The jets climbed, their run finished, but Gunner did not see them. His entire attention, his mind and his body, was focused on the town.

  "All yours, Gunner."

  Wilson did not answer. He dropped his nose, cracked down his flaps, and felt a shudder as the plane sank sickeningly, like a stone, toward the ground. Below him, the area around the town was lighted for hundreds of yards in every direction. He pressed the camera buttons and felt, rather than heard, the vibrating whir of the cameras.

  For a long moment he continued to fall, and then he shoved the stick forward, and the plane seemed to catch in the air, to grab, and lift and climb. He had a fleeting glimpse of the main street. He saw bodies, bodies everywhere, spread-eagled, lying in the streets, across cars...

  "Judas," he said.

  And then he was up, still climbing, bringing the plane around in a slow arc, preparing for the descent into his second run and trying not to think of what he had seen. One of the first rules of air reconnaissance was "Ignore the scenery "; analysis and evaluation were not the job of the pilot. That was left to the experts, and pilots who forgot this, who became too interested in what they were photographing, got into trouble. Usually they crashed.

  As the plane came down into a flat second run, he tried not to look at the ground. But he did, and again saw the bodies. The phosphorus flares were burning low, the lighting was darker, more sinister and subdued. But the bodies were still there: he had not been imagining it.

  "Judas Priest," he said again. "Sweet Judas."

  ***

  The sign on the door said DATA PROSSEX EPSILON, and underneath, in red lettering, ADMISSION BY CLEARANCE CARD ONLY. Inside was a comfortable sort of briefing room: screen on one wall, a dozen steel-tubing and leather chairs facing it, and a projector in the back.

  When Manchek and Comroe entered the room, Jaggers, was already waiting for them, standing at the front of the room by the screen. Jaggers was a short man with a springy step and an eager, rather hopeful face. Though not well liked on the base, he was nonetheless the acknowledged master of reconnaissance interpretation. He had the sort of mind that delighted in small and puzzling details, and was well suited to his job.

  Jaggers rubbed his hands as Manchek and Comroe sat down. "Well then," he said. "Might as well get right to it. I think we have something to interest you tonight. " He nodded to the projectionist in the back. "First picture."

  The room lights darkened. There was a mechanical click, and the screen lighted to show an aerial view of a small desert town.

  "This is an unusual shot," Jaggers said. "From our files. Taken two months ago from Janos 12, our recon satellite. Orbiting at an altitude of one hundred and eighty-seven miles, as you know. The technical quality here is quite good. Can't read the license plates on the cars yet, but we're working on it. Perhaps by next year."

  Manchek shifted in his chair, but said nothing.

  "You can see the town here," Jaggers said. "Piedmont, Arizona. Population forty-eight, and not much to look at, even from one hundred and eighty-seven miles. Here's the general store; the gas station-- notice how clearly you can read GULF-- and the post office; the motel. Everything else you see is private residences. Church over here. Well: next picture."

  Another click. This was dark, with a reddish tint, and was clearly an overview of the town in white and dark red. The outlines of the buildings were very dark.

  "We begin here with the Scavenger IR plates. These are infrared films, as you know, which produce a picture on the basis of heat instead of light. Anything warm appears white on the picture; anything cold is black. Now then. You can see here that the buildings are dark-- they are colder than the ground. As night comes on, the buildings give up their heat more rapidly."

  "What are those white spots?" Comroe said. There were forty or fifty white areas on the film.

  "Those," Jaggers said, "are bodies. Some inside houses, some in the street. By count, they number fifty. In the case of some of them, such as this one here, you can make out the four limbs and head clearly. This body is lying flat. In the street."

  He lit a cigarette and pointed to a white rectangle. "As nearly as we can tell, this is an automobile. Notice it's got a bright white spot at one end. This means the motor is still running, still generating heat."

  "The van," Comroe said. Manchek nodded.

  "The question now arises," Jaggers said, "are all these people dead? We cannot be certain about that. The bodies appear to be of different temperatures. Forty-seven are rather cold, indicating death some time ago. Three are warmer. Two of those are in this car, here."

  "Our men," Comroe said. "And the third?"

  "The third is rather puzzling. You see him here, apparently standing or lying curled in the street. Observe that he is quite white, and therefore quite warm. Our temperature scans indicate that he is about ninety-five degrees, which is a little on the cool side, but probably attributable to peripheral vasoconstriction in the night desert air. Drops his skin temperature. Next slide."

  The third film flicked onto the screen.

  Manchek frowned at the spot. "It's moved."

  "Exactly. This film was made on the second passage. The spot has moved approximately twenty yards. Next picture.

  A third film.

  "Moved again!"

  "Yes. An additional five or ten yards."

