Tricia Monroe, out without her father's knowledge, sat in the sun.
George Champton tirelessly dug.
She had a bench, and a book, and decided they were all she needed then. Tricia, with her hat in her lap and the meager heat from the New England sun settling on her head, smelled the flowers from the park and listened to the children playing in the wide open yard before her. Trees rustled; the sounds of motor-cars and horse carriages went by behind her.
Alone for once, she read with a small, automatic smile on her lips.
Shame for her it wasn't a very interesting book, as she kept getting distracted by things more exciting, like a dog barking, or two children feuding, or an old man hauling a hand-cart and shovel.
She dismissed him as a groundskeeper, but his manners were strange. He stopped and searched around him, picked up his tools and kept moving, stopped again and looked again. She watched him, her confusion growing.
Eventually he settled his hand-cart down and took his shovel, plunging it into the earth over and over until a hole about the size of an orange crate appeared. After resting for a moment, the man reached into his hand-cart and took an object--from the distance it didn't look like much of anything to Tricia--and placed it in the hole, fussing over its orientation and direction. Once he had finished he took his shovel again and covered it with the dirt he had displaced.
Finished, he took his hand-cart and moved on, out of the park and away from Tricia's sight. She returned to her novel.
Some time later she figured she should return to her father's house, in case he again threatened to place her with a bodyguard. She began to walk home, through the streets of Boston, enjoying her limited time out on the street.
Of all things--but of course she would see him again--the old man from the park appeared, pushing his cart slowly in the same direction she was walking, patently ignoring the shouts of people to get out of the way, or pick up speed. He shoved forward at a level pace, letting the other people go around him. After a time Tricia caught up to him. His cart, other than the shovel, was full of odd bottles. They were large, perhaps large enough to contain a human head, but instead they held identical engines, part motor and part clock. There must have been ten or a dozen inside the cart; they rattled together, creating a clinking chorus.
The man saw her looking and regarded her with an unhappy raised eyebrow, mouth pulling down around a sea of wrinkles.
"I'm sorry," said Tricia. "I couldn't help looking. I saw you in the park, digging. What are these?" She pointed a finger at the bottles.
Instead of answering, the man pushed forward, leaving her behind. But Tricia had found something interesting and was not about to let it get away. Walking faster, she caught up. "Come now! Don't be angry; I want to know what you have here!" The man's face changed from anger to surprise. "Something to help the motor cars? I've seen a few engines; they look similar."
The man grumbled something she didn't catch. He let out a heavy sigh. "Safeguards," he said in a gravelly voice.
"Safeguards?" Tricia repeated. "What against? How can they help in bottles and buried in the ground?"
She walked next to his cart. He was trying to go faster but too many people blocked the way. "Come now sir, be a good sport. They aren't...dangerous, are they?"
The man shot a laugh; it tumbled through his throat and came out almost like a cough. "Don't care to explain it to you," said the man. He took a grubby, calloused hand from the cart and pushed her away; she nearly stumbled into the street. "Keep off."
"I say, sir!" shouted a man into whom Tricia had crashed. "Don't treat a lady with such disdain!" He helped her to the sidewalk. The old man had forged on, using his cart to carve a path. It quickly closed, leaving Tricia and the young man together. "Are you all right ma'am?"
"I think so, yes." She began to notice the man, dressed simply but elegantly. "Thank you. I might have fallen into the road but for you. Oh, and, I'm no ma'am."
"That's quite all right, miss." He touched his cap. "Thomas Gerryson. Where are you headed?"
"Tricia Monroe, and back to my father's house if it's all the same to you."
"I'd be wrong to say it isn't. May I see you home? A lady of your beauty shouldn't be on her own in these times."
"Mr. Gerryson!" Tricia said, blushing. "I accept, as long as you go on your own before we get too close. My father is...protective."
"As fathers should be." Thomas motioned to the street. "Shall we?"
They walked together, talking about trivialities. "That man-" Gerryson said as they neared her house. "Why were you talking to him?"
"Didn't you see what was in his cart?" Tricia asked. Her feet ached from the walk but she enjoyed the man's company. "Tiny engines in bottles! I caught him burying one in the park while I was reading. More interesting than this drivel." She shook her novel. "I happened to see him again and wanted to know more."
"Well, he certainly seemed unwilling to talk," Gerryson said. "How close are we?"
"Close enough, I say," Tricia stopped. "I've enjoyed our time, Mr. Gerryson."
"Please, call me Thomas." He produced a card with his name, address, and telephone number. "I'd like to speak again, if you're willing. I work at my father's printing shop. I'm sure he'd be delighted to meet you."
"I'll consider the offer," Tricia said, taking the card. "Perhaps I'll even say yes. That's all for now, Mr. Gerryson." She walked toward her house, leaving him before her smile could get through.
When she got into her home she stepped quietly, trying not to let herself be detected. She got into her room and laid Thomas' calling card on her writing table. The sun's down light had no presence here; it was almost dark enough to sleep since her window faced east. She changed into home clothes, and eventually went out to join her family at dinner.
Her mother and father sat at their ends and Tricia was in the middle. Her father read the evening paper as her mother talked away about things and, as always, Tricia went more or less unregarded. Dinner was a boring time, but near the end her father made a surprised sound.
"Listen to this," he said, laying his fork and knife down. "A man was arrested trying to bury something in Steven Louis' yard."
Tricia perked up. "Police arrested him with a shovel and a cart full of odd bottles." Her father folded the paper closed. "How strange. Nothing good, I assume." His vision seemed to clear and he looked at his daughter. "How has your day been, Tricia?"
"Rather good, I'd say." Tricia watched her father put the paper on a nearby buffet table. "I read in the yard this afternoon but the novel I chose wasn't worth the paper it was printed on." She huffed, already trying to figure out how to sneak out and get to the jailhouse without being detected. "Uninteresting other than that, I suppose, but peaceful."
"You should get out more," her mother said. "Meet a nice gentlemen. You're spending so much time with your books."
"I would love to do so," Tricia said, carefully.
"It's dangerous for a lady like you," her father said. This conversation was repeated, in differing words, at least once most weeks. "You need to be cautious. You know how I see things."
"Yes father."
"Though I would enjoy seeing you out with a man of good stature."
"Yes father."
"I'd have to meet him first, of course."
"Of course father." Tricia rose. "I'd like to retire. I feel rather sleepy."
"Yes dear," her mother said. Her attention shifted. "Edward, remember the Gerrysons will be visiting the day after next. The mister wants to work out a new deal."
"Ha, a new deal." Her father breathed in deep as Tricia froze. "Our old deal was too profitable for him, I suppose. They do good work though; I look forward to it."
"Father..." Tricia said. "Have I ever met the Gerrysons?"
"Hmm?" Her father thought. "No, I don't believe you have. One of the printers I work with. Why?"
"I thought I recognized the name," she said, turning away. "Must have been mistaken." She smiled to herself as she went to her room.
A few hours later, after she knew her parents would be readying for bed, she slipped out the back way dressed in dark, quiet clothes. Her night-boots, covered in a special felt she had procured from one of her father's binders, produced little sound compared to the other people walking the streets, the horse trotting down the streets, and the carts rolling past. She stopped a policeman and inquired where a man arrested at the east end of the city would end up for the night, and he told her after a momentary confusion.
Some time later a warden lead her to the cell in which the old man from earlier resided. "You're free, Champton. This lady's bailed you out."
The old man registered her with surprise, but quickly shifted to anger. He rose. "My bottles?"
"You'll get them. Give a man a minute," the warden said. "You'll be all right alone with him, miss?"
"I'll be fine. His bottles, please."
The warden left her alone with the old man. She grinned at him, hips cocked and a fist planted on the right side. He could barely meet her gaze. "I think I deserve to know your name, at least."
The man nodded rapidly. "George Champton." He paused. "Thank you."
"You're welcome." She lifted her head and stared down her nose at him, something her mother had done to her many times during her life. "I'd like to know more about what you're doing. Can't you tell me?" Champton made no motion to respond. "Burying bottles, each with a strange device inside. It isn't legal, or at least allowed, since I've just had to pay to free you. You're lucky my father knows Mister Louis, otherwise I never would have heard about you, and then I suppose you would be on your way to the county jail in the morning for digging up a man's yard." George only scowled. "Well?"
He finally made a sound, a clearing of his throat. When he spoke, he had more power behind his words, louder and clearer. "It's nothing for a lady like yourself to worry about. It's something I've tasked myself to do and something I must get done. You've done me a great service by freeing me, but it would be poor repayment to involve you in my work." He straightened. Tricia imagined he had been tall--once. "I apologize for shoving you earlier today. It was quite uncouth. I had been trapped with my thoughts for many days and wasn't used to someone like you speaking to me so frankly. I'm glad you weren't hurt."
"That's very kind of you to say," Tricia said, her heart falling. "And I suppose if you truly refuse to tell me what you're doing, I'll let it stay secret." The warden reappeared. "It seems your things are ready."
"With me, Champton. Miss."
Tricia and George followed the warden outside, to where George's cart and shovel waited. There were still a dozen bottles; the city's darkness made it hard to see what was inside.
The warden stood nearby as Tricia picked one up. It was deceptively heavy. The dark shape inside clanked against the glass as it shifted. The glass was slightly wet.
"I suppose I'll never find out what's really inside," she said, sadly, pouting.
"You won't. Be-"
The glass slipped out of her hands thanks to the moisture coating the surface, and shattered on the ground at her feet.
Instantly the engine roared to life, throwing light and great howling sound. Fine filigree lines of starlight rose in helixes, spinning from the center of the sudden burst of light; a crackling energy bounced around them, knocking the dust from her eyes.
"What in God's name?!" the warden shouted.
The light and energy and sound began to funnel, shooting up and--once it reached some distance above them--out in all directions, a thunderous crack accompanied it, nearly knocking Tricia down. The grandest fireworks paled compared to the sudden, shining, circular rainbow spreading above their heads.
The discharged sound died but the rainbow hung over them, grand and translucent. Tricia, held rapt by the sight, almost failed to notice Champton seizing his cart and dashing away; only the warden's cry alerted her. She chased him, boots pounding the road. Everyone they saw was watching the spreading circle of multi-colored light, or running in fear. Tricia guessed it was the same all around the city. After a minute she caught the old man and grabbed the scruff of his coat. He fell backward, panting and wheezing.
Similarly tired, Tricia pushed the cart and let it roll a foot. "What." She stopped and swallowed, trying to catch her breath. "Are they? What have you been carting around and burying in yards and parks?" She pointed a shaking finger at the huge halo in the sky. "What did I just do?"
"Nothing," Champton said finally. "Your fault did nothing but waste some of my time and give people around here a fright." He sat back against the wall near him.
"Then will you please be so kind as to tell me what it is you're doing?!" she raged.
Champton looked at the large disc currently illuminating Boston. "They are to protect us," he said. "I think something is coming to our small space, and this will stop them."
"What sort of thing?"
"A people, a species. From another planet."
They moved, looking for a spot free of panic. "I am an astronomer," George Champton told her. They walked near the bay, trying not to breathe it in too much. He pushed his cart before him carefully; the bottles within clattered as if pining for their lost brother. "Ten long years ago I thought I had discovered a new heavenly body. I didn't presume to think it was a planet, or even a moon...but perhaps a comet to bear my name after I die." He stared ahead. "I wasn't so lucky.
"It moved...erratically. To describe how I even could track it..." He shook his head. "Math, physics. I barely understand it and I know you won't. But I watched the dim piece of light go wandering from one end of our sky to the other, hoping it was something I could study further."
They walked under the disc's fading light. They were on their way to nowhere.
"I didn't understand how it was moving. Our tilt, or motion around the sun, none of it seemed to make sense. I'd studied the sky my entire life but I'd never seen anything like it before. I consulted friends, measured against charts, spent days on end sitting up and trying to figure out what was happening.
"It was following us."
"Us?" Tricia asked.
"Earth. It was drawing a straight line to Earth as we floated, coming closer with aching slowness. It took me years to notice, but the light--reflected from the sun--was growing brighter. It was coming for us."
"How could you tell?"
Champton glared at her, but then his face softened. Tricia saw him sigh; he seemed more tired than she could ever be. "It was a hunch at first, but the arithmetic proved it. That's the best explanation I can give at the moment."
"Fine," Tricia said. "The bottles?"
"That's a more complicated story, and will take longer to tell," he said. he put a hand against his chest, over his heart. "It turned me into a man that could push a woman into the street and not look back." He craned his neck up. "This is where I rest my head," he said, and Tricia found them at a run-down building. "You're welcome to come in, but I likely have nothing so close to how your home is arranged."
"Thank you, Mr. Champton, but I believe I'll head home as well. If my parents discover me gone, I may never get the chance to leave again. But Mr. Champton." He turned to look at her. "We aren't done. If what you say is true...I will have to know more."
Eventually he nodded, and shut the door on her.
The disc both provided a meager light to see, and helped her find out where she was in the disorganized city tangle. It took her longer to reach home than she thought it would, but at last entered the back way quietly. The city was still buzzing, and Tricia knew she would have to possess as great an interest in something she already knew about--indeed, something to which she was intimately tied--as she would to something she knew nothing about. Likely her father would speak about it in the morning paper. Maybe she would drop her knife, or spit our milk. She would be scolded for being unladylike, but it would produce the desired results.
Breakfast went as she had predicted, with much of the morning paper wondering about the multicolored disc. Tricia's father had read the story fully, after Tricia had pressed him. This served a dual purpose. Not only was it what an uninvolved Tricia would do, but it also told her how much was known.
"Appeared over the east side of the city near the bay at about midnight, sources say," her father read. "Its point of origin is as of yet unknown, but investigations are ongoing." He closed it, and laid the paper down, shaking his head. "Foul."
"I wonder what it could have been?" Tricia wondered out loud.
"Nothing good, I can tell you!" her mother said. She rose from the table sharply. "Sometimes I feel like the world is going mad! Motor cars, airplanes, and now this...whatever it is."
"Margaret please, you'll have a fit," Tricia's father said. "Tricia, until we know more about what that thing is, I won't allow you outside the house."
"Father-!"
"No!" He raised his hand. "I fear for you, Tricia, you know that. There's no reason for you to leave the house for a few days. As long as nothing more sinister is revealed in this business. My mind is set." He got up from the table as well. "I'm off."
