much as time is," Brown said.

"And resources," said Lantine."Resources?"  Maddox asked.  "We're
talking about things a fraction the size of a flea.  How much resources
can it take?"

"It's not size that matters, General," Cross said.  "It's our ability
to make enough.  Am I right, Portia?"

She nodded.  "There's a few labs in this country that have the
capability of building these things.  A few more in Britain, some in
France and Germany and Japan.  I'm not sure about the other countries.
Even though nanotechnology has come into its own in the last few years,
we haven't been mass producing much of anything.  It's not like we can
take someone off the street and have him assemble pieces of a
nanorescuer.  It takes some specialized skills."

"Oh," Maddox said.

"However," Bradshaw said.  "I have some ideas."

Maddox turned to him.

"Science schools like MIT and Cal Tech have entire nanotechnology
divisions.  They have post doc students whom we can hire, and other
students whom we can train."

"There are many universities with some excellent nanotechnology
researchers," Brown said.  "We just have to grab them and their best
students now."

"And then do this worldwide," Portia said.  "We need each country to
have enough of these things so that they're prepared."

Maddox nodded.  "That's the real problem, isn't it?"  she said.  "We
have no idea what is enough."

"Well, actually," Bradshaw said, "we can get a fairly good estimate if
we do some basic math."

"If they attack in the same numbers as before."  Portia looked at
Bradshaw and Cross had the sense this was the continuation of another
discussion from long ago.  "If they attack in larger numbers, we're in
trouble."

Cross studied the now empty monitor.  He was remembering the black
dust, the videos of the blackness falling from the sky, the people
screaming" We have one more problem," he said.  "We have to be able to
launch these rescuers before the harvesters do much damage."

"That does present a problem," Maddox said.

"No," Brown said.  "Launching won't help us at all.  These
nanoharvesters destroy too much too fast."

Cross was afraid of that.  He felt all the muscles in his shoulder
tighten.  They hadn't created something that was too little too late,
had they?

"So what do we do?"  Maddox asked.

"We dust."  Portia spoke quietly.

Maddox looked at her with a perplexed expression.  "Dust?"

"You know, like crop dusting.  We spray the areas we think will be
affected with the rescuers.  We give people rescuers to carry on
themselves, and then we hope we're right."

"My God, Ms.  Groopman," Maddox said.  "Do you know what kind of scale
you're suggesting?"

Portia smiled.  "I know it's a much grander scale than I usually work
on," she said, "but, yes, General Maddox, I do."

Cross leaned back.  One step forward and two steps back.  If resources
had been a problem before, they were a disaster now.  There was no way
he could see anyone manufacturing close to enough rescuers by the time
the tenth planet returned.

If the aliens were still alive.

But there were still four days before the missiles were scheduled to
hit the tenth planet.

"I hope those nukes work," Maddox said.  "Because the amount of work
this plan will take is something I'm having trouble imagining."

"We can do it," Bradshaw said.

Maddox turned toward him.  "I appreciate optimism, Dr.  Bradshaw, as
long as it's well founded."

"I think it is," Bradshaw said.  "We just have to take things one step
at a time."

At that moment a young-looking man with blond hair came running into
the room.  He flicked on a television sitting on a table against the
back wall, then turned to them, his face red, his eyes wide.  "I think
you're going to want to see this."

On the screen was a scene Cross had hoped he would never live to see.
Smoke was pouring out of a huge hole in the side of the Capitol
Building.  Under the picture were the words Capitol Bombed.

As if fighting the aliens wasn't enough, they still had to fight each
other.

August 12, 2018 14:32 Universal Time

90 Days Until Second Harvest

The warship worked better than Cicoi could have imagined.  He stood at
his command post, his upper tentacles resting on the controls, his
lower tentacles wrapped around the circle, and his eye stalks extended.
He had practiced enough that he did not get dizzy despite the long
amounts of time he had to stand in this position.

His staff was scattered along its various positions, some of them
clinging uncomfortably to their posts.  Those members he had to make a
note of because they had not trained as he had requested.  He would not
be able to use them in the upcoming missions to the third planet.

"Commander," his Second said.  "We are approaching the first
cylinder."

Cicoi waved a single tentacle, initiating visuals.  He saw tentacles
rise and fall in surprise all around the command center.  The images of
space surrounded them, except for an ugly projectile heading in their
direction.

