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  She put an arm around my waist, helping me out of the cell and through the door. We entered the main office. It had two desks, a rifle rack, a coffee table—I heard car doors slam outside.

  “What are we going to do with the body?” I heard the whiny deputy ask.

  “Leave it for now,” the sheriff said. “I want to talk to the stranger first.”

  “Quick,” Debby whispered, urging me toward the back.

  I knew we’d never make it. So I lifted my arm from her shoulders and headed for the rifles, for the five of them in the gun rack.

  “What are you doing?” Debby whispered, following me. “We have to get out of here.”

  I saw my mistake. The rifles were locked in place by a bar.

  “Logan,” Debby whispered with urgency and despair.

  That’s when I got angry. I was angry at my weakness, angry that the sheriff had gotten the drop on me and almost beaten me to death, angry that I’d screwed things up for Debby. The woman was trying to help me.

  I gripped the lock in my hands and twisted suddenly and savagely. It wasn’t a big lock, but it was big enough. The lock resisted my newfound strength. I snarled, grabbed a rifle barrel and wrenched it as hard as I could. Wood splintered as I tore the rifle from the rack.

  “Did you hear that?” the deputy whined. “What’s going on in there?”

  The sheriff didn’t respond verbally. He broke into a run. I could tell by his heavy, rushing footfalls.

  Debby moaned, with her hands in front of her mouth.

  I ripped open a drawer, tore bullets from a box and shoved them into the rifle. It was an old-style, lever-action Winchester, just like the ones in old movie Westerns.

  The front door banged open as the sheriff entered with a big revolver in his hand.

  I levered a bullet into the chamber and fired from the hip. The sound was deafening inside the office. One after another, I levered more bullets into the chamber, firing each one at the sheriff.

  The bullets sent him staggering backward. Then, he went down hard, the gun flying from his hand.

  The deputy ran up with his own gun in hand. I’d hoped the man would run away. Flames burst from his barrel as he shot at me. The splintering sound told me he’d hit wood to my left.

  I shot the deputy three times until he sprawled outside on his back.

  Behind me, Debby moaned more piteously than ever. “Now you’ve done it,” she said. “Now you’ve done it.”

  I approached the sheriff.

  “No, Logan,” she said. “Watch out.”

  I glanced back at her. She screamed, seeing something in front of me.

  I whipped around in time to watch the sheriff sit up. The front of his shirt was torn, and there were marks on his flesh—pseudo-flesh, I guess you’d call it. Underneath the marks gleamed bright metal.

  “He’s a robot,” Debby said. “Don’t you understand? You can’t kill him. Now he’s going to kill us.”

  -30-

  A cold, terrible feeling struck me as I watched the sheriff climb to his feet. He actually was a robot. Were they all robots in Far Butte? I didn’t believe that. What about old Parker with his chopper?

  I had another question. How many of the Far Butte people had guns? I was betting not too many of them did.

  “You are under arrest,” the sheriff said. The head moved minutely as he took in Debby. “You have aided and abetted a criminal escaping from justice. Your time has come, Debby.”

  I shot him in the head. He staggered. I ran at him as I levered another bullet into the chamber. I fired, pumping bullets at him. He staggered out the door and tripped as his heels struck the dead deputy.

  “Come on, Debby!” I shouted. “Follow me.”

  I vaulted over the fallen robot, landing on the street. Swiveling around, cocking the lever-action Winchester, I aimed at Walt as the robot sat up again.

  Debby screamed, sliding to a stop. She was in the doorway with the robot blocking her way.

  I pulled the trigger, hearing the rifle click. I was out of bullets.

  If you can imagine this, the robot smiled. What kind of robot would smile knowing someone had run out of bullets? I’m guessing it had to be an advanced model with sadistic programming.

  I swung the rifle by the barrel, smashing the butt against his head as if it were a baseball. I knocked him down again, this time onto his side.

  “Debby,” I shouted.

