Hicks frowned. How many years of fictional paranoia had conditioned him to be dubious of extraterrestrials bearing gifts? Of all the motion pictures made about first contact, only a bare handful had treated the epochal event as benign.

How often had Hicks's eyes misted over, watching these few films, even when he tried to keep a scientific perspective? That great moment, the exchange between humans and friendly nonhuman intelligences . . .

It had happened in Australia. The dream was alive.

And in California, nightmares.

The Guest does not appear to have been designed for a long life span.

He put the Australian booklet on the top of the stack and reached awkwardly over the stack to turn off the light. In the darkness, he disciplined himself to take regular, shallow breaths, to blank his mind and go to sleep. Even so, sleep came late and was not restful.

Chapter 21

21

October 11

Crockerman, wearing slacks and a white shirt but no coat or tie, a powdery patch of styptic pencil on his chin from a shaving cut, entered the office of his chief of staff, and nodded briefly at those assembled there: Gordon, Hicks, Rotterjack, Fulton, Lehrman, and the chief of staff himself, plump and balding Irwin Schwartz. It was seven-thirty in the morning, though in the windowless office time hardly mattered. Arthur thought he might never get out of little rooms and the company of bureaucrats and politicians.

"I've called you in here to go over our own material on the Great Victoria Desert bogey," Crockerman said. "You've read their booklet, I presume?" Crockerman asked. All nodded. "At my request, Mr. Hicks has been sworn in, and his security clearance has been processed ..."

Rotterjack looked dyspeptic.

"He's one of us now. Where's Carl?"

"Still in traffic, I think," Schwartz said. "He called a half hour ago and said he'd be a few minutes late."

"All right. We don't have much time." Crockerman stood and paced before them. "I'll play his part. We have 'one or more' agents at the Australian rock. I need not tell you all how sensitive this fact is, but take this as a reminder ..."

Rotterjack threw a very pointed glance at Hicks. Hicks received it calmly.

"Ironically, the information passed on to us only confirms what the Australians have been saying in public. Everything's Pollyanna as far as they're concerned. We're about to enter a new age of discovery. The robots have already begun to explain their technology. David?"

"The Australians have passed on some of the physics information the robots have given to them," Rotterjack said. "It's quite esoteric, having to do with cosmology. A couple of Australian physicists have said the equations are relevant to superstring theory."

"Whatever that is," Fulton said.