Page 7 of Them

But then his mind wandered to their insectoid joints and hardened scales, the way they repelled bullets like the bow of some bulging darksteel battleship. How they waded through mighty river currents as if the rapid water were no more than a shallow puddle. The way they moved in those old news clips, immense weight ignorant of gravity. Living weapons that frolicked through the streets of Boston without mercy or consideration. Death incarnated in a steel stinger.

The moon would soon be new and absent, likely not tomorrow, but within two or three days. Big blue eyes would have a harder time picking him out in such conditions, even if there were six of them on each head.

The moon knew the man was studying it. Its sleek crescent seemed to open up and chat with him. Why, yes, it said, I will be gone in a few days. Well, not gone, little mouse, but my eye will turn in and close and you will have your run of the void. Have you been eating your carrots? Have you developed night vision yet? Have you the ocular vigor?

The man considered the moon’s points. He saw well in the dark, but seeing was easy at a walking man’s pace. He might have to run, and without the moon, even jogging could be dangerous on a flat and open road. How dark would it be under the trees? Traveling in thick forest or without moonlight was feasible without his own torch—he’d done both before—but all at once? He knew they liked sleep, needed it just as he did, but he didn’t know how easily they would stir. Would a flashlight or lighter wake them? Attract them like moths? Did they have adrenaline? Cortisol? Could they snap from their creek-sleep lull and pounce? Were they really hesitant in the dark, as the populace was once advised? Or did they merely go to sleep like everyone else?

He wasn’t sure, but knew that he never would be.

The man made up his mind. He would move on the new moon, at the witching hour, but neither his decision nor the moon’s suggestions offered him any comfort.

The only thing he took solace in was their eyes. He was fairly sure they glowed. If Scylla and Charybdis awoke and opened their alien sight, the water would light up neon, and he would be impaled by their slick spears and dragged into their blue shimmer.

But at least he would see them coming. Before they ate him alive. That was good. That would leave enough time to shoot himself.

The man’s eyes had wandered to the ground in contemplation. He returned them to the moon, which looked more like a wink than a mouth now. It had nothing left to say.

In a stranger’s bed, the man affirmed his decision. Two or three days at this house. Maybe four. Cross over the creek at the witching hour when it’s darkest, when even six blue searchlights will have difficulty spotting him. Until then, sleep and wait and eat and take inventory.

He was glad the moon was waning. The man hoped it was two days. The man had spent many days waiting. He yearned for the privilege of impatience.

The man stilled for some time, appearing to sleep, when suddenly he sprang out of the sheets and into the bathroom. He returned with a bottle that jingled in medicinal tunes. In the dim heat of his lighter, the label confirmed that the drug would help him sleep through the sun. Three cheers for Izzy’s parents.

He swallowed two pink tablets, left the bottle on the nightstand, and let the chemicals take him. He would be deep by sunrise. Their cries, metal xylophones that said Hello, sun, we’ve been waiting, would not wake him.

Two or three days.

Maybe four.

And he slept.

Artemis’s first arrow reeled back rocks from a distant, dead planet. It worked on the first try, can you believe that? Took Brown half a decade to build the damn thing, but still: first try. Makes you think it might’ve not been an accident after all.

I never was religious. Grew up going to church but my mind was always outside the stained glass walls. Wandering. When I was fighting, I wore a cross, but most guys do. It gives your mom something to hold on to if you get shipped back in pieces. But now, I wonder.

They were just rocks. I wasn’t there for that first firing, Project Artemis being in the dreaded basement. Brown told me the initial test was happening, but I thought it most likely that the austere observatory would be coated in mechanical soot after a few small explosions. So I’d stayed away, even gotten a head start on filing the closure paperwork. Put down a McCarthy hardcover to do it: The Road, I think it was, but maybe I’m projecting.

But rocks are not soot, nor are they nothing.

Brown called me right after. He was manic. I didn’t believe him. Didn’t believe him until, five minutes later, I received another call from an unlisted number. They were my orders to fly to New Mexico and pack a bag, a big one.

“Dress for the desert sun, Buxton; your one-way leaves in six hours.”

But they were just rocks. Inside that giant underground dome, a spherical chamber huddled beneath a fifty-foot cannon, bathing in the glow of blinking lights and whirling gauges—gray rocks. Piles of sandy dirt. Geological reds and browns as ordinary as our own.

It was funny, that mess so carefully preserved in fluorescent sterility. The chunks at the edge were sliced in clean curves so that the whole thing formed a perfect circle. Some in neat halves, others with only a small slice missing, and a handful that had fallen over. It looked like a miniature Stonehenge, something a hippie would’ve had in his backyard so they could kneel down in the middle of it all and meditate.

Just rocks and dirt. But they were there. They were undeniably there. Right in front of me. I asked where they’d come from and some of the lab coats chuckled.

Brown grinned and his eyes sparkled. “Space, Buxton, space.”

And then it became clear that Project Artemis was not going away. It was not like the others. They’d won. They’d taken on all laws of convention and sanity and won. I suppose I should say that we won, but looking through that blast-glass window, I felt alien. Criminal. The battle against the universe wasn’t supposed to be victorious. We weren’t even supposed to fight it.

I stood there for a silent moment after uttering my ignorant question. Quite a few moments. Brown stood behind me, rocking on his heels, beaming the whole time, a little kid waiting to say “I told you so.” When I was ready, I turned and left without a word. The battle was won, but the war—their war—was not over.

And yet I can’t claim any of that to be true. The truth is, I could’ve been smiling. It might not have been the strenuous task of believing that kept me stupefied. It could’ve been wonder. It might’ve been victory. And it was my victory too. Just as I’d routinely received the blame for any number of basement failures beyond my control, the dozen or so G-men on the other end of my phone that night all referred to me as the King of the Cosmos.

In the following months, too insatiable to be content with our initial success, the desert team pushed the limits of our teleportation cannon. Still just rocks. For now.