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"Maybe"

"Why would it be there all this tier Hundreds of years

Thousands"

"But why a starship at the bottom of a pond?" "Maybe it’s an observation station, a place where they ht set up in Antarctica to study things there

Holly realized they sounded like kids sitting under the stars on a suht, drawn like all kids to the contemplation of the unknown and to fantasies of exotic adventure On one level she found their hable, and she was unable to believe that recent events could have such a neat yet fanciful explanation But on another level, where she was still a child and alould be, she desperately wanted the fantasy to be made real

Twenty radually Holly began to settle down froitation to which the lights in the pond had catapulted her Still filled onder but no longer mentally numbed by it, she remembered what had happened to her just prior to the appearance of the radiant presence in the , preternatural, al watched She was about to s she had found at the farmhouse

"It’s completely furnished," she said "You never cleaned the house out after your grandfather died"

"I left it furnished in case I was able to rent it while waitin for a buyer"

Those were virtually the sa in the house, to explain the curious situation to herself "But you left all their personal belongings there, too"

He did not look at her but at the walls, waiting for son of a superhuman presence "I’d have taken that stuff away if I’d ever found a renter"

"You’ve left it there for aled

She said, "It’s been cleaned h not recently

"A renter ht always show up"

"It’s sort of creepy, Jim"

Finally he looked at her "How so?" "It’s like a mausoleum"

His blue eyes were utterly unreadable, but Holly had the feeling she was annoying him, perhaps because thisand real estate was pulling him away from the hed and said, "Yeah, it is creepy, a little"

"Then why?" He sloisted the lantern control, reducing the flow of gas to the wicks The hard white light softened to a low, and the shadows eased closer "To tell you the truth, I couldn’t bear to pack up randht months earlier, when she’d died, and that had been hard enough When hepassed away so soon after her, it was too , they’d been all I had

Then suddenly I didn’t even have them"

A tortured expression darkened the blue of his eyes

As a flood of syh Holly, she reached across the ice chest and took his hand

He said, "I procrastinated, kept procrastinating, and the longer I delayed sorting through his things, the harder it becaain "If I’d have found a renter or a buyer, that would have forced s in order, no matter how unpleasant the job

But this old farm is about as marketable as a truckload of sand in thethe house upon the death of his grandfather, touching nothing in it for four years and four months, except to clean it once in a while that was eccentric Holly couldn’t see it any other way At the same time, however, it was an eccentricity that touched her, entle e, beneath his steely superhero identity, and she liked the soft-hearted part of hiether," Holly said "When we’ve figured out what the hell is happening to us, wherever and however we go on frorandfather’s things It won’t be so difficult if we do it together"

He s else "Jiave you of the woht, the woman who came up the nize her"

"So?" "But there’s a photo of her in the house"

"There is?" "In the living rooraph of a couple in their early fifties

Are they your grandparents, Lena and Henry?" "Yeah That’s right"

"Lena was the woman in my dream"

He frowned "Isn’t that odd?" "Well, nize her"

"I guess your description wasn’t that good"

"But didn’t you hear me say she had a beauty htened around hers "Quick, the tablets"

Confused, she said, "What?" "So’s about to happen, I feel it, and we need the tablets we bought at The Center"

He let go of her hand, and she withdrew the two yellow, lined tablets and felt-tip pen fro at her side He took the around at the walls and at the shadows above the

That h Ji not merely of the events of the past year but of the last two and a half decades And not just that, either More Much reater understanding, transcendental truths, an explanation of the fundains and destiny, and of the ht be, he sensed that the secrets of creation would be revealed to him before he left the windhtenions

As the second spell of ringing began, Holly started to get up

Jiured she intended to descend to theon the stairs and look into the pond He said, "No, wait It’s going to happen here this ti stopped again, Jim felt compelled to push the ice chest out of the way and put one of the yellow, lined tablets on the floor between him and Holly He was not sure what he was expected to do with the other tablet and the pen, but after a brief moment of indecision, he held on to thean a third tiht within the lilow seemed to well up from inside the stone at a point directly in front of the thee fire whipped around them, Holly issued a wordless sound of fear, and Jiht The worandh room, had seen an amber emanation within the walls, as if theuni born out of those er to reassure her "This isn’t The Eneer here This is a different light"

He was only sharing with her the reassurances that were flooding into hiher power He hoped to God that he was correct, that no threat was iical transforuel little ht had pulsed within the oily, insectile birth sac that had blistered out of ordinary drywall, and the shadowy for he would ever want to see , the color of the light changed to a radiance in his bedrooether the vile yellow of putrescent matter or of rich dark pus-and which had throbbed in sympathy with an ominous tripartite heartbeat that was not audible now