He swung into the driveway and parked behind the custom camper van. Antonio Vitale, a tall beefy man with a beard and moustache, leaned out the side door of the house. "Hey, Joey! Hurry up! Mama's making pancakes for you!"

  "Great, Pop. I'm starving." Unfolding his lanky frame from the sports car in careful stages, he climbed out, slammed the door, and stood looking at the street with a grin. Joey still sometimes missed living at home, though his luxurious Manhattan apartment had its obvious advantages. He took a long stride toward the house.

  "Hi, Joey," said a quiet voice from the house next door.

  Vitale turned, peering into the shadows of the porch, then smiled tentatively at the young woman sitting on the top step.

  She was small, with taffy-brown hair and pert features, and was wearing a Yankees sweatshirt and much-faded jeans. "Hi, Marianne. Good to see you."

  Hesitantly, Joey crossed the narrow strip of lawn as she came down the steps toward him. He stopped about four feet away, wondering if hugging her would be the right thing to do. "Hey, you look really great. How you been?" No hug.

  Simultaneously, she said, "I haven't seen you in months. Ilow've you been?"

  They broke off, then laughed. "You first," said Joey.

  "Well, I've been pretty good. Studying hard. Grad school keeps me pretty busy. Your turn."

  "Same here. We didn't make the play-offs," he shrugged. "But maybe next year. I see you still got the sweatshirt I gave you."

  "I've still got everything you gave me," she said, instantly looking as though she wished she could have taken the words hack. "Uh, that's some nice camper you gave your folks."

  "Yeah, well, Pop always wanted one. And with all the money Alex Garr pays me, the least I can do is make sure Mom and Pop have what they want. They're takin' a trip to Italy next summer."

  "That's nice. Are you . . . still seeing that girl? Leslie?"

  He glanced over at his car, then down at his Adidas. "Nah. All she was really interested in was going to parties and gettin' expensive presents. Too highfalutin for me. You know what I like—a thick shake, a coupla burgers . . . and a good martial arts or horror flick—that's me."

  "Yeah, I know," she said, not without irony. "You must not have much trouble meeting girls, though."

  " Ahhh, they're all baseball Annies, just hangin' around the hotels and bars. I tried it a couple of times. Not my style. I'd rather watch the late movies and go to sleep by myself, or sit around and talk baseball with Pete and Bobby Neal." He met her eyes squarely. "Why'd you want to know?"

  "I don't know. 'Cause I still care about you, I guess. You're a nice guy. Too nice, sometimes. People—women—take advantage of you."

  "Not lately," he said with a tinge of bitterness. Then, more hesitantly, "I thought about calling."

  "Joey ..." She looked down, wrapping her hands in the gray folds of the sweatshirt.

  "Mare . . ."He paused, then plunged ahead. "Couldn't we try it again?"

  She looked up at him for a long second, then shook her head hopelessly. "Nothing's changed. There're still all those nights you'd be on the road and I'd still be Joey's little woman, sitting in the stands, cheering you at the home games. I just don't think I could live like that."

  "That's not forever,'you know," he said more roughly than he'd intended. "I got enough money. I could retire by the time I'm thirty and never have to work again. Pete's helped me invest it, and I'm learning how to manage it right. Then we'd have the rest of our lives together. No road trips, no baseball Annie's tryin' to put the make on me."

  "And you'd always feel that if you'd played another five years, you'd be a Hall of Fame candidate. I can't ask you to give up what you love for me. Besides," she sighed, "I'm almost done with my degree. I want to work for a while before I settle down. Date some other guys. Since we were kids, there's only been you in my life."

  "Jo-eeey!" Antonio bellowed. Joey stepped back until his father could see him.

  "Be there in a minute, Pop."

  "Oh! Okay, son, sorry." The elder Vitale disappeared.

  "See?" Joey looked back at Marianne. "They're still hoping we'll get back together. They love you, Mare."

  "And I love them," she said, trying not to give in. "It's just—I don't know, Joey. You know I'll always care about you, but I just don't—"

  He didn't want her to say anything final, so he gently interrupted, giving her that famous smile. "I won't push you. But promise me you'll think it over, huh?"

