Hour of the Horde

3

In the night he woke suddenly for no apparent reason. He lay staring at the darkness of the ceiling above him and wondering what had wakened him at such an hour. The bedroom was hot and stuffy, and he had kicked off all his covers.

His pajama top was wet with perspiration. It clung like a clammy hand to his chest, and this, plus the thickness of the air, filled him with a strange sense of some lurking presence as of a crouching danger in the dark. He wondered whether Marie was sleeping peacefully or whether she had also wakened.

It was unnatural for the room to be so stuffy and hot. He got up and went to open the window, but it already stood wide open from the bottom, as high as it could be raised. Outside, the night air hung unmoving, as unnaturally warm and stuffy as the room air.

No breeze stirred. Below, silhouetted against the corner streetlight beyond, a tall, horizontal-armed oak towered over the lilac bushes and the small flowering crab tree in the dark rooming house yard. Bushes and trees alike stood like forms of poured concrete, all stiffly upright, darker than the night.

Distantly, thunder muttered. Miles looked up and out at the horizon above the trees, and the flicker of heat lightning jumped, racing across the arc of black sky in which no moon or stars were showing. The thunder came again, more loudly.

He stood watching as the lightning and thunder increased. Still no breath of air moved. The lightning flared along the distant edge of darkness like the cannon flashes of some titanic war of the gods, just out of sight over the horizon. The thunder grew. Now the heat lightning had given way to chain lightning, which stitched wild, jagged thrusts of brilliance across the sky.

The air sighed suddenly outside the window. It blew damply against him. The thunder roared. Suddenly the skies split with thunder directly above him, and a lightning flash left a searing afterimage of trees and bushes painted on his vision. The wind blasted, and suddenly there was a dry, hard pattering all around.

It was hail. At once, before he could move back and close the window, the full hailstorm was on him. In the wild lightning he saw the yard below full of dancing whiteness, saw the bushes bent over and even the ornamental flowering crab tree bent nearly to the earth.

Only the oak, he noticed, refused to bend. It stood towering as before. Its leaves lay over flat, and its branches swayed to the wind, but its trunk ignored the storm. It stood unyielding, upright, all but indifferent.

Hail was stinging Miles’ face and arms. He pulled back from the window, closing it all but an inch or two. Even through that little space, the wind whistled icily into the room. He got back into bed, huddling the covers up around him.

Before he knew it, he was asleep once more.

“The Ship…”

It seemed that those were almost the first words Miles encountered on going downstairs after waking the next morning. They were on the lips of his landlady as he left for breakfast and his first class, and they echoed around him from everybody who was abroad in the red light of this early day as he crossed the campus. When he reached the room in which the seminar on Renaissance art was held, it seemed to be the only topic of conversation among the graduate students there as well.

“Too big to land, anyway,” Mike Jarosh, a short, bearded man who was one of the graduate history majors, was saying as Miles came in. “As big as the state of Rhode Island.”

“They’ll probably send down a smaller ship,” somebody else put in.

“Maybe. Maybe not,” Mike said. “Remember, the ship just appeared there, in orbit a thousand miles out. None of the telescopes watching the sun saw it coming, and it appeared right in front of the sun, right in front of their telescopes. If whoever’s in the ship can do that, they may be able to send down people to the surface of the Earth here just by some way of transferring them suddenly from the ship to here—”

The professor in charge of the seminar, Wallace Hankins, a thin, stooped man, half-bald but with his remaining hair still as black as his eyebrows, came in the door just then, cutting off Mike in mid-sentence.

“Any news? Any broadcasts from the ship—” Mike was beginning to ask him, when Hankins cut him short.

“Yes, there’s been some kind of message,” Hankins said. “The United Nations Secretary-General just received it—the broadcasts don’t say how or why. But that’s all beside the point. It’s plain there’s no use trying to hold any kind of seminar under these conditions. So we won’t try it today. The rest of you go about your business—and, with luck, we’ll meet again here next week at the same time under conditions more conducive to a discussion of Renaissance art.”

The babble of excitement that broke out at this announcement, Miles thought, would have suited a group of grade-school children better than a dozen hardworking graduate students. The others hurried off as, more slowly, he put his own books back into the briefcase from which he had taken them while Mike Jarosh was talking. Hankins had stood aside to let the class members stampede past him out the open door. So it happened that, as Miles was leaving last, he came face to face with Hankins.

