“You know, we’ve been dating for a decade, and I’ve never seen this many people recognize you,” said Graham, voice pitched high, like he was trying to lighten the mood. He looked between us, measuring the situation, deciding whether or not he needed to intervene. “Are you about to start showing up in the tabloids?”

“I think you mean ‘again,’” said Dr. Tillman, removing his hand from mine. He made the gesture graceful, even elegant, and not as rushed as he clearly wanted it to be. A professional, then, and a good man: good enough to care about the feelings of a potentially dangerous stranger.

He looked at me, and his gaze was measuring, taking in and breaking down every inch of me, rendering me component and complete. “Miss Miller was in the papers quite a bit when I was in school. Seems she’s from another planet, and she’s here to provide lucky numbers and diet tips.”

My cheeks reddened. “It turns out you can’t sue the gossip magazines for making stuff up, as long as what they make up is ridiculous enough,” I said. “I never said I knew how to help people lose weight or … or get in touch with their cosmic spirit guides or anything like that. I never would. Aliens don’t need to commit acts of cultural appropriation.”

Dr. Tillman blinked. Then he laughed. “I suppose that’s true,” he said. “Still doesn’t explain what you’re doing here, Miss Miller. Did I miss the part where your alien friends told you to come to Maine?”

“Maybe,” I said.

“I called ahead,” said Graham. “I spoke to your administrator. I told her we wanted to hear the alien signal without distortion or modification by the local equipment, and she said it wouldn’t be a problem.”

“We’d also like to meet Dr. Vornholt,” I added. “We’ve been trying to track him down. It hasn’t worked very well.”

“Ah.” David hesitated. He wasn’t a very good liar: maybe astronomers didn’t need to be. Maybe a life spent staring up at the stars could be essentially honest, as long as you weren’t the one in charge of securing funding for the new telescope or to put a new roof on the observatory. Academia would have eaten this man alive if he’d stayed closer to the universities. Instead, he had sought isolation, and been able to stay a lousy liar long enough for us to meet up with him.

There was a certain beautiful inevitability to the whole thing. I just wished I could understand what it was going to be.

My elbow itched. I put a hand over it, and I didn’t scratch.

“Is that a problem?” pressed Graham.

“Nah,” said a voice behind us.