"Meat locker," Minelli responded, his hands trembling.

"There's a phone. We can call ambulances in Las Vegas, or a helicopter. Maybe we can call Edwards or Goldstone and get the authorities out here," Edward said, defending his actions.

"What'll we tell them?" Reslaw asked. "They won't believe the truth."

"I'm thinking," Edward said.

"Maybe we saw a jet plane go down," Reslaw suggested.

Edward squinted dubiously.

"It spoke English," Minelli commented, nodding.

None of them had mentioned that point in the hour and a half since they had hauled the creature away from the base of the cinder cone.

"Hell," Edward said, "it's been listening to us out there in space. Reruns of I Love Lucy."

"Then why didn't it say 'Hey, Ricky!'?" Minelli asked, covering his fear with a manic grin.

Bad news. Like a mole that shouldn't be there.

Edward pulled the truck into the service station, its heavy-duty tires tripping the service bell. A deeply tanned teenage boy in jeans bleached to nondescript pale gray and a Def Leppard T-shirt walked out of the garage attached to one side of the grocery and approached the Land Cruiser. Edward warned him back with his hands. "We need to use a phone," he said.

"Pay phone right there," the boy drawled suspiciously.

"Anybody got quarters?" Edward asked. Nobody did. "We need to use the store phone. This is an emergency."

The boy saw the towel-shrouded shape through the Land Cruiser windows. "Somebody hurt?" he asked curiously.

"Stay back," Minelli warned.

"Shut up, Minelli," Reslaw whispered through gritted teeth.

"Yeah."

"Dead?" the boy asked, one cheek jumping with a nervous tic.

Edward shrugged and entered the grocery. There, a short and very wide woman clerk in a muumuu adamantly refused to let him use the phone. "Look," he explained. "I'll pay for it with my credit card, my phone card," he said.

"Shoa me the cahd," she said.

A tall, slender, attractive black-haired woman came in, dressed in unfaded jeans and a white silk blouse. "What's wrong, Esther?" she asked.

"Man's givin' us a royal payin," Esther said. "Woan use the pay phone ahtside, but sayes he's gaht a credit cahd—"

"Jesus, thanks, you're right," Edward said, glancing between them. "Ill use my card on the pay phone."

"Is it an emergency?" the black-haired woman asked.

"Yeah," Edward said.

"Well, go ahead and use the store phone."

Esther glared at her resentfully. Edward sidled behind the counter, the clerk moving deftly out of his way, and punched a button for an open line. Then he paused.

"Hospital?" the black-haired woman asked.

Edward shook his head, then nodded. "I don't know," he said. "Maybe the Air Force."

"You've seen an airplane go down?" the woman asked.

"Yeah," Edward said, for the sake of simplicity.

The woman gave him an emergency hospital number and suggested he use directory assistance for the Air Force. But he did not dial the emergency number first. He dithered, glancing nervously around the store, wondering why he hadn't planned a clear course of action earlier.