“I’m sorry to lose a day,” said Miles honestly, stopping.

Hankins looked back at him, his round face under the high, hairless forehead more than a little sour.

“The Renaissance seems out of fashion at the moment,” he said and, following Miles out through the door of the seminar room, closed it behind both of them.

Miles, briefcase in hand, headed back down the worn marble steps of the staircase inside the history building and out of the building back toward his rooming house. He was not quite sure what he should do with this unexpected gap in his daily schedule. Automatically, he thought of setting up his easel somewhere outside and trying to work—and then he remembered that outdoor painting would be all but impossible as long as the sun continued to be this color. Color values would be all off.

No sooner had he thought of this than he was intrigued by the notion of doing a painting under the red light, just so that he could see in what way the colors were off once the sun returned to normal. He hurried on to the rooming house and went up the stairs to his room with enthusiasm beginning to burn inside him. But as he entered his room, his spirits took a sudden drop. The sight of the canvas he had painted yesterday afternoon, now drying in the corner, reminded him abruptly of Marie and the storm of the night before.

He was suddenly face to face with a strong sense of guilt and loss. No matter how wrong Marie had been last evening, two things remained unchanged. It was her concern for him that had made her say what she had and also, he had no one else in the world that was close to him.

He sat down heavily on the edge of his bed, newly made by Mrs. Arndahl. The strap springs creaked dolefully under his weight. He had been looking forward to the release and freedom of his year in Europe. The thought of loneliness had never occurred to him until now. But now he felt it come to him powerfully at the thought that he might easily lose Marie for good.

He got abruptly to his feet. He had been wrong in walking out like that. It had not been fair to expect her to understand what moved him in his wholehearted search without ever a word of explanation of that search. At least he could find her and make that explanation now. He owed her that much.

He got up, went over to open the top drawer of his dresser to take out a brown manila envelope. He put it into the inside pocket of his jacket and headed back out of the rooming house.

At this hour Marie was usually in the second-floor study room of the university library. But when he got there, he found the room deserted except for three or four stray figures looking dwarfed and foolish among the long tables and empty chairs. Marie was not one of them. He turned and left the library.

The most logical place to look next was the girls’ dormitory, in which Marie was a counselor.

He went there. It was on the other side of the campus, a tall red-brick building with a row of glass doors across the front of it. He went through one of the doors into the lobby and asked for Marie at the desk. The clerk buzzed Marie’s room, and less than a minute later Marie herself called down on the house phone. Miles heard her voice with a sense of relief.

“It’s me,” he said. “Can you come down?”

“I’ll be right there,” her voice answered. His heart moved in him. It was the same soft, calm voice as ever. He had expected any reaction but this, after he had walked out on her the way he had the night before.

“You can wait in the lounge,” the pointed-faced little clerk said to him.

He had waited in that lounge many times before, but when he went in now, like everything else, it was different. Usually there were only four or five vaguely impatient or irritated males seated in the heavy armchairs and couches scattered decorously about the room. Now nearly all the farther seats were empty. The nearer ones had been drawn in around the television set and were occupied by a small crowd of girls. These listened to the omnipresent television announcer in such uniform silence that Miles had no difficulty overhearing what the announcer was saying.

“Word has been received from reliable sources here at the UN,” the announcer was saying, “that the message was not sent by any mechanical means from the ship now in orbit about our world but was delivered in person by two of the passengers or crew from the ship. The same source also provides the information that the two beings in question appear to be two men with somewhat swarthy features, in every respect, including the suits they wear, as human as we are. Further word is expected shortly.

“Now some details about the ship, as the details have been gleaned by telescope from the surface of our world. The ship itself appears to be at least as large as was originally estimated. There seems to be no evidence of windows or entrances in its outer surface. Moreover, no sign has been seen of a small ship leaving it or of any means by which the two from the ship could have made the trip down to the UN buildings here in New York. No landing of any type of alien craft has been reported and no unusual visitors have been escorted to the building…”

His voice droned on. Miles went to the opposite end of the room and sat down on a heavy green sofa pushed back against the wall. It was only a few minutes before Marie appeared in the entrance to the lounge. He got up swiftly and went to meet her.

“Miles—” she said as he came up to her.

“Can we get out of here?” he said. “Somewhere away from television sets and radios?”

“I’m on duty here at the dorm starting at one o’clock,” she answered. “But we could go someplace and have an early lunch until then.”

