“Hi, babe. It’s me.”

  “Jerry? Oh, my God! Where are you? How are you? What have you been doing? How are Bruce and Barbara? Oh, my God! Are you okay?” Questions poured out of her, as well they might. She even remembered his cousins’ names.

  “Honey, I’m in Washington,” he said.

  “I know that. Tacoma, right?” She sounded impatient.

  “No, not that Washington. Washington, DC.”

  “Washington, DC? What the hell are you doing there?” Anna paused for a moment. Then she said, “Oh, my God!” one more time, now on an entirely different note. “It’s that stupid fucking ship you were on, the one that went after Russian submarines. Is the CIA after you? Did they kidnap you or something?”

  She might be melodramatic, but she was a long way from dumb. “It has to do with the CIA, yeah, but they’re not after me anymore, not after I got here and did what I had to do.”

  “Anymore? What were you doing? Why didn’t you tell me about any of this?” Anna demanded. Those were all reasonable questions, too.

  Jerry answered the last one first: “I didn’t tell you anything because the less you knew, the safer you were. I was in a bad spot. I didn’t want you there, too. I’m still not gonna tell you what it was all about over the phone. I figure the CIA’s been listening to me ever since I got back to the mainland. To you, too.”

  “That’s illegal!” She sounded furious.

  He nodded, though she couldn’t see him. “It sure is. They do it anyway. They do all kinds of shit that’s illegal.” He almost told her about what had happened to Steve Dole. At the last second, he held back. It would only alarm her and make her angrier. And he wasn’t in danger of getting bumped off anymore, not if he could rely on Henry Kissinger’s word.

  How’s that working out for South Vietnam? he asked himself. Himself loudly told him to shut the hell up.

  “When are you coming home?” Anna asked.

  “I don’t know yet. Stuff here isn’t finished. And I drove, so it’ll take a little while.”

  “What did you do for money? Do we have any left?”

  Those were also sensible questions. “I managed. And we have more than you think.” When Jerry told her how much more, she let out a startled squeak. He said, “I kept quiet about it because I couldn’t explain it without explaining a bunch of other stuff, too. And I was always afraid I might need to use some of it for something like this.”

  “We really need to talk when you do get home,” Anna said—ominously, Jerry thought.

  “Yeah. I know. I got in deeper than I thought. I didn’t find out how deep till I was already on the Glomar Explorer. That was too late for me to do anything about it. You may find out on the news, though.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “You’ll see. Or else you won’t.” Jerry yawned. “Sorry, babe. You’ve got no idea how worn out I am. Listen, if you need to get hold of me…” He gave her the hotel’s name, the phone number, and his room number. “With any luck, I’m gonna crash. I love you.”

  “I love you, too. But I’m not sure I know you at all.”

  “Right this minute, I don’t know me, either. I did the right thing, though. That’s pretty important just now. I’m going to go. ’Bye.” He hung up.

  He put on his sweats and T-shirt (the House of Slob, he thought, not without pride) and brushed his teeth. It was a little after ten: late, by the hours he’d kept on the road. He was worn out, but he was also wired on adrenaline. He took Have Space Suit—Will Travel out of his suitcase. If anything could relax him, familiar words might.

  Fifteen minutes late, Kip and Peewee were prisoners at the Wormfaces’ base on Pluto. Things looked bad for the good guys. Jerry was about to turn another page—he couldn’t read Heinlein and not keep turning pages—when somebody banged on his door.

  He jumped. He dropped the book. Even as he went to the door, he thought he knew who it would be. When he peered through the little wide-angle peephole, he found he was right. There stood John P., with a younger, bigger guy behind him.

  “What do you want?” Jerry asked without opening up.

  “Just to talk. Promise.” The senior CIA man held up his right hand as if taking an oath.

  Jerry considered. They’d been faster about tracing the call than he’d thought they could be. But he’d figured they’d do it. Now that they knew where he was, they could take him out whenever they pleased unless he planned to stay in here forever. Sighing, he undid the dead bolt and security chain and opened the door.

  John P. scowled at him in disgust. “You motherfucking son of a bitch.”