  "Jo-eeeey!" This time it was his mother's singsong from the kitchen window. "The pancakes are getting cold. Bring Marianne in with you—I got plenty."

  Joey and Marianne looked at each other. He rolled his eyes. "She could announce at the stadium without the PA system."

  They finally managed to smile, sharing the first really comfortable moment since they'd started to chat. "Well, I never could turn down your mom's pancakes." She linked her arm through his and they headed for Joey's house.

  "Denise," said the voice in her earphone. "Camera two in live . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one ..."

  The demanding red light flicked on and Denise smiled into Ihe lens. "Good morning and welcome back to our second hour of the Morning News. Once again I'm going solo because the Visitors continue to be a round-the-clock, round-the-world story, and our staff of correspondents have been shuttling around the globe, giving you the most comprehensive coverage possible.

  "Four days ago, history was made in Visitor-Earth relations when work began at assorted chemical plants around the planet, work designed to retool the plants for processing the Visitors' life-saving chemical." She turned toward the monitor behind the anchor desk. "We thought this would be a good time to give you a quick review of the past two and a half unprecedented weeks in our world's history."

  On the monitor, images of the giant ships hovering over world capitals unreeled, then the videotape of Mike Donovan's initial tour of the New York Mother Ship appeared. Denise narrated: "The day after the alien saucers arrived, we finally saw the interiors of these massive space vehicles and found them not all that different from our own largest aircraft carriers—-at least at first glance." The monitor ran quickly over shots of blue-gray walls, dimly lit hangars filled with gleaming white shuttles and squad vehicles, with red-coveralled Visitors bustling to attend to them.

  The screen flickered, then filled with Kristine Walsh's familiar features, and beside her another woman—dark-haired, imperiously beautiful, with a figure that even the red coveralls couldn't conceal. "We met Diana," Denise continued her voice-over, "Supreme Commander John's second-in-command for the enormous Visitor Fleet, who has subsequently resumed command of the Los Angeles ship in her capacity as science officer for the expedition. Incidentally, our scientists are very curious about the huge ships' gravity drive, which we've been told takes up nearly half their interior. The Mother Ships also have enormous refrigerated holds designed for storage of the compound manufactured here on Earth. As nearly as we've been able to guess—and we've been given no specific numbers—the crew of each of the fifty or so ships in the Fleet numbers from three to five thousand Visitors."

  Denise turned away from the monitor. "Yesterday I went with a camera crew to visit the opening of a chemical plant located right here in Brooklyn, New York—the borough famous for Coney Island, foot-long hotdogs, and, of course, the old Brooklyn Dodgers baseball team. We were given a guided tour of the facility as the work begun earlier in the week progressed. But first here's what it looked like that first day when the Visitors came to Brooklyn . . ."

  As Denise continued her voice-over, the tape showed three large Visitor shuttlecraft landing on the football-field-sized parking lot then disgorging wave upon wave of red-coveralled workers and technicians, all under the watchful eyes of mounted police and area residents.

  Denise watched herself appear onscreen with Roger while a Visitor shuttle lifted off behind them with nearly soundless efficiency. The plant was visible behind it, its smokestacks looming overhead, lengths of tube and pipe threading in and out, hugging the concrete slab walls.

  "Roger," her onscreen image asked, "as Commander and supervisor of the operations that will begin at this plant today, were you surprised by the greeting you received from the people who live here in Brooklyn?" Denise's videotaped image held the cordless mike closer to the Visitor officer to catch his reply.

  "Surprised? In what way?"

  "Well, elsewhere in this country, your ships have been greeted with marching bands and an almost festive sideshow atmosphere. But here in Brooklyn, while hundreds of residents did turn out to watch, they were much more reserved—as if they had yet to pass judgment on whether they approve of the Visitor activities in their area."

  Roger gave his best boyish grin. "I see what you're getting at. No, Denise, that doesn't worry me. I was warned that New Yorkers are tough—and I mean that in the best possible sense. They're honest and protective of their neighbors, so it's natural they'd be concerned about a large force of outside—and I do mean outside—" he grinned again, "workers and technicians coming here."