“Good,” he said. “Let’s go to someplace downtown that isn’t overrun by people from the U.”

They took the bus toward downtown Minneapolis. As the bus rolled across the freeway bridge, Miles gestured toward the window beside which Marie was sitting.

“Look,” he said, indicating the rock wall below which he had stood painting the afternoon before. “You see the bluff there? Do you think you could climb it?”

Marie stared at the steep rise of rock.

“I guess so—if I had to,” she said. She turned, frowning in puzzlement at him. “I don’t think I’d like to. Why?”

“I’ll tell you later, while we’re having lunch,” said Miles. “But look at it now—will you?—and just imagine yourself climbing it.”

Marie looked back out of the window and kept her eyes on the bluff until the bus passed the point where that side of the river could be seen. Then she looked questioningly at Miles.

When he said nothing, however, she looked away, and neither of them said anything more until they left the bus downtown.

Miles, in fact, waited until they were actually inside the restaurant they had picked—a small, medium-priced eating place with no television set.

“About last night—” he began, after the waitress had given them menus and left.

Marie laid down her menu. She reached out across the table to put her hand on his.

“Never mind,” she said. “It doesn’t matter.”

“But it does matter,” he answered. He withdrew his hand, took the manila envelope out from the inside pocket of his jacket, and handed it to her. “There’s something I want you to understand. That’s why I had you look at that bluff on the way here. I should have told you about it a long time ago; but when I first met you, well, I just wasn’t used to telling anyone about it, and later I liked to think you understood without being told. Then, when I found you didn’t last night—that’s why I blew up. Take a look in that envelope.”

Looking strangely at him, Marie opened the envelope and poured out the sheaf of yellowing newspaper clippings on the white place mat. She looked through them while he waited. Then she looked back up at him, frowning.

“I guess I don’t understand,” she said.

“They’re all instances of hysterical strength,” Miles said. “Have you ever heard of that?”

“I think so,” she said, still frowning. “But what’s it all got to do with you?”

“It ties in with what I believe,” he said. “A theory of mine about painting. About anything creative, actually…” And he told her about it. But when he was done, she still shook her head.

“I didn’t know,” she said. She shuffled the clippings with her fingers. “But, Miles, isn’t it a pretty big guess on your part? These”—she shuffled the clippings, again looking down at them—“are hard enough to believe—”

“Will you believe me if I tell you something?” he interrupted.

“Of course!” Her head came up.

“All right then. Listen,” he said, “before I met you, when I first had polio, I took up painting mainly to give myself an excuse to hide from people.” He took a deep breath. “I couldn’t get over the fact I was crippled, you see. I had a knack for art, but the painting and drawing were just an excuse that first year, after I’d been sick.”

“Miles,” she said gently, reaching out to put her hand on his again.

“But then, one day, something happened,” he said. “I was outside painting—at the foot of the bluff I pointed out to you. And something clicked. Suddenly I was in it— inside the painting. I can’t describe it. And I forgot everything around me.”

He stopped and drew a deep breath.

“I shouldn’t have done that,” he said. “Because it just happened I was attracting a gallery. Some kids had come up to watch me painting. Kids not much younger than I was—and I guess after a while they must have started asking me questions. But I didn’t even hear them. I was all wrapped up in what I was painting, for the first time—and it was like a miracle, like coming alive for the first time since I’d been sick.”

In spite of himself, remembering, his hand curled into a fist under her fingers. She held tightly to the fist.

“When I didn’t answer,” he went on after a second, “they evidently began to think that I was embarrassed by being caught painting, and they began to jostle me and move my brushes. But I was still just barely conscious of them, and I was scared stiff at the thought of quitting work on that painting, even for a second. I had a feeling that if I quit, even for that long, I’d lose it—this in -ness I’d discovered. But finally, one of them grabbed up my paint box and ran off with it, and I had to come out of it.”

“Oh, Miles!” said Marie, softly. Her fingertips soothed his hard-clenched fist.

“So I chased him—the one who’d taken it. And when I was just about to grab him, he dropped it. So I brought it back—and then I found out something. My canvas was gone.”

“They took it?” said Marie. “Miles, they didn’t!”

“I looked around,” he went on, seeing not her across the table as much as the much-remembered scene in his mind’s eye, “and finally, I spotted the one who’d taken it. He’d run off the other way from the one who took my paints and up around the road leading to the top of the bluff, and now he was running along the bluff overhead.”

