Footfall

It’s good for me, Harry thought. It’s got to be. And, by damn, my legs are tightening up. He slapped his thigh-it did feel more solid than it had in a long time-and shifted the guitar from his left hand to his right.

The little .25-caliber Beretta was too heavy in his shirt pocket. He knew he ought to leave it at home. It wasn’t much of a gun, and even so, the cops would get soggy and hard to light if they caught him with it. But it was all the gun he had, and there were some bad people out there.

Not the only gun, he thought. He’d rooted around in the Dawson house-hell, Wes knew he’d do that, that’s why he told him about the money in the drawer behind the big drawer in the kitchen-and he’d found the Army .45, the one Wes bought for Carlotta on Harry’s advice, and damn all, she hadn’t taken it with her. But it wasn’t his gun, and Harry couldn’t carry it. It would really hit the fan if he was caught carrying a piece registered to a congressman.

Hell, he’d never carry that weight up this hill! It was always steeper. Every fucking night it got steeper.

It’s good for me. It’s really good for me. Oh, my, God, I have got to get that motorcycle fixed.

I’ve got enough for a deposit. They’ll fix the engine. Maybe if I sing at three places, the hell with the free drinks, get to places where the tips are good, I can scrape up enough to get it out, because I can’t go on climbing this hill! And there’s groceries. Jesus, I’m down to chili and cornmeal and NutriSystems. For the first week it had been easy. There had been food in the refrigerator. He ate vegetable omelets, then frozen stuff, then cans. But now he was down to the NutriSystem stuff Carlotta had bought years ago.

Diet stuff! Lord God. It tastes better than it ought to, and I could lose some belly, here. But opening the cans feels like opening cat food, looks like opening cat-food cans, and Carlotta went off the diet two years ago! Fry it with eggs, and it looks like cat food and snot! And I’m out of eggs…

He shifted the guitar to his other hand. Nothing left but breakfast cereal! I’m going to get that engine fixed.

Tomorrow, Harry thought. He shifted the guitar again. I can take the Kawasaki apart, but the engine has to be rebuilt. I’ll have to carry it in. Borrow Arline’s pickup again.

If you pulled a drawer in the Dawson kitchen all the way out, there was another drawer behind it, and a thousand dollars in fifties behind that. A good burglar would find it and go away, Harry thought, and that was probably its major purpose. Burglar bait, for God’s sake, and thank God he didn’t need it. He had enough for the deposit.

Jenny stood quickly as Admiral Carrell came into her tiny office in the White House basement.

“Sit down,” he commanded. “I’m just old enough to feel uncomfortable when ladies stand up for me. Got any coffee?”

“Yes, sir.” She took cups from her desk drawer and poured from a Thermos pitcher.

“Pretty good. Not up to Navy standards, of course. Navy coffee will peel paint. Did we get anything out of that zoo?”

“Yes, sir,” Jenny said.

“You sound surprised.”

“Admiral, I was surprised. I thought the exercise was a waste of time, but once those sci-fi types got going, it was pretty good.” She opened a folder that lay atop her desk. “This, for instance. When the alien ship came into the solar system almost fifteen years ago, a few telescopes including Mauna Kea happened to be pointed that way. . No one noticed anything then, but when we really looked—” She showed the photographs.

“It look like blobs to me.”

“Yes, sir. They looked like blobs to all of us. Maybe they are blobs. But the sc-fi people suggested that the alien ship dropped a Bussard ramjet.”

“A—”

“Bussard ramjet, Admiral.” She looked down at her notes and read. “Vacuum isn’t empty. There’s hydrogen between the stars. The ramjet is a device for using the interstellar hydrogen as a means for propulsion. In theory it will take ships-large ships-between the stars. It uses large magnetic fields for scoops, and—”

“You may spare me the technical details.”

“Yes, sir. The important point is that they dropped something massive, something they may need if they contemplate leaving our solar system.”

“Which means they intend to stay,” Admiral Carrell said mildly.

“Yes, sir—”

“Rather presumes on our hospitality. Almost as if they didn’t intend us any free choice.” He stood. “Well, we will know soon enough.”

“Yes, sir”

“My congratulations on your work with the advisors. Perhaps I can glean more speculations from them.”

“You’re going to work with them, sir?’

“I may as well. The President has decided that someone responsible must be inside Cheyenne Mountain when the aliens arrive. That someone, apparently, is to be me.”

“Good choice,” Jenny said.

Carrell smiled thinly. “I suppose so.”

“Any special preparations I should make, sir?”

“Nothing that isn’t in the briefing book. I’ve discussed this with the Strategic Air Command and the Chief of Naval Operations. They’re ordering a Yellow Alert starting tomorrow afternoon.”