Tricia sat at the table for a few minutes in the quiet room. Angela, their maid, cleaned up around her. Finally, she got up and went into her room.
She found the card Thomas Gerryson had handed her, and went about writing a letter to him, addressing it, and sealing it. She gave it to their footman, with instructions it should reach only the young Mr. Gerryson. She waited for the day to waste away, reading in the yard. It was utterly uninteresting.
"Tricia!" her mother yelled. "The Gerrysons are here!"
"Coming mother," Tricia said at the top of the stairs, rather pleased with herself. Their footman announced Mr. and Mrs. Gerryson, as well as, to her parent's surprise, Master Thomas Gerryson.
"This is our eldest," William Gerryson said. He and his son were dressed almost identical in long black coats and hats. "He was adamant that he be allowed to accompany us. I told him that it would be mostly business."
"I intend to go into the business," Thomas said, removing his hat. "Why shouldn't I learn it now?"
"A fine way to look at things," Mr. Monroe said. "Here's our daughter Tricia."
"A pleasure to meet you," Mr. Gerryson said, intercepting her before Thomas could get close enough. "And might I say you look lovely tonight."
"Thank you Mr. Gerryson, you're too kind."
"My son, Thomas."
"Thomas, is it?" Tricia asked as the young man moved to greet her. "A pleasure to become your acquaintance."
"Mine as well. I admit I'm pleased to see the evening won't be merely business."
"Dinner!" Tricia's mother called.
Having told Angela to prepare another seat at the table beforehand, Tricia found herself sitting beside Thomas on one side. The talk was mostly of the bright light in the sky two nights previous. Both families traded rumors and beliefs about its composition, origin, reason, and more. Tricia listened, trying not to laugh at their mad guesses.
"What luck, eh?" Thomas said to her under his breath when, at one point, the discussion got loud. "Our families are business partners?"
"I agree; fortuitous," Tricia responded. "You played your part well."
"I'm glad you contacted me," he said.
"So am I."
Dinner moved into business, which left little place for the women. Adjourning to the sitting room, Tricia found herself with her mother and the gray-haired and rouged Mrs. Gerryson. They could just hear the voices from the other room, discussing shipments, payments, and more.
"Tell me Tricia, what is it you like to do?" Mrs. Gerryson asked. "I saw quite a deal of inquisitiveness in your gaze doing the meal."
The statement put Tricia back. What else had the woman seen? "I like interesting things," Tricia said. "I find myself bored too quickly."
"It's been that way all her life," her mother said. "Couldn't keep still, had to be always looking around and moving. I don't know how many times I asked her to keep still when she was a child."
"Thomas was the same way. Very fidgety, as a boy. A bundle of energy. I wonder if that's why I recognized it. Rather a similar strain of motion."
"I think I agree," Tricia said, and was forced to change how she thought of Mrs. Gerryson in a hurry, lest she let something slip. Perhaps she already had.
"Mrs. Gerryson, won't you tell me how it is having a son? Tricia is our only child. Is it quite difficult?"
Mrs. Gerryson thought for a moment, then opened her mouth to respond, but was stopped when they all heard a sudden and riotous sound from the other room. Tricia's father came in. "It's happening again!"
They went to the window and Tricia saw a spreading wave of shimmering light under the clouds, from red on the outer edges to purple on the inner. "Look!" Thomas gasped, and they saw another ring rising to the south. A third appeared, farther away.
"What in heaven is happening?" William Gerryson shouted. "Rapture!"
Any further words were shut down as the house began to shake. A painting on the wall near them almost exploded, sending wood pieces to the ground. Thomas pulled Tricia away from the window and into the hall; they heard a smash and a cry as the window fell in on her father. A deep crack went over them and they saw the hall's ceiling beginning to tear open, raining dust. Thomas covered Tricia with his arms as planks fell.
Minutes later only small quakes continued, shaking the house dangerously. Tricia crawled out from under Thomas and went into the room with her father, lying in a pool of blood.
"Father! Father!" Tricia said. He looked up with slow eyes. Thomas and Mr. Gerryson joined her.
"We need to bandage him, quickly," Mr. Gerryson said. "But it isn't safe near the window." The family's footman, harried and wide-eyed, discovered them and helped carry Tricia's father to the dining room table. The maid fetched a roll of wrapping, and the torn clothing her father had worn was stripped away. Her mother had to be helped to a seat due to her shaking.
"What was it?" Mr. Gerryson asked. "What happened?"
Tricia, the only person who could have known, said nothing.
"An earthquake," Thomas said. "It's been some time since we had one." Thomas looked in the direction of the windows. "I wonder more about those strange lights. So many."
"Will he be all right?" Tricia asked their footman, who said nothing, simply kept working. She went to her mother and sat next to her, putting an arm around her. She felt very small; she shook.
A few hours later Mr. Monroe was sitting up, drinking a broth, pale and weak. He was alive and awake, at least, and Tricia felt a pressure remove itself from her. She found the Gerryson men standing at the window, watching the disks' creeping expanse. More had appeared; they could see five from the window and Tricia guessed more had appeared beyond its range. They applied illumination to the undersides of the clouds hanging over Boston, turning them into strange stagnant rainbows. The city was alive with fires. The earthquake had wreaked havoc worse than the house.
"How is Mr. Monroe?" Mr. Gerryson asked when Tricia joined them.
"I'm no doctor, but he seems to be recovering," she said quietly, standing with them in front of the large window. "Do you think it was a coincidence? The earthquake and the lights, I mean?" Could it have been?
"It's possible," Thomas said. "An unlucky coincidence. There was that light a few nights ago, which seems to be the same thing, and nobody felt anything then."
"Excuse me," Mr. Gerryson said. "I'll see to your mother, Thomas."
He left them alone in the room. "And what do you think?" Tricia asked. "Do you think it's a coincidence?"
Thomas said nothing, looking out the window with his arms crossed loosely in front of him, a worried expression coming and going across his face. "I want to know more." He said it very softly, almost afraid someone would hear. "I want to see where those things came from."
"I can do one better," Tricia said, after checking the rest of the room. "You remember how we met? When the man pushed me? They're his. The things inside his cart--he buries them. I was with him those few nights ago when the first one went up. I walked him home."
"You-!"
"I got him out of prison. We had to run or we both would have ended up in a cell. It's a good thing we weren't caught, otherwise I suspect we'd both be in danger of execution after this."
"You know where he lives?" Thomas asked.
"Yes. We could go there. I doubt he's in. He seemed like a man used to being out at night."
Thomas had his eyes closed and brow crunched together. He began nodding, slowly at first, and then faster. "Yes, I think I do." He turned, heading back into the dining room. Tricia followed him. The light was brighter here, and the adults in the room all looked at them when they came in--save Tricia's father, who was asleep.
"Tricia and I are going to see if there's anything we can do to help," Thomas said, a lie of which Tricia approved. "There may be people in trouble."
"I can't allow that," Tricia's mother said. "You know exactly what your father would say about such a notion. You're both staying here."
"I know what father would say," Tricia replied. "But I also know you probably wouldn't agree with it."
"Now more than ever I feel he's right," Tricia's mother rose from her seat straight up, like a column. "What happens if another quake strikes?"
"We'll be safer outside."
"In the city?" Her mother let out a barking laugh, and drew closer. "No, no, you two are going to stay inside this house until it's safe to travel, at which time the Gerrysons will go to see the hopefully light damage done to their home."
"If you fear for her safety, Mrs. Monroe, I assure you I will keep her safe," Thomas said.
"I'm sure you will try, Thomas Gerryson," her mother said. "But will you succeed?" She turned. "Mr. Gerryson, what do you think of such an idea?" she said, obviously expecting Thomas' parents to be on her side.
"Thomas is a man," William Gerryson said. "He acts properly. He keeps his word. If he says he will keep your daughter safe, I believe he will." Tricia's mother frowned.
"Mother, please," Tricia said. "There could be people dying."
"Go." Everyone turned, with surprise, to look at Mr. Monroe. He coughed. "She wants to help, let her go."
"Father?"
"Keeping you safe is one," he said softly. "But you want to put yourself in danger to help others." He stopped to breathe. "I'd be foolish to keep you from doing such a thing."
"Sh-she'd be going out with a man she hardly knows!" Tricia's mother said, shocked.
"I've known William for years. I see his son as very similar." He lifted a bandaged arm and waved it--the footman ran forward. "Go." He put the arm down.
Tricia looked at her mother, whose face was pressed together in anger. "I promise to stay safe."
"Put on better clothes," her mother finally said. "Something to protect you if things go sour." She glanced at the Gerrysons. "Thomas Gerryson, if something happens to her, I will hold you accountable."
"I accept the charges," Thomas said quickly.
Tricia reappeared down the stairs wearing clothes more suited to a dangerous night in the city, dark pants and a shirt to cover her skin. The boots, from her father's closet, were a bit loose, but certainly better for moving than the footwear she was used to.
"Not an outfit I'm used to seeing a woman wear," Thomas said, standing at the bottom of the stairs. The front door had been cracked in half by the quake; Tricia could see dark lawn through it.
"Do you see women wearing many different outfits?" she wondered. Thomas blushed. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't be so flippant," she said. "Are you ready to go?"
"Ready," Thomas responded. He tried pushing the front door open normally and found it jammed, the cracked pieces stuck at angles to each other. He grunted and pushed it down. "After you, miss," he said, offering his hand as a dust cloud rose
Tricia smiled and stepped into the Boston night. They saw the floating light from fires under the brilliance of the disks. More had appeared, and now they numbered over a dozen. Tricia wondered how many more still lay hidden and asleep in their shallow graves.
"A fine twist of the truth," Tricia said as they walked. "We go to help, but not the way they think."
"It was a clever phrase," Thomas responded. "But if something happens to you all the more will fall on my neck."
"We'll be all right. I can take care of myself. I had to make a hasty escape with Mr. Champton a few nights ago and managed that well."
"Is that his name?"
"Yes. George Champton. He told me a few things that night. Not everything...A sliver of the truth, but something that became harder to think a lie tonight." Tricia looked at the surreal cityscape, lit by fires and rainbow halos. "If we find him, I daresay we'll learn more."
"What was it he told you?"
Tricia relayed the story, about the light from the sky on its driven and controlled path to earth, according to Champton. "He said the arithmetic proved it. Even if he had told me the details, I would have had no way to disprove him. A short time after that we arrived at his home." She looked around. "We'll be coming upon it soon."
Instead of the down-trodden but liveable home Tricia had first seen, they found a pile of rubble. Tricia called for Mr. Champton but got no response. After searching they discovered only possessions, including a number of bottled engines; George hadn't been inside when the building collapsed.
"Do you know where he could have gone?" Thomas asked after an hour of looking. Tricia shook her head. "Was this his only residence?"
"How could it not be?" she said. "He--no." She looked up. "Of course. He's an astronomer. He must have a lab somewhere. He must have had a place that he used to study the stars. He must have had a telescope; we saw nothing like it in the rubble."
"But there must be hundreds of places he could go," Thomas said. He had his coat off and his sleeves rolled up. "How are we to find something like that?" He paused, and then hesitantly spoke: "Will finding him really be able to help us? What could he tell us?"
"He could tell us if the earthquake was his doing," Tricia responded. "He could tell us what the disks are for. He said he first discovered the point of light ten years ago; he's been working since then to do something about it. He must have had some plan in place, and was working toward it." She gestured up. "What else could these lights be for? As for finding him, I'm afraid I don't have any ideas."
"A simple enough solution," A voice behind them said. Thomas instantly jumped in front of Tricia. They found the weary-looking and fearful form of George Champton coming toward them out of the dark behind his destroyed home, dragging his cart.
"Mr. Champton!" Tricia said, running forward. "Are you all right? You aren't hurt, are you?"
"I'm fine." The man sat, letting out a long breath. "I came back to the house to try and salvage more materials and found you two pawing through it. I didn't know what your goal was so I listened."
"You were spying on us?!" Thomas said.
"To make sure you weren't out for my blood." Mr. Champton looked up at him. "I recognized Ms. Monroe quickly enough, but who are you? I didn't know if you had ill will on the mind."
"I was the person that kept Ms. Monroe from falling into the street after you shoved her," Thomas said angrily.
"Of course."
"It's all right, Thomas," Tricia said. "Mr. Champton has apologized."
"Yes, it was a sour thing to do. You'll forgive me if I can't bring about the same decorum at the moment. It's been a tiring night."
"Will you tell us what's been happening?" Tricia asked, sitting next to him, on a large stone once a piece of his home. "The bottles? The earthquake?"
"Related, though not directly," Champton said. He rubbed his face -Tricia saw dirt on his hands and under his fingernails. He turned his face up to Thomas. "How much do you know?"
"Ms. Monroe explained what you told her a few nights ago."
Champton nodded. "The light reached Earth."
The three of them stood in silence, in the minor light from the disks. Tricia and Thomas looked at each other with confused expressions. "What do you mean, Mr. Champton?"
"The light I'd been following has reached Earth. It is here, somewhere on the surface of our planet. The engines--the disks of light you see--activated because they detected its presence and shattered, sending up the disks. They are designed to reflect it back, but I believe they failed."
"How do you know?" Thomas asked.
"The only place I could bury the engines in time was around Boston. The light could have landed anywhere on Earth. The other hint, and more obvious, is the quake. Things impacting the earth cause it to shake; it may have landed close but not to close. Some dozen miles away."
"You're saying the quake was from there?" Tricia asked, aghast. Champton nodded. "Is there any way to prove it?" she asked. He shrugged. "Do you know what to do next?"
"I had just enough time to realize we didn't want the light to reach earth, and figure out a way to make small defenses." He brought his eyes up to take in the glow from the rainbow discs. "What little help it did. But what was I supposed to do? Yell about a danger from the sky on street corners? I would have found myself in a prison cell even quicker, likely shunted off to a sanitarium thanks to my 'raving.'"
"We can tell people now," Tricia said. "Surely they'll believe us."
"Why?" Champton asked. "Because of an earthquake? Rare, but not unheard of on the seaboard. Lights in the sky? Man-made, and even if they don't know that, there are enough skeptical people to try and find other explanations. And they should, of course; extraterrestrial threats are far down on anyone's list of explanations for quakes and lights." He leaned forward. "We must tell them. The city is in danger."