  “Hey, I love you, too.” Jerry stepped back and to the side. “C’mon in.”

  “You look better without the hair and the hippie whiskers, I will say,” John P. added.

  “Bite me,” Jerry said without heat. “You came here to talk about how I wear my hair, you can goddamn well leave.”

  “Do you have any idea how much damage you’ve caused your country? I mean, any idea at all?” the CIA man demanded as his muscular henchman closed the door.

  “No. Neither do you, unless your people have got a lot further with figuring out how Humpty Dumpty works than I think they have.”

  John P. waved that aside. “We did the heavy lifting. Literally—we did. Why do you think the fucking Russians deserve a piece of the pie?”

  “They’re human beings?” Jerry suggested. “They have scientists? Smart scientists, even? Plus the big one, of course—you assholes were gonna rub me out. Your turn now. How come you don’t think they deserve it?”

  “They’re Russians. They’re a pack of murderous Commie bastards.” To John P., it was as obvious as The sun will come up tomorrow. He added, “If I had my druthers, we’d fry you like a pork chop, the way they did with the Rosenbergs.”

  Jerry just barely knew who the Rosenbergs were. Spies for the Russians, who’d been executed when he was tiny; that was about all. “Why don’t you ask Steve Dole how he feels about it?” he said.

  “I had nothing to do with Steve Dole’s death. The Agency had nothing to do with it,” the CIA man said quickly.

  “My ass. If you mean you didn’t pull the trigger yourself, okay, I believe that much. The rest is just crap. He and I talked about what it would mean if one of us came down with a sudden case of loss of life. You think I couldn’t read the signs, man? I was next, first chance you found. So don’t talk to me about how murderous the Russians are, okay?”

  John P. just glared at him. The younger man who’d come into Jerry’s room with the CIA bigwig shifted his feet, ever so slightly. Jerry didn’t know he was tacitly admitting anything, but would have bet that way.

  He went on, “This is bigger than countries. It’ll change the whole world.”

  “Exactly,” John P. said. “It will change the whole world. And the United States needs to set the agenda on how.”

  “We haven’t done so real great at that, have we? How long do you think Saigon’s gonna last?”

  “Not very long.” The CIA man’s admission surprised Jerry. John P. went on, “And what happens afterward, there and in Cambodia and Laos, will be one of the ugliest things since Mao won in China.”

  He was much too likely to be right about that. Even so, Jerry said, “Not like our hands are clean. Some of the generals who’ve run South Vietnam, Franco, South Africa, all the tin-pot dictators in South America … C’mon, man. You know all this way better’n I do.”

  “Democracy,” John P. said. Jerry laughed in his face. The other CIA man stirred again, this time like an attack dog waiting for Sic ’im! John P. ignored him, continuing, “You think we’re bad, wait till you find out about your new friends.”

  “Oh, I know about them. Bet your balls I do. But you guys were gonna kill me,” Jerry said. “Like, what can they do that’s worse than that?”

  He thought he’d asked an unanswerable question. But John P. said, “They’re liable to start a thermonuclear war. If you live through it—which isn’t likely—you can put that on your conscience. Jesus, when I make a mistake I don’t do it halfway.” He looked disgusted again, whether at Jerry or himself Jerry couldn’t say. Then he turned. “Come on, Andy. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  Out they went. Andy tried to slam the door, but the pneumatic gadget at the top foiled him. The door clicked shut instead of banging.

  Jerry sank into a chair. His legs didn’t want to hold him up anymore. His hands shook, too. He’d never done confrontations worth a damn.

  He still wasn’t sleepy, either. He started to pick Have Space Suit—Will Travel up off the rug, then looked at the nightstand clock. It was a few minutes before eleven. Somebody would be showing news at the top of the hour.

  A couple of stations were, in fact. Both opened with the same robbery and shooting at a liquor store. Yellow journalism was alive and well on color TV. It had been alive and well on black-and-white TV, too.

  But then a newsman with almost-long hair sprayed firmly into place said, “In foreign affairs, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has received what he described as an ‘alarming call and note’ from Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin. Sources speaking off the record say this has to do with the Hughes Glomar Explorer, the so-called ocean-mining ship that’s been in the news a lot lately. Some of the other things those off-the-record sources say seem too bizarre to be believed.”

