Strangers

he had proclaimed the colonel more than fit enough for the elite DERO companies, he had noted peculiarities of the man's personality that made his report disturbing reading for Miles, who could read not only what was on the paper but what lay hidden between the lines.
        First: Leland Falkirk feared and despised all religion. Because love of God and country were prized in career military men, Falkirk tried to conceal his antireligious sentiments. Evidently, these attitudes sprang from a difficult childhood in a family of fanatics.
        Miles Bennell decided that this fault in Falkirk was especially troublesome because the current undertaking, in which he and the colonel were involved, had a multiplicity of mystical connotations. Aspects of it had undeniable religious overtones and associations that were certain to trigger intense negative reactions in the colonel.
        Second: Leland Falkirk was obsessed with control. He needed to dominate every aspect of his environment and everyone he encountered. This urgent need to control the external world was a reflection of his constant internal struggle to control his own rages and paranoid fears.
        Miles Bennell shuddered when he thought of the terrible strain this current assignment had put on the colonel, for the thing being hidden here in Thunder Hill could not be controlled forever. Which was a realization that might lead Falkirk to a harmless breakdown - or to an explosion of psychotic anger.
        Third: Leland Falkirk suffered a mild but persistent claustrophobia that was strongest in subterranean places. This fear might have arisen in his childhood as a result of his parents' unrelenting assertion that he would one day wind up in Hell.
        Falkirk, uncomfortable when underground, would be automatically suspicious of everyone in a place like Thunder Hill. In retrospect, it was frighteningly obvious that the colonel's growing paranoid suspicion of everyone on the project had been inevitable from the first day.
        Fourth and worst: Leland Falkirk was a controlled masochist. He subjected himself to tests of physical stamina and resistance to pain, pretending these ordeals were necessary to maintain the high level of fitness and superb reflexes required of a DERO officer. His dirty little secret, hidden even from himself, was that he enjoyed the suffering.
        Miles Bennell was more disturbed by that aspect of Falkirk's character than by anything else in the profile. Because the colonel liked pain, he would not mind suffering along with everyone in Thunder Hill if he decided their suffering was necessary to cleanse the world. He might actually enjoy the prospect of death.
        Miles Bennell sat in darkness, troubled and bleak.
        But it was not even his death or the deaths of his colleagues that most frightened him. What made his gut clench was the fear that, while destroying everyone on the project, Falkirk would also destroy the project itself. If he did, he would be denying mankind the greatest news in history. And he'd also be denying the species its best - perhaps only - chance for peace, immortality, endless plenty, and transcendence.
        

        
        Leland Falkirk stood in the Blocks' kitchen, looking down at the album that lay on the table. When he opened it, he saw photographs and drawings of the moon, all colored red.
        Outside, searching the property end to end, a dozen DERO troops shouted to one another, voices garbled and muffled by the raging wind.
        Doing deep breathing exercises that were supposed to expel a little of his tension with each exhalation, Leland turned a page of the album and saw more scarlet moons: the child's weird collection.
        The sound of engines rose to the kitchen window from behind the motel as the men drove at least two vehicles around from the front. Leland recognized the souped-up, all-terrain pickup's distinctive snarl.
        The colonel continued to page through the album, remaining calm, totally in control in spite of the series of setbacks that continued to plague him. He was proud of his control. Nothing could faze him.
        Lieutenant Horner's quick heavy footsteps sounded on the stairs leading up from the office. A moment later he thumped across the living room, into the kitchen. "Sir, we've checked all the motel rooms. No one's there. They left by the back, overland. Two very vague sets of tire tracks in the snow. Can't have gone