"But why?" Tricia asked. "Surely there's no further danger." Champton made no motion. "There is?! What is it?" He said nothing. "You know the truth! You can explain it to them! You're a scientist; you know what it was! They have to listen to you!"
"I live on my own," Champton said. "I keep to myself. Barely anyone knows who I am. I was placed in prison for digging in a man's yard a few nights ago. Who would listen to me, besides you? Even your friend has a look on his face that I've come to terms with."
Tricia looked up at Thomas, who was rubbing his head, a confused look on his face. "I admit it. It is rather fantastic," Thomas said. Champton nodded. "But if what you say is true...we have to try to convince someone!" He looked around. "The police will be out in strength. If we can bend one of their ears, we may be able to reach someone with the power to do something."
"Where do we go?" Tricia asked.
"The nearest blaze," Champton said, rising from his seat. "You're right," he said to the other two. "I have to at least try. I saw it; I have to accept the charge of making it known." He stood still for a moment, then took a breath, then started walking toward the closest orange light, and the distant throng of voices coming from it.
In ten minutes they reached their target. It was a smaller fire compared to some of the others; Thomas and Champton were conscripted into the bucket brigade bringing fresh water from a pump. Both rolled up their sleeves and began helping as Tricia sought out a policeman.
"Sir," she said, letting only a drop of urgency creep into her voice. "There's something I must discuss with you."
"Not at the moment, Miss," the man said. "There-"
She snatched the fabric on his upper arm and pulled him off balance. "There is nothing more important, at the moment." She gave him a blazing smile and reveled in his confusion and surprise. "My friend knows why the quake and the lights in the sky are here, and we need to reach someone that can help us. He believes we are in much greater danger than a few fires give." She let him go and he steadied himself.
"Calm yourself, young lady," the policeman said quickly and angrily. "If you don't get over your hysterics, no one will give you the time."
A little, tiny part of Tricia detached and planted itself, burning, between her eyes. "Silence. If you don't follow me, this city will be destroyed, and you and everyone you love will die. Do you understand me?"
The policeman stared at her, aghast.
"I asked: do you understand me?!" She took hold of him again and dragged him to the bucket brigade and Champton. "Mr. Champton, this policeman has volunteered to help us." She pushed the officer forward.
Champton detached from the line. "Thank you officer; this is a matter of the utmost importance."
"So I'm led to believe," the policeman said. He seemed pale in the flickering firelight. He glanced at Tricia, who stood next to Champton. She grinned.
"The earthquake was not natural. It was caused by something striking the earth; only twenty or thirty miles away if I have it figured correctly. The disks in the sky are my doing."
"What?!" The policeman pulled out his stick. "You did this?"
"They are defenses!" Champton said. "Intended to protect us, should the thing from space land directly on us! But it didn't! They have done nothing other than illuminate!"
"And what do you want me to do about it?" the policeman asked. "Why should I believe such a crackpot idea?"
"If you don't and I'm right, we will be overrun," Champton offered. "If I'm right and you do, you'll be instrumental in saving the city."
"Overrun? Overrun by what?"
Champton paused. The shouts from the brigade carried over them; the fire's light spread their shadows. "Monsters. Creatures. Beasts from another sun."
Even Tricia was surprised by this. "Crazy," the policeman said.
"I agree. But I watched them come for ten years, and did everything I could to keep the city safe." He pointed up, at the closest disk. "You see the results."
The policeman looked at the disks spread around the city, more than a dozen. He looked down at Champton, and then at Tricia, who stood with hands on her hips. "You believe this as well?"
"As much as an observer can."
The policeman looked from one to the other, clearly thinking through his next action. "Yes. Well...I suppose...Please come with me."
Tricia pulled Thomas from the bucket brigade, and they followed the policeman up the street away from the now thankfully smaller fire. They were taken toward a crowd of people all clamoring for help, and a group of policeman trying to direct them. "Captain!" the policeman with them shouted over the other voices. "Captain, these people have information!"
The captain, an old man with a gray, flat moustache, turned and waved them forward. Tricia and the others squeezed through the people around the captain. "Follow me!" the captain shouted, and brought them into the building behind him, quieter but not by much. The crowd shouted outside and men worked inside at a frantic pace. The captain removed his cap, revealing a bald head, and dabbed it with a cloth. "Information? What sort of information? Is it about the lights in the sky? Because if it isn't, I don't-"
"Yes," Mr. Champton said. "I created them using small engines."
The captain was struck mute for a moment. "Whatever for?!"
"Something hit the Earth," Champton said. "Had it hit Boston itself, the city would have been destroyed. I created the disks as shields. As it happened, the object landed outside the city. It caused the earthquake."
"Thank you," the captain said. "You've been very helpful. But I have much to do, and-"
"Move all your officers to the west edge of the city unless you want the city to be overrun," Champton said. "An army is coming."
"Army? What army?" He pushed Champton aside. "I don't have time for madness."
"The object was controlled, taking it directly to us," Champton said, undeterred. "It was being driven like a horse or motorcar. It changed course to collide with the planet. There is something foul coming from it."
The Captain looked at Thomas Gerryson. "Young man, is there any validity to what he's saying?"
Thomas stuttered. "We don't know anything in detail; miss Monroe and I are friends of Mr. Gerryson and we believe he's telling the truth."
The captain looked at Tricia for a moment, then turned his attention back to Champton. "Sir, I simply cannot move men to the edge of the city when they are needed inside it on the whim of something that may or may not be true." He replaced his cap. "Now if you'll excuse me." He marched past and asked a man to show them out.
Back on the dark street, they stood huddled together.
"Mr. Champton, are you quite certain?" Tricia asked. "You never told us about an army!"
"For just this reason," Champton said. "It sounds insane. But I know it's true."
"How big was the thing that hit the planet?" Thomas asked. "To hold an entire army...it must be massive!"
"No...too big and the sky would be covered in dust. Humanity as we know it would come to an end," Champton said. "I calculated it to be about ten feet in diameter."
"Mr. Champton!" Tricia said. "That's how big it is, and you go and frighten us all with talk about armies?"
In the waning rainbow light of the disks, George Champton turned his eyes on Tricia; they shined in unknown ways. Her mind bellowed at her to back away but she was unable to move. She stood frozen.
"You have trusted me so far, Tricia," the man said. "I ask you trust me just a little longer." His voice was smoke in her lungs. "I cannot overstate the importance."
"Sir," Thomas said. His voice seemed distant. "How can something that small threaten us?"
Champton covered his mouth with a hand and turned away. He stared at the ground, drilling through it mentally to find help at what he thought. "Mr. Gerryson, do you know things?"
"I'm sorry?"
"Things that you could not know? That the day will go well, for instance? That a certain man is a buffoon and a peckerhead, even though you've only known him for a moment? Perhaps even farther out, such as the belief that the woman you marry will be a poor cook?"
"I..." Thomas faltered. "I suppose I've thought such things."
"And you've been correct?"
"Yes. But not always."
"But sometimes there are things you feel so strongly--they must be true! And they are! Things that to be wrong about would flow against the wind and push against a mountain!"
Thomas hesitated. "I admit I've thought such. Once."
"And?"
"I was right."
"And so I feel about the object from space. Since the first time I saw it. It comes to destroy us. It was why I worked so hard to fight it." He looked from Thomas to Tricia. "I beg you. I cannot do it myself."
Thomas nodded, just once. "I'll help you." He looked at Tricia. "Miss Monroe?"
"It has been an interesting night," Tricia said. "I'm hesitant to see it end. But where will we go next?" Neither of the men said anything. "I have an idea. My father is a well-known publisher; he works with many writers and statesmen. One man--Steven Louis is his name--is a good friend of the family, and well-regarded with the mayor. If we can convince him, then the way will be open for us."
"The name is familiar," Champton said.
"You were arrested while digging in his yard a few days ago. Certainly you remember."
Champton frowned. "We're going back to him?" He put his wrists together. "You might as well clap me in irons now."
"Don't be that way, sir." Tricia found the proper direction. "With me by your side, we'll make him listen. I've known him for many years. I believe he will be able to help."
Champton nodded. "You may lead the way, Miss Monroe."
More than an hour later they arrived at the home of Steven Louis. It was a larger estate with an iron fence around it, and looked damaged only cosmetically by the quake. Lights were on inside the house.
"Let me speak with him," Tricia said to Champton. "I'm sure he won't be pleased to see you again," She turned her attention to Thomas, "and he of course doesn't know you."
"Seems like the surest course of action," Thomas responded. "What are you going to tell him?"
"The truth," Tricia said, and then knocked on Mr. Louis' front door. It was opened a minute later by a tail-coated man. Tricia introduced herself and the two men with her, and another minute later Steven Louis greeted them.
He was a tall, thin man, nearly hobbling as he led them inside. "Miss Monroe, a visit at this time? Should you be out?" He inspected her fellows closer. "Hold a minute...I recognize you!"
"Mr. Louis, that's why we're here," Tricia said as Louis jabbed a finger at Champton, anger flashing on his face. "This is George Champton. He's responsible for the disks in the sky."
She told him everything they knew, including the knowledge Champton had so recently revealed to them: the approaching army. "We've been trying all night to reach someone that will believe us, and has the power to do something to help us. You are our latest, and perhaps last, option."
"An army! Attacking the city!" Steven placed a hand on his forehead and leaned against a table. "You're asking me to believe something like that?"
"We are, Mr. Louis. I know it sounds incredible--all three of us find it difficult to believe--but Mr. Champton studied the object on its path to earth for ten years, and truly thinks that it poses a threat to us even now."
Louis stood rubbing his forehead, eyes flicking back and forth, his mouth a stony cleft in his face. Finally he looked up. "You sir, Mr. Gerryson."
Thomas nodded. "Sir."
"You believe this?"
"I..." Thomas paused, then looked at Tricia, who watched him from the corner of her eyes. "I do, sir. Not at first...but yes."
Louis looked at Mr. Champton. "You."
"I apologize for digging in your yard, sir. I found it necessary."
"You were burying one of your...'engines'?" Louis asked. Champton nodded. "Which create the disks in the sky. How?"
"When they detect a disturbance in the atmosphere's pressure, caused by the object's entry," Champton explained. "Then it activates. One was set off accidentally when its glass bottle shattered, creating a very sudden change in pressure. Surely you remember? It was the same night you had me arrested."
"I remember. I was still awake," Louis said. "Writing a letter. I looked out the window and thought I'd fallen asleep and was dreaming." He shook his head. "And the earthquake was from the object hitting the earth."
"Yes."
Louis ran his eyes over all of them, then straightened. "Russell! My coat please; I'm going out," he called over his shoulder. "You seem of sound mind," he said to them. "I have an exit strategy but the three of you don't as far as I can tell, so I trust you."
"Exit strategy, sir?" Thomas asked.
"If we're wrong about this approaching army," Louis said, "I'll just tell everyone it was a ploy to drum up interest in a book I'll write." He grinned, pulling thin lips back. "The joys of being a writer."
Louis' man approached holding open a blue greatcoat. "We'll speak to the mayor. I've just had dinner with him last night; he'll admit us." He shrugged the coat onto his shoulders. "Let's take my car."
"It'll be all right," Tricia, keeping her hair together with one hand, said to Thomas, to whom she sat beside in the backseat of Louis' car. "You've really never ridden in one?"
Thomas shook his head, trying not to tremble. "They're too expensive for my family. And we don't need one." He gripped the knees of his trousers tightly. Tricia laid a hand on his arm and smiled at him.
"I've heard about a company by a man named Ford," Louis shouted back at them. He wore a cap and goggles. "He intends to produce his own cars cheaply and quickly. Perhaps you will have one soon enough young man!"
Thomas didn't answer, and instead kept his mouth very much shut.
"How long will it take us to reach the mayor?" Champton asked, in the front passenger seat. The wind nearly took his words away.
"Most nights no more than ten or twenty minutes," Louis replied. "But with the city in chaos like it is it may be longer!"
Tricia looked over the edge of the motor car and saw no fewer than six separate fires, accompanied by flashing lights and sirens from firetrucks, all turned odd hues by the persistent disks. "Even if we convince the mayor about the army," Tricia asked Champton, "what is he supposed to do about it?"
"The city may be in disarray," Louis shouted back. "But I'm sure John will be able to figure something out. That is, of course, if we can convince him! Who knows if he'll accept the premise?"
"I'll make sure he believes us," Champton said from the front, in a low voice somehow clearly audible to the rest of them. Tricia felt herself grow chilled from more than the rushing air.
"I won't tolerate violence!" Louis said to Champton forcefully.
"It won't be violent," Champton responded in turn. He looked out his window. "The city's getting worse."
Tricia and Thomas both looked. A group of people gathered in a street. "That's a riot if I've ever seen one," Champton remarked. "They're using discord and destruction to take for themselves. No mayor would want to see this get worse!"
"And that's what you intend to invoke to the mayor?" Louis asked.
"In a way, yes," Champton replied cryptically. The rest of the drive went in silence. The motor car eventually stopped in front of the mayor's office, and the four entered the building. It was just as chaotic inside; there was never a silent moment. A policeman stepped toward them as soon as he saw them enter.
"State your business," he said simply. He was tired.
"My name is Steven Louis," Louis said, placing a hand to his chest. "I have to speak with the mayor; it's of the utmost urgency. The safety of the city is at stake."
The policeman started laughing. At first it was a simple chuckle, but quickly grew into a hiccuping roar, complete with shaking shoulders and tearing eyes. The room grew a slight bit quieter as many people stopped what they were doing to look at the howling policeman.
Tricia felt her cheeks burn with the attention, and took a step back. She saw similar looks on Thomas' and Champton's face, but Mr. Louis stood resolute, even placing his hands on his hips. He was nodding his head at a particular rhythm, and after an unknown amount of time had passed, he took a quick step forward and slapped the policeman across the cheek, cutting his laughter short like a bottle shattering.
"Young man! Hold yourself!" Louis shouted. "I am Steven Louis, a personal friend of the mayor's and I must speak with him!" The policeman glared, feeling his cheek. "I apologize for striking you, but this is no time for foolishness! The man here-" he indicated Champton "-may have information that will place the city in even greater danger than it was in before!" His face rumpled together. "And I will not let you get in my way!"
He stormed past the stunned man, and the other three hurried to catch up. "Mr. Louis!" Tricia said. "I've never known you to act that way!" she said as they went down a hall. The confusion of the building got denser as they went.
