Midnight

than five or ten minutes. She was afraid that some alien-possessed busybody would see her as she crawled into her hiding place and would call the police to report her, and that she would be trapped.
    By the time she reached the vacant lot on Juniper Lane, beside Callan's Funeral Home, and curled up in the deepest brush—dry grass and bristly chaparral—she was beginning to wonder if she would ever think of someone to turn to for help. For the first time since her ordeal had begun, she was losing hope.
    A huge fir spread its branches across part of the lot, and her clump of brush was within its domain, so she was sheltered from the worst of the rain. More important, in the deep grass, curled on her side, she could not be seen from the street or from the windows of nearby houses.
    Nevertheless, every minute or so, she cautiously raised her head far enough to look quickly around, to be sure that no one was creeping up on her. During that reconnoitering, looking cast past the alleyway at the back of the lot, toward Conquistador, she saw a part of the big redwood-and-glass house on the east side of that street. The Talbot place. At once she remembered the man in the wheelchair.
    He had come to Thomas Jefferson to speak to the fifth- and sixth-grade students last year, during Awareness Days, a week long program of studies that was for the most part wasted time, though he had been interesting. He had talked to them about the, difficulties and the amazing abilities of disabled people.
    At first Chrissie had felt so sorry for him, had just pitied him half to death, because he'd looked so pathetic, sitting there ill his wheelchair, his body half wasted away, able to use only one hand, his head slightly twisted and tilted permanently to one side. But then as she listened to him she realized that he had a wonderful sense of humor and did not feel sorry for himself, so it seemed more and more absurd to pity him. They had an opportunity to ask him questions, and he had been so willing to discuss the intimate details of his life, the sorrows and joys of it, that she had finally come to admire him a whole lot.
    And his dog Moose had been terrific.
    Now, looking at the redwood-and-glass house through the tips of the rain-shiny stalks of high grass, thinking about Harry Talbot and Moose, Chrissie wondered if that was a place she could go for help.
    She dropped back down in the brush and thought about it for a couple of minutes.
    Surely a wheelchair-bound cripple was one of the last people the aliens would bother to possess—if they wanted him at all.
    She immediately was ashamed of herself for thinking such thing. A wheelchair-bound cripple was not a second-class human being. He had just as much to offer the aliens as anyone else.
    On the other hand … would a bunch of aliens have an enlightened view of disabled people? Wasn't that a bit much to expect? After all, they were aliens . Their values weren't supposed to be the same as those of human beings. If they went around planting seeds—or spoors or slimy baby slugs or whatever—in people, and if they ate people, surely they couldn't be expected to treat disabled people with the proper respect any more than they would help old ladies to cross the street.
    Harry Talbot.
    The more she thought about him, the more certain Chrissie became that he had thus far been spared the horrible attention of the aliens.

12
    After she called him Dr. Doom, he sprayed the Jenn-Air griddle with Pam, so the pancakes wouldn't stick.
    She turned on the oven and put a plate in there, to which she could transfer the cakes to keep them warm as she made them.
    Then, in a tone of voice that immediately clued him to the fact that she was bent on persuading him to reconsider his bleak assessment of life, she said, "Tell me—"
    "Can't you leave it alone yet ?"
    "No."
    He sighed.
    She said, "If you're this damned glum, why not …"
    "Kill myself?"
    "Why not?"
    He laughed bitterly. "On the drive up here from San Francisco, I played a little game with myself—counted the reasons that life was worth living. I came up with just four, but I guess they're enough, because I'm still hanging around."
    "What were they?"
    "One—good Mexican food."
    "I'll go along with that."
    "Two—Guinness Stout."
    "I like Heineken Dark myself."
    "It's okay, but it's not a reason to live. Guinness is a reason to live."
    "What's number three?"
    "Goldie Hawn."
    "You know Goldie Hawn?"
    "Nope. Maybe I don't want to, 'cause maybe I'd