  He went on to talk about a bad crash on the Beltway that afternoon. Jerry didn’t know whether to laugh or to scream. No one wanted to believe any of this. It seemed too much like sci-fi.

  What did you do, though, when sci-fi turned real? People had been asking that question since the first V-2 fell on England, since the A-bombs incinerated two Japanese cities, since Sputnik beeped across the sky, and since Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. One of Jerry’s best moments ever had been watching Robert A. Heinlein talk about that live with Walter Cronkite. A not-so-good moment followed: remembering that Wernher von Braun, who’d pioneered the V-2, had also had a big hand in the moon-landing program. What was Mort Sahl’s line? I aim for the stars, but sometimes I hit London.

  He left the news on till it ended, hoping they’d say more. They didn’t, though. He was watching the ABC affiliate here. He thought about getting up and switching to the Peacock and Johnny Carson. Before he could, a voice-over guy said, “Here is an ABC News special report, live with Harry Reasoner.” Jerry didn’t change the channel after all.

  On came the ABC News anchorman. Jerry thought of him as Walter Cronkite Lite; he’d been Cronkite’s backup at CBS for years before moving to ABC, and he had the same kind of measured, reasonable delivery. Now Reasoner sat in front of a picture of the Glomar Explorer in Long Beach harbor.

  “What did this ship find when it sailed into the North Pacific to try to raise a sunken Soviet submarine?” Reasoner said. “Whatever it was, learning of it was enough to make Leonid Brezhnev’s veteran ambassador virtually threaten war with the United States unless his country is included in examining and exploiting it. More than one source has told ABC News that the answer may literally be out of this world.”

  So the real story was finally starting to come out. Jerry wondered whether Harry Reasoner’s sources were American or Russian. Reasoner had a fairly good notion of what had gone on while Humpty Dumpty was being raised, but he could have got that from either side.

  “I know this will sound incredible to many of you,” he said. “It sounds incredible to me, too. But it seems believable to both the Soviet Foreign Ministry and the State Department. And the peace of the world may depend on their ability to reach a mutually satisfactory arrangement.” Then he proved he was indeed a TV man: “We’ll be back after these messages.”

  Jerry endured the commercials. In due course, Reasoner returned. He said, “I am informed that there has been an ongoing dispute among the specialists on the Hughes Glomar Explorer, and in the highest echelons of the U.S. government, over how aggressively to investigate this, this object from another world. Thus far, I hear, caution has for the most part prevailed.”

  “Thank you, Jesus!” Jewish Jerry exclaimed. However ABC News had got that, it was something he hadn’t known himself.

  “Whether and to what degree the United States will let the USSR share in this astonishing discovery remains to be seen. So does what the USSR will do if its demands are refused,” Reasoner said. “On that, at the moment, depends the future of the world, and whether the world has a future. Thank you, and good night.”

  More commercials. Jerry turned off the TV. He finally did pick up Have Space Suit—Will Travel. As he did, he wondered what Heinlein thought of today’s news—and how much of it he already knew.

  * * *

  When Jerry went down for breakfast, Major Bronstein sat in the lobby reading The Washington Post. SPACESHIP THREATENS WORLD PEACE! the headline shouted. For a moment, Jerry wondered how the Russians knew where he was. But somebody could have tailed him as he walked to the parking lot. Somebody could have followed him back to the hotel.

  Bronstein saw him, too. The Soviet officer put down the paper and came over with his hand out. “Good morning, Mister Stieglitz.”

  “Good morning.” Ruefully, Jerry added, “Guess my tradecraft wasn’t all it could’ve been last night.”

  “You got here. You completed your mission. And now, will you eat with a friendly adversary?”

  “Sure. Will you tell me your name and patronymic? I’m Jerry Gymanovich.” Jerry pronounced his father’s name Russian style; without the H sound, the Russian language substituted a G for it.

  “You know our customs,” Major Bronstein said with a smile. “I’m Yakov Moiseyevich.” A lot of Jews in the USSR wore Russified names. Not Bronstein. Jerry wondered how much harder that had made his life.

