“You’re right,” Rachel agreed. The feeling of being watched wouldn’t go away, but still she went on with her task. She took a hammer and crowbar and began to work at the back of the metal box. In a few minutes it popped open.
There was another box inside, a wooden box with no lid. Rachel gazed at it in wonder, taking in the strange whorls of the wood, patterns that resembled living things. Eric leaned over and looked inside.
“Weird,” he said. “Someone carved faces into that. I wonder what it is.”
Rachel just stared at it. Something was very, very familiar. She reached in and ran her hands along the wood.
“Look, there’s an empty space at the front,” Eric said. “Some kind of wires are sticking out. Do you think it could have been a probe of some kind? Gordy said there was an explosion at sea ten years ago. Maybe there was a submarine, and they launched these one-man probes to let spies enter our country without being caught. Only they were caught, and here are their vessels.”
He scratched his head. “Is that what this is all about? Does this have something to do with enemy spies? Maybe this whole setup is to study these pods, to see how it was done.”
“I don’t have anything to do with spies,” Rachel whispered. “But, Eric, I’ve seen this before. Those faces in the wood—”
The sound of a quiet sneeze made them swing around. There was a muttered curse from a dark corner of the room.
“Who’s there?” Eric demanded.
Suddenly a man appeared, armed with a rifle. He aimed it at the two.
“How long have you been standing there?” Rachel cried.
“Long enough,” the man said. “Did you think it would be this easy to move around on this floor? We were aware of your presence from the moment you opened that panel. You might have gotten away if you hadn’t been so resourceful.”
He looked right at Rachel as he spoke.
“I wanted to shoot you down on sight,” he said. “But the fat man wanted me to hear what you had to say. You’ve got something to do with those other two, don’t you?”
Rachel stiffened. Eric put an arm around her.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he insisted.
“Sure you do,” the man said. He waved the gun at the opening in the wall. “Move on out. You’ll be with your friends in a few minutes. And then you’ll all have a lot of explaining to do.”
Rachel was tempted to retort that the man’s superiors would have explaining of their own. But she decided this was one of the times when silence was best.
54
SAMANTHA SAT ALONE in a cell very similar to the one which held Julie captive. She’d been separated from Wil minutes after her breakdown, dragged yelling and struggling off the floor where Marty lay strapped to an examination table.
Marty.
Samantha kept looking at her hands, trying to see beyond the pinkish flesh and five fingers. These were not her hands at all, but “borrowed” appendages, part of an overall metamorphosis from her true identity. Seeing Marty had brought back memories of her real self.
“I’m not human,” she whispered, not even caring if she was being monitored. “My name is Ch’Mrazi and I am Ixtauran.”
When Marty had turned to look at her, it had been with aquamarine doe’s eyes. His eyes were twice as large as a normal human’s, the focal point of a bald, rounded head. His nose was small, his mouth lipless, his ears tiny. The overall effect was that of a baby.
This is what Samantha knew herself to be like; at least, it was what she had once looked like long ago. As a female, her head had been different in that her ears were bent downward and her cheekbones were more pronounced. Like Marty, she did not have five fingers, but eight, and they had been almost six inches long. Like Marty, she had also had a tail.
She was humanoid, but very definitely not human. She was beyond human.
And the others? Were the children also Ixtauran? Was Rachel, or Eric? Where did Barbara and Wil fit into this?
Some memories had come crashing to the surface when she looked at Marty, but not all. There were still many unanswered questions.
She brought the back of her wrist up to her eyes and wiped away tears. As far as she could recall, Ixtaurans did not cry tears.
Samantha heard rattling in the metal door, which swung open to reveal an armed guard.
“Come on, lady,” he said. “LaBerge wants to talk to the lot of you.”
He waved his gun into the hall, then followed her after she’d exited the cell. He did not seem afraid, or even curious. Samantha guessed he’d never been down to the lowest level, and had never seen Marty.
Or . . . he had seen the young alien and had no idea that Samantha was supposed to look like that. This revelation gave her strength. If no one knew who she really was, perhaps there was some way out of this.