"I have no time for fools that deign to laugh when solemnity is required," Louis said, words straining through his mouth. "It pinches me badly."
"You're lucky the man didn't become angered," Champton said. "He could have had you arrested."
"Now?!" Louis shook his head. "Not now. He had too much to deal with." They reached the end of the hall, and Louis pushed a set of double doors open, revealing a room filled with men in various states of dress. The mayor, sitting behind a large desk surrounded by helpers, looked up with a telephone receiver in his hand, surprised.
"Steven!" he said, then hastily spoke into the receiver. "I'm sorry, someone's just arrived. Yes, there are fires, there are fires everywhere! Riot reports are coming in as well...damage to the docks and several bridges. Thank you."
He looked at Louis. "Steven, what in Mary's name are you doing here?" He looked beyond Louis. "And who are they?"
"Gentlemen, miss, meet John Fitzgerald. John, this is Thomas Gerryson, Tricia Monroe, and George Champton. Mr. Champton is responsible for the colored disks."
"What?!" Fitzgerald asked. The room shouted. An angered man stepped up to Champton, grabbing his arm. Thomas stepped in-between them. "Quiet!" Fitzgerald shouted. "Steven, explain yourself!"
"The disks did not cause the earthquake!" Louis cried. "In fact, they were put in place to stop further disaster! Mr. Champton himself can explain better than I." He looked at the man. "George--if I may--speak well."
Champton nodded and stepped forward. The others in the room stepped away, giving him a small area. He began talking, mentioning the object he'd seen in the sky, and its slow but unmistakable path toward earth. He told them he knew he would have to develop a way to defend against it, and the birth of the engines in their small bottles, as well as his tiring work burying the engines in the ground around the city.
"It came even faster than I could have imagined," he said. "I was predicting a number of years to prepare, but instead...you see what has happened. That isn't all," he said, cutting off the mayor. "It is my belief that an army approaches."
What little chatter remained in the room ended. Champton had all of their attention. "Incredible as it might seem, I believe that the object that landed contains a way to bring conquerors to us."
The mayor looked at Champton, and then at Louis. "You believe this dribble, Steven?"
"Yes sir I say I do."
"Well, I have something to say about that." The mayor gritted his teeth. "I-" His face changed, and he pressed the phone he held closer to his ear. "Mr. Roosevelt, hello. Yes, everything they told you is true. I've just...been told that the earthquake was caused by something striking the earth near Boston." He looked at Champton who nodded, and then held up two fingers and a fist, and mouthed the word miles. "Approximately twenty miles away. Yes sir. Yes sir. No sir. I understand sir." The mayor's voice changed again. "Where? New York...San Francisco, Chicago, Miami...do you know how many, sir?" He nodded. "Yes sir. We'll do our best. We-"
The lights went out, leaving the room in hot darkness. "Mr. President?" The mayor shouted into the receiver. He dropped it, a clunk in the dark.
"Lights have gone out all over the city, sir!" a man yelled from the window. His face was faintly lit by the nearest disk.
"The phone is out!" Fitzgerald yelled. "Someone explain this!"
"They've hit the power plant outside of Boston!" Champton said in a loud voice. "They're coming for the city, Mr. Mayor!" He walked forward, pushing a few people out of the way, and slammed his hands on the mayor's desk. "They're coming to destroy us! I know what you discussed with the president--he told you other objects had landed!"
"It could be a coincidence!"
"A coincidence?!" Champton roared in the mayor's face. "If you really think it's a coincidence, you can kiss my ass!"
He didn't wait for the room to recover. "The city is going to be destroyed, and you will be remembered by the survivors as a weak, useless ruler without the power to do anything to protect his citizens!"
He pushed off and walked back to his companions. "I'll be doing everything I can to stop them; everything possible!" he shouted. Tricia imagined his face was beet red.
"And what would you have me do?" the mayor said before they left. "The city is in shambles, the police force is spread thinner than it's ever been! We have no army, no way to contact them. The people in this room and in this building are all we have at the moment unless we have more time!"
Champton stood motionless at the end of the room. Tricia, Thomas, and Mr. Louis watched him, feeling the emotions from the two men attack each other. "I have forty or so engines, still bottled. Send people with me to gather them. In the meantime, get word out to the city, let them know what's happening. This is not something for the awake and ready, Mr. Mayor. Let loose the lights of wakefulness, or our city will be put to rest."
The mayor sat at his desk with fists clenched. "Nathaniels." A man responded. "Gather five other men and take a car with Mr. Champton. No, seven others. Mr. Louis will accompany you." He shot up. His chest was filled with air. "Mr. Gerryson, Miss Monroe, you will stay in the building for the time. Jackson, send runners to every police station...every fire station...every church. Get them to make as much noise as possible. Get everyone out of bed and ready for action. We need as many men as possible at the edge of the city." He looked up. "Now."
The city had turned from a bed of crackling fires and shouts into a beast making ready to charge. Tricia guessed not a single soul slept, at least not soundly. No one could ignore the sirens, the ringing bells, the shouts from every man and child. Alarm, alarm. A cold wind swept past Tricia.
She and Thomas stood next to each other, just barely not touching, on a bridge. Under them, the Charles river flowed, undisturbed. To their east, the Cambridge campus rose up, beginning to fill with the minds and bodies of young men and their energy. Three hours had passed, and Tricia badly wished she could talk to her parents. She saw similar thoughts on Thomas' face. They still waited for Champton, Louis, and the other men with the bottled engines, but they'd helped the Mayor and his cabinet corral the many people inside the building, and all trucked to the west side of the city, those riding either hysterically chatting or sitting in stony silence.
Now they sat in pods of three or four, clerks and office assistants roused from their sleep by an earthquake and now expecting to fight against an army.
Other than the gently fading disks, it was dark.
Tricia worriedly looked back toward the city, searching for the two vehicles the men had taken to Champton's ruined home. "They'll be back," Thomas assured her. She looked at him. "Mr. Louis is very energetic. I'm sure after what happened in the mayor's office he'll let nothing stop him. Mr. Champton has surely been galvanized as well. They'll come back."
"Supposing they do," she said. "And then what happens?" She uncrossed one arm and waved it over the darkness in front of her. "Do monsters come spilling in to break us down and kill us?"
"I won't let them get you."
She regarded Thomas. "Who will stop them from getting you?" Thomas didn't answer, but they found themselves looking into each others' eyes. "I'm sorry," Tricia finally said, looking at the ground. "I can't stop thinking about all this. None of it really seemed real until the mayor's office. It was just something interesting to do. But now."
"Now we're in danger," Thomas said. "Real danger, not fanciful thoughts of pain and suffering--it measures to greatly exist in our future." He hugged her, forcing a gasp to escape from her mouth. "I'm scared too."
"Mr. Gerryson-"
"My name is Thomas, Tricia."
After a second she hugged him back, and they stood quietly together, her head pressed against his shirt. She began to think she would fall asleep until a light traveled over the bridge and across them. They found a truck and Mr. Louis' motorcar approaching.
The vehicles halted and the men piled out, carrying bottles. "Miss Monroe, Mr. Gerryson," Champton said to them when he saw them approach. "We would have gotten here much sooner, but the roads were thronged with confusion. The mayor's edict helped us none, but it's better that everyone knows what is going on. Come, there are many engines."
Thomas joined the group of men unloading the truck, and after a few minutes the bottles, grouped together and standing upright, twinkled in the disks' light. The mayor found them.
"Okay Mr. Champton, we have your bottles. What do you mean to do next?"
"We give them to groups of three or four people and spread them along the edge of the city. It will be difficult, but once we discover which direction they're coming from, we group there. The disks will be able to to keep them and anything else that tries to pass through them back. Has there been any sight?"
"Sight of what?" the mayor said. "They don't know what they're looking for, and there's no light, just a few torches."
"Use the trucks and cars," Champton responded quickly. "We saw them being used for light all around the city. Each group with a vehicle. No, two. Once they spot them, send one of the trucks back here."
"What will be here?"
"The rest of us," Champton said. Behind him, people were gathering, holding torches and civil war rifles, like scared villagers on their way to the monster's lair. "But we need more time to get a proper defense. That's what the engines are for."
The mayor listened as Champton explained, then began separating those present into groups. They went scrounging for vehicles; the mayor declared a state of emergency. Thomas went with one of the groups, leaving Tricia with Champton.
"How long before morning, do you think?" she asked him at one quiet point. Thomas and the other men had left in squads over thirty minutes ago. "I've never stayed awake for this long."
"You must be very tired," Champton responded. He looked up. "I'd say it's about three...maybe four o'clock. Several hours before the sun comes up. If you wish, you may rest. I'll wake you if something happens."
Tricia nodded and sat down, leaning against the stone wall of the a retaining wall. Her next thought was another earthquake had hit, but it was only Mr. Champton shaking her. "Tricia! Tricia!" he whispered.
The sky had changed. It was a fraction lighter. "What? What?" she mumbled with stiff lips.
"They found them, south of here. We're going there now!"
"How long was I asleep?" she asked, slowly getting up.
"Less than an hour," Champton replied. "Quickly, help me get these engines."
They loaded up bottles with several other helpers and got into a vehicle with an open top and loud, snarling motor. The driver took them along the Charles river, and over the treetops and buildings a rainbow disk blazed into life.
The vehicle swerved but stayed upright, all passengers yelling out in surprise. The disk illuminated the land around them like a sunrise, and the driver pushed forward, bringing the vehicle up to speed.
It wound through trees then pulled to a halt. A half-dozen other vehicles were already there, thronged with people unloading themselves and bottles. The disk was a semicircle of color; close by it seemed like a wall.
Tricia and Champton went beyond the trucks to where the engine had been deployed. About a dozen men were there, armed with rifles and torches, watching beyond the disk.
Through its translucent surface Tricia made out shapes. They could have been men--once--but now their skin seemed to be bark, or pieces of stone growing up and out from their joints and bones. Their heads and faces were elongated and stretched, and their limbs the same. They were tall and wide. Some carried large objects like hammers or spears, others had smaller tube-like objects. One of them pointed his tube and ejected a burning white line at the rainbow disk, making a sharp crackling sound which split the air and released smoke from where it met the disk, but appeared to do little more.
"See!" Champton said. "See what I foretold! Monsters!" He shouted to the other men with him, waving his hand at the score or more creatures. "This won't be all! They will go around! They could already be in the city!"
"But what do we do?" a young man asked.
"Aren't you an American?" Champton asked. "You show them what happens when invaders land on our shores!" He took a rifle from one of the men and shook it. "Bullets will pierce them just as well as they will us!" A cheer went up. "But we need more time! We must keep them from getting inside the city, or we'll have a massacre on our hands. The bottled engines, when aimed parallel to the ground and smashed, will create impenetrable shields such as you see before you!
"We must create a barrier around the city until we have enough here to defend ourselves! The city wakes quickly, but the barbarians are at our door!" He shook the rifle again; silhouetted in the rainbow's light he appeared to be a furious creature from myth. Tricia watched from the line of vehicles as he rallied the men. She looked up.
"Mr. Champton!" she shouted. "They're moving!" Champton looked. The creatures were loping north, toward the distant edge of the disk.
"Follow them, quickly!" Champton yelled, and men streamed past her toward the trucks. She and Champton followed, reaching the edge of the disk ahead of the monsters.
There were several trucks there already, including Thomas'. Tricia found him and embraced him quickly. "I saw them," she said. "Champton was right."
"Sir!" a man hollered at Champton. "They're coming!" Tricia and Thomas found many more monsters than before rushing forward around the edge of the disk.
Thomas grabbed the nearest engine and pointed it at the edge of the first rainbow, squinting in the glow. Without thinking Tricia snatched a rifle from a man near her and turned it around, smashing the end of the bottle with the rifle's stock.
Brilliant light shot out, driving forward toward the monsters streaming around the disk. It collided with the lead, expanding in the blink of an eye to form into an identical twin of the disk alongside it. The lead monster and many more were thrown backward by a tremendous force, rolling and scraping the ground as they fell. More stepped up to batter against the disk but could make no dent, and then took off north once more, rushing for the next edge.
Compared to the fake light of the disks, the true sunrise was a mesmerizing array of beauty.
For hours the citizens of Boston had worked to keep the monsters out of the city, slowly gaining strength as the city came to realize fires and riots held second throne to invading beasts.
The disks came to barricade the entire city from the beasts until they ran out, and then faded away slowly. By then enough policemen and militia members had gathered, and drove the monsters back. There was still no power; telephones were out and may never return.
After being awake for hours, sore and tired, drained of everything except a blurry forward motion for the next task, Tricia and Thomas returned to her family's home. They were dropped off, standing hand-in-hand, both unaware of what such a thing would have meant twenty-four hours ago; even if they had known neither would have cared.
They entered the home, calling out, and Tricia's parents, Thomas' parents, the maid and the footman emerged, holding old weapons and with worried faces.
Tricia and Thomas told them everything.
"It's all changed," Thomas said. Tricia sat next to him, letting him do most of the talking. "In the span of a day the greatest event in human history occurred, and we survived by the width of a child's hair. Everything will be different now."
"And the two of you?" Mr. Gerryson--speaking for all four parents present--asked.
"Clinging to each other," Tricia said. Her voice was dusky, exhaustion coming across in low tones. "I'm not likely to let go."
Thomas sat up straight. "If that's all right with you, Mr. Monroe."
"Thomas, you kept her safe through the entire night-"
"She kept me safe just as often."
"You held your word, I'm saying." Tricia's father sat back. "I see nothing to discuss." Thomas nodded, smiling.
"You two must be dead on your feet," Tricia's mother said. "Angela and I will make up a bed for you, Thomas. Please...get some rest."
Boston became one of the few cities on Earth free of destruction, and without question the safest. Champton's design for the bottled engines spread to other cities and holdouts with the help of courageous men and women, ferrying the plans across desolate, enemy-ridden roads. Boston grew thanks to its status of a safe haven, pressing against the attackers. Humanity remained, resolute against its foe.
Victory? None could know.
But, decades later, a woman named Joan Gerryson, while walking home after working at the barricades, ran across an old man named George Champton, who curiously didn't recognize her, or her name. He told her he had found something some miles away from the city with an off-course supply truck. It was a large rock, perhaps ten feet across, and every hour or so one of the enemies would climb out--a slow, unending stream. He wondered if, perhaps, it was where they were coming from. He wondered if it could be destroyed.