"Can we tell what it is?"  he asked.  "It is not a probe," his Second
said.  "It has many functions, but there is a concentration of
materials in the tip that seem--"

"Forgive me, Commander," said his Third, "but the materials when
combined could explode."

"Explode?"  Cicoi felt himself float slightly.  He tightened his grip
on the circle.  So the Elder had been right.  This was a weapon.
"Harvest the energy from this cylinder, and instruct the other ships to
do the same.  Then send a message to the fleets led by the Center and
North informing them of this."

"We will expend more energy in the message," his Tenth warned, "than we
will receive from the cylinder."

"I know," Cicoi said.

He watched as his staff performed their functions.  His Second stopped
suddenly, his upper tentacles tangling.

Cicoi felt his own upper tentacles rise slightly.  He forced them back
down.  "What is it, Second?"

"I am getting readings that indicate many more cylinders," his Second
said.

"How many more?"

"At least eighty in this first group.  Some had simply arrived in
advance of the others," his Second said.

"First group?"  Cicoi did not like the sound of that.

"I am getting shadows, readings from at least two more groups," his
Second said.  "They are larger than this first group.  And very close
behind."

"Larger?"  Cicoi knew he shouldn't repeat, knew it made him sound
powerless, but he had not expected this.

The Elder had, though.

"And you believe them all to be weapons?"  Cicoi asked.

"I am confirming this now," his Ninth said.  "I have run the materials
and the speculations about them.  The weapon inside is crude, but
extremely powerful.  If all of those weapons hit Malmur, we will lose
everything."

Cicoi nearly lost his grip on the circle.  How could these creatures
have gone from such a primitive place to having the ability to destroy
Malmur in the time it took to do one Pass?

"Send this information to the fleets of the North and Center.  Have the
Command on Malmur launch our harvester ships.  We must absorb energy
from these cylinders," Cicoi said.

"Some of the energy in these cylinders is dormant," said the Eighth.
"Many of the cylinders have been propelled here, and are approaching us
with momentum only."

"Surely the weapons have energy signatures," Cicoi said.

"Not enough for us to use," said the Eighth.

"We can absorb some of the energy, Commander," his Second said, "but
not all of it.  We do not have enough ships."

"Then we must divert," Cicoi said.  He pressed the controls with the
tips of his tentacles and saw what was causing his staff to pocket
their eye stalks  Even with all the harvester ships deployed, even with
the fleets of new warships, they did not have enough power to attack
all of the cylinders.

Some would get through.

He felt his own eye stalks wilt, but it took all of his composure to
make certain that he did not pocket them.  He had to think.

He straightened his eye stalks and pointed one at his Second.  "I want
you, and the Third through Fifth, to see which of these cylinders have
the smallest weapons.  Those we will not pursue.  The others we will
handle as best we can."

They raised a single eyestalk in response.

"Remember," he said, "make your measurements accurate.  The ones we
ignore are the ones that will hit our homes."

His voice shook at that last.  He wished the Elder had come with him,
but the Elder had not.  The Elder had said it was up to Cicoi to greet
this threat.

But, as had been the case with the third planet, the threat was greater
than expected.

And, Cicoi worried that no matter what he did, the threat would
destroy them.

August 16,2018

7:32 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time

86 Days Until Second Harvest

The lab was full.  Scientists, guests, dignitaries, and of course, the
actual researchers who belonged there.  For the first time, Cross felt
like one of the gang.  He at least got nods of recognition from the
researchers who seemed to view everyone else with suspicion.

Britt was at one of the control stations.  She was working on several
things at once, and Cross knew better than to ask what they were.  He
was staring at the large monitors scattered around the room, the flat
screens holding the key to the future.

Today was the day.  The papers and newscasts for the last few days had
alternated between images of the bombing at the Capitol Building and
the attack coming on the tenth planet.  The attack on the Capitol had
been put down to one lone extremist who thought the aliens were fake
and the government had killed her kids in California.  At the moment
Cross wished the aliens were fake.  Or that he would just wake up from
this nightmare.  But neither seemed to be the case.

He kept staring at the screens.

The images coming back from the tenth planet were somewhat strange.
Cross thought he caught glimpses of black alien ships in space, and so
did several of the researchers, but it was tough to confirm.  They were
almost impossible to see, and the readouts that the lab was getting
from the missiles gave conflicting information.

