The Taking

too, as had decades of news stories about UFOs.
        The object traveled silently. No purr of engines. No whoosh of displaced air. From it emanated none of the pulsations that had radiated from the larger ship and that had throbbed in blood and bone.
        If the southbound leviathan that had recently passed over was the mother ship-or one of many mother ships-then the approaching UFO had most likely been dispatched from that larger vessel. This might be an observation craft, a bomber or the equivalent, or maybe a troop transport.
        Or none of the above. This war bore little or no resemblance to any of the many conflicts of human history, and the usual lexicon of battle had no application to these events.
        As the UFO drew near, it slowed, appearing to glide with the gravity-defying ease of a hot-air balloon.
        It came to a full stop directly above their little group, where they stood in the street, and there it hovered soundlessly.
        Molly's heart swelled with a rush of dread.
        Teach us to care and not to care. Teach us to sit still: quoting Eliot to herself now, seeking consolation in the cadence, reassurance in the rhythm.
        When Abby cringed against her, Molly dropped to one knee, to be at the girl's level, to pull her close and to help her find the courage to face whatever might come.

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    36
        
        BENEATH THE FLOATING MYSTERY, IN ITS GOLDEN yet baleful light, under its malevolent influence, the four of them gazed up, afraid but unable to look away.
        At first sight of the approaching light, Molly had considered fleeing with the children, hiding, but she had realized that if the pilot of the craft wished to find them, they would be found. Surely these ETs could track ground targets by infrared surveillance, by body-heat profiling, by sound-spoor detection, and by other means beyond the capabilities of human science and technology.
        She felt watched, and more than watched: intimately scrutinized, physically and mentally analyzed, her fullest measure taken in ways unknowable and profound. As she became more sensitive to the depth of this analysis, her fear grew more intense and, to her surprise, she was also overcome by shame-her face burned with it-as if she stood naked before strangers.
        When she heard herself murmuring the Act of Contrition, she realized that instinctively she expected to die here in the street, in this minute or the next.
        Neither the hovering transport's powerful light nor the effect of its silent propulsion system to any degree burned off the fog beneath it. If anything, the mist thickened, conspiring to keep hidden the contours and every detail of the machine.
        She expected to be incinerated, reduced to burning tallow in a boiling pool of blacktop, or to be atomized.
        Alternately, the prospect of the craft descending to the street, of being taken aboard, of coming face-to-face with their inhuman masters and subjected to God knew what experiments and humiliations made atomization almost appealing.
        Instead and unexpectedly, the luminous object moved away from them, receding rapidly. In seconds, every glimmer of its golden glow had been extinguished by the overcast.
        The thick mist was empurpled again, and the street cast into false twilight, as before.
        After hugging Abby almost too fiercely, Molly rose shakily to her feet. Neil stood with one reassuring hand on Johnny's shoulder. His eyes met hers, and did not blink.
        Their mutual sense of relief was palpable, but none of them had a word to say about the event that had just transpired, as though to speak of the craft would be to invite its immediate return.
        During the encounter, she had not been aware of the dog. If he had been frightened, he had recovered as quickly as the vessel had vanished in the fog. He stood, alert and apparently undaunted, ready to lead the search for other children.
        Molly was eager to follow him-and grateful to have a purpose important enough and difficult enough to prevent her from brooding too intently on the hostile new world they would have to face in the days ahead.
        Nonetheless, as Virgil led them farther north along the street, Molly noticed that the radiant lichen crusted a significant number of trees: stone pines, sugar pines, sycamores dressed with the yellow foliage of autumn. The transformation of the earth continued apace.
        She