One Door From Heaven

to guarantee themselves eternal life. Oh, they were the ultimate utilitarians, ethical in all their undertakings, creating us to be of use to them and using every one of us fully, wasting none of us.
        Move over, Francis Crick. Move over, all you other lame Nobel laureates. The academy would award him not just the coveted prize, but all of Sweden, if he could prove what he had theorized.
        Seeking to confirm his theory, Preston had spent the past four and a half years ricocheting around the country, from one UFO sighting to another, meeting with gaggles of alien abductees, everywhere from Arkansas backwaters to Seattle, to purple mountain majesties, across the fruited plain, yearning to be beamed up and to have a chance to present his theory to the incomprehensibly intelligent worldmakers themselves in their bib overalls and straw hats, which is why he came here to Nun's Lake, only to be disappointed again, only to wind up in want of a window, spitting in his lap.
        Spitting in his lap? What a repulsive act. Next thing you knew, he'd be pissing his pants. Maybe he already had.
        Yet in spite of his fastidiousness, it was true: Here he sat in a peculiar corner of an odd sort of place, repeatedly and vigorously hawking up clots of vile black phlegm and spitting them in his lap. He was also ranting aloud about his theory. Deeply humiliated to hear himself raving like a booze-addled street person, he nevertheless could not shut up because, after all, deep intellectual analysis and philosophical rumination were the essence of his work. That's what he did. That's who he was. Analyzer, ruminator, killer. The only thing that perhaps he needed to be embarrassed about was that he had been talking aloud to himself… but then he realized that he wasn't alone, after all.
        He had company.
        The pall of smoke retreated like a gray tide, and the air in the immediate vicinity grew clean, and into this sudden clarity came a visitor of extraordinary appearance. It was about the size of the Hand, but not the Hand, not anything that Preston had ever previously seen or dreamed about. Feline, but not like a cat. Canine, but not
        like a dog. Covered in lustrous while fur, glossy as ermine, but fur that sometimes appeared to be feathers, yes, that certainly was both fur and feathers - and yet neither. Round and golden eyes, as large as teacups, pellucid and luminous eyes that in spite of their beauty struck fear in him, even though he understood that the visitor meant him no harm.
        When it spoke, he was not surprised, though its voice - that of a young boy, mellifluous enough for the Vienna choir - was not what he expected. Evidently it had listened to his ranting, for it said, "One problem with the theory. If incomprehensibly intelligent aliens made this world and everything in it - who made the aliens?"
        An answer eluded Preston, and he could come up with nothing but another glutinous wad of black phlegm.
        The gray tide flooded over him again, and the visitor retreated into the gloom, dissolved into a white blur, moving away, and then a final glimmer of luminous gold as just once it glanced back.
        He felt an inexpressible loss at its departure.
        The thing had been a figment of his imagination, of course, born of blood loss and toxic fumes. Figments seldom spoke. This one had spoken, though Preston couldn't remember what it had said.
        The firelight dimmed as thickening haze screened it. Evidently, too many pipes were being smoked here in the old opium den.
        From a far corner came a peculiar sound, a protracted thuuuuuud. Then again: thuuuuuuud. And yet a third time: thuuuuuuud. Like giant dominoes toppling into one another in slow motion. Ominous.
        He felt death coming. A wave. Sudden darkness, absolute. And no air, only soot that his lungs sought to store up by the pound.
        Preston Maddoc screamed into a black pillow, screamed in terror at the realization that his time had come to provide a little power for the starship.
        THUUUUUUUD…
        Last in line, moving toward the rear of the house, toward fire where fire had not been earlier, Noah worriedly looked back in the direction that they had come, back into air where blackened magazine pages glided like stingrays, back into the schools of lanternfish, and he saw the suspended black tsunami abruptly pour forward through the maze, and he cried out much as he