  "So one person down there is alive?"

  "That," Jaggers said, "is the presumptive conclusion."

  Manchek cleared his throat. "Does that mean it's what you think?"

  "Yes sir. It is what we think."

  "There's a man down there, walking among the corpses?"

  Jaggers shrugged and tapped the screen. "It is difficult to account for the data in any other manner, and--"

  At that moment, a private entered the room with three circular metal canisters under his arm.

  "Sir, we have films of the direct visualization by P-square."

  "Run them," Manchek said.

  The film was threaded into a projector. A moment later, Lieutenant Wilson was ushered into the room. Jaggers said, "I haven't reviewed these films yet. Perhaps the pilot should narrate."

  Manchek nodded and looked at Wilson, who got up and walked to the front of the room, wiping his hands nervously on his pants. He stood alongside the screen and faced his audience, beginning in a flat monotone: "Sir, my flybys were made between 11:08 and 11: 13 p.m. this evening. There were two, a start from the east and a return from the west, done at an average speed of two hundred and fourteen miles per hour, at a median altitude by corrected altimeter of eight hundred feet and an--"

  "Just a minute, son," Manchek said, raising his hand. "This isn't a grilling. Just tell it naturally."

  Wilson nodded and swallowed. The room lights went down and the projector whirred to life. The screen showed the town bathed in glaring white light as the plane came down over it.

  "This is my first pass," Wilson said. "East to west, at 11:08. We're looking from the left-wing camera which is running at ninety-six frames per second. As you can see, my altitude is falling rapidly. Straight ahead is the main street of the target..."

  He stopped. The bodies were clearly visible. And the van, stopped in the street, its rooftop antenna still turning slow revolutions. As the plane continued its run, approaching the van, they could see the driver collapsed over the steering wheel.

  "Excellent definition," Jaggers said. "That fine-grain film really gives resolution when you need--"

  "Wilson," Manchek said, "was telling us about his run."

  "Yes sir," Wilson said, clearing his throat. He stared at the screen. "At this time I am right over target, where I observed the casualties you see here. My estimate at that time was seventy-five, sir."

  His voice was quiet and tense. There was a break in the film, some numbers, and the image came on again.

  "Now I am coming back for my second run," Wilson said. "The flares are already burning low but you can see--"

  "Stop the film," Manchek said.

  The projectionist froze the film at a single frame. It showed the long, straight main street of the town, and the bodies.

  "Go back."

  The film was run backward, the jet seeming to pull away from the street.

  "There! Stop it now."

  The frame was frozen. Manchek got up and walked close to the screen, peering off to one side.

  "Look at this," he said, pointing to a figure. It was a man in knee-length white robes, standing and looking up at the plane. He was an old man, with a withered face. His eyes were wide.

  "What do you make of this?" Manchek said to Jaggers.

  Jaggers moved close. He frowned. "Run it forward a bit."

  The film advanced. They could clearly see the man turn his head, roll his eyes, following the plane as it passed over him.

  "Now backward," Jaggers said.

  The film was run back. Jaggers smiled bleakly. "The man looks alive to me, sir."

  "Yes," Manchek said crisply. "He certainly does."

  And with that, he walked out of the room. As he left, he paused and announced that he was declaring a state of emergency; that everyone on the base was confined to quarters until further notice; that there would be no outside calls, or communication; and that what they had seen in this room was confidential.

  Outside in the hallway, he headed for Mission Control. Comroe followed him.

  "I want you to call General Wheeler," Manchek said. "Tell him I have declared an SOE without proper authorization, and ask him to come down immediately." Technically no one but the commander had the right to declare a state of emergency.

  Comroe said, "Wouldn't you rather tell him yourself?" "I've got other things to do," Manchek said.

  4. Alert

  WHEN ARTHUR MANCHEK STEPPED INTO THE small soundproofed booth and sat down before the telephone, he knew exactly what he was going to do-- but he was not very sure why he was doing it.

  As one of the senior Scoop officers, he had received a briefing nearly a year before on Project Wildfire. It had been given, Manchek remembered, by a short little man with a dry, precise way of speaking. He was a university professor and he had outlined the project. Manchek had forgotten the details, except that there was a laboratory somewhere, and a team of five scientists who could be alerted to man the laboratory. The function of the team was investigation of possible extraterrestrial life forms introduced on American spacecraft returning to earth.

  Manchek had not been told who the five men were; he knew only that a special Defense Department trunk line existed for calling them out. In order to hook into the line, one had only to dial the binary of some number. He reached into his pocket and withdrew his wallet, then fumbled for a moment until he found the card he had been given by the professor:

  IN CASE OF FIRE -- Notify Division 87 -- Emergencies Only

  He stared at the card and wondered what exactly would happen if he dialed the binary of 87. He tried to imagine the sequence of events: Who would he talk to? Would someone call him back? Would there be an inquiry, a referral to higher authority?