Two of the six monitoring missiles had gone dead in the last hour,
which Cross saw as confirmation that the aliens were out there in space
trying to stop Earth's attack.

He didn't like that.

But it was expected.  It was the reason so many missiles had been sent,
why some were to explode on impact, with no energy source onboard for
the aliens to drain.  The aliens trying to stop the attack had been
expected.  Cross just had to remember that.

His stomach was jumping, and it wasn't from the four cups of coffee
he'd had since he arrived.

This time, when Britt had gotten the expected middle-of the-night call,
he had come with her.

Cross had answered.  He'd been lying there, unable to sleep, as he had
for the past two nights.

Everything rested on those missiles.

Everything.

For the first time, when he said the fate of the world was in balance,
he meant it.  If the missiles didn't strike, didn't wipe the aliens
out, Earth's chances of survival were poor, even with Portia's
rescuers.

Now a number of the monitoring missiles had gone dead, and there were
alien ships out there.

It was expected, he knew.  He kept reminding himself, yet he was
getting a horrible feeling that all this waiting, all this planning,
had been for nothing.

Then, on the screen before him, a blinding flash.

The screen seemed to go white.

The entire lab lit up with the intense light from the screens.

The tenth planet showed up for a moment in relief, like a shiny black
surface catching the reflection of a flashbulb.

That image was frozen in his mind.

Black screens covering the entire planet, and one explosion ripping a
massive hole in those screens.

"Oh, my God," someone said.  "Was that--?"  someone else asked.

Then there was another flash.

This time the second flash lit up the glowing mushroom cloud of the
first before the planet disappeared into blackness again.

And then another flash as a third atomic blast hit the tenth planet.

And then another.

So much light was coming from such a far distance away that Cross had
to shade his eyes from the screens.

"We're doing it," Britt said.  Then she shouted it.  "We're doing
it!"

Two more bombs exploded.

Cross watched.

Stunned.

He'd never seen nuclear bombs go off in real time.

His reaction was mixed.  Stunned shock, and a weird elation.  He hadn't
thought it possible.

He had thought they would fail.

No, he had believed they would fail.

Three more dashes, and then, abruptly, the pictures got cut off.

There was a moment of silence.

People continued to stare at the dead screens.

Researchers pushed buttons on their monitors.  Britt checked to see if
the satellite relays were working.  They apparently were, for when she
turned around, a grin was on her face.

"We did it," she said again.

And a cheer went up, the loudest cheer Cross had ever heard.

It took him a moment to realize his own voice was in the mix, raspy and
joyful and full of relief.

They had done it.

They.

Had.

Done.

It.

They had attacked the tenth planet.

They had fought the aliens in a second battle.

And this time, Earth won.

11

August 16, 2018 17:42 Universal Time

86 Days Until Second Harvest

Cicoi was the last to leave his warship.  He took the glide path to the
staging area, his tentacles drooping, his eye stalks hanging near his
torso in complete disgrace.  He should have listened to the Elder.  He
should have listened sooner.  He should have planned for this.

Fifteen of the cylinders had gotten through the ships and had hit
Malmur.

Fifteen.

The destruction was more than he could think of.

The images of those explosions sending odd-shaped clouds into the
atmosphere were burned into his memory.

Two pods were gone.

An entire sleeping chamber, with thousands of unawakened Malmuria, had
been vaporized.

Eight harvest ships were destroyed and, in some ways, worst of all,
vast areas of energy collectors had been ruined.

And none of that counted what the radiation released by the cylinders
might do.  It was unfamiliar to Malmur and possibly toxic.

His planet was in flames.

The black surface of his home was lit by fire for the first time in any
memory.

He had seen some of the fires from orbit as he returned home.

In disgrace.

He would offer himself to the recycler, and try to serve his people as
best he could by converting himself to energy.

No.

He wilted farther.

His Elder was here.

Waiting.

We cannot lose more of our kind, particularly to a misplaced sense of
shame.  You did listen to me.  You diverted or destroyed all but
fifteen of their cylinders.  There were at least three hundred. Imagine
if they had gotten through.

The Elder appeared in front of him, tentacles floating.  Cicoi thought
such a cavalier attitude at this time was almost as bad.  Thousands had
died.  Thousands more probably would die once it became clear that the
energy reserves were gone.

