Strangers

watched Brendan, Dom, and Ginger approach the golden craft. The three had begun to move out of sight along the side of the ship, and everyone still on the shoulder of the highway had rushed eastward a hundred feet or so to keep them in view. Jorja had seen the portal, too, a round circle of blazing light on the side of the glimmering hull.
        "The three of us gathered in front of the door." Brendan spoke softly, yet his voice carried above the rumble of the truck. "Dom and Ginger and me. We thought… something would come out. But nothing did. Instead, there was a quality about the light inside… the wonderful golden light I've seen in my dreams… a comforting and compelling warmth that drew us somehow. We were scared, dear God, we were scared! But we heard helicopters coming, and we sensed government people would take over the second they arrived on the scene, take over and push us back, and we were determined to be part of it. And that light! So…"
        "So you went inside," Jorja said.
        "Yes," Brendan said.
        "I remember," Sandy said. "Yes. You went inside. All three of you went inside."
        The immensity of the memory was overwhelming. The moment when the first representatives of the human race had set foot for the first time into a place built neither by nature nor by human hands. The moment that forever divided history into Before and After. Remembering, their memory blocks having entirely crumbled, no one could speak for a while.
        The truck rumbled toward its unguessable destination.
        The darkness within the vehicle seemed vast. Yet the eight of them were as close as any people had ever been since the dawn of time.
        At last Parker said, "What happened, Brendan? What happened to the three of you when you went inside?"
        

        
        Using the rope bridge, they crossed the pressure-sensitive alarm grid. Pausing several times to employ other clever devices in Jack's bag of tricks, they passed through the finely woven web of electronic security that guarded the grounds of Thunder Hill, coming at last to the main entrance.
        Ginger looked up at the immense blast doors. The blowing snow had stuck and frozen to the burnished steel in cryptic patterns that looked as if they ought to have some meaning.
        A two-lane blacktop led away from the doors. Heating coils were evidently embedded in it, for not a speck of snow lay on the pavement, and steam rose from its surface. The road curved down and west across the meadow, into the forest, where the lights of the main gate glowed softly in the distance. She could not see the guardhouse past which they had crept in the pickup, but she knew it was out there.
        If visitors were admitted during the next few minutes, or if the guards changed shifts and returned to the Depository, the jig was up. She and Dom and Jack could scurry off, lie in the snow, hide. However, obviously little traffic passed through here, for the snow around the smaller door was smooth and undisturbed when they arrived; therefore, the fresh tracks they left would guarantee apprehension as surely as a tripped alarm. They had to get inside quickly - if they had any hope of getting inside at all.
        The smaller single door to the right of the blast doors looked no less formidable than those giant portals, but Jack was unperturbed. He had brought along an attaché-sized computer called SLICKS, and although Ginger had forgotten exactly what the acronym stood for, she knew from Jack that it was a device for penetrating electronic locks of various types and that it was not for sale to members of the general public. She did not ask where he had gotten it.
        They worked in silence. Ginger kept a lookout for incoming headlights from the main gate and surveyed the snowy expanse of the meadow for a foot patrol, though they were confident no guards were on prowl. Dom held a flashlight on the ten-digit codeboard that was the equivalent of a keyhole in an ordinary door, while Jack employed the probes of the SLICKS in search of the sequence of numbers that would gain entrance.
        Crouching on one knee in the snow, alert for trouble, Ginger felt exposed - and much farther than twenty-four hundred miles from her life in Boston. The wind stung her face. The snow melted in her lashes and trickled into her eyes. What a cockamamy situation. Meshugge. That an innocent person could be driven to such a state as they'd been.