Strangers

in the snow which fell like a storm of ashes from a coldly burning sky. Another north-south county artery - Vista Valley Road - lay six miles east, and that was where they were headed. Once there, they would turn south and go to a third county road that paralleled I-80 and that would carry them into Elko.
        Ernie suddenly realized twilight was falling to the shadow armies of the night. Darkness had nearly stolen up on them. It was standing just a little way off, not in distance but in time, only a few minutes away, but he could see it watching them from billions of peepholes between billions of whirling snowflakes, creeping closer each time he blinked, soon to leap through the curtains of snow and seize him…
        No. There were too many other things worth fearing to waste energy on a nonsensical phobia. Even with a compass, they could get lost at night in this shrieking maelstrom. With visibility reduced to a few yards, they might drive off the edge of a ridge crest or into a rocky chasm, unaware of the hole until it swallowed them. Driving blindly to their own destruction was such a real threat that Ned could make no speed but could only nurse the Cherokee forward at a cautious crawl.
        I fear what's worth fearing, Ernie told himself adamantly. I don't fear you, Darkness.
        Faye looked over her shoulder from the front seat. He smiled and made an OK sign - only slightly shaky - with thumb and forefinger.
        Faye started to give him an OK sign of her own, and that was when little Marcie screamed.
        

        
        In his office along the wall of The Hub, deep inside Thunder Hill, Dr. Miles Bennell sat in darkness, thinking, worrying. The only light was the wan glow at two windows that faced into the central cavern of the Depository's second level, illumination insufficient to reveal any details of the room.
        On the desk in front of him lay six sheets of paper. He'd read them twenty or thirty times during the past fifteen months; he did not need to read them again tonight to recall, word for word, what was typed on them. It was an illegally obtained printout of Leland Falkirk's psychological profile, stolen from the computer-stored personnel records of the elite Domestic Emergency Response Organization.
        Miles Bennell - Ph D. in biology and chemistry, dabbler in physics and anthropology, musician proficient on the guitar and piano, author of books as diverse as a text on neurohistology and a scholarly study of the works of John D. MacDonald, connoisseur of fine wine, aficionado of Clint Eastwood movies, the nearest thing to a late-twentieth-century Renaissance man - was among other things a computer hacker of formidable skill. He had begun adventuring through the complex worldwide network of electronic information systems when he had been a college student. Eighteen months ago, when his work on the Thunder Hill project threw him into frequent contact with Leland Falkirk, Miles Bennell had decided that the colonel was a psychologically disturbed individual who would have been declared unfit for military service even as a private - but for one thing: He was apparently one of those rare paranoids who had learned how to use his special brand of insanity to mold himself into a smoothly functioning machine-man who looked and acted normal enough. Miles had wanted to know more. What made Falkirk tick? What stimulus might make him explode unexpectedly? The answers were to be found only at DERO headquarters. So sixteen months ago, Miles began using his personal terminal and modern to seek a route into DERO files in Washington.
        The first time he'd read the profile, Miles had been frightened, though he had developed a thousand rationalizations for staying on the job even if it meant working with a dangerous and violent man like the colonel. There was less chance of trouble if Miles treated Falkirk with the coolness and grudging respect that a controlled paranoid would understand. You dared not be buddy-buddy with such a man - or flatter him - for he would assume you were hiding something. Polite disdain was the best attitude.
        But now Miles was totally in Falkirk's power, sealed beneath the earth, to be judged and sentenced according to the colonel's warped view of guilt and innocence. He was scared sick.
        The Army psychologist who'd written the profile was neither very well educated as psychologists went nor too perceptive. Nevertheless, though