As if the Elder had heard the thoughts, it said, We cannot mourn.  We
are not done fighting yet.  Yes, we have lost thousands.  But millions
still live.  And for their sakes, we must go to the third planet and
take what we need.  Only then will Malmur survive.

Cicoi knew that.  There was logic in it.  "But we have no way to defeat
the creatures of the third planet," he said.

You think they are great because they 'we attacked us?  You know
nothing of war.  They were primitives when we first came here.  They
are nothing compared to us.  The Elder moved closer to him, waving eye
stalks in front of him.  They have probably used all of their weapons
to attack us.  And they are no match for the Sulas.  We must get to the
planet.  We must take everything we can.  And then we must never
return.

"But how can we do this now?"  Cicoi asked.  "We have lost Malmuria. We
have lost ships.  We have lost recyclers, and

energy collectors, and storages.  We do not have time for repairs."

We make the time, the Elder said.  We cannot rest until we have what we
need.  We will defeat them, and we will do it my way.

Cicoi let his eye stalks droop even farther.  He knew that he did not
deserve to live.  His curse was that he could not have an honorable
death after this great defeat.

He had to live on.

He had to live on with the memory of those explosions ripping his world
apart.

He had to live on with the memory of the fires burning.

And in living on, he would do everything he could to save his
people--and his home.

August 16,2018

8:18 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time

86 Days Until Second Harvest

"All that pessimism, Bernstein, and we won," Shamus O'Grady said.

Doug Mickelson eased himself away from the conversation, but not so far
away that he couldn't hear.  They were in the Oval Office at Franklin's
invitation, along with the other Cabinet members, the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, a few of Franklin's closest advisers, and the First Lady.
Despite the champagne, this gathering was not billed as a celebration.
It was, instead, something else.  What, exactly, Franklin hadn't made
clear yet.  "I wasn't pessimistic about the bombs," Bernstein said.  "I
told Mickelson that.  That's why I've been talking about the domestic
situation."

Mickelson moved even farther away from the conversation.  The Capitol
Building had been attacked.  In many ways, Bernstein had been exactly
right, yet they had all done what they had needed to do.

He glanced around.  There weren't any real conversation groups he
wanted to join.  He heard a lot of discussion of policy, for the first
time in months--and a lot of laughter, also for the first time in
months.  From various groups, he heard "Ka-boom!"  as someone's hands
rose.  The papers were running picture after picture of the atomic
bombs exploding on the black, panel-covered surface of the alien world.
Pictures with headlines saying we won!

It had become clear to him that the moment when the missiles hit the
tenth planet would become one of the defining moments of this
generation.

Maybe of all human history.

Franklin's approval ratings in the nation and worldwide couldn't be
higher.  The United States suddenly was the most popular country on the
globe for organizing and carrying out this mission.  Even though other
governments were involved, everyone knew where the credit belonged.

"You're not drinking your champagne," Maddox said softly.

He turned.  She looked both tired and relaxed.  This had been an
incredible strain on her.  "Neither are you."

She shrugged.  "I have made it a policy to never toast a successful
bombing raid."

He started.  He hadn't thought of it that way.  "It does seem like bad
form, doesn't it?"

"When you think of it in those terms," she said.  "But that's really
not why everyone's celebrating."

"We struck back," he said.

She turned her head slightly.  "You know, you're the first person I've
spoken to who actually understands the difference."

"Between what and what?"

"Winning a battle and winning the war.  "He set his glass down.  She
did the same as the door from Franklin's private secretary's office
opened. An aide came in, and handed Franklin a downloaded hard copy. 
Franklin squinted at it, then had the aide close the door.

The room grew silent.  This, then, was what they had been waiting
for.

Franklin took an extra moment, and then looked up.  He waved the paper.
"It's a damage assessment report," he said.

Mickelson felt his shoulders stiffen.  A hard look came over Maddox's
face.

"It seems," Franklin said, "that it's better than we thought.  We
thought that if the aliens fought back--and it's now clear they had
spaceships in the area, attempting to destroy our bombs--we'd be lucky
if one or two hit the surface.  Fifteen-or five percent--of the
missiles we sent up there hit and exploded on their planet."

Mickelson found himself breathing shallowly.

"We've hurt them," Franklin said.  "We've hurt them badly.  Let's hope
they'll think twice before coming to us again."

