Tim didn’t hesitate. “Sure, I’ll do that. Hell, I’ll stash it in the safe at work. Nobody’ll get it outa there.” He had a tech job in aerospace over in Redondo Beach. As he stepped on the gas, he said, “You all right? This sounds kinda heavy.”

“I think everything is okay. I’m just staying on the safe side, like. If I’m wrong, well, you’ll know. Do whatever you think is best then.”

Tim turned onto Rosecrans and headed east toward the Harbor Freeway. Jerry remembered the freeway pushing south past the elementary school where the two friends met. It seemed a million years ago, but it wasn’t. His mother had already died by then.

Slowly, Tim said, “You mean, if anything happens to you?”

“Nothing’s gonna happen to me.” One more time, Jerry tried not to think about termination with extreme prejudice. One more time, he didn’t have much luck. It was too much like trying not to think about a blue monkey. Even as that thought ran through his mind, he realized he’d got it from one of Manly Wade Wellman’s Silver John stories. Science fiction and fantasy had started warping his life long before Stephen Dole first showed him photos of what they weren’t yet calling Humpty Dumpty.

Tim took one hand off the wheel to scratch an ear. He still wore his hair short. He’d grown sideburns, but that was as far as he’d gone along those lines. But for them, he still looked the way he had in high school. “I hope you know what you’re doing,” he said.

“Me, too,” Jerry said: an admission, he realized too late, that he wasn’t telling everything he might have.

The rest of the ride to the south passed mostly in silence. Only after the Long Beach Freeway divided and they went to the harbor instead of into downtown Long Beach did Jerry tell his friend how best to get to Pier E. Tim pulled into the parking lot where Jerry’s Rambler had been sitting since June. Jerry hoped like hell they’d remembered to turn the engine over every now and then.

He and Tim walked to the security perimeter that had protected the Glomar Explorer. The ship was long gone; the perimeter remained. Tim whistled softly. “Razor wire? They weren’t kidding around, were they?” he said.

“Not even a little bit,” Jerry said.

A man with a pistol on his hip came out of the little guard shack as Jerry and Tim drew near. “Do something for you guys?” he asked. He would have said “Do something to you guys?” in the same tone of voice.

“I’m Jerry Steinberg. I’m just back from the Glomar Explorer. You people have my car keys,” Jerry said.