Miles stopped speaking. With an effort he pulled his inner gaze from the four-year-old memory and looked again at Marie.

“Marie,” he said, “I wasn’t thinking of anything but that painting. It seemed like life itself to me, just then, life I’d found again after thinking I’d lost it for good with polio. It seemed to me that I had to have that painting, no matter what happened. And I went and got it.”

He hesitated.

“Marie,” he said, “I climbed up that bluff and got in front of the kid who’d taken it. When he saw me coming, he threw it facedown on the grass and ran. When I picked it up, it was nothing but smears and streaks of paint with grass sticking all over it.”

“Miles!” said Marie, her fingers tightening on his fist. “How terrible!”

“No,” said Miles, “not terrible.” He looked deeply into her brown eyes. “Wonderful. Marie, don’t you understand! I climbed up that cliff!”

She stared back at him, baffled.

“I know, you said that,” she said. “And you must have climbed awfully fast—”

“Yes, but that’s not it!” said Miles. “Listen! I climbed up that cliff—and I had only one arm. Only one arm and one hand to climb with!”

She still stared, without understanding.

“Of course,” she said. “That’s right, you only had one arm—” She broke off suddenly, on a quick intake of breath.

“Yes. You see?” Miles heard his own voice, sounding almost triumphant. “Marie, a cliff like that can’t be climbed by a one-handed man. You need to hold with one hand while you move the other to a fresh handhold, and so on. I came back there the next day and tried to see if I could climb it again. And I couldn’t. I couldn’t even get started. The only way I could possibly have done it would have been to balance on my feet alone while I changed handholds.”

He nodded at the clippings on the place mat before her.

“To climb like that,” he said, “I’d have needed the strength and speed written about in those news clippings.”

She gazed at him, her face a little pale.

“You don’t remember how you did it?” she asked at last.

He shook his head.

“It’s all sort of a blur,” he said. “I remember wanting to go up the cliff, and I remember climbing up it, somehow, very quickly and easily, and the next thing I knew, I was facing the kid with my painting.” He stopped, but she said nothing. “You see why I lost my head with you last night? I thought you understood that what I was after was something that didn’t leave any strength or time left over for the rest of the world. I thought you understood it without being told. It wasn’t until after that I began to see how unfair I was being in expecting you to understand something like this without knowing what I’d been through and what I was after.”

He pulled his hand out from under her now-quiet fingers and took her hand instead in his own grasp.

“But you understand now, don’t you?” he asked. “You do, don’t you?”

To his surprise she shivered suddenly, and her face grew even more pale.

“Marie!” he said. “Don’t you understand—”

“Oh, I do. I understand. Of course, Miles.” Her hand turned so that her fingers grasped his. “It’s not that. It’s just that knowing this now somehow makes it all that much worse.”

“Worse?” He stared at her.

“I mean”—her voice trembled—“all this business about the sun and the ship and the two men, or whatever they are. I’ve had a feeling from the beginning that it all meant something terrible for us—for you and me. And now, somehow, your telling me this makes me even more afraid.”

“What of?” he asked.

“I don’t know.” He could feel her shiver again, just barely feel it, but the shiver was there. “Something… something that’s going to come between us—”

From across the room a sudden, measured voice interrupted her. Looking in that direction, Miles saw that two men had just entered the restaurant and sat down at a table against the farther wall. On the table one of them placed a portable radio, and even with the volume turned down, its voice carried across to the table where he sat with Marie. Anger exploded in him.

“I’ll make them turn that thing down!” he said, starting to get to his feet. But Marie caught hold of his arm.

“No,” she said. “Sit down. Please, sit down, Miles. Listen—”

“By television and radio,” the radio was saying. “We now bring you the President of the United States, speaking to you directly from the East Room of the White House…” The musical strains of “Hail to the Chief” followed closely upon the announcer’s words. Marie got quickly to her feet.

“Miles, quickly,” she said. “Let’s find a television set.”

“Marie—” he began harshly, with the backwash of his anger at the two men and the radio across the room in his voice. Then he saw the peculiar rigidity of her face, and a feeling of uneasiness washed in to drown the fury.

“All right,” he said, getting to his feet in turn, “if you want to.”

She hurried out of the restaurant, and he had to stretch his legs to keep up with her. Outside, in the sudden glare of red sunlight, she paused and looked, almost frantically, right and left.