Joan, who had known only the city, was very interested.
George Champton tirelessly dug.
She had a bench, and a book, and decided they were all she needed then. Tricia, with her hat in her lap and the meager heat from the New England sun settling on her head, smelled the flowers from the park and listened to the children playing in the wide open yard before her. Trees rustled; the sounds of motor-cars and horse carriages went by behind her.
Alone for once, she read with a small, automatic smile on her lips.
Shame for her it wasn't a very interesting book, as she kept getting distracted by things more exciting, like a dog barking, or two children feuding, or an old man hauling a hand-cart and shovel.
She dismissed him as a groundskeeper, but his manners were strange. He stopped and searched around him, picked up his tools and kept moving, stopped again and looked again. She watched him, her confusion growing.
Eventually he settled his hand-cart down and took his shovel, plunging it into the earth over and over until a hole about the size of an orange crate appeared. After resting for a moment, the man reached into his hand-cart and took an object--from the distance it didn't look like much of anything to Tricia--and placed it in the hole, fussing over its orientation and direction. Once he had finished he took his shovel again and covered it with the dirt he had displaced.
Finished, he took his hand-cart and moved on, out of the park and away from Tricia's sight. She returned to her novel.
Some time later she figured she should return to her father's house, in case he again threatened to place her with a bodyguard. She began to walk home, through the streets of Boston, enjoying her limited time out on the street.
Of all things--but of course she would see him again--the old man from the park appeared, pushing his cart slowly in the same direction she was walking, patently ignoring the shouts of people to get out of the way, or pick up speed. He shoved forward at a level pace, letting the other people go around him. After a time Tricia caught up to him. His cart, other than the shovel, was full of odd bottles. They were large, perhaps large enough to contain a human head, but instead they held identical engines, part motor and part clock. There must have been ten or a dozen inside the cart; they rattled together, creating a clinking chorus.
The man saw her looking and regarded her with an unhappy raised eyebrow, mouth pulling down around a sea of wrinkles.
"I'm sorry," said Tricia. "I couldn't help looking. I saw you in the park, digging. What are these?" She pointed a finger at the bottles.
Instead of answering, the man pushed forward, leaving her behind. But Tricia had found something interesting and was not about to let it get away. Walking faster, she caught up. "Come now! Don't be angry; I want to know what you have here!" The man's face changed from anger to surprise. "Something to help the motor cars? I've seen a few engines; they look similar."
The man grumbled something she didn't catch. He let out a heavy sigh. "Safeguards," he said in a gravelly voice.
"Safeguards?" Tricia repeated. "What against? How can they help in bottles and buried in the ground?"
She walked next to his cart. He was trying to go faster but too many people blocked the way. "Come now sir, be a good sport. They aren't...dangerous, are they?"
The man shot a laugh; it tumbled through his throat and came out almost like a cough. "Don't care to explain it to you," said the man. He took a grubby, calloused hand from the cart and pushed her away; she nearly stumbled into the street. "Keep off."
"I say, sir!" shouted a man into whom Tricia had crashed. "Don't treat a lady with such disdain!" He helped her to the sidewalk. The old man had forged on, using his cart to carve a path. It quickly closed, leaving Tricia and the young man together. "Are you all right ma'am?"
"I think so, yes." She began to notice the man, dressed simply but elegantly. "Thank you. I might have fallen into the road but for you. Oh, and, I'm no ma'am."
"That's quite all right, miss." He touched his cap. "Thomas Gerryson. Where are you headed?"
"Tricia Monroe, and back to my father's house if it's all the same to you."
"I'd be wrong to say it isn't. May I see you home? A lady of your beauty shouldn't be on her own in these times."
"Mr. Gerryson!" Tricia said, blushing. "I accept, as long as you go on your own before we get too close. My father is...protective."
"As fathers should be." Thomas motioned to the street. "Shall we?"
They walked together, talking about trivialities. "That man-" Gerryson said as they neared her house. "Why were you talking to him?"
"Didn't you see what was in his cart?" Tricia asked. Her feet ached from the walk but she enjoyed the man's company. "Tiny engines in bottles! I caught him burying one in the park while I was reading. More interesting than this drivel." She shook her novel. "I happened to see him again and wanted to know more."
"Well, he certainly seemed unwilling to talk," Gerryson said. "How close are we?"
"Close enough, I say," Tricia stopped. "I've enjoyed our time, Mr. Gerryson."
"Please, call me Thomas." He produced a card with his name, address, and telephone number. "I'd like to speak again, if you're willing. I work at my father's printing shop. I'm sure he'd be delighted to meet you."
"I'll consider the offer," Tricia said, taking the card. "Perhaps I'll even say yes. That's all for now, Mr. Gerryson." She walked toward her house, leaving him before her smile could get through.
When she got into her home she stepped quietly, trying not to let herself be detected. She got into her room and laid Thomas' calling card on her writing table. The sun's down light had no presence here; it was almost dark enough to sleep since her window faced east. She changed into home clothes, and eventually went out to join her family at dinner.
Her mother and father sat at their ends and Tricia was in the middle. Her father read the evening paper as her mother talked away about things and, as always, Tricia went more or less unregarded. Dinner was a boring time, but near the end her father made a surprised sound.
"Listen to this," he said, laying his fork and knife down. "A man was arrested trying to bury something in Steven Louis' yard."
Tricia perked up. "Police arrested him with a shovel and a cart full of odd bottles." Her father folded the paper closed. "How strange. Nothing good, I assume." His vision seemed to clear and he looked at his daughter. "How has your day been, Tricia?"
"Rather good, I'd say." Tricia watched her father put the paper on a nearby buffet table. "I read in the yard this afternoon but the novel I chose wasn't worth the paper it was printed on." She huffed, already trying to figure out how to sneak out and get to the jailhouse without being detected. "Uninteresting other than that, I suppose, but peaceful."
"You should get out more," her mother said. "Meet a nice gentlemen. You're spending so much time with your books."
"I would love to do so," Tricia said, carefully.
"It's dangerous for a lady like you," her father said. This conversation was repeated, in differing words, at least once most weeks. "You need to be cautious. You know how I see things."
"Yes father."
"Though I would enjoy seeing you out with a man of good stature."
"Yes father."
"I'd have to meet him first, of course."
"Of course father." Tricia rose. "I'd like to retire. I feel rather sleepy."
"Yes dear," her mother said. Her attention shifted. "Edward, remember the Gerrysons will be visiting the day after next. The mister wants to work out a new deal."
"Ha, a new deal." Her father breathed in deep as Tricia froze. "Our old deal was too profitable for him, I suppose. They do good work though; I look forward to it."
"Father..." Tricia said. "Have I ever met the Gerrysons?"
"Hmm?" Her father thought. "No, I don't believe you have. One of the printers I work with. Why?"
"I thought I recognized the name," she said, turning away. "Must have been mistaken." She smiled to herself as she went to her room.
A few hours later, after she knew her parents would be readying for bed, she slipped out the back way dressed in dark, quiet clothes. Her night-boots, covered in a special felt she had procured from one of her father's binders, produced little sound compared to the other people walking the streets, the horse trotting down the streets, and the carts rolling past. She stopped a policeman and inquired where a man arrested at the east end of the city would end up for the night, and he told her after a momentary confusion.
Some time later a warden lead her to the cell in which the old man from earlier resided. "You're free, Champton. This lady's bailed you out."
The old man registered her with surprise, but quickly shifted to anger. He rose. "My bottles?"
"You'll get them. Give a man a minute," the warden said. "You'll be all right alone with him, miss?"
"I'll be fine. His bottles, please."
The warden left her alone with the old man. She grinned at him, hips cocked and a fist planted on the right side. He could barely meet her gaze. "I think I deserve to know your name, at least."
The man nodded rapidly. "George Champton." He paused. "Thank you."
"You're welcome." She lifted her head and stared down her nose at him, something her mother had done to her many times during her life. "I'd like to know more about what you're doing. Can't you tell me?" Champton made no motion to respond. "Burying bottles, each with a strange device inside. It isn't legal, or at least allowed, since I've just had to pay to free you. You're lucky my father knows Mister Louis, otherwise I never would have heard about you, and then I suppose you would be on your way to the county jail in the morning for digging up a man's yard." George only scowled. "Well?"
He finally made a sound, a clearing of his throat. When he spoke, he had more power behind his words, louder and clearer. "It's nothing for a lady like yourself to worry about. It's something I've tasked myself to do and something I must get done. You've done me a great service by freeing me, but it would be poor repayment to involve you in my work." He straightened. Tricia imagined he had been tall--once. "I apologize for shoving you earlier today. It was quite uncouth. I had been trapped with my thoughts for many days and wasn't used to someone like you speaking to me so frankly. I'm glad you weren't hurt."
"That's very kind of you to say," Tricia said, her heart falling. "And I suppose if you truly refuse to tell me what you're doing, I'll let it stay secret." The warden reappeared. "It seems your things are ready."
"With me, Champton. Miss."
Tricia and George followed the warden outside, to where George's cart and shovel waited. There were still a dozen bottles; the city's darkness made it hard to see what was inside.
The warden stood nearby as Tricia picked one up. It was deceptively heavy. The dark shape inside clanked against the glass as it shifted. The glass was slightly wet.
"I suppose I'll never find out what's really inside," she said, sadly, pouting.
"You won't. Be-"
The glass slipped out of her hands thanks to the moisture coating the surface, and shattered on the ground at her feet.
Instantly the engine roared to life, throwing light and great howling sound. Fine filigree lines of starlight rose in helixes, spinning from the center of the sudden burst of light; a crackling energy bounced around them, knocking the dust from her eyes.
"What in God's name?!" the warden shouted.
The light and energy and sound began to funnel, shooting up and--once it reached some distance above them--out in all directions, a thunderous crack accompanied it, nearly knocking Tricia down. The grandest fireworks paled compared to the sudden, shining, circular rainbow spreading above their heads.
The discharged sound died but the rainbow hung over them, grand and translucent. Tricia, held rapt by the sight, almost failed to notice Champton seizing his cart and dashing away; only the warden's cry alerted her. She chased him, boots pounding the road. Everyone they saw was watching the spreading circle of multi-colored light, or running in fear. Tricia guessed it was the same all around the city. After a minute she caught the old man and grabbed the scruff of his coat. He fell backward, panting and wheezing.
Similarly tired, Tricia pushed the cart and let it roll a foot. "What." She stopped and swallowed, trying to catch her breath. "Are they? What have you been carting around and burying in yards and parks?" She pointed a shaking finger at the huge halo in the sky. "What did I just do?"
"Nothing," Champton said finally. "Your fault did nothing but waste some of my time and give people around here a fright." He sat back against the wall near him.
"Then will you please be so kind as to tell me what it is you're doing?!" she raged.
Champton looked at the large disc currently illuminating Boston. "They are to protect us," he said. "I think something is coming to our small space, and this will stop them."
"What sort of thing?"
"A people, a species. From another planet."
They moved, looking for a spot free of panic. "I am an astronomer," George Champton told her. They walked near the bay, trying not to breathe it in too much. He pushed his cart before him carefully; the bottles within clattered as if pining for their lost brother. "Ten long years ago I thought I had discovered a new heavenly body. I didn't presume to think it was a planet, or even a moon...but perhaps a comet to bear my name after I die." He stared ahead. "I wasn't so lucky.
"It moved...erratically. To describe how I even could track it..." He shook his head. "Math, physics. I barely understand it and I know you won't. But I watched the dim piece of light go wandering from one end of our sky to the other, hoping it was something I could study further."
They walked under the disc's fading light. They were on their way to nowhere.
"I didn't understand how it was moving. Our tilt, or motion around the sun, none of it seemed to make sense. I'd studied the sky my entire life but I'd never seen anything like it before. I consulted friends, measured against charts, spent days on end sitting up and trying to figure out what was happening.
"It was following us."
"Us?" Tricia asked.
"Earth. It was drawing a straight line to Earth as we floated, coming closer with aching slowness. It took me years to notice, but the light--reflected from the sun--was growing brighter. It was coming for us."
"How could you tell?"
Champton glared at her, but then his face softened. Tricia saw him sigh; he seemed more tired than she could ever be. "It was a hunch at first, but the arithmetic proved it. That's the best explanation I can give at the moment."
"Fine," Tricia said. "The bottles?"
"That's a more complicated story, and will take longer to tell," he said. he put a hand against his chest, over his heart. "It turned me into a man that could push a woman into the street and not look back." He craned his neck up. "This is where I rest my head," he said, and Tricia found them at a run-down building. "You're welcome to come in, but I likely have nothing so close to how your home is arranged."
"Thank you, Mr. Champton, but I believe I'll head home as well. If my parents discover me gone, I may never get the chance to leave again. But Mr. Champton." He turned to look at her. "We aren't done. If what you say is true...I will have to know more."
Eventually he nodded, and shut the door on her.
The disc both provided a meager light to see, and helped her find out where she was in the disorganized city tangle. It took her longer to reach home than she thought it would, but at last entered the back way quietly. The city was still buzzing, and Tricia knew she would have to possess as great an interest in something she already knew about--indeed, something to which she was intimately tied--as she would to something she knew nothing about. Likely her father would speak about it in the morning paper. Maybe she would drop her knife, or spit our milk. She would be scolded for being unladylike, but it would produce the desired results.
Breakfast went as she had predicted, with much of the morning paper wondering about the multicolored disc. Tricia's father had read the story fully, after Tricia had pressed him. This served a dual purpose. Not only was it what an uninvolved Tricia would do, but it also told her how much was known.
"Appeared over the east side of the city near the bay at about midnight, sources say," her father read. "Its point of origin is as of yet unknown, but investigations are ongoing." He closed it, and laid the paper down, shaking his head. "Foul."
"I wonder what it could have been?" Tricia wondered out loud.
"Nothing good, I can tell you!" her mother said. She rose from the table sharply. "Sometimes I feel like the world is going mad! Motor cars, airplanes, and now this...whatever it is."
"Margaret please, you'll have a fit," Tricia's father said. "Tricia, until we know more about what that thing is, I won't allow you outside the house."
"Father-!"
"No!" He raised his hand. "I fear for you, Tricia, you know that. There's no reason for you to leave the house for a few days. As long as nothing more sinister is revealed in this business. My mind is set." He got up from the table as well. "I'm off."
