But Tim, after a “How ya doin’?” when Jerry got in, said very little till they got to the park. Working in aerospace, he was trained to think about security, where Jerry’d had to learn on the fly. Then, as they started to play catch to loosen up, Jerry’s friend asked, “So how’d you like doing the I-5 all the way up? I haven’t been much past Sacramento myself.”

“I didn’t drive up the coast,” Jerry said.

“Yeah?” Tim sounded altogether unsurprised. He broke off a better curveball than either one of them usually managed. “You were sure goin’ somewhere last time I saw you. Had to do with that goddamn envelope, huh?”

“You got it.” Jerry tried a curve of his own. It didn’t do much. His elbow asked him what the hell he thought he was up to. “Anyway, I headed east instead. Wound up in DC.”

“Did you?” Tim held up a hand before Jerry could answer. “Don’t tell me what was in the envelope. I don’t wanna know. As long as I don’t know, I don’t break any oaths by lying if they ask me about it. I may even pass a polygraph, ’cause I’ll be sure I’m telling the truth when I play dumb.”

“Gotcha,” Jerry said, and caught another pretty decent breaking ball. He sent a not-too-fast fastball back. His elbow liked that better.

They hit fungoes for a while. Jerry made one over-the-shoulder catch he was proud of and dropped a towering pop a seven-year-old should have caught in his sleep: about par for the course. Tim was just as erratic with the ones Jerry hit. Then Tim asked, “Where in DC did you wind up?”

“The Russian embassy,” Jerry answered, and waited for the sky to fall.

But all Tim said was, “Did you?” He eyed Jerry, very visibly thinking. “You have something to do with all the fun and games between the Russians and Kissinger? And with Ford’s speech and all that?”

“Oh, maybe a little,” Jerry said.

Tim knew how he talked. They’d hung around together since they were seven or eight; Tim was the brother Jerry didn’t have. “I wondered. I kinda thought so, to tell you the truth. I knew you were out on that ship. And if you were out there, you were there to work on the waddayacallit.”

“The Midlothian object,” Jerry supplied. “Yeah. Only after we saw it for real and not just in photos, we called it Humpty Dumpty.”

“Oh, yeah?” Tim laughed. “That’s pretty good, from the pictures I’ve seen. Did you … see the aliens, too?”

“Uh-huh. Steve Dole and I, we were the first two people into the spaceship.”

“Were you? That’s … something, man.” Tim thought some more. “Steve Dole? I know that name from somewhere.”