"The temperature is now twelve degrees centigrade. We are reducing that to several degrees above zero, to inhibit terrestrial bacterial growth. The core and fluid samples will be analyzed and the autopsy will continue at a later hour. Gentlemen, it is time I rested. My assistants are going to make further measurements and take core samples from the limbs. Later this morning we will begin on the head."

Hicks sat at the table across from the President, smiling at the waitress as she poured him a cup of coffee. They were alone in the dining hall; it was early, just past seven in the morning. The President had called him at midnight and requested his presence at breakfast for a private discussion. "What's your pleasure, Mr. Hicks?" Crockerman asked him.

"Toast and scrambled eggs, I think," he said. "Can you make a Denver omelet?"

The waitress nodded.

"The same for me," Crockerman told her. As she left, Crockerman pushed his chair back a few inches and bent to pull papers from an open valise beside him. "I'll be meeting with a distraught mother at nine o'clock, and with an admiral and a general at eleven. Then I fly back to Washington. I've been making notes all night long, trying-to put my thoughts in order. I hope you don't object to my bouncing a few ideas off you."

"Not at all," Hicks said. "But first, I must make my situation clear. I'm a journalist. I came here for a story. All this—your request that I stay here, instead of being booted out with the others—is . . . well, it's extraordinary. I must honestly say that under the circumstances, I ..." He ran out of words, looking into Crockerman's rich brown eyes. Lifting his hand, he gestured vaguely at the door of the dining room. "I'm not trusted here, nor should I be. I'm an outsider."

"You're a man with imagination and insight," Crockerman said. "The others have expertise. Mr. Gordon and Mr. Feinman have imagination and expertise, and Mr. Gordon has been very close to this kind of problem, as administrator of BETC. Perhaps he's been too close, I don't know. I've been wondering whether or not we're dealing with extraterrestrials, as he would have us believe. You have a distance, a fresh perspective I could find very useful."

"What is my official capacity, my role?" Hicks asked.

"Obviously, you can't report this story now," Crockerman said. "Stay here, work with us until the story is about to be released. I suspect we'll have to go public soon, though Carl and David strongly disagree. If we do go public, you have your exclusive. You get first crack."

Hicks frowned. "And our conversations?"

"For the time being, what we say to each other is not to be discussed elsewhere. In the fullness of history, in our memoirs or whatever . . ." Crockerman nodded to the far walls. "Fine."