The press conference, though an ordeal, was mercifully brief—only half an hour. They sat alone at a long table while approximately three hundred reporters competed to ask questions, one at a time, through remote microphones. For Edward, the questions blurred into one another: How did you find the alien? Were you actually looking for spaceships and aliens? Are you going to sue the Air Force or the United States government? ("I don't know," Edward replied.) What do you think of the Australian spaceship? Of the President's address to the nation? ("If we are being invaded," Minelli said, "I think his message sucks.") Bernice Morgan, Stella's mother, sat in a roped-off section. She wore a belted print dress and carried a broad white sun hat. Her face was calm. Beside her sat the Morgan family lawyer, older and much more grizzled than the military counsel, in a dark blue suit, clutching a briefcase.

By three, they were back in the auditorium. Stella stood beside her mother while their lawyer discussed the circumstances of their release. He then offered to represent all four of the detainees, as he referred to them.

A staff sergeant handed Edward a bag containing the keys to his Jeep, and they were all given their packets of personal effects. "I can drive you all right out of here," Edward said. "If we can avoid the reporters ..."

"That's going to be difficult. If you'd like an escort ..." the military counsel offered.

"No thanks. We'll manage."

Reslaw and Minelli went with Edward. Stella accompanied her mother to the lawyer's limousine. "Where are we going?" she asked Edward.

"I'll take up your offer if it's still open," Edward said. Minelli and Reslaw agreed.

"Open to all."

The Jeep and the limousine pulled away from Vanden-berg's main eastern gate, away from the crush of reporters. A few valiant camera trucks and press cars followed them, but Edward managed to shake them off by taking a devious route through Lompoc.

The climb up the shaft was not difficult; Rogers had indicated it was a much more impressive journey mentally than physically. Yet Arthur was not entirely certain why he was making the trip. What could the hollow interior tell him, that he hadn't already seen in Rogers's photographs and video?

Still, he had to do it. His inner confusion had to be resolved. He half hoped for some intuitive breakthrough. And perhaps something would have changed—a change that might indicate where the truth actually lay.

Arthur clambered around the second bend and crawled on all fours along the last stretch of tunnel. In a few minutes, he emerged into the broad cylindrical antechamber, switching on the video camera mounted over his ear.