  She ran and jumped, landing beside me as she grabbed my jacket for balance.

  “Get in the car,” I told her.

  “What car?” she shrieked.

  “The police car,” I said. “See if the keys are still in the ignition.”

  The sheriff began sitting up for the third time. I batted him down before he could get his balance.

  Debby ran to the police car, opening a door and jumping in. She fiddled for a second before the engine came to life with a roar.

  The robot sat up faster this time, and he—it—dodged my swing. I clubbed it on the return swing, causing the rifle butt to blow apart. The robot absorbed the blow and shot to its feet.

  Bellowing, I charged, jabbing what remained of the rifle against its torso. I shoved and it tripped over the doorjamb. I figured I’d used up all my remaining luck for the next ten years. I pitched the bent rifle at the robot and sprinted for the police cruiser.

  The tires spun, squealing on the pavement as smoke billowed. The car whipped out of its parking location. Debby jammed on the brakes, stopping the car amidst a smoky haze.

  I opened the passenger-side door and leaped in. She punched the gas pedal, making the tires spin and squeal again. Then she screamed.

  I twisted around. The robot was coming. Just before it could grab me, the car shot forward, the passenger-side door striking the humanoid machine just enough to throw it off balance.

  We sped away from it down Main Street.

  I opened my partly shut door and slammed it closed. I looked back, fully expecting to see the robot sprinting after us and gaining. Instead, the sheriff just watched. The machine kept watching until Debby took a corner fast, making the tires squeal once more.

  “Now what do we do?” she shouted.

  That was a damn good question.

  Debby kept accelerating as we roared out of Far Butte.

  ***

  “Why don’t you pull over there?” I said several miles later. Far Butte was behind us. We were out in the desert.

  Debby glanced at me before doing as I suggested. She brought the car to a stop under some trees, turning off the ignition and killing the headlights. Her shoulders slumped in the darkness.

  I opened the passenger-side door. A cool breeze blew in, and I heard a windmill thump as its vanes spun overhead. Tree leaves rustled, adding their sounds. Stars twinkled brightly, but there was no moon tonight.

  “Thanks for coming to get me,” I said.

  Debby did not respond.

  I turned toward her. She’d bowed her head with her face in her hands. I think she might have been crying, but it was so soft that I couldn’t hear.

  “Hey,” I said, as I patted her shoulder.

  She looked up and tried to smile. “I’m scared,” she said in a small voice. “I think…I think I did it this time. The sheriff will kill both of us. I went too far.”

  “Did you grow up here?” I asked.

  “No! None of us did. Mr. Gaines says—”

  “Who is Mr. Gaines?” I asked.

  “That’s the old-timer in the leather jacket, Parker Gaines. He used to be a biker in the Bar Hoppers. He told me once that he took a turnoff while traveling Route 50. He said it was the worst mistake of his life. That’s how he got stuck in Far Butte.”

  “What is Far Butte?”

  “I’m not sure,” she said.

  “How long have you been here?”

  “Eight years.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-three.”

  “You were fifteen when you came to Far
Butte?” I asked.

  Debby stared at me in the darkness. “I ran away from home. I was stupid back then. I thought I had a rough life. My dad, my real dad, died in Operation Ripper in South Korea.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “My dad was drafted into the military,” she said.

  No one had been drafted into the U.S. military since the Vietnam War. Was she saying she wasn’t an American?

  “Uh…”I said. “Your dad fought and died during Operation Ripper?”

  She nodded.

  “I never heard of it,” I said.

  “It was in the news. General Ridgeway—”

  “Ridgeway?” I asked. “You can’t mean General Ridgway who led the 82nd Airborne during World War II.”

  “That sounds about right,” she said. “He also took over from MacArthur in South Korea during the Korean War.”

  Her words weren’t stacking up.

  “Uh…” I said for a second time. “This might sound like a stupid question. But what year did Operation Ripper take place?”