Everyone in the room cheered.

Franklin raised his glass and proposed a toast.

Mickelson grabbed his and feigned a sip, but he felt unsettled.

He made his way through the crowd, to Franklin's side.  "Mr.
President," Mickelson said, as usual finding it uncomfortable to greet
an old friend that way, "you know as well as I do that they will still
come back."

Franklin nodded.

"Then why did you say that?"

He turned to Mickelson.  "Because we need hope, too, Doug."

"Hope won't prevent the tenth planet from coming close to the Earth
again in eighty-six days."

"No, it won't," Franklin said.  "But it just might give us enough
energy to fight the next battle--and win it, too."

August 16,2018

9:51 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time

86 Days Until Second Harvest

The sounds of celebration echoing over the city were dying down.  Leo
Cross sat on a lawn chair in the enclosed yard of his D.C. house. Britt
sat beside him.  They'd finished one of Constance's wonderful dinners
and a bottle of wine, and this time, when they went to bed, Cross was
unplugging the phone.

The world could do without Britt Archer for one night.

"Sounds like people are getting tired of partying," she said.

"Sounds like," he said.

When the images of the bombs exploding on the tenth planet were
broadcast all over the world, people took to the streets in joyous
celebration.  Confetti fell, fireworks went off, there was screaming
and shouting and general mayhem.  It reminded Cross of the pictures
he'd seen of New York City the day that someone declared World War II
had ended, only this time, the celebrations happened worldwide.

In Washington, a cheering crowd had gathered outside the White House,
ignoring the damaged Capitol Building.  But Cross knew that the damage
was part of this battle.  And that there was going to be more before
the war was over.

"I would have thought the celebration would continue for days," Britt
said.

"People know," Cross said.  "The tenth planet still has to orbit close
to us.  There's still a threat."

He looked up at the clear sky.  Stars winked against the blackness.
Who'd've thought that something that happened so far away would affect
them like this at home.

"At least now those damn aliens know how it feels," Britt said.

Cross looked at her.  She seemed fiercer than she ever had.  "They're
just trying to survive like we're trying to survive."

"I don't give a damn about their reasons," Britt said.  "They hurt us.
We hurt them.  Maybe they'll go away now."

"They can't, Britt," he said.  "They need Earth's resources.  Those
aliens are going to come back even stronger.  We didn't destroy them,
we only hurt them, just like they hurt us.  Just like they have been
hurting us every two thousand years."

She sighed.  "I know you're right.  I just wish you weren't."

"I wish I wasn't either."

They both stared at the stars for a long moment.

"So we fight," Britt said finally.

"We fight," Cross said.  "And it'll be the most important battle we'll
ever fight.  We have no other choice.  The planet can't support both
races."

"One of us must win," Britt said, softly.

Cross didn't reply.  There was nothing to say.

Epilogue

August 17, 2018

6:21 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time

85 Days Until Second Harvest

Danny Elliot slipped out of the house and onto the quiet street.  All
of the adults were still asleep.  His mother had been up forever last
night, drinking and laughing and celebrating for the first time since
the black dust came.  In the last few months, they had managed to put
their lives back together, but his mother hadn't laughed.

She said the aliens got what they deserved.

Finally.

Danny watched the bombs hit the tenth planet over and over again.  The
images made him a little sick inside, but he wasn't going to say that.
Instead he sat, quiet, wondering if that's what the aliens saw when
they dropped all that stuff on San Luis Obispo.

He adjusted his backpack and crossed the street, past the still-full
houses and into the Zone.  The patrols didn't happen as often anymore,
and the dust had long ago turned to a thick black mud, solid from the
rains.  It had packed down into something like concrete, except in
areas closest to buildings or under trees where the wind had blown
it.

He knew of a couple of places like that.  Maybe he should have called
Nikara, but he didn't.  Their friendship didn't feel the same anymore,
not without Cort.  The three of them balanced, but when Cort died the
day the dust fell, the balance died, too.  Nikara and Danny fought a
lot, and there was no longer anyone to referee.

Danny'd said something about that to his mom, and she had looked at him
sadly.

"It's not the fighting," she said.  "Cort's presence will always be a
ghost between the two of you."

Maybe.

But yesterday, Cort had been avenged.

Atomic bombs had been dropped on the aliens.

