“Food run, of course. We may have to use cash, though. They might have flagged our accounts by now.”

“You could use Phil’s account,” Sheldon said. “It has a significant balance.”

“How would I do that?” I asked.

“I had access to Phil’s phone. Phil pays for things with his phone. Shall I draw you a picture, with little stick people and dialogue balloons?”

Patrick laughed out loud. I sighed, looked at Nat, and shook my head. “Let’s see if we have enough cash first. If we have to use Phil’s account, we will, I guess. And it would help support the narrative that we’ve completely disappeared.”

The view on the wall screen showed the 7-Eleven just off the highway near Akron. It was still early enough in the evening to be busy. Cars pulled in and out of the parking lot regularly—far too often to risk a drop-off from an invisible spaceship.

“We can put down just up the road, on the shoulder,” I suggested. “Sheldon, can you suppress the lighting for the airlocks?”

“Of course.”

“Okay, that should be minimum risk, if we can find a darker area. We can walk in, buy some food, and walk out. We get back on board when it’s safe.” I looked around at the others. No one had any argument, probably motivated by the fact that no one had eaten in close to sixteen hours. For middle-class Americans used to three squares, it was akin to torture.

“We should take zappers,” Nat said.

“I don’t think it’ll be necessary,” I replied.

“Any time you have a choice of taking a weapon or not taking a weapon, you always take a weapon,” Nat said. “Have you never watched TV?”

Patrick and I replied with weak smiles, and Nat added, “Remember that Geico horror movie ad?”

“Yeah,” Patrick said, “Let’s not be those kids.”

Nat and I waited in the darkened vestibule. I had instructed Sheldon to watch for a good moment, with no nearby traffic, before lowering the stairway. Wasting no time, we rushed down the stairs.

“We’re out,” I said, as soon as we were on solid ground. The stairway retracted, without the usual chirp-chirp and flashing lights.

The 7-Eleven was fifty yards or so down the road. I patted my hoodie pocket as we entered the store, checking that my disruptor was still there. Where it was supposed to have gone, I couldn’t say, but I felt a strong urge to check it every few seconds. I remembered reading somewhere that this behavior was a tell, done by people who didn’t normally carry a weapon. Clerks were trained to watch for people patting a pocket too often in the store.