Tricia sat at the table for a few minutes in the quiet room. Angela, their maid, cleaned up around her. Finally, she got up and went into her room.
She found the card Thomas Gerryson had handed her, and went about writing a letter to him, addressing it, and sealing it. She gave it to their footman, with instructions it should reach only the young Mr. Gerryson. She waited for the day to waste away, reading in the yard. It was utterly uninteresting.
"Tricia!" her mother yelled. "The Gerrysons are here!"
"Coming mother," Tricia said at the top of the stairs, rather pleased with herself. Their footman announced Mr. and Mrs. Gerryson, as well as, to her parent's surprise, Master Thomas Gerryson.
"This is our eldest," William Gerryson said. He and his son were dressed almost identical in long black coats and hats. "He was adamant that he be allowed to accompany us. I told him that it would be mostly business."
"I intend to go into the business," Thomas said, removing his hat. "Why shouldn't I learn it now?"
"A fine way to look at things," Mr. Monroe said. "Here's our daughter Tricia."
"A pleasure to meet you," Mr. Gerryson said, intercepting her before Thomas could get close enough. "And might I say you look lovely tonight."
"Thank you Mr. Gerryson, you're too kind."
"My son, Thomas."
"Thomas, is it?" Tricia asked as the young man moved to greet her. "A pleasure to become your acquaintance."
"Mine as well. I admit I'm pleased to see the evening won't be merely business."
"Dinner!" Tricia's mother called.
Having told Angela to prepare another seat at the table beforehand, Tricia found herself sitting beside Thomas on one side. The talk was mostly of the bright light in the sky two nights previous. Both families traded rumors and beliefs about its composition, origin, reason, and more. Tricia listened, trying not to laugh at their mad guesses.
"What luck, eh?" Thomas said to her under his breath when, at one point, the discussion got loud. "Our families are business partners?"
"I agree; fortuitous," Tricia responded. "You played your part well."
"I'm glad you contacted me," he said.
"So am I."
Dinner moved into business, which left little place for the women. Adjourning to the sitting room, Tricia found herself with her mother and the gray-haired and rouged Mrs. Gerryson. They could just hear the voices from the other room, discussing shipments, payments, and more.
"Tell me Tricia, what is it you like to do?" Mrs. Gerryson asked. "I saw quite a deal of inquisitiveness in your gaze doing the meal."
The statement put Tricia back. What else had the woman seen? "I like interesting things," Tricia said. "I find myself bored too quickly."
"It's been that way all her life," her mother said. "Couldn't keep still, had to be always looking around and moving. I don't know how many times I asked her to keep still when she was a child."
"Thomas was the same way. Very fidgety, as a boy. A bundle of energy. I wonder if that's why I recognized it. Rather a similar strain of motion."
"I think I agree," Tricia said, and was forced to change how she thought of Mrs. Gerryson in a hurry, lest she let something slip. Perhaps she already had.
"Mrs. Gerryson, won't you tell me how it is having a son? Tricia is our only child. Is it quite difficult?"
Mrs. Gerryson thought for a moment, then opened her mouth to respond, but was stopped when they all heard a sudden and riotous sound from the other room. Tricia's father came in. "It's happening again!"
They went to the window and Tricia saw a spreading wave of shimmering light under the clouds, from red on the outer edges to purple on the inner. "Look!" Thomas gasped, and they saw another ring rising to the south. A third appeared, farther away.
"What in heaven is happening?" William Gerryson shouted. "Rapture!"
Any further words were shut down as the house began to shake. A painting on the wall near them almost exploded, sending wood pieces to the ground. Thomas pulled Tricia away from the window and into the hall; they heard a smash and a cry as the window fell in on her father. A deep crack went over them and they saw the hall's ceiling beginning to tear open, raining dust. Thomas covered Tricia with his arms as planks fell.
Minutes later only small quakes continued, shaking the house dangerously. Tricia crawled out from under Thomas and went into the room with her father, lying in a pool of blood.
"Father! Father!" Tricia said. He looked up with slow eyes. Thomas and Mr. Gerryson joined her.
"We need to bandage him, quickly," Mr. Gerryson said. "But it isn't safe near the window." The family's footman, harried and wide-eyed, discovered them and helped carry Tricia's father to the dining room table. The maid fetched a roll of wrapping, and the torn clothing her father had worn was stripped away. Her mother had to be helped to a seat due to her shaking.
"What was it?" Mr. Gerryson asked. "What happened?"
Tricia, the only person who could have known, said nothing.
"An earthquake," Thomas said. "It's been some time since we had one." Thomas looked in the direction of the windows. "I wonder more about those strange lights. So many."
"Will he be all right?" Tricia asked their footman, who said nothing, simply kept working. She went to her mother and sat next to her, putting an arm around her. She felt very small; she shook.
A few hours later Mr. Monroe was sitting up, drinking a broth, pale and weak. He was alive and awake, at least, and Tricia felt a pressure remove itself from her. She found the Gerryson men standing at the window, watching the disks' creeping expanse. More had appeared; they could see five from the window and Tricia guessed more had appeared beyond its range. They applied illumination to the undersides of the clouds hanging over Boston, turning them into strange stagnant rainbows. The city was alive with fires. The earthquake had wreaked havoc worse than the house.
"How is Mr. Monroe?" Mr. Gerryson asked when Tricia joined them.
"I'm no doctor, but he seems to be recovering," she said quietly, standing with them in front of the large window. "Do you think it was a coincidence? The earthquake and the lights, I mean?" Could it have been?
"It's possible," Thomas said. "An unlucky coincidence. There was that light a few nights ago, which seems to be the same thing, and nobody felt anything then."
"Excuse me," Mr. Gerryson said. "I'll see to your mother, Thomas."
He left them alone in the room. "And what do you think?" Tricia asked. "Do you think it's a coincidence?"
Thomas said nothing, looking out the window with his arms crossed loosely in front of him, a worried expression coming and going across his face. "I want to know more." He said it very softly, almost afraid someone would hear. "I want to see where those things came from."
"I can do one better," Tricia said, after checking the rest of the room. "You remember how we met? When the man pushed me? They're his. The things inside his cart--he buries them. I was with him those few nights ago when the first one went up. I walked him home."
"You-!"
"I got him out of prison. We had to run or we both would have ended up in a cell. It's a good thing we weren't caught, otherwise I suspect we'd both be in danger of execution after this."
"You know where he lives?" Thomas asked.
"Yes. We could go there. I doubt he's in. He seemed like a man used to being out at night."
Thomas had his eyes closed and brow crunched together. He began nodding, slowly at first, and then faster. "Yes, I think I do." He turned, heading back into the dining room. Tricia followed him. The light was brighter here, and the adults in the room all looked at them when they came in--save Tricia's father, who was asleep.
"Tricia and I are going to see if there's anything we can do to help," Thomas said, a lie of which Tricia approved. "There may be people in trouble."
"I can't allow that," Tricia's mother said. "You know exactly what your father would say about such a notion. You're both staying here."
"I know what father would say," Tricia replied. "But I also know you probably wouldn't agree with it."
"Now more than ever I feel he's right," Tricia's mother rose from her seat straight up, like a column. "What happens if another quake strikes?"
"We'll be safer outside."
"In the city?" Her mother let out a barking laugh, and drew closer. "No, no, you two are going to stay inside this house until it's safe to travel, at which time the Gerrysons will go to see the hopefully light damage done to their home."
"If you fear for her safety, Mrs. Monroe, I assure you I will keep her safe," Thomas said.
"I'm sure you will try, Thomas Gerryson," her mother said. "But will you succeed?" She turned. "Mr. Gerryson, what do you think of such an idea?" she said, obviously expecting Thomas' parents to be on her side.
"Thomas is a man," William Gerryson said. "He acts properly. He keeps his word. If he says he will keep your daughter safe, I believe he will." Tricia's mother frowned.
"Mother, please," Tricia said. "There could be people dying."
"Go." Everyone turned, with surprise, to look at Mr. Monroe. He coughed. "She wants to help, let her go."
"Father?"
"Keeping you safe is one," he said softly. "But you want to put yourself in danger to help others." He stopped to breathe. "I'd be foolish to keep you from doing such a thing."
"Sh-she'd be going out with a man she hardly knows!" Tricia's mother said, shocked.
"I've known William for years. I see his son as very similar." He lifted a bandaged arm and waved it--the footman ran forward. "Go." He put the arm down.
Tricia looked at her mother, whose face was pressed together in anger. "I promise to stay safe."
"Put on better clothes," her mother finally said. "Something to protect you if things go sour." She glanced at the Gerrysons. "Thomas Gerryson, if something happens to her, I will hold you accountable."
"I accept the charges," Thomas said quickly.
Tricia reappeared down the stairs wearing clothes more suited to a dangerous night in the city, dark pants and a shirt to cover her skin. The boots, from her father's closet, were a bit loose, but certainly better for moving than the footwear she was used to.
"Not an outfit I'm used to seeing a woman wear," Thomas said, standing at the bottom of the stairs. The front door had been cracked in half by the quake; Tricia could see dark lawn through it.
"Do you see women wearing many different outfits?" she wondered. Thomas blushed. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't be so flippant," she said. "Are you ready to go?"
"Ready," Thomas responded. He tried pushing the front door open normally and found it jammed, the cracked pieces stuck at angles to each other. He grunted and pushed it down. "After you, miss," he said, offering his hand as a dust cloud rose
Tricia smiled and stepped into the Boston night. They saw the floating light from fires under the brilliance of the disks. More had appeared, and now they numbered over a dozen. Tricia wondered how many more still lay hidden and asleep in their shallow graves.
"A fine twist of the truth," Tricia said as they walked. "We go to help, but not the way they think."
"It was a clever phrase," Thomas responded. "But if something happens to you all the more will fall on my neck."
"We'll be all right. I can take care of myself. I had to make a hasty escape with Mr. Champton a few nights ago and managed that well."
"Is that his name?"
"Yes. George Champton. He told me a few things that night. Not everything...A sliver of the truth, but something that became harder to think a lie tonight." Tricia looked at the surreal cityscape, lit by fires and rainbow halos. "If we find him, I daresay we'll learn more."
"What was it he told you?"
Tricia relayed the story, about the light from the sky on its driven and controlled path to earth, according to Champton. "He said the arithmetic proved it. Even if he had told me the details, I would have had no way to disprove him. A short time after that we arrived at his home." She looked around. "We'll be coming upon it soon."
Instead of the down-trodden but liveable home Tricia had first seen, they found a pile of rubble. Tricia called for Mr. Champton but got no response. After searching they discovered only possessions, including a number of bottled engines; George hadn't been inside when the building collapsed.
"Do you know where he could have gone?" Thomas asked after an hour of looking. Tricia shook her head. "Was this his only residence?"
"How could it not be?" she said. "He--no." She looked up. "Of course. He's an astronomer. He must have a lab somewhere. He must have had a place that he used to study the stars. He must have had a telescope; we saw nothing like it in the rubble."
"But there must be hundreds of places he could go," Thomas said. He had his coat off and his sleeves rolled up. "How are we to find something like that?" He paused, and then hesitantly spoke: "Will finding him really be able to help us? What could he tell us?"
"He could tell us if the earthquake was his doing," Tricia responded. "He could tell us what the disks are for. He said he first discovered the point of light ten years ago; he's been working since then to do something about it. He must have had some plan in place, and was working toward it." She gestured up. "What else could these lights be for? As for finding him, I'm afraid I don't have any ideas."
"A simple enough solution," A voice behind them said. Thomas instantly jumped in front of Tricia. They found the weary-looking and fearful form of George Champton coming toward them out of the dark behind his destroyed home, dragging his cart.
"Mr. Champton!" Tricia said, running forward. "Are you all right? You aren't hurt, are you?"
"I'm fine." The man sat, letting out a long breath. "I came back to the house to try and salvage more materials and found you two pawing through it. I didn't know what your goal was so I listened."
"You were spying on us?!" Thomas said.
"To make sure you weren't out for my blood." Mr. Champton looked up at him. "I recognized Ms. Monroe quickly enough, but who are you? I didn't know if you had ill will on the mind."
"I was the person that kept Ms. Monroe from falling into the street after you shoved her," Thomas said angrily.
"Of course."
"It's all right, Thomas," Tricia said. "Mr. Champton has apologized."
"Yes, it was a sour thing to do. You'll forgive me if I can't bring about the same decorum at the moment. It's been a tiring night."
"Will you tell us what's been happening?" Tricia asked, sitting next to him, on a large stone once a piece of his home. "The bottles? The earthquake?"
"Related, though not directly," Champton said. He rubbed his face -Tricia saw dirt on his hands and under his fingernails. He turned his face up to Thomas. "How much do you know?"
"Ms. Monroe explained what you told her a few nights ago."
Champton nodded. "The light reached Earth."
The three of them stood in silence, in the minor light from the disks. Tricia and Thomas looked at each other with confused expressions. "What do you mean, Mr. Champton?"
"The light I'd been following has reached Earth. It is here, somewhere on the surface of our planet. The engines--the disks of light you see--activated because they detected its presence and shattered, sending up the disks. They are designed to reflect it back, but I believe they failed."
"How do you know?" Thomas asked.
"The only place I could bury the engines in time was around Boston. The light could have landed anywhere on Earth. The other hint, and more obvious, is the quake. Things impacting the earth cause it to shake; it may have landed close but not to close. Some dozen miles away."
"You're saying the quake was from there?" Tricia asked, aghast. Champton nodded. "Is there any way to prove it?" she asked. He shrugged. "Do you know what to do next?"
"I had just enough time to realize we didn't want the light to reach earth, and figure out a way to make small defenses." He brought his eyes up to take in the glow from the rainbow discs. "What little help it did. But what was I supposed to do? Yell about a danger from the sky on street corners? I would have found myself in a prison cell even quicker, likely shunted off to a sanitarium thanks to my 'raving.'"
"We can tell people now," Tricia said. "Surely they'll believe us."
"Why?" Champton asked. "Because of an earthquake? Rare, but not unheard of on the seaboard. Lights in the sky? Man-made, and even if they don't know that, there are enough skeptical people to try and find other explanations. And they should, of course; extraterrestrial threats are far down on anyone's list of explanations for quakes and lights." He leaned forward. "We must tell them. The city is in danger."
"But why?" Tricia asked. "Surely there's no further danger." Champton made no motion. "There is?! What is it?" He said nothing. "You know the truth! You can explain it to them! You're a scientist; you know what it was! They have to listen to you!"
