"They've found an anomaly in the Mongolian People's Republic. Something that wasn't there a year ago. It looks like a huge boulder." He gently pushed the photographs at Schwartz, who examined them and passed them on to Arthur. Arthur compared three key photographs, beautiful computer-enhanced abstractions of blue-gray, brown, red, and ivory. A white circle about an inch wide surrounded a bean-shaped black spot in one photograph. In two earlier, otherwise practically identical photos, the black spot was absent.

"That makes a triad," Crockerman said. "All in remote areas."

"Have the aliens talked with the Mongolians, the Russians?" Arthur asked. The Mongolian People's Republic, despite a fiction of autonomy, was controlled by the Russians.

"Nobody knows yet," the President said. "If there are three, there could easily be more."

"What sort of . . . mechanism do you envisage them using?" Harry asked. "You and Mr. Ormandy."

"We have no idea. We do not second-guess the agents of supreme power. Do you?"

"I'm willing to try," Harry said.

"Will you disband the task force?" Arthur asked.

"No. I'd like you to keep on studying, keep asking questions. I am still capable of admitting we might be wrong. Neither Mr. Ormandy nor I are fanatics. We must talk with the Russians, and the Australians, and urge cooperation."

"Can we ask you to postpone your speech, Mr. President?" Schwartz asked. "Until we are more sure of our position?"

"You already have almost two months. I do not know to the day when the speech will be delivered, Irwin. But once it becomes clear to me when I must speak, it will not be postponed. I must go with my convictions. Ultimately, that's what this office is all about."

The four of them stood in the hallway outside, their half hour concluded, clutching copies of the NSA report.

"Fat lot of good my being here did," Harry said.

"I'm sorry, gentlemen," Schwartz said.

"He's going to be very effective on television," Hicks said. "He almost convinces me."

"You know the worst of it?" Arthur asked as they left through a rear door, Schwartz following them out to their cars. "He's not crazy."

"Neither are we," Schwartz said.

An hour after they left the White House, Hicks, Arthur, and Feinman ate lunch at Yugo's, a steak and rib restaurant favored by those in the know, despite its location in one of Washington's less decorative neighborhoods. They ate in silence, Hicks finishing his plate while Arthur and Harry barely picked at theirs. Harry had ordered a salad, a wilted and blue-cheese-overloaded mistake.

"We've done everything we can," Arthur said. Harry shrugged.

"What next, then?" Hicks asked. "Carry on scientists?"

"We haven't been shut down," Harry said.

"You've just been ignored by your Chief Executive," Hicks commented dryly.

"You've always been the odd man out here, haven't you?" Harry said. "Now you know how we feel. But at least we had a definite niche to fill."

"A role to play in the grand comedy," Hicks said.