  The scene cut to a sidewalk interview with an elderly man wearing a baseball cap and windbreaker. "We never liked having the plant here to begin with," he was saying, "but we learned to live with it. Now these Visitors are doing who-knows-what to it. What if they ruin it for other uses, or pollute Ihe air and ocean? This is our beach here, y'know."

  Roger's concerned face appeared again. "Rest assured that we won't be doing anything to endanger the community. In Iaet, our manufacturing process is much safer than the chemical processing you humans were doing here previously. Much of what we're doing at this plant is simply desalinating seawater to use in our cooling and refining process. You see, Denise, when you consider that we're going to be using eryogenic techniques, it's easy to see that—"

  Denise smilingly nodded her head as Roger authoritatively—and nearly incomprehensibly—began on the technical problems of using supercooled substances in chemical processing. Finally she held up a forestalling hand. "I'm sure there are many members of our audience who are following you |ierfectly, Roger, but others of us, myself included, lost you on the first sentence. Perhaps you can illustrate what you're talking about during our tour?"

  The camera followed Denise and Roger through the plant while her voice-over continued: "Unfortunately, we didn't discover a great deal about the nature of the Visitor chemical processes during our tour. The consultants we'd brought with us were able to glean only a little more from the highly scientific jargon the Visitor technicians employed."

  Her voice hesitated. "But getting answers to our questions at all posed more of a problem than comprehending any answers we received. Many of our questions were deferred with promises to get back to us with information at some later date, and many of us were left to ponder this increasing evidence of the Visitor high technology and scientific superiority."

  Then the poised videotaped Denise stood alone, mike in hand, hair windblown, in front of the plant. "There is a definite wariness apparent here in the sea breezes of Brooklyn, as those who live near the chemical plant watch and wait. This is Denise Daltrey, on location, here in Brooklyn." The recorded voice cut with the image and the monitor blanked. Denise turned back to her audience. "We'll be right back after these messages."

  The red light blinked off, and the director's voice boomed over the loudspeaker, "Denise, pick up the phone. It's the president."

  "Of the United States?" Denise gasped.

  "Of the network."

  She cocked an eyebrow at Winston Weinberg as he leaned against the end of the anchor desk. "You think the shit just hit the fan?" she asked.

  "You'll know in a second," he said.

  Denise reached for the phone. "Yes, sir?" She listened for a second. "Yes, I'm free after the broadcast. And I think Mr. Weinberg is too." She hesitated. "A meeting? Well, we have a lot of work to do before tomorrow's—" She winced and bit her lip. "Yes, sir. Yes, sir, we'll be there."

  She slowly put the receiver back into its cradle.

  "Well?" asked Weinberg.

  "He wanted to know why we were picking on the Visitors and how we could have aired such a suspicious, unfriendly, potentially divisive report. Where's our sense of priorities? he wants to know." She twiddled her fingers against the stack of notes at her spot on the anchor desk. "He'll have all our heads on silver platters if the News Division doesn't shape up and fly right—starting now."

  Weinberg smoothed his droopy moustache. "He said all that?"

  "He talks quickly when he's pissed off, Winnie." Denise tried to smile but didn't succeed. "Actually, I think 'enraged' is a better word."

  The producer shook his head. "That dumb sonofabitch. He's network president because he's an accountant, and he has the balls to tell us how we should cover the news? What does he expect from us? Puff pieces like the ones Kristine Walsh is doing? She's covering this thing like she's their official spokeswoman, not a journalist. Jesus H. Christ . . ."Weinberg clenched his hand into a fist, looked at it, then turned away, his shoulders sagging.

  "Ten seconds," came the disembodied director's voice.

  * * *

  Angela paced in front of the conference table where Roger a. arms folded. Jennifer stood by the portal, watching her expressionlessly, wishing the Commander hadn't requested her

  presence.

  "We simply can't allow any more media coverage like that Daltrey woman's broadcast this morning," Angela snarled. We're having enough trouble with this damned city already."

  1 agree," Roger said mildly. "But we've already taken steps. Diana approached Kristine Walsh yesterday, as scheduled. And the CBS network president came through just as we suggested."

