"But Crockerman's swallowed the message. It's working on him. Young and Xavier will have seen the site . . . Ah, Lord." Harry wiped his face with a towel. "This is not nearly as much fun as I thought it would be. Isn't it a bitch? Life is always a bitch. We were so excited. Now it's a nightmare."

Arthur raised his hand. "Guess who was captured riding an airplane with three desert types?"

Harry blinked. "How the hell should I know?"

"Trevor Hicks."

Harry stared. "You're not serious."

"The President is reading his novel now, which is trendy enough, and not quite pure coincidence. He obviously felt it was research material. The three desert types have been returned to Shoshone with a stiff reprimand and the loss of their plane and license. Hicks has been invited to dinner tonight."

"That's insane," Harry said, turning off the bathroom light and picking up his dress shirt from the corner of the bed. "He's a journalist."

"Crockerman wants to talk things over with him. Get a second opinion."

"He has a hundred opinions all around him."

"I last met Hicks," Arthur mused, "three years ago, at Cornell."

"I've never met him," Harry said. "I suppose I'd like to."

"Now's your chance."

Arthur left his friend's room a few minutes later, feeling worse than ever. He could not shake the sensibilities of a disappointed child. This had been a wonderful early Christmas present, bright and filled with hope for an unimaginable future, a future of humans interacting with other intelligences. Now, by Christmastime, the Earth might not even exist.

He took a deep breath and squared his shoulders, not for the first time hoping by physical effort to shake the gloom.

The waitresses and cooks behind the white walls and copper-paneled pillars of the dining room had come up with a formal repast of prime rib, wild rice, and Caesar salad, the salad greens a trifle wilted because of the halt in deliveries, but all else quite acceptable. Around a rectangular table assembled from four smaller tables sat the principals of the action at the "Furnace," plus Trevor Hicks, who acted as if he were taking it all in stride.

I have stumbled into a jackpot, he thought as the President and the Secretary of Defense entered and took their seats. Two Secret Service agents ate at a small table near the doorway.

Crockerman nodded cordially at Hicks, seated beside the President and across from Lehrman.

"These people have really done a fine job, haven't they?" the President said after the main course had been served and the dishes cleared. By a kind of silent and mutual decree, all talk during dinner had been of trivial things. Now coffee was brought out in an old, dented silver service, poured into the owner's personal Wedgwood bone china cups, and served around the long table. Harry declined. Arthur loaded his coffee with two cubes of sugar.