  “1951,” Debby said.

  I stared more intently as the weirdness intensified.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked. “Why are you staring at me like that?”

  “Ah…how old are you again?”

  “I already told you. Twenty-three.”

  Debby looked and sounded twenty-three, but if her dad had died in Operation Ripper in 1951, did that mean she’d been born around 1950? If so, she had to be approaching seventy.

  Debby turned away. “You don’t realize yet, do you?”

  I guess I didn’t. “Are we in some kind of alternate reality?” I asked.

  “No, nothing like that,” she said. “I could only wish it were that. It’s worse.”

  “How could it be worse?”

  “This place—Far Butte, the surrounding desert—is out of phase with the rest of the planet. Sometimes though, ever since 1951, it opens a little and a few luckless souls wander in. Most of the time, the sheriff interviews them. If they pass, the latest inductees get to work in the tower.”

  “What happens in the tower?”

  Debby pushed her lips out. “It’s hard to remember. Most people can’t. Not too many of them worry about that, though. You get used to it. With a few, though, remembering becomes an obsession. Eventually, Walt takes those few out into the desert and no one sees them again.”

  “You remember, though, don’t you?” I asked.

  She looked down. “A little,” she admitted.

  “What do you do in the tower?”

  In a soft voice, she said, “I polish a strange, giant ornament until the pieces gleam. Some of the pieces have cracks in them. I remove those from time to time and insert special crystals into the vacant areas. It’s very complicated and only a few people get to go where I do.”

  She seemed to become uncomfortable. “I hear voices sometimes as I work in there. Horrible voices telling me awful things.”

  She began to weep softly.

  I hesitated. Her story was starting to freak me out. Was she saying we were in some kind of 1950’s time warp? That didn’t seem quite right. It seemed as if she meant out of phase as if this was a pocket separate from the regular world.

  Finally, the weeping got to me. I slid farther into the car and held her. She put her face on my shoulder and cried a little harder. Soon, I found myself stroking her hair.

  “I don’t go into the tower all the time like the others,” Debby said quietly. “Mostly, I work in the diner, helping to feed everyone. But every once in a while someone finds the right kind of crystal and I have to see if it will fit in the matrix.”

  I thought about my crystal from Rax Prime. It seemed odd the sheriff hadn’t taken Rax when he—when it—had had the chance. Maybe the sheriff hadn’t realized Rax was a sentient crystal inside the metal sheath. That might have saved Rax from going into the special room inside the tower.

  “You said we’re out of phase. What does that mean exactly?”

  “Just what it sounds like,” she whispered. “We’re hidden from everyone else on Earth. We’re out of phase from normal time or maybe from normal space. I can never remember which.”

  “What changed in 1951?” I asked. “You said ever since 1951 a few luckless souls have wandered into this out-of-phase place. Operation Ripper couldn’t have caused that.”

  “No, of course not,” she said. “Parker has a theory about why things started happening in 1951, but I don’t know if he’s right. Back then, America began testing nuclear weapons in Nevada. Parker thinks the explosions woke something up here, something in the tower that’s been hiding for a long, long time. The thing has been stirring ever since the nukes went off. And since that time, it has let a few people into its out-of-phase existence.”

  I thought about Greenland, the Polarions and those hominids in the stasis tubes. Supposedly, someone had built the complex when Greenland had been ice-free Thule. Had the white tower been hiding out here in Far Butte, Nevada since those times? Did the tower create some kind of out-of-phase field? Could our Cold Warriors testing their nuclear bombs have woken something up that should have remained asleep?

  It was crazy stuff, and I was stuck in this Twilight Zone place. Was it any weirder than aliens in an orbital pirate-vessel, though? Was being out of phase any weirder than Unguls? Maybe. But that wasn’t my immediate concern.

  “You must realize that you’ve been here longer than eight years,” I said. “If you came in 1951—”

  “I came in 1966 when I was fifteen years old.”