"I live on my own," Champton said. "I keep to myself. Barely anyone knows who I am. I was placed in prison for digging in a man's yard a few nights ago. Who would listen to me, besides you? Even your friend has a look on his face that I've come to terms with."
Tricia looked up at Thomas, who was rubbing his head, a confused look on his face. "I admit it. It is rather fantastic," Thomas said. Champton nodded. "But if what you say is true...we have to try to convince someone!" He looked around. "The police will be out in strength. If we can bend one of their ears, we may be able to reach someone with the power to do something."
"Where do we go?" Tricia asked.
"The nearest blaze," Champton said, rising from his seat. "You're right," he said to the other two. "I have to at least try. I saw it; I have to accept the charge of making it known." He stood still for a moment, then took a breath, then started walking toward the closest orange light, and the distant throng of voices coming from it.
In ten minutes they reached their target. It was a smaller fire compared to some of the others; Thomas and Champton were conscripted into the bucket brigade bringing fresh water from a pump. Both rolled up their sleeves and began helping as Tricia sought out a policeman.
"Sir," she said, letting only a drop of urgency creep into her voice. "There's something I must discuss with you."
"Not at the moment, Miss," the man said. "There-"
She snatched the fabric on his upper arm and pulled him off balance. "There is nothing more important, at the moment." She gave him a blazing smile and reveled in his confusion and surprise. "My friend knows why the quake and the lights in the sky are here, and we need to reach someone that can help us. He believes we are in much greater danger than a few fires give." She let him go and he steadied himself.
"Calm yourself, young lady," the policeman said quickly and angrily. "If you don't get over your hysterics, no one will give you the time."
A little, tiny part of Tricia detached and planted itself, burning, between her eyes. "Silence. If you don't follow me, this city will be destroyed, and you and everyone you love will die. Do you understand me?"
The policeman stared at her, aghast.
"I asked: do you understand me?!" She took hold of him again and dragged him to the bucket brigade and Champton. "Mr. Champton, this policeman has volunteered to help us." She pushed the officer forward.
Champton detached from the line. "Thank you officer; this is a matter of the utmost importance."
"So I'm led to believe," the policeman said. He seemed pale in the flickering firelight. He glanced at Tricia, who stood next to Champton. She grinned.
"The earthquake was not natural. It was caused by something striking the earth; only twenty or thirty miles away if I have it figured correctly. The disks in the sky are my doing."
"What?!" The policeman pulled out his stick. "You did this?"
"They are defenses!" Champton said. "Intended to protect us, should the thing from space land directly on us! But it didn't! They have done nothing other than illuminate!"
"And what do you want me to do about it?" the policeman asked. "Why should I believe such a crackpot idea?"
"If you don't and I'm right, we will be overrun," Champton offered. "If I'm right and you do, you'll be instrumental in saving the city."
"Overrun? Overrun by what?"
Champton paused. The shouts from the brigade carried over them; the fire's light spread their shadows. "Monsters. Creatures. Beasts from another sun."
Even Tricia was surprised by this. "Crazy," the policeman said.
"I agree. But I watched them come for ten years, and did everything I could to keep the city safe." He pointed up, at the closest disk. "You see the results."
The policeman looked at the disks spread around the city, more than a dozen. He looked down at Champton, and then at Tricia, who stood with hands on her hips. "You believe this as well?"
"As much as an observer can."
The policeman looked from one to the other, clearly thinking through his next action. "Yes. Well...I suppose...Please come with me."
Tricia pulled Thomas from the bucket brigade, and they followed the policeman up the street away from the now thankfully smaller fire. They were taken toward a crowd of people all clamoring for help, and a group of policeman trying to direct them. "Captain!" the policeman with them shouted over the other voices. "Captain, these people have information!"
The captain, an old man with a gray, flat moustache, turned and waved them forward. Tricia and the others squeezed through the people around the captain. "Follow me!" the captain shouted, and brought them into the building behind him, quieter but not by much. The crowd shouted outside and men worked inside at a frantic pace. The captain removed his cap, revealing a bald head, and dabbed it with a cloth. "Information? What sort of information? Is it about the lights in the sky? Because if it isn't, I don't-"
"Yes," Mr. Champton said. "I created them using small engines."
The captain was struck mute for a moment. "Whatever for?!"
"Something hit the Earth," Champton said. "Had it hit Boston itself, the city would have been destroyed. I created the disks as shields. As it happened, the object landed outside the city. It caused the earthquake."
"Thank you," the captain said. "You've been very helpful. But I have much to do, and-"
"Move all your officers to the west edge of the city unless you want the city to be overrun," Champton said. "An army is coming."
"Army? What army?" He pushed Champton aside. "I don't have time for madness."
"The object was controlled, taking it directly to us," Champton said, undeterred. "It was being driven like a horse or motorcar. It changed course to collide with the planet. There is something foul coming from it."
The Captain looked at Thomas Gerryson. "Young man, is there any validity to what he's saying?"
Thomas stuttered. "We don't know anything in detail; miss Monroe and I are friends of Mr. Gerryson and we believe he's telling the truth."
The captain looked at Tricia for a moment, then turned his attention back to Champton. "Sir, I simply cannot move men to the edge of the city when they are needed inside it on the whim of something that may or may not be true." He replaced his cap. "Now if you'll excuse me." He marched past and asked a man to show them out.
Back on the dark street, they stood huddled together.
"Mr. Champton, are you quite certain?" Tricia asked. "You never told us about an army!"
"For just this reason," Champton said. "It sounds insane. But I know it's true."
"How big was the thing that hit the planet?" Thomas asked. "To hold an entire army...it must be massive!"
"No...too big and the sky would be covered in dust. Humanity as we know it would come to an end," Champton said. "I calculated it to be about ten feet in diameter."
"Mr. Champton!" Tricia said. "That's how big it is, and you go and frighten us all with talk about armies?"
In the waning rainbow light of the disks, George Champton turned his eyes on Tricia; they shined in unknown ways. Her mind bellowed at her to back away but she was unable to move. She stood frozen.
"You have trusted me so far, Tricia," the man said. "I ask you trust me just a little longer." His voice was smoke in her lungs. "I cannot overstate the importance."
"Sir," Thomas said. His voice seemed distant. "How can something that small threaten us?"
Champton covered his mouth with a hand and turned away. He stared at the ground, drilling through it mentally to find help at what he thought. "Mr. Gerryson, do you know things?"
"I'm sorry?"
"Things that you could not know? That the day will go well, for instance? That a certain man is a buffoon and a peckerhead, even though you've only known him for a moment? Perhaps even farther out, such as the belief that the woman you marry will be a poor cook?"
"I..." Thomas faltered. "I suppose I've thought such things."
"And you've been correct?"
"Yes. But not always."
"But sometimes there are things you feel so strongly--they must be true! And they are! Things that to be wrong about would flow against the wind and push against a mountain!"
Thomas hesitated. "I admit I've thought such. Once."
"And?"
"I was right."
"And so I feel about the object from space. Since the first time I saw it. It comes to destroy us. It was why I worked so hard to fight it." He looked from Thomas to Tricia. "I beg you. I cannot do it myself."
Thomas nodded, just once. "I'll help you." He looked at Tricia. "Miss Monroe?"
"It has been an interesting night," Tricia said. "I'm hesitant to see it end. But where will we go next?" Neither of the men said anything. "I have an idea. My father is a well-known publisher; he works with many writers and statesmen. One man--Steven Louis is his name--is a good friend of the family, and well-regarded with the mayor. If we can convince him, then the way will be open for us."
"The name is familiar," Champton said.
"You were arrested while digging in his yard a few days ago. Certainly you remember."
Champton frowned. "We're going back to him?" He put his wrists together. "You might as well clap me in irons now."
"Don't be that way, sir." Tricia found the proper direction. "With me by your side, we'll make him listen. I've known him for many years. I believe he will be able to help."
Champton nodded. "You may lead the way, Miss Monroe."
More than an hour later they arrived at the home of Steven Louis. It was a larger estate with an iron fence around it, and looked damaged only cosmetically by the quake. Lights were on inside the house.
"Let me speak with him," Tricia said to Champton. "I'm sure he won't be pleased to see you again," She turned her attention to Thomas, "and he of course doesn't know you."
"Seems like the surest course of action," Thomas responded. "What are you going to tell him?"
"The truth," Tricia said, and then knocked on Mr. Louis' front door. It was opened a minute later by a tail-coated man. Tricia introduced herself and the two men with her, and another minute later Steven Louis greeted them.
He was a tall, thin man, nearly hobbling as he led them inside. "Miss Monroe, a visit at this time? Should you be out?" He inspected her fellows closer. "Hold a minute...I recognize you!"
"Mr. Louis, that's why we're here," Tricia said as Louis jabbed a finger at Champton, anger flashing on his face. "This is George Champton. He's responsible for the disks in the sky."
She told him everything they knew, including the knowledge Champton had so recently revealed to them: the approaching army. "We've been trying all night to reach someone that will believe us, and has the power to do something to help us. You are our latest, and perhaps last, option."
"An army! Attacking the city!" Steven placed a hand on his forehead and leaned against a table. "You're asking me to believe something like that?"
"We are, Mr. Louis. I know it sounds incredible--all three of us find it difficult to believe--but Mr. Champton studied the object on its path to earth for ten years, and truly thinks that it poses a threat to us even now."
Louis stood rubbing his forehead, eyes flicking back and forth, his mouth a stony cleft in his face. Finally he looked up. "You sir, Mr. Gerryson."
Thomas nodded. "Sir."
"You believe this?"
"I..." Thomas paused, then looked at Tricia, who watched him from the corner of her eyes. "I do, sir. Not at first...but yes."
Louis looked at Mr. Champton. "You."
"I apologize for digging in your yard, sir. I found it necessary."
"You were burying one of your...'engines'?" Louis asked. Champton nodded. "Which create the disks in the sky. How?"
"When they detect a disturbance in the atmosphere's pressure, caused by the object's entry," Champton explained. "Then it activates. One was set off accidentally when its glass bottle shattered, creating a very sudden change in pressure. Surely you remember? It was the same night you had me arrested."
"I remember. I was still awake," Louis said. "Writing a letter. I looked out the window and thought I'd fallen asleep and was dreaming." He shook his head. "And the earthquake was from the object hitting the earth."
"Yes."
Louis ran his eyes over all of them, then straightened. "Russell! My coat please; I'm going out," he called over his shoulder. "You seem of sound mind," he said to them. "I have an exit strategy but the three of you don't as far as I can tell, so I trust you."
"Exit strategy, sir?" Thomas asked.
"If we're wrong about this approaching army," Louis said, "I'll just tell everyone it was a ploy to drum up interest in a book I'll write." He grinned, pulling thin lips back. "The joys of being a writer."
Louis' man approached holding open a blue greatcoat. "We'll speak to the mayor. I've just had dinner with him last night; he'll admit us." He shrugged the coat onto his shoulders. "Let's take my car."
"It'll be all right," Tricia, keeping her hair together with one hand, said to Thomas, to whom she sat beside in the backseat of Louis' car. "You've really never ridden in one?"
Thomas shook his head, trying not to tremble. "They're too expensive for my family. And we don't need one." He gripped the knees of his trousers tightly. Tricia laid a hand on his arm and smiled at him.
"I've heard about a company by a man named Ford," Louis shouted back at them. He wore a cap and goggles. "He intends to produce his own cars cheaply and quickly. Perhaps you will have one soon enough young man!"
Thomas didn't answer, and instead kept his mouth very much shut.
"How long will it take us to reach the mayor?" Champton asked, in the front passenger seat. The wind nearly took his words away.
"Most nights no more than ten or twenty minutes," Louis replied. "But with the city in chaos like it is it may be longer!"
Tricia looked over the edge of the motor car and saw no fewer than six separate fires, accompanied by flashing lights and sirens from firetrucks, all turned odd hues by the persistent disks. "Even if we convince the mayor about the army," Tricia asked Champton, "what is he supposed to do about it?"
"The city may be in disarray," Louis shouted back. "But I'm sure John will be able to figure something out. That is, of course, if we can convince him! Who knows if he'll accept the premise?"
"I'll make sure he believes us," Champton said from the front, in a low voice somehow clearly audible to the rest of them. Tricia felt herself grow chilled from more than the rushing air.
"I won't tolerate violence!" Louis said to Champton forcefully.
"It won't be violent," Champton responded in turn. He looked out his window. "The city's getting worse."
Tricia and Thomas both looked. A group of people gathered in a street. "That's a riot if I've ever seen one," Champton remarked. "They're using discord and destruction to take for themselves. No mayor would want to see this get worse!"
"And that's what you intend to invoke to the mayor?" Louis asked.
"In a way, yes," Champton replied cryptically. The rest of the drive went in silence. The motor car eventually stopped in front of the mayor's office, and the four entered the building. It was just as chaotic inside; there was never a silent moment. A policeman stepped toward them as soon as he saw them enter.
"State your business," he said simply. He was tired.
"My name is Steven Louis," Louis said, placing a hand to his chest. "I have to speak with the mayor; it's of the utmost urgency. The safety of the city is at stake."
The policeman started laughing. At first it was a simple chuckle, but quickly grew into a hiccuping roar, complete with shaking shoulders and tearing eyes. The room grew a slight bit quieter as many people stopped what they were doing to look at the howling policeman.
Tricia felt her cheeks burn with the attention, and took a step back. She saw similar looks on Thomas' and Champton's face, but Mr. Louis stood resolute, even placing his hands on his hips. He was nodding his head at a particular rhythm, and after an unknown amount of time had passed, he took a quick step forward and slapped the policeman across the cheek, cutting his laughter short like a bottle shattering.
"Young man! Hold yourself!" Louis shouted. "I am Steven Louis, a personal friend of the mayor's and I must speak with him!" The policeman glared, feeling his cheek. "I apologize for striking you, but this is no time for foolishness! The man here-" he indicated Champton "-may have information that will place the city in even greater danger than it was in before!" His face rumpled together. "And I will not let you get in my way!"
He stormed past the stunned man, and the other three hurried to catch up. "Mr. Louis!" Tricia said. "I've never known you to act that way!" she said as they went down a hall. The confusion of the building got denser as they went.
"I have no time for fools that deign to laugh when solemnity is required," Louis said, words straining through his mouth. "It pinches me badly."