  He rubbed his eyes and stared at the card, and finally he shrugged. One way or the other, he would find out.

  He tore a sheet of paper from the pad in front of him, next to the telephone, and wrote:

  2^0

  2^1

  2^2

  2^3

  2^4

  2^5

  2^6

  2^7

  This was the basis of the binary system: base two raised to some power. Two to the zero power was one; two to the first was two, two squared was four; and so on. Manchek quickly wrote another line beneath:

  2^0 -> 1

  2^1 -> 2

  2^2 -> 4

  2^3 -> 8

  2^4 -> 16

  2^5 -> 32

  2^6 -> 64

  2^7 -> 128

  Then he began to add up the numbers to get a total of 87. He circled these numbers:

  2^0 -> (1)

  2^1 -> (2)

  2^2 -> (4)

  2^3 -> (8)

  2^4 -> (16)

  2^5 -> (32)

  2^6 -> (64)

  2^7 -> (128)

  = (87)

  And then he drew in the binary code. Binary numbers were designed for computers which utilize an on-off, yes-no kind of language. A mathematician once joked that binary numbers were the way people who have only two fingers count. In essence, binary numbers translated normal numbers which require ten digits, and decimal places-- to a system that depended on only two digits, one and zero.

  2^0 -> (1) -> 1

  2^1 -> (2) -> 1

  2^2 -> (4) -> 1

  2^3 -> (8) -> 0

  2^4 -> (16) -> 1

  2^5 -> (32) -> 0

  2^6 -> (64) -> 1

  2^7 -> (128) -> 0

  Manchek looked at the number he had just written, and inserted the dashes: 1-110-1010. A perfectly reasonable telephone number. Manchek picked up the telephone and dialed. The time was exactly twelve midnight.

  DAY 2

  Piedmont

  5. The Early Hours

  THE MACHINERY WAS THERE. THE CABLES, THE codes, the teleprinters had all been waiting dormant for two years. It only required Manchek's call to set the machinery in motion.

  When he finished dialing, he heard a series of mechanical clicks, and then a low hum, which meant, he knew, that the call was being fed into one of the scrambled trunk lines. After a moment, the humming stopped and a voice said, "This is a recording. State your name and your message and hang up."

  "Major Arthur Manchek, Vandenberg Air Force Base, Scoop Mission Control. I believe it is necessary to call up a Wildfire Alert. I have confirmatory visual data at this post, which has just been closed for security reasons."

  As he spoke it occurred to him that it was all rather improbable. Even the tape recorder would disbelieve him. He continued to hold the telephone in his hand, somehow expecting an answer.

  But there was none, only a click as the connection was automatically broken. The line was dead; he hung up and sighed. It was all very unsatisfying.

  Manchek expected to be called back within a few minutes by Washington; he expected to receive many calls in the next few hours, and so remained at the phone. Yet he received no calls, for he did not know that the process he had initiated was automatic. Once mobilized, the Wildfire Alert would proceed ahead, and not be recalled for at least twelve hours.

  Within ten minutes of Manchek's call, the following message clattered across the scrambled maximum-security cable Five minutes later, there was a second cable which named units of the nation: the men on the Wildfire team:

  ***

  =UNIT=

  TOP SECRET

  CODE FOLLOWS

  AS

  CBW 9/9/234/435/6778/90

  PULG COORDINATES DELTA 8997

  MESSAGE FOLLOWS

  AS

  WILDFIRE ALERT HAS BEEN CALLED. REPEAT WILDFIRE ALERT HAS BEEN CALLED. COORDINATES TO READ NASA/AMC/NSC COMB DEC. TIME OF COMMAND TO READ LL-59-07 ON DATE.

  FURTHER NOTATIONS

  AS

  PRESS BLACKFACE POTENTIAL DIRECTIVE 7-L2 ALERT STATUS UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE

  END MESSAGE

  ===  

  DISENGAGE

  ***

  This was an automatic cable. Everything about it, including the announcement of a press blackout and a possible directive 7-12, was automatic, and followed from Manchek's call.

  ***

  =UNIT=

  TOP SECRET

  CODE FOLLOWS

  AS

  MESSAGE FOLLOWS AS THE FOLLOWING MALE AMERICAN CITIZENS ARE BEING PLACED ON ZED KAPPA STATUS. PREVIOUS TOP SECRET CLEARANCE HAS BEEN CONFIRMED. THE NAMES ARE+

  STONE, JEREMY ..81

  LEAVITT, PETER ..04

  BURTON, CHARLES .L51