In all the stories Danny heard, in all the vids he saw, ghosts went to
their final rest after they'd been avenged.  And even though he didn't
want to lose Cort--the living, wonderful Cort--Danny didn't mind losing
the dead one.

He wanted to get the image of Cort, lying on the couch sick with the
flu, melting under the black dust like those people on TV had, out of
his mind.  He needed to think about the friend he'd known, not the way
Cort had died.

And this morning, he'd woken up with a way to do it.

It didn't take long to reach the house that he and Nikara had climbed
up to, that day in April.  It was easier to get to now that the
military wasn't patrolling that much.  They weren't as afraid of the
dust.  They knew what it was, knew that it wouldn't hurt anyone, or so
they said.  So they didn't really guard it anymore.

The rhododendron bushes no longer had flowers.  Instead, thick green
leaves covered them, making one side of the white house look like a
forest.  The trellis they'd climbed a few months ago was hidden by
climbing roses and out-of control growth.

He slipped past all of it, catching a bit of ocean breeze, inhaling the
salty scent.

Cort had loved living in this part of town.  Cort would stop them
sometimes and make them smell the ocean, or look at the way the roses
had grown over the summer.  Cort said it didn't matter what kind of
house you lived in, or what neighborhood you lived in, as long as you
noticed what nature provided nearby.

What nature had provided here was a shelter.

Danny went around the house and into the backyard, right up to the
beginning of the black dust.  A giant rhododendron grew right on the
edge.  It would provide what he wanted.

The blackness looked less threatening now.  Maybe because he was used
to it, or maybe because he knew it would never come again.  But he
still wasn't going to walk on it.  Walking on it would be like walking
on Cort.

Danny took off his backpack and reached inside.  He had taken ajar that
Cort had given him last year.  It was obsidian and smooth, a magic jar,
Cort had said.  They both didn't believe in magic anymore, but it was
nice to pretend.

Danny'd had the jar beside his bed ever since Cort died.

Danny pulled the stopper and carefully set it on the top of his
backpack.  Then he grabbed a ladle he'd stolen from the kitchen, and
slowly lifted a branch on the rhododendron.  A branch on the side
toward the destruction.

There was real black dust underneath, blown there by the winds off the
ocean.  Black dust and bits of other things, things that Danny'd always
imagined were bones.

Ashes and bone.

Bits of Cort.

Carefully, using the ladle, Danny scooped up as much of the dust as he
could and poured it into the jar.  It was painstaking, disgusting work,
but it was important.

Too many people had died in April.  Too many went unaccounted for, and
too many had just disappeared.  Cort's entire family--his dad, and his
mom, and his dog--had died that day, too.  And when entire families
went, no one bothered with a funeral.  Danny had heard that Cort's
grandparents,

who lived in Minnesota, had had a memorial, but that had been too far
away.  No one in Minnesota even knew Cort.

But Danny had.  Danny and Nikara and a lot of other kids.  And it
wasn't right that they didn't really get to say goodbye.

Danny stoppered the jar, and then took out one other container.  He
felt weird using his mom's Tupperware, but the guys would understand. 
He filled it, too.

That container he would take to the ocean.  They'd have a service, and
he'd throw Cort's ashes into the sea where Cort would want them.

But Danny was going to keep some in the jar, for remembrance.

For Cort.

Danny finished and climbed out from under the rhododendron.  Then he
leaned up and stared at the cloudless blue sky.  He held the jar aloft
and, imagining that black alien planet, the one where the bombs hit, he
said, "Yesterday was for Cort, you bastards."

He wondered if, somewhere deep down, they had known that.  He imagined
that they did.

He put the jar and the container in his backpack, then he stood.  For a
moment, he stared at the blackness.

Then he turned his back on it.

Forever.

85 Days Until Second Harvest

Watch for The Tenth Planet: Final Assault

DEAN WESLEY SMITH was a founder of the well-respected small press
Pulphouse.  He has written a number of novels--both his own and as
tie-in projects- including Laying the Music to Rest and X-Men: The
Jewels of Cyttorak.

KRIS TINE KATHRYN RUSCH is the Hugo and World Fantasy Award-winning
former editor of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.  She
turned to writing full time two years ago.  She, too, has written a
number of original and tie-in novels, including the Fey series and Star
Wars: The New Rebellion.