  A black attendant poured coffee for both of them. Jerry ordered bacon and eggs. Yakov Bronstein got ham and eggs. They smiled the wry smiles of Jews who didn’t keep kosher. Jerry said, “Is it really going to be that bad?”

  “Well, I don’t know.” Bronstein plainly chose his words with care. “It may be that bad. We do not aim to be closed out of learning from the Midlothian object. The ambassador has made that very clear to your secretary of state. So has Foreign Minister Gromyko. Anatoly Fyodorovich told me Kissinger told him the foreign minister had never before spoken to him that bluntly. So where we go from here is up to the United States.”

  “Is Kissinger still saying it belongs to us because we found it in international waters?” Jerry asked.

  “He is. He seems less insistent than he did yesterday—he has discovered we are serious,” the major said. “He has also discovered we have put our military forces on alert and are beginning necessary preparations for whatever may come.”

  Jerry was saved from answering when their breakfasts came. He ate for a little while. Then he said what was still on his mind: “Good Lord!”

  “Is this not the effect you wanted to create?”

  “I wanted both sides to study Humpty Dumpty. I didn’t want to blow up the world!”

  “We also want both sides to study it.” Bronstein steepled his fingers. “No one wants to blow up the world. But what we want to do and what we find ourselves doing, these are not always the same thing. If our interests are flaunted—no, excuse me, flouted—we will defend them.”

  Jerry ate some hash browns. He didn’t see anything to say to that. The attendant came by with his coffee pot and raised an eyebrow. Jerry nodded. The man refilled his cup. “Thank you very much,” Jerry told him. He raised the eyebrow again. He might not have been used to getting treated as a person rather than a convenience.

  “I have looked at your work and your writing,” Bronstein said. “I understand why your government recruited you for the Hughes Glomar Explorer. I also enjoyed the stories.”

  “Flatter me some more,” Jerry said. Major Bronstein laughed, altogether unembarrassed. Jerry was pleased anyway.

  “You are welcome to stay at the embassy. Even to request asylum,” Bronstein said. “We recognize the debt we owe you.”

  “No. I didn’t do it for you. I did it for everybody. I don’t have any use for Communism myself. Sorry to be rude and everything, but that’s where I’m at.”

  “I understand. You may be safer under our roof, though.”

  “Ambassador Dobrynin told me the CIA wasn’t after me anymore.” Jerry didn’t mention that John P. had said the same thing. Either the Russians already knew about last night’s visit or they didn’t.

  Yakov Bronstein’s sorrowful look told him he was in over his head, and hinted at how far in over his head he was. “I was not talking about the CIA. They are professionals. But sooner or later your name will come out. Your whole country will know you were the one who told Russia about the Midlothian object. What kind of life will you have then?”

  “Urk,” Jerry said, most sincerely. He’d thought things through till he got to the Soviet embassy—if he got to the Soviet embassy. Whatever happened next would just happen. But And they lived happily ever after only worked in fairy tales. In real life, things were messier.

  A thermonuclear war? His name mud from sea to shining sea? Yeah, quite a bit messier.

  “Think about it. You will be received as a friend if you visit us again.” Bronstein set money on the table. He said, “Zei gezint,” and left.

  Jerry got up, too. He asked a valet to fetch his car. “I just need to get something out of the trunk. You can put it back again once I’m done,” he said.

  “Yes, suh,” the man answered. Jerry tipped him the same as he would have any other time. He was sure nobody ever got rich fetching other people’s cars for them.

  He breathed a sigh of relief to find that his envelope of cash hadn’t walked with Jesus. That would have messed him up but good. Should have thought of it last night, he scolded himself. He took the envelope back to his room and checked it there to make sure the Agency hadn’t substituted cut-up newspapers or something. Nope—still Federal Reserve notes.

  Then he turned on the TV. He skated from station to station, the way he had during the Watergate hearings. Commentators were speculating as hard as they could. Better to specu late than never, Jerry thought vaguely. Of course, these might be the last days of the late, great Planet Earth for real.