“Okay. Good. If you think for even a minute that they don’t mean it, you’d better think again. Anybody who talks out of turn about this, anybody at all, is a sudden fatal accident waiting to happen. He won’t have to wait long, either. This game is for keeps.”

“They wouldn’t do that to you!” Jerry exclaimed.

“Of course they would. They’ll do it to anybody. You said it yourself—this is too big for them. The only way they see to have any control over it is to keep it secret and hold on tight. If they can learn things from Humpty Dumpty without waking the aliens, or if they’re positive the aliens can’t take over the ship as soon as they wake up…”

Jerry stared at him. “You’re as scared as I am.”

“Who in his right mind wouldn’t be? I think we’re fine as long as we’re on the ship. We can’t talk to outsiders here. But unless they’re convinced we’re harmless, I’d be real careful once I got home. If you hear a car hit me while I was crossing the street or something, maybe you should try to disappear.”

“Yeesh!” Jerry said. By sounding so calm and reasonable, Steve made it seem more scary, not less. How far can I trust him, though? Jerry wondered. If Steve reported him to Jack and Dale, wouldn’t the man from the RAND Corporation buy safety for himself? Or was there any safety to buy anywhere? Was Steve trying to talk him into saying things that would justify punching his ticket for good?

Once you started down that rabbit hole of suspicion, how did you ever come out again? The dangers you imagined—the ones you thought you were imagining—might prove real after all. Will I see CIA guys whenever I go outside from now on, the way John Birchers see Communists everywhere?

“Hang on a second. I have something,” Steve said. He opened a desk drawer, pulled out a bottle, and showed it to Jerry.

“Stolichnaya! Where’d you get that?”

“From Dale. He brought a lot of good Russian liquor aboard. I don’t think he told the Agency about it, either. Instead of shooting it out if we got boarded, he aimed to try to bribe the Russian officers with it.”

“No shit?” Jerry said. Steve nodded. Jerry went on, “We won’t get boarded now.”

“That’s right. And Dale’s a good Mormon, so he won’t drink it himself.”