“He’s right!” Now the complex, hundred-jointed, threedimensional flux of that tail was apparent to everyone. Shock spread through the room in a palpable wave. “Secretary Moreland . . . it would be anatomically impossible for a human being to move that way. And the fins . . .” She pointed again, and Ellison tapped, magnifying the image even more. The fins rippled on the screen, as sensuous and agile as the fingers of a concert pianist. The woman turned to the young man with the sky blue tie, a look of desperate appeal on her face. “Are you sure this wasn’t created by a computer?”

“I’m reasonably sure—” the young man started, but Secretary Moreland waved him to silence.

“Think what we’re dealing with, people. Agent Ellison here gets hold of one photo that just looks like a bunch of seaweed to me, and he goes off on this rampage. Says he has audio files, but he’s been shouting all over the place that these recordings are somehow, for some big fat mystery of a reason, too dangerous for anyone to hear. That’s the best reason he can give for hiding his alleged evidence. And then he talks the Director into sending out teams to install video cameras, and they all come up blank for weeks. All of them except one, which just happens to get smashed a few minutes after they turn it on. Now this.” Moreland cocked his head at the screen. “Reasonably sure doesn’t cut it. Not when this video is coming from a known fanatic. No offense meant, of course, Agent Ellison.”

The men in the room were glancing around at one another, obviously doing their best to be persuaded. The woman in burgundy still gaped helplessly into the screen as if she hadn’t heard Moreland speaking, and for some reason the boy with the blue tie was staring at the woman, a look of inexplicable compassion on his face. An excruciating sense of futility choked Ben Ellison as he sat with his hands stiffly folded on the conference table. There would never be any stronger evidence than this; they would never manage to capture one of these creatures alive. He felt sure of that. These idiots were stubbornly determined to avoid a truth too big to fit in their tiny minds, and every day, somewhere in the world, another ship was lured to its destruction. It was all he could do not to explode with rage.

“Of course,” Secretary Moreland went on, “if these audio recordings were actually produced, maybe we’d get somewhere.”

Ellison looked up. “We’ve done an analysis of the sound waves, Secretary Moreland. I sent you the report.”

“Bunch of squiggly lines. What am I supposed to do with that?”