It had been decided that an effort needed to be made to find out more about them. But they were incredibly elusive, which was how Mark had become involved. People were always telling him that he was the best tracker in the army. For his part, he’d seen many a trail peter out, so he wasn’t exactly confident of that assessment.

They’d put him in charge of this reconnaissance unit—which was fair enough, as far as he was concerned. Traipsing around the backwoods of America surely beat living rough in the Zagros Mountains, which was where he’d been when his new orders had come through.

Watching, listening, he led his team deeper.

Distant on the air, he heard the faint sound of a tractor. So the farm they’d passed on the way was now awake.

“This site is too close in,” Dr. Linda Hicks said softly. As the team biologist, she was concerned with such things as whether the hybrids might carry unknown diseases, but her primary responsibility was to gather samples for the scientists who were working on the project.

Mark was not concerned about diseases. He was not concerned about the welfare of the hybrids. He was concerned about the military danger that they might pose, whatever form it might take.

Mark got her to the right spots. She did the evidence gathering, the scientists the theorizing.

Linda and the scientific committee thought the hybrids would be friendly, but that was not Mark’s instinct. His instinct was that something was wrong or they wouldn’t be so elusive. What did they have to hide? Had to be that something about what they wanted to do—or were doing—we wouldn’t like.

A town, Willoughby, was just six kilometers from here, with a campground a few hundred meters away, picnic turnouts along the road, and that farm less than a half klick away.

As the team entered a narrow clearing, they saw the box. It appeared to be of a heavy grade of cardboard and reminded Mark of one of those paper coffins you’d see in ’Stan. He motioned for a halt.

Linda began to deploy her sampling gear. He could see that she was excited, and that worried him.

“Go slow,” he said. “Okay, guys, let’s form a perimeter around this thing. Knots and Massy, we’re gonna open it.”

“I want everyone who approaches it in masks and gloves,” Linda said. “Just get it open and then step away.” She was unrolling her white isolation suit.

“There’s another one over here,” Knotty said.

Four more were with it. Mark called Gina. “We have a total of six boxes. Five of them back in the trees.”

“Don’t move anything. Open the one I can see. Then we’ll go on from there.”