  Angela whirled to face her commanding officer. "Yes, but we wouldn't have had him to fall back on if / hadn't marked him as an ideal conversion subject back at the Mayor's party. Don't forget that, Roger."

  The Commander stood abruptly, towering over the small blonde. "And my records give you full credit for your contribution," he said tightly. "I'm sure there's no need to remind you that I'm the reason you've risen through the ranks as quickly as you have—the reason you were given this assignment as my second over officers with more time in service."

  Angela lowered her eyes, realizing she'd gone too far. "I didn't intend to imply that I had forgotten, Roger. It's just that today's broadcast made me furious. I was just—how does the expression go—blowing off steam."

  "Very well," Roger said, mollified. He turned to Jennifer, who was trying not to look at Angela, knowing how the latter—her superior officer—would react to Jennifer's witnessing her rebuke. "I called you in, Jennifer, to ask if you've completed your investigation of Denise Daltrey."

  "Yes, Commander," Jennifer replied. "I don't think she's a candidate for a spokesperson slot. She's not the same kind of human as Kristine Walsh—I can't uncover any weaknesses significant enough to control her. In fact, I definitely recommend against approaching her with an offer similar to the one we made Walsh. My analysis indicates it would be rejected summarily, and it would cause unwelcome suspicion on Daltrey's part."

  Roger nodded. "Very well. Let's see if our word with the

  network president takes care of the situation before considering any direct action." His green eyes fixed on Angela's. "Satisfactory?"

  "Yes, Commander," the blonde officer replied meekly, but Jennifer didn't miss the glance she cast at Roger's back as he turned away. Angela wasn't much of an actress at concealing her true thoughts . . .

  Denise sat alone in her office, still smarting from the morning's meeting with the network president. A tuna on rye toast and a diet Pepsi rested in the white deli bag on her desk, but her stomach flipped over at the very notion of food. The bastard, she thought. You'd have thought we'd done an expose on his favorite auntie's whorehouse. Why the hell did he take it so personally?

  She popped open the can of Pepsi and took a cautious sip. The liquid stayed in her stomach, so she took another sip, opening her desk drawer to get out a napkin. Her fingers encountered an edge of white envelope, and she tugged a note out of the drawer, seeing her name written in her producer's familiar scrawl. "Hate to say it," the note read, "but I was righter than I knew. Walsh was named Visitor Spokesperson today. I must be psychic—now you know why I bet all the time. Should've put money on it this time. At least that way I'd have had something to comfort me while I barfed in disgust. Love and kisses, Winnie."

  Denise balled the note up savagely, then prompted by an impulse she didn't care to examine too closely, she tore it into indecipherable shreds. Something's going on here, she thought, feeling her anger crystallize into resolution. And whoever's behind it had better look out . . .

  Joey Vitale savored each and every moment he could spend on the grass and dirt of Yankee Stadium. For his father's generation, nothing could replace the old Brooklyn Dodgers, long gone to Los Angeles. But for Joey, born after the Dodgers had packed up and broken the hearts of baseball fans from Flatbush to Canarsie, and after that old bandbox called Ebbets Field had been bulldozed for a housing project, there was only one ballpark in his childhood dreams—the House that Ruth Built, nestled in a still-habitable corner of the South Bronx.

  The presence of the stadium and its baseball dynasty stood as a bulwark against the spreading urban decay that had swallowed most of the surrounding area, transforming a once-prosperous middle-class neighborhood into one of the poorest in the country.

  That was the sociology of the place as related to Joey by Pete horsy the when the younger player had first joined the team. Joey had grown up in the city, but when he was a kid, Yankee Stadium had been an isolated golden haven, a stop on the subway, or an exit off the Cross-Bronx Expressway when his pop would swallow his Yankee-hating pride and take his son to the games. The young player had never known what its surrounding neighborhood was like until Pete took him for a drive through streets that could have been transplanted from World War Two Europe—hollow-eyed shells of once-grand apartment houses, rubble-strewn, often-charred lots that resembled Hiroshima ground zero where jobless teenagers hunched against boarded-up storefronts and where faded and near-indecipherable signs above the doors gave mute evidence that commerce had once existed in this desolation.