“Where?” she asked. “Oh, where, Miles?”

“The nearest bar, I suppose,” he said. Looking about himself, he spotted the neon sign of one, palely lit and violet-colored in the red sunlight, half a block down the street from them. “This way.”

They went quickly down the half block and into the bar. Within, no one was moving—neither bartenders nor customers. They all were sitting or standing still as carvings, staring at the large television set set up high on a dark wooden shelf at the inner end of the bar. From that ledge, the lined, rectangular face of the President of the United States looked out. Miles heard the tail end of his sentence as they entered.

“For simultaneous announcement to all countries of the world,” said the slow, pausing voice in the same heavy tones they had heard a dozen times before, speaking on smaller issues of the country and the world. “These two visitors also supplied us with a film strip to be used in conjunction with the announcement. First, here is a picture of our two friends from the civilization of worlds at the center of our galaxy.”

The rectangular face disappeared, to be replaced by the still image of two men in what seemed to be gray business suits, standing before a window in some sort of lounge or reception room—probably a room in one of the UN buildings, Miles thought.

It was as the radio announcer had said earlier. There was nothing about the two to distinguish them from any other humans. Their noses were a little long, the skin of their faces a little dark, and there was a suspicion of a mongoloid fold above the eyes. Otherwise, they might have been encountered on the streets of any large city in the world, east or west, without the slightest suspicion that they had come from anywhere off the planet.

“These gentlemen,” the Presidential voice went on slowly, “have explained to the representatives of the nations of our world that our galaxy, that galaxy of millions upon millions of stars, of which our sun is a minor star out near the edge”—the figures of the two men disappeared and were replaced by what looked like a glowing spiral of dust floating against a black background—“will shortly be facing attack by a roving intergalactic race which periodically preys upon those island universes like our galaxy which dot that intergalactic space.

“Their civilization, which represents many worlds in many solar systems in toward the center of the galaxy, has taken the lead in forming a defensive military force which will attempt to meet these predators at the edge of our galaxy and turn them aside from their purpose. They inform us that if the predators are not turned aside, over ninety percent of the life on the inhabited worlds of our galaxy will be captured and literally processed for food to feed this nomadic and rapacious civilization. Indeed, it is the constant need to search for sustenance for their overwhelming numbers that keeps them always on the move between and through the galaxies, generation succeeding generation in rapacious conquest.”

Suddenly the image of something like a white-furred weasel, with hands on its two upper limbs and standing erect on its two hind limbs, filled the television screen. Beside it was the gray outline of a man, and it could be seen that the creature came about shoulder-high on the outline.

“This,” said the disembodied voice of the Chief Executive, “is a picture of what the predator looks like, according to our two visitors. The predator is born, lives, and dies within his ship or ships in space. His only concern is to survive—first as a race, then as an individual. His numbers are countless. Even the ships in which he lives will probably be numbered in the millions. He and his fellows will be prepared to sustain staggering losses if they can win their way into the feeding ground that is our galaxy. Here, by courtesy of our two visitors, is a picture of what the predator fleet will look like. Collectively, they’re referred to in the records of our galaxy as the Silver Horde.”

Once more the image in the television screen changed.

“This is one of their ships,” said the President’s voice.

A spindle-shaped craft of some highly polished metal appeared on the television screen. Beside it, the silhouette of a man had shrunk until it was approximately the size of a human being standing next to a double trailer truck.

“This is a scout ship, the smallest of their craft—holding a single family, usually consisting of three or four adults and perhaps as many young.”

The image on the television set shrank almost to a dot, and beside it appeared a large circular craft nearly filling the screen.

“And this is the largest of their ships,” said the President. “Inside, it should have much the appearance and population of a small city—up to several thousand individuals, adult and young, and at least one large manufacturing or tool-making unit required by the Horde for maintenance and warfare, as well as food-processing and storage units.”

The voice of the Chief Executive lifted, on a note that signaled he was approaching the end of what he had to say.