  “Okay… That means instead of eight years you’ve been here more like sixty.”

  Debby shuddered and began to weep again.

  I held her, waiting for the tears to subside.

  Finally, she looked up as she dried her eyes. Our lips were very close. I kissed her because I knew I should—her lips were salty with her tears—and I held her more tightly.

  Soon, she kissed me back hungrily, causing me to respond with even greater fervor.

  “Martin,” she whispered once.

  I let that go because Debby seemed lonely. Maybe I was lonely, too, but had never let myself know it.

  One thing was clear. I had to leave this place. It must have something to do with Polarions, with something inside the white tower. Maybe if I could get inside the tower, I could turn off whatever kept this place out of phase with the rest of the planet.

  Debby pulled away, maybe because she sensed my drifting thoughts.

  “I-I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I-I shouldn’t have done that.”

  “You needed to,” I said.

  Her eyes narrowed as she studied me. “You needed to,” she said.

  “That’s true. I feel better for it, especially because now I have an ally. We’re partners, Debby, you and me against that maniacal robot.”

  “It’s no joke.”

  “Who’s joking?”

  She grabbed my fingers, gripping them tightly. “Do you mean that?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I can’t stay here. Aliens are threatening Earth. I have to stop them.”

  “How are you going to do that?”

  I pulled my hands free. “Let’s step outside, get some fresh air.”

  We slid out of the car, and I put an arm around her shoulders, maneuvering her to the biggest tree. It was colder outside than I’d realized. That was the desert for you. I leaned against the tree trunk, letting Debby rest against me.

  A thought struck. I pushed off the tree and disengaged from her. I got the keys from the ignition, walked back and opened the trunk.

  Behind me, Debby sucked in her breath.

  We both stared at the UFO-like alien lying in the trunk. I’d killed him with my flick-knife earlier. The blade was still stuck in his forehead. I yanked it out—it made a sucking sound—and wiped the blade on his torn clothes.

  “That’s gross,” Debby said.

  “It’s mine,” I said, folding the blade back into the handl
e, sliding the knife into a pocket.

  “You killed him?”

  “It was self-defense. Have you ever seen someone like him before?”

  She took a step closer, peering at the Ungul. Finally, she looked up at me, shaking her head.

  “You’re sure?” I asked.

  “Positive. There are no aliens here. Who is he?”

  “One of the aliens messing with Earth,” I said. “I followed him to Far Butte. I wonder why he came…”

  “What’s wrong?” Debby asked. “Why did you stop talking?”

  I closed the trunk. “The Unguls and the tower must be connected. Maybe the tower is one of the old pieces of treasure shown on the Canopus map. The Unguls definitely came searching for this place. Well, they went searching for something and found this place. Did being out of phase surprise them or surprise the Organizer? Rax didn’t seem to know about this place.”

  “Who’s Rax?” she asked.

  “A friend,” I said. “He can’t help us now. Okay. We have the element of surprise. That means we have to keep moving in order to keep them off balance.”

  “How do we do that?” she asked.

  I thought about it. “Can anyone else remember, even a little, what happens in the tower?”

  “Parker,” she said. “But I wasn’t ever supposed to tell anyone.”

  “We have to go see Parker,” I said.

  “That’s a bad idea. Parker doesn’t like visitors. He’s old, and he seems humorous, at times, but the man’s a killer. You don’t want to get on his bad side.”

  “Parker talked to you,” I pointed out.

  “That’s because Parker likes girls.”

  “We’re going to see Parker. We have to figure out what’s going on if we’re ever going to leave this place.”

  I headed for the driver’s side, stopping when I didn’t hear Debby following me. “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  She seemed to come out of a trance, moving suddenly, hurrying to me and looping one of her arms around one of mine.

  “Maybe you’re right,” she said. “I’ve forgotten what it’s like being with someone who has hope. I feel alive again, and I love it. Yes, let’s go see Parker.”

  -31-