"You're lucky the man didn't become angered," Champton said. "He could have had you arrested."
"Now?!" Louis shook his head. "Not now. He had too much to deal with." They reached the end of the hall, and Louis pushed a set of double doors open, revealing a room filled with men in various states of dress. The mayor, sitting behind a large desk surrounded by helpers, looked up with a telephone receiver in his hand, surprised.
"Steven!" he said, then hastily spoke into the receiver. "I'm sorry, someone's just arrived. Yes, there are fires, there are fires everywhere! Riot reports are coming in as well...damage to the docks and several bridges. Thank you."
He looked at Louis. "Steven, what in Mary's name are you doing here?" He looked beyond Louis. "And who are they?"
"Gentlemen, miss, meet John Fitzgerald. John, this is Thomas Gerryson, Tricia Monroe, and George Champton. Mr. Champton is responsible for the colored disks."
"What?!" Fitzgerald asked. The room shouted. An angered man stepped up to Champton, grabbing his arm. Thomas stepped in-between them. "Quiet!" Fitzgerald shouted. "Steven, explain yourself!"
"The disks did not cause the earthquake!" Louis cried. "In fact, they were put in place to stop further disaster! Mr. Champton himself can explain better than I." He looked at the man. "George--if I may--speak well."
Champton nodded and stepped forward. The others in the room stepped away, giving him a small area. He began talking, mentioning the object he'd seen in the sky, and its slow but unmistakable path toward earth. He told them he knew he would have to develop a way to defend against it, and the birth of the engines in their small bottles, as well as his tiring work burying the engines in the ground around the city.
"It came even faster than I could have imagined," he said. "I was predicting a number of years to prepare, but instead...you see what has happened. That isn't all," he said, cutting off the mayor. "It is my belief that an army approaches."
What little chatter remained in the room ended. Champton had all of their attention. "Incredible as it might seem, I believe that the object that landed contains a way to bring conquerors to us."
The mayor looked at Champton, and then at Louis. "You believe this dribble, Steven?"
"Yes sir I say I do."
"Well, I have something to say about that." The mayor gritted his teeth. "I-" His face changed, and he pressed the phone he held closer to his ear. "Mr. Roosevelt, hello. Yes, everything they told you is true. I've just...been told that the earthquake was caused by something striking the earth near Boston." He looked at Champton who nodded, and then held up two fingers and a fist, and mouthed the word miles. "Approximately twenty miles away. Yes sir. Yes sir. No sir. I understand sir." The mayor's voice changed again. "Where? New York...San Francisco, Chicago, Miami...do you know how many, sir?" He nodded. "Yes sir. We'll do our best. We-"
The lights went out, leaving the room in hot darkness. "Mr. President?" The mayor shouted into the receiver. He dropped it, a clunk in the dark.
"Lights have gone out all over the city, sir!" a man yelled from the window. His face was faintly lit by the nearest disk.
"The phone is out!" Fitzgerald yelled. "Someone explain this!"
"They've hit the power plant outside of Boston!" Champton said in a loud voice. "They're coming for the city, Mr. Mayor!" He walked forward, pushing a few people out of the way, and slammed his hands on the mayor's desk. "They're coming to destroy us! I know what you discussed with the president--he told you other objects had landed!"
"It could be a coincidence!"
"A coincidence?!" Champton roared in the mayor's face. "If you really think it's a coincidence, you can kiss my ass!"
He didn't wait for the room to recover. "The city is going to be destroyed, and you will be remembered by the survivors as a weak, useless ruler without the power to do anything to protect his citizens!"
He pushed off and walked back to his companions. "I'll be doing everything I can to stop them; everything possible!" he shouted. Tricia imagined his face was beet red.
"And what would you have me do?" the mayor said before they left. "The city is in shambles, the police force is spread thinner than it's ever been! We have no army, no way to contact them. The people in this room and in this building are all we have at the moment unless we have more time!"
Champton stood motionless at the end of the room. Tricia, Thomas, and Mr. Louis watched him, feeling the emotions from the two men attack each other. "I have forty or so engines, still bottled. Send people with me to gather them. In the meantime, get word out to the city, let them know what's happening. This is not something for the awake and ready, Mr. Mayor. Let loose the lights of wakefulness, or our city will be put to rest."
The mayor sat at his desk with fists clenched. "Nathaniels." A man responded. "Gather five other men and take a car with Mr. Champton. No, seven others. Mr. Louis will accompany you." He shot up. His chest was filled with air. "Mr. Gerryson, Miss Monroe, you will stay in the building for the time. Jackson, send runners to every police station...every fire station...every church. Get them to make as much noise as possible. Get everyone out of bed and ready for action. We need as many men as possible at the edge of the city." He looked up. "Now."
The city had turned from a bed of crackling fires and shouts into a beast making ready to charge. Tricia guessed not a single soul slept, at least not soundly. No one could ignore the sirens, the ringing bells, the shouts from every man and child. Alarm, alarm. A cold wind swept past Tricia.
She and Thomas stood next to each other, just barely not touching, on a bridge. Under them, the Charles river flowed, undisturbed. To their east, the Cambridge campus rose up, beginning to fill with the minds and bodies of young men and their energy. Three hours had passed, and Tricia badly wished she could talk to her parents. She saw similar thoughts on Thomas' face. They still waited for Champton, Louis, and the other men with the bottled engines, but they'd helped the Mayor and his cabinet corral the many people inside the building, and all trucked to the west side of the city, those riding either hysterically chatting or sitting in stony silence.
Now they sat in pods of three or four, clerks and office assistants roused from their sleep by an earthquake and now expecting to fight against an army.
Other than the gently fading disks, it was dark.
Tricia worriedly looked back toward the city, searching for the two vehicles the men had taken to Champton's ruined home. "They'll be back," Thomas assured her. She looked at him. "Mr. Louis is very energetic. I'm sure after what happened in the mayor's office he'll let nothing stop him. Mr. Champton has surely been galvanized as well. They'll come back."
"Supposing they do," she said. "And then what happens?" She uncrossed one arm and waved it over the darkness in front of her. "Do monsters come spilling in to break us down and kill us?"
"I won't let them get you."
She regarded Thomas. "Who will stop them from getting you?" Thomas didn't answer, but they found themselves looking into each others' eyes. "I'm sorry," Tricia finally said, looking at the ground. "I can't stop thinking about all this. None of it really seemed real until the mayor's office. It was just something interesting to do. But now."
"Now we're in danger," Thomas said. "Real danger, not fanciful thoughts of pain and suffering--it measures to greatly exist in our future." He hugged her, forcing a gasp to escape from her mouth. "I'm scared too."
"Mr. Gerryson-"
"My name is Thomas, Tricia."
After a second she hugged him back, and they stood quietly together, her head pressed against his shirt. She began to think she would fall asleep until a light traveled over the bridge and across them. They found a truck and Mr. Louis' motorcar approaching.
The vehicles halted and the men piled out, carrying bottles. "Miss Monroe, Mr. Gerryson," Champton said to them when he saw them approach. "We would have gotten here much sooner, but the roads were thronged with confusion. The mayor's edict helped us none, but it's better that everyone knows what is going on. Come, there are many engines."
Thomas joined the group of men unloading the truck, and after a few minutes the bottles, grouped together and standing upright, twinkled in the disks' light. The mayor found them.
"Okay Mr. Champton, we have your bottles. What do you mean to do next?"
"We give them to groups of three or four people and spread them along the edge of the city. It will be difficult, but once we discover which direction they're coming from, we group there. The disks will be able to to keep them and anything else that tries to pass through them back. Has there been any sight?"
"Sight of what?" the mayor said. "They don't know what they're looking for, and there's no light, just a few torches."
"Use the trucks and cars," Champton responded quickly. "We saw them being used for light all around the city. Each group with a vehicle. No, two. Once they spot them, send one of the trucks back here."
"What will be here?"
"The rest of us," Champton said. Behind him, people were gathering, holding torches and civil war rifles, like scared villagers on their way to the monster's lair. "But we need more time to get a proper defense. That's what the engines are for."
The mayor listened as Champton explained, then began separating those present into groups. They went scrounging for vehicles; the mayor declared a state of emergency. Thomas went with one of the groups, leaving Tricia with Champton.
"How long before morning, do you think?" she asked him at one quiet point. Thomas and the other men had left in squads over thirty minutes ago. "I've never stayed awake for this long."
"You must be very tired," Champton responded. He looked up. "I'd say it's about three...maybe four o'clock. Several hours before the sun comes up. If you wish, you may rest. I'll wake you if something happens."
Tricia nodded and sat down, leaning against the stone wall of the a retaining wall. Her next thought was another earthquake had hit, but it was only Mr. Champton shaking her. "Tricia! Tricia!" he whispered.
The sky had changed. It was a fraction lighter. "What? What?" she mumbled with stiff lips.
"They found them, south of here. We're going there now!"
"How long was I asleep?" she asked, slowly getting up.
"Less than an hour," Champton replied. "Quickly, help me get these engines."
They loaded up bottles with several other helpers and got into a vehicle with an open top and loud, snarling motor. The driver took them along the Charles river, and over the treetops and buildings a rainbow disk blazed into life.
The vehicle swerved but stayed upright, all passengers yelling out in surprise. The disk illuminated the land around them like a sunrise, and the driver pushed forward, bringing the vehicle up to speed.
It wound through trees then pulled to a halt. A half-dozen other vehicles were already there, thronged with people unloading themselves and bottles. The disk was a semicircle of color; close by it seemed like a wall.
Tricia and Champton went beyond the trucks to where the engine had been deployed. About a dozen men were there, armed with rifles and torches, watching beyond the disk.
Through its translucent surface Tricia made out shapes. They could have been men--once--but now their skin seemed to be bark, or pieces of stone growing up and out from their joints and bones. Their heads and faces were elongated and stretched, and their limbs the same. They were tall and wide. Some carried large objects like hammers or spears, others had smaller tube-like objects. One of them pointed his tube and ejected a burning white line at the rainbow disk, making a sharp crackling sound which split the air and released smoke from where it met the disk, but appeared to do little more.
"See!" Champton said. "See what I foretold! Monsters!" He shouted to the other men with him, waving his hand at the score or more creatures. "This won't be all! They will go around! They could already be in the city!"
"But what do we do?" a young man asked.
"Aren't you an American?" Champton asked. "You show them what happens when invaders land on our shores!" He took a rifle from one of the men and shook it. "Bullets will pierce them just as well as they will us!" A cheer went up. "But we need more time! We must keep them from getting inside the city, or we'll have a massacre on our hands. The bottled engines, when aimed parallel to the ground and smashed, will create impenetrable shields such as you see before you!
"We must create a barrier around the city until we have enough here to defend ourselves! The city wakes quickly, but the barbarians are at our door!" He shook the rifle again; silhouetted in the rainbow's light he appeared to be a furious creature from myth. Tricia watched from the line of vehicles as he rallied the men. She looked up.
"Mr. Champton!" she shouted. "They're moving!" Champton looked. The creatures were loping north, toward the distant edge of the disk.
"Follow them, quickly!" Champton yelled, and men streamed past her toward the trucks. She and Champton followed, reaching the edge of the disk ahead of the monsters.
There were several trucks there already, including Thomas'. Tricia found him and embraced him quickly. "I saw them," she said. "Champton was right."
"Sir!" a man hollered at Champton. "They're coming!" Tricia and Thomas found many more monsters than before rushing forward around the edge of the disk.
Thomas grabbed the nearest engine and pointed it at the edge of the first rainbow, squinting in the glow. Without thinking Tricia snatched a rifle from a man near her and turned it around, smashing the end of the bottle with the rifle's stock.
Brilliant light shot out, driving forward toward the monsters streaming around the disk. It collided with the lead, expanding in the blink of an eye to form into an identical twin of the disk alongside it. The lead monster and many more were thrown backward by a tremendous force, rolling and scraping the ground as they fell. More stepped up to batter against the disk but could make no dent, and then took off north once more, rushing for the next edge.
Compared to the fake light of the disks, the true sunrise was a mesmerizing array of beauty.
For hours the citizens of Boston had worked to keep the monsters out of the city, slowly gaining strength as the city came to realize fires and riots held second throne to invading beasts.
The disks came to barricade the entire city from the beasts until they ran out, and then faded away slowly. By then enough policemen and militia members had gathered, and drove the monsters back. There was still no power; telephones were out and may never return.
After being awake for hours, sore and tired, drained of everything except a blurry forward motion for the next task, Tricia and Thomas returned to her family's home. They were dropped off, standing hand-in-hand, both unaware of what such a thing would have meant twenty-four hours ago; even if they had known neither would have cared.
They entered the home, calling out, and Tricia's parents, Thomas' parents, the maid and the footman emerged, holding old weapons and with worried faces.
Tricia and Thomas told them everything.
"It's all changed," Thomas said. Tricia sat next to him, letting him do most of the talking. "In the span of a day the greatest event in human history occurred, and we survived by the width of a child's hair. Everything will be different now."
"And the two of you?" Mr. Gerryson--speaking for all four parents present--asked.
"Clinging to each other," Tricia said. Her voice was dusky, exhaustion coming across in low tones. "I'm not likely to let go."
Thomas sat up straight. "If that's all right with you, Mr. Monroe."
"Thomas, you kept her safe through the entire night-"
"She kept me safe just as often."
"You held your word, I'm saying." Tricia's father sat back. "I see nothing to discuss." Thomas nodded, smiling.
"You two must be dead on your feet," Tricia's mother said. "Angela and I will make up a bed for you, Thomas. Please...get some rest."
Boston became one of the few cities on Earth free of destruction, and without question the safest. Champton's design for the bottled engines spread to other cities and holdouts with the help of courageous men and women, ferrying the plans across desolate, enemy-ridden roads. Boston grew thanks to its status of a safe haven, pressing against the attackers. Humanity remained, resolute against its foe.
Victory? None could know.
But, decades later, a woman named Joan Gerryson, while walking home after working at the barricades, ran across an old man named George Champton, who curiously didn't recognize her, or her name. He told her he had found something some miles away from the city with an off-course supply truck. It was a large rock, perhaps ten feet across, and every hour or so one of the enemies would climb out--a slow, unending stream. He wondered if, perhaps, it was where they were coming from. He wondered if it could be destroyed.
Joan, who had known only the city, was very interested.