“Our visitors have told us,” he said, “that defense of the galaxy is a common duty. For our world to join in that defense is therefore a duty. What they require from us, however, is a contribution of a highly specialized nature.” His voice hesitated and then went on more strongly. “They tell us that the weapons with which our galaxy’s defensive force will meet the Horde are beyond the understanding of our science here on Earth. They tell us, however, that they are part physical, part nonphysical in nature. The number of fighting individuals we can contribute, therefore, to our galaxy’s defense is limited by our relatively primitive state of awareness as far as these nonphysical forces are concerned. We can send only one man. This one individual—this one man who is best suited to be our representative by natural talent and abilities—has already been selected by our visitors. He will shortly be taken over by them, adjusted so as to make the best possible use of these talents, and then turned loose for a brief period to move about our world and absorb an identification with the rest of us. This process of absorbing an identification has been compared by our visitors to the process of charging a car battery, to exposing its plates to a steady input of electrical current. Once he has been so ‘charged,’ all of us on this world who have managed to contribute to the ‘charging’ will continue to have some sort of awareness in the backs of our minds of what he is going through up on the battle line, to which he will then be transported. And from this linkage he will draw the personal nonphysical strength with which he will operate his particular weapon when the encounter with the Horde occurs.”

The President’s face once more appeared on the television screen. He paused, and standing in the bar, Miles felt the impact of the older man’s eyes upon him—as, evidently, did everyone else in the room.

“That is all for now,” said the President slowly. “As soon as we have more information, people of America and people of our world, it will be released to you. Meanwhile, in this trying and strange time into which we have suddenly been plunged by events, let me ask you all to go on with your lives in their ordinary fashion and show patience. As we approach what lies in store for us, what lies in store for us will become more plain to us all. God bless you, and good afternoon.”

His face vanished from the screen. There was a moment of grayness; then the face of an announcer flickered on.

“The voice you have just heard,” the announcer said smoothly, “was that of the President of the United States…”

There was a slowly beginning, gradually increasing combination of sighs and rustles of movement within the bar as the people there came to life and action again. Miles turned to Marie and saw her standing white-faced, still staring at the television screen.

“Come on,” said Miles. “Let’s get out of here.”

He had to take her by the arm before he could break the trance that held her. But when he touched her, she started and seemed to come awake. She turned obediently and followed him out once more into the red-lighted street.

In the street she leaned against him, as if the strength had gone out of her. He put his arm around her to steady her and looked anxiously about him. Two blocks down the street, a lone cab was coming toward them. Miles whistled, and the cab came on, angling into the curb to stop before them.

Miles bent down to open the rear door. As he did, he became conscious of the fact that besides the driver, there was a man in a blue suit in the front seat and another man sitting in the back seat. He checked, with the door half-open.

“It’s all right,” said the man in the back seat. “You’re Miles Vander, aren’t you? And this will be Miss Bourtel.”

He reached into his inside suitcoat pocket and brought out a leather case, which he flipped open. Miles saw a card in a plastic case, with the man’s picture and some lines of fine type underneath.

“Treasury Department,” said the man. “You’re to come with us, Mr. Vander. We’ll drop Miss Bourtel off on the way.”

Miles stared at him.

“Please get in,” said the man in the front seat beside the driver, and the evenness of his tone made the words more a command than an invitation. “We were told we’d find you here. And there’s no time to lose.”

Within the circle of Miles’ arm, Marie leaned even more heavily against him. Worry for her tightened Miles’ chest.

“All right,” he said abruptly. He helped Marie into the back seat of the taxi next to the man sitting there and then got in himself, closing the door behind him.

“We’d better go—” he was beginning, when the man in the front seat cut him short.

“That’s all right. We’ve got our instructions on that, too,” he said. He sat half turned in the front seat, with one elbow over the back to the seat so that he looked directly into Miles’ face. “Look at her.”

Alarmed, Miles looked sharply around again at Marie. She sat with her head against him, her eyes closed, unmoving, breathing deeply and slowly.

“Don’t worry,” said the man in the front seat. “She’s only asleep. The aliens arranged it—the two from the ship—to get her through the business of seeing you picked up by us. We’re to deliver her to the university hospital, where they’ll take care of her for an hour or two, until she wakes. When she does wake up, she won’t be alarmed about what’s happened to you anymore.”

Miles stared at him.

“What is all this?” Miles burst out.

“I don’t blame you for not suspecting,” the man in the front seat answered. The taxi was already pulling away from the curb and heading off down the street in the direction of the distant university. “We’ll be taking you immediately to the airport, where a military airplane will fly you to Washington. You’re the man that the two aliens from the spaceship—our two visitors from the center of the galaxy—have picked to be this world’s representative, defending the galaxy against the Silver Horde, and everything we’ve done so far, like our finding you and Miss Bourtel